Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 62

50
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MARCH, 1923
Deva of this family, dated 1509-10 A.D. (No. 12 of Appendix A, Epigraphical Report, Madras, 1920-21) has been discovered at Kâvali in the Nellore District, and a stone inscription (No. 208 of 1899) of the same king in the Guntur District. But when the Oriyas came into conflict with the powerful Vijayanagar Empire under Krishna Dêva Râya, they had to recede northwards, and a boundary for their country was formed where Vaddâdi (Vadde of the Odias: vádi, a limit), a town in the District of Vizagapatam, now stands. A further proof of their adventurous spirit is to be found in the fact that Vaddes, a class of Odias, are found settled so far south as the district of Tinnevelly.
Such being the spirit of the people, no wonder the Khonds had to submit, and were perhaps reduced to the position of the serfs of European feudal times. Thus degraded, the Khonds treated their superiors as over-lords and called them Odâs, which in the Kui language means kings. At the present day the indebted hillmen of the Jeypore Agency call their creditors sahukar, which in Oriya, as elsewhere, means money-lender, while the lower classes call the Brahmans, especially the temple-priests, mahd-prabhu, which means "great lord."
The Kui word oda is purely Dravidian and is found in all the Dravidian languages Thus-Telugu, Odayadu or Odayudu, meaning "king" or "lord": Kanarese, Odayar, the title of the Mahârâja of Mysore: Tamil, Udayar, meaning "king." Another form of the word, Udayavar, is applied only to Râmânuja, the reputed founder of the Vaishnava religion in the South.
Add to this Dravidian word oḍa the suffix iya, which means 'belonging to,' and we get Odia, as the "people of the kings." Such a derivation conforms with vernacular habits, while Sanskrit scholars, who want to make every word pedantic, add ra to the root and form from it odra by the process of dropping the final a and lengthening the initial o. In my view the Odias got their name out of their own tongue and themselves gave it to their language and their country. The language is in fact of comparatively recent origin and did not take on a literary form till the middle of the nineteenth century.
INDIA AND THE ROMANS.
BY PROF. G. JOUVEAU DUBREUIL.
(Translated from the French by Sir R. C. Temple.1)
Ir is generally thought that Europe and India are far removed from each other, though relations between them were numerous before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the progress of navigation. I propose not only to show that there were communications between India and Rome, but to try and prove that they were frequent and important and that India was thoroughly saturated with Roman civilisation..
The Roman Republic had without doubt hardly any relations with India. But the Emperor Augustus received two Indian embassies. One of them brought with it some presents and a letter written in Greek, by which a king in India gave the Romans complete liberty of entry and traffic. The presents consisted of curiosities from his country: a man without arms, an enormous tortoise, some snakes, and a gigantic partridge [? peacock]. The ambassadors went by the city of Broach, which is to the north of Bombay, followed the route of Nearchos along the Persian Gulf, and reached Italy by way of Antioch. That was the old route to Europe.
1 G. Jouveau-Dubreuil : L'Inde et les Romains; Librairie Paul Geuthner, 13 rue Jacob, Paris, 1921. A pamphlet of 7 pages.