The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.100

v1.c30.100

The other great nation, which arose on the ruins of the Maurya empire to take its part in the struggle for supremacy, had also its home in the lowlands of the eastern coast. The Kaliṅgas², who occupied the country of the Mahānadī, were no doubt connected ethnographically with the Aṅgas and the other peoples of the plains of Bengal with whom they are associated in the Purāṇas (p. 317). They had been conquered by Açoka c. 262 b.c.³; but at some time after his death they had regained their independence; and the next glimpses of their history are afforded by inscriptions in the caves of the Udayagiri Hill near Cuttack in Orissa⁴. The immediate object of these inscriptions (nos. 1345–50) was to preserve the memory of pious benefactors—two kings, a queen, a prince, and other persons—who had provided caves for the use of the Jain ascetics of Udayagiri; and one of the inscriptions (no. 1345) in the Hāthīgumphā, or ‘Elephant Cave,’ contained a record of events in the first thirteen (or possibly fourteen) years of the reign of one of the kings, Khāravela, a member of the Cheta dynasty. This is one of the most celebrated, and also one of the most perplexing, of all the historical monuments of India. Unfortunately it has been badly preserved. Of its seventeen lines only the first four remain in their entirety. These describe the fifteen years of the king’s boyhood, the nine years of his rule as prince (*yuvarāja*), his coronation as king when his twenty-fourth year was completed, and events in the first two years of his reign. All the other lines are more or less fragmentary. Many passages are irretrievably lost, while others are partially obliterated and can only be restored conjecturally. Time has thus either destroyed or obscured much of the historical value of this record.