History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c29.33

v1.c29.33

As noticed by Chakravarti, the conquest of Vijayanagara by Purushottama is recorded in the Bengali poem Śrī-Chaitanya-Charitāmṛta by the Vaiṣṇava saint Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja. This poem mentions that Purushottama conquered Vijayanagara and brought an idol named Sākshī-gopāla and a jewelled throne from that country.² This throne was presented to the Lord Jagannātha at Puri and appears to be the same as the stone altar on which the wooden images of Jagannātha, Balarāma and Subhadrā stand at present. Those who have examined this Ratnavedī at close quarters inside the Vimāna of the temple of Jagannātha at Puri will be able to recognise the bizarre arabesque of the decadent Hoyśala type, which one sees in the temple of Hazāra-Rāmasvāmī at Hampe or Vijayanagara, on it. It appears to me that a part, at any rate, of this jewelled throne consisted of a carved stone altar which also was presented along with the metal portion to the Lord Jagannātha. There are no reasons to disbelieve the statements of Gosvāmī Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, as he wrote in distant Vṛndāvana long after the fall of the Gajapatis of the Surya Vaṃśa dynasty and was no court sycophant. While the Kāñji-Kāverī-Pothi is a mere romance of the type of the Gaṅgādāsa-Pratāpa-Vilasam the Chaitanya-Charitāmṛita is a reliable biography of Chaitanya with which panegyrics of the type of the Sāḷuv-ābhyudayam would not even bear comparison.