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 77

AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA even the highest floods of the river. An examination of the boulders found in the river-bed near Kamata and Sargachira revealed that they were of various sizes but those of over 9 inches were quite common, while those lying near the eastern bank and nearby being smaller. The boulders were mostly of quartzite but a fair number were also of greenish or bluish trap derived from the dykes which run across the country. This is significant. The boulders obtained in Quarry 'C' are generally of medium size and are almost wholly of quartzite. This would seem to indicate that this boulder bed is not the work of the Burabelang but of some tributary nālā, which fact is also corroborated by an examination of the contours of the neighbourhood of Kuliana.
Kuliana itself and its neighbouring regions are thus made up of two kinds of rocks. Artifacts found at equal depths were not necessarily laid down at the same point of time. If tools found at different depths within one pit of restricted horizontal extent are compared, their relative sequence can reasonably be fixed. But tools discovered from equal depths but 50 yards away from each other need not be contemporary.
No fossil has hitherto been recovered from the detrital laterite in Kuliana and, therefore, the exact age of the bed will naturally remain obscure. If the laterite plain of Kuliana had been a river-built terrace it could be of some use. But it being only an erosional plain resulting from the complete weathering down of various kinds of metaphoric rocks and a local redistribution of the leterite material to fill in the inequalities of the surface of the ground—the entire process having taken place sub-aerially—the method of dating by means of river-terraces, which have been