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32
AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA Thus the bearing that Kongoda was to the south-west of Odra, as noticed by Hiuen Tsang, is tolerably consistent, but that Odra with its capital at Cuttack undoubtedly shared rivers Mahānadi and Rishikulya was variously known in ancient times. Mediaeval inscriptions, already referred to, prove that it was a part of Dakshiņa Tosala and particularly equivalent to the Kongoda country. It was also known as Odra. The Bhuvaneśvara Stone Inscription of the twelfth century A. D. refers to Ekāmra (viz. modern Bhuvanesvara) in the Utkala-vishaya.
It is idle to speculate on the political reasons of such a variety of names, for, none of the above mentioned people excepting the Kalingas played any important part in the political history of the country. The others are purely ethnographical and geographical names.
In course of time the Odra and the Utkala tribes were merged into one. It might have been, as Dr. Mahtab' thinks, that one tribe completely extirpated the other or in the natural course of time they united into one. After a lapse of some time there began the gradual fusion of the Utkalas and the Kalingas into one people. This process of amalgamation was complete only when the two peoples had remained together under one political authority for a considerable time, and the language and literature had been fused into one. But in the process of history the kingdom of Kalinga could not maintain its territorial limits upto the Godāvari in the south for a long time. Utkala too lost its northern boundary upto the Gangā. Thus through the vissitudes of political fortune out of the above mentioned regions ultimately there evolved one single state in the shape of modern Orissa.
1. E. I., XIII, pp. 150-5.; Utkala-deja is referred to in E. I., XI,
pp. 20-6.
%.
8.0., p. 2,
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