

divisions shows a revenue of £537,495 ^^s. However the revenues 

 might be deranged from year to year by tumult or rebellion, the 

 nominal demand remained the same in the Imperial account books ; 

 and the Pere Thieffenthaler, amid the Mahratta anarchy of the 

 eighteenth century, was still informed that the province yielded 

 £570,750 330. 



The revenue under the Gangetic line (1132 — 1532 A.D.), its last 

 independent dynasty, may therefore be set down at £435,000 a year 

 from the twenty-four thousand square miles of Orissa Proper. The 

 southern strip had long ceased to yield any income to the Orissa 

 kings. The present province, comprising an equal area, yields to 

 the British Grovernment, in round numbers, £450,000 ^^^. But while 

 the actual revenue remains about the same, its purchasing power 

 has completely altered. Under the native dynasty, it sufficed to 

 maintain a gorgeous court, a vast army, innumerable trains of priests, 

 and to defray the magnificent public works of the Grangetic kings. 

 Under the English it barely pays the cost of administering the province. 

 The charges for collecting the revenue and protecting person and 

 property amount to £33^,096 ; the interest on one of the local public 

 works, the Orissa canals, comes to £65,000 a year ^^^ ; a single native 

 regiment at Cuttack costs £17,000 ; and a petty balance of £28,000 is 

 all that remains over after paying the merely local charges of holding 

 the Province. Orissa contributes scarcely anything to the general 

 expenses of Government. It does not pay its share of interest on the 

 public debt ; it contributes nothing to the cost of defending the 

 Empire ; and hardly does more than support the charges of the local 

 administration. Under the native dynasty, the same revenue sufficed 

 to support an administration infinitely more minute, and, as regards its 

 higher officials, infinitely higher paid. None of the English governing 

 body in Orissa ever hopes to make a fortune ; under the Hindu princes, 

 Government employ was synonymous with assured opulence. Sixteen 

 great ministers regulated the kingdom, with seventy-two deputies, 

 and thirty-six separate departments of State. Under the English, the 

 revenue of Orissa with difficulty maintains seven hundred sepoys ; 

 under the Hindu princes it supported, besides a peasant militia of 

 300,000 men, a regular army of 50,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and 2,500 

 elephants. About a vast militia being attached to the soil there can be 

 no doubt ; and if Hindu chroniclers have magnified the number of the 

 regular troops, we know from the Musalmdn annalists, that the Orissa 

 king could at a moment's warning take the field with 18,000 horse and 

 foot. But the public works of the Hindu dynasty attest the magnitude 

 of their resources in a way that admits of no dispute. Thirty or forty- 

 thousand pounds were not considered extravagant for an ordinary temple. 



329 Sicca Es. 4,961,497, or Company's Ks. 5,374,955, under SMh Jah6,n, 1627—1658 ; 

 As. Res. XV. 2V6. 



33" Seloti 3faitouchi, As. Res. XV. 212. This sum may possibly have included outstand- 

 ing arrears. Mr. Stirling, without stating any grovinds, conjectures that it included also 

 the revenue of the Northern Circars ; but such a conjecture is opposed to the historical 

 facts of the time, and to the recorded statistics about the Orissa revenue. 



331 The area is 23,907 square miles, but it has lost the fertile tracts towards the 

 Hugli and received in place of it an addition to its hill territorj'. In 1870 the total 

 revenue was £464,861, but this included the extraordinary income-tax. £450,000 is a 

 fair average in round numbers. ^ 



332 ij millions sterling had already been spent on 31st March 1871. 



