History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c30.46

v1.c30.46

With the death of Pratāparudra the pall of dense darkness descends upon the mediæval history of Orissa, to be lifted only with the Mughal conquest of the province half a century later. Inspite of Neo-Vaiṣṇavite teaching and Chaitanya’s religion of universal love and toleration the repeated treachery of Hindu Oriyas brought the power and prestige of Orissa down within a very short time and hastened the conquest of the southern vice-royalty by the Quṭb-Shāhi Sulṭans of Golkonda and the Afghan-Sur dynasty of Bengal. The result was intense anarchy, during which the Garhjāt chiefs assumed independence. The next important step in the decline of Orissa was the religious superiority of Jagannātha and its hierarchy of temple priests. We have already seen in the chapter on Kapilendra that public proclamations were incised on the Jaya-Vijaya gate of the Jagamahona of Jagannātha; not only so, whenever the Gajapati king was in trouble, he went and expressed a pious wish about his trouble at the feet of Jagannatha. From this period the importance of the Śaiva hierarchy of Āmra-tīrtha or Bhuvaneśvara decline definitely and the king becomes the representative of the Lord Jagannātha in exclusion to Kṛttivāsa of Bhuvaneśvara or Vimala of Jajpur and Kinchikeśvarī of Kiching, as much as the holy Roman emperor was of the See of Rome.