Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/440



428 ORISSA. The Mahánadi, as has been shown in the present author's Orissa, illustrates in a striking manner the life of a great Indian river. Rising in Central India, 520 miles off, it collects the rainfall of 45,000 square iniles, and pours down on the Orissa delta through a narrow gorge just above Cuttack city. In its first stage it runs on a lower level than the surrounding country, winding through mountain passes, and skirting the base of the hills. During this long part of its career it receives innumerable tributaries from the higher country on both hanks. So far, it answers to our common English idea of a river. But no sooner does it reach the delta than its whole aspect changes. Instead of running along the lowest ground, it finds itself lifted up on its own depos.ts of silt, its banks gradually forming ridges, which rise above the adjacent country. Instead of receiving affluents, it shoots forth distributaries. The silt gradually accumulates in the bed and on its niargins, until its channel shallows, and its capacity as an outlet for the waters which pour into it from above diminishes. The same process goes on in every one of the hundred distributaries into which the parent stream breaks up; and as the beds grow more shallow, their total discharging power becomes less and less adequate to carry off the water-supply to the sea. As the rivers in the delta thus gradually build themselves up into high-level canals, so the lowest levels lie about half-way between each set of their distributaries. The country, in fact, slopes gently downward from the river banks, and in time of flood the overflow is unable to make its way back again into the rivers. The waters stand deep upon the harvest fields long after the main channels have run down. They slowly search out the lines of drainage, accumulating in stagnant swamps, drowning the crops, and poisoning the air with malaria, until they dry up or at last reach the sea. Even in periods of quiescence, the rivers form a complicated network of channels, which crawl eastwards by innumerable bifurcations, interlacings, and temporary rejunctions and divergences. History --The Bráhmanical archives of the temple of Jagannath give us our knowledge of the early history of Orissa. These curious relics consist of bundles of palm leaves, neatly cut, and written over with a sharp iron pen, without ink. They furnish a list of 107 kings, and the exact dates for their reigns, from 3101 1.C. to the present day. During the first three thousand years of which the palm-leaf records treat, or up to 57 2.C., twelve kings are said to have reigned in Orissa, averaging a little more than 250 years a-piece. The first three of them, who are well-known monarchs of the Mahabharata, divided among them no fewer than 1294 years. At whatever date the Aryan settlement took place in Orissa, we may conclude that it did not start from Northern India, the seat of these kings, before 1807 B.C. The first king with any