Kalinga was an early state in central-eastern
IndiaThe Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
, which comprised most of the modern state of
OrissaOrissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...
/Utkal ' onMouseout='HidePop("29446")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Orissa">Orissa
Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...
), as well as the Andhra region of the bordering state of
Andhra PradeshAndhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...
. It was a rich and fertile land that extended from the river
DamodarDamodar can refer to:* Damodar Das Arora a famous Punjabi Poet* Damodar River in India* Damodar * Damodar * Damodar Pande - First Prime Minister of Nepal...
/Ganges to
GodavariThe Godavari is a river that runs from western to southern India and is considered to be one of the big river basins in India. With a length of 1465 km, it is the second longest river in India , that runs within the country and also the longest river in South India...
and from
Bay of BengalThe Bay of Bengal , the largest bay in the world, forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. It resembles a triangle in shape, and is bordered mostly by the Eastern Coast of India, southern coast of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the west and Burma and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the...
to
AmarkantakAmarkantak is a pilgrim town and a nagar panchayat in Anuppur District in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. Also called "Teerthraj" , Amarkantak region is a unique natural heritage area and is the meeting point of the Vindhyas and the Satpuras, with the Maikal Hills being the fulcrum...
range in the West. The region was scene of the bloody
Kalinga WarThe Kalinga War was a war fought between the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka the Great and the state of Kalinga, a feudal republic located on the coast of the present-day Indian state of Orissa. The Kalinga war is one of the major battles in the History of India. Kalinga put up a stiff resistance,...
fought by the
MauryaThe Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in ancient India, ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 321 to 185 BC...
Emperor Ashoka the Great of
MagadhaMagadha formed one of the sixteen Mahājanapadas or kingdoms in ancient India. The core of the kingdom was the area of Bihar south of the Ganga; its first capital was Rajagriha then Pataliputra...
circa 265 BCEYear 265 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Gurges and Vitulus...
.
Rise of Kharavela
KharavelaKhārabēḷa was the third and greatest emperor of the Mahāmēghabāhana Dynasty of Kaḷinga . The main source of information about Khārabeḷa is his famous seventeen line rock-cut Hātigumphā inscription in a cave in the Udayagiri hills near Bhubaneswar, Orissa.During the reign of Khārabēḷa, the Chedi...
was the warrior emperor of Kalinga. He was responsible for the propagation of
JainismJainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
in the
Indian SubcontinentThe Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
but his importance is neglected in many accounts of Indian history. According to the
Hathigumpha inscriptionThe Hathigumpha inscription , from Udayagiri, near Bhubaneshwar in Orissa, was written by Kharavela, the king of Kalinga in India, during the 2nd century BCE...
near
BhubaneswarBhubaneswar is the capital of the Indian state of Orissa, officially Odisha. The city has a long history of over 2000 years starting with Chedi dynasty who had Sisupalgarh near present-day Bhubaneswar as their capital...
, Orissa, he attacked
RajagrihaRajgir is a city and a notified area in Nalanda district in the Indian state of Bihar. The city of Rajgir was the first capital of the kingdom of Magadha, a state that would eventually evolve into the Mauryan Empire. Its date of origin is unknown, although ceramics dating to about 1000 BC have...
in Magadha, thus inducing the Indo-Greek king
DemetriusDemetrius I was a Buddhist Greco-Bactrian king . He was the son of Euthydemus and succeeded him around 200 BC, after which he conquered extensive areas in what now is eastern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan thus creating an Indo-Greek kingdom far from Hellenistic Greece...
to retreat to Mathura. But this inscription doesn't mean that he merged Magadha in Kalinga. But this shows his strong ties with the Shunga ruler Pushyamitra and Agnimitra who have just started their rule after uprooting the Mauryans.
The Kharavelan Jain empire had a formidable maritime empire with trading routes linking it to
Sri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, Burma,
ThailandThailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
,
VietnamVietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
,
CambodiaCambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
,
BorneoBorneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
,
BaliBali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
,
SumatraSumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
and
JavaJava is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...
. Colonists from Kalinga settled in Sri Lanka, Burma, as well as the
MaldivesThe Maldives , , officially Republic of Maldives , also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls oriented north-south off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and...
and
Malay ArchipelagoThe Malay Archipelago refers to the archipelago between mainland Southeastern Asia and Australia. The name was derived from the anachronistic concept of a Malay race....
.
Historical accounts of Kalinga
Kalinga is mentioned in the Adiparva, Bhismaparva, Sabhaparva, Banaprava of
MahabharataThe Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
. Kalinga King Srutayu is stated to have fought the Mahabharat war for the Kauravas. Kalinga is also mentioned as Calingae in
MegasthenesMegasthenes was a Greek ethnographer in the Hellenistic period, author of the work Indica.He was born in Asia Minor and became an ambassador of Seleucus I of Syria possibly to Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra, India. However the exact date of his embassy is uncertain...
' book on India –
Indica & Megasthenes states that Magadha & Kalinga were Jain Dominant Kingdoms:
- "The Prinas and the Cainas (a tributary of the Ganges) are both navigable rivers. The tribes which dwell by the Ganges are the Calingae, nearest the sea, and higher up the Mandei, also the Malli
Mallı is a village in the Goychay Rayon of Azerbaijan. The villages forms part of the municipality of Mallı-Şıxlı....
, among whom is Mount Mallus, the boundary of all that region being the Ganges." (Megasthenes fragm. XX.B. in Pliny. Hist. Nat. V1. 21.9–22. 1.)
- "The royal city of the Calingae is called Parthalis. Over their king 60,000 foot-soldiers, 1,000 horsemen, 700 elephants keep watch and ward in "procinct of war." (Megasthenes fragm. LVI. in Plin. Hist. Nat. VI. 21. 8–23. 11.)
The
Kalinga scriptKalinga script is one of many descendants of the ancient Brāhmī script used in territory of modern Orissa. The Kalinga script was used to write an ancient Dravidic language spoken in Kalinga state. It is derived from Brahmi and visually is very close to that ancient script...
, derived from Brahmi, was used for writing. Among the offshoots, Kalinga script had the maximum resemblance with the parent script,
BrāhmīBrāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
and later modified to
Oriya scriptThe Oriya script or Utkala Lipi or Utkalakshara is used to write the Oriya language, and can be used for several other Indian languages, for example, Sanskrit.- History :...
in the beginning of the second millennium. This makes the Oriya Script as the most distinctive and least distorted script among the Indic scripts.
The term "Keling"
Long past the end of the Kalinga Kingdom, derivatives from its name continued to be used as the general name of India in what are now
Malaysia and
IndonesiaIndonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. "
KelingKeling is a word used to describe people originating from the Indian subcontinent by native Malaysians and Indonesians. It is now generally considered offensive by majority of Indians....
" was and still is in use in these countries as a word for "Indian", though since the 1960's Indians came to consider it offensive.
See also
- Kalinga War
The Kalinga War was a war fought between the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka the Great and the state of Kalinga, a feudal republic located on the coast of the present-day Indian state of Orissa. The Kalinga war is one of the major battles in the History of India. Kalinga put up a stiff resistance,...
- Kalinga Magha
Magha , also known as Kalinga Magha and Magha the Tyrant, is a medieval king of Sri Lanka who is remembered primarily for his tyrannical and oppressive rule. Magha invaded the country from Kalinga in eastern India, usurping the throne from Parakrama Pandya, in 1215...
- Jaffna Kingdom
The Jaffna kingdom , also known as Kingdom of Aryacakravarti, of modern northern Sri Lanka was a historic monarchy that came into existence around the town of Jaffna on the Jaffna peninsula after the invasion of Magha, who is said to have been from Kalinga, in India...