Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/86

64 and Sandangans, or vowel and diacritical signs, sufficiently testify.

Whether the Oṛiyas received the art of writing from Bengal or from Central India is a question still under dispute. The probabilities are strongly in favour of the latter supposition. In the flourishing times of the monarchy of Orissa, the intercourse with Central and Southern India was frequent and intimate. Raja Chûranga (or Sâranga) Deva, the founder of the Gangavansa dynasty, which ruled from A.D. 1131 to 1451, came from the south, and was said in native legends to be a son of the lesser Ganges (Godâvarî). The princes of that line extended their conquests far to the south, and their dominions at one time stretched from the Ganges to the Godavari. Kapilendra Deva (1451-1478) resided chiefly at Rajamahendri, and died at Condapilly on the banks of the Kistna, having been employed during the greater part of his reign in fighting over various parts of the Telinga and Karnata countries. This monarch also came into collision with the Musulmans of Behar. In fact, the early annals of Orissa are full of allusions to the central and southern Indian states, while Bengal is scarcely ever mentioned. Indeed, the Oṛiya monarchs at one time did not bear sway beyond the Kânsbâns, a river to the south of Baleshwar (Balasore), and there was thus between them and Bengal a wide tract of hill and forest, inhabited in all probability, as much of it is still, by non-Aryan tribes. The changes and developments which have brought Oṛiya into such close connexion with Bengali appear in very many instances to be of comparatively recent origin.

Assuming then that the Oṛiyas got their alphabet from Central, rather than from Northern, India, the reason of its being so round and curling has now to be explained. In all probability in the case of Oṛiya, as in that of the other languages which I have mentioned above, the cause is to be found in the material used for writing. The Oṛiyas and all the