OR CUTTACK. ' 221 



tion of the vestiges of the old system yet actually in existence. I shall af- 

 terwards notice the changes impressed on the face of things, by the two 

 great revolutions which the province has experienced in modern times ; 

 first, its subjection to the Mussulman, and afterwards to the British rule. 



In the preceding part of my paper, I have noticed generally the great 

 territorial divisions both natural and political which exist in this province. 

 The extensive hilly regions and forest tracts, jangle Pergimnahs and Me- 

 hals, as they are now termed, reaching nearly from Bishenpur totheGoda- 

 veri, together with the woodland country on the sea shore of Orissa Pro- 

 per, have been in all ages parcelled out among and occupied by a number 

 of Chieftains of the Military class. These Chiefs may be safely consider- 

 ed as de facto proprietors of their possessions under the native governments, 

 that is to say they held them hereditarily, exercised uncontrolled territo- 

 rial jurisdiction within their limits, and appropriated the entire revenues, 

 subject to the condition of performing Military service, or other offices and 

 duties, at the court of their superior Raja, the Gajapati, residing mostly at 

 Cuttack, which services have in latter ages been generally commuted for a 

 light tribute or money payment. The more fertile and productive division 

 of the province (now the Mogulbandi) formed the Kot, Khaliseh, or domain 

 of the prince, from which the Hindu sovereigns of Orissa like their succes- 

 sors the Moguls, Marhattas, and English, derived their principal reve- 

 nues. There can be no question, I think, but that this other great territo- 

 rial division was the landed estate or property of the sovereign. I may ob- 

 serve, en passant, that such a state of things as above indicated, conforms 

 exactly with the declaration contained in a well known passage of the 

 digest of Hindu law translated by Mr. Cplebrooke : " By conquest the 

 earth became the property of Parasurama: by gift the property of the 

 sage Cas'yapa and committed by him to Cshatriyas for the sake of protec- 

 tion, became their protective property, successively held by powerful con- 

 querors and not by subjects cultivating the soil." So strikingly and uni- 

 versally true indeed is the maxim of the property of the soil vesting in the 

 Cshatriyas, that we find them always either asserting a title to owner- 



