History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c14.48.2

v1.c14.48.2

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.