Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/465



ORISSA. 453 Before a week is over, money altercations commence, which in process of time resolve themselves into an acrimonious haggling over every shrine; and the last few days of their stay are generally devoted to schemes for getting out of the holy city with as few more payments as possible. Every day the pilgrims bathe in one of the sacred lakes. These vast artificial sheets of water are embanked with solid masonry, honeycombed by time, and adorned with temples rising from the edge or peeping from beneath masses of rich foliage. At the principal one, 5000 bathers may be seen at once. On the masonry banks, whieh are formed into one continuous flight of steps all the way round, a good mile in lengtlı, there is sometimes not an inch of standing room to be had. Here, as in every spot where the common people congregate, the primitive adoration of local divinities and village gods makes its appearance. In this centre of Vishnu-worship, half-way down the grand flight of steps to the lake, stands a venerable banyan tree, the abode of an ancient sylvan deity, whom the pilgrims propitiate by sticking red flowers into the crevices of the weather-beaten trunk. Not far off is the garden-house of Jagannath, whither the three sacred images are drawn during the Car Festival. It stands at the end of a long, broad, sandy avenue, somewhat under a mile in length, which runs direct from it to the temple. It is surrounded by a massive wall about twenty feet high, castellated at the top. The principal gateway looks towards the temple, and is a handsome structure, with a fine pointed roof adorned with lions in the niost conventional style of Hindu sculpture. Inside, one catches glimpses of long straight walks, and grores of bright evergreen trees, with an ancient shrine at the end of the vista. Another place visited by all pilgrims is the Swarga-dura, the Gate of Heaven. The devotee threads his way through the deep-sunk narrow alleys of the town, with their thatched huts of wattle and mud gaily painted with red and yellow gods, till he reaches the shore. There, on the south of the city, he comes on a region of sandhills, bordered by temples and tombs behind, and with the surf-beaten beach in front. No distinct boundaries mark the limits of the Gate of Heaven. It runs about a quarter of a mile along the coast, or as much as may be occupied by a thousand cows.' In the background the lofty tower of Jagannath rises from the heart of the city; and in the intervening space little nonasteries cluster, each in its own hollow between the sandy hills. Sometimes an outlying rood or two of land is reclaimed, with infinite labour, from the sandy slopes, and fenced in by a curious wall made of the red earth pots in which the holy food is served out to the pilgrims. The sacred rice can only be placed in a new vessel, and every evening thousands of the unbroken pots are at the disposal of any one in want of such slender building materials.