A History of India, Third Edition

RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND MILITARY FEUDALISM

Kalachuri king Ratnadeva, who boasted in an inscription that he had
defeated ‘King Chodaganga, Ruler of Kalinga’. Thus Anantavarman
remained a coastal ruler, but the coastline under his control was nearly 500
miles long. At the end of his long life he built the famous Jagannath temple
of Puri. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Anantavarman’s
successors clashed with the new Muslim rulers of Bengal; nevertheless, the
Muslim could not make any inroads into Orissa. King Anangabhima III
(1216–39) proudly praised his Brahmin general, Vishnu, in an inscription:

How are we to describe that heroism of Vishnu during his fight

with the Muslim king, while all alone he shot dead many excellent

soldiers?...[The display of heroism] became a grand feyst to the

sleepless and unwinking eyes of the gods who were the interested

lookers-on in the heaven above.^1

King Narasimhavarman I (1239–64), the builder of the great sun temple at
Konarak, was one of the few Hindu rulers of his time who did not manage
simply to defend himself against the superior military forces of the
Muslims, but who also launched an offensive against them. When in 1243
the Muslim governor of Bengal wanted to increase his autonomy and
extend his sway after the death of Iltutmish, an army from Orissa attacked
him in his capital, Lakhnaur, in central Bengal. The following year the
Hindu forces scored another success in Bengal. Narasimhavarman’s
grandson was to record the event in an inscription commemorating his
ancestor’s deed: ‘The Ganga herself blackened for a great extent by the
flood of tears which washed away the collyrium from the eyes of the
Yavanis [Muslim women] of Radha and Varendra [west and north Bengal]
whose husbands have been killed by Narasimha’s army.’^2
Narasimhavarman’s offensive policy probably warded off a Muslim
attack on Orissa for more than a century. Only in 1361 did the sultan of
Delhi, Firoz Shah, suddenly assault Orissa on his way back from Bengal,
‘extirpating Rai Gajpat (Raja Gajapati), massacring the unbelievers,
demolishing their temples, hunting elephants, and getting a glimpse of their
enchanting country’^3 , as it is reported in the contemporary chronicle
Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi. The sultan had rushed through northern Orissa
where he had destroyed the Bhanja capital, Khiching, and he had then
taken the Gajapati Bhanudeva by surprise at Cuttack. Bhanudeva fled but
was reinstated on condition that he pay a regular tribute to the sultan. The
Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi then goes on to report: ‘The victorious standards now
set out for the destruction of the temple of Jagannath. This was the shrine
of the polytheists of this land and a sanctuary of worship of the unbelievers
of the Far East. It was the most famous of their temples.’ However, no
other sources report the destruction of the temple.
Firoz Shah’s assault had no lasting consequences as far as Orissa’s status