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History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c8: Chapter I. Topography

History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v1.c8

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English

Chapter I. Topography

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The country, which is now known to us as Orissa, was originally included in the country or province of Kalinga. The modern term, Orissa, is derived from Odra, which is the name of a very small part of Orissa. The country of Kalinga was practically co-extensive with the Oriya-speaking tracts of Bihar and Orissa and Madras. It is also quite possible that portions of the Telugu-speaking districts to the north of the Delta of the Godavari were originally Oriya-speaking districts. The Godavari-Krishna Doab, especially that part of it which lies at the bottom of the Eastern Ghats, was the march-land between Kalinga and the Andhra country. An account of Orissa must, therefore, necessarily be an account of Kalinga or Greater Orissa, as she originally was, until the last days of her independence.

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The country of Kalinga was divided from very early times into three parts and was called Tri-Kalinga. This term was translated into the Dravidian languages as Muḍu-Kalinga, which the western writers, Megasthenes and Pliny, transliterated into "Modo-Galingam." Some modern writers say that Muḍu and Kalingam become Mukkalingam, if combined according to the rules of modern Telugu grammar. Mr. Ramdas suggests that this term is derived from Modugula, the name of a village in the Vizagapatam district.¹ But Mr. Ramdas has not proved whether the modern rules of combination (*sandhi*) held good in the 1st century A. D. or not. The existence of the term *Tri-Kalinga* in Sanskrit tempts us to accept *Muḍu-Kalingam* as a direct translation of the Sanskrit form or *vice versa*. The natural division of the northern extremity of the Eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal is very well suited to the term *Tri-Kalinga*. The country of Kalinga originally extended up to the modern districts of Medinipur and Howrah in Bengal. Even in Mughal times the Suvarṇarekhā river, now in the south-western part of the district of Medinipur, was regarded as the northern boundary of Orissa. Even now the titles of the majority of Hindu Zamindars of Medinipur prove that they were land-holders and feudatories of the Hindu kings of Orissa at no distant date. The people of south-western Medinipur are very much like those of Balasore and the Mayurbhañja State in manners, customs, language, and caste. Towards the west the language of Orissa gradually merges into that of the aboriginal tribes, who live in the secluded valleys of the Eastern Ghats, beginning with Dhalbhum and Singhbhum to the north and west of Mayurbhañja and ending with the States of Karond, Kanker and Bastar in the Central Provinces. The districts of Khammamet and Nalgonda in the Nizam’s dominions lie on the Ghats immediately to the west of the Kṛṣṇa-Godāvarī *Doāb* and these are the northern-most districts of the Telugu country on the Deccan plateau. The vast country on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal, which extended from the Delta of the Ganges to that of the Godāvarī was called Kaliṅga in ancient times. Nature has divided this tract into three different parts, the first of which consists of the flat alluvial plain which begins from the western bank of the Damodar and contains the hill tracts of Mayurbhañja, Keunjhar and Angul. This tract is intersected by the great rivers Rupnārāyan, Haldi, Suvarṇarekhā, Barabalang, Vaitaraṇī, Brāhmaṇī and the now defunct Prāchī. The second division begins from the right bank of the Mahānadī and contains the hilly tracts between that river and the Godāvarī and is bisected by the Rushikulyā river. Here the hills extend almost to the sea and the width of the coast land is extremely narrow with certain extensions, as in the tract of the country between the Mahānadī Delta and the Chilka lake and again between the Southern bank of the Chilka and the basin of the Rushikulyā river. To the south of Berhampur-Ganjam, the ghats almost touch the sea and reach one of their highest points at Mahendragiri in the Mandasa Zamindari. To the south of Mahendragiri there is a stretch of plain flat country along the banks of the Lānguliyā river and it was on this part of the coast that Kaliṅga-nagaram, the ancient capital of Kaliṅga, was situated. There are no important rivers between the Lānguliyā and the Godāvarī, and the country also is much less productive. Originally the Andhra country seems to have lain to the south of the Godāvarī, though the Telugu language has now crept up northwards along the coast in the Vizagapatam district. The northern part of the Andhra country was very important as providing direct access into the interior of the Deccan plateau along the Rekapalli-Bhadrachalam road and again by the pass followed by the Bezwada-Warangal section of the Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway. This tract contains numerous creeks as well as the famous lake of Kolar.

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¹ *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society*, Vol. XIV, 1928, pp. 539-40.

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The political divisions of the country of Kaliṅga were very different. The Medinipur and Balasore districts, along with that portion of the country which lay towards the north of the Brāhmaṇī-Vaitaraṇī was called Utkala, the central tract consisting of the modern districts of Cuttack, Puri, and the Northern part of the Ganjam district, along with some of the small states on both banks of Mahānadī, such as Ranpur, Nayagadh, Khandpara Daspalla, Tigiria and Athgadh, was called Tosala. Most probably the country between the Chilka lake and Mahendragiri was called Koṅgoda or Koṅgada, because one of the charters make it clear that Koṅgada was situated in Southern Tosala. There are distinct mentions of two different Tosalas in later inscriptions, one of which must be to the north of the Chilka and the other to the south extending as far as the Ghumsur Taluga of the Ganjam district. The reference in Jātakas to the river Telavāhā as being the boundary of Kaliṅga or Andhra is impossible to believe, because in the tract now traversed by the modern river Tel there is no sign of any Telugu-speaking people.

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There is no natural boundary, at the present time, dividing Koṅgoda or southern Tosala from Kaliṅga, unless we take it for granted that the Vaṃśadhārā or the Lāṅguliyā were at one time much larger and perhaps tidal rivers which could be taken as a landmark. From Chikakole to the Godāvarī Delta the country is very beautiful but in this tract the ghats are divided into a number of parallel ranges which reduce the breadth of the flat plain country to a minimum. The rivers in this tract are few and far between and very small in size. This is Kaliṅga proper as described by Yuan Chwang in the 7th century A.D. The people of this country were warlike from the very dawn of history and it was reduced with great difficulty by the Musalman conquerors of Orissa. The ferocity of the people of Kaliṅga may be judged from the number of people killed and captured during Aśoka’s campaign in Kaliṅga. In mediaeval times, long after the Musalman conquest of Northern Orissa, Central and Southern Orissa continued to offer stout resistance to the Quṭb-shāhī Sulṭāns of Golkonda and the independent Pathan or Afghan Sulṭāns of Bengal. The Musalmans of Golkonda ousted the Gajapatis of Ganjam in 1571, but the first Musalman Faujdār of Chikakol was appointed only a few years before 1641.¹

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¹ J. Sarkar, *History of Aurangzib*, Vol. I, p. 215.

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The invasions of Southern India from Orissa and South Indian armies penetrating into Orissa, came for the most part through the Godāvarī-Kṛiṣhṇā Doāb, because the network of rivers in the Deltas of these two rivers prevented the passage of large armies through it, along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal. In this region naval activity revived after the decline of Portuguese power in Asia and from Coconada in the north to Nizampatam in the south, a line of ports sprang suddenly into existence on account of the activity of English, Dutch and French traders. The coast-land from Hijli in the Medinipur district to Madras does not include any good harbours or roadsteads. The shore slopes away gradually from the coast and deep water is available only after two or three miles. Moreover, the sea is very rough during the South-eastern Monsoon when cyclones visit this coast almost every year. Inspite of these natural defects the people of ancient Kalinga developed into good sailors very early in the history of the country. Signs and remains of the tremendous maritime activity of the people of Kalinga are still abundant in Ceylon, Further India and the Indian Archipelago.¹

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¹ See Chapter III.

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On its Western frontier Kalinga and Orissa are protected by range after range of hills, the offshoots of the great Eastern Ghats, which form a very effective bulwark on that side; but, at the same time, the secluded valleys between these ranges have sheltered the primitive inhabitants of India from time immemorial. Here are to be found the Kolian tribes speaking languages of the Austric race, who clung pertinaciously to their own languages, manners and customs for centuries and who have given up infanticide and human sacrifice long after the British conquest. These aboriginal tribes have been seldom conquered by earlier kings of the country, who were often pleased to accept a nominal submission from their chiefs. To the north of Mayurbhanja lies Dhalbhum and Singbhum, tracts forming the home-land of the Kolian people. The North-western portion of the Mayurbhanja State is almost entirely inhabited by aboriginals. In modern times the states of Gangpur, Bonai, Bamra, Rairakhol, Sonpur, Patna and Karond with a portion of the British district of Sambalpur form a line along which the aboriginals live with a sprinkling of North Indian or Oriya population, and in this tract a sort of hybrid Oriya is spoken, showing that the original inhabitants of the country were civilized by the people of Orissa and Kalinga. This part of the highlands of Orissa was called Khinjali in ancient times and was divided into two parts by the river Mahānadī. The chiefs of this area now claim Rajput descent, but the discrepancies in the accounts preserved or published by them prove that in the majority of cases they are of hybrid descent or mere pretenders to Rajput descent. In mediaeval ages the country to the west of Khiñjali was called Mahākośala or Dakṣiṇa-Kośala and was subject to the Somavaṁśīs and the Haihayas of Tripurī and Ratnapura. The present characteristics of the population and the dialects spoken point to a aboriginal or mixed descent.

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To the south of Patna and Karond a broad horn of British territory along Kotpad, Naorangpur, Poragadh, Amarkot and Raigadh penetrates into this hilly country, dividing the Indian state of Bastar from the states now included in the modern province of Bihar and Orissa. In Bastar the modern Telugu or Andhra influence is traceable directly to the immigration of the Kākatīya dynasty, which migrated from Ekaśilā-nagarī or Warangal in the Godāvarī-Kṛṣṇā Doāb, across the Godāvarī, to the hilly country occupied by the aborigines when Warangal was finally conquered by the Bahmanī Sulṭāns of Bidar. The language spoken in this state is a sort of hybrid Telugu, which is as different from real Telugu as the Oṛiyā of Sambalpur is from the pure Oṛiyā of Puri and Cuttack.

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The inclusion of the Oṛiyā speaking district of Ganjam in the Madras Presidency is due to the different steps in the Musalman conquest of Orissa. While the Sulṭāns of Bengal conquered Northern Orissa in 1568, their own independence was at stake, as Akbar destroyed the independence of the Musalman kingdom of Bengal eight years later, in 1576. The Musalman conquest of Central Orissa was left unfinished and the Afghans seldom succeeded in penetrating into the interior of the Mahānadī Delta. The Quṭb-shāhīs of Golkonda were very slow in approaching Central Orissa, though they occupied Rājamahendrī soon after the death of Pratāparudra. They advanced as far as Qasimkoṭā in many different stages. So far only the plain flat country at the foot of the Ghats had submitted to them and the Hindu chiefs remained independent in the vast hilly country to the North-west. The Ganjam district was reached by the Quṭb-shāhis only a few years before their fall in 1687. Because the Oṛiyā speaking tracts were included at that date in the kingdom of Golkonda, therefore they continued in the Ṣūbah of Ḥaidarābād till their transfer to the British in 1761. Even after the unification of the whole of Oṛiyā-speaking countries under British rule in 1804-5 and 1856, the Ganjam district still continues to form a part of Madras, and the states on the border of Kośala belonged to the Central Provinces till 1905, while Southern Medinipur is still included in Bengal.

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The Bastar State forms a continual boundary of Kaliṅga Proper, now represented by the Vizagapatam district towards the west. To the north-west of that part of the Godāvarī-Kṛṣṇa Doāb, which lies at the foot of the Eastern Ghats, are to be found the districts of Khammamet and Nalgonda of the Nizam's dominions. The country between Bezwada on the Kṛṣṇa and Rājamahendrī on the Godāvarī had been the battlefield between the armies of the North and the South from very ancient times. This part of the country is much more readily accessible from the plateau of the Deccan than any other part of Kaliṅga or Orissa. In this area the net-work of rivers of the Deltas of the Kṛṣṇā and Godāvarī have rendered it extremely fertile and it is very densely populated. The great fortress of Koṇḍaviḍu, near Guntur, to the south of the Kṛṣṇā and Rājamahendri to the north of the Godāvarī have been the sites of numerous battles. Another great fortress, that of Koṇḍapalle, was regarded as the key to the Doāb up to the end of the 18th century.

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In Northern Orissa, as well as in all other parts of this country, the principal towns are situated in the narrow strip of flat plain country at the bottom of the Ghats. The principal towns are the port of Balasore in the north, Jajpur on the river Vaitaraṇī, Cuttack or Katak on the Mahānadī and Puri or Purushottama on the sea. The Chilka lake prevents the formation of any large town on the coast between Puri and Ganjam. The country between Ganjam and Chicacole is without any important towns; but it was in this area that Kaliṅganagaram, the ancient capital of Kaliṅga, was situated. The great series of ports on the Kaliṅga coast begin from modern Kaliṅgapatam. In the interior also towns, of a sufficiently large size to be mentioned, are rare.

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In Northern Orissa one important artery of traffic is the Katak-Sambalpur road, which practically follows the contour of the Mahānadī and joins the Calcutta-Nagpur road in the vicinity of Sambalpur. The only other important artery of traffic is the Calcutta-Madras road along the coast. Towns in the hilly area behind Orissa proper are few and far between. The only town which deserves mention is Vinītapura or Yayātipura, which is the same as modern Sonpur, chief town of a small state of that name. This was the capital of the degenerate Somavaṁśis, who fled to this part after their expulsion from Sirpur, their ancestral home. Sonpur possesses very few ruins and fewer specimens of antiquity compared with Ratanpur or Sirpur, and the poverty of the new capital of the Somavaṁśis proves that the dynasty itself rose to no very great prominence. Other towns in this border-land of Orissa are of modern origin and their importance lies merely in the fact that they are the present seats of petty Oṛiyā chiefs, called the chiefs of the Garhjat.

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In northern Orissa the only important place from the point of view of antiquity is Khiching, the Khijiṅga of the second group of Bhañja kings, which has been recently explored by Rai Bahadur R. P. Chanda of the Indian Archaeological Department. The next important ruin in Northern Orissa is Udayagiri and Lalitagiri in the Cuttack District, which was a considerable Buddhist establishment at one time. These ruins have not been sufficiently explored as yet to permit us to form any definite opinion. Kaṭaka or modern Cuttack has been given undue importance by many writers, who have identified it with the word Kaṭaka, meaning the camp of a king in Copper plate charters. Beyond the fact that the position occupied by this town at the junction of the Kāṭjuṛi with the Mahānadī is important, there are no remains of antiquity at any place near Cuttack. Kaṭaka may therefore be a capital of recent origin, specially of the time of the Sūryavaṁśis, of which period there are several buildings in this town, all ascribed to Pratāparudra. The first important town or city of undoubted antiquity is Dhauli near Bhuvaneśvara, in the vicinity of which there are wide-spread ruins as yet untouched, which may represent Uttara Tosala or Tosali.

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Bhuvanesvara itself is a town of comparatively greater antiquity in Orissa. The earliest temples at this place go back to the 8th century, if not to the 7th, and the caves on the Udayagiri and Khandagiri hills are partly of the 2nd century B.C. and partly of the 9th century A.D. Compared to this area there is no other tract in the whole of Northern Orissa, which goes so far back in date except the unexplored ruins of Gandharadi in the Baudh State, on the right bank of the Mahanadi. Purushottama or Puri is undoubtedly of recent origin, as only the main shrine was erected by Anantavarman Chodaganga towards the close of the 11th century A. D. Further south, the ruins of only one important town need be mentioned. This is Kalinga or Kalinga-nagara, the capital of the greater Kalinga. The ruins of the ancient city have been partly carried away by the sea, partly buried in the sand. Some remains of the 2nd and 1st century B. C. have been discovered in the temple of Kurmesvara and certain others at Mukhalingam. The entire area is unexplored and very little attention has been paid to it by the Archaeological Department of the Government of India. Further south, the remains at Simhachalam, Anakapalle and other places belong to the mediaeval period. Of places in the Godavari-Krishna Doab very little information exists. The only important places in the interior of the Southern part of Kalinga are the remains on the Mahendragiri hills, on which several temples and inscriptions are known to exist.

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The general characteristics of the entire coast-land are somewhat different from those of the Southern portion of Bengal. The soil is either alluvial or a reddish laterite cut up by low hills, which yields a poor harvest even in the best of seasons. Irrigation is possible on account of the existence of a number of big rivers and was used even in the 2nd century B. C. The lower parts of many great rivers intersect the coast-land and their Deltas spread fan-wise in the flat plains near the sea. Fishing and salt-making are the principal industries along the sea-coast, and both have suffered materially during recent years on account of the competition of foreign salt and the dried fish trade of the Sunderbans.

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Very little of the coast-land of Orissa was known to the ancients. Ptolemy mentions a number of places on the sea-coast of Orissa, but none of them can be identified on account of the changes of names, though abortive attempts have been made by many to do so. The northernmost point in Ptolemy's map identifiable at present is Maisolos¹, which is the same as modern Masulipatam and the ancient Musala-pattana, being the capital of the Mosalas or Musalas, a southern tribe who are classed with the Andhras in the Purāṇas.

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¹ Ptolemy's India, ed. Dr. S. N. Mazumdar Sastri, M. A. PH. D.

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Pliny's references to Kalinga are also very scanty. Kalinga is mentioned as the habitat of a people of the same name close to the sea. In the same passage are mentioned the Mandei and the Malli and the mountain Mallus but these three are stated to have been situated higher in the country.²

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² Natural History, Eng. Trans. by Philemon Holland, London, 1634. p, 126. (Book VI, Chap. XVII).

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The people of Kalinga are mentioned along with the Gandaridae in the country which lies on the other side of the Ganges¹. Dantakura or Dandagula, which is mentioned in the Mahabharata occurs in Chap. XX. "From the mouth of the Ganges where he entereth into the sea unto the cape Caliugon (Calingon ?) and the town Dandagula are counted 725 miles²."

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¹ Natural History, Eng. Trans. by Philemon Holland, London 1634. Book VI. Chap. XIX p. 126.

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² Ibid., p. 127

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