264 ON ORISSA PROPER 



denly returning with tremendous noise and fury, swallowed up a great portion 

 of the army and inundated the whole country to a frightful extent. The flood 

 reached inland as far as the Baronai Pahar of Khurda, taking with it im- 

 mense quantities of sand. It was at this time that the Chilka lake was 

 formed by the irruption of the waters of the ocean, 



The Raja died shortly afterwards in the jungles. His son Indra Deo 

 succeeded to the title, but was captured and murdered by the invaders. A 

 Yavana dynasty then ruled over Ofissa for the space of 146 years. Thus 

 were completed years 396 of the Sacabda, 



Possibly the tradition which I have described above, may have some 

 connectien with the fierce religious disputes which raged between the 

 worshippers of Brahma and Buddha about the period in which the invasi- 

 on of foreigners and the flight of Jagannath is placed, and which as is well 

 known terminated in the expulsion of the latter from the continent of India, 

 A real irruption of the ocean may have occurred in the same age, and this 

 natural calamity, the ever active invention of the Brahmin Chroniclers chose 

 to ascribe to the authors of the bloody wars, revolutions, and other moral 

 evils, which afflicted the country at the time. But it were vain to speculate 

 farther on the origin of an account which is perhaps altogether the work of 

 imagination, and the unravelling of which at all events would require the 

 exercise of much more learning and ingenuity than I can bring to the task r 



We come now to the accession of the Rajas called the Kesari Pat or 

 Vansa, A. D. 473, from which period I should be disposed to date the 

 commencement of the real history of the province, but before entering 

 upon the account of their reigns I should observe that there is nothing 

 in the preceding relation to explain what is meant by the " eradicated race 

 of Utcala,"* alluded to in the inscription on the pillar at Buddal, which 

 Major Wilford refers to the expulsion of a martial race of Princes from 



* Vide Asiatic Researches; vol. i, 



