1859.] Notes and Queries suggested by a Visit Jo Oriasa. 197 



the Kattak bills, but bow were they carried over the sand ? 

 Is it not very probable that the sea formerly flowed up to the 

 base of the temple? In Orissa the land has beeu gaining on 

 the sea all along the coast, and so has the sand ; in Puri there are 

 many buildings now buried under the sand, which in the memory of 

 living men were known to have been built above them. The same 

 process which is increasing the Sandheads and filling up 'the Hooghly 

 river is going on in Orissa. The deposits brought down by the 

 bill streams and large rivers of Orissa must be gradually silting 

 up the coasts. 



24. Cuttaclc — ancient city of Orissa. The foundation of Cut- 

 tack is attributed to the 10th century, — is not this the modern 

 city however ? "Was not ancient Cuttack situated to the North, 

 at a distance from the treacherous Mahanadi river, — immense ruins 

 have been found there, which served to build the Fort of Cut- 

 tack and to form the revetment. Probably old Cuttack was the 

 political and commercial capital of Orissa, for which its position 

 at the head of the Delta and on the road to Magadh or Bahar 

 favoured it. Cuttack had until lately a fine monument of anti- 

 quity Port Barabati, a splendid specimen of an old fortification 

 which contained remains of the Kesari Raja of the 14th century.* 

 Though Kattak was the capital of the Mahrattas in Orissa, there 

 are no documents available in Orissa to throw light on their career : 

 like the Musalmans in Orissa they seem to have intermeddled very 

 little in internal arrangements of the country, they were men of the 

 sword not of the pen. The Patans, however, have gained such a 

 hold in Orissa that one-tenth of thejpopulation is Afghan. 



Queries. 



I append a few additional queries or desideranda relating to other 

 points about Orissa. 



* In 1837 by the Magistrate's orders the fort was pulled down and sold to sup- 

 ply metalling for the roads. An ignorant or perverted taste would lead sonio 

 men to obliterate all recollections of the past. They sec not the force of 

 Dr. Johnson's maxim, " Whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future 

 predominate over the present, raises us in the scale of being." 



