232 J. Beames —Notes on the History of Orissa. [No. 3, 
forts, should not have erected a single stone building in a place where 
stone abounds. 
An additional argument for my view is derived from the existence 
of numerous tenures of a kind originally granted for the purpose of clear¬ 
ing and settling forest land. These tenures, so numerous in northern 
Balasore, are hardly known south of the Ivansbans except in the hills. 
I may also point to the very large number of villages whose names 
begin with the word “ Ban” = forest, including according to one derivation 
Balasore itself, (i. e , Baneshwara, forest-lord,* Sanskrit Yaneswara) and 
to the very marked prevalence of the Kole or aboriginal type among the 
lower classes. 
Stirling’s account of Orissa has been long in print, and is so well 
known, that it would be superfluous to repeat what is there said about the 
various dynasties of Orissa. It will have struck many readers of that 
work that often as the towns and regions of the Cuttack and Pooree dis¬ 
tricts are mentioned in the historical portion, Balasore is hardly ever 
spoken of. One would not of course expect to find it mentioned under 
the name of Balasore, because Balasore as a town is a creation of the Eng¬ 
lish and quite a modern place, but no other towns, villages, or parganas in 
this part of the province are ever mentioned. Till the arrival of the 
Musalmans, no event in Oriya history took place there, nor is there any 
evidence of its having been more than scantily peopled, if at all. 
It will not therefore take long to put together the scattered 
notices that exist during the Hindu and Muhammadan periods. From the 
people themselves not much can be got, the best informed of them cannot, 
with few exceptions, go back further than the sanads granted to their 
ancestors by the provincial governors under Aurangzeb or at furthest Shah 
Jehan, and the majority do not as a rule know who their own great-grand¬ 
fathers were, and do not care. 
The first of the few notices of any part of this district occursf in 
a speech made by Baja Anang Bhim Deo who ruled in Orissa A. D. 1175— 
1202, in which he informs his courtiers that the kings who had preceded 
him had ruled from the Ivansbans in the north to the Basikoilah in the 
south, but that he had extended his sway to the Datai Borhi river on the 
north. I cannot find what river is meant, but I presume it to be the 
Subanrekha, which in some parts of its course is still called Dantai. The 
statement that the whole country from the Ganges to the Godavery was 
* [The little village of Balasore which afterwards, under English influence, grew 
into the present town, is called from a temple to Mahadeva Vaneshwara or “ Shiva the 
forest lord,” probably because the place where his temple stood was covered by dense 
jungles.] 
f Stirling’s Orissa, p. 109. 
