Page:The Aristocracy of Southern India.djvu/134

 94 The Aristocracy of Southern India.

on the successful performance of your marriage ceremonials.

Wishing you a long and prosperous life. I remain, Yours sincerely, (Signed) C. F. MacCAETIE.

It was the Rajah Sahib that purchased the Rambha Estate from Mr. F. J. B. Minchin some years ago. As the major portion of the Chilka Lake which is attached to that estate belongs to the Rajah Sahib we give an account of it from W. W. Hunter's Orissa:—

"A native tradition relates how, about the year of Our Lord 318, a strange race (the Yavanas) came sailing accross the sea, and cast anchor off the holy city of Puri, hoping to capture the temple, with its store of jewels, and treasure-house of costly oblations. But the priests^ having for days beforehand seen quantities of litter from the horses and elephants drifting ashore, fled with the precious image and left an empty city to the invaders. The disappointed General Red-arm (Rakhta-Bahu) by name, enraged at the tell-tale tide, advanced in battle array to punish the ocean. The sea receded deceitfully for a couple of miles, and then suddenly surging in upon the presumptons foreigners, swallowed them up. At the same time it flooded a great part of the Puri District, and formed the Chilka Lake. We take the following from " Wild-life in Canara" by Forbes : —

"The Chilka Lake extends from Pooree to the neigh- bourhood of the town of Ganjam, a distance of nearly fifty