1859.] Notes and Queries suggested by a Visit to Orissa. 189 



Deva, one of the Grajapati kings who ruled from A. D. 1503 

 renounced the Jain doctrines and adopted those of Chaitanyea. 

 The following printed books afford some information on the 

 subject. 



Chaitanyea Chandroday, Chaitanyea Bhagavat, Chaitan- 

 yea Charitra. — But there are many MSS. boarded up by the 

 Grosaius as carefully as the Jains hoard up theirs — these ought to he 

 procured. 



8. Jain MSS. desirable. The Jains have very valuable libraries 

 in B-ajputana which, judging from what China has yielded, may also 

 remove some of the veil which hangs over Orissa. I was two years 

 ago in a Jain house in Benares where there was a large collection of 

 Jain MSS. Dr. Stevenson has made use of Jain MSS. to give in- 

 formation regarding certain places in the Bombay Presidency. These 

 MSS. might afford a clue to the connection of the Jains or Buddhists 

 in Central India with those in Orissa. A Buddhist inscription has 

 been found m a Buddhist temple in Nagpur of the date 657 A. D., 

 and it was not until the 13th century the Jains were expelled from 

 the Pandyan country. 



Analyses of these works with notes on the plan that Hodgson 

 and Ksoma de Koros have adopted, would be of great use. The Asia- 

 tic Society might publish some in their Bibliotheca Indica, which 

 hitherto has contained few works throwing light on the social con- 

 dition and manners of the people of India. 



9. Romanising in Orissa. All the Sanskrit MS. used in Orissa 

 are written in the Uriya and not in the Nagari character, though 

 the latter is the sacred character of India and hence called the Deva 

 Nagari or divine character, but the Brahmans will not accept an 

 universal character — nationality prevails over theory — and yet there 

 are men who dream of abolishing all the Indian alphabets and sub- 

 stituting the English alphabet for them ! 



10. Uriya language. The Uriya language has been very little 

 cultivated : the Brahman scholars in Orissa as well as in Bengal 

 despised the Vernacular. The Bhagavat Gita however was trans- 

 lated from the Sanskrit into Uriya three centuries ago ; among ori- 

 ginal works are the Rasa Kalol on Krishna, the Vaidehivilds about 

 Bam, the Labaneatatva, a tale, the Mukunda Mala, Jdrati bhakti a 



