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334
TRIBES IN ANCIENT INDIA Utkala seems to have extended to the river Kapiśā (probably identical with either the modern Suvarnarekhā, according to Lassen, or with the Kāśāi in Midnapur, according to Pargiter) and to the realm of the Mekalas on the west, with whom they are constantly associated. and who were inhabitants presumably of the Mekala hills. In the Apadāna of the Khuddaka Nikāya of the Sutta-pitaka, a book of the Pāli Canon, Okkalā or Ukkalā or Utkalas were a tribe mentioned along with the Mekalas.1 Southward must have extended the realm of the Kalingas. From this, Pargiter deduced that Utkala must have comprised the southern portion of modern Chotanagpur.2 He further suggests that the reading Suhmottarāh, a people of the eastern countries, of the Matsyapurāna, should be amended to Suhmotkalāh to mean the 'Suhmas and the Utkalas', in which case the Utkalas become the immediately contiguous southern neighbours of the Suhmas who occupied roughly the modern districts of Bankura, Midnapore, Purulia and Manbhum. The Mārkandeya Purāna, however, locates the Utkalas as inhabiting the Vindhya mountains, along with the Karūshas, Keralas (according to Vāyu and Matsya Purānas, the reading here should be Mekalas and not Keralas which is evidently incorrect), the Uttamaranas and the Daśārņas. Roughly speaking, the Utkalas were indeed a Vindhyan people inasmuch as the Chotanagpur hills are just an extension of the Vindhya ranges.
Coming to more definite historical times, we hardly find mention of the Utkalas as a people, though in later inscriptions and literature there are numerous references to Utkaladeśa or Utkalavişaya, the country presumably of the Utkala people. Thus a twelfth century epigraph of Gāhadavāla Govindachandra refers to a Buddhist scholar Säkyaraksita, who was a resident of the Utkaladeśa. Another inscription, also of the twelfth century (Bhuvaneswar Stone Inscription of Narasimha I) refers to the building of a Visnu temple by Candrikā, sister of Narasimha, at Ekāmra or modern Bhuvaneswar, in the Utkalavisaya. It is obvious from this inscription that Utkalavisaya at this period at least comprised the Puri and Bhuvaneswar regions as well. Earlier, in the Bhagalpur grant of Nārāyaṇapāla, a certain king of the Utkalas (Utkalānāmādhisa) took fright and fled from his capital at the approach of Prince Jayapāla of the Pāla dynasty. The Bādal Pillar Inscription of the time of Gudavamiśra credits King Devapāla with having eradicated the race of the Utkalas along with the pride of the Huņas and the conceit of the rulers of Drāvida and Gurjara. The Rāmacaritam of Sandhyākara Nandi in giving a list of foreign countries invaded by
1 Pt. II, p. 359.
2 Mārkandeya P., p. 327 f.n.
3 Chap. CXIII, 44.
