Jainism in Kalingadesa

Author(s): Bool Chand
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

Page 18

( 16 ) of the territories comprised within the limits of Kalinga, scems to have left the country politically disorganised, for there is record of Yavana rule over Kalinga again and some members of the ruling family migrating to Ceylon. Prof. Krishnaswami Iyengar thinks that this Yavana must have been one of the Kshatrapas of the west, although in view of the existence of the Vakataka power on the way that seems somewhat unlikely. When the Gupta cmpire went into dismemberment at the end of the fifth century, Kalinga may have regained some of the lost power and emerged into some importance again, although Prof. Banerji said, so far as the history of Kalinga is concerned we are not on firm ground until the 7th century A.D., when Yuan Chwang, the Chinese pilgrim, paid a visit to Kalinga. Yuan Chwang docs not give the cxact boundaries of the country, although he mentions that Kalinga was then divided into three parti~U'cha (Odra), Kong-yu-to (Kugoda) and Ki-ling-kia (Kalinga). The country, Yuan Chwang goes on to say, was less than a thousand miles in circuit, containing large forests. It produced large dark clephants which were prized in the neighbourhood. "The people were rude and headstrong in disposition, obscrvant of good faith and fairness, fast and clear in speech, in their talk and manners they differed somewhat from mid-India."
Politically, history of Kalinga during this period is rather obscure, but from a religious point of view this period of Kalinga history seems to offer a momentous aspect, for it was about this time that Nagarjuna of Kanchi converted Kalinga to the Mahayana school of Buddhism, which later on changed its shape into the nco-Vaishnavic Hinduism of which Jagannath Puri, one of the famous cities of Kalinga, has since been the gicat distributing centra