History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c14.76

v1.c14.76

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 :