The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.92

v2.c18.92

**Kopari.** Forty-two miles to the south-east of Balasore, it lat. 20 *d.* 19 *s.* long. 86 *d.* 30 *s.*, there is a small village called Kopāri, and by it, on a level plain surrounded on three sides by low rocky hills, there are some ruins "which exhibit the traces of an ancient Buddhist temple and Vihāra or monastery with a pleasure-ground or grove intervening. The Buddhist temple appears to have been destroyed and its materials used to erect a Brahmanical temple, dedicated to Śiva, whose emblems in a later style of art, some in fact comparatively modern, are found in abundance'³³. The ruins have been described by Mr. Beams under three heads: 1st, the earlier building, [**160**] 2nd, an oblong platform, and 3rd, a narrow hall. With regard to the first, he says, 'it consists of a confused mass of laterite hewn stones of very great size,...a square of about 38 feet in length on each side. In what seems to have been the centre, is a huge square mass of laterite like an altar, about four feet high, and at each corner a small niche in one of which was an image of Māyā Devi. One of the other niches has been removed to a distance of about half a mile and set up on the edge of a tank, probably for purposes of Brahmanical worship; the other two niches are overgrown with trees... this building I suppose to have been the original Buddhist temple and the altar probably sustained an image of Buddha of gigantic size, the mutilated remains of which have been set up in the village temple and are now worshipped as Baladeva'. The image of Māyā Devi was shown to me and I read on the back of it the Buddhist creed inscribed in the Kuṭila character. This would give the date to be the 10th century or a little before; but Mr. Beames thinks it highly probable that the image was dedicated long after the erection of the temple. Anyhow the Buddhist character of the ruins cannot be doubted. The tank is large and noted for retaining its water all round the year, though it is hewn in stone and only 6 feet deep.