Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c11.3

c11.3

In ancient times a powerful people called the Kalingas lived in the present Orissa region. In the third century B.C., the Maurya emperor Aśoka (*circa* 369-332 B.C.) conquered the Kalingas and annexed the Kalinga country to his empire. The province of Kalinga in the Maurya empire was divided into two administrative units. The north-eastern part of the country had its headquarters at Tosali (although the land around the city was later often called Tosala) which is the modern Dhauli near Bhubaneswar in the Puri District of Orissa. In a later age, kings of the Ārya-Mahāmeghavāhana family of the Chedi clan, which is represented by Khāravela, described as ‘the supreme lord of Kalinga’, appear to have had their capital at the same place. In Maurya times, South-Western Kalinga had its headquarters at the city of Samāpā near modern Jaugaḍa in the Ganjam District. Indian literature intimately associates Kalinga with the Mahendra-giri now standing on the borders of the Ganjam District of Orissa near those of the Srikakulam District of Andhra Pradesh. But there is no doubt that the Godāvarī or the Kṛṣṇā was often regarded as the south-western boundary of the Kalinga country. This is indicated by the fact that, about the fifth century A.D., some rulers, enjoying the title *Kalinga-ādhipati*, not only had their capital at Piṣṭapura, modern Pithapuram in the East Godavari District, but sometimes even claimed lordship over the whole coast land between the Kṛṣṇā and the Mahānadī.¹ Actually however, the north-eastern boundary of the ancient Kaliṅga country lay even beyond the Mahānadī, although Kaliṅga did not include the whole of modern Orissa. The north-eastern part of coastal Orissa was included in early times in the land of the Utkalas while the Patna-Sonpur region in the upper valley of the Mahānadī formed the eastern part of the country named Dakṣiṇa-Kosala till the early medieval period. But the Utkalas and some of their neighbours may have been ethnically related to the Kaliṅgas. Indeed, an ancient tradition recorded in the *Mahābhārata* and some of the Purāṇas² regards the progenitors of the Aṅgas of East Bihar, the Vaṅgas of South Bengal, the Kaliṅgas, the Puṇḍras of North Bengal and the Suhmas of West Bengal as co-uterine brothers. Early European writers sometimes represent the people of South Bengal (Gangaridae) as a branch of the Kaliṅga people.³