History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c14: Chapter VII
History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c14
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Chapter VII
v1.c14.1
It is dawning upon us slowly that in the very dawn of Indian History the people of Kaliṅga were the pioneers of Indian colonisation in Further India and the Indian Archipelago. More than half-a-century ago Kern recognised that South Indian tribes took the most prominent part in the colonization of the Indian Archipelago and among the Simbiring tribe (which means the Black) there are five sub-divisions designated Choliya, Pandiya, Meliyala, Depari and Pelawi. In these five names he rightly recognised the South Indian names Choḷa, Pāṇḍya, Pahlava or Pallava and Malayali or Chera. The origin of the Depari is still a subject of conjecture. The Meliyala, according to Vogel, are the Malayalis of the Malabar Coast of South India. The same authority states that "it is curious that among the other tribes of the Karo-Bataka the 'Keliṅg' origin of the Simbiring is a recognised fact. This term Keliṅg or Kiliṅg by which immigrants from the Indian continent are generally designated among the inhabitants of the Archipelago is clearly derived from Kaliṅga, the ancient name of the Telegu country, situated on the East coast of India between the rivers Mahānadī and Godāvarī. I may note parenthetically that the use of this term indicates that the Telegu country too must have had a considerable share in the colonisation of the Far East."[1] Vogel is too cautious and, therefore, unjust to the claims of Kalinga. It is universally admitted that Keling or Kling is the term applied in the Malaya Peninsula and all parts of the Indian Archipelago to denote a man from India, irrespective of the province from which he comes. It proves directly that the earliest Indians with whom the Indonesians became familiar were people from Kalinga. The names of the five tribes of the Simbirings of Sumatra are due to the incorporation of Chola, Pandya, Pallava and Malayan people in them owing to the Indians' losing hold on the islands of the Archipelago. Originally the Simbirings must have been people of Austric origin who had imbibed Negrito blood and there came a further admixture of South-Indian or Dravidian blood when the Malayas drove the Indians of the coastland of Java, Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines into the hinterland. The Kalingan origin of the earliest colonists from India does not depend merely on the term now applied to Indians in the Indian Archipelago, but also on definite archaeological and historical evidence. During the reign of the Chola king, Rajendradeva Parakesarivaman, one of the younger sons of the great Chola conqueror, Rajendra Chola I Gangaikondan, an expedition was sent to Ceylon some time before 17th August, 1055. This inscription is to be found in the Manimangalam or the Rajagopala-Perumal temple in the Tanjore district. It is recorded that this army captured the king Vira-Salamegha (Vira-Salamegan), who was beheaded. There was, therefore, a king of Ceylon belonging to a Kalingan dynasty, which country had itself lost its independence long before that date.
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¹ *Nederlandsche Gesselschaft, p. 196.*
v1.c14.3.1
Further records of the colonisation of Further India and the Indian Archipelago by the people of Kalinga is to be found in the History of Burma and Siam. It is now acknowledged universally that the Talaing people of Burma, though of Mon origin, obtained their name from Tri-Kalinga. G. E. Harvey says, "Indeed the name 'Talaing' is probably derived from Telingana, a region on the Madras coast, whence so many of them came." It is further elucidated in a note, "the derivation of Phayre's is still the best. See Halliday, Hobson-Jobson s. v. 'Talaing', J. B. R. S. 1914 Blagden 'Talaing.' The aetiological tale that Alaungpaya christened the people Talaing meaning 'downtrodden' is disproved by the occurrence of the name Talaing in Burmese inscription as early as 1107 (Inscriptions 1913-18)."¹ The term Talaing is phonetically connected with Tri-Kalinga though that form cannot yet be proved to have existed in India in the first century B. C. or A. D. The undoubted origin of the name Talaing from Tri-Kalinga finds a curious corroboration in the fact that the Talaing land itself was divided into the three countries : Pegu, Myaingmya and Bassein. The king Razadarit (1385-1423) divided them into 32 village circles.² The Talaings of Burma were formed by an admixture of the original Indonesian or Negrito population with the Mons, with a small dose of Dravidian-Kalingan blood.
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The structure of their language is undoubtedly Mon but the name which has stuck to them through centuries was first applied to the Indian colonists settled on the coast land. The process of the absorption of the Indian colonists is described graphically by Harvey. The Indians must have settled along the coast lands before the 1st century B. C. and the original settlements from Bengal to Borneo and Tonkin were little trading principalities, such as Prome, Rangoon and Thaton. Like the European invaders of the 17th and 18th centuries the Indian colonists conquered in three different stages : the Missionary, the Trader and the Soldier. Originally they came as peaceful traders and they were welcomed by the original inhabitants as such. In the next stage they came in larger numbers and set up independent communities, for which there was ample room in this sparsely populated country. It was in the next stage that the Indians started conquering and founding new kingdoms under some energetic leader. Perhaps religion did not form a mask to colonisation and conquest as in the case of the European Christian. The question of the religion of the original colonists from India to Further India and the Indian Archipelago is still the subject of a very great controversy. Results of excavations prove that both in Further India and the Indian Archipelago the earliest Indian colonists were Hindus, *i. e.* Brahmanical in faith.
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Buddhism enters the stage at a much later period of the history, while Jainism does not appear at all. The absence of Jain throughout Further India and Indonesia is extremely significant in view of the fact that the province of their origin, Orissa, was a stronghold of Jainism. In fact, not a single Jain image has been recorded to have been discovered in any province of British Burma, Federated Malaya States, Siam, Annam or Cambodia. The case is slightly different in the case of Indonesia. Though Upper Indonesia has been visited from time to time by Dutch or French scholars like Krom, Finot and Vogel the majority of the islands of the South Pacific remain unvisited by any Indologist; yet, from time to time, claims are put forward by sensation-mongers or American scholars to connect the ancient Mayan civilisation with that of India. The connecting link or the route still remains to be discovered and two hypotheses have been put forward. The first of these is the time-honoured theory of the Mongolian origin of the American Indian. It is generally supposed that the Reds crossed from Asia to North America by the land bridge now represented by the Aleutian island or a vanished isthmus which originally joined Siberia to Alaska. The second theory is that some Asiatic Culture was carried across the South Pacific by traders. The islands of the Southern Pacific contain numerous remains of an extinct race.
v1.c14.3.4
It is generally admitted that the Polynesian races were never sufficiently cultured to produce such monuments. Up to this time it has never been the good fortune of any Indian Archæologist or even an European Indologist to examine the ruins of Mayan cities or to explore the Archæological remains in the South Pacific. There is a continuous chain of islands from the south-western end of New Guinea through New Hebrides, Fiji, Friendly islands, Harvey or Cook Island, Pitcairn Island to the Easter Islands, up to which the Melanesian group of Austric languages extend. From the Easter islands it is not a far cry to Juan Fernandez, off the coast of the Argentine Republic. In the Easter Islands there are antiquarian remains of the type to which a certain amount of attention has been paid by Anthropologists.¹ It is not possible in the present state of our knowledge, to aver that these remains of the Southern Pacific belong to the early colonists from Kalinga but such a hypothesis is not, altogether, impossible.
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¹ Harvey—History of Burma 1925, p. 6
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² Ibid. p. 115.
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¹ Perry—The Children of the Sun, pp. 21-55.
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We have to distinguish between two different stages in the colonisation of Indonesia and the Pacific islands, the first of which belongs to the period prior to the Aryanization of the great Dravidian nations of Southern India, *e. g.*, Kalingas, Cholas, Pandyas and Keralas. The second stage belongs to the historical period when the Dravidian had accepted the faith of the Aryan invaders with certain modifications. Scholars have recognised Hindu or Brahmanical remains in Java, Sumatra, Borneo and some of the neighbouring islands, such as Bali and Timor; but over the greater part of Indonesia the pre-historic remains include distinct traces of a pre-historic civilisation, no connection or contact with which can be established even now. The subject has been dealt with very summarily by W. J. Perry. The subject has been divided into two chapters entitled "Culture-sequence in Oceania and Indonesia." In Oceania two distinct people are recognised :—The dark skinned negroid people of the Solomon island, New Hebrides and Fiji and the light skinned people of Polynesia or the rest of the Pacific Islands with the exception of Micronesia. These two areas divide the culture of Oceania. Throughout Polynesia one finds stone monuments and stone statues or images which are not used, in the majority of cases, by the present inhabitants of these islands. In the case of the Easter Islands such monuments are quite beyond the constructive power of the present inhabitants or their implements.
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The Easter Islands are isolated from the rest of Polynesia but here one finds "Stone houses massively built, and placed in rows of streets : platforms from 200 to 300 ft. in length and 15 ft. to 20 ft. high, on the outer or seaward side, constructed of hewn stones dovetailed together ; stone statues 3 ft. to 30 ft. high, representing the upper portion of a human figure, sometimes standing on the platform and sometimes on the ground ; and sculptured rocks, the subject being generally the human face. On the heads of the larger pillars crowns made from a red volcanic stone were fitted."[¹] "One peculiar feature of these statues is the disproportionate size of the ears" which we find in Jain and Buddhist images of India from the Gupta period downwards. The platforms on which these images were placed are pyramidal in shape and the people who built them were agriculturists of an advanced type as the remains of an irrigation system found on the island prove.[²] Similar stone ruins have been discovered in Hawaii where there are huge pyramidal temples and stone tombs made for kings. The modern inhabitants of Hawaii use irrigation for cultivation. Similar stone images and buildings have been found on the uninhabited Necker Island, 450 miles north-west of Honolulu, and in Fanning's Island near Christmas Island. But the remains on the Marquesas group bear strong resemblance to those of the Easter Islands." Several statues with points of resemblance to the remains of the Easter Islands have been found in the Marquesas. In Nuku-hiva, Porter saw a statue of stone, about the height of a man, but larger in proportion in every way, round which the dead were exposed in canoes. This figure differed from those of Easter Islands in being in the squatting position, but a greater similarity is present in a statue found by Christian in the Island of Riva-oa. This is about 8 ft. high, and in the position of the arms and general characters of the features definitely resembles the statues of Easter Island.... The ma'ae or sacred places had two or more platforms, but there is no evidence of a pyramidal form.¹ The statues were placed on pyramidal altars and the platforms were surrounded with upright stones. There are traces of a considerable irrigation system which are also to be found in the Paumotus.² In the Pitcairn Island foundations of stone temples were discovered while stone images or statues have been found at Raivaivai of the Austral Islands. In the case of the latter the existence of these great stone statues is a puzzle. In the Society Islands, Tahiti possesses a large number of these pyramidal structures. Captain Cook describes one of them :—"It is a long square stone-work built pyramidically; its base is 267 ft. by 67 ft.; at the top it is 250 ft. by 8 ft. It is built in the same manner as we do steps leading up to a Sun-dial or fountain erected in the middle of a square, where there is a flight of steps on each side. In this building there are eleven of such steps, each step is about 4 ft. in height, and the breadth 4 ft. 7 in., but they decrease both in height and breadth from the bottom to the top. On the middle of the top stood the image of a bird carved in wood; near it lay the broken one of a fish carved in stone. There was no hollow or cavity in the inside, the whole being filled up with stone.
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¹ W. H. R. Rivers—*Survival in Sociology*—*Sociological Review* 1913.
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² *The Children of the Sun*, p. 22.
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¹ Ibid., Rivers-Folklore, pp. 295-96.
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² Children of the Sun, p. 22.
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The outside was faced partly with hewn stones and partly with others, and these were placed in such a manner as to look very agreeable to the eye. Some of the hewn stones were 4 ft. 7 in. by 2 ft. 4 in., and 15 in. thick, and had been squared and polished with some sort of an edge tool. The east side was enclosed with a stone wall—a piece of ground, in form of a square, 360 ft. by 354 ft.—in this were growing several cypress trees and plantains. Round about this marae were several smaller ones all going to decay, and on the beach between them and the sea lay scattered up and down a great quantity of human bones. Not far from the great marae were two or three pretty large altars, where lay the skull bones of some hogs and dogs.”¹
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¹ Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, 1896, pp. 38-9.
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Polynesian monuments and images of the class described above should be carefully distinguished from Megalithic monuments like upright stones and stone circles which belong either to the Palæolithic or the Neolithic ages. In Fiji there are stone tombs in the island of Rotumah and there are irrigated terraces opposite Viti Levu. In the Chatham Islands there are stone causeways and walls. The Maori of New Zealand preserve traditions of a people called the Maruiwi or Moriori who built forts with moats and ramparts.² A Bronze bell of the type used in Hindu worship was found in the North Island and described by Crawfurd in 1867.³
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² Children of the Sun, pp. 24-27.
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³ Ibid., p. 26.
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Traces of ancient stone walls and buildings are now being discovered in New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, New Guinea and other islands. Perry is of opinion that in Micronesia, specially in the Caroline group more remains are found of the vanished people of the old civilisation than in any other island of Polynesia. All over the Mariannes, in the seats of the native population before their discovery by the white men, there exist certain pyramids and truncated cones, on the top of which are placed semi-estufas, *i. e.*, half-spherical bodies. These cones or pyramids on the island of Guahan do not exceed 3 ft. in height, the diameter of the curious pieces on the tops being about 2 ft. Amongst the natives these go by the name of *Houses of the Ancients*.¹
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¹ F. W. Christian—*The Caroline Islands*, p. 19.
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In the eastern part of Ponape is the harbour of Metalanim which is described as a regular Venice. One of the ruins there is described in the following words : "The water-front is faced with a terrace built of massive basalt blocks about 7 ft. wide, standing out more than 6 ft. above the shallow waterway. Above us we see a striking example of immensely solid cyclopean stone-work frowning down upon the waterway, a mighty wall formed of basaltic prisms laid alternately lengthwise and crosswise after the fashion of a *check* and *log* fence, or, as masons would style it, *Headers and Stretchers*.
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"The left side of the great gateway yawning overhead is about 25 ft. in height and the right some 30 ft., overshadowed but hidden from view by the dense leafage of a huge ikoi tree, which we had not the heart to demolish for its extreme beauty.
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"Here in the olden times the outer wall must have been uniformly of considerable height, but has now in several places fallen into lamentable ruin, whether from earthquake, typhoon, or the wear and fear of long, long ages. Somewhat similar in character would be the semi-Indian ruins of Java and the cyclopean structures of Ake and Chichen-Itza in Yucatan. A series of rude steps brings us into a spacious courtyard, strewn with fragments of fallen pillars, encircling a second terraced enclosure with a projecting frieze or cornice of somewhat Japanese type. The measurement of the outer enclosure, as we afterwards roughly ascertained, was some 185 ft. by 115 ft., the average thickness of the outer wall being 15 ft., height varying from 20 to nearly 40 ft. The space within can only be entered by the great gateway in the middle of the western face, and by a small ruinous portal in the north-west corner. The inner terraced enclosure forms a second conforming parallelogram of some 85 ft. by 75 ft. ; average thickness of wall, 8 ft. ; height of walls, 15 to 18 ft. In the centre of a rudely paved court lies the great central vault or treasure chamber identified with the name of an ancient monarch known as Chau-Te-reu, or Cahu-te-Leur, probably a dynastic title like that of Pharaoh or Ptolemy in ancient Egypt."¹
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¹ Ibid., pp. 79-80.
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According to an old chronicle the origin of these ruins is very obscure. The oldest inhabitants do not possess any information about them and there is no tradition in the locality as to their origin. Such Cyclopean ruins can be associated only with the Gabr-bands in dried river courses of Biluchistan such as those in the Hāab valley.² Traces of this ancient civilisation also exist in Yap, Lele of Kusaie in the Caroline group and other islands. Summing up Perry states :—"This Survey establishes the fact that in the past the population of Oceania erected stone buildings, carved stone images, and practised irrigation or terraced cultivation or both. The megalith-building population is not reported in every group of Oceania . . . . . On the whole the civilisation of Oceania, judging from the crafts of stone-working and irrigation, has suffered a considerable decline, so that the present-day communities live alongside remains beyond their capacity to construct."¹
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² Annual Report of the Archæological Survey of India, 1903-04. pp, 194. 201, Pl. LX-LXI.
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¹ Children of the Sun, pp. 31-2.
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It is apparent from this description that a highly civilised race colonised different parts of widely different groups of Oceania at some remote period. The present population is not a degenerate descendant of that civilised and virile race but some other people who have swamped out their real descendants but have failed even to profit by their example and decadent knowledge. Such an example is always to be met with in Indonesia proper which was also colonised by Dravidians but which continued to be within the zone of Indo-Dravidian influence long after the Aryanisation of the Dravidians of India. Perry is of opinion that signs of the beginnings of civilisations in Indonesia are far more difficult to interpret than those of Oceania because Indonesia has been overrun by many strange races. In the first place, the Brahmanic influence in Indonesia is not very old and does not go back beyond the 1st or the 2nd centuries of the Christian era. The evidence of the Indian script in Burma, Siam, Java, Bali and Bugi points to a still later date, but there is a class of evidence totally neglected by Indologists, which Perry has recorded. In India and Europe the majority of scholars are still obsessed with the idea that the Dravidians were the aborigines of India and were savages or primitive people when they came to this country. They, therefore, look upon Indonesia as being colonised by Aryans either two centuries before or after the birth of Christ. The mass of evidence recorded by Perry points to a certain connection between the pre-Aryan civilisation of a part at least of Indonesia and that of Mohen-jo-daro. This evidence falls like that of the Chalcolithic culture of Mohen-jo-daro into four different classes :—
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I. Methods of disposal of the dead, II. The use of or the worship of the phallic-emblem without the *Aghrapaṭṭa* or *Yonipaṭṭa*. III. The use of irrigation and stone masonry which may be termed Cyclopean, and IV. The use of ancient glass, porcelain and faience.
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To distinguish between the Aryan culture of Indonesia and its predecessors is indeed extremely difficult and only certain indications recorded by Perry enables us to locate the difference. For example, in the case of methods of the disposal of the dead, it is stated that: "The civilisation of Minahassa is likewise ascribed by native tradition to strangers; people who sometimes placed their dead in rock-cut tombs, sometimes in large monoliths hollowed out at the top." According to the same authority, Herr A. C. Kruyt, "These strangers moved through Central Celebes, they have left unmistakable traces of their presence, partly in the form of stone-images, dolmens, monoliths and phallic emblems, and partly in the shape of a number of pottery urns buried in the ground in which they put the ashes of their cremated dead."¹ The burials in rock-cut tombs and dolmens ally these people with those of Southern India who used similar rock-cut tombs and cairns in Southern India and incidentally with the tomb of the girl discovered by me at Mohen-jo-daro in December 1922.² The urn-burials are far more important, as they connect those people of Indonesia with the unknown civilised race of Mohen-jo-daro who practised the burial of ashes in urns with pointed bottoms in the last phase of their existence. It is true that urn-burials were practised by Buddhist monks, *e. g.*, Kanheri, Amarāvatī and Pagan, but this seems to be a survival of the pre-Aryan or non-Aryan custom of burying ashes in urns.
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¹ *Children of the Sun, pp. 39-40.*
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² See the Photographs published by Sir John Marshall in *The Illustrated London News*, for September 20, 1924.
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The discovery of the phallic-emblems in Celebes is far more interesting, because small terracotta phallic-emblems were discovered by me at Mohen-jo-daro in 1922-23 and by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni at Harappa in 1923-24. These terracotta emblems are quite different from the early natural *liṅgas* of Mathurā or Guḍimallam. They are representations of the emblem of Virility in relief against a small plaque barely two inches in length. The phallus worship of these pre-Aryan civilizators of Indonesia once more ally them to the culture of the Chalcolithic people of the Indus Valley.
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In the foregoing pages enough has been said in quotations from different works about irrigation, terraced cultivation and food products, now unknown in Indonesia. In Indonesia and India proper the irrigation of the pre-Aryans have been lost sight of in the secluded valleys of now deserted Baluchistan. A further study of dams, channels, sluices in Oceania and Indonesia is required before they can be compared with the Gabrabands of Baluchistan. The descriptions of the terraced cultivation reminds me of similar terraces discovered by me at Ghaibi-daro on the border of British India and Baluchistan.
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The discovery of glass and porcelain in Indonesia is far more interesting, as it supplies the fourth and the most definite link with the pre-Aryan colonizators of Indonesia and the Chalcolithic people of the Indus Valley. Glass was known in the Copper age in the Indus Valley and Baluchistan as proved by the discoveries of Major Mockler in the Pre-historic dambs of Baluchistan and the excavations of Mr. H. Cousens at Brahmanabad-Mansura. The Mockler collection in the Indian Museum at Calcutta contains beautifully tinted glass, which is certainly not the product of amateur efforts. The discovery of Faience at Mohen-jo-daro, both blue and white, by me in 1922-23 and in subsequent years by others, led to the recognition of the large bangles discovered by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni at Harappa in 1920-21 as pure Faience. I am suspicious of the term porcelain used by Perry and others, and I think that this porcelain may turn out to be Faience after all. That this strange civilisation of Oceania and Indonesia is earlier and quite separate from that of the Aryan civilisation of Indonesia is apparent from the statements of writers on Indonesian antiquities. Perry says that "It is certain that the two have certain elements in common, such as irrigation, the working of metals and stone-carving. But in one respect it is possible to distinguish between the Hindu civilisation of Java and that responsible for cultural progress in Oceania; the Hindus of Java never made megalithic monuments of the dolmen or stone circle type... of late years dolmens have been discovered in Java, as well as images of the Polynesian type."¹ The culture contacts of the Indus Valley civilisation have not been fully established as yet. In order to proceed in this direction it will be necessary to distinguish between the earlier age of pure megaliths and dolmens and the later period in which dolmens were used as burial places by a subsequent race. Then it may be possible to find out how the Oceanic and Indonesic civilizators were connected with the civilisation of the Indus Valley.
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¹ Children of the Sun, p. 40.
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The Dravidian people can be traced in a long unbroken line from Crete and Lycia to the Indus Valley and the south of India, at least culturally. It would not be strange at all to find that the Chalcolithic civilisation of these people extended as far as the Easter Islands and perhaps to Peru and Mexico. In my opinion the people of Kalinga, who have been proved to be the pioneer colonists of India, Indonesia and Oceania, are probably the very same people whom the Modern barbarians of the pacific and Indian Oceans regard with awe and wonder as people from the sky who civilized them and taught them the rudiments of culture.
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1, 2, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B, 5, 6, 7A, 7B, 8, 9, 10A, 10B, 10C, 11
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(10A) (10B) (10C) (11) } Ganga Coins 3. Gajapati 1
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(7A) (7B) } Tanka Coins, Puri Kushans
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(8) Imperial Great Kushan, Kaniska (K4)
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(9) Imperial Great Kushan, Fourarmed Siva, Huviska (H2)
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(4A) (4B) } Imperial Great Kushan, Huviska (H)
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(5) Imperial Great Kushan, Kaniska (K3)
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(6) Imperial Great Kushan, One of the "Seven Coins," Kaniska (K)
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(1) Imperial Great Kushan, Kaniska (K5)
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(2) God on cloud, Huviska (H 3)
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(3A) (3B) } Imperial Great Kushan, Huviska (K2)
v1.c14.48.1
of orders of the Gajapati Mahārājās of Orissa who are the hereditary trustees of the Temple, and the annals of these Mahārājās. This last section of the Mādalā Pāñji was first brought to the notice of the students of history by A. Stirling in his ‘An Account—Geographical, Statistical and Historical—of Orissa Proper, or Cuttack,’ published in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. XV, 1825.”¹ Mr. Chanda notes that “It is said that in the beginning of the Kaliyuga, 18 kings of the Somavaṁśa or the lunar dynasty beginning with Yudhishthira ruled for 3,781 years. In the reign of Śobhana Deva, the 17th king of this dynasty, Raktabāhu, the Amir (amurā) of the Mughal Pādshāh (Patishā) of Delhi, invaded Orissa and ravaged the kingdom. According to one manuscript, C, Raktabāhu, the Mughal from Delhi, came across the Sea in a ship (Jahāja), Śobhana Deva fled to the Jhāḍakhaṇḍa where was succeeded by Chandrakara Deva. The Mughals held the kingdom for 35 years. Yajātikeśarī then siezed the kingdom and is said to have reigned for 52 years up to Śakāvda 448 (A. D. 526). Stirling and Bhavānī Charan call this Raktabāhu a Yavana, but the latter refers to a Mughal invasion in the reign of Nirmala Deva, the grandfather of Śobhana Deva, I have not been able to trace the manuscript of the Rājacharitra used by Stirling. As stated above, none of the manuscripts I have hitherto examined are so called. As in all and in the one used by Bhabānī Charan, the foreigners who invaded Orissa in the 5th century A. D.
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are called Mughals, it may be safely concluded that the sections relating to the pre-Mughal period of these records were first compiled in the Mughal period.”¹ The summary of these records as reproduced by Rama Prasad Chanda, Bhabānī Charan Bandyopādhyāya and A. Stirling tend to show that in these records is preserved the account of one or more foreign invasions of Orissa. The term Mughal may be taken to mean a foreigner in Oṛiyā, just as the same term came to mean a non-Indian Musalman in the 18th century. The traditional account is certainly incorrect, as Chanda has proved with regard to the mediaeval kings of Orissa. Inspite of their pretended superiority in Sanskrit scholarship, Oriya scholars have failed to notice in their national chronicle, the Pauranic account of the thirty-two kings of Kaliṅga who intervened between the Mahābhārata war and the reign of Mahāpadma Nanda. Śobhana Deva and his grandfather Nirmala Deva may or may not be fictitious names, but we may accept with caution the account of a foreign invasion of Orissa. There is a certain amount of corroboration of a foreign invasion of Orissa in the period intervening between that of the overlords of Kaliṅga and the rise of Yayātikeśarī or Mahāśivagupta-Yayāti in the 11th Century A. D.
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We now know the history of Orissa pretty accurately from the beginning of the 7th century and, therefore, it is possible for us to state with a tolerable amount of certainty that this foreign invasion did not take place after the time of the Śailodbhava prince, Mādhavarāja II. The corroborative evidence I have spoken of above is a class of copper coins, termed “Puri Kushan” by Numismatists in India, without much reason. These coins were current in Orissa and Chhoṭa Nagpur up to a fairly late date. They are generally uninscribed, but one or two specimens, which it was my good fortune to describe, bore the word *Taṅka* in character of the 8th Century A. D.¹ These coins are very rude in appearance. The late Dr. V. A. Smith was of opinion that "They may have been issued by rulers of Kaliṅga in the fourth or fifth century, and it is possible they may have been struck only for use as temple offerings. All Numismatists acknowledge that they exhibit a reminiscence of the characteristic Kushan type."² The latest described hoard of these coins was discovered on the Northern slope of the Rakha hills in the Singbhum district in 1917. The majority of the coins show the standing figure of a man holding a crescent in his left hand, which reminds one very strongly of the figure of the standing king on the obverse of Imperial Kushan coinage. A similar figure, with or without the crescent, is to be found on the reverse. Mr. E. H. C. Walsh, I. C. S., C. S.
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I., described the hoard from the Rakha³ mines. The term "Puri Kushan" was applied to these coins by Dr. A. F. R. Hoernle, who examined the earliest known specimens found in the Gurbai Salt Factory at Manikpatna in the Puri district. In 1858 a hoard of similar coins was found at Purushottampur in the Ganjam district and described in the Madras Journal of Literature and Science.
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¹ Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Vol. XIII, 1927, p. 10.
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¹ Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Vol.XIII, 1927, pp.13-14.
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¹ *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Vol. V, 1919, pp. 83-84, pl. I, 3. A hoard of similar coins was discovered recently in the Mayurbhanj State.*
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² *Catalogue of the Coins of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, Vol. I, pp. 64-65.*
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³ *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Vol. V, 1919, pp. 73-81.*
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Dr. Hoernle describes the Puri Kushan coinage and classifies them as follows :—
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1, 4A, 7A, 10A, 2, 4B, 7B, 10B, 3A, 5, 8, 10C, 3B, 6, 9, 11
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(7A) Tanka / Coins, / Puri / Kushans . (7B)
(8) Imperial Great Kushan, Kaniska (K4)
(9) Imperial Great Kushan, Four-armed Siva, Huviska (H 2) (10A) Ganga / Coins 3 . (10B) (10C)
(11) Gajapati 1
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(4A) Imperial / Great / Kushan, / Huviska / (H) . (4B)
(5) Imperial Great Kushan, Kaniska (K 3)
(6) Imperial Great Kushan, One of the "Seven Coins," Kaniska
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(1) Imperial Great Kushan, Kaniska (K5)
(2) God on cloud, Huviska (H3) (3A) Imperial / Great / Kushan, / Huviska / (K2) . (3B)
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Class I—No crescent on either side. Class II—With crescent on the reverse in the left top of the field. Class III—With crescent on reverse in right top of field. Class IV—With crescent on both obverse and reverse. Class V—With crescent on head of the reverse figure.¹
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¹ *Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal*, 1895, p. 65.
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Since then a new type have been discovered in which one-side of the coin is occupied with three acute pyramids and below it the word *Taṅka* in characters of the 8th century A. D.
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The occurrence of this type of the coinage from Singhbhum to Ganjam very probably indicates influences of the Kushans. We know that Magadha was included in the empire of the great Kushans and, therefore, it could not be unscientific to assume that the so-called Mughal invasion of Orissa was really the conquest of the country by the Kushan foreigners.
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A hoard of coins recently discovered in Mayurbhanj State contains 282 copper coins among which 170 were Puri Kushans and 112 Imperial Great Kushans of Kāṇishka and Huvishka. There were seven coins with the figure of the king standing by the side of an altar on the obverse and the standing figure of the Sun-god on the reverse. The legend on both sides is in Greek.² Thirty-three coins of the same king of the same type but with the Fire-god on the reverse and the legend in Greek script but in the old Persian language come next.³ Three coins of the same king and of the same type but with the goddess NANA¹ on the reverse come third. Fourteen coins of the same king and the same type bear the figure of the Wind-god, OADO, on the reverse.² The coins of Kaniṣkha come to an end with ten coins of the same type bearing the figure of the four armed Śiva on the reverse.³ The series of coins of Huvishka begin with the type in which the figure of the king is riding on an elephant and the legend is in the Greek script but the old Persian language. Twenty-nine coins bear the figure of the Moon god, MAO, on the reverse.⁴ Two coins of this type bear the figure of Herakles⁵ and one coin that of the Moon-god. Another coin of the same type bears the figure of four-armed Śiva on the reverse.⁶
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² V. A. Smith—*Catalogue of Coins in the Indian Museum, Calcutta*, Vol. I, p. 71, no. 17.
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³ *Ibid.*, p. 72, no. 24.
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¹ Ibid., p. 73, no. 30.
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² Ibid., p. 74, no. 60.
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³ Ibid., no. 67.
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⁴ Ibid., p. 80, no. 27.
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⁵ Ibid., p, 79, no. 26.
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⁶ Ibid., p, 80, no. 37.
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There was only one coin of the type in which the king is seated on clouds with the figure of the Sun-god, MIORO or MITHRO, on the reverse.⁷ Another of the same type bears on the reverse the figure of the Fire-god.⁸ six of these coins show the king seated on a throne but half of them bear the figure of the Sun-god and the remaining three that of the Moon-god on the reverse.⁹ It is quite possible that when Northern and Southern Bihar were annexed to the empire of the great Kushans, Orissa and the Eastern Sea-board as far as the Rushikulyā and the Lānguliyā were also conquered.
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⁷ Ibid., p. 82, no. 53.
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⁸ Ibid., no, 47.
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⁹ Ibid., nos. 57 and 59.
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We have no materials even to present a chronology of the history of the three provinces of Kalinga during the Gupta period. Nothing is known about the condition of Orissa from the third to the end of the sixth century A. D. Samudragupta, in his Southern campaign, chose to neglect the more practicable route to the Godāvarī-Kṛṣṇā Doab along the Eastern Coast through South-western Bengal and followed the extremely difficult route through the Jubbulpore and Raipur districts of the Central Provinces. If the kings mentioned in L. 19 of the inscription on the Allahabad pillar are arranged in geographical order, then he conquered Mahendra of Kośala, *i. e.* Mahākośala or Dakṣiṇa-Kośala, *i. e.*, the Southern part of the Jubbulpore district and the districts of Raipur and Bilaspur in the Central Provinces and entered the Eastern part of the great Gondwana forests now represented by the Chhattisgarh Division and the Orissa States of Bamra, Rairakhol, Sonpur, Patna and Karond. Most probably he emerged along the old road through Raigaḍh, Koragaḍh, Naurangpur and Kotpad into the Ganjam district. The Vyāghrarāja of Mahākāntāra appears to me to be the same as that mentioned in the Ganj and Nachna inscriptions, though Messrs. K. N. Dikshit and Jouveau Dubreuil hold other views,¹ I believed, sometime ago that Samudragupta did not enter the Ganjam district but I find that he fought with a chief named Svāmidatta of Koṭṭura. This place has been identified by M. Jouveau Dubreuil with Kothoor in Ganjam. Evidently there is some mistake in the arrangement of names at this place of the Allahabad inscription because Maṇṭarāja of Koraḷa and Mahendra of Piṣṭapura are mentioned before Svāmidatta of Koṭṭura. Kothoor is in the Ganjam district while Piṣṭapura is modern Pittapuram in the Godāvarī district. So the other alternative is that a confederacy of Southern kings met Samudragupta just as he emerged out of the Eastern Ghats into the coast and the first kings met were the chiefs of Koraḷa and Pittapuram and Svāmidatta of Koṭṭura was defeated by him afterwards. Unfortunately, Koraḷa cannot be identified. Eraṇḍapalle and Devarāṣṭra the chiefs of which, Damana and Kubera, were defeated by Samudragupta, are also princes whose territories lay within the province of Kaliṅga proper. Eraṇḍapalli is mentioned in the Siddhantam plates of Devendravarman of Kaliṅga.¹ Devarāṣṭra is also the name of a district or province in Kaliṅga. So, altogether, the following chiefs of Kaliṅga obstructed the passage of Samudragupta through their country :
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¹ *Epi. Ind. Vol. XVII, p. 362 ; Gupta Empire and its Culture, pp. 16-7.*
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¹ Ancient History of the Deccan, pp. 58-61.
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(1) Svāmidatta of Koṭṭura.
(2) Damana of Eraṇḍapalle and
(3) Kubera of Devarāṣṭra.
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Kusthalapura, Avamukta and Koraḷa have not been identified as yet. Very probably the three Kaliṅga kings formed a confederacy with the powerful Pallava kings of the South about whose identification and location there is no doubt :—
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(1) Viṣṇugopa of Kāñchī,
(2) Hastivarman of Veṅgī and [Figure: Indo-Persepolitan pilaster—Ananta Gumpha Khandagiri, Puri District]
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(3) Ugrasena of Pālakka (in the Nellore district of the Madras Presidency).
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The invader either proceeded or receded leaving the country unchanged except for the resultant track of misery and starvation along his wake. We do not know what happened to the three provinces of Kalinga afterwards. Perhaps, the country remained under numerous petty chiefs who fought continuously with each other. We do not know of any attempt on the part of any other Gupta king to conquer or annex Orissa. There is no evidence, whatsoever, to prove that any part of Orissa or Kalinga was included in the Gupta empire. The country was distinctly within the zone of influence of Gupta political influence and culture. This is proved in the first instance by the use of the Gupta era in certain inscriptions. The date in the Ganjam plates of the time of Śaśankarāja is distinctly connected with the Gupta era by the use of the term "Gaupt-ābde," but after the discovery of that inscription scholars considered that the Gupta era was used because Śaśānka himself came from a province where the Gupta era was used. But since then the discovery of a number of inscriptions in the Central Provinces and Orissa have proved that the Gupta era was used over a much larger area in North-eastern India than was hitherto proposed. I refer to the Patiakella plate of Śivarāja of the Gupta year 283 and the Arang plate of Bhīmasena II of the Gupta year 282.¹
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¹ Epi, Ind. Vol. IX. pp. 342-45.
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The Patiakella plate of the Mahārāja Śivarāja bears the second known inscription of the Gupta period discovered up to this time in Orissa. The date 283 is equal to 602-603 A.D. At this date a king named Śagguyayyana was ruling over Southern Tosali. The titles given to this king by his feudatory are *Paramamāheśvara-Paramabhaṭṭāraka Paramadevatādhi-daivata*, but the king is not called a Mahārāja or Mahārājādhirāja. The family to which he belonged is called the Māna-vaṃśa. The order was issued from the camp at Vorṭṭanoka, which cannot be identified. The feudatory who actually issued the grant, Śivarāja, is called *Mahārāja*. No description of his family is given and the village granted, Tandralvalu or Tundilvaluja was situated in the district (*Vishaya*) of Southern Tosali.¹ Dr. Sten Konow proposes to read the name of Śivarāja’s suzerain as Sambhuyayya but I find that I cannot change my opinion framed twenty-four years ago after seeing the plate once more which has been presented to or acquired for the Indian Museum at Calcutta.
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¹ *Ibid.*, pp. 285-8.
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With the beginning of the seventh century we reach surer ground in the history of Orissa and we get a larger number of records for the construction of her ancient past. The object of the inscription of the Patiakella plate is to record the donation of the village to a large number of Brāhmaṇas by Śivarāja. The donees belonged to different *Gotras* *Charaṇas*. About the Māna-vaṃśa we know that it is referred to in two other inscriptions; the Govindpur stone inscription of the Poet Gaṅgādhara of the Śaka year 1059,² and the Dudhpani rock inscription of Udayamāna³. Govindpur is in the southern part of the Nawada sub-division of the Gaya district and Dudhpani is in the Hazaribagh district of Bihar and Orissa, localities not too far away from Orissa. No definite information is available about these Māna kings except that Varṇamāna ruled at a time when Orissa was independent under Gaṅga kings. Udayamāna is much earlier and belongs to the 8th century according to Kielhorn, but he was not a man from Orissa but from Ayodhyā.
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² *Ibid.*, vol. II, pp. 330-42.
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³ *Ibid.*, 343-7.