184 L. A. Waddell— Old Orissan port of Chitratala. [Deo. 



2. Identification of the old Orissan port of Chitratala, the ' Che-li-ta-lo ' 

 of Hiuen Tsiang.—By L. A. Waddell, Esq., M. B., M. R. A. S. 



In regard to few of the ancient Indian sites described by Hiuen 

 Tsiang, have more widely divergent attempts at identification been 

 made than in the case of the old Orissan port of 'Che-li-ta-lo.' St. 

 Martin, 1 Cunningham, 8 Fergusson, 3 &c., having each selected widely 

 different sites, in various parts of Orissa and Western Bengal — over 

 200 miles apart, and none of them satisfy the pilgrims' description even 

 in a general way. 



This wide divergence of opinion has been due partly to the want 

 of local knowledge on the part of the writers and also to the geogra- 

 phical vagueness of the country of ' U-cha ' in which this port was 

 located, owing to the non-identification of the preceding capital of 

 Karnasuvarna from which the pilgrims' route is calculated and described. 



In a recent paper, 4 I have fixed the site of the capital of Karna- 

 suvarna as being almost certainly at Kansonnagar near the Kanchan- 

 nagar suburb of Burdwan town. And by the same process which 

 proved so successful in that deltaic inquiry, viz , by searching along the 

 old rivers of the delta for the survival of the name and also taking 

 into account the traditional capital and ports of the people, I have been 

 led to determine locally the site of the Old Orissan port of ' Che-li-ta-lo.' 



At the time of Hiuen Tsiang's visit, circa 640 A. D. Yajapur, 6 was 

 undoubtedly the capital of the country of ' U-cha ' — the northern 

 portion of Orissa which lay to the south-west of Karnasuvarna, and to 

 the north-east of ' Kong-u-tha ' (Khordha) north of Kaliiiga. Indeed 

 the ' U-cha ' of the pilgrim seems intended to represent the Sanskrit 

 Yd-ja. 



Hiuen Tsiang describes the port thus : — " On the south-eastern 

 " frontiers of the country (of U-cha) on the borders of the ocean, is 

 " the town of Che-li-ta-lo, 6 about 20 li 7 round. Here it is merchants 



1 Memoires Contrees Occident., ii, 395. * Ancient Geography of India. 



8 Jour. Royal As. Soc, vi. 



4> Note on King S'asanha who defaced the stone foot-prints of Buddha at Pdtaliputra 

 circa COO A. D. and on his lost kingdom of Karnasuvarna — An Appendix to the /><-- 

 covery of the exact site of Atoka's classic capital of Tdfaliputra — the Palibothra — of the 

 Greeks; and description of the superficial remains. — By L. A WADDELL, published by 

 The Government of Bengal, Calcutta, 1892. 



6 Still locally spelt as above, but usually pronounced ' Jajpur.' 



6 And a note by the Chinese editor states Fa-liiiiLC <>r 'citj oi departure' — though 

 it is nut stated whether this is a definition of the site oi the etymology of its name. 

 Beal 'II. Tsiang, II, p. 233; has shown that the second or 'Southern' Charitrapura 

 of J alien has no place in the text. 



7 I. e., over 3 miles in circumference. 



