Early History of Orissa

SR No.: 006922
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Amarchand Mittal
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society
Publication Year: 1957
Total Pages: 506
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 9 MB

Page 48

POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTRY
23
Bhuvaneśvara in the 12th century A.D., as the local inscriptions prove. A verse in an Oriya manuscript runs thus :
"Khandagiri-ti nāmāsan pavitra ch-otkale bhuvi”:3
Utkala, therefore, embraced a portion of the Kongoda country, but it is separately mentioned in the Marañja-mura Charter of Mahāśivagupta, where Odra is left out (Kalingakongadotkalaka Kośala).3 If Kongoda was identical with the Mahānadi-Risikulya valley, the collection of names suggests that Kalinga was to the south of the Risikulya, and Utkala lay to the north of the Mahānadi river.
The transfer or extension of the name to the plain country along the sea-board was perhaps later. The name. Utkala implies that it was situated to the north of Kalinga, and the situation of Utkala-vishaya, in what has been found to be the Kongoda country, agrees well with the references we have of Kalinga and Utkala. Kālidāsa makes no mention of Odra as does Hiuen Tsang of Utkala, which according to the former, stretched from the river Kapiśā as far south as Kalinga. Perhaps, Odra was another name of Utkala from which the modern appellation of Orissa is derived.6 Śri Purshottamadeva, king of Kalinga, and the author of the lexicon Trikāņdaśesha? writes “Audra-utkala-nāmano”. In later times, the names Utkala
1. The Bhuvaneswar Stone Inscription refers to Ekámra (viz. modern Bhuvaneswar) in Utkala vishnya (E. I., XIII, pp. 150-55). Utkala. deja is referred to in ancther inscription (E. I., XI, pp. 20.26).
2. HAIB, p. 27, fn. 5. 3. JBORS, II, p. 45f.
4. Pargiter (Märkandeya Purana, p. 327) identified it with river Cossya in Midnapur.
5. Raghuvansa, IV, 38. 6. Levi, Pre-Aryan & Pre-Dravidian, p. 84. 7. p. 31.