INTRODUCTION.
XV
speeches accepted some Aryan words in their languages, and pronounced those words with their tribal peculiarities. One section of the Dravidas, we are informed, naturalized a good number of Aryan words and thereby made that particular Dravidian speech very sweet. This example strongly reminds us of We see that the Sabaras were the Andhra speech of to-day. known as charcoal-burners it is easy to imagine by looking to similar instances at the present time, that when the Sabaras came to the market of the Aryans, they had to use some Aryan words and that their pronunciation of those words was marked by their I may note in passing that some Sabaras of tribal peculiarity. It is highly Orissa still sell charcoal in the market of the Oriyas. probable that the Odras of the days of the " Natya Sastra " used only a number of loan words of Aryan stock and the Aryans met them mostly in market-places. We may remind the readers that when Tapusa and Bhallika of Utkala country went to Gaya, their business was to sell some articles of theirs in some market of the Aryans.* When we consider these facts along with what Huen Tsiang informs us of the language of Orissa, we are forced to the conclusion that Oriya as a Magadhi speech was not brought into use in Orissa, even so late as the 7th century A.D., but the people all throughout the country adopted a good number of Magadhi words We may very well say that the way was paved in their tribal speech. for the introduction of a full-bodied Magadhi speech into the country, when the Odras and the Sabaras of lower civiHzation found the borrowing of the words of the people of higher civilization a When and how this introduction of the new necessity with them. speech took place should be next inquired into. We cannot say for want of historical accounts worth the name, how Orissa fared for two centuries after the time of Huen Tsiang, but we may reasonably hold that the country did not relapse into barbarism, since we can trace rapid progress from the 10th century onward. A few facts relating to the political condition of the country during the period when new progress was set in, should now be narrated to trace the origin and development of the Oriya language. According to the accounts of the Madia Panji, the history of Orissa begins with the reign of Yayati, son of Janamejaya, it is quite right that the Madia Panji chronicles do not recognize anything of the time, when the eastern tract of the country was an integral part of the Kalinga Empire. As the organization of Orissa as a new country was really due to Yayati and his father Janamejaya, facts relating to their origin should be duly^ noted. That the kingdom of Daksina Kosala comprised of the districts of Raipur and Bilaspur, together with a considerable portion of the upper valley of the Mahanadi, is of much antiquity. In the 7th century A.D. a line of rulers of Hinduised Sahara origin established its rule in the Kosala country with Sirpur, in the
- Tasmin samaje Tapassu-Bhaliiku nama dve vanijS panchahi fiakatasatehi
Ukkala janapada majjhima clesaiii gacchante. etc. (Fausholl. "Jatakas," V'ol. T,
p. 80).
