152 
R. Banerjea —Note on a Copper-plate from Cuttack. [No. 2T, 
under notice, for, according to tlie palm-leaf records, this prince was celebrat¬ 
ed for his piety and his munificence to Brahmans, for he it was who rescued 
his native land from the hands of a foreign foe, restored the worship of 
Jagannatha at Puri, and commenced to build the sacred fane for the worship 
of Mahadeva in Bliuvanesvara. 
As regards the names of places in this plate : at the commence¬ 
ment of the declaration, the endower says that the village of Chandra, in 
the fiscal division ( Visaya ), of Marada, in the country ( Desa ) of Dakshina 
Kosala, is given in perpetuity ; hut with regard to the grantee, the declara¬ 
tion specifies that he was a Madhyadesiya Brahman, who came originally 
from the village of STivalla, and was residing at Silabhanjapati, a village 
in the country of Odra (Orissa). Now the question arises, if the country 
at the time bore the name of Dakshina Kosala, which included the fiscal 
division of Marada, and a village called Chandra ; what was the site of 
Odra whose name occurs separately, as distinct from Dakshina Kosala ? If 
we recall to mind, however, that the Odra of old was not conterminous 
with the Orissa of modern days, including the three districts of Katak,. 
Puri, and Balasor, the difficulty disappears. Odra originally comprised 
very little, if any, besides the present subdivision of Khurda. It was the 
original country of the Od Cliasas, and the name Odra was subsequently 
assigned to the whole tract from the Chilka Lake to the Vaitarani River, and 
included the names of Kalinga, Kosala, and Tilkala. We have its parallel 
in Bengal. Different portions of that province at one time bore the names 
of Pundravardhana, Gauda, Barendra, Tamralipta, &c., which all gradually 
gave place to the single designation of Banga, though the latter was but a 
small portion of the main country in the delta of the Ganges. 
The original country of the Brahman who had the endowment 
from the royal hands of Yajati Kesari, calls for a few remarks. Dr. Hunter, 
speaking of the Brahman migrations in Orissa, says : “ The local legends 
and the palm-leaf records alike relate how about 500 A. D. the founder* of 
the long-haired or lion line imported ten thousand Brahmans from Audli 
and endowed them with lands around Jajpur on the sacred Baitarini river.” 
But the record under notice and the Chaudwar one (which is evidently a 
very old grant) prove beyond a question, that the North-western Brahmans 
must have migrated to Orissa long before Yajati Kesari, for the plates 
give the names of three generations of the grantees, the names of their 
original and adopted countries and villages, &c. This record shows 
moreover, that the migration was not restricted to Audh Brahmans 
only. In this case, the grantee belonged to Madhyadesa, which, according to 
Manu, is the country between the Himalaya and the Vindhyan chain, bound- 
* Yajati Kesari. 
