The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.28

v2.c18.28

Of the other two buildings the temple proper is also now totally dismantled, and forming an enormous mass of stones, studded with a few *pipal* trees here and there, and harbouring snakes, from the dread of which few care to approach it. The only work of art prominently noticeable on it at the time when I visited the place was a figure of a rampant lion, which had projected from the southern face of the tower. Wishing to have it measured with a tape, I desired a cowherd boy to go up and do the needful for me; but the dread of snakes made him refuse my offer of two rupees, when his daily earnings probably did not exceed a penny. I guessed its size to be about 14 feet, and its weight, including that of the horizontal portion which was built into the wall, to be about 6 tons. It has jutted out in the air at a height of about a hundred feet from the ground. Judging from the Great Tower and other temples of Bhuvaneśvara, I believe there were similar figures also on the west and the north sides of the temple but they are now completely buried in rubbish. In 1824, when Mr. Stirling visited the place, only a small section of the temple was standing. It was about one hundred and twenty feet in height, and, when seen from a distance, gave ‘to the ruin a singular appearance, something resembling that of a ship under sail’⁷. This portion was still standing in 1839, when Mr. Fergusson took a drawing of it for his *Picturesque Illustrations of the Architecture of Hindustan*, but when I saw it at the close of 1868 its upper portion had tumbled down. Mr. Fergusson has since produced a restored drawing of this temple and it affords the only representation that can now be had of this most magnificent sample of Orissan art.