22 J. Beames — The Alii Hills in CuttacJc. [No. 1, 



that the boundary" of the two zamindarfs of Alti and 'Xlamgir was at one 

 time disputed, and the disputants were coming to blows about it, when these 

 two stones rolled from the top of the hill and fixed themselves where they 

 now lie. Both parties agreed to recognize the occurrence as a divine inter- 

 position and accepted the spot as the boundary line between their two 

 estates ; and the stones lie there to this day as the boundary mark ; ' so it 

 must be true', said the old man. 



Passing on eastwards across a small valley we come to the Udaygiri, 

 or Sunrise Hill, the first point in Orissa on which the sun's rays light every 

 morning, in spite of the fifty miles of lowland between it and the Bay of 

 Bengal. It is a conical peak with three long spurs stretching respectively 

 north, north-east, and south-east ; and clothed with dense vegetation, amongst 

 which on the southern face are noticeable five or six immense Plumeria 

 trees (gul-chini) with their naked fleshy branches and overpoweringly fra- 

 grant white blossoms. In gardens I have never seen this tree more than 

 10 or 12 feet high, but below the mosque there is a group of them upwards 

 of fifty feet in height, the flowers of which are dropped on to the pavement 

 and offered by the mujdwir in front of the kiblah. 



In the bay formed between the south-eastern and north-eastern peaks of 

 Udaygiri is a sloping plain of bare laterite rock, on the edge of which stands 

 a statue of Buddha upwards of 8 feet high. I give a sketch of the profile of 

 this figure (plate VI, upper left hand corner) to shew the way in which it 

 stands out from the slab on which it is carved. The nose as usual is broken, 

 and the lower part of the figure mutilated and overgrown with lichen. All 

 round lie numerous stone samdclhs, marking the graves of Buddhist priests of 

 by-gone times. There are several hundreds of these so closely resembling in 

 shape large lingas, that I at first mistook them for such, till I noticed the 

 small sitting figure of Buddha on the top. Passing from this over the 

 broad stony plain, a small temple or " gumpa" is reached, and close to it is 

 the celebrated well. This is cut in the laterite rock and is well described 

 by Babu Chandra Sekhar. The inscription is, however, as I make it out, 

 not as he read it, but as follows : 



What it means it is difficult to say, but it occurs twice over, each time 

 in letters six or eight inches long, of the ordinary Kutila type, and after 

 looking at it a long time I am fairly certain of every letter. If it be a 

 name Brajaldla, then it is singular that the second ^r should have been 

 omitted in both cases. This could hardly be an accident. 



The great glory of- Udaygiri is the gateway of which I give a sketch 

 (see plate III). It is just beyond the well, and after I had the jungle cut, 

 stood out well against the background of trees and shrubs. 



