History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c24.23

v1.c24.23

Besides these three land grants, Anantavarman Choḍagaṅga is known from a number of small stone inscriptions of which more than one hundred have been discovered in the temples at Mukhaliṅgam and several at Śrī-Kurmam. It is interesting to note that no inscriptions of this king have yet been discovered in the Puri, Cuttack and the Balasore districts of Northern Orissa. This perhaps proves that some local king was still ruling over Northern Orissa who had been reinstated by Anantavarman, as stated in his inscriptions. According to the inscriptions of his successors Anantavarman destroyed the fortified town of Āramya or Ānamya and then defeated the king of Mandāra. This Mandāra is called in the *Rāmacharita* Apara-Mandāra² to distinguish it from Mandāra in the Bhagalpur district of Bihar. It is called Madāran in the *Ain-i-Akbari*³ and Mandāran in Bankim Chandra’s celebrated novel *Durgeś-nandinī*. The place is now called Bhitargarh and lies eight miles to the west of Ārāmbāgh in the Hooghly district of Bengal. The king of Mandāra is said to have been defeated on the banks of the Ganges, though that river now flows more than fifty miles from Bhitargarh. The empire of Anantavarman Choḍagaṅga now extended from the mouth of the Ganges in the north to the mouth of the Godāvarī in the south. The western boundary of this vast kingdom was not properly defined. His immediate neighbours on the west were the Kaḷachuris or Haihayas of Ratnapura. Anantavarman’s relations with the Chedīs were not amicable. In the Malhar inscriptions of Jājalladeva, Ratnadeva I is said to have defeated king Choḍagaṅga¹ and this information is repeated in the Ratnapura inscription of Pṛthvīdeva.² According to a work of very doubtful antecedents, edited by Mahāmahopādhyāya Dr. Hara Prasād Śāstri, M.A., PH. D., C.I.E., the Vallāla-charitam by Ananda Bhaṭṭa, Vijayasena of Bengal was the friend of Anantavarman Choḍagaṅga.