Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/63

Rh though the situation of Kalinga to the south of Suhma and Vanga, is rather well defined in many parts of that work. In the Viṣma Parva for instance (IX, 348), the Utkalas have been mentioned as rude people, and nothing has been stated regarding their owning any country in an organised form. Vanga seems to have been in olden times connected with Anga on one side, and with Kalinga on the other; for the Angas, the Vangas, and the Kalingas are found constantly linked together in the Mahābhārata, as people closely allied by race and position. [Vide for instance Drona Parva (Chap. LXX).] In the Purāṇas also the Utkalas have been distinctly mentioned as a rude tribe of very early origin, having no affinity with the races around them. (Vide Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, Canto LVII, Hari-vamśa, X, 631-32.) From the description given by Kālidāsa in the 4th Canto of the Raghuvamśa, it becomes clear that just on crossing the river Kapisā, the country of the Utkalas was reached. Here too, there is mention of the Utkalas, i.e., of a tribe but not of any country possessed by that tribe. The river Kapisā is the modern Kasāi or Kānsāi, which flows through the southern parts of both Chutia Nagpur and Midnapur. The Utkalas in Kālidāsa's days, had no political organization, for Raja Raghu had not to conquer the country of the Utkalas, and the people only showed the soldiers of Raghu their way leading to Kalinga. Again, in the Purāṇas the Utkalas have been mentioned in the east, near about the Bay of Bengal, and in the west, in connection with the wild tribes of Mekhala of the districts of Raipur and Bilaspur in the Central Provinces. It is also to be noted, that in the Purāṇas, the river Vaitarani is described to be flowing right through the Kalinga country. All these facts taken together lead us to suppose, that the hilly and wild tract of the Utkalas, extended from Nilgiri and Mayurbhanj to 6