History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c46.126

v2.c46.126

The age of temple-building was practically over in the beginning of the 11th century. After the Liṅgarāja-Ananta Vāsudeva-Brahmeśvara group there is a gap of nearly a century. The next group begins with the great temple of Jagannātha at Puri. The late Mr. Monmohan Chakravarti proved definitely that this temple was built before the close of the 11th and not the 12th as Fergusson and other earlier writers supposed. Further, almost all land grants of the descendants of Anantavarman Choḍagaṅga inform us that that king began the great temple of Jagannātha at Puri.³ The 27th verse of the Kenduapatna plates of Narasimha II mentions the building of the temple of Jagannātha (Prāsāda Purushottamasya) explicitly.¹ In the case of this temple Orissan tradition rightly ascribes the beginning of the erection of the Vimāna and the Jagamohana to Choḍagaṅga. It is said that Anantavarman Choḍagaṅga built the Vimāna, but the Jagamohana was left unfinished and was completed by Anaṅgabhīma I. The temple, as it stands, has been very well described by earlier writers like Fergusson and modern writers like the late Mr. Mano Mohan Ganguly, and need not be repeated here. In this temple both the Vimāna and the Jagamohana are square in plan. The Jagamohana being a more perfect square, both inside and outside, than the Vimāna, but it lacks the dignity of that of the Liṅgarāja. Fergusson’s comments on the style of this temple is rightly adverse, but he committed the mistake of all pioneer writers in comparing the architects and artists of the late 11th century with those of the early 10th. He quotes Stirling to support himself, but as both of them knew the history of the country very imperfectly, they could not but create confusion. The late Monmohan Chakravarti has proved from inscriptions of kings who ruled outside Orissa that the temple of Jagannātha became famous late in the 10th and early in the 11th century. In the middle of the 7th century, when Yuan Chwang came to Orissa the great temple did not exist and the god Jagannātha had not acquired such wide fame.