The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c6.11.3

v1.c6.11.3

If this inference be tenable, it would afford a curious clue to the meaning of the second name, *Utkala*, by which the province is known to Sanskrit writers.¹³ Mediaeval etymologists take it to be a compound of *ut* "above," or an expletive, and *kal* "to go", meaning "one who travels with a load", "a porter," and secondarily Uriyās who are extensively employed even to this day as load-carriers and *pālki*-bearers. The root *kal* also means "to sound indistinctly", and some imagine that it has been used to indicate the imperfect sounds of Uriyā speech.¹⁴ Both these derivations are, however, fanciful, and we must look to other than the Sanskrit for the true radicals of the word under notice. *Oḍra* is by far the most extensively used term for the Uriyās, and its vernacular form is *Oḍ*, or *Uḍ*, both according to the rules of the Prakrit grammar and popular usage. If this, as a specific tribal designation, be added to *Kola*, the generic name for the aborigines, we get Uṭkola "a *kola* of the *Oḍ* or *Uḍ* class", the sonant *ḍ* being required by a well-known euphonic law to change to the surd *ṭ*. The subsequent conversions of *uṭ* into *ut* and *Kola* into *kala* are the results of phonetic decay, or vernacular corruption and regeneration of which innumerable examples may easily be adduced.