INTRODUCTION.
xiii
The description
of the victorious campaign of Raghu in the canto of the Raghuvarh^a by Kalidasa, makes it almost certain that even in the 5th century A.D., the Utkalas continued to be as rude as before, and had no organized government of their own, since the soldiers of Raghu had no need to conquer the country of the Utkalas, and the Utkalas onlj showed the soldiers In the 7th century A.D., however, the their way to Kalinga. political situation of the country was considerably changed. Some epigraphic records of the districts of Puri and Ganjam inform us that the district of Puri obtained then the name Kongada, and
4th
Sasanka
alias
Narendra Gupta
of
Karnasuvarna
in
Bengal became
the overlord of that district. The changes, with which Huen Tsiang makes us familiar, should be duly noted here, for we find that when the Chinese traveller visited Orissa and Ganjam, the rude people of Utkala and Orissa freely flowed into the sea-board tract of Orissa, and the people of Kalinga speaking a Dravidian speech were limited within the confines of the country which has got the designation Andhra Desa to-day. After visiting Tamralipti and Karnasuvarna, Huen Tsiang proceeded to " Ucha" or " Utkala." His description makes it certain that the northern boundary of Ucha " was conterminous with the southern limits of Karnasuvarna and Tamralipti. Regarding the people of "Ucha," Huen Tsiang says: they are " uncivilized, tall of stature, and of a yellowish black complexion. Their words and language differ from the speech of Central India. They love learning and apply themselves to it without interMost of them believe in the law of Buddha. There are mission. some hundred Sangharamas with 10^000 priests. They all study the Great Vehicle." This description shows that these uncivilized people are not those who were the dwellers of ancient Kalinga the high class people of Kalinga seem to have entirely disappeared from the land. The language of mid-India or Magadha prevailed now all over Bengal, but just crossing the frontier of Karnasuvarna and Tamralipti the Chinese traveller found the people of " Ucha" (who were mostly Bauddhas) to be speaking a different tongue altogether. The description of the " Kongada" country by this traveller
highly interesting as it discloses many facts of considerable This land, which is described to be bordering on a bay " with rocky background to the west, contained a population wholly similar to the people of '* Ucha" in general ethnic character. Though the people of Ucha were Buddhists and the people of Kongada were heretics, the Buddhist traveller ungrudgingly remarks that unlike the Buddhistic people of Utkala, or Ucha, the people of Kongada shook off much of their rudeness and became It has been said that in the Kongada rather polite and honest. country the script of Northern India was introduced^ though the people pronounced the Aryan words differently. We have to attribute it to the influence of the rulers of Karnasuvarna that the script of Northern India was introduced in the district of Puri or Kongada in the 7th century A.D. We notice that the Magadhi speech as prevailed in Bengal was also struggling to take root is
significance.
