Kalinga
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Kalinga
One of the ancient kingdoms on the east coast of India. Its limits have been variously fixed, but it appears to have included the country lying between the Eastern Ghats and the sea from the Goda- vari river as far north as Orissa. Its people and its reigning house are alluded to in the oldest extant chronicles of India and Ceylon, and were also known to the classical writers of Greece and Rome and to the inhabitants of the Far East. They appear to have been adven- turous traders by sea to different countries. The earliest Buddhist legends speak of the Kalinga monarchs as being even then the rulers of a civilized country, but little definite is known of them. A number of kings belonging to the Eastern Gangas of Kalinga are named in copperplate grants, which are dated in an era whose starting-point has yet to be settled. The earliest of these kings is believed to belong to the seventh century. Later records of the same family state that the Gangas of Kalinga were the cousins of the Western Gangas of Mysore. At the beginning of the eleventh century the Cholas overran Kalinga, which was then in the possession of the Eastern Chalukyas, and set up a pillar of victory on the Mahendragiri hill. The Gangas appear to have held Kalinga until a comparatively late period, though defeated by thfe Gajapatis in the fifteenth century. Inscriptions recently de- ciphered seem to show that their capital, for which very various sites have been at different times assigned, was at Mukhalingam in Ganjam District.
