History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c29.45

v1.c29.45

The chronology of Purushottama's reign was so very little known that writing in 1919 the late Tarini Charan Rath said: "It is rather difficult to fix with precision the date of this Kāñchī-Kāverī expedition of king Purushottama-deva and find out the name of his contemporary king of Karṇāṭa, with whom he waged war and whose daughter Padmāvatī he married.¹ Purushottama’s contemporaries in Karṇāṭa were Virupāksha II, Sāḷuva Narasiṁha, Narasa Nāyaka and Immāḍi Narasiṁha. Professor S. K. Ayyangar now admits that Sāḷuva Narasiṁha failed to capture Udayagiri rājya from the Gajapati king.² If the Mādalā Pāñji is to be believed, then Purushottama erected the Bhoga-maṇḍapa or the hall of refection, being in fact the third maṇḍapa in the temple of Jagannātha. Following this custom three separate maṇḍapas have been erected in front of all important temples in Orissa. The temple of Jagannātha at Puri, that of his consort Lakshmi, the temples of Krittivāsa and Ananta-Vasudeva at Bhuvaneśvara, and that of the former’s consort Pārvatī at the same place consist of one sanctum (vimāna) and three separate maṇḍapas (Jagamohana, Nāṭyamandira and the Bhoga maṇḍapa). In another line Purushottama introduced an innovation. Up to the time of Narasiṁha IV and Kapilendra, charters in Orissa were issued after being written on plates of copper. We can trace this system from the time of Kumāragupta I (414-55 A. D.) up to that of Rāmachandra II of Khurdah (1731-43 A.D.) The usual form of these copper plates is rectangular. Purushottama issued his grant on a piece of copper, shaped like an axe, which was most probably a real pre-historic copper axe. While the material may have been got by accident, the real innovation introduced by Purushottama was the final rejection of the proto-Bengali script in favour of the cursive Oriya. All subsequent grants issued in Orissa show the use of the Oriya script. The Balasore grant written on the copper axe was issued on the 5th Aṅka 7th April 1483.A. D.¹