The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c6.11.1

v1.c6.11.1

Even the origin of its very name is involved in doubt. Unquestionably the word Orissa is a corruption of the Sanskrit *Oḍra-deśa*, the country of the Oḍras or Uḍras; but who the Oḍras were, remains yet to be determined. According to grammarians the word Oḍra is derived from the root *uḍ*, "to embrace"; but this derivation does not in any way serve to elucidate how the province came to be so designated. According to some, it is a compound of the prefix *ā*, "slight increase" and the root *undi* "to soil" with the affix *raka*, the *d* being changed to *ḍ*, meaning "the country of the dirty people", the Uriyās being, in the estimation of the Bengalis, unmindful of cleanliness; but the derivation, on the face of it, appears so fanciful that it may be at once rejected as an afterthought. Lassen takes it to be a Prakrit form of the Sanskrit *uttara* "north"—the northern country.⁶ A common ornamental plant with large bright red flowers (*Hibiscus rosa sinensis*⁷) is in Sanskrit named *Oḍra*, and it has been alleged that the province derives its name from the plant, "the land of hibiscus flower", in the same way that India is called Jambudvīpa "the island of the *Jām* fruit "from the *Eugenia jambolana* which is said to have been at one time very widely spread over the country.