1883.] 
J. Beames— Notes on the History of Orissa . 
231 
Notes on the History of Orissa under the Mahommedan, Maratlia, 
and English rule.—By John Beames, B. C. S. 
[These notes were written as Chapter II of a manual of the district of Balasore, 
of which I was Collector from 1869 to 1873. The work when completed was laid 
before Sir R. Temple (then Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal) in 1875 ; but for certain 
reasons which cannot be here stated, was not printed. In 1877 I was asked by Mr. 
Blochmann, then Secretary to the Society, to allow him to print the historical portion 
in the Society’s Journal. I was unable to comply with his request at that time, and 
the work was put aside. Recently being engaged in some researches regarding the 
history of my present official charge, the Burdwan Division, I have had occasion to 
refer to it, and as I do not know of any compilation which gives all the facts therein 
contained, I have thought that it may be useful to print it.] 
There is some reason for believing that for many centuries the 
country between the Kansbans and the Subanrekha was totally uninhabit¬ 
ed, and covered with jungle. The legends of the Oriya race render it 
probable that they came into the province through the hills and down 
the Mahanadi, and the characteristics of their language lead me to believe 
that they broke off from the main stream of Aryan immigration some¬ 
where about Shababad and Gya. That they are not an offshoot of the 
Bengalis is proved by the fact that their language was already formed as 
we now have it, at a period when Bengali had not yet attained a separate 
existence, and when the deltaic portion of Bengal was still almost unin¬ 
habited. So that in fact they could not have sprung from the Bengalis, 
simply because there were then no Bengalis to spring from. 
Numerous as are the allusions in early Oriya history to the north¬ 
western and western parts of India, and frequent as were their expeditions 
to the south, it is remarkable that there is nowhere in all their annals more 
than an obscure occasional mention of Bengal, and then even as a far-off 
inaccessible place. The similarity between the languages is not by any 
means so great as some Bengali writers have sought to make out, and what 
similarity there is, is due to the fact that they are both dialects of the 
eastern or Magadhi form of Prakrit. 
The ancient sovereigns of Orissa were great builders and employed 
stone in their works. As the province is not deltaic, but high and rocky, 
these stone buildings would last for ages, and in fact central and southern 
Orissa are full of them. Now it is a remarkable fact that in all northern 
Balasore from the Kansbans to the frontier of Bengal there is not a vestige 
of a single fort, temple, palace or bridge that can be traced or attributed 
to any older period than the sixteenth century. It is hardly possible that 
if this part of the country had been inhabited, the kings and rich men who 
so lavishly spent their wealth in the rest of the province on temples and 
