1883.] Bemarhs hy Dr. Mitra on Mr. Beames^s paper. 69 



Coming to a history of Orissa after reading these works, one naturally 

 expects something new, or some information as to what is taken from 

 these authors and what is original discovery. But Mr. Beames supplies no 

 such information, and systematically avoids all reference to his predecessors, 

 Uftftking no distinction between what he has taken from old records, and 

 what i« based on mere local tradition of the present day. The paper was 

 written between 1869 and 1873 or before the dates of the Gazetteer and Mr. 

 Toyn bee's book : that perhaps accounts for some omissions, but in publish- 

 ing a paper in 1883, it is desirable that due acknowledgment should be 

 made of previous writers, and the new materials collected should be duly 

 labelled. It would have been a great accession if Mr. Beames had given 

 extracts from the works noted in Mr. Blochmann's precis, but he has not 

 done so, nor, as far as can be made out, utilised them in any way. 



The name of the paper appeared to Dr. Mitra as misleading. The 

 paper is devoted principally to Balasore, but it is called a ' History of 

 Orissa.' Balasore was only one-third, and that the most insignificant third, 

 of Orissa. 



Mr. Beames starts by saying that the country between the Kanabana 

 and the Subarnarekha rivers, i. e., Balasore, " was totally uninhabited and 

 covered with jungle." This was probably the case in some remote pre- 

 historic period, soon after the tract was reclaimed from the sea, but as 

 Mr. Beames seemed to assume that such was also the case in the 13th or 

 14th century of the Christian era. Dr. Mitra urged that such was not the 

 case, and he believed that there was not a tittle of evidence to show that 

 the Aryans entered Orissa from the west, following the course of the 

 Mahanadi. Mr. Beames assumes that the Aryans proceeded from between 

 Arrah and Gaya to Orissa. Philological evidence is entirely in favour of 

 the theory of the migration from the Behar province, but the determina- 

 tion of the exact locale between Arrah and Gaya was the merest assump- 

 tion. But, taking for granted that they did go from Arrah or Gaya, the 

 route they must have followed to come to the Mahanadi from the west 

 would be, first a westerly course to Nagpur, thence a southerly course 

 down Sambhalpur to reach the Mahanadi in or near Berar, and then an 

 easterly one to Orissa, and this has to be accepted as an historical fact, 

 because the straight cut through Balasore was not practicable, because that 

 district was then an impenetrable jungle. This major, however, has no 

 leg to stand upon. Mr. Beames urges that the name of the district shows 

 that it was once a jungle The name, he says, is a corruption of ' Banesvara' 

 or ' the lord of the forest,' referring to the presiding divinity bf the 

 place, and the district must have therefore once been a forest, but he does 

 not adduce an iota of evidence to prove that the name is really a corrup- 

 tion of the kind, nor does he show that Dr. Hunter was wrong when he 



