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 59

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AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA
“This is a well known legend in India and these three towns are styled Tripuri or Traipuri under Tripurāsura who was Tricalingādhipati and had a town in each Calinga. These were destroyed, at once, by the unerring arrow of Śiva who was standing in the district of Tipperah. One of these towns was to the eastwards of the Ganges, the other near Amaracaņțaka, and the third to the west of Indus." I Unfortunately, Wilford has not given the source of the above legend and no Sanskrit Dictionary gives the meaning of Kalinga as a 'sea-shore'. According to Wilford's interpretation, Pliny's three Calingas may be interpreted as the three shores of India and Farther India, and we have found it historically true that the two shores on the east and the west of the Bay of Bengal represent the two Kalingas, but there is nothing to support that the western coast of India was ever known as Kalinga.” In the Harshacharit, 8 the epithet 'tri-samudrādhipati' is found and it reminds us of 'trikalingādhipati' in the same sense as put by Wilford.
Burnell however mentions—"Western and Eastern Kaliogas”,' and in the footnote he adds—"Kalinga or rather Trikalinga is very old name for the greater part of the Telugu coast on the Bay of Bengal”. Dr. Caldwell took Pliny's Modogalingam to be the old Telugu Modaga' and 'linga' meaning “three lingas', and thus accepted the native chronology of Telugu. There can be no doubt that it is merely Mudu-kalinga or three Kalingas and has nothing to do with ‘linga'. In the second edition of his work, however, Dr. Caldwell gives up this explanation and states that the Trikalinga theory is certainly not supported by Ptolemy's Triglypton or Trilingon, which is most probably
1. JA8B, xx, 1851, p. 484. 2. P. Acharya, JBORS, Vol. I, No. 1., p. 80. 3. Book VIIT. 4, Elements of South Indian Palaeography, 1878, p. 23.