was in the Kalinga country. It is also indefinitely indicated by this description that the Vaitaraṇī, in the highlands, formed almost the southern boundary of the Utkala land (Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, Ch. 57) and that the whole of the Utkala country consisted of a narrow strip of land, extending through the Feudatory States of Nilgiri, Mayurbhanj, and Keonjhar, to the western limit of Gangpur. This geography also appears to be certain from some other facts which I now narrate very briefly. It is significant to note that the Utkala country, as demarcated above, has been the principal home of the Bhuiyās since a very remote time, and the Bhuiyās still exercise much influence all over this tract (vide my paper on the Bhuiyās incorporated in the essay on the subject in Russell's "Castes and Tribes of the Central Provinces"). It is of the greatest importance to note that the Ukkalas, i.e., the people of Utkala, have been Bhuiyās since the time of Gotama Buddha, for to illustrate the unreasonableness of the barbarous people the भञ्ञा-s of उक्कल बस्स [?] have been mentioned in the Majjhima Nikāya.
Many epigraphic records of Chattisgarh, as well as of the Sambalpur tract, disclose to us that the district of Sambalpur, with its Feudatory States, formed in ancient time a part of Dakṣiṇa Kośala, and the hilly country lying between Kalinga and Dakṣiṇa Kośala was the Oḍra land, while Utkala, as a separate country to the north of Oḍra, has been clearly recognized in all old records. To fix the limits of the Oḍra country with some definiteness, we have also to mention this fact on the authority of the epigraphic records (e.g., Jajalla Deva's inscriptions of 12th century A.D.), that the Feudatory States of Daspalla and Baud lying to the east of the Tel river were within the Andhra country; that the river Tel lay just on the western border of the Andhra Deśa, is what we get also in the Jātaka stories as recently noticed by Mr. K. P. Jayaswal. These facts lead us to infer with some degree of certainty that the highlands of Orissa, extending from the southern limits of Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj to the left bank of the river Mahanadi, constituted the land of the Oḍras. We learn also from the Tirumalai inscriptions edited by late Mr. Venkayya, that the hero of the inscriptions, after conquering Trikalinga, had to pass through the Oḍra land which was difficult of access, to reach the Kośala country. That the people of old Kalinga despised the people of Utkala as barbarians, can be gathered from a fact which is by itself of great historical value. The mighty people of Kalinga had established an empire in Burma long before the Emperor Aśoka led his victorious soldiers into Kalinga. The new Kalinga Raṭṭa in Burma was given the designation Muḍu Kalinga, by adopting the very name which the Kalinga Empire bore in India; a hilly tract of land lying to the west of Muḍu Kalinga in Further India was given the name Utkala or rather Ukkala to signify the rude character of that land.* We thus clearly see that the Kalinga Empire of old lay
- Vide "Researches on Ptolemy's Geography" by Col. Gerini, p. 73. Gerini states (p.119) that Hindus overthrew the Dravidian rule in Further India by about 644 B.C.
