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 ascent on the other side. Mr. Willock (see p. 142) threw a girder bridge across the gorge and took the road over this, almost on the level. The new road from the bridge to the town was cut through the large and substantial old mud fort which gives Ráyagada its name. This is supposed to have been built by one of the Rájas of Jeypore, who made it his residence. Within it, near the tumble-down temple to its guardian deity Majji Giriya, is pointed out the spot where his wives committed sati on his death. Alongside the road is a black slab called the Janni pothoro, or 'priest's stone,' on which human sacrifices are said to have been offered formerly. The hill people still regard it with awe and decline on any account to touch it. In the police-station compound lies an old iron cannon which was taken from the fort. It is an exceedingly primitive weapon consisting of a core made of straight bars on to which successive rings of iron have been shrunk. It is some six feet long and is provided with four iron rings for lifting it. The imprisonment of Rája Vikrama Deo in this fort by his son in 1849 is referred to on p. 268 above and the neighbouring falls of the Nágávali are mentioned on p. 9.

Singapur, usually known as Kalyána Singapur to distinguish it from Bhairava Singapur in Jeypore taluk, stands 30 miles north by west of Ráyagada on the main track to Kálahandi 997 feet above the sea in a narrow valley immediately west of the Nímgiris. The population is 1,996. It contains the remains of an old fort, is surrounded on three sides by the Nágávali river, and is almost buried in a jungle of bamboo. Just south-west of it rises sacred Dévagiri, a steep rocky hill in which there is a cave containing a lingam where a feast is held at Sivarátri, and on which are several pools of water and an inscription which seems undecipherable.

Singapur is the chief village of a subdivision of Jeypore, consisting of Khond villages, which was granted by Rája Vikrama Deo II (1825-60) to a kinsman on service tenure. In 1864 1 the then Rája sued the grantee's son, Krishna Deo, for the possession of the property or an annual payment of Rs. 5,000 for it. It was decreed that the Us. 5,000 should be paid and the decision was upheld on appeal by the High Court 2 and the Privy Council. Krishna Deo, who was always known as the Rája of Singapur, died in 1884 leaving a young widow named Níla Dévi, to whom he had given authority to adopt, and an illegitimate son named Gópinátha Deo, twelve years of age. The