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The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t9: Orissa

The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t9

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English

Orissa

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Similarly, the ancient history of Orissa is yet to be unfolded by systematic field studies. Physically, Orissa is divided into two distinct zones: the narrow coastal alluvium differing in width from fifteen to forty miles covering the districts of Ganjam, Puri, Cuttack and Balasore; the hilly upland which is part of the Vindhyan Complex with hills of crystalline and metamorphic series.³ Significantly these divisions are recognized by distinct names. The upland country is called 'Udra' or 'Odhra'. It is still the main centre of the tribal and backward areas of Orissa.

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³ GANGOLY, MANMOHAN. *Orissa and her remains—Ancient and Medieval*, Calcutta, 1912. p 239.

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The coastal plain is divided by the Mahanadi into two parts: the northern called the ‘Utkala’ (significantly suggestive of Aryan influences) and the southern called ‘Kalinga’.¹ The northern boundary of Utkala and the southern boundary of Kalinga have always depended on fortunes of political struggles.

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¹ MEHTAB, HAREKRISHNA. *The History of Orissa*. Radhakumud Mookerji Endowment Lectures, 1947. Lucknow, 1949, p. 2.

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In spite of our abundant knowledge of the temples and other monuments of the Early historic and Medieval periods, the main sequence of cultures has not been studied in detail. The first glimpse is provided by the excavation of B. B. Lal at Sisupalgarh.² Since we have a consistent literary and epigraphic evidence of Kalinga as a highly cultured area even by the time of Asoka's conquest in 246 B.C., we can assume an earlier infiltration of Gangetic valley influences through Magadha and Kosala. Significantly Panini mentions Kalinga for the first time.

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² LAL, B. B., "Sisupalgarh 1948", *Ancient India*, No. 5. New Delhi.

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According to Lal the earliest deposits at Sisupalgarh roughly belong the Mauryan period and thereabouts. In view of the more recent evidence about the date of the black-and-red wares and the date of the N.B.P., it is not unreasonable to assign slightly earlier dates to these levels. In the Department of Anthropology of the Calcutta University, there are two shouldered celts alleged to have come from Sisupalgarh.³ In the Museum at Bhuvaneshvar, there are nice shouldered and chipped celts from Athgarh (west of Cuttack) and Angur (Dhenkanal district) and Ranpur (Puri District).⁴ As already referred to, Tamluk in the Midnapore district has yielded evidence of an earlier ‘Stone axe culture’ being succeeded by the Gangetic valley influences indicated by the N.B.P. etc. Hence it is not unreasonable to infer a similar sequence in coastal Orissa.⁵

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³ I am very much obliged to Shri Dharani Sen for this information.

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⁴ I am grateful to Shri P. Acharya, Superintendent of Archaeology, Orissa, for this information.

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⁵ In the month of May, the author jointly with Prof. G. S. Das conducted an excavation in the neighbourhood of Sisupalgarh. In one of the section cleanings, a fine core of chert was found. It should be followed up.

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The excavations, conducted by Smt. Debal Mitra at Jaugada, Ganjam District, confirm this story. At this site with an Asokan inscription, a neolithic culture was found vaguely represented at the site by a few stone celts of oblong section *and one of them occurs immediately above the natural soil*. The next phase links with Sisupalgarh with black-and-red ware and iron.⁶

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⁶ *Indian Archaeology*, 1956-57.

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The wide alluvial plains seem to have been colonized by adventurous Aryan groups from the Gangetic valley and Central India. There are two possible routes: one across south Kosala and through the Mahanadi valley and the second along the coast from the delta of Bengal. The last seems to be the more probable, in view of the existence of two Asokan inscriptions along the coast at the junction of Andhra and Kalinga. This is also borne out by the finding of Rouletted ware at Tamralipti and Sisupalgarh.

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Kerala

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Kerala is almost a *terra incognita*, for the same reason that no systematic excavation has ever been carried out of any habitation site, except a few megaliths.

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Finally, as already indicated, the isolation of most of the larger river basins of the country was broken during the early historic period by the development of a vast net work of communications, and the consequent expansion and colonization of large scale agricultural communities under politically stable and economically prosperous conditions.

Cites (5)