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EPIGRAPHIA JAINICA. 73 These agency tracts of Ganjam and Vizagapatam of the ancient Kalinga kingdom are to-day regarded by the generality of people as the haunts of the wolf, the bear and the tiger and of men equally barbarous and ferocious. Little do we regard, in our ignorance, how they were once teeming with organised communities of highly civilised men and women, well established - principalities, flourishing towns, pandit parishads, ascetic viharils, moving armies and civil and military officers of all grades and ranks. In the building up of this early civilisation in these battle-grounds for the colonisation of northern and southern 'peoples, the Jaina Kadambas of the early centuries of the Christian era must have had a no mean share. . The inscription published by J. F. Fleet (in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. IX, No. XXVII) probably speaks of a Western Deccan branch of this line of Jaina Kadambas. He says “ they belong to some epoch when the great kings of the south, the Chalukyas, were not in possession of such power as they attained to in later times. The Chaluky, dynasty.................. in earlier times.” Palasika was their capital in the Western Deccan, and it is not extravagant to suppose that Palasa in the Ganjam District was founded by a branch of this line of Jaina Kadambas. A more difficult question to solve is which foundation is the earlier,—the Kalinga one or the Western Deccan one.
