The Bhavānīśaṅkar temple is one of the early temples of Odisha. It is situated close to the northern compound wall of the Liṅgarāja temple in the old town of Odisha. At present it is a ruined temple and only the eastern side of the temple was exposed sometime in the 1970s and no proper record is maintained about it. The exposed wall contains a number of short inscriptions, which may be dated to the seventh century ce on grounds of palaeography. The inscriptions record some personal names and refer to the deity for whom the shrine was erected. The characters of the inscriptions and the stylistic peculiarities of the extant images and motifs are now only parameters to fix the date of the temple. The paper attempts to study the character and contents of the short inscriptions and to contextualise them with the early building activities of Odisha.