1837.] Facsimiles of Ancient Inscriptions. 279 



rock, published in Stirling's memoir on Cuttack (As. Res. XV.) In 

 doing this, he came most unexpectedly upon a number of highly curi- 

 ous ancient temples and insc; iptions, of which he hastened to make 

 drawings and facsimiles. He found himself impeded and foiled by 

 the brahmans of the spot, who even went so far as to abstract one of 

 the copies which had cost him the most labour. Upon seeking the 

 cause of so unusual a want of courtesy, the priests told him how 

 their images and relics had been carried off by former antiquaries, 

 and pointed out whence the commemorative slab had been actually 

 cut out from the temples of Ananda Bdsu deva at Bhubaneswar by a 

 late Colonel Sahib. The dimensions of the slab and the subject 

 of invocation tallied so exactly with the inscription translated by 

 Captain Marshall, that Lieut. Kittoe wrote to me on the subject, 

 and on referring to the list of donations at the end of the ele- 

 venth volume of Researches, I find General Stewart set down as 

 the donor of " two slabs with inscriptions from Bhubaneswar in 

 Orissa." 



There was nothing in the first of the two whence we could guess its 

 locality ; the person noted as the founder of the temple being a pri- 

 vate individual, named Bhatta Sri' Bhava-deva ; but in the slab, now 

 confidently conjectured to be its companion, we have a raja's name 

 and ancestry which ought to afford a better clue. 



This king appears in the 15th verse as Aniyanka Bhima, the 

 brother of " an excellent man" who had come to the throne through 

 marriage with Surama', the daughter of Ahirama, whose parentage 

 is nameless, and recorded only as " the ornament of their race." 



On referring to Stirling's catalogue of the princes of Orissa*, 

 we find this very person, under the name of Ananga Bhim Deo, 

 ascending the Gajapati throne, out of the direct line, in 1174 A. D. 

 He was one of the most illustrious princes of the Gangavansa line, 

 the Firoz of his day, for the number and variety of the public works 

 he erected. " Having unfortunately incurred the guilt of killing a 

 brahman, motives of superstition prompted him to construct nume- 

 rous temples as an expiation for his offence ;" and probably this of 

 Bhubaneswara was one of them. The date of raja Ananga Bhima also 

 agrees closely with what was assumed from the style of the alphabet, 

 and the "Samvat 32" of the Basu-deva slab. It will hence become 

 a question, whether these figures are, in all cases, to be referred to a 

 Cuttack era, or whether the same Deva-Nagari alphabet was in use 



* See Useful Tables, page 113 ; or As. Res. XV. 269. 

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