History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c22.2

v1.c22.2

Sometime in the tenth century a line of kings belonging to the family of the Moon were driven out of the highlands of Mahākośala and forced to take refuge in the forest country now occupied by the district of Sambhalpur and the States of Sonpur and Patna. After the fall of the Kara or Keśarī dynasty they seem to have obtained temporary possession of the level country at the foot of the Ghats and began to use the high sounding title of "Lord of the Three Kaliṅgas" (*Tri-Kaliṅgādhipati*). A long-standing connection between Orissa and Somavaṁśī kings is still problematical; but one scholar, Mr. B. C. Mazumdar, has tried to establish, without sufficient reliable evidence, that they were the makers of Orissa. With the exception of one or two kings of this dynasty it cannot be proved that they had any control over Orissa proper. They are known entirely from their charters. The kings of this dynasty founded a small principality in the jungles of Eastern Gondwana in the 7th or the 8th century A. D. They claimed descent from a person named Udayana of the Pāṇḍava family, whose great-grandson, Mahāśiva-Tivaradeva, became the master of the whole of Mahākośala. His younger brother, Chandragupta, was a contemporary of the Gurjara-Pratīhara king, Nāgabhaṭa II, of Bhinmal¹. Chandragupta’s descendants used the affix Gupta after their names and his great-great-grandson, Mahāśivagupta, was the founder of a small kingdom in the Eastern part of Mahākośala. His father's name is not known to us and it is quite probable that his grandfather, who bore the same name as this king, Mahāśivagupta and the *biruda* Bālārjuna, was driven out of the ancestral capital, Śrīpura, modern Sirpur, in the Raipur district of the Central Provinces, by the kings of Sarabhapura and kept out of it by the Haihayas or Kaḷachuris of Tripuri and Ratnapura. We know only four generations of kings of this dynasty in the Eastern part of Mahākośala, out of which only three generations use *birudas* in addition to their official names which are alternately Mahābhavagupta or Mahāśivagupta. Almost all known inscriptions of this dynasty of kings are land-grants engraved on copper plates. The fourth king Udyota-keśarī is known from three stone inscriptions only, in one of which he is connected with the regular Somavamśis of Eastern Mahākośala. He does not bear the regular official title of kings of this dynasty with the affix *Gupta*.