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 STUDIES IN ORISSAN SOCIETY, CULTURE AND HISTORY
Editors: HERMANN KULKE and BURKHARD SCHNEPEL

1: Jagannatha Revisited: Studying Society, Religion and the State

in Orissa, edited by Hermann Kulke and Burkhard Schnepel
2: The Jungle Kings: Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politics and Ritual
in Orissa, by Burkhard Schnepel
3: Text and Context in History, Literature and Religion of Orissa,
edited by Angelika Malinar, Johannes Beltz and Heiko Frese
4: — Altar of Power: The Temple and the State in the Land of Jagannatha,
by Yaaminey Mubayi
5: |The Aghria: A Peasant Caste on a Tribal Frontier, by Uwe
Skoda

6: Time in India: Concepts and Practices, edited by Angelika

Malinar

7: Periphery and Centre: Studies in Orissan History, Religion and

Anthropology, edited by Georg Pfeffer
8: Popular Religion and Ascetic Practices: New Studies on Mahima
Dharma, edited by Ishita Banerjee-Dube and Johannes Beltz
9: Bhima Bhoi: Verses from the Void—Mystic Poetry of an Oriya
Saint, edited by Bettina Baumer and Johannes Beltz
. 10: Descriptive Topographical Catalogue of Orissan Inscriptions, by
Snigdha Tripathy
. ll: Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa,
edited by Hermann Kulke and Georg Berkemer
. 11: Jagannatha and the Gajapati Kings of Orissa: A Compendium of
Late Medieval Texts (Rajabhog, Sevakarmani, Deshakhanja and
Other Minor Texts), edited by Gaganendra Nath Dash
CENTRES OUT THERE?
Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa

Edited by .
HERMANN KULKE
GEORG BERKEMER

LIBRARY
NARAYAN RAO MELGIRI
National Law School
BANGALORE
026920

First published 201 1

© Individual contributors, 201 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted, in any form’or by any means,
without prior permission of the editors and the publisher.
ISBN 978-81-7304-906-4
Published by
Ajay Kumar Jain for
Manohar Publishers & Distributors
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110 002

Typeset by
Digigrafics
New Delhi 110 049

Printed at
Salasar Imaging Systems
Delhi 110 035
 Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction
Hermann Kulke and Georg Berkemer

l. Space, History and Cultural Process: Some Ideas on the

Ingredients of Subregional ‘Identity’
Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya 21
. Profiling Daksina Ko§Sala: An Early Historical Subregion?
Bhairabi Prasad Sahu 39
. The Feudatory States of Orissa: Centres out There
Hermann Kulke 61
. The Transformation of a Tribal State into a Centre of
Regional Culture: The Case of the Bhafijas of Keonjhar
Gaya Charan Tripathi 85
. Jajpur and the Legendary King Yayati KeSari
Susmita Arp 111

. Contribution of Sarala Dasa to the Emergence of an

‘Oriya Identity’ and Its Localization
Basanta Kumar Mallik 123

. Kosalananda Kavyam and Making of a Rajput Dynasty:

A Study of the Chauhans of Western Orissa
Shishir Kumar Panda 133

. Between Narratives and Silence: Centring Gangpur State

Chandi Prasad Nanda 149

. The Centre Was Out There in the South, in Ghumsar

Gaganendra Nath Dash 175

. The Formation of a Centre Out There: The Case of Ranpur

Niels Gutschow 193

li King, Goddesses and Jagannatha: Regional Patriotism and

Subregional and Local Identities in Early Modern Orissa
Akio Tanabe 227
 CONTENTS

. Tutelary Deities at Royal Courts in Orissa

Cornelia Mallebrein 255

. Sitting on the Tribal Chief’s Lap: Coronation Rituals in

Ex-Princely States of Orissa
Cornelia Mallebrein 273

14. The Aghria and Their Mythology: In Between

Politico-Religious Centres and Hierarchical Antipodes
Uwe Skoda 303

15. Interrogating Stereotypes: Exploring the Princely States in

Colonial Orissa |
Biswamoy Pati 327

. Divine Possession as a Religious Idiom: Considering Female

Ritual Practice in Orissa
Beatrix Hauser 347

ER Social Representations ‘In Between’: Concepts of

Society and Community in Orissa and Beyond
Ulrich Demmer

18. Dulduli: The Music ‘Which Touches Your Heart’ and

the Re-enactment of Culture
Lidia Guzy 389

19. Discourses, History and Modernity: In Search of

Orissan Civil Society
Georg Berkemer 397

List of Contributors 419

Index 42]
 Acknowledgements

On the occasion of the publication of the last volume of the proceedings of

international conferences of the second Orissa Research Project,' it is our
pleasure to express again on behalf of its members our thanks to the government,
research institutions and scholars in India, especially in Orissa, who generously
welcomed and supported our academic endeavours. As already mentioned in
the acknowledgements of a previous volume, we hope to pay back with these
volumes at least a little of what this country has given to us. To conduct two
comprehensive research projects in Orissa from 1970-75? and 1999-2005 was
possible not only by the continuous support and help of scholars, many of
whom have become our friends over the years. We are also gratefully
remembering the numerous villagers, officers and chaprasis in research
institutions who enabled our fieldwork and archive studies. A priceless gain
for all German members of the ORPs is, thanks to the people of Orissa, our
intimate acquaintance with their great culture and the experience of the warm
hospitality bestowed upon us.
We are grateful to Robert Parkin, Oxford, for copy-editing our articles and
to Niels Aulike, Nicole Pohland and Tim Schwabedissen for their work on the
manuscripts and for their painstaking administrative work during the final
years of the project at its head office at Kiel University. We are particularly
grateful to Ramesh Jain and Siddharth Chowdhury, Manohar Publishers &
Distributors, for their support and patience to bring out this volume, too, as
the above-mentioned contributions of the ORPs since 1978.’ And last but not
least, we wish to thank the German Research Council (DFG) for its generous
support of the project and its annual conferences with our Indian colleagues
at the stately manor house at Salzau/Kiel.
HERMANN KULKE GEORG BERKEMER
Kiel Berlin

'H. Kulke and B. Schnepel (eds.), Jagannath Revisited: Studies in Society, Religion and
the State in Orissa (2001); A. Malinar, J. Beltz and H. Frese (eds.), Text and Context in
the History, Literature and Religion of Orissa (2004); G. Pfeffer (ed.), Periphery and
Centre: Studies in Orissan History, Religion and Anthropology (2007); A. Malinar (ed.),
Time in India: Concepts and Practises (2007); 1. Banerjee-Dube and J. Beltz (ed.), Popular
Religion and Ascetic Practices: New Studies on Mahima Dharma (2008), G. Pfeffer and
D.K. Behera (eds.), Structure and Exchange in Tribal India and Beyond (2009), http://orp.
uni-kiel.de
24. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathi (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and the
Regional Tradition of Orissa (1978).
Except G. Pfeffer and D.K. Behera (eds.), 2009, published by Concept Publishing
Company, New Delhi.
 Introduction

HERMANN KULKE AND GEORG BERKEMER

From 1969 to 1974 the first Orissa Research Project (ORP), financed by the
German Research Council and conducted by the South Asia Institute of
Heidelberg University, revealed vital elements of Oriya identity and culture
through its extensive research on the cult of Jagannath and the temple city of
Puri. In a time when the discourses on Indian civilization were dominated by
bipartite concepts like Redfield’s ‘great and little tradition’, Singer’s ‘paro-
chialization’ and ‘universalization’ or Srinivasa’s ‘Sanskritization’, the major
theoretical quest of the project was to establish through its paradigmatical
studies on Orissa the importance of India’s great regional traditions not only
as the central portion of the uninterrupted cultural continuum between the
many local and the pan-Indian traditions but also as their genuine ‘melting
pot’ or ‘transmission belt’. Its results were published in a large number of
research articles, monographs,' and a final report on the cult of Jagannath and
the regional tradition.”
In June 1997, about 25 years after the former ORP undertook its field re-
search, a group of German and Indian scholars of Orissan studies, among them
five members of the former project, met at a conference at Heidelberg, entitled
Jagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion and the State in Orissa.’ It
was planned as a kind of a state of the arts survey of research on Orissa and
a stock-taking of its progress during the last two decades. It was during this
conference that the decision was taken to conceive of a new research scheme
on Orissa. In 1999 the second ORP, ‘Various Identities: Socio-Cultural Profiles
of Orissa in Historical and Regional Perspectives’, coordinated at the
Department of History at Kiel University, was sanctioned by the German
Research Council until 2005. Although it was based on, and continued in many
ways, the research of the former project, there was a clear shift of emphasis
from the coastal region to the hinterland with the tribal and folk traditions of
its various local and subregional identities. Whereas the former project focused
on the dominant discourses of coastal Orissa, the second project was periphery
oriented in a double sense. Geographically it extended its studies to the
hinterland and periphery of coastal Orissa, and sociologically it gave a stronger
emphasis on its peripheral or subaltern folk and tribal groups. With these

'See http://orp.uni-kiel.de.
2A. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathi 1978.
3H. Kulke and B. Schnepel 2001.
8 HERMANN KULKE AND GEORG BERKEMER

complementary studies the second ORP attempts to give a more comprehensive

view of the polymorphic and polycentric pattern of the great regional tradition
of Orissa.‘ It also hopes to reveal the inherent vitality and dynamics of India’s
regional traditions by its paradigmatic studies on the genesis, historical
development, competition and integration of various local and subregional
traditions of Orissa.
From 2000 to 2003 the ORP conducted four annual conferences at the
palatial manor house, the Landes-Kulturzentrum of the Federal State Schleswig-
Holstein, at Salzau near Kiel. They were followed in 2004 by a final round of
the members of the project in Civita Castellana in Italy. The four Salzau
conferences were greatly enriched by the contributions of altogether about two
dozen scholars from abroad, primarily from Orissa. Each of these conferences
took up a special subject which was of central importance for the general
theme of the project and related discourses. In its quest for reinterpretation of
existing and the discovery of new sources for the study of Orissa’s various
identities, one of its grand theme, the notion of ‘text’, was taken up by the
2000 conference under the title Text and Context in Orissa and Beyond.° The
following conference in 2001 focused with a strong anthropological emphasis
on another theme of crucial importance for the project, the multi-faceted
relations of Periphery and Centre.® The 2002 conference Time in India:
Concepts and Practices’ scrutinized Indian perceptions of ‘time’ as major
markers of identity construction in Orissa.
The present volume Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities
in Orissa contains the proceedings of the fourth Salzau conference in 2003.°
Its title is a deliberate borrowing from Victor Turner, not only to emphasize
the two seemingly contradictory aspects of centrality and remoteness in the
phenomena under study here. It was also meant as an invitation to see—similar
to Turner’s own approach?—the creation and functioning of the multiple centres
not only as attempts to achieve social stability, but as processes, in which
change and conflict are at least as much integral elements.
The title requires a qualification insofar as the dominant perception of Oriya
identity usually associates its centres with coastal Orissa, particularly its
‘Golden Triangle’ of Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konarak. The 2003 conference

*See in this context also K.K. Basa 2004.

*A. Malinar, J. Beltz and H. Frese 2004.
°G, Pfeffer (ed.) 2007. Other contributors from among the participants in the project
were P. Berger, R. Hardenberg, T. Otten, U. Skoda and C. Striimpell (see below and the
references).
7A. Malinar 2007.
*P. Yule’s preliminary report of the third archaeological field season of the Kiel group
of the ORP in the year 2002 was again lectured by him at the 17th Conference of the
European Association of South Asian Archaeologists at Bonn in July 2603 and published
in its proceedings; see Yule et al. (2005), Yule (2006) and Brandtner et al. (2007).
°V. Turner 1973, 192,
 INTRODUCTION , 9

and this volume, however, focus on their hinterland and periphery. Despite its
size of about two-thirds of present-day Orissa with 62 distinct tribal communities
and the history and culture of the former 24 Feudatory or Princely States!’ as
well as the famous monuments of art and architecture of their predecessors,
the early medieval mandala states, the so-called ‘hinterland’ of coastal Orissa
remained until recently the stepchild of historical and socio-cultural research,
the only notable exception being anthropological studies.'' The present volume
attempts primarily to emphasize this noticeable need and, if possible, to partly
satisfy it.
A look at the history of Orissa clearly shows that the emergence of local
and subregional identities had its roots in early medieval processes of state
formation when tribal polities emerged in the periphery of the coastal kingdoms
as autonomous mandala states. They were not just disruptive factors in the
politics of these kingdoms but through processes of adaptation and inclusion
became integral parts of them, strengthening their coherence and helping to
extend the borders of their realm. The development of Orissa’s little kingdoms
as Garhjat or ‘fort born’ polities became a statewide phenomenon in the
mountainous hinterland of coastal Mugalbandi since the seventeenth century
and culminated in the rise of their successors, the Feudatory states in colonial
Orissa. It is therefore no coincidence that more than half of the present papers
pertain to the Feudatory states of Orissa and their early medieval predecessors,
a subject which had already been taken up by G. Berkemer and B. Schnepel
in the context of their studies of little kingdoms in Orissa.'?
The volume opens with three introductory papers, viz., B.D. Chattopadh-
yaya’s critical reasoning of the location and space of subregional centres and
traditions in Indian history, B.P. Sahu’s detailed and paradigmatic study of
the emergence and early history of Dakshina Koshala as a subregional centre
and H. Kulke’s depiction of Orissa’s Feudatory states as ‘centres out there’.
In his search for a model which can both locate cultural dynamics of integration
and take note of diversities of separate communities, Chattopadhyaya takes
us back to post-Vedic janapadas and the tinai eco-zones of Tamil Nadu in the
Sangam age. The connecting links between the four levels, the subcontinent,
its regions, subregions and localities, as ‘basic sites of elements of diversity’,
he introduces the concept of ‘imitable models’ which emerged in the course
of history and had varying lives in the process of circulation. He concludes
his exploration with the hope that ‘the perspective of looking at the Indian
civilizational entity from above will be turned upside down, and the effort
should rather be made to look for the historical processes involved in the
making of a larger entity rather than for widely distributed sites of diversity
as all derived from one tradition’. B.P. Sahu analyses the early history and

oT E.B. Cobden Ramsay 1910.

"Eg. Bailey 1960; Sinha 1962, Mahapatra 1987.
2G. Berkemer 1993, 1997 and (together with M. Frenz) 2003; B. Schnepel 2002 (see
his bibliography for his further studies on this subject); see also H. Kulke 1977.
10 HERMANN KULKE AND GEORG BERKEMER

cultural development of Dakshina Koshala, an area situated in present-day

western Orissa and eastern Chhattisgarh, in order to examine how this ‘socially
unified space came to acquire discernible qualities which more or less defined
it as a historico-cultural unit’. He admits that he used the terms ‘regional’ and
‘subregional’ interchangeably throughout his paper as ‘the subregion, like the
region, is a category which is easy to understand but rather difficult to define’.
But he concludes his presentation with the helpful definition of subregions as
‘a part of a region but with no single unit constituting it. In other words, they
are in it and yet out of it, and in this are embedded the historical roots of
contestation and negotiations within regions’. In his plea for stronger
appreciation of the contributions of the Feudatory states to the cultural
development of Orissa, H. Kulke points out that, in contrast to their early
medieval mandala forerunners on the one hand and their often rather inglorious
role under British rule on the other, their history, between the downfall of the
imperial Gajapati kingdom in 1568 and British conquest of Orissa in 1803
remains outside the mainstream of Orissan historiography. But it was exactly
during this decisive post-Gajapati period that the Garhjat states emerged as
‘centres out there’, when Orissa had come under Mughal and Maratha rule
and Khurda struggled desperately for recognition as successors to the erstwhile
imperial Gajapatis. |
The wide spectrum of various socio-cultural facets of the Garhjat and
Feudatory states of Orissa from centres of tribal integration to centres learning
and emerging subregional identities is highlighted by several contributions of
this volume. The two papers of C. Mallebrein on integration of tribal deities
as tutelary deities of royal courts and on the famous coronation ritual with the
raja sitting on tribal chief’s lap'’ depict paradigmatically the enduring vividness
of the tribal heritage of Orissan Feudatory states. In regard to their nature and
emergence as ‘centres out there’ it is essential that these traditions focus on
the ‘capital’ with its royal court as microcosm of the realm. Mallebrein’s
unique combination of visual media, interest in material culture and his-
toriographical method provide insight into the subregion of central Orissa. Her
contributions in the present volume concentrate on historical and religious
aspects of some former feudatory states there, while elsewhere she has published
and exhibited representative examples of Orissa’s rich regional cultures."*
Whereas Mallebrein derives her examples primarily from the mountainous
regions of western and northern Orissa, N. Gutschow’s paper refers to
Manikesvari, the powerful tribal tutelary goddess of Ranpur at the border of
coastal Orissa. Her dominant role in the royal rituals is essential for the ritual
centrality of Ranpur in its little kingdom. However, as pointed out by C.P.
Nanda in his paper on Gangpur, a ‘true’ centre out there in far-off western
Orissa, local traditions also preserve symbolic examples of tribal resistance

"See also C.P. Nanda forthcoming.

“For details to the newest publications see the references section of this chapter and
otherwise the references of her contributions.
 INTRODUCTION 11

against their rulers in the shape of the presiding tribal deity. The traditions of
these powerful tribal goddesses about their usually miraculous discovery and
their deeds in favour of the rulers and the ruled are essential ingredients of
local and subregional identities. As in the case of Gangpur and Ranpur, the
legends of their ‘Divine Play on the Earth’'® found their way into local
chronicles. As these were usually produced in the courts as dynastic or ‘royal
chronicles’ (rdja-vamSdavali), they further influenced the courtly nature of
subregional identities.'® Another aspect of religious life in the areas away from
Orissa’s coastal belt is the movement of Mahima Dharma. It has been studied
by Anncharlott Eschmann in the first Orissa Project'’ and has been subject of
extensive research in the second project."
Several papers illustrate the rise of local Garhjat polities to truly ‘centres
out there’ during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. N. Gutschow’s paper
is instructive in this matter, too.'? As an architect and historian of South Asian
architecture, he traces the Ranpur’s ‘formation of a centre out there’ through
a study of its town-planning. Although its powerful tutelary goddess Mani-
nagesvari is mentioned in inscriptions since a millennium, Ranpur’s emergence
as a subregional Garhjat state is linked with the rise of neighbouring Khurda
as contested successor to the imperial Gajapatis in late sixteenth century. With
the ‘Great Street’ (bada danda) for the annual car festival in front of the
centrally located Jagannatha temple (sixteenth century) and the palace, it copied
during the following two centuries systematically the Puri model. Ranpur’s
subregional centrality is moreover well documented by the annual Pancadola-
yatra festival when mobile images (calanti pratima) of 108 deities from all
over the State congregate in small portable shrines on Ranpur’s ceremonial
ground around its tutelary deity Maninagesvari.
G.C. Tripathi’s case study of Keonjhar’s rise to a powerful Feudatory state
and a prominent seat of Brahmanical learning and Vedic studies is particularly
revealing.”” Bhanja kings are known to have ruled in the vicinity of Keonjhar
since mid-first millennium CE and local tradition dates its foundation with the
support of Bhuiyan tribe and tutelary goddesses of purely tribal origin in the
early twelfth century. But its rise began with Govindabhanja around 1500,
who became a staunch devotee of Jagannatha and whom Tripathi rightly calls
‘harbinger of a new era’. In the late seventeenth century Lakshminarayana
Bhanjadeva constructed in the capital Keonjhargarh the monumental Balabhadra
temple, Orissa’s second highest Vishnu temple after Puri’s Jagannatha temple,

'SThis is the title of companion guide to the recent exhibition on tribal art and culture
in Orissa at the Vélkerkunde-Museum (Museum of Anthropology) at Heidelberg, see C.
Mallebrein and H. von Stietencron 2008.
"CH. Kulke 2004.
'74. Eschmann 1978.
'8This research was done mainly by J. Beltz and L.J. Guzy; see Banerjee-Dube and
Beltz 2008, Beltz 2007 and Guzy 2004, 2007.
'9See also N. Gutschow, H. Kulke and R. Vasavada, in preparation.
2See also B. Schnepel, P.K. Nayak and H. Kulke, forthcoming.
12 HERMANN KULKE AND GEORG BERKEMER

and established five sasana villages for Brahmans whom he invited from all
over Orissa. His successors collected and copied systematically manuscripts
and laid the foundation stone of Keonjhar’s fame as a centre of learning with
its still existing unique library of palm-leaf manuscripts.
The rise of the Feudatory states as ‘centres of learning’ during this period,
which Kulke, too, tries to document in his paper by a survey of the places of
origin of the palm-leaf manuscripts of the Orissa State Museum, is further
validated by the paper of G.N. Dash on Ghumsar in South Orissa. Its high
estimate as the cultural centre ofSouth Orissa is linked with Upendra Bhanja
in early eighteenth century, the greatest late-medieval Oriya poet, and with
his grandfather Dhananjaya. The major emphasis of Dash’ erudition is a critical
evaluation of the statement of John Beames, that the language of Ghumsar
represents standard Oriya or ‘the purest form’ of the speech. $.K. Panda’s
paper on the Kosalananda Kavyam shows that already in mid-seventeenth
century Sambalpur in western Orissa had even become a ‘centre of attraction’
for learned Brahmans. Gangadhar Mishra from a sasana village near Puri
accepted the invitation of Raja Baliardeva to settle at Sambalpur and to compose
Orissa’s first historical Sanskrit poem on his dynasty.
Panda’s article is relevant in regard to another matter of central importance
of this volume, the creation of subregional identities by the emerging royal
‘centres out there’. As already shown by S. Sinha in 1962 in a seminal article,
the mostly tribal little kingdoms in the mountainous regions of eastern India
experienced in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries a wave of ‘Rajputization’
by adopting the Rajput model of state formation and the creation of genealogies
and chronicles tracing their Rajput origin.” The most famous case in Orissa
are the Chauhan Rajput kingdoms of Patnagarh-Bolangir, Sonpur, Sambalpur
and Khariar in western Orissa. The earliest and in fact the major source of
their deeply rooted Rajput identity till today is the Kosalananda Kavyam,
whose historicity is fully accepted by historians of Orissa. Panda, however,
for the first time comes forward with very convincing arguments that it was
an ‘invented tradition’ by Gangadhar Mishra. The papers of C.P. Nanda and
U. Skoda also refer to the ‘Rajput myth’ in the context of Gangpur and
Bonai.
S. Arp takes up another important, most likely similarly controversial case
of an invention of tradition, the legend of Yayati Kesari’s invitation of ten
thousand Brahmans from Kanauj for the performance of ten horse sacrifices
at Jajpur. The great legendary deeds of Yayati Kesari, Orissa’s most popular
hero of pre-Gajapati history, at Jajpur and Puri? are unanimously associated

1S. Sinha 1962.

“H. Kulke (in print), argues that Yayati Kesari’s Puri legend of the renewal of the
Jaganntha cult and his construction of the first Jagannath temple at Puri is a legendary
projection of the late sixteenth century. The legend moves Ramachandra of Khurda’s
renewal of the cult back into the ‘hoary past’.
 INTRODUCTION 13

by Orissan historians with the historical Somavamsa king Yayati I and/or

Yayati II (ninth and tenth centuries respectively). However, Arp advances
emphatically strong arguments that Jajpur’s Yayati Kesari legend, the
foundation myth of the Kanauj origin of Orissa’s Brahmans, is most likely not
older than late eighteenth century. If the rather recent origin of Jajpur’s and
Puri’s Yayati Kesari legends can be further verified, they validate the importance
of the post-Gajapati period for the creation of important identity markers in
coastal Orissa and its ‘hinterland’ alike.
B. Pati interrogates in his paper on colonial Orissa ‘constructions of post-
Onientalist Orientalism that tend to romanticize princely rulers’ and depicts a
very different picture of Orissa’s ‘Princely States’ during late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.” He explores the socio-economic order of seven
states as ‘centres of exploitation’ which were closely integrated into the colonial
system and processes of colonial underdevelopment. But he admits that ‘it is
not so clear how social practices associated with caste and patriarchy were
preserved and reinforced in order to maintain social hierarchies, acquire
legitimacy and thus obtain access to resources’.
Pati’s work is a significant contribution to socio-historic questions at the
tribal-state interface. While the tribals** and other non-Hindu minorities are
increasingly marginalized in the course of modernization by the colonial state,
the state administrations of the princely states, and later Indian governments,
they still retain their particular world-view. The telling description of the
conflicting moral orders of gatherer-hunters, tribals and the political society
of the state in U. Demmer’s contribution illustrates the fact that without a basic
comprehension of tribal social norms even the most well meaning state
administrator or development worker will fail to understand the consequences
of the even the most well-intended interventions.
As has been shown by studies of ORP members which are not included in
this volume, the most glaring contrasts exist in areas where mining and heavy
industry exist as islands of ‘progress’ in a rural and tribal world. This aspect
of social co-existence and conflict has been studied by C. Striimpell.* Details
about the way of life under such different moral orders can be gleaned from
P. Berger’s studies on the Gadaba,” R. Hardenberg on the Kondh,” T. Otten
on the Rona,”* G. Pfeffer on the structure of tribal society.”

23See also B. Pati 2007.

We are well aware of the fact that the term ‘tribal’ is considered old fashioned and
even derogatory outside the Indian context. Within, it has significant legal connotations
due to its occurrence in Article 342 of the Constitution of India and in the Fifth Schedule
[The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950).
5C. Striimpell 2006, 2007.
6P. Berger 2004, 2007.
27R. Hardenberg 2003, 2007.
28The Rona are an OBC group, not a scheduled tribe; see T. Otten 2006, 2007.
29G. Pfeffer 1998, 1998a, 2004; special mention should be made of the series of volumes
14 HERMANN KULKE AND GEORG BERKEMER

The 2003 conference was too early to raise the issue of the fate of tribals
as traditional or converted non-Hindus versus an increasingly aggressive
militant fringe of nationalist ‘religiosity’, as recently introduced into Orissa
by the Sangh Parivar, who utilize social tensions between Tribals and Dalits
for their aims.
Tribal-state co-existence in precolonial and early colonial times was neither
always peaceful nor a field of permanent conflict.*° Warfare and revolts did
occur, as discussed by C.P. Nanda, and were part of claims and counter-claims
for land and status, and sometimes, as B. Pati emphasizes, fights for sheer
survival. U. Skoda, on the other hand, shows in his present contribution and
in his earlier work,*!' a still existing tribal-caste interface left relatively
undisturbed by the most recent economic and religious upheavals. Here, a
peasant caste, the Aghria, immigrated into a tribal area, and social change
came about without the destruction of the former moral order. In so far, this
example is one of the paradigmatic types of Orissan little kingdoms. The
already mentioned Feudatory state of Ranpur has been taken up by recent
research as another such type.*? Others are Gangpur/Bonai (Nanda, Skoda),
Mayurbhanj/Keonjhar (Kulke, Tripathi) and Khurda (Tanabe). Others such as
Kalahandi (Mallebrein) and Parlakhemundi (Berkemer) can be found in
previous volumes of the Salzau conferences series.
Then there is L.J. Guzy’s description of music as part of village rituals in
western Orissa and its more recent social function in the formation of a Koshal
identity. Here, a living tradition at the Hindu-tribal frontier is being re-
formulated in the context of regional identity formation. The agency taken
over by a modern political discourse, village culture becomes both city folklore
and an expression of a new subregional identity which seeks to construct its
history by turning living but marginal traditions into its own fictitious past.
This contribution and S.K. Panda’s article on the Sanskrit poem Koshalananda
Kavyam both give us an insight in the history of a text: its repeated re-creation
as a depository of knowledge, its reflection of the dominant discourse during
stages of its development, and finally its fate in the modern political and social
contexts of the area it represents.
A second paradigmatic text for the creation of identity in Orissa is

published by Pfeffer and Behera called Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies, Prof. Satya
Narayana Ratha Felicitation Volumes. This is an archive of work on tribal life and its
changes in contemporary Orissa.
*°See C. Mallebrein’s articles on traditional tribal/state rituals of co-existence, but also
G. Berkemer’s contribution on Tekkali (Berkemer 1997), whose royal vamsavali hints at
generations-long wars over land between Hindu settlers and tribal groups.
*"U. Skoda 2003, 2005.
»’This former little kingdom has been studied by several authors, among whom N.
Gutschow’s angle is unique (2003, 2004 and under preparation); see also Kulke 2004,
Mallik/Kulke (in preparation).
 INTRODUCTION eo - 15

Saraladasa’s Oriya rendering of the Mahabharata. This text which is written

by a low caste author is being discussed by B.K. Mallik. His focus is on caste
tensions and the question of the life of widows in pre-modern Orissa. Mallik’s
contribution combines literary and social history with a gender issue.**
The gender aspect in religious ritual is being introduced by B. Hauser
through her study on women’s possession in south Orissa, thus bringing to
our mind to what extent the female perspective, but also gender issues in
general have so far been neglected in Orissan studies.
There are other topics shared by several contributors: the question of
historiography is prominent among them. It occurs in various contexts and
combinations with textual studies, art, history, subaltern studies, anthropology,
archaeology and various political critiques throughout this volume. The.
construction of the past, as it is done by chroniclers and astrologers, ritual
specialists and family elders, bards and musicians, scribes and Brahmans,
politicians, little kings and other wielders of power, and last but not least by
historians and other academics, permeates all these contributions. Some criticize
politically motivated attempts at history-building, or show that schoolbook
history can be a very one-sided narrative of the past.*°
After having described a host of real and academic challenges, the editors
intend to end this introduction on a positive note: From A. Tanabe’s® studies
on the changing world of a little kingdom at the border between the former
worlds of the traditional state and the tribal hinterland, a picture of slowly
changing social formations emerges. Even though focusing on coastal Orissa,
it can be very well put together with C.P. Nanda’s, U. Skoda’s and G.C.
Tripathi’s studies on the royal/tribal interface in western Orissa. Social change
is not just a question of modernization, but runs more deeply in such social
institutions which provide the integrative force for the coherence of otherwise
very disparate worlds: what change other authors find in texts, narratives and
rituals, is present here as well. The integration of both worlds as described by
Tanabe is one of the most fascinating ongoing studies in Orissan research. The
focus on proto-nationalism or ‘patriotism in a primordial sense’ shows us
social integration which is deeply rooted in a living past and leads into a
possible non-Western modernity.

3See also e.g. B.K. Mallik 1996, 2004.

4B, Hauser 2005, 2006, 2007; the gender aspect has also been studied by E. Hust 2002
and T. Otten 2007. The question of gender has not played much of a role in Orissan studies
inside and outside the Orissa project (cf. however Behera/Nanda 1997, Tanabe 1999 and
Tokita-Tanabe 1997 in the references). In Orissan studies, ‘gender’ is rarely distinguished
from ‘sex’ and almost inevitably refers to ‘woman’.
35See G. Berkemer in the present volume and H. Frese (2004).
%6For references see A. Tanabe 2005, 2006, 2006a, 2007 in this chapter and his own
references in the present volume.
 16 HERMANN KULKE AND GEORG BERKEMER

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 INTRODUCTION al oa 19

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 CHAPTER |

Space, History and Cultural Process:

Some Ideas on the Ingredients of
Subregional ‘Identity’

BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

The major concern of the sceptical discourse on culture is that the concept
suggests boundedness, homogeneity, coherence, stability, and structure
whereas social reality ischaracterized by variability, inconsistencies, conflict,
change, and individual agency. . . .
CHRISTOPH BRUMANN (1999, 52)

The concern that underlies the sceptical discourse on culture also applies to
generalizations concerning space, since culture is in essence envisioned in the
context of its spatial dimensions or its communities, whatever the nature of
that space may be. Any discourse on India, stated even in historiographical
terms, starts by invoking a by now hallowed convention of invoking a unique
image of the country as a ‘unity in diversity’. The present chapter attempts to
understand to what extent available historical studies reflect this image and
also evaluates the directions of suggested departures. This attempt will not be
anchored in the context of any specific region except by way of providing
examples. Instead, it will limit itself to consideration of some aspects of
historiography relating to how India and its territorial components are viewed,
and making references to textual and other ways of thinking about culture in
relation to space.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF INDIA AND ITS SPATIAL COMPONENTS

Since the idea of India as a unit of historical study is colonial in origin,' the
unit was in essence viewed from a political perspective. This view took the
form of an Indian State and of the Indian subcontinent as the space for that
state. The history of the state, however, was dissected; the fragments, in
chronological order, were Hindu, Muslim and British (not Christian). Some
form of dichotomy between pre-Islamic and Islamic historiographical traditions

' Of the many studies available on the origins of moder Indian historiography, particularly
on the shift to the history of India, see Chatterjee 1999, 1-49; also, Chattopadhyaya 2003,
Chapter 1.
22 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

may have existed earlier, but dividing up the history of the subcontinent in
religious terms was certainly a colonial invention. On two counts the relationship
between space and history made a break from early Indian traditions: (1) by
making the subcontinent the space of study. This space was different from
Bharatavarsa, the land of the Bharatas, with its varying geographical
connotations,” (ii) the traditional way of writing history with reference to
‘sovereign rulers’ and of the uninterrupted succession of sovereign families.
This break must be stressed in particular because the relationship of the
Cakravarti or sovereign ruler was to sarva-bhumi (all land), which comprised
all the spaces (janapadas) of different communities. To put it briefly, in the
new historiography, when regions become the units of study, they devolve
from the larger space, which should be a stable space. The historical pattern
of regions and formats of regional history are therefore replicas of general
histories of India. The colonial break was not remade by anti-colonial nationalist
enterprise. The ‘fundamental unity’ of India’ being the base with which to
start historical studies, the components of India, which were integrated through
an elaborate system of networks of ideas and other cultural ingredients, came
to be recognized essentially by the extent of which they were the representatives
of the ‘pan-Indian’ pattern or deviations from this ideal. The perspective
reminds one of W.B. Yeats’s famous lines in “The Second Coming’ (1920):
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

What, then, about the much talked-about diversities? One notices here, if one
observes carefully in retrospect, that there was areal mismatch between history
and the various surveys—ethnographic, linguistic and in other areas—at ground
level.* To repeat, region was a fractured space, a part of a larger one. To be
fair, regional studies were built upon meticulous investigations into, and
acquisition of, source material,° in attempting to identify major segments of
what were considered regions and, more significantly, by some of the following:

*This is drawn from my ongoing work on ‘Bharatavarsa, its Connotations and

Historiographical Implications’.
*This expression was used as the title of a short but profoundly influential work by R.K.
Mookerji (2003).
‘One has in mind here the impressive series of ethnographic monographs, by both
European and Indian scholars, presenting the results of fieldwork among tribes and other
communities, with details of belief systems, kinship and marriage structures, ritual,
subsistence and resources—the production pattern—and so on. For linguistic survey, see
the comprehensive eleven-volume survey by G.A. Grierson published between 1903 and
1928 in Calcutta, Central Publication Branch.
*Source material, at the early stage of historical writing, was fairly well defined but
varied. It included archaeological material, particularly monuments and art historical
artefacts, inscriptions, coins, texts in manuscripts, archival records—all of which, expertly
reported, edited and most times translated, constituted a vast corpus drawn upon by historians,
even today, with occasional additions.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS 23

(i) icons of a region in the form of its mainly political heroes; (ii) attempted
early chronologies of civilizations and kingdoms of which the region was the
locus; (iii) rivals as homeland of such major figures as Kalidasa or Jayadeva;
and (iv) the uniqueness of its sacred centre or centres and the form of worship.
Even defined in terms of certain traits, regions were simply units of bounded
space and were constructs similar to the construct of India as a given unit. For
the historian, the problem with such constructs is that there are no pointers to
the ways in which India would have evolved over time as a recognizable space,
though not a homogeneous cultural space as a ‘fundamental’ entity. Similarly,
in most studies, a region is a permanently homogeneous entity, not accom-
modating variations and mutations.
The problem, then, is one of developing a model for historical trajectories
which can both locate cultural dynamics by pointing to modes and scales of
integration and take note of diversities in the large number of communities
that separate themselves in relation to others, in the areas of language and
dialect differences and differences in religious practices and beliefs, and also
of, in general, incorporating all these into a historical narrative. This does not
mean switching from a grand mega-narrative to the microscopic views of
fragments. The dynamics implied in any historical and cultural process have
to be grasped, to start with, by taking into consideration the following
dimensions of a possible interrelationship:

Spaces Historical/cultural Formation of cultural

processes spaces and networks

With an interrelationship at this basic level being in the reckoning, the Indian
subcontinent as a culture-space cannot be presupposed as a way of then looking
for its diversities. The method should be the other way round: to look at the
process and chronology of the formation of cultural zones and of networks of
interaction, and further, to examine whether historically larger spatial formations
could and did emerge over time. Thus, the three basic elements in this inter-
relationship were not isolated historically, but were in fact in a constant state
of varying forms of interaction:

Historical/cultural Formation of cultural

processes zones and networks

REGIONS AND THEIR COMPONENTS IN

GEOGRAPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Before we proceed further along this line of thinking, it may be worth taking
account of how the components—geographical and cultural—constituting India
have been defined and viewed in their interrelationships by geographers and
anthropologists. Unlike historians, who start with an assumption of unity and
24 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

then proceed to the presumed constituent components, geographers talk of

diversities at both the macro and micro levels—mainly in terms of physical
traits, but also of the historical possibilities of a complex of traits.° Thus
regional traits are often seen to correspond to an order of hierarchy, in which
perennial nuclear regions can be contrasted with march regions, areas of relative
isolation, areas of isolation, and so on. Applied to the study of archaeology
and history,’ the concept of nuclear regions in relation to other not-so-nuclear
areas has been found useful in explaining the location and spread of archaeological
cultures, the emergence of kingdoms and empires, of cities and urban growth,
as well as in suggesting directions of population movements and civilizational
progress. There are, however, two limitations of this kind of ordering: (i) the
static character of the nuclearity of space embedded in it does not explain why
nuclear regions may cease to be nuclear over time, and other categories of
space down the hierarchy emerge as centres of rapid change; and (ii) the issue
of nuclearity and non-nuclearity in history, in which different patterns of culture
may co-exist, may be one of several perspectives, and one must therefore be
specific about which particular pattern is taken to represent nuclearity. If one
is analysing the pattern of interaction in simple societies, nuclearity will have
a different implication than it would have in a complex society. These
limitations, however, do not, as I shall try to show later, make the notion of
hierarchy redundant; one still has to contend with the issue of the historical
emergence of centres and networks, even though not as static points on cultural
landscapes. In the context of the study of Indian society in its diversity and
interrelationships, the notion of networks first came to be articulated effectively
by anthropologists, and it is necessary to note, for the present context, of how
they viewed the problem of spatial relationships in cultural terms. In a seminal
article first published in 1958 and entitled ‘Networks and Centers in the
Integration of Indian Civilization’, B. Cohn and M. Marriott’ started by stating

°See, for example, Spate and Learmouth 1972.

’For an elaborate early attempt to analyse archaeological data in terms of a hierarchized
order of regions, following geographical studies, see Subbarao 1958, Chapters 2, 6-8 in
particular. For new ways of analysing archaeological cultures in spatial terms in general,
see the collection edited by Wagstaff 1987. There have been several attempts to discuss
ways in which regions can be conceptualized in the Indian context. See Crane 1967, Fox
1977, for studies of ‘power’ in relation to their regional dimensions. For other bibliographical
references, see also Chattopadhyaya 1984.
*For example, although Radha in Bengal, with its extension to the Bhagirathi, was the
nuclear region of proto- and early-historical cultures; in the Gupta period Pundravardhana
in north Bengal, with its poorly documented settlement history in an earlier phase, was
definitely the nuclear region. In the early centuries of the Christian Era, the shift from the
nuclear Mahanadi basin to the comparatively inhospitable coast in the south of Orissa and
Andhra is epigraphically documented. For a detailed study of how, in the Kakatiya period,
there was a shifting of focus from the Krishna-Godavari delta to west and central Andhra,
with Warangal emerging as the core of a new empire, see Talbot 2001.
*Included in Cohn 1998, 78-87; see also idem 1998b.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS _ 25

that “both socially and culturally’ India represented a combination and partial
integration of very diverse elements. Since ‘integration’ is an assumed premise
in this statement, the patterns of integration focused on ‘networks’of relationships
and relationships with centres. For this purpose, India needed to be viewed at
four levels at least: (i) All India: The subcontinent, (ii) The Region: generally
defined by a literary language and distinctive caste-patterning, (iii) The
Subregion, (iv) The local level.
The regions and subregions do not correspond to political divisions, and,
in any case, so far as level (i) is concerned, ‘the nation of India is, of course,
a recent unity’. The distinct contribution of the notion of the levels is that
“integration” is not seen as a reassemblage of the parts of a broken whole, but
as the recognition of the presence of complex sets of ‘social commonalities’
such as caste structure and certain shared elements of culture such as language.
“In each division there is also likely to be a shared and characteristic variant
of Hinduism, a body of distinctive historic tradition, and a common style in
many matters of daily life’.
The notion of ‘integration’ implies the existence of ‘centres’, and indeed
Cohn and Marriott believe that ‘India’s civilizational centres may be seen as
formed and functioning in relationship to such networks, against the background
of extreme social and cultural diversity. Reference to ‘centres’ rather than to
a ‘centre’ takes the focus away from a single steady ‘centre’ as the pole star
of Indian history and ‘[c]entres then contribute to India’s diversity even in the
process of organizing that diversity’.
Two points emerging from the voluminous contributions of geographers
and anthropologists towards the understanding of diversities are (1) centres as
nodes for networks, and (ii) the implied relationship between a ‘centre’ and
spatial hierarchies which are conditioned geographically. From the perspective
of historical time spans, the points, although of heuristic value, have to be
checked against historical evidence, since both geographical and anthropological
works tend to view hierarchies, networks and centres as congealed in time and
as not shaping and re-shaping themselves. The historical exercise may begin
with a brief statement of the spatial and cultural components constituting Indian
space in early textual perception.

JANAPADAS AND NADUS

In Sanskritic perceptions about spaces, one can see a shift from landmarks
like rivers or mountains as signifiers of space to janapadas, or settlements of
people (literally, ‘foot of the people’). An early Buddhist text gives us a list
of sixteen major janapadas, distributed between the north-west and the Godavari
valley in the Deccan.'° Janapadas arranged according to directions (dis), later
became an elaborate cosmographic scheme in which Bharatavarsa was the

'0 See Raychaudhuri 1958, particularly the chapter, ‘Puranic Cosmography’.

26 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

macro-unit. Despite its varying uses and substitution by other, more official
terms in some parts of contemporary India, janapada has come to be used
again but mainly to denote district-level administrative units. What did
janapadas denote in spatial and cultural terms? What, for example, would be
the difference between Gandhara, Kuru, Koshala, Magadha or Anga in the
period of the Buddha? At this stage it seems to have been more political and
ethnic than cultural, although later texts do bring out the particular cultural
traits of different regions. The difference as perceived was the difference—real
or imagined—between sets of people who inhabited their respective janapadas,
hence the interchangeability of the janapada name with ‘ethnic’ name."’
However, a janapada was not a homogeneous space, neither its ethnic
composition. It is therefore necessary to understand the meanings of the term
as they are suggested by the texts. Janapada space was not uniform, and a
major difference was between aranya (forest) and what could be considered
as proper inhabited space. Inhabited space too was differentiated in terms of
varieties of villages (grama), market places (nigama), cities (nagara) and big
cities (mahanagara), with cities and big cities expectedly functioning as
‘centres’ where networks converged.'”
The multiplicity of janapadas and multiplicity of ‘centres’ thus constituted
the landscape of Bharatavarsa with their differentiated and hierarchical
structures. The total number of janapadas would vary from text to text, as
would the number of divisions within which they were grouped, their number
varying from five to nine.
To continue with the issue of the difference between janapadas, it is doubtful
whether material culture, as revealed by archaeology, made any major
difference. If one considers the material cultures of the major janapadas in
the period of the Buddha, it would perhaps be impossible to distinguish between
the Vatsa, Koshala, Kasi and Magadha janapadas.'’ There is, of course, a
highlighting of particular resources for particular janapadas. Kalinga, for
example, was, along with a few other janapadas, marked as an area of covetable
textile production. Elephants too constituted one of its resources.'* In Kalidasa’s
Raghuvamsam, the particular resources of the Malaya areas, namely the land
in the southern hills, were items like black pepper (marica), cardamom

'' Although H.C. Raychaudhuri considered them to be ‘states of considerable extent and
power’ in the period of the Buddha, his detailed discussion on the janapadas of the period
leaves no doubt that the texts use these names interchangeably with the people who inhabited
them. Raychaudhuri 1997, pts. I-III.
"For the settlement structure of a janapada, see Ghosh 1973, Chapter 3.
"This will be evident from the nature of archaeological material culture of the middle
Ganga basin of the period of the Buddha. For a synthesis of the material, see Sharma 1983,
Chapters 4 and 6.
'*Arthasastra, 2. 20: the elephants of Kalinga, along with those of Anga, Purvadesa,
Cedi and Karusa, were considered to be the best. A reference to Kalingaka or cotton textiles
is to be found in 2. 11.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS © - 27

(elaphala) and sandalwood (candana)."* In Brahmanical notions, however, it

was not material culture or resources which marked off one janapada from
the other, but the extent to which they were close, both spatially and culturally,
to where the ideal moral or social order prevailed. This was madhyadesa or
aryavarta. The centrality of the ‘firmly established’ madhyadesa, dating to
the text Aitareya Brahmana,"* is expressed in Manu-Samhita thus:'’
Where the black antelope ranges by nature, that should be known as the country fit
for sacrifices; and beyond it is the country of the barbarians (mlecchas).

The impurity associated with marginal areas is also evident in Baudhayana

Dharmasutra’s injunction:"*
If someone travels to the land of the Kalingas, he commits a sin through his feet. The
seers have prescribed the Vaisvanari sacrifice as an expiation for him.

The geographical limits of Madhyadesa could change, but its centrality did
not. In the tenth century the writer Rajasekhara would consider Aryavarta to
be the source of all sadacara (honest behaviour), with its foundation resting
on four varnas and asramas; the literary codes too that could be emulated
were those of the Aryavarta.'”
Although the cultural ingredients of individual janapadas are not really
spelt out, they do sometimes make their appearance in the form of references
to peculiarities of speech, particular social habits, and even the display of
personality traits of individuals representing peculiar human personal traits of
a janapada,” extending to the imagined desirable or undesirable qualities of
women to be seduced as sexual partners.”!
Janapada, which would roughly correspond to a nadu in the context of
south India, did not mean a region. Like janapada, the term nadu too could
have various connotations.” It could mean the domain of a ruling power as in

'SDevadhar 1984: IV. 26-86.

'6Cf. the expression dhruvayam madhyamayam paitisthayam disi, Aitareya Brahmana,
8. 14.
"7 Manu-Samhita, 2. 17-24.
'8 Baudhayana Dharmasutra, |. 2. 9-14.
''This is what Rajasekhara, in the desavibhaga section (17) of his Kavyamimansa says
with regard to the Aryavarta: tasmin caturvaryam caturasramyam ca tanmulasca sadacara
tatratyo vyavahara prayena kavinam, i.e. ‘there prevail four varnas and four ashramas; it
is the source of good behaviour, the poets follow the practices of this (region)’.
See, for example, the allegorical play Prabodha Candrodaya by Krsna Misra, written
in the eleventh century. This refers to a character from Daksina Radha-Pradesa who is a
personification of ahamkara (egoism) and who, appropriately, calls everyone around him
a fool: murkha-bahulam jagat, i.e. ‘the world is full of fools’, II. 2-18.
21See, for example, the monologue-play (bhana) Padataditaka by Saumilaka, which
refers to Barbari women desired by men from Surashtra, who are themselves like monkeys;
women from Lata; Yavani, woman enamoured of a male from Malava; M. Ghosh 1975,
155-7; for some sexual proclivities, see Kamasutram, V.5, V. 6.
2 See Subbarayalu 1973, Chapter 5; Stein 1980, Chapter 3. However, their characterization
28 YA
BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYA

Hoysala-nadu, but it was, like janapada, a basic unit of human settlement,

distinguishable from other nadus and with a heterogeneous structure. Both
janapada and nadu would correspond to what I have elsewhere called locality
or ‘settlement locality’,”* and, thus, Cohn’s ‘locality’ in his schema of four-
tiered spatial arrangement.
The rationale for the above exercise was the search for possible sources of
diversities in the composition of the Indian entity, and janapada and nadu and
the various meanings they carry may provide some useful insights into the
making of Indian regions and subregions. Being basic and enduring units, they
were in a sense autonomous (although internally differentiated), and while
their incorporation into larger units or patterns of interaction with varying
networks would surely change their character, traits which were local could
remain at the core of what changed. One word of caution is called for here.
While space is stable, a janapada name was not. For example, in Orissa,
Kalinga was the settlement space of the Kalinga people in the littoral tract in
early recorded history. In Major Rock Edict 13 of Asoka, Kalinga is used in
both singular and plural,” possibly to refer to the Kalinga people and their
settlement spaces interchangeably, as in cases of the Colas, Pandyas, Ceras
and Satiyaputas. The two nodes of Kalinga, Tosali and Samapa, were located
respectively in the delta of the Mahanadi Valley and on the banks of the
Rishikulya. But the connotation of Kalinga underwent major modifications
indicating an actual geographical shift of the name to the south.” This should
serve as a mild reminder against the notion of the fixity of any variables in
history.

REGIONS, SUBREGIONS AND ‘IMITABLE MODELS’

It has already been noted that janapadas were not regions in the way human
groups assert their spatial identity and cultural affiliation today. Modern regions
like Bengal, Maharashtra, or Rajasthan would not have existed throughout
Indian history. Historical evidence and perspective therefore demand that we
look for the processes that went into the making of regions and the particular
characteristics associated with them. The processes and characteristics, or, in
other words, the history of the formation of regions, would obviously vary
from one region to another, and the chronology and ingredients too may have
differed. For example, whereas the formation of most regions is recognizable
at a much later stage, Tamil Nadu may serve as an example of a ‘historical’

of nadu as peasant macro-regions, that is, as basic units of the agrarian landscape, does not
take into consideration other meanings of the term, including possible comparisons with
such terms as badi.
*Chattopadhyaya 2003a.
Major Rock Edict XIII; for text see Sircar 1965b, 34-7.
**Ganguly 1975, Chapter 1; Brandtner 2001, 179-210.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS — | 29

region.” Tamilaham, the early name, was marked by the presence of three
major chiefdoms, Cola, Pandya and Cera. Despite their being mentioned as
communities, along with other communities in Asokan edicts (Coda, Pada,
Satiyaputo, Ketalaputo), their poetic image as the major representatives of the
space give Tamilaham a certain measure of cohesion. More importantly, there
was the language in which bards—men and women—composed their songs
and sang them. The term Sangam, which is of later origin, carried the memory
of a tradition of the poetic assemblies at Madurai, the seat of the Pandya
chief.
That language and script came to be the most important ingredients of the
formation of regions is suggested by historical evidence. The slow transition
to modern Indian scripts through several historical stages is revealed by
epigraphic documents, supplemented at a later stage by manuscripts from
different regions.”’ Proto-regional scripts, later to mature into regional scripts,
appear in the early medieval period. Whereas in epigraphy the appearance of
local words in Sanskrit-language inscriptions slowly gives way to regional
languages, their articulation in literary compositions is more spectacular.
Regional languages did not completely displace Sanskrit, but they and their
literary products having become more accessible, regional literary products
now came to contest the dominance of Sanskrit. It has been surmised that in
Andhra, the ‘emergence of vernacular to a high literary status’ did not ‘take
place in the centres of high culture’ but in ‘isolated regions’. However, by
the thirteenth century the Telugu language had come to be recognized as
equivalent to the land of the Andhras. Languages now denoted places.” The
identification of a language with a region, which was visible in the early
medieval period, now remained everywhere the major binding force in Indian
history. In the nineteenth century, the Oriya writer Fakirmohan Senapati
creatively articulating in his autobiography his agony over the neglect of Oriya,
recorded the efforts he and his associates had made to contest the dominance
of the Bengali language over Oriya-speaking people.* In the twentieth century,
the creation of linguistic states in India, and the more recent emergence of
Bangladesh as a sovereign country are a testimony to the abiding sensitivity
of language as identity, and as a source of conflict and tension. This, however,
should not make us unconcerned about other potentials of identity formation
and modes of mutation of identities. To this I shall return later.
The ambiguity in the meaning of janapada makes it difficult to suggest that
it may stand for what we would call a subregion today. But present regions

26The term ‘historical region’ is used by B.S. Cohn 1998a.

21Sircar 1965a, 46-60; also Salomon 1998, 39-41.
28See Nagaraju 1995, 8-23; see also Cynthia Talbot 2001, 34-7 for some details of the
inscriptional spread of Telugu.
Talbot 2001, 36-7.
%Senapati 1977.
30 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

are comprised of a number of distinct subregions, which are visible in the

historical records at different points in time, and some of them are indeed
listed as janapadas in varieties of texts. The distinction between ‘locality’ and
‘subregions’, both modern terms, is hard to make in historical times; one may
suppose that interaction between and the coming together of some localities
was a prerequisite for the formation of the distinctive personalities of
subregions.
Before I proceed to some later examples of what might correspond to modern
subregions, I would like to provide a unique example, again, from early Tamil
texts. This is to underline how even a coherent space like Tamilaham could
comprise different segments, each segment corresponding to an ‘eco-zone’,
and each being, as it were, ‘worlds in themselves’.*! Early Tamil poems,
codified and indexed in the technical work Tolkappiyar, are grouped—taking
into account both akam (poems of the interior) and puram (poems of the
exterior)—in terms of their being related to several eco-zones. These are Kurinci
(the hilly region), Mullai (region of ‘pasturelands and open terraces’), Marutam
(‘riverine-agrarian’ region), Neytal (coastal region), and Palai (uncultivated
dry region). The differences between these segments were not simply
geographical but went deeper into their respective subsistence patterns, and
in their respective “behaviour patterns’ (tinai) in love and war too. If Kurinci
overall represented the subsistence pattern of hill-cultivation and hunting and
gathering, the Neytal communities had fish and salt as their major resources;
Marutam was the region of settled agriculture, with the centres of their three
major chiefs. The respective deities of the eco-zones were different: Kurinci
had Murugan as its major cult; Mullai was represented by Mayon; for Palai,
oscillating between the geographical characteristics of different regions, it was
the fierce goddess Kottravai. The segments, which in today’s terminology may
be called subregions of Tamilaham, perhaps convey a notion of hierarchy in
terms of the resources available in each, but more importantly, they were not
segments in isolation. Note the following poem in a Sangam anthology,
Porunarattrupadai:”
Those selling honey and roots eatable
Exchange them for fish’s fat and wine
They barter sugarcane and roasted rice
Fr toddy and deer flesh. The fisher folk
sing hillmen’s song, while hillmen
wear garlands of fragrant blooms that grow along the coast.
The dwellers of the desert sing the songs
of those in fertile lands, and these in turn
Praise forest lands where grows the mullai blue.
The wild fowl eats rice, while the domestic
Eats millet grain. The hillside monkey rolls

*'This is based on Sivathamby 1974, 29-37; see also Gurukkal 1987, 46-57.
’Chelliah 1962, 73-5.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS: ~ ~ 31

In salty marsh, while cranes that take a bath

in briny sea-waves rest themselves on hills,
Four diverse pleasant regions are thus found
Together in a single realm.

The broad-spectrum cultural differences constituting the profile of early

Tamilaham ‘subregions’ and so subtly articulated in the differential ‘patterns
of behaviour’ (tinai) of the Sangam poems are not evident in other types of
written documents. However, the historical emergence of ‘subregions’ is visible
in documents in different regions of today. To cite one example, Radha, lying
to the south and west of Bhagirathi in present-day West Bengal, emerged
through the coming together of distinct early ‘local’ culture zones. The
geography of the pre-historic, proto-historic and early historical sites in this
subregion shows a distinct shift from one spatial segment to the other,® but it
is only from the early historic period that Radha, as a subregion, sometimes
starts figuring in historical records.* The distinctiveness of the different
subregions of Bengal (West Bengal and Bangladesh), that is, Radha, Varendra,
Vanga and Samatata, has been studied with reference to Sanskrit epigraphy
down to the thirteenth century,** but it still has to be worked out what ingredients
go into the making of a subregional personality. In Bengal, the subregions are
distinct geographically, and there are further geographical, and culturally
distinct, segments within a subregion with one or several centres in them; but
the perception of difference between one subregion and another does not seem
to have been derived from their being distinguishable geographical segments
alone. Varendra, which was earlier known as Pundravardhana and associated
with the Pundras, appears as quite distinct from Radha or Vanga in the records,
both inside and outside Bengal. One ingredient may have been political or the
way a spatial segment emerged as a politically coherent unit. In both Maurya
and Gupta times, Varendra, or more correctly Pundravardhana, figures as a
political core area.” But the sense of belonging to a subregion or a particular
combination of subregions goes far beyond the political. The unique personality
of a space may be invoked with reference to its landscape and climate, the
way its language is spoken, its style of cooking, its method of house construction
and communication, its marriage networks, and so on. In Bengal, again,
Bhagirathi is seen as constituting a major cultural divide. The differences
between the major segments, east and west of the Bhagirathi, are not essentially
political; they are present in the way Bengali is spoken, in styles of cooking
and preferences for particular food items, names of favourite rivers, and even
in the support of different favourite soccer teams. That marriage networks too,

B.D. Chattopadhyaya (in press).

34For the major subregions that came to constitute the region of Bengal, see Ray 1980,
Bhattacharya 1977, Morrison 1970.
%5Morrison 1970.
%6Tbid.; see also Chattopadhyaya 1990, Chapter 2.
32 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

expressed not simply in caste terms, were viewed as sensitive indicators of

cultural differences comes out beautifully in two early medieval Buddhist
mystic poems in proto-Bengali, which Niharranjan Ray cited in his History of
the Bengali People.*’ In one, a bridegroom is admonished that he will lose his
sense (vijana) because he has married a girl from Vanga. In another, Bhusuku,
author of one of the poems, is mentioned as having become a true ‘Bengali’
since he has married a Candali. This may be a typical mystical statement, but
Bhusuku’s identity as a Bengali does have a veiled reference to the relationship
between marriage and identity. Subregion formation too would have to be
visible historically, as indeed region formation has to be.
The recognition of regions, subregions and localities as basic sites of elements
of diversity (in whatever way we construct these sites) simultaneously demands
a search for what may function, and may have functioned, as connecting links
between them. These connecting links I have chosen to call ‘imitable models’.
Although different segments of space do not stand in isolation from one another,
and cultural elements that are recognizable across the subcontinent are
overwhelmingly present, it is impossible to think of an everlasting cultural
pattern engulfing and transforming all the others,** given the simultaneous
existence of different social formations in India even today. From a historical
perspective, it would be preferable to think of ‘imitable models’ which are not
constant, but which nevertheless emerged in the course of history and had
varying lives in the process of their circulation. If the patronage of Buddhism,
the construction of Buddhist monuments and gifts of land and other resources
to monks constituted model acts at some historical stage,*? the basic ‘imitable
model’ of kingship was Brahmanical, particularly from the Gupta period
onward. The vigorous espousal of varnadsrama-dharma, gifts of land (bhumi-
dana), the creation of agraharas, the patronage of temples and monasteries,
and projection of the king as someone comparable to an epic hero, all constituted
an ‘imitable’ model of kingship present all over India.*° Other imitable culturai

*7Ray 1980, 595.

*§Concepts such as ‘Aryanization’ or ‘Sanskritization’ imply that cultural transformation
is a one-way process, in which the agency and medium of change cumulatively represent
a diffusionist model. R.K. Mookerji’s The Fundamental Unity of India thus underlines the
role of ‘Aryanization’, as do many other works, in forging that unity. Mookerji asserts:
“With the gradual extension of Aryan colonization of India beyond the limits of old Aryavarta
so as to embrace the whole of Dakshinapatha or southern India, the old Vedic formula of
the conception of Indian unity was supplemented by the other appropriate formula to give
fitting expression to an expanding geographical consciousness’ (Mookerji 2003, 51-2). This
completely negates the ingredients of regional personalities in the making of Indian
culture.
For an example of the patronage of Buddhism in the early historical period, see Dahejia
1992, Chapter 2; for the ideology of the gift in early historical Buddhism, see Liu 1997,
Chapters 4, 5, 6.
“See Chattopadhyaya 2004.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS 33

models were the Sanskrit language as the medium of elite literary circulation,*!
and major Puranic deities as the representatives of model cults to which local
cults could correspond. As a code of social practice, despite the extensive data
on non-vegetarian diets, including beef,*? and the continued practice of eating
all varieties of meat among numerous communities, non-vegetarianism was
projected and practised as desirable by ideologically active sections of the
society.” Even when vernacular languages emerged, the major reference points
continued to be provided by Sanskrit and the epic-Puranic repertoire of
characters, symbols and motifs. For example, the play Krdabhiramamu,
assigned to the fifteenth century, was written in Telugu.* The narrative of the
playis similar to that of a bhana, a genre
of play in Sanskrit,
and as ajustification
for writing it in Telugu, the author asserts:*°
They say ‘Sanskrit is the mother of all languages,
but among the languages of the land
Telugu is the best’. Of course,
Between the aged mother
and the ravishing young daughter,
I'll take the daughter any day!

In addition to the acknowledgement, rightly or wrongly, of Sanskrit as the

mother of Telugu, here is the following:
Vallabharaya composed this play called
Ridabhiramamu: The Joys of Sex, after the model of the
work know as Premabhirama: The Joys of Love, by
Ravipati Tripurantaka Deva.
Tripurantaka Deva?
Not much of a poet, is he?
And that Premabhirama—is it a great book?
Great enough to be the model for a Telugu play?
And Vallabharaya thought it was worthy?
And why make it Telugu?

41See Pollock 1996, 197. He writes: ‘The spread of Sanskrit in the first millennium as
a strikingly homogeneous expressive mode of political power, helped create a new kind of
vast zone of cultural interaction, what some might name as ecumene’. Pollock’s restriction
of Sanskrit to an ‘expressive mode of political power’ is an inverted perspective that does
not do proper justice to the status of Sanskrit as a vehicle of multifaceted expressions,
whose political use depended on varying historical contexts.
“That beef-eating was prevalent among early Indians and among Indian communities
in general is demonstrated from the time of Raja Rajendralal Mitra onward, on the strength
of a voluminous corpus of textual and archaeological evidence. For a recent restatement
of relevant textual material, see Jha 2001.
“Jha 2001, Chapter 4.
“Rao and Shulman 2002.
‘STbid., 37-8.
“Tbid., 47.
34 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

At the level of cultic practices too, attempted proximity to what has greater
circulation and visibility is very much in evidence. In Candimangala, a major
vernacular text of sixteenth-century Bengal, the serpent-goddess Manasa,
whose cult is at the centre of the text, has to be affiliated to Siva. Kalaketu, a
hunter-chief in the text, was originally an earthly incarnation of Indra’s son.*’
The evolution of the cult of Jagannatha in Orissa, which grew to be of supra-
regional circulation and established in the region a model for the God-King
nexus, ensured the multiplication of the mode] throughout Orissa in contexts
in which such a nexus needed to be projected.** In other words, ‘imitable
models’ were legitimizers within a complex repertoire of cultural ingredients,
the range of which could expand with time. It is the study of the processes
and mechanisms of the circulation of such elements, from the diverse sources
of their origins, that can provide us with an understanding of the interpenetration
between the local, subregional, regional and subcontinental levels.

CONCLUSION

The questioning of ‘centre’ or ‘centrality’ as the agency for the making of

India and of its structure was undertaken to explore the multiplicity of the sites
and sources of ingredients which instead constitute it in kaleidoscopic
combination. The exploration will obviously have to continue, but hopefully
the perspective of looking at the Indian civilizational entity from above will
be turned upside down, and the effort should rather be made to look for the
historical processes involved in the making of a large entity rather than for
widely distributed sites of diversity as all derived from one tradition. That the
perspective of focusing on a centre somehow lingers on seems to be suggested
by a recent paper by Ravinder Kumar.” Kumar believes that the ‘political
identity of the Republic of India’ ought to be defined in terms of a ‘civilization-
state’ rather than a ‘Nation-state’. Kumar also acknowledges ‘the . . . great
mass of humanity characterized by a striking diversity held together in the
cultural unity [emphasis added] which constitutes Indian society’; and further,
the ‘concept of a subcontinental culture resting upon a multiplicity of religious
visions and drawing into its matrix the regional constituents of Indian society’.
The use of such expressions as ‘held together in the cultural unity’ and ‘resting
upon’ lays more emphasis on the agency of some undefined source ‘holding’
‘the regional constituents’ together in the ‘cultural unity’, while ‘resting upon’
implies the presence of an immutable superstructure.

“’See Chattopadhyaya 2004.

“Hermann Kulke writes: ‘Jagannatha, as the rastradevata of Orissa par excellence, is
directly linked with the deities of the subregional level, most aptly represented by the
powerful “Eight Mother Goddesses’ (astamatrka) of Orissa’ (Kulke 1993, 97). At the same
time, he stresses the linkage across various levels: local, subregional and other levels.
“Kumar 2002.
 SPACE, HISTORY AND CULTURAL PROCESS 35

Since the focus of the present discussion is the notion of the subregion as
a ‘centre’, the question that needs to be raised here is whether one is moving
from one type of fixed centre to a multiplicity of centres in isolation. As a
research strategy, such a position would be as untenable as the other one in
terms of historical evidence. Segments of space are made and unmade, and
their constituent cultural ingredients need to be defined and redefined over
time. In doing so, one is likely to come across, apart from varieties of ingredient,
more than one nodal point and therefore hierarchy. The major nodal point,
emerging in a particular context, may function as a political centre and generate
cultural novelties which can transcend a delimited space. For example, a style
of cooking or singing (gharana) associated with a royal court can survive royal
space to become a more enduring cultural product and enter into a larger
network. Research on the possibility of satisfactorily demarcating a subregion.
would therefore call for attention to the following:
— Criteria for defining a subregion as a distinct cultural space in a broad sense,
with admission of both continuities and shifts over time.
— The need to investigate patterns of interaction with other spaces, keeping
in view the emergence of new cultural modes from within and the response
to more dominant modes from outside.
— The possibility of the existence of more than one node, which would ensure
_ the coming together of local communities and local cultural forms and
which also function as centres of local governance.
— A more comprehensive examination, apart from the major focus on political
and cult centres, of craft production, housing types, dialects, styles of
cooking,” styles of music and so on, in order to construct the personality
of a subregion.
To close, I would like to sum up, availing myself of the opportunity given to
me here, by suggesting a spatial model for viewing the processes of the making
of India. The subcontinent, in this view, represents a space of interlocking
regions (and not a given hierarchized combination of them), with the space
within each region having to be defined for the time span during which one
is investigating it. The space is not simply physical but also cultural in a broad
sense, and therefore the spheres of its interaction, dominance, or subordination
are also historical and cultural. Space and its historical evolution, therefore,
imply hierarchy, but not with one centre forever subordinating the others. The
overlapping of regions in this model creates spaces in-between, between points
which intersect. They are not peripheral spaces, as they share the cultural
ingredients of interlocking regions. In this model, therefore, there is no uniform

5°For example, a work of posthumous codification such as Kiran Lekha Ray’s Varendra-
Randhan (i.e. Cooking of Varendra) in Bengali, reprinted Calcutta 2000. Material collected
for this anthology of recipes was originally a part of a project to amass material on the
history and culture of Varendra, a subregion of Bengal.
36 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

or homogeneous space, nor a privileged central place, but a multiplicity of

spaces and their nodes, with their contours constituting the model being drawn
and redrawn to the rhythm of historical movements.*!

5! Even as early as the tenth century, Rajasekhara referred to Audra-Magadhi, Pancala-

Madhyama, Avanti, Daksinatya as different styles of women’s dressing; Kavyamimamsa,
third adhyaya called ‘Kavya-purusotpatti’.

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38 BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA

Subbarao, B. 1958. The Personality of India: Pre- and Protohistoric Foundation of India
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 *

CHAPTER 2

Profiling Daksina Kosala:

An Early Historical Subregion?’

BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

The question of the formation of regional identities, based on a set of region-

specific cultural traits, has become a recent concern of historians. This paper
attempts to analyse the evolution of Daksina KoSala during the early historical
and early medieval periods to examine how the socially unified space came
to acquire discernible qualities which more or less defined it as a historico-
cultural unit. Up to now the region, like most hinterlands, has not been the
focus of any sustained historical research, largely owing to the attraction of
the coastal belt, which is not entirely unrelated to its alleged historical priority.
The area of study is conventionally referred to as western Orissa or Chhattisgarh,
neither of which constitutes a historical region on its own. They are rather the
products of administrative decision and represent political units. Taken together,
however, they manifest commonly shared traits, derived through a long process
of historical evolution, and constitute an organic socio-cultural entity. From
epicentric perspectives, it is seen as either an extension of coastal Orissa or a
buffer or intermediate zone between the coastal tract and northern and central
India, and even as a site of contestation between feuding dynasties ranging
from the Vakatakas and Nalas, through the Kalachuris and Somavarnsis, to
the Telugu Codas and Chindaka-Nagas, among others. The question then is,
do we continue to perceive it as such or see if it had a personality of its own?
In the case of the latter, questions relating to change, agency, cultural forms
and their signifiers will have to be addressed. This chapter therefore seeks to
understand the trajectory of socio-cultural transformation in the region from
an early phase of segmented ‘localities’ to the constitution of a larger supra-
local community identity bound by a commonly shared cultural system,
assuming there is one. With reference to regional specifics, it examines whether
the movement towards the formation of an agrarian region, a differentiated
and hierarchized caste society, larger political enterprises (extending across
the region and beyond), and the role of Brahmans, among others, in disseminating

*I am grateful to Professors H. Kulke, B.D. Chattopadhyaya and H. von Stietencron for

comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also thank my younger brother, Shri Lakshmi
Narayan Sahu, who facilitated my visit to Sirpur, Rajim, Marguda, Budhikomna and Khariar
in the summer of 2001.
40 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

cultural forms and the creation of cultic centres, which may have performed
a unifying and levelling function, facilitated the creation of a sense of belonging
or identity formation. The area is rich in archaeological material and land grant
inscriptions, which form the basic evidence in the present case.
Like Vidarbha and Malwa, Daksina KoSala is a part of the central Indian
Intermediate Zone, which separates the northern plains from Peninsular India.
Though communication across this zone was never easy, there have been slow
and steady interactions between these subregions, as well as between them
and the adjacent and peripheral cultural systems through the ages, which have
facilitated the integration of the tribes into the caste-peasant base since the
earliest historical phase. Daksina Koala broadly comprised the space between
Amarkantak in the north to Kanker (close to the source of the river Mahanadi)
in the south, and from the Wen-Ganga Valley on the west to the middle valley
of the Mahanadi (extending up to Sonpur) in the east.' It was bounded by
Mekala in the north, Vidarbha in the west, Bastar in the south and Kalinga in
the south-east. More specifically, this cultural unit is spread over the modern
districts of Bilaspur, Raipur, Durg and Raigarh in Chhattisgarh, and Sambalpur,
Bolangir and Kalahandi in Orissa.” Like other regions, the territorial borders
of Daksina KoSala were not fixed in the past. The tribal presence in this region
was and continues to be strong even today. The tribal situation, together with
its physiography, seems to account for the generally late historical transformation
of the region. Sites like Malhar (Bilaspur district) and Asurgarh (Kalahandi
district) registering early beginnings, instead of disturbing this understanding,
point to their favourable geographical location and the uneven patterns of
historical growth within the subregion. Notwithstanding the importance of
the Mahanadi and its tributaries, the Sheonath and Tel, for irrigation, paddy
cultivation and other activities in the region, this is a land of tanks. The intrinsic
importance of both rice and tanks comes through from the early inscriptional
references to them in this spatial and cultura] segment."
The earliest reference to KoSala as a territorial unit, its location in
Daksinapatha in close proximity to Mahakantara and Kaurala (which comprised
parts of Bastar and western Orissa), and indications of its manifest socio-
political profile come from the Allahabad praSasti of Samudragupta.* This is
listed among a dozen atavika-rajyas, which suggests that it was a post-tribal
chiefdom or early state. The forest people of central India known as atavi find
mention in the ASokan edicts, and after a gap of about six hundred years the
addition of the suffix rajya unmistakably points to the change that had come
from within local societies during the intervening period. Vakataka inscriptions

'A. Cunningham 2000 (rpt.), 68.

?All references in the text are to the undivided districts of western Orissa before 1990.
Since then, these districts have been subdivided into many more new districts.
*For early references to dhdnya, see §.P. Tiwari 1985, section on taxes; for tanks, see
ASI-AR 1930-4, 1936, 140, and K.D. Bajpai and S.K. Pandey 1978, 35.
*J.F. Fleet 1970 (3rd edn.), 7.
 PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA 41

of the fifth century CE and the Aihole inscription of PulakeSin II successively

record the conquest of Koala along with contiguous territories such as Mekala,
Kalinga and Andhra.’ Hiuen Tsang provides a good account of the region, its
people, their manners and religious beliefs, in the mid-seventh century, among
other details.° Around the same time the Panduvamséi king Tivaradeva is
represented in the epigraphical records of the family as the lord of the whole
of KoSala.’ In the land-grant charters of the SomavarhSis (ninth to eleventh
centuries), who succeeded the PanduvarhSis, the donated area is usually
mentioned as a part of some administrative unit in KoSala desa, their homeland
and/or area of control. Continued use of the nomenclature and identification
of the region with KoSala is discernible even in a seventeenth-century text,
significantly titled KoSalananda Kavya.* It is difficult to pinpoint when and
how the territory acquired its name, but the existence of a seal from Malhar
(dated to the second century CE) bearing the legend Gamasa KoSaliya may
possibly suggest its post-Mauryan origins, especially the early centuries of the
Christian Era.’ It is not certain whether, in using the term KoSala, an already
existing name was being appropriated, or whether the process of its continuous
usage conferred on the region a discrete identity through imperceptible
gradations. It was perhaps a two-way process, involving both the communication
and constitution of a spatial cultural image.
The issue of the formation of a subregional identity raises many obvious
but interrelated questions—how was it forged, what were its major identifiable
constituents, and even, what were the stages, if any, in its creation? Archaeological
evidence constitutes the most important source for the reconstruction of the
early phase of the history of Daksina KoSala. The available evidence suggest
that the process of cultural development was mostly dispersed, spread over
the river valleys of the Mahanadi, the Tel (which is an important tributary of
the Mahanadi) and their tributaries, possibly with interactions of one form or
another between clusters of sites and beyond. The reported sites surely did not
all share the same history, but rather there were chronological and typological
variations across sites.'° To elaborate, not all known early historical settlements
need be perceived as urban centres. It is the cultural assemblage that ultimately
determines the character of a site. In introducing these qualified statements,
my intention is to make the more general point that not only was the transition

5Cited in S.P. Tiwari 1985, 9-10.

®Xuanzang 1906, 209-10.
7See Adhabhara Plates of Maha-Nannaraja, in E/ 31, 1955-6, 220-1, lines 5-9, and
Bonda Plates of Tivaradeva, year 5, in EJ 34, 1960-1, 115, lines 16-17.
®See S.K. Panda in the present volume.
°K.D. Bajpai and S.K. Pandey 1978, 21 and 34. It may be mentioned that there is a
reference to one KoSala nagara in the Malhar Plates of Mahasivagupta. B. Jain 1977, 52,
line 11. Also in A.M. Shastri 1995, 139.
\OThis has been well argued in the case of early Bengal and it is equally true of the other
regions. B.D. Chattopadhyaya 2003a, 66-101.
42 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

to the historical phase in the region, as elsewhere, a complex phenomenon,

but also that there were uneven patterns of growth.
Excavations unveiling the cultural sequence have been carried out at Malhar,
Sirpur, Asurgarh, the Marguda Valley, Manmunda and Nehena; and many
other sites have been subjected to surveys and explorations. Malhar in Bilaspur
district was occupied from the early part of the first millennium BCE to the
thirteenth century CE. Periods II and III, which are of immediate concern here,
have been dated to c. 350 BCE to CE 300 and c. CE 300 to 650 respectively."
For Period II the mud rampart remains of a fort have been located. This has
yielded black-and-red ware, two pieces of northern black polished ware
(hereafter NBPW), red slipped ware, stamped pottery and bricks corresponding
to the Mauryan and Satavahana types. Punch-marked, cast and Satavahana
coins have also been reported. There is the interesting seal, already mentioned,
dated to the second century CE, which reads Gamasya KoSaliya. Black-and-red
ware (suggesting its continued use), red polished ware and kaolin pottery have
been identified from Period III. The site also yielded a piece of the rim of a
large jar, a baked pendant and a clay seal with Gupta Brahmi characters.'? The
seal is particularly important because it bears the legend Maharaja Mahendrasya,
who has been variously identified with Mahendra of KoSala of the Allahabad
inscription of Samudragupta and Mahendraditya of the Sarabhapuriya dynasty.
The remains of Saivite temples, Buddhist chaityas and viharas and bricks used
in their construction have also been recovered. A huge tank which now covers
an area of about 60 acres is dated to this period. Sirpur or ancient Sripura,
situated at a distance of 60 km from Raipur, in Raipur district, and associated
with the late Sarabhapuriya kings and their successors the Panduvarnéis,
possesses extensive ruins.'* However, all of it, including the temples, vihdras,
sculptural remains, and the associated artefacts, belong to the second half of
the first millennium CE.
The excavation carried out at Asurgarh, in Kalahandi district, has laid bare
a site whose chronology ranges between c. the third century BCE and the fifth
or sixth centuries CE.'* From the upper phase of the lowest layer in this fortified
settlement, black-and-red ware was found in good numbers, together with
black polished ware. A piece of chunar sandstone bearing Mauryan-era polish
was also found from this early layer. The second layer contained red glazed
pottery, iron objects, and beads of semi-precious stones probably dating to the
early centuries CE. Punch-marked coins and a copper coin of Kaniska have
also been obtained from the site. The top layer contained floors of houses
paved with brickbats, and a circular structure between the two trenches was

''K.D. Bajpai and S.K. Pandey 1978, 33-5. Megalithic remains have been reported from
sites in Raipur and Durg districts. Black-and-red ware (BRW) is a common occurrence at
megalithic sites, but it continues well into the early historical period.
'K.D. Bajpai and S.K. Pandey 1978, 34-5.
'°S.L. Katare 1959, 1-8.
'IAR 1972-3, 29. Also see S.C. Behera 1982, 5-6.
 PROFILING DAKSINAKOSALA- | ~ 43

also exposed. It is not certain whether this had anything to do with the
autochthonous deity StambheS$vari mentioned in the Terasinga plates'> of the
Maharaja Tustikara, who had acquired a visible political presence around the
same area in the same period. Budhigarh in M. Rampur Tehsil, located in the
same part of the district as Asurgarh, is marked by an extensive mound (1,000
x 500 metres). This has produced a wide range of antiquities, comprising
NBPW, fine black ware, black-and-red ware, punch-marked coins, terracotta
figurines, copper and iron objects, two seals and semi-precious beads, among
other things.'® The nature of the evidence alludes to its early historical
moorings.
The Marguda Valley is situated in Nuapada subdivision of Kalahandi district,
bordering Chhattisgarh, on the banks of the Sonk River, which is a tributary
of the Mahanadi. The valley is rich in antiquities and monuments. Excavation
and explorations have yielded evidence of beads, iron artefacts, sculptural and
brick structural remains. The ruins of the settlement, which has a formidable
natural fortification, included a Saivite vihdras complex, a palace complex
and a Saktipitha. An interesting archer image of Durga has been obtained in
situ from the single chambered brick temple. The image bears an inscription
reading MaheSvari Bhabada, which has been ascribed to the fourth century
CE.'? The Amguda copper-plate grant of Jayaraja and the Khariar charter of
Sudevaraja (both belonging to the Sarabhapuriya dynasty) have been discovered
in the vicinity of the valley. The overall cultural complex suggests that the
site can be dated from the fourth or fifth century onward. Nehena, 4 km from
Khariar town, in the same subdivision, has produced a cultural sequence ranging
from the early historical to the early medieval periods. Material remains
unearthed from the trial excavation were black-and-red ware with painting in
white, red and brown ware, beads of agate and carnelian, bricks and gold coins
of Prasannamitra (of the Sarabhapuriya dynasty). Two cultural phases have
been suggested for the site. The earlier period, identified with the early historical
phase, yielded much of the pottery mentioned above, which in terms of shape
and wares compares well not so much with those from coastal Orissa but with
the central and western Indian finds.'* The early medieval sites had no black-
and-red ware with a rough surface but contained iron tools, some iron slags
and the gold coins just mentioned.
Kharliagarh, located at the confluence of the Tel and Raul in Bolangir
district, is close to the eastern border of Kalahandi district. The mounds inside
the fort have yielded evidence of copper punch-marked coins, Kusana copper

'SS.N. Rajaguru 1958, 81-5.

'6P. Mohanty and B. Mishra 2000, 158-60; B. Mishra and M.P. Singhdeo 2002,
152-5.
'7C_B. Patel, ‘Maraguda Valley Excavations’, paper presented to the Seminar on Eastern
Indian Archaeology, held at Konark during 5-7 April 2001. Also see J.P. Singh Deo 2000,
418-30.
'8See M. Brandtner 1993, 101-13.
44 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

coins, beads of semi-precious stones, iron implements and metal bangles.'’

These, together with the burnt brick rampart remains of the almost square fort,
indicate the early historical origins of the site. Manmunda, situated at the
confluence of the Tel and Mahanadi in Phulbani district, is an early historical
site. Black-and-red ware, black polished ware, polished and red slipped ware,
iron objects (including a sickle), a silver punch-marked coin, beads of semi-
precious stones, lids with knobs in good quantity (reminding one of similar
finds on the coastal sites of Orissa) and burnt brick structural remains are
among the important finds from the trial excavation at the ancient settlement.”
Black-and-red ware was totally absent in the upper two layers. At a distance
of about 50 km to the east of Manmunda lies Maryakud, an island in the
Mahanadi in the same district of Phulbani, which along with Manmunda was
situated on the eastern frontier of Daksina KoSala. Explorations in and around
the mound have brought to light sherds of black-and-red ware, black polished
ware, red slipped ware, semi-precious stone beads and pieces of iron slag.”’ It
may not be out of place to mention that the eastern part of Daksina KoSala or
what constitutes western Orissa today is rich in precious and semi-precious
stones.
Buddhist remains have been reported from the excavations at Ganiapali and
Nagraj, on the left bank of the river Ong, a tributary of the Mahanadi, in
Sambalpur district.” The finds comprise sculptures of the Buddha and burnt
brick structural remains of a vihadra dated to the late fourth and early fifth
centuries CE. Carnelian beads, terracotta objects and potsherds were the other
miscellaneous finds from these sites.
The provenance of the archaeological data, together with the locations of
early numismatic finds and Prakrit inscriptions, seems to suggest a pattern in
the evolution of early Daksina Ko§ala. The coin finds—from punch-marked
coins through local uninscribed copper coins and inscribed Magha coins to
the Kusana copper and Roman gold coins—in the western part of the region
tend to centre in and around Malhar in Bilaspur district, though with a scattering
in the neighbouring districts.** The Guiji and the (damaged) Kirari inscriptions,
assigned to the early centuries CE, recording the donation of numerous cows
to Brahmans by important state functionaries (like amatya, dandanayaka and
baladhikrta) and a list of administrative designations (viz., mahasendani,
pratihara, bhandagarika, aSvaroha, padamilika, rathika and gomandalika,
among many others) are also located in the same district.** Bilaspur thus
emerges as a pulsating ‘locality’, with Malhar as an important node. At the

"H.C. Das 1990, 187-8.

0S.C. Behera 1982; JAR, 1984-5, 58-9; JAR, 1989-90, 80-5 and JAR, 1991-2, 86.
1B. Tripathy 2000, 401-11.
S.C. Panda 1981, 47-52.
This understanding is based on the discussion in Sangeeta Abhay Chandra’s ‘Transition
to Early Historical Phase in Chhattisgarh Region of Madhya Pradesh’, unpublished M.Phil.
dissertation, Department of History, University of Delhi, 1994, Chapter II.
*For details, see N.K. Sahu, 1984, 377-85.
 PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA seme 45

risk of repetition one may reiterate that Malhar has yielded most of the above
varieties of coin, as well as other markers of prosperity from Period II (c. 350
BCE-CE 300). The site is said to be located on the ancient trade route joining
Kausambi with the south-east coast, and that perhaps explains its importance.
Influences both from the north and the Deccan and central India, especially
under the Satavahanas, may account for the long list of official titles in the
epigraphic records of the subregion during its formative period. As one moves
into the Gupta period, the adjoining districts of Durg and Raipur, to the south,
begin to provide material relating to the extension of Gupta influence. In
addition to the Gupta coins, there is the Arang fragmentary inscription, assigned
to the fourth century, which is perhaps the first Sanskrit inscription in the area,
and the copper-plate grant of Bhimasena II, again from Arang, in Raipur
district, dated in 182 or 282 in the Gupta Era (CE 502 or 602).* The repoussé
gold coins of Mahendraditya and Prasannamatra spread over the districts of
Bilaspur, Raipur, Durg and Kalahandi,” with the Garuda motif and Sankha
and Chakra to the left and right respectively, bear the unmistakable imprint
of the Gupta emblem. Such influences extended to the domains of art, culture
and polity as well, and will be discussed later.
On the basis of the combined archaeological and numismatic evidence, it
may be surmised that there were mutual interactions and communications
between Asurgarh, Budhigarh, Kharliagarh and Manmunda, cutting across the
modern administrative divisions in eastern Daksina KoSala, with Asurgarh
being in some kind of privileged position. The presence of silver and copper
punch-marked coins as well as Kusana coins and beads at these sites suggests
in that direction. If the alignment of sites is any indication, then the Tel played
an important role in the emergence and maintenance of the network of exchange
and cultural transactions that contributed to the prosperity of the locality. The
river valleys emerge as important factors in the socio-cultural development of
and movement towards a complex society in the region.
The trajectory of internal transformation that has been sketched so far
demonstrates the formation of localities across variegated spaces. Localities
may be taken to approximate to janapadas, to use a familiar north Indian
term.”” Development was uneven and segmented, with some areas registering
greater visibility than others. But then the question is, how does one explain
craft specialization, trade, the money economy and social differentiation, or,
to put it simply, the transition from pre-state to state societies? The proliferation
of settlements”* suggests a rise in population and agrarian growth. Change is
archaeologically demonstrable during and after the Mauryas. The horizontal

E19, 342ff.
26S.P. Tiwari 1985, 56-7.
271For details of this idea, see B.D. Chattopadhyaya 1988, 727-32.
28In addition to the sites discussed here, archaeological surveys have identified many
ruins and mounds in the region, yielding red ware and burnt brick. For example, see JAR
1981-2, 54; IAR 1983-4, 61-2; and JAR 1995-6, 60-1. Beglar and Cunningham’s Reports
also provide a list of sites, though mostly belonging to the later centuries.
46 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

spread of the Mauryan state and the subsequent ascendancy and expansion of
the Satavahanas then constitute the background to the early transformation of
the region. Flowing from it, it may not be out of place to argue that the transition
itself derived, as in the Deccan and Kalinga,” from a combination of
autochthonous forces and the influences emanating from proximate advanced
cultural regions through continuous interaction.
A further stage in the transition of Daksina KoSala is discernible from the
sixth to seventh centuries onward, when the first locally organized subregional
state was formed. There was no break but an expansion of and acceleration in
the historical processes of change,.which continued to influence and impact
on each other. For example, the extension of political authority was related to
agrarian expansion, the spread of Brahmanical settlements, the dissemination
of Sastric-Puranic ideas and the emergence and spread of sacred centres,
including Buddhist monasteries. Like Brahmanical ideology and temples,
Buddhism seems to have helped in organizing diversity and the process of
socio-political integration. The process of state formation shows the phased
territorial extension and structural evolution of states from their tentative
beginnings to the making of a regional state combining parts of Kosala and
central and coastal Orissa.
The stages in the evolution of the structure of the polity can be mapped
with reference to the provenance of the land-grant charters, the identification
of donated settlements, lists of officials addressed in these records, the privileges
and exemptions transferred to the donees, and the titles and epithets borne by
the rulers of successive dynasties. The earliest known raja in the region,
following those mentioned in the Allahabad praSasti, was Maharaja Tustikara,
whose Terasinga plate informs us that he ruled around the fifth to sixth centuries
in Kalahandi district, bordering Bolangir. The Sarabhapuriyas were the first
local dynasty. They issued most of their land grants from Sarabhapura (not
yet satisfactorily identified) and Sripura (Sirpur), their successive seats of
power.” The geographical distribution of the copper-plate grants and the
identification of the donated settlements reveal that their dominion roughly
comprised the present-day districts of Bilaspur, Raipur and Raigarh in
Chhattisgarh and Kalahandi in Orissa.*' The spatial spread of the gold coins
of Mahendraditya of the same lineage broadly coincides with this political
geography. Bhoga, bhukti, rastra and Ghara were the administrative units
above rural settlements. The single instance of the term G@hadra may have been
an inheritance from the Satavahanas and the Deccan. The taxes included bhaga,
bhoga, dhanya and hiranya. High officials do not seem to have been addressed
while making land grants. However, there are references to bhogapatis urging
them to protect the grants, and such other categories as dita, adhikarana, cata

*S. Seneviratne 1980-1, 54-69; B.D. Chattopadhyaya 1988, and B.P. Sahu 2003a,
especially 35-42.
*°One grant each was issued from Prasannapura and Tilakeswara.
'S.P. Tiwari 1985, Chapter 2.
 PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA iy 47

and bhata. Towards the end of their reign we come across one mahasamanta
sarvadhikrta Indrabalaraja. The Sarabhapuriya kings used the title maharaja
and at times the suffix bhattaraka, but nothing more grandiose. The construction
of a grand genealogy or exaggerated family tradition was conspicuous by its
absence. There are several instances of land grants being made by high state
functionaries and influential people with the consent of the king.*? The
impression that one is left with is of a state in an early stage of evolution,
where power was unobtrusive and the administrative units, taxes and state
functionaries were yet to be formally structured.»
The Panduvarnsis, who succeeded the Sarabhapuriyas, made their grants
largely from Sripura. The provenance of their records and the locations of the
place names mentioned in them suggest that their realm broadly coincided
with that of their predecessors.* While the kingdom was divided into rastra,
bhoga, bhukti and visaya, the popular revenue terms were bhaga and bhoga.
However, the remissions to the beneficiaries of land grants were more elaborate
and included expressions such as sarva-kara-sameta, a-catabhata-pravesa
and sarva-pida-varjita. State functionaries were addressed and informed about
the grants being made. The list includes gramakiita, dronagika, gandakanayaka,
devavarika and cata and bhata. The records of MahaSivagupta Balarjuna also
informed the kaladhyasin (astrologer), sam@hartr, sannidhatr, adhikarana and
sakarana.** The PanduvarhSis began to appropriate significant titles and symbols
of substance such as ParamamaheSvara, Paramavaisnava, ParameSvara and
KoSaladhipati. MahaSivagupta Balarjuna was represented in his records as
dharmavatara, the protector of varnas and Gframas, and even compared to
the epic heroes.*® Overall it appears that the subregional state had moved
forward and that there was a consolidation of royal authority.
The SomavamsSis, who were perhaps a collateral branch or junior line of
the same family, followed the PanduvarhSis after a gap of about a century.
They were the first to move into central Orissa displacing the Bhafjas of
Khijfijali (in the Baudh area) in the later part of the ninth century, and then
moved on to occupy coastal Orissa, creating a regional kingdom in the process.
Their charters were issued from a number of places like Suvarnapura (Sonepur),
Mirasima (near Bolangir town), Vinitapura (Binka, near Sonepur) and
Yayatinagara, among others, indicating their eastward expansion. The sites
where their charters have been found are spread over the districts of Bolangir,
Puri, Cuttack and Balasore, with a conspicuous concentration in the district
of Bolangir. Among the settlements identified in the donative records, many

2Tbid., 76-7.
The Eastern Vakatakas provide a comparable picture. H. Kulke 2004.
4 See, for example, U. Singh 1994, the discussion on the Sarabhapuriyas and Panduvarhsis
in Chapter |.
35See his Bonda, Bardula, Mallar and Lodhia Plates, in A.M. Shastri 1995.
36See ‘The Sirpur Stone Inscription of the Time of Mahasivagupta’, E/ 11, 1911-12,
184-201, verses 12-13, 18-19 and 23-4.
48 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

are situated in Bolangir district, especially around Bolangir town and the
Bolangir-Baudh area, the Bargarh locality of Sambalpur and Kalahandi
districts. Desa, mandala, khanda, bhukti and visaya constituted the
administrative divisions. The list of privileges of the donees became more
detailed, including the transfer of community rights over trees, creepers and
forest products. Similarly, the list of functionaries registered a numerical
increase, and royal titles were more numerous and pompous.*’ Terms such as
Maharajadhiraja, Paramabhattaraka and KoSalendra, reflecting the image
or self-image of royalty, were in circulation. Through the instrument of land
grants and the transfer of rights, pockets of authority were being created, which
would have then spread the message of royal power and helped in extending
the orbit of state authority.** There was an underlying unity in these developments.
The rise in the number of possible sources of revenue and the widening political
structure were in conformity with the expanding frontiers of the state. That
begs the question, what were the forces or conjunction of forces that made
such political enterprises possible?
The early medieval centuries were characterized by the growth of a rural
economy, burgeoning rural settlements and the emergence of religious centres
and towns. Malhar continued to flourish. At Sirpur, Rajim, Tala and Kharod
in present-day Chhattisgarh and the Marguda Valley, Budhikomna, Belkhandi
and Ranipur-Jharial in western Orissa, for example, there are extant brick
temples and their ruins going back to the Gupta and post-Gupta period.*? Urban
centres such as Sarabhapura, Prasannapura and KoSalanagara are also referred
to in contemporary dynastic records. Centres like Sirpur and Rajim were
multifunctional towns, whereas sites like Tala and the Ranipur-Jharial complex,
with religious activities dominating the scene, may have been largely uni-
dimensional in nature. It needs no emphasis that, irrespective of their cultic
association and function, temples and towns are markers of agrarian growth.
The proliferation of temples thus indicates both the spread of Puranic religions
and the moving frontier of peasant society. Vatapadra, Khadirapadra, Salagrama
and Kadambapadrullaka, among others, unambiguously suggest that the names
of settlements were derived from local flora, and they allude to the rich, thick
vegetation in their surroundings. During the Sarabhapuriya period and even
later, the evidence of settlements sharing boundaries with other habitations
is sparse. Similarly, the four boundaries or catuhsima of the donated land
are in many cases not specifically defined,” implying thinly scattered rural
settlements interrupted by intermittent woods and forests. This impression is

"U,. Singh 1994, Appendixes II and III on ‘Official Designations and Fiscal Terms’.
**H. Kulke 1995, 243-4.
For details, see J.D. Beglar and A. Cunningham 2000 (rpt.), 4-87, 118ff; K.N. Mahapatra
1947, 167-72; J.P. Singh Deo 2000; D.R. Das 1990; S.S. Panda 1989, 117-26 and 1995,
46-87.
“B.P. Sahu 1993, 52.
 PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA i 49

strengthened by references to trees, plants, animals, forests and forest products

in the SomavarhSi inscriptions,*' in the general context of remissions to the
donees. The evidence for collective grants to several groups of Brahmans
throughout the period and the frequency of the occurrence of padras or
padrakas,* not gramas (fully settled villages), as the object of the grants up
to the SomavarhSis perhaps suggest an early stage in the spread of plough
agriculture and the evolution of rural settlements in many parts of the region.
Notwithstanding the early patterns of socio-economic transformation, there is
a gradual increase in the epigraphic references to rural settiements. The use
of the names of rivers, like Ong and Tel, in demarcating administrative divisions
drives home their importance in these developments. The fact that the land
grants of the Sarabhapuriyas and PanduvarhSis were largely distributed over
the districts of Bilaspur and Raipur, while those of the SomavarhSis were
mostly concentrated in and around Bolangir district, urges the recognition of
phased agrarian expansion, with specific localities being the focus of political
interest at different points in time.
The Brahmans, with their knowledge of the calendar, agriculture, the Vedas,
Sastras and Puranas and, deriving from it their inherent capacity to provide
socio-political legitimacy, appear to have played a significant role in the
transformation of autochthonous societies. Though they are known to the
region since the early centuries CE, they achieved a noticeable presence from
the middle of the millennium onward. During this period they were most often
the beneficiaries of royal munificence. The Bonda plates of Panduvarhsi
Tivaradeva (seventh century) provide perhaps the earliest allusion to the
migration of Brahmans, which in subsequent times became a regular
phenomenon. “8 Migrant Brahmans from Radha, Odradesa, MadhyadeSa,
Sravasti, etc., came in under the SomavarhSis. Some more social segments (if
not all of them) which emerged in the wider context of social change find
mention in the copper-plate inscriptions either as addressees or because of
their involvement, in one capacity or the other, in the making of the land-grant
charters. Besides the Brahmans, rural society comprised other categories, such
as kutumbins, pradhana-prativasins and prativasins. While kutumbin is seen
to be the equivalent of the middle peasant,” prativasin means inhabitant and,
flowing from it, pradhana-prativasins would then translate as important
residents or men of substance. Such esteemed men attained recognition and

“'Tbid., 51.
42Padras, or padrakas, in Orissa even today, are settlements with a sprinkling of houses,
clearly separated from gramas, which are full-fledged villages. For a good discussion of
the typology of rural settlements, see A.K. Choudhary 1971 and B.D. Chattopadhyaya
1990. For collective grants, see, for example, Arang Plates of Sudevaraja, Bonda Plates of
Tivaradeva, Bardula Plates of Mahasivagupta and Patna Plates of Mahabhavagupta I, in
A.M. Shastri 1995, 39-42, 102-6, 119-23 and 172-8.
43 A.M. Shastri 1995.
“4R. Chakravarti 1996, 179-98.
50 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

visibility from the later part of Panduvarnéi rule.** Among the occupational
groups, the saétradhara (architect/master craftsman), suvarnakara (goldsmith),
vanik (trader), ma@lakara (garland maker), gauda (cowherd), kayastha and
engravers of records find mention in contemporary sources.*° The numerous
temples and copper-plates, for example, bear testimony to the existence of
Gcaryas, bricklayers, stone-cutters, smiths and composers, among others.
Individuals other than royalty were involved in the construction of temples
during the early stages,*’ pointing to their accrued economic competence. To
make the more general point that there were noticeable disparities, one need
not go further than the Brahmans. There were Brahmans enjoying a settlement,
others having some shares in a settlement or settlements and still others with
only some measures of land.** The emergence of new groups helped the
transition to a caste society and the unfolding of social complexity, which
were gradual, long-term processes. Differential access to economic resources,
political power and ritual status contributed to social differentiation and
hierarchization within the overarching framework of Brahmanical ideology,
and with reference to the dominant schema.
The early medieval period was shaped not just by an expanding agrarian
economy and social fluidity, it was equally a period of artistic innovation,
cultural growth, and the movement of ideas. The elite showed interest in
temple-building activities, and temple towns emerged as important centres of
socio-cultural activity. The temple movement can be fully appreciated in the
context of the formation of local and subregional agrarian bases and the
simultaneous evolution of a complex, hierarchized socio-political structure,
where various segments were seeking the confirmation of their assumed or
achieved status.” Though the construction of temples in South KoSala dates
from the late Gupta period onwards, it is only from around the seventh century
that there is evidence for royal patronage to temples and Buddhist establishments
alike, the reign of MahaSsivagupta Balarjuna at Sirpur being particularly
prominent. Temple rituals became more elaborate, and Brahmans, a@caryas

“SV.V. Mirashi and L.P. Pandeya, ‘Mallar Plates of Mahasivagupta’, EJ 23, 1935-6,
120, lines 6-7; P.B. Desai, ‘Bardula plates of MahaSivagupta: Year 9’, EJ 27, 1947-8, 290,
lines 6-8.
“°See the Gandharesvara temple inscription from the time of Sivagupta, the fragmentary
GandhareSsvara temple inscription and Sonpur Plates of Mahabhavagupta I, in A.M. Shastri
1995, 152 (line 5), 161 (line 8) and 196 (line 19). Also see R.N. Misra 1975, 64-5.
“See S.P. Tiwari 1985, chapter on administration; A.M. Shastri 1977, 63-9. See also
the Pipardula Plates of Narendra, Arang Plates of Sudevaraja and Senakapat stone inscription
in A.M. Shastri 1995.
“Inscriptions not only record the grant of a settlement (e.g. padraka or grama) to single
Brahmanas, but also to more than one Brahmana. The Arang plates of Sudevaraja record
a grant to nine Brahmanas, while the Bonda plates of Tivaradeva mention a grant to twenty-
five Brahmanas. As mentioned in the Senkapat stone-slab inscription, some of them received
certain hala measures of land. See A.M. Shastri 1995.
“R. Thapar 1987, 34ff; B.D. Chattopadhyaya 2003b, 153-71.
 U2b9 20
PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA oe 51

and local bodies looked after their management.” The growing complexity
and addition of details is reflected in the introduction of music and dance in
these religious institutions.
At Tala, situated close to the confluence of the Seonath and Maniari rivers
in Bilaspur district, are preserved the ruins of two temples of remarkable
beauty, known as Jithani and Devardni, the former being relatively older than
the latter. They are assigned to the late fifth and early sixth centuries, and the
motifs bear affinities with Gupta art, combined with influences from Vidarbha,
especially the sculptural idiom. Despite the analogy of sculptural art with
Vakataka and Gupta examples, it is said that ‘they definitely breathe an
atmosphere of their own’.*' It is further suggested that this art form evolved
from an indigenous tradition in wood-carving and laid the foundation of the
KoSala style of architecture.” There have been efforts to understand the region-
specific traits in the sculptures as representing Saivite affiliation from South
KoSala. The integration of animal figures in the main body of sculptures and
the carving of the whole body of the deity instead of just the mukha on the
linga in the assemblages at Tala and Malhar are regarded as the regional
characteristics. Under the Panduvarnsis and later Nalas, a distinct art tradition
evolved in the region. Sripura and Rajim emerged as important centres with
exquisite temples adorning these towns. The Laksmana and Rajivlochana
temples are fine examples. Malhar and Kharod too illustrate the growth in
patronage and the spread of temples. Ranipur-Jharial in Bolangir district, a
predominantly Saivite complex, came to prominence under the Somavarhsis.
In addition to the numerous temples, the large number of what appear to be
votive shrines around SomeSvara suggest that it was a /irtha (pilgrimage
centre). KoSaleSvara at Baidyanath, in the same district, and Patale$vara at
Budhikomna (near Nuapada), in Kalahandi district, among others, are placed
in the same time bracket of the mid-ninth to mid-tenth centuries. It appears
that under Somavarhéi rule the tradition of art and architecture in the Upper
Mahanadi moved into the Middle Mahanadi Valley and adjoining areas. Some
experimentation in art and ground plan were initiated, to which I shall return
later. The Kalachuris continued to patronize temples, a large number of which
were built between the middle of the eleventh and end of the twelfth centuries.
Contemporary records mentioned the presence of artists and craftsmen such
as sutradharas, Silpis and ripakaras.*° Under the Kalachuris art assumed a
‘provincial’ character, and sculptures were marked by excessive standardization,
emphasizing an anthropomorphic type in contrast to the earlier elegant

50See the Lodhia Plates of MahaSivagupta, in Shastri 1995, 129, lines 11-12 and
1977.
‘'H, Bakker 1994, 25.
2Tbid. 1994, 10, 22.
%S.B. Majumdar 2003.
*D.R. Das 1990, 49.
55R.N. Misra 1987, Appendix I.
LIBRARY
RAO M
NARAYAN
National Law Schoc
52 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

simplicity and sensitive rendering of figure work.** In the upper Mahanadi

Valley the classical tradition faded out by the ninth century. However, it seems
later to have influenced art in the middle Mahanadi region, the Somavarhsis
being its ostensible carriers.
Brick was the popular building material in the temples of KoSala, from Tala
to Budhikomna and from Malhar to Rajim, as was the case with the temples
of Vidarbha. As one moves eastwards into coastal Orissa, stone replaces brick
as the preferred raw material. Stellate or star-shaped temples, a product of
considerable experimentation, were perhaps a typical South KoSala style. They
involved the principle of two squares being placed diagonally to one another
and intersecting at an angle of 45°. They are known from Kharod, Budhikomna,
Kansil (near Ranipur-Jharial), Baudh and other places, and are usually brick
temples dedicated to Siva. While the river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna flank
the doorway of the shrine, the Navagrahas with Gajalaksmi at the centre adorn
the lintel.°’ Dasavatara images embellish the door-jambs in the Laksmana
temple at Sirpur and decorate the pillars of the Rajivlochana temple at Rajim.
The carving of large figures against the pillars in the temple as at Rajim, Sirpur
or KoSalesvara at Baidyanath, near Sonepur, appear to be specific to KoSala.
Similarly, knotted snakes decorating the doorways of shrines as at KoSalesvara,
for example, were a characteristic feature of the region, not known in the
Lower Mahanadi Valley and the plains of Orissa.** Some of these traits, which
are common occurrences in Daksina KoSala, find visible manifestation at
places like Baidyanath and Boudh, largely because they are situated on the
border, which helped them to combine influences from both KoSala and
Orissa.
The co-existence of multiple forms of religion, beliefs and practices is borne
out by the combined evidence of archaeology and inscriptions. Malhar and
Sirpur have yielded evidence of both temples and Buddhist vihdaras. In fact,
the viharas at Sirpur were in the vicinity of the Laksmana temple. Patronage
was broad-based, and the rulers of successive dynasties spent their resources
on the temples of Visnu and Siva as well as Buddhist monasteries. While
Bhavadeva, brother of Nannaraja (a Panduvarhéi king), had a Buddhist vihadra
repaired, Isanadeva, another brother of the same king, built a temple at Kharod.®
MahaSivagupta Balarjuna was equally liberal in his generosity towards
Brahmanical shrines and Buddhist establishments. Many rulers, despite their
Saivite affiliations, invoked Vaisnava imageries in their official records. Even
Ranipur-Jharial, an ostensibly Saivite complex, had a Krsna temple and at the
same site several Vaisnavite figures are present on the walls of Indralath, a

**Tbid. 1987, 99.

*’For the temple art of South KoSala, see R.N. Misra 1987, 99-128; also see J.K. Pattnaik
1999, 236-40.
*V. Dehejia 1979, 136-8.
See Arang stone inscription and the inscription in the Laksmane$vara temple at Kharod.
Also see H. Bakker 1994, 14.
 PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA |. | ~ 53

temple dedicated to Siva.” It is thought that at Sirpur the same artists worked
at temples and Buddhist sites, a situation akin to what occurred in coastal
Orissa.°!
Narasirnha and Mahisdsuramardini or Sakti appear to have been popular
deities. Images of Mahisasuramardini are present in Sirpur, at the site museum,
and Rajim, and a figure of Durga has been retrieved from the Marguda Valley,
while Stambhe$vari is referred to in the Terasinga plates of Tustikara. Sculptural
representations of Narasimha are available at Tala, Sirpur and Rajim, while
the Laksmana temple at Sirpur (alluded to in the stone inscription of Vasata)
was probably dedicated to Visnu-Narasirhha. The compulsions of political
power or the need to win over one’s subjects may explain why royal patronage
was inclusive, not sectarian. However, one wonders whether the popularity
of Sakti, the man-lion deity and later Sivaism, which unlike Visnuism is kin-
based, had anything to do with the autochthonous inheritance of local societies
in transition. In the context of adjoining Vidarbha, it has been suggested that
the popularity of Narasimha rested on his being ‘a brave heroic deity’.® Even
while Buddhist institutions were flourishing and were also the recipients of
royal favour, the reformed Brahmanical religion with Visnu and Siva as its
two most important gods seems to have increasingly gained court patronage
from around the sixth to seventh centuries onward. The shift mostly in favour
of Sivaism is more clearly visible under the SomavarhSis and Kalachuris,
especially in the artistic record of the times.* Whether this shift was a result
of a swing in popular support or a change in royal patronage or both warrants
careful investigation.
Art and ideas are a product of society and involve particular cultural contexts
and specific forms of social organization. The early medieval scene is
illuminated by symbols and idioms in contemporary inscriptions, as is temple
art, which reflects on these domains. The spread of Vedic, Sastric, epic and
Puranic ideas can be gleaned from the images or self-images of royalty as
represented in the prafasti sections of the copper-plate and stone inscriptions.
The influence of the DharmaSastras is easily discernible in the benedictory
and imprecatory verses in the land grant charters. The dasavatara images
on door-jambs or pillars in temples at Sirpur and Rajim or the story relating
to Skanda in the Mahabharata rendered in art at Tala point in the same
direction.®

6B _.C. Chhabra, E/ 24, 243ff; D.R. Das 1990, 34.

61On the basis of the style of carving and treatment of figures, it is suggested that the
same artists and craftsmen had been at work at both Ratnagiri and SisireSvara. See V.
Dehejia 1979, 109, 114; S.L. Katare 1959, 7-8.
HH. Bakker 1990, 62-85.
See, for example, D.R. Das 1990; R.N. Misra 1987, Appendix II, 139-55. For an
analogous situation in Bengal, see R.M. Eaton 1997 (paperback), 12-17.
See the Laksmana temple inscription of Vasata at Sirpur and Mahasivagupta Balarjuna’s
Sirpur stone inscription, in A.M. Shastri 1995, 141-7 and 150-1.
For Tala, see H. Bakker 1994, 27-9.
54 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

The significant correspondence between KoSale$vara, the name of the Siva

temple at Baidyanath, and the Somavarhsis, who constantly projected
themselves as the lords of KoSala, cannot be missed. This is just one instance
of the ways in which royalty sought to identify with divinity. Understandably
the appropriation of divinity was couched in a vocabulary which tried to achieve
the desired purpose without doing violence to popular sensibilities. The familiar
use of similes, metaphors and double entendre was intended to achieve this.
For example, in his charters Mahasivagupta Balarjuna described himself as
the son of Harsagupta, just as Karttikeya was of lord Siva. Various discursive
strategies were employed in the making of dominant ideology and techniques
of control. Brahmanas and temples disseminated Sastric and Puranic ideas and
values with a view to creating a coherent cultural ethos, a favourable ground
for the extension and consolidation of state society.®’ The place of temples as
catalysts in this process can be seen from the Senakapat inscription, which
besides granting plots of land to a Siva temple, expected the Saivite ascetics
to arrange for sacrifices (yaga) and initiate people into Sivaism.® Brahmana
and temple settlements were the ‘pillars of the normative order of Hindu
Kingdoms’,® something that explains the grants of land to them as a necessary
component of state policy. Whatever may have been its other functions, it
surely provided the state with ideological legitimacy.
In the course of their being read out on several occasions, starting with a
public proclamation on the occasion of the grant, the copper-plate charters,
with their significant use of Sastric, epic and Puranic ideas and symbolisms
and focus on legal and moral norms, played an important role in communicating
these messages, in the process contributing to the formation of an overarching
value system. As public records, the inscriptions on temple walls, such as the
Laksmana temple stone inscription of Vasata at Sirpur, among others, were
powerful instruments of cultural transmission.’”? The temples and monasteries
at Sirpur attracted many devotees of different ideological persuasions, thus
investing the stone inscriptions with political meaning.’!' These official records
therefore need to be seen not simply as land transaction documents or as being
reflective of a cultural milieu, but perhaps as transformatory stimuli in the
early medieval social formation of South KoSala, a region which in many areas
experienced the transition to historical society largely during the Gupta and

°**For a general discussion of the issue in the early medieval context, see B.P. Sahu
2003b, 56-64; a good discussion of the situation in adjoining Vidarbha is available in H.
Bakker 1992, 83-100.
°’B.D. Chattopadhyaya 1983, 25-63; H. Kulke 1995, 233-62; and B.P. Sahu 2001, 12-
26.
**A.M. Shastri 1995, 154-9, verses 15-23.
°H. Kulke 1995, 244.
See, for example, the Arang stone inscription, the Sirpur stone inscriptions, Sirpur
Gandharesvara temple inscription and the Senkapat stone slab inscription, in A.M. Shastri
1995, 96-101 and 148-59.
"For details of this argument, see H. Kulke 1997, 237-43.
 PROFILING DAKSINA KOSALA Bilin 55

post-Gupta periods. By the time of the Panduvarhsis, especially Mahasivagupta

Balarjuna, Sastric and Puranic ideas had been sufficiently internalized by
society for artists to express them in stone and poets and scribes to articulate
them in their compositions of the drafts of charters so that engravers could
transfer these on to copper-plates or stone. By mediating between the local
and the pan-Indian, Brahmans, temples, artists and poets helped in the creation
of an intermediate level of cultural identity or belonging, which in the long
term bound people together through a common way of thinking and believing,
leading to the making of an ‘experienced region’.”
It may be good to remind ourselves at this point that early medieval regimes
were neither monolithic nor omnipresent.” Similarly, the coherence of
Brahmanical enterprises has perhaps been assumed more than is warranted. It
may be reasonable to suggest that both agrarian expansion and Brahmanical ~
ideology built on and could not escape opposition and conflict, as such intrusions
would have blended coercive and persuasive strategies. At the beginning of
the second millennium, then, Brahmanical settlements, temple towns and their
influence were not all-pervasive. Agrarian expansion and concomitant develop-
ments moved in a phased manner, with unevenness built into the process.
On this material and cultural foundation arose the medieval Rajput king-
doms of the region,” but that is not within the scope of this discussion.
The chapter started with the premise that socio-cultural transformations are
a product of interaction between trans-regional patterns and local initiatives.
Viewed from this perspective, many of the developments in South Koala
appear to be universal, yet it marked a distinctiveness in particular cultural
forms. The regional autonomy of art forms was a historical reality, though its
extent is debatable. At this point one may ask how the Daksina Koala
experience differed from the pan-Indian or alternatively geographically proxi-
mate Orissan experiences. Notwithstanding influences from the adjoining
regions, the cumulative traits of Koala art and architecture provide a distinctive
regional flavour. The important innovations in art forms seem to be an act of
self-assurance on the part of the KoSalan people. The projection of the kings
as ‘Lord of Ko$ala’ (e.g. KoSaladhipati and KoSalendra) and the worship of
Siva as Kosale$vara (Lord of KoSala) at Baidyanath perhaps derived from, as
well as contributed to, the formation of a KoSala identity. The indigenous
people may or may not have comprehended the formation of a subregion, but
we can perhaps raise and address the issue by suggesting that it emerged from
a shared, common historico-cultural, though not necessarily homogeneous
experience, which may have provided the local communities with a spatially
distinguishable and culturally identifiable identity. Art and culture would have
engendered a sense of affiliation among the people, but how many envisaged
it that way is a difficult question to answer.

2] have borrowed this expression from K. Chakrabarti 2000, 14.

For a good discussion, see B.D. Chattopadhyaya 1997, 1-14.
74For later developments, see C.U. Wills 1919, 197-262; N.K. Sahu 1985, 1-42.
56 BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU

The terms ‘regional’ and ‘subregional’ have been used interchangeably

throughout, but at this point there is a need for some precision in what is being
said. The subregion, like the region, is a category which is easy to understand
but rather difficult to define. Like multiple communities, which constitute a
plural society with none having a monopoly or privileged position in defining
it, subregions are a part of a region but with no single unit constituting it.
In other words, they are in it and yet out of it, and in this are embedded the
historical roots of contestation and negotiations within regions. In that sense,
by the end of the first millennium Daksina KoSala was an evolving subregion
with features which defined the contours of its personality in the succeeding
centuries.’> Flowing from it, it is necessary to engage in a different evaluation
of the subregions than just seeing them as simple extensions and therefore as
hierarchically subordinate repetitive images of theepicentre, in this case coastal
Orissa. They seem to constitute as much as be impacted by the perceived
centre. It appears that both generalizing and essentializing the criteria of the
subregion, like the region, have their share of problems. If generalizations
subsume subregional historico-cultural specificities, essentializing them tends
to ignore the multiple sources of identity formation, as well as the fact that
identities in the past, as so often today, were not immutable.

it appears that South KoSala, which, under the later PanduvarnSis and early Somavarhsis,
was emerging as a region, became a subregion of Orissa after the SomavarSis’ conquest
of eastern or coastal Orissa and the forging of a regional or supra-regional kingdom.

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 CHAPTER 3

The Feudatory States of Orissa:

Centres out There

HERMANN KULKE

The emergence of regional cultures as a major feature of Indian history since ~

the early Middle Ages is well known.’ Less known but equally remarkable is
the fact that late medieval and in particular early modern India is likewise
characterized by the shaping and gradual development of subregional and local
polities and identities. Colonially enforced processes of modernization further
enhanced the development of the Feudatory states and their emergence as
Princely States in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ But under the
impact of the national independence movement and the creation of the States
of independent India, they were challenged by and partly submerged into
homogenizing processes of emergent regional and national identities.
The former Feudatory states in the predominantly tribal hinterland of Orissa
and their development as ‘centres out there’ vis-a-vis the politically and
culturally dominant coastal belt depict this development paradigmatically. But
surprisingly their emergence in late medieval and early modern Orissa still
remains a step child of Orissan historiography. The inscriptions and monuments
of their ‘classical’ predecessors since late first millennium CE are properly
studied as is well documented, e.g. by B.P. Sahu’s paper in this volume. The
same holds good for the history of Orissa’s 24 recognized Feudatory or Princely
States under colonial rule when most of them had finally emerged as genuine
trans-local ‘centres out there’.* But research on this period focuses primarily
on the analysis of their ‘feudal’ structure and exploitative nature and the
collaboration of their rulers with the colonial power on the one hand and on
agrarian unrest and political agitation of their people in the wake of Indian

‘A. Eschmann 1978; B.D. Chattopadhyaya 1994.

2K. Chakravarti 2001 and B.K. Mallik 2004.
3The Feudatory states of Orissa are known under several names: Their original name
was Garhjat (fort-born) Mahals and during Mughal rule they were termed as Zamindaris,
under British rule they became first known as Tributary Mahals, then as Feudatory states
throughout the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and finally as
Princely States during the last decades before independence. In this paper they will be
usually referred to as ‘Feudatory States’ (Cobden Ramsay 1910).
4The size of Orissa’s Feudatory states ranged from 4,243 (Mayurbhanj) to 46 square
miles (Tigeria).
62 HERMANN KULKE

freedom movement on the other hand.° The inglorious role of rulers of several
Feudatory states in the last stage of independence movement finally stigmatized
them not only as centres of indirect colonial rule but also as ‘centres out there
of exploitation’ (B. Pati in this volume). The intermediate period, however,
between the ‘glorious classical’ and the ‘inglorious colonial’ periods still
remains outside the mainstream of Orissan historiography. But as also pointed
out by A. Tanabe in the present volume, it was exactly this period which was
most essential for the emergence of the Feudatory states as ‘centres out there’
and their till today prevailing trans-local or subregional identities.® The present
paper intends to highlight few aspects of this development.

THE HISTORY OF THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA

The history of the Feudatory states of Orissa goes back to the early medieval
period when a considerably large number of mandala or samanta polities
surrounded Orissa’s coastal kingdoms.’ Well known among them were the
Bhanjas of the Khijjinga and Khinjali Mandalas in modern Mayurbhanj and
Baudh respectively® and the Sulkis of Kodalaka Mandala in present Dhenkanal.
Their political status as samanta or ‘neighbouring’ tributary states was char-
acterized by a strong autonomy. Culturally they competed successfully—as
witnessed by the beautiful Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture, e.g. at
Kiching, Baudh and Kualo?—with the coastal Maharajas. But they were
distinguished from the coastal kingdoms by their concomitant patronage of
purely tribal goddesses, such as Stambhesvari by the Bhanjas and Sulkis or
the powerful Maninagesvari at Ranpur whose first historically known devotee,
Raja Lokavigraha, was praised in CE 600 as overlord of eighteen [Gond]
chiefdoms.'°
Little or, in fact, next to nothing is known about these Mandala states during
the more than three hundred years of Ganga rule in Orissa.'' But in the fifteenth
century they re-emerged as a strong and increasingly irritating factor in the
power struggle of the Gajapati kings of the imperial Suryavamsa dynasty.
Kapilendra, its first great ruler, and his son Purushottama were compelled to
threaten them in their inscriptions with the wrath of Lord Jagannatha and the
confiscation of their wealth if they rebel (droha) against his orders.'? But it

°M.M. Mishra 1983; B. Pati 1993; C.P. Nanda 1998.

°B. Schnepel 2002 and H. Kulke 1979.
™N.K. Sahu 1956, vol. 2, 351-65; K.C. Panigrahi 1981, 134-50; J. Mahapatra 1997 (who
was kind enough to reprint map no. | of H. Kulke 1979 without reference).
A. Joshi 1983.
°T. Donaldson 1985, vol. 1, 111-269.
'0S.N. Rajaguru 1950; see also Kulke 1977.
''S.K. Panda 1986.
'*A good example is an inscription of Kapilendra at the Jayavijaya doorway of the
Jagannatha temple at Puri of the year 1464: ‘Oh Jagannatha! Thus prayth Thy servant
(sebaka). Throughout the kingdom, I maintained from childhood these (feudal) lords
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA 63

was this great—and in the collective memory of the Oriyas—heroic period to

which most of the later Feudatory states and their dynasties trace back their
foundation legends. Most popular in this context are the accounts in the local
vamsavali chronicles about the alleged participation of various dynastic founder
kings in the legendary Kanchi Kaberi campaign of the second Gajapati king
Purushottama."*
Under circumstances which are not yet fully known, the power of at least
few of these Garhjat (or fort-born) Mahals apparently had increased tremendously
in the sixteenth century as during the decline of the imperial Gajapati kingdom,
three scions of the Bhanjas of Mayurbhanj and/or Keonjhar (Raghubhanja,
Durgabhanja and Ramachandra Bhanja) were strong enough to play a rather
inglorious role in several coups d’état against the Gajapatis during the last
years before the fall of the Orissa kingdom in 1568.
After their final conquest of Orissa in 1592, the Mughals carried out a
settlement which resulted in a tripartite division of Orissa. The coastal region
came under the name of Mughalbandi under their direct rule whereas the
Garhjat Mahals or Zamindaris, particularly Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar, retained
under their indirect rule a strong autonomy. ‘These chiefs may be safely
considered as de facto proprietors of their possession under the native
governments, that is, they held them hereditarily, exercised uncontrolled
jurisdiction within their limits and appropriated the entire revenues subject to
the condition of performing military service’.'*The newly established Khurda
kingdom, as the nominal successor state to the erstwhile imperial Gajapatis,
was invested by Akbar’s General Mansingh with the fief of the small but
important Garhjat Mahals in the lower Mahanadi Valley and the former Ganjam
district.'° The creation of a directly ruled coastal belt under the Mughals, which
remained the backbone of foreign dominance in Orissa until 1947, enforced
the cultural, social and political division of Orissa which continues till
today.'®

THE GAJAPATIS OF KHURDA AND THEIR FEUDATORY STATES

The dominant position of Khurda as successors of the erstwhile imperial

Gajapatis was frequently threatened by Akbar’s successors and their Mughal
subahdars at Cuttack and after 1751 by the Maratha and temporarily also by

(samanta) including the infantry and cavalry and gave them wealth. All of them have
forsaken me. I shall deal with them and punish them each according to their desert. Oh
Lord! Jagannatha! do Thou judge this fact whether I am right or wrong’, K.B. Tripathy
1962, 272; see also H. Kulke 1979, 70-3 and B.K. Mallik 2004.
13]. E.B. Cobden Ramsay 1910; G.N. Dash 1979; B. Schnepel 2000 and 2003; M.M.
Mishra 2003; Kulke 2004, Berkemer 1993, 234-6.
4A. Stirling 1822 (1904), 70.
'5,4’in-i-Akbari, vol. 2, 155-7; M.A. Haque 1980, 226-32; H. Kulke 1979, 103-8.
'6G.N. Dash 2007.
64 HERMANN KULKE

the Parlakhimedi rajas of South Orissa.'’ But due to Khurda’s direct access to
and control over Puri and its Jagannatha cult and its ritual authority over a
large number of small but locally important Garhjat Mahals, it remained the
foremost state of Orissa until late eighteenth century.'* Late N.K. Sahu, the
great Sambalpur historian, might have been right when he spoke of Khurda’s
‘Phantom Gajapatis’.'? But their kingship and elevated position in the Orissan
society was of prime importance for the Jagannatha centred Oriya identity and
the emergence of various subregional identities of competing Garhjat chiefs.
The high status of the Khurda rajas is well attested by an unusual witness
of mid-seventeenth century. During his campaign in Orissa in 1660-2 the
General Khan-i-Dauran sent a report to his imperial master Aurangzeb in
which he referred to Raja Mukunda Deva of Khurda as ‘the leading zamindar
of this country whose orders were obeyed by the other zamindars [and] whom
all the other zamindars of this country worship like a god and disobedience
of whose order they regard as a great sin’.”” Khan-i-Dauran’s campaign was
in fact a reconquest of Orissa after Aurangzeb’s war of succession during
which more or less all zamindars or chiefs of Orissa had regained their
independence. The importance of the Khan’s report lies not only in the often
quoted reference to the Khurda rajas. Equally revealing are his hints at the
formidable resistance offered for several years by various rajas or zamindars
of Orissa such as Narsinghpur, Banki, Ranpur, Banpur, Kujang, Kanika,
Madhupur, Khallikote and in particular by the Bhanjas of Mayurbhanj and
Keonjhar.
Khan-i-Dauran’s reports amounts to a ‘who is who’ of Orissan Garhjat
Mahals and Zamindaris in mid-seventeenth century. According to Puri’s
Madala Panji chronicle, the singha dvara, the main gate of the Jagannatha
temple at Puri, which had been closed for several years by Aurangzeb’s order,
was again forcefully opened by the Khurda raja with the help of the rulers of
the 18 Garhjat Mahals after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707.7!
The short period of Maratha rule in Orissa was of particular importance for
the further development of the Feudatory states. As Hindu rulers, the Marathas
contested the position of the Khurda rajas as ‘sacred and secret rulers’ of Orissa
and mediatized its Feudatory states and thus ‘freed’ them from Khurda’s
overlordship. A short report about this event comes from T. Motte who travelled
in 1766 on a mission from Calcutta to Sambalpur:
When Ragoojee [the Maratha ruler of Nagpur] entered Orissa, he found these parts
divided into small zemindaries, dependent on the rajah of Pooree at whose capital is
the famous temple of Jeggernaut, near the Chilka lake. This prince was regarded by

7H. Kulke 1978.

"For Khurda see K.N. Mahapatra 1969; H. Kulke 1979, 80-207; A. Tanabe 2003 and
in the present volume; G.N. Dash 2010.
'"'N_.K. Sahu 1956, 391.
0J.N. Sarkar 1916, 161.
1 4.B. Mohanty 1969, 70.
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA 65

his subjects in a religious light also, and appeared formidable to the Mahrattas, who,
apprehensive lest he might seize a favourable opportunity to cut off the communication
between Nagpoor and Cuttac, resolved to reduce his power by dividing it. He made
the petty zemindars independent of him, and formed the chucklas [tax districts] of
Dinkanol [Dhenkanal], Bonkey [Banki], Nersingpoor [Narsinghpur], Tigorea [Tigeria],
Tolchair [Talcher], Chunda Parra [Khandpara], Dispulla [Daspalla], Hindole [Hindu],
Ungool [Angul], and Boad [Baud].”

Khurda’s feudatories thus came under the sway of the Maratha subahdar at
Cuttack to whom they had to pay a light quit rent as was the case with the
other Garhjat States of Orissa. But ‘being secure in their forts, most of which
were surrounded by dense jungles and confident of their strength to resist any
attack, many of the feudatory chiefs were often irregular in payment of tribute
and occasionally showed a spirit of insubordination’.~ Apart from a greater
reluctance to pay their tribute, the position of the Garhjat rulers under the
Marathas seemed to have remained the same as under the Mughals. But there
was an essential difference. The dismemberment of ‘formidable’ Khurda by
the Marathas through mediatization of its Garhjat Mahals reduced its political
authority to the level of its former feudatories, particularly when the Marathas
also began to challenge its ritual hegemony in the Jagannatha cult of Puri.”
Particularly important in our context is the fact that Khurda’s diminution
enhanced the position of the Feudatory states and their rulers to a hitherto
unknown degree of autonomy. They used their new position to equip their
‘capitals’ with various paraphernalia of Hindu kingship.

THE RITUAL PRIVILEGES OF FEUDATORY RAJAS IN PURI

An important ingredient of an emerging Hindu kingship ideology of the rulers

of the Garhjat Mahals were their ritual privileges in the cult of Jagannatha,
granted by the raja of Khurda. Although meant primarily to strengthen Khurda’s
position, they also validated the rise of the Garhjat rulers to Feudatory rajas.
In their desperate struggle against the loss of control over their feudatories,
which had already begun during Mughal rule and which culminated in their
mediatization under the Marathas, the rajas of Khurda increasingly exerted
their ritual authority as ‘First Servant’ (adi sevaka) of Jagannatha. In order to
strengthen their own precarious position and to regain the loyalty and support
of the feudatory rajas they granted special ritual privileges to them during their
visits to Puri and their darsan of Jagannatha through ‘royal letters’ (chamu
citaus), a policy which they had already begun in periods of crisis under the
Mughals.”
The archive material of the Madala Panji which the first Orissa Research

2T. Motte 1930, 27.

B.C. Ray 1960, 129.
4H. Kulke 1979, 205-15.
25For further details see H. Kulke 1992b and und S.K. Panda 2000.
66 HERMANN KULKE

Project procured from the temple scribe (deula karana) of the Jagannatha
temple in 1971 contains about 160 chamu citaus, most of them being addressed
to altogether 32 rajas, princes and zamindars of Orissa during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries: Ranpur (13), Athgarh (12), Khandpara (10),
Dhenkanal (10), Tigeria (9), Nayagarh (6), Baramba (5), Banpur, Khallikote,
Sambalpur, Tekkali and Sukinda (each 4), Jeypore, Parlakhimedi and
Vijayanagara (each 3), Kanika, Mahuri, Narsinghpur and Patia (each 2), Angul,
Badakhemundi, Khemundi, Banki, Baudh, Kujang, Madhupur, Mayurbhanj,
Parikud and Sonepur (each 1). ,
One of the early letters, issued by Raja Mukunda Deva in CE 1662, illustrates
the peculiar ‘chamu citau policy’ of the Khurda rajas.
Raja Nilakantha Deva [of Badakhimedi in South Orissa] has gone [to Puri] for darsan
[of Jagannatha]. We sent Paramananda Patanaik along with him. He will stay with
him and make him perform the darsan. The palanquin, the royal umbrella, a fan made
of peacock feathers and the sword and dagger [of the raja] will be kept at a place near
the Lions Gate. He will be allowed to take his big fan and other necessary articles of
prestige with him. After being carried over the seven steps of the batadvara of the
Jagamohana, all this will be kept near the Jaya Vijaya Gate [inside the temple
compound]. He will worship at the Jaya Vijaya Gate. Entering [the sanctum sanctorum]
he will have darsan. Then he will perform the golden camara seva. After this he will
come through the inner southern gate and after having had darsan of the ‘side deities’
(parsva devata) he will go out through the Lion’s Gate.?’

As has been shown elsewhere in greater detail,”* the Khurda rajas had a wide
range of different ritual privileges at their disposal, which they granted according
to the position of their princely recipients, their loyalty and the support the
Khurda rajas received or expected from them. The rajas of neighbouring Ranpur
for instance had the privilege of the ‘dagger and sword service’ (curi-khanda
seva), carrying these weapons whenever Jagannatha proceeds ritually for
hunting. Particularly fascinating is the hierarchy of these privileges. Thus only
few princely visitors got the permission to use a camara whisk with a golden
handle in front of Lord Jagannatha, whereas others had to fan with a silver or
only cotton handle. A particular criterion of distinction was the display of
one’s own ‘royal’ paraphernalia not only in Puri but also onto the outer Lion’s
Gate or even onto an inner gate of the temple. Another very rare privilege was
the visit together with the womenfolk to the temple after it had been vacated
(sodha) from pilgrims and priests. Most likely greatest was the privilege to
act during the visit of Puri as an administrator (pariksa) or even head
administrator (adipariksa) of the Jagannatha temple.

The complete collection of Madala Panji temple archive material of about 15,000
palm-leaves has been donated to the Orissa State Museum in August 1974; see H. Kulke
1987. The edition and translation of its chamu citaus is at present prepared jointly with
G.N. Dash and S.K. Panda.
27Letter MP, 4, 16, 4R.
*H. Kulke 1992b.
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA 67

The grant of these privileges primarily intended to reconfirm and strengthen

the precarious position of the Khurda rajas. But, on the other hand, they also
enhanced the reputation of their princely recipients. The participation in royal
rituals of Jagannatha and the grant of special privileges by the Gajapatis, the
highest authorities of Orissan society, elevated their status in their own local
society and in the competition with the rulers of other Feudatory states. These
ritual privileges enhanced the recognition and validation of their seats as
‘centres out there’.

THE ‘ROYAL PANTHEON’ OF THE FEUDATORY STATES

As shown in greater detail by N. Gutschow and C. Mallebrein in this volume,

another essential parameter of a ‘centre out there’ is its ‘royal pantheon’. It
forms the kernel of the dynastic ritual policy of the Feudatory states and their
identities. It consists of a synthesis of several distinct but closely linked layers
of various deities and is the result of a protracted stepwise development of
several centuries. Most significant for Orissa’s Feudatory states is the elevation
and integration of powerful tribal godesses.” As has already been pointed out,
this process had already begun under the early samanta predecessors of the
late medieval Garhjat Mahals. It is documented by inscriptions since mid-first
millennium CE when Raja Lokavigraha worshipped the ‘Lady of the Jewel
Serpent’ (maninagesvari) in the form of a flat round stone (chata pathara) on
top of the Manigaga hill near Ranpur and when Raja Tustikara in the Sonepur
region was praised as a devotee of the ‘Lady of the (wooden) Pillar’
(stambhesvari-pada-bhakta).”
The more recent ‘royal chronicles’ (rajabamsabali) of the Feudatory states
associate the foundation of the dynasties and their ‘capitals’ with the integration
of three different types of tutelary deities into the royal pantheon.*' The pristine
deity is often of purely local origin and reminds one of the many village
goddesses (grama devata) of Orissa. Several traditional accounts” relate the
sacrifice of tribesmen or woman by the legendary founders of their respective
dynasties. Their heads were worshipped as ‘martyr istadevatas’ or tutelary
deities near the palace gate in the form of an unhewn stone.*’ A good example
is the legend of Sabaruni, a pregnant Sabara woman in Baramba. According
to the dynastic history of Baramba of the early twentieth century, Sabaruni
met Hatakesvara Raut, the legendary founder of Baramba, at the place of his
future ‘capital’. When she told him about the great miracles of this place,

29C. Mallebrein and N. Gutschow in the present volume; for further details see Eschmann
1978; Kulke 1979, 17-26 and 1992a and C. Mallebrein 1999, 2004b and 2007.
30S.N. Rajaguru 1950.
3'For greater detail see Kulke 1992a and C. Mallebrein 2007.
32This term was introduced into Orissan studies by G.N. Dash for the various anonymous
local accounts.
3Kulke 1992, 65-7.
68 HERMANN KULKE

Hatakesvara told her: ‘I shall cut off your head and you will become our
thakurani. We shall keep your head and worship it.’** Other examples are
Dhenka Sabara whose head (munda) is worshipped outside the palace of
Dhenkanal as Sabara Dhenka Munda* or a dhobi (washerman) whose head is
worshipped as Dhobei Guru near the old fort of Banki. All legendary accounts
report that the victims agreed to be sacrificed under the condition to be
worshipped. The irregular rituals of these ‘martyr istadevatas’ are performed
not by royal Brahmans but by members of neighbouring tribes and by local
low caste Hindus.
At the centre of the royal pantheon of most Feudatory states of Orissa is a
thakurani of tribal origin, worshipped at her place of origin in an unhewn
stone, mostly decorated by some anthropomorphic features like silver eyes
and a small sari-like cloth. As the locally most powerful manifestation of
divine presence of the state, she represents its veritable overlord and symbolizes
the unifying link between the raja and the people, as both are her subjects. Her
trans-local power validates the profane and sacred power emanating from
the emerging ‘centre out there’ into its hinterland. Famous examples are
Maninagesvari at Ranpur, Bhattarika, the Great Mother (bada amba) at
Baramba, Charchika at Banki, Hingula at Talcher and Samalai at Sambalpur,
all of them belonging to the ‘Eight Mothers’ (ashta-matrika) of Orissa. Aithough
none of them can claim to be as ‘old’ as Maninagesvari, local traditions relate
that they all existed long before the legendary foundation of their respective
patron dynasties. In most cases their founders ‘discovered’ them under
miraculous circumstances outside their ‘capitals’ and acknowledged them as
their great tutelary deities. But they were too powerful and obviously also
somewhat too dangerous to be fully appropriated by the palace. Usually they
remain at their place of origin where they continue to be worshipped by their
tribal or low caste priests (e.g. malik or gardeners). At the palace they are
represented by ‘mobile images’ (calanti pratima), usually in the form of
beautiful bronze images of Durga-Mahishasuramardini, worshipped by the
royal rajguru.
Local legends explain why such famous tutelary goddesses like Bhattarika
of Baramba are worshipped in temples at their places of origin in unhewn
pieces of rock whereas in the palaces they are manifested by bronze images
of Durga. As in the case of Bhattarika, an often occurring explanation is that
their allegedly original bronze idols had once been stolen and, after their
miraculous rediscovery, had been ‘re-installed’ in the palaces for safety
reasons.*° During the most important royal festival, the annual Durgapuja, the

“Badamba Rajavamsara Itihasa, manuscript in possession of K.K. Pattanayak,

Cuttack.
*R. Nanda 1929, 23.
*°See B. Schnepel 2003. These legends may be regarded as a kind of Hinduization, of
tribal images by explaining and elevating their original stone images. A similar case are
the heaps of stones which are worshipped in many places as Sivalinga in the form of ‘self-
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA. | - 69

“mobile images’ (calanti pratima) are accompanied by the raja and his rajaguru
to their ‘place of origin’, transforming their kshetra into an arena of royal
performance, attended likewise by rulers and the ruled.*’
As a third category of deities of tribal origin in the royal pantheon ‘subsidiary
tutelary deities’ should be mentioned at least shortly. They are powerful local
goddesses in the border regions of these states. These thakuranis legitimate
the authority of the central rulers over the tribes of these distant regions through
their temporary integration into royal rituals. Since their places of origin are
often far away from the royal centre they are, usually only once a year during
Durgapuja, carried by their local devotees to the royal court where they are
well received and treated before they return with presents. Good examples are
Khila Munda of Ranpur™ and Mahakali in Baramba’s border region with
neighbouring Narsinghpur. A most fascinating recent example of the rise of ©
a formerly subsidiary deity of a Feudatory state is the famous Tarini at Ghatgaon,
located in the jungle at the original border of Keonjhar. Her roadside tribal
kshetra has become a genuine centre out there within the last two decades
with hundreds of daily pilgrims, several temples, guest houses and daily
markets.”
The ritual integration of these powerful thakuranis into the royal pantheon,
and the network of their ritual relations with the hinterland and the border
regions can be regarded as a most essential mode of socio-political integration
of the Feudatory states and the emergence of their subregional traditions and
identities. As well documented and illustrated in this volume by N. Gutschow
this ritual integration with a clear focus on the royal centre is most genuinely
performed in Ranpur during Pancadolayatra, when the mobile images of 108
deities from all over the state congregate in small portable shrines on Ranpur’s
ceremonial ground around its tutelary deity Maninagesvari.

TOWN-PLANNING AND THE ‘CAPITALS’

OF THE FEUDATORY STATES

Town planning is yet another indicator of the emergence of a ‘centre out there’.
The rise from the seat of a local, mostly tribal, chief to the ‘royal capital’ of
a Feudatory state was strongly linked with the ritual policy of its rulers. As
this aspect the emergence of a ‘centre out there’ is depicted in detail by the
development of Ranpur in N. Gutschow’s paper in this volume, only few more

created linga’ (svayambhu linga), most famous of them being Lingaraja in his monumental
temple at Bhubaneswar. The legend of the ‘lost’ beautiful image of Nilamadhava as the
original image of Jagannatha and his miraculous resurrection in a wooden image (daru
devata) may have to be explained in the same way.
7B. Schnepel 2002, particularly Chapter VI, ‘Durga and the Dasara Festival’, 255-
92.
38See N. Gutschow’s paper in this volume.
39C_ Mallebrein 2004a; B. Schnepel forthcoming.
70 HERMANN KULKE

general remarks may suffice.” In their quest to raise their status and to extend
their royal pantheon beyond its tribal heritage, the would-be rajas and maharajas
of the Garhjat Mahals began a stepwise policy which has been termed as
Ksatriyaization and Hinduization. Ksatriyaization comprises various efforts
of the Garhjat rulers to elevate their social position by emulating symbols of
Hindu kingship in order to gain the status of Ksatriyas.*' Hinduization refers
in this context primarily to the metamorphosis of tribal thakuranis into Hindu
deities, as manifested most prominently in the rise of the cult of Jagannatha.*
In the course of the transformation of Garhjat Mahals into Feudatory states,
both processes met in the endeavour of their rulers to create their own veritable
‘centres out there’ through imitation of or even competition with Khurda and
Puri, the seats of the Gajapatis and Jagannatha, Orissa’s veritable centres of
the profane and sacred domain. This quest lead to the settlement of Brahmans
in newly established sasana villages,“ to town planning with an axial road
like the bara danda at Puri, construction of temples dedicated to their Hinduized
thakuranis“ and other Hindu deities, particularly Jagannatha, and, most im-
portant, the construction of a palace at the bara danda near the Jagannatha
temple. The new palace-focused capitals with its temples and sahi-quarters of
different castes became a microcosm of the States.*°
This process started after the downfall of the ‘Imperial Gajapatis’ in 1568
and the temporary destruction of Puri’s Jagannatha cult. In competition with
the ‘local Gajapatis’ of Khurda, the rulers of Garhjat Mahals began, in most
cases for the first time, to build Hindu temples in their own ‘capitals’. Among
them were the first Jagannatha temples outside coastal Orissa.*° The construction
of the monumental Balabhadra-Jagannatha temple at Keonjhar in seventeenth
century as the greatest temple of late medieval Orissa is particularly impressive
and amounted to a ritual declaration of independence from Khurda and the
Mughal subahdar at Cuttack.*’ The astonishing proliferation of Jagannatha

See also Kulke 1980 and N. Gutschow forthcoming.

*'H. Kulke 1976. A special variety of this process in the Hindu-tribal frontier region of
Orissa and Chhota Nagpur is ‘Rajputization’, the attempt to achieve the status of Rajput-
Kshatriyas, see S. Sinha 1962.
“A. Eschmann 1978.
“For the ceremony of the establishment of a sasana village according to a manuscript
from Keonjhar see G.C. Tripathi 1981 and his paper in this volume. Whereas Puri’s sasana
villages are all situated in its hinterland (see G. Pfeffer 1978), in several Feudatory states,
e.g. Ranpur and Keonjhar, sasana villages are also integrated into the old township of their
capitals.
“Examples are the Samalai and Stambhesvari temples at Sambalpur and Sonepur.
‘SL.K. Mahapatra 1997, 902.
“°K.N. Mahapatra (1971) gives in his short survey mostly much earlier traditional dates,
e.g. CE 1485 for Ranpur’s undated but supposedly oldest Jagannatha outside Puri and
Cuttack which, however, may not be older than seventeenth century; see N. Gutschow in
this volume.
“See G.C. Tripathi in this volume.
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA _ : 71

temple construction, particularly in the second half of the eighteenth century,

can be directly linked with the ‘new age’ of the Garhjat Mahals under the
Marathas and the increasing weakness of Khurda.**
The culmination, followed by the abrupt end, of a new period of palace-
centred town-planning in Orissa’s Feudatory states or Princely States (as they
were then called), were the high-days of British imperialism in late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. With hitherto unknown means at their disposal
the then also imperially acknowledged rajas and maharajas constructed vast
palaces in their capitals. Some of them competed with the rajas of Khurda
who had their new palace ostentatiously constructed near the Jagannatha temple
at Puri’s bara danda in the seventeenth century,” and built their new palaces
also near their Jagannatha temples. Ranpur,” Khandpara and Tigeria even
surpassed Puri as their new palaces were located next to the Jagannatha temple
or even in one and the same compound. Jagannatha and his annual car festival
(ratha yatra) had thus been fully appropriated by the Feudatory rajas, partly
side-tracking their great tribal thakuranis. After the Great War several Feudatory
rajas went a step further and built their ‘Little Versailles’ outside the old town
in the new township which housed also ‘the Station’ and cantonment of the
imperial power in order to validate their new status. Good examples of these,
in the context of Orissa, truly monumental palaces were those in Nayagarh,
Bolangir and Kalahandi. Due to the ‘merger’ of the ‘Princely States’ with the
State of Orissa in 1948/9 some of these palaces remained uncompleted (e.g.
in Nayagarh) or are now in a dreadful state of dilapidation (e.g. in Keonjhar
and Sonepur).

FEUDATORY STATES AS CENTRES

OF LEARNING AND LITERATURE

The systematic settlement of Brahmans in sasana villages and the construction

of Hindu temples near the seats of royal power transformed some of the former
Garhjat Mahal into genuine centres of learning and literature of trans-local
importance. This development, however, has not yet gained its due share in
the history of Orissan literature. In fact, in his standard work on the history of
Oriya literature, Mayadhar Mansingh entitles the section of the post-Sarala
Das age rightly as ‘Literature Goes to Feudal Courts’. But astonishingly he
states that ‘this age did not produce anything new, but just expanded what had
been started earlier’. And then we are even informed by him that ‘the voluptuous
courts found religious sanction for their bejewelled sensuality in the word-cult
of Gitagovinda and the decadent Sanskrit kavyas and the Krishna-Gopi cult
of the Neo-Vaishnavites; and both influences have percolated into the national

48For an excellent example of the history of a Jagannatha temple in a ‘centre out there’
during Maratha period at Dharakote see D. Pathy 2001.
“Kulke 1978.
5°N, Gutschow 2004 and in this volume.
72 HERMANN KULKE

consciousness of Orissa, with disastrous consequences for the national character

as well as national literature’.*!
The present volume contains three case studies which highlight the literary
contributions of Keonjhar (by G.C. Tripathi), Ghumsur (by G.N. Dash) and
Sambalpur (by S.K. Panda). As they depict in great detail the court culture
and royal patronage of Sanskrit and Oriya literature in these three emerging
Feudatory states, a more general study of the distribution of poets and
manuscripts in the Feudatory states may suffice in the context of this paper.
So far no comprehensive study exists on the rise of the Feudatory states as
cultural ‘centres out there’ vis-a-vis the traditional seats of learning in coastal
Orissa. But we can derive some revealing information from the manuscript
collection of the Orissa State Museum about the various places of origin of
its manuscripts and of their authors. Moreover, Kedarnath Mahapatra, the first
Curator of Manuscripts of the Orissa State Museum, provides in his Khurudha
Itihasa detailed surveys of manuscripts and their authors during the reign of
each Khurda king which contain so far the most comprehensive history of
literature of Orissa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.** They
are based on a systematic analysis of dated colophons of the palm-leaf
manuscripts which were at his disposal when he wrote his descriptive catalogues
of the manuscripts of the OSM* and the Khurudha Itihasa. Although the
statistical data derived from the manuscripts of the Orissa State Museum
provide only a random sample, they are nevertheless of great significance for
our delineations about the rise of the Feudatory states as centres of learning
in the eighteenth century, particularly in its second half under the Marathas
(1751-1803).
According to Mahapatra altogether 34 Oriya poets were known during the
reign of the three Khurda rajas Divyasimha, Harekrishna and Gopinath who
ruled for 39 years from CE 1688-1727. Out of them 25 (or 73 per cent) still
belonged to the traditional seats of learning in coastal Orissa, whereas only 9
(or 27 per cent) came from the Garhjat Mahals.** Their share, however, more
than doubled during the following long reign of Virakesari who ruled from
1737-93, thus covering the greater part of the Maratha rule in Orissa. During
these years, out of altogether 58 Oriya poets, which Mahapatra was able to
trace during this time, 39 (or 68 per cent) belonged the Garhjat Mahals.*°
During the Maratha period the coastal region with Puri and its famous
Brahman sasana villages had obviously lost its cultural hegemony as even the

5'M. Mansinha 1962, 108-9.

°K.N. Mahapatra 1969.
°3K.N. Mahapatra 1958-63.
*K.N. Mahapatra 1969, 137-80.
*Chikiti (7), Jarada and Jeypore (each 4), Parlakhimedi, Badakhimedi, Dharakote and
Baramba (each 3), Ghumsur (2), Nayagarh, Banki, Khallikote, Athgarh, Tarala, Sambalpur,
Mayurbhanj, Dhenkanal, Angul and Huma (each 1); see K.N. Mahapatra 1969, 204-47.
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA 73

places of origin of Sanskrit poets reveal re emergence of the Garhjat Mahals

as the new centres of learning. During the reign of Virakesari out of 20 Sanskrit
poets, coastal Orissa produced only 6 (or 30 per cent), whereas 14 (or 70 per
cent) had their home in the so-called ‘tribal hinterland’ and its Garhjat
Mahals.*®
Particularly revealing is a comparison of the number of poets (of both Oriya
and Sanskrit) from coastal Orissa with those from its hilly hinterland from late
seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries. Whereas in the coastal region their
number more or less stagnated (increasing only from 25 to 27) during this
century, the number of their colleagues in the vana kshetras went up from 9
to 53 poets and thus by more than 500 per cent!
As for the manuscripts collections of the ‘centres out there’, G.C. Tripathi’s
detailed description of Keonjhar’s ‘Royal Manuscript Library’ provides in this
volume an excellent depiction of their growth and richness. To my knowledge
no other such detailed survey exists about other collections of palm-leaf
collections in possession of the former Feudatory rajas of Orissa. But a statistical
account of the places of origin of Sanskrit manuscripts which the Orissa State
Museum collected from various ‘centres out there’ until the early 1960s may
serve as a kind of substitute.*’ But it has to be mentioned again that this
‘statistical account’ is based on a random sample of the manuscripts which
former rulers of the Feudatory states had donated to the Orissa State Museum.
This, however, still seems to be the exception rather than the rule. For instance,
Keonjhar’s valuable collection of about 270 palm-leaf manuscripts is still
preserved in the palace and therefore does not figure in the following lists. A
catalogue of the still existing manuscripts in the ‘royal palaces’ of Orissa is
therefore a great desideratum. It would throw light on the great contributions
of the ‘centres out there’ to the culture of Orissa before falling into oblivion.
The first volume of the catalogues of Sanskrit manuscripts the Orissa State
Museum is particularly revealing.** Of its 257 listed Smriti manuscripts the
find spots of 17 manuscripts are unknown. Out of the remaining 240 only 115
(or 48 per cent) come from the traditional seats of learning in coastal Orissa,
whereas altogether 125 (or 52 per cent) originate from former Feudatory states:
Ranpur (60), Khallikota (30), Parlakhimedi (14), Baripada (13) and Athgarh
(Ganjam district), Bolangir, Kalahandi and Badakhemundi (each 2).
Taking into account all the 1,105 Sanskrit manuscripts which are listed in
the five descriptive catalogues,” altogether 424 manuscripts (or 38 per cent)
originate from former Feudatory states. Most impressive among them are again

%6Parlakhimedi (3), Khimedi and Banki (each 2), Athgarh (Cuttack district), Athgarh
(Ganjam district), Dharakote, Jeypore, Keonjhar, Baramba, Surangi (each 1); see K.N.
Mahapatra 1969, 247-67.
57K.N. Mahapatra, 1958-63 and M.P. Das 1965.
58K_N. Mahapatra 1958.
59K.N. Mahapatra 1958-63 and M.P. Das 1965.
74 HERMANN KULKE

Ranpur (136) and Khallikote (122), followed by Parlakhimedi (63), Mayurbhanj

(44), Sana Khimedi (18), Chikiti (13) and Kalahandi (10).
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Garhjat Mahals and their
‘capitals’ apparently had become not only important centres of learning, few
of them even surpassing the traditional centres in coastal Orissa, but also
‘centres of attraction’ for learned Brahmans. As shown by S.K. Panda in this
volume, a well-known example is Gangadhar Mishra. Born in a sasana village
near Puri, he was invited to Sambalpur where he wrote his famous Kosalananda
Kavyam ‘to glorify his royal patron Baliar Singh of Sambalpur’. The life story
of the famous Vaishnava poet Sadananda Kabisurya Brahma is particularly
revealing in this regard. Born in a sasana village near Nayagarh in 1737, he
spent, except four years in Damodarpur in Cuttack district, all his life at the
courts of Ghumsur, Daspalla, Chikiti and Madhupur, where he composed his
poems.°!
No survey exists of the altogether, certainly more than one hundred sasana
villages, in and around the capitals of the former Feudatory states which were
established primarily during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” But
from the fact that Keonjhar alone claims to have more than thirty of them”
and from its valuable royal manuscript library, one can easily imagine their
significant role in the development of the Feudatory states and their capitals
as centres of learning. As shown by S. Arp in this volume, the importance of
the sasana villages and their learned Brahmans increased further in the late
eighteenth century with the creation of the Yayati Kesari legend who allegedly
had invited ten thousand Brahmans from Kanauj nearly thousand years ago
to perform ten horse sacrifices at Jajpur.*% Nowadays most Brahmans in Orissa
regard themselves as descendants of these Kanauj Brahmans, a claim which
seems to be particularly relevant for the court Brahmans in the Feudatory
states. On the one hand, it enhanced the status of their royal patrons whose
tribal descent was still well remembered and, on the other hand, it distinguished
the court Brahmans more clearly from tribal Dehuri priests of the powerful
tutelary thakuranis of the royal pantheon.

FEUDATORY STATES AS CENTRES OF

SUBREGIONAL HISTORIES AND IDENTITIES

Another major feature of the princely and Brahmanical centres of the former
Feudatory states of Orissa is their ‘creative historiographical capacity’ and its
strong influence on the respective subregional identities. With its two dozen

Moreover Bolangir (5), Bhavanipatna (4), Kalahandi, Athgarh, Badhakhemundi, Aska

(each 2) and Nayagarh (1).
°'K.N. Mahapatra, 1969, 212-13.
For Puri’s sasana villages see G. Pfeffer 1978.
°°M.M. Mishra, 2003 and G.C. Tripathi in this volume.
See also §. Arp 2007 and H. Kulke 2008.
 THE FEUDATORY SPATES OF ORISSA ~— * 75

States (and several important ‘Estates’) with their own distinct local traditions,
Orissa is particularly rich in traditional local accounts and histories. A major
source of inspiration was the Madala Panji, Puri’s famous temple chronicle,
and its legendary accounts of Orissan history.°° Most common of these
traditional local histories are the dynastic or ‘royal chronicles’ (rajavamsavali)
which focus on the ruling houses and their tutelary deities. As a pedant to
the ‘little kings’ H. Frese coined the term ‘little chronicles’ for these
rajavamsavalis.©
Several dynasties of former Feudatory states still have their own unpublished
genealogies and ‘royal chronicles’ in palm-leaf or paper manuscripts in their
palaces or with members of their former ruling houses.” Only few palm-leaf
manuscripts have come to the Orissa State Museum at Bhubaneswar, e.g. from
Kalahandi and Ghumsur.® But the Orissa State Archives preserves in its District
Record Room and the Record Room of the former Board of Revenue a
considerably large amount of unprinted paper copies of genealogies and
vamsavali-like chronicles of Feudatory states, e.g. of Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar,
Seraikella, Kanika, Dhenkanal, Daspalla, Baud and Patna. The Oriental
Manuscript Library at Chennai possesses a considerable number of genealogies
and chronicles (kaifiat) of Feudatory states of South Orissa, e.g. Tekkali,”
Khallikote, Athgarh, Kimedi, Parlakhimedi and Vijayanagara, collected by
Telugu Pandits of Colin Mackenzie, the then Surveyor General of the Madras
Presidency, in the years 1814-16.”
As has been shown in greater detail in the case of the chronicle of Ranpur,”!
the royal chronicles usually consist of three distinct sections, (I) the mythological
section which links the foundation of the dynasties and the origin of their
tutelary deities with pan-Indian epics and Puranic traditions, (II) the legendary
section which associates through ‘invented traditions’ the history of the ruling
houses with regional legendary traditions of the great Gajapati kings and
Jagannatha and in several cases also with Rajput heroes of Rajasthan, and (III)
the historical section which deals, with a certain historical accuracy, with the
local history from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries onwards
until the chronicles were finally compiled (usually) in the late nineteenth
century. The three sections reflect three distinct but interrelated perceptions

65 A.B. Mohanty 1969; H. Kulke 1987.

66H. Frese 2004, 139.
67E_g. the Bonaigarh Vamsavali (to be edited by U. Skoda); Ranapura Rajavamsa Itihasa
(to be edited by B.K. Mallik in N. Gutschow, in preparation), Sri Jayapura Rajavamsavali
(to be edited by C.P. Nanda and G. Berkemer).
88E.g. Kalahandi Madala (OSM, No. Or. 123); Ghumusara Kabya (OSM, No. Or.
360).
6G. Berkemer 1997.
Local Records, Government Oriental Manuscript Library Madras; for details see Kulke
1987.
™B.K. Mallik 2008.
76 HERMANN KULKE

of the past: (1) the mythological section, depicting an assumed pan-Indian past,
(II) the legendary section, propagating a localized constructed regional past,
and (III) the historical section, presenting the remembered local past.”
The subregional identities of all important Feudatory states of Orissa are
thus a synthesis of local, regional-Orissan and pan-Indian elements. At all
these three levels, they are centred around local divine manifestations and their
miraculous interference into the profane world of the rulers and the ruled,
particularly the tribes. In regard to the emergence of the subregional identities
of the Feudatory states, the central sections of their chronicles are most
‘productive’. In a process of localization most of them incorporate Jagannatha
and the Gajapatis, the supreme sacred and profane Lords of Orissa, into the
legendary history of the Feudatory states. The legends of their benevolent
interference in the local life became the most important source or point of
reference of their still existing subregional identities. Thus, for instance,
Jagannatha himself selected Govinda Bhanja of Keonjhar as supreme General
of the great Gajapati king Purushottama for his finally victorious Kanchi Kaveri
war,”*? whereas he ordered Prataparudra, Purushottama’s son, to donate his
(Jagannatha’s) most sacred Madhava image of Puri to Uddhava, the raja of
Ranpur, who then introduced Jagannatha’s annual car festival at Ranpur.”
Similar ‘invented traditions’ are known from about a dozen other states.”
The interest of the Feudatory rajas in their own family histories got a strong
impetus in late nineteenth century in the wake of the systematic settlement
operations in all states. The Settlement Reports required short introductory
historical chapters of the states, usually with genealogies of their ruling
dynasties. In many cases these ‘histories’ and in particular the dates of the
royal genealogies appear to have been ‘reconstructed’ for the first time in a
systematic manner for this purpose on the basis of various local, regional Oriya
and pan-Indian traditions. The royal chronicles received a kind of imperial
sanction by their inclusion into the Gazetteer of the Feudatory States of Orissa
in 1910 by L.E.B. Cobden Ramsay, the first Political Agent for the Tributary
and Feudatory States of Orissa.”° This was an important step forward for the
validation of various local and subregional identities.
But their joint publication also disclosed for the first time various contesting
‘historical claims’ for superiority among Orissa’s leading dynasties. This in
turn led to a kind of historiographical contestation among these dynasties,
particularly between the Bhanjas of Mayurbhanj and the Chauhans of western
Orissa. They invited historians, some of them from Bengal, with the assignment
to enhance the greatness of the dynastic history of their royal patrons through
a peculiar blending of traditional accounts and ‘new histories’ based on later

”H. Kulke 2004, 48.

™M.M. Mishra 2003.
“BK. Mallik 2008.
>L.E.B, Cobden Ramsay 1910.
’°L.E.B. Cobden Ramsay 1910.
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA . | - 77

discovered inscriptions. A typical outcome of this ‘ordered historiography’ is

B.C. Mazumdar’s writing on Sonepur and the Chauhans of western Orissa
in his book Orissa in the Making published in 1925.” The late 1920s and in
particular the 1930s witnessed the publication of an astonishingly large number
of ‘histories’ of the Feudatory states, e.g. on Dhenkanal (1929),”* Keonjhar
(1932)” and Banki (1934),® followed by Jeypore (1938), Nandapur (1939),
Baramba (1940), etc. As textbooks of the schools of the Princely States they
were primarily prasasti-like eulogies of their dynasties. But as they incorporated
also all the local legends of rajas, thakuranis and their devotees, their influence
on the ‘constructed identity’ of the ‘centres out there’ on the eve of their merger
should not be underestimated.
Modern historians of Orissa usually treat these ‘dynastic histories’ of Orissa’s
former Feudatory states according to the verdict of the British government
epigraphist J.P. Fleet against the Madala Panji, Puri’s famous temple chronicle.
In 1895 he proclaimed in connection with the legendary Kesari dynasty that
‘everything related to ancient times, which has been written on the unsupported
authority of these annals, has to be expunged bodily from the pages of history’.*!
This is not the place to examine critically the correctness of Fleet’s statement.
What matters in our context is the deplorable fact that his historiographically
correct verdict as far as ‘ancient history” is concerned, ‘expunged’ also the
whole genre of local chronicles of the ‘centres out there’ from modern Orissan
historiography and, what is even worse, rejected them as important sources of
local identities.
The same is true in regard to the alleged Rajput origin of about a dozen
ruling houses of Orissa. In this case, too, an elaboration of this controversial
claim is not required. S.K. Panda is already exemplifying in this volume the
Chauhan dynasties of western Orissa, the most prominent ‘Rajputs’ of Orissa.
In the context of our delineations it is relevant that, as shown by S. Sinha in
his seminal paper ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India’,
Rajputization refers since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to widespread
social processes of the rise of formerly tribal chiefs through the imitation of
the Rajput model of Hindu kinship.*’ A major aim of this endeavour was the
creation of valid and socially acceptable stories of their Ksatriya-Rajput origin
which in turn became major ingredients of the identities of the “centres out
there’.

77B.C. Mazumdar 1925.

78R. Nanda 1929.
K.S. Mishra 1932.
8ON.R. Sarma 1934.
31H. Kulke 1993, 137.
82 According to Cobden Ramsay’s Gazetteer of the Feudatory States of Orissa of the
year 1910, altogether 13 dynasties claimed Rajput origin: Athmallik, Bonai, Kalahandi,
Keonjhar, Khandpara, Mayurbhanj, Narsinghpur, Nayagarh, Pal Lahara, Patna, Rairakhol,
Sonpur and Talcher.
836 Sinha 1962; see also H. Kulke 1976 and L.K. Mahapatra 1987.
78 HERMANN KULKE

Apart from the creation various kinds of traditional local accounts, it is

worth mentioning that the beginnings of genuine historical research in Orissa
in the 1940s took its roots not in colonial coastal Orissa, e.g. in the Ravenshaw
College at Cuttack, but in the much maligned ‘centres out there’, the Feudatory
states, particularly in Mayurbhanj, Patna and Kalahandi. It was these states
where most of the founder fathers of Orissan historiography, like P. Acharya,
K.C. Panigrahi, K.N. Mahapatra and S.N. Rajaguru, found their first engagements
as historians and archaeologists. Their efforts culminated in the foundation of
the Kalinga Historical Research Society under the patronage of the Chauhan
Maharajas of Kalahandi and Patna and in the publication of its Journal of the
Kalinga Historical Research Society, Orissa’s first genuine and well-edited
historical journal from 1946-50. Its last issue contains a sad story of the
difficulties it faced after merger of the states which reminds one of the
treatment of Indian scholars during colonial rule.* P.C. Rath, the Secretary of
the Society and co-editor of the journal, went even a step further when he
noted on its last page: ‘Such behaviour was not witnessed even during the
period of foreign rule.’®° In 1952 the Kalinga Historical Research Journal was
succeeded by the Orissa Historical Research Journal. Published by the
Government of Orissa, it became the genuine organ of Orissan historians. But
it left an aching void in the former Feudatory states from which they never
recovered. |

THE FEUDATORY STATES AS CENTRES OF RESISTANCE?

Let me conclude with a few remarks on the colonial period during which the
Garhjat Mahals finally turned into genuine Princely States and became veritable
‘centres out there’, although in quite different ways. Today many of them are
remembered as centres of an autocratic and semi-feudal system of oppression
and exploitation. Their image of ‘dark zones’ in the history of Orissa*®* is based
on the collective memory of various kinds of sometimes brutally enacted forced
labour (bheti) and on the independence movement when the National Congress
and its Prajamandal organizations in Orissa fought against the colonially
pampered Princely States.*’
There are, however, a few points which deserve our attention. A major
aspect of the history and identity of these ‘centres out there’ is the continuation
of their resistance capacity which we have already come across under Gajapati
rule. For a whole century some Feudatory states and their rulers resisted the
establishment of colonial rule, beginning with the Ghumsur raja’s refusal to
pay his tribute to the French in 1757 and ending with Surendra Sai’s involvement
in the Great Mutiny in 1857-8, India’s so-called ‘First War of Independence’.

“M. Brandtner 1999.

*SP_C. Rath 1950, 273.
6B. Pati in the present volume.
7B. Pati 1993; C.P. Nanda 1998.
 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA 79

But when we pass Khurda on the National Highway, we are taught by a sign
board that Khurda’s paik bidroha of 1817 was India’s first war of
independence.
The post-Mutiny conciliatory policy of the Victorian age towards India’s
Princely States did not fail to have its effects on Orissa’s Feudatory states. It
confirmed their rulers in a policy of regulated exploitation and luxury and thus
contributed to their final extinction through merger. Their mutation from
centres of anti-colonial resistance to centres of feudal or semi-feudal oppression
and princely splendour was supplemented by a Curzon-like colonial ‘benevolent
despotism’. Accordingly the spirit and direction of resistance in the Feudatory
states mutated from anti-British to agrarian unrest and anti-feudal and, one
should add, anti-modernization revolts which flared up in the second half
of the nineteenth century and then again in the 1940s in a large number of
Feudatory states.** The agency of resistance thus moved from courtly elites to
the subalterns of the villages and small towns. The peculiar meli-like rural and
tribal demonstration and resistance emerged in the Feudatory states decades
before similar developments began in coastal Orissa under the impact of the
Congress and Gandhi. But even during this time, the subalterns of the Feudatory
states bordering British coastal Orissa, such as Nilgiri, Talcher, Dhenkana!
and Ranpur, retained their dominant position as centres of resistance in Orissa,
a position which more recently tribes of the former ‘centres out there’ seem
to have taken over in their struggle against being opened up for industrialization
and globalization.

88Athmalik (1863), Mayurbhanj (1866), Narsinghpur (1878), Nayagarh (1849-52

and 1893-4) and Keonjhar (1867-8 and 1891-3), see J. Sengupta 2002, 216 and P.K.
Mishra 1983.

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Rajaguru, S.N. 1950. “The Kanas Copper-Plate Grant of Sri Lokavigraha Bhatta Mahasamanta’,
in Journal of the Kalinga Historical Research Society 2, 261-6.
Rath, P.C. 1950. ‘Conspectus of Actions of the Kalinga Historical Research Society’, in
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Ray, B.C. 1960. Orissa under the Marathas, Allahabad: Kitab Mahal.
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Sarkar, J.N. 1916. ‘The History of Orissa in the Seventeenth Century: Reconstructed from
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338-49.
Sarma, N.R. 1934. Banki Itihasa, Banki: Saraswati Store.
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 THE FEUDATORY STATES OF ORISSA 83

——2003. ‘The Stolen Goddess: Ritual Enactments of Power and Authority in Orissa’,
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 CHAPTER 4

The Transformation of a Tribal State

into a Centre of Regional Culture:
The Case of the Bhanjas of Keonjhar

GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

LEGENDARY HISTORY OF THE BHANJA FAMILY OF KEONJHAR

According to the traditional records of the history of Keonjhar, the state was
founded in the early twelfth century (CE 1128) by a young prince of the
Bhajija family called Jyotibhafija, younger brother of Adibhaiija, the ruler of
Khijjinga-Mandala, whose royal seat is identified with the modern Khijjing
in Mayurbhanj district. These two brothers are said to be the sons of Kotta-
bhanja, perhaps the first powerful ruler of the Bhafija line of Khijjiga, under
whom the Bhafijas expanded their territory and rose from an insignificant
local power to a strong regional power. All the early copper-plate inscriptions

of their dynasty, who was born into the family of Virabhadra, the founder of
the first (i.e. the oldest) family, indeed the very tribe of the Bhafijas. This
Virabhadra had become a mythical figure in the times of the Bhanja kings and
is believed to have been born out of (i.e. ‘breaking open’ or bhanj) the egg of
a peahen (mayiara) by the grace of Lord Siva in the penance grove (@§rama)
of the sage Vasistha, which was known as KottaSrama. The child was then
reared by the sage Vasistha.' He founded a dynasty which produced rulers of
this region, into whose line was born King Kotta-bhafija, who was well known
for his might and was a ‘firebrand for the forest of his enemies’. He is also
glorified with adjectives like ‘brave’, ‘pure’ and ‘humble’ (Sarah, Sucih,

'Cf. the following traditional verses found at the beginning of a number of copper-plate
grants of the Bhafijas, collected and annotated by Snigdha Tripathy as vol. 6 of the
Inscriptions of Orissa (published by the Orissa State Museum, Bhubaneswar, 1974):
Asit kotya[{kotta] Sramamahatapovanadhisthane |
mayurandam bhittva ganadando virabhadrakhyah \\
pratipaksanidhanadakso vasisthamunipalito nrpatih |
In a number of copper-plate grants, the kings of the Bhafija family, especially Ranab-
hafijadeva, describe themselves as andajavamSaprabhavah.
86 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

vinitah), as well as ‘self-respecting’, ‘generous’ and ‘compassionate’ (mani,

tyagi, adandakah).”
However, no mention of Jyotibhaiija—who, according to local records, is
said to have ruled from 1128 to 1158—as yet been found in any of the copper-
plate grants of the Bhajijas. Jyotibhafija is said to have been kidnapped as a
small boy from the royal palace of Khijjing by some Bhuiyan chieftains who
were finding it too burdensome and tiring to go all the way to Mayurabhanja—
the seat of royal power—crossing the Vaitarani River to hand over their taxes
or seek justice. According to the legend, this boy was reared by the Bhuiyan
tribals and was left to socialize freely with the young tribal women, from
whom a large number of children were subsequently born, who in distinction
from others called themselves ‘Rajakuli Bhuiyans’ (i.e. Bhuiyans belonging
to the royal family). Later the Bhuiyan chieftains arranged the marriage of
Jyotibhafija with Princess Ksiroda of Pallahera. Jyoti’s father (Kottabhanija,
according to local tradition) was greatly pleased to learn about the safe existence
of his son and sent his elder son, Adibhafija, to meet him. The two brothers
greeted each other with great fraternal affection at Vaitarani, where Adibhafija
founded a village named after him (Adipur), on the north-eastern bank of
Vaitarani, after which, a few years later, Jyoti also founded a village on the
exact opposite (south-west) bank of the river. Adipur has yielded a number of
copper-plate grants of the Bhajijas.?
The inscriptions of the Bhafijas, however, do not explicitly refer to any
‘Adibhafija’ as the proper name of any king. It is, in fact, only the expression
‘Adibhafijavam$a’ (perhaps to be understood as Adi-bhafijavaméSa, i.e. ‘the
first, original, or oldest line of the Bhajfijas’ and not as Adibhafija-vaméa, i.e.
the family line of [the King] Adibhafija) which is referred to and in which
Kottabhafija is said to have been born later. The mention of an elder brother
of Jyotibhafija named ‘Adibhajija’ can only be understood as referring vaguely
to the first progenitor of the Bhanja dynasty, about whose particular name the
later writers of the chronicle of Keonjhar do not seem to have any clear idea.
It is probably meant only to emphasize that the Keonjhar dynasty is a genuine
offshoot of the original Bhajija line, parallel to that of Mayirabhaiija.
One of the partly mutilated inscriptions of the Bhafijas (i.e. the Kesari
copper-plate of Satrubhajija),* does seem to refer to Kottabhajija as ‘Adibhaiija’,
but if we were to regard him as the elder brother of Jyotibhafija, we would
land into great chronological difficulties. The donor of this plate is Satrubhaiija,
who called himself a son of Ranabhafja, the grandson of Durjayabhafija and
a great grandson of Kottabhafja. Now, since two of the copper-plate grants

?Tasyadibhanjavam§e ripuvanadavanalah balakhyatah |

Sirah Sucir vinitpo jatah $rikottabhanijakhyah \\
(v. 1. mani tyagi adandakah khydatah)
*See, for example, Tripathy 1974, Plates 4, 5 and 11 of the Inscriptions of Orissa,
vol. 6.
*Vide Copper-plate Grant No. 6 in the /nscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6.
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TRIBAL STATE — 87

of Ranabhanja can be dated with certainty to CE 924 and 929 respectively, on

account of his mentioning Bhauma Era 188 and 193 as the years in which they
were issued, it is certain that Kottabhafija cannot have lived later than the
middle of the ninth century (i.e. around CE 850), in which case this would not
tally with the dates of the foundation of the city of Keonjhar, which is reported
to have taken place in CE 1128.
The only historically important and relevant fact that we can glean from
this legend is that the central area of the present Keonjhar state was carved
out of the kingdom of Khijjinga-Mayirabhaiija in the twelfth century. Whether
. this was done deliberately by the Imperial Gangas, who had occupied the
throne of Orissa a few years earlier (CE 1 1 12), by truncating Khijjinga Mandala
for strategic reasons, i.e. to create a friendly buffer state towards the north of
their empire, or whether it came into being out of its own political dynamics,
is not known. But the reason does not seem to be internal feud or enmity
between the brothers, given that the political relationship between the two
houses of Mayirabhafija and Keonjhar were always very cordial and on some
occasions, when in one of these states a king died without issue, a child from
the other state was adopted as the heir to that throne (e.g. Vamadeva Bhajija
of Maytrabhafija was adopted as heir to the throne of Keonjhar in CE 1246).
In the early nineteenth century, Janardana Bhafija (1792-1831) of Keonjhar
even had to wage three wars against Mayirabhafija to thrust his younger
brother on the throne when the three childless widows of its departed king
expressed their reluctance to accept a prince of the Keonjhar line as their suc-
cessor. Keonjhar also once provided an heir to the state of Ghumsur in the
early thirteenth century, this being the same line into which was later born the
most illustrious of all Oriya poets of the pre-British period, namely, Upen-
drabhafijadeva.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE BHANJAS

The history of the Bhafija dynasty goes back to the fourth and fifth centuries
at least, when we find the image of a Nataraja with a three-line Sanskrit in-
scription donated by one Satrubhaiija on its pedestal, discovered at the village
Asanpat in Keonjhar, as well as an inscribed painting in a cave called Sitabhinji
(Sita Bhenji < Bhafiji?), situated on a low-lying hill not far from Keonjhar and
depicting Disabhafija or Digbhafijadeva riding an elephant. The inscription on
the painting mentioning the name of the king has been ascribed to a period
between the fifth and eighth centuries by different scholars basing their argu-
ments mainly on the palaeography of the script, which appears on the lower
right-hand side of the painting. Though paleographic considerations are not
absolutely reliable, since a particular archaic mode of writing may retain itself
longer in one region than in others, stylistically the painting in Sita Bhenji
also appears to belong to the late-Gupta or early post-Gupta period. Thus there
may not be any doubt as to the fact that the family of the Bhafijas has been in
Orissa since the early centuries of the Christian Era and that remarkably, they
88 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

have been able to preserve their identity until today. The unusually vast area
of their settlement is also amazing. Copper-plate grant No. 1 of this dynasty,
issued in CE 924, included in the Inscriptions of Orissa Pt. VI, was discovered
in Singhbhum district, Bihar (now Jharkhand), which was situated, according

On the one hand, we have inscriptions from Suvarnapura (Sonepur) issued in

the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries,’ and kings like Ranabhafijadeva II claim
to enjoy the grace of the goddess StambheSvari, which connects them un-
mistakably with the city of Sonepur on the western borders of Orissa. On
the other hand, a large number of copper-plate grants still exist, which were
issued from Vafijulavak in the Ganjam region, in the extreme south of Orissa,°
in the same period. In Copper-plate grant No. 44, issued from Banatumba,
Ganjam, by Nettabhafja of the Drumaraja family, the king claims that his
dynasty has been on the throne for ninety-nine generations and that his is the
one hundredth generation. It is therefore remarkable that such great authorities
as D.C. Sircar and S.N. Rajaguru assign the grants of Nettabhanja to the eighth
century on paleographic grounds.’ The same is true of Plate No. 41 of
Nettabhanja issued from Navangulakapattana. Both these plates are composed
in excellent Sanskrit. Ganjam district also produced the most prolific and the
greatest of all the poets of the Oriya language, namely Upendra Bhanja (first
quarter of the eighteenth century). From southern Orissa, the Bhanjas spread
westwards and occupied large tracts of the former district of Bastar in Madhya
Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh), over which they ruled until almost the present
day, the last king, Pravinacandra Bhanjadeva, being murdered in the early
1960s by his political adversaries.
The above-noted volume of the Inscriptions of Orissa, compiled by Snigdha
Tripathy, contains fifty inscriptions of the Bhafijas from the north, north-west
and south of Orissa, starting right from the eighth and ninth centuries up to
almost the fourteenth century. It shows that not all Bhafijas belong to the same
‘clan’ or gotra. Some mention the sage Vasistha as the first preceptor of their
family (vasisthamunipalitah), while others give this credit to sage KaSyapa
(e.g. the houses of Baudh and Daspalla). Though most Bhafijas claim to be
the descendants of Gana Virabhadra, the later Bhafijas of Khifijali Mandala in
the Baudh-Sonepur region never mention this. They would rather claim to be
Ksatriyas, descendants of the ancient solar dynasty of Ayodhya, and for still
later Bhafijas, their forefathers allegedly came from Rajasthan like the ancestors
of the rulers of Sonepur.* King Satrubhajija, who inscribed a few lines of

°Cf. Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, Pl. 42.

°Cf. Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, Pl. 24, 25, 41, 44, etc.
"Edited and published by S.N. Rajaguru in vol. 1, 265-70 of the Orissa Historical
Research Journal. Later included by Snigdha Tripathy in /nscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6,
no. 44. See also her remarks on p. 249 of her work.
*See the opening chapters of the epic work Kosalananda-kavyam of Gangadhara,
published by the Orissa Sahitya Academy, which contains a glorified genealogical history
 THE TRANSFORMATION
OF A TRIBAL STATE — 89

dedication on the image of Nataraja of Asanpat, claims to be a scion of the

‘Naga’ family.
The main period of Bhafija rule was from the eighth to the tenth centuries,
when they ruled as feudatories of the Bhaumakaras of coastal Orissa, some
even having relationships of marriage with the Bhaumas. We know from the
Talatali copper-plate grant of Dharma Mahadevi that King Subhakara Deva
V of the Bhaumakara dynasty had two queens, one of whom, Vakula Mahadevi,
was the daughter of an unnamed Bhajja ruler. The Bhajijas also used the
Bhauma Era of CE 736-7 in their records, the latest date appearing in the
copper-plate grant of ‘TribhuvanakalaSa’ Nettabhafija of Vafijulavak, which
gives 213 as the year it was issued, meaning some time before CE 950. In using
this Samvat, they were stressing their allegiance to the Bhaumakaras. It is also
possible that the Bhaumas and the Bhuiyans originally belonged to a single
clan, as Bhauma seems to be a Sanskritized form of Bhuiyan. This may explain
the special regard paid to the Bhaumas by the Bhafijas, who had chiefly
Bhuiyans as their subject.
Although, as already mentioned, the traditional account of the ruling dynasty
of Keonjhar starts in CE | 128, it is unlikely that Keonjhar was an independent
state at this time. It was most probably a town in the Khijjinga Mandala of a
branch of the Bhafijas that split off and established their capital at Dhrtipur.
Historians have not yet been able to locate this capital precisely, but it must
have been situated somewhere in the Baudh-Sonepur region, since a number
of copper-plate grants issued by its rulers (especially Ranabhafijadeva) honour
the goddess StambheSvari, whose famous temple is located at Sonepur, and
refer to the river Mahanadi. Dhrtipur witnessed the rule of four illustrious
Bhaiijas of this western line, namely: Silabhafija (alias Angadi), Satrubhafija
(alias Gandhata), Ranabhafija I and Digbhaiija (alias Disabhajfija),’ the total
period of their rule apparently extending approximately from CE 850 to 975.
After this they probably migrated towards the south (i.e. to Vafijulavak in
Ganjam), obviously under the pressure of the inroads of the Somavamsis, who
were also called KeSaris, coming from the west. They probably found it safe
and convenient to move towards this hilly tract in the south because there were
already a number of Bhajija royal families ruling over this region, as is proved
by the Banatumba plate of Nettabhafija, who declares himself to be the
hundredth ruler of his dynasty, and also because the rule of the KeSaris most
probably did not extend up to that region but was limited to the western and
coastal parts of Orissa.
Even if smaller principalities of the Bhafijas existed here and there in north-
west Orissa during the rule of the KeSaris, they could not have had good
relations with the SomavamSis, who had usurped most of their western

of the rulers of Sonepur-Patna. Also S.K. Panda’s paper in this volume and Snigdha Tripathy,
Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, ‘Introduction’, iii-iv.
9These Satrubhafija and Disabhafija are not identical with the donors of the Asanpat
image or the painting in Sita Bhenji respectively.
90 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

territories, as is evident from two copper-plate inscriptions of the first great

conqueror of the SomavamSi KeSari, MahaSivagupta Yayati. In the first copper-
plate, issued in his ninth regnal year, the king records a grant to a Brahman
hailing originally from ‘Silabhafijapati in Odradega’.'° The second copper-plate
grant, belonging to the king’s fifteenth regnal year, was issued from a place
called ‘Gandhapati-mandala, which had been annexed to the country of Kosala
(koSaladesa-pratibaddhagandhapatimandale)’."'
The Bhafijas who migrated towards the south after the conquest of their
territories by the KeSaris ruled in these hilly and forested tracts without much
interference from the latter, apparently peacefully and with absolute authority
from Vafjulavak for more than one hundred years until the arrival of the
Gangas from the south (CE 1112). A number of copper-plate grants issued
during this period in untainted Sanskrit bear witness to their peaceful and
prosperous rule. When the Gangas under Codaganga conquered coastal
Orissa from the northern part of Andhra and ousted the KeSaris, the Bhafja
territory fell between the northern and southern borders of the Ganga empire.
The only way for the Bhanjas to survive now was to ally themselves with the
Gangas, which they promptly did, continuing to rule as their vassals. Their
allegiance to the Gangas is indicated by the Kapoteshwar copper-plate of
Anangabhimadeva III (1211-39),'? which when read together with the
Antarigam plates of YaSobhafja'’ conclusively proves that the latter was a
feudatory of the Ganga sovereign Anangabhimadeva, since in these plates both
rulers claim to have vanquished King Jagadekamalla (alias Virapandyadeva)
of the western Calukya dynasty, whose capital was at Kalyani.'* This is taken
as proof that Yasobhanja fought for Anangabhimadeva as his vassal against
the Calukyas. The attribute of YasSobhafija ‘Samasta-khinjala-desadhipati’
(sovereign lord of the entire Khifjala region), expressed in this plate, should
therefore be taken with a grain of salt. It is also significant that the donee of
both these plates (Jagaddhara Sarman, son of Dharadhara Sarman) is the
same person.'* This Pandit seems to have migrated from the court of
Anangabhimadeva to Khifjalimandala and was patronized first by Yasobhafija
and then by his brother Jayabhaija.
After a few futile attempts to assert their suzerainty, the Bhafijas of Keonjhar

‘Obviously a town founded by the first ruler of Khifijalimandala, hence named after
him; Epigraphia Indica 3, 353; Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, xvi.
''Named after Gandhapati, the headquarters of the region, founded by Satrubhaiijadeva;
Epigraphia Indica 11, p. 96.
Published in Orissa Historical Research Journal 9, 19-29.
'3See Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, Pl. 38.
“Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, 37, edited first by Raibahadur Hiralal in Epigraphia
Indica 18, 298-9. The reference to Jagadekamalla appears in verse 5; cf:
tatsunurjagadekamallavijayi castangalaksmiyutah |
ksmabhrnmaulivibhusanojjvalamanivyagranghripadmadvayah \l
'SCf. Pl. 38 in the /nscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, 209-14 and Epigraphia Indica 19,
41-5.
 THE TRANSFORMATION‘OF A TRIBAL STATE - 9]

region similarly allied themselves with the Gafgas and were able to come to
power again in CE 1128 (as the traditional history tells us) to rule as their
feudatories, which gave them freedom regarding the internal affairs of their
territory. The Gangas too must have viewed it as an advantage to have them
as a buffer state, a sort of protective wall against any hostile attacks from the
north and north-west. The possibility of a parallel line of the Bhafijas coming
into existence as a breakaway group of the Khijjing royal line at Keonjhar,
with the active support and blessing of the Gafgas, cannot be precluded since
the Gangas must have been interested in splitting up the powerful kingdom of
Khijjing for strategic and political reasons. It appears that the relationship
between the house of Keonjhar and the Gangas remained, by and large cordial,
as is indicated by their uninterrupted and peaceful period of rule. However,
the Oriya (Prachi) Madala Pajfiji also records a war between Pratapa Nara-
simhadeva (1307-27) and the Bhuiyans of Keonjhar, which the latter lost very
badly. Since the KatakaradjavamSavali (Sanskrit Madala Pajiji)'® does not
mention this event at all, it is open to some doubt, though we cannot rule out
sporadic attempts by the Bhuiyans to regain their freedom from the central
power based in Cuttack.

GRADUAL DRIFT OF THE BHANJAS TOWARDS

THE CLASSICAL TRADITION OF ORISSA

Jyotibhafija, the first ruler of the newly established state of Keonjhar with its
capital at Jyotipur, was still deeply embedded in his tribal culture, but he slowly
started opening up to the mainstream Brahmanic culture of coastal Orissa and
is reported to have invited Brahman and Karana families from outside and
settled them in his first capital of Jyotipur. Later, when he shifted his seat of
administration to the city of Keonjhar, he took care to settle another group of
non-tribal upper-caste people around his newly constructed palace in the city
quarter called ‘Garh Sahi’. At the same time he did not give up his tribal
beliefs, but created a place of worship for the twelve ancestors of the Bhuiyans"”
and erected shrines to five local tribal goddesses (Andhari, Tarini, Dandadevi,

'6See KatakarajavamSavalih, Tripathi and Kulke 1986, 22, 78.

'‘7The names of these tribal ancestors, who are supposed to have sacrificed their lives
to establish an independent state of Keonjhar, are as follows:
Vir Malara Jaya Rala
Jhada Denga Jala
Bhim Malara Andhara Chora
Jantu Jhekua Kila

We are also told that they are worshipped everyday by the royal priest in the north-east
corner of the royal kitchen before the king is served food. Specific worship is offered on
the days of Rakhi Paficami (September) and Holi (March). In fact, the occasions are a sort
of ‘thanksgiving’ for the harvest and are called Nua Khia (eating of new [grain)).
92 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

Patadevi and Rangadevi), of whom the first was the istadevi of most of his
tribal subjects. The second settlement of higher caste people in the city was
done by his son Udaya Bhajija (1158-73), who on this occasion also invited
Khandayats (Ksatriyas), as well as Brahmans and Karanas.
After the Gangas had ceased to rule, the Bhafijas seem to have allied them-
selves firmly with the SiryavamSi Gajapatis (1434-1568). If the personal names
of the successors of Jyotibhafija are any indication, the Bhanja family was
shifting more and more towards the mainstream of contemporary religious
beliefs. Among the successors of Jyotibhanja, after following Jagatesvara, we
find in the traditional accounts names like Ananta, Dayanidhi, Narahari,
Vamadeva, Yadunatha, Gangadhara, Jagannatha, Sridhara, Srikara, Gopinatha,
Candra$ekhara and Trilocana, eight of which denote Visnu and four Siva.

THE HARBINGER OF A NEW ERA: GOVINDADEVA

The great turning point towards classical culture and Hinduism, however,
occurred in the reign of Govindabhaija, the son of Trilocana (1461-81), who,
because of some differences with his father, left for Athagarh, a dependent
state of Keonjhar, recruited young tribals there, gave them intensive training
in archery to improve their native skills and created a formidable troop of
archers. Making a correct appraisal of the current political situation, he dedicated
himself with unflinching loyalty to Gajapati Purusottamadeva (1465-97), the
most powerful ruler in east India at the time. According to the traditional
history of Keonjhar, he even took part as the commander-in-chief of the army
of Purusottamadeva in his second expedition to Kanchipuram (of the Kanchi-
Kaberi episode'® fame), helped Purusottamadeva win the battle, and brought
the images of Rama, Laksmana and Vanadurga from there for his people. His
contingent in this expedition consisted mainly of well-trained archers, drawn
from the tribal population of the Bhuiyans, who had been especially trained
for battle. It is said that these soldiers, elevated to the Khandayat caste, fought
in the garb of Brahmans, with sacred thread around their shoulders, so as to
enjoy maximum protection in the battle and were later called Mastani
Brahmanas (i.e. inebriated or carefree Brahmans; indeed, it is not unlikely
that, true to their tribal practices, they really fought under the influence of
alcohol!). Of these, Athagarh today has the greatest population. For his timely
help and loyalty Govindadeva was awarded rule of the Athagarh state by the
Gajapati, and also the position of honorary superintendent (pariccha/pariksaka)
of the Jagannatha temple.
Upon the death of his father Trilocana Bhafija in 1480, Govinda marched
towards Keonjhar and occupied its throne, presumably with the blessings and
active support of Purusottamadeva. This is the greatest landmark in the history
of Keonjhar, with which begins a glorious chapter of the transformation of

'’On the historical validity of this tradition, see G.N. Dash 1979,
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TRIBAL STATE 93

this tribal state towards the classical Hindu culture of Orissa. Govinda converted
completely to Visnuism and became a staunch devotee—though not exclusively
so—of Jagannatha. He caused an image of Madanamohana (i.e. Krsna playing
on a flute, representative of Lord Jagannatha during anavasara, when the temple
is closed for the annual renovation and restoration of the wooden statues) to
be fashioned in stone, set it up it in his palace and worshipped it regularly as
his istadevata. The former rastradevi of the state of Keonjhar was the tribal
deity Tarini, who was replaced by an image of Vanadurga. Her shrine was
erected in the north-east corner of the palace and she was renamed Tara, one
of the ten Mahavidyas of Tantric Hinduism. The worship came to be conducted
in a double manner—in the tribal manner by a Dehuri (tribal priest) and in the
classical Hindu manner with Vedic-Tantric mantras being uttered by the royal
priest. The worship of Madanmohana also came to be performed in a mode
which was a mixture of Sakta and Vaisnava practices, much along the lines
of the puja of Jagannatha.
Govinda Bhafja was the first ruler of Keonjhar to have established two
§asana villages (i.e. a village exclusively or primarily established for the
settlement of Brahmans), which he called Jayagovindapur and Viragovindapur,
and he invited Brahmans from all over Orissa to settle in these tax-free villages.
None of the rulers of the smaller independent states of Orissa had previously
done this except the sovereign and the chief ruler of Orissa, who at this time
was Gajapati Purusottamadeva—the main inspiration for this act and the person
whom Govinda wanted to emulate in every respect. He survived his model
Purusottamadeva and ruled for fifty-four years, until 1534. The previous
practice of the Bhafija rulers had been to grant the already existing villages to
Brahmans by making them a sort of landlord for collecting and enjoying the
proceeds of the revenue, as evidence of which at least fifty copper-plate grants
exist. However, the establishment of a Sdsana village had a particular effect
on its environment, helping immensely in spreading the classical Brahmanic
culture and learning, which was different in nature from the already inhabited
ordinary villages with their mixed populations. It is from these families of
§asana Brahmanas that the learning of Sanskrit and important classical
literature, i.e. the DharmaSastra, etc., spread out to Orissa and even to the
outside world. Since the time of Govinda Bhajja it had become a common
practice with almost every ruler of Keonjhar to establish Brahman Sasanas in
his name, some rulers establishing four, five or even six such villages.
One of Govinda’s memorable acts was also to accord a sort of Brahmanical
status to some of the clans (Chaudhury, Naik, Behera, etc.) of the “Mastani
Brahmanas’, the trusted soldiers of Govinda Bhafija, who were otherwise
reckoned as Ksatriyas. The commanders-in-chief of the army and of the king’s
personal bodyguard were chosen from among these Mastanis and were
eventually given an important role in the king’s coronation. These loyal
Brahman-Ksatriyas became Govinda’s greatest supporters and contributed a
great deal towards the political strength and stability of Keonjhar.
94 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

Govinda Bhajija was not only a brave fighter and a competent ruler but also
aman of learning. Besides a few bhajans, he is credited with having composed
four devotional works in Oriya, namely, Bhakta-vinoda (on the lilds of Krsna),
Rama-gathd (the story of Rama), Baula-carita (a collection of mystical poems)
and Sricarana-sudhanidhi (spiritual elevation through devotion to one’s own
Lord).
VireSvara Narayana, Govinda’s son and successor, is also reported to have
enjoyed a very long and peaceful rule (1534-91). However, Govinda Bhanja’s
grandson, Rudranaryana (alias Siva-Narayana, 1591-1654), established a
§asana in his name for which he brought learned Brahmans from Sdasana
Damodarpur near Puri. He appointed one of these learned Brahmans, called
Narasimha Misra, as his court Pandit, and the latter repaid this honour by
composing an allegorical Sanskrit drama with the philosophical theme of
Vedantic Jivanmukti and called it, after his patron, Sivandrayaniyam. This
was the first work composed in Sanskrit in the state of Keonjhar. Besides
establishing a Brahman Sdsana called Sivanarayanapur, he also created three
new villages in which he settled people from elsewhere, who mainly belonged
to the upper castes. The tribal character of Keonjhar was now slowly changing
and adopting the mainstream Orissan culture, which flourished mostly in the
coastal regions.

THE CLASSICAL REGIONAL CULTURE TAKES DEEPER ROOTS:

LAKSMINARAYANA AND HIS SUCCESSORS
The next king, Laksminarayana Bhanjadeva (1654-88), was one of the greatest
and certainly the most powerful Hindu king of his time. He had the courage
to challenge the governor (subedar) of Cuttack, although this ultimately harmed
the interests of Keonjhar. In his time, the cult of Balabhadra was quite popular
in the region watered by the Vaitarani River, using Balabhadra images with
quite different features compared to the image of Balabhadra in the Jagannatha
temple of Puri. When the most important of all Balabhadra temples, situated
in the village of ‘Pandra Gacchia’, was destroyed by the Mughal subedar, the
king constructed a new Balabhadra temple in his capital at a rather exorbitant,
not to say prohibitive, cost for a small state like Keonjhar. The construction
work of the temple started in 1671 (Saka 1593) and was finished in 1685. It
is the second highest Visnu temple in Orissa after the Jagannatha temple and
has a height of 90 cubits (hastas) or a 135 feet. Though the temple was originally
conceived only for the deity Balabhadra, when the construction was already
under way, it was thought proper to add the images of Jagannatha (Krsna) and
Subhadra, and to make the iconographic features of Balabhadra match these
in order to make it a new Purusottama temple for the state of Keonjhar which
could compete with the temple in Puri. For the consecration of the temple,
Brahmans expert in ritual performances were specially invited from Puri. This
king also founded another important temple to Dadhivamana (a single and
smaller image of Jagannatha) on the banks of the Vaitarani and with great
 THE TRANSFORMATION OFA TRIBALSTATE” 95

fanfare instituted the festival of Rathayatra for both temples, as well as a

Candanayatra in the river Vaitarani for Dadhivamana. It is clear that his aim
was to make Keonjhar a centre of religion and culture to compete with Puri.
Indeed, Keonjhar was now competing with Puri in every respect, and the raja
had no mind to be subservient and inferior to the raja of Puri.
In order to outdo the contemporary kings of Puri-Khurda, who were weaker
by this time, and to attain the status of such famous kings as Yayati and the
Gajapati rulers, Laksminarayana invited a number of Brahmans from all over
Orissa and further afield and established five SGsanas in his territory, all
carrying the name of the king, only prefixing adjectives like vira (e.g. Vira-
laksminarayanapur, two villages of the same name), Sri, vijaya and pratapa.
He also commissioned the writing of the Madala Panji of his state, to which
he gave the new name of Ganasammata (approved by the people).
Laksminarayana Bhafijadeva was also a man of learning. He established a
library in his palace and took pains to procure the best works of Sanskrit and
Oriya for his collection. The library of palm-leaf manuscripts in the state of
Keonjhar was one of the richest royal libraries in Orissa, and there was hardly
any work of literary, cultural, or religious importance of that time which was
not available in his collection. All the Vedic Samhitds and almost all important
kavyas and dramas of classical Sanskrit literature, epics and Puranas,
representative works of the Dharmasastra literature, all basic philosophical
texts, Ayurveda and veterinary sciences (e.g. Afvasastra, GajaSastra), works
on gardening, erotics, astrology/astronomy and all significant Oriya kavyas
found a place there, can be seen from a hand-list of some selected important
works in his collection, which contains 270 titles and was created by Pandit
Madan Mohan Mishra, the present court pandit and librarian, in 1973 for
private circulation.'? Although Laksminarayana Bhafijadeva’s successors
presumably added to this collection, the main collection certainly goes back
to his time, and the library itself was also known by his name for a long time
(later changed). That the library is really old is also proved by the fact that
although it abounds in works that were well known until the time of
Laksminarayana Bhafijadeva, it lacks many works composed in later times.
It is definitely worth mentioning here that when I was working on the rite
of Navakalevara and on the ritual of the consecration of the newly fashioned
Jagannatha images, all my sources of information were works procured from
this wonderful library of Laksminarayana Bhafijadeva. Not a single work of
this sort was available in the Pandit Sabha Library of the Jagannatha temple
of Puri. Works like Netrotsava-vidhi (on the final painting of the eyes of the
statues to bring them to life), Calafrimartipratistha-vidhi (containing a very
detailed description of the consecration rite of the wooden images of
Jagannatha), Rathapratistha-vidhi (the consecration of the chariots for the car

This list, originally made for the first Orissa Research Project (1970-5), is available
from the author or Hermann Kulke.
 96 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

festival) and the rare text of HayaSirsapaficaratra—the basic text for these
rituals—all these came from the library of Keonjhar. Laksminarayana
Bhafijadeva also seems to have had composed or collected from some rare
and now unknown sources the mode of worship of Lord Baladeva, his istadevata
and the main deity worshipped in the state temple of Keonjhar. Similarly
Baladevapija-vidhi by Y ajiiavalkya in this collection is a rare work not found
anywhere else and seems to have been composed by some pandit at the be-
hest of the king. The same might be true of the copies of the famous
Gop4alarcanapaddahati, etc., on the worship of Jagannatha, which had been
composed, or at least commissioned, by Gajapati Purusottamadeva in the
second half of the fifteenth century and which was a guide to how the worship
should be conducted in his Baladeva temple.
It is clear from the above that Keonjhar emerged as a new centre of Orissan
culture during the time of Laksminarayana Bhafjadeva and became a hub
of religious activities, which were in no way fewer in number or inferior
in character to what was taking place in Puri at the same time. There was no
looking back for Keonjhar thereafter, and since it was remote from the attention
and the evil eye of the Mughal subedars of Cuttack, which was always directed
towards Puri, it could continue its cultural and religious activities without
much hindrance or disturbance from outside.
Jagannatha Bhaja (1688-1700), the son and successor of Laksminarayana
Bhanja, is known for the Vacanika (conversation) between Laksmi and
Jagannatha after the return of the latter from Gundica.” The Vacanika is still
used today in the Rathayatra festival of Keonjhar. The cult of Jagannatha and
_ the religious practices of the Puri temple now formed a firm part of the Baladeva
temple of Keonjhar. Following in the footsteps of his father, Jagannatha Bhanija
also established a Brahman sasana called Jagannathapur.

THE CLASSICAL REGIONAL CULTURE AT KEONJHAR

STARTS ABSORBING ELEMENTS OF PAN-INDIAN CULTURE

The next ruler, Raghunatha Bhafija (1700-19), took a special interest in the
revitalization of Vedic learning, especially of the Atharvaveda, which had
declined deplorably in Orissa. There were still some Atharvavedins living in
the Ganjam area, whom he respectfully invited and settled in a village founded
especially for them, where he built a big water reservoir near Keonjhar. He
named the village after himself, as Viraraghunathapur or Upadhyayapur, since
most of the Brahmans he invited to settle in the village were teachers of the

In this poetical exchange of verses between the two, recited by their respective priests,
Laksmi accuses her husband (Jagannatha) of having left her alone in her palace and gone
out for a pleasure trip with her brother and sister. She does not let him in until he apologizes
and promises not to do it again (only for him to break his promise, of course, the very next
year!).
 THE TRANSFORMATION OFA TRIBALSTATE 97

Atharvaveda. From the colophons of a number of palm-leaf manuscripts

deposited in the royal library of Keonjhar, we learn that they were either written
or copied in Viraraghunathapur. With the Atharvaveda came also the tradition
of the ancillary literature belonging to the Atharvaveda, like SilpaSsastra, Vastu,
Tantra and Atharvanic philosophy, the kinds of works in which Orissa abounds
even to this day. Not satisfied with establishing just one SGsana, he went on
to found another two, called Sriraghunathapur and Vijayaraghunathapur, in
later years.
Until his time there was no important temple dedicated to Rama in Keonjhar,
and Rama bhakti was at its lowest ebb. The upsurge of Rama bhakti in north
India seems to have spread to Orissa too during his reign, influencing the rulers
and the public alike. Realizing this, he took measures to erect a suitable temple
for Rama at Vijayaraghunathapur and also placed the statue of Hanuman,
Rama’s most faithful servant, in front of the temple. He also initiated the
celebrations of the festival of Ramanavami (the birthday of Rama), which
lasted a week, with great fanfare. It is not impossible that his own name, an
appellation of Rama, might have inspired him to build a temple to this
deity.
Raghunatha Bhafija’s successor, Gopinatha Bhanja (1719-27), established
as many as five fasana villages, and his eldest son, the brave Narasimha
Narayana Bhafija (1727-36), even went a step further: not satisfied with
establishing just a village for the Brahmans, he also provided them with well-
furnished houses containing all household articles and servants, plus tax-free
land for cultivation.”' The only duty assigned to these Brahmans was to perform
sandhya prayers three times a day and to bless the king and thereafter his
subjects! Three other §Gsana villages of normal character were also founded
by this king.
The istadevi of the royal family of Keonjhar is Sridandadevi, who is
worshipped by the Dehuris with their own specific ritual. She too has a
prominent place in the royal palace. Narasimha Narayana Bhanja changed the
practice of worshipping the goddess from the tribal manner to the Hinduistic
Sakta manner using Sanskrit mantras. The aniconic form of the goddess was
replaced by a yantra which became the symbolical ‘Image’ of the deity. Animal
sacrifices to her were stopped and a great festival was introduced for her during
the Navaratra of the autumn, in which the tribal Bhuiyans, who had readily
accepted the Hinduization of the goddess, also started participating with great
enthusiasm. The tribal goddess now entered the Hindu pantheon and became
a form of Durga.
The king was also an avid reader of the Tantric literature. His study of the
Tantra told him that the appearance, i.e. the bodily hue of the goddess

21This information has its source in the traditional history of Keonjhar based on
Ganasammata, drafted in English by Pt. M.M. Mishra (unpublished manuscript).
98 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

Bhuvanesvari is red like the rising sun.”” Now, since Subhadra is identical in
nature and concept to Bhuvane$vari and is worshipped using the Bhuvane$vari
mantra, she should logically look like Bhuvanesvari. The king therefore
changed the colour of Subhadra’s image from yellow to red, as it is still the
case in the Balabhadra temple in Keonjhar, in contrast to the image of Subhadra
in the Jagannatha temple, where it is painted yellow. A Brahman Sasana called
Kamaladevipur was also established by this king in the name of his wife
(Kamala), or possibly by his wife herself.
Most of Narasimha Narayana’s successors were men of learning and culture.
Jagatesvar Bhafija (1758-64) was an erudite scholar of Sanskrit and a good
poet of Oriya. He wrote a work in Sanskrit on the ‘Science of Horses’
(ASvaSsastra), a copy of whichis still available in the royal library of Keonjhar.
His pathetic poem, a sort of elegy, entitled Mandodari Koili (‘Lamentation of
Mandodari’, on the death of her husband) is a gem of Oriya literature. The
next ruler, Pratapabalabhadra Narayana, was as great a warrior as a scholar
and a much more accomplished poet, with a good command of Sanskrit, Oriya
and Hindi, and he composed two kavyas in Sanskrit, some intricate citrakavyas
and a number of devotional bhajans. As a very devout Vaisnava, he made
liberal grants to the temple of Balabhadra, besides establishing three Brahman
villages. He is also given credit for having created an island in the middle of
a lake for the facilitation of Candanayatra. We notice that by this time, i.e. the
end of the eighteenth century, Visnuism was very firmly established in the
Keonjhar state, not only in the royal court but perhaps also among the common
people, tribal practices being more and more relegated to the background day
by day.
His son, Janardana Bhanja (1792-1831), is as famous in the annals of
Keonjhar for his heroic deeds as for his religious-mindedness. Not only did
he annex the territories of Bandhagadha Dandapat and Pandua Dandapiat, to
his kingdom, he also waged three wars against the state of Mayurbhanj in
order to thrust his younger brother Trivikrama on its throne. It is reported that
he was very liberal in his religious policies and never interfered with the
religious practices of the territories he annexed (e.g. he did not disturb the
worship of the tribal goddess Khanduri in Bandhagadha or of a Muslim Pir in
Pandua). He himself was an ardent devotee of Lord Siva, especially of
Visvanatha of Varanasi, besides having Sriraghunathaji (Rama) and Jayagopala
(Krsna) as his istadevatas, whose temples had been erected by his forefathers.
Local chronicles state that whenever he rode out on an elephant, he was
preceded by a moving image of Jayagopala on another elephant. He founded

Cf. (i) udyad inadyutim indukiritém, tuhigakucam nayanatrayayuktam/

§meramukhim varadankuSapasabhitikaram prabhaje bhuvanesim \\
- Durgasaptasati, opening verse to Adhy. 11
(ii) balarkamandalabhasam caturbahum trilocanam \
pasankuSavarabhitir dharayantim Sivam bhaje \\
- ibid., opening verse to Adhy. 13
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TRIBAL STATE. . 99

a temple for Ka$i-VisSvanatha in his capital, named his son Visvanatha and
obtained the ‘foot water’ of Lord ViSvanatha to moisten the hair of his son for
his tonsure ceremony. He also sent some of the priests in the Balabhadra temple
to Puri to learn the details of the daily puja ceremony in the Jagannatha temple
and introduced a number of new ceremonies in the Balabhadra temple like
Gitagovinda Seva (recitation of Gitagovinda at the time of laying the deities
to rest), Devadasi dances and the chanting of Samaveda. He established four
Brahman §4sanas, inviting mainly the Brahmans of Vasistha-gotra to inhabit
them, since the Bhafijas have the same gotra as them and the Ganadanda
Virabhadra is said to have been adopted and brought up by Rsi Vasistha. Like
his forefathers, this king was also well versed in Sanskrit and Oriya. He
patronized a number of scholars who composed quite a number of works,
including Bhafijamahodayam (containing the glorified history of the Bhafija
family), Gitasitavallabham (an imitation of Gitagovinda with Rama and Sita
as the main characters), both by Nilakantha and Smrtyarnava (a work on the
Dharmasastra), and himself authored a number of Oriya works, like bhajans
and a kavya titled Lild/ata. During his reign Orissa was conquered by the
British and Keonjhar also had to succumb to British forces, but he saved his
rule by entering into a treaty with the British according to which he had to
pay them a regular tribute.
VisSveSvara Bhanja (1831-8), Jannardana Bhafija’s son, is reported to have
performed a large Vedic sacrifice for the sake of the welfare of his subjects
strictly in the manner prescribed in the Vedic texts and observing all the
appropriate rites. For the proper performance of the yajfia he especially invited
two families of Agnihotri Brahmans from Jajpur to carry out the functions of
Acarya and Hota. The Acarya who was later offered the post of chief priest
of the royal family (Rajapurohita),” was also made superintendent of the
Balabhadra temple and was given the right to represent the king in a number
of religious ceremonies. ViSveSvara’s son Gadadhara Bhanja (1838-61) was
also a highly devout Vaisnava, on account of which he was made the Pariccha
of the Jagannatha temple of Puri in an honorary capacity by the raja of Puri,
this being a great honour. Having founded a temple of Dadhivamana at
Vaitarani, he also invited 108 Vedic Brahmans from Jajpur, even sending one
of them to Varanasi to pursue the intensive study of the Vedas, and upon his
return appointing him Brahma of this temple. Fond of visiting religious places,
he died on one of his pilgrimages to Bengal.
Although the subsequent rajas of Keonjhar were educated in English
institutions, they remained true to the traditions of their family and took an
active interest in maintaining and upholding both the traditions of classical
Hinduism and the tribal beliefs. It appears from the life histories and activities
of the members of the royal family that, although in their personal lives they

3The descendants of this family are still living in Keonjhar and occupy an honourable
position in the royal family. Pandit Madan Mohan Mishra is one of them and has been a
sort of Guru of the former raja.
100 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

were ardent followers of high Hinduism, they were equally devoted and
reverential towards their tribal deities and tribal practices. Their adherence to
tribal religious practices not only gave them a strong sense of a separate
identity, it also strengthened their relationship with their subjects, mainly the
tribal population of Bhuiyans and Juangs.

SOME SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE

CULTURAL TRADITION OF KEONJHAR

THE CORONATION PRACTICES OF THE BHANJAS

It is obvious that no king can rule over a country without being recognized by
the majority of his subjects and without their full support. According to the
traditional history of Keonjhar (which is quite similar to the history of the
installation of the first royal dynasty in a number of other tribal states), the
first king of the state of Keonjhar was a scion of the Khijjing royal dynasty,
who according to legend was kidnapped by Bhuiyan tribesmen in order that
they might have a king of royal blood for themselves. It is the Bhuiyans who
constitute the backbone of support of royal authority. The king worships the
ancestors of the Bhuiyans, accepts their gods (especially the goddesses) as his
istadevatas and shows his regard and consideration for them on each occasion,
and the Bhuiyans repay the king with their unflinching loyalty to the throne.
The Bhuiyans connected with the palace or serving directly under the king are
known as ‘Rajakuli Bhuiyans’ (i.e. belonging to the royal family), and it is
they who first of all hold the danda (stick, sceptre) and the chatra (umbrella)
over the prince when he is declared heir apparent. In fact, they have an important
role to play all through the formal coronation of a new king. But since the
royal house of Keonjhar has become more and more Hinduized, adopting
practices of high Hinduism, an interesting and unique situation has arisen,
wherein the coronation ceremony of a crown prince is done twice, first in
the traditional manner involving the tribal practices of the Bhuiyans, with
their active participation at their earliest convenience, without finding any
astrologically auspicious moment, and only thereafter in the Vedic manner as
prescribed in the ancient Sanskrit texts, and on a day and time decided by the
royal astrologer (pattajosi). It is interesting to note that during the Bhuiyan
ceremony of coronation the tribal chief of the Bhuiyans not only puts the tilaka
marks on the forehead of the new king but also carries the prince (heir apparent)
on his back, assuming the posture of a horse, for quite some distance in the
palace. The Bhuiyans also present a long knife to the king, after which the
chief of the tribe sits on the ground and bends his neck. The newly coronated
king touches his neck seven times with the sharp knife, denoting that the king
has full powers to punish erring tribesmen and that they are totally subservient
to him. This symbolic rite must have been a part of the original tribal coronation
ceremony, but with the royal house inclining more and more towards Vedic
practices, an elaborate Rajyabhiseka is also performed later, on an auspicious
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TRIBAL STATE~ — = 101

day, at an auspicious hour, both having been calculated and determined by

astrologers.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to describe the various rites of the
ceremony of Vedic coronation as performed in the state of Keonjhar. I have
dealt with this subject extensively elsewhere.* It may just be remarked that
this elaborate ceremony is minutely described in the work Rajyabhisekavidhi,
the manuscript of which is available only in the Keonjhar Palace Library and
which is fairly old (around two hundred and fifty years or so). It appears,
therefore, that the ceremony described in it has been performed for many
generations.” The work is a wonderfully compiled text, which takes into
account the whole written and oral tradition of the ceremony of coronation,
from Vedic times down to contemporary practices. Its excerpts and quotations
are taken from a large number of texts, ranging from the Vedas to the Smrtis ~
and Puranas.” This Paddhati*’ differs considerably from similar Paddhatis
available in older DharmasSastra texts and appears to have been prepared
specially for the coronation of the rajas of Orissa, if not particularly those of
Keonjhar, since it prescribes the worship of Kanaka Durga along with that of
Laksminarayana before conducting the abhiseka. The worship of Kanaka
Durga, whose shrine is found in the palaces of a number of Orissan rulers,
especially that of the raja of Puri, was a particular phenomenon of Orissa,
while the image of Laksminarayana, of course, represents Jagannatha and
Laksmi or Subhadra.
Further, the instruction that ‘after the bathing ceremony (abhiseka) of the
king is over, he should follow the practices of his country, his social group
and the customs of his gotra and family’ is very significant and seems to be
an indication of the recognition of the ancestral practices of the family of the
king and the customs of the local tribal population.”
It is also interesting to note the contrast in the spirit of the ceremony of
coronation organized by the tribals (Bhuiyans) a few days earlier and this

4See G.C. Tripathi 1991, 73-92.

25The Manuscript seems to us to be fairly old and we have the impression that it must
have been prepared some time in the first half of the eighteenth century. It is, however,
certain that the work Rajyabhisekavidhi is certainly older than 250 years because it contains
such a large number of errors and omissions that it looks probable that the work has
undergone a long process of copying and recopying. The Vedic mantras with which the
work is full, have suffered the most in the hands of the scribes ...’, ibid., 73-4.
26The text contains mantras and quotations inter alia from: Rgeveda, Vajasaneyi Samhita
of Yajurveda (both Kanva and Madhyandina), Taittiriya Samhita, Maitrayani Samhita,
Katha Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana, Visnu-purana, Brahmanda-purana, Bhavisya-purana,
Manusmrti, Yajnavalkyasmrti, Brhatsamhita of Varahamihira and Sukraniti.
277A text describing the procedure of a particular ritual, with its constituent rites and
mantras.
28 Tatafca kuryan nijajatidharmam |
desanuSsistam kuladharmam agryam |!
_.. svagotradharmam nahi santyajec ca \I
102 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

Vedic one, which is carried out by the Brahmans later. Whereas in the former
the leader of the tribe performs the function of a human horse (narayana) for
the king and the king touches his neck seven times with a sharp knife in order
to demonstrate his absolute authority over his kinsmen, in the latter, it is the
Brahmans who lend him authority to rule through their taporaSi (tapas, i.e.
spiritual power) by uttering a particular mantra drawn from the Rgveda (VI.
47.29),”° but at the same time they raise the horn of a black buck against him
in a gesture of intimidation, sounding a warning that he should not misuse his
powers or the authority thus bestowed upon him. This is a rite with an old
history going back to Vedic times and has been described in the Satapatha
Brahmana V.3.4.2.
This second ceremony of coronation along Vedic lines is a proof of its
subsequent and secondary introduction. The traditional history of Keonjhar
speaks of only one coronation of Jyotibhanja, the founder of the Keonjhar
dynasty, by the Bhuiyans in the tribal manner. That ceremony still exists,
though considerably shortened, being sandwiched between the other two august
ceremonies. They are:
(1) The formal declaration of the abdication of the throne by the king, or
the official announcement of his death and the investiture of the crown
prince along with the transfer of power, a purely internal, family affair.
After receiving the kingship from his father, the prince goes to the
family deities, the deities of the tribal folk on which he is ruling, and
the ‘Rastradevata’ of his kingdom, 1.e. Baladevayji in the great temple
and the goddess Dandadevi.
(2) The proper ceremony of coronation according to Vedic-Brahmanical
rites, which are usually performed either in the open outside the palace
in public view or in the main hall of the palace. This threefold investiture
is a good example of a tribal dynasty moving slowly towards the cultural
epicentre of a region which was the Puri-Bhubaneswar area and adopting
its practices, thus acting more strongly in its attempt to become a part
of the mainstream, though at the same time strictly preserving its identity
by observing its age-old practices.
It has been mentioned earlier that, from the time of Govinda Bhajija, the
Keonjhar Raj family started involving itself more and more in the political
affairs of the sovereign rulers of Orissa, which started with him (Govinda)
establishing a close friendship with the Gajapati Purusottamadeva and taking
part in the Kafici Kaveri event, as well as participating in religious activities
in the Jagannatha temple in Puri. With the passage of time, this led to

” Upa $vasaya prthivim uta dyam

purutra te manutam visthitam jagat |
sadundubhje sajirindrena devair
dirad daviyo apa sedha Satriin \\
iti taporasi pradanam \\ (cf. also VS 29.55)
 THE TRANSFORMATION
OF A TRIBAL STATE — . 103

competition with Puri, culminating in the construction of the dynasty’s own

Jagannatha temple, only a little lower in height than the temple in Puri, and
the institution of all the main festivals of Purusottama-Jagannatha for the
Keonjhar Jagannatha as well. A Gundicha temple was also built and the
Rathayatra was instituted, with Bhuiyans performing the function of the Daitas
in Puri. Proper and liberal arrangements were also made for other important
‘public’ yatras, like Chandanaydatraé and Snadnaydatra, etc. However, to have
an identity different from that of Puri Jagannatha, the temple of Keonjhar was
declared to be a Baladeva temple, and the elder brother was given more
prominence. The statues were made of wood, but were intentionally given a
slightly different shape, shorter than the Puri images. King Janardana Bhanja,
who ruled in the early nineteenth century, even dedicated his whole kingdom
to Lord Baladevaji, thus stepping into the footsteps of the Ganga king
Anangabhimadeva and ruling as his deputy.*° King Gopinatha Bhajija (1905-
26) then established a Dharma-niti-pradayini-sabha, its venue being located
inside the Baladeva temple, as an institution parallel to the Muktimandapa
Pandit Sabha of Puri. This consisted of learned Brahmans drawn from the
Sasana villages and it gave verdicts on a number of questions pertaining to or
connected with controversial religious and social affairs. It is interesting to
note that, upon his coronation, every new raja in Keonjhar dedicated the revenue
of an additional village to the deity Baladevaji, making the temple better and
better endowed over time.

ESTABLISHMENT OF SASANAS BY THE BHANJAS

The rulers of Keonjhar were very liberal in establishing revenue-free villages

for learned Brahmans, who were invited from all over Orissa, though mainly
from Jajpur, Puri and Ganjam. There are altogether forty-five Brahman Sasanas
in the state of Keonjhar, a number exceeding by far what the Siryavamsi
Gajapatis of Orissa and the later rulers of the Bhoi dynasty (of Khurda-Puri)
did for this community in their states. The practice of establishing Sasanas
started in the fifteenth century with Govinda Bhajija and continued till the end
of nineteenth century up to Dhanafijaya Bhafija. Many rulers created more
than one Sasana, and Gadadhara Bhajija (1838-61) was so enthusiastic that he
founded as many as six for Brahmans he had invited mainly from the Jajpur
area.
These Sdsana villages were established by strictly observing the age-old
practice of founding villages. One unique manuscript, the Sasanakaranam, on
the ritual of founding a Brahman village, is only found in the library of Keonjhar.
No other such text is known to exist elsewhere. Internal evidence indicates
that it was composed shortly after 1700, but it is based mainly on much older
Sanskrit texts on architecture and town-planning, which it quotes. The ritual

See M.M. Mishra n.d. b; with regard to Anangabhimadeva, see Madala Panyi 1940,
27. Cf. also H. Kulke 1979, 50-1.
104 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

it describes is entirely Vedic-Brahmanical in nature, with hardly any trace of

tribal practices. This detailed description of the method of founding a new
village, its layout, the position of temples and ponds, etc., the situation of the
houses of various caste groups and finally the details of the whole ritual which
must be performed in establishing a new village, provides an invaluable insight
into a domain which is not documented with such precision elsewhere. The
mantras for performing various rites of the ceremony have been taken almost
exclusively from the Vedic Samhitas of the Rgveda and the White Yajurveda
(Kanva branch), indicating that the Brahmans of these two branches were most
prominently represented in Orissa, and in Keonjhar in particular, at that time.
I give here the translation of some of its opening lines, which are quite
interesting:
A settlement of intelligent and noble persons belonging to different jatis is called a
grama, but if the population of the landowners in that settlement solely consists of
Brahmans, it is called an Agrahara [revenue-free]. It may be established with Brahman
families numbering as few as twelve or as many as one thousand, depending upon the
king’s resources. For this purpose one [i.e. the donor] should invite Brahmans endowed
with scholarship and noble character, those who are well versed in the Vedas and other
branches of learning; who regularly perform their daily Vedic rites after establishing
perpetual fire in their homes and, in addition, who are poor and facing hardships due
to the high number of children in their families. After inviting them, the Yajamana
(donor king] should honour them in the traditionally prescribed manner in accordance
with their seniority. The limits of the village should be clearly and unambiguously
marked, and the measurements and location of the land of each individual should be
very clearly defined, with detailed descriptions of their boundaries on all the four
sides.*!

We also learn from later in this work that the population of a §asana village—
contrary to the popular belief of the scholars—consists primarily but not solely
of Brahmans, since they also need the help of members of other social groups
and professions in their day-to-day lives, especially to till their land, supply
merchandise and do odd jobs in the house. The exact locations for the settlement
of the various social groups and the construction of the different temples are
described in detail in the work. The foundation stone is dug into the earth in
the centre of the village, at the intersection of the two main roads running
east-west and north-south, after invoking the deities Visnu and Laksmi at it.

*! Vipranam tu samastanam vaso grama itiritam |

anekajatisambandhinanavidvajjanair yutam \\|
Sa eva dvijasamjnanam agrahara iti sthitih |
sahasram uttamam ksudre [. . .] yathasakti tu karayet |
vidyacaravratair yuktan sagnikan bahuputrakan |
daridran vedaSsastrajnhan Ghiya carcayet kramat \\
Gramasimam viniScitya vayovidyam vicarya tu |
pramane nif$citam bhimim dadyac codakapurvakam |
Cf. Tripathi 1981, 59.
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TRIBAL STATE _ . 105

Most of the Sasana villages in Orissa today correspond to the description given
in this work.
The work sheds much light on the motives for and purpose of establishing
such a settlement, which must obviously have been to introduce classical pan-
Indian culture in the region and to acquire a sufficient number of ritual experts
to perform the puja and the other ceremonies in the temples and the palace.
We must feel grateful to the royal house of Keonjhar for having preserved for
us a very valuable document on ancient Indian village planning.

THE STRENGTHENING OF ROYAL AUTHORITY:

THE CEREMONY OF PUSYABHISEKA

One of the many other very old royal ceremonies of a religious nature going °
back to the later Vedic period is Pusyabhiseka, which has more or less vanished
in other parts of India but is still performed in Orissa, especially in the
Jagannatha temple and the palace of the Puri raja, but not so ceremoniously
or sO gorgeously as previously in Keonjhar. There is a text on this ceremony
in the personal collection of the raja family—now deposited in its library—which
gives details of the ceremony, a close study of which also brings to light the
special features of the Keonjhar version.”
The term Pusyabhiseka simply means ‘bathing [the king] on the occasion
of the full-moon day of the lunar month Pausa [which is conjoined with the
constellation Pusya]’. The aim of this ceremony is to reinforce and strengthen
the royal authority of the king year after year. The main part of the ritual
consists of a ceremonial bath (or rather the sprinkling of water) given by Vedic
Brahmans to the king with holy waters drawn from various firthas, while
simultaneously uttering the prescribed Vedic and non-Vedic (composed in
classical Sanskrit) mantras. It is thus a shortened version of the much larger
ceremony of Rajyabhiseka, in which only the main and substantial part of the
ritual (viz., the abhiseka) is repeated, all the other rites belonging to it being
left out.
The first extensive description of the ceremony of Pusyabhiseka is found
in the Brhatsamhita of Varahamihira (Chapter 42), composed towards the end
of the sixth century CE. The commentator, Utpala, talking about its origin,
remarks that once Indra (the royal power) became very weak and could not
conquer the Daityas (the evil forces), whereupon his priest Brhaspati (a
Brahman) strengthened him by means of his ‘spiritual force’ (Brahman) uttering
the Vedic mantras. It is therefore spiritual authority which strengthens worldly
or royal authority. Manu remarks in his Smrti (7.2): ‘After receiving the
brahmanic Samskara [i.e. having inculcated spiritual refinement in himself] a

32For a detailed study of this ceremony with historical and comparative perspectives,
see G.C. Tripathi 1996-7, 41-66.
106 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

Ksatriya should provide justice and protection to his subject according to the
rules of law.’*
The Pusyabhiseka ceremony of the ruler of Keonjhar has assumed a distinctly
Agamic character highly influenced by Hindu image worship, except for the
rite of abhiseka proper. For all these Agamic rites, however, Vedic mantras
are not only preferred but used almost exclusively. A perusal of the ritual texts
composed during the medieval period in Orissa unmistakably points to the
fact that there has been a constant and ever-increasing effort on the part of the
Brahman priests, right up to the eighteenth century, to lend a Vedic character
to their temple and personal rituals.
The most striking feature of the Pusyabhiseka of Keonjhar, however, is the
inclusion of the worship of the goddess StambheSvari in its ritual. As is well
known, worship of this goddess is widespread and quite popular in the western
part of Orissa, a region which must have been under the sway of the Bhanjas
from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, as a number of kings mention
themselves as having received the grace of the goddess StambheSvari
(stambheSvarilabdha-varaprasadah).* The inclusion of this goddess is a unique
feature of the Pusyabhiseka of Keonjhar. She is not invoked, for example, in
the Paddhatis describing the ritualistic ceremonies pertaining to the Jagannatha
temple or the raja of Puri and is understandably also absent in older works
like Kalika-purana and Brhatsamhita. Stambhesvari is invoked and honoured
as ‘Gramadevata’, i.e. as the tutelary deity of the village or town where the
ceremony takes place. She is addressed and praised as the “bestower of all
comforts, one who fulfills all desires and grants all mangalas (auspiciousness,
well being) to the worshippers’.
The Pusyabhiseka ceremony of the state of Keonjhar is thus a good example
of the acceptance of an age-old ceremony going back to a hoary past by a
Hinduized court in a tribal area with proper modifications corresponding to
local needs and contemporary practices.

THE INDRADHVAJA FESTIVAL IN KEONJHAR

The last and perhaps most important example of the adoption, assimilation,
and celebration of another festival by the Bhanjas of Keonjhar, dealt with here,

> Cf. Brahmam praptena samskaram ksatriyena yathavidhi |

sarvasyaiva yathanyayam kartavyam pariraksanam \|\
Manusmrti 7. 2.
The same idea is found in a number of verses in the Rajadharmaparva of the Santi-
parvan in the Mahabharata. Training in spiritual texts and the Dharmasastra was a must
for a Ksatriya.
** Among the rulers ofthe Bhafija dynasty, Ranaka Ranabhafijadeva of Khifijali-mandala
uses this expression very often. He is also the first to use it. Since he also styles himself
ubhyakhifijalimandaladhipati (sovereign ruler of both the Khifjalis), it appears that this
western part of Orissa came under the rule of the Bhafijas for the first time during the reign
of Ranabhafijadeva (with his capital at Dhrtipur). See Tripathy 1975, 67-100, Plates 14-19,
in the Jnscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6.
 THE TRANSFORMATION OFA TRIBAL STATE 107

related to what is most probably the oldest folk festival in India, going back
to Vedic times. Some scholars would like to believe that it even has Indo-
European parallels (for example, in the Maypole festival in Europe). This
festival was celebrated in honour of the Vedic deity Indra, the most powerful
god of the Vedic pantheon, and later the ruler of the gods and of heaven. The
festival is variously referred to as Indrotsava, Indradhvaja, Indramahah, etc.
It lasts for seven days starting from the twelfth lunar day of the Bhadrapada
month (around September) and going beyond the full-moon day. It is celebrated
in the open in the middle of pleasant natural surroundings, the centre of the
activities being a tall stem of Sala tree [Shorea robusta (Roth)] brought from
the forest and erected in the city in a highly decorated form. A number of gods
are worshipped in the different parts of this pillar, where they are believed to.
take up a position after their invocation. After the worship of Indra and the
gods is over, merry-making and festivities go on for a full seven days on the
occasion of the Indradhvaja. We know from references in the N@tyaSastra of
Bharata that the first ever Sanskrit drama was also enacted on the occasion of
an Indradhvaja festival.
The Indradhvaja festival seems to have survived only in Orissa and—outside
India—in Nepal. In Orissa, it is presently celebrated only in the Jagannatha
temple in a rather rudimentary form as a temple ritual. As such, it was a pleasant
surprise for me to learn that it was celebrated in the state of Keonjhar till very
recently, i.e. up to 1963, until the death of the last maharaja of the ‘pre-merger’
Keonjhar, Balabhadra Bhafija (1926-63). The significance of this festival can
be gauged from the striking fact that the siiniya year (by the Anka reckoning)
of the rulers of Orissa (now, the raja of Puri) starts from this very day. Elsewhere
in India, this day is not important as the beginning of the regional year, but is
associated with the birth of the Vamana incarnation of Visnu and is known as
Vamana dvddaSi. The state of Kerala celebrates the festival of Onam on this
day, when the great and mighty demon king Mahabali is supposed to return
to the earth in order to check whether his previous subjects are living
happily.
A work in the royal library of Keonjhar, called /ndrotsavavidhi, describes
the festival in detail. A comparison of the details of the festival as it is celebrated
in the Jagannatha temple and the town of Keonjhar would show that they each
have marked differences and their own older traditions. For example, whereas
the pole of the Jagannatha temple has a height of 25 cubits and is made of
bamboo, the Keonjhar pole is a Sala stem, corresponding to age-old tradition,
and has a height of 32 cubits with an additional 8 cubits under the ground. It
is mentioned in the records of Keonjhar that once, during the time of Balabhadra
Bhafija, the stem broke into two pieces when it was being erected with the
help of ropes, which did not augur well for virtually the last king of this
state.
The stem of the Sala stands in a hole, which is located at the centre of a
Sarvatobhadra Mandala. Two metallic images, of Indra and Visnu, are placed
on this Mandala beside this ‘standard of Indra’ and are worshipped properly.
108 GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHI

But before their worship can start, 63 Hindu deities (including planets, mothers,
etc.) are invoked in a water pitcher and are honoured. A homa (fire sacrifice)
then starts in which oblations are dropped while reciting Rgvedic hymns to
both Indra and Visnu. The standard is considered to be a sort of axis mundi,
and fourteen pithakas (packets) are suspended from it, symbolizing the fourteen
lokas (worlds).
The text of the Indrotsavavidhi mentions that it is based on the Brhatsamhita
of Varahamihira. But a close examination of it shows that in the Brhatsamhita
the Indrotsava is a festival meant purely to honour Indra in order to gain the
favours of the celestial king for the worldly ruler. However, in the Indra festival
of Keonjhar, Visnu has become equally importa with Indra, and in the
Jagannatha temple much more so.
The worship of minor deities in Keonjhar, like planets, Dikpalas and mothers,
in the water jar is purely a later Hindu phenomenon not originally connected
with this festival. However, in Keonjhar the god Indra was still important and
was accorded proper worship, whereas in the Jagannatha temple he has hardly
any significance and the Indradhvaja Yatra has become a yatra (festival) chiefly
in honour of Visnu and Laksmi. Laksmi does not play any role in the Indrotsava
of Keonjhar.*
It may thus be seen that, by adopting and upholding a regional tradition,
the state of Keonjhar has opted for an older and more pristine version of the
tradition, thus not only keeping its separate identity, but also strengthening its
links with the older and more classical] tradition of Hinduism.
I therefore suggest that Keonjhar is a very significant and powerful centre
of culture away from the centre of political power, where we can observe a
strong localization of the regional Onssan tradition. Although it certainly
absorbed the cultural and religious traditions of coastal Orissa, it also derived
inspiration from its local context, left its own imprint on this tradition, and
then successfully disseminated it in areas subject to its influence.*®

‘For further details, see G.C. Tripathi 1977.

*°The author is obliged to Pandit Madan Mohan Mishra of Keonjhar for supplying
much of the information that has been used in this chapter.

REFERENCES
Dash, G.N. 1979. Jana$Sruti Kafici-kaberi, Berhampur: Pustaka Bhandara.
Epigraphia Indica 3, 353; 11, 96; 19, 41-5.
Gangadhara, Kosalananda-kavyam, Bhubaneswar: Orissa Sahitya Academi and Cuttack:
Granthamandir.
Hiralal, Raibahadur in Epigraphia Indica 18, 298-9.
Kulke, Hermann 1979. Jagannatha-Kult und Gajapati-Kénigtum, Wiesbaden: Steiner.
Madala Panji 1940. Madala Panji: Rajabhoga Itihasa, ed. A.B. Mohanty, Cuttack: Praci
Samiti (rpt. Bhubaneswar 1969).
Mishra, Madan Mohan n.d. A hand-list of some selected important works in his collection,
 THE TRANSFORMATION OFA TRIBAL STATE _ 109

which contains 270 titles and was created by Pandit Mishra. Orissa Research Project
(1970-5), available from the author or Hermann Kulke.
n.d. Ganasammata, drafted in English by Pandit M.M. Mishra, unpublished
manuscript.
——n.d. Traditional History of Keonjhar (Based on Local Oriya Sources), unpublished
manuscript.
Orissa Historical Research Journal 9, \9-29.
Tripathi, Gaya Charan 1977. ‘Das Indradhvaja-Fest
in Orissa: Uberreste
der Indra-Verehrung
in Ostindien’, in Wolfgang Voigt (ed.), Neunzehnter Deutscher Orientalistentag: vom
28. Sept. bis 4. Okt. 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1977 (Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, Supp!|. 3, Teil 2), 1002-14.
———1981. The Ritual of Founding a Brahman Village: A Description of the Ceremony
of Establishing a Brahmana-sasana in Orissa on the Basis of an Unpublished
Manuscript, Delhi: GDK. ‘
——(ed.) 198la. The Text ofSasanakaranam, in G.C. Tripathi, 1981, 59ff.
——1991. ‘The Ritual of Royal Consecration in Orissa: Introducing the Manuscript
Rajyabhisekavidhi’, in Journal of the G.N. Jha Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha 47,
73-92; reprinted in B.N. Swain (ed.) 1998, Dharmasastra Parydlocand, Puri.
— 1996-7. ‘The Ceremony of Pusy4bhiseka in Orissa’, inJournal of G.N. Jha Kendriya
Sanskrit Vidyapeetha 51-2, 41-66.
Tripathi, Gaya Charan and Hermann Kulke (eds.) 1987. KatakardjavamS$avalih: A Traditional
History of Orissa, Allahabad: Vohra.
Tripathy, Snigdha (ed.) 1974. Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 6, Bhubaneswar: Orissa State
Museum.
 CHAPTER 5

Jajpur and the Legendary

King Yayati KeSari

SUSMITA ARP

A popular Orissan legend relates how King Yayati KeSari once invited 10,000
Brahmans from Kanauj in northern India to Jajpur. He had then performed ten
horse sacrifices (aSvamedha), complex rituals and symbols of powerful kingship
since Vedic times. This legend is not unique to Jajpur (Yajpur), where a so-
called DaSa$vamedhaghat can be found on the banks of the river Vaitarani,
where the sacrifices are supposed to have taken place. It is also widely known
among Brahmans in other parts of Orissa, many of whom trace their roots
back to the north Indian Brahmans invited by Yayati KeSari, who are regarded
as particularly pure and learned. King Yayati is also the subject of another
well-known myth which credits him with the revival of the Jagannatha cult in
Puri after an invasion by a foreign power.
Many historians believe that the legends have a kernel! of truth in them and
identify Yayati KeSari with a king of the Somavamsi dynasty, who is said to
have united large parts of contemporary Orissa for the first time. The importance
of King Yayati to Orissan identity is so great that some historians see in him
the actual founder of Orissa. Panigrahi points out: ‘Yayati I united Koshala
and Utkala politically and culturally and can justly be regarded as the father
of the modern Orissa.’' There were two SomavamSi kings called Yayati; one
of them lived in the first half of the tenth, the other at the beginning of the
eleventh century. Like so many other details connected with the history of the
Somavamési kingdom, the exact chronology of its expansion is unknown. Thus
Panigrahi and Sircar are of different opinion? as to which of the two Yayatis
was the renowned conqueror whose deeds may have sparked off the Yayati

*This article is a revised translation of the German article ‘Jajpur und der legendare
Konig Yayati KeSari’, in Conermann and Kusber 2003, 9-22, translated by Nicole Pohland.
I am grateful to G.N. Dash, Thomas Oberlies and Stephan Conermann for their advice and
valuable information on this subject.
'Panigrahi 1981, 106. Similarly Bose 1927, 30: ‘[Yayati Kesari] is said to have brought
ten thousand Brahmans from Kanauj in the United Provinces and they performed a great
Vedic fire-sacrifice in the newly founded town of Jajpur. From that time onwards, Orissa
has been a land of Hindus. . . . As we have already said, the germs of a separate Orissan
culture were laid during the reign of the Kesaris.’
?Panigrahi 1961, 13-14; Sircar 1971, 178-9.
112 SUSMITA ARP

KeSari legends. They do, however, agree that this particular king changed the
name of the capital of the Bhaumakaras after its conquest in Yayatinagara and
made it his second capital.
Yet whether the Yayati legends of Orissa can indeed be traced back to the
time of the Somavamsi seems doubtful. Hermann Kulke has recently shown
that the tradition crediting Yayati KeSari with the revival of the Jagannatha
cult and the construction of Puri’s first temple is in all probability a construct
of the late sixteenth century. Further, it is directly connected with the legiti-
mization of Ramacandra of Khurda, who tried to establish himself as local
successor of the erstwhile imperial Gajapati kings of Orissa and revived the
Jagannatha cult in 1590.° According to Kulke, the Yayati KeSari myth was
created to fashion a heroic king who, in ancient times, triumphantly overcame
a disruption of tradition caused by an alleged Muslim rule in the fifth century
CE. Kulke arrives at the conclusion that the Yayati legend of Puri was not, as
formerly supposed, modified and adapted to the ‘biography’ of Ramacandra
at the end of the sixteenth century, but newly created at that time after the
‘model’ Ramacandra in order to sanctify his deeds.
In the following I shall take a closer look at the Yayati legend of Jajpur. I
am going to show that it too probably did not originate in the time of the
Somavamsi, and that it may in fact be even younger than the Yayati tradition
of Puri examined by Kulke.
One of the pivotal lines of reasoning that postulate a former connection
between Jajpur and Yayati, and thus the alleged great age of the Yayati tradition,
is the identification of Yayatinagara with Jajpur. Many of the later documents
of the Somavamsi dynasty were drawn up in Yayatinagara. This does suggest
that Yayatinagara was indeed an important administrative centre, and it may
even have been the capital.* It does not, however, prove that Yayatinagara is
identical with Jajpur. I will therefore begin by closely examining the arguments
of Panigrahi and Sircar, the two most prominent defenders of this theory.
Important sources for both authors are the Madala Pajfiji chronicles, the
writing down of which began at the end of the sixteenth century. In connection
with the Ganga king Anangabhima, the first Pafji mentions a place called
Abhinava Yayatinagara. Panigrahi states: ‘The context in which this place-
name has been used leaves no doubt that by Abhinava Yayatinagara the
chronicle means modern Jajpur. ...’® The particular passage in the text describes
how King Anangabhima visits Purusottamaksetra (Puri) and makes gifts to
the Jagannatha temple. Abhinava Yayatinagara seems to be located somewhere
within Puri.’ Also, the remainder of the passage pertaining to the reign of

‘Kulke (in press).

“On the geographical names of the Somavaméi inscriptions, see e.g. Rath 1983, 193ff;
Sarma 1983, 23ff.
*Other authors identifying Yayatinagara with Jajpur more or less repeat the reasons put
forth by Panigrahi and Sircar, e.g. Rath 1983, 195-8.
*Panigrahi 1961, 14.
’Madala Pariji \940, 28.
 JAJPUR AND THE LEGENDARY KING YAYATI KESARI 113

Anangabhima does not indicate that this king had any relationship with
Jajpur.
On the contrary: one finds that Anangabhima resided first in a palace in
Chaudwar, and later in Barabati on the other side of the Mahanadi River. The
Maddala Panji chronicles do mention Jajpur several times, but the name that
is used is always ‘Y4jpur’, not ‘Yayatinagara’.® In this context, the value of
the Madala Pafiji seems at least questionable: What was called ‘New-
Yayatinagara’ at the end of the sixteenth century can by no means be identical
with the Yayatinagara of the Somavam‘i inscriptions of the tenth and eleventh
centuries.
Panigrahi also follows another important line of reasoning:
In the Oriya Mahabharata written by Raja Krishna Simha in the eighteenth century,
it is stated that anybody who visits Yayati-pattana, gets the same merits as accrue from
the performance of the ASvamedha sacrifice. Because of its situation on the river
Baitarani, the poet has merely changed YayAtinagara into Yayati-pattana, but all the
same his description of the merits that accrue from a visit to the place, leads to its
identification with Jajpur.’

Snigdha Tripathy also mentions this passage dating from the eighteenth
century. But contrary to Panigrahi, she does not interpret it as proof of a former
connection between Jajpur and Yayati, but sees this late text as the first written
evidence for such a tie.'° Even this is uncertain, since the verse composed by
Krsna Simha in Oriya only rephrases a similar passage from the Sanskrit
Mahabharata which obviously does not refer to Orissa.'' The original Sanskrit
text describes a number of different places of pilgrimage along the way between
Puskara and the Narmada River, places far away from Orissa. The exact
location of most of these sites, including Yayatipatana, is obscure.'* Nothing,
however, suggests that the pilgrimage refers to Orissa. One cannot tell whether
Krsna Simha had Jajpur in mind when he translated the verse in the eighteenth
century, but his Oriya version does not contain any modification or amendment
that would point in that direction. Several other places of pilgrimage named
after a king called Yayati—for example Yayatitirtha—are mentioned in the
epic and Puranic literature. None of these are located in Orissa, but lie, for
example, in Benares or near the Sarasvati River.'* Yayati is one of the great
kings of supra-regional Sanskrit mythology, of whom a number of different

’ Madala Paniji 1940, 22, 34, 52, 77.

*Panigrahi 1961, 15.
‘Tripathy 1998, 42.
''The verse from Krsna Simha’s Oriya-Mahabharata reads (cited after Panigrahi 1961,
15):
yayati-pattanaku yae yeun naral a$vamedha-phalati huai tahara ||
In the Sanskrit Mahabharata 3. 80. 67 the following verse can be found:
pradaksinam tatah krtva yayatipatanam vrajet |
hayamedhasya yajfiasya phalam prapnoti tatraiva \\
'20n the different locations, see Mehendale 1996-7.
'3See Kane 1973.
114 SUSMITA ARP

myths are told. The many passages alluding to him in epic and puranic literature
do not refer to Orissa or contain any hints of the Yayati KeSari of Orissan
tradition.
The fact that Krsna Simha, or rather the original Sanskrit text of the Maha-
bharata, promise those who visit Yayatipatana the same merit as accrues from
a horse sacrifice cannot be used to connect the text passage with Jajpur,
where, according to regional tradition, Yayati KeSari performed a dasasvamedha
(sacrifice of ten horses). The promise to achieve for certain pilgrimages the
same merit as for a horse sacrifice is one of the most common, almost
stereotypical ones in the puranic literature. It can by no means be seen as an
exclusive characteristic of Jajpur’s mythology. We do not have to discuss two
other sources listed by Panigrahi, i.e. Dhoyis Pavanadita and some Cola
inscriptions.'* Panigrahi’s interpretation of these sources—if they are to be
followed'°—does not prove that Yayatinagara is identical with today’s Jaj-
pur; it only confirms that it lay in a coastal area. Many historians who do not
identify Yayatinagara with Jajpur are of this opinion, as will be seen in the
following.
Sircar’s reasons for identifying Jajpur with Yayatinagara differ from those
of Panigrahi. He explains that some sources seem to indicate that Yayatinagara
is identifiable with Cuttack. This, he argues; is wrong, for: *. . . Jajpur seems
to be a corruption of the name Yayatipura which is again practically the same
as Yayatinagara, both meaning ‘the city of Yayati’.'® Sircar even presents the
hypothetical linguistic steps that lead from yayd@ti-pur to yaj-pur. In fact, the
phonetic laws allow for a number of developments, and from time to time an
anomalous phonetic process can be detected. However, a shift from yayati- >
yaj- would entail several anomalous processes"’ and is therefore highly unlikely.
Furthermore, anomalous linguistic change usually occurs only in the everyday
language, not in proper nouns.'®
Sircar assumes that not only the Somavamsis, but also the Gangas had their
capital in Yayatinagara: ‘If the Ganga conquerors of coastal Orissa ruled the
country from Yayatinagara or Yayatipura, i.e. modern Jajpur, before the

'Panigrahi 1961, 11-14; Panigrahi 1981, 114.

''On the question of whether the Cola inscriptions really do read ‘Yayatinagara’, see
Acarya 1969, 90. The Cola inscriptions do not specify clearly the location of this site; see
the translation of the inscriptions in Nilakanta Sastri 1955, 207. Thus Rath and Panigrahi
interpret the Cola inscriptions differently, in spite of the fact that they both identify
Yayatinagara with Jajpur. Rath states (1983, 196): ‘During the invasion of the Cola army
there was only one Yayatinagara located in Kosala.’ And Panigrahi 1961, 15: ‘There was
thus a Yayatinagara in Orissa, now known as Jajpur. Rajendra Cola met Indraratha . . . at
this place and defeated him in about 1021 A.D.’
'Sircar 1971, 180.
'Intervocal y would have to become j, an entire syllable would have to vanish and the
quantity of the vowel would have to move to the front.
'’Thus the name Yayati can be found unchanged in later Oriya sources like the Madala
Pafiji (1940, 5).
 JAJPUR AND THE LEGENDARY KING YAYATI KESARI 115

transference of its headquarters to the Cuttack region, we can easily explain

why the Muslim writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries mentioned
the kingdom of the Gangas in Orissa as Jajnagar (Yayatinagara).’'? Indeed,
the name Jajnagar is used in some early Persian sources to denote Orissa.
However, the exact region and the origin of the name remain unclear.”° Apart
from the apparent similarity of the Indian toponym Jajpur with the Persian
Jajnagar, there are no indications that the Muslim authors might have called
the empire thus because they remembered the name of the former capital,
Jajpur. Nor do the authors explain the origin of the name, or describe a city
of that name. To give an example, no such place is cited in the anonymous
Sirat-i Firizsahi, whose author describes in great detail the route taken by
Sultan Firaz Sah in 1361 on his military campaign through Orissa. According
to Wali, this is also true of other works.*' Thus, the author SAfif does not
mention anything about an old city or capital called Jajnagar. Instead, he
describes Cuttack (Baranasi) as the old residence of the rajas of Jajnagar.”
Looking at the Persian texts, it cannot be ruled out that the name Jajnagar
developed from either Jajpur (Yajpur) or Yayatinagara. However, the sources
contain no proof of this derivation, nor do they indicate that Yayatinagara and
Jajpur are identical.
To summarize, the arguments for the identification of Yayatinagaras with
Jajpur are very weak. Thus, a number of historians reject this theory. One of
them is S.N. Rajaguru,” whose most important counter-argument—already
pointed out earlier by Fleet™—is the fact that several Somavamé&i inscriptions
describe Yayatinagara as a city located on the banks of the Mahanadi. Panigrahi
and Sircar get round this problem by suggesting that there was initially a
Yayatinagara by the river Mahanadi in western Orissa, and later another one
in the coastal area, i.e. in Jajpur. There is, however, no convincing proof for
the existence of two cities of the same name. The only possible argument
would be that Yayatinagara is mentioned in the documents of Yayati I at a
time when the SomavamSis had not yet advanced beyond Koshala. Later
documents mentioning Yayatinagara were drawn up by rulers who had by then
conquered the Orissan coast, but lost control over Koshala. Accordingly, there
must have been a Yayatinagara in Koshala as well as on the coast. Yet this

'"Sircar 1971, 180.

See, for example, Roy 1942, 61, note 2; Elliot/Dowson |867-77/1990, 112-13, notes;
Wali 1923, 290.
21Wali 1923, 289: ‘Badayuni commences the description of the expedition as that of
Jajnagar, but in the course of the narrative, never once mentions Jajnagar, but other places.
Such is also the case with other Persian historians.’
22€Afif’s Ta? rikh-i Firazsahi, translated in Elliot/Dowson | 867-77/1990, 312: °... Sultan
Firoz rested at Baranasi, an ancient residence of the arrogant Rais. At that time the Rai of
Jajnagar, by name Adaya, had deemed it expedient to quit Baranasi, and to take up his
residence elsewhere; so Sultan Firoz occupied his palace.’ See also Desai 1968-9, 43-4.
Rajaguru 1966, 373.
*Fleet 1894-5, 355.
116 SUSMITA ARP

argument only makes sense as long as we accept the suppositions about the
expansion of the Somavamsi kingdom mentioned above. But, as Sircar himself
admits, the Somavamsi conquest of the coastal area is one of the gaps in
Orissan history and has so far been difficult to reconstruct.”°
Those who disagree with this identification of Yayatinagara suggest several
other locations, but list only a few reasons for their choices. Rajaguru speculates
that it may have been some city close to Kantilo, or maybe Jagti (near Baudh).*
Bina Kumari Sarma states that Jajpur must be ruled out and suggests that it
may have been Chaudwar.”’ H. von Stietencron and G.N. Dash also favour
Chaudwar or Sarangagarh, also situated near Cuttack, and consider possible
motivations for the relocation of the capital to this place. P. Acharya, on the
other hand, feels certain that Yayatinagara was situated in the west ‘on the
bank of the Mahanadi somewhere in the Sonpur State or the Sambalpur
District’.2? In the present state of research, any definite identification of
Yayatinagara seems to be impossible. However, Jajpur is probably an unlikely
candidate—especially because of the Somavaméi inscriptions that locate
Yayatinagara by the Mahanadi River. For the present question, this means that
the allusion to Yayatinagara does not prove any former connection between
Jajpur and Yayati.
The question remains as to when the Yayati-KeSari legend of Jajpur
originated. A number of different works of supra-regional Sanskrit literature,
as well as several Mahatmyas from Orissa, praise Jajpur and its places of
pilgrimage, among them the Vaitarani River, diverse Siva-Lingas, the goddess
Viraja and Visnu in the form of a boar (varaha).*° According to the Mahabharata,

°Sircar 1971, 179: ‘The story of the transference of the lordship of that region [the
coastal regions of Orissa] from the Bhauma-Karas to the Somavamsis is not clearly
known.’
*Rajaguru 1966, 373 and 397. Jagti is obviously the place also cited by N.K. Sahu:
‘The Capital of the United Kingdom was located at Yayatinagara on the Mahanadi, identified
with modern Jagati or Jagatinagar near Baud in Phulvani District’; Sahu/Mishra/Sahu 1979,
29. See also ibid., 179 and Sahu 1977, 41.
77Sarma 1983, 25-36.
**Stietencron 1978a, 28: ‘... the transfer of his [Codangaga’s] capital from Kalinganagara
to the Cuttack area either Sarafigagada or Chaudwar after this war may have been caused
partly by the need for more direct control of the northern parts of his kingdom, but partly
also by the king’s wish to supervise the building of the temple in Puri.’ See also ibid., 1;
Stietencron 1978b, 74, notes; cf. Dash 1978, 161: ‘Codaganga’s suspicion of the Saivas
[of Bhubaneswar] seems to be the reason why he shifted the political capital of his empire
to Sarangagarh, a few miles north of Bhubaneswar, which was the capital of the later
Somavamsis.’ Chaudwar is also cited by Kedarnath Mahapatra 1977, 549. The explanations
in square brackets are my own.
”» Acharya 1969, 94. He follows Hiralal 1911-12, 189 and Mishra 1936, 75.
“Works are the Mahabharata, a number of different Puranas, Nibandhas and Mahatmyas,
as well as several Pitha lists from Tantric works. These textual references are given in Arp
2006.
 JAJPUR AND THE LEGENDARY KING YAYATI KESARI 117

Viraja as Jajpur iscalled here, is a place particularly appropriate for sacrifices.*'

A verse from a ninth-century Skanda-purana promises the same gratification
as for a horse sacrifice to anyone who visits Siva here.*? Much later, probably
in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the Virajamahdtmya equates the worship
of a certain l/inga with the performance of ten horse sacrifices.** The story
forming the framework of this work, which, like the others, belongs to the
category of anonymous literature, tells the tale of how the god Brahma once
performed a great sacrifice in Viraja, during which all the great divinities
appeared and settled in Virajaksetra permanently. As can be seen, several texts
mention Jajpur in connection with the performance of sacrifices, sometimes
horse sacrifices in particular. If named, however, the sacrificer is the god
Brahma, not Yayati KeSari nor, indeed, any other king. In fact, Yayati KeSari
makes no appearance whatsoever in any of these texts. Even the Virajamahatmya,
an entire work concerned solely with the greatness of Jajpur, does not mention
him, nor is the place ever called Yayatinagara.
However, several elements of the Yayati legend can be detected in another
source. During a ritual in which rice balls (pinda) are offered to the ancestors,
the sacrificer retains some of the gifts for the local Brahman and utters the
following words: ‘I also give a share to the Brahmans, to those dead and to
those alive, who were once called from Kanauj by the maker (Brahma the
creator?) in order to perform a ten-horse-sacrifice (das@fvamedha).’™ The
invitation to Brahmans from northern India contained in this verse is an
important part of the legend, but again the allusion to Yayati KeSari is missing.
It is hard to determine the age of the verse since it cannot be found in any
written source. The fact that the modern Indian word Kanauj is used instead
of the Sanskrit Kanyakubja suggests a more recent origin, as Snigdha Tripathy
has already pointed out.*°
Snigdha Tripathy has found traces of the legendary invitation of north Indian
Brahmans in another source which is much easier to date. An inscription on
a Bhaumakara copper plate issued in CE 766, and therefore before the time of
the Somavam&i, mentions 204 Vedic Brahmans who settled in close proximity
to Jajpur. Tripathy believes that these Brahmans came from northern India
and also performed sacrifices for their patron. According to her, the memory
of this was kept alive over the centuries and, together with other legends,

31 Mahabharata 1927-72, 3.114.4-6 and 13.

32Hans Bakker, who along with other authors is editing the Skanda-purana, has kindly
pointed out this paragraph to me. Verse 167.184 reads:
ekamre ca vibhoh sthanam drstva svargam avapnuyat |
virajayam haram drstva vajimedham avapnuyat ||
3 Virajamahatmya 10.76-7.
4 kanaujadesat svayamahita ye dasa$vamedhaya pura vidhatra |
martyastitah svargagatas ca vipras tebhya dvijebhyah pradadami carghyam |\
Quoted in Panigrahi 1961, 15, note 44.
Tripathy 1998, 40.
118 SUSMITA ARP

formed the Yayati tradition.” It is indeed plausible that the settlement of such
a large number of learned Brahmans by the Bhaumakaras, to which the
inscription bears witness, has been linked to Jajpur since that time and later
became part of the Yayati legend. However, it should be noted that the
inscription does not reveal the origin of the Brahmans, nor does it mention
any rituals.
Thus several sources are the basis for two important components of the
Yayati tradition of Jajpur, i.e. the settlement of learned Brahmans and the
performance of great sacrifices. On the other hand, the third important element,
King Yayati KeSari, is missing. In searching for textual evidence, I only found
two works connecting Jajpur with Yayati,*’” both of which date from the
nineteenth century. The Sanskrit chronicle KatakarajavamSavali, written around
1820, notes the following: ‘when Yayati’s mother was pregnant with him a
voice foretold her that she would bear a great king. Therefore the people
took the newborn child to the old capital in Yajapuraksetra, where the boy,
by Siva’s blessing, came to power, thus an old legend tells us.’** In another
tale about King Yayati, Jajpur is not mentioned any more. The second text,
the Purusottamacandrika, is a chronicle of Puri written in Bengali and published
in 1844. The author reports what he was told about Yayati and starts his account
with the statement that the king resided in Jajpur.* In the following, the story
of the re-establishment of the Jagannatha cult by Yayati KeSari is told, i.e. the
Yayati legend of Puri, similar to that in the KatakarajavamSavali. This story
can be found in the Maddala Pajniji chronicles, which are by far older, whereas
the legends about Yayati’s connection to Jajpur are not mentioned there.
As Kulke has pointed out, the Madala Panji chronicles, written towards
the end of the sixteenth century, are the first sources to introduce the figure
of Yayati KeSari. No older chronicle or inscription alludes to this king. The
Bhaktibhagavata, for example, written in 1510, discusses four Orissan
dynasties, among them the SomavamSa. Obviously taking their title from a
number of Somavaméi kings, they are called KeSari in these texts. However,
the search for a founder of the dynasty named Yayati KeSari remains
unsuccessful, as does that for any of the myths associated with him. As
mentioned above, Kulke believes that Yayati KeSari and the legends about his

**Tbid., 42.
The existence of further textual references cannot be ruled out. Since Orissan literature
is often hard to access and is not classified and ordered by indices, a systematic search is
difficult. However, G.N. Dash, an erudite scholar of Oriya literature, has kindly informed
me that he himself knows of no other references.
8 KatakarajavamSavali 1986, 6:
tatratyalokaih yajapuraksetrasthapracinarajadhanim prati nitah |
katikalanantaram t§varaprasadad ayam rajabhavad iti pracina katha |
yajapuraksetre yayatike Sarina rajatvam praptam |
*” Purusottamacandrika 1844, 27:
likhi tar kichu yaha Sunechi Srabane | raja yajpure bas karilen giya.
 JAJPUR AND THE LEGENDARY KING YAYATI KESARI 119

saving the Jagannatha cult were created not until the end of the sixteenth
century. After the fall of the powerful Gajapati kingdom and the Muslim rule
that followed in Orissa, Ramacandra established himself as the successor of
the Gajapatis by re-establishing the Jagannatha cult at the end of the sixteenth
century. The Yayati KeSari legend records that once before in Orissan history
the figure of the ‘state god’ Jagannatha was hidden from foreign rulers. Only
after 144 years was it rediscovered by Yayati KeSari, the founder of a new
dynasty, and installed in a new temple at Puri. Thus the legend created a
historical precedent that showed how a forced disruption of tradition could be
successfully overcome.
According to Kulke, the time of Ramacandra was characterized by ‘a strong
common need to heal the forced break of tradition’. This would have been
true for Jajpur, too, which had suffered terrible destruction and had to reassure
itself that its current traditions, newly erected temples and re-established cults
were firmly rooted in the past. Puri’s new myth of the ‘old’ hero Yayati KeSari
satisfied the needs of that uncertain period and seems to have been very
successful, as can be seen in the wide geographic distribution of the Yayati
legends. It may be that Jajpur’s narrators and priests, inspired by the Yayati
legend of Puri’s chronicles, also tried to trace their traditions back to Yayati,
and that the Jajpur legend of the settlement of learned Brahmans by Yayati
and his performance of the ten-horse sacrifice arose soon afterwards. Since
the only texts connecting Yayati with Jajpur are from the early nineteenth
century, it cannot be ruled out that Jajpur’s Yayati tradition gained fresh
popularity only in the late nineteenth century. Then, the healing of a disruption
of tradition was no longer at the centre of the legend, but rather Yayati’s role
as the ‘father of modern Orissa’, as Panigrahi later called it.*' The rule of
Yayati KeSari, the alleged Somavamsi king, became one of the most important
historical points of reference. At that time, when the British tried to record the
history of the country and Orissa found itself struggling to construct its own
identity—not least of all to set itself apart from Bengal—the Yayati legends
emerged almost as an Orissan origin myth.** Whether the Yayati legend of

“Kulke 2001, 171.

*! See above, fn. 2.
“This change in the description of Yayati is foreshadowed in the accounts of the
Purusottamacandrika and the KatakarajavamSavali. Hunter (1872) also seems convinced of
the great importance of Yayati: ‘The history of Lower Bengal starts from an immigration of
this sort [migration of north Indian Brahmans], and the same phenomenon looms through the
mists of Orissa tradition, which cloud the origin of the Sivaite line of kings. The local legends
and the Palm-leaf Records alike relate how about CE 500, the founder of the Long-haired or
Lion-line [KeSaris] imported ten thousand Brahmans from Oudh, and endowed them with
lands around Jajpur on the sacred Baitarani river.’ Hunter 1872, 238. The ‘Palm-leaf Records’
refer to the Madala Panji, which, however, as mentioned above, only cites the Yayati legend
of Puri.
120 SUSMITA ARP

Jajpur originated in this context or already at the end of the sixteenth century
soon after the creation of the Yayati myth cannot be determined on the basis
of the few textual references. However, the evidence suggests that it is younger
than the Yayati legend of Puri.

REFERENCES
Acharya, P. 1969. Studies in Orissan History, Archaeology and Archives, Cuttack: Cuttack
Students’ Store.
Arp, S. 2006. ‘In Search of Goddess Viraja’, in G. Pfeffer (ed.), Periphery and Centre:
Studies in Orissan History, Religion qnd in Anthropology, Delhi: Manohar, 59-78.
Bose, N.K. 1927. ‘The History of Orissa and Its Lesson’, in The Calcutta Review, July
1927 [rpt. in ibid., Culture and Society in India, London, 1967, 24-31].
Conermann, S. and J. Kusber 2003. Studia Eurasiatica: Kieler Festschrift fir Hermann
Kulke, Hamburg: e.b. Verlag, 9-23.
Das, M.N. 1977 (ed.). Sidelights on History and Culture of Orissa, Cuttack: Vidyapuri.
Dash, G.N. 1978. ‘The Evolution of Priestly Power: The GangavamSa Period’, in A.
Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathy, 1978, 157-68.
Desai, Z.A. 1968-9, ‘Orissa in the Eyes of Muslim Authors’, in Journal of Ancient Indian
History 2, 39-64.
Elliot, H.M. and J. Dowson 1867-77/1990. The History of India, as Told by its Own
Historians, vol. 3, London; rpt. Delhi: Low Price.
Eschmann, A., H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathy 1978 (eds.). The Cult of Jagannath and the
Regional Tradition of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar.
Fleet, J.F. 1894-5. ‘Records of the Somavamsi Kings of Katak’, in Epigraphia Indica 3,
323-59.
Hiralal, R.B. 1911-12. ‘The Sirpur Stone Inscription of the Time of MahaSivagupta’, in
Epigraphia Indica 11, 184-201.
Hunter, W.W. 1872. Orissa, or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province under Native and
British Rule, in two volumes, vol. 1, London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Kane, P.V. 1973. History of DharmaSastra, vol. 4 (2nd edn.), Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental
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KatakarajavamSavali 1986. Ed. and trs. G.C. Tripathi and H. Kulke, Allahabad: Vohra.
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2008. ‘Yayati Kesari Revisited: Ramachandra of Khurda and the Yayati Kesari
Legend of Puri’, in P. Berger, R. Hardenberg, E. Kattner and M. Prager (eds.), The
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Maddala Panji 1940. Ed. A.B. Mahanty, Cuttack: Praci Samiti.
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Mahapatra, K. 1977. ‘Temples of Bhubaneswar’, in M.N. Das (ed.), Sidelights on History
and Culture of Orissa, Cuttack: Vidyapuri, 542-64.
Mehendale, M.A. 1996-7, Mahabharata: Cultural Index, vols. 3 and 4, Pune: Bhandarkar
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Mishra, B. 1936. Dynasties of Medieval Orissa, Calcutta: K.N. Chatterji.
Panigrahi, K.C. 1961. Chronology of the Bhauma-Karas and the SomavamsSis of Orissa,
Madras: M.L.J. Press.
 JAJPUR AND THE LEGENDARY KING YAYATI KESARI 121

—1981. History of Orissa, Cuttack: Kitab Mahal.

Purusottamacandrika Saka 1766 (CE 1844) [or Sriksetradhamer Vivaran) by Bhavanicaran
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Rajaguru, S.N. 1966. Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 4, Bhubaneswar: State Museum.
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Wali, A. 1923, ‘Life and Letters of Malik ‘Aynu’ l-Mulk Mahri, and Side-lights on Firaz
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Bengal, Letters 19, 253-90.
 . *

CHAPTER 6

Contribution of Sarala Dasa to the

Emergence of an ‘Oriya Identity’
and Its Localization

BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK

Participating in an ‘identity discourse’ is indeed a significant activity of the

intellectual pursuit. Identity of a nation, a region or a community is very often
determined by its civilization and culture. Not the concept but identities dis-
criminate between the self and the others in a struggle against ‘homogenization’.
For minorities the imposition of a national identity is essentially tantamount
to a choice between ‘survival’ through integration and cultural ‘extinction’.
On the other hand, the construction of one’s own identity depends on particular
contexts like cultural awakening, resurgence movements or the rise of one’s
own social group. In these cases the question of cultural identity may become
so important that it occupies entirely the cognitive world of the community
by edging out other issues. The present paper is an attempt to discuss the
construction of an early Oriya cultural identity in Sarala Dasa’s Mahabharata
and its localization.
So far scholars studied the emergence of an Oriya identity mainly in the
context of social and cultural movements within the colonial system of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study of “Oriya nationalism’ and
‘Oriya identity’ began in the late 1970s with two papers of G.N. Dash and J.
Boulton and were followed by the studies of N. Mohanty, B.N. Mohapatra
and H. Kulke.' A major emphasis of these studies were the literary activities
of Oriya poets, the analysis of the Jagannatha temple chronicles and the Oriya
language agitation of the Oriya movement in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries which finally led to the creation of a separate province of
Orissa in 1936. The importance of the late nineteenth century for the emergence
of an Oriya identity was again strengthened by B.N. Mohapatra in his study
of Orissa’s famous Kanchi-Kaveri legend in which he traced the growth and
development of an Oriya ethnic and cultural consciousness. But his conclusion
that ‘no consciousness of cultural identity in the strong sense existed among
Oriyas prior to the colonial period’,’ is difficult to accept.

'‘Dash 1978, 359-74; Boulton 1979, 228-60; Mohanty 1982; Mohapatra 1996, 203-4;
Kulke 2001, 24-5.
2Mohapatra 1996, 206.
124 BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK

In his study on Jagannatha and Oriya Nationalism G.N. Dash pointed out
that the emergence of an Oriya identity or, as he designated it, the “formative
phase of Oriya Nationalism can already be traced back to the late sixteenth
century. In the pre-sixteenth century, however, the Orissan empire of the
“imperial Gajapatis” at its best was a mixture of heterogeneous elements,
bound together by the person or dynasty of a ruler, where several Aryan and
Non-Aryan languages were spoken’. This situation, however, changed
considerably in the late sixteenth century.’ Nivedita Mohanty, in her important
work, studied in detail the growth of Oriya language agitations and the Oriya
movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.*
In his paper ‘Historiography and Regional Identity’, H. Kulke nghtly em-
phasized historiography as another important factor of an emerging Oriya
identity. Puri’s temple chronicles of the late sixteenth to early nineteenth
centuries, generally known as the Rajabhoga Itihasa of the Madala Panji and
related texts have considerably enriched the emerging Oriya identity. Their
main contribution was the creation of a hitherto unknown perception of the
greatness of Orissan history on the one hand and the universalization of Orissa’s
regional history in the wider context of India’s traditional history on the other.
By far the most important influence, however, was exercised by these chronicles
by their construction of a Puri and Jagannatha centred perception of Orissa’s
past.° This paper will go even a step further and show that the emergence of
an early Oriya identity can be traced back to Sudramuni Sarala Dasa and the
efflorescence of the Oriya literature since late fifteenth century.
Regional cultural identities in India emerged in a hierarchically structured
society which was characterized by the cultural hegemony of a few over the
masses. The specific forms of economic, social and cultural stratification and
inequitable access to the means of production and learning were based on the
varna system. As a system of privileges for a few and deprivation of the many
on the basis of birth, the varna ideology was contested by the Bhakti movement
of medieval India. It endeavoured the shaping of the society, culture, religion
and literature and thus regenerated cultural identities. The “Bhakti reformers’
represented a general movement and were by no means confined to their region
and language. The painful tenor of their writing and lives testifies their
opposition to the social hierarchy and their unwillingness to exercise the art
of pleasing the ruling class. The saints of medieval Orissa played a vital role
in generating the spirit of equality and human dignity. They undermined the
established tradition of writing in Sanskrit and composed their works in the
language of the common people, i.e. Oriya. They agitated against superstitions
preached by the orthodox priests and propagated that god can be prayed to in
their colloquial language and worshipped in their heart and mind filled with
bhakti.®

*Dash 1978, 359.

‘Mohanty 1982.
*Kulke 2001, 24-5.
°Mallik 2004, 13-16.
 CONTRIBUTION OF SARALA DASA. 125

Sudramuni Sarala Dasa, a cultivator and poet, composed the Oriya

Mahabharata in the late fifteenth century in Jhankar, a village in present
Jagatsinghpur district, quite far away from the royal court.’ The orthodox
pandits of medieval Orissa did not appreciate the efforts of Sudramunis and
saints of the non-Brahman communities to render the main epics and Puranas
into the vernacular. As they had to face humiliations from the learned pandits
and to protect themselves against hostile criticism, they dedicated their writings
to the gods and goddesses they believed in. The anti-caste pronouncement is
very conspicuous in their writings and they renounced their original caste
surnames and used ‘Dasa’ after their names, meaning ‘servant’ to gods and
goddesses.* In this way they protested against caste surnames and the
discriminative character of the Brahmanical order. They were not satisfied
only by rendering the Sanskrit works into Oriya, they also attempted to
participate in the Veda discussions held in the Jagannatha temple of Puri. The
most outspoken and revolutionary amongst them, Balarama Dasa and
Achyutananda Dasa, even challenged the authority of the pandits and their
prohibition to allow Sudras to study Vedas and Dharmasastras.
The fifteenth century was an era of political and cultural awakening in the
history of Orissa. During this time, Gajapati Kapilendra Dev achieved political
glory for Orissa by extending the Orissan empire from Ganges to Kaveri and
his contemporary poet Sudramuni Sarala Dasa rephrased the great Indian epics
in the language of the common people of Orissa. Through them he became
the pioneer of a movement protesting against the domination of a section of
the people who monopolized learning and education. With this social message
in Oriya language Sarala Dasa laid the foundation of an Oriya identity by
creating a perennial fountain of literary forms and traditions with distinct
characteristics that have come down to posterity as an ever widening stream.
Three of his epics, the Mahabharata, the Vichitra Ramayana and the Chandi
Purana are so far known, out of which the Mahabharata is regarded as his
magnum opus.
Sarala Dasa was born in an age when in almost every Indian language
Puranic literature was composed in the vernacular and when the society and
literature of Orissa, too, were taking a new shape. By this time, Oriya literature
had attained its fully developed shape and the writers preserved the sacred
events of gods and goddesses in the form of their own literature. Sarala Dasa
accepted the challenge of the time and played a vital role in this development.
The exact date of his birth is unknown but can safely be placed in the second
half of the fifteenth century CE. Many scholars confirm the contemporaneity
of Sarala Dasa with the reign of Kapilendra Dev, the famous Gajapati king of
Orissa, who ruled from CE 1435 to 1467 .” The Adiparva of Sarala Mahabharata

Tbid., 17.
®Mohanty 1995, 19.
9Mahatab 1959, 263; see also Mansingh 1962, 47-8; Panigrahi 1975, 13; Mukherjee
1981, 7; Das 1982, 59.
126 BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK

opens with a long invocation of Lord Jagannatha of Puri who by then already
enjoyed the unquestioned supremacy amongst the Hindu gods and goddesses
of Orissa. It describes the manifold powers and qualities of Jagannatha and
the innumerable offerings to him which destroyed the sins of the Kali age.
Since the Brahmans were still adherents of Sanskrit literature and the
Brahmanical social order, they had an aversion against the spoken language
and a poet from the lower social strata. Sarala Dasa very often tells us that he
was an uneducated Sudra cultivator and a man of no importance. But posterity
did not accept his low self-estimation, but regarded him as a man of vision
who responded to call of the time and initiated hitherto unknown changes in
the cultural identity of Orissa.
The Gajapati rulers used to patronize the Sanskrit literature of their court
poets. But Sarala Dasa deviated from the tradition of writing religious texts
in Sanskrit and therefore did not receive any political patronage. He composed
his Mahabharata, the Vichitra Ramayana and the Chandi Purana in his village
Jhankar, quite far away from the royal court and the state capital. From a writer
of the Oriya Mahabharata one would have expected to translate the Sanskrit
original or at least to follow it up closely, but he did neither. With innumerable
omissions, deviations and creations of his own he borrowed merely the bare
outline of the original Mahabharata. For example, although Sarala Dasa has
accepted the number of eighteen Parvas of the Sanskrit Mahabharata, he
altered and changed the titles of the Parvas. In those cases which are largely
his own creations he omitted numerous mythological episodes, fables, moral
sayings, and philosophical discourses of the original. He even disposed of the
entire Bhagavata Gita by making only a reference to it in two verses. He seems
to have considered the Gita as ‘an interpolation serving the needs of the upper
strata of society’.'? On the other side, he narrates numerous stories which
cannot be traced in the Sanskrit Mahabharata. For example, the story of the
Jhimiti game as the cause of the Mahabharata war,"’ the story of a jackal and
king relating to land grants and wasteland management,’ the story of King
Duryodhana’s crossing the river of blood after the war,'* the story of Amavasya
Kanya and widow remarriage,’ the episode of the mango and Draupadi’s
intense love for Arjuna’? and particularly the detailed description of the tribal
origin of Jagannatha.'° In this way, Sarala incorporated his own imagination
and local Oriya traditions in the pan-Indian Mahabharata.
The poets of the pre-Sarala period devoted their writing exclusively to
religious themes. Their works never contained the non-religious themes like

'°Kosambi 1962, 14-18.

'' Sarala Mahabharata (Adiparva), I, 443.
'Panigrahi 975, 49-50.
'Tbid., 56-8.
'*Sarala Mahabharata (Adiparva), I, 112-19.
'STbid. (Vana Parva) |, 578-9.
'Tbid. (Musali Parva), 50-61, 78-86.
 CONTRIBUTION OFSARALADASA 127

state, economy and social problems. Sarala Dasa deviated from this tradition,
as his writings contain detailed accounts of the material life of the people and
their socio-economic problems. For example, he was sympathetic towards
Ekalavya and Karna who were discriminated in the Mahabharata because of
their different social status based on birth. And his description of the conflict
between the Brahmans and Chandalas in the Adiparva of his Mahabharata
depicts caste tensions in medieval Orissa.'’ Moreover, Sarala Dasa did neither
believe in rituals, pilgrimages or yajnas nor did he advocate the rules of Sastras
or compromise with the pandits.'* He criticized and, in his own way, revolted
against the exploitative orthodox tradition.
Sarala Dasa’s most important contribution to the Oriya identity was his
efforts to revive and preserve the original tribal essence of the Jagannatha cult,
which faced a serious threat in the process of orthodox Hinduization of the «
deity and its rituals in his time. He propounded the roots of the Jagannatha
cult by strengthening its relations with the tribes of Orissa and protested against
the submergence of Jagannatha into the fold of Brahmanism. In his Musali
Parva Sarala Dasa created new stories by virtue of his poetic imagination and
identified Lord Jagannatha as the tribal deity Sabari Narayan. He was
worshipped in the form of a tree and, later on, in a piece of a blue stone (Nila
Madhava) by the tribal chief Jara.'? In the Sabha Parva Sarala described the
pitha of Sabari Narayan as a great shrine. Anna (rice), meat of deer and
rhinoceros were offered to the deity by santric rituals and there was no
discrimination of caste in the shrine. The Daitas or non-Brahman priests of
the Jagannatha temple of Puri are believed to be the descendants of Vidyapati,
the Brahman minister of King Galamadhava and Lalita, the daughter of the
Sabara chief Jara, who got married to each other in the forest before the god
Nila Madhava. There is another interesting episode in the famous Indradyumna
legend of Sarala Mahabharata. In the Musali Parva Jagannatha emphatically
advocates the cause of the aboriginal Sabaras. Here, the two legends of Nila
Madhava and of Jagannatha are combined in a pair of opposing paradigms of
negative and positive royal attitudes towards tribes. In the legend of Nila
Madhava, King Galamadhava kills the innocent Sabaras, the sons of Krishna
and is therefore cursed by the god that his royal line will become extinct. In
the legend of Jagannatha, King Indradyumna acknowledges the Sabara chieftain
as ‘King of the Forest’ and as the ‘root’ (mula) of the Jagannatha cult. Hence,
Indradyumna is favoured by the god.”
The moral of the legend is quite obvious: a king who is harsh to the tribes
evokes divine wrath and falls from power. On the other hand, the king who
is friendly towards the Sabaras and other tribes wins the favour of Jagannatha
and remains in power. Without the cooperation of the Sabaras there is no

'"Tbid. (Adi Parva) I, 693-705.

'8Tbid. (Bhisma Parva), 2, 3, 142.
Ibid. (Musali Parva), 38.
2Tbid., 147; see Geib 1975, 181.
128 BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK

Jagannatha cult and without Jagannatha there is no kingship. These legendary

explanations of the Jagannatha cult embody a unique cultural synthesis of
indigenous and pan-Indian traditions in the land of Orissa. Sarala depicted the
Jagannatha cult as a form of protest and retrieved its close relation with the
neglected tribes and other depressed classes.
Sarala Dasa was also a champion of cultural and social upliftment of
women. His contribution to the elimination of superstitions and the elevation
of the status of the women had a deep impact on Oriya society. Sarala’s de-
viation from the original Mahabharata had obvious social connotations and
intended to communicate a clear message to the society. For instance, there
was a widespread superstition that a person who weds a girl, born on the
amavasya day (the last day of the dark fortnight), does not survive. Moreover,
prohibition of widow re-marriage prevailed at all levels of the society. Due to
the extensive warfare of Gajapati Kapilendra Dev there must have been a large
number of widows of soldiers who encountered social indignity and ostracism,
besides their personal grief and sufferings. By stating against the original
Mahabharata that Gandhari (the princess of Gandhara who later became queen
of Dhritarashtra of Hastinapura) was born on the amavasya day, the poet
intended not only to discourage the superstition but also to change the society.
Since nobody wanted to marry her, on Vyasa’s advice she was first married
to a Sahada tree (Streblus asper Lour.) and then her marriage was solemnized
with Dhritarashtra. Sarala Dasa was thus not simply a poet, but also a social
reformer conveying his messages through his writing. Besides his endeavour
to re-establish the pride and honour of the neglected womenfolk, Sarala Dasa
‘empowered’ the women characters of his epics and made some of them even
superior to their male counterparts. With a remarkable note of dissent he
composed his epics almost in opposition to the traditional pattern of patriarchal
writings and elevated the status of the female characters of his epics. The role
of Sita in killing Sahasrasira, the thousand headed Ravana, in his Vichitra
Ramayana, or of Durga in killing Mahishasura in his Chandi Purana and the
role of Draupadi in the destruction of the Kauravas in his Mahabharata provide
an insight into his reformatory quest.’'
Sarala Dasa is thus known as the pioneer in writing epic texts in Oriya
language. He was the poet who laid the foundation stone of regional literature
in eastern India. He was a man of the villages to which he owed all his nurture
and it was his village where he composed the three major works. It was the
goddess of his village who endowed him with the sensibilities of a poet to
write the epics as a Sudramuni in Oriya, far away from the traditional centres
of learning. To get them recognized by the readers of the contemporary literary
taste, was not an easy task but a remarkable contribution to the emergence of
an Oriya cultural identity. Through his work Jagannatha became associated
with the cultural plurality and people of all denominations of Orissa, from
tribal to Brahmanical. The great bhaktakavis of sixteenth and seventeenth

*'Rath 1997, 533; see also Mallik 2004, 89-91.

 CONTRIBUTION OF SARALA DASA 129

centuries accentuated the great tradition inaugurated by Sarala Dasa which

envisaged the rise of a strong Oriya consciousness in the pre-colonial Orissa.
His writings were a major breakthrough in the history of Oriya language and
literature and his literary creations were a challenge against various forms of
orthodox hegemony and deprivation.
In the context of this paper it is particularly relevant that Sarala Dasa refers
in his poems to a large number of local places in Orissa and narrates various
stories of their sacredness thus contributing to the emergence of local and
subregional identities. In his Mahabharata he described places like Vijayanagar,
Mallikarjuna, Gokarneswar, Chilika, Ramachandi, Konarka, Ekamra Kshetra
and Kapilasa, to mention only a few. By virtue of his imaginative power, he
created and associated stories and cultural attributes with these places. In the
Sabha Parva he relates the origin of the Vijayanagar kingdom. On his way
back to Ayodhya and after having killed Ravana, Rama came to Sri Giri,
identified with Sri Sailam which belonged to the Orissan empire during the
time of Sarala. When Rama desired to take rest on the hill, Hanuman
immediately constructed a fort. Since Rama entered the region or ‘appeared’ (in
Oriya bije) there, the name of the place came to be known as Vijayanagar.”
Sarala Dasa’s account of Sri Sailam shows also interesting similarities of
its presiding deity Siva-Mallikarjuna, with the tribal traditions of Puri. The
inhabitants of Sri Sailam belong to the Chenchu tribes which believe that Siva
once came there for hunting and fell in love with a Chenchu girl and married
her. Since then Siva is worshipped by the Chenchus under the name of
Mallikarjuna. They observe all his festivals and rituals whereas his priests
belong to the Jangamas, a Sudra caste.” Sri Sailam thus depicts striking
similarities with Puri, its Sabara tradition and the role which the Daita priests
play in its rituals.
In the Adiparva Sarala Dasa describes the origin of the deity Gokarneswar
on the sacred mountain Mahendragiri, which was already well known in
Sanskrit sources like the Mahabharata and Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa.* Sarala
Dasa relates that Arjuna had climbed up the Mahendragiri to kill a rhinoceros
but, by a mistake, killed a holy cow with his arrow. When he carried away its
dead body with another arrow, different parts of it fell down on the earth.
Wherever these mutilated parts touched the earth, Sivalingas emerged. The
place where the head of the sacred cow fell down a most sacred /inga appeared,
popularly known as ‘Gokarneswar’. Then all gods and rishis assembled on
the Mahendra mountain to rescue Arjuna from the sin he committed by killing
a cow and performed a yajna. When Brahma searched for a person to continue
the worship of the Gokarneswar linga, Sahadev immediately brought a Sabara
who later on came to be known as a Bauri and Kalindi Bipra. After Brahma
offered him a sacred thread he settled down with his kith and kin, known as

22Sarala Mohabharata (Sabha Parva), I, 546.

231bid. (Vana Parva), Il, 42.
*Mishra 2006, 253.
130 BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK

Bauri sasana.” The Bauris were a tribe in south India and Orissa. In the process
of transition from tribe to caste the Bauris seem to have emerged from the
Sabara tribe. The episode of killing a sacred cow by Arjuna might have been
a brain-child of Sarala Dasa’s imagination. But the appointment of the Bauris
as the priests of Gokarneswar is socially relevant till today as priests of different
scheduled castes are still known as Kalindi Vaishnavas.
Sarala Dasa relates also his own story of the origin of the Chilika Lake. In
the west of Puri there was a large settlement of Nishadas (hunter tribe) known
as Nishadpuri. Participating in a war between the disguised elephant and
tortoise, Garuda crashed on Nishadpuri which was completely destroyed. Out
of the great hollow which was causéd by this occurrence, a great lake emerged
that came to be known as Chilika Lake.” The interesting information we can
derive from this story is that the present Chilika region was once inhabited by
tribes.
Sarala Dasa’s story of Ramachandi near Konarka contains another important
information. It narrates that Rama installed an auspicious pillar on the sea
shore at this place for the construction of a bridge to Lanka. But since the
place and direction were not suitable to reach Lanka, he moved further to the
south. The people, however, started worshipping this pillar as goddess
Ramachandi. This tradition is very significant as the cult of Jagannatha, too,
is linked with the worship of the pillar goddess Khambeswari or Stambheswari.”’
Today, the goddess Ramchandi is worshipped as ten-handed Mahishasuramardini
Durga in her temple, constructed in the nineteenth century. But during the
time of Sarala Dasa the goddess was worshipped in form of a pillar which
indicates the existence of wooden pillar deities worshipped by tribes in the
places near Puri with its famous daru devatas.
Sarala Dasa associates several episodes with the Konarka Kshetra. Amongst
them, two appear to be particularly important. Firstly, Brahma, the creator of
the world and author of the Vedas, kept the Veda manuscripts on the seashore
during his bath in the ocean near the sacred Chandrabhaga River. But the
demon Sankhasura stole the Vedas and concealed them at a hidden place in
the ocean. After bath, when he saw what meanwhile had happened to the
Vedas, Brahma was greatly annoyed and worried. He prayed to Vishnu who
then, in disguise of a fish, searched around at various places in the Ocean and
finally rescued the Vedas from Sankhasura after killing him.”? Secondly, Sarala
Dasa relates the episode of Krishna’s son Samba who worshipped the Sun god
Surya at Konarka to get cured from leprosy.*° In addition, the Kapila Samhita,
composed about hundred fifty years after Sarala’s Mahabharata, relates that

25 Sarala Mahabharata (Adiparva), Il, 619-35.

Tbid. (Vana Parva), Il, 153.
"Tbid., 106; see Eschmann 1978, 79-97,
Mishra 2006, 263.
”°Sarala Mahabharata (Udjoga Parva), 384-91.
Tbid. (Vana Parva), Il, 103ff.
 CONTRIBUTION OF SARALADASA. |. 131

Samba was not only cured after worshipping the Surya but also discovered an
idol of Surya in the river Chandrabhaga and built a temple for it at
Konarka.*!
These episodes are significant for the socio-cultural traditions of Orissa and
the local identity of Konarka. In the first episode Sarala Dasa indicated that
the sacred knowledge of the Vedas was exclusively in the possession of a
privileged social group and that a militant leader of the deprived section of
the society faced punishment of death when he tried to acquire the source of
knowledge. The second episode, further elaborated by the Kapila Samhita,
enhanced the sacredness of the Chandrabhaga where large numbers of people
take their holy dip, as once started by Brahma.
The episodes of Ekamra Kshetra (Bhubaneswar) as related by Sarala Dasa
have a close similarity with the great myth of killing of Mahishasura by Durga.
According to Vana Parva and Swargarohan Parva, the two demon brothers
Kriti and Basan were empowered with blessings of Ekamranath or Siva. In
course of time, they became ambitious to rule over the heaven and defeated
the gods and plundered the treasury of Kubera, the god of wealth. As the
people of Ekamra became frightened Siva persuaded Parvati to kill these two
demon brothers. In disguise of a beautiful milkmaid, Parvati offered curd to
them. Thereupon the two brothers fell in love and proposed to marry her.
Parvati agreed under the condition that Ekamra Kshetra is shown to her by
them while standing on their shoulders. Both the brothers immediately agreed.
But when Parvati, in her disguise as a milkmaid, climbed on their shoulders
they were unable to carry her weight and with her divine power Parvati pressed
them into the deepness of the earth.”
Kapilas is a famous sacred complex of the Saivism in Orissa. There are
three stone inscriptions, inscribed on the Kapilas temple on top of the hill
during the reign of the Ganga king Narasimha Deva. One of them, written in
CE 1246, states the name of the deity as Kailasa-Sikharesvara, whereas the
one of the year CE 1253 gives the name as Kailasa Deva. Sarala Dasa narrates
that Siva gave away all his belonging and that finally he even did not possess
a piece of cloth to wear. Siva was then moving with an old bullock on the
river bank of Chitrotpala where Sikhara, a member of the Sabara tribe, took
care of him. Being satisfied with helpfulness of Sikhara, Siva assumed the
name Sikhareswar and retreated to the top of the mountain Kapilasa.*
Many of these legends appear to be Sarala Dasa’s own creation. But even
in those cases where they were already locally prevalent, they received new
inspiration through Sarala’s imagination. But most important in our context
is the fact that Sarala Dasa ascribed the origin of quite a few Orissan deities
to a tribal origin, either to have emerged directly from a tribe or to have been

31Mishra 2006, 263.

32 §grala Mahabharata (Vana Parva), Il, 80ff.; see also (Swargarohan Parva), 35ff.
3Tbid. (Vana Parva), I, 96.
132 BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK

primarily worshipped by Sabaras or other tribes. Examples are the legends of

Gokarneswar, of his own village deity Sarala Chandi, of Jagannatha and
Sikhareswar. Enriching and creating new traditions in a synthesis of tribal,
folk and Brahmanical traditions, Sarala Dasa contributed immensely to the
emergence of local and subregional identities. The network of the sacred
topography of Orissa in his writings served as a collecting screen for the
integration and localization of pan-Indian traditions and thus for a further
enrichment of local, subregional and regional traditions of Orissa.

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Parva, Vana Parva, Udjoga Parva), ed. A.B. Mohanty, 1965, Bhubaneswar: Department
of Cultural Affairs.
 CHAPTER 7

Kosalananda Kavyam and the

Making of a Rajput Dynasty: A Study
of the Chauhans of Western Orissa*

SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

In an excellent ethno-historical study, ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in

Tribal Central India’,’ Surajit Sinha in 1962 demonstrated the emergence of
princely states in late-medieval central and eastern India and their alleged
Rajput affiliations. He analysed the emergence of the Munda Raj of Chhota
Nagpur, the Bhumij state of Barabhum and the Raj Gond kingdom of Gond-
wana, all based on internal tribal development, ‘invented’ Rajput affiliation
and Brahmanical association. These developments had several parallels in
Orissa too, and processes of Rajputization may have been even more evident
in western Orissa than in central India. Western Orissa is an excellent ex-
ample which shows that Rajputization operated not only through ritual and
social means, as Sinha shows, but also through the work of court poets who
created a new reality of ‘invented Rajputization’ through literature.

THE PROBLEM

The Chauhan dynasty of South Koshala was an important ruling family of

late-medieval Orissa and played a major role in shaping the history and culture
of western Orissa. Since its foundation in the first half of the fourteenth century
at Patnagarh, it extended its authority to Sambalpur, Sonepur and Khariar,
regions where it established separate kingdoms. The claim of the Chauhan
kings that they originate from the famous Rajput Chauhans of northern India
was for the first time validated in CE 1663 by the court poet of Sambalpur,
Gangadhar Mishra, through his Sanskrit work Kosalananda Kavyam.’ Scholars
working on the history of the Chauhan dynasty of western Orissa usually

*My thanks are due to Hermann Kulke for his constructive criticism and suggestions
on an earlier draft of this chapter. However, I alone am responsible for the facts and opinions
stated in it.
'Sinha 1962.
2Manuscript preserved in the Orissa State Museum, S. No. 43, Cat. No. SMS/12. In the
present work I have used the recently published Oriya version of the Kosalananda Kavyam
(henceforward KK); see Sahu Chopdar 2000.
134 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

accept the historical authenticity of the Kosalananda Kavyam as a reliable

source for its descent from the Rajput Chauhans of northern India. In this
chapter, I shall attempt to examine its historicity and the alleged Rajput origin
of the Chauhans of western Orissa, their lineage and genealogy. A main
emphasis will be on contextualizing the Kosalananda Kavyam in the history
of Orissa and its Chauhan dynasties. Finally, I shall also consider how far its
poet contributed to the emergence of a separate identity in western Orissa by
designating the land Dakshina Koshala, thus reviving the cultural glory of
ancient Koshala under the Chauhans.

ORIGIN OF THE HISTORICAL TRADITION IN SOUTH KOSHALA

AND THE POET GANGADHAR MISHRA

The Kosalananda Kavyam of Gangadhar Mishra is the earliest historical work

on the history of South Koshala in general and the history of its Chauhan
dynasties in particular. Prior to this kavya no other historical writing on South
Koshala is known, though we have a large number of inscriptions from the
earlier ruling dynasties. For the first time in Orissan history, the Kosalananda
Kavyam contains the legendary account of a ruling dynasty tracing its lineage
back to a Rajput dynasty of northern India. In order to identify the origin of
this tradition, we must examine the poet Gangadhar’s own history.
In the last canto of his poem, Gangadhar mentions that he belongs to the
Vajpayi family of learned scholars in a Brahman sasana village near
Purushottamakshetra (Puri). His father Pandit Gopinath and grandfather
Vidyakara were scholars and notable Smriti writers.’ Since Puri was a centre
of Sanskrit learning, the Chauhan king of Sambalpur, Baliar Singh, invited
the reputed Sanskrit poet and scholar Gangadhar Mishra to his court. He settled
him in Sambalpur by granting him land, a common practice among the ruling
families since early-medieval times.‘ As a poet and scholar, Gangadhar must
have known Puri’s chronicle, the Madala Panji, and it seems very likely that
he was also acquainted with the historical kavyas and Indian bardic literature,
like the Prithviraj Raso,’ Hammira Mahakavya’ and Prithviraj Vijaya,’ which
glorify the valour and heroism of the Chauhan Rajputs of northern India and
trace their Kshatriya ancestry back to the solar dynasty of Vedic fame.
For centuries Puri itself had been recognized as a famous tirtha and attracted
large numbers of pilgrims, religious preachers and scholars from various parts
of India. Inscriptional sources prove that pilgrims from northern India visited
Puri as early as the ninth century CE.* From the period of Gangadhar, we know

*Mahapatra 1960, ‘Introduction’, p. CXXIX.

*Panda 1978-9, 25-35.
*Bardai n.d.
°Kirtane 1878.
7Ojha and Guleri 1941,
*Scholars like K.N. Mahapatra and A.K. Rath have suggested that pilgrims visited Puri
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 135

from the chamu citaus (royal letters) of the Khurda rajas that members of the
royal family of Jaipur (Rajasthan) visited Puri in the seventeenth century.’ By
that time the fame of the Rajputs and their bardic literature had already spread
to eastern India through Mansingh, Akbar’s great General who defeated the
Afghans in Bengal and Orissa in 1590 and 1592 and supported the renewal of
the Jagannath cult by Ramachandra of Khurda. It is therefore quite likely that
Gangadhar was influenced by the ‘Rajput myth’ and the works of the bards
of Rajasthan as well as by the Madala Panji tradition of Puri'® when he wrote
the Kosalananda Kavyam to glorify his royal patron Baliar Singh of Sambalpur.
The purpose of writing this kavya, as mentioned by the poet himself, was to
obtain a rent-free village from the king: ‘By worshipping the Goddess Kali
and through her blessings I received patronage from Bali Singh and described
his family history. Through the blessings of the mighty destiny, I was able to
receive Khandapali (a village). The renowned King Bali Singh was born in
the famous royal family. Due to prayer of Gangadhar, he donated a number
of villages for his enjoyment of the revenue which also included Khandapali
Puri.”!!

CHANGING FACES OF THE KOSALANANDA KAVYAM:

TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

The kavya was written in CE 1663 in Sanskrit and consisted originally of

twenty-one cantos."? It describes the history of the Chauhan dynasty of Patna-
garh from Ramadeva, its founder, to the rule of King Baliardeva of Sambalpur.
The opening canto deals with the political condition of South Koshala before
the rule of the Chauhans."’ It was ruled by Rana Simha, a powerful despotic
king who was ousted by the Gajapati king of Orissa. He was succeeded by
eight Mallik chiefs who ruled collectively and, in turn, were overthrown by
the Chauhan prince Ramadeva.
The second canto desribes the family history and ancestry of Ramadeva,"*
which is traced back to the epic Somavamsa or lunar dynasty. Gangadhar
constructed a long genealogy of altogether twenty-four Somavamsi kings

as early as the seventh century CE. (Mahapatra 1954, 17; Rath 1987, 92). But it is more
convincing to accept the date suggested by H. von Stietencron (1978).
_ 9We have two chamu citaus (royal letters) collected from the temple archives of Pun
relating to the visit of members of the royal families of Jaipur (Rajasthan) to the Jagannath
temple, dated CE 1740 (No. 60, MP 2, 8, 13R and No. 61), Jagannatha Sthalavrittantam,
translation by S.N. Rajaguru, Orissa Collection in the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg
University.
For Madali Panji see Kulke 1987, 1-24.
"KK, 251, verse 3,4.
'2For details of the text and translation, see KK.
Tbid., 1-6.
'Tbid., 10-14.
136 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

followed by twenty-four Chauhan kings of northern India from Manikya

Chauhan to Prithviraj Chauhan, who was killed by the Yavanas. Because of
internecine wars, scions of the dynasty migrated to different parts of northern
India and established their kingdoms there. Alhanadeva became the founder
of the Mainpuri line of the Rajput Chauhans. Visaladeva, the tenth descendant
of this line, was killed by a Muslim ruler of Delhi. His wife was at that time
pregnant and gave birth to a son named Rama. While on a pilgrimage Rama
and his mother reached the Koshala country, where they stayed with a Brahman
family at Patnanagara.
From the third to the seventeenth cantos the kavya describes at length
Ramadeva’s youth and his capture of the throne of Patnagarh.'> We are told
that once a white tiger created terror in the Koshala region and the ministers
declared that whoever killed the tiger would be made king of Patnagarh.
Ramadeva, the valiant Chauhan prince, killed the white tiger, collected its tail,
nails, nose and ears, and presented them before the assembly of the people.
The assembly was convinced of his heroic act and declared him ruler of
Patnagarh. Thereafter, the poet gives a detailed description of the coronation
ceremony of Ramadeva, his pilgrimage to Puri, his marriage to a niece of the
Gajapati king, his return journey to Patnagarh through Sonepur, and his
achievements as a king.
At the end of the seventeenth canto, the genealogy of the nine Chauhan
kings of Patnagarh from Ramadeva to Hiradeva is given.'* The last four cantos,
eighteen to twenty-one, narrate the foundation of the Sambalpur kingdom by
Balaramadeva and his four successors up to Baliardeva, at whose court
Gangadhar wrote his kavya."’
The original kavya of Gangadhar Mishra underwent several changes through
interpolations and additions in later days. In 1700 another poet, Gangadhar
Guru, added an additional canto, consisting of several hundred shlokas.'* No
details about this poet are known, but he mentions in the sixth shloka that he
composed the additional canto for the presentation of the kavya at the court
of Gajapati king of Puri, Divyasimhadeva (1688-1716). In this additional canto,
he briefly describes again the rule of all the Chauhan kings from Ramadeva
to Baliaradeva and adds the story of the succeeding kings of Sambalpur, Ratan
Singh and Chhatra Sai. The original kavya and Guru’s poems are more or less
identical, except for a few minor interpolations and the additional canto.'®
Thereafter, from 1870 to 1945, various copies of Kosalananda Kavyam
were reproduced by court pandits of Patnagarh, Sonepur, Bolangir and Khariar.”°
Their authors retained the main theme and the Rajput origin of the Chauhans

'Tbid., 20-193.
'Tbid., 192-3.
'Tbid., 200-50.
'®As mentioned by Sahu and Chopdar 2000, 251-9.
Tbid., 251.
Tbid., 1-11.
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 137

but added several additional stories which will be discussed in the following
pages. Moreover, one can observe variations in the genealogical lists of different
branches of the Chauhan rulers of western Orissa. All this points to a revival
and proliferation of the Rajput myth at the courts of western Orissa during the
late-colonial period. It flourished not only in Patnagarh and Sambalpur but
later on also in Sonepur and Khariar.
Among these versions of Kosalananda Kavyam, the largest number of
distortions and interpolations are found in the Sonepur Durbar Manuscript.
This was prepared by Sri Chintamani Nanda of Sonepur and published in the
name of Maharaja Biramitro Singhdeo in 1929.”' In the original kavya, the
origin of the dynasty is described in the second canto, whereas in the Sonepur
version it has been extended to the third and fourth cantos, thus raising their
number from twenty-one to twenty-three cantos. Further, we find some new
narratives, for example, about the enmity between Prithviraj and Jayachandra,
the Svayamvara ceremony and abduction of Sanjukta and the agnikula theory
of the origin of the Rajputs. They seem to have been derived from the bardic
literature of Rajasthan like Prithviraj Vijaya of Jayanaka.” It seems that the
Sonepur pandits were well acquainted with these details and interpolated them
into the original manuscript in order to validate further the Rajput origin of
the Chauhans of western Orissa and of Sonepur in particular. Moreover, we
find a different genealogical story in the Sonepur edition. Here, it is mentioned
that after the death of Visaladeva, the tenth descendant of the Rajput dynasty
of Mainpuri, his pregnant wife fled to Patna kingdom, where she took shelter
with a Brahman family and gave birth to Ramadeva, a significant derivation
from the original kavya regarding the migration of Chauhans to western
Orissa.
In the post-independence period the first initiative for re-editing the text
was taken by the Sri Jagannatha Sanskrit University, Puri. It was published
under the editorship of Niranjan Kar under the title Kosalananda Mahakavyam
in 1994.” The editor produced the full texts of the original manuscript as well
as the published Sonepur version in Sanskrit with an English introduction but
without translation. More recently, in 2000, J.K. Sahu and D. Chopdar™ of the
Department of History, Sambalpur University, again published the Kosalananda
Kavyam. They undertook the painstaking work of compiling the Sanskrit texts
from all the available versions of the manuscripts and of providing an Oriya
translation. Further, they wrote a detailed historical note on the history of the
manuscripts, the historical geography of South Koshala, the origin of the
Chauhan dynasty and their history at Patna and Sambalpur. This is the most
exhaustive and detailed reproduction of all the manuscripts available so far.

21 Singhdeo 1929.
22Sahu and Chopdar, op. cit.
3Kar 1994.
24Sahu and Chopdar 2000.
138 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AS A SOURCE FOR THE

RAJPUT ORIGIN OF THE CHAUHANS: A SURVEY

Apart from the Kosalananda Kavyam, the earliest reference to the history of
the ruling family of Patna-Sambalpur is to be found in the narrative account
of T. Motte who visited Sambalpur in 1766.” He stated that a group of Hindus
from Sambhar in the province of Ajmer went on a pilgrimage to Jagannath at
Puri. On their return journey the whole party was murdered except for a
pregnant woman who escaped to Sambalpur. She supported herself by begging
and subsequently gave birth to a son. He grew up, and since he showed all the
qualities of a prince, the king adopted him as his successor. When he came to
the throne, he built a palace and called it Sambalpur after the home of his
father in Rajputana. Motte may have collected his information from the court
pandits. But since he did not mention the Kosalananda Kavyam and its historical
narrations, it is more likely that his writing was based on oral information
which he collected during his stay at Sambalpur.
Subsequently, we find a version of the Kosalananda Kavyam in a Hindi
work, Jaya Chandrika, written in 1782 by Prahllad Dubey, a Brahman court
poet of the Sarangagarh zamindar.”° The main aim of his kavya was to highlight
and glorify his masters, the chiefs of Sarangagarh who had helped the Sambalpur
kings Chhatra Sai and Jayant Singh to regain their throne. Regarding the
ancestry of the Chauhans of Sambalpur, his story is similar to that of Gangadhar
Mishra. He designated Ramadeva as “Ramaideva’ (the term in the local dialect
for Ramadeva), a scion of the Chauhan dynasty of Garh Sambar. However,
regarding the accession of Ramadeva to the Patnagarh throne, he gave a
completely different story. Ramadeva is said to have captured the throne by
killing seven Malliks except his mentor Chakradhar Panigrahi, the chief Mallik.
Further, Prahllad Dubey’s work contains a rather confusing and defective
genealogy of the Chauhans. As a result, modern scholars have generally rejected
his Jaya Chandrika as a genuine source of Chauhan history.”’
But Charles Grant in 1870, in the Central Provinces Gazetteer,** and Major
H.B. Impey in 1863, in his ‘Notes on Gurhjat State of Patnagarh’” repeated
this new story of ‘Ramadeva’s rise to power’. They mention that the pregnant
wife of Hitambar Singh, the Rajput king of Sambhar, fled to Patnagarh, where
She gave birth to Ramadeva, who later captured its throne by killing eight
Malliks. They seem to have collected their information from the Jaya Chandrika
of Prahllad Dubey.
A different origin for the Chauhans 1s referred to in a report of Sir Richard
Temple from 1863.*° He states that ‘the Sambalpur and Patna rajas are

*Motte 1953.
26S.P. Dash 1969, 189-95.
Sahu 1953, Appendix I, 14.
Grant 1870, 393-4.
*Impey 1953.
“Temple 1863.
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 139

sometimes said to have descended from or related to the royal or independent

Haihayavamsi dynasty of Ratanpur, which was formerly the capital of
Chhattisgarh’.*' Sir Richard may have collected this information from the
Ratanpur durbar of the Haihayavamsi kings, who also claim Rajput origins,
although not through the Chauhans.
The British Gazetteers of L.S.S. O’Malley (1909) and L.E.B. Cobden
Ramsay in 1910* also mention that the Chauhans came from Sambar. It seems
that they followed the writings of Charles Grant and Major Impey and that
they too had no access to the original Kosalananda Kavyam. In all versions
of the original kavya it is mentioned that the widowed queen was given shelter
by a Brahman, but in these colonial writings it is always a Binjhal tribal.
Moreover, Cobden Ramsay reports yet another new story of Ramadeva’s
birth.** He states that Hamiradeva fled from Garh Sambhar and established
himself at Manikgarh fort near Khariar. But from other sources it is known
that Hamiradeva, a scion of Prithviraj from a separate branch of the Rajput
dynasty at Ranthambor, committed suicide after being defeated by Alaud-din
Khalji in CE 1301.*° Before going into battle Hamiradeva took leave of his
seven queens and told them that if his messenger pigeons returned without
him, they should acknowledge his death on the battlefield. When the pigeons
returned without him, six of his queens committed suicide by drowning
themselves in the Ramadraha (lake) near Narsimhanath temple to the north of
Patnagarh. The remaining pregnant queen was found wandering in the jungles
on the border between Patna and Khariar. She was cared for by a Binjhal and
in due course gave birth to Ramadeva. Ramadeva put an end to the rule of the
eight Malliks by killing them and establishing his supremacy over eighteen
forts (garhs) and thus expanded the Patna kingdom. The thrust of the story is
that the Khariar kingdom was founded by Ramadeva’s father, Hamiradeva,
which indicates that Cobden Ramsay most likely collected his information
from Khariar sources.
Apart from Khariar’s claim that the Chauhans founded their first kingdom
in its territory, the Chauhan family of Sonepur also tried to legitimize their
Rajput origins through an invented family history. They even engaged B.C.
Mazumdar, an advocate andhistorian from Calcutta, to write their history in
1911. He tells us that ‘the legendary account of Chauhan rajas is that one
Humeru of the family of Prithviraj of Delhi, having lost his position at Mainpuri
in upper India during the time of Mohammedan rulers, came with his queens
to the borders of Patna state and established a little principality of his own in
that locality’.** Although he ‘reconfirmed’ the Rajput origin of the Chauhans

Tbid., 8.
2Q’Malley 1909, 21-3.
Cobden Ramsay 1910.
4Tbid., 284-5.
3$Sharma 1959, 131-2.
36Mazumdar 1911, 44-5.
140 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

from north India, he rightly raised a question: ‘how this Rajput adventurer
came upon this far off tract after travelling many hundred miles through rugged
hills and dense forests is not easy to ascertain’.*”
In 1925, Mazumdar, in his work Orissa in the Making,* accepted without
any objections O’Malley’s and Cobden Ramsay’s versions of the Rajput origin
of the Chauhans of Sonepur. He stated again, ‘so early as the twelfth or
thirteenth A.D. one Humeru of the family of the Chauhan Rajputs of Mainpuri
in the United Provinces came to Patna with his wife’.*? Regarding the foundation
of Chauhan rule in Patna, he followed the story of Prahllad Dubey of the year
1782: ‘The son of Humeru born in Patna State became by his mythical powers
the chief of the eight Malliks who had the government of Patna and Sambalpur
in their hands and thus established the Chohan rule in the Koshala
country. ’*°
It is interesting to note that although Mazumdar was writing about the Rajput
origins of the Chauhans, he spoke of ‘legendary accounts’. This shows his
reluctance to accept them as historical facts, but obviously he followed the
writings of Major Impey in order to satisfy his patrons at the Sonepur durbar.
However, at the height of the national independence movement he obviously
avoided linking the rise of the Chauhans with the killing of eight indigenous
local leaders and spoke instead of Ramadeva’s ‘mythical power’ which brought
him to power. |
In 1928, R.D. Banerji, one of the earliest scholars of Orissan history to
pursue a scientific method and analysis, for the first time raised doubts about
the Rajput origins of the Chauhan dynasty of Sambalpur and Patna. In his
seminal article, ‘Rajput Origin in Orissa’,*' he pointed out the parallels with
an alleged Rajput claim of the Vizianagaram ruling family and the Bhanjas of
Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. He wrote his article at a time when he was just
completing the manuscript of his monumental History of Orissa,” which was
published in two volumes in 1930-1. On the basis of his thorough study of
inscriptional sources, he unveiled the indigenous tribal origin of many ruling
dynasties of early Orissa, particularly of the various Bhanja dynasties. Of the
alleged Rajput origin of the Chauhans, he remarked: ‘The chiefs of the Patna-
Sambalpur-Sonepur group were descended from a pilgrim of some unknown
caste who came on pilgrimage from Sambhar to Jagannath in the earlier part
of the sixteenth century, founded a kingdom which later on became powerful
and began to claim Rajput origin and who, with the help of British Gazetteer
writers, have now become the agents of Prithiviraj Il of Delhi and Ajmer.’*

Tbid.
*Mazumdar 1925.
*Tbid., 219.
“Thid., 220.
“Banerji 1928, 285-91.
“Banerji 1930-1.
“Banerji 1928, 290.
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 141

Banerji thus rejected the Rajput claim of Orissa’s Chauhan dynasty but accepted
the ‘pilgrim theory’ as known since T. Motte. In this context it is interesting
to note that neither Mazumdar nor Banerji mention the Kosalananda Kavyam.
They seem to have used exclusively the Gazetteers compiled by Grant, Impey,
O’Malley and Cobden Ramsay.
Rama Chandra Mallick’s Samkshipta Kosala Itihasa,* published in 1931,
contains again a different genealogical list of the Chauhan kings from
Ramaideva (Ramadeva) to Narasimha, which also does not tally with the
original manuscript of Kosalananda Kavyam. Regarding the ancestry of
Ramadeva, he seems to have followed Cobden Ramsay. But he invented new
place names, names of queens and details of the tribal people who took care
of Ramadeva. As he called Khariar the first kingdom of the Chauhans in South
Koshala, it is very likely that he too used the Khariar version of Kosalananda
Kavyam without, however, referring to it. Regarding the ancestry of Ramadeva,*
we are told that a Chauhan prince from Mainpuri founded the Khariar kingdom.
The thirtieth ruler of this dynasty, Hamiradeva, was a feudatory of the Gangas
and had four queens. He founded the Hamirgarh (fort) on the hills of
Gandhamardan. The king once took part in a war between the Ganga and
Kalachuri dynasties. As his two messenger pigeons did not return from the
battlefield, his queens, except the youngest one, assuming that he had been
killed, committed sati by drowning themselves in a lake. The youngest queen,
Jayantidevi, was pregnant and fled to the jungle and, after crossing the Patpani
hill, delivered her son Ramadeva with the help of a tribal priest (jhankar) and
his wife. The local Binjhal zamindar, Ramod Bariha, took care of mother and
son. Later on, Chakradhar Panigrahi, one of the Malliks, reared Ramadeva as
his own son. Finally Ramadeva overthrew the rule of the eight Malliks and
became king.
In 1962 Siba Prasad Dash wrote his Sambalpur Itihasa,“ which is still
regarded today as the major work on the history of Sambalpur. In it he referred
in detail to the accounts of Kosalananda Kavyam, the Jaya Chandrika of
Prahllad Dubey and the Samkshipta Kosala Itihasa of Rama Chandra Mallick
in order to prove the Rajput origins of the Chauhans of western Orissa in a
comparative study. He also provided the different genealogical lists of all these
works.
J.K. Sahu’’ was the first scholar to take up a serious study in his Ph.D. thesis
‘The Chauhan Rule in Orissa’ at Utkal University in 1968. It is based mainly
on the Kosalananda Kavyam. He too accepted the Rajput origins of Orissa’s
Chauhan dynasties, the main aim of his work being to study their achievements
as kings of Patna and Sambalpur. In a 1971 article he again mentions that the

“Mallick 1931.
‘Tbid., 87-8.
46S.P. Dash 1969.
“Sahu 1969.
142 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

Kosalananda Kavyam preserves an ‘accurate and authentic genealogy’.*

However, he has now discarded the story of Ramadeva killing a white tiger
as mentioned in the Sonepur version of the kavya. In his opinion, ‘the account
of the kavya is a symbolical one, the white tiger being a representation of the
government which Ramai Deva overthrew’.”
In the most recent edition of Kosalananda Kavyam, the joint editors J.K.
Sahu and D. Chopdar of Sambalpur University raise several interesting and
relevant questions about its authenticity.°° Earlier Sahu had accepted that the
Kosalananda Kavyam was genuine and authentic work, but in this recent work
the editors agree that it contains a considerably large number of interpolations
by the durbar pandits of Sonepur. They reject the stories of the pregnant queen
of Visaladeva, the killing of a white tiger by Ramadeva and the genealogical
list of the early Chauhan kings of Garhsambhar and Mainpuri as imaginary
creations. However, in spite of their objections, they finally subscribe to the
Rajput origins of the Chauhans of western Orissa as depicted in the Kosalananda
Kavyam.*!
Their most important contribution is that for the first time they take up the
challenging theory of R.D. Banerji’ that the Chauhans of western Orissa were
not genuinely Chauhan Rajputs of northern India. They put forth a number of
arguments in favour of the Rajput origin theory, which I shall try to evaluate
critically. To prove the Rajput Chauhan origin, the editors cite the earlier work
Prabodha Chandrika, composed by Vaijaladeva II (c. 1510-40), in which he
proclaimed himself Chauhanavamsa-tilaka Patnadhinatha (Lord of Patna and
the Glory of Chauhan Dynasty).
But we must also take into consideration that nowhere does this royal poet
care to mention any details of the origin of his ancestors, and in particular any
relationships with the Chauhan Rajputs of Garh Sambhar. On the one hand,
the Prabodha Chandrika confirms that there existed some vague earlier tradition
of Rajput origins which then might have been taken up by Gangadhar Mishra
in the seventeenth century. But the fact that King Vaijaladeva claims Chauhan
origins in his poem without, however, giving any further reference to his
ancestry makes it more likely that it was just an invention in support of the
claim to Kshatriya status of the indigenous rulers of Patnagarh. He seems to
have followed the example of many ruling dynasties of tribal origin in eastern
India who later claimed Kshatriya status with the help of their Brahman court
priests and poets.*’ The Prabodha Chandrika appears to belong to this
tradition.
So far, the Narasimhanath temple inscription is taken to be the first epigraphic

“Sahu 1971, 31.

“Tbid., 32.
Sahu and Chopdar 2000.
*'Tbid., 35-50.
Banerji 1928.
Panda 2004.
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 143

record of the ‘future’ Chauhans in western Orissa.™ It mentions that the temple
was constructed by King Vaijaladeva 1, son of Vatsarajadeva of Patna in CE
1413.
This inscription, however, does not say anything about his dynasty or
ancestors, which was the general practice of the ruling kings, although certainly
not a rule. But in the case of the Chauhans, later so proud of their Rajput
origins, it is certainly strange that Vaijaladeva I did not care to mention it in
his inscription, whereas Vaijaladeva II referred to it in his Prabodha Chandrika.
This makes it very likely that Vaijaladeva II’s reference to an alleged Chauhan
origin was just to claim ‘Kshatriyahood’, without any concrete genealogical
significance. The full story of their Rajput origins from Garh Sambhar was a
later invention by Gangadhar Mishra. In this context the editors argue that
since the early rulers of Patnagarh did not claim any ancestry from or
relationship with any other dynasty, their Rajput origins cannot be ruled out
using a negative approach.
Finally, they argued in favour of a Rajput origin on the basis of Ramadeva’s
marriage to the daughter of Gajapati’s brother Samar Singh. In their opinion
the Gajapati king would not have given his niece in marriage to a non-Rajput
or non-Kshatriya ruler of Patnagarh.
I have strong doubts about Samar Singh being a brother of the Gajapati
king, as the name Singh never appears as the family title of the imperial
Gajapatis of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Moreover, the Gajapatis of
the succeeding Khurda dynasty were originally from the Bhoi or writers’ caste,
and were not Kshatriyas.* Therefore I am convinced that the poet has ‘invented’
this imaginative matrimonial relationship with the erstwhile imperial Gajapatis
of Orissa in order to strengthen the Rajput-Kshatriya status of the rulers of
Sambalpur.
In the different versions of Kosalananda Kavyam, one finds mainly two
theories about the Rajput origins of the Chauhan rulers: (1) the pilgrimage
theory; and (2) the migration of the pregnant queen. The story of a Rajput
prince travelling with his pregnant wife on a pilgrimage to Puri is a common
legend about the origin of ruling dynasties in central and eastern India. As an
example, the legendary origin of the Barbhum Raj family may be cited here.
According to the legend, a prince of Rajputana was once going on a pilgrimage
to Puri. He was accompanied by his pregnant wife who gave birth to a pair of
twins without his knowledge. She left her newborn babies in the forest, where
they were reared by a pig. The Bhumijs rescued the babies and killed the pig.
When the twins grew up with superior mental and physical qualities, the
Bhumijs were convinced of their Kshatriya origin and took them to the royal
court. The king was impressed by the brothers and allocated them a part of

*Dash 1969, 212.

The Srijanga Inscription of Achyuta Bahar Singh Mahapatra (1598) mentions
Ramachandradeva of Khurda even as ‘Sudra Gajapati’, Patnaik 1940, 25; the Madala Panji
designates Ramachandradeva as Ramai Routray of Bhoi family, see Mohanty 1969, 64.
144 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

his kingdom, which later became known as Birbhum.” Such legends in different
versions are prevalent among many of the ruling feudatory families of Orissa,
such as in the Athamallik, Bonai, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Khandpara, Nayagarh,
Talcher and Tigiria.*’
The main lacuna in the editors’ arguments is the fact that they do not take
into consideration research on either the bardic traditions of Rajasthan” or the
social processes in eastern India that have been called Rajputization by Surajit
Sinha*’ and Kshatriyaization by H. Kulke.® S. Sinha pointed out four essential
measures adopted by ruling families to be recognized as Rajputs, which we
observe also in the case of the Chauhans of western Orissa:
— Inviting Brahmans from distant lands and patronizing them by means of
land grants. The poet Gangadhar Mishra was also invited to come as a court
poet from Puri and received a grant of a village.
— A major duty of these Brahmans was to write the royal genealogies to
establish a legendary connection with an illustrious Rajput clan of northern
India. The Kosalananda Kavyam was a typical outcome of this en-
deavour.
— Ritual display by the kings through the observence of Brahmanical rites,
and in particular, by patronizing local cults and festivals. After coming to
power, the Chauhans of western Orissa continued to interact with local
tribals by patronizing their goddesses, such as Patneswari at Patna,
Samaleswari or Samalai at Sambalpur and Khambeswari at Sonepur.
— Entering into marriage alliances with already recognized Rajput or Kshatriya
families. The poet Gangadhar Mishra described the supposed marriage
alliance of Ramadeva, the founder of the dynasty, with the imperial
Gajapatis.
This analysis shows that claims to Rajput origins were prevalent among many
of the ruling families of central and eastern India, and that the Chauhans of
western Orissa were no exception to this ‘rule’. In view of this situation, the
question arises, who were the Chauhans if not Rajput Kshatriyas? To answer
this question, the dynastic history of the ruling families of early medieval
Orissa must be taken into account. Elsewhere I have shown, on the basis of
epigraphical evidence, that some of the ruling families were of tribal origin
who later claimed the status of the Kshatriyas.°' The Sailodbhavas, Bhaumakaras,
Nalas, Bhanjas, Sulkis and Varahas were originally of tribal stock and were
elevated to the status of Kshatriyas through the process of Hinduization. This
process was strongly influenced by Brahmans who were invited in from outside

Dalton 1969, 154.

Cobden Ramsay 1910, 114-15, 143, 213, 239, 262-3, 329, 335.
**Fiirer-Heimendorf 1961.
Sinha 1962, 1987.
Kulke 1976, 398-409; 1993, 82-92.
*'Panda 2004, 83-4.
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 145

by the ruling families in the tribal belts of Orissa. The most significant result
of this development was the emergence of a number of princely states and
small kingdoms which became the ‘nuclear areas’ of diffusion of the ‘great
tradition’ of Brahmanical culture and thus of chronicles, too. When composing
the royal prasastis of land grant charters, the court pandits would link the origin
of the donor, the ruling king, with some ancient Kshatriya clan through an
invented genealogy. In my opinion, the court poet Gangadhar Mishra continued
this tradition in his Kosalananda Kavyam by linking, in a sophisticated and
elaborate way, the ruling dynasty of Sambalpur with the Rajput Chauhans of
north India, who meanwhile had emerged as the imagined ideal Hindu kings
of late-medieval India. Hence, we come to the conclusion that the Chauhans
of western Orissa were indigenous people of the locality, neither outsiders nor
linked with the Rajput-Kshatriyas of the Chauhan dynasty of Rajputana, as
claimed by Gangadhar Mishra.

KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE SEPARATE

IDENTITY OF WESTERN ORISSA

Gangadhar Mishra and his kavya doubtlessly contributed to the emergence of

a separate identity in western Orissa. By calling his poem ‘Kosalananda’,
which means ‘Koshala [the land of] happiness’, he wanted to eulogize the
prosperity of the land. By associating it with Koshala of Puranic fame, he not
only depicted the land as a separate geographical entity, but also glorified the
Chauhan kings for their royal and cultural revival of western Orissa: As coastal
Orissa was identified with the cult of Jagannatha and the Gajapati kings,
Gangadhar tried to equate or even to supersede the humble origin of the Gajapati
kings of Khurda by proclaiming a Rajput origin and the marriage of his royal
patron with the erstwhile imperial Gajapatis. Furthermore, the poet praised
the Chauhans of western Orissa as the revivers of the ancient cultural glory
of Koshala, as a new era started with the foundation of their rule. Therefore
the poet called the first canto of his kavya ‘Kosaladesa Svarupa Nirupanam’.®
The founder of the Sambalpur Raj, Balaramadeva, constructed the two imposing
temples of Samaleswari and Pataneswari at his new capital. He and his
successors patronized a new culture, combining Brahmanic and folk and tribal
traditions. The new religious cult centring around the goddess Samalai and
the Kosali language has had a deep influence on the life and society of western
Orissa right up to the present time.
Summarizing this argument, therefore, one may come to the following
conclusions. The Sambalpur court poet Gangadhar Mishra was well acquainted
with the historical tradition of Puri and most probably was also familiar with
the bardic literature of Rajasthan. In order to glorify his royal patron, Raja
Baliardeva of Sambalpur, and to win his favour, he composed the Kosalananda
Kavyam on the model of the Prithiviraj Vijaya of Jayanaka and Prithiviraj

82 KK, Text, 6.
146 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

Raso of Chand Bardai, combining it with Puri’s local historical tradition.

The fame of the Rajput tradition reached Orissa fairly late. Its impact was
felt only under the impression of the conquest of Orissa by the great Mughal
Rajput General Man Singh. Since the seventeeth century the concept of the
Rajput origins of the local ruling families had spread to the ‘capitals’ of the
emerging Garhjat Mahals of northern and western Orissa. It seems that
Gangadhar’s Kosalananda Kavyam was an outcome of this ‘Rajputization
process’. Gangadhar created a consistent and fascinating story, combining
Rajput traditions with local legends and imaginations, in order to establish a
Chauhan Rajput origin for the Sambalpur rajas and even to link them to the
Puranic Somavamsa of pan-Indian tradition. In a later process, the original
kavya was extended by the court pandits of the Sonepur, Patna and Khariar
durbars to satisfy the ambitions of their ruling families, thus popularizing the
‘Rajput myth’ even more through the invention of new imaginary stories.
While writing the history of the region, the authors of the British gazetteers
depended on information provided by these court pandits. By referring again
and again in their gazetteers to similar ‘Rajput stories’ of other princely states,
they strengthened and validated the ‘Rajput myth’ of the ruling families of
western Orissa through its official proliferation.
Geographical separation, the evolution of a synthesis of tribal and Brahmanic
cultures, the emergence of new cults centring around tribal goddesses, the
Kosali language and the Chauhan myth became identity markers of the people
of western Orissa, as they still are up to the present. Members of the ex-ruling
families are not only revered by the people as Chauhan Rajputs but have also
been elected by them to various official positions, from Members of the
Legislative Assembly to Chief Minister, in spite of their affiliations with
different political parties. Western Orissa has been represented repeatedly by
these ruling families in the government. The leaders and the educated elite of
the former royal families often play the card of a separate identity to arouse
public sentiment whenever they feel that their interests and ‘legitimate demands’
are being neglected or suppressed by the coastal leadership. The present Koshala
movement for a separate state of western Orissa has its roots in these
processes.™

°G.N. Dash 2006.

REFERENCES
Banerji, R.D. 1928. ‘Rajput Origin in Orissa’, in Modern Review 43, 285-91.
1930. History of Orissa, 2 vols, Calcutta: R. Chatterjee.
Bardai, Chand n.d. Prithviraj Raso, Nagaripracarini Granthamala Series, Varanasi:
Nagaripracarini Sabha.
Cobden Ramsay, L.E.B. 1910. Feudatory States of Orissa, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot (rpt. 1950, 1982).
Dalton, E.T. 1969. Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, Calcutta: Firma K.L.
Mukhopadhyay.
 KOSALANANDA KAVYAM AND THE MAKING OF A RAJPUT DYNASTY 147

Dash, G.N. 2006. ‘Changing One’s Own Identity: The Role of Language in theTransformation
of a Subregional Tradition’, in A. Malinar (ed.), Time in India: Concepts and Practices,
Delhi: Manohar, 272-91.
Dash, S.P. 1969. Sambalpur Itihasa, 2nd edn., Sambalpur: Visva-Bharati Press.
Fiirer-Heimendorf, C. von. 1961. “The Historical Value of Indian Bardic Literature’, in
C.H. Philips (ed.), Historians ofIndia, Pakistan and Ceylon, London: Oxford University
Press, 87-93.
Grant, Charles 1870. The Gazetteer of the Central Provinces of India, 2nd edn., Nagpur:
Education Society Press Bombay.
Impey, H.B. 1953. “Notes on Gurhjat State of Patna’, in Orissa Historical Research Journal
2, 2, Appendix II (rpt.).
Kar, Niranjan (ed.) 1994. Kosalananda Mahakavyam, Puri: Samskrtagavesanakendram,
Sn Jagannathasamskrtavisvavidyalayah.
Kirtane, N.J. (ed.) 1878. Hammira Mahakavya of Nayachandra, Bombay: Education
Society’s Press.
Kulke, H. 1976. ‘Kshatriyaization and Social Change: A Study in the Orissa Setting’, in
S. Devadas Pillai (ed.), Aspects of Changing India: Studies in Honour of Prof. G.S.
Ghurye, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 398-409, rpt. in idem, Kings and Cults: State
Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia, Delhi: Manohar 1993, 82-
92.
—1987. ‘The Chronicle and the Temple Records of the Madala Panji of Puri: A
Reassessment of the Evidence’, in The Indian Archives 36, |, |-24; rpt. in Kings and
Cults, 137-58.
Mahapatra, K.N. 1954. ‘Antiquity of Jagannatha Puri as a Place of Pilgrimage’, in Orissa
Historical Research Journal 3, |, 6-21.
—1960. A Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts of Orissa, vol. 2,Bhubaneswar:
Orissa State Museum.
Mallick, R.C. 1931. Samkhipta Kosala or Sambalpur Itihasa (in Oriya), Sambalpur.
Mazumdar, B.C. 1911. Sonepur in the Sambalpur Tract, Calcutta: Brahmo Mission.
1925. Orissa in the Making, Calcutta: University of Calcutta.
Mohanty, A.B. (ed.). 1969. Madala Panji (in Oriya), Bhubaneswar: Utkal University.
Motte, T. 1953. ‘A Narrative of a Journey to the Diamond Mines at Sombhulpur’, in Orissa
Historical Research Journal |, 3, Appendix II, 1-48 (rpt.).
O’Malley, L.S.S. 1909. Bengal District Gazetteer: Sambalpur, Calcutta: The Bengal
Secretariat Book Depot.
Ojha, G.H. and C. Guleri (eds.) 1940. Prithviraj Vijaya of Jayanaka, Ajmer:
Vaidikayantralaya.
Panda, S.K. 1978-9. ‘Brahmanas in Medieval Orissa, Cir. A.D. 1000-1600", in Journal of
Ancient Indian History 12, 25-35.
——2004. ‘Situating Tribals in Early History of Orissa’, in B.B. Chaudhuri and A.
Bandopadhyaya (eds.), Tribes, Forest and Social Formation in Indian History, Delhi:
Manohar, 81-8.
Patnaik, Sudhakar 1940. ‘The Srijang Inscription of Achyuta Bahar Singh Mahapatra
(1598)’, in Journal of the Orissa Academy 3, 1, 21-32.
Rath, A.K. 1987. ‘Jagannatha-Puri as a Place of Pilgrimage in the Early Medieval Period
(c. AD 700-1200): A Study Based on Epigraphical and Literary Sources’, in idem,
Studies on Some Aspects of the History and Culture of Orissa, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak,
90-100.
Sahu, J.K. 1953. ‘Historical Value of Jaya Chandrika’, in Orissa Historical Research
Journal 2, 2, Appendix I (rpt.).
148 SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA

———1969. ‘The Chauhan Rule in Orissa’, Ph.D. thesis, Utkal University,

Bhubaneswar.
1971. ‘Chauhan Rule in Western Orissa’, in N.K. Sahu (ed.), New Aspects of the
History of Orissa, Sambalpur: Sambalpur University.
Sahu, J.K. and D. Chopdar (eds.) 2000. Kosalananda Kavyam, Sambalpur: Sambalpur
University.
Sharma, D. 1959. Early Chauhan Dynasties, Delhi: Chand.
Singhdeo, Biramitradaya (ed.) 1929. Kosalananda Kavyam, Sonepur.
Sinha, Surajit 1962. ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India’, in Man in
India 42, 1, 35-80.
(ed.) 1987. Tribal Polities and State Systems in Pre-Colonial Eastern and North
Eastern India, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi.
Stietencron, H. von 1978. ‘The Advent of Visnuism in Orissa: An Outline of its History
According to Archaeological and Epigraphical Sources from the Gupta Period up to
1135 A.D.’, in A. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathy (eds.) 1978. The Cult of
Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 1-30.
Temple, Sir Richard 1863. Report on the Zamindaries and Other Petty Chieftaincies in the
Central Provinces, Nagpur: Govt. Press (rpt. 1923).
 CHAPTER 8

Between Narratives and Silence:

Centring Gangpur State’

CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

This chapter seeks to contest the ‘centre-periphery’ binary opposition in the -

study of the politico-cultural history of Orissa by proposing a shift in the
prevailing historiographic paradigms.' As part of a larger research project
exploring the social history of colonial and pre-colonial Orissa, and in particular
the creation of diverse cultural specificities and attendant subregional or local
identities in the Orissan hinterland, the present chapter attempts to examine
the socio-cultural history of a former princely state of Orissa, namely, Gangpur,
which was administratively incorporated into Sundargarh district in post-
colonial Orissa. It may not be out of place to suggest here that, having the
distinction of being the main steel manufacturing city in India, Sundargarh
paradoxically symbolizes the ‘march of modernity’ against the backdrop of a
predominantly tribal population and their associated cultural values and
traditions. By ‘centring Gangpur’, as the title of the paper suggests, on the
basis of the hitherto perceived, unchallenged and generally claimed centrality

*I am indebted to Hermann Kulke and Georg Berkemer for generating the desire in me
to study the vamsavalis as part of my overall interest in exploring the social history of
pre-colonial and colonial Orissa. For this specific study on the erstwhile State of Gangpur
of Orissa, the generous support extended by Bhawani Singh, Biswajit Pradhan (Sambalpur
University), Kasinath Sekhar Deo, Rabinarayan Thakur and Gouri Patel (Sundargarh) is
noteworthy. During the tedious fieldwork at Sundargarh in piecing together the varieties
of information concerning its local history, they have remained both as my informants and
as my critics consistently. Though it has not been possible to fully negotiate all the questions
raised in the study, still it can be seen as a preliminary draft of a larger exploration into the
world of western Orissa including its cultural boundary in order to probe the nature and
ramifications of the idea of subregional identities of the region.
'In the specific context of undertaking a systematic research on the hinterland of Orissa,
focusing on the numerous ex-feudatory states of Orissa as a contrast to historically well-
researched coastal plains of Orissa, I have argued elsewhere that the existing historiographic
traditions ranging from Orientalist perspective to Colonial, Nationalist and Marxist
perspectives have more or less delimited the possibility of exploring the varied yet integrally
complex relationship existing between the domains of politics, religion and culture in the
context of these princely states. Therefore, it has been suggested alternatively, to look into
the Orissan hinterland by engineering a shift in the historiographic paradigm itself. Nanda
2003, 205-20.
150 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

of Puri and the Jagannath cult, the main attempt of the paper is to subvert the
‘centre-periphery’ binary opposition by shifting the historian’s gaze to one of
the ex-feudatory states of the Orissan hinterland.
By looking beyond the existing historiographic narratives based on
Orientalist, Colonial, Nationalist and Marxist perspectives, the paper attempts
to tap unexplored literary and oral traditions in the shape of vamsavalis, myths,
legends, etc., relating to the cultural and social practices of such regions. These
unexplored aspects may be seen as the ‘voices of silence’ in the prevailing
historiographic traditions, which await vocalization so that the collective
memories relating to the Orissan hinterland may be brought to life. In the final
analysis, as can be seen, so-called ‘peripheral zones’ like Gangpur assume
‘centrality’ and ‘focus’ in terms of both mental and geographical aspects. Such
‘strategic shifts’ in existing historiographic traditions, in my view, pave the
way for understanding the process of the crystallization of the ‘multi-layered
identities’ grounded in subregional contexts. Moreover, this aids significantly
in critiquing and contesting the hegemonic ‘centre-periphery’ discourse.
My field studies and research in the last two years or so in certain ex-princely
states of Orissa have revealed at least one important and inescapable reality,
namely, documenting local historical traditions by examining the royal palace,
its library (though it is currently in a deplorably dilapidated state) and temple
archives alongside locating or re-reading the vamsavalis of such states at one
end and the folk traditions and cultures of the locality at the other in order to
form a comprehensive picture of the region under study. This, I suggest, may
pave the way for methodological shifts in terms of historical research to
overcome the ‘silence’ in the sphere of collective memory pertaining to
Orissa.
Horizontally, Gangpur State can be viewed as lying on the margins when
compared to the coastal tracts of Orissa, the so-called ‘centre’. Similarly in a
vertical sense, the exploration of the demographic, socio-political nature of
the state yields much information on the marginalized social strata of the
region. For instance, the very attempt in this chapter to map the social history
of Gangpur State significantly reminds one to examine the historical trajectory
of tribal resistance in the tract (namely, the Bhuyan and Munda rebellions),
apart from understanding the several complex issues with regard to the social
stratifications of this former princely state.
For the ‘silence’ part of the present study, I have mainly tried to locate and
analyse a few of the vamsavalis pertaining to Gangpur State as well as certain
hitherto unexplored documents unearthed from the Sundargarh District Records
Collections as preserved in the Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar. The
vamsavalis, which often highlight political, dynastic and regal details and were
invariably written to valorize the particular deeds of the kings, also contain
significant insights into the interwoven aspects of culture, religion and society.
In other words, the twin interrelated processes of ‘Hinduization’ and
‘tribalization’ are indirectly and tacitly suggested in the body of the vamsavali
texts.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE | 151

It is similarly the case with the archival records mentioned above, which
have yet to be fully tapped and which provide a plethora of information for
the study of the culture, history and society of such states. Although it has not
been possible to utilize fully all these highly relevant source materials to
reconstruct the history of Gangpur State, the present chapter is a modest attempt
in this direction.
The aim of the chapter as a whole is to study the origin of Gangpur State
by examining its many genealogical traditions alongside its myths and legends.
Secondly, the chapter seeks to bring into sharper focus the voices of the
subalterns who sought to resist and subvert domination from any centre and
thus positioned themselves as virtual centres of authority. Importantly too, the
chapter attempts, from the horizontal point of view, to show how—despite an
apparently dichotomous ‘centre-periphery’ relationship between the ‘Hindu
kingdom’ of coastal Orissa and a predominantly tribal tract such as Gangpur
State—certain tribal cultural practices underwent a process of gradual
transformation in terms of ‘Hinduization’ and, vice versa, ‘in between’. The
chapter begins with the origin and rule of the Kesari and Sekhar dynasties in
the Gangpur region on the basis of some of the local traditions, including
genealogical accounts. Furthermore, it also aims to show how the tribal people
of this region sought to relate themselves to these two dynasties. By specifically
examining the ‘moments of resistance’ and ‘mentality of reverence’ on the
part of the tribal people of the region vis-a-vis the state or centre, the chapter
aims to demonstrate the fragile basis of a constructed conceptual binary
opposition in terms of ‘centre and periphery’.
The main idea in pursuing such a study of one of the ex-feudatory states is
to indicate the ‘possible nature of polycentric, multilayered and dynamical
quality’ so far as the pre-modern state in India is concerned. This view is
appropriately corroborated when it is argued that the state ‘is an idea and a
system of symbols which can be more or less deeply rooted in the social norms
and values of a society (where “the state” is given in people’s view of the
world, there is a state)’.”
The present district of Sundargarh or the former Princely State of Gangpur
formed a part of South Koshala and was ruled by the Somavamsis from the
first half of the sixth century CE.’ During the rule of the Somavamsi king,
Udyotakesari Mahabhavagupta, the Somavamsi dominion was not only
consolidated but became divided into the two main political units of the Koshala
and Utkal regions. The former chief, Abhimanyu, who was the grandfather of
Udyotakesari, was made ruler of the Koshala division, which was sometimes
referred to as ‘Paschima Lanka’ or ‘Paschima Kalinga’.* Suvarnapura or modern
Sonepur was the capital of the Koshala division. The reference to the early
origin of the Kesari dynasty in the Gangpur region around the eleventh and

2Berkemer 2003, 2.
3Sahu 1971, 16.
‘Tbid., 20; Rajaguru 1971, 49.
152 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

twelfth centuries CE in some of the genealogical accounts may have certain

links with the Somavamsis, who are also known as the Kesari dynasty.
However, later on, the Kalachuris seem to have occupied the territory during
the early part of the twelfth century. The Ganga rulers subsequently contemplated
the conquest of Koshala following the occupation of Utkal by Chodaganga,
the Ganga king. However, the conquest of Koshala succeeded when Anangabhima
III (CE 1211-38) fought and defeated the Kalachuris, thus wresting South
Koshala from them. This is the time when the Ganga rulers came to control
the region of the erstwhile Gangpur state or the modern Sundargarh region.
Given the paucity of historical evidence as far as this part of Orissa during the
period of Ganga supremacy is concerned, one has to take note of local traditional
accounts which point to rule over Gangpur by a number of kings with Kesari
titles. Even though the exact relationship between these Kesari kings and the
Gangas cannot be determined, it seems probable that all these rulers with the
Kesari epithet were feudatories of the Gangas of Utkal.° It was probably during
the time of the Gangas that Gangpur was consolidated as a separate political
unit and thus thrived as a feudal state.°
In this context, it is pertinent to note that the local traditions of Gangpur
point to the existence of a Kesari line with sixteen kings who ruled over
Gangpur. It is also said that they had their capital at various places, like
Masabiragarh, Sukhabandha, Hemagir, Belsaragarh, Keshargarh and Karamgarh.
The names of Kesari kings vary in different local traditions and seem to be
imaginary. However, based on traditions, it appears that a local dynasty using
the epithet “Kesari’ ruled over the region from about the twelfth century onward.
Much later, official colonial writings also mention the rule of this dynasty in
the region.’
As one tradition relates:
Some of the scions of the Somavamsis (famous as Kesari kings in the tradition), on
their defeat by the Gangas, migrated to Gangpur region and established their authority.
These Kesari rulers were apparently allowed to carve out a self-contained principality
in the Gangpur region and continued as vassals of the imperial Gangas. The last of
these Kesari rulers, called Raja Deo Kesari, was an oppressive ruler and was therefore
eventually murdered together with members of his family by a powerful Bhuiyan
leader, Madan Pradhan. The consequent political confusion that prevailed offered the
opportunity for the progenitor of the Paramara-Sekhara family to seize the land.*

The veracity of this tradition concerning local Kesari rule in Gangpur may
be judged against the backdrop of Chatesvara inscriptions, pointing to a decisive
victory by Anangabhima III’s General Vishnu over the Kalachuri king of

‘Behera 1971, 53.

°Orissa District Gazettear: Sundargarh 1971, 54 (hereafter, ODG).
References can be made to the writings of Colonel Dalton, C.W.E. Connolly (Settlement
Report of 1911) cited in ODG 84, 54 respectively; Hunter 1877, 189-95.
S‘ODG, 54.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 153

Tumana in a battle fought on the banks of the Bhima, the edges of the Vindhyas,
and the shore, and resulting in the Gangas taking possession of a vast stretch
of land in western Orissa. Furthermore, findings from certain maufi grants
indicate that Anangabhima visited the Sambalpur region. Also, the Khambesvari
temple inscription bears testimony to the fact that the Sonepur region was
under the control of the imperial Gangas during the time of Bhanudeva (1264-
79), which had been placed under the charge of a governor.?
Yet another tradition relates that the Kesari family of Gangpur owed its
origin to Puri, where two brothers named Ratan Kesari and his younger brother,
Kapila Kesari, ‘having title to the royal stock left Puri in order to find out
places where they might be rulers’. Accordingly, ‘the elder brother, Ratan
Kesari, succeeded to the gaddi of Keshargarh whereas the younger, Kapila
Kesari, succeeded to the gaddi of Karamgarh’. They and their descendants
began to rule over these two places, which were two separate states at that
time.'°
In addition, a local genealogical tradition corroborates the suggestion that
two brothers, namely, Kapila Kesari and Ratan Kesari, who hailed from the
country of ‘Puri and Cuttack’ of Aitreya gotra, settled in the village of Masabira
in the Gangaimati region. Once, while Kapila Kesari was asleep, the presiding
deity of Gangpur (Kashari, perhaps a tribal deity, who used to be worshipped
every Tuesday through the offerings of the usual sacrifices) appeared to him
in a dream and told him that a bamboo tree would bear flowers in the Masabira
hillock and he would be the king of that region. The deity disappeared after
asking him to organize worship for the ‘god Narasimha Garuda, Dharmaketu
Khanda (the sword protecting Dharma), the Ashtabhuji Khanda (a sword with
eight handles), Bijekarna Katari (a victory axe?), Chhatrabauti (a bamboo tree
in the shape of canopy) and Dwarasini (the guards at the temple entrance)’.
Then Kapila Kesari narrated the dream to his brother Ratan Kesari. Afterwards,
he not only founded the village at Masabira by making people settle there, but
also made Masabira a fort. In the gaddi of Masabira, he installed the above-
mentioned god and became king in CE 1135."!
Ratan Kesari established his rule at Keshargarh in the border region around
present-day Orissa and Chhattisgarh. Similarly, Kapila Kesari “sat on the gaddi
[throne]’ of Karamgarh. Afterwards, he relocated Karamgarh around Hemgir
Sukhabandh and ultimately founded his capital on the site of the fort of
Belsaragarh. In another account, it is pointed out that Kapila Kesari kept
shifting his capital from ‘Karmaga to Sukhabandha before finally opting for
Belsaragarh as the appropriate place for the capital site from the standpoint of
defence’.'? The two brothers continued to maintain amicable relations, even
though they exercised different territorial jurisdictions from the twin centres

*Tbid., 53-4.
‘Pandey 2003; Private Loose Records ACC No. 700, ACC No. 677 (hereafter PR).
'' PR, 677.
'2Pandey 2003.
154 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

of Kesharagarh and Belsaragarh. Ratan Kesari was succeeded by Birata Kesari

and Bikram Kesari. As Bikram Kesari died without issue, the queen bequeathed
the state to a member of a certain Behera family, namely, Jayadev Behera,
along with five diamonds. Tradition has it that the queen committed satt.
Meanwhile, at Balsargarh, Kapila Kesari was succeeded by his sons and
grandsons. The last king of this line was Deo Kesari, who had three queens.
While the two eldest queens stayed at Belsargarh, the youngest, who belonged
to the ‘stock of the Ho family’ of Ratanpur in Bilaspur, lived at Hemgir near
Sukhabandh. Deo Kesari appointed Madan Pradhan diwan of the state and
continued to manage ‘the state together with him’. The raja used to perform
the sacrifice to propitiate the goddess Kusari every Tuesday.'* In another
account, it is told that the king used to offer human sacrifice to the istadevata
Kesar Mati every Tuesday." |
In course of time, the king and the diwan fell out. Consequently, Deo Kesari
divested Madan Pradhan of the diwanship and appointed him a mere zamindar,
granting only two villages in his favour. Humiliated, Madan Pradhan vowed
to destroy the Kesari dynasty and sought to mobilize “all the Bhuiyans and
the Khandayat Bhuiyans of twenty-two zamindaris’.'° He also sought the
support of the king of Pallikote of Nagpur in his ‘war’ against Deo Kesori. In
return, he handed over a tract of land of around 28 miles (14 kos) to the raja
of Nagpur. The land that was exchanged at this time is still known as Kesalpur.
Similarly, in exchange for granting the parganas Ganjagiri or Jagyangiri and
Karmagarh to the king of Raigarh, he secured his military support. The two
kings mentioned above helped Madan Pradhan by providing soldiers. Thus
emboldened, Madan was able to defeat King Deo Sekhar.
Not only was the king brutally murdered at Belsaragarh, his pregnant queen
was also beheaded. According to the popular memory, the lower portion of
her body came to be worshipped at Belsaragarh in the form of the goddess
Rani Aai, a practice that still exists today. The other queen of the king at
Belsaragarh jumped into the water out of panic upon learning about the dreadful
attack on the royal family. This place is known as Rani Buda. The youngest
queen, who was living at Hemgir, was also murdered, later emerging in Hemgir
in the form of the goddess Manikeswari."* In the popular perception, the goddess
of Belsaragarh attained more prominence than the goddess of Hemgir.'”
Yet another tradition suggests that one queen fled to her father at Ratanpur
in Chhattisgarh. According to this tradition, the last ruler of the Kesari dynasty,

PR, 700.
“Pandey 2003.
'STbid.; PR 677; 700. The account contained in these sources refers to the ‘bloody
massacre’ (emphasis added) of the royal family with subtle variations in terms of
narratives.
‘The tradition relating to the accounts of local deities can be gleaned from the following
sources; PR, 700, 677; Pandey 2003.
Pandey 2003.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 155

Manabhanja Kesari, was murdered at Hemgir while he was with the youngest
queen. This incident is dated to CE 1597.'* This tradition also adds that the
splash of blood that oozed out upon the brutal murder of Manabhanja Kesari
ultimately flowered into a Sivalinga. Siva is still worshipped at Hemgir under
the name of the god Manikeswar. The variation in these accounts as to the
difference in the gender of the ‘local’ deity is interesting.
As the tradition continues, Madan Pradhan took possession of the sword,
a symbol of the god Garuda Devata Bada Deo, the state deity, the palm-leaf
book (the book containing the history of the four garhs) and the vermilion
case to Indrapur. He also reorganized the ‘due worship’ of the local goddess."*
All the wealth belonging to the raja, including the horses, elephants and other
domestic animals, was ‘plundered’ and ‘fairly and proportionately’ divided
amongst his followers.” The iron wristlets (kural khada) and the chains of the
elephant were also removed to Belsaragarh. This tradition has been maintained
here down the generations.”' It is still possible that, as this account points
out, initially Madan Pradhan preserved the ‘sword with eight handles and a
big iron chain’ in the cave at Hemgir mountain and that these articles were
worshipped by the garotia (the military fief-holder) at Hemgir. Moreover,
after his supposed victory, Madan Pradhan distributed all the booty looted
from the royal household, including cattle, elephants and horses, proportionately
among the zamindars who had stood by him during the ‘war’ against the
king.
From the preceding accounts, it appears that, during his rule in the tract,
the Kesari king, Kapila Kesari, may have used Gangaimati, Masabira,
Karamgarh, Sukhabandh or Hemgir, and finally Belsargarh as his capital fort.
The very process of shifting the capital leads the social historian to consider
the idea of shifting boundaries and centres. The other interesting references
are to the act of sati allegedly committed by the queen of Bikram Kesari at
Keshargarh and the subsequent abdication of the throne in favour of Jayadev
Behera, who did not belong to the Kesari line. These point first, to the due
observance of ‘Hindu practices’ on the part of the royal family, including the
act of sati by the queen. Secondly, it seems probable that the death of King
Bikram Kesari was followed by the rule of a ‘powerful local chief’ who may
have been a vassal of the king. Given the association of the Gaudas (milkmen),
to which Behera may have belonged, with the royal history of Gangpur, it is
also possible that Bikram Kesari took a wife from a non-Kshatriya community.

'8The peculiarity with the Oriya version of the genealogical account, of Gangpur state
is twofold. First, it ascribes CE 1135 as the year of accession of Ratan Kesari, the founder-
ruler of local Kesari/Kesori dynasty. Second, it talks of the local god of Gangpur, i.e.
Manikeswar (Lord Siva) as the emerging presiding deity of Hemgir instead of the local
goddess, as evident in other accounts.
'9PR, 700.
°Tbid.
21Pandey 2003.
156 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

As he died without issue, the state lapsed into the control of one of his powerful
‘vassals’ or ‘chiefs’.
A critical reading of all these accounts alerts the historian to take note of
the following issues and ideas.
(a) The meticulous attempt of the authors of these local genealogical
traditions of Gangpur state to ascribe its ‘legend of origin’ to the Puri
and Kesari dynastic traditions may be a much later ‘imagined or invented’
tradition. As has been pointed out, the Yayati Kesari tradition was
transformed into a foundation myth of early Orissa by modern historians
based on the typical combination of history and legend and flavored
with the argument that Yayati I (c. 922-53) was the first to establish a
regional kingdom in Orissa, uniting both Koshala and Utkal politically
and culturally and thus emerging as the father of modern Orissa.” It is
further argued that, ‘despite some possibly genuine historical allusions
to the tenth century, Puri’s Yayati Kesari legend has to be regarded
primarily as a construct of [the] late sixteenth century of Orissa for
validation and legitimization of priestly and royal authority after the
downfall of the imperial Gajapatis’.
In this context, what merits consideration is that the “foundation legend’
of Gangpur is one of the typical legends.of the Garhjat (ex-feudatory)
states, which most likely emerged during the Khurda Period (and
certainly not during the Ganga period) as part of the project of the
‘revival of Yayati Kesari tradition’ of late-sixteenth-century Orissa.
(b) The reference to the story of the two brothers in the local traditions
venturing out to places where they might be rulers apparently has close
parallels in the ‘origin legend’ of certain other ex-feudatory states such
as Keonjhar, which merely points to similar narratives being composed
in favour of the ‘origin’ of such princely states pushing their antiquities
back into the ‘hoary past’ at a much later historical period. In addition,
such stories also highlight the contestation and reconciliation between
two or several contenders for power and political control.
(c) Similarly, the reference to the names of Kesari, Kesuri and Kesar Mati
as the presiding local goddess of Gangpur in the local traditions may
have contributed to the texturing of the legend of the Kesari dynasty
ruling over Gangpur State. However, the reference to the god Manikeswar
as the presiding local god (Lord Siva) in other accounts indicates the
possible impact of the Brahmanical tradition and a conscious attempt
by the chronicler of such a tradition to distance his material from the
overwhelmingly tribal religious traditions of the region. Furthermore,
the dominance of Madan Pradhan as the Bhuiyan leader during the
period concerned also reminds us that the Bhuiyans were the mulavasis

For detailed reference, see Kulke (forthcoming); Panigrahi 1961.

 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 157

(the original inhabitants) of the region, the ‘Kesari’ being a much later
‘invented’ dynasty of Gangpur.
In addition, the ‘foundational myth’ in terms of pregnant women being
killed and later being transformed into istadevi as seen in the local
tradition of Gangpur is also evident in the context of other princely
states of coastal Orissa, such as Nayagarh, Baramba and Banki. The
association of such legends with the ‘royal tradition’ of the states may
imply a certain amount of space being allocated by royalty in favour of
(or to accommodate) tribal religious traditions in terms of mother
worship.
(d) The vernacular genealogical account of Gangpur State makes specific
mention of 1135 as the year of the inception of the Kesari dynasty in
Gangpur, with Kapila Kesari mounting the throne at Masabira. It further
mentions the name of Manabhanja Kesari as the thirteenth successor
king in the line of Kapila Kesari, who assumed the throne in 1548 and
was killed by the Bhuiyan leader Madan Pradhan in 1597. The supposed
variation in the name of the king killed by Madan Pradhan, Sri Deo
Kesari and Manabhanja Kesari, in two local traditions minimally but
clearly shows that the ‘Kesari tradition’ was invented during the late-
sixteenth century in the ‘Khurda Period’ of Orissan history.
In the final analysis, what merits attention in these accounts is that the foundation
of a ‘Hindu’ state in this region was marked by both a process of attempting
to ‘control and integrate’ the tribal and other communities of the region, and
valiant efforts from ‘below’ to arrest such processes at certain times. However,
such alleged ‘resistance’ from the indigenous communities was also associated
with the idea of the emulation of values, as we have been told, with the conti-
nuation of the religious traditions of the Kesari dynasty by Madan Pradhan or
the ‘smooth succession’ to the gaddi of Kesharagarh after Bikram Kesari,
someone who belonged to the non-Kshatriya community. In the latter case, it
was suggestive of the fact that someone who belongs to a non-Kshatriya
community could only be made king after he had been ‘rightfully nominated
and acknowledged’ by the previous king, who himself was a Kshatriya.
Similarly, the ‘divine dream’ in which Kapila Kesari was asked to organize
worship for certain gods and goddesses of both Hindu and tribal origin along
with a bamboo parasol and ‘typical swords’ central to tribal religious practices
perhaps indicates the idea of reconciling the Hindu with the dominant tribal
religious practices on the part of a Kshatriya king who was seeking to control
and integrate the region under his authority. However, as these accounts suggest,
the alleged oppression and misrule of the Kshatriya ruler evoked mass
mobilization and solidarity on the part of the indigenous tribal communities
under Bhuiyan leadership.
The alleged ‘resistance’ of the tribals to Kshatriya and Hindu domination,
as seen in the context of Madan Pradhan’s ‘war’ against Manabhanja Kesari
158 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

or Sri Deo Kesari, has conversely been integrated into popular memory and
local traditions by investing the persons or places that bore the burnt of the
murderous assault on Madan Pradhan with an aura of religious sanctity. As
has been shown above, the places of Rani Aai, Rani Buda at Belsaragarh or
the goddess or god Manikeswar in the form of Sivalinga at Hemgir retain this
legacy and have become part of the collective memory and local subregional
identity.
It might also be argued that the attainment of divinity on the part of the
king or queen following their murder not only implies the ‘divine wrath’
expressed against the indigenous tribal population through the mere fact that
the miracles happened: it also implies the so-called ‘invincible prowess’ of
the Kshatriyas vis-a-vis the tribal chiefs. All these components have obviously
been tailored and stitched into a dominant discourse revolving around the
Hinduization or Kshatriyaization process. Naturally, therefore, the genealogical
accounts, local historical traditions and popular memory integrally share and
supplement such a discourse through their own narratives.
The tradition of a wholesale massacre of the loca! Kesari royal family by
Madan Pradhan was followed by the rule of the Bhuiyans, who had grouped
themselves into several principalities. Madan Pradhan seems to have been
succeeded by his son and grandson Medini Pradhan and Betal Pradhan
respectively. With the death of Betal Pradhan, who died without issue, one of
his kith and kin, Panu Pradhan, continued to maintain the tradition of worshipping
the sword symbolizing the god ‘Garuda Debata Bada Deo’. This ‘sword was
preserved at Pradhan Pat and was removed to Samleswari temple by the late
Tikait’. The tradition of worship of the sword by the Bhuiyans is suggestive
of the tribal origin of the sword itself having religious significance. As the
priests of the ‘aboriginal deity’, the Bhuiyans continued to worship their trad-
itional god or goddess and the symbols associated with such deities. How-
ever, the sword as an alleged marker of the Hindu and Kshatriya ritual order,
or for that matter in the context of the religious practice of local Kesari rule,
including its link with the sword, may have been a later ‘invented tradition’.
Perhaps, after the death of Betal Pradhan the region of Gangpur continued
to be controlled by several Bhuiyan leaders. We come across quite a few names
of Bhuiyan zamindars who belonged to this phase and wielded considerable
‘power and authority’ in different tracts of this region. These were Mansingh
Majhi/Bharathi Majhi of Sargipalli; Bimbadhar Singh/Madan Mohan Singh
(Hemgir), Jagat Singh Mohapatra (Nagra), Madan Pradhan (Kirma Danda),
Charusingha Dansana and Prahallad Gartia (Sarpagarh or Sarapgarh).”* Of all
these chiefs, it seems that the Majhi of Sargipalli managed to secure the largest
tracts of land.” The continuous conflicts among the Bhuiyan chiefs to rule
over larger tracts of land often led to attempts to obtain external support from
the rajas of Raigarh and Palikot.

*ODG, 69; PR, 677.

* PR, 700.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 159

It was in this context that the Majhi of Sargipalli, who had by now emerged
as the most powerful Bhuiyan leader, may have sought the help of a wandering
Kshatriya called Parikhit Sekhar, alias Gangadhar Sekhar Deo, in subjugating
his rivals who were contesting his authority.” The Majhi of Sargipalli thus
invited Gangadhar Sekhar Deo to help defeat his rivals and subsequently put
‘vermilion on his forehead’ and made him the king of this region. Gangadhar’s
reign signalled the advent of the so-called ‘Kshatriya rule’ in Gangpur.
Let us now pause to examine the nature of social stratification in this region
and the probable explanations for the emergence of a so-called Kshatriya
dynasty under the name of ‘Sekhar’ in the Gangpur region. Writing his im-
pressions of the ‘most numerous’ and ‘dominant’ Bhuiyan tribe of Gangpur,
W.W. Hunter, the colonial administrator, noted that the Bhuiyans held not
only ‘fiefs in most parts of Gangpur’ under the raja but were also regarded as
the ‘especial priests of the aboriginal gods’.** Referring to the ‘current belief”
among the tribals, he also noted that the ‘local divinities are most readily
propitiated by the tribe which has had the longest acquaintance with them;
that is, who first claimed the county’. Elaborating on the hierarchy existing
within this tribal group, Hunter mentioned Bhagwan Manjhi of Tilla (an estate
situated in the north-west corner of Gangpur) as the chief of the Bhuiyan
vassals having the ‘sole right of conferring tilaka or token of investiture on
the raja of the state’ (a ‘custom’ which he realized, was on the wane with the
structuring of ‘Hindu ideas’ in the region). The next Bhuiyan feudatory in
order of importance was Balki Mahapatra, who controlled the estate of Nagra
in the south-east of Gangpur. Apart from rendering military service to the king
when required, in the form of ‘a contingent of armed followers or naiks’, he
used to pay annually for his land four hundred rupees, of which half consisted
of rent and the other half of magan or cess (the feudal levies). On the other
hand, the Naiks who were themselves Bhuiyans held land in his estate as feudal
sub-tenures on a par with the position of the Mahapatra himself.
Similarly, ‘Sibnath, the garhotia or military fief holder’ controlled the estate
of Hemgir, which had eighty-four villages. Interestingly, he would boast that
‘he can travel 24 miles in a direct line over his own land without seeing a
single house’, perhaps an indication of the vast stretch of forest land under his
control. Similarly, Balram was the garhotia of Erga. The garhotias of Hemgir
and Erga were ‘bound to render military service’ to the king, but their tenures
were ‘more like ordinary zamindaris than those of the Manjhi and Mahapatra’.
Hunter grouped them into the category of ordinary zamindars along with five
other Bhuiyan feudatories who were distinctly less socially privileged and
whose ‘estates are small and need no special notice’, as in the case of Maneswar
Singh, the garhotia of Sarapagarh.
Further, Dalton, in his ‘Report on the Tour in Bonai and Gangpur during

5%0ODG, 69.
26Hunter 1877, 192-3.
160 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

1863-64’, observed that the ‘Bhooyas’ were ‘no doubt’ the ‘first settlers’ of
the region and formed the ‘majority of the population’.”” He further notes
significantly that
all the zamindars under the Rajah are of that race, and hold their estates as fiefs at low
fixed rates and terms of service. Consequently, the Rajah is under the necessity of
adopting a conciliatory policy towards some of them at least. There are generally one
or two in opposition, but fortunately for the Lord Paramount the great vassals are too
jealous of each other readily to combine. The largest estate is held by the vassal who
bears the title of Mahapater. . . .

Dalton further states that ‘the chiefs’ of Gangpur, Bonai, Keonjhar and Bamra
States ‘now call themselves Rajputs; if they be so, they are strangely isolated
families of Rajputs’.”* In this connection, he points out,
the country for the most part belongs to the Bhuiyan sub-proprietors, they are a
privileged class, holding as hereditaments the principal offices of the State, and are
organized as a body of militia. The chiefs have no right to exercise any authority till
they have received the tilak or token of investiture from their powerful Bhuiya vassals.
Their position altogether renders their claim to be considered Rajputs extremely
doubtful, and the stories told to account for their acquisition of the dignity are palpable
fables. They were no doubt all Bhuiyas originally; they certainly do not look like
Rajputs.

Refuting the theory of the Kshatriya origins of Gangpur state and the
expulsion of the ‘Kaiserbuns’, the Kesari dynasty of Rajput-Kshatriya lineage
from Gangpur, Dalton reasons that the ruling family descended from the
‘original Bhooya chiefs’.” He goes on to stress that the ‘traditions’ of ‘assigning’
the ruling chiefs ‘a nobler birth’ are founded
on the supposition that the Rajpoots or Cshetryas were the only class qualified to rule,
that where there was no one of this class over a nation or a people, ‘the Gudee’ was
vacant, and a Cshetrya, had only to step in and take it. The Cshetryas must have
wandered about like knights-errant of old, in search of these vacant Guddee, as we do
not find in the country any descendants of the followers whom they must have had, if
they came in other fashion to oust the native chiefs and seize the country.

Dalton’s equation of the sons of the soil theory (bhumi, earth) with the
Bhuiyans finds an echo in Hunter.*° Hunter considers the legend of ‘stealing
a child of Sikhar family from Sikharbhum or Panchet’, who was subsequently
‘elected as the chief’, as ‘one form of the Brahmanical doctrine that all rulers
should be Kshatriyas, and the wide prevalence of similar stories, together with
the dark complexion and non-Aryan features of the raja, make it far more

“Report on Lt. Colonel T. Dalton’s Tour in Bonai and Gangpur during 1863-64 cited
in ODG 84 (hereafter, Dalton Report. . .).
*Dalton 1973, 140; Russel and Hira Lal 1975, 306-7.
” Dalton Report, 84-5.
Hunter 1877, 195; Bhuiyan may also stand for ‘Lord of the soil’ or ‘Belonging to the
soil’ and is a Sanskrit derivative. Russel and Hiralal 1975, 305.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 161

probable that he is, like most of his fief-holders, a Bhuiya’. However, in this
connection, what needs to be ascertained is the specific equation between this
so-called ‘outsider’ and the indigenous Bhuiyan community of the region. The
Bhuiyans could have either collaborated with the ‘chief from outside’ to defeat
their rivals or accepted him as the new ruler or been entirely subjugated by
this chief.
The accounts of Hunter and Dalton remind us interestingly about a similar
development in the Keonjhar state and its ‘foundational legend’ when one
takes into account the ceremonial practice of royal investiture as organized by
Bhuiyan chiefs or the story of a child of the royal lineage being stolen by the
Bhuiyans and subsequently being groomed to be the king of the region.
Moreover, the legendary foundational Rajput origin of some of the ruling
dynasties of central and eastern India as has been exemplified by Surajit Sinha
in the context of the Barbhum Raj family,” or in the case of the Chauhans of
western Orissa as pointed out by Shishir Kumar Panda,” reinforces the above
arguments.
Against the backdrop of these possible scenarios, however, the fact remains
that the Bhuiyans traditionally asserted their rights over the land as well as
over the ‘kingdom in the making’ [emphasis added]. It was in this context that
the ‘primordial right’ to participate in the rituals of royal investiture on the
part of the Bhuiyans assumes critical significance, at least clearly symbolizing
that royalty in the region was to be validated by the Bhuiyans in the last
analysis.»
Apart from the Bhuiyans (24,000), other tribes such as the Oraons (47,000),
Gonds (37,000), Kharias (26,000) and Mundas (19,000) along with the Agharias
(7,000), a cultivating caste, were the other significant social constituents of
this region.** Given the nature of the social composition, what needs to be
stressed further is the distinct initial resistance of the Bhuiyans, under Madan
Pradhan’s ‘bloody move’ to extinguish the local Kesari dynasty, or, as may
be seen in the revolt of Madri Kalo in 1897 (the aboriginal Gauntia and a
Bhuiyan) vis-a-vis the Agharia (belonging to the dominant and prosperous
agrarian class and non-tribal in origin), which also assumed the shape of ‘social
banditry’ [emphasis added].*° Finally, viewed against the backdrop of the peak
of nationalist politics and popular mobilization all over Orissa during late
1930s, the Munda rebellion against the ‘colonial and feudal order’ in Gangpur
in 1939 can be seen as emanating from the highly subjectively structured
perceptions of the tribals of the region in terms of the ‘original authority over
their land’.*°

Sinha 1962.
See Panda in this volume.
33Qne comes across similar patterns in the context of Keonjhar State so far as the notion
of ‘primordial right’ of the Bhuiyan is concerned; Nanda 2003.
44Cobden Ramsay 1910, 178-9; P.P. Mishra 2002, 4.
35Cobden Ramsay 1910, ibid.; ODG, 84.
Hunter 1877, 192-3 .. .‘The current belief is that these local divinities are most readily
162 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

It is crucial to note here that the tribal rebellion led by Madri Kalo in 1897
was a reaction to the policy of introducing a new Revenue Settlement in 1874
by Raja Raghunath Sekhar Deo, backed by the overall colonial land revenue
policies.*” The very introduction of the settlement resulted in the transfer of
some villages to the highest bidders in the neighbouring states. As a result,
quite a number of tribal chiefs lost their earlier privileges to people of other
castes, mostly ‘Agharias and rich people from Sambalpur’.** The colonial
administration interestingly characterized the nature of the rebellion as
follows:*?
The discontent had been smouldering for some years until in February 1897, it took
the shape of open revolt by the malcontents, which culminated in a series of more or
less serious dacoities and a general blackmailing of the villages in the disturbed tracts.
It was at length found necessary to depute the Deputy Commissioner of Singhbhum
with an armed body of British police to assist the chief in restoring order and in arresting
the insurgent leaders.

The Agharias, who in the words of Cobden Ramsay were the ‘most thriving
cultivators’ in the state, in the course of time emerged as a threat to the
indigenous tribal communities by vigorously taking up the profession of
agriculture and thus becoming wealthy and influential. As a new-rich class,
they sought to threaten the privileged social status hitherto enjoyed by the
Bhuiyan and other tribal communities. In this connection, Dalton’s note on
the Agharia caste assumes significance.”
According to their own tradition, they are called Agrahia [sic] from having come from
Agra. They were there, they say, Kshatriyas; but having been subjected to some
persecution by the ruler of the State, they left it, and taking up new lands in a new
country, cast aside their sacred thread, the badge of twice-borm, with all its privileges
and obligations, and took to the plough. Their appearance favours their pretensions to
be of good blood. Tall, well-made with high Aryan features and tawny complexions,
they look like Rajputs; but they are more industrious and intelligent than the generality
of the warrior caste.

Under these circumstances, it may be argued, the gradual dominance of the

community as the new successful class of agriculturists in the region threatened
the privileged positions of the indigenous castes and communities. The resultant
social tension may have expressed itself in the shape of a tribal reaction to
non-tribals under the leadership of Madri Kalo.
The continuing discontent among tribals was increased further around 1939,
when the durbar administration in Gangpur sought to increase the demand for

propitiated by the tribe which has had the longest acquaintance with them; that is, who first
colonised the country’.
*’P.P. Mishra 2002, 5-7.
*ODG, 75.
*Tbid., 75-6.
“Cobden Ramsay 1910, 180.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 163

land revenue. On this occasion the tribals resisted the attempt under the
leadership of Nirmal Munda, a converted Christian, and demanded a revision
of the rent structure. The movement gathered momentum and resulted in the
firing on the tribal people of Simko village on 25 August 1939, during which
a number of tribal people were killed.*!

We now shift our focus to explore briefly the history of the Sekhar dynasty
of Gangpur, which was supposed to have originated with the rule of Gangadhar
Sekhar Deo, who assumed the gaddi of Gangpur a little later, after the end of
the local Kesari rule. However, what needs to be emphasized is that any attempt
to explore the social history of a region during the pre-colonial and colonial
_periods on the basis of genealogical and local traditions needs to be critically
réconstructed and informed of varieties of processes at work, given the
complexities associated with the nature of social stratification and the ‘notion
of rights, privileges, along with the idea of the state’, as perceived by the in-
digenous communities of the region.
Here I shall probe the origin of the Sekhar dynasty and some ofthe socio-
cultural aspects pertaining to this royal lineage on the basis of a few genealogical
accounts, including an account of the history of the ex-princely family of
Gangpur by one of the relatives of the present raja called Kasinath Sekhar
Deo.”
All these accounts mention the infighting among several Bhuiyan chiefs
soon after the decline of the local Kesari dynasty. This infighting ultimately
resulted in growing ‘political anarchy and confusion’ in the region. It led to
such a situation that a group of Bhuiyan chiefs got together under the leadership
of the zamindar of Sargipalli and decided to search for a Kshatriya king to be
installed on the throne of Gangpur. As mentioned in Kasinath’s account, before
the advent of the Sekhar dynasty, the Bhuiyans used to choose their leader by
placing a lemon before potential candidates. The person towards whom the
lemon rolled was chosen as the king. In any case, it seems that continuous
conflict among the Bhuiyan chiefs to arrogate power and authority to themselves
created an opportunity in which a Kshatriya and Hindu king from “outside the
region’ was sought by preference by the Bhuiyans at large.
In one account, it is said that the Bhuiyan chiefs stole a child from
Sikharbhum or Panchet and elected him as their chief.*’ It is worth pointing
out that in Keonjhar State, we have similar references to two brothers, Adi
Bhanja and Jyoti Bhanja, who originally belonged to the Khijjing Kota or
Khijjinga Mandala (ex-feudatory state of Mayurbhanj). The younger brother
Jyoti Bhanja was kidnapped by the Bhuiyans of Keonjhar and subsequently
groomed to be the king of Keonjhar. In fact, the Bhuiyans, the original
inhabitants of Keonjhar, had long felt the acute need for a Kshatriya king who

41P_P. Mishra 2002, 10.

42 PR 677, 700; Sekhar Deo 2003.
’ 8Hunter 1877, 195.
164 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

would rule their ‘territories’ instead of being ruled and controlled by the remote
political authority located at Khijjinga Mandala.“ However, in all these
genealogical and local traditions, a detailed reference can be gleaned as to
how a Kshatriya ruler of the Paramara clan who originally belonged to Dhar
in Ujjain and a branch of that family had migrated to Panchet or Sikharbhum
or Panchakot Kashipur in Dhalbhum or to the Manbhum region of West Bengal.
The sovereign family deity of this royal line was Sekhar Basini, and a member
of this royal family occupied the gaddi of Kesaripur, named after the former
king of the Kesari line, and subsequently went on to rule Gangpur State. For
instance, the genealogical traditions pertaining to Gangpur maintain that:
Gangadhar Sekhar alias Parikshit Sekhar, the younger brother of the king at Sikharbhum
in Manbhum, fell out with the latter and thus left his home in search of ‘some other
country where he might be the ruler’. Seeking permission of his mother, he set out on
his journey without letting others know about his mission. Being only 22 years old,
he started his journey ‘on Saturday, the seventh day of Kanya of 407 Hindu era of
Delhi emperor’. On the way, he met a born-blind Brahman performing his morning
ablutions in a river. The shadow of the prince, his galloping horse, and the goddess
Sekhar Basini fell on the Brahman. Upon this, the Brahman predicted that ‘he who
was riding by him would become a raja in no time and further advised him to proceed
in Northward direction’. As a result, Parikshit Sekhar instantly alighted from the horse
and promised the Brahman that he would make him and his successor not only his
family priest but also the raja for two hours on Vijayadashami day. The old Brahman
agreed to the proposal and warned Parikshit Sekher that ‘he should not astray from
the path of virtues’ and assured him that he would be a nice ruler if he adhered to his
instructions. Encouraged by the blessings of the old Brahman, Parikshit Sekhar
proceeded further and on the way reached Kesaripur. In fact, Kesaripur provided an
opportunity to Parikshit Sekhar to realize his dream of becoming a king there. He
witnessed the continuous infighting amongst the Bhuiyan zamindars and chiefs. With
the arrival of Parikshit, a realignment of forces amongst the Bhuiyan chiefs took place.
Parikshit sided with the supposedly dominant Bhuiyan chiefs like the Majhi or zamindar
of Sargipalli and waged war against the other chiefs. He emerged triumphant in the
war and finally received the vermilion mark, the sign of royalty on his forehead from
the hands of Majhi of Sargipalli and Madan Pradhan, ‘on the eighteenth day of kanya
408 Delhi era’. Later on, Parikshit was taken to Masabira, where the royal umbrella
had been preserved. He continued to rule from Masabira for sometime afterwards.
... Parikshit’s elder brother from Panchakot Kashipur came down to Masabira region
in search of the former. However, he couldn’t find him there as the Bhuiyan kept him
concealed in a manchan (a platform) made in the midst of a stream. However, his elder
brother assured the Bhuiyans that he would not take away his brother and they should
properly inform him whether he was alive or not. Upon this, the Bhuiyan leaders
produced him and renamed Parikshit as Jalandhar as he had been kept in the manchan
inside water (jala). Finally, his elder brother left for Panchkot Kashipur, thereby leaving
the younger one to rule the State of Kesaripur which was subsequently named as
Gangpur.”

“M.M. Mishra n.d.

** PR, 700; Sekhar Deo n.d.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE . _. 165

This account is really one of the fascinating examples of a legend of

Rajputization, most likely of the same period, as has appropriately been
described in the context of the Chauhans of western Orissa.“ Needless to say,
such narratives associated with the Rajputization model are typical of the
period dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
As Masabira was not placed at the ‘centre’ of his domain, Jalandhar decided
to shift his capital to Patnagarh, later called Gangpurgarh. What is more
significant is that Jalandhar or Gangadhar also granted two villages, namely,
Masabira and Laikera, ‘free of rent in perpetuity’ to the Kalo, an influential
Bhuiyan family of the locality. He further ordered that the Kalo should supply
only two chhatra dandas (bamboo for Chhatra) at the time of the accession
of a new raja to the gaddi. He also resolved that ‘no Paramara ruler will
overlook the practice and collect rent from these villages and if any one goes
beyond it [sic], he will meet with premature death’. The Kalos seem to have
accepted the new king and become reconciled to the new Kshatriya regime in
the region by making a declarative oath inscribed on a piece of stone called
the Gadha Sila. The oath reads as follows:
We the Kalos, priest gar-majhi and all the zamindars do hereby promise to have perfect
amity among ourselves and shall have no hostile attitude against each other and the
raja on any account.*’
Yet another account mentions that:

Gangadhar alias Parikhita Sekhar is referred to as Hatihambar Sekhar who was crowned
at Masabira ‘seated on a platform (mancha) inside a stream’. As his coronation took
place in the pool of water, he came to be called as Jalandhar Sekhar Deo. . . . With the
coronation of the king, the zamindars became powerful. The king could never object
to whatever the zamindars wished to do. As per the account, the Bhuiyan zamindars
gave Jalandhar Sekhar Deo, a few praganas and distributed the rest amongst themselves.
Accordingly, the zamindar of Sargipalli received seventeen praganas in the relatively
plain areas of the region, while the zamindars of Sargipalli, Hemagir, Nagra, Saraphgarh,
Erga, Laikera, Pithabhuin, Giringkela, Mahulgaon, Nuagada, Bauseni, Baghabandha,
Kukurdiha and Lurkidihi received 17 praganas, 84 praganas, 30 kos (of land), 14 kos,
42 praganas, 24 praganas, 12 praganas, 15 praganas, 5 praganas, 12 praganas, 12
praganas, 5 praganas, 5 praganas and 5 praganas respectively. Further this account
mentions that ‘all the zamindars got together and convinced Jalandhar Sekhar to return
the lands which originally belonged to Madan Pradhan’. Thus, Madan Pradhan got
back his dewanhuda. Finally, after giving a few praganas to the king Jalandhar Sekhar
Deo, the zamindars distributed the rest of the praganas amongst themselves. Afterwards,
both the ‘zamindar and the Raja Dewan’ got united to rule over the region. The period
from 1597 to 1618 A.D. is ascribed to the reign of Jalandhar Sekhar Deo.”

The narrative is perhaps suggestive of the fact that, leaving aside the most

46For detailed references, see Panda in this volume.

47 PR 700.
48 PR 677.
166 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

likely late ‘invented’ Kesari dynasty [my emphasis], there was always the
dominance or rule of the various Bhuiyan chiefs, only once interrupted by the
‘unsuccessful’ attempt of Madan Pradhan, one of the powerful Bhuiyan chiefs,
to establish something like a kingdom. Once he and his weak successors were
dead, his ‘land’ was redistributed among the Bhuiyan chiefs. This seems to
be a typical case of tribal resistance, ‘however not by the tribal subalterns but
by the tribal chiefs’. The real ‘tribal subalterns’ rose in revolt only when, under
colonialism, the chiefs and kings attempted or had to exploit the people more
because of new settlement regulations and so on.”
What is more interesting in this account is the reference to the continuous
‘disturbances’ that the kings of Sekhar had to face subsequently in the form
of the threats posed by the ‘tigers’ of the region, the ‘poor health’ of subjects
or the ‘divine wrath’ caused by the discontent of the presiding deity of
Gangaimati. The account goes on to suggest that,
on account of these (above said) reasons, the gaddi didn’t suit Jalandhar Sekhar for
long as a result of which Jalandhar relinquished the throne and lived in the fort of
Gangpur on the bank of river Ib. Similarly, Hamir Sekhar Deo (1635-1698) also faced
the same kind of crisis. The ‘divine wrath’ caused by the presiding deity of Gangaimati
was so terrible that the tigers infested the region. Hence, the former asked Betala
Pradhan to propitiate the presiding deity by ‘preparing a kite’. But however, the Pradhan
family got wiped out in two months time while performing the puja to propitiate the
deity.
... The phase of crisis persisted till Gaikan Sekhar Deo (1698-1737). During his
reign, the ‘threat of the tigers, sickness of the people and wrath of the presiding deity
all combined to disrupt the peace and security of the region. The only solution for the
state appeared to be the propitiation of the state deity who was seen as the ‘creator of
all these problems’. It was in this context, the Bhuiyan zamindars attributed the reasons
for such disturbances to the murder of Manbhanjakesari, the last ruler of Kesari dynasty.
They further reasoned that the son of the youngest queen of Manbhanjakesari who had
been pregnant and fled from Hemagir to her father’s place at Ratanpur in Bilaspur to
escape death after knowing about the brutal murder of the king, should be brought
back to the Gangapur kingdom with honour. The son of the queen, Bharata Kesari had
married in the Chauhan family. The Bhuiyans were convinced that if he was brought
back to the kingdom, then the presiding deity of the state could be conciliated and the
problems of the kingdom would be eased out. The king of Ratanpur agreed to the
proposal and ordered the zamindars to fetch Bharata Kesari.
Thus, Anand Singh Majhi, Sansadhar Majhi, Tetiasingh Dansana, the Zamindars
of Sargipalli, Hemagir and Sarapagarh respectively went and met the Ho king of
Ratanpur and appealed to him to return Bharathi Kesari to Gangpur. Initially, the
Ratanpur king hesitated and reminded the zamindars that they had killed the Kesari
king in the past. Upon this, the Bhuiyan zamindars en masse vowed to protect the
surviving scion of ex-local Kesari rule with due honour. Finally, the Ho king conceded
and agreed to send Bhrarathi Kesari to Gangpur. On return, the Bhuiyans pleaded with

“T am grateful to Kulke for his valuable comments on this aspect of ‘Subaltern

resistance’.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE ~ > 167

the Sekhar king to install Bharathi Kesari on the Gangpur throne, which was
unacceptable to the king. On the other hand, Bharathi Kesari, as the scion of ex-royal
rule was provided with 20 lakhraj villages and assumed the title of Bada Kuanar, a
zamindar. As Bada Kuanar, he was supposed to offer worship to the presiding deity
of the state. The deity was finally satisfied and the problems of the ‘kingdom’ were
surmounted. Bharathi Kesari continued to remain as the zamindar of Kopasingha.”
This story is yet another symbolic example of ‘tribal resistance’ in the shape
of a presiding tribal deity who stood opposed to a non-Bhuiyan king. It was
only after a person of tribal origin became a zamindar that the deity was
pacified. The account further points out that, during the reign of Brajanath
Sekhar Deo (1795-1822), the zamindar of Sargipalli sought to contest the
authority of the king. The latter ‘killed (?)’ the Sargipalli zamindar at
Kopasingha. Under these circumstances, the king had to shift his capitalto
Kopasingha for five years. However, in all probability,
Indra Sekhar Deo had his capital at Gangpurgarh but he subsequently removed his
capital to Raibogagarh when Pratap Majhi, the zamindar of Sargipalli defied his
authority and made preparation to attack Gangapurgarh. After Indra Sekhar Deo, his
son Parsuram Sekhar Deo became the ruler. He received the first Sanad from the British
Govt. in CE 1827. He had his capital at Nabrangpur, near modern Rajgangpur. He was
a powerful king and attacked Sargipalli to take revenge on Pratap Majhi who had been
a bitter enemy of his father. Pratap Majhi escaped but later on when he was found
addressing a meeting at Kupsingha, he was dramatically stabbed to death with a spear
by Raja Parsuram Sekhar Deo from horse back.*'
The history of Gangpur State as furnished by Kasinath Sekhar Deo, with certain
twists in the narratives, presents almost the same story as mentioned above.”
This account runs as follows:
Gangadhar, accompanied by one of his brothers who fell out with the eldest brother
at Panchakot Kashipur, set out on a hunting expedition in a northern direction. On this
expedition, he was accompanied by the family deity Sekhar Basini. On the way,
Gangadhar left behind his middle brother and met a blind Brahman while proceeding
by the side of river Brahmani. The Brahman who was moved by the shadow of
Gangadhar and the deity Sekhar Basini predicted that if Gangadhar moved in the
northern direction, he would definitely be a king. Gangadhar thus promised the Brahman
that if his prediction went right he would make him the king for an hour during the
day of Vijayadashami by offering him royal canopy and parasol. After this, Gangadhar
proceeded in the north-ward direction and met a group of people at Mandiakudar who
were herding buffaloes. These people served Gangadhar with cheese and curd as the
latter was feeling hungry. Finally, Gangadhar crossed the Ib river and reached Patnagarh.
Herein, he came in contact with the Bhuiyans and cultivated relationship with them.
Afterwards, the Bhuiyans expressed their desire to install him in the gaddi. But,
Gangadhar told them that his middle brother who was following him would not allow

3°PR 677.
5S}ODG 70.
52Sekhar Deo n.d.
168 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

him to be the king there and instead would prefer to take him back. Then, the Bhuiyans
concealed Gangadhar in the place called Rajaluka of Masabira by erecting a platform
(mancha) inside a stream. After some time, Gangadhar’s brother reached Masabira
and enquired about him. But the Bhuiyans didn’t divulge any information about
Gangadhar and on the other hand, argued that Gangadhar might have been killed by
the animals on the way. But, Gangadhar’s brother was not prepared to accept this and
instead argued that Gangadhar could never have been killed as he was a great warrior.
Rather, he suspected that the Bhuiyans had kept him secretly. But, the Bhuiyans pleaded
their innocence. Finally however, the brother returned to Kashipur Sikhar Bhuiyan.
... Then the Bhuiyans persuaded Gangadhar to be the king. But, Gangadhar wanted
to ensure the blessing of the local deity (who would reside in the royal canopy) before
becoming the king. Thus, he planted a dried bamboo on the soil and branches came
out of the plant overnight. This finally made him accept the gaddi of Gangpur,
whereupon, the zamindar of Sargipalli coronated him to the throne by putting vermilion
on his forehead. The king further made arrangements for the worship of the bamboo
tree at Masabira.

Thus, the bamboo umbrella came to assume critical significance in the

coronation rituals of the king. The account goes on to state:
If at any point of time, a bamboo tree in Masabira bore flowers at the top like an
umbrella, then it was a sure signal for the death of the king. Accordingly, the dehuri
was supposed to inform the king about this development. After the death of the king,
the bamboo was cut off into three pieces, and brought back to the royal palace with a
procession. Two pieces of this bamboo were placed by the side of goddess Samalai
and Kali in the Samleswari temple, situated inside the palace of Sundargarh. The other
piece was placed in the royal canopy. Gangadhar also made the blind Brahman who
had done the authentic prediction for his kingship, the royal priest and donated him
the village of Ekma. The Bhuiyan zamindars who had helped him to be the king were
also considerably rewarded by granting them large tracts of land. These zamindars
afterwards helped Gangadhar in consolidating his authority over the region. Later on,
Gangadhar also brought back his middle brother and gave him Hatibari or Kinjiri State
by way of Kharposh (maintenance) grant. Gangadhar also tried to compensate the help
rendered to him by the people belonging to gauda caste of Mandiakudar by granting
them the said village. This caste was importantly integrated to the royal ceremony and
royalty subsequently. They were assigned the task of beating drums by using the horns
of buffaloes during the day of Vijayadashami and used to accompany the king in the
latter’s inspection of the township during this auspicious day. As the beating of drums
with the horns of buffaloes required tremendous energy, castor oil used to be applied
on their heads at regular intervals.
... afterwards, Gangadhar shifted his capital to Patnagarh from Masabari. It is only
after the death of Gangadhar, his son Jagannath and grandson that Jalandhar renamed
their state as Gangpur in the name of the late king. Jalandhar who was a powerful king
fought against the raja of Raigarh over the issue of the Gangpur boundary.

During the rule of Indra Sekhar Deo, the capital of Gangpur was shifted to
Raibogagarh to counter the resistance of Pratap Majhi, the zamindar of
Sargipalli. However, the latter was killed by Raja Parsuram Sekhar Deo, the
son of Indra Sekhar, at Kopsingha. Thus, both Indra Sekhar and Parsuram
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE _— * 169

largely succeeded in removing the threat posed by the Bhuiyan zamindars.

The son of Parsuram Sekhar Deo, Jagadev Sekhar Deo, was in all probability
the same person as Indra Sekhar Deo.** Jagadev Sekhar Deo had shifted his
capital to Jagatgarh. As Jagadev Sekhar Deo did not have a son, his brother’s
son, Janardan Sekhar Deo, became the king after his rule. Danardan or Janardan
Sekhar Deo had established his capital at Suadihi near the river Ib. One day,
while he was on his way to Ranchi to attend the durbar, the family priest killed
him near Ekma village.™
The reason for the alleged murder, as the popular memory recounts, is
attributed to the anger of the Brahman, who had been humiliated by a joke
against him made by the king. While travelling on the back of an elephant
himself, the king had seen the royal priest being carried in a palki by the
servants. The king made a disparaging remark, enquiring where the dead body
was being taken,® which greatly offended the Brahman. However, the incident
goes on to suggest that a Kshatriya ruler was bound to respect the Brahmans.
It was, after all, the old blind Brahman who had nghtly predicted that Gangadhar
would become a king. He had also warned him ‘not to go astray’. It may also
be suggested here that the king in question may have tried to deviate from the
custom of having the Brahman perform the role of a king during the
Vijayadashami function, or else he wanted to divest the Brahman of the
traditional privileges enjoyed by the latter. The story also reinforces the belief
that Brahmanical support was essential and indeed a precondition for the
Kshatriya to be a king, particularly if the latter’s Kshatriya status was not fully
authenticated. What further needs to be emphasized here is that the constant
relocations of the so-called ‘capitals’ implies that these were neither ‘capitals’
nor ruled by ‘kings’ with so-called kingdoms, but only refer to certain territorial
boundaries containing forts that were controlled by the tribal zamindars.
Kasinath’s account also provides certain other fascinating details regarding
the kings of Gangpur State and the rituals they observed. For instance:
As the son of Danardan/Janardhan Sekhar, Pitambar Sekhar didn’t have a son, his
brother’s son, Raghunath Sekhar Deo, became the ruler of Gangpur during 1858-1917.
It is worth noting that Raghunath Sekhar Deo succeeded to the throne when he was a
minor. However, he took over the charge of the state from 27 January 1871. He renamed
Suadihi as Sundargarh. Raghunath was a Ramanujaite and established the temple of
Jagannath in 1916. The rituals as followed in the temple of Jagannath in Puri came to
be emulated here. He also built the temple for Sikharbasini, i.e. Rajeswari Durga, the
presiding deity of the state. Twice in a year, once on the day of Nuakhai and the other
on the day of Ambagundi of Phaguna Purnami, the deity used to be offered puja. The
Samaleswari temple was constructed by his grandson.
The two other goddesses Kali and Durga were seated in the left and right side of
Samaleswari goddess. Besides, the bamboo sticks collected from Masabira were also

330DG 70-1; Sekhar Deo, n.d.

540DG 71; Sekhar Deo, n.d.
55Sekhar Deo, n.d.
170 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

kept by the side of goddess Samleswari on both sides. The Bhuiyans have been offering
worship in this temple since its inception.
. . During the Dushera festival, sixteen swords are usually worshipped from the
day of Amabasya to the day of Vijayadashami. And in each of these days, a he-goat
used to be sacrificed which stands for one of the sixteen swords. The royal guns,
swords as well as the royal books and royal canopy are also worshipped during this
period in the temple of Samaleswari. In the eighth day, ashtabali was offered to the
goddess which included—black hen, black swan, black pigeon, black she-goat, pumpkin,
black fish, etc. The practice of human sacrifice before the goddess Kali in every three
years duration as supposedly practiced in the state came to be substituted by the above
form of sacrifice afterwards. “
... The day of Vijayadashami marked the apex of royal festivities and glamour. It
started with the coronation process of the king amidst the placing of thirty two golden
chairs. In this specific day, all the zamindars including the members of Royal family
in all the villages came down to greet the king. The zamindar of Sargipali, the
traditionally influential Bhuiyan, not only offered the king the right of investiture by
gifting the royal turban but importantly also paid the annua! dues on the same day. It
was during this occasion the king in fact, sought to implement his promise made to
the Brahman by making the latter the king at least for two hours. The royal priest had
to hold the royal sword and the bamboo canopy and being seated on the back of the
elephant, he was driven to the place of target-shooting. After performing the puja, the
royal priest returned to the king his sword and canopy. The priest who had killed
Danardan Sekhar Deo/Janardan Sekhar Deo was dismissed and instead, another
Brahman was brought from Sonepur and thus made the royal priest.
... The king used to move around the royal capital accompanied by the zamindars
and the royal army including elephants and horses and moved on to the place of target
shooting. This was followed by a grand feast wherein the general populace of the city
partook and dancing performance and music concerts took place at night.
... At the lion’s gate of the palace, the goddess Kanaka Durga used to be worshipped
as the protector of the palace, by a Bhuiyan dehuri. In this temple, the royal sword
(Patta Khanda) was also worshipped. Inside the palace, there is a place called Chattra
ghara (room containing the royal canopy). A piece of bamboo brought from Masabira
was kept inside the royal canopy. In order to protect the fort, usually a he-goat sacrifice
was made in the northern end of the palace. The sacrifice was made in the name of
Brahmarakhysa.©
What emerges clearly from these local genealogical accounts of Gangpur state
is their focus on what may be called the ‘constructed regional and remembered
local past’.®’ The regional past to which these accounts draw our attention
seems like a world of legendary traditions of regional heroes and gods and
their constructed relations with the respective localities. Similarly, the remem-
bered past of the accounts consists of a barrage of information narrating local
events, including references to earlier dynastic genealogies. What is more evi-
dent in these accounts is the authors’ predilection for exploring and forging
links on behalf of the local dynasty with the Kshatriya tradition as a whole
and the north Indian Kshatriya tradition in particular.

Ibid.
Kulke 2004.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE _ 171

The so-called triumph of Kshatriyaization in the region, despite temporary

setbacks (as in the case of the decline of local Kesari dynasty), as vindicated
by these accounts, really consists of stories punctuated with moments of
assertion, resistance and subversion by the indigenous communities of the
locality vis-a-vis outsiders who belonged to the Brahmanical order. Furthermore,
what is equally critically discernible in these accounts is the marginal triumph
of Kshatriya rule associated with its precarious and ambivalent positions with
continuous contestations and negotiations.** The periodic resistance of the
Bhuiyan zamindars or the Munda rebellion in the region over a prolonged
historical period illustrates this. What is more crucial to point out in this context
is the subtly ‘muted valorization’ (emphasis added) of the advent of Kshatriya
rule over the region. In contrast, the indigenous communities, and the Bhuiyan
zamindars in particular, are shown to have played a decisive role in determining
the nature and extent of Kshatriya rule.
The ‘declarative oath’ of one of the Bhuiyan chiefs, i.e. the Kalos, inscribed
on the rock, regarding the ‘primordial right’ of the Bhuiyans to legitimize the
coronation of the king by putting vermilion on the forehead or handing over
the royal turban to the king or the conciliatory policies adopted by the king
vis-a-vis the Bhuiyan chiefs with regard to land distribution as reflected in
these accounts, all point to a not so dominant position of authority for the
Kshatriya kings. In a way, the Bhuiyans sought to assign the king a position
of centrality without marginalizing their own positions. The Bhuiyans were
always zealous in guarding their ‘traditional and time honoured privileges’,
and any infringement of such freedom bred tension and resistance.
Similarly, the stories of Brahmanical support of Kshatriya rule in terms of
Brahmanical prophecy for the king or the revenge unleashed by the royal priest
on the king through murder or elevating the Brahman to the position of the
king in the royal rituals are suggestive of the ambiguity of the Kshatriya-
Brahman combination on the Hindu-tribal frontier in ensuring the subjugation
of the indigenous communities.
More important, however, are the host of repeated references in the accounts
to local deities, gods and goddesses and the ways they sought to relate
themselves to the local dynasties. The story of the chattra bauti (bamboo
canopy), with its ‘highly venerated’ implications for royalty and its association
with the rituals of the presiding deity of the state invariably indicates the
stronger hold of indigenous religious practices which impacted on the Kshatriya
religious order. :
The history of the chattra bauti, starting with its origin in the fort of Masabira
to its subsequent link with the state capital of Gangpur, and mediated by a
long process of transformation ‘in between’, in a way implies a reconciliation

8Kulke 1993, 85. As has been aptly pointed out by Kulke, Kshatriyaization in its
functional sense, refers to a social change ‘from above’ which was initiated in tribal areas
by the Kshatriyas, i.e. zamindars, chiefs or rajas in order to strengthen their legitimation
as Hindu rajas in their own society and broaden the basis of their economy and political
power.
172 CHANDI PRASAD NANDA

of the ‘Hindu’ and ‘tribal’ religious perceptions. As stated earlier, the processes
of the ‘Hinduization’ of tribal gods, goddesses, rituals and religious practices
and of the ‘tribalization’ of kingship not only co-existed but characterized the
socio-cultural space of the region.
The other significant aspect of the accounts is the attempt to forge links
with the earlier local Kesari dynasty and thus ensure an ‘imagined’ continuity
of Kshatriya rule in the region by ‘incorporating’ the surviving members of
the erstwhile royal lineage to the ‘present ruling dynasty’.
As the story tells us, the surviving member of local Kesari rule, who was
residing at Ratanpur and belonged to the Ho tribe, was invited to settle down
in the Sekhar kingdom. The Bhuiyan zamindars had realized that the adversities
through which their region was passing could only be warded off if they
repented for their crime of brutally murdering the last local Kesari king,
Manabhanjakesari. The Bhuiyans thus ‘repented’ by appealing to the father
of the Kesari queen at Ratanpur in Bilaspur and successfully persuading the
latter to ‘return’ the surviving scion of the former Kesari rule to the fort of the
Sekhar royal family. A member of the Kesari family was therefore not only
invited, accommodated and granted a ‘prestigious position’ in the social
hierarchy, but also the Bhuiyans had done sufficiently to atone for their brutal
crime of killing the so-called Kshatriya rulers. One can therefore understand
the strategy adopted by the authors of such accounts, which were mainly
narratives drawn up by the Brahmans of the royal court to validate and legitimize
the hegemonic position of the Kshatriyas over the region, particularly the tribal
communities in general.

REFERENCES
Banerji, R.D. 1928. ‘Rajput Origins in Orissa’, in Modern Review 43, 285-91.
Berkemer, G. 2003. ‘The Centers Out There: Facets Subregional Identity’, Call for Papers,
Salzau Conference, Germany.
Behera, K.S. 1971. ‘Barapati Copper Plate of Hambhir Deva’, in N.K. Sahu (ed.), New
Aspects of History of Orissa, vol. 1, Sambalpur: Sambalpur University, 52-4.
Cobden Ramsay, L.E.B. 1910. Feudatory States of Orissa, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot (rpt. 1950, 1982).
Dalton, E.T. 1973. Tribal History of India, Delhi: Cosmo.
Hunter, W.W. 1877. Statistical Accounts of Bengal: Singhbhum District, Tributary States
of Chota Nagpur and Manbhum, vol. 17, London: Triibner & Co.
Kulke, H. 1993. ‘Ksatriyaization and Social Change: A Study in the Orissa Setting’, in H.
Kulke (ed.), Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast
Asia, Delhi: Manohar, 82-93 (Ist pub. 1976).
2004. ‘The Making of a Local Chronicle: The Ranapur Rajavamsa Itihasa’, in
Angelika Malinar, Johannes Beltz and Heiko Frese (eds.), Text and Context in the
History, Literature and Religion of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 43-66.
2008.‘ Yayati Kesari Revisited: Ramachandra of Khurda and the Yayati Kesari Legend
of Puri’, in P. Berger, R. Hardenberg, E. Kattner and M. Prager (eds.), The Anthropology
of Values: Festschrift in Honour of Georg Pfeffer, Delhi: Pearson/Longman.
Mishra, M.M. n.d. ‘Keonjhar Rajavamsavali’, unpublished manuscript.
 BETWEEN NARRATIVES AND SILENCE 173

Mishra, P.P. 2002. ‘The Hillsmen of Gangpur: Social Stratification and Resistance
Movement’, paper presented at Modern South Asian Conference, Edinburgh
(unpublished).
Nanda, C.P. 2003. ‘Validating “Tradition”: Revisiting Keonjhar and Bhuyan Insurgency
in Colonial Orissa’, in G. Berkemer and M. Frenz (eds.), Sharing Sovereignty: The
Little Kingdom in South Asia, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.
——2008. Vocalising Silence: Political Protests in Orissa 1930-42, Delhi: Sage

Orissa District Gazetter: Sundargarh, \971, Cuttack: Govt. Press.

Panigrahi, K.C. 1961. Chronology of the Bhauma-Karas and the Somavamsis of Orissa,
Madras: M.L.J. Press.
Pandey, S. 2003. ‘Belsaragarh: Eka Anudhyana’ (Oriya), in Mukta Kalam, vol. 7-13,
Bhubaneswar/Sundargarh.
Pati, B. 1993. Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in
Orissa 1920-50, Delhi: Manohar.
Private Loose Records: ‘Traditional Note of Gangpur Raj Family (Kesari and Sekhar Raj
Families)’, ACC. No. 700, Orissa State Archives, Bhubaneswar. ‘Genealogy of the
Ruling Chief of Gangpur State (Oriya)’, ACC. No. 677. Orissa State Archives,
Bhubaneswar.
Rajaguru, S.N. 1971. ‘Somavamsi Kings of Kosala’, in N.K. Sahu (ed.), New Aspects of
History of Orissa, vol. 1, Sambalpur: Sambalpur University, 49-51.
Russel, R.V. and R.B. Hira Lal 1975. Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India,
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Sahu, B. 2010. ‘Profiling Daksina KoSala: An Early Historical Subregion?’, in Hermann
Kulke and Georg Berkemer (eds.), Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities
in Orissa, Delhi: Manohar.
Sahu, N.K. 1971. ‘A Survey of the History of South Kosala’, in N.K. Sahu (ed.), New
Aspects of History of Orissa, vol. |, Sambalpur: Sambalpur University, 9-24.
Sekhar Deo, K. n.d. ‘Gangpur Itihasa’ (Oriya), unpublished manuscript.
Sinha, S. 1962. ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India’, in Man in India
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Skoda, Uwe 2005. The Aghria: A Peasant Caste on a Tribal Frontier, Delhi: Manohar.
 CHAPTER 9

The Centre Was Out There

in the South, in Ghumsar

GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

I would suggest rather, let them take a chasa' of Dacca and a chasa of Ghumsar
and see how much they understand of one another's talk.
JOHN BEAMES 1870?

Beames, Collector of Balasore in 1870, made this remark to disprove the

contention that mutual intelligibility between Bengali and Oriya is very high,
as was claimed by Kantichandra Bhattacharya and supported by R.L. Mitra.*
It was part of a larger thesis Beames put forward, that Oriya was not merely
a dialect of Bengali, as Mitra and others claimed, but an independent language.
This was again in the context of a controversial debate on the question of
introducing Bengali instead of Oriya as the medium of instruction in schools
in Orissa.
My main aim in referring to this remark and the context in which it was
made is to show that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the language
spoken in and around Ghumsar appeared to an outsider like Beames to be
a specimen of the ‘true’ Oriya language. Ghumsar was a small and former
princely state in the south, which had been annexed to the British territory of
the Madras Presidency and was therefore out of “Orissa Proper’, which consisted
of the three coastal districts of Cuttack, Puri and Balasore. However, it must
also be emphasized here that Beames, who was then working on the northern
frontier of Orissa, in Balasore, never had the occasion to visit any place, let
alone Ghumsar, in the southern region of the Oriya-speaking tracts when he
made this observation.
Although this observation might have been based, at least partially, on
public perception, it should not be dismissed as a casual and careless remark
by an ordinary and not so knowledgeable British administrator. On the contrary,
it was a well-considered opinion by a serious scholar. Beames was an Orientalist
and philologist in his own right, who made this observation in all seriousness

'In Orissa the cultivator caste is known as chasa.

2Beames 1870.
3For more information on the views and arguments of Kantichandra Bhattacharya and
R.L. Mitra; see Dash 1993.
176 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

in a paper presented to a session of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, later to be

published in the proceedings of the Society.‘ Furthermore, about two years
later, in the first volume of his famous work, A Comparative Grammar of the
Modern Aryan Languages of India, Beames was even more forthright when
he stated, ‘Oriya literature begins with Upendra Bhanja, who was a brother of
the raja of Ghumsar, a petty hill-state in the south of Orissa, which even to
the present day is celebrated as the home of the purest form of the language’.°
Beames further noted: ‘It is said by the Oriyas themselves that the language
is spoken in its greatest purity in the hill-state of Ghumsar, the birthplace of
the first national poet, Upendra Bhanja.”° Therefore Beames’ opinion was
based, at least to a certain extent, on the public perception, ‘said by the Oriyas
themselves’. But Beames did not accept that opinion blindly and without
careful consideration. He even tended to doubt the veracity of this view when
he said: ‘As, however, Ghumsar is very to the south, closely adjoining areas
peopled by Dravidians and Kols, this assertion seems rather doubtful.’’ But
finally he came to the conclusion that ‘The poems of Upendra Bhanja and his
contemporaries are written in a language, which hardly differs in a single word
or inflection from the vernacular of today, and every word of which is distinctly
intelligible to the meanest labourer. These poems, written three hundred years
ago, exhibit a perfectly settled modern language. . . .** In other words, to
Beames, if not the language of Ghumsar, certainly the language used by
Upendra Bhanja, the prince of Ghumsar, represents standard Oriya or ‘the
purest form’ of the speech. Therefore his opinion was based not only on public
perceptions but also on his own careful considerations.
At about the same time, in 1872, W.W. Hunter similarly regarded Upendra
Bhanja as ‘the most eminent of all the Oriya poets’,’ a statement which also
reflects the prestige and celebrity that Upendra Bhanja and Ghumsar enjoyed.
Another British official, T.J. Maltby of the Madras Civil Service, also observed
that ‘(t]he purest Uriya is spoken in Gumsur, and north of Rushikulia river as
owing to Bengali being the official language in Orissa, and its having a
considerable affinity to Uriya, the latter seems to have assimilated to it more
than to Telugu in the south’.'° Moreover, in 1864, in one of his essays a Bengali
intellectual, Rangalal Bandyopadhyay, who first came to Orissa in 1863 as a
government official, had accorded Upendra Bhanja at any rate the second
position among the celebrated poets of Orissa,'' crediting him with fifty-two

“Beames 1870.
*Beames 1872, 88 [emphasis added].
*Tbid., 105.
"Tbid., 119.
*Tbid.
*Hunter et al. 1956, 220.
'°Maltby 1874: Preface, VI. The preface was written in October 1873.
''Bandyopadhyay 1864. In first position he placed Dinakrushna Das, author of Rasa
Kallola.
 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, INGHUMSAR 177

famous literary works. As in the case of Beames, the opinions expressed by

Hunter and Rangalal appear to have been based both on public perceptions
and on their own judgements.
It is not my intention to either accept or examine critically the truth of the
judgements of these three administrators-cum-scholars. What I want to
emphasize is that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to Oriyas,
knowledgeable outsiders like Beames, Hunter and Maltby, and even Bengali
intellectuals like Rangalal,'* the linguistic and literary centre of the Oriya-
speaking tracts was in the south, in and around Ghumsar, beyond the then
political boundaries of Orissa.
This high estimate of Ghumsar and Upendra Bhanja among the Oriyas in
the second half of the nineteenth century seems to have existed continuously
since the eighteenth century, the time of Upendra Bhanja (c. 1685-1735), the
great late-medieval Oriya poet. This is indirectly confirmed from another,
rather unusual source, namely, public interest in the Ghumsar Raj family,
which manifests itself in a large number of vamsavali pothis, or family
genealogies, both in Sanskrit and in Oriya (in Oriya prose and verse), by
different authors,"’ although the rajas of Ghumsar reigned only until 1835. No
such other large numbers of genealogical texts are known from any other Raj
family of Orissa (including the Feudatory states), although these rajas continued
to reign until 1948-9. This is indicative of the high public esteem and importance
of the Ghumsar Raj family.

II
In order to understand the rise of Ghumsar to this high position, we must go
back more than three hundred years, to when Dhananjaya Bhanja (c. 1637-
1701) was the raja of Ghumsar. He set certain literary trends, which matured
in the hands of his grandson Upendra Bhanja (c. 1685-1735) and made Ghumsar
famous throughout the Oriya-speaking tracts. In addition, Ghana Bhanja (1707-
54)'4 and Trivikrama Bhanja (1773-80)"* of the same Ghumsar Raj family are
also known for their important literary contributions. Suryamani Chyau
Pattanayak (1773-1828), who translated the Sanskrit Adhytma Ramayana into
Oriya and wrote Ghumusar Bhanja Vamsavali also belonged to Ghumsar.
Dhananjaya has several works to his credit. He exhibited great interest and
talent in writing long narrative kavya poems, divided into several cantos based

'21t is also said that a little later, in 1879, another Bengali intellectual, Bhudev
Mukhopadhyay, also praised Upendra Bhanja’s poetic talents. See Durgacharan Ray 1998,
103-4, 112-14.
13,At least seven such vamsavali texts have been identified up till now. See ‘Ghumsar
Bhanja Vamsavali Texts’ in the references.
'4K.N. Mahapatra 1969, 215-16. Ghana Bhanja has written two kavyas called
Trailokyamohini and Rasanidhi.
'STrivikrama Bhanja has written a kavya called Kanakalata.
178 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

on either Puranic (mythical) or imaginary stories. Besides Raghunatha Bilasa,

the story of Ramayana in the form of a kavya, he wrote at least four more
imaginary kavyas such as Icchabati, based partly on a folk tale, the Tripuramohini,
Madanamanjari, Anangarekha and some songs. Dhananjaya’s chief merit lies
in his thematic and stylistic innovations in late medieval kavya literature. For
the theme of his kavyas, he preferred imaginary stories'® to mythological or
Puranic ones and introduced rhetorical subtleties and eroticism into the realm
of Oriya narrative poetry. He allowed his imagination free reign in using
similes, metaphors and other figures of speech. For him, poetry was not merely
to be read or recited but also to be sung, as was expected at princely courts in
those days.'’ Therefore these long narrative poems could very well be sung,
as their cantos were written in different metrical arrangements, or chhandas
as they are called. This led to experimentation in the making of chhandas.
Because of this, the medieval Oriya kavyas are known as chhanda pothis or
chhanda texts.
All these developments came to full maturity in the hands of Upendra
Bhanja, Dhananjaya’s grandson. Although Upendra’s father Nilakantha was
king for a short while after Dhananjaya was murdered in a palace conspiracy,
Upendra was not destined to be king and lived most of his adult life in exile,
away from his kingdom. Nonetheless he became and remained the uncrowned
king of the Oriya literary world for more than a hundred and fifty years. He
was the author of more than forty texts of different kinds, including a verse
lexicon, a translation of Purushottama Mahatmya and a treatise on poetics.'*
As far as the themes of his kavyas are concerned, he had nothing really new
to offer, but he was a ‘master of rhetorical excellence’ and ‘knew intimately
the Sanskrit rules of elegance’.'? Moreover, he was extremely fond of playing
on sounds, of which he was a master, and therefore developed an exceptional
control over items of vocabulary of every kind: tatsama, tadbhava and desaja.
‘Sometimes he wrote poems with only vowel “a’’ added to consonants; at other
times he retained a particular sound as the initial sound of each lines, even of
the title, of a kavya.’ For example, in Baidehisha Bilasa and Subhadra Parinaya,
two of his kavyas, he retains the consonant sounds ‘b’ and ‘s’ respectively as
the initial sound of each line. Similarly, in Kalakautuka, another of his kavyas,
he retains the consonant sound ‘k’ at both the beginning and the end of each
line.” He was a learned man and showed off his learning at every opportunity.

'°In Orissa, in the context of Oriya literature, such imaginary stories are classified as
‘secular themes’, in contrast to Puranic stories, which are classified as ‘religious
themes’.
"The singing of Gitagovinda by Jayadeva, especially in the Jagannath temple, Puri,
was extremely popular in Orissa. See Dash 1976 and 2004 for more information.
'’See Surendra Mohanty 1992, 403-7; Binayak Mishra 1962, 146-7.
'"Chakravarti 1898, 367.
When retained at the end of the lines, ‘k’, of course, is invariably followed by an ‘a’
vowel, as Oriya syllables are invariably open and end with a vowel.
 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, INGHUMSAR 179

In one of his kavyas he even boasts that he ‘has crossed the ocean of words’.?!
He was, in fact, a juggler of words. But, ‘in spite of the innumerable lines of
unequal merits, due to his constant attempt to play on sounds and with words
and show off his learning, a large number of passages contain poetical
excellence, fit to stand the fierce light of moder criticism’.* To quote Mayadhar
Mansinha:
It has to be admitted, however, that, in spite of the artificialities and all the pretentious
pedantries, Upendra sweeps his readers off their feet by the deep subtle rhythm of the
lines, by his superb metrical success and last, but not the least in importance, by the
enchanted world of love, beauty and youth into which he ushers his readers or audience
the moment his lines are sung or read. Unrivalled in the power of manipulating words
most dexterously according to their own laws of beauty, unmatched in the art of painting
sensuous, youthful love and unique in the total grand music of his lines, Upendra
Bhanja dominates Oriya poetry with an influence that has almost been totalitarian for
nearly two centuries.”
For at least a hundred and fifty years after him, most Oriya poets fell more or
less under his influence and tried to imitate his ornate, pedantic and even erotic
court poetry and songs throughout the Oriya-speaking tracts. Even those who
attempted to move away from him and make innovations or experiments had
to imitate him to start with, perhaps for their own legitimation as poets. As
mentioned earlier, Ghana Bhanja and Trivikrama Bhanja of the Ghumsar Raj
family, following Dhananjaya also wrote kavyas. Again, many of the most
eminent Oriya poets of the early nineteenth century, such as Kavisurya Baladeva
Rath (1789-1845), Jadumani Mahapatra (1781-1866) and Gopal Krishna
Pattanayak (1785-1862), were from the south of Orissa, where Ghumsar is
situated. They too appear to have dominated the scene. Besides them, there
were a host of authors, both in Oriya and in Sanskrit, who belonged to southern
Orissa, for whom Ghumsar and their princes were always a source of
inspiration.
The late medieval Oriya kavya literature became very popular among both
the educated people and the illiterates throughout Orissa. While only a few
could read the palm-leaf manuscripts, innumerable copies of which were made,
both the educated and the illiterates listened to them because of their musical
qualities. In coastal Orissa, Oriya kavya literature became popular through the
media of Pala and Dasakathia, semi-musical theatrical performances, the kavyas
of Upendra being immensely popular. The educated and the illiterate knew
many chhandas of his kavyas by heart, even though they did not understand
them properly. They were so popular that Utkalamani Gopabandhu wrote in
August 1906, in a poem on Upendra Bhanja:

21 Koti Brahmanda Sundari, 14/38.

2Chakravarti 1898, 367.
3Mansinha 1962, 11.
2 A large number of late medieval Oriya poets and authors of religious and other treatises
in Sanskrit were from southern Orissa.
180 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

Oh Upendra,
Your lines are recited by the learned ones in assemblies,
And sung by the travelers on the road during
long and tedious trekking,
By the peasants working in the fields,
By the ladies within the confines of inner
apartments of the households,
And by the courtesans too, while dancing.»

The popularity of this literature helped in bringing about some kind of

uniformity in the use of the Oriyalanguage, a development which had already
begun with the Oriya rendering of Bhagavata-purana in Oriya by the saint-
poet Jagannath Das in the sixteenth century, as Beames had already acknowledged
indirectly.*° Because of their popularity and prestige, the poets of southern
Orissa, led by the prince of Ghumsar, deeply influenced the poets of other
parts of Orissa. Thus, the impression gradually gained acceptance that the
language of the southern area was the purest form of Oriya.
Apart from this, Dhananjaya of Ghumsar may be credited with the pioneering
attempt to write Chaupadi”’ or Odissi songs, which nowadays often accompany
Odissi dance. Of course, some earlier attempts to write such songs were made.
But they were numerically few and were mostly confined to Sanskrit plays
written by Oriya authors” or were referred to in Sanskrit treatises on music.”
But it was only Dhananjaya who accorded an independent status to them.”
Upendra Bhanja, closely following his grandfather also showed exceptional
talent and interest in composing a large number of such songs. Other poet-
composers of such songs from southern Orissa include Kishorachandra Rajendra
and Krushnachandra Rajendra, kings of Chikiti; Dinabandhuraj Harichandan,
the king of Manjusha (Mandasa), Gobinda Rayaguru of Pittala and Jadumani
Mahapatra.*' This trend culminated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries in the works of Kavisurya Baladeva Rath, who was associated
with several princely courts of southern Orissa and Gopalakrushna of
Parlakhimedi.
A little more than half a century ago, the dance form today popularly known

**The poem was first published in a literary periodical, Mukura (1/5), and later, after
Gopabandhu’s death, was included in an anthology of his poems, Abakashachinta. See
Pandit Gopabandhu Granthabali 2004, 170-1 for the poem and 13-14, 25, for further
information.
6See Beames 1872, 119.
21These songs do not necessarily consist of four padas or couplets as the name indicates.
See J.B. Mohanty 1976, S1f. and 1982, 3-18 for more information.
”*For such a song written in Oriya, see Parasurama Vijaya, a Sanskrit play, the authorship
of which is attributed to Gajapati Kapilendra Dev. See The Prachi 2, 3/4, 115.
’Such songs are to be found in Sangita Muktavali by Srichandan and Sangita Narayana
by Gajapati Jagannath Narayan Dev of Parlakhimedi. See J.B. Mohanty 1982, 9-10.
*Dhananjaya’s available work is Chaupadi Bhusana, in which 34 such songs have been
compiled, though he may have written many other songs too,
*'For more information, see J.B. Mohanty 1976, 1982.
 THE CENTRE
WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, INGHUMSAR 181

as Odissi dance took the important step of being ‘reconstructed’ by a fusion

of two still living but distinct dance forms: Gotipua dance* and the Mahari
(or Devadasi) dance of the Jagannath temple at Puri. Their synthesis was
refined on the basis of some medieval Orissan dance treatise and temple
sculpture of Orissa® in order to have it recognized as a margi (in the terminology
of medieval texts) or classical dance form, a project very dear to Oriya na-
tionalists.* It appears that instead of being a decadent or corrupted version
of an originally margi or classical dance form, the Gotipua dance was from
the very beginning a desi or regional dance form from southern Orissa. It
consisted mainly of two components: (i) bandha or nritta, i.e. rhythmic dance
accompanied by bol and tala, played on drum, and (ii) abhinaya,** based on
Chaupadis or Odissi songs that were strongly influenced by the Ghumsar
tradition.*° It contained no other components of what today is known as Odissi
dance.*’ The very name Odissi also appears to be not very old.** The trend to
trace artificially the origin of Gotipua dance in temple sculptures, in the Mahari
dance of the Jagannath temple,” and in some medieval texts is also recent.
When female dancers were not available to dance in public places, especially
in princely courts (the Maharis of the Jagannath temple of Puri were a rare
exception), male dancers, mostly adolescent boys, took their place and played
the female roles. That is how the Gotipua dance originated. In connection with
the subject of this paper, it is worth mentioning that the adolescent boys used
to be called Dakshini pila (the southern children), which indicates that in
former days the Gotipua dancers came from southern Orissa. Moreover, the
Gotipua dance appears to be intimately related to the Sakhi Nacha, which was

See D.N. Patnaik 1990, 73-9.

The Gotipua dance was exclusively male in contrast to the Mahari dance, which was
exclusively female. There were other distinctions. Gotipua dancers used to sing mostly the
Chaupadis or Odissi songs, whereas the Maharis sang mainly the songs of Gitagovinda.
% Dasarupakam 1/9. See Vatsyayan 1987 for a theoretical discussion of the concepts of
margi and desi.
38 According to Dasarupakam by Dhananjaya, nritta is based on tala and Jaya and is
different from nrittya, which consists of abhinaya or ‘acting’. See Dasarupakam 1/9.
36In Prayaschitta, a novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati published in 1915, the term chaupadi
is qualified significantly by the term Dakshini, i.e. ‘the southern’.
This is the style of Gotipua dance that I saw in my childhood days, more than fifty
years ago.
38Kalicharan Pattanaik seems to have only slightly hinted, but not explicitly claimed,
that the term Odisi occurs in an old proverb, utha, baitha, thia, chali; buda, bhasa, bhaunri,
pali; Odisi natara atha beli, which he came to know from one Somanath Mahapatra of the
village Ardia (Pattanaik 1975, 204). However, this proverb, which has not been noted by
any other folklorist, seems to be modern. Somanath Mahapatra might even have created it
himself. Of course, the Oudra or Oudra-Magadhi dance forms are mentioned in the treatise
on music.
In contrast to the Gotipua dance, the Mahari dance might have originated from a
classical, that is, Margi dance.
182 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

also prevalent in southern Orissa.*° Thus it seems quite likely that both Odissi
songs and Gotipua dance originated in the princely courts of southern Orissa,
and Ghumsar in particular, from where it spread to the whole of coastal Orissa,
where it was much in demand during Dola and Jhulana festivals. In the course
of this development Puri and its adjoining area became another centre of
Gotipua dance."
As pointed out by Eberhard Fischer, illustrated palm-leaf manuscripts of
outstanding artistic quality are generally found in the south, but rarely in the
Puri area.*? This is another indication of the rich cultural and artistic tradition
of the south, which has, at least indirectly, a lot to do with literature, as
illustrated by these palm-leaf manuscripts. It seems that works in the Oriya
kavya literature, such as the Labanyabati* and Rasikaharabali of Upendra
Bhanja and the romantic kavyas of other poets of southern Orissa, were a
major source of inspiration for the production of such illustrated palm-leaf
manuscripts.
The importance of the Ghumsar Raj family in the Ortya literary and cultural
traditions has now become well established and recognized. Thus Mansinha
aptly observes: ‘In the midst of murders, frauds, intrigues, and unspeakable
immoralities, the ruling Bhanjas of Ghumsar kept up a living tradition of
literary culture in the family."* Gopabandhu too, at the end of the poem on
Upendra Bhanja, already referred to, says that in the future, Oriyas, especially
those interested in literature, would regard Ghumsar as a holy place, a ftirtha,
and would pay homage to it. No wonder, then, for Beames and Hunter, as well
as for Oriya-speakers in general, the linguistic, literary and cultural centre of
the Oriya-speaking tracts was to be located in Ghumsar in the age of Upendra
Bhanja.

“D.N. Patnaik 1990, 77. Dinanath Pathy, although he does not say so explicitly, gives
a broad hint that the Gotipua dance form might have evolved from Sakhi Nacha when he
says, “The sakhinata slowly moved from the religious enclosures and was performed for
the king and the palace. Could the source of rajanrtya be traced in the sakhinata of south
Orissa?’ (Pathy 2003, 41).
*'There is a tradition that Ray Ramananda, an Oriya associate of Sri Chaitanya, was the
creator of this dance form, which thus would have originated from Puri. But this tradition
is highly doubtful, as from the Chaitanya Charitamrita we know that Ray Ramananda was
staging dramas with the maharis or devadasis, i.e. female actors, playing different roles.
See Chaitanya Charitamrita, Antya, 5,10-24, 36-9. At best he might have been the creator
of the Puri school. Kelucharan Mohapatra, the famous Guru of Odissi, is a product of the
Puri centre. See Citaristi 2001.
“Eberhard Fischer, unpublished paper entitled ‘Painting in Southern Orissa in nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries: Regional Styles, Workshop Styles or Individual Styles?’
delivered as keynote address in the Annual Conference of the Orissa Research Project at
Salzau, Germany, May 2003; see particularly the famous palm-leaf illustration of Upendra
Bhanja’s Rasika Haravali, jointly published by Fischer and Dinanath Pathy (1990).
“See Williams and Das 1988.
“Mansinha 1962, 116.
 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THEREIN THE SOUTH, {N GHUMSAR 183

Modern Oniya literature had yet to emerge when Beames and Hunter made
their observations as mentioned earlier. But even after its emergence in the
late-nineteenth century, it still took a long time to be firmly established in the
public mind and to compete with the prestige that Upendra Bhanja’s works,
and all those later works that came under his influence, had once enjoyed. As
is known from the literary controversy of Indradhanu vs. Bijuli (The Rainbow
vs. The Lightning)* in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the popularity
of the Oriya literature represented by Upendra Bhanja initially appears to have
successfully withstood the challenge of the newly emerging Oriya literature
represented mainly by Radhanath Ray. At the height of the controversy,
Radhanath himself in a letter published in a periodical admitted the poetic
talent and greatness of Upendra Bhanja and even called him one of his poetic
gurus,*° after which the controversy gradually subsided. The debate in fact had
started when a supporter of Radhanath vehemently attacked Upendra Bhanja
and his works. Thus the supporters of Upendra Bhanja and the genre of literature
he represented appear to have emerged victorious out of the controversy. But
ironically though, since this controversy, and especially since the beginning
of the twentieth century, the genre of literature Upendra Bhanja represented
gradually lost its influence and foundations to the emerging modern Oriya
literature, although it continues to have its admirers and imitators and to
generate academic and scholarly interest.*’ It was certainly not just sheer
coincidence that Gourishankar Ray, the celebrated editor of Utkal Dipika,
actively and ardently supported Upendra Bhanja and the genre of literature he
represented in the Indradhanu vs. Bijuli literary controversy and debate, because
by that time he had already played a crucial and pivotal role in the Oriya lan-
guage agitation and in the construction of an Oriya identity, the implications
of which will be explained below.

45After this debate was taken up in other periodicals, it gradually became very personal,
involving the respective supporters of Upendra Bhanja and Radhanath Ray. Once the
personal insinuations and accusations had reached a new low, it was considered inadvisable
to publish such writings in prestigious periodicals. Therefore two special periodicals,
Indradhanu (The Rainbow) and Bijuli (The Lightning), came into being. /ndradhanu
supported Upendra Bhanja and was anti-Radhanath, whereas Bijuli supported Radhanath
and was anti- Upendra Bhanja. For more information, see Samantaray 1981, 54-66, 78-83;
1960, 118-20; /ndradhanu, Introduction, 1-49; and P.C. Mishra 1996, 2002.
46For this letter, published on 14 March 1894, see Samantaray 1981, 54-66. It may be
further noted that at the start of his literary career Radhanath paid homage to Upendra
Bhanja in a poem titled Kabibar Upendra Bhanja, which was written in Bengali and
published in 1868 in Kabitabali, an anthology of his Bengali poems. For this poem, see
Durgacharan Ray 1998, 67.
47Besides books, popular articles and research papers on Upendra Bhanja and the genre
of his literature, a number of Ph.D. and D.Litt. dissertations have been submitted to different
universities in Orissa. In the Oriya-medium M.A. curriculum, Upendra Bhanja and the
related literature he represents always occupy a vital place.
184 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

Furthermore, it may be pointed out that even in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, although the literary and cultural centre had shifted to central coastal
Orissa, especially to the Cuttack-Puri region, the rich literary and scholarly
heritage of southern Orissa did not just die out. Southern Orissa still produced
a number of important scholars who continued to make contributions to the
culture of Orissa. This continuity, though in a somewhat less forceful and
influential manner, indicates that once, and in the not too distant past, the
literary and to a large extent the cultural centre also had indeed been located
in southern Orissa.
.

Ii
Upendra Bhanja and the genre of literature he represented might have lost its
influence and foundations to modern Oriya literature, but he continued to
remain extremely popular among the common people. And what impresses
most, apart from the musical quality of his poetry, is the way he played with
sounds and words. Upendra Bhanja, like the Sun temple of Konarka, gradually
became a symbol of Oriya pride and a marker of Oriya identity.** This is partly
because to the Oriyas the Bengalis, who were specifically seen as ‘the political
other’—Telugu- and Hindi-speakers, and even the British, were much less
so—do not have any such medieval poet or temple to be proud of. Another
reason for the continuous popularity of Upendra Bhanja is the musical aspects
of his literary works. They are often sung in small or large gatherings, in radio
and television broadcasts, and accompanying Odissi dance performances. The
popular admiration for Upendra Bhanja has found expression in a total of
seven different plays on his life,*? mostly based on traditional popular accounts.
No other medieval or modern author or individual in Orissa has been honoured
in such a way. Besides the host of literature that has sprung up around the
Bhanjas of Ghumsar, such as Upendra Bhanja (1895), a poem by Gopalaballav
Das; the Ghumsar Itihas (1912) by Tarini Charan Rath; or the Ghumusar
Kavya (1936) by Chintamani Mahanty, the ordinary people were so impressed
by Upendra’s skill of playing on sounds and words that a popular saying in
verse was created, running as follows:°°
Raising both of his arms (in defiance) announces Upendra Bhanja,
He does count anybody as poet under the Sun.

“’See below for further discussion of the subject.

“These plays are (i) Rajakabi Upendra (1928) by Mayadhar Mansinha; (ii) Kabisamrat
Upendra Bhanja (1947) by Manoranjan Das; (iii) Bhanjakabi (1948/50) by Debendra Kumar
Singh; (iv) Kabisamrat (1953) by Rajat Kumar Kar; (v) Sisira Sikta Kabi (1972) by
Raghunath Mishra; (vi) Kalinga Kabi (1977) by Pitambar Pradhan; and (vii) Upendra
Bhanja (1984) by Saileswar Nanda. A film has also been made on the life of Upendra
Bhanja.
Some people attribute the authorship of this verse to Upendra Bhanja, which is extremely
doubtful.
 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, IN GHUMSAR 185

He only takes shelter at the feet of Jayadeva and Dinakrishna;*!

(But) he puts his left foot on the heads of other poets.*?

The popularity of Upendra Bhanja finds expression even today in many different
ways. Several literary organizations have been established throughout Orissa,
with the aim of popularizing Upendra Bhanja and his literature.** At Berhampur,
Bhanjanagar, one of the seven university campuses in Orissa is named after
him. The only other individual who was—though much later—distinguished
by such an honour is Fakir Mohan Senapati at Balasore. It is significant that
in competition with the Rabindra Jayanti, the week-long Tagore festival that
used to be held by the Bengalis of Cuttack, a Bhanja Jayanti or week-long
Upendra Bhanja festival was started in Cuttack in 1944, and continues under
the aupices of ardent Oriya nationalist, Bichhanda Charan Pattanayak.™ It is
significant that Bhanja Jayanti is also celebrated in the month of May. Whereas
Tagore was born on 7 May, nothing is known about Upendra’s birthday. But
Bhanja Jayanti almost became a movement, and nowadays it is held throughout
Orissa with much ceremony. Similarly, after an auditorium called Rabindra
Mandap was constructed in Bhubaneswar during the celebrations of Tagore’s
centenary (1961), the name of another already existing government auditorium
was changed in the 1970s under public pressure from Kala Mandap to Bhanja
Kala Mandap. In the same way, a town in the former kingdom of Ghumsar,
which was called Russelkonda during the British period, was renamed
Bhanjanagar after Independence. All this indicates that Ghumsar and Upendra
Bhanja, its famous prince, not only formerly occupied a central position in the
sphere of literature and culture, but also that they continue to occupy an
important place in the public mind in present-day Orissa.

IV
From the time when Upendra dominated the Oriya literary scene, Ghumsar
also played a significant role in Orissan politics. Some of the available Ghumsar
Raj vamsavalis maintain that Ramachandra II, the raja of Khurda (1727-36),
his queen, and his son and successor, Birakesari (1737-93), had something to
do with Ghumsar, although the precise nature of this relationship remains
unclear due to the differences among the vamsavali texts.
But a study of these vamsavalis reveals that, in spite of the differences
among them, there are also many similarities which make it amply clear that
Ghumsar and its monarch played an important role in the lives of Ramachandra

5'Dinakrushna Das might have been a senior contemporary of Upendra Bhanja. He is

the author of Rasakallola, a kavya dealing with Krishna’s life and famous for its lyrical
beauty.
‘2Translated from Oriya by the present author.
‘3Kainga Bharati, established by Bichhanda Charan Pattanayak, is the most prominent
and famous among them; see Rajalaxmi Mohanty 2002, 46-9.
54Bhanja Vamsanucharita, ed. Maguni Das 1977, 30-2.
186 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

Dev II, the raja of Khurda who became a Muslim, and of his queen and his
son, Birakesari Dev.» Besides, there is some corroborative evidence to prove
some of the claims contained in the vamsavali texts. First, Ghana Bhanja, raja
of Ghumsar (1707-54), in both of his kavyas (Trailokyamohini and Rasanidhi)
held the title of ksatriyabara, which, according to the vamsavali texts, was
conferred on him by the raja of Khurda. Secondly, Ghana Bhanja established
a Brahman Sasana called Ksatriyabarapur near his capital of Kulada. Finally,
one Brundaban Kuanar Guru Mahapatra, who is mentioned in the Ghumsar
Raj vamsavalis, is also known from a bilingual copper-plate inscription which
was issued by Birakesari Dev in his fifth Anka year. According to this
inscription, Brundaban Kuanar Guru Mahapatra, the Parichha (pariksa) of the
western door, had helped the Mahasrama (i.e. the Gajapati king) on his flight
to Chakapadumal in Ghumsar and to Angul and was rewarded accordingly.
Moreover, Brundaban Kuanar Guru Mahapatra is also mentioned in the
rajabhoga section of the Madala Panji.*’ From this corroborative evidence it
is clear that the events recorded in the Ghumsar Raj vamsavalis are more or
less based on historical facts. Ghumsar and its king played an important role
in eighteenth-century Orissan politics, as he provided shelter to Ramachandra
Dev II’s queen and to Birakesari, and most likely also to Ramachandra'Il, the
Gajapati of Orissa. |
Occupation by the colonial powers was also not plain sailing. After the
French invasion of 1757, the British invaded Ghumsar in 1768, 1778, 1799,
1801, 1815 and 1835.°* Even after its annexation to British territory in 1835,
its continued resistance to colonial administration required further military
operations. The resistance offered by its people, especially the Konds led by
Dora Bisoyi and then Chakra Bisoyi, gradually spread to other areas and was
directly responsible for the annexation of the Kandhmal region of the Kingdom
of Baud (1855-6)°’ and indirectly for the annexation of Angul in 1847.® In
this connection it is worth mentioning that the Paik rebellion only broke out
openly in Khurda in 1817 after a sizeable number of Konds from Ghumsar
appeared on the scene.°' After a gap of about half a century, in the later part

These vamsavali texts have not yet been fully utilized by scholars in writing the history
of the Khurda rajas.
*©See K.N. Mahapatra 1958, 131-4 and 1969, 268-70. According to K.N. Mahapatra,
the date of the inscription is 6 October 1739.
*’Madala Panji 1940, 78.
*Padel 2000, 329 (note 5 of Chapter 2).
*Ramsay 1910, 24. But on another page (136) of the same book it is mentioned that
the Khondmals were taken over by the British in 1835. For more information, see Padel
2000.
Ramsay 1910, 24. For further information, see Padel 2000, Sudhakar Patnaik 1956
(Introduction) and De 1957, 90-4, 159-95.
*'G. Toynbee writes: ‘In March 1817 a body of Gumsur Khunds, 400 strong, crossed
over into the Khurda territory and openly unfurled the banner of revolt.’ Toynbee 1960,
15. See also B.C. Ray 1960, 268.
 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, INGHUMSAR 187

of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Oriyas of Ganjam, including
Parlakhimedi and particularly Ghumsar, again played a significant role in the
construction of an Oriya identity. In 1870, for example, the very year when
Beames made his observation quoted at the beginning of this paper,
representatives of Oriya-speakers in Ganjam held a large meeting in Russelkonda.
In view of their sorry plight in the Madras Presidency, they made an appeal
to the Oriyas of the districts of Cuttack and Puri in the Bengal Presidency
to make sincere efforts to bring all the Oriya-speaking tracts under one
administration, with Oriya as the official language.” Even though this was not
the first time a demand had been made for the unification of the Oriya-speaking
tracts,® it was certainly the first time that such a demand was made to a large
public meeting. It is significant that the meeting was held in Russelkonda
(which was renamed Bhanjanagar after independence) in Ghumsar taluk.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Upendra Bhanja has often been
cited as a witness to the glorious past of the Oriyas, and especially of Oriya
literature. He became, at least indirectly, a source of inspiration for those who
played leading roles in the construction of an Oriya identity in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. As pointed out earlier, Beames, Rangalal, and
other non-Oriya administrators of the nineteenth century, in whose perception
the linguistic and literary centre of the Oriya-speaking tracts lay in Ghumsar,
made very definite and positive contributions to the emergence of an Oriya
identity,” the imagined community of Oriya-speakers.
In this connection, Gourishankar Ray in particular, the editor of Urtkal
Dipika, should be mentioned.® He was an admirer of Oriya literature, especially
of Upendra Bhanja and the genre of literature he represented, and he took an

®This is known from a letter to the editor by one Janarddan Das, published in the
22 October 1870 issue of the Utkal Dipika. See S. Patnaik 1972, 172-6.
°The demand for the unification of the Oriya-speaking tracts under one administration
was made for first time in the pages of Utkala Dipika by Gourishankar Ray in March 1869.
See S. Patnaik 1972, 531-6.
“During the Oriya-language agitation, in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century,
Beames supported the Oriya language, forcefully claiming that it was an independent
language. Besides, he asserted that ‘[a]t a period when Oriya was already a fixed and settled
language Bengali did not exist; the inhabitants of Bengal spoke a vast variety of corrupt
forms of eastern Hindi’ (Beames 1872, 119). The claim made by Beames was a great source
of inspiration in the construction of an Oriya-language identity. Furthermore, it may be
recalled here that Beames accorded Upendra Bhanja the position of ‘the first national poet’
(see ibid., 105). For more information on Beames’ role here, see Dash 1983, 49-53, 67-73;
1993, 17, 23-4, 170-204. The important role played by Bengali intellectuals like Rangalal
Bandyopadhyay and Bhudev Mukhopadhyay in the Oriya-language agitation and the
construction of an Oriya identity should not be underestimated. For Rangalal’s role, see
Dash 1978, 368-9, fn. 45; 1979, 74-7, 83-104.
‘The Oriya-language agitation in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century,
championed by Gourishankar Ray, was the very first important step in the construction of
an Oriya identity. See Dash 1991, 1993.
188 GAGANENDRA NATH DASH

active interest in its publication.” As early as 1866, Premasudhanidhi, a kavya

by Upendra Bhanja, was published by the Cuttack Printing Company over
which Gourishankar Ray presided. This was the first ‘medieval’ literary Oriya
text to appear in printed form since a translation of the Gitagovinda by
Dharanidhar was published along with the Sanskrit text in 1840. Between 1866
and 1875 as many as nine other works by Upendra Bhanja were published,
some of them more than once, and in most cases edited by Gourishankar Ray.®
Therefore, in the very early phase of the construction of an Oriya identity, this
prince of Ghumsar, ‘the centre out there’, played an important indirect role
when, with the arrival of printing machines, his works were made available
to a steadily growing readership. They contributed to the emergence and
consolidation of what Benedict Anderson calls a ‘national print language’ in
Orissa. Thus Gourishankar Ray took a major step, which was followed by
others, in making Upendra Bhanja popular among the people of Orissa and,
finally, turning him into an icon of Oriya identity.
At a still later period, in the first decades of the twentieth century, Utkalamani
(the jewel of Utkal) Gopabandhu, along with his colleagues Pandit Nilakantha
Das and Pandit Godabarish Mishra, the famous trio of the Satyabadi School
and ardent nationalists, followed Gourishankar Ray in their admiration for
Upendra Bhanja. Gopabandhu’s much quoted lines in his poem on Upendra
Bhanja have already been referred to.® In it he lamented that Ghumsar was
beyond the then political boundaries of Orissa. This indicates how Ghumsar
and Upendra Bhanja had become markers of the emerging Oriya identity.
Pandit Nilakantha Das also admired Upendra Bhanyja and his literature, but
for a slightly different reason. According to him, the literature of Upendra
Bhanja was a reflection of true Oriya culture.” Following him, nationalist
critics of Oriya literature admired Upendra Bhanja and his literature not only
for purely literary reasons, but for nationalistic ones as well. Pandit Godabarish
Mishra, who was also a poet, admired Upendra Bhanja and his poetic talent,
as is known from one of his poems on Upendra.’' But Upendra Bhanja was
certainly also a source of inspiration for Mishra’s political activities. Another
ardent admirer of Upendra Bhanja was Bichhanda Charan Pattanayak, who,
as mentioned earlier, increased Upendra’s popularity through the Bhanja Jayanti
celebration.

Moreover, he was an active and ardent supporter of his in the famous Jndradhanu vs.
Bijuli debate, mentioned earlier.
®’ All this information has been extracted from Shridhar Mahapatro Sarma 1986.
See Anderson 1991, 67.
See Pandit Gopabandhu Granthabali 2004, 170-1, and also 13-14, 25.
” According to Pt. Nilakantha Das, the mutual loyalty of husband and wife (svakiya
priti), which he considered a characteristic feature of Oriya culture, was emphasized in the
literary works of Upendra Bhanja, in contrast to the permissiveness and licentiousness
(parakiya priti) of Krishna as reflected in the works of the Vaisnava poets of Bengal and
their Oriya followers. See Nilakanth Das 1953, 484-8.
™'See Godabarish Mishra 1946, 48.
 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, INGHUMSAR 189

Vv
It can therefore be claimed that from a linguistic and literary point of view,
Ghumsar was the most important of a number of centres in the Oriya-speaking
tracts, prior to and during the early modern period. As the ‘centre out there’
in the south, it had a strong impact on the emergence of an Oriya identity in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But recent events—such as
establishing the political as well as literary and cultural capitals in central
coastal Orissa in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, as well as the histories written by
some of our colonial masters and then by Oriya nationalists mostly from central
Orissa—have successfully clouded our perception to such an extent that it is
often mistakenly taken for granted that the literary and cultural centre has
always been located in central Orissa, around Cuttack and Puri. The rediscovery
of the ‘southern centre out there’ is therefore now long overdue.

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Mansinha, Mayadhar 1962. History of Oriya Literature, Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
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Store.
Mishra, Purna Chandra 1996. Utkala Dipikare Bhanja Prasanga, Berhampur: Royal Book
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2002. Bitarka Balayare Bhanja, Berhampur: Jayanti Mishra.
Mohanty, J.B. 1976. Odia Giti Kabya, Cuttack: Grantha Mandira.
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 THE CENTRE WAS OUT THERE IN THE SOUTH, IN GHUMSAR 19]

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Cuttack: Shankar.
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48, 131-59.
 CHAPTER 10

The Formation of a Centre Out There:

The Case of Ranpur

NIELS GUTSCHOW

INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL AND SPATIAL BACKGROUND

THE EMERGENCE OF THE GARHJAT STATES

Almost fifteen hundred years ago, eighteen ‘jungle states’ were first mentioned
in the hinterland of coastal Orissa. At that time ManinageSvari appeared as a
Hinduized tribal deity, worshipped on a hill some 50 km south-east of the
capital of earlier dynasties near Bhubaneswar. Hermann Kulke has described
the later process of the formation of feudatory states (or ‘Littke Kingdoms’)
west, south-west and north-west of Bhubaneswar (Fig. 10.1):
The Gajapatis encircled their fertile coastal granary and their political and religious
centers, Cuttack and Puri, by a large number of feudatory states which bore the name
gadajata, meaning ‘born from the fort’ (gada). Several decades after the downfall of
the Gajapatis in the year 1568, the Moghuls assigned the small Garhjat (Gadajata)
states of central Orissa to the rajas of Khurda who had meanwhile become local
successors to the imperial Gajapatis. Under the Khurda rajas, the Garhjat states achieved
a semi-autonomous status which they retained even when the Marathas conquered
Orissa in 1751. When the British conquered Orissa in 1803, the autonomy of the
Garhjat states even received imperial sanction when the East India Company
acknowledged them for a quit-rent as their allied feudatories.'

TRIBAL GODDESS AND STATE DEITY:

AN ASSOCIATION IN CONFLICT OR IN PACIFICATION?

From the start, political power needed legitimation: rituals connected to an

expanding religious infrastructure offered a platform to celebrate the king’s
divine affiliation. The seat of power in the shape of an urban settlement served
as an arena in which to place symbols of Hindu royalty, namely, temples and
palaces. However, a settlement of Brahmans, around these symbols served to
legitimize an emerging power in a tribal territory.
In the case of Ranpur, the development of a settlement at the foot of a power
place of tribal origin certainly offered an immense strategic advantage. A

'Kulke 1980, 30-1.

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 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 195

variety of associations were tied to ManinageS$vari, one of the eight Mother

Goddesses (Astamatrka) who exerted power at a subregional level. During
ritual events (see the Paficadolayatra below), her association with tribal cults
overruled the role of Jagannatha as the state deity (ra@stradevatda), a role that
Jagannatha (The Lord of the Universe) had already attained under the Gajapati
kings. While accepting the sovereignty of the tribal goddess over a restricted
realm, the king of Ranpur ruled simultaneously as the son of the supreme
overlord. Represented in a non-iconic, chthonic fashion, the goddess represented
‘place’, being immovable and thus unique. Jagannatha, however, had to be
brought from the centre: a replica served as a kind of governor on local level,
mirroring regional power on the subregional level of a feudatory state.
A local chronicle (Ranapura RajavamSa Itihasa), basically a nineteenth-
century compilation,’ reflects the hierarchy between the tribal goddess and
the imported governor. It tells us that in 1727 BCE ‘God’ ordered a local chief
to establish Maninaga, the Jewel Serpent, as an act with rich cosmogonic
associations. The goddess demonstrates the origin of place and territory. In a
second step, the chronicle constructs a suitable past for the kings of Ranpur
to legitimize their power: in the fifteenth century CE the king secured the
necessary paraphernalia of Hindu kingship in Puri and returned with an image
of Madhava as a representation of Jagannatha and subsequently constructed
a temple. Soon afterwards he moved his fort from its probable location on the
hilltop to the foot of the hill, thus taking the first step towards a permanent
settlement.
Some time later, a conflict with the central power in Puri created a peculiar
discontinuity in Ranpur’s development. In the early eighteenth century the
king had to include in the royal pantheon what Kulke has called a ‘subsidiary
ishtadevata’.’ It was only with the support of a jungle goddess (Khilamunda)
and her tribe that he was able to re-establish his local power. This goddess
remained in the jungle, but appears annually with great pomp in the centre of
the Little Kingdom on the occasion of Durgapaja, the autumnal ritual of renewal
par excellence.
The following events in the eighteenth century may already belong to what
Kulke has called the ‘remembered past’, as the chronicle continues by saying
that one raja established seven main roads and forty-two small streets and built
a new temple—again royal actions with cosmogonic claims.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Marathas conquered
Orissa, Ranpur’s religious infrastructure must have been fully established. It
was probably at this time that the present temple of Jagannatha was constructed,
while the king established his new quarters in a large compound adjoining the
temple. To complete the new set-up, the tribal goddess was replicated in iconic
form and housed in a temple at the foot of the hill. As Talamaninaga (literally

2See Gutschow 2004, Kulke 2004.

3Kulke 1980, 32.
*Kulke 2004, 62.
196 NIELS GUTSCHOW

‘the lower jewel serpent’), the goddess was now easily accessible and probably
tamed. One more movable representation was kept in the palace to be paraded
in a portable shrine on the occasion of the vernal ritual of renewal.
The chronicle tells us that the ‘twelve festivals/rituals’ tied to Jagannatha
were introduced as early as the sixteenth century. These significant rituals
established a strong ritual tie between a peripheral kingdom in the jungle and
the centre. As this notion is clearly part of a ‘constructed past’, we must assume
that these rituals had been introduced or re-introduced by the middle of the
eighteenth century.
Not much later, the Dolamelana festival must have been established to
celebrate a vernal ritual of renewal on the occasion of the full moon in March,
close to the spring equinox. The sequence of this development already reveals
a hierarchy. On the regional level the jungle king demonstrated his loyalty to
the state deity Jagannatha. On the subregional level the king renewed his ties
with the jungle goddess who had been instrumental in renewing his kingship.
And on a third level, that of the tutelary goddess of the king and protective
power of his territory, the Jewel Serpent (Maninaga) called for a demonstration
of loyalty from all (in reality a hundred and eight) the village gods, including
those from Ranpur.

THE URBAN FABRIC

An immaterial axis dominates the urban site in an east-west direction. To the

west, Maninaga is located high above the settlement and the surrounding fields.
The powerful tribal goddess ultimately represents the sense of place and
territory (ksetra). From the hilltop she graces her divine realm in an otherwise
unprotected and potentially chaotic landscape. In this capacity she cannot be
moved, transferred, or otherwise manipulated. From her hilltop the Jewel
Serpent looks down on the temple of Jagannatha, together with the neighbouring
compound of the palace, to which three imposing structures were added in
around 1910 in what one could call Orissan baroque with a vernacular
touch.
The temple turns strictly east towards the main street of a settlement which
was established in the late seventeenth century. This main road (called
Samukhasahi) runs along an s-shaped curve before it reaches one of Jagannatha’s
five ‘ministers’, SvapneSvara, who presides over the eastern direction. The
bends are smooth enough not to obscure the dominant axis: at a certain point
in the approach to the abode of Jagannatha, the goddess Maninaga appears
almost as a crown high above the temple. Perpendicular to this main axis,
which also divides the town in two halves consisting of six neighbourhoods
(sahi) each, runs the ritual axis of the settlement, appropriately called
bada danda, literally the ‘main stick’. This originates at the main gate of
Jagannatha’s compound and ends at the gate of Gundica, the summer residence
of Jagannatha at a distance of some seven hundred metres. Opposite the gate
of the summer residence, the ritual axis opens up to form a large square or
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 197

field (padia) to accommodate the needs of two major urban rituals. In this
spatial constellation Ranpur mirrors Puri, where the commanding main axis
extends in an east-west direction in a prolongation of the temple’s axis. The
opposition of temple and summer residence (Gundica) in Puri served as a
prototype which guided every other urban development in Orissa. It would be
misleading to call the result a ‘replica’, because neither the scale nor the design
and its traces in the urban plan recalls the ‘original’. It is rather the ‘idea’ and
the programme that is realized in a new configuration, adapted to the local
conditions.
In early July, the three chariots of Jagannatha, Subhadra and Balabhadra
are placed here for a period of five days in a waiting position until the Triad
returns ‘home’, and on the occasion of Paficadolayatra a hundred and eight
gods convene here to demonstrate their loyalty to the great goddess,
ManinageSvari. Thus, this ritua! space is created as a stage for the performance
of the two main events in the calendar of the Little Kingdom: the chariot
festival in honour of the Lord of the World ‘legitimises the Hindu kingship’*
of the Little King, while Dolamelana secures territorial integrity.
The shift of the royal residence documents a decisive change from fortress
to settlement, traces of which can still be seen. The first kings must have ruled
from a fort on top of the hill, close to a shrine with the non-iconic representation
of Maninaga. The chronicle tells us that in the early-sixteenth century the king
moved his residence to a plateau below the hill and slightly above the later
settlement. Before the middle of the eighteenth century, Ramachandra
Narendra—who had regained the kingship with the help of the jungle goddess
Khilamunda—moved his ‘palace’ (in reality nothing more than a one-storey
structure around a large square courtyard) further down, close to the Lord of
the World, whose temple must have been rebuilt at the same time on a much
grander scale. With the establishment of a new proximity between, if not unity
of, palace and temple, a powerful symbol of Hindu kingship evolved as the
centre of a complex urban configuration which defined the centre of an
expanding territory, often in conflict with neighbouring entities of a similar
type.
Other temples dedicated to Krsna and Laksmi were built in the nineteenth
century. The construction of yet another new palace in the early twentieth
century adjacent to the wall of the temple compound only accentuated the
already existing pattern. A gate now provided direct access from the palace
courtyard to the temple.
In imitation of patterns known from Puri, the Lord of the World is encircled
by five ‘ministers’: Hariharesvara within the deity’s compound (the centre),
Svapnesvara to the east, DandabalunkeSvara to the south, Candesvara to the
north and BalunkeSvara far beyond the limits of the settlement to the west.
Eight monastic institutions (matha) are scattered across the twelve neighbour-

5Kulke 1980, 36.

198 NIELS GUTSCHOW

hoods, one other being located in the village of Purnavasanta, close to the
temple of Balunkesvara. A temple dedicated to Badibalunke$vara was added
recently at the ritual square and in 1998 a temple dedicated to GaneSa was
constructed close by. Besides these, a temple dedicated to Narayani and
eleven shrines to Mangala (often represented in non-iconic form by a pair of
reeds) are found, as well as temples dedicated to Brahmanidevi (in Nuagaon),
Bhuvane$vari and Habudasinghi.
A simple second shrine to Narayani was constructed in 1996, and next to
her a small shrine dedicated to Tarini, the popular goddess of north-east Orissa,
was added in 2002. New shrines, dedicated to this goddess mushroomed all
over Orissa in the 1990s. The latest development is characterized by the
construction of a Hanuman temple on the slope between Talamaninaga and
the temple of the tribal goddess on top of the hill. A crude concrete structure
was provided on the initiative of a group of young men from Ranpur. Slogans
like ‘Jay Hanuman, Sri Ram; Hare Krsna, Hare, Hare’ are painted on to the
rocks flanking the structure. An additional notice excludes non-vegetarians
from visiting the shrine. With these latest additions, the former Little Kingdom
has successfully been integrated into what, on a higher level in scale, is called
‘globalization’, in the light of the growing influence of the pan-Indian Hindutva
movement. All-Indian and all-Orissan trends have arrived, if only on a modest
scale. The original urge to replicate the spatial and ritual model of the centre
has been considerably widened to bind Ranpur to the wider world, in which
Tarini will overrule and even replace Maninaga, while Rama appears as the
rival of Jagannatha. Seven Bhagavatamandapas, small buildings in which the
Bhagavata is read out in the evening, add to the religious infrastructure, as do
Bibahamandapas and two Kamanaghars, towards which the competing groups
in the Dance of Punishment (Dandayatra) are oriented.
To sum up, the centre of the urban landscape is occupied by a double re-
presentation of divine and profane kingship. The division of the settlement by
means of an east-west axis and the placement of the five ‘ministers’ stresses
the cosmic orientation towards the four directions, although the cross appears
to have been truncated. The duality of the two halves of the settlement surfaces
again with the existence of two Kamanaghars and two Bibahamandapas. This
is indeed a well-known pattern that may allow competition and even aggression
to arise in the course of urban rituals in times of crisis.
Similarly, the social topography adds to this spatial duality. Clearly ‘beyond’
the northern end of the ritual axis, the Untouchable quarter unites lumbermen,
bamboo-workers, sweepers, cobblers, fishermen and watchmen, while at the
southern end a less distinct quarter unites fishermen, washermen, the tribal
priest (Jani) and the (landless) Muslim community as butchers, who also acted
as the care-givers of elephants and horses in the days of the Little Kingdom.
Originally the tribal community of Behera, whose members produce items
made of reed like the ritual stick needed for the Dandayatra, also settled
here.
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 199

In contrast to what is known of Sasana villages in Orissa, in which it was

planned to settle exclusively Brahmans, the social topography of Ranpur
appears mixed. Along the east-west axis, for example, a number of sevakas
(Brahmans who serve Jagannatha) settle, but side by side with blacksmiths
and carpenters and the diw@n, the minister of the Little King, as well as the
karana, the temple accountant. The ritual axis or bada danda originally had
only a small row of houses on the eastern side, as the opposite side belonged
to the royal family. This pattern had changed already by the 1920s, when a
Marwari trader occupied a plot on the western side and constructed a pretentious
building which imitated the palace of the king. Since then the badadanda has
turned into a market street, with old houses with thatched roofs being replaced
by multi-storeyed reinforced concrete structures.
The north-south orientation of the settlement is even reflected in the location
of the cremation grounds. About 2 km north of Ranpur, the cremation ground
for commoners and members of the Scheduled Castes is located on the banks
of the Mandakini. The royal cremation ground remained near the site of the
former fort in the south, Upargada. The Muslim cemetery (Mosani Padia) is
found at the southern end of the axis, which is not straight as it tends to follow
the slope of the hill. Not surprisingly, the inhabitants of Nuagaon, the ‘model
village’ that was planned after the great fire of 1943, have a separate cremation
ground even beyond the Muslim cemetery. Ritually speaking, Nuagaon is
treated as a separate entity which cannot be absorbed by the original settle-
ment.

THE URBAN PATTERN

The spatial pattern of Ranpur (Fig. 10.2) reveals the realization of a pre-
conceived plan, the basic element of which is a neighbourhood (sah) that
differs considerably in size from case to case.° Two rows of houses face a
broad road similar to what in English is called a common. This is clearly a
rural element which is replicated in order to shape a more complex settlement
as the centre of a Little Kingdom. The surrounding villages demonstrate this
organization of space more clearly because a large open space in front of the
house legally belongs to the plot. This means that the actual ‘public’ space is
much narrower than can be visually perceived. The house itself extends over
two or three courtyards in depth and marks the centre between the forecourt
and a long backyard which is accessible from behind along a narrow service
lane. Half of Ranpur’s quarters are laid out in an east-west direction, the other

°The field survey conducted in July 1999 counted altogether 1,299 households, nearly
agreeing with the census of 1981, which counted 1,308 households with 6,894 inhabitants.
In 1981, 1,140 ‘houses’ were counted, a number which reflects the survey made in July
1999. Houses are not easily defined, as quite often more than one household resides below
one long roof. Only after some time does a household become identical with a house, when
repairs result in a clear definition of what constitutes a single entity.
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Fig. 10.2: Ranpur: Development of the sacred landscape from the seventeenth century
to the establishment of a model village following a devastating fire in 1943.
Chronicles mention the establishment of the first temple dedicated to Madhava
and a fort (Upargada) in the first half of the sixteenth century. By 1700 the
settlement is said to have developed along the main ritual axis, the bada
danda, stretching from the temple towards Gundica. At that time a new
phase began with the relocation of the palace to the ritual axis and probably
the replacement of a simple temple by a grander scheme. Transformed into
an iconographic representation, the tutelary deity ManinageS$vari was installed
at the foot of the hill by about 1840.
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE | 201

half in a north-south direction. This change in direction produces a T-shaped

pattern which makes small connecting lanes obligatory. The original fabric
has been greatly obscured by changes that were made following the fire in
1943, which devastated most of the town. Long rows of houses were reduced
to small rows, creating additional access lanes which changed the basic linear
system into a grid pattern.
Every settlement in the coastal belt of Orissa needs ponds to bridge the dry
season. Some are architecturally framed, with steps leading down from an
artificial dam. Sixteen such ponds surround the settlement. The chronicle of
Ranpur mentions the ‘digging of a tank’ called Bada Samuka, and at the end
of the nineteenth century two ponds were united and named pretentiously
‘Sagara’ (ocean).

THE JAGANNATHA TEMPLE OF RANPUR:

A REPLICA NEEDED TO DEMONSTRATE ROYALTY?

THE TEMPLE IN PURI

Concerning the origins of the Jagannatha temple in Puri, “nothing definite can
be said about the early history of Puri until proper excavations . . . under the
main temple reveal the hidden past of this place’.’ The earliest possible temple
on the site had a shrine to Nilamadhava in the tenth century. The present
structure, however, was built only after CE 1135. In a long process, but not
before the beginning of the fourteenth century, Jagannatha has acquired the
status of the uncontested imperial deity of the Ganga dynasty, and it took
another two hundred years before the deity fulfilled a similar legitimatory task
for a number of feudatory states in the hinterland of Puri and Bhubaneswar,
one of which was Ranpur.
Likewise, little is known about the architectural development of the Puri
temple. The deul tower and the adjoining assembly hall (jagamohana) of the
present temple must have been completed by the beginning of the thirteenth
century. The adjoining festival hall (nd@tamandapa) was probably added in the
fourteenth century, and the westernmost hall of offering (bhogamandapa) in
the fifteenth. The entire architectural configuration of the temple, with the
subsidiary temples of the inner enclosure, was walled less than a hundred years
before the Ranpur chronicle talks about the establishment of the first temple.
Hundreds of years later, the outer enclosure with the ‘graveyard’ of Koili
Baikuntha and the bathing platform attained its present shape (Fig. 10.3).

THE TEMPLE IN RANPUR

The Ranpur chronicle tells us that one King Uddhava Singh received an image
of Madhava in Puri, brought it to Ranpur, and established a temple there in
CE 1530 (4632 Kaliyuga). No trace remains of such an early temple structure,

7§tietencron 1978, 62.

202 NIELS GUTSCHOW

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Fig. 10.3: Puri: Jagannatha Temple compound, drawing by Bijay Basukala, 2000. The
outline of the main temple is based on measurements taken by R.J. Vasavada,
N. Verma and H. Pandya in December 1999. All the structures of the inner
compound are based on measurements taken by A. and B. Basukala, while
the structures of the outer compound are based on the Setthement Map of
1987-8 on a scale of 1 : 990.
1. Jagannatha Temple;
2. Mahalaksmi Temple;
3. Vimala Temple;
4. Surya Temple;
5. Koili Baikuntha, the ‘graveyard’ of the old deities;
6. Snanamandapa, the bathing platform;
7. Central kitchen for the preparation of bhoga;
8. KaSivisvanatha, representation of the Lord of All (of Varanasi).

and we doubt whether the deul tower of the present temple is the one the
chronicle talks about when it mentions the installation of three large deities
by King Sarangadhara, who also is said to have established the chariot festival,
in the middle of the eighteenth century. As not a single reliable date is available
in Orissa for temple structures of the eighteenth century, we must accept this
information for the time being. But we must also assume that the chronicle,
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 203

whose origins date to the middle of the nineteenth century, would have
mentioned the building of a large temple at a later stage, as such an event
would have constituted a well-remembered past. The assembly hall can be
seen as belonging to the early eighteenth century period, while the elaborately
crafted hall of offering must have followed a few decades later. The dancing
hall between them represents a later addition.
The comparative presentation of the ground plans of the temples in Puri
and Ranpur (Fig. 10.4) demonstrates a typological identity which seems striking.
The difference in size—Ranpur’s temple covers little more than one third of
the grand imperial scheme in Puri—clearly demonstrates the restricted resources
of a Little Kingdom in the jungle. Relocating an earlier Madhava, installing
a replica of the powerful triad of Puri, and initiating the annual ritual journey
of the gods in chariots contributed to shaping Ranpur in imitation of the centre.
In ritual terms, the kings of Ranpur turned into the sons of the Lord of the
Universe. Cleaning the chariots with a broom under the eyes of his former
subjects still bears witness of the king’s role today.
The moment the new temple was built, the king moved his palace to the north
of it, establishing a unity of the two structures, which was further strengthened
when in 1910 the new ambitious palace touched the compound wall of the
temple (see the site plan, Figs. 10.5 and 10.6). By establishing and further
reinforcing this constellation, the king legitimized his power. Initiating annual
rituals to incorporate powerful tribal deities like Maninaga and Khilamunda
subsequently became instrumental in meeting their claims to precedence and
power. A well-balanced designation of roles must have created a solid base at
the beginning of the nineteenth century which lasts until today.

THE LEGITIMATION OF POWER THROUGH RITUAL PERFORMANCES

Of the annual calendar of festive events, every urban ritual of Ranpur is

performed along models developed in Puri, the uncontested ritual centre of
the entire region. Considered to be one of the Four Corners (cardham) of the
subcontinent, the Indian universe, Puri grew to become a major pilgrimage
centre from the ninth century. The rituals observed in Puri largely reflected
the agricultural cycle, which governs life in the fertile valleys of the major
rivers of Orissa.

RATHAYATRA: CONFIRMING THE PRESENCE OF THE

IMPERIAL DEITY ON THE PERIPHERY

As was noted earlier, the Ranpur chronicle mentions the early establishment
of atemple in Ranpur in CE 1530 by King Uddhava Singh. The chronicle does
not fail to mention that Jagannatha ordered in a dream the performance of the
twelve festivals (dvadaSayatra) that mark the annual cycle of rituals tied to
the Lord of the Universe. The shaping of a new centre in the jungle obviously
also needed a framing in time. The cycle starts with the bathing of Jagannatha
on the day of the full moon in the month of Jyestha (June). During a critical
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 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 207

period of fever, the surface of the wooden deities are renewed and finally
painted on the first day after the new moon. On the following day the three
deities are placed in three ceremonial chariots which have been under
construction over a period of fifty-eight days since the ‘indestructible third’
(aksaya trttya). The three chariots are paraded along the main ritual axis, which
covers less than one third of that in Puri. The deities retire to their temporary
abode of Gundica for seven days. In the company of the five ministers of her
husband, Laksmi pays Jagannatha a visit and returns home through the darkness
of the back lanes (Fig. 10.7). With the return of the three deities to the temple
on the eleventh day (Fig. 10.8), one of the main events of the year is over. In
a renewed form, the greatest regional deity has graced his urban territory with
his retinue. Striding through this space, he confirms the existing order, which,
ritually speaking, is identical to that in the centre, in Puri.

DURGAPUJA: PAYING TRIBUTE TO THE TRIBAL GODDESS KHILAMUNDA

Nine days before the day of the new moon in October a Brahman priest
accompanies a long bamboo pole (in 2002 this measured 632 cm) carried in
procession to the shrine of a jungle goddess (Khilamunda) about 15 km south-
west of Ranpur. Until recently, her non-iconic representation in the shape of
a simple stone was kept in a wooden hut and attended to regularly by a tribal
priest, a Jani. The goddess is invited once a year to attend the great ritual of
renewal in Ranpur in a tribute to her decisive role in re-establishing the power
of the Ranpur dynasty of kings, an event which is stated by the local chronicle
to have happened in the early eighteenth century in order to add a new layer
to the process of appropriating the tribal territory and turning it into a Little
Kingdom.
The goddess enters the bamboo pole to attain another non-iconic form,
probably a rare case of a non-iconic deity remaining in a non-iconic state as
her portable representation. The newly coloured pole is carried in a procession
to Ranpur (Fig. 10.9) to be kept in the palace compound for sixteen days
(sorapuja). On the Victorious Tenth (VijayadaSami) or DaSahara festival, the
pole is carried to the festival ground (DaSahara Padia) beyond the northern
edge of the settlement. Flower garlands and saris are offered to the goddess
while she is paraded along the ritual axis, accompanied by a frantic crowd.
The king follows with the representation of Maninaga from his palace under
a ceremonial umbrella, accompanied by the diwan, who carries the ceremonial
sword, and his preceptor, the rajaguru. Upon the completion of the ritual, the
bamboo pole returns to the palace, where it is kept in a state of slumber. The
essence of the goddess returns to Ukutukumei in the form of a pigeon.
Khilamunda only enters the bamboo pole for a period of sixteen days. The
pole itself is renewed annually as long as the king is in power. At this level
of understanding, the pole represents royalty and merges with the generative
forces of the tribal goddess for a limited period which precedes her victory
over her enemies. In this event, Maninaga, the primary manifestation of place,
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embark upon their ritual journey in chariots on the second day after new
moon in July and reach Gundica the same day. On the fifth day, Laksmi
visits the three deities in the company of the ‘Five Ministers of Jagannatha’
and returns through back lanes ‘unseen’ the same day. On the tenth day the
three deities mount their chariots, but only Balabhadra returns to the starting
point. On the eleventh day Subhadra returns, followed by Jagannatha on the
twelfth day. Jointly they return into the sanctum of the temple.
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Fig. 10.9: Ranpur: The tribal goddess Khilamunda is brought from Ukutukumei to
Ranpur once a year on the occasion of Durga Puja in October. Besides
Sanagada and Champagada, Ukutukumei was one of the three forts that
guarded the periphery of the king’s territory.

merely witnesses the renewal of the tribute which the king owes to the goddess
of the jungle. On yet another level, a more Brahmanical goddess, Narayani,
is present at the ritual ground in the shape of a pot, the ghata.

DANDAYATRA: LIFE AND DEATH AS THEMES OF

THE ‘FESTIVAL OF PUNISHMENT’

The following brief account focuses on notions of time and space in a complex
ritual. [t is not the motives or social dramas that are of interest here, but the
territorial aspects.®

“Burkhard Schnepel has focused in a couple of accounts on what in South Orissa is

known as dando nato. He covers the performative aspect of ‘quite rustic and comic theatrical
interludes’ and elements of ‘love of and devotion to the goddess, Kali’. See Schnepel
2000.
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 211

Like the slightly earlier Paficadolayatra, the Dandayatra is tied to a highly

symbolic moment in the calendar. It does not reflect the movement of the
moon, but of the sun. The first day of the month Vaisakha (14 April) is not
only the day that recalls the mythic event of Ganga touching the earth. According
to the solar calendar it also heralds the beginning of a new year. In Orissa this
day is called pan@samkranti.
The festival lasts for twenty-three days. During the twenty-one days
preceding the advent of the New Year, twelve young men (called bagata),
exclusively from those sub-castes that have a tribal origin, make their rounds
through town with performances of penance. The prominent figure of the group
carries a pair of cane sticks which represent the divine couple, Siva and Kali.
In a singular term, the sticks are also called Gauribeta, arousing associations
with Gauri, Siva’s spouse, who symbolizes the oceans or fertilizing rains which
flow down from her.
On the twenty-first day, Caitra maSanta or New Year’s Eve, the groups turn
to Kamanaghar, a small temple along the main ritual axis which houses Kali.
All participants are ordered by their teacher, the guru, to perform in the name
of Maniama, the protective mother goddess of Ranpur’s territory. Finally, the
guru, who appears to represent the goddess, is carried away, covered with
white cloth to signal his death. Late at night, the pair of cane sticks also die
symbolically as they are clandestinely carried away to the sound of a drum
usually struck in cases of death.
On the twenty-second day, the first day of the new solar cycle, the participants
complete their performance with fire-walking in front of the Kamanaghar—in
a way in the presence and in honour of Kali. Three pits have to be crossed:
the first is filled with milk, the second with glowing charcoal, and the third
with water. Within the temple, a jar is opened in which rice has been sprouting
over the period of twenty-one days. Such a demonstration of growth within
the sanctum adds another notion of far-reaching renewal. The entire ritual
celebrates death and subsequent renewal at a critical point in time. On the
twenty-second day the participants undergo purificatory rituals before being
reintegrated into society.
The territorial aspect of the entire exercise is equally overwhelming in its
complexity. Every group of participants is organized around a kothi, a ‘small
house’ that is identified with an unassuming temple dedicated to Kali, who in
Ranpur is identical with Maniama, the primeval goddess of place. Within the
present-day territory of Ranpur district, people share the notion that a hundred
and eight such kothis were formerly established within a realm that is specified
as caudakoSsa, with a radius of 14 kofa ora little over 47 km around the centre,
marked by the palace of the king (Fig. 10.10). When it comes to naming the
location of these kothis, never more than thirty-six, exactly one third of the
auspicious number one hundred and eight, can be counted. The notion of a
circle, a mandala of caudakoSa, recalls a territorial extent that can be attributed
to the constructed past. Only a faint idea survives that it covers religious
212 NIELS GUTSCHOW

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Fig. 10.10: Ranpur: Map demonstrating the idea of the caudakoSa mandala, a realm
that is delineated by a radius of 14 koSa, which is equal to 47.6 km. Although
the present Ranpur tahsil and the former princely state (until 1948) covers
a much smaller area, it is said that originally there were 108 congregations
for the Dandajatra (the festival of ‘punishment’) prior to the Vaisakhi, the
first month of the solar year.

endowments made by the king of Ranpur in neighbouring areas. The number

of acting kothi varies. While some are desperately seeking participants, others
have been recently established after receiving the necessary stick deities from
Ranpur.
The tribal associations with the event are not only demonstrated by the
social status of the participants. Brahmans are not only strictly excluded; they
make sure that groups do not enter their villages. Dandayatra indeed splits the
society of Ranpur: Brahmans, who once migrated here from the centre, represent
the elite, being engaged in reading, teaching and administering; farmers and
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 213

gardeners are inevitably tied to the agricultural calendar and depend on the
grace of Gauri. A generation or two ago all groups had to convene in Ranpur
to demonstrate loyalty in front of the king. A first offering of fire was made
to Jagannatha as the representation of the imperial power, a second to the king.
All the participants joined in a chorus wishing well-being.

THE ULTIMATE RECONFIRMATION OF THE DIVINE AND

ROYAL TERRITORY IN SPRING: PANCADOLAYATRA

THE URBAN RITUAL ARENA

The Dolamelana festival, literally ‘the meeting of swings’, is widely celebrated

around the full moon in the month of Phalguna (February/March), which in
Orissa is known as Dolapiirnima. This is the day of the lunar calendar that
precedes the spring equinox, which in the northern hemisphere marks the
advent of renewal. In Orissa this has many profane consequences: budgets are
prepared and land lease contracts renewed.
In Ranpur the entire festival lasts for eleven days and is called ‘Paficadolayatra’
(literally ‘the procession of swings or palanquins on the fifth day’), after the
final event on the fifth day after the full moon. On that day all swings from
the former princely state of Ranpur are carried in procession (y@tra) to the
central ritual ground to pay homage to the presiding royal deity. Such swing
festivals are commonly enacted for the divine couple Krsna/Radha in many
parts of India, but only in Orissa does the gentle swinging of the couple tran-
scend the narrow confines of a Vaisnava event to turn into a powerful manifest-
ation of territorial integration.
Neither in Ranpur nor in the surrounding villages are swings made for the
sole purpose of rocking the deities. Rather, the swing is a portable shrine which
houses the movable images of deities for a certain time, rarely longer than a
day. The deity ‘leaves’ the temple to undertake a journey and returns to its
original place after its completion. Often the deity represents a copy of the
presiding deity of the sanctuary or a variation that suits the purpose of the
journey. On such occasions, the deities grace and validate the protective quality
of the quarters of the settlement and turn to individual households upon their
invitations. On such occasions, the deity is praised and receives offerings in
exchange for granting ‘the eye contact or vision that confers divine blessing’
(Skt. dar§ana).?
These small shrines are shaped like a real temple with an open platform,
complete with four or even twelve elaborately carved columns. The roof is
often two-tiered, complete with a vase (kala§a) at the pinnacle and, if the
shrine carries a manifestation of Siva, a trident and a snake-hood or, if the
shrine houses a form of Visnu, his disk. [ron rings on the side permit the entire

*Stietencron 2001, 365.

214 NIELS GUTSCHOW

structure to be slung between two pillars to be rocked. However, this is rarely

done as the shrine is there to undertake a pre-designed journey. Two poles of
bamboo are fixed below the shrine or to the sides, thus converting the swing
into a palanquin. It is carried by four helpers from its temple, while a member
of the Mali sub-caste of gardeners heads the procession banging on a metal
plate. A second Mali follows with a ceremonial umbrella, the usual symbol
of royal or divine presence.
Until recently, the ritual ground was amorphous in shape, without any
architectural framework. However, at ground level, a hundred and eight
platforms can be seen framing and surrounding a space measuring roughly
100 x 70 metres. Throughout the year, most of these platforms are covered
with food stalls. But for the occasion of the grand urban ritual the stalls have
to be moved for a fortnight, the platforms repaired and painted light blue.
Three phases of the ritual can be identified, which form a symmetry in time.
The full moon day is preceded by five days of local significance and succeeded
by five more days culminating in a grand gathering of the deities, representing
the state of Ranpur.

FIRST PHASE: THE DIVINE COUPLE, VISNU/LAKSMI

GRACES THE URBAN TERRITORY IN THE COMPANY OF HIS
FIVE MINISTERS, MANIFESTATIONS OF SIVA

On the first five evenings, the ritual journey starts in front of the temple of
Jagannatha (Fig. 10.11). The five representations of Siva in Ranpur are
considered to act as ‘ministers’ of Jagannatha, and as such they accompany
the divine couple, Dolagovinda and Laksmi, on the journey (Fig. 10.12). Their
manifestation in the shape of a /inga is kept at temples which mark the boundary
of the urban territory.
On the night preceding the full moon the final event is announced. Jagannatha
appears in his manifestation as Dolagovinda and in the shape of a four-armed
Visnu with his usual attributes. He is accompanied by his consort Laksmi as
well as by Krsna in his form as a child (Balakrsna). As soon as they leave the
temple compound, the troupe of deities are accompanied by their ‘ministers’.
Five temple servants head the procession: a barber with a torch, followed by
a musician with aconch shell, and three members of the sub-caste of gardeners
with a ceremonial umbrella and metal plates, the sound of which announces
the coming of the deities. The group heads immediately northwards towards
the ritual ground, paficadola padia. The procession stops a few times to pay
its respects to deities enshrined in temples facing the bada danda, the main
ritual axis of the town. At these halts the four carriers from the sub-caste of
farmers do not place their palanquins on the ground but support the carrying
poles with sticks of equal length. The palanquins remain floating in mid-air.
At the ritual ground the three palanquins are lined up facing the east to attend
a purification ritual to the continuous sound of the metal plates, which prepares
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Fig. 10.12: Ranpur, Paficadolayatra: For a period of seven days five movable
representations of Mahadeva who act as the ‘ministers’ of Jagannatha,
convene at the temple gate to accompany the divine couple Dolagovinda
and Laksmi on a nocturnal journey through the lanes of the twelve quarters.
The night preceding the full moon, the troupe carrying the portable shrines
turns to the paficadola padia, the festive ground (1), to witness a fire in
honour of Maninagesvari, the tutelary goddess of the king. On the way
back the procession first turns east to the temple of Svapnesvara (2) and
then returns after a circuit through the southern quarters.
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTR
OUT THERE
E 217

the ground for the final event. A fire of straw is lit to purify the place where
Maninagesvari, the tutelary goddess of the ‘Little King’ and his kingdom, will
be seated six days later to accept the submission of the hundred and eight
territorial deities of the kingdom.
The three palanquins return in a formal procession along the ritual axis
towards the temple of Jagannatha, then turn east to the temple of Svapne$vara,
add a detour through the southern quarters of the town, and then return to the
point of origin a few hours after midnight.

SECOND PHASE: DOLAPURNIMA, OR FULL Moon,

THE ADVENT OF SPRING

In the morning of the day of the full moon, a palanquin carrying the divine
couple (Dolagovinda-Laksmi) leaves the temple and is placed on a large
platform with a carved plinth, the dolavedi, in front of the palace and facing
the ritual axis. As the posts from which the shrine was originally suspended
to form a swing have broken, the palanquin is simply placed on the ground.
Two ceremonial umbrellas are placed on either side, while a large canopy
covers almost the entire platform. The son of the last acting king, who survives
in poverty in his ruined palace, worships the divine couple. The offering of
green mango fruits and a large jackfruit mark the beginning of spring, the
renewal of the world.
On the same day, the one hundred and eight deities within the territory of
Ranpur leave their temples and are placed in their portable shrines, which are
put to rest for a few hours on the swing platform within the temple compound.
In Ranpur itself, the five ‘ministers’ mentioned above and the deities of the
nine mathas and the Nrsingha temple appear to be worshipped by the people
of the respective quarters of the city. In these cases the mathas represent a
manifestation of the divine couple, mostly Radha/Krsna. On that day and
the day following, the ‘ministers’ accompany the divine couple again on their
nocturnal journey through the lanes of the city.
The following day, Holipirnima, is dedicated to a violent celebration of
the change of the seasons. All the shops along the ritual axis are barricaded
and women seek to hide themselves as young men go round throwing coloured
powder not only at each other but at anybody who happens to come into sight.
Obscene slogans fill the air of the main street, which turns into an arena of
violence for about two hours. Although the crisis is intentionally created, it is
experienced as a spontaneous outburst ignoring accepted social behaviour and
hierarchy. The day of Holi has the quality of a liminal event. It is neither here
nor there in time, but in between. The crisis or chaos that is produced is meant
to dissolve the accepted order. Dissolution embraces the germ of renewal, and
the vernal equinox or the full moon preceding indeed provides perfect timing
for this process. In the case of Ranpur, the dissolution is the inevitable pre-
condition for the concluding event which celebrates the reconfirmation of the
territorial order of the Little Kingdom.
218 NIELS GUTSCHOW

THIRD PHASE: THE CONVENTION OF THE

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT DEITIES OF THE TERRITORY

The administrative servant of the Jagannatha temple sends invitations to the

deities of the former kingdom’s territory well in advance. The caretakers of
fifteen temples and mathas of Ranpur and ninety-two temples of villages which
dot the agricultural land of the former kingdom need this invitation as a gesture
of belonging (Fig. 10.13). Only one deity is invited from beyond the nineteenth-
century territorial boundaries, from the village of Siko. From there a repre-
sentation of Siva appeared in mythic times to reconfirm Ranpur as a place of
kingship. The ritual seems to ‘remember’ this relationship.
The hundred and eight deities leave their abode on the fifth day after the
full moon in the palanquin that had been used on the day of the full moon and
arrive in Ranpur after midnight. The majority of palanquins originate from the
southern villages, seven alone from Gopalpur. Four come from the south-west,
where reclaimed land stretches like a finger into the forest, five from the west

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Fig. 10.13: Ranpur, Paficadolayatra: On the fifth day after the full moon in March the
movable representations (calanti pratima) from villages of the former State
of Ranpur (including one from neighbouring Siko) are carried in festive
processions towards the festival ground at the northern end of the ritual
axis of Ranpur. From the north 39 and from the south 34 portable shrines
join those from Ranpur itself.
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 219

and five from the east. The remaining thirty-six palanquins originate from the
northern villages, three alone from Sunakhala, an important marketplace on
the border with the former neighbouring state of Khandpara.
The palanquins are paraded with great pomp towards the designated ritual
ground, which is encircled by one hundred and eight platforms. Colourful
animals in bizarre shapes are brought on cycle rickshaws, and the night is
passed in dancing and singing songs in praise of the gods. Collective excitement
fills the access roads towards Ranpur.
The assembly of the deities on the ritual ground is strictly organized
(Fig. 10.14). This means that every shrine has its predetermined place, one of
the platforms that form a modified circle along the edge of the ground. The
spatial order of the territory is reflected in the order of sequence, which is
divided by an invisible axis. The host or rather the ‘master of the place’
(thanapati, Skt. sthanapati), namely, Jagannatha in the form of Dolagovinda,
presides over the congregation at the top of this axis, facing south. The western
part of the circle is reserved for representations of Visnu (in the form of
Jagannatha, Krsna or Radha/Krsna), the eastern part for representations of
Siva. The configuration of the congregation suggests a strong element of what
has been described as the meeting of Visnu and Siva (hari-hara-bheta)."° In
contrast to similar meetings elsewhere in Orissa, the Saiva element dominates
the scene. Altogether sixty-four representations of Siva are placed to the left
of the presiding deity and forty-three representations of Visnu to his right. One
more form of Krsna, the Brajavihari from the Brajavihari math in Purnavasanta
(the village north of Ranpur), is placed between Dolagovinda and his five
§aiva ministers to avoid what could be seen as an unwanted confrontation.
Brajavihari is needed to mediate the hierarchy or make it obscure. The dividing
line between the two groups thus becomes less decisive: Jagannatha’s (or
Dolagovinda’s) role becomes less assuming, the hierarchy more ambivalent.
The division of the circle clearly reflects an opposition between Saiva and
Vaisnava without aiming at symmetry. The question of superiority does not
surface, because all the deities are arranged around the centre, which is occupied
by the most powerful territorial deity, Maninage$vari. Whether Vaisnava or
Saiva, on this occasion all one hundred and eight deities are subsidiary territorial
deities. They have assembled to pay their respects to and be reconfirmed by
the primeval protective goddess. She is the territorial goddess par excellence,
representing the origin of the place, and she once witnessed the clearing of
the forest. All the other deities stand for the settlements that participate in
her protective powers. Literally ‘the jewel serpent’ (mani naga), the goddess
ensures water and fertility. Seen as a meaningful event of renewal, one could
argue that the one hundred and eight territorial deities merge with the ultimate
deity of place. Their concentric movement could be seen as a march of death,
one that ends in a circular fashion to overcome any hierarchy. The return to

See Stietencron 2002, 379.

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the villages equals a rebirth on the occasion of the vernal equinox. One hundred
and eight deities fan cut from a centre to reclaim the cultivated land of their
villages and to reoccupy their position as the Lord of Place.

THE SYMBOLISM OF SPACE AND TIME

The spring equinox is a perfect occasion for rituals of renewal throughout

the northern hemisphere. Calendrical diversity, however, allows this day to
be fixed at different times. In the Gregorian solar calendar this day is 21 March.
The incorrect calculations of Brahmanical astronomers have caused a gradual
shifting of it towards 14 April, the first day of the month of Vaisakha, which
in many subcultures of the subcontinent is still celebrated as New Year. In
Orissa, Dolapurnima, the full moon in March, represents the alternative
according to the lunar calendar.
New Year by definition calls for a ritual of renewal to ensure the continuity
of time and space, as well as the continuity of individual and collective life,
human beings, and even gods in a given territorial situation, whether a temple
compound, a village, an imperial city, or a royal or divine territory. In Ranpur,
the ritual addresses the territory of the Little King which, on that occasion, is
identified as a divine territory over which Maninage$vari presides. Her presence
in the centre of a circle of a meaningful number of gods ensures and confirms
the territorial set-up. Taking into account similar ritual events, one could even
talk of a rebirth. In this context, the fire made on the site of the congregation
the night before the full moon probably indicates death, or at least a far-reaching
cleansing of evil influences from the site.
To return to Ranpur, the mobile representation of Maninage$vari, the
istadevata of the Little King and thus the tutelary deity of his territory, leaves
her shrine within the palace for what I would call a demonstration of loyalty
by all the village gods, and above all by Jagannatha and his ‘ministers’. At
this moment the notion of the Little Kingdom turns into a ‘divine kingdom’.
It is ManinageSvari who rules the divine kingdom, while in profane matters
the Little King becomes her tool. Kulke has referred to the annual coronation
ceremony of Jagannatha, during which he is visited by the subregional deities,
Maninagesvari among others. This act has been translated into the image of
a tent, with the eight Mother Goddesses forming the pegs of the tent and
Jagannatha representing the supporting central pole.'' This idea is certainly
applicable to Ranpur, where the one hundred and eight gods represent the pegs
of the tent, with ManinageS$vari representing the centre. This is probably truer
than anywhere else, because the congregation of gods on the occasion of
Paficadola forms a circle around the tutelary goddess.
The number one hundred and eight fits into this model of interpretation, as
it is the most perfect number in combining spatial and temporal symbolism:

''Kulke 1980, 31.

222 NIELS GUTSCHOW

nine represents space and twelve represents time. Most often, the number is
tied to a processional route which opposes a meaningful, protective inside to
a potentially unordered outside.'? The case of Ranpur is unique as a hundred
and eight sites dot the entire territory without an inherent order. Only once a
year does this territory assume the shape of a circle to create an order that can
be experienced visually. The circle is formed to acknowledge the superiority
of the centre. Individually, the a hundred and eight territorial deities represent
fractions of a whole. The number and the ritual convention only tie each part
to a cosmic and eternal model.
%

THE COLONIZATION OF THE TERRITORY: SASANA VILLAGES

The people of Ranpur insist that the former state had nine SGsana villages (see
Fig. 10.15), thus associating them with a significant number: nine is the perfect
number, which provides the symbolism of time and space to any spatial entity,
be it a single temple, a village, or a larger territory. The Ranpur chronicle
refers to only eight gifts of land settling Brahmans in such villages, excluding
the establishment of Samukhdsahi, the east-west axis of the city, along which
today many Brahmans and the diwdn of the former kingdom are settled. The
chronicle says nothing about specific motifs such as vows for the establishment
of the villages. Nothing is known beyond what Pfeffer has referred to as a
process of immortalizing the king’s or queen’s name and ‘appeasing an
extremely influential elite of ideologists’,'* who are settled in some thirty
villages in the vicinity of the Jagannatha temple of Puri, where a universe with
a strong numerical symbolism has been created around the seat of the Lord of
the Universe. In the centre, four so-called ‘seed’ villages, where the rajagurus,
the royal preceptors of the kings, settled, established the apex of the hierarchy.
Sixteen §dsana villages followed, thirty-two villages were founded for queens
and other dignitaries and thirty-two villages for menial workers. The first wave
of immigrants were allegedly summoned from Kannauj, the legendary heartland
of Brahmanism, to emphasize their civilizing ability. These Brahmans were
assigned the mission to shape the administrative and political framework of
‘an “underdeveloped” politically insignificant region’.'4
The Brahmans who were called to colonize the jungle of the Little Kingdom
of Ranpur had to fulfil similar expectations. The establishment of the eight
§asana villages belongs to the period of the ‘remembered past’. The pattern
of civilization claimed by the political and ritual centre of Orissa reached the
periphery by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Puri now attained the
role that was earlier reserved for Kannauj, the imperial centre of Harsha.
However, only faint notions of their origin survive among the Brahmans of
Ranpur. The Ratha Brahmans of Brundabanpur, established by King Brundaban

2Gutschow 1994, 201.

“Pfeffer 1978, 423.
'Thid., 426.
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 223

Fig. 10.15: Ranpur: Location of nine §Gsana villages with the territory of the former
princely state of Ranpur. According to the chronicle, these were established
between 1560 and 1850 by the kings and queens of Ranpur. Two more
villages, Jamadeipur and Krushnachandrapur (indicated in italics on the
map), bear witness to a royal deed, but are settled not by Brahmans but
by oil pressers and farmers. East of Ranpur, a belt of three ‘revenue villages’
(fields without any settlement) are dedicated to the temple of Jagannatha
and named after the Trinity: (1) Jagannathpur, (2) Subhadrapur, (3)
Balabhadrapur.

in the early years of the nineteenth century, recall that their ancestors were
ordered to migrate from Balabhadrapur and Parvatipur by the king of Puri.
Two or three decades later, King Brajasunda ordered Brahmans from Ranpur
itself to establish Brajasundarpur in an area adjoining the earlier settlement.
King Sarangadhara, who was mentioned earlier as the king who first established
a replica of the Puri triad of deities in a new temple, settled Mahapatra Brahmans
from Balapur near Puri in a village named after him, Sarangadharpur. Unusually,
even the name of the first Mahapatra, Grameshvar, is remembered by the
villagers, who belong to some thirty Mahapatra families and a few named
Nanda and Misra. For Kundanadeipur at the southern edge of Ranpur’s territory,
even the exact date of the establishment, the fourth year of the reign of King
Mukunda Deva of Puri (1802), is mentioned by the chronicle, which is based
224 NIELS GUTSCHOW

on a now lost palm-leaf manuscript, written in the 1830s. A second chronicle

also mentions one Nrusinghapur, established by King Bajradhara Nrusimha
Narendra, the son of Sarangadhara. The villagers remember that their ancestors
were summoned from Biranarasinghapur and Lalitapatapur near Puri. Till
today the village has preserved an exclusive population of Brahmans, whereas
other §dsana villages, such as Ramachandrapur, established in the middle of
the eighteenth century by King Ramachandra, include satellite clusters for
menial workers (farmers, washermen, barbers, fishermen and weavers).
Nrusimha’s great-grandson, Benudhara, was the last king to offer land claimed
from the jungle to ten families of Brahmans, who were brought from Parvatipur
near Puri. One other §Gsana village, Banamalipur, was established in the early
years of the eighteenth century, but was later deserted due to attacks by
tigers. |
Beyond the villages mentioned above, the names of a few more are tied to
sponsors. Jamadeipur is said to have been established by Jama, the daughter
of Mukunda Deva of Puri, who had married King Padmanabha of Ranpur,
whose death in CE 1578 (4680 Kaliyuga) is reported by the Ranpur chronicle.
Belonging to the period of the ‘constructed’ past, such narratives must be seen
in the context of a search for earlier ties of the local dynasty to the territory.
A second and much earlier chronicle even mentions one Krushnachandrapur,
which is said to have been established by the grandfather of the present raja
of Ranpur. The villagers, however, refute this and insist that their village is
called Arakapada and that it was established by their ancestors ‘ten generations
ago’.
To sum up, human resources seem to have been drained away from the
centre since the early eighteenth century to shape the territory of the jungle
king. Around such early core villages, a few settlements of farmers were
established to claim more fields from the virgin jungle. Even more than these,
eighty-five villages, which represent the territory in the context of the Paficadola
festival, were established in the course of the twentieth century. Following a
devastating fire in 1943, as mentioned earlier the establishment of Nuagaon
on the southern periphery of Ranpur as a ‘model village’ served as a prototype.
Up until today, such settlements have been developed along existing roads in
a bid to provide land for the landless.

SUMMARY: HOW A NEW CENTRE RECALLS

THE IDEA OF THE ORIGINAL

It would be misleading to characterize the establishment of a new centre in

the jungle of the Orissan hinterland as a ‘replica’ or ‘copy’. In referring to an
urban configuration and to architectural features, both terms indicate identity
with the original, or at least a high degree of likeness. As neither the urban
fabric nor the built form of temples in Ranpur bear any visual likeness to the
originals, the process of transferring an idea into a new spatial context needs
 THE FORMATION OF A CENTRE OUT THERE 225

to be described along different lines. It would be rather like sound being echoed
or contours and colours being vaguely reflected in a new environment. It would
be better to say that an idea or a cluster of constituent ideas is put into a new
form.
In the case of Ranpur, the seat of the Lord of the World, Jagannatha, and
his ritual requirements at the place of origin, in Puri, constitute the prevailing
idea, which is transported into the hinterland to be reshaped in a local context.
A tower indicates the location of the sanctum as the house of the deities who
look towards the rising sun—which is not in any way a specific idea. It is
rather the definition of ritual space between the permanent abode of the deity
and his summer residence that shapes the capitals of Little Kingdoms. Beyond
the reflection of a spatial configuration, it is the enactment of the ‘twelve
festivals’ that ties time to the cosmic calendar. Realizing or re-enacting the
parameters of the original in space and time imbues the new place “_ the
qualities that are needed to legitimize royal power.
The establishment of Jagannatha as a replica of the greatest regional Sily
certainly represents a constituent act of appropriation. The deity is truly a
replica or duplicate. His presence is replicated in order to occupy ‘foreign’
territory symbolically and to attach what is a process of colonization with
cosmic significance. With the regional deity came a retinue of settlers to receive
royal grants. The Sdsana villages were standardized and served as the models
for every other settlement in the region.
This process of territorial appropriation was never intended to uproot or
replace an existing subregional identity. Local deities like ManinageSvari in
Ranpur were never overpowered but rather incorporated into the ritual of
Jagannatha. As she presides over the congregation of all territorial deities on
acalendrically significant day, she celebrates her partial superiority. Similarly,
she emphasizes this supremacy on a second vernal event, Dandayatra. The
exclusion of Brahman (or ‘foreign’) participants stresses the subregional
territorial aspects.
The centres of the Little Kingdoms managed to establish an equilibrium
between the aspirations to reflect cosmic claims and standards and the urge
to respond to the needs of the chthonic deities of tribal origin.

REFERENCES

Gutschow, Niels 1994. ‘Varanasi/Benares: The Centre of Hinduism?’, in Erdkunde 48,

194-209.
—_2003. ‘Ranpur: The Centre of a Little Kingdom’, in G. Berkemer and M. Franz
(eds.), Sharing Sovereignty: The Little Kingdom in South Asia, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz,
137-64.
2004. ‘Ranpur Resolved: Spatial Analysis of a Town in Orissa Based on a Chronicle’,
e ©
in A. Malinar, J. Beltz and H. Frese (eds.), Text and Context in the History, Literatur
and Religion of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 67-92. De A
in Puri and
Gutschow, Niels and Rabindra J. Vasavada. 2001. “Temples of Jagannath
226 NIELS GUTSCHOW

Ranpur—Onissa, India: A Preliminary Typological Comparison’, in Beitrdge zur

Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Archdologie, vol. 21, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern,
59-74.
Kulke, Hermann 1980. ‘Legitimation and Town Planning in the Feudatory States of Central
Orissa’, in J. Pieper (ed.), Ritual Space in India: Studies in Architectural Anthropology,
Art and Archaeology Research Papers (aarp) 17, London: Aarp, 30-40.
—2004. ‘The Making of a Local Chronicle: The Ranapur Rajavamé$a Itihasa’, in A.
Malinar, J. Beltz and H. Freese (eds.), Text and Context in the History, Literature and
Religion of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 43-66.
Pfeffer, Georg 1978. ‘Puri’s Vedic Brahmans: Continuity and Change in Their Traditional
Institutions’, in A. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathi (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath
and the Regional Tradition of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 421-38.
Schnepel, Burkhard 1997. Die Dschungelkénige. Ethnohistorische Aspekte von Politik und
Ritual in Siidorissa, Indien, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
—2000. ‘Der K6rper.im ‘Tanz der Strafe’ in Orissa’, in Klaus-Peter K6pping and
Ursula Rao (eds.), Im Rausch des Rituals: Gestaltung und Transformation der
Wirklichkeit in kérperlicher Performanz, Berlin: LIT, 156-71.
Singh Deo, Damodhar 1962. History of the Dynasties of the Ranpur State, Ranpur:
Manuscript (translation by A. Das, Orissa Research Project Library Ms 688).
Stietencron, Heinrich von 1978. ‘Early Temples of Jagannatha in Orissa: The Formative
Phase, in A. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathi (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and
the Regional Tradition of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 61-77.
— 2001. ‘A Congregation of Gods: The Dolamelana Festival in Orissa’, in Hermann
Kulke and Burkhard Schnepel (eds.), Jagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion
and the State in Orissa, Delhi: Manohar, 363-401.
 CHAPTER II

King, Goddesses and Jagannatha:

Regional Patriotism and Subregional and
Local Identities in Early Modern Orissa

AKIO TANABE

INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the topic of regional patriotism and subregional and
local identities in the context of late pre-colonial, early modern Orissa. It will
look at the historical development of regional patriotism in early modern Orissa
and try to understand its mechanism and structure, also taking into account
how it was possible for different groups of people, embedded in different local
and subregional socio-political units, to have a sense of belonging to and love
for the then politicaliy non-existent state of Orissa.
Before I proceed to my discussion of these issues, I would like to con-
textualize this chapter in respect of the theme of this conference and the
research framework of the German Orissa Research Project (hereafter ORP).
A great contribution was made by the former ORP in pointing out the existence
of a regional culture, in contradiction to the more usual dichotomy between a
pan-Indian great tradition and a series of local little traditions.' This chapter
certainly owes a great deal to the former ORP for the attention it gave to the
significance of the regional level. In discussing regional identity in Orissa,
however, the danger of privileging the regional culture of the Jagannatha cult
has been correctly pointed out by the members of the present ORP, who are
making efforts to shift attention to subregional identities or little kingdoms.
The present ORP reconsiders and problematizes the centrality of the Jagannatha
cult, at the same time aiming to understand its historical and socio-cultural
complexities by positing multiple centres in Orissa.’
I agree that any claim regarding the existence of a culture in a given territorial
space—such as that being made in this case that the Jagannatha cult is a national
or rather regional culture of Orissa—often leads to the conceptual imposition
of a dominant culture of the centre that is supposedly shared by all members

'The best products of the former ORP are represented in Eschmann, Kulke and Tripathi
1978.
Peabody also stresses the need to pay attention to multiple centres in opposition to the
‘monocentric view’ represented by Dirks (Peabody 2003, 82; Dirks 1987).
228 AKIO TANABE

of the region in question. By positing a centre, we should not privilege a

dominant culture as an essence representing the territory as a whole, thus
imposing the modern idea of a ‘bounded’ space with a homogenous culture.’
In this sense, I agree with the idea of deconstructing the supposed essence of
a monocentre and thus seeing Jagannatha and the Gajapati in their socio-
historical contexts, instead of taking their privileged positions within Oriya
culture for granted. However, I am also opposed to the other extreme: the
post-modernist, deconstructionist idea that everything depends on viewpoints
and that there are only fragments which represent multiple centres. Regional
integration is a reality, and althotgh subregional units are indeed important
as multi-centres, they cannot have their own viewpoints and agency independently
of the larger politico-cultural structure. An extreme post-modernist framework
not only loses sight of actual political dominance and the question of cultural
hegemony, it also fails to see the overall politico-cultural framework without
which contestations and communication would not be possible in the first
place.
In my view, it is not the positing of a centre that is the problem. Indeed, I
think we can safely say that cert in centres existed in precolonial Orissa and
that there was a sense of regional territoriality deriving from them and defined
through exchanges and networks. In this sense, pre-colonial Orissa can indeed
be said to have been a centre-oriented territory, where regional integration
existed through networks connecting multiple spaces with a core centre
(Tambiah 1985).* It should be noted that this idea of a centre-oriented territory
is not the same as assuming cultural homogeneity in a presupposed “bounded’
space. What leads to the imposition of an essentialized dominant culture is
the obsession that the culture or cosmology of the centre must be shared
homogeneously within a bounded space for a particular territory to be called
a nation or cultural region. In this kind of representation, there is little scope
for explaining the existence of the diversity of cultures that characterizes
regional societies and communities, not only in Orissa, but anywhere else in
India.°
What is necessary here, in fact, is to think carefully and seriously about the
relationships between the different nodal points in the network. In the words
of Berkemer, one of the organizers of the conference on which the present

‘Tambiah 1985.
*See Berkemer (2002) on the transformation of the ‘traditional border regions (sima in
Oriya) into border lines (simdnta)’.
*A related difficulty applies to the conundrum of the ‘great’ and ‘little’ traditions. It is
not the analytical assumption of great tradition versus little tradition that is the problem.
In fact, the problem begins when the great and little traditions are somehow defined in a
substantive manner, with the little tradition being seen as a residue which does not fit into
the great tradition. In this kind of schema, the little tradition is defined negatively as mere
deviation from the unity represented by the great tradition. Thus the little tradition is
considered to have little importance for national integrity.
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA 229

volume is based, attention should be drawn to areas, institutions and phenomena

‘in between’ as a way out of centrist and dichotomous paradigms.® Previous
arguments on culture and identity have tended to ask what the common feature
is, or what is the key to integration? They have therefore focused on describing
and explaining the essence of a nation or a region, be it caste, kingship, or
religion. The problem with trying to identify the essence of national or regional
integration is that it posits a dominant culture or institution as a common
feature and thus essentializes national or regional cultures and identities at
the cost of ignoring diversity and complexity in the nation or region. As a way
out of this problem, I propose that we examine the interrelationships between
the various levels of polities and institutions within the region and consider
what kind of integration, contestation and diversity these entailed.
In this chapter, I would like to concentrate on the relationships between the
regional, subregional and micro-regional (local) spaces, each of which seems
to have great significance in the understanding of identities in early modern
Orissa.’ It is my contention that there came into being a new kind of relationship
between the three levels—regional, subregional and microregional—in the
early modern period, from which a sense of patriotism emerged. This sense
of patriotism connected the people’s feelings of attachment to land, which
were until then confined to the micro-regional locality, with the cultural design
of sovereignty and political legitimacy at the regional level in Orissa. The
workings of little kings and the great little king of Khurda at the subregional
level were pivotal here.* By looking at the transformation of the relationships
between the Khurda king, other little kings and the people in the local society,
I would like to show how the early modern development of state formation
and social change connected the people in the locality not only to the subregional
kingdom, but also to the patria of Orissa as a sphere of shared political legitimacy
and ethics.
Recent research on patriotism in late pre-colonial India’ has demonstrated
its non-exclusive characteristics, which permitted the co-existence of multiple
and heterogeneous identities, along with a sense of belonging to the same
country. We can more or less safely state that the key to regional patriotism
in early modern Orissa lay in the institutions of the Jagannatha cult and Gajapati

°Berkemer 2003.
7This can be said, from another point of view, to be an attempt to contribute an answer
to the problem as regards the nature of the Indian state as put forward succinctly by
Chattopadhyaya as follows: ‘In trying to understand the presence of autonomous spaces of
authority within the structure of a State it is . . . necessary to understand how sources of
authority were perceived and how they were sought to be related to the authority of the
State’ (Chattopadhyaya 1997, 8).
its
®The Khurda king was ‘great’ in its authority as Gajapati, but ‘little’ in terms of
Marathas.
territorial size and because it was under suzerainty of the Mughals and later the
Hence I call the Khurda king a ‘great little king’.
*Bayly 1998, Ray 2003.
230 AKIO TANABE

kingship. A notable feature of Oriya patriotism was that the network of

exchanges centring around the Jagannatha cult and Gajapati kingship succeeded
in connecting the people’s sense of self, which was embedded in particular
localities and subregions, with regional level ideas and institutions regarding
sovereignty and political legitimacy, without imposing homogeneity. It
integrated people of the region who associated themselves with Jagannatha
through different channels, at the same time permitting a continuity of
subregional and micro-regional identities, which were often associated with
particular polities and communities—little kingdoms, chieftaincies, micro-
regions and castes—and correspondingly diverse forms of cultural and religious
practices, including various goddess cults rooted in localities and clans.
In the following, I focus first on the structure of the micro-regional com-
munity and its system of patrimonial entitlements, which I believe was the
basis for people-embodied personhood and attachment to land. Next, I exam-
ine the relationships between the micro-regional and subregional levels. I
argue that there was an important transformation in the relationships from
the medieval to early modern periods, which transformation involved the
permeation of the royal power of the subregional kings (i.e. little kings) down
to local levels. In the process, the little king came to be established as the
source of authority for the local system of entitlements. The importance of
subregional identities among the people seems to have increased with this
early modern application of royal power, which connected embodied personhood
with its attachments to land and people embedded in micro-regional localities
with the authority of the subregional level kingship. Then, I consider the
relationships between the subregional and regional level. I look at the changes
in the network of relationships between the subregional little kings, Gajapati
and Jagannatha. The little kings came to be more intimately related with
Jagannatha, so to speak, as some of them began to participate in the regional
system of honour and privileges centring around Jagannatha and Gajapati, as
Kulke has pointed out.'®
Thus, in sum, closer interaction and exchange developed between the
regional, subregional and micro-regional levels during this period. This made
it possible for people living in particular localities to connect and reflexively
define their selves vis-a-vis the universal politico-religious values represented
by the Jagannatha cult and Gajapati kingship through the mediatory channel
of the subregional kingship. In this way, they came to identify themselves in
relation to the country of Jagannatha and Gajapati, that is, Orissa. What I shall
argue in the following, in other words, is that the channelizing or mediating
power of the Gajapati Khurda king and other little kings worked to connect
idiosyncratic groups of people belonging to various castes, religions and
localities under an emotional-ideational unit of the Jagannatha country having
a common framework of politico-cultural ethics regarding power and sovereignty
in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Orissa.

Kulke 1978b, 1993a.

 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA | 231

THE BASIS OF PATRIOTISM: MODES OF FORMATION OF

PERSONHOOD AND IDENTITY IN ORISSA

I now turn to the level of the micro-regional community, which I suggest

provided the basis for a kind of primordial patriotism. To understand the
popular sense of attachment to and love for the local land, I suggest that we
start by considering how personhood and identity are formed. In the following,
I first look at the basic mechanism of the formation of body-personhood in
Orissa, and then discuss how this is related to the system of entitlements in
micro-regions.
In understanding personhood and identity in India, it is necessary to look
at how humoral and fluid bio-moral'' interactions, involving an exchange of
code-substance'* materials that carry cultural meanings and values, constitute
and determine the position and identity of a body-person. The term ‘body-
person’ is used here to indicate how the body as a corporeal substance and
personhood as a social role and position are inseparable. This is because bio-
moral exchanges form a body in a given social network, and the kind of code-
substance that constitutes the body carries socio-cultural meanings and
values.
According to this bio-moral definition of identity of a body-person, inter-
actions between land, food and human bodies—the aggregate of which
makes up the basic network of eco-society—are particularly important. A body-
person is constructed from the corporeal code-substance made through
the marriages he concludes and food he ingests. Since the food is produced
on a plot of land, the moral nature of that particular earth-substance is also
taken into the body-person.'* The socio-political position, titles and ritual
privileges that are granted to someone also constitute his or her personhood,
as they carry certain code-substances as well. Similarly, actions influence a
body-person, since they involve an exchange of bio-moral substance. In this
regard, gift exchanges are extremely important in determining personhood,
since the moral nature of the giver is contained in the gift of women, food,
land and other ritual-economic resources, and influences the personhood of
the receiver. Anthropological studies of India in the 1960s and 1970s have
described in detail the kind of care and attention Indians pay regarding from
whom to accept water, food and women. These matters are related to concerns
about maintaining their proper body-personhood, and previous studies con-
sidered them to represent the norms of Indian society.'*
However, I would argue instead that we can also see this phenomenon the
other way around. That is to say, instead of starting with the existence of a
society where there are norms prescribing exchanges, we can see how the

"Bayly 1998.
'2Marriot 1976, Daniel 1984.
Daniel 1984.
'4Classic examples of these works include Mayer 1960 and Parry 1979.
232 AKIO TANABE

politico-cultural acts of exchange determine relationships of sociality between

various body-persons and their relationships with the land. In other words, it
is the aggregate of these bio-moral exchanges that forms a body-person, and
their networks that make up the society and polity. A body-person can be seen
as a knot in the overlapping and multi-layered networks of exchanges that
constitute group and territorial formations.
According to a common folk discourse in Orissa, a human body is formed
when the man’s seminal fluid (birja) mixes with the woman’s sexual secretion
(raja) during intercourse. The man’s sperm is referred to as the seed and the
woman’s womb as the field. It is not only the seed that determines the character
of the body, since seeds grow through bio-moral exchange with the field.’° It
is considered important that the right kind of seed should be planted in the
right field, so that the result will be a suitable body-person who befits the
duties of the particular family and caste.'® Right from conception to death and
subsequent incorporation as an ancestor, a person is involved in interactions
and exchanges of code-substances, which embed him or her in the society and
locality."’
The body that is produced as a result of an appropriate combination of seed
and field takes in food which is produced on a particular piece of land which
has been passed down over the generations. Ingesting food produced on the
land is one of the most important ways in which code-substances affect the
body constitution of a person.'* Food is produced on land allocated to a family
as part of the patrimonial entitlements attached to the office the family holds.
More precisely, a family holds entitlements over a certain proportion of products
on a particular piece of land.
There is a telling expression about the nurturing of the body through land.
When a man occupies a service land, he is said to eat the land (jami khaiba).

'SThis is not only in relation to human reproduction: the same kind of discourse can be
found in relation to agricultural production (cf. Daniel 1984, Gupta 1998).
'6The territorial sphere of marriage alliances was also connected with territorial identities
in an important way. There are several marriage alliance networks. The immediate sphere
consists of direct ‘relatives by marriage alliance’, called bandhu, that is, the family of one’s
spouse. Then comes the network of the bandhus of one’s own family, and then that of the
bandhus of one’s lineage. Thereafter, there comes the network of bandhus of bandhus.
Lastly, there is a network of potential bandhus, which is same as the endogamous caste
group or jati. In the context of pre-colonial Orissa, the territorial sphere of a jati as an
alliance network often corresponded to the unit of subregional kingdoms. For example, in
Khurda the peasant militias were called ‘Oriya’ by caste name and formed a marriage
alliance network within the Khurda kingdom: they did not form marriage alliances with
peasant militias belonging to other kingdoms. (Other jatis had their own territorial networks.)
In this way, it was partly the jati or networks of marriage alliances that endorsed the import-
ance of the subregional unit in little kingdoms.
'’Tokita-Tanabe forthcoming.
'8Since the bio-moral substance of whoever cooks also affects the eater, care is taken
regarding ‘from whose hand one eats’ (kahdara hatru khaiba).
 KING, GODDESSES:
AND JAGANNATHA 233

This means that the entitlement holder is eating and nurturing his body from
the product of the allocated land. The organic and humoral relationship between
personhood and land is strengthened by the fact that a particular piece of land
allocated to a family often has a proper name suggestive of the owner’s identity.
For example, there are plots of land called Khumbdara hetda (potter’s service
land), Pradhan heta (village head’s service land), and Ramacandinka bhogo
khanja jami (land as offerings to the goddess Ramachandi, this being the |
Khond priest’s land). Thus we see that there is a parallel conception here
between the body, personhood and the allocated land.
Land was allocated as part of patrimonial rights in the ‘system of entitlements’
that defined the socio-political structure of local communities in Khurda."* It
is therefore natural that, in order for a person to occupy a certain office and
thus the land that has been allocated to him, it is considered necessary for him
to have a body-personhood to suit the office. In other words, there is an idea
that a person should live on and at the land which is appropriate to his body-
personhood. Just as it is important for the seed to match the earth, the sperm
the womb and the food the body, it is also important for the body to match
the family, with its prescribed entitlements to land and office. The question,
“Does that person suit the land?’ (se loka se jamiku sohiba ki?) arises especially
in the case of an adoption, when someone is brought from the outside to inherit
the office. Let me give an example here by way of illustration. The chief of
Garh Manitri today was adopted by the family from an affinal relative, after
the original chief emigrated to England. His elder brother was brought in first
but returned to his natal home, as he was said not to have matched the chief’s
family land and had caught leprosy. The present chief was then brought in but
also caught leprosy. It is said, however, that he was cured after he prayed to
Ramachandi, the tutelary goddess of the region, so that he might be accepted.
He remains in the office today.
The system of entitlements defined rights to shares of the products of the
land, salary, privileges and the duties of the office. This system defined people’s
identity in the locality and the kingdom, since it decided where a person lived
(residential land was also provided tax-free to entitlement holders), how much
land he was given and where he was given it. It also defined the person’s role
and privileges in the local community and the state. The entitlement holders
included the chief, warriors, priests, scribes, accountants, barbers, potters, car-
penters, musicians, labourers, etc., each of whom was provided with particular
patrimonial duties and entitlements.
The local community or the micro-regional unit, which was the basis of the
system of entitlements, had a tutelary deity, usually a goddess, who protected
the fort and its community. At Khurda fort there were the sister goddesses,
Barunai and Karunai, at Garh Manitri there was Ramachandi, at Tapang there
was Hastesvari, etc. People in the locality ascribed their fortune and well-being

Tanabe 1998, forthcoming.

234 AKIO TANABE

to the protection of the goddess in all kinds of matters, ranging from agricultural
fertility to military success. The land on which they lived and the rice they ate
were all seen as manifestations of the goddess herself. It was through the
goddess’s acceptance and protection, as well as bio-moral exchange with the
goddess as the manifestation of nature in the locality, that the people could
eat the land they lived on and come to suit it. There was thus an intimate
relationship between the people’s attachment to the locality and their devotion
towards the local goddess. The system of entitlements also worked as a
sacrificial organization for the tutelary goddess.
I would like to emphasize the importance of the unit of the local community
as the basis of people’s identity, with its patrimonial lands, houses and offices,
sacred groves and local shrines,” neighbourhood and community, all of which
bio-morally formed one’s body-personhood. The importance of the local
community or fort area in the hilly tracts of Orissa as the unit of the system
of entitlements and the basis of identity is perhaps comparable to the importance
of the unit of the nadu in south India. It has been pointed out in studies
of south Indian history that this was significant in establishing ritual, social
and political identities.2| According to Srinivas, like the village, the n@du is a
unit which corresponds to the sentiments of the people, and not merely an
administrative division imposed by the rajas.” He also adds that man has a
great love for his nadu and points out that patriotism for one’s na@du was
widespread and deep.” It is notable that Srinivas used the word patriotism to =—

describe the people’s sense of love and attachment to the locality. As Schaar
points out, to be a patriot is to have a patrimony, or to be grateful for a legacy
and to recognize that this makes him a debtor.** The local community in Orissa
contained not only familiar surroundings and people, but also the system of
entitlements defining patrimonial rights to the products of the land and duties
in the community. Thus these might have indeed led to feelings of indebtedness
and a moral bond towards the local community, which can be called patnotism
in a primordial sense.
In this way we can see that the territorial and moral basis of people’s identity
was embedded in the exchange relationships of code-substances involving
body, food and land that were defined by the system of entitlements which
intimately connected people to the local community and land. This may be
seen as the basis of a primordial sense of patriotism which brought about a
bio-moral bond within the micro-regional territory. How did this local sense
of patriotism extend to patriotism for the country? For this feeling to develop,
it required a further step.
I argue that for the locally embedded patriotism to be cultivated into love
for one’s country and a sense of indebtedness towards it required a particular

Schaar 1981, 309.

'Bhatt 1980, 55; see also Subbarayalu 1973; Stein 1977; Beck 1972.
Srinivas 1952, 57.
Tbid., 66, 69.
“Schaar 1981, 288.
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA 233

working of kingship at the subregional level. It was through politico-ritual

exchanges with royalty that local body-persons came to be linked beyond the
locality to the larger referential spaces of the subregional kingdom and regional
country. I further argue that it was through such a process that regional
patriotism developed in early modern Orissa. The important point about this
particular development of regional patriotism was not how people imagined
their country.” Instead of an abstract and mental construction of a sphere filled
with discrete literate persons sharing information and imagination, as I describe
below, what constituted patriotism in early modern Orissa was the ways in
which the body-persons of people of diverse groups connected through bio-
moral exchanges in local communities were linked, via the little kings, with
the Gajapati king and with Jagannatha, who represented the centres of Orissa.
In other words, one of the important aspects of patriotism in early modern
Orissa consisted of how people embodied their relationships with these centres.
A reflexive and ideational sense of love for the country was consistent only
with this kind of embodied feeling.
In the following section, I dea] with the history of how this might have
occurred, taking the Khurda kingdom as an example of early modern subregional
kingdom.

STATE FORMATION AND THE TRANSFORMATION

OF A LOCAL COMMUNITY

The medieval Orissan empire came to an end in 1568, and the Khurda kingdom
was established as the major subregional polity with an all-Orissa level authority
in about 1570, later being acknowledged by Akbar in 1592.” Before the
establishment of the Khurda kingdom, there were many autonomous mini-
chieftaincies in the region which usually consisted of a (few) fort(s) and
surrounding villages. Numerous chieftaincies seem to have existed throughout
of the coastal area, in pre-colonial
the hilly jungle areas, as well as in some parts
Orissa, even on the eve of colonialism. W. Ewer, a British Commissioner,
observed that, besides the countries occupied by the present Gurjat (garhjat)
tributaries (feudatory chiefs in the hilly tracts), there were numerous smaller
estates called gurhs or killahs (forts), situated chiefly on the sea coast between
Coojung (Kujang) and Juggernaut (Puri), which were held at a quit rent
by chiefs called Khundaits or Gurjat Khundaits.”” Ewer says that there were
fifty small chieftaincies with forts on the coast at the time of the British
conquest.”*

25Anderson’s notion (1991) of an ‘imagined community’, which rests on the idea that
there is a literary and mental imagination of a nation, cannot take into account the kind of
embodied emotions dealt with in this paper.
6Kulke 1978b.
27Bwer Report, para. 11, Selections I, 5. The word in brackets have been added by the
author.
28Tbid., para. 228, Selections I, 86.
236 AKIO TANABE

These local chieftaincies enjoyed considerable autonomy in medieval times

(till the sixteenth century), as the chief, the khandayat-raja, along with his
istadebata (often a goddess), were regarded as the central figures responsible
for the overall welfare of the chieftaincy. The Gajapati emperor-king did not
play any integral role in the internal organization of the chieftaincy. In this
medieval political scheme, there were distinct differences in levels between
the chieftaincies and the regional empire. At the level of the regional empire,
the tutelary god (rastradebata) and the real ruler of Orissa was Lord Jagannatha,
the emperor-king being seen as Jagannatha’s deputy on earth.” The latter
conducted rituals of worship (pija)'to Lord Jagannatha in Puri and dealt with
the military and administrative affairs of the state from Cuttack. At the level
of the chieftaincy, the chief worshipped his tutelary goddess, who was also
the tutelary deity of the chieftaincy, and managed everyday affairs within the
micro-region. The local goddesses often had tribal priests (Khond or Saora in
case of Khurda region), though many later also acquired Brahman priests in
the course of Hinduization or Kshatriyaization.* The imperial regional kingdom
in medieval Orissa was established by integrating the surrounding chiefs and
kings in such a way as to maintain their autonomy at the lower levels. This
situation is described aptly by Kulke: local autonomous corporate institutions
continued to exist within and autonomous tributary kingdoms outside these
enlarged imperial core areas.*' Tributary and indirect administrative relationships
were established with the existing institutions without interfering directly in
internal matters. There was thus a multilayered state structure of regional-
imperial, subregional and local level polities, in which the lower level of
local chieftaincies was encompassed by the higher level of the imperial king-
dom. This medieval arrangement of encompassment with autonomy was
to be irreversibly transformed through the development of early modern sub-
regional kingdoms, where the autonomy of local institutions was increasingly
eroded.
The indigenous sources say that the Khurda king obtained his territory from
the king of Buddha Saori (a pure Saora who had originally ruled the region).
Ramachandra Deva, the first Khurda king, is said to have sacrificed the latter
and buried his head under a tree.*” There are several instances where an
indigenous tribal is said to have been sacrificed at the moment of the integration
of tribal chieftaincies into a kingdom. They often became the tutelary deity
(istadebata) of the fort or the local chieftaincy. Kulke mentions instances
of these as martyr istadebatas.** Cited here is one example I collected from
Manika Garh, a fort under the Khurda king:

On the idea of the Gajapati being the deputy of Jagannatha, see Kulke 1978a.
*Kulke 1976; Eschmann 1978.
*'Kulke 1985, 114 (quoted in Kulke 2006, 65).
*?Pattanaik 1959, 6; Kulke 1978a, 325.
*Kulke 1993; 100-1.
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA 237

A brother of the maharaja of Orissa came to this place to live. He tried to construct a
fort here around the shrine of the indigenous goddess Bunya, but the wall of the fort
never held up. He had a dream in which the goddess told him that if he wanted to
construct a wall he had to sacrifice a human being and bury the head. The king’s
brother told the villagers about the dream. The Khond chief was in distress. The
daughter of the Khond chief, seeing her father’s condition, asked what the problem
was. The chief told her the situation. The girl offered herself to be sacrificed on the
condition that her name would be attached to the goddess. The girl, whose name was
Manika, was sacrificed and the fort was built. Today the sacrificed girl is worshipped
as Manikibunya, who is said to be a Khond goddess (Khond thakurani) and considered
the istadebata (tutelary goddess) of the fort. Manika Garh (Fort of Manika) is also
named after the sacrificed Khond girl.

I would like to offer one perspective for interpreting these myths of martyr
istadebatas where a tribal chief (or his representative, the Khond chief’s
daughter, as in the above case) is sacrificed by the king (or his representative,
the king’s brother, as in the above case) and becomes the tutelary deity. It
seems to me that, in a symbolic manner, these mythical oral histories indicate
an important historical shift in the agency of the sacrificer for the goddess.
The tutelary goddesses of the localities had special relationships with the
indigenous tribal populations. The tribal chief was the main worshipper and
sacrificer of the indigenous goddess. The king making a sacrifice of a tribal
chief is a symbolic act which represents the fact that it is now the king who
has become the sacrificer and is responsible for the welfare of the population.
The tribal chief is transformed from the sacrificer to the sacrificed with this
shift in the agency of the sacrifice. Interestingly, however, the sacrificed tribal
becomes symbolically one with the goddess. The indigenous tribal special
relationship with the goddess had to be recognized when the king became the
sacrificer. The early modern characteristic of royal integration, which can be
seen from this myth, is the irreversible loss of autonomy of the micro-regional
polity or chieftaincy. The chief no longer held the seat of the sacrificer for the
local tutelary goddess but became dependent on the king’s politico-ritual
authority as a sacrificer. Thus the autonomy of the encompassed micro-regional
polity was irrevocably lost, and the king came to be established as the sole
sacrificer for both Jagannatha and the local fort goddesses. I suggest that the
oral histories of martyr istadebatas symbolize this important historical
transformation in politico-ritual authority. By becoming a sacrificer for the
local goddesses, the king also came to occupy the central place in the local
sacrificial organization that made up the micro-regional socio-political structure.
Needless to say, the infiltration of royal authority into the locality and the
removal of the autonomy of the local polity correspond to the early modern
penetration of royal governmental power into the local level, which worked
to monitor and control local resources.”

Tanabe 1999a, 2000. The position of the king as the sacrificer for the local goddess
is also represented in local rituals I have described elsewhere (Tanabe 1999b, in press).
238 AKIO TANABE

‘At the time the Khurda kingdom was established, there are said to have
been numerous Saori khanddyats, apart from the Saori chief who had been
sacrificed.** Besides the territories of these chiefs, there were also many other
autonomous chieftaincies, such as Atri, Kalupareh, Murdeswara, Banpur and
Haldia, in the Khurda region. The Khurda king had initially probably allowed
the indigenous chiefs considerable autonomy, while he himself ruled from
above as the encompassing power over them. However, in the course of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these chiefs were gradually driven out
and replaced by the chiefs of the fort areas, called bisoi and/or dalabehera,*
who were more directly under the king’s command. The number of independent
Saori chiefs was reduced to thirteen, and hence came to be called tera Saori
khandayat (tera means thirteen), and this title can still be found in oral history
today.*’ Besides these, there were four Suddhi khandayat (purified Khandayats),
who were autonomous (tribal but purified) chiefs in the Khurda kings’ time.**
The number of these autonomous chiefs further decreased, and only two
§uddhi khandayats and four Saori khanddyats remained at the time of the
advent of the British. Meanwhile, Atri, Kalupareh and Murdeswara became
forts under dalabeherdas in the Khurda kingdom. Banpur became a district in

Ewer Report, para 35, Selections I, 109. It should be noted here that khandayat refers
not to the caste name but to the ‘autonomous chief’. The Saori khandayats tell us an
interesting oral history regarding their origin: ‘One day, the king of Khurda came to the
jungle for hunting. There he saw a sari hanging to which bees were attracted because of
its sweet fragrance. The king asked to see the owner of this sari, who was an extremely
beautiful Saora girl. The king had a relationship with her and she gave birth to thirteen
sons. The king granted thirteen territories for the sons to rule as kKhandayats (autonomous
chiefs). Since they were born of a Saora mother, they came to be called Saon khandd@yats’
(oral information collected in a Saori khandayat village by Tanabe). Thus the Saori
khandayats claim that their ancestors were in fact the sons of the king, though they
acknowledge their Saora origin by admitting that their mother was a Saora. This is another
example of the legitimation of one’s position and rights in relation to kingship. The Saori
khandayats have the following legend regarding their ritual status as ‘water untouchables’
(those who cannot give water to caste Hindus): ‘Village people [implying caste Hindus]
visited a Saori khanda@yat’s house for a meeting. The Saori khandayat, however, did not
even offer them water out of pride that ‘I am the king’s son’. When the king heard this, he
became angry and prohibited Saori khandayats from giving water to people. Since then
they have become ‘water untouchable’ (collected in a Saori khandayat village by Tanabe).
In this legend, their ritually inferior status is ascribed to an incident rather than to their
origin. According to this, it is by the king’s order that they became ‘water untouchable’
and not their Saora origin. Thus they explain the discrepancy between their political strength
and ritual inferiority. These legends can be seen as the attempts by Saori khandayats to
reinstate their position as legitimate Kshatriya rulers, claiming that only incidental and
peripheral factors mark them in name and ritual position.
**Bisoi refers to the head of a bisi (county, Skt. visya). Dalabehera refers to the leader
(beherd) of a regiment (dala). Bisoi and dalabehera were usually the same person.
"Forrester Report, para 35, Selections I, 109.
*Tbid., para 33, Selections I, 108; Srichandan 1989.
 KING, GODDE
ANDSSES
JAGANNATHA 239

the Khurda kingdom,” while Haldia remained autonomous till the British
period.”
Thus, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Orissa, there was a process
of depriving small chieftaincies of autonomy and incorporating them into the
kingdom, as autonomous chiefs were replaced by chiefs subordinate to the
king.*' It should be noted that the dalabeherds or military chiefs, who replaced
the autonomous chiefs in Khurda, never had independent authority. They were
given the king’s sword as the symbol of royal authority and could command
power in the localities only as partial representatives of the sovereign king.”
In other words, even the dalabehera was just one among the many office-
bearers in the local system of entitlements. It was the king and not the dala-
behera who occupied the central place as the source of authority.
The extension of the king’s control over the micro-regional polity-society,
however, did not mean centralization in the sense of the modern state, where
bureaucrats and armies are dispatched from the central government and the
structure of command is unified. Although the chiefs, scribes, accountants,
soldiers, etc., who provided military-administrative functions for the state were
indeed stationed in the micro-regional forts, where they became hereditary
office-bearers in the locality and lived as members of the micro-regional
community, they were guaranteed not only economic bases but also administrative
and military power as well as ritual capacity from the king, which they enjoyed
in the locality. In other words, while the command came from the king, the
military-administrative functionaries became embedded within the local system
of entitlements. In this sense, it can be said that the process by which the state
took control over a micro-region paradoxically involved decentralization and
a sharing of sovereignty with the localities. Therefore, it can be said that
centralization had a distinctly decentralized character® in pre-colonial Indian
kingdoms.

*Tbid., para 23, Selections 1, 107; Sterling 1904, 44-5.

“Ewer Report, paras 26-32, Selections I, 108.
4! The fate of small chieftaincies outside Khurda was very similar. Although the Marathas
retained the Khurda king and other principal chiefs, it was their ‘policy to destroy as far
as practicable the community and institutions of the smaller gurhs (forts)’. The khandayat-
rajas of ‘50 small killahs (forts) on the seacoast’ previously mentioned were reduced to
common zamindars by the Marathas. Ewer also says that, among these, ‘not one was
admitted by the Revenue authorities as entitled to hold a peshcush on the first settlement
of the province, and the very name of paik, kundait, and peshcush would appear to have
been altogether lost in many’(Ewer Report, para. 232, Selections I, 87).
42This does not mean that the chiefs were totally dependent on the king for the legitimacy
of their rule. The chiefs also attempted to establish their own authority in the locality by
claiming that they acquired the territory through their own actions in conquering the place.
This corresponds to proving their body-person’s worth as the ruler of the locality. Peabody
notes that Rajputs forged special links with the conquered land by offering pinda, a ball
made from land sustenance or land itself, that is offered to ancestors who conquered the
land, thus creating bio-moral bonds with the territory (Peabody 2003, 90).
*Perlin 1985, 475.
240 AKIO TANABE

While the socio-political structure of the local system of entitlements was

largely maintained in spite of the penetration of royal power, the important
aspect of change in the relationship between the state and the community was
the transformation in the source of legitimacy and authority of the system of
entitlements. It was not the local chief but the king who came to be seen as
the giver of these entitlements and the central sacrificer for the local tutelary
goddess. Each entitlement was classified, enumerated and recorded on palm-
leaf manuscripts by the royal government scribes and accountants who were
stationed in these forts. These records not only legitimized each entitlement,
but also functioned to demonstraté clearly that all the resources originally
belonged to the king and that he was the giver of these entitiements. It is no
coincidence that these palm-leaf manuscripts are worshipped alongside the
royal swords that are said to be filled with the local goddess’s power during
her autumn festivalin Garh Manitri.“4 The manuscripts were and still are a
ritual representation of the royal authority and royal legitimation of the local
system of entitlements.
Many families claim that they were called by the king to take up their
present positions and live in the particular micro-region. Some of the land also
has names which are related to oral histories which tell us how the land and
other entitlements were presented by the king to their family. It is important
to note that the stories concerning the acquiring of land are invariably related
to the king as the donor of the land.*° The king was the centre of authority for
the distribution of land, honour and positions, through which the recipient
came to acquire his specific identity supported by the sanction of the king and
by implication of the divine ruler, Jagannatha. For example, we find the name
‘yice water land’ (tu nia ndla) held by the Pujari Brahmana family.*° When I
asked the priest how he acquired the land and how the land came to have that
particular name, he said:
Once the king of Khurda, under the attack by the Mughals, escaped to Garh Manitri.*’
He did not have anything to eat from the morning. The king asked the Pujari for some

“Tanabe 1999b.
“Cf. Tanabe 2000.
““Tulani refers to the liquid that goes with pakhdala (water rice). Pakhala is made by
mixing rice with water and tordani is that water taken along with pakhdla rice. Pakhdla is
typical Oriya food, which is also offered to Lord Jagannatha. Villagers often comment that
drinking torani after eating pakhdla rice gives them satisfaction. The name torania nala
thus contains a certain humorous touch.
“This seems to reflect certain historical facts. In 1617, King Purushottama Dev of
Khurda fled with his family to Garh Manitri ‘near the border of Ranpur and made it (a
provisional) capital’ after being attacked by Mukarram Khan, the new subahdar of Orissa,
under the Mughals (Mahapatra 1969, 61). According to K.N. Mahapatra, Purushottama
Dev hid Jagannatha in Garh Manitri in 1619-20 in fear of a Mughal attack on the temple
in Puri. The king had to flee again and go to Garh Manitri after being defeated by Ahmed
Beg Khan, the subahdar of the Mughals, in 1621, and he stayed there till his death in 1621
(ibid., 62; P.K. Pattanaik 1979, 32). The next king, Narasinha Dev, again secretly brought
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA 7 241

food. The Pujari had just finished offering pakhila (rice in water) bhoga (offering) to
Trtiya Deba.“ He offered the pakhdla prasad to the king. The king had pakhila to his
hearts content and, finally drinking up the remaining torani (rice water), became very
satisfied. Thereupon, the king granted the Pujari a piece of land called ‘torania nala’,
which was added to the Pujaris khafija land for the service of Trtiya Deba.

In another example, there is a piece of land called ‘clarified butter-eater’ (ghia

khia), which is held by the chief’s family. The following is one story about
how the chief obtained this land.
The chief of Manitri fort area was one of the selected few persons who had the privilege
of free entrance into the royal palace. One day, the chief saw cooks in distress and
asked them the reason. The cooks answered, “The king has ordered fried spinach as
one of the dishes for lunch today, but we have put salt in it twice by mistake. It has
become too salty. There is no more spinach in the kitchen and the king is waiting for
lunch right now.’ The chief told them, ‘Do not worry. Just do what I tell you.’ He told
them to put a large amount of clarified butter into the fried spinach. The cooks served
the king lunch including the fried spinach with plenty of clarified butter. The king
tasted the spinach and liked it very much. The king summoned the cooks and asked
them where they got the idea, as the spinach tasted much better than usual. The cooks
told the king what had happened with the promise that their heads will be saved. The
king became very pleased with the chief and presented land to him saying, ‘You will
need more land since you know how to eat clarified butter.’

Ownership of a particular piece of land, combined with the discourses regarding

how the land was obtained from the king, serves to legitimize the landowning
family’s position in the micro-region and their right to consume the fruits of
the land and to reconfirm their unique identity based on history. Notably, their
position and entitlements were invariably related to the king as the bestower
of all resources. The king was the centre of authority for the distribution of
land, honour and positions, through which the recipient came to acquire his
specific identity supported by the sanction of the king. The king as the giver
of the land had particular importance, as the land was the basis of the identity
of the body-person who ate the land. By eating the king’s land, the body-person
of the entitlement holder acquired a particular bio-morality that represented a
certain aspect of sovereignty.
Moreover, the link between the king and the entitlement-holders was
reinforced through gift exchanges between them. The king bestowed gifts on
some of the prestigious office-bearers at festivals, and the latter gave gifts to
the king on such occasions as the annual celebration of his enthronement

Puri Jagannatha’s brahma—the divine essence of the deity—to Garh Manitri, hid it and
built a Jagannatha temple there to house it (K.N. Mahapatra 1969, 65). The king also
constructed his palace in the village (Tripathi and Kulke 1987, 103), the Jagannatha temple
(temple for Trtiya Deba) being placed in front of the gate of the palace.
‘8Trtiya Deba is another name for Jagannatha.
4°Tt is commonly known that clarified butter is rare and expensive.
242 AKIO TANABE

(sunia).© Through these gift exchanges, a hierarchy was created among the
various entitlement- and office-bearers in relation to the king.
Thus, through gifts of land, honour and positions, each entitlement-holder
came to acquire a bio-moral connection with the king as the source of legitimacy
for his role in the local system of entitlements. Dirks’s argument about caste
being centred around the king is relevant here,*' but we should also remember
that the king’s position in relation to the entitlement-holders in the locality
must be seen in the context of historical transformation. The centrality of the
king’s authority in the caste system may be an early modern or late medieval!
development, rather than being the essence of caste, as Dirks seems to suggest.”
The sacrificial organization of the local community came to be incomplete in
itself, so to speak, and came to require the presence of the king as the sacrificer
who had central authority in the local system of entitlements in this early
modern development. So, while the system of entitlements as the basis of the
caste division of labour remained in principle the same throughout the pre-
colonial period, the penetration of the king’s authority and the royal legitimation
of individual entitlements were added as new characteristics of the early modern
period.
In this way, complementary and more intimate relationships were established
between the sacrificer king and the sacrificial community in early modern
Orissa. The penetration of royal authority into the locality came to connect
the people, who were embedded in the locality, with the king. This connection
worked not only at the level of body-personhood, but also at the level of the
people’s sense of self. The latter, which had strong links with the local patri-
mony, came to be connected with the idea of the sovereignty of the king as
the source of position, honour and titles. The people’s sense of attachment to
the patrimony thus came to be connected with kingship, as it was the king
who was seen as the giver of patrimonial entitlements. The people’s body-
personhood, which was closely linked to patrimonial lands, came to acquire
a new sense of self, by which the people reflexively saw the basis of their
personhood as being linked with the king. The old kind of medieval patriotism,
which hitherto had been largely confined to micro-regional territoriality, at
least in the Khurda region, thus came to acquire a broader territorial reference
of subregional kingship. This must have helped in strengthening the people’s
sense of subregional identity during the late-pre-colonial period, when there
was a rise in the politico-administrative importance of the subregional
kingdoms.
The development of a sacrificer state and sacrificial community in the late
sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in Khurda can therefore be seen as an
irreversible process of change in the relationship between the micro-regional

See Tanabe 1999a for details of the gift exchanges between the Khurda king and the
local office-bearers.
*'Dirks 1987.
* Also see Peabody for criticism of Dirks’ model (Peabody 2003, 5-9; Dirks 1987).
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA - 243

unit and the subregional little king.** The king as the head of the state came
to occupy the seat of the sacrificer for the local and subregional goddesses
too, and the local sacrificial community came to depend on the royal authority
for the legitimation of the system of entitlements. This development was
concomitant with important transformations in the people’s sense of self, as
well as in aspects of the political-economy. The permeation of the king’s
authority as the sacrificer into the locality entailed the penetration of the early
modern state’s administrative technology and power of surveillance into the
locality, without, however, breaking up the integrity and basic mechanism of
the system of entitlements of the local community. The entitlement holders
thus came to acquire a patriotic sense of belonging in relation to the subregional
king, while still being embedded in the locality.

PATRIOTISM AND FOUR MODES OF INTEGRATION

OF THE LITTLE KINGS IN ORISSA

Although the examples I have given here are limited to the Khurda area, it
would not be unreasonable to assume that there were parallel phenomena in
many subregional kingdoms in Orissa, though this remains a subject for further
research. I would like to present a general hypothesis here (for future research),
namely, that the importance of subregional little kingdoms as a focus of people
identity increased as the administrative workings and ritual authority of
subregional royal government penetrated into micro-regional localities in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Orissa. The subregional king was
established as the centre of authority even for the local socio-political system
of patrimonial entitlements, which provided the most primordial basis for
people-embodied personhood and identity. This contributed towards connecting
the people’s sense of attachment to the local patrimony to the larger sphere of
the subregional kingdom, thus generating subregional level patriotism.
Subregional kings, in their turn, were integrated into the region of Orissa in
various ways, as described in this section. We may say that the people’s sense
of self and patriotism was connected indirectly with the regional unit of Orissa
via subregional kings, there being a common source of sovereignty and political
legitimacy. If this was indeed the case, we may find here the mechanism of
regional patriotism in early modern Orissa.
Let us now see how the different subregions in Orissa were connected with
Jagannatha and the Gajapati kings. I suggest here as a hypothesis that there
were four main modes of integration that connected subregional and micro-
regional units to Jagannatha and the Gajapati kings in early modern Orissa.
They are conceptual integration centring around Jagannatha as the sovereign;
ritual integration centring around the Khurda king as Gajapati; feudatory
integration centring around the Khurda king as the feudatory lord; and direct

53See Tanabe 1999a, in press, for the notions of ‘sacrificer state and sacrificial
community’.
 244 AKIO TANABE

’ political dominance by the Khurda king. These four main modes of integration
can be seen as constituting four overlapping concentric spheres and can be
represented in a model map of integration of early modern Orissa. In this map,
the Khurda king is placed at the centre, though alternative maps can be drawn
from different viewpoints with other powerful kings as the centres. However,
historically the Khurda king does seem to have exercised the most influential
authority as the Gajapati. Therefore, the map drawn here should have some
relevance for understanding Orissan integration of the period, though it should
not be taken as the only possible one.
The largest sphere of integration in Orissa is represented by the shared
conception of political legitimacy centring around Jagannatha as the real ruler
of Orissa. It would be difficult to ascertain the extent of the territory in which
Jagannatha was recognized as the sovereign ruler of Orissa. However, we can
assume that there was such recognition in much of what constituted the former
Orissan medieval empire.** There were kingdoms, like Parlakhemundi, which
fought for the position of Gajapati against the Khurda king as the representative
of Jagannatha and did not recognize the former’s supremacy. These kingdoms
were peripheral from the point of view of the Khurda king, but also were the
most important alternative centres of integration that attempted to extend their
authority.* This sphere of a shared sense of political legitimacy centring around
Jagannatha represented the extent of what could be called Jagannatha country,
which more or less corresponded to the early modern Orissan patria. There
were indeed contestations over who represented Jagannatha on earth, but it
should be noted that these contestations were possible precisely because there
was a shared understanding regarding political legitimacy which provided a
common field of contestation. The sharing of the sense of political legitimacy
without actual political dominance seems to be a characteristic of the situation
in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Orissa.
Encompassed within this sphere of the Orissan country was the second
largest sphere of integration centring around the Khurda king as the Gajapati.
As stated, there were other alternative centres for the position of Gajapati, but
it is a historical fact that it was the Khurda king’s authority that was recognized
most extensively in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Orissa. Within this
sphere were included little kings and chiefs of areas such as Kujang and Kanika,

***(MJany of the former feudatory rajas have introduced Jagannatha temples in their
capitals’ (Stietencron 1978, 473).
Cf, Berkemer 2006.
**In medieval Orissa, the Jagannatha cult was monopolized and used as a religio-ritual
resource by the regional emperor-king to legitimize his political power. By the late sixteenth
century, however, the tables had been turned, and it was the Jagannatha cult which defined
political legitimacy in Orissa. This meant that there came to be a shared sense of political
legitimacy centring around Jagannatha, which provided the basis for territory of Orissa,
with a particular cultural design of power within which contestations over political authority
could take place.
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA 245

who were politically under Mughal (and later Maratha) overlordship, but
recognized the ritual sovereignty of the Khurda king as the Gajapati. These
little kings and chiefs received gifts, titles, ritual roles and privileges from the
Khurda king as the centre of authority.*’ There were such interpenetrations
and overlaps of sovereignties of various kinds among many polities in late-
pre-colonial Orissa.** A semi-regional system of honour and privilege and a
sharing of ritual sovereignty” was constructed around the Khurda king, which
extended beyond the sphere of hispolitical dominance. Here, one can see that
the ritual resource of Jagannatha was no longer monopolized by the Gajapati
king, as had been the case in medieval times, but shared out among the little
kings. Kulke explains this as an aspect of ritual politics on the part of the
Khurda king to compensate him for his weakened political power.” However,
I would argue thai this was not simply about the politics of a weakened king.
As Kulke noted in his earlier work, what seems to have been more important
for the integration of the semi-region was the ritual bond between the feudatories
and the state deity (rdstradebata), which was under the control of the central
raja.°' The establishment of the semi-regional system of sharing honours and
privileges centred around Jagannatha contributed to forming a common field
of service for the sovereign God and thus a sphere of ritual bonding among
the feudatories. Jagannatha was no longer just an imperial God but a shared
focus of identity and activity in the region. Whereas under the medieval Orissan
empire, the Gajapati king monopolized relations with Jagannatha, the little
kings and chiefs having their own relationships with local goddesses, the little
kings and chiefs came to participate in the system of sharing a common source
of legitimacy and honour in the early modern period.

57Cf. Kulke 1978b. See the important map drawn by Steitencron and Kulke in ‘Feudal
Ties in Late Mediaeval Orissa’ (Eschmann, Kulke and Tripathi 1978).
‘8The overlapping and interpenetrating characterof sovereignties is pointed out by Wink
(1986) in his study of the eighteenth-century Maratha and is also highlighted in the description
of late-pre-colonial Rajasthan polities by Peabody (2003), who says, *[K]ings were implicated
in multiple hierarchies of authority that intersected not only with the hierarchies of sectarian
organizations . . . but also with the hierarchies of rival kings’ (ibid., 83).
The theory of the ‘segmentary state’ argues in effect that the king has only ritual
authority and that political power lies in the local societies within a state. Here, | am referring
to the situation in which there were different modes of integration involving different levels
of polities. I am aware that no straightforward dichotomy can be drawn between the ritual
and the political, but I use the terms here to describe different modes of integration.
°Kulke 1993.
°'Kulke 1978a, 342.
“The ritual sovereignty of the Khurda kings seems to have continued even after
considerable reduction in their political power under the Marathas in 1760-1, as they
continued to have ‘their regnal years (arika) and they were allowed to send “royal letters”
(chamu cithau) to the rajas and chiefs of Orissa’ (Kulke 1978a, 338). Ewer also notes:
regal
‘Even in the fallen condition of Rajahs of Khoordah, they continued to exercise the
countries,
privilege of conferring titles on the inhabitants of the Mogulbundee and the Gurjhat
246 AKIO TANABE

Next, this sphere of the ritual sovereignty of the Gajapati also came to
include the sphere of feudatory relationships. The feudatory rajas paid peshkash
and provided military service to the Khurda king. These feudatory rajas included
those of Banki, Dhenkanal, Athgarh and Ranpur, among others. In 1592, the
Mughal emperor Akbar acknowledged the Khurda king’s authority over thirty-
one feudatory rajas. These in their turn recognized the political overlordship
of the Khurda king as the Gajapati and also participated in the semi-regional
system of honour and privileges centring around Jagannatha.®
Lastly, there was the Khurda kingdom itself, which was under the direct
political dominance of the Khurda king. Here it is very easy to see how the
notion of one’s self being embedded in the local system of entitlement was
linked to regional patriotism.” I have already discussed how the Khurda king
was established as the central sacrificer and the source of authority even for
the local micro-regional units, thus linking the people’s sense of self with the
subregional Khurda kingship. In Khurda, as the king was the Gajapati himself,
the channellization of the body-persons in the locality with royalty meant that
their sense of self was also linked with Jagannatha, who defined the centre of
the Orissan patria. Thus, the local entitlements and duties also had ritual-
spiritual importance as service for Jagannatha. The people self-reflexively
considered their positionality vis-a-vis Jagannatha as the representative of the
universal value as well as the sovereign of Orissa. This may be related to the
popular development of the bhakti cult in Orissa during this period, where
devotion to Jagannatha as oneself was emphasized. Here perhaps one can see
a development of patriotism, where the sense of selfhood embedded in the
local patrimony was connected to the wider sense of country, with a common
source of political legitimacy and authority.
In this way, the various subregional and micro-regional units in Orissa were
connected to the regional unit of Orissa through one of the four forms of
integration. Although there was indeed no ‘country’ in early modern Orissa
in the political sense, there was a shared sense of the sovereignty of Jagannatha
and the political legitimacy of the Gajapati institution among the subregional
units that constituted the Orissan patria at the level of political morality and
political theology.® This shared sense of a political morality and a love for

which was never objected to by the Mahratta. I am informed, indeed, that no title granted
by the Mahratta Government was considered to confer any distinction in Orissa, until
confirmed by the Rajahs of Khoordah’ (Ewer Report, para. 187, Selections I, 65).
The number of feudatory rajas under the Khurda king declined to seventeen after the
Maratha intervention in 1759 (Kulke 1978a, 337-8).
Khurda is referred to as ‘Orissa’ and the peasant warriors of Khurda refer to themselves
as “Oriyas’. Khurda is often seen as the centre of Jagannatha’s country by the people of
Khurda and garhjat areas.
The term ‘political theology’ is borrowed from Kantorowicz 1957. See also Schnepel
1995.
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA | 247

the Jagannatha country must indeed have had some part to play in the later
formation of Orissan nationalism.™

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have tried to show how micro-regional, subregional and

regional identities were inter-related to form regional patriotism in early modern
Orissa. First, it should be pointed out that identity formation in the micro-region
was based on intimate connections between the body, food and land. Identity
formation in this case was not about people’s ideational attachment to an im-
agined community, but about their embodied organic relationships with the
land through bio-moral exchanges of code-substances. These exchanges took
place primarily in the context of the local system of patrimonial entitlements,
which defined rights to shares of products of the land, as well as the salaries,
privileges and duties of the offices of people in the micro-region. The system
of entitlements also constituted a sacrificial organization in which each person
with an entitlement participated in the functioning of the community, usually
with a goddess as the tutelary deity. However, with the replacement of
indigenous chiefs by the subordinated chiefs in the forts of micro-regions and
the permeation of the subregional king’s surveillance over each entitlement
in early modern Orissa, due to improved technologies of administration the

The two symbols of the Jagannatha cult and Gajapati kingship, which were the centres
of politico-morality and Orissan regional identity, played an important part in the Oriya
nationalist movements in the later colonial period, especially during times of popular
participation (Mohanty 1982; Dash 1978; Das 1992; Bayly 1998, 73-4). The Paik Rebellion
in 1817 induced the Khurda king to accept leadership as the representative of Jagannatha.
The insurgent pdikas and Jagabandhu marched towards Puri, which was the abode of Lord
Jagannatha, ‘the true rulerof Orissa’. It was also the place where Jagannatha’s representative
on earth, the king of Khurda—their former ruler, who was reduced to being the superintendent
of the temple—resided. On 14 April 1817, Jagabandhu and pdikas entered Puri, the aim of
the insurgents being to restore the king’s sovereignty in Khurda. According to the petition
of the raja of Puri dated 6 March 1818, ‘Jagabandhu . . tried to take him [the Khurda king]
and his family to Khurda with the intention of installing him on the throne there as the Raja
of Khurda’ (De 1962, 20; Ewer Report, paras 14-22, Selections I, 7-11; Pattanaik 1978;
Mohanty 1982, 11-12; Mishra 1983). In 1880, the Oriya nationalist movement gained
popular impetus when protests surged against an attempt by the British to increase their
control over the management of the Jagannnath temple and reduce the role of the Gajapati
through the Puri Temple Act (Mohanty 1982, 44-5; Dash 1978; Das 1992; Bayly 1998,
73-4). Jagannatha and Gajapati are still very important in shaping Oriya identity even today.
I have described elsewhere how the sense of identity and politico-morality related to
Jagannatha and Gajapati can lead to political repercussions for the present Orissa state
government (Tanabe 1995). The sense of self and identity related to regional patriotism
centring around the Gajapati and Jagannatha seem to have played an important role as the
central symbol in shaping conceptions of popular Oriya nationalism and nationality into
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Dash 1978; Mohapatra 1996).
248 AKIO TANABE

king came to be seen as the bestower of entitlements as well as the sacrificer

for the local goddesses. Each entitlement-holder embedded in the micro-regional
system of entitlements came to have exchange relations with the king who
represented the focus of subregional identity. The entitlement-holders came
to eat the king’s land and embody their relationships with the king. This must
have certainly contributed to the strengthening of subregional identities in
early modern Orissa.
In Khurda, since the subregionai king was also the Gajapati, further
association was established with Jagannatha, the supreme ruler of Orissa,
through the mediation of the Khurda king. With the popularization of the
bhakti cult, people began to consider their duty, prescribed by the system of
entitlements and sanctioned by the king, to be service for the king and for
Jagannatha. This linked the people’s attachment to patrimony to a sense of
love for the country.
The other subregional kings in Orissa also accepted the supreme sovereignty
of Jagannatha. Many of them also accepted the ritual sovereignty if not political
overlordship of the Khurda king as the Gajapati. The shared political theology
regarding the sovereignty of Jagannatha and the institution of the Gajapati
thus linked up subregional kings in Orissa to form an emotionai-ideational
territory of the Orissan country.
In this way, we can see that patriotism in the early modern period was based
on a multilayered territoriality consisting of micro-regional, subregional and
regional levels. The people related to the land through bio-moral exchanges
at the micro-regional level came to be connected with the subregional king,
whose authority increasingly penetrated into the locality. These subregional
kings were further integrated into the Jagannatha country through a shared
political theology and institutions. Thus the multi-layered territoriality of
micro-regional, subregional and regional levels was reciprocally connected to
form the Orissa patria without imposing a homogeneous culture, and it managed
to maintain subregional and micro-regional idiosyncrasies.
Lastly, I suggest that a study of regional patriotism in early modern Orissa
may throw light upon an understanding of the development of regional identity
and nationalism in Orissa in the (post-)colonial period. Although the idea
of nationalism in the language of the modern politics of liberalism and self-
determination indeed came to India from Europe, it would be wrong to see
nationalism in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India as a totally
derivative discourse.® Territorial identities and popular ideas of political
morality and good governance also developed in pre-colonial India, which
influenced the sense of belonging to India and the perception of Indian
nationalities in the nineteenth century, as Bayly argues. Between the imported

*’Cf. Chatterjee (1986), who also sees the importance of indigenous ideas of nationalism,
but seems to regard ‘derivative’ and ‘indigenous’ ideas and discourses on nationalism too
much in a dichotomous manner, See note 69 below.
“Bayly 1998, 14. The problem with Bayly, however, is that he does not pay enough
 KING, GODDESSES AND JAGANNATHA 249

idea and institution of nationalism on the one hand and the indigenous sense
of politico-moral goodness and rightness on the other, there have been many
serious attempts to articulate the two to create an Indian form of good govern-
ment and democracy in colonial and post-colonial India.” These attempts to
bridge derived and indigenous political ideas were also an endeavour to re-
concile the concepts of nationality held by the elite and the popular masses
respectively. It might be said that nationalist struggles won popular participation
only when they were successful in bridging the popular sense of politico-
morality with the anti-colonial nationalist movement.” Even today in the
post-colonial period, the need to integrate the popular sense of politico-morality
with the institution of the nation-state is arguably one of the most important
political agendas of Indian democracy.”' In order to fully understand the
development of Indian nationalism and democracy in the colonial and post-
colonial periods, then, it is necessary to pay attention to indigenous and popular
ideas of politico-morality, as well as to how they manifested themselves

attention to the effect of colonialism when he says, for example, ‘What modernity did was
to transform and redirect these emergent identities [from the pre-colonial period] rather
than to invent them ex nihilo’ (Bayiy 1998, 3). It is important to acknowledge that the idea
of liberal democracy as a universal political ideal upon which nationalism was based was
indeed imported to India from outside, and that it was institutionally and politically
monopolized by the British while being denied to the Indian people. Thus, it would be
necessary to consider the effect of the ‘colonial mule of difference’ (Chatterjee 1993) between
the colonizer and the colonized upon the formof Indian nationalism more than Bayly seems
to allow. This does not mean, however, that we should be content with simply pointing out
the division between imported ideas and indigenous ones and analysing the duality of
nationalism in India. Such an approach is taken by Partha Chatterjee (1993), who points
out the existence of two spheres of nationalism: while nationalists admitted the superiority
of the West in the material ‘outer’ sphere, they insisted on their spiritual superiority and
the bases of the cultural sovereignty of India in the ‘inner’ sphere. However, granted that
there was indeed a division between the inner and outer spheres of nationalism under
colonialism, we should not forget that many efforts have also been made to create an Indian
form of nationalism by integrating the two spheres.
©The various strands in nationalist movements—including those of Tagore, Gandhi,
Nehru, Iqbal and Jinnah—can be said to have been different attempts to create a form of
nationalism which could appeal to both modern and indigenous ideas of nationalities. They
attempted to command legitimacy and support from people with different ideas about
nationality.
The Gandhian movement in its successful periods is a prime but short-lived example
of such bridging and articulation between the elite and the popular masses, as well as
between nationalism as a derivative discourse and an indigenous politico-moral sense
(Haynes 1992). Kaviraj says, [Gandhi] managed to bridge the gulf between the two sides
[the Indian elite and the lower orders], and keep the values, objectives and conception of
the world of the two sides intelligible to each other (Kaviraj 1991, 85).
1] have suggested elsewhere (Tanabe 2002) that we need to pay attention to the sphere
of ‘moral society’, as distinct from ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’ (Chatterjee 2000),
where attempts have been made by the people to articulate an indigenous sense of rightness
and goodness with contemporary liberal-democratic ideas and institutions.
250 AKIO TANABE

historically in different periods of time in conjunction with political and

institutional arrangements. The present chapter is therefore intended as a step
towards understanding popular ideas and the sense of politico-morality, as
well as how they manifested themselves in the form of regional patriotism
under the particular historical and political contexts of seventeenth- to
eighteenth-century Orissa.

ABBREVIATIONS
Ewer Report: From W. Ewer to W.B. Bayley, Calcutta, 13 May 1818, in Selections from
the Correspondence on the Settlement of Khoorda Estate in the District of Pooree,
vol. 1.
Forrester Report: From W. Forrester to the Secretary to the Commissioner of Cuttack,
17 October 1819, in Selections from the Correspondence on the Settlement of Khoorda
Estate in the District of Pooree, vol. |.
Selections I: Selections from the Correspondence on the Settlement of Khoorda Estate in
the District of Pooree, vol. 1. F

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 CHAPTER 12

Tutelary Deities at Royal Courts in Orissa

CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

The religious ideas, concepts and traditions of the numerous tribal communities
in Orissa have exercised an important formative influence on the religious
landscape of this state.' Numerous prominent deities here have a tribal
background, among the best known being the god Jagannath from Puri.? But
in most cases it was a goddess from the forest, the realm of the tribes, who
rose to regional prominence.
One of the most famous forest deities is the goddess Tarini from Ghatgaon,
a rapidly growing religious centre in Keonjhar district. Up until thirty years
ago, this goddess was worshipped in a sacred grove in the form of a simple
stone at the foot of a tree surrounded by clay horses. Her devotees feared this
lonely place, thinking that her mount, a tiger, roamed in the dense woods.
Rarely did anyone dare to go there alone. Today the situation is strikingly
different: instead of a forest path, a wide road flanked on both sides by numerous
souvenir shops and food stalls leads to the impressive temple compound. Cars,
buses and trucks take pilgrims to the temple of Ma Tarini. A huge, recently
constructed enclosure wall shields the inner sphere of the temple from the
noise and bustle of the outside world. Inside, the goddess Tarini is worshipped
within an open enclosure, still in the form of a simple stone, her original cult
image. According to the priest it was her wish to be worshipped in the open
air, so that no roof should restrict her view of the sky. Thousands of coconuts,
her favourite offering, are donated to her everyday. Devotees name their shops,
companies, restaurants, even vehicles after her. All over Orissa, small shrines
have been built in her name in thanksgiving for her help. On the Internet, she
has her own website.‘ Her rapid growth is paradigmatic of the increase in
goddess worship, not only in Orissa, but all over India as well.°

'The present chapter forms one part of a wider study of the Hinduized tribal deities at
royal courts in Orissa, which is being supported by the German Research Council (DFG)
within the Orissa Research Programme (ORP). I would like to thank the DFG for making
this research possible. I am grateful to Dillip Sethi for his assistance during my fieldwork
in Orissa.
*Kulke 1978 b.
3For a detailed study of the goddess Tarini of Ghatgaon, see Mallebrein 2004b.
4www.maatarini.com (greatness of Maa).
The website of Ma Tarini provides further links (arati links) to the websites of famous
goddesses like Vaisnodevi and Naina Devi.
256 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

Goddess Tarini’s fame starts with her being the tutelary goddess of the
royal family of Keonjhar, who fostered her cult and worship and who had a
shrine constructed for her, as their family goddess, within their palace compound
in Keonjhar.°
The former rulers of Orissa played an important role in the growth and
development of the worship of goddesses.’ In order to establish and strengthen
their power as local rulers, they depended on the assistance and protection of
the main local goddess, who was in most cases a tribal deity. Owing to a strong
belief in her power, she received the status of a tutelary deity of the royal
family, and as such she was also considered to be a protective goddess of the
territory. Since the rulers promoted her cult and worship, she often acquired
supra-regional recognition. These tutelary deities of the former royal families
of Orissa form a specific group of deities, many of whom have their roots in
the tribal fold.
I have tried to document these deities by collecting data in the royal courts
of the former feudatory states and raja-zamindaris of Orissa (the Bengal
Presidency, Central Provinces and Madras Presidency). I have also taken into
account the deities of the border regions of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh,
Bihar and Jharkhand, to determine whether they too might be linked to the
royal families of Orissa, as is DanteSvari, the family deity of the royal house
of Jagdalpur.’
This research attempts to show their ability to create a sense of identity and
loyalty between the various social groups and royal families, as well as to
discuss their integrative function with respect to a larger region.
The present chapter focuses on five topics: first, the interrelationship and
links between profane and sacred centres on the secular and political as well
as religious levels; second, different forms of secular and sacred legitimation,
such as festivals and rituals, but also chronicles and local legends; third,
traditional factors in securing and defining regional identity; fourth, the
development of and changes in sacred centres in recent times as a result of
shifts in patronage since independence; and fifth, the importance of historical
photography as documents of the former days of royalty.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROFANE OR

SACRED CENTRES AND THE PERIPHERY

The territory of a ruler and its periphery are interconnected by a network of

relationships on different levels.

°Cf. Cobden Ramsay 1910, 212-31; Mishra 1974.

’On this topic, see Berkemer 1993, Schnepel 2002, Kulke 1992.
*Cf. Schnepel 1993.
*For more information on Dantesvari, see Mallebrein 1996, Sundar 1997.
 TUTELARY DEITIES AT RO¥AL COURTS IN ORISSA 257

THE SECULAR AND POLITICAL LEVELS

This level is marked by various interrelations between the local rulers and the
supra-regional rajas, as well as between the rajas and their subordinate local
authorities, like the zamindars and gauntias.'® To a great extent the latter
relationship is based on economic exchange in the form of tribute. In addition,
there is another exchange on the religious level. Often the zamindars, but also
the gauntias, acknowledge the tutelary goddess of the ruler as their own family
deity; as such she is given the status of the protective goddess of their ad-
ministrative villages. This results in the fame of the royal tutelary goddess
spreading all over the ruler’s territory.
The rulers maintain a specific network of relationships between their own
tutelary goddesses in their capitals—in most cases within the palace com-
pounds—and the numerous shrines and temples donated to them on the village
level. During the annual main festival of the goddess, which in most cases
was integrated into the DaSahara festival, the respective local priests and the
subregional authorities—the zamindars, gauntias and other dignitaries—
assemble during the durbar, which is performed in a lavish style by the raja.''
Due to her close proximity to the royal family, the deity of tribal origin was
finally incorporated into the fold of Hinduism.'* As a royal goddess she was
looked after by the court Brahmans, who were entrusted with her worship at
the main temple within the palace compound. Due to her power and strength,
they linked her with the goddess Durga, in which role she acquired further
respect and honour. Although her main annual festival was incorporated into
the DaSahard festival, she often managed to remain independent and to maintain
her wild tribal character. Many of these family deities are considered tantric
and thus demand tantric worship, which includes animal sacrifices.'’ Rarely
did her identification with Durga obliterate her tribal origin and character. In
adopting the tutelary deity of the raja as their own family goddess, the local
subordinate authorities obtained access to a divine power in whose strength
and efficiency the raja had full trust. For the local population, this divine power
caused a feeling of security, and at the same time the royal goddess reminded
the villagers of their manifold obligations towards the raja. The raja in his turn
showed his respect towards the royal goddess in the villages by presenting her
with sacrificial offerings and donations during her main annual festival. To a
large extent this network of worldly economic and religious exchanges bound
to a ritual context has contributed to the spread of the tutelary goddesses, most
prominently ManikeSvari,'* who is worshipped widely in Kalahandi, Rayagada

Skoda 2003, 2005.

''On the importance of the DaSahara festival, see Schnepel 2002.
2Cf, Mallebrein 1999, 137-56; Eschmann 1978a.
Cf. Singh Deo 2001.
'4For a detailed discussion of ManikeSvari, see Mallebrein 2006.
258 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

and Ganjam districts, and the goddess Samlesvari,'® who is known in the
Bolangir and Sundergarh areas. They exert a strong integrative influence in
these particular regions.
Another network is kept alive between the various tutelary goddesses of
the royal families. This may be the result of an inter-family-marriage rela-
tionship. As a token of memory towards her own family goddess, the new
wife may take a figurine or photograph to her new home, where it is worshipped
daily within the private sphere. But this outside goddess may also be given
her own temple within the palace compound, so that she may look after the
well-being of the people. .
Family deities are also interlinked by well-planned marriage policies which
bring the territories of dynasties closer and thus enhance their influence and
importance. As a result, various forms of ritual partnership on a worldly and
other-worldly level are observed. Likewise, the adoption of a ruler from another
royal family can cause a shift in the family deity. A newly adopted son from
another dynasty introduces his own family deity into his new realm as a
protective goddess.
Another shift in tutelary deities is caused by the auction of a territory, a
custom which was quite prominent in British times. The tutelary goddess of
the former dynasty enters the court of the new owner, where she is given a
place as the younger sister of the family goddess.
A network of relationships may also result from a family splitting up, as
was the case within the Kimedi raja family. The royal families of Parlakimedi,
Badakimedi and Sanakimedi join in worshipping the goddess ManikeSsvari.
Over time, the tutelary goddesses of various royal families developed a
certain sisterly relationship among themselves, which reflects actual profane
relations and dependencies among the rulers concerned. Striking examples are
the ‘seven sisters’ surrounding the goddess Bhagavati of Banpur.'® The image
of the seven sisters is widely known all over Orissa, but in contrast to south
India, in Orissa they do not generally consist of disease goddesses. The number
seven has a connotation of completeness, and on the lowest level the seven
sisters may control seven villages or hamlets. The seven sisters surrounding
the goddess Bhagavati mark the territory of a group of local rajas who had
close relations.'’ Bhagavati of Banpur is considered the most important of the
sisters. The Gajapati of Puri is her main patron. Within her temple compound,
two of the seven sisters, the goddesses Birajai and Phulkasini, are present in
a shrine. Of all the sisters, the goddess Birajai is the oldest. Her place of origin
is a small, barely accessible temple in the dense forest near Bankada. Her
priest is a member of the Kondh tribe. The stone image depicts her as dangerous,
with Camunda chewing on the little finger of one of her left hands. Hence she

On Samlesvari, see Pasayat 1997, 1998.

‘For information on Banpur and connected deities, see Das 1999, 136-41.
The goddess Bhagavati protects the west, Siddhesvari the north, Narayani the south,
and Kalijai the east.
 TUTELARY DEITIES AT ROYAL COURTS IN ORISSA 259

is referred to as Carccika.'* The figure can be dated to the seventh and eighth
centuries. Within the group of seven mothers (saptamatrka), Camunda is
usually shown as the last. In contrast to the other mothers, she has no partner,
although she is associated with Siva, who has his own impressive temple close
to Birajai’s jungle abode. The Sopne$var temple of Bankada used to be a centre
of the Sailodbhava dynasty.'? After the extinction of the Sailodbhava power
in this region, the centre of Birajai worship was shifted to Banpur. As the most
senior of all the sisters, she enjoys the privilege of a movable image (calanti
pratima), the Kathithakurani, a long wooden pole, being placed inside the
main temple, in front of Bhagavati’s sanctuary. Philkasini, who is the lowest
sister in the hierarchy and who lives with Birajai and Bhagavati, no longer has
a special relationship with any king. The fourth sister in the hierarchy is the
goddess Kanaka Durga, represented by a metal statue of Durga Mahisasuramar-
dini, which is kept within the Daksaprajapati temple in Banpur. Daksaprajapati
is considered the male companion of the seven goddesses, or rather their
father.” The Kathithakurani of Bhagavati has its place in his temple. The fifth
among the sisters is SiddheSvari, the family goddess of the royal house of
Bhatapada Garh, a small village near Banpur. Rajasaheb Dulal Manabendra
Moharatha of Bhatapada Garh still plays an important role in the various
festivals in Banpur today. During the rathaydtra of the god Jagannath, he

goddess Narayani, the tutelary goddess of the royal family of Khallikot.*' The
last in the series is the goddess Kalijai, whose temple is situated on an island
in the Chilika Lake. She is the family goddess of the royal family of
Parikud.
When all the local rulers were still in power, the seven sisters enjoyed an
elaborate system of mutual recognition and honours. Today only a few of the
once highly differentiated and hierarchically structured sister rituals are kept
alive, but, transposed on to a religious and supra-mundane level, they still
reflect the actual political and hierarchical structures of the past. It is still a
tradition for the sisters Narayani, Kalijai and SiddheSvari to take part in the
Da§ahara festival of the goddess Bhagavati at Banpur in the form of a flower
chain (Gjfidmala). Once a year, in the month of Caitra, the Kathithakurani of
Bhagavati visits her sister SiddheSvari in Bhatapada Garh. The movable image,
the Kathithakurani, is a huge wooden pole, wrapped in numerous saris on
ritual occasions. The trunk recalls her origin in the forest. The saris are wrapped
in such a way that the whole arrangement resembles a magnificent umbrella.
Out of joy at being together with her sister SiddheSvari, the Kathithakurani of
Bhagavati dances through the village street of Bhatapada Garh. The devotees

'8Qn Camunda as Carecika, see Donaldson 1985-7, vol. 3, 1077-8.

'9On Bankada/Punjiyama and the Siva temple, see Donaldson 1985-7, vol. 1, 132ff.
2For more information on the Daksaprajapati Siva temple, which can be dated to the
second half of the thirteenth century, cf. Donaldson 1985-7, vol. 2, 635ff.
21Cf. Das 1999, 179.
260 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

are convinced that it is only because Bhagavati endows those who carry this
trunk, the priests of the Banpur temple, with divine power that they can carry
such an enormous weight. Bhagavati is given splendid food and spends the
night in the temple of her sister Siddhesvari. The whole village stays awake
till the early morning, when Bhagavati, after a lavish feast, returns to
Banpur.
A further network of relationships is formed on the political and secular
level between the local ruler and the clan sections of different tribes. In their
migration myth, it is told that a clan group once left its former settlement in
the mountains to move towards the plains. This movement is clearly expressed
in the migration myth of the goddess Patkhanda.” Her main temple is in
Jarasingha, Bolangir district. In the territory of the new ruler the clan members
play a double role: as a protecting power—paika soldiers and khandaiat—for
the raja; and as farmers who clear the forest in the name of the raja to introduce
the cultivation of profitable crops like rice.** Patkhanda is a clan deity of the
Mutkia Kondh. Her place of origin lies in a dense forest grove near Mahasinghi,
a village about 7 km south-east of Balliguda, a subdivision of Kondhmal
district. According to the legend, Patkhanda stayed in the house of a Kondh
in the form of a powerful and magical vegetable chopper (paniki), which
automatically cut the objects placed on it. Once this Kondh took a loan from
a Brahman. As he could not pay it back, the Brahman stole the magic chopper.
Patkhanda showed her anger by breaking it into three pieces, then she decided
to leave the place and, together with her brother Birpani and her adoptive
brother Jenabudha, she left the jungle region and wandered to the plains of
Jarasingha. She asked permission from the god of the local hill of Budhadangar
to stay there, and he advised her to contact the family deities of the Patnagarh
Chauhan king, the goddesses Patanesvari and Samlesvari, to permit her to
stay. They agreed under the condition that Patkhanda assisted the Chauhan
king, Vatsarajadeva of Patnagarh, in a battle against the king of Bastar.
Eventually, it was only due to Patkhanda’s help that the Chauhan king won
the war. Patkhanda realized that Bastaren, the family deity of the king of
Bastar, had dressed as a woman and sold poisoned food to the Chauhan king’s
soldiers in order to weaken his army. Patkhanda caught Bastaren, and she
surrendered. Patkhanda received the territory of Jarasingha from the grateful
Chauhan king as her new region to rule. Bastaren acknowledged the supreme
power of Patkhanda and went with her to Jarasingha, where she was granted
the right to be worshipped as a village deity. This myth tells how the Mutkia
Kondh settled in the area of Jarasingha, and it testifies to their importance as
soldiers in the service of the Chauhan rulers. Patkhanda is the tutelary deity
of the raja-zamindar of Jarasingha. Today a sword and shield represent her in
the temple. Although she is a tribal deity, her annual festival is integrated into

”For a detailed study of Patkhanda, see Mallebrein 2004c.

*On the theme of Ksatriyaization, see Kulke 1993b.
 TUTELARY DEITIES AT ROYAL COURTS IN ORISSA _ 261

DaSahara. Patanesvari and SamleSvari still send offerings (patsindar) to her

today at the beginning of the Patkhanda festival.**
However, some of the clan deities have retained their former tribal identities.
The most prominent of these are Silia, the clan god of the Maufisia Kondh,
and Sikerpat, the clan god of the Khadangia Kondh, who is widely worshipped
in Bolangir District.* Their migration myths reflect the movement of the clan
section from the mountains to the plains. In both cases the clan gods were first
worshipped on top of a hill. One day, the priest forgot his ritual water pot and
left it at the site of the sacrifice, so he climbed back up to get it. When he
reached the top, he saw the gods sharing the animal sacrifices, but always
leaving one share. They looked around and found the priest hiding. When they
saw him they became very angry, and Salida and Sikerpat threw the sacrificial
pot down the hill towards the plain. There they continue to be worshipped,
and every year the Kondhs celebrate a great festival (yatra) at these places.
Sikerpat’s main site is near the village of Ghuna, and Salia’s is near the village
of Khairaguda. Huge numbers of buffalo and goats are offered as sacrifices.
Their main festival is performed in the month of Pausa, the traditional month
for tribal festivals.

THE NETWORK ON THE RELIGIOUS LEVEL

On the religious level, a network between the palace and the place of origin
of the family deity (malpitha) is maintained. This place is often quite a distance
away from the capital, in an area mostly inhabited by tribes. One reason for
this distance is the tradition of the constant moving of forts in dynastic histories.
The old fort was abandoned, and only the fort deities remained, being silent
testimonies to the former rulers. They mark the various migrations in the
history of their former rulers and reflect former geographical and historical
connections.
Rulers began to establish their power on a great scale mainly under British
supremacy in the nineteenth century.” A new representative capital was planned
with a huge palace, various government buildings and new temples. The tutelary
goddess was also given her impressive temple within the palace compound,
and court Brahmans took over her cult and rituals. In the course of time the
Brahmans acquired enormous importance as being responsible for the ritual
care of a multitude of deities within the territory. Integrative festivals like
DaSahara are supervised by them.
Although the Brahmanical influence grew, the traditional relationship
between the king and the tribal communities in his realm was kept alive. The
close links became most visible in the coronation ritual. The seal (sindur tikka)

For a detailed study of Patkhanda and the Patkhanda yarra, see Mallebrein 2004c.
25For a detailed study of Siilia and Sikerpat, see Mallebrein 2004a.
On early state formation, royal legitimation and the new town planning of royal
families, see Kulke 1978a, 1993a.
262 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

of legitimation of rule over a certain region, was in most cases taken from the
original cult image (marti) of the tutelary goddess. This close bond between
the tribes and the raja is made very clear in the coronation rituals of the royal
families of Keonjhar, Pallahara, Bonai, Sundergarh and Kalahandi, in whose
territories the major part of the population once belonged to a tribal community.
It is a senior chief of the major tribe of the area who invests the future ruler
with the right to rule. During the coronation ritual, the future king sits in the
lap of the tribal chief, who places the tikka, the sign of rule, on his forehead,
thus endowing the ruler with the power to rule over the tribal region.’

THE MECHANISM OF WORLDLY OR SACRED LEGITIMATION

In this section, some aspects of constructing collective identities are discussed.

I shall examine further the relationship between political and religious power,
which strives for legitimation. In constructing an identity, different kinds of
texts and their interpretations play an important role. Among them are ‘stories’
and ‘legends’ about the first encounter of the founder of a dynasty with his
future tutelary deity of tribal origin. She suddenly appears to the homeless and
wandering Rajput prince in a dream and shows him the way to his new realm,
or else she helps him in a miraculous way to conquer a new territory.** Quite
often, the self-sacrifice of a tribal chief is mentioned.” Through his sacrifice,
the tribal victim paves the way to power for the Ksatriya prince. These texts
contain valuable information on historical changes in a region, the expansion
of the territory by a dynasty, or, alternatively, the loss of a region, and they
allow an insight into the historical movements of various dynasties.
Another important function is connected with festivals and rituals. They
strengthen the ties between the ruler and his family deity and thus legitimate
his worldly rule. It is the medium (Dehuri, Sirha, Kalisi) who plays a leading
role as a ‘living god on earth’ within these festivals, visibly confirming the

7’For the tradition in Kalahandi, see Cobden Ramsay 1910, 202 (citing a Lieutenant
Elliot); also P.K. Deo 2000, 51. As the Kondh consider the raja from Kalahandi to be a
member of their community, it was customary till recently for the Kalahandi raja to take
a Kondh girl as his first wife (patrani). It was also a custom in the Kalahandi royal family
for the coronation of a new king to take place in the lap of the Kondh Patmaji of Merkul.
This custom was still followed by P.K. Deo, the father of the present Maharaja, Udit Pratap
Deo, in Jugsaipatna, who mentions in his biography that before his official investiture
ceremony was celebrated on 16 March 1940, his rajyabhiseka was conducted on an auspicious
day at the ancestral stone in Jugsaipatna. While he was sitting in the Patmaji’s lap, his
turban was tied by the zamindar of Lanjigarh. He also gave the tilaka with sindir taken
from the Manike$vari stones inside the temple.
®On this topic, see Schnepel 2002, 147, fn. 30: ‘The widespread production of vamsavalis
and genealogies proclaiming Rajput descent is probably to be dated to the period between
1770 and 1820, when early colonial interests provided a stimulus to such productions.’ See
also Schnepel 2002, 155-7; Sinha 1962; Banerji 1928.
Cf. Kulke 1992,
 TUTELARY DEITIES AT ROYAL COURTS IN ORISSA 263

right of the raja to rule to everyone present. The importance of this divine
legitimation becomes manifest during the annual festival in honour of the
goddess Hingula in Gopalprasad near Talcher. Hingula is the protective goddess
of the royal family of Talcher.*° Every year through her medium, she answers
three questions asked on behalf of the raja, in which she assures the royal
family and all the inhabitants of the region of her support and protection. The
climax of the last main day of the festival is the transformation of the Dehuri
into the goddess Hingula inside the temple.*! The Dehuri, her medium, is
worshipped in an elaborate ritual similar to a cult image, with leaves, flowers,
bananas and puff rice. A huge potful of nectar (paficamrta) and molasses is
poured over his head. While he is being worshipped this way, the Dehuri starts
trembling, a sign that Hingula has started to enter his body. Suddenly he takes
Hingula’s sword and, possessed by divine power, runs towards a spot where
Hingula appeared at the beginning of the festival in the form of a flame. The
self-created flame symbolizes her power and energy. In the eyes of her believers,
the land around Talcher belongs to the body of the goddess. This area is
exceptionally rich in coal, so much so that earth gas spontaneously ignites on
the surface. The mining of coal is experienced by the local people as a painful
encroachment of ‘mother’ Hingula’s body. During the Hingula yatra, vast
amounts of sacrificial offerings, saris, butter fat and flowers are thrown into
the growing fire, whose colossal flames climb up to the sky. The festival ends
after the Rajasaheb of Talcher and his wife have offered their oblations to the
fire the night following the main day, after the transformation of the Dehuri
into the goddess Hingula.
The medium also plays an important role within the tradition of offering
animal sacrifices to the tutelary goddesses. However, this tradition is highly
controversial, and it has been changed considerably. At many temples animal
sacrifices have been replaced with vegetarian offerings, often due to pressure
from the government. This ‘vegetarization’ of deities is creating numerous
changes.” For example, the institution of the medium, in most cases a male,
who represents the deity on earth, is gradually disappearing, as one major task
of the medium was to drink the blood of the sacrificial animal in the sight of
all the participants as proof that the deity had accepted the sacrifice. For the
temple the prohibition of animal sacrifices also has economic implications, as
the sale of animals to be offered as mahadprasada was an important source of
income. The task of the medium in being the mouthpiece of the deity has
shifted to the domestic arena. The number of women who are becoming
possessed by a goddess is growing. In an altered state of consciousness, and
possessed by divine power, they can respond to believers’ questions and also
heal afflictions. The medium, in his role as the deity on earth, has an important

°Cf. Eschmann 1978b.

1For more information on the Hifgula yatra, see Eschmann 1978b, 277-8; Hingula
Pitha Unnayan Parisad (ed.) 1998.
32On this topic, see Mallebrein 2007.
264 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

integrative function within his village. Social conflicts can be resolved by the
pronouncements of the medium, which are accepted as coming from the deity.
On the occasion of great celebrations in honour of the deity, mediums
embodying deities from villages all over the area come together to celebrate
the feast, thus strengthening the social ties of the region, whose major divinities
they represent. The tradition of the Sirhas (medium) is particularly alive in the
border area of Orissa and Bastar (Chhattisgarh). The Sirhas of different gods
and goddesses meet annually in large numbers during the Mondai festivals,
which are performed in several villages, primarily in the Nawrangpur region.
Being clothed in ritual dress and decorated with cowries, the Sirhas are led in
a trance around the village in a great procession. Often hundreds of local
divinities take part, represented either by their Sirha or by bamboo bars with
conical metal tops. The festival ends in the Sirhas’ ecstatic dances. Once again
the deities show all their power and ecstatic wildness before they leave the
body of their Sirha. The Sirha, in his manifestation as a ‘living god on earth’,
serves as a further source of inspiration for the metalcasters in the Bastar Orissa
border regions, who have been inspired by the performances of the Sirhas as
the representatives of a deity in creating the metal figurines of gods and
goddesses.*9
The family history of the dynasties justifies their legitimatory claim to rule
over a specific territory. It is often reported that an assembly of tribes asked
the future raja to rule over them and that they gave their goddess to him as
the tutelary deity of his family and state.

TRADITIONAL FACTORS IN SECURING AND

DEFINING REGIONAL IDENTITY

Since the foundation of new capitals in the nineteenth century, an ever-

increasing number of new temples have been erected for major Hindu gods
and goddesses, as numerous social groups have migrated from the hinterland
to the capital. They all demanded a temple in which to worship their specific
deities. Parallel to this, numerous monasteries (matha) were founded. With
the extension of the palace, a great number of Hindu deities entered into the
private temple sphere of the palace compound. The palace of the ruler became
a microcosm, tied to a sacred geography. A close association developed between
the deities of the palace area and those beyond it. The performance of festivals
in honour of all these various deities created a feeling of identity, and the
relationship between the ruler and his subjects was strengthened and defined.
The celebration of festivals thus played a major part in local power struggles.
The splendid performance and arrangement of the DaSahara festival became
an important aspect of these. Every ruling family arranged their DaSahara
differently, but they all stressed that as part of DaSahara the ruler receives the
permission of his tutelary goddess to rule over her territory.

On this topic, see Mallebrein 1993, 1998.

 TUTELARY DEITIES AT ROYAL COURTS IN ORISSA 265

DaSahara is still the most important of festivals within the annual festival
calendar of the royal families. The relationship between the raja and his family
goddess as a tantric goddess who demands animal sacrifices is particularly
close. Every year the royal family of Kalahandi offers animal sacrifices to the
goddess ManikeSvari, who is believed to have such enormous power that she
appears to the devotees only in a darkened sanctuary, where she can only dimly
be seen. As a Kondh deity, she is linked to the Budha Raja, her male
companion, whose shrine is to the right side of her temple. Like Patkhanda,
she is also linked to Jen, whose place of worship (Jena@-khalo) lies approximately
3 km from the temple. During DaSahara, in the night from Mahastami to
Navami, countless animal sacrifices are offered at this spot. Jena is also called
Bali-Raja and is regarded as Yama’s assistant. He demands blood. ManikeSvari’s
movable image (calanti pratima) is a huge umbrella, similar to Bhagavati’s.
During DaSahara it is brought outside the temple to receive the animal
offerings.
The institution of ritual service holders (sevaka), who take an active part
in the performance of the festivals, is another factor that creates a feeling of
collective identity. The members of various castes and tribal groups promise
to perform certain duties within the festival, thus strengthening the relationships
of the various social groups.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SACRED CENTRES IN RECENT TIMES

With the Independence of India in 1947, radical changes took place in traditional
power structures and in other ways. The abolition of the royal privileges (privy
purses) in 1971 meant another serious cut in the patronage of divinities and
temples.*> The documentation of tutelary deities at royal centres takes note of
changes such as the weakening of the palaces as worldly and sacred centres.
Members of the royal family still take part today in the rituals for their tutelary
goddess, mainly during the DaSahara celebrations, but they are no longer her
representatives on earth and main sponsors. Due to outside influences, the
former structure of the DaSahara festival is changing in the direction of a
generalized Bengali form of the Durga piija. Nevertheless, at some places the
association of the goddess with her tribal origins is maintained.
This lack of patronage has resulted in the neglect of many small local
temples, shrines and monasteries, many of which have already been given up.
However, new temples are being built, mainly in the name of Rama and
Hanuman, but also for goddesses who have attained supra-regional fame. This
is the result of a new temple policy on the part of the temple trusts, to attract
huge crowds of devotees and thus increase the income of the temple. The
former temple compounds are being extended, and numerous new temples for
other deities and huge wedding halls and rest houses are being added. Thus

4For a discussion of the origins of ManikeSvari and Dokri, sce Mallebrein 2006.
35On the princely states of Orissa before Independence, sce Samal 1988.
266 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

the temple is becoming a well-organized, multifunctional, religious centre.

The various religious events are splendidly performed. Since the goddess now
requires male protection, Siva has moved in, and a temple has been constructed
in his name. To expand the sacred area on the divine level too, the goddess is
linked to-other deities, such as Jagannatha/Krsna, who is given a place of
worship close by. The new sponsors of these multiple religious centres are a
financially strong clientele, often actively engaged in politics. Thanks to their
generous patronage, Orissa is experiencing a boom in the construction of new
temples and the enlargement of existing ones. The increased number of devotees
is leading to an expansion of their cults, and new shrines and temples are being
set up all over Orissa, side by side with the traditional local divinities. The
yatras of these popular deities are becoming events of interest to religious
tourism and are carried out on a large scale on festival days.

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTATION

Modern life in India is producing such changes that it is not always easy to
imagine the influence and power of the former rulers and their way of life.
Documentation of that period is not easy to come by. I have therefore created
an extensive documentation of early photographs which can serve as historical
documents. Only a few people remember earlier times, when the raja attended
the DaSahara procession in his howdah on the state elephant. Therefore the
historical photographs provide a valuable insight into earlier ways of life at
the royal capitals and religious events like rituals in honour of the tutelary
deity or the DaSahard festival.*° Thus they represent a valuable historical source
of data for the history of religion.
The aim of the documentation is to demonstrate the socio-political dynamics
of the religious worship of tutelary deities at royal capitals in Orissa. Related
to local royal cults and patronage, the worship of female deities combines the
power of royalty with the power of the ritual ecstatic performance. The ritual
worship of goddesses links the experience of a spiritual power with the
experience of the secular power of ritual patronage. The history of the goddesses
and their popularity reflects the history of local chiefs and the expansion of
their political influence right up to the present time.

“The historical photography of India has received great attention in recent years; see
Dehejia 2000.

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 TUTELARY DEITIES AT ROYAL COURTS IN ORISSA 267

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their Tutelary Deities’, in S. Mahapatra (ed.), The Realm of the Sacred: Verbal
Symbolism and Ritual Structures, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 56-78.
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Kings and Cults, Delhi: Manohar, 82-92.
Mallebrein, C. 1993. Die Anderen Gétter. Volks- und Stammesbronzen aus Indien, Cologne:
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum and Heidelberg: Edition Braus.
1996. ‘DanteSvari, the Family Goddess (kulasvamini) of the Rajas of Bastar, and
the DaSahara Festival of Jagdalpur’, in A. Michaels, C. Vogelsanger and A. Wilke
(eds.), Wild Goddesses in India and Nepal, Berne: Peter Lang, 483-511.
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Tradition, Berlin: State Museum of Ethnography.
1999. ‘Tribal and Local Deities: Assimilations and Transformations’, in V. Dehejia
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of the Kondh Tribe’, in C. Mallebrein and L.J. Guzy (eds.), Facets of Orissan Studies.
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2004c. ‘Entering the Realm of Durga: Patkhanda, a Hinduized Tribal Deity’, in A.
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and Practices, Delhi: Manohar, 209-41.
2007. ‘When the Buffalo Becomes a Pumpkin: The Animal Sacrifice Contested’, in
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G. Pfeffer (ed.), Periphery and Centre: Groups, Categories and Values, Delhi: Manohar,
443-72.
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Institutions, Legends, and Rituals Performed in the Royal Palace’, Keonjhar
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Devi in Sambalpur’, in G. Pfeffer and D.K. Behera (eds.), Contemporary Society:
Tribal Studies, vol. 2, Delhi: Concept, 304-16.
1998. Tribe, Caste and Folk Culture, Jaipur/Delhi: Rawat.
Samal, J.K. 1988. Princely States of Orissa (1905-1947), Allahabad: Vohra.
Singh Deo, J.P. 2001. Tantric Art of Orissa, Delhi: Kalpaz.
Sinha, S. 1962. ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India’, in Man in India,
42, 1, 35-80.
Skoda, U. 2003. ‘On a Tribal Frontier: Aghria-Gauntia as Village Kings’, in G. Berkemer
and M. Frenz (eds.), Sharing Sovereignty: The Little Kingdom in South Asia, Berlin:
Klaus Schwarz.
2005. The Aghria: A Peasant Caste on a Tribal Frontier, Delhi: Manohar.
Schnepel, B. 1993. ‘Die Schutzgottinnen: Tribale Gottheiten in Siidorissa (Indien) und ihre
Patronage durch hinduistische Kleink6nige’, in Anthropos 88, 337-50.
2002. The Jungle Kings: Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politics and Ritual in Orissa,
Delhi: Manohar.
Sundar, N. 1997. Subalterns and Sovereigns: An At History of Bastar, 1854-
1996, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
12.2: Dokri-Manikesvari of Rampur
dhe
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mm : : ;

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Fig. 12.3: Birijal Birajalmala

 Fig. 12.4: Dehuni of Hingula-Talcher

Fig. 12.5: Manikaesvari in Parlakhemundi Palace

 we £
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Fig. 12.7: Raja’s Palace at Kalahandi

 CHAPTER 13

Sitting on the Tribal Chief’s Lap:

Coronation Rituals in Ex-Princely
States of Orissa

CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

The peculiar coronation tradition of a future raja sitting on the lap of a tribal
chief who is installing him as a ruler attracted the attention of British colonial
writers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,' such as Elliot,
Dalton, Roy and Cobden Ramsay,’ and found a place in their reports on the
royal families of these former feudatory states.’ In searching for the real origins
of Indian rulers, this ritual stimulated their interest. They read it in two ways.
One was as a visible demonstration of the power of the dominant tribes, who
in these states were the real owners of the land,* and as demonstrating the
interdependence between the raja and the tribal chiefs. Secondly, it was seen
as indicating the possible tribal origin of the kings themselves.*
The rajas on their side tried to eradicate any indication of a possible tribal
origin by demonstrating excessive pomp and splendour and maintaining glorious
genealogies. Referring to their genealogical narrative texts (rajavamSavalli),
they claimed to be the legitimate rulers and descendants of famous and powerful
Rajput clans, originally descended from either the sun or the moon.® In their

'The present chapter forms part of a wider study of Hinduized tribal deities at royal
courts in Orissa, which is being supported by the German Research Council (DFG) within
the Orissa Research Programme (ORP). I would like to thank the DFG for making this
research possible.
2Elliot 1856, 479; Dalton 1872, 145ff; Roy 1935, 199ff; Cobden Ramsay 1950, 45.
3On the history of the princely states in Orissa, see Sahu 1993, Patnaik 1988.
+See Dalton 1872, 140: ‘They [Bhuiya] are the earliest known settlers in parts of
Singhbhum, Ganpur, Bonai, Keonjhar and Bamra. The chiefs of these estates now call
themselves Rajputs. . .. The country for the most part belongs to the Bhuiya sub-proprietors.
They are a privileged class, holding as hereditaments the principal offices of the state and
are organized as a body of militia. The chiefs have no right to exercise any authority tll
they have received the “silak” or token of investiture, from their powerful Bhuiya vassals.
Their position altogether renders their claim to be considered Rajputs extremely doubtful.
_.. They were no doubt all Bhuiya originally; they certainly do not look like Rajputs.’
5See Roy 1935, 6: ‘But the physical characteristics are all alike Dravidian, and in Captain
Brown’s time (1772-8) the Chiefs never thought of claiming to be other than Bhuiya.’
6Cf. Inden 1998, 46, on this idea. Schnepel (2002, 155-7) discusses the term ‘Rajput’
274 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

family histories, their relationship with the tribes was clearly defined. They
were not intruders from outside who captured rule by force; on the contrary,
the different tribal clans were not in a position to govern themselves, so, being
in need of a strong hand, they sought a future king from among the Kshatriya
caste. To obtain such a powerful ruler, they did not hesitate to steal a child
from a Kshatriya family. In proclaiming the need of the tribes for a strong
ruler from outside, the kings received support from the Brahmanical court
historians, who defined a kingdom, the duties of a king (rajadharma),’ and
his relationship to his subjects in accordance with the old Hindu scriptures on
royal kingship like the Dharmasastra.* They took the view that the egalitarian
tribal society and its traditional tribal chieftainship represented nothing less
than anarchy, leading to chaos and constant fighting.” Only a Hindu king with
Kshatriya blood, it was claimed, could protect the people by maintaining the
moral order or dharma, as well as the order of the world and even the whole
universe. In short, he represents the rajadharma.'® It was at the coronation
ritual, the rajyabhiseka performed by the Brahmans, that this idea of a king
as a god—as a microcosm of the Cosmic Man and thus the axis mundi, the
centre of his kingdom and the microcosm of the world—treceived its visible
expression.'' This Brahmanical view of the king as the ‘lord’ or ‘master’ of
the earth, with his people being his ‘dependents’, and the Brahmanical self-
perception that the Brahmans are the ‘gods’ on earth (bhi-deva) elicited a
response from the tribes, who, to counterbalance this view, insisted on the
performance of their own installation ritual in their own traditional tribal
manner. They made it clear that only after legitimation of the king by themselves
could the royal accession be completed. The rajas, however, were ambivalent
about being crowned in this way by a tribal chief. They were aware that the
intention of this ritual was a visible demonstration of the real power in the
state, which was actually still a tribal state.
This unique part of the coronation ceremony, when the future raja sits on
the lap of a tribal chief, is known from the ex-feudatory states of Kalahandi,
Gangpur (Sundergarh), Bonai, Pallahara and Keonjhar, which are dominated
by the strong and powerful Kondh, Bhuiyan and Saora tribes, but not from
Bamra (Deogarh). The reason is said to have been that the present royal family
was brought to the area by two tribal chiefs, one each from the Bhuiyan and
Kondh tribes, and he can sit only on one lap.

in connection with the Jeypore royal family. According to him the question is not whether
the Jeypore kings were ‘true’ or ‘pseudo’ Rajputs, but whether their ‘Rajputish-ness’ was
based on ‘blood’ or merit. ‘Rajput’ was a generic title for a number of relatively open
groups Originating in military service (and reputation). Cf. also Banerjee 1928.
’Cf. Derrett 1976.
*Kane 1946, vol. 3, 1-103 (Rajadharma); Kotani 1999, 239.
’On the traditional Bhuiyan form of chieftainship, the role of the headmen and the great
meetings of tribal chiefs (gdddi), cf. Roy 1935, 101.
On this topic, cf. Heesterman 1998.
''Cf. Inden 1998.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP * 275

In the context of my research project on Hinduized tribal deities at royal

centres in Orissa, I carried out fieldwork between 2002 and 2004 in Sundergarh,
Bonai, Deogarh, Pallahara, Kalahandi and Keonjhar. Members of the present
royal families kindly described to me their past and present coronation traditions.
To provide additional information, members of those tribal chief families who
traditionally perform the coronation ritual at the royal court were also
interviewed. In this way, I collected a body of quite heterogeneous information
on the meaning and importance of this ritual, both formerly and today. It has
to be borne in mind, however, that in most cases, the people I questioned had
never personally witnessed a coronation ritual, but referred instead to what
they had heard about this tradition as performed in the times of their fathers
or grandfathers. The only informant who personally underwent a consecration
ritual was Rajasaheb Kadamba Keshari Chandra Deo Deb of Bonai, whose
installation ritual took place in 1949. Besides this field data, various reports
from the British period and by modern historians like Madan Mohan Mishra
have also contributed to this chapter.
The Bhuiyan, who still today are the most powerful and the dominant tribal
community in Sundergarh, Deogarh, Bonai, Pallahara and Keonjhar districts,
consider themselves to be the original owners of the land, despite having
handed it over to the newly selected leader on the condition that ‘he look after
land and people’. In their eyes, it is only through his legitimation by the tribal
chief in a proper coronation ritual that the raja is entitled to rule. Otherwise
the Bhuiyan are prepared to fight for their rights, as with the disturbances in
Keonjhar in 1868, when the British Government tried to install a new king
without the consent of the Bhuiyan leaders."
Although Independence has dissolved the former relationship between the
tribes and the raja, the installation ritual is still performed today, though in a
changed and very much reduced form, and in private rather than in public.
Deprived of its legitimizing function, it is now more of religious and symbolic
importance: the rajas’ may be struggling for survival and their former splendid
palaces are being left to fall into ruin, but even without a kingdom they still
enjoy a high social status within local society, being called rajasaheb by the
people.

'2The Keonjhar chief Rai Bahadur died without legitimate issue. Dhanurjay, one of his
two illegitimate sons by a phulbihai (concubine), was placed on the gaddi by the diwan.
The rani of Keonjhar secretly installed the grandson of the raja of Mayurbhanj on the gaddi,
in which she was supported by the principal leader of the Bhuiyan Ratna Naik. The British
Government, however, decided to install Dhanurjay formally on the throne. A dispute arose
between the supporters of the rani and the government, culminating in an insurrection by
the Bhuiyan and Juang tribes, which was finally suppressed by the aid of British troops
and the troops of neighbouring rajas of Bonai, Pal Lahara, Dhenkanal and Mayurbhanj.
The installation ceremony of Raja Dhanurjay by the Bhuiyans on 13 February 1868 is
reported at length by Dalton, who was present (cf. Dalton 1872, 144-7). On the rebellion
216-
in Keonjhar by the hill tribes, see Hunter 1872, vol. 1, 1 15ff.; Cobden Ramsay 1910,
Zin
276 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

What keeps the coronation tradition alive is the strong relationship between
the royal families and the tribal deities, which is based on a deep belief in the
power of the latter. As rulers who came from the outside, they accepted the
autochthonous tribal deities such as istadevata and patronized their worship
and cult.'? Indeed, they still believe in the deities’ protective power, which
they need in their present-day lives and struggles for survival, as well as for
their activities in the field of politics, a domain followed by many members
of the royal families.
The istadevi of the leader of the major tribal group plays a central role in
the coronation ritual. After the future raja has taken his seat on the chief’s lap,
he marks a sign (tikka) on his forehead with sindir taken from the marti of
the istadevi’s main temple (malpith); the tikka thus stands for the divine seal
of legitimation, The autochthonous deity of the dominant tribal group invests
the new king with the power to rule over her country and her people. Therefore,
even today the representatives of the tribes insist on their inherited right to
perform this part of the coronation, which demonstrates the raja’s acceptance
by their goddess, while at the same time recalling their own high status as the
former landowners. Thus, the Kondh Patmaji of Merkul reminded the present
maharaja of Kalahandi, Udit Pratap Deo, that since the recent death of his
father, Pratap Keshari Deo, he has not performed this part of the installation
ritual, that is, the official sanction to rule granted by ManikeSvari, the istadevi
of the royal family of Kalahandi, as well as by the Kondh Patmaji of Merkul.
The rite performed by the tribal chief concluded the coronation. By that time
the king had already been installed and crowned in the prestigious Vedic form,
and therefore in an elaborate and solemn manner, by the Brahmans."*
The photograph albums kept by the royal families also speak to us in a clear
language, since they show us what they considered to be important events.
Whereas weddings are documented in all their splendour, photographs of
coronations are rare, and none of the rituals performed by tribal chiefs have
been discovered so far in these albums. Only Bhanga Tribhuvan Deo, the
young raja of Bamra, asked a professional photographer to document his
pompous investiture durbar in Deogarh in 1936 and its huge gathering of
“Who’s Who’ in the state.
The representatives of the dominant tribes were perpetually engaged in a
struggle with the raja for their recognition and acknowledgement. They
considered themselves the real, original owners of the land, and that only their
priests ‘were able to control the divine power of the powerful and dangerous
autochthonous deities’.'’ But the pressure of competition increased with the

"Cf. Kulke 1993a, 1992, on this topic.

‘For a description of the traditional ritual of royal consecration in Orissa, cf. Tripathi
1998,
'® Still today, in most temples dedicated to a royal istadevi of tribal origins, tribal priests
perform the daily rituals. Only during DaSahara the Brahmans, the Rajpurohits of the raja,
are in charge of special rituals. According to Mahapatra (1997, 901-3), the palace fort
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP 277

great number of immigrant castes and tribes invited into the country by the
rajas. Now Brahmans were not only engaged in the important rituals of the
palace, the royal court, but they also looked after the numerous newly con-
structed temples of pan-Indian Hindu deities.'®
This intermingling of various castes and tribes was an aim of the rajas. In
promoting people from outside, the rajas sought to counter the claims to power
of the dominant tribes. The deities of the newcomers also acquired their own
specific places of worship within the palace grounds, which thus represented
a microcosm of the state. The superior power of the autochthonous tribal deities
was thus controlled and restricted. Going a step further, the rajas allowed the
Brahmans to install their Hindu gods in the temples of the tribal deities, and
now Hindu as well as tribal deities are worshipped side by side."’
The various and quite heterogeneous family histories and myths of the ex-
princely states mirror the political, social and religious roles played by various
subregional identities. Within this power play, the decisive role is played by
the Brahman genealogists and their capacity for never-ending invention. Tracing
this process will form part of this chapter.

THE GENEALOGIES OF THE ROYAL FAMILIES

As already mentioned, the genealogies of the royal families of Bonai, Bamra,

Gangpur, Pallahara, Keonjhar and Kalahandi purport to confirm the assumption
that, since the tribes are divided among themselves, they are not in any position
to rule. Therefore tribal chiefs start searching for a strong ruler, a king, to put
an end to the anarchy. This idea of searching for a king from the outside follows

housed all the important deities of the state and was guarded by all the important tribes of
the state and the royal istadevata and rastradevata. All the subdivisions or older chiefdoms
and tribes are represented through their deities. ‘The primordial sentiments and moral
bindings of various chiefdoms, regions, tribes and castes in a princely state were sought to
be centred round the royal dynasty, its seat in the palace-fort and in the person of the raja
and rani, through the assemblage of gods and goddesses, even aniconic tribal deities, and
observances of rituals, cults, and ceremonies. .. .’
'6On this topic, cf. Mahapatra (1997, 911): ‘Induction of several Hindu castes and
especially the Brahman priest and pandits along with other service castes like barber,
cowherd, watermen and washermen, was necessary to make the princely state function like
a Hindu rashtra, and not as a tribal kingdom of the ancient past. If the ruling family was
actually derived from some tribal group and if the royal family or the palace rituals depended
on the tribal priests, this came in direct conflict with the royal ambitions for Kshatriya
status or Rajput affiliation. Hence, the founding of numerous Brahman shasans or agrahar
of
villages, Brahmanization of the deities and goddesses from tribal into shastric, building
family
temples with Brahmanic rituals and Brahman priests. . . . Sanskritization of their
the raja, his
customs and rituals... . The processes aimed at raising the social status of
the common
family, and other royal descendants much higher above the lowly status of
subjects and of course, above the “primitive” adivasi subjects.’
Cf. Kulke 1993.
278 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

the Hindu model in similar situations:'* the ‘characteristics’ (laksana) of a

proper king are then recounted and the ‘dignitaries of the country’ (rastra-
mukhya) enjoined to select and welcome (varana) a man who appears to have
these characteristics.
That a kingless country (arajaka) comes to ruin is an old belief, which was
already expressed in the Mahabharata," and one may assume that the
genealogists at the royal court were well acquainted with it. Indeed, this
statement might have been a source of inspiration for them in composing it.
It is significant that the different versions of the migration myths of the royal
family’s legends of migration resemble one another. According to the
Mahabharata, the most desirable thing for a state is to crown a king, for in
a kingless country there is no dharma, nor any security of life or property. A
state is not a state without a king, and only anarchy will result if it does not
have one. People living in the arajaka” fall into ruin by attacking each other
because they lack a king. Therefore they seek a king for their own protection,
as well as to create the state and its welfare. They appeal to Brahma, the creator,
to appoint a ruler whom they will all honour and who will protect them. Manu
is selected as the king, though he only agrees after a lot of persuasion.
This story therefore proclaims the first kingship to have been a divine
institution created by the god Brahma himself and asserts the necessity of a
mutual agreement between king and people—the king had to be persuaded to
accept to rule, but finally agreed. This seems to be an ideal concept which
ambitious ‘jungle kings’ used to legitimize their rule, not only towards their
subjects, who were mainly members of different tribes, but also towards the
new colonial power intruding from the outside, since it justified their
existence.
How the court poets formulated these migration myths by blending together
local tribal ideas with Hindu concepts can be seen by examining the origin
myth of the royal family of Bonai. This family has until today maintained a
very close relationship with the Bhuiyan tribe, the main tribe of their area, and
it is still the Bhuiyan Samanto from Kaleiposh who traditionally performs the
coronation ritual of the future king. I shall now examine more closely two of
the traditional Bhuiyan myths that explain the origin of the close relationship
between the Bhuiyan, the peacock and the Kadamba tree,”' the royal symbols
of the present royal family.”
According to Bhuiyan myths, the Bhuiyan were originally all of royal blood.

'® Visnudharmottara-purana (VDhP); cf. Inden 1998, 59.

''For an examination of the theories of origin of kingship in the Mahabharata, Santi
Parva, Chaps. 59 and 67, cf. Kane 1946, vol. 3 (Rajadharma), 33-4.
°On the term arajaka, cf. Kane 1946, vol. 3, 30; it means a situation in which there is
no king and no ruler.
*! Neolamarckia cadamba (ex Nauclea cadamba, Roxb. = Anthocephalus cadamba,
Miq.), a very large flowering tree [add. the editors].
“On the Pauri Bhuiyan and their legends, see Patnaik (et al.) 1979-80, 2-5.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP . 279

However, thanks to an asura’s seven clever daughters, they became polluted.

While out hunting one day, the seven royal brothers saw beautiful naked girls
and were attracted to them not realizing that they were the daughters of a
demon. Until then, the Bhuiyan brothers had followed strict rules of austerity,
refraining from drinking any liquor or eating fowl or pork. The girls’ aim was
to pollute the brothers, thus degrading them from their social status and then
being able to marry them. They served them cooked rice which concealed
chicken curry, thus making the brothers impure. Only the younger brother,
who arrived a little later, tried to escape, but the demon girls followed the hoof
prints of his horse. To save him, a peacock wiped out the hoof marks with its
legs. The six Bhuiyan brothers married the girls but, being impure, they had
to remain in the hills and forests. The pure younger brother was installed as
the Bhuiyan’s king, and because his life was saved by a peacock, he ordered
that no one should kill it.
The next myth explains the close relationship between the Bhuiyan and the
Kadamba tree. The seven brothers once quarrelled about who should sit on
the throne, finally deciding that it should be the brother who could shoot an
owl] sitting on a Kadamba tree with a single shot. The first six brothers all
missed, but the youngest was successful. Now king, he called himself ‘Kadam
Kesari’ after the tree, while the six other brothers continued to call themselves
‘Bhuiyan’. The name ‘Kadam Kesar’ is still used within the royal family, and
the name of the present raja of Bonai is ‘Kadam Kesari Deo’.
The compositions of the royal family’s genealogists also include the peacock
and the Kadamba tree in their story of migration, but in a quite different way.
Several versions exist. According to Cobden Ramsay,” the Bonai family came
from Sakaldwip or Ceylon; the founder of the family was abandoned by his
mother under a Kadamba tree and was on the point of falling into the hands
of the enemy when a peacock rescued him by swallowing him and keeping
him in its craw until the danger had passed. In gratitude for this service, the
boy, who later became king, adopted the peacock as his family’s emblem.
Referring to the Kadamba tree, the chiefs describe themselves as *Kadamba-
Vansi Rajputs’.
In another version, the first king came voluntarily, by chance, and the local
god Baneévar predicted supremacy for him if he joined up with a local chief.”
According to this story, the previous name of Bonaigarh was Shronitanagar.
The first Kshatriya king was Pratap Deo from the island of Singhal.* With
his seven brothers, he went to Orissa to visit Lord Jagannath. To save having
to pay the usual fee for visiting the temple, they tried to enter it forcibly. But
the Gajapati of Puri placed a sharp-edged saw blade (karata) across the way

Cf, Cobden Ramsay 1910, 143-4.

24T am grateful to Uwe Skoda, who is writing a monograph on the royal family of Bonai,
for his valuable information. The present version is only a summary of the family
history.
5Tdentified as Sri Lanka.
280 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

to the sanctum. Four brothers were killed while trying to cross this blade. Of
the three remaining, two went to Singhbhum, while Pratap Deo came to the
deeply forested Bonai region. He was told that the state belonged to the
Bandsura demon who worshipped Banesvar Siva near the Brahmani River.
Pratap Deo went to worship him. The local chiefs, Mahabira, Bira, Hamira,
Necha Keuta and Leda Kamar, who came to know about the foreigner, decided
to kill him. When Pratap Deo came out of BaneSvar’s temple next morning,
he saw them ready with their weapons. He escaped and found refuge in a
hollow Kadamba tree. To save his life, a peacock wiped out his footprints with
its tail. The same night Banesvar appeared to Pratap Deo in a dream and told
him that he would become king of the area. He was told that he should join
up with the first person he met next morning, and together they were to kill
all the local rulers. Next morning Kalei Kisan, the Bhuiyan ruler of Kaleiposh,
sent a member of his family, called Lechada, to visit BaneSvar’s temple. On
his way he met Pratap Deo bathing in the Brahmani River. They became friends
and together decided to kill the local chiefs Hamira, Mahabir, Bira, Lecha
Keuta, Leda Kamar and Kahiru. After having killed them, Kalei Kisan of
Kaleiposh performed the royal consecration (rajabhiseka) of Pratap Deo. An
umbrella (chhata) was offered to Bane$var, and the new Raja Pratap Deo made
the Bhuiyan Lechada his Samanta.
A further variation of the mythical story concerns the present raja of Bonai.
It differs in some points, but here too BaneSvar orders the first ruler to join
with a local person and to kill the other chiefs.*° According to the raja, his
family is descended from a Rajput family in Rajasthan. The seven brothers
went to Puri. On their way back they parted, three of them passing through
the Bonai area. They took refuge in a Kadamba tree from dangerous enemies
who tried to kili them. One brother, Pratap Varaha, was advised by BaneSvar
to make friends with everyone who came into his temple in order to make
himself a ruler. Accordingly he met the chief of a Bhuiyan clan, Indra Samanto,
from Kaleiposh village. During that time, the area was divided into seven small
chiefdoms and split into two warring groups. The Bhuiyan Indra Samanto
asked Pratap Varaha to help him subdue the chiefs of the two groups, whose
leaders belonged to various other tribes (Ho, Kolha, Kisan) and castes (potter,
fisherman, blacksmith). But this war was not without its consequences, because
the chiefs uttered a curse on the later royal family, which has remained in
force until today. In the meantime, the other brothers left to look for Brahmans.
As this took a very long time, the Bhuiyan chief installed Pratap Varaha as
raja, with the blessing of Lord Bane§var Siva. Later the brothers returned with
the Brahmans and were asked to remain in the country. Because they had taken
refuge in a Kadamba tree, the dynasty was called ‘Kadamba’. Thanks to the

6T would like to thank Rajasaheb Kadam Keshari Chandra Deo Deb of Bonai and his
son Bir Keshari for their support in obtaining information about the coronation ritual in
Bonai.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP 281

peacock’s help, their throne became Mayursimhasan, and the peacock became
the state symbol.
In former times the Samanto from Kaleiposh, whose ancestors once joined
hands with Pratap Varaha to kill all their rivals, played the central role in the
coronation ritual. The future king sat on his lap, as will be discussed in the
next section.
These examples show how the court genealogists use parts of tribal myths,
like those relating to the Kadamba tree and the peacock, to create their own
myth of legitimacy justifying the rule of the present king. The idea that the
various tribal clans are unable to rule and therefore need the strong hand of a
Kshatriya, if possible one from Rajasthan, is also the basic message in the
origin myth of the royal family of Bamra.

THE ORAL HISTORY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF BAMRA

In contrast to Bonai, no local god is involved in the selection of the new ruler
in Bamra. According to local oral history, the dominant tribes of this area, the
Kondh, Bhuiyan and Gond, had no proper leader and constantly quarrelled
among themselves.” Finally, Kanto Bhuiyan and Suna Kondh went in search
of a strong ruler. They came to Patnagarh, once the stronghold of the powerful
Ganga kings, but at that time the Chauhan Ramai Deo had had al! the members
of the former Ganga dynasty killed. Kanto Bhuiyan and Suna Kondh stole
the child of the murdered Ganga king from the main wife, the patrani.* But
the treacherous Chauhan followed them, so to save the child’s life they hid
him on top of a Char tree (Buchanania lanzan). The Chauhan questioned the
Bhuiyan and Kondh about his whereabouts, but being quite bright, they
answered: ‘He is not with us either in the sky, in heaven or on the ground’,
thus not disobeying the tribal prescription not to tell lies. After reaching the
village of Titlipada, they went to a rock on which was a wonderful Sar tree
(Saraca indica, the Asoka tree). Under this tree the Gafga prince was crowned,
in whose memory he received the name Saraju Dev. Because the Bamra were
tribes living wild in nature, they had only the bark of a tree to bind around the
prince’s head like a turban. Being poor, they had nothing more to offer than
the soil of Bamra, which they gave him, saying: ‘From now on you shall be
our leader’. Until recently they brought a handful of Bamra soil to the king
during DaSahara as an offering.”
One difference in this story from other examples is that the ritual of sitting
on the lap of a tribal chief is not performed in Bamra, as the raja cannot sit on

I am grateful to Kesri Gang Deb, Prasun Gang Deb and Nitish Gang Deb for their
valuable information on the royal family of Bamra.
28According to one tradition, the boy escaped and wandered homeless. He voluntarily
went with the Bhuiyan and Kondh chiefs to the Bamra area.
2To make an oath with earth or by touching earth is an old tribal tradition; cf. Roy
1935, 87.
282 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

the laps of two tribal chiefs simultaneously. Today the rajaguru plays the main
role in the coronation ritual.

THE COURT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF GANGPUR

In Gangpur, it is a blind Brahman who prophesies supremacy and a deity who

confirms this in a miracle. The family chronicle of the Gangpur royal family
also states, like the previous ones, that, since the various tribal groups were
once unable to rule the country and the different Bhuiyan clans were constantly
fighting, a new form of rule was needed.
As the history of the Sundergarh region and the rulers of the Kesari and
Sekhar dynasties are discussed in detail by C.P. Nanda,” I shall merely
summarize the history of the Gangpur Sekhar family given to me by Kashinath
Sekhar Deo.*! The family claims descent from the Parmar clans of the Rajputs
of Ujjain, whose founder, Vikramaditya, also founded the Samvat Era.** The
present line of chiefs belongs to the Parmar Kshatriya branch of Dhar in
Ujjain.** Two brothers once migrated to Panchakot Kashipur in Manbhum
(West Bengal). There the younger, Gangadhar, fought with his brother, left
home, and went towards Suruguja in search of a country to rule. There he met
a blind Brahman, who prophesied that he would be a raja. Gangadhar told
the Brahman that if he became a raja, he would allow the Brahman and his
descendants to sit on his gaddi (throne) for two hours every year.** The Brahman
accompanied the raja. When they arrived, the powerful and very influential
Bhutyan leader, Madan Pradhan had the family of the previous Kesari rulers
killed. Thus the Bhuiyan leaders of various principalities were involved in
constant fights. One reason for this was their traditional system of choosing a
ruler, who was not selected according to his ability but through the actions of
a lemon placed in the middle of the group of clan leaders: the lemon moved
among them, and the one it touched was chosen as the new king. Therefore a
new form of rule was needed. The Rajput Gangadhar joined hands with the
dominant Bhuiyan chief of Sargipalli, and they started to subdue the others.
They won the struggle and the outsider Gangadhar became their king. The
Maji of Sargipalli placed the vermilion mark, the sign of royalty, on his fore-
head. In the meantime, the elder brother came from Panchkot in search of

*°Cf. Nanda in the present volume.

*'T would like to thank Kashinath Sekhar Deo for his information on the history of the
Sekhar family.
Some historical data is mixed up in this genealogy. Vikramaditya of Ujjain is said
to have founded the Vikrama Era of 58 BCE. The Samvat Era refers to the Saka Era of
CE 78.
* An ancient town called Dhar served between the ninth and fourteenth centuries as the
capital of the Paramara Rajputs.
“This ritual function was observed by the royal family on the VijayadaSami day. The
blind Brahman received the village of Ekma for his maintenance. His descendants are still
the Rajpurohits of the royal family.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP 283

Gangadhar. The Bhuiyan zamindars of Sargipalli concealed Gangadhar on a

platform floating in the middle of a tank near Masabira village. When they
_ were asked by Gangadhar’s brother where he was, they answered obliquely,
“We have not kept him in the air, heaven or earth’, again in order not to lie.
Then the delegation left and the Bhuiyan decided to make Gangadhar their
king, but he refused, saying, ‘It is god’s wish whether I shall be your king’.
He placed a bamboo stick, which he had brought along with him, in the earth,
saying: ‘If this bamboo grows branches by tomorrow, I shall be your king’.
The next morning the bamboo had reached a height of 21 feet and had grown
like a chhatd, thus providing the future king with shade.** He was installed as
king by the Maji of Sargipalli, who placed the rikka, the vermilion mark, on
his forehead as sign of royalty. All the villages were given to him. The Bhuiyan
zamindars received several parganas in return. Masabira became the first capital
of Gangpur State. It is the Sargipalli zamindar who takes the future raja on
his lap and places the sindiar tikka on his forehead.

THE COURT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF PALLAHARA

In Pallahara, as in Bamra, no god is involved in the selection of the ruler. Here

too one can discern the imaginative abilities of the court genealogists, who
use the motif of akidnapped child.*® According to this history, the family came
from north India and trace their origin back to the famous dynasty of Anang
Pal, the last king of Delhi. He had no male issue, so his nephew forcibly
assumed rule. The former king went to Puri on a pilgrimage. Two of his five
wives accompanied him, and on the way they both became pregnant and gave
birth to sons. During this period the Savaras (Sora) were ruling the area of
Pallahara State, but they were in constant conflict with each other. Traditionally
there was no ruler over all the clan leaders, so for some years they declared a
wooden pole to be their leader. After some more years they gathered to renew
the wooden pole as ruler. But one day they decided to cut the pole down as

38The bamboo is worshipped as Chhatapati (Chhata Baufi) in the Bhuiyan village of

Demul, where this goddess has a shrine. Her worship takes place in the month of Caitra.
It is said that before the approaching death of a raja, a miracle appears in Masabira. People
see a bamboo whose twigs are growing in the shape of an umbrella. This miracle happened
in 1967, before the death of the late Udit Pratap Sekhar Deo. The bamboo was then cut
into three pieces, two parts being used to hold the chhard for Kali and Samlei. The remaining
part was used to hold the chhata of the new ruler. According to C.P. Nanda, Kapila Keshari,
a king belonging to the dynasty that ruled this area before the Sekhar Rajputs, had already
had a dream in which the presiding deity of Gangpur told him that a bamboo would bear
flowers in the Masabira hillock and he would be the king of that region. He became king
in CE 1135.
36] am grateful to Rajasaheb Ram Chandra Pal of Pallahara, who provided me with this
information about the history of his family, and Guru Charan Boita, from the village of
Tambur, the present Savara raja, for his valuable information. On Pal Lahara, cf. Cobden
Ramsay 1910, 275ff.
284 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

there was no peace. This was done by a Savara, who cut the pole into several
pieces, which resulted in streams of blood flowing out. So the people demanded
a new, strong ruler, and they ordered the Savara to search for one. During the
search, in one village they found Sulepal, a small boy, sleeping on a heap of
straw. His mother was wandering around with a group of village actors. They
realized that she was a princess and one of the wives of King Anang Pal, who
had taken refuge with the Gypsy people to save her son’s life. The younger
wife who had also given birth to a son and demanded of her husband that her
son should become king. In pursuit of this plan, she tried to kill the son of her
older rival. To get hold of Sulepal, the Savaras decided to poison the wandering
troupe, in this way managing to kidnap him. In memory of the fact that he
was found sleeping on a heap of straw, the dynasty received the title ‘Pala’.

THE COURT HISTORY OF KEONJHAR

According to local tradition, the Bhuiyan of the region of Keonjhar decided

to have their own ruler, who would remain in their area. They stole Jyoti
Bhanja, one of the two sons of King Jai Singh, the ruling family of Mayurbhanj,
and made him their king. The Bhuiyan still play a central role in the coronation
ritual today.*”

THE COURT HISTORY OF KALAHANDI

According to the family tradition, the dependency of Kalahandi formerly

belonged to a family of Gangavamsi Rajputs. Here no tribes are involved; the
selection goes back to an internal family decision. The last member of this
royal line, Jagannath Deva, had no male issue. In CE 1008 he gave his daughter
in marriage to Raghunath Sai Deva, the younger brother of the then raja of
Shatranjigarh in Chhota Nagpur. Raghunath Sai Deva was a Nagvamsi Rajput;
he started the line of the present family.**
However, the Kondh Patmaji of Merkul has his own tribal Kondh version,
one which makes the tribes responsible for the selection. According to him, a
long time ago the different Kondh clans were quarrelling among themselves.
They decided to have their own ruler,’ and they chose an ancestor of the
present royal family of Kalahandi as their first king. The first fort of their new
ruler was located high up in the mountains, at a place called Salapgarh. Later
the ruler moved his fort down to the plains, to Jugsaipatna, where a temple

For a discussion of the early history of Keonjhar, cf. Cobden Ramsay 1910, 212-14;
Senapati 1986 (Kendujhar), 44-5.
**T am grateful to the present maharaja, Udit Pratap Deo, for his information on his
family’s traditions and his support in my fieldwork in his area; cf. also Mahapatra 1982.
There are various opinions about the origin ofthe first ruler of the present royal family.
Some Kondh informants are of the opinion that the first ruler was a member of the Kondh
tribe who belonged to one Naga (Nagvams7) clan, while others say that he was a wandering
strong hero, a Kshatriya, whom they had chosen as their leader.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP 285

was constructed for ManikeSvari, the tutelary goddess of the Kondh Patmaji
and the royal family. At Jugsaipatna there is also the ancestor stone, where
the installation rituals were performed. Since the Kondh played a dominant
role, the new raja also has to marry a Kondh girl.

THE CORONATION RITUALS OF VARIOUS ROYAL FAMILIES

The following section examines the installation ceremonies of the ex-feudatory

states of Bonai, Bamra, Gangpur, Keonjhar, Kalahandi and Pallahara. How is
the coronation ritual of sitting on a tribal chief’s lap related to the family his-
tories (rajavamS4vali) discussed earlier?
All these histories contain one crucial aspect: the ruler did not forcibly take
over rule, but came as the saviour of quarrelling tribes, thus bringing unity
and peace to the area. The court histories of these royal families deny the tribes
any ability to rule their own country, even though it is where they claim
ownership rights. It may be assumed that this ascribed incompetence is not
easy to accept for freedom-loving, proud tribal groups, which the Kondh and
Bhuiyan are considered to be. Thus one may conclude that their role in the
coronation ritual was a sort of concession made to give them particular
importance and to acknowledge their traditional place as the original owners
of the land. Thus the coronation ritual was a balancing act between, on the
one hand the raja, who claimed to be the ruler of the area and its people, and
on the other the various tribal groups and clans, who were well aware of the
real ownership of the country and of their own power. Accordingly the raja
tried to minimize their role in the coronation rituals, as was already observed
by British writers of the early-nineteenth century. Today this tradition has been
given up or is simply retained as a sort of reminiscence of the good old
days.
There are only a few old reports about the coronation rituals in Bonai,
Keonjhar and Kalahandi, provided by Elliot (1856), Dalton (1872) and Roy
(1935) respectively. It is the ritual of sitting on a tribal chief's lap that attracted
their attention. The rajaguru of Keonjhar, Madan Mohan Mishra (1974),
describes the coronation ritual in Keonjhar of the last king Nrusingha Narayan
Bhanj, the son of Raja Balabhadra Narayan Bhanja. P.K. Deo, the late maha-
raja of Kalahandi, refers in a short chapter to his investiture ceremony at
Jugasaipatnam on 16 March 1940.

THE BRAHMANICAL VERSION OF THE CORONATION

The various rituals of royal consecration and enthronement differ with the
various royal families,” each of which has its own traditions. But they agree

The present-day rituals performed by Brahmans in Orissa are short versions of the
elaborate descriptions given in the traditional literature. On the various coronation rituals,
see Drekmeier 1962, Gonda 1966, Kane 1946, vol. 3, 73, Heesterman 1957, Schlerath 1960,
Inden 1998.
286 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

on one point, that sitting on a tribal chief’s lap follows the royal abhiseka
performed by the court Brahmans.
One example of a Brahmanical royal consecration once performed in Orissa
is described in the old palm-leaf manuscript, Rajyabhisekavidhi, which is
presented here in abridged form in order to provide an insight into a traditional
accession ritual.*! The coronation of a king should take place in the open, in
full view of the people. A pavilion (mandapa) is erected. First the metal statues
of the deities are worshipped. Then the king expresses his desire to perform
the religious rite of abhiseka through the acarya and the priests. This is followed
by the elaborate worship of Laksmi and Narayana. To the figure of Laksmi-
Narayana is added an image of the Goddess Durga, made of solid gold (Kanaka
Durga), who is worshipped to ward off and conquer the king’s enemies. This
is followed by the actual bathing ceremony: the royal couple is bathed eight
times, with eight different varieties of water. The first bathing is performed
with the water containing some soil of the land on which the king has to rule.
After the ceremonial bath, the king and his consort change their clothes, put
on new silken garments, and crowns are placed on their heads. These golden
crowns are wrapped in a garland of flowers. Then the priest starts the rite of
the simhdsana puja, that is, the worship of royal throne, which consists of
making obeisance to the lowest base of the throne, which is also the base of
the earth. Then the acarya worships the earth as a goddess. After reciting a
mantra on Visnu, the king steps on to the throne with the queen at his side.
The mantras are recited for the purpose of infusing the king with the holy
splendour of Brahman (spirituality). Now endowed with Brahmanic spirituality,
he is finally able to rule his kingdom properly. He is then endowed with the
royal insignia and the ‘attributes’, of which six are most important, namely,
the chatra (umbrella), camara (chowrie whisk), khadga (sword), carma (shield),
dhanu (bow) and Saras (arrows). The king also receives the particular emblem
of his family and the flag of his state, after which he should be addressed as
a raja or ‘His Highness’ as a full-fledged king.
The aim of the next part of the ceremony is to impart the character of Visnu
to the newly consecrated king. This is followed by a ‘mantric’ abhiseka with
sanctified sacrificial water, with which the king and the queen are sprinkled
with the help of a bunch of kuSa grass, while uttering Vedic mantras. This
turns the king into a calanti Visnu. His right arm is separately sprinkled with
holy water, and the royal authority (samrajyam) is transferred to the right hand
of the king. Finally the king puts on the royal robe. After this ceremony in the
open, the king goes for darSana (sight) of the deities in the main temple of
his capital. Finally he comes back to the palace, where ladies greet him with
a tilaka.
According to Inden,” the rajyabhiseka itself is binary in its structure. The
first half, the abhiseka proper, consists of a series of baths in which the king

*'According to G.C. Tripathi (1998) the manuscript is older than 250 years. He has
translated this important work and provided a commentary.
“TInden 1998, 61.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF'S LAP 287

is the passive recipient. The second half, which is often referred to as the
patta-bandha, that is, the ‘fixing’ or ‘tying on’ (bandha) of the ‘headband’ or
‘crown’ (patta), consists of the crowning, enthronement, and a series of other
rites by which the king acts out his royal role.

THE TRIBAL VERSION OF THE CORONATION

The unusual ritual of the future king sitting on the lap of a tribal chief is
supplementary to the Brahmanical version described above and is added to
the second half of rajyabhiseka; it therefore takes place in the afternoon and
completes the installation ceremonies, which last a whole day.
This rite reflects the claim of the tribes to the inherited right to install the
designated raja, just as they did hundreds of years ago during the time of the
first ruler.* Their former living conditions are reflected in the performance:
at that time they lived in the deep jungle. Instead of a wooden throne, and in
order to show honour and respect to their chosen king, the tribal chief offered
his own body as a throne. From the outset, therefore, the Kshatriya prince is
symbolically elevated and endowed with the power to rule. At that time they
had nothing more than a tree creeper to bind around their new ruler’s head
like a crown,” and to seal this contract, they made a tilaka on his forehead
with the soil from their land and another with sindiir or blood from the temple
of the main local goddess. To enhance his royal status, they endowed him with
the insignia of royalty made out of perishable materials. By claiming this right,
the tribes made the king understand that he could only be the ruler if he was
acknowledged as such by the tribal chiefs, otherwise they would rebel.*°
How seriously they took their claim is reflected in the fact that only they
had the right to bestow the rajtilaka, the seal of mutual agreement that empowers
the raja to rule, on the new king. In the ex-feudatory state of Kalahandi, this
role was that of the Kondh headman (P4tm@ji) of the village of Merkul, as the
Kondh formed the strongest tribal group; in Gangpur, Bonai and Keonjhar, it
was a headman of the Bhuiyan tribe; in Bamra a Bhuiyan and a Kondh, later
replaced by the rajaguru; and in Pallahar a Savara (Sora). In Bamra the tribal
ritual is no longer performed.
The sindir tilaka, which the tribal chief places on the forehead of the future
king, who is sitting on his lap, is of particular importance. It is taken from the
marti of the istadevi of the dominant tribal group, who is often considered
tantric. This immense power, which transcends all worldly forms of rule,
whether local or from the outside, is still controlled by tribal priests. In
Kalahandi the istadevi is ManikeSvari from Jugsaipatna; in Gangpur it is
Samlei, the istadevi of the Bhuiyan zamindar from Sargipalli; in Bonai it is

“Cf, Roy 1935, 119, on the coronation tradition in Keonjhar.

“This tradition was alive till recently only in Bonai, Pallahara and Keonjhar. In Kalahandi,
Bamra, and Gangpur a silk turban was wrapped around the head of the raja. The members
of the other major tribal groups hold royal insignia like pafchhata and camara.
45Tm Kalahandi the new ruler also had to marry a girl from the Kondh tribe.
288 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

Kalapat, the istadevi of the Bhuiyan samanta from Kaleiposh; and in Pallahara
it is Durga (GramSri)** from Sulepal, the istadevi of the Sawar raja. The royal
families of Bamra and Keonjhar are strong followers of Vaishnavism. The
sindiir of the tilaka does not come from the istadevi temple of the tribal chief,
but from the shrine of the family goddesses. In Bamra this is Kanaka Durga,
in Keonjhar most probably the shrine of Tarini.
The place where the tribal coronation rituals are performed may be the
ancestor stone or throne*’ or the durbar hall of the Rajmahal (Bamra, Gang-
pur), a hall within the guest house (Bonai), or the Rani-Mahal (Pallahara,
Keonjhar). ‘
Common to all royal families, not only in Orissa but all over India, is the
strong belief that the throne should not be vacant even for a minute. As soon
as the death of a raja is confirmed, his successor must be installed on the
throne. It is a tradition that a future raja is never made impure by the death of
his father. The new raja gives the order for the dead body to be removed from
the palace through a special gate.** The moment the new raja is installed, the
late raja’s rani becomes a widow. In Bamra, Gangpur and Keonjhar, this
installation ritual is performed immediately after the death of the raja; in Bonai
and Pallahara conversely, the empty throne is guarded by Bhuiyan soldiers
(Bonai) or the soldiers of the Sawar raja (Pallahara).

THE CORONATION RITUAL IN BONAI

In this section, a summarized account of the coronation ritual of Bonaigarh is

given. The ritual was performed for the present, fifty-eighth ruler of Bonai.*
In Bonai, the rajtilaka ceremony takes place on the twelfth day” after the
former raja has passed away.°' In the meantime, the throne is guarded by the

“Roy (1935) calls her Gai-Sri. On her importance as a village goddess, cf. 221-4.
“In Kalahandi the ritual is performed on the ancestor stone in Jugsaipatna, where the
first coronation took place. In Keonjhar the raja takes a seat on the ancestor throne, which
is said to contain a SGlagrama of the god Visnu.
48S.N. Roy (1929) writes a short note on the raja’s funeral in the Feudatory State of
Orissa.
“T would like to thank the present rajasaheb of Bonai, Kadam Keshari Chandra Deo
Deb, the Samanto of Kaleiposh and Uwe Skoda for their valuable information on these
traditions in Bonai.
According to $.C. Roy (1935, 129), the ritual takes place on the sixteenth day.
*'S.C. Roy (1935, 128-9), who describes the installation ceremony of a raja of Bonai,
adds that a new silk turban is placed on the head of the corpse of the deceased raja and
than the new raja is crowned with this turban. The ancient sword known as the ‘Kumari
Prasad’ is also placed in the hands of the new raja. While he is sitting on the throne (gaddi),
he orders that the corpse be removed. Between the day of the demise of the former raja
and the formal abhiseka, the new raja must live in seclusion, all the time holding a sword
in his hand.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’S LAP 289

Bhuiyan soldiers of the Bhuiyan Samanto from Kaleiposh, the only zamindar
in the Bonai area, and the first among the tribal leaders.*
In the early morning of the twelfth day, the designated raja is carried in a
palanquin to the temple of Siva BaneSvar, where he is received with great
honours.*? In the ritual that follows, the god BaneSvar hands over his realm to
the new king. The new raja sits opposite BaneSvar, flanked on both sides by
a Rajpurohit. Two Bhuiyan Dehuri are also present.** Now the new raja is
identified with BaneS$var and is therefore addressed as BaneSvar-agrya. At first
the offerings are given to BaneSvar and then in the same way to the new raja,
and the Rajpurohit ties a turban first on BaneSvar and later the same one on
the new raja. The last item that the raja receives from BaneSvar is the white
royal umbrella (pat-chhata), which is kept behind BaneSvar. The Bhuiyans
have the honour decorating the umbrella with a new layer of white cloth. Now
the ceremonial umbrella is held over the king, and everyone stands up. The
king addresses the god Banesvar with the following words: “By your order
the universe functions; please give me your blessings. I swear, O God, that I
will administer and look after the people of Bonai on your behalf. Bonai is
your country.’ This is a clear sign to the Bhuiyan that Banesvar is handing
over his rule to the new king, therefore the Bhuiyan must accept him.
Accompanied by music, the raja returns to his palace in a palanquin.
Before the ritual of sitting on the lap of a tribal chief takes place, the
Brahmanical purohit performs the official raja-abhiseka in the jaj mahal.* As
part of the ritual, the royal sword Patkhanda is handed to the raja. The Patkhanda
is worshipped only during the raja-abhiseka and twice a year on the raja’s
pauspiarnima-abhiseka and §ravana-abhiseka.* A sword called Mohana Khanda
is also brought from her shrine, only being worshipped during raja-abhiseka.
The royal umbrella (pat-chhatd) is brought from the Banesvar temple, and a

°2The Samanto belongs to the Paficasahakhanda Bhuiyan, who served as the militia to
the king. It is said that the king gave them five hundred swords to assist him in his wars.
The Samanto belongs to this group. The istadevi is Kalapat. The Samanto family gave five
hundred villages to the king to rule.
53]t is said that the Bonai area was ruled by Bandasura, a giant. Everyday he went to
Varanasi to worship Kasi Visvanath. When he was old and no longer able to go to Varanasi,
he asked Kasi Visvanath to come to his kingdom. The latter agreed to come with Banasura
to the Bonai region, but Banasura must not look back. Suddenly Banasura could not hear
the sound of the god Siva any more. He turned back to look, and Kasi Visvanath told him
that he would henceforward remain in this place and be worshipped by the name of
BaneSvar.
‘4The priests of this temple are still members of the Bhuiyan tribe.
55 According to Roy (1935, 130), the raja remains all the time seated during the Hom
one
ceremony, armed with five kinds of weapons: the Kumari Prasad sword, one dagger,
knife, a bow and three arrows.
56 According to Roy (1935, 130), this is the Patkhanda, which is said to be the sword
with which the first Kadam Bamsi raja conquered the country.
290 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

small black stone representing the god Ramchandra, the istadeva of the family,
is placed close by.*’
In the late afternoon, the ritual of sitting on the lap of a tribal chief takes
place in the big hall of the guest-house, marking the end of the ceremony. In
the centre of the hall a big wooden throne, richly decorated with red velvet
and flowers, is set up, and the floor is covered with carpets. Seats are arranged
for the Samanto of Kaleiposh and the Gond jagirdars, called Dandapat and
Mahapat. When the raja is led into the hall, everyone stands up; only the
Samanto remains sitting with a group of Bhuiyan warriors (paika) with their
weapons ranged behind him. Then the Samanto asks the new raja to sit on his
lap.*® He hands the raja some soil in a leaf, and places a tilaka of the soil on
the his forehead, followed by a tilaka of sindir brought from the temple of
Kalapat, the istadevi of the Samanto.” In this way Ka4lapat, the real ruler of
this region, sanctions the rule of the new king.
After the raja has sat on the lap of the Bhuiyan Samanto, the latter guides
the new raja to his official throne and addresses him with the following words:
“You are the raja of Bonai from this day onwards’. The raja answers: ‘From
this day onwards you are my zamindar. I shall give you around thirty villages.’
During this ritual conversation, the raja is accompanied on his left by the
Patayat and on his right by the Tikkayat. Then the chief of the Pahudi Bhuiyan
takes a holy thread made of a Siali creeper [Pueraria tuberosa (Roxb. ex
Willd.)] and presents it to the raja. Out of joy, the tribal musicians begin to
play their horns and drums, and start moving around the town. After the
Samanto has declared the new raja the ruler of Bonai region, all the important
state officials, like the chief minister of Orissa and the collector, are informed,
as is the Government of India in Delhi.

THE CORONATION RITUAL IN KEONJHAR

Of all the coronation rituals of royal families being considered here, it is that
of Keonjhar which has attracted the most attention. Information on it comes
from Roy, Dalton and M.M. Mishra. By way of a short introduction, Roy’s
description will be summarized here. A special aspect of the ceremony in
Keonjhar is the tradition that a Bhuiyan carries the raja on his shoulders, like
a horse. Also at the end of the ceremony, a Bhuiyan symbolically dies as if in
a human sacrifice (meriah).
After the Bhuiyan receive the permission of the designated raja to perform
the ceremonies identical to those with which they are reputed to have installed

*’Roy (1935, 130-1) mentions that after this ritual the new king visits all the important
temples of the town.
*®Roy (1935, 131) does not mention the ritual of sitting on the tribal chief’s lap.
He is worshipped in the villages of Ladam and Anga. In the early morning of the
rajtilak ceremony, the Samanto goes to the Kalapat temple in the village of Anga to take
the soil for the tikka.
Roy 1935, 119-23.
 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF’SLAP 291

the first Bhanja raja of Keonjhar, a Bhuiyan with the title of mahd@ndyak carries
the raja on his back, like a horse, to the simhdsan meld or throne room, where
another Bhuiyan official called kGtoi is sitting on a cotton quilt. The mahandayak,
in the guise of a horse, seats the raja on a new cloth spread over the knees of
the katoi, while another Bhuiyan (r6ra) sprinkles sanctified water on him. The
mahdandayak then places a crown, made of a long flexible creeper (sudlata), on
the raja’s head, invests him with a sacred thread (poita) made of the same
creeper, and marks a rdj-tika or mark of royalty on the raja’s forehead with
vermilion and sandalwood paste. The headman of the Sanoti tribe (probably
a subtribe of the Bhuiyan), who is styled berajal mahdap@tra, then ties a silk
turban (pagri) on the raja’s head, while another headman of the same tribe,
who is called Gharpo, stands by the raja’s side, fanning him with a bunch of
siari fibres [Pueraria tuberosa (Roxb. ex Willd.)] fastened together in the
shape of a chadmar or whisk, and the headman (Kab4r) of the Khond tribe
holds an umbrella made of sidri leaves over the raja’s head. A number of
Bhuyian stand round the raja, holding in their hands clubs made of tree-branches,
with the leaves and bark still attached, to represent maces of gold and silver
and other symbols of the insignia of royalty, such as flags and banners, canopies
and chamars or fanning whisks, royal umbrellas, etc.
After the tribes have demonstrated their power by installing and legitimizing
the new king through the seal of their istadevi, the ritual that follows brings
back the power to the king from the divine to the profane, worldly level. Now
the king demonstrates who is in charge of the executive power over life and
death.
The headman of the Rajkuli Bhuyian, who bears the title of Danda-Sena,
sounds a gong, and the Mahapdatra of the Sanoti tribe marks the raja’s forehead
with a mark of dahi (curded milk). Then the Kabat of the Khond tribe gives
the royal umbrella to a Bhuyian to hold it over the head of the raja, and the
Bhuyian lies down with his face to the ground before the raja, impersonating
a meriah (or victim for human sacrifice). The Bhuyian (the headman of the
village of Bargora), who bears the designation Ronda, hands a sword to the
raja, telling him: ‘I invest thee with the right of beheading people. Do thou
thy will.’ The raja touches the neck of the meriah with the sword twice and
hands the sword back to the Rona. The Rond, in his turn, similarly touches
the neck of the mock meriah with the sword, and then puts it back. Then the
Khond meriah gets up and runs away, after three days reappearing before the
raja, as if restored to life by a miracle.
In his description of the coronation in Keonjhar, M.M. Mishra refers only
briefly to the ritual of sitting on the tribal chief’s lap, since he concentrates on
the Brahmanical ritual that precedes the short tribal rite. He mentions that on
the coronation day of Raja Nrusingha Narayan Bhanja the raja was led to the
Muguni Mela, that is, the hall where the ancient coronation stone seat lies. It
is said that inside the stone there is a Salagrama. The raja took a seat on the
coronation stone, and eight eminent Brahmans performed the abhiseka puja.
After visiting the shrine of several deities, he went to the Bhula Mandei, part
292 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

of the royal harem, where the Bhuiyan performed their traditional rites for the
raja’s coronation. A Bhuiyan sirdar called Makhamal of Daumla sat on the
ground. He held the raja who was seated on the ground just close to his lap in
front. A white umbrella (Svetachhattra) was placed on the head of the raja.
The Bhuiyans admitted to him being a raja and did namaskar. After this the
new raja ordered that the dead body of the late raja be taken to the cremation
ground for cremation and went to his royal quarters.
From M.M. Mishra’s description, one receives the impression that this ritual
lost its former wild character and became just an integral part of the coronation
ritual. This contrasts with the lively and slightly amused report given in 1872
by Dalton,*' who witnessed the coronation ritual of Dhanurjay Bhanj. According
to Dalton, after the rituals performed by me Brahmans, the tribal rite took
place, but not in the palace:
A large shed attached to the raja’s palace and ordinarily used as lumber room, was
cleared out, swept and garnished, spread with carpets, and otherwise prepared for the
occasion. A number of Brahmans were in attendance in sacerdotal costume, seated
amidst the sacred vessels and implements, and articles for offerings used in the
consecration of rajas, according to the ceremonies described in the Veda. Beyond the
circle of the brahmanical preparations a group of the principal Bhuiyans were seated,
cleanly robed for the occasion and garlanded . . . [there] was heard a great crash of
discordant but wild, deep-toned instruments and drums of the Bhuiyan and other tribes,
and the raja entered mounted on the back of a strongly built Bhuiyan chief, who plunged
and pawed and snorted under him like a fiery steed. Moving to the opposite side of
the brahmanical sacred circle, followed by a host of the tribe, one of them placed
himself on a low platform covered with red cloth, and with his body and limbs formed
the back and arms of the throne on which the raja, dismounting from his biped steed,
was placed. Then the attendant Bhuiyan each received from the raja’s usual servants
extemporised imitations of the insignia of royalty—banners, standards, pankhas, chaurs,
chhattars, canopies—and 36 of the tribe as hereditary office-bearers, each with his
symbol, arranged themselves round their chief.

COMPARISON OF THE RITUALS IN GANGPUR,

BAMRA, PALLAHARA AND KALAHANDI

In Gangpur, the coronation ritual takes place immediately after the death of
the raja: the throne should not be vacant for a moment. A sardar, a high Rajput
official, informs the zamindar of Sargipalli about the incident. Then all the
zamindars proceed to the palace to be present at the rajtilaka ceremony. The
coronation ritual takes place in the new palace, in the main hall of the raja-
mahal. Along with the zamindars, the Rajpurohit and Brahmans are present.
The ritual starts with the abhiseka puja performed by the Brahmans. Then the
new raja takes a seat on the decorated floor along with the Sargipalli zamindar.
For a brief moment the Sargipalli zamindar takes him on the right thigh and

*' Dalton 1872, 145-7.

 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF'S LAP 293

places the candana and sindiir tilaka on his forehead, saying, ‘From this day
onwards you are our king’. Then the raja sits in front of him. The Sargipalli
zamindar binds the silk turban, places the crown on the raja’s head, and then
hands him the king’s sword (patkhanda) taken from the Kanaka Durga shrine.
Then all the other Bhuiyan zamindar give him a candana and sindiir tilaka.
A Rajput holds the chhata, made from the bamboo of Masabira. After the
rajtilaka is presented by the Sargipalli Maji, they proceed to the Samlei temple
near the palace for darSana. On the twelfth day after the former raja’s funeral,
the guests come to greet the new raja, but the great festival for the new king
takes place during DaSahara, when all his officials and the members of his
family come together.
In Pallahara, on the day of the coronation, the Savara raja takes his seat on
a small decorated platform in front of the royal throne. Then he asks the raja
to sit on his lap. Behind him the representative of the Kondh holds the
patchhattar, while the Bhuiyan holds the c@mar. Now they place a golden
crown on his head, and a Savara binds a creeper (simba), made by the Savara,
around the crown as a sign that they are poor and therefore cannot offer anything
else. Then the Savara raja puts a tilaka on the raja’s forehead with soil from
Sulepal and addresses him, saying ‘From today you receive the State; take
care of it and its people’. The soil for the rajtilaka comes from the shrine of
the goddess Durga, also called GramSri of Sulepal, the istadevi of the Savara
raja (in former times the Savara raja had his royal gaddi in Sulepal). To arrange
the coronation gaddi for the new raja in Pallahara, they bring some soil from
the former Savara gaddi in Sulepal.” After the new raja sits for a brief moment
on the Savara’s lap, he is guided to his official royal throne.
As mentioned earlier, in Bamra, there is no tradition of sitting on the lap
of a tribal chief. Here the rajaguru plays the main role. Immediately after the
death of the old raja, the rajaguru performs the rajtilaka and binds the turban
around the new raja’s head. The king sits on the simhdsan (gaddi) and then
gives the order to start the cremation rituals. Members of the families of Kanto
Bhuiyan and Suna Kondh still live in the Deogarh area today, but they play
no part in the coronation ritual; only during DaSahara do the Bhuiyan and
Kondh come to present some soil from Bamra as a gift to the ruler.
In Kalahandi, P.K. Deo had his rajyabhiseka ritual performed on 16 March
1940, at the ancestral stone in Jugsaipatna. While sitting in the Patmaji’s lap,
his turban was tied by the zamindar of Lanjigarh who also gave the ti/aka with
sindar taken from the Manikesvari® stones inside the temple. As the Kondh
consider the raja of Kalahandi to be a member of their community, it was

The king and the earth are apparently regarded as husband and wife. Elsewhere in
India, Galey (1990, 153), for instance, says that the king is married to the throne as he is
to the queen, and that he is considered the masculine protector of the earth and the Goddess; ~

cf. also Inden 1998, 44, 62.

6On ManikeS$vari, cf. Mallebrein 2006.
294 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

customary until recently for the Kalahandi raja to take a Kondh girl as his first
wife (patrani).™

CONCLUSION

All the coronation rituals presented in this paper demonstrate the crucial
historical link between local royal dynasties in Orissa and local tribes, as
represented by their tribal chiefs. My data on the coronation rituals and the
oral histories about them, including myths, stories and interviews with members
of the families involved, indicates the highly intensive and symbolic importance
of this ritual for the region. Obviously the tribal rite within the coronation
ritual is crucial for the maintenance of peace between local ethnic groups like
the Gond, Kondh, Bhuiyan and Sora tribes. The performance of the coronation
ritual creates a single cultural identity among diverse ethnic groups, integrates
diverse local cultures, and thus generates a communal feeling within the
kingdom.
It is significant that this tradition of sitting on the lap of a tribal chief at a
royal coronation is mainly found in those royal families who claim their
ancestors were brought to the area by tribes, often forcibly, in order to make
them their kings and assume rule. This assertion is found in the histories of
those the families who rule over an area mainly inhabited by the Bhuiyan and
Kondh tribes, who have a reputation as very powerful and freedom-loving
communities.
For the tribes, the Brahmanical rite of coronation was a mystery, consisting
of an endless number of elaborate abhiseka rituals, using symbolic gestures
and a language only understandable to the small elitist Brahmanical circle.
Conversely, the tribal form of coronation had a clear message: it is the goddess,
the istadevi of the dominant tribe, who installs the ruler as king over the area,
just as it is the tribal chief, her representative on earth, who places the sindar
tilaka, the seal of mutual agreement, on the king’s forehead. It is the country
of the tribes that holds and maintains the king. Moreover, it is represented by
the throne consisting of the body of the tribal chief, who, like the throne itself,
personifies the kingdom. Finally, this kingdom is actually ruled and under the
protection of the main goddess of the dominant tribes. The king’s contract is
with the local goddess. In Kalahandi, this contract becomes even clearer: the
raja must marry a Kondh girl before his official marriage with a Kshatriya
girl, thus establishing a close family bond between the raja and the tribe,
however, symbolic (this first marriage is dissolved as soon as it has been
carried out).
On the one hand, the coronation ritual reveals the valorization of the tribal
communities as important parts in the formation of the body of the local
kingdom. On the other hand, the tribal ritual actors are subordinated in the

“For the tradition in Kalahandi, cf. Cobden Ramsay 1910, 202 (citing a Lieutenant
Elliot); also P.K. Deo 2000, 51.
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 SITTING ON THE TRIBAL CHIEF'S LAP _ 297

succeeding ritual sequences featuring a human sacrifice, thus being placed

correctly in the correct hierarchy (holy order) of the local kingdom.
By examining the coronation rituals of local dynasties in Orissa, their ritual
symbols and their actors, the performative power of rituals is revealed to us.
Through the symbolic ritual performance of a new king sitting on the lap of
a tribal chief, a sense of unity is created for the local kingdom and its diverse
local ethnic cultures.

REFERENCES
Banerjee, R.D. 1928. ‘Rajput Origins in Orissa’, in Modern Review 43, 285-329.
Cobden Ramsay, L.E.B. 1910. Feudatory States of Orissa, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot (rpt. 1950, 1982). |
Dalton, Edward Tuite 1872. ‘Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal’ Illustrated by Lithograph
Portraits Copied from Photographs, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of
Government (rpt. under the title: Tribal History of Eastern India, Delhi: Cosmos,
1978).
Deo, P.K. 2000. Memoirs of a Bygone Era, Delhi: Minerva Press.
Derrett, J.M. Duncan. 1976. *“Rajadharma’, in Journal of Asian Studies 35, 4, 597-609.
Drekmeier, Charles 1962. Kingship and Community in Early India, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Elliot, C. 1986 (1856). “Report on Kalahadi State’, in N. Senapati and D.C. Kuanr (eds.),
Orissa District Gazetteers (Kalahandi): Supplement, Cuttack: Orissa Government
Press, 457-2.
Galey, J.C. 1990. ‘Reconsidering Kingshipin India: An Ethnological Perspective’, in J.C.
Galey (ed.), Kingship and the Kings, Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Gonda, J. 1966. Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View, rpt. from Numen
3 and 4 with Addenda and Index, Leiden: E_J. Brill.
Heesterman, J.C. 1957. The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration, The Hague: Mouton.
— 1998. ‘The Conundrum of the King’s Authority’, in J.F. Richards (ed.), Kingship
and Authority in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 13-40.
Hunter, W.W. 1872. Orissa, or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province Under Native and
British Rule: Being the Second and Third Volumes of the Annals of Rural Bengal,
London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Inden, Ronald 1998. ‘Ritual, Authority, and Cyclic Time in Hindu Kingship’, in J.F. Richards
(ed.), Kingship and Authority in South Asia, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 41-91.
Kane, M.P.V. 1946. History of DharmaSsastra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil
Law), vol. 3, Chaps. 1-10, ‘Rajadharma’, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,
1-103.
Kotani, Hiroyuki 1999. ‘Kingship, State and Local Society in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth
Century Deccan with Special Reference to Ritual Functions’, in Noburu Karashima
(ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Delhi: Manohar, 237-71.
Kulke, H. 1992. ‘Tribal Deities at Princely Courts: The Feudatory Rajas of Central Orissa
and their Tutelary Deities’, in S. Mahapatra (ed.), The Realm of the Sacred: Verbal
Symbolism and Ritual Structures, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 56-78.
—1993a. ‘Royal Temple Policy and the Structure of Medieval Hindu Kingdoms’, in
H. Kulke, Kings and Cults, Delhi: Manohar, 1-16.
1993b. ‘Legitimation and Townplanning in the Feudatory States of Central Orissa’,
in idem, Kings and Cults, Delhi: Manohar, 93-113.
298 CORNELIA MALLEBREIN

Mahapatra, K.N. 1982. ‘Kalahandi Under the Gangas and the Naga Kings’, in H.K. Mahtab
(chief ed.), The Orissa Historical Research Journal 23, 1/4, Special Volume, Dedicated
to the Memory of Late K.N. Mahapatra, Bhubaneswar: Orissa State Museum, 1-13.
Mahapatra, L.K. 1997. ‘Ex-Princely States of Orissa: Their Social History’, in P.K. Mishra
(ed.), Comprehensive History and Culture of Orissa, vol. 2, Delhi: Kaveri Books,
896-927.
Mallebrein, C. 2006. ‘ManikeSvari and Dokri: Changing Representations of Two Tribal
Goddesses and the Dynastic Histories of Orissa’, in A. Malinar (ed.), Time in India:
Concepts and Practices, Delhi: Manohar, 209-41.
Mishra, Madan Mohan 1974. ‘Data on the Ex-State of Keonjhar: Its History, Religious
Institutions, Legends and Rituals Performed in the Royal Palace’, Keonjhar
(manuscript).
Nanda, Chandi Prasad 2003. ‘Between Narratives and Silence: Centring Gangpur State’,
in this volume.
Patnaik, Jagannath 1988. Feudatory States of Orissa (1803-1857), Allahabad: Vohra.
Patnaik, N. (ed.) 1979-80. Handbook on the Pauri Bhuinya, Bhubaneswar: Tribal and
Harijan Research-Cum-Training Institute.
Roy, Sarat Chandra 1935. The Hill Bhitiyas of Orissa, Ranchi: Man in India Office.
Roy, Satindra Narayan 1929. ‘A Raja’s Funeral in the Feudatory States of Orissa’, in Man
in India 9, 1, 7-9.
Sahu, Bhagabana 1993. Princely States of Orissa Under the British Crown (1858-1905),
Cuttack: Vidyapuri.
Schlerath, B. 1960. Das Kdnigtum im Rig- und Atharvayeda, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
Schnepel, B. 2002. The Jungle Kings: Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politics and Ritual in
Orissa, Delhi: Manohar.
Senapati, N. and D.C. Kuanr 1980. Orissa District Gazetteers (Kalahandi), vol. 6,
Bhubaneswar: Gazetteer Unit, Department of Revenue, Government of Orissa.
—1986. Orissa District Gazetteers (Kendujhar), Bhubaneswar: Gazetteer Unit,
Department of Revenue, Government of Orissa.
Fig. 13.1: Manikesvari at Jogsahipatna
 Fig. 13.2: Kali Samalei at Sundergarh

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35

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 CHAPTER 14

The Aghria and Their Mythology:

In Between Politico-Religious Centres
and Hierarchical Antipodes

UWE SKODA

In north-west Orissa, particularly in Sambalpur District, a mixed tribal and caste

society has emerged through migration of peasant castes such as the Aghria into
predominantly tribal areas in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of
the twentieth centuries. During these periods, Aghrid peasants started to clear a
large part of the forests, became revenue collectors for various little kings, managed
to establish themselves as village kings, and were influential in integrating the
tribal population into the little kingdoms.
In this chapter I shall explore how the Aghria locate themselves in this
peripheral mixed tribal and caste society and how they conceptualize their
origins, status and links to religious and political centres. It will be argued
that, claiming to be Kshatriya and descendants of Bidur, place themselves
mythologically in between in terms of status, but also geographically. They
situate themselves between Agra, the Muslim centre they left behind, and Puri,
the Hindu centre and their destination. Furthermore, on the one hand
mythological links are constructed with the Brahmans, or rather Tiharis, their
own Brahmanical priests, and on the other hand with the low-caste Chamar,
in other words, to both ends, or complementary antipodes, of the caste hierarchy,
while their tribal neighbours are not mentioned at all.
Thus the Aghria firmly locate themselves within caste society. In addition,
the central but irresol vable conundrum of caste society, the relationship between
the Brahman or priest and the king, appears as a prominent theme of the myth
in the form of the relationship between the Aghria as holders of the plough
(Fig. 14.1) and the Disandhri (Fig. 14.2)' as their younger brothers guarding
the sacred thread. The Disandhri became the bards of the Aghria, thus

' There are various ways of spelling the name of the bards of the Aghria such as Disandhri
(see below), but also Disondhi, Difondhi or Dossondhi (see e.g. publication of Bolangir
Aghria samaj 1993) or even Bisandhi in Chhattisgarh area. I use the former version in the
text.
Fig. 14.1: Plow-puja
 “ORR ang

20
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bs
> Q = os S a=P=:=
306 UWE SKODA

emphasizing the role of the Aghria as patrons” and contributing to their status
as ‘village kings’, as I have elaborated elsewhere.’
Since myths are an essential part of political discourses in which claims
and counterclaims are being put forward, this myth might well be related to
the rise of the Aghria to the position of ‘village kings’ in a mixed tribal and
caste society, as well as to a subsequent process of ‘Kshatriyaization’.‘ In this
regard, and in order to legitimize their place and rank, Aghria myths seem to
fulfil a similar function as the vamSdvali literature or the chronicles of royal
families.° Nor, within this political arena, is the existence of different versions
contesting their origins and their Kshatriya status at all surprising. Thus, other
explanations and ideas about the origins of the Aghria and their place in society
will also be highlighted here.
These days Aghria mythology® is generally transmitted in two ways. On
the one hand myths are passed on by Disandhri acting as the Aghrias’ bards
and reciting mythological stories known as mandida’ on special occasions. For
their performance the Disandhri were entitled to a gift of a cow or a buffalo.
The relationship between Aghria and Disandhri is an essential aspect of the
myths and will be discussed below. On the other hand, there are published
accounts of the origins of the Aghria. The Aghria caste organization (Aghna
Samaj), which was founded in 1904,* has published Aghria myths since the
beginning of the twentieth century and has been particularly influential in

?For the role of bards in a kingdom in western India see Basu (2000).
3Skoda 2005.
“The term is borrowed from Kulke (2001 [1976]). For further examples of the wide-
spread phenomena of caste mobility and castes aspiring a higher status by adopting a
Kshatriya model see also Rowe (1968a, 1968b). For social mobility in the wider perspective
see also Dumont (1980 [1966]: 196).
>Kulke 2001b, 2001c; Berkemer 1993; Schnepel 2002. VamSavalis or family chronicles
gained particular importance during British rule in late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries at a time of a routinization of the colonial administration, i.e. the records were
consulted by British officers and became a tool of Indian rulers to legitimize themselves
vis-a-vis the British. Therefore the chronicles of Puri were ‘systemized’ in early nineteenth
century or even fabricated in feudatory states at the time (see Kulke 2001 [1987a]: 140ff;
Schnepel 2002: 139ff).
*T use the term mythology here in the sense of myths as sacred narratives (Leach 1991:
66), since it is said that the Disandhri as bard traditionally used to tell these stories only
in a ceremonial context and were entitled to gifts afterwards (for the sacred character of
oral tradition in orthodox Brahmanism see also Gough 1986 [1968]: 135). However, there
is no clear-cut distinction between mythology and history—myths may well contain a
‘historical core’, which might be termed historical if it can be cross-checked with other
independent sources (Leach 1991: 66; for the relation between myth and history see also
Basu 2000: 15).
7On the term ‘mand/a’ and its use in Puri see Kulke (2001 [1987a]: 154). He states two
possible explanations of the term: either as ‘beginning’/‘first’ or as ‘king’/‘chief’.
‘Compare Gazetteers of India, Orissa, Sundargarh Districts, ed. by N. Senapati/D.C.
Kuanr, 1971 (1975).
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY - 307

propagating certain versions. Thus one finds oral and written accounts not
only co-existing, possibly even merging in a process of canonization, but also
occasionally deviating in certain details. This double transmission of mythology
itself, of both written and oral versions, may lead, or may have led, to
contradictions in the texts, or, rather, as Goody and Watt have remarked,
express existing conflicts.’ For these authors, while the emergence of a literate
tradition is often related to the realization of contradictions between various
texts, an oral tradition might be more easily adaptable to changing conditions
within society. Different accounts from both oral and written sources have
been recorded and will be presented here in an attempt to reveal a dominant
Aghria myth. However, no homogenization or reduction of mythological
narratives to a singular standard version'® is intended, but merely a description
of the discursive field. Subsequently, the myths will be interpreted by exploring
etymologies put forward by the Aghria before turning to radically different
accounts which may question their status and origins.
Let us now turn to the Aghria myths themselves. Most accounts distinguish
two phases of the origins of the Aghria: a very early period is differentiated
from a much later period with dated events, specifically migration into Orissa.
In the following description, I follow this emic order and distinction.

EARLY ORIGINS

One Disandhri related the earliest part of Aghria mythology in the following
manner:
The wife of Atriya Rushi [= a sage] is Anusuya. Chandra [= the Moon God] had an
affair with the Goddess Tara [= star]. The name of the Moon’s son is Budha. Puraraba
was his son. Puraraba’s son is King Prabira. His son was Mata Sananta. His son was
born as Raibira. Raibira’s son is Dusmanta.
This is to note that Bharata is the son of Dusmanta. The son of Bharata is Abhimanyu
and his [Abhimanyu’s] son; Biratha—a great hero—is as powerful as Indra. The son
of Biratha is King Sambhurana. He has five sons of the name of ‘Kuru’. The son of
the eldest Kuru is Karaka. The son of Karaka is the King Shantanu Mahadev. The sons
of Shantanu were Chitra and Bichitra Birja. They died without sons due to bad blessing.
This is the result of sin. His [Shantanu’s] wife is Satyabadi and her son is Vyasa
Mahajati. The sons of Vyasa Deba, the great Saint (Mahajati), are Pandu and
Dhrutarastra. The son of Pandu is the great King Jujesth.
There was a king named Hath Keshab. His caste is Shudra. His daughter gave king
Padmanava birth to Ambhu, Ambhika, Ambalika and Ambabati. The son of Ambhu
is Dhrutarastra. The son of Ambhika is King Pandu. The son of Ambhubati is Bidur.
Gandhari got married to Dhrutarastra. King Gainta offered his daughter to King Pandu
named Bhojraj.
The marriages of those ancient kings are the same as that of the marriage of eighty-one
kings. His daughter, called Punchho, has a son Bhanu Chandra. Bhanu is a very powerful

°Goody and Watts 1986, 93.

'0On the heterogeneity of myths see Lévi-Strauss (1996 [1980]: 171).
308 UWE SKODA

miraculous king of Kuru family. Satyabati the king’s mother saw the annihilation of
the Bhanu Chandra bansa after the death of Bichitra Birja, without any son. The strong
desire as per the instruction of King Bhisma, she remembered Vyasa Deba (Mahajati)
and requested for the remedy and for the ability to produce a son. By obeying the order
of his mother Satyabati Vyasa Deba (Mahajati), through his miraculous power, created
the conception of legitimate offspring Dhrutarastra and Pandu and through servant
(dasi) Vaishnabi Sanjay of Sujani caste, Umabati and Bidur are born.
From his childhood Bidur in the best family tradition was a prophet of the Bhagbat
Gita. He got married to the daughter of the Shudra King Kesab of Hathkesar near
Kashi. To his legitimate two sons were born Priya Bhanu and Stra Bhanu.

In this account the statuses of Bidur’s mother and wife are given as Sudra,
though in the case of his wife this is a reference to a Sudra royal family. Bidur
is presented as the son of a maidservant as well as of Queen Ambhubati, which,
of course, contains an inherent contradiction. Such ambiguities are also
expressed in a variety of other Aghria texts. For example:
The great King Bichitra Birja of Chandra bansa died without having a son. When the
king’s mother Satyabatdebi saw the annihilation of the Somabansa [= Chandra bansa]
with strong desire as per the instruction of magnanimous King Bhisma, she has requested
the great Saint Vyasadev, who had the ability to see the past and to predict the future,
to beget sons. The sage, through his own power, begot Dhrutarashtra and Pandu, and
from the uterus of Vaishnabinavi Dasi [dasi = maidservant] Sanjay and from the womb
of Shudra dasi Bidur were born.
From childhood Bidur was too much attached to God, and good in behaviour. He
was a man of justice and ascertainment. The great King Dhrutarastra took advice from
him. Bidur got married to the daughter of Keshab Das, Shudra king of Hatakeshwar
near Kashi. The name of the mother of Bidur is in the list of Shudras, but that is not
the fact. She is Ambubati, daughter of King Harikeshwar of Surya bansa and the second
queen of the great King Bichitra Birja."!

Thus in the latter version, which is more or less exactly reproduced in more
recent publications of the Aghria Samaj, for example, in 1983, it is emphasized
that Bidur was the son of Queen Ambhubati. In other words, it is asserted that
he was apparently of Kshatriya origin, while in the Disandhri version and the
Gazetteers" he is said to be of Sudra status. This corresponds to north Indian
versions of the Mahabharata, for example Sorensen, in which Vidura (Bidur),
also called “Kshattr’ and seen as an incarnation ‘of a portion of Dharma’, is
described as the son of Vyasa and a Sudra woman who was a maid of Queen
Ambika.'* However, according to one version of the Mahabharata, which I

''*History of the society of eighty-four houses Agaria and a list of Regulations, written
from the ancient palm leaf manuscript, True Copy.’ Original Author: Late Balunkeshwar
Pandey, Jharsuguda. Compiler: Sri Rajendra Patel, M.A., B.Ed., Rastravasha Ratnaa
(Researcher), Village/P.O. Darlipalli, Dist. Sundargarh; Dr. Bishwambhar Patel (Lecturer—
L.N. College, Jharsuguda).
The same is also mentioned in the Gazetteer of India 1971 (1975), Orissa-Sundargarh
District, ed. N. Senapati and D.C. Kuanr, p. 113.
'Sérensen 1978, 733.
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY: 309

came across in an Aghria household and which was supposed to have been
written by Sarala Das, Bidur apparently married the daughter of a Vaisya king.
In this book it is noted (the poem-like structure has been maintained as far as
possible):
The king of Harikesh is in the state of Harikesh. He is the king, born in the family of
Rudra [Siva], his daughter’s name is Ambhubatee. The great king Bichitra Birja got
married to her. Amba and Ambalika are blessed with sons, but Ambhubatee is deprived
of it. You are my son, who is very great in wisdom. You arrange it to give birth to a
son through Ambhubatee. The excellent wise person Vyasa, went by the order of
mother, and entered the womb of Ambhubatee. The wife, Ambhubatee, got herself
dressed the same as, Amba and Ambalika used to dress themselves. The emotional
meeting was with great joy and pleasure, she became fortunate in copulating with
Vyasa. ... A son fair face like moon, was born at once. The son was born in an
auspicious moment of immorality, Vyasa saw that he is too much learned. That son
was born from the leg side, Again there were signs of lotus and the conch shells in
both legs. He makes sound in the divine speech in words of the learned, The name
Bidur is given by the great ascetic Vydsa. By holding him on the lap, Vyasa gave him
kisses on his lips, Vyasa told, ‘Let him be very expert and intelligent’. ‘You be rich
in all qualities, always riches and beauty will not break from your shoulder. In enlarged
knowledge let all your activities be seen, In wisdom and righteousness let all your
days be spent.” The excellent ascetic Vyasa after giving such a boon, has handed over
the son on the lap of ‘Satyabatee’ [name of Vyasa’s mother]}.'*

Of Bidur’s marriage, the following is said:

A king named Kasheeshawar was there in the State of Kashee, he has a daughter named
as Vandanabatee. He has given Vandanabatee as a gift to Bidur. The King of
Kasheeshwar belonged to Vaishya.'*

Thus in this version of the Mahabharata, Bidur is apparently born to a queen

and married to a Vaisya. In other words, Bidur’s mother and wife are described
in the texts mentioned above either as Sudra, Vaisya or Kshatriya. This makes
Bidur’s Kshatriya origins as the ultimate forefather of the Aghria, on whom
a descent model of origin is focused, somewhat ambiguous, although Bidur
is closely associated with the royal family of Dhrutarashtra and with a sage
called Vyasa, who is said to have begot Bidur. However, although the Aghria
believe themselves to be the descendants of Bidur, to whom Krishna once
promised that his descendants would never be poor, Bidur does not play any
role in the ritual cycle of the Aghria.

MIGRATION

In a second, clearly marked, even more common part of the myth, a process
of migration is described. Once again, a version told by a Disandhri will be
presented first:

Das 1983, 32-3.

'STbid., 44.
310 UWE SKODA

In the name of Shri Vishnu pay respect: The Soma-bansa Rajputs were the inhabitants
of Agra. When the emperor (badshah) told them to pay respect, then the Aghria Rajput
replied that the Aghria are bold heroes (bira) and they are very strong, and that is why
they should not bow down in front of the emperor. After receiving this answer from
the Rajputs the emperor became angry. He consulted his courtiers and decided to tie
a sword (karat bata) in the middle of the court.
When the Aghria will come to the court keeping the heads up high, they will be cut
off. When the Rajputs will learn about this, they will be frightened and will have to
bow their heads down. Near the entrance the emperor watches what the Aghria will
do. When the Aghria came around ten to twenty heads were cut off. Most of the Aghria
died, but they never bowed down their heads. When the Aghria came to know about
this conspiracy they decided to leave Delhi and Agra, and even vowed not to take
water any more in the absence of a cosmic order (pane pine ka dharam nahi). They
left Agra and Delhi, and came to the Gajapati Maharaja [i.e. ‘to Puri’]. They requested
the Maharaja to allow them some occupation. ‘If you do not allow us any occupation,
what will we do? We have come under the foot of the King [i.e. ‘under your
jurisdiction’].’ After listening to them the Gajapati Maharaja replied: ‘I will allow you
some occupation.’
He constructed two sword sheathes (dhdal).'° One sword (khanda) was made of iron,
but its handle was of silver. Instead of constructing a second sword, he just kept a stick
to drive the bullocks (pachen bddi) with a golden handie. He kept them in front of
Parmeshwar [i.e. ‘Lord Jagannatha’]. The Gajapati said: “You have to choose one
among these two. Whatever is in your fate, that will be your occupation.’ After listening
to this, Uros Raut said [implicitly: ‘to the Aghria’]: ‘If you permit me to lift one sword,
I will do it, otherwise I will not do it.’ All the Aghria agreed and allowed him to choose
one. After being permitted he lifted the sword with the golden handle. They brought
out the sword [i.e. ‘from its cover’].
Bam and Jatam, two brothers (bhai), handed over their axe (kathar) to Ram Singh
and then they started to take care of the land [i.e. ‘started cultivation’]. They made ten
shares, and one share will go for the Dissondhi. That’s the order of the Gajapati.

In one written account,'’ the migration of the Aghria is described in the

following manner:
The Bidur Kshatriya continued to live in Agra in Rajputana and in its nearby areas.
The Muslim king Adilshaha sat on the king’s throne in the year CE 1550 at Delhi.
During his reign the Hindu tenants were in much oppression. The Kshatriya born in
the family of Bidur did not even salute the king by bowing their heads. After having
been informed about it the king introduced a new formula to receive salutations. If
anyone salutes without bowing his head, while standing on the line drawn by the king

'°Dhal literally means shield rather than sword. However, in other versions Dhar is
given in this passage indicating cover or sword cover.
"The text is a translation of ‘History of the Society of Eighty-four Houses Agaria and
a List of Regulations, Written from the Ancient Palm Leaf Manuscript, True Copy.’ Original
Author: Late Balunkeshwar Pandey, Jharsuguda. Compiler: Sri Rajendra Patel, M.A., B.Ed.,
Rastravasha Ratnaa (Researcher), Village/P.O. Darlipalli, Dist. Sundargarh; Dr. Bishwambhar
Patel (Lecturer—L.N. College, Jharsuguda). An almost identical text has been published
by the Aghria samaj in their yearly publication 1983.
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY 311
on the floor of the house, he will be very certain to get his throat cut by the very sharp,
prickly iron saw hung on the top. But the Kshatriya born in the family of Bidur got
wounded by the saw . . . , even then they did not bow down their heads.
The king proposed and announced order for sending them to Kandhar war after
seeing their determination and moral courage. Those who were reluctant to go for war,
will have to accept the Islam religion or else will beconvicted with capital punishment.
When the announcement of this strict order was known, the 44 houses out of 84 houses
(chaurasia ghar) of Kshatriya with their families fled to Orissa State. They took refuge
in Utkal (Orissa) in the yearCE 1550, ruled by the Gajapati, the Maharaja Mukundadeba.
The king of Orissa had made arrangements for the maintenance of the newcomers
(G4gantuka) of those 84 houses. Two sword covers were kept on the back side of the
king’s throne Sri Jagannatha—one made of gold with a stick to drive the bullocks
(pachen badi) inside and a silver one with an iron sword inside, only the covers being
visible, while the remaining part were covered with a silk cloth. The Maharaja called
the 84 houses and said, ‘Let the eldest person among you hold the hilt of any of the
two weapons kept under the throne and bring it when lifted up’. Uros Rout, the senior
in age present among the 84 houses, was selected for the accomplishment of that work.
When he got tempted, he lifted the weapon hilted with gold and brought it. The
Maharaja, seeing this, ordered farming to be their livelihood from that day.
From that day Uros Rout and rest of them started the work of cultivation in their
own hand, after having abandoned the sacred thread. Only the youngest brother of
Uros took the sign of Kshatriya, the sacred thread and axe (kardr). They were known
by the title Disandhri. The Disandhri have continued to keep the past symbo] in their
successive generations. They did not do the work of cultivation in their own hand,
same as that of Brahman and Kshatriya. They were ordered by Uros in the past to
attend the priestly work (jachakata)'* in the 84 households as their main part of their
livelihood.
The 44 households Kshatriya of Bidur descendants, that had come from Orissa, at
first established in a colony at Patna State. . . . The contemporary emperor of Patna,
after seeing their skills in cultivation, donated large lands and villages for the excellent
prosperity of the State. Few households from them came out of Patna when supported
by the clever Emperor Madhukar Sai of newly formed Sambalpur State in order to
place a colony in the village of Laida at the beginning. Even now the people of that
caste say that the village Laida is inherited land of their family. This is called as the
place of ‘Jhampi Pedi Utra’."”
According to the increase of their number of families, they started to live at Patna,
Phuljhara, Bilaspur, Sambalpur, Gangapur, Bamanda, etc. They are called as the Agniha
caste as they have come from Agra. In due course of time the word agrua changed to
agria and further to Agria. The Agria caste (jati) was divided into three parts: Choudhary,
Nayak and Patel. Out of 84 households, 6 are Choudhary, 18 households are Nayak,
and 60 households are Patel. All are Kshatriya. ‘Koili kattar’ [{kattar = dagger] belongs
to Choudhary households. ‘Jama dadha kattar’ belongs to Nayak households.
‘Meghanada kattar’ belongs to Patel households.

'8The work for a jajman.

19 Jhampi designates a basket, while pedi signifies a precious box. Uira means ‘to get
down’. Thus literally it might be translated as: to get down with all their belonging.
312 UWE SKODA

The various myths I have collected differ to some extent. Occasionally, for
example, Agra is replaced by Delhi or Rajputana. Also, both the period and
the Mughul emperor who was reigning at the time are disputed. Most Aghria,
however, say that Adil Shah was ruling at that time, though historically he
does not seem to fit the context of the myth. No Mughal emperor of that name
is known to have ruled in Delhi or Agra within the time frame mentioned in
the myth.” Nor is there unanimity over the date of migration or the ruler of
Puri. However, in most versions like the one above, Mukunda Deb is mentioned
as the ruler of Utkal (Orissa), possibly a reference to the historical figure of
Mukunda Harichandana.”! 8

THE MYTHOLOGICAL LINK WITH THE CHAMAR.

In some versions of the dominant myth, particularly in the accounts narrated

by members of the Leunia clan of the Aghria, one finds as subsidiary element
a peculiar link to the Chamar who were instrumental in the Aghria’s survival.
Strikingly similar stories are also remembered, as well as emphasized, by the
Chamar themselves.
The most common version told by the Leunia runs as follows:
The Aghria were called to the Moghul court in order to decide whether to bow down
their heads or to have their heads cut off by the hanging sword. All the Aghria refused
to bow down their heads in front of the Moghul emperor until only two or three were
left, who searched for ways to escape. They called some Chamar standing next to them
and asked them for help. The Chamar knew that they would die by the hanging sword

20 Adil Shah neither ruled Agra nor Delhi in the fifteenth or sixteenth century as suggested
by the myth (compare H. Kulke/ D. Rothermund, 1999 [1986]). However, the name Adil
Shah appears as a historical figure in various epochs and regions (see Cambridge History
of India 1958, vol. III: 148-50, 193, 300, 313-4, 425ff, 439ff). Firstly, an Adil Shah estab-
lished and ruled the kingdom of Madura in fourteenth century (1356-69) after having
been a governor of Muhammad Tughlaq. Secondly, a dynasty known as Adil Shahi is
mentioned in Bijapur as one of the Deccan kingdoms of fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
This dynasty was founded by Adil Shah, also known as Yusuf Adil Shah or Yusuf Adil
Khan, in 1490, who was succeeded by Ismael Adil Shah (1510-34), Ibrahim Adil Shah
(1534-58), Ali Adil Shah (1558-80) and Ibrahim Adil Shah II. It seems that each of them
were involved in constant feuds with their neighbours, e.g. the Hindu kingdom of
Vijayanagar, for which they may have hired and dismissed foreign troops, e.g. Maratha,
as well as killed courtiers suspected of conspiring against them. Thirdly, a dynasty founded
by Adil Khan (1435-41) and succeeded by Adil Khan II (1457-1501) and Adil Khan III
(1501-20), ete., ruled over the Khandesh kingdom neighbouring Gujarat, whose influence
is said to have reached even Jharkhand. Fourthly, an Adil Khan is mentioned as Governor
of Lahore under Nasir ud din Mahmud in the late fourteenth century. Thus, though all of
them were Muslims (Sunni and Shia), none of them has ever ruled Delhi or Agra.
*! According to Panda (1999: 241ff) King Mukunda Harichandana or Mukunda Deb of
Chalukya family is said to have ruled Orissa from 1560 to 1568. He became involved in
conflicts between Mughals and Afghans, which ultimately led to the fall of the Orissan
Kingdom.
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY 313

if they replaced the Aghria. They told the Aghria: ‘When we will die, who will perform
the obituary rites (Sraddha)?’ The Aghria promised to perform all rituals necessary.

Other versions highlight the struggles of the Aghria against the Mughals, in
which they are said to have been supported by the Chamar. A father-son-
relationship or link between ancestors and descendants, usually expressed by
offering pinda, is stressed even more explicitly in the following version, this
time told by a Chamar:
Most Aghria were hanged by the Moghul emperor . . , but one Aghrid managed to
escape. The emperor’s guards followed him. The Aghria took refuge in the house of
an old Chamar, who was hanging pieces of leather on a rope and was pouring some
water over it [the traditional work of a Chamar]. The Aghria pleaded with the Chamar:
‘Please, save me, otherwise I will be hanged.’ The Chamar replied: ‘You will do my
work, while I will sit next to the door.” When the emperor’s guard, searching for the
Aghria, reached the house of the Chaméar and asked, ‘Have you seen the Aghria?’, the
old Chamar replied. ‘Look for yourself: only my son is working here, nobody else.’
The guard left and the Aghria was saved. Later the Aghria offered a cake (pinda)”
with some water to the Chamar on Nua Khai, subsequently repeating this every
year.

In some narratives, not only is a relationship with the Chamar as the lowest
stratum of caste society emphasized, but also links between the Aghria and
their Brahman priests, known as Tihari are stressed.

RELATIONS WITH THE TIHARIS AND BRAHMANS

Significantly, the Aghria are served by priests who are supposed to work
exclusively for them. These ritual specialists are known as Tihari or Tiwari
and claim to be Kanya Kubja Brahmans, a claim which links them to the Vedic
Brahmans of coastal Orissa. However, other Brahmans contest the status of
the Tihari and doubt their Brahmanical credentials.
Occasionally the Tihari are also called the kul purohit of the Aghria. The
origin of the peculiar relation between the Aghria and the Tihari as their own
priests is explained in the following quotation from an undated pamphlet—
probably an early publication of the Aghria Samaj—entitled ‘Why Aghria do
not accept food from Brahman?’ It also highlights a certain tension between
the Aghria and high-status Brahmans in general:
In former times Aghria were Kshatriya serving the King as warriors. Once there was
a war against Kandahar, and the Aghria were fighting bravely for the King. The Aghria
asked the Brahmans for help in the war, but the Brahmans refused, saying they do not
want to die in this war. Therefore the Aghria vowed not to accept food from the hand
of a Brahman any more. Due to these difficulties with the Brahmans, the A ghria decided
to leave the place. On their way to Puri they met a Brahman from Kanya Kubja, who

2The Chamar might have mixed pinda (cake) and pinda (rice balls offered for the
ancestors) here.
314 UWE SKODA

was a Tiwari. The Tiwari saw that the Aghria did not even accept water from a Brahman.
The Aghria, being happy to have met the Tiwari, promised that the Tiwari could
perform all their rituals.

This statement is confirmed by various Aghria publications,” for example,

one containing a description of the Aghria of 1925, according to which the
priestly acts of the Aghria are conducted by Tihari.*
However, some Aghria asserted that they only started accepting food from
Brahmans about thirty years ago, prior to which they used to cook for
themselves. Although the rule not to accept food from Brahmans is still
maintained during caste feasts (bhoji), a Brahman may be hired to cook for
the guests during larger functions.

INTERPRETATION

The origins of the Aghria are obviously remembered in two phases: a very
distant and undated mythicai past, and a more recent historical past
conceptionalized as being linked to precise dates, for example, the year of
leaving Agra (though the dates vary from version to version). The former
contains a long list of mythical kings, starting from the union between the
moon and a star as the ‘point of commencement’.” Thus the Aghria are directly
linked to the moon and claim to be of Chandra bansa origin (one of the two
important lines of Kshatriya descent),”° which might also help legitimize
the present position of the Aghria as a dominant caste. From there the line of
ancestors leads to Bidur, a character in the Mahabharata epic, who is asserted
to be the forefather of all Aghria. His credentials as a Kshatriya are somewhat
ambiguous, however, since in some versions (many of them put forward by
the Aghria or the Disandhri themselves), his mother and wife are said to be
of Sudra or Vaisya origins.
The second phase, which asserts a more recent migration, is metaphorically
richer in the sense of containing more oppositions. It places the Aghria
somewhere in the periphery between two centres and seems to offer an ex-
planation for their place and occupation in Orissa. Apparently there are two

3See ‘Description of Aghria bansa’, published by B. Pandey, Sambalpur 1925 [the title
might be an indicator that the author was an Aghria himself—US] or ‘History of the Society
of Eighty-four Houses Agaria and a List of Regulations, Written from the Ancient Palm
Leaf Manuscript, True Copy.’ Original Author: Late Balunkeshwar Pandey, Jharsuguda.
Compiler: Sri Rajendra Patel, M.A., B.Ed. Undated manuscript.
In case there was a scarcity of Tihari or Kanya Kubja Brahman, Aghria may have
managed with Utkaliya (Oriya) Brahman or Aranyaka Brahman (Jungle Brahman). The
same system is currently practised: Every Aghria family should call the Tihari when a
family priest (purohit) is needed, but if he is already engaged by another family any other
Brahman might be called for urgent rituals.
*>Thapar 2000a, 758.
For the Mahabharata as epic of the CandravamSa see Thapar (2002 [1992]: 788).
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY 315

centres opposed to each other. On the one hand, one finds Agra (or Delhi) as
centre of the Mughal empire ruled by a Muslim dynasty, which the Aghria
leave behind. Agra, as the myth says, is a place where you can neither drink
nor eat, thus implying that it is without dharma (religious or cosmic order).
The departure of the Aghria is due to a trick at the ruler’s court to force them
to bow down their heads. Such a ploy is obviously incompatible with the
ksatra-dharma, which prescribes conquest, warfare, and duels on the battlefield
instead of the playing of tricks.” On the other hand, Puri in the text is ruled
by the Gajapati, a Hindu dynasty and associated with Lord Jagannatha, and
therefore a place of dharma. Thus apparently the Aghria migration is based
on oppositions, as seen in the table, the journey or migration itself being a
medium of transformation,™ which may also be indicated by the decapitation
of the Aghria at the Mughal court:

Agra (Delhi) Puri

Mughal Gajapati
west (north-west) east (south-east)
Muslim Hindu
absence of Gods/dharma _ presence of Gods/dharma
(cosmic order) (cosmic order)
centre left behind centre of destination
autochthonous immigrants (newcomers)
rebellion against orders obeying orders
negative centre positive centre

Thus on the one hand, one finds Puri, ruled by the Gajapati as a Hindu king
and situated in the east, the direction generally associated with Hindu gods,
including Lord Jagannatha. On the other hand, there is Agra, the western centre
left behind, where there are no gods or rightful cosmic order (dharma). While
the Aghria have to leave their place of origin after rebelling against the orders
to bow down, they readily accepted the divine order of Lord Jagannatha.
Keeping in mind that there are virtually no Muslims in north-west Orissa, the
construction of Muslim rule in opposition to Hindu kings may be surprising,
but it may also refer implicitly to their tribal neighbours, who are otherwise
conspicuously absent in the myth. As in the case of hierarchy, certain
relationships are hardly expressed verbally, but nonetheless taken for granted
or explained by reference to other communities. Therefore tribals and Muslims
might be implicitly identified as the ‘Others’. This, though in reversed form,
may correspond to the opposition between autochthonous and immigrant, the
tribal population being imagined in opposition to the Aghria as newcomers.
In contrast to this interpretation, however, a reference to Muslims might also

27For ksatra-dharma, see e.g. Zimmermann (1987: 184).

28In the way that Lévi-Strauss described cooking, etc., as medium of transformation in
myths.
316 UWE SKODA

replicate the chronicles of royal families in which a victory over Muslims is

sometimes mentioned.”
In the final part of their migration, the Aghria obey an order by Lord Jagannatha
conveyed by the Gajapati as a Hindu king. Similar myths of divine interventions
in order to legitimize rulers coming from outside—or ‘intruders’—are also found
in other parts of Orissa, and the vamSavali or chronicles of the royal family of
Jeypore may serve as an example here.*® Without wishing to over-interpret the
myth, it can be said that in this way the Aghria rationalize their share in
consolidating the rule and increasing the revenue of Hindu kings in tribal areas,
which they may also have started to imitate, as well as being agents of an ongoing
process of Hinduization and peasantiZations.
It is also significant to note that the Aghria are placed in between two centres.
They also have to leave Puri, after they have been assigned a new occupation.
This time, however, they do not escape, but are given a command by Lord
Jagannatha, and thus leave in obedience to a divine decision. It is this divine
order—combined with a fault of their own, their greed—which justifies their
reduction in status: warriors turn into peasants; the stick replaces the sword.

warrior peasant
sword stick

However, the Aghria’s myths are not just apparently simple and straightforward
stories, which reflect only past ‘grand events’,*' and provide an explanation for
a perceived fall.*? They are not simply representations of empirical facts, but are
rather characterized by various inversions.*’ In my view, a central paradox of the
myths concerns the relationship between the Aghria and the Disandhni, their
bards. On the one hand, the Aghria are regarded as the elder brothers of the
Disandhri. However, the distinction between elder and younger found here, and
known from various parts of Orissa and Middle India, is not only related to the
domain of kinship and biological age but also to a difference in status, the elder
being in a hierarchically superior position.** This seems to be reflected occasionally
in local characterizations of the Disandhri as sG@n (small, ‘junior’) in relation to
the Aghria, on whom they are dependent and who are bad (big, ‘senior’). The
superior Aghria provide their younger brothers with their means of survival,
offering ideally a tenth of their harvest to them as their share (bha@g;* hence the

"For the Jaipur dynasty see Berkemer (1993: 212).

*“Schnepel 2002, 148f.
*' Thapar 2000a, 755.
The theme of decline in low caste myths is quite frequent and occasionally combined
with one’s own decisions leading to the fall (see also O’Flaherty (1988 [1976]: 19-21).
See Lévi-Strauss (1992 [1973]).
“Pfeffer 2000, 342.
Similar traditions of offering Y/) known as bhag during feasts are found as well among
Rona in Koraput indicating that such a tradition might be common in tribal society too (L.
Guzy: personal communication).
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY 317

name ‘Disandhri’ is derived from ten, dis ‘ten’, via dos, = ‘ten’).*° Thus a material
dependence is clearly expressed in the myth and related to the elder-younger
distinction. On the other hand, the Disandhri are ascribed the task of guarding
the sacred thread (paita), which the Aghria had to remove in order to turn to
agriculture and start ploughing. Obviously ploughing cannot be combined with
the standards of purity required for wearing the sacred thread, which the Disandhri
still wear today. This differentiation of status, related to the use of ploughs, is
found among Brahmans in Orissa as well, the Vedic or Sdsana Brahmans, who
are only engaged in their ritual functions, claiming superiority over the Oriya or
‘plough’ Brahmans, who have been influential in introducing the plough to the
‘tribal frontier’.*’ Thus a second conflicting hierarchy of purity is contained within
the myth: the Disandhri as the younger brothers being relatively purer, but
materially dependent on their elder brothers, the Aghria, as shown here.*

higher lower
elder younger
Aghria (eB) Disandhri (yB)
materially independent materially dependent
higher lower
purer more polluted
Disandhri Aghria
sacred thread plough

The ambivalent relationship between the Aghria and the Disandhri is expressed
in terms of the acceptance of food as well. Although the Disandhri, who claim
a higher status than the Aghria because they wear the sacred thread,” should
not, according to their own standards, accept cooked food from the Aghria, in
practice they do. To some extent, the ambiguous position of the Disandhri in
relation to their patrons mirrors the role of the Charan as opposed to the Rajput.
The Charan, as royal bards in western India, are conceptionalized as the ritual
sisters of their Rajput patrons.*° This implies on the one hand an inferior status

36In Chhattisgarh I heard the name Bisandhi indicating a share of Ys (bis = 20) for the
bards. The name Disandhri in its ‘avatar’ dafondi seems to be common in Gujarat as well.
Basu (2000: 49, 62) translates it as ‘poet’ or ‘bard’. However, it is apparently not related
to the number ten there.
“Pfeffer 1978, 425-6.
38For the Brahmanical ideal of non-dependence at which the entire ideal-typical life of
a Brahman is aimed see van der Veen (1973: 47ff).
39 According to some Aghria they might be allowed to accept food from a Disandhri,
but in practice there is hardly any opportunity, because it is the Disandhri coming to the
Aghria also seen as his patron (jajman—see Chap. 4.4.) demanding his share (bhag) and
not the other way round. Other Aghria told that it was strictly forbidden to accept food
from a Disandhri in former times, but a Disandhri was allowed to enter the kitchen of his
Aghria patrons. However, though conceptionalized as brothers every community practices
endogamy.
“Basu 2000, 119.
318 UWE SKODA

for the Charan within the gender hierarchy, while on the other hand the Charan,
as sisters, are the recipients of gifts (dan), just like the Brahmans and ascetics,
which indicates a higher status. Thus, like Charan bards in western India, the
Disandhri seem to stand in a similar structural position to their ‘patron-kin’,
though the ritual idiom in which the relationship is expressed is completely
different.
Without stretching my interpretation of the myth too far, the Aghria-Disandhri
relation resembles the Kshatriya-Brahman pair or king-priest in a wider sense.*!
This seems to be confirmed by the fact that priestly functions are assigned to the
Disandhri in the myth—even though the Disandhri do not fulfil them in reality—
while the Aghrid receive a stick by order of Lord Jagannatha, which itself is a
symbol of rule over the world and of royalty.** Therefore, the Aghria appear as
relatively impure givers in relation to the Disandhri as purer receivers. Thus, like
the Asdiwal myth studied by Lévi-Strauss,” the Aghria myth seems to deal with
a more general societal paradox, one which Trautmann once called ‘the central
conundrum of Indian social ideology’.* In the myth one finds a contradiction
between two conflicting patterns of ordering society or two hierarchies, one from
the perspective of the king as universal giver, the other from that of the relatively
purer priest. The myth reveals this paradox, though in a disguised form, and thus,
following Lévi-Strauss, one might argue that one function of the myth might
well be to acknowledge the existence of an irresolvable paradox, the admission
of a practical antinomy.*
This might be further substantiated by another inversion of the myth. In most
versions it is the eldest among the Aghnia who is described as greedy and who
commits a serious mistake by choosing the golden sword handle instead of the
silver one, a mistake which proves to be so fatal to the Aghria. Keeping this in
mind, it seems that the status as Kshatriya is being opposed to greed here. At the
very moment in which the oldest Aghria is tempted and overwhelmed by his
greed, Kshatriya status in the sense of the Aghria being warriors is lost, and a
decline sets in. Thus this part of the myth might represent a symbolic reminder
of the close link between Kshatriya status and generosity, not greed. Only by
generosity, by giving, can a Kshatriya status be maintained and the ksatra-dharma

*'For critical remarks on the structural interpretation of myths see e.g. Douglas (1988
[1968]: 61ff) who warns particularly of reductions of meanings by imposing binary
oppositions, or Burridge (1988 [1968]: 109) additionally advocating a meaningful dialogue
between culture and myth.
“For the stick as royal symbol see Hardenberg (2000: 21)
“Lévi-Strauss 1992, 197ff.
“Trautmann 1995, 285; Trautmann related the conundrum to two types of exchange:
sacred versus profane and noble versus ignoble. For multiple hierarchies resulting from
these overlapping pattern of classification see also Basu (2000: 45f).
“Lévi-Strauss 1992, 197ff; Lévi-Strauss (1985: 239ff) also argued—perhaps in contrast
to the rather pessimistic Asdiwal myth—that myths may express or ‘communicate’ options,
theoretical solutions or models for certain societal problems out of which one may be chosen
by the society.
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY, 319

be fulfilled—a point which seems to reflect the position of the Aghria as ‘village
kings’ and givers at the centre of a redistributive system* rather than as
warriors.
Now let us turn to the peculiar link between the Chaméar and the Aghria
mentioned in various versions, and stressed particularly by the Chamar, for whom
it is clearly a matter of prestige to be able to link themselves to the dominant
caste. However, this relationship is also acknowledged by the Aghria, particularly
of the Leunia clan.*’ One might argue, as some Aghria do, that the Chamars—who
share their language, Laria, with the Aghria—may have migrated from the same
area or at the same time as the Aghria. This quite close relationship might also
be explained through the fact that in former times the Chaméar used to produce
special leather pots known as puhurda, which were required to lift water and carry
it to the fields. Since such pots were essential for agriculture,* the Aghria were,
to some extent, dependent on the Chamar for their production. In contrast, however,
another opposition seems to be expressed here, one related to the relative impurity
with which the Chamar are associated throughout India. In the myth the Aghria
are endangered by the Mughal, but they find safety in the house of a Chamar.
While the Chamar are usually associated with death, specifically of cattle, in this
myth they appear as the protectors of life from the perspective of the Aghna,
though they may also have to sacrifice their own lives.
Thus one finds the following oppositions:

Ksatriya Chamar
pure impure
high low
needing help offering help
endangered safe/surviving
status temporarily given up status temporarily sought

Being a Chamar, or having an impure status in a wider sense, may offer

protection against life-threatening forces. Interestingly this story is recalled
specifically in the case of death: some Aghria acknowledge that until recently
their forefathers had offered a pinda during their §raddha, although nowa-
days most Aghria reject this practice, which they probably conceive as
degrading.” ~
In addition, the Aghria are not the only peasant caste claiming Kshatriya
descent who are, at the same time, associated with the ‘Untouchables’

“Skoda 2005.
47Some Leunia rationalize the peculiar custom of their clan by stating that they were
the leaders of the Aghria trying to escape, but other Aghria do not agree.
48It is not quite clear, if such pots were used for drinking too, but it is likely that they
were used in ancestor rituals (fraddha) for the Chamar as well.
491 heard that in some cases children of communities like the Gand occasionally teased
their Aghria classmates by calling them Chamar or even beef-eater if they were quarrelling.
The Aghria used to explain it as envy.
320 UWE SKODA

mythologically. In an apparently very similar case of the Nontya of north India,

to which I shall return later, one finds a related myth: the escaping warrior-
heroes are saved by ‘Untouchables’, but at the price of eating the latters’ de-
filing food.”
The very same idea seems to be expressed in the custom of selling sick or
endangered children to lower-status communities in the hope for their survival.
A temporarily impure state or an association with the Chamar in particular is
considered life-protecting.*'

VARIANTS OF THE MYTH ‘

Though not in itself fully coherent, the mythology presented above might be
called the dominant myth transmitted orally as well as in written form. Apart
from these ‘official’ and ‘public’ versions—myths circulated by bards or caste
organization—there are various other ideas and deviating legends about the
origins of the Aghria and their name which contest the dominant myth and
place it in perspective.
The existing variety of competing versions might best be demonstrated with
reference to explanations for the caste name. According to the myth already
mentioned, the Aghria fled from Agra, hence their name ‘Aghria’. However,
different spellings and intonations of the caste name leave room for divergent
interpretations. In written sources the name is spelt ‘Agriha, Agria, Agriha’,
and ‘Agria’ (see the mythical accounts above), but also ‘Agriha’ and Agharia’
or ‘Agharia’. The spelling ‘Agharia’, as in publications of the Bolangir Aghria
Samaj,” is obviously not fully identical with Agra and exhibits inconsistencies.
Spellings such as these (‘Agharia’) may have led some non-Aghria—for ex-
ample, members of the royal family of little kingdoms—to argue that “Aghria’
is derived rather from a-ghar-ia (ghar = house/home; a- = without), which
implies that the Aghria were either homeless after coming to Orissa, or that
they had a low status and were not allowed to enter the houses of others. Some
Aghria accept the former explanation and say that they camped under a Mahua
tree first, which offered them some protection and has been highly respected
in the community ever since. It is further argued that this special relationship
is expressed in the fact that the Aghria place Mahua trees at the centre of their

According to Rowe (1968a: 73) a subsidiary element of the Noniya myth describes
the escape from the battle against Muslims. Being chased by Muslim armies the Noniya
take refuge in the house of an ‘Untouchable’. The Muslim officer demands a proof, that
the Noniya Cauhan are indeed kinsmen of the ‘Untouchables’ as they claim. In order to
prove it the Noniya have to eat the impure food of the ‘Untouchables’—being thus saved,
but defiled. The similarity to the Aghria myth is striking.
*'OQ’ Flaherty (1988 [1976]: 21) mentions interesting cases in which some ‘Untouchable’
communities argue that they were Kshatriya pretending to be Untouchables while fighting
Muslims, but were cursed later on and, therefore, remained ‘Untouchable’.
* See for example a publication of the Bolangir samaj 1976. In more recent publications
of the same samdj the spelling has changed to Ag(a)ria.
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY 321

wedding altars, and that they are also highly venerated among the tribal
communities of the region.*
Other explanations have also been put forward. The Aghria are sometimes
apparently confused with the Aghori or Agnori, a Saiva sect supposed ‘to feed
on human corpses’, which, however, is not the case. In a publication by the
Aghria Samaj of 1983, the name is derived from agra (front, first row) and
hiya (chest), an allusion to the Aghria as brave warriors always fighting in the
front lines of the battle. Similarly, as one elderly Aghrid told me, the name is
based on ag (front) and rahi (to march) thus implying that the Aghria were
the ‘front-runners’ who led the ‘Aryan’ to central India. Some Aghria® are
convinced that their forefathers were iron-smelters and that their name is
logically derived from 4g (fire), though this may represent confusion with a
tribal community of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh,* which has a similar
name.’ Still others believe the Aghria to have been salt-makers, the name in
this version being based on agar, the salt-makers’ sallow pan.** These sallow
pans, Nanda argues, are used in Rajputana and Punjab. This theory may
derive substantiation from the fact that some Aghria or Tihari argue that the
Aghria caste is in fact a mixture of various different castes that migrated to
Orissa together.
This theory may be linked to the possibility that one of the Aghria’s most
important clans, the Leunia, may be related to a caste of traditional salt-makers
turned peasants called the Loniya, Luniya or Noniya, who are found in Uttar
Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar,” Punjab and Sindh,” and perhaps other parts

3For the importance of Mahua (Madhuca longifolia (J. Konig) J.F. Macbr., syn. Bassia
latifolia (Roxb.).) among tribal communities of the region, e.g. among Gand see Elwin
(2000 [1936]: 13).
4Russell and Lal 1975, 13; see also Risley 1981, 10.
Patel (1995).
Elwin (1991 [1942]: 73) considers at least some segments of the Agaria as sub-tribes
of the Gond.
57In one case an Aghria believed that their name was created under British influence.
According to this line Aghria originally comes from agrarian—the British knowing the
Aghria as good peasants or agrarians. In Raigarh I was told a new way of explaining the
name Aghariya: A(gility) G(anga) H(oly) A(ffability) R(egularity) I(ngenious) Y(eomanly)
A(uthentic).
8For example Nanda 1994, citing Elwin.
59 Apart from that I also heard Aghria say, that there are Agaria salt makers in Gujarat
and that they saw a TV documentary about them. However, I could not gather any further
information. Additionally, many Aghria have heard that the title Patel used by most Aghria
is very common in Gujarat. Though the title Patel is indeed frequently used in Gujarat, e.g.
by Patidar (see Pocock 1972), there is neither another hint at a common origin nor any
other common features, the title being most likely only a superficial common characteristic.
Apart from that other titles used by the Aghria, e.g. Naik, are also widely used among Gand
and no Aghrid sees that as sufficient proof of a common origin.
Rowe 1968a, 1968b.
6'Kurin 1990.
322 UWE SKODA

of India as well. As Rowe mentions of the Loniya residing in Uttar Pradesh,”

these salt-makers are also undergoing a process of upward social mobility and
claiming to be of Kshatriya or Cauhan status. There is also a myth which links
the Loniya to the struggle against Muslim rulers and which ‘explains’ their
subsequent loss of status after their escape from the Muslim armies, which is
almost identical with the Aghria case.® In addition, Kurin describes how, in
Punjab, Nunari—or Nuniya, Luniya, among other spellings—turned from salt-
making to agriculture under British influence at the end of the nineteenth
century and were consequently even included in the category of ‘notified’
agriculturist castes.” ‘
Caste brethren from neighbouring Chhattisgarh do not share the dominant
Aghria myth from Orissa that has been discussed here. During a short survey
among the Aghria of Chhattisgarh (Raigarh and Sarangarh areas), some
significant differences emerged, particularly regarding the link with Puri as
the religious centre of Orissa. Here another point of reference for the migration—
Alkatara, a place in Chhattisgarh—figures prominently, which is not very well
known among the Aghria of Orissa. Asked whether the Aghria® had gone to
Puri, the president of the Aghria Samaj of Raigarh, a frequent visitor to meetings
of the Aghria Samaj of Sambalpur and Sundargarh and therefore certainly
aware of the dominant myth in that area, replied that the traditional Alkatara
Aghria did not go to Puri, but that others went. Other Aghria of the region
confirmed the change in perspective by claiming that the Aghria had come
from Agra to Bilaspur and other parts of Chhattisgarh, but had not gone on to
Puri, while yet others said that the Aghria had come via Sundargarh to Puri

Rowe 1968a, 98ff.

Rowe (1968a: 68ff) analysed the process of upward mobility among the Noniya/
Loniya, arguing that they are originally of Sidra descent, but have acquired wealth by
doing contract work in late nineteenth and twentieth century and claiming Kshatriya/Cauhan
status. Subsequently they started to enhance their status by wearing the sacred thread and
by creating ‘a body of literature which functionally served as a social charter to authenticate
the claims’ (Rowe 1968a: 71). In their myth published by the influential caste organization
from early twentieth century onwards, it is said that in the twelfth century under the Hindu
king Prithviraj of Delhi they defended the kingdom as brave warriors, but were defeated
and had to escape. Now landless they were forced to turn to salt-making. The process
parallelled by an improving economic position is conceived as having reclaimed a nghtful
status.
“Kurin 1990, 989ff; Kurin further describes the different developments of Hindu and
Muslim segments of the community—the former sticking to their traditional occupation of
salt-making, while the latter turned to agriculture using opportunities to acquire land under
canal irrigation schemes. In order to be eligible under and to benefit from such schemes
Nunari successfully followed a strategy of being included in the Jat category. In addition,
Kurin analyses various folk models that Nunari employ to conceptionalize their own
community. Though it is highly speculative, one can certainly not exclude the possibility
of an Aghria origin as salt makers who turned to agriculture as described by Kurin (1990)
or as indicated by Rowe (1968a, 1968b).
* Unfortunately I could not meet and communicate with these Alkatara Aghria.
 THE AGHRIA AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY 323
and spread over Orissa subsequently. Still others argued that there might have
been different waves of immigration and that although some Aghria might
have gone to Puri, not all of them did so. Thus the link between the Aghria in
Chhattisgarh and Puri as centre of the Jagannatha cult—a connection so
prominent in Orissa itself—is rather weak in Chhattisgarh. Some Aghria in
Chhattisgarh whom I questioned had no idea whatever about any mythological
link between the Aghria and Puri or Jagannatha, which is not surprising given
their greater geographical distance from the coast of Orissa. However, as far
as I know no other religious centres feature in Aghria myths from Chhattisgarh.
Instead, here, links with other communities are mentioned, such as the Kurmi,
although their proposals for marriages with the Aghria have been rejected by
the latter.

CONCLUSION

Beginning with the long genealogy given in the first part of a dominant myth,
the Aghria highlight their descent from the moon and later from Bidur as a
leading mythical figure in the Mahabharata. Subsequently a change in
profession is described in the second part, linked to migration from one political
centre, namely, Agra, to another, politico-religious centre, namely, Puri, the
two locations being sharply contrasted. Through the combination of a divine
order from Lord Jagannatha and a fault of their own, the Aghria are forced to
move into a peripheral region between these centres. However, the myths
presented here correspond only very loosely at best to historical facts, as the
case of Adil Shah documents.
The Aghria perceive of their position as being in between, not only in the
geographical sense, but also in terms of status. Their mythical migration as a
transformative process expresses a perceived decline in status, from warriors
to peasants. Similarly the Kshatriya status they lay claim to is not unambiguous
in their own stories and is contested by others. Given the history of the Aghria
from the end of the nineteenth century on the village level, they established
themselves fairly successfully as landowners and ‘village kings’, as has been
discussed elsewhere.” One might argue that the rise of the Aghria in the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries might be related to a concurring myth
describing a great past. The cases of the Noniya in north India and of other
communities have shown that a process of upward mobility is quite often
reflected in an elaborated ‘caste history’ published by an influential caste
organization. Thus a process of Kshatriyaization might be discovered among
the Aghria, who share many features with the Noniya. In contrast to the Noniya,
however, the Aghria have not only an influential caste council trying to enhance

That does not mean, however, that Jagannath is not worshipped in many parts of
Chhattisgarh (see also Babb 1975: 144).
§7Skoda 2005.
Rowe 1968a.
324 UWE SKODA

their caste status by publishing a ‘caste history’. They also have their traditional
bards who narrate their myths and in turn may be considered important for
status as well.
In addition, the Aghria myths of which written sources exist from the early
twentieth century onwards appear to reflect and perhaps imitate earlier
vamSsavali or chronicles of the ruling families of the feudatory states of Orissa.
These family chronicles and the Aghria myths have certain features in common,
such as conflicts with Muslims or a divine intervention determining the fate
of the protagonists. Therefore, the existence of such myths among the Aghria,
seen as peasants-turned-village kings in predominantly tribal areas, may indicate
the spread of the ideas and structures of kingship on this tribal frontier.
Finally, what Aghria mythology does not express is also significant. In the
myths discussed here, the Aghria are linked to Brahmans on the one hand and
to Chamér on the other, that is, to the extreme poles of caste society. However,
no direct reference is made to tribal society, to their immediate neighbouring
communities. This link is completely absent, suggesting that the Aghria firmly
perceive and maintain their roots in caste society, though these are simultaneously
extended into tribal society.

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 CHAPTER 15

Interrogating Stereotypes: Exploring the

Princely States in Colonial Orissa*

BISWAMOY PATI

Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish

between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historiography
has not yet won this trivial insight. It takes every epoch at its word and
believes that everything that it says and imagines about itself is true.
MARX and ENGELS, The German Ideology

INTRODUCTION

This paper examines the historical basis of labels attributed to the andharua
mulakas or ‘dark zones’ of Orissa. While popular memory remembers the
people in the princely states as garhjatias who accepted and tolerated their
despotic chiefs and were Dhenkanalias (a term used disparagingly to describe
the people of the state of Dhenkanal), the question of whether the terror struck
by these despots has any empirical historical basis or is a part of a fantasized
nationalist construction needs to be examined. This becomes necessary in.a
climate in which there seems to be some re-thinking of the magnitude of the
problems in the former princely states or zamindaris in colonial India.' Yet
another stereotype relates to the personal world of the princes, namely, their
education, exposure to the West and interest in reforms, which needs to be
contextualized within the real world in which the bulk of the people in the
state lived.”
Outlining the details of some of the princely states of Orissa, this chapter
examines the problems posed by a feudal system that rested in the lap of
“I would like to thank the participants in the Orissa Research Programme conclave at
Salzau (13-18 May 2003) on ‘Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities’ for their
suggestions and comments. I would like to dedicate this paper to Prof. Hermann Kulke.
'It would not be possible to distinguish rigidly the princely states from the zamindaris
or even so-called British Orissa without being trapped by the classification strategies of
colonial discourse. In factual terms, Orissa had 24 princely states that were incorporated
into the province in 1947-8.
2B. Ramusack, 1996, refers to reformatory health initiatives, without any reference to
the basic questions related to the resources that were utilized in these projects and the
problems they posed. As I. Copland (1997, 5), puts it, truly vicious rulers were rare; he
points to how some of them were educated at Aligarh, Oxford, etc.
328 BISWAMOY PATI

colonialism and how this impacted upon the day-to-day lives of the common
people. Colonial and nationalist sources, as well as those of the Prajamandal
movement and oral evidence collected from interviews, have been explored
for this chapter. Some of the typical points of argumentation are described in E

order to interrogate constructions of post-Orientalist Orientalism that tend to

romanticize the princely rulers and in turn gloss over the despotic order in
these enclaves.’

THE SETTING

The princely states of Orissa were created on the permanent settlement model.
Let us begin by examining the agrarian and social structure in the seven princely
states that form the focus of this study, and start with Dhenkanal. In 1804 the
state of Dhenkanal entered into an agreement with the British. In 1849 it had
its first revenue settlement. The gross rental (land) of the state increased from
Rs. 63,316 in 1846 to Rs. 2,39,347 in 1923. Interestingly, the peshkush paid
by the state to the colonial government was only Rs. 5,099. At the top was the
‘invisible’ colonial government, followed by the raja. This state had no
zamindars. The dominant section of the state comprised people holding khanja
(charitable) and lakhiraj (rent-free) tenures as well as holders of brahmottar,
debottar and paikan jagir \ands. These were land grants to Brahmans, specific
idols to facilitate worship and the ‘martial’ Paika caste, respectively. They
were held chiefly by Brahmans and Kshatriyas. Rarely did they cultivate their
own lands but got others to do it for them. The state depended on the sarbarkars
(revenue officers enjoying privileges) to collect land revenue and other ces-
ses as well as help out in the administration. They received commissions of
12.8 per cent for the land revenue and 6.4 per cent for the forest cess. Their
posts were hereditary, but they could be removed by the state.
The raiyati tenures comprised thani (resident), pahi (non-resident), chandna
(a non-agricultural homestead) and paikali. The paikali tenures, which were
originally tax-free, came to be taxed under the 1923 Settlement. These paikali
tenures were held by Paikas (feudal warriors). The thani raiyats were mostly
Chasas, the largest caste group in the state. There were some raiyats who held
the lands of occupancy. These raiyats were purely tenants-at-will and had no
occupancy rights. Some adivasis (like Savaras, Gonds, and Kandhas) and some

*Most of the princely rulers of Orissa invented their past through their rajabansabalis
(i.e. accounts of their family histories). This was a process that saw a virtual competition
among the princely rulers to prove their ‘ancientness’ and in many cases establish links
with the martial ‘Rajput’ tradition of north India, being prompted by colonialism’s desire
to classify the states; ‘Brief Histories of Each of the 24 Feudatory States (1909)’, can be
cited as a classic example to prove the point being made here. The trend to play down the
oppressive component has its origins in some of the earlier works on the subject, like
Ramusack (1978) and Copland (1997). Bhagavan (2003) is deeply influenced by a spirit
of romanticism and is a victim of ‘modernity’ in his examination of the princely states of
Baroda and Mysore. I am using the term ‘feudal’ here in a loose sense.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES 329

Untouchables (like Panas, Bauris, and Dombs) held lands which they were
not supposed to sell to non-adivasis or upper castes, respectively. At the bottom
were the agricultural labourers, mostly Panas and most probably some adivasis,
invisible in the settlement reports. These agricultural labourers were called
haliyas and were recruited around March for one year. They were paid a loan
in cash and paddy by their employers, which formed the basis of an ‘agreement’
for them to work. They were also paid three manas of paddy per day and were
given a small plot of land (about a quarter of an acre) or something in kind,
in lieu of the plot. The female agricultural labourers or kamtunis were not
given these plots of land. There is evidence of bethi, begar (both forms of
forced labour) and rasad (free supply of provisions).*
As for Talcher, this state made a treaty with the British government in 1848.
The state paid a tribute of about Rs. 1,040, though its land revenue collection
rose from Rs. 21,290 in 1846 to Rs. 58,971 by 1913. As in Dhenkanal, the
colonial establishment was at the top, but in real and visible terms since the
state had coal deposits which were mined. The chief controlled the state, which
had no zamindars in the state. Land grants were held by the dominant castes.
The sarbarkars collected the land revenue as well as other levies and managed
the administration. Their position was similar to that of their Dhenkanal
counterparts. The raiyati tenures comprised the thani, pahi, and chandna. The
Chasas, who were the dominant agricultural caste, constituted nearly 37 per
cent of the state’s population. The majority of the raiyats were ‘average’
(middle peasants), very few well-to-do (‘rich’ peasants). Most of the agricultural
work was done by the members of the peasant family themselves. There were
few under-raiyats and some of them had raiyats under them, who were tenants-
at-will. Their rents were paid in cash or kind (sanja/bhag). The agricultural
labourers were composed of Panas and some adivasis like Savaras, Gonds and
Kandhas. Male agricultural labourers were paid 4 annas and females | anna
per working day. Some of the Panas settled down as peasants on small plots
(‘poor’ peasants). The state extracted bethi and begar. Besides, the chief
boasted of the kankar collection during the Naanka (1866) famine, which he
expected would yield a great profit.
The state had some workers in the coal mines and the railway system, who
came mostly from the de-peasantized section of the state’s population and
people from outside. Coal was an important resource from the point of view
of the colonial establishment throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth
centuries.’ What needs to be borne in mind is that the existence of coal mines

‘Final Report on the Settlement of the Dhenkanal Feudatory State, 1966, 11-14; 24-8;
40. Memoranda on the Indian States, 1930 (1931, 222-3) gives us the amount of the
peshkush; R.K. Ramdhyani, n.d., 77-82.
5Report on the Land Revenue Settlement 1911-1912 Talcher State, 1963, 13, 21-2, 31-5,
43, and Completion Report of the Talcher State Revision Settlement Season 1928-9, n.d.,
13-14, 19; Ramdhyani, n.d., 280-6; ‘Confidential History of Talcher State (1926)’. The
details of the kankar tax are not known. It seems to be derived from kankar, which means
330 BISWAMOY PATI

explains both the visible presence of colonialism and the importance attached
to Talcher by it.
Ranpur state had almost the same agrarian structure as the two other states
just studied. The first Settlement of 1877-9 was followed by the 1880-1
Settlement, which expected the peasants to pay three-quarters of the assessed
jama in cash and the remaining quarter in kind. This was followed by the 1899
Settlement, which formally abolished the system of grain rent and saw the
intervention of the colonial government in a big way, leading to the appointment
of a diwan. There were no zamindaris in the state, and the land grants were
roughly similar to those of Dhenkanal and Talcher.
What, perhaps, ought to be mentioned here is the existence of a set of
khanjadars who were of the Kshatriya caste and descendants of the chief’s
family. Their khanjas (land grants) were privileged enclaves where they wielded
power and authority. They collected taxes through their agents, paying a quarter
to the chief. The sarbarkars under them were paid a commission of 5 per cent
and some of the khanjadars performed this role. The raiyati tenures were of
similar categories and the raiyats were mostly Chasas. The raiyats of
khanjadars, however, had no permanent rights over their land, i.e. they could
not sell it. We have no evidence of the caste composition of the under-raiyats,
and we only know that they had no rights and could be ejected. It is possible
that some adivasis, like the Lodhas, Kandhas and Savaras, held some of these
tenures. The agricultural labourers were composed chiefly of Panas, although
other Untouchables like the Dombs, Chamars, Bauris and Hadis perhaps also
performed this role. Some adivasis were most probably agricultural labourers.
Along with several levies, the state extracted bethi, begar, magan (forced
contributions) and rasad (forced supply of various items).°
The first reference to the joint drive to appropriate resources was premised
on the colonial administration’s demand for wood needed to manufacture salt
in the 1850s. In 1855 the durbar, we are told, demanded a high price for
supplying this. In 1877 its diwan admitted to some of the oppressive levies,
including hooba and sadabart, two taxes that amounted to 17 “4 seers of paddy
per bigha of land owned, the reason for which was ‘not known’. In addition,
basanel was collected on the basis of each plough owned. Levies like foila (at
5 annas per head), 5 seers of oil per mill from Telis (oilmen), 2 annas from
each house for the rathajatra, along with fees on the remarriage of widows,
were also imposed. The inhabitants of the state were expected to offer bheti,
sunia and ank. Each village had to provide three cartloads of vegetables on
certain Hindu festivals like Dutiya Ausa and Charkhai, along with a general

a long-handled spade. Perhaps it was a form of forced labour which was extracted during
the 1866 famine, since we are told how the chief ‘had got Villiers & Co. to agree use it in
their works’, p. 10. The Report on the General Administration of the Tributary Mahals of
Orissa for the Year 1890-1, 9, mentions that Talcher had large deposits of coal.
°G.N. Singh, 1963, 10, 32-6, 61-71; it was mentioned that the land revenue had gone
up by 40.5 per cent over the 1899 Settlement (ibid. 57); Ramdhyani, n.d., 82-92.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES . 331

levy on Shree Panchami (a religious festival of the Hindus). By 1894 the durbar
sought to impose further restrictions on the use of the forests by the inhabitants
of the state, a point that indicates the massive profits extracted from this sector.
In addition, efforts were made to increase rent collection above the fixed
amount (viz., a quarter of all produce in kind).’
As for Nilgiri, in 1809 its chief agreed to pay an annual tribute of Rs. 2,108
to the British government. The proceeds of the land revenue increased fivefold
between 1850 and 1920. The agrarian structure of Nilgiri was almost similar
to the other states under discussion. There was a marked absence of big
landlords. The state had a similar pattern of land grants and raiyati tenures.
The subtenants had the same position. Some jagirs were held by adivasis, in
exchange for which they were expected to contribute unpaid labour to the
state. These adivasis were mostly Bhumij, Bhuiyans, Kols and Santals. The
agricultural labour force of the state was composed of these adivasis and Panas.
Their wages were mostly in kind. Besides begar, a number of cesses were
imposed.*
Mayurbhanj, the next state to be considered, was the largest princely state
in Orissa. Its alliance with the British had been tested by confrontations between
the East India Company and the ruler of Nagpur. This formed the basis of a
relationship that was formalized in 1912, when the durbar agreed to pay a
peshkush of Rs. 1,001 per year. Mayurbhanj had plenty of resources and had
the largest income among Orissa’s princely states, which stood at Rs. 29,41,000
in the 1930s. It had a zamindari, Kaptipada, which had been under it since
1890.’
Mayurbhanj poses serious problems for historians, especially due to the
lack of sources, the settlement reports for this state not being available. Along
with this, several factors conceal the internal order of exploitation.'° I will try
to discuss some typical aspects of exploitation on the basis of the empirical
evidence available. It can perhaps be mentioned here that one of Mayurbhanj’s
chiefs, Sri Ramachandra Bhanja, was the first president of the Orissa Sammilani
(who delivered the first presidential address in the Cuttack session in 1903),
which championed the cause of the unification of the Oriya-speaking tracts."
This body was a congregation of the Oriya middle class, which joined the

7‘Confidential History of Ranpur State’, R/2-306/1 3.

Final Report on the Nilgiri Settlement 1917-22, 1922, 34-41; 51, Ramdhyani, n.d.,
195-200. B. Das pointed to the absence of ‘big’ landlordism in the state and characterized
it as 2 ‘small peasant’ economy (interview 1982).
*Senapati and Sahu 1967, 72-5, 84; Memoranda on the Indian States, 1932 (1933) puts
the average annual revenue at Rs. 28,20,000; the payment to the government was Rs. 1,068,
an increase of Rs. 67 over what had been paid in 1812, as mentioned earlier (ibid., 222-3).
Mahtab et al. 1939, 218.
Tn fact, it is worth pondering whether the omission of Mayurbhan) from Ramdhyani
(undated) which examines almost all the princely states of Orissa, is a mere coincidence
or a result of this process.
"'Senapati and Sahu 1967, 81.
332 BISWAMOY PATI

princes and the zamindars of Orissa. Alongside, the post-colonial middle class
and bureaucrats like Nilamani Senapati, the pioneer who compiled the data
relating to the District Gazetteers of Orissa, hardly spoke of there being any
unpleasant features in Mayurbhanj. After all, many like him were part of an
order that had been patronized by the durbar and its educational intervention.’
These sections have contributed significantly to concealing the structure of
oppression and virtually legitimizing it. These two features need to be borne
in mind while exploring the structure of exploitation at Mayurbhanj.
That everything was not going well for the people becomes clear from their
anger in the context of the settlement operations in early 1866, when the
Naanka famine hit Orissa, especially the coastal tract. The people of Bamanghatty
and Uparbhag were particularly affected by the harassment of the settlement
officials. The anger of the adivasi population, comprising Santals, Bhumijs,
Kols and Hos, was also directed against the Hindu population of Gaudas,
Chasas and Mahantis who had taken over their lands. While the officiating
superintendent of the feudatory states, T.E. Ravenshaw, is accused of being
‘unwilling to see starvation’ (due to the famine), it is vital to see this discontent
as a result of the settlement operations in the volatile context of the famine,
which polarized the anger of the state’s population. Moreover, it also needs
to be emphasized that various institutions created during the rule of Krushna
Chandra Bhanja (1867-82), like the jail and hajat system, the charitable
dispensary and the postal system, also created new burdens on the people."’
The laudatory references to Sri Ramachandra Bhanja increasing the forest
revenue from Rs. 30,000 to 1,50,000 per year can similarly be taken as il-
lustrating the mechanism of exploitation that troubled the adivasis. After all,
the adivasi rebellion that shook the state in May 1917 had a pre-history of
economic hardship to which the adivasi population of the state was exposed—
increasing pressures, alienation of land and the loss of forest rights—which
was triggered by forced recruitment for the First World War. Even after being
assured about the recruiting operations, the Santals continued to hold mass
meetings. These gatherings ‘discuss[ed] sundry grievances with regards to
some features of the administration’, a point which illustrates the pressures on
the people of the state. The context had a special significance with regard to
the colonial presence in Mayurbhanj. Thus, the sudden death of Sri Ramachandra
Bhanja in 1912 led to a minority, and the state came directly under the colonial
establishment till 1920.'*

Tbid., 80-1. Thus we are told that the Maharaja improved the school which produced,
among others, three Indian Civil Service officers, viz., Nilamani Senapati, Rabindranath
Bannerjee and Satyendra Mohan Dhar, and one Indian Education Service officer.
'Tbid., 338-9.
‘“Ibid., 79-82; Report of the Indian States Committee 1928-29, 1929. During this time
the state was under the Court of Wards. The Report on the General Administration of the
Tributary Mahals of Orissa for the Year 1890-91, 9, refers to the presence of iron ore; this
undoubtedly made Mayurbhanj important from the point of view of colonialism.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES - . 333

Gangpur, however, had a structure that was quite different from all the
states we have discussed so far. Gangpur received a sanad from the British
government in 1827. The relationship between the colonial government and
the chief was regulated by the sanad granted in 1889, which was renewed in
1905 when it was transferred from the Central Provinces to Orissa, and a
political agent was appointed to assist the chief, this indicating the direct
presence of colonialism. The state paid Rs. 10,000 to the colonial government.
Nevertheless, the land revenue tapped by the state can be judged from the
following table:
Name of area Land revenue Land revenue demand Percentage
under the chief demand before the _—_ after settlement in Rs. increase
1929-36 settlement (appx.) (appx.)
in Rs. (appx.)
Khalsa 110,257 149,861 36 %
Zamindaris:
Nagra 27,116 38,538 42 %
Hemgir 11,371 18,786 65 %
Sargipali 4,691 6,962 48 %
Sarapgarh 1,855 2,583 39 %
Hathibani 5,889 8,956 52%
Total 161,179 225,686 (avg.) 47 %

Moreover, by the 1940s the total revenue of the state was Rs. 8.22 lakh.
The raja of Gangpur had the Khalsa land directly under him. These were
originally leased out to gountias for five years in lieu of cash. These gountias
had taken over villages reclaimed by the adivasis, and it appears that they were
mostly the affluent section of the adivasis. However, by the 1890s the preference
for such leases was being given to Aghrias and Telis (non-adivasis) of
Sambalpur. Given the logic of the system, the gountias enjoyed privileges in
terms of lands (bhogra), and there were no limits on how much they could
collect from the peasants. Then there were the customary land grants as in any
other state. The state had five zamindaris: Nagra, Hemgir, Sargipalli, Sarapgarh
and Hathibari. These were privileged landed elements, who did not have to
encounter problems like the ‘sunset law’. They paid tekauli to the chief, which
amounted to only 5 per cent of the amount they collected; this was raised to
10 per cent in the 1936 Settlement. The zamindars had various privileges and
enjoyed a number of rights. They were originally Bhuiyans, but distinguished
themselves from their tribesmen by calling themselves Khandayat Bhuiyans.
Below them were the ganjhus or village headmen, whose ancestors had cleared
the forests and who were the patriarchal heads of families. The fact that most
of them were Bhuiyans implies the possibility that they had received land
grants. There were two main kinds of ganjhu: khuntkalti and thica. These
headmen were the intermediaries between the zamindars and the tenants. They
were given 45 per cent of the collection as their commission and had some
334 BISWAMOY PATI

privileges in land too. Below them were the sub-ganjhus and sikmi gountias,
who assisted the head ganjhus. The chief also had three parganadars under
him: Raiboga, Erga and Daldali. Raiboga paid 50 per cent of the collection to
the chief, while the parganadars of Erga and Daldali themselves decided the
amount they had to pay. These parganadars had a large number of villages
under them; they had absolute rights like the zamindars and enjoyed rent-free
lands. They either collected taxes directly or used the services of gountias.
The evidence available is extremely meagre, but one can perhaps deduce that
these parganadars were also adivasis. There was no distinction between the
thani and pahi raiyats. There were chandna raiyats as well. The Aghrias were
the chief cultivators of the state. They had occupancy rights but could be
removed by the gountias or ganjhus for failing to pay rent. Some peasants
who tilled the bhogra or nijchas lands were tenants-at-will, as were those
under-raiyats who held the lands of others. Along with a host of cesses, the
state extracted bethi and begar.
The agricultural labourers came mostly from the adivasi population and
were composed of Mundas, Bhuiyans, Oraons, Gandas and Kisans. Their
wages varied from 3 annas a day for men to 2 annas a day for women. Some
of the adivasis resorted to rice cultivation. It is interesting to note that as late
as 1911 there is evidence of Karuwas, who were food-gatherers and hunters,
bartering forest products for food.'* :
Kalahandi, the next princely state under discussion, had five zamindaris:
Karlapat, Mahulpatana, Madanpur-Rampur, Lanjigarh and Kashipur.
Interestingly adivasi rebellions and their ‘management’ provided the starting
point for the links with colonialism. Kalahandi came directly under colonial
rule in 1863, and this was formalized by the sanad of 1867 and complemented
by the two summary settlements of 1883 and 1888 under the direct supervision
of the colonial establishment, which had taken over Kalahandi’s administration
in 1882. Incidentally the railway line linking Kalahandi with Rajnandgaon
was inaugurated in 1883. Kalahandi seems to have been a prize catch for the
Empire, given that it was the only Orissan princely state to be granted a nine-
gun salute in the nineteenth century.’
The power structure was dominated by the not so visible colonial ad-
ministration, except during the 1880s, when the state was taken over by the

'SJ. Mukherjee 1938, 17-19, 29, 33, 41-6; and Ramdhyani, n.d., 82-92. There were 907
ganjhus and gountias in the state; 19 per cent of them were Bhuiyans and 15 per cent were
Agharias. Besides upper castes (Brahmans and Kshatriyas) there were low castes and
Untouchable ganjhus and gountias (ibid., 18-19). Memoranda on Indian States, 1931,
222-3, mentions the amount paid by the state to the British.
'©J, Das 1962, iii; The Imperial Gazetteer, 1908, 293; Thus, Memoranda on the Indian
States, 1932 (1933, 232) informs us that Mayurbhanj was granted a nine-gun salute status
for services in connection with the First World War on | January 1918; Land takeovers
without payments continued; thus Ramdhayani, n.d., 112, cites a 1928 case, when land was
acquired to build a railway line without any compensation being paid.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES 335

colonial administration at the top, followed by the chief who had five or six
zamindars (who were members of the ruling family) under him. The raja held
the Khalsa land directly under him and granted maufi tenures to gods and
Brahmans. The state paid a paltry peshkush to the British, which amounted to
Rs. 16,000 in 1938. However, the resources siphoned off were massive. Thus,
in 1894 the total income of the state was Rs. 1,1 1,000. In 1933-4 its total land
revenue alone was about Rs. 2,12,698. And, by 1938 its total income stood at
Rs. 6,25,000. Consequently, in a period of forty-four years, viz., 1894-1938,
the total income of the state increased more than five times.
The magnitude of the problem can also be judged from the level of
enhancement after the settlements. Thus, the 1911 Settlement led to a 30 per
cent enhancement for the villages, with a 50 per cent increase for individual
peasants. Similarly, the 1922 Settlement was marked by a 60 per cent increase
for the villages and 100 per cent rise in the tax paid by the raiyats. Also, the
land tax in Kalahandi was higher than in the neighbouring states.'’ The
exploitative system was also perfected by the zamindars, who had sub-
zamindars under them. The zamindars were quite powerful and levied their
own tolls and taxes. The colonial administration was closely aligned with the
zamindars, whose presence by the twentieth century was felt in the remotest
comers of the state.'*
At the village level, the Brahmans and the Kulta gountias dominated the
power structure. These were the landed elements who also dominated
money lending and the grain trade. There was only one type of ryotwari tenure
in the state. One should mention here the indigenous internai exploiters within
adivasi society, who either sought upward social mobility and became integrated
into the caste system, or else continued to identify themselves as adivasis.'
The gountias were landed elements. Every village was held by a gountia,
and the maufi villages had sikmi gountias. The built-in logic of parasitism can
be grasped if one keeps in mind the fact that gounti rights were frequently
auctioned off to the highest bidder. The power of these gountias pivoted around
their tax-collecting role, with which came vital privileges. They owned the
best land (bhogra). They could reclaim wasteland and take over land surrendered
by ejected peasants. They were supposed to construct water sources, and

'7J, Das 1962, 12, 16; Ramdhyani, n.d., 112, 115. It should be noted that Mahtab et al.
(1939, 195) refer specifically to the high rents collected at Kalahandi compared to the other
Western Orissan states like Patana. Thus, the highest rent collected at Patana was Rs. 1-8-0,
whereas at Kalahandi it was Rs. 6-11-0.
'8Ramdhyani, n.d., 110-11; The Imperial Gazetteer, 294; out of the total of 69,194
holdings in 1946-50, Brahmans had 2,461, Kultas had 2,196, Gonds had 13,725, Kandhas
had 11,910 and Dombs had 12,350. Although the Brahmans and Kultas together had 4,657
holdings, land was heavily concentrated in their hands, with the others having smaller
holdings. Interestingly, as mentioned by R.K. Ramdhyani, n.d., some of the settlement
reports of the zamindaris were not available (ibid., 110).
'9J. Das 1962, 3; Senapati and Kuanr 1980, 99; Ramdhyani, n.d., | 12.
336 BISWAMOY PATI

originally were rewarded by the durbar for these. However, although the water
systems were built by forced labour, these were ‘stolen’ from the people
subsequently. The gountias’ power stretched, without any legal basis, into the
dongarla area. They tapped the dongarchasis and appropriated the resources
that were thus obtained.”°
Large parts of Kalahandi were not surveyed even up to the 1940s. Most of
the dongarla area was part of this unsurveyed region. Although not assessed
systematically, the adivasi inhabiting them were sometimes taxed on the seed
capacity of the strips they had cleared for cultivation or the number of ploughs
and axes they owned. In the twentieth century, settlements were made quite
frequently (every six to twenty years) with these people. The mode of assessment
and the regularity of the settlements, coupled with the nature of cultivation,
made things extremely difficult for the people in dongarla areas.
The villages had some officials such as the jhankar, chaukidar and nariah,
and washermen and barbers held service tenures. The occupancy tenants had
no rights. Some of them leased out portions of their land to others in return
for paddy or cash rents. The sukhabasi were those who held homesteads not
above 0.25 decimals. Together with the agricultural labourers, they worked
for others. The normal working day was eleven hours, for which men got
3 seers of paddy and women half of this in the early part of the twentieth
century. This became 25 paise in 1942 and 37 paise in 1945 for males. The
forced labourers were recruited from among the occupancy tenants, the
sukhabasis and the agricultural labourers.”!
Conventional practices included the recruitment of forced labour. This was
supposedly abolished in 1923 and a cess imposed in lieu. Nevertheless the
practice continued, and what was witnessed was the co-existence of monetization
and feudal exploitation, which crippled the people. Then there was rasad.
Given the fact that the state had monopoly rights on almost everything, anything
ranging from forest products to grain was ‘bought’ for paltry amounts from
the people. Among the other ways adopted for extracting money, we should
mention the innumerable cesses, which assumed alarming proportions between
the 1880s and 1940s. The concept of compensation to those whose lands were
taken over or of remissions and suspensions in years of crisis was not
known.”
Thus what can be seen in the case of the princely states that we have
examined so far is the emergence of a system which was a virtual re-creation
of a dead European feudal model, with a colonial aspect. In fact, it is very
striking that colonial reports and printed materials project these enclaves along
the lites of Europe’s past. Although the princely rulers paid token amounts to
the colonial government, which were almost fixed amounts, they had access

J. Das 1962, 3; Senapati and Kuanr 1980, 99.

**Ramdhyani, n.d., 109, 115; J. Das 1962, 10; Senapati and Kuanr 1980, 234, 269, 274:
J. Das (1962, 11-13) refers to land revenue settlements in 1904-5, 1911-12 and 1922-3.
Ramdhyani, n.d., 112-16; Mahtab et al. 1939, 195.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES | 337

to massive resources which increased with the passage of time. In addition,

most of the exploitative practices—such forced labour, forced supply of items,
rents which were increased with every land settlement, lack of land rights
for the bulk of the peasantry, innumerable levies, low wages, which were even
lower for women, and the enforcement of a monopoly system are sharply
visible. Nevertheless, features like large-scale transfers of lands belonging to
the adivasis, which they made cultivable, are not easily visible.
The existence of the monopoly system, coupled with market fluctuations
and their associated problems like the debt structure, needs further elaboration.
Thus, the debt structure was linked to an extremely vicious network, which
was based on an understanding of prices, and seasons from which recovery
was impossible. The case of Kalahandi can be cited here as an example. Thus,
food grain prices were lowest immediately after the harvest, and dearest
immediately before it. For example, the price of rice fluctuated between 12,130
and 16,800 kg per rupee and that of mandia (millet) between 20,527 and 29,857
kg per rupee in 1912. Similarly, the price of rice rose from 18,660 kg per rupee
in September 1918 to 8,864 kg per rupee inMarch 1919, while that of mandia
rose from 23,325 kg per rupee in April 1918 to 11,662 kg per rupee in March
1919. In 1933-4 the price of rice was 31 seers per rupee in December, but
20 seers per rupee between July and September. In the same period, the price”
of mandia was 40 seers per rupee in April, May, January and February and
32 seers per rupee from July to November and in March. Local factors like
rumours about impending scarcities as well as general features affecting the
colonial economy (viz., the First World War and the ‘Great Depression’) also
exacerbated the situation. And, given these, a harvest ‘boom’ was actually
followed by scarcities, given the hoarding of grain by traders.” Consequently,
it is important to understand that a level of monetization and of associated
capitalist ‘development’, irrespective of how distorted they were, co-existed
with the feudal order, thus making it highly predatory and making life extremely
difficult for the people of the state.
It should also be emphasized that some features, like the preservation of
social hierarchies, though considered very vital, were nevertheless ‘invisible’.
This was because they were rooted in social and cultural practices that were
intrinsically associated with the caste system itself. One should also refer to
patriarchal practices like dowry, which was legitimized by some chiefs. Thus,
by demanding 2 lakhs of rupees for the marriage of his son, the Talcher chief
was legitimizing a practice which was an integral part of the caste system, and
which was a burden for the people of the state.”
In discussing this point, one should refer to customs that ‘integrated’ the
adivasis into the brahmanical order through the Jagannatha cult.” This proved

Senapati and Kuanr 1980, 229-31; J. Das 1962, 3; Report on the Administration of
Kalahandi for 1933-4, n.d., 16.
‘Confidential History of Talcher State (1926)’.
25See, for example, H. Kulke 1993, 93-113.
338 BISWAMOY PATI

to be colonialism’s greatest legitimizer® and was championed by the feudal

chiefs since it served to ‘disguise’ the levies collected during the rathayatra.
It was through features like the Brahmanical order that a system of exploitation
was created. It comprised the chiefs and their ‘martial’ kinsmen (technically
Kshatriyas), along with upper-caste collaborators ranging from Brahmans and
Paikas to Kultas and Chasas (as well as privileged sections from among the
adivasis like the Khandayats) and state officials who exploited the adivasis
and Untouchables. This needs to be linked to restrictions on the use of forests,
grazing, the manufacture of liquor, low wages, a crippling debt structure, and
land transfers in order to grasp the magnitude of the problems faced by these
sections.
It should also be emphasized that the system in the princely states was
designed, preserved, and reinforced by colonialism with the active collaboration
of the feudal chiefs as its junior partners throughout the nineteenth century.
Both were actively involved in siphoning off resources. The system of peshkush,
which formed the basis of the formal links with the princely states, was only
the tip of the iceberg when it came to the question of the ‘external’ draining
away of resources. Colonialism’s looting and plunder included diverse features
that ranged from building railway lines, mining resources like coal to
recruitments made and resources obtained for the First World War.”’
The Oriya middle class provided this structure with administrative inputs
and legitimacy in the early years, even though the situation changed dramatically
in the post-1920s, with the rise of the mass movements, including the
Prajamandal movement, and the rise of a middle class in the princely states,
which questioned the existing order, including the inhuman practices that
existed.“ This explains why features like civil rights, which figured in the
demands of the Prajamandal movement in the 1930s, are invisible in what we
have seen.

THE PROBLEMS

This section examines the typical features taken up by the Prajamandal move-
ment—not the actual forms of struggle that developed—in the late 1930s in
the princely states that I have examined in this chapter. This will serve to
historicize the magnitude of these problems and show what the people of the
state had to live with. |
The Dhenkanal Prajamandal was set up in June 1938. Interestingly, the first

*Tbid., 108-10.
"Here I am not mentioning the Second World War, in which many of the princes and
zamindars of Orissa provided resources, ranging from those collected as ‘War Contributions’
to aircraft.
*This was an all-India body with a presence in the Orissan states. It was associated
with the struggles of the states’ people against the princes and colonialism; see B. Pati
(1993) for details related to the Prajamandal movement in Orissa.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES 339

major issue that was taken up by the Prajamandal was related to the question
of state monopolies. Thus, its first formal decision was to oppose the high
price of pana (betel leaf), which was a popular commodity and a monopoly
item. The formal decision to boycott pana was taken on 2 July 1938. The
Prajamandal finalized its demands very soon after this. These included demands
for civil liberties and representative government, the abolition of bethi, magan,
the monopoly system for certain commodities and the re-structuring of the
forest and tenancy laws. What followed was the stopping of suniya vethi (New
Year’s gift) from 6 September 1938.”
The Prajamandal movement united people from different sections, which
was naturally perceived as a threat by the durbar. Since the state attached a
great deal of importance to the preservation of social hierarchies, it invoked
the caste system to disrupt the peoples’ struggle. Thus, a typical method adopted
by the durbar to counter the Prajamandal movement in 1938 was to divide the
unity of the people by employing Untouchables to beat and arrest people of
high caste.*° This trend was seriously resurrected in post-August 1946 as well.
Thus, while Brahmans who held brahmottar \and grants were promised that
these would be made permanent, simultaneously landless outcastes were
promised lands and were also mobilized to cut the standing crops of Prajamandal
activists and sympathizers from the upper castes.’
In Talcher, the starting point of the Prajamandal movement was also provided
by the hated system of monopolies. In an attempt to promote the sales of a
cloth store owned by the raja’s brother, khaki uniforms were made compulsory
for students in January 1938. This led to a student’s strike.*? The Talcher
Prajamandal was formed on 6 September 1938, and its demands included the
right to form associations, hold meetings, the abolition of bethi, magan and
vethi, modifications of the tenancy and forest laws, and better working
conditions in the collieries. From the early phase of the movement, the direct
presence of colonialism caused the Prajamandal to appeal to the people not to
recognize the durbar and the British authorities. Subsequently, it also set up
small shops to sell those commodities that were declared to be under the
monopoly system.”
The Ranpur Prajamandal’s starting point was devoted to a demand for its
recognition. Subsequently its demands included the recognition of civil,
democratic and social rights, and the abolition of bethi and customary feudal
levies. What needs to be emphasized is that its basic problem was one of mere
survival. The level of intolerance on the part of the durbar, cradled by

29All India Congress Committee Papers (hereafter AICC), file no. G-35, Part 1, 1938,
Statement of Sarangadhar Das, 27 November 1938; S. Pradhan 1986, 99; National Front,
25 September 1938; interview: B. Patnaik 1985.
30AICC, Statement of S. Das, 27 November 1938.
31 All India State People’s Conference (hereafter AISPC), file no. 127.
325. Pradhan 1986, 113.
33 AISPC, file no. 164; National Front, 4 June 1939.
340 BISWAMOY PATI -

colonialism, exploded when Bazellgate, the political agent, was murdered in

the state in January 1939.
Nilgiri was perhaps the only state where the divisive politics of caste
perpetuated by the durbar were challenged in the course of a process which
saw the formation of the Prajamandal itself. Thus, in line with Gandhian ideals
of social reform and Harijan uplift, the practice of organizing an annual din-
ner where people of different castes, including Untouchables, sat and ate to-
gether had originated in 1932 in Ajodhya in Nilgiri. The number of people
participating in this contributory dinner had increased to two thousand by
1937, and Congressmen like Kailash Chandra Mohanty were addressing the
gatherings.*° %
Since this common feasting undermined the basic principle underpinning
the order of caste, which operated on the basic principle of preserving its
associated hierarchies and, in turn, served to preserve the social order, the
durbar decided to act in November 1937. Some of the sponsors of the subversive
dinner were asked to explain why they should not be excommunicated. This,
along with aitempts to prevent meetings, the circulation of radical newspapers
like Krushak and the arrests of left-wing student activists associated with
literacy campaigns, provided the initial spark that led to the foundation of the
Prajamandal.*° What can be seen most clearly in all of this is the feudal order
attempting to assert itself against anything that created possibilities for the
people to unite and question its authority.
Regarding the demands of the Prajamandal more specifically, it should first
of all be mentioned that its list of thirty-one demands included the abolition
of all kinds of bethi, the lowering of rents (to the level of neighbouring Balasore,
which was in British Orissa) and forest rights. It also included the abolition
of restrictions on the manufacture of handia (rice liquor) and the standardization
of rent assessments for adivasis as well as caste Hindus. Subsequently, the
Nilgiri Prajamandal incorporated demands which included the abolition of
forced levies by sahukars, limiting the maximum interest on loans to 25 per
cent, a standardization of measurements for the whole state, and the fixing of
a minimum wage at 5 seers of paddy per day.*’
Mayurbhanj also had a Prajamandal, even though it was largely free of any
major struggles in the explosive phase. Interestingly, the Orissa State Peoples’
Conference named it as one of the best-administered states, though by 1940

“Interview: K. Misra 1984; R. Ram 1986, 113-16. Bazellgate, the political agent of the
Orissa states, was murdered in the state by a crowd. He had panicked, shot at and killed
someone, after which he was disarmed and beaten to death; for details, see B. Pati 1993,
125-6.
8 Nilgiri Praja Andolanara Itihasa, 1981, 64; Krushak, 3 January 1938.
*6National Front, 19 June 1938; Home Political Fortnightly Report, file no. 4/4/1938;
Nilgiri Praja Andolanara Itihasa, 1981, 74.
* According to B. Das (interview 1982), the sahukars gave grain loans in small, Laxman
gaunis and took back repayments in big, Ram gaunis, seeking to justify this on the basis
that Ram was Laxman’s elder brother.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES. 341

it was being admitted that civil liberties had been conceded only after the
Prajamandal movement developed in the princely states.** In 1938, when the
Prajamandal movement developed in Orissa and efforts were being made to
enquire into the conditions of the people in the states, it was admitted that the
adivasi population, which comprised 70 per cent of the people, ‘have real
grievances’. As reported, adivasis like Kols and Bathudis went to meet the
Enquiry Committee at Balasore to express their grievances. These included
bethi extracted to build schools and state bungalows and repair roads; rasad
paid to state officials and during shikar (i.e. hunting expeditions); a road cess
(which was | anna per rupee of rent paid), though carts were not allowed to
use main roads (which were only for motor cars); 4 annas per month per family
as fuel fee; 2 annas per head of cow for grazing cattle in villages outside their
own settlement; a fee of 4 annas per yoke of oxen for obtaining Sal wood for
agricultural implements; a 12 anna cess for fassar (i.e. silk) cultivation; and
a chaukidari tax of between 2 and 5 annas.”
Another point requiring emphasis is the superficiality of the reforms, with
criticism being directed against the monarchical and autocratic rule which
was marked by a sharp contrast between the capital Baripada, where
the ‘administration was polished’, and the other outlying areas. The lack of
irrigation facilities and high land rents—which were not proportionate to the
average produce and much beyond the capacity of the people to pay—caused
serious indebtedness and undermined the stamina of the people. Sardars or
revenue collecting agents used their offices as positions from which to make
profits. When the durbar set up representative institutions called praja sabhas
in 1938 to counter the Prajamandal movement that had swept the princely
states, it was dominated by padhans and mahajans, money- and/or paddy-
lending exploiters, their emergence in the arena of the state-sponsored public
domain illustrating the close links they had with the durbar.
Finally, the ‘Resolution of the Prajamandal’ in its third Annual Session
(14-15 May 1947) under the presidency of Sarat Chandra Das at Pratappur—
which was attended by about 20,000 people, including 1,500 women—offers
us more clues to understanding the problems faced by the people. Besides
thanking the maharaja for joining the Constituent Assembly as it matched the
expectations of the Prajamandal, it also outlined some of the grievances of the
people. Among the important points, the meeting articulated a demand to do
away with all kinds of privileged jagirs and /akhiraj tenures, condemned the
policy of exporting wood—even though the people of the state faced problems

3 AISPC, file no. 127, letter of S. Das, Secretary, Orissa State Peoples’ Conference,
16 March 1940.
39 As Mahtab et al. (1939, 218-19) put it: ‘Evidently the 24 per cent of the Oriya population
in Mayurbhanj who are vocal, are quite satisfied with the administration, though at the cost
of their much less advanced aboriginal brethren. Humanity requires that much more attention
should be given to improve the lot of the aborigines’.
40AISPC, file no. 112, ‘Reforms in Mayurbhanj in Their True Colour’, undated, perhaps
written in 1945-6.
342 BISWAMOY PATI

in obtaining firewood—and called for the immediate enforcement of the Trade

Union Act in the state, since labourers were being exploited. The demand to
allow more than one person to operate transport buses, which carried people
like gunny bags, illustrates the problems associated with the existing system
of monopolies.*!
At Gangpur the immediate issue that precipitated the anger of the people
of the state was the sudden increase in the rate of rent. The revision settlement
that had started in 1928 and was completed in 1936 raised the rent by 100 to
150 per cent above the 1910 Settlement. The main feature of this settlement
was that the whole state was surveyed and all lands assessed. This settlement
hit the Munda adivasis the hardest, since they were ‘irregular’, i.e. shifting
cultivators. Although there was no Prajamandal, the state people submitted a
petition to the rani, the diwan and the tahsildar. The petition demanded the
abolition of bethi and forced levies (which were also hated, since on occasion
people were beaten for failure to provide these), restrictions on land transfers,
the use of the forests and selling of forest products, abolition of the export
cess, the right to use the roads, improvements in irrigation and employment
facilities, and doing away with the income tax (this was the only state which
levied such a tax). A representative government was also demanded. The
demand to sell mahua (an intoxicating drink) indicates not only an attempt to
interfere with a customary adivasi practice, but possibly also anger against the
monopoly system.”
As for Kalahandi, it was in virtual isolation from the nationalist movement
and the Prajamandal-inspired struggles that swept many of the Orissan princely
states. Apudu Sahoo’s attempt to establish an adivasi sevamandal at the
Kashipur zamindari in November 1947 is the only reference to the attempts
to mobilize the people of the state. This effort was directed towards educating
the Kandhas and Dombs and the campaign against begari and the forced sup-
ply of items. The Adivasi Sevamandal was outlawed and the 4 anna Kandha
and Domb recruits of the Congress arrested and beaten.** This implies that
these exploitative practices were not only present, but continued even after
Independence.

CONCLUSION

This paper illustrates that ‘the centres out there’ were indeed centres of
exploitation. The situation was compounded in the case of states like

*' AISPC, file no. 112; as reported, distinguished Congressmen from neighbouring states
attended this meeting, where messages from the prime minister of Orissa and the Socialist
leader, Surendranath Dwivedy, were read out.
“Ramdhyani, n.d., 82-92; Home Political Fortnightly Reports, file nos. 18/2/1939;
18/3/1939; AICC, G-12, 1937-9; AISPC, file no. 127, ‘Orissa State News Bulletin’, a note
prepared by S. Das, 27 April 1939.
“S. Das, file nos. 129-30, 27 November, 1947. One needs to add here that most of the
princely states of Orissa did not experience any major upheavals associated with the
Prajamandal movement.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES 343

Mayurbhanj, Gangpur or Kalahandi, which had zamindaris. This intensified

the scale of the oppression. Our discussion demonstrates how the internal order
of the princely states was closely integrated with the colonial system and the
process of colonial underdevelopment. That both sought to tap resources, drain
the states and exploit the people is quite obvious. What remains disguised,
and hence not so clear, is the manner in which social practices associated with
caste and patriarchy were preserved and reinforced in order to maintain the
social hierarchies, acquire legitimacy and thus obtain access to resources. The
role of the Utkala Sammilani, which united a section of the middle class with
the feudal chiefs and the colonial and post-colonial bureaucrats to conceal this
exploitative order in some of the princely states, needs to be emphasized.
Similarly, another aspect that lies hidden is the distinctly anti-adivasi and
anti-Untouchable orientation of this order. Features like restrictions on the use
of forests as well as the contrasts between these sections and the non-adivasis
and upper castes need to be grasped. Until this happens, historians will be
blind to the hardships faced by these marginalized people, who formed the
dominant section, in terms of population, in all the princely states.
What is apparent here is the drive by the chiefs and colonialism to introduce
aspects of modernity in their states. These efforts were much more nuanced
than they are made out to be and need to be located within the paradigm
of colonial modernity. And, in the context of what has been discussed in
this paper, it would be unhistorical to talk of colonial modernity abstracted
from the phenomenon of oppression—the hallmark of the states examined.
Consequently, this reformatory exercise saw the creation of railway lines,
mines, educational institutions and hospitals, for which land was taken over
without any compensation, along with the extraction of forced labour and
levies.“ Besides, one should not lose sight of the fact that this project of
modernity was in many ways aimed at concealing the oppressive aspects of
the princely states and at securing legitimacy from both colonialism and a
section of the people of the state. At the same time, this project legitimized
the colonial presence in the states. In this sense, my examination of the princely
states of Orissa demonstrates the hollowness of some scholars who appear as
apologists for both the feudal enclaves and their colonial associates.”
Although it would go beyond the scope of this chapter, it should be
emphasized that the situation was hardly any different in the zamindaris of

“It should be mentioned that Mayurbhanj had a railway line that connected its capital
Baripada to the Bengal-Nagpur Railway.
451. Copland (1997, 6) individualizes the issue by talking of the abilities of the chiefs.
As he asserts, the princes could not rule autocratically since the job was simply too big for
any one person, and it was the ‘quality of the bureaucracy that really mattered—in particular
the calibre of the princes’ ministers’. J. Manor (1978, 14) projects the princes and their
advisors as people ‘buffeted by circumstances, people whose plans were often formulated
on the run, or in the dark because of lack of knowledge, people struggling valiantly to
“muddle through”. Besides being too simplistic, such assessments do not grasp the broader
links between these enclaves and the process of colonial under-development. Bhagawan
(2003) and Ramusack (2004) are also affected by the same problem.
344 BISWAMOY PATI

British Orissa. Any difference can perhaps be explained by the depth of the
pre-colonial economic interventions in the coastal tract and colonialism’s
interaction with this region since the eighteenth century, which undoubtedly
served to ‘disguise’ the process, making everything appear to be relatively
smooth and less traumatic. One can end by saying that it is not enough to
criticize the exploiters of the colonial past, since many of these practices haunt
the people in many parts of Orissa even in this post-modern twenty-first
century.

REFEREN CES
All India Congress Committee Papers, Private Papers, file no. G-35, Part 1, 1938; G-12,
1937-9, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi.
All India State Peoples’ Conference, Private Papers, file nos. 112; 127; 164, Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library, New Delhi.
Bhagavan, M. 2003. Sovereign Spheres: Princes, Education and Empire in Colonial India,
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Completion Report of the Talcher State Revision Settlement Season 1928-29, n.d. Cuttack:
Orissa Government Press.
“Confidential History of Talcher State (1926)’, Crown Representative Papers R/2-306/134,
India Office Records, British Library, London.
Copland, I. 1997. The Princes of India and the Endgame of Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Das, J. 1962. Final Report of the Land Revenue Settlement in Kalahandi District Ex-State
Khalsa Area 1945-56, Berhampur: India Law Publication Press.
Das, Sarangadhar n.d. Private Papers, file nos. 129-30, New Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library.
Final Report on the Nilgiri Settlement 1917-22, 1922. Berhampur: Sarada Press.
Final Report on the Settlement of the Dhenkanal Feudatory State Orissa 1923-24, vol. 1,
1966. Berhampur: Swadheen Press.
Home Political Fortnightly Reports, file nos. 4/4/1938; 18/2/1939; 18/3/1939, Delhi:
National Archives of India.
Interviews: Banamali Das, Nilgiri, May 1982; Krupasindhu Misra, Ranpur, June 1984;
Baishnab Patnaik, Dhenkanal, June 1985.
Krushak. 3 January 1938.
Kulke, H. 1993. ‘Legitimation and Town Planning in the Feudatory States of Central Orissa’,
in H. Kulke, Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and South-
East Asia, Delhi: Manohar, 93-113.
Mahtab, H.K. et al. 1939. Report of the Enquiry Committee: Orissa States, Cuttack: Orissa
Mission Press.
Manor, J. 1978. ‘The Demise of the Princely Order: A Re-assessment’, in R. Jeffrey (ed.),
People, Princes and Paramount Power, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Memoranda on the Indian States 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933. Calcutta: Central Publication
Branch, Government of India.
Mukherjee, I. 1938. Final Report on the Land Revenue Seitlement of the Gangpur State
1929-1936, Berhampur: Indian Law Publication Press.
National Front. 19 June 1938; 25 September 1938; 4 June 1939.
Nilgiri Praja Andolanara Itihasa (Oriya; ‘The History of the Nilgiri Prajamandal’) 1981.
Balasore: Nilgiri Prajamandal Compilation Committee.
 INTERROGATING STEREOTYPES 345

Pati, B. 1993. Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in
Orissa 1920-50, Delhi: Manohar.
Pradhan, S. 1986. Agrarian and Political Movements: States of Orissa, 1931-1949, Delhi:
Inter-India.
Ram, R. 1986. Sangrami (‘Freedom Fighter’; Oriya), Cuttack: Nabajuga Granthalaya.
Ramdhyani, R.K. n.d. Report on the Land Tenures and the Revenue System of the Orissa
and Chattisgarh States, vol. 3, Berhampur: Indian Law Publication Press.
Ramusack, B. 1978. The Princes of India in the Twilight ofEmpire, Columbus: Ohio State
University.
———1996. ‘Maternal and Child Health Initiatives: Madras and Mysore, 1880-1947’,
presented at a conference, ‘Medicine and the Colonies’ (Oxford, England, 19-
21 July).
—12004. The New Cambridge History of India, M1 6: The Indian Princes and Their
States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Report of the Indian States Committee 1928-29, 1929. Calcutta: Government of India,
Central Publication Branch.
Report on the Administration of Kalahandi for 1933-34, undated. Kalahandi: Kalahandi
State Press.
Report on the General Administration of the Tributary Mahals of Orissa for the Year 1890-
91, 1891, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
Report on the Land Revenue Settlement 1911-1912 Talcher State, 1963. Cuttack: Orissa
Government Press.
Senapati, N. and Nabin K. Sahu 1967. Orissa District Gazetteers: Mayurbhanj, Cuttack:
Orissa Government Press.
Senapati, N. and D.C. Kuanr, 1980. Orissa District Gazetteers: Kalahandi, Cuttack: Orissa
Government Press.
Singh, G.N. 1963. Final Report on the Original Survey and Settlement Operations of the
Ranpur Ex-State Area in the District of Puri 1943-1952, Berhampur: Sarada Press.
The Imperial Gazetteer, vol. 14, 1908. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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 CHAPTER 16

Divine Possession as a
Religious Idiom: Considering
Female Ritual Practice in Orissa

BEATRIX HAUSER

In academic discourse, people who experience spirit possession are commonly

regarded as having weak personalities vulnerable to exterior forces. They
appear to be under some kind of external control, not only when their body is
taken over by a non-human agent, but also in their daily lives, a feature that
is often identified as a precondition for their possession. This is particularly
so in the case of women, who are considered as the favourite gender of demonic
and divine powers. The at times violent and desperate behaviour while possessed
is interpreted as a reaction to a woman’s lack of recognition in and exclusion
from many spheres of life.' The academic discourse on South Asia is no
exception to this: the cultural phenomenon of spirit possession is overwhelmingly
seen as involving women who are distressed in some way.’
My aim in this article is to question the usual assumption that Hindu women
are purely the passive victims of possession and highlight instead the religious
dimension of these events. I argue that women in southern Orissa consider
divine possession as essentially religious act that shapes and explains their
engagement in rituals, as well as their perspective on Hinduism.’ This argument

'For a review of the anthropological discourse on spirit possession see Boddy (1994),
who largely questions the instrumentality of these events and hence its character as an
oblique strategy of protest. Behrend and Luig (1999) as well as Mageo and Howard (1996)
reflect this debate on the basis of ethnographic examples from Africa and the Pacific
respectively. For a feminist critique on the deprivation theory in the academic discourse
on possession see Sered (1994).
?Fortunately, some recent research provides more nuanced forms of understanding. For
an overview of the present South Asian discourse on possession see the compilations of
essays edited by Assayag and Tarabout (1999) and also by Carrin (1999); cf. Smith (2006,
Chapter 2) for a brief survey of ethnographic studies on deity and spirit possession.
Since my research focus was on the negotiation of female identity in and through
cultural performances, I began to look at how this practice may influence the women’s
self-definitions and self-images (see Hauser, forthcoming a). Initially the project was part
of the Orissa Research Programme and I am grateful to the editors for their invitation to
present my results in this volume. I owe even more thanks to Burkhard Schnepel who
together with others encouraged me to continue with this project in another institutional
348 BEATRIX HAUSER

is not entirely new. Elisabeth Schombucher had already pointed out that in the
academic discourse on South Asia there is a tendency to ignore the reality of
possession as a religious experience.‘ Recently, Frederick Smith argued on
the basis of Indian literature from different ages that ecstatic possession is the
most common form of spiritual expression in India.® His argument certainly
is a challenge to historians of religion, given the fact that several introductions
and general books on Hinduism simply skip the subject of possession.®° However,
even Smith’s criticism of academic scholars—who obviously have difficulties
acknowledging the religious potential of possession’—does not explore the
issue of gender differences. It is undérstood that ‘[p]ossession more often than
not involves the feminine—either women are possessed or men are possessed
by a form of the goddess.’* From a gendered perspective on religion and
identity, this preponderance of women in (some of the) contemporary traditions
of possession in South Asia indeed calls for further investigation.
Focusing on southern Orissa, more precisely the town Berhampur and its
rural surroundings, I shall evaluate a variety of private and public rituals that
may include deity possession.’ It will be shown that from the perspective of
women, possession is a rather common religious idiom that is limited neither
to a specific ritual event nor to a particular class of persons. Although possession
episodes are fairly patterned and also predictable, they create extraordinary
experiences for those overwhelmed as well as for onlookers. Moreover, they
contribute towards a discourse on the power of deities and the necessity of
women’s religious commitment and activities to appease them.'°
The significance of deity possession to women’s religious experiences in
southern Orissa differs from and partly contradicts the notion of female victims
in the academic discourse on possession in South Asia. Taking a close look
at the ways scholars have represented possessed women and evaluated gender

framework. For the presentation of an earlier version of this paper my thanks go to the Max
Planck Institute for Anthropology in Halle, and to Bettina Schmidt for her valuable critique
on this article.
*Schémbucher 2003, 261.
*Smith 2006.
See, for instance, Michaels (1998), an otherwise very recommendable introduction to
Hinduism.
7 Although Social Anthropologists in general classify spirit possession within the religious
realm, they are also likely to focus on its social context rather than considering it as embodied
knowledge by itself. Hence Lambek (1989) calls for a change in the perspective ‘from
disease to discourse’.
*Smith 2006, 153.
*The database for this article derives from participant observation and narrative interviews
during sixteen months of anthropological fieldwork in and around the city of Berhampur,
Ganjam District (five periods in 1999, 2000-1, 2003).
'Elsewhere I had explored how individuals actually perceive deity possession, how
they sense their bodies being overpowered by an exterior force, and in what ways they
personify the divine presence (Hauser 2004b).
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 349

differences concerning the experiential states of those possessed, | shall argue

that the contrast emerging in comparison with accounts of possession from
other parts of the Indian subcontinent is in some degree due to the dynamics
of academic knowledge production itself. Whereas the psycho-medical and
also the sociological ‘explanations’ of possession each have their local
counterpart in folk theory, the religious relevance of possession is a matter of
social contestation. From a ‘high-caste, educated male’ perspective (which of
course is a label which summarizes a variety of views) possession is denied
the status of a religious idiom in its own right. Thus, the apparent importance
given to possession in Orissa may reflect women’s religious practices even
beyond this region, assuming there is a similar emphasis on devotionalism
(bhakti) and the worship of goddesses (Shaktism).
Before I introduce some exemplary possession episodes, some remarks are
in order concerning terminology and classification. As in other languages of
the Indian subcontinent, there is no Oriya term for spirit or deity possession."
Instead people speak of a supernatural being who is likely to ‘dance’ (n@ciba)
and ‘play’ (kheliba), to ‘catch’ (dhariba), ‘jump upon’ (detki yiba) or to “come
to the body’ (dehaku Gsiba), regardless of whether or not the human host is
prepared for such an encounter or whether the possessing power is identified
as an ancestral spirit, ghost, demon or deity.'? Although people distinguish
between forms of possession that are beneficial (anticipated by ritual preparations)
or unwanted (spontaneous, but also explained with calculable circumstances),
this does not allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding the nature of a
particular entity. Rather, the cosmos is characterized as having a continuum
of supernatural powers of higher and lower order, some of whom appear to
be rather fierce. Non-human beings may also change in status over time. An
ancestor who had suffered an inauspicious death might be appeased by rituals
and gradually gain a reputation as a powerful guardian, before later being
identified with a well-known Hindu deity. Hence disturbing and harmful forms
of possession (rather than creatures) are removed or banished.'’ At times, this
process may also address a particular type of goddess, known by the generic
term thakurdani (literally: mistress, lady). Even what might be labelled

'The terms for possession in South Asian languages have been rendered by Smith
(2006, Chapter 4). He proposes to identify most of these experiential states with the Sanskrit
concept dvesa, literally “entrance into’, here taken as an umbrella term for ‘positive oracular
possession’. However, the semantic meaning of this word varies historically and in the
Indian languages, as Smith (2006, 14, 119) has pointed out. Similarly, the Oriya term abesa
translates into English as ‘attention’.
In Oriya, the terms mahdpuru (Lord), ma (mother), thakura or thakurani (master/
mistress, lord/lady) are used to address a possessing deity; ancestral spirits are referred to
as sajiba debata (enlivened god) and as atma (spirit, soul); overwhelmingly fierce entities
are classified as bhita (ghost, spirit), as dahani (demoness/female ghost) or as dakini
(demoness, witch).
BThe very notion of ‘evil spirits’ is, according to Smith (2006, 116), a Western
construction imposed on the ethnographic and textual descriptions from South Asia.
350 BEATRIX HAUSER

‘exorcism’ serves to re-situate a non-human being within his or her own realm,
a process performed by those ritual specialists well versed in magical techniques
(and addressed as fdntrika). Yet any spontaneous and involuntary possession
conveys the potential to develop divinatory skills, and most mediums initially
underwent a similar ordeal.
In other words, the classification of an event as either ‘divine’ or ‘demonic’
possession is partly a matter of context and perspective, as some deities are
known for their disturbing powers.'* Thus it is difficult to find an appropriate
English term that embraces this ambivalence (and goes beyond the Christian
connotations of ‘devil possession’). Whereas the anthropological term ‘spirit
possession’ generally includes divine beings, several scholars working on South
Asia employ this term to specify malevolent and unwanted forms." In the latter
case, the positive dimension of possession is recognized by a variety of expres-
sions, such as ‘spirit mediumship’, “possession mediumship’, ‘oracular posses-
sion’ or ‘ecstatic possession’. Considering the subject position of possessed
persons, scholars speak of ‘mediums’ or, to acknowledge their competence, of
‘shamans’ .'° With respect to Orissa, however, the term ‘shamanism’ alludes to
‘tribal’ religions and influences rather than normative or popular Hindu prac-
tices, although these forms certainly may overlap and influence each other.'”
Since the majority of possession episodes I encountered during fieldwork were
identified with the agency of a goddess, and since the behaviour of female hosts
did not suggest any consistent markers to distinguish novices from specialists,
I alternately use the terms “divine possession’ and ‘deity possession’; the pos-
sessed (Hindu) woman is referred to as a ‘medium’.

FEMALE POSSESSION: CASE STUDIES FROM ORISSA

At the beginning of my fieldwork, I was not looking specifically for incidents

of possession. While watching women’s rituals, time after time one of the

'SOn the dark qualities of a thakurani, see Hauser 2005.

'SSee Gold 1988, Mayaram 1999, cf. Claus 1975 and Smith 2006.
'’The problem with these terminological distinctions is that they are based on the
assumption that possession is an altered state of consciousness rather than an embodied
practice. As Mary Keller (2002) rightly pointed out, scholars tend to conceive of religion
as a mental activity (a modern Christian concept) and therefore, while discussing possession,
repeatedly get stuck at the question of awareness—in Western discourse the means of human
agency.
"The distinction between ‘shamanism’ (referring to spirit journeys while the body
remains unconscious) and ‘possession mediumship’ (the inhabitation of the body by another
spirit) goes back to Mircea Eliade. With respect to South Asian ethnography, the usage of
these terms—as of ‘trance’ and ‘exorcism’—is rather arbitrary and there is little evidence
to support the necessity of these conceptual distinctions (see Tarabout 1999, 10-12).
Moreover, to link possession solely to Hinduism is no less problematic since similar forms
occur among South Asian Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians. Sometimes, the
possessing entity and its medium belong to different religions altogether (Mayaram
1999).
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 351

participants’ behaviour changed radically, so that her body was regarded as

taken over by a deity. Some of the possessed trembled, jumped wildly or
painfully twisted their faces; others had their eyes closed, walked calmly and
responded to questions. On the one hand, I had severe doubts about what was
happening and therefore shared the uncertainty of several onlookers. On the
other hand, I could sense the tension that the incident gave rise to through my
own body. I watched the scene full of excitement, at times slightly worried,
and more than once I forgot to take any notes. Women encouraged me to tell
them what I had experienced and also to test an oracle. Some of them regularly
learned that their own and other’s behaviour was being driven by a goddess.
This divine presence was not at all an unusual topic of conversation. On certain
ritual occasions, young girls were encouraged to interpret some of their bodily
reactions in terms of non-human agency. The respective female host, her family
and others appreciated this kind of divine encounter. Although it constituted
an extremely exhausting physical experience, it also contributed towards the
self-esteem of the possessed woman. Later, when I began systematically
attending rituals to witness manifestations of the divine, one of my research
assistants left because she could not bear the, on some occasions, intense
drumming and its psychophysical effects. She feared becoming possessed
herself. (As a graduate in journalism, she finally joined a private TV
channel.)
In the following paragraphs, I give a variety of examples that show when
and how women in southern Orissa recognize divine possession, as well as
how they conceive of this embodied state and social practice. The descriptions
are largely based on women’s personal memories and thus also reflect common
ways of talking about possession. My compilation is not exhaustive but rather
tries to cover different ritual settings (private, public, spontaneous, insti-
tutionalized, individual, and collective).'*
When I devote myself very much to worship (puja), then the Lord (mahapuru) enters
my body. (Basanti, 37 years, tea-stall owner)

It is the duty of a Hindu wife to take care of the family deity. Thus most
married women devote some time of the day to pray at the house altar, i.e. a
place attached to the kitchen or located in a separate puja room. During this
form of solitary worship, some women face possession. This may happen
particularly on those weekdays on which it is particularly auspicious to worship
a thakurani (i.e. on Tuesdays)or the divine man-lion Narasimha (on Saturdays).

'8During the course of my fieldwork I was faced with possession in thirty-eight cases
(five mediums were men). Thirty-three times the agent was identified as a deity; twenty-
four times as a form of a thakurani, twice as Narasimha, and four times as ancestral spirit.
I also watched several hundred possessed women during the final procession of Thakurani
Yatra, the biennial goddess festival of Berhampur. These numbers are not representative
of possession in general since I specifically attended religious occasions that attracted
women,
352 BEATRIX HAUSER

Then possession indicates that a woman favours one of them as her personal
goddess or god, a preference that may overlap with the identity of the family
deity. Deity possession at the house altar is usually a more or less private
religious experience.'’ No special attention is paid to it, although neighbours
will gradually get to know about it. For Basanti, who lived with her husband
and children in a nuclear family, this encounter with God was a welcomed
opportunity to share all kinds of day-to-day problems, whether concerning
health or finance. However, she did not remember these incidents by herself.
Rather her children told about her frightening appearance while serving
Narasimha. Basanti was very happy (khusi) when she learned about this, yet
her husband remained indifferent to it.
In another family, a strange noise was heard from the puja room, where
Sanju was busy with the daily worship of several deities. Since her childhood,
she had been vulnerable to possession by Kali and Narasimha. Initially her
parents tried to save her from such physically exhausting experiences. When
they learned from a senior relative that it was not a malevolent spirit (bhita)
but rather divine beings who were manifesting themselves in Sanju’s body,
she was given care of the house altar. After leaving school she spent several
hours a day in prayers and worship on behalf of her extended family. Due to
her slightly abnormal physique and poor health, she did not marry but continued
to live in her parents’ home. Yet her social status was high, since the prosperity
of the family business (renting out mechanical equipment) was attributed to
the regular divine presence in Sanju’s body. Gradually, friends and neighbours
came to ask for divine advice and—upon getting it—paid the young woman
with food, clothes, and other gifts. One might speculate whether Sanju was
forced into this role since, due to her physical deficiency, her parents could
not find a suitable marriage partner for her. In fact, she planned to leave her
family more than once (for different job offers and also to enter monastic life)
but they refused to let her go out of fear that they would ‘lose everything’.
After one month he appeared in my mother-in-law’s dream and asked her: ‘Why do
you just sit idle? We serve the public!” My mother-in-law could not understand anything.
She didn’t know how to answer people’s questions. He replied: ‘You just concentrate
on me, call my name and I shall appear through your body.’ (Nirmala, 47 years old,
widow)

Sometimes, the capacity for divine possession is inherited within the family,
for instance, if a child has died from smallpox and takes possession of his or
her mother and of mothers in later generations. When Nirmala got married,
she learned of her mother-in-law’s regular possession by the spirit of a deceased
son (Nirmala’s husband’s younger brother). ‘I was scared to see this. I knew
that the Lord had entered her body but still I was horrified . . . and avoided

"Studies of spirit and deity possession usually stress the performative aspect of this
social phenomenon. From this angle, it is quite unusual for the possessed woman to be on
her own. Nevertheless, others will notice and share their impressions.
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 353

the puja room. Then I got used to this. Since I was staying in this house, did
I have any alternative?’ The ancestral spirit was identified with Baidhara, the
son of Burhi Thakurani, the patron goddess of Berhampur.”’ This goddess is
known, among other things, to induce, cure and embody smallpox (basanta),
and anyone who fails to survive this disease is believed to be her son or
daughter. At the age of thirty, Nirmala’s husband died and a few years later
her parents-in-law followed. By that time, Nirmala herself had started to
develop divinatory skills. Once a week she answered people’s questions and
gradually gained a reputation as an oracle. In fact, the divination was the only
way she could make a living and raise her four children. Although Nirmala
enjoyed the financial benefits of her submission to Baidhara, she also
complained about the physical side effects. The divine encounter produced
bodily pain, so Nirmala often avoided possession or limited its duration. At
the same time she felt obliged to surrender to this god so as to guarantee divine
satisfaction and hence blessing. She was looking forward to a daughter-in-law
who could release her from this burden, yet she knew that she could not assume
her cooperation. ‘If she is very stylish, she probably won’t like this. If we take
measures in order to save my daughter-in-law from being possessed, then he
won’t come. Otherwise he will not leave her.’
Jyotsna (19 years old): ‘Mother, Mother, who are you? . . . Mother, who has come?’
A woman blows on a conch, while others ululate.
Nila (17 years old, student): “Who has come?
Hey you, who has come?’
Jyotsna: ‘Tell us! If you keep quiet like this, then how will we know?’

Possession may occur during semi-public rituals shared by the women of one
neighbourhood, for instance, on the occasion of the Jahni Osa, a votive rite
undertaken by teenage girls to obtain a good husband.*' For one month,
unmarried girls meet every evening to worship the goddess Brndabati. At some
puja sites, though not at all regularly, one of the votaries becomes possessed.
Then the girls have to find out who has appeared and why, i.e. what form the
goddess has taken and whether her presence is the sign of her grace or anger.
One evening, the identity of the deity and the subsequent divination were
anything but clear. The votary who had at first impersonated Brndabati as a
part of the ritual (Fig. 16.1) started to shake her body in a very violent and
unpredictable manner. The girls assumed that the goddess had appeared as
Bata Mangala, a particularly frightening form of the goddess Mangala often
met at the roadside (bata). Here Bata Mangala complained about the incorrect

2B aidhara is worshipped under a sacred tree within the premises of the Burhi Thakurani
temple. There devotees had donated a stone idol to him. At first sight he seems to be another
form of Bhairaba (Sanskrit: Bhairava) who is also known as a guardian of the goddess.
The head priest of the Burhi Thakurani temple distinguishes both deities though, drawing
on the iconography of Baidhara vis-d-vis Bhairaba in the nearby Siba temple.
21For a detailed evaluation of this votive rite see Hauser 2008.
354 BEATRIX HAUSER

Figs. 16.1 and 16.2: A votary impersonates the goddess Brndabati and becomes possessed
by Bata Mangala

puja she had been offered (Fig. 16.2). Then the goddess started to stammer
and to utter strange noises. She revealed herselfas Jari Ma, literally the ‘Dumb
Mother’. Finally, the possessor was recognized as Brndabati herself, who,
through her human host, addressed certain problems in the marriage negotiations
of one participant. After half an hour the exhausted medium lay down and the
girls completed the evening’s regular programme of worship. The discussion as
to the meaning of the prophecy continued over the following days. Since the
divine utterances had been fragmented and ambiguous, nobody knew for sure
whose ‘brother had made a mistake’, who exactly should be appeased, where
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 355

° Ap € = ; y* Ti >
we “
a

others, the mere

and in what way. Nonetheless, in this Jahni Osa group and
of the participants’
possibility of divine possession underlined the significance
to perform votive rites
religious practice. Girls felt they had a responsibility
enter their bodies and
whole-heartedly, since otherwise the goddess would
one of ambivalence, fear
complain. Hence, their attitude towards possession was
and appreciation at the same time.
. So if we don’t dance in front of
[The goddess] likes dancing, songs and everything
29 years old, priest)
her, she will not appear at this place. (Babula,
ted by aesthetic means such as
On some occasions divine possession is invi
e costumes and artistic dancing.
rich decoration, figurative masks, elaborat
356 BEATRIX HAUSER

Families who, because of a prospective marriage or for any other reason, wish
to ensure the divine benevolence may take a procession out to the temple Burhi
Thakurani. The priests of this temple, Oriya barbers by caste (Bhandari), will
organize these processions on suitable days in the month of Caitra (March/
April). They will invoke the divine generative power (Sakti) in one or more
sacred pots that have to be carried by married women on behalf of the family.
A few dancers, who remain hidden below huge thakurani-figures, will
commence the pageant. A group of drummers follow. In their midst, a younger
male member of the priest’s family will dance, dressed up as the goddess Kali.
Moving a mask in front of his face, he interacts with the women who carry
the sacred pots on their head. Then the remaining family of the sponsor,
relatives and friends follow. While proceeding through the lanes of Berhampur,
neighbours bow down to the pot bearer(s) and wash her/their feet with sacred
water. Regardless of possession, these women are worshipped as an embodiment
of the goddess. Moreover, the ritual specialist in the costume of Kali will try
to evoke the divine agency in the body of the pot bearer(s), and indeed some
of them start to tremble, shriek or communicate in some other way. Neighbours
may ask the possessed for their advice and prophecy, while others lay their
babies on the road (Fig. 16.3). In response to this act of surrender, the living
goddess is to step over them and thus show her grace. If a spectator becomes
possessed, the priest will intervene and relocate the divine by ‘cooling’ the
unprepared body with turmeric water.”
[I told her:] ‘If you are really powerful, then you have to come into my body.’ . . .
[Finally] the goddess entered my body, so won’t I feel happy? (Rajeshvari, 58 years
old, nurse)

There are several circumstances which influence whether and when a woman
should invite or rather avoid goddess possession. During the three weeks of
the biennial celebration of Thakurani Yatra, a festival in honour of the patroness
of Berhampur, night after night nine women from the Devangi caste (Telugu
silk weavers) carry sacred pots in a procession and are worshipped by the
public as human manifestations of Burhi Thakurani.** In this context the
goddess is banned from taking possession of the pot bearers. Just before the
daily procession, a priest well versed in magic rituals (i.e. a tantrika) will seal
their bodies. Rather than by pragmatics (daily possession would be physically
exhaustive), this rule is governed by the fact that Barhi Thakurani has ‘adopted’
the chief of the Devangi as her father. Since a goddess may possess her children
(i.e. devotees) but never her parents—here in a wider sense all Devangi—she is
not supposed to overwhelm the pot bearers. During the final night of the festival,
however, any women of Berhampur seeking divine favour may go on a fast and
join the nocturnal procession. In 2001, several thousands gathered for this event,

For a thorough discussion of these processions see Hauser 2004b, forthcoming b.

The various dimensions of this festival I have discussed elsewhere (Hauser 2005,
2006a, forthcoming a).
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 357

Fig. 16.3: The living goddess is to step over children

and thus show her grace

each carrying a pot invested with the divine generative power (Sakti). Since these
women were not given similar protective measures, in the course of standing and
walking in the crowd for hours, about 10 per cent of them became possessed.
Whether overpowered by the divine or not, women appreciated this event as a
significant religious experience, although due to the crowd the individual
transformations were not paid any specific attention. After arriving at the Burhi
Thakurani temple in the early hours of the morning, not only the sacred pot but
also the remaining signs of possession were removed, again by sprinkling turmeric
water to ‘cool’ the body.
The experience of possession is not restricted to particular castes or social
strata. However, the majority of people in Berhampur and the surrounding
area belong to the middle-ranking and lower spectrum of the caste society.
They are basically artisans, small businessmen, agricultural labourers and
farmers, or self-employed in the service industry. In regard to deity possession,
caste and class identity does not matter that much.” These incidents move

4During fieldwork I spoke to possessed women from the following communities: Karana
(accountants), Oria (potters, etc.), Bhandari (barbers, priests), Devangi (weavers), Liari
(rice processors), Dalua (betel merchants), Hari (sweepers), Telanga (bangle manufacturers,
etc.), Gaura (milkmen), Halua Brahmana (Brahman farmers) and Karada (merchants).
However, most families had given up their designated caste occupations.
358 BEATRIX HAUSER

Oriya- and Telugu-speaking devotees, women and also men. Yet possession
is specifically associated with femininity. The preponderance of possessed
women is explained by the goddess’s preference for human beings who share
her bodily substance through their sameness of sex and also the consumption
of meat. (In southern Orissa only a very few people, Brahmans and non-
Brahmans included, are pure vegetarians.) In general, deity possession is an
optional proof of the divine that heightens religious experience and therefore
is not limited to a specific ritual event. This may vary gradually if prophecy
and therefore possession become a regular service on demand (as in Nirmala’s
case). The local discourse on divine possession involves only certain kinds of
deities who are known for their hot temper and demanding character. Thus
the man-lion-shaped Narasimha, a variety of thakuranis and deceased small-
pox victims are likely to take possession.” Regardless of her or his mood, to
experience the divine by means of the lived-in body is conceptualized in terms
of pleasure (khusi). It is not related to the overpowered individual, her living
conditions or social situation. Being selected by a deity is understood to be a
result of divine grace and thus may prove the piety of a woman. Yet divine
possession is an ambivalent gift since it involves not only the voluntary sur-
render to an external agency but also demands unconditional physical self-
denial.
On the basis of academic literature, it is difficult to judge whether the
ethnographical examples given above are representative of female possession
throughout Orissa. Moreover, this Indian state exhibits very considerable cultural
diversity, with its dominant Oriya population in the plains, its well-established
Telugu diaspora in the south and along the coast, and its various indigenous
communities (Adivasi) in the upland interior. The rare and dispersed records
on female possession all refer to institutionalized forms. Lynn Foulston mentions
the example of a woman who is routinely possessed by the goddess within the
premises of a Santosi Ma temple.” Every Friday, this ritual specialist assumes
divine form, proven by eating fire. Being transformed, she is accredited with
healing powers and thus draws large crowds of devotees, who seek help with
medical problems and also in family affairs.*’ According to James M. Freeman,
who analysed a fire walking ceremony that failed, deity possession seems to be
a low-caste affair.** He describes a 70-year-old woman from the untouchable
Bauri (Bauri) caste who acts as a female ‘shaman’ (kalasi).”° As arepresentation

*Conversely, the goddess Laksmi and male deities such as Narayana, Rama, Krsna or
Hanuman will not take a human form.
6Foulston 2002, 145-9.
” Although Foulston (2002, 104) does not provide any details on the background of the
medium, she observes that the Scheduled Castes may attend this form of Friday worship
but are forbidden to enter the sanctum of the goddess.
8J.M. Freeman 1981.
*The term derives from the word kalasa, the sacred pot carried by devotees. J.M.
Freeman (1981, 311) translates the role of a kalasi (kalasi) as ‘shaman’ and as ‘shamanistic
curer’. As described above, to install the divine power in an earthen pot carried by devoted
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 359

of the goddess Banadurga, it was her task to guide the (male) firewalkers. ‘She
went into trance, trembling, stretching, and yawning, accompanied by loud
drumming, blaring bagpipes and horns, played by Bauri-caste musicians, and
a twirling dancing boy, dressed in a women’s [sic] garb, performing the patua
dance.’ Both instances of deity possession were observed in proximity
to Bhubaneswar. In southern Orissa, to the best of my knowledge, this
institutionalized form is considered the realm of the men, although in general
women are believed to be more eligible for possession than male devotees.*!
Deity possession among women of a Telugu fishing caste (Vadabalija),
living along the shores of Orissa, is well documented. Elisabeth Sch6mbucher
has provided an excellent analysis of the power and poetry of the divine words
uttered by these female mediums.” The Vadabalija consider three classes of
non-human beings as liable to possess women: (1) regional goddesses (in Oriya
classified as thakurdni) and addressed as ‘mother’ (Telugu: ammavaru); (2)
Vaishnava male deities such as Narasimha; (3) immortal beings who have
achieved the status of a demigod (Telugu: virudu), such as victims of an
untimely death.** The Oriya and Telugu women I met during fieldwork basically
shared this classification. However, unlike in Berhampur, possession among
the fisherwomen seems to be limited to a distinct therapeutic framework where
a male priest (da@sudu) encourages a female medium (bhakturdlu) to address
the afflictions of various clients. The divine utterances of the possessed person
constitute a dialogue that lasts for one or two hours. Its highly stylized and
lyrical language inspired Schémbucher to analyse these possession séances as
a verbal art, taking into account that the required skills might escape Western
notions of aesthetics. In comparison, only some possessed women in Berhampur
were speaking in tongues and employed familiar religious formulae, yet in a
rather brief and much less articulated way. ;
The mass possession of women in public, as during Thakurani Yatra, alludes
to another type of nocturnal procession in the coastal zone of Andhra Pradesh.
According to David Knipe these pageants are related to death and ancestor
worship.* They are performed in honour of Virabhadra, a divine hero associated
with the deification of ancestors who suffered a premature death (similar to

women is common ritual practice in Berhampur. Although I describe these women as pot
bearers, they were not considered as kalasi, a term reserved for professional mediums (or
‘shamans’, in J.M. Freeman’s parlance).
30J.M. Freeman 1981, 315.
3! During the fire-walking festival (Jhamu Yatra) in the outskirts of Berhampur, a male
priest cross-dresses in order to become an apt vessel for the goddess Ellamma, and only
he walks on glowing coals. At a similar ceremony downtown, again a male ritual specialist
embodies the goddess, yet the act of fire-walking itself has been abandoned (see Hauser
possessing
2007). At the yearly Danda Nata performance, the goddess Kali is known for
the male officiant (cf. Schnepel 2000).
32Schémbucher 1994a, 1994b, 1996, 1999, 2006.
33 §chémbucher 1996, 243.
“Knipe 1989.
360 BEATRIX HAUSER

Birhi.Thakurani’s smallpox victims). Ahead of those processions one finds

musicians and dancers, who wear costumes to impersonate these departed
heroes. A crowd of devotees follows. In the course of the night, some of these
<
=

marchers get taken over by the spirits of deceased family members. According
to Knipe it is ‘most frequently younger mothers in their twenties and thirties,
who sway or whirl, slowly at first, then quickly before they abandon the march
and fall screaming to the ground.’*
Dialogues with immortal beings also characterize the religious practices of
Adivasis in Orissa, such as the Sora, who live in the mountains bordering
Andhra Pradesh. As Piers Vitebsky has demonstrated, it is again overwhelmingly,
possessed women who utter the non-human voice of deceased relatives.*°
In this context the mediums are recognized as shamans (kuran) or rather as
priestesses in their own right. However, the Sora’s spirits (1/da) differ from
the deified ancestors that are commonly worshipped by their Hindu
neighbours.*”
To make a thorough assessment of divine possession in Orissa, much more
comparative research is certainly needed. With respect to the population in
and around Berhampur, however, deity possession is not limited to specific
religious events, social purposes or strata but rather serves as a general ritual
act that might occur during various forms of worship. It is highly appreciated
among women. As a religious idiom of its own, it proves the relevance of their
pious dedication and specifically of those religious activities that scarcely find
approval in brahmanical male discourse. Whether this commitment to deity
possession reflects a regional development or rather hints at a hitherto silenced
and gendered form of Hindu devotion is discussed in the next section.

FEMALE POSSESSION IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

The academic discourse on possession in South Asia is characterized by
different theoretical and methodological approaches. Schémbucher distinguishes
four interpretative models: (1) the psychological; (2) the sociological; (3) the
cosmological and (4) the performative model of possession.** These different
strands of argumentation reflect not only disciplinary preferences and a
chronological development of research paradigms but also relate to different
social contexts and phenomena that are discussed under the heading of
possession.*? Here I shall evaluate central positions taken in this literature
regarding possession as a gendered practice.*°

Knipe 1989, 127-8.

*Vitebsky 1993.
*’A collection of essays edited by Tina Otten and Uwe Skoda (forthcoming) will give
several further examples of possession in tribal communities,
*Schémbucher 1993, 240.
Similarly possession has been evaluated within studies on goddess worship, healing
ceremonies and ritual dramas.
“For a review of the ‘classical’ academic positions followed in the 1950s, 1960s and
1970s see Sch6mbucher (1993).
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 361

Some of the pioneering studies on possession in South Asia conceive of

these experiential states as a culture specific form and treatment of psychic
disorder. The focus is on demonic possession, i.e. a form of body experience
that is conceptualized in negative terms and demands exorcism. The afflicted
person suffers from this state and shows mental and bodily signs of weakness
that make normal life impossible and cause alarm in his or her relatives.
Throughout the Indian subcontinent a variety of religious institutions specialize
in the therapeutic cure of such illnesses and in this way testify to the prevalence
of malevolent possession. Patients are not only taken to Hindu temples—as
illustrated by Sudhir Kakar and, more recently, by Marine Carrin—but also to
Buddhist shrines, graves of Muslim saints and to Christian pilgrimage
centres.*!
Although the patients suffering from demonic affliction are from both
genders, academic scholars notice a preponderance of women. With reference
to Varanasi, Jonathan Parry claims that about 70 per cent of victims are female,
while over 80 per cent belong to the lower castes.** The main argument
explaining demonic possession draws on Freudian psychoanalysis. The Indian
female self is said to invite this exaggerated behaviour in order to deal with
hidden desires, repressed emotions, guilt, fear and conflict—similar to the
gendered phenomenon of hysteria in European medical discourse at the
beginning of the twentieth century. To project “the other’ on to the demonic
is regarded as a coping mechanism that is successfully dealt with in healing
ceremonies, which aim to re-establish the self in relation to family and
acquaintances. This approach is identified with psychoanalytically influenced
scholars like Sudhir Kakar and Gananath Obeyesekere.*’ Although met with
criticism—for instance concerning the Western bias—their influential studies
keep on inspiring scholars.“ Following this line, psychiatrist Antti Pakaslathi
has pointed out that affliction by spirits is not limited to the underprivileged.”
Exorcists of a north Indian temple instead attract clients with an ‘average or
better than average education’, who ‘belong to the higher castes’ and who are
of urban domicile. Regardless of social status, Sarah Caldwell suggests that
female possession originates, among other factors, in the traumatic childhood
experience of sexual abuse.”
Influenced by Ioan Lewis’ deprivation theory, scholars identify demonic
possession as a social phenomenon that allows subalterns to raise their voice

41See Kakar 1982, Carrin 1999, cf. Obeyesekere 1977, Pfleiderer 1988, 1994, Stirrat
1992.
“Parry 1994, 233.
43Kakar 1982, Obeyesekere 1977, 1981.
Chandra
“For current psychological views from India compare Pakaslathi (1998) and
and Carrin
Shekar (1989), for recent studies on demonic possession see Dwyer 2003
1999.
4SPakaslathi 1998, 164.
46Caldwell 1999, 228-33.
362 BEATRIX HAUSER

and pursue their interests against the hierarchy.‘’ In a survey on popular

Hinduism, Chris Fuller argues therefore that incidents of possession provide
‘culturally tolerated opportunities to complain about female inferiority and
subordination within Indian society’.** They serve women seeking to escape
ill-treatment by their in-laws, to postpone an unwanted marriage or to claim
authority in family decisions. Explorations by Claus, Gellner, Obeyesekere
and Pfleiderer sustain this argument.” More recently, Isabelle Nabokov has
questioned the effectiveness of this kind of ‘subversion’.*® With respect to a
case study from Kerala, she claims that demonic possession does not provide
women with a means to attain secondary gains but rather acts to keep them
under control.
Looking at shamanic careers, scholars also recorded the transformation of
previously suffering victims of demonic possession into ritual specialists, now
in control of their ability to host a spirit. This institutionalization of possession
may take the form of a regular oracular service at a shrine or of a public display
of divine agency during religious festivals. Whereas the potential to gain
control over non-human powers seems to be independent of gender and role
expectations, female mediumship has raised academic attention fairly often.
It will not come as a surprise that scholars concentrated on the socio-political
impact of possession. Deprivation and severe troubles in life are often at hand
to make sense of a professional approach to possession, since mediums
themselves emphasize how the divine call has had a radically positive influence
on hopeless economic, medical and social issues—a rhetoric that generally
proves the power of a deity. The Rajasthani shaman described by Shail
Mayaram, for instance, troubled by her alcoholic husband who, learning about
her vocation, stopped drinking and assisted her in the management of a shrine.*!
Similarly Margaret Egnor traces the development of a low-caste construction
labourer in Madras (Chennai) who, after suffering from poverty and considering
suicide, was called by the goddess in a dream.** Becoming a divine servant
did not only give her mental support. By means of possession she gradually
emerged as a priestess of the goddess Mariamman, a ritual task that appeared
to be a viable way of earning a living. Although some professional mediums
may gain social reputation and practically intervene in family matters, caste
and local politics, their memories and life-stories reflect first of all a religious
discourse. Thus the scholarly comparison of a person’s living conditions before
and after the growth of mediumship skills risks underplaying the religious
experience of a medium in her lived-in world. However, the form of possession
seems to vary in accordance with social factors. According to David Gellner

“Lewis 1975.
“Fuller 1992, 233.
“See Claus (1975), Gellner (1994), Obeyesekere (1977) and Pfleiderer (1988, 1994).
“Nabokov 1997, 299.
‘'Mayaram 1999,
*Egnor 1984,
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 363

and Karin Kapadia the rising status of a medium mostly correlates to the class
of divine power that takes possession of her (or him).*° From that perspective,
the identification of a non-human being—for instance a famous pan-Indian
goddess—can be understood as a claim to authority.
The institutionalized dialogue with the divine is not limited to ritual
specialists of low economic and caste status. Kathleen Erndl’s studies on night
vigils in honour of the mother goddess reveal that in northwest India, well-to-
do and educated Brahman women may also experience possession and turn
into “living mothers’.* In any case, women’s experience of possession and
their gradual rise to expertise often initiates a complete change of life (whether
intended or involuntary), i.e. giving up family ties and adopting an ascetic
lifestyle. Still, it is anything but clear whether the scholarly preference for
female mediums reflects the local gender distribution among this type of ritual
specialists, or whether these women attract attention as exceptions to the rule.
However, while studies on malevolent possession emphasize female victims,
the women described here appear as strategic agents who manipulate their
environment.
The problem with both the psychological and the sociological perspective
on possession is, as Schémbucher has pointed out, that they regard these
experiential states as a “symbolic expression of other experiences’.*° In her
view, scholars should rather follow a ‘performative approach to possession’ .*®
They should consider the theatrical aspects of possession, the sequencing of
the event, audience reactions and also the divine dialogues as cultural expression
in its own right. This perspective was favoured in an exemplary way by Bruce
Kapferer.*’ In his study on exorcism in Sri Lanka, he showed how aesthetics,
creativity and humour contribute significantly to the experience and efficacy
of the ritual act. Similarly, Richard Freeman emphasized that possession
consists of learned and rehearsed gestures of possession rather than ‘trance
behaviour’ of individuals.** On the basis of teyyam-performances, a ritual
dance that culminates in the speaking in the voice of a god, he observed well-
choreographed movements and highly structured recognizable utterances.
Studies focusing on possession as a ritual and aesthetic performance—and thus
as meaningful by itself—overwhelmingly identify male mediums to develop
artful and ludic ways of expression. Schémbucher’s work is exceptional since
she considers the poetic potential and, in this respect, the authorship of possessed
women.” Although academic literature gives more hints of a creative role of
possessed women, scholars seemingly fail to recognize the possession episodes

3Gellner 1994, 38-9, Kapadia 1996, 433.

4Erndl 1993, 1996, 1997.
55Schémbucher 1993, 242.
56Schémbucher 1993, 257.
‘’Kapferer 1983.
588R. Freeman 1993, 124.
59Schémbucher 1996, 2006.
364 BEATRIX HAUSER

as a cultural site (co-)defined by female performers. Likewise Peter Claus

describes women of a matrilineal community in Karnataka joining the
performance of the Siri epic.” While mimetically re-enacting the suffering of
the heroine, some of them are possessed. Yet according to Claus, these female
participants ‘are not true specialists because they do not see themselves
essentially as priestesses to Siri’. To make it clear, I do not propose translating
‘Western’ concepts of personhood and art to South Asian contexts. Rather I
wish to show how possessed women are represented in academic discourse
and in what respect they are conceived of as subjects (compared with male
mediums).
Socially widespread and mostly unobtrusive forms of deity possession, like
those embedded in women’s religious practices in southern Orissa, are rarely
reflected by academic discourse. However, Mary Hancock’s study of middle-
class women in Chennai suggests that such an approach to possession is not
limited by region.*' She discusses how Smarta Brahman women develop
mediumship skills in their devotion (bhakti) to a goddess, using these skills
for private matters but also offering their help to others. According to Hancock,
goddess oracles and their clients are found throughout all castes and social
strata. Similar to the Orissan examples given in the previous section, this
form of religious practice is regarded as compatible with women’s roles as
mothers and wives.®
In academic discourse, divine possession is mostly recognized in its
institutionalized form, i.e. related and limited to specific ceremonies (possession
cults). Only rarely do scholars focus on possession as a type of ritual behaviour
like, say, the singing of hymns. This is not only due to research methodology.
Although formalized possession routines are to some extent predictable and

Claus 1975, 56.

*'Hancock 1995.
Hancock 1995, 63, 70.
* Recently, Smith (2006) has applied the notion of possession to a continuum of
experiential states of the body-mind complex. With reference to bhakti theology, he includes
meditative and devotional practices that serve to evoke an emotional proximity to, if not
complete absorption in the divine. His argument is in line with the findings of McDaniel
(1989), who in a study on religious ecstasy among Bengali saints has shown how the
emotional identification with a god is interlinked with the experience of being overpowered
by a deity. ‘In devotional ecstasy’, McDaniel (1989, 3) explains, ‘there is a permeability
and openness uniting the person and the divinity, and a sharing of love between them.’
Analysing theological texts, interviews and biographies of two female saints and three
contemporary ‘holy women’ (sddhika), she shows that these renunciants subscribe to a
clear hierarchy of these altered states of the body (1989, 229). They privilege emotional
experiences classified as bhava (literally: mood, emotion, ecstasy) and downplay a rigid
personality change conceived of as bhor (literally: engrossed, possession). Although both
terms have their Oriya counterpart (bhaba, bhola), people do not employ them to describe
or classify experiential states like possession. However, in McDaniel’s study women who
have experienced the divine in this form are represented as subjects of their own with some
freedom and self-determination.
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 365

thus suitable for systematic observation, the scholarly preference also reflects
the social contestation of these experiential states within their own context. In
the following, I show how local people (‘informants’) come to support
ethnographer’s scepticism as to the validity of possession as a religious ex-
perience and thus encourage the interpretation of possession as a representation
of something else.
Both the psycho-medical and the sociological model of possession have, I
argue, a counterpart in local folk theory. Ethnocentric assumptions deriving
from (Western) psychoanalysis meet and apparently ‘translate’ Indian concepts
on the female nature and vulnerability. Several scholars have rendered
‘cosmological models of possession’ (in Sch6mbucher’s classification). They
discussed South Asian characterizations of women as highly emotional beings,
morally weak, attached to worldly desires, seducible and therefore likely to
face possession.™ These stereotypes are consistent with gendered concepts of
the body, such as the menstrual impurity of women, their bodily permeability
and specific ‘openness’.* The sociological approach to possession as a subaltern
strategy to acquire secondary gains corresponds in a similar way to ‘emic’
doubts on the reality of divine overpowering. In fact, deity possession is often
subjected to critique and mockery.” Even the pious may challenge the
authenticity of possession, the standard argument being that it is simply deprived
individuals who try to win attention and wealth through this pretence. There
is a certain amount of scepticism about the credibility of mediums and religious
specialists, a stance taken and related to habitus (Bourdieu) and also to self-
presentation.”
On the one hand, the perspective on possession is determined by caste and
class, and thus reflects processes of status distinction. On the basis of fieldwork
in Tamil Nadu, Kapadia distinguishes two clearly separated positions.®
According to ‘lower-caste ethos’, possession is said to prove a person’s piety
and true love for God. Thus it constitutes one of the most important forms of
bhakti. It contrasts with the brahmanical view that denies the religious
significance of these bodily experiences and rather emphasizes liturgy
authenticated by the Sanskrit scriptures.” Similarly Parry shows that from the

See Kapferer 1983, 140; Gellner 1994, 39.

6 Osella and Osella 1999, 186-91.
66See Hancock (1995, 70), Mayaram (1999, 122), Egnor (1984, 28), Kapadia (1996,
435).
67Gellner (1994, 39) recognizes another aspect that influences the social contestation of
deity possession. According to his study in Nepal, the doubts as to the credibility of
possession rise with the status of the possessing entity. The higher a deity, the more sceptical
are people of claims to possession. Although this argument sounds convincing, it provokes
tricky classificatory problems since the hierarchy of deities is itself a matter of context and
perspective (on the ‘multiple identities’ of Durga and Kali, see McDaniel 2004, Chapter
4).
6’ Kapadia 1995, 124, Chapter 6. }
ng to
“The orthodox standpoint, however, has been challenged by recently. Accordi
366 BEATRIX HAUSER

perspective of Brahman orthodoxy in Benares, spirit possession is considered

as ‘superstition’ and, like impurity, reflects an inferior social status.”
Nonetheless, Brahman priests may accept ritual specialists exorcizing demons,
so long as they do not interfere with their own ritual competence and business,
i.e. the negotiation with the divine. It seems that in many parts of the Indian
subcontinent, ‘high-caste’ (or ‘middle-class’) discourse silences and openly
devalues deity possession as an extrovert style of worship associated with the
impure, uneducated, lower strata of society.’’ As a marker of class and caste
distinctions, however, the relevance of possession is also subject to social
change. Kapadia shows that divine possession may serve upwardly mobile
middle-caste men (non-Brahman Tamils) to ritually back their new economic
status.’? As a result of this prestige, however, women are banished from these
religious events. )
On the other hand, the perspective on possession is related to the self-
presentation of an interlocutor, whether medium or onlooker. Women who
consider themselves to be a deity’s vehicle are well aware that their own
possession may be ridiculed. In Tamil Nadu, low-caste female possession is
mocked at and made fun of.”* According to Hancock, Smarta Brahman women
under-emphasize their emotionally and aesthetically satisfying experiences
during possession in order to avoid doubts being raised as to the genuineness
of their transformation.” The fear of being stigmatized seems to particularly
affect educated and high-caste people, who—refuting deprivation theory—
actively participate in rituals that include and require possession in several
parts of South Asia.” Regarding divine possession by men, William Sax points
out that although high- and low-caste people are possessed, upper-caste people
tend to deny it of themselves and attribute it to the subalterns.”° However, the
assessment of divine presence may also change in the course of time. Pious
spectators who are swept away with emotion at the time of the possession
episode, Kapadia notes, might later sneer at the alleged charlatans.”
Ethnographers who study possession are thus confronted with this locally
contested practice. Their own scepticism as to the reality of this altered state
of the body is likely to be manipulated by the respective standpoints of their
interlocutors. With reference to anthropological studies on caste, Richard

Smith (2006), accounts of possession can be found in Vedic, Buddhist, Jain, Tantric and
devotional literature, in the epics, in Sanskrit drama and also in medical texts.
Parry 1994, 226-30.
"See McDaniel 1989, 240; Sax, cf. Smith 2006, 170.
”™ Kapadia 1996, 2000, 181-2.
™ Kapadia 1995, 157 and 1996, 435; Egnor 1984, 28.
“Hancock 1995, 70.
Scholars have documented brahmanical possession in Himachal Pradesh (Erndl 1993,
Chapter 5, 1996, 1997), in Rajasthan (Pakaslathi 1998, 164), in Kerala (R. Freeman (1999,
165-70) and in Tamil Nadu (Kapadia 1995, 150-4).
Sax, cf. Smith 2006, 170.
"Kapadia 1996, 430.
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 367

Burghart has argued that scholars tend to imitate the perspective of their mostly
high-caste ‘informants’ (and research assistants, I would add) or, conversely,
ignore and exclude their perspective altogether.» Although there is nothing
like one brahmanical or upper-class view, the focus on the dynamics between
researchers and their local counterparts in the production of ethnography
suggests some self-criticism concerning the acknowledgement of possession
as a form of religious experience. To give examples by two renowned scholars:
As mentioned above, Gellner recognized how female mediums claim authority
by identifying the possessing agent as a respected deity.”” Yet when he concludes
that this development was promoted by modern democracy, he seems to adopt
the viewpoint of his (high-caste male?) Nepali interlocutors and ignores the
perspective of mediums and their followers. Conversely, attending possession
séances left an impressive mark on Erndl.® She decides ‘to take seriously the
notion of the Goddess as an agent herself rather than simply a symbol or
projection . . . as an agent who interacts with both the person possessed and
the devotees who worship her.’ She obviously identifies with the devotees
and, for her part, neglects the local scepticism about possession.*' Both
authors—in spite of their valuable contributions to the study of possession—
seem to give preference to only one side of the coin. While wondering who
actually is performing during possession episodes in Rajasthan, Ann Gold
rightly recognizes ““The spirits themselves” might be a simple, valid response,
but even speaking from within the culture, it is not the whole story.’”

CONCLUSION

Whereas the overview of scholarly approaches to possession gives some

indication of the major social contexts through which possession in South Asia
is constituted, the variety of situations thatinsouthern Orissa may evoke divine
possession seems to escape any of these patterns and rationales. It would
be misleading to reduce this diversity on the basis of social factors. The
overpowering by a divine agent can occur on several ritual occasions and
serves as an optional proof of the divine that heightens the religious experience
of mediums and onlookers alike. To communicate with the divine through
one’s own body is highly respected, particularly among women. It allows
encountering the divine in an accessible form that resonates to one’s own body

*Burghart 1990.
%Gellner 1994, 38, 41.
Erndl 1996, 174-5.
81Only once Ernd! (1996, 183) cursorily mentions that individuals might doubt the
validity of deity possession.
Gold 1988, 59. This social contestation of possession also alludes to a general
anthropological problem: there is nothing like a singular emic voice. Moreover, performers,
onlookers and also the ethnographer each produce their own arguments in relation to
others.
368 BEATRIX HAUSER .

and self-understanding. Orthodox high-caste women in principle share this

religious discourse, yet only a few of them undergo this personal experience.
The realm of devotion is rather defined by demographically dominant social
groups. Although deity possession is hardly prevalent among the educated
middle-class, it is not merely a sign of low status (unlike in Tamil Nadu, as
suggested by Kapadia). At any rate, ‘modern’ interlocutors will carefully con-
sider their self-presentation when rendering possession episodes. This does
not outdate the relevance of deity possession as a religious idiom of its own.
Apart from deities that may ‘jump upon’ and ‘dance’ mortal beings, the
Hindu cosmology in southern Orissa is populated by several uncanny
supernatural entities that cause suffering and disease. On several occasions
priests make use of a peacock-feather whisk to wipe out malevolent influences
and to protect the human body. This “brushing and blowing’ (jhara-phunka)
is also performed by (male and female) mediums taken over by a goddess.®
If possession occurs for the first time, people may call a ritual specialist well-
versed in magical techniques (tantrika) to find out whether this condition is
caused by a haunting ghost (bhiita). Besides, possession is removed in the case
of those persons who are not considered eligible to enter this experiential state.
Unlike in parts of India with temples widely known for their exorcism rituals,
in southern Orissa to drive away spirits, or rather to re-balance the human
body is, in general, a two-to-ten minute affair that does not raise much attention.
As shown above, there is no clear boundary between desired and harmful
forms of possession. In both cases, the behaviour and expressiveness of the
body is similar and, like during Thakurani Yatra, even goddesses can be
prohibited from entering pious women. However, certain types of psychophysical
affliction are identified within a discourse on black magic (gunia) and thus
regarded as a result of malevolent (super-)human manipulation.
As to the problem of whether this gendered form of divine possession can
be considered an Orissan phenomenon, my analysis has raised several questions
and can only suggest some answers that need further clarification. Certainly
there are features that may account for the specific regional popularity of divine
possession: the importance given to goddess worship (Shaktism) and the
popularity of devotionalism (bhakti), which emphasizes individual experience
of the divine. Yet the intraregional variety of possession practices should not
be underestimated. At any rate, the previous sections indicated that the contrast
between my observations in southern Orissa and the literature on possession
also emerges due to the dynamics of anthropological knowledge production
itself. Since the religious significance of deity possession is a locally contested
issue, it is prone to being overlooked or devaluated by ethnographers. To them
the local equivalent of academic psycho-medical and sociological arguments
is tempting indeed. Therefore it is likely that women in other parts of Orissa,

* This ritual act is not limited to Orissa but commonly performed in popular and ‘tantric’
Hinduism (McDaniel 1989, 13; Gellner 1994, 31; White 2003, 259).
 DIVINE POSSESSION AS A RELIGIOUS IDIOM 369
and even South Asia, may also appreciate the religious experience of divine
possession, particularly in its non-institutionalized form.
To women in southern Orissa, divine possession is mostly synonymous
with goddess possession. These incidents transmit fundamental cosmological
knowledge about the similarities between and interdependence of women and
female deities. Moreover, the occurrence of possession demonstrates the need
to engage in the divine dialogue through prayers and elaborate forms of worship,
sO as to ensure that the goddess is pleased and will take care of her devotees
and the territory they live in. Thus the practice of deity possession does not
only express certain ideas about the self, the permeability of human bodies
and communication with the divine. It also perpetuates Shaktism in its accessible
and embodied form. This religious knowledge includes an inventory of images,
observations, emotions and experiences that outline the character and power
of female deities. It is re-enacted, spread and authenticated primarily by
possessed women and their (male and female) exegetical supervisors. However,
from an ideal ‘high-caste male’ perspective on Hinduism, this ritual practice
can be seen to question hegemonic views on religion and society. Yet it would
be highly misleading to regard the challenge of brahmanical (and academic)
scholars as a self-conscious religio-political act intended by the respective
women. The ‘subversive’ potential of possession is very limited.
In academic discourse, people who experience spirit possession are
commonly regarded as weak personalities vulnerable to exterior forces. They
appear to be under control, not only when in an altered state of consciousness,
but also in their daily lives, a feature which often acts as a precondition for
their possession. This is particularly so in the case of women, who are regarded
as the creatures of demonic and divine powers. Their at times violent and
desperate behaviour while under possession is interpreted as a reaction to their
lack of recognition in and exclusion from many spheres of life. Although most
scholars do not treat possession events solely as indigenous psychotherapy or
a subversive form of social criticism but also focus on their aspect as cultural
performance, they rarely associate women with aesthetic communication, ludic
transgression, or ritual authorship.

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 CHAPTER 17

Social Representations ‘In Between’:

Concepts of Society and Community
in Orissa and Beyond

ULRICH DEMMER

INTRODUCTION

This chapter takes up one of the vital issues in the recent study of Orissan
culture and society, namely, to seek a way out of centrist and dichotomous
paradigms and examine subregional perceptions of the social and cultural
fabric. In particular I ask how tribal communities perceive and construct society
and the social environment. The present chapter will discuss this subject on
the rather abstract level of social representation and the conceptualization of
the social sphere—in other words, I ask, what kind of models do we find ‘in
between’, and how do they relate to the dominant models of Indian social
anthropology? Empirically I present a comparative perspective including the
tribal cultures of Orissa and, on the other hand, a gatherer-hunter community
of south India. These cultures will serve to show in detail how society and
social relationships are modelled not only in quite specific but also in rather
different ways.

MODELS OF SOCIAL LIFE

The question how people organize, represent, and model their social relations
was and still is one of the central issues in South Asian as well as Orissan
anthropology. This quest is dominated by, more or less, two ‘master models’.
One is, of course, that put forward most prominently by Louis Dumont.' As
is well known, in his model of society, India is organized as a total system,
with a consistent single pattern and prime values. Moreover, social relations
are patterned by a clear-cut structure of oppositional ideas like purity-impurity
and hierarchy-equality.
In recent times this image has come under new scrutiny, for example, by
historians of the Subaltern Studies group’ and by anthropologists like Nicholas

'Dumont 1970.
2Cf. Prakash 2000.
374 ULRICH DEMMER

Dirks,*? Veena Das‘ or Gloria Raheja.* Although one can certainly argue that
the Dumontian thesis represents a rather structured concept of society, in
particular the latter has advocated a social model that is no less accentuated.
While Dumont foregrounded structure, system and a unity of values and ideas,
Raheja’s model underlines the openness, flexibility, and negotiated and
contested character of relationships and values. Referring to praxis- and
discourse-centred approaches, Raheja® views ‘society not primarily in terms
of structural fixities but in terms of the processes through which relationships
are constructed, negotiated, and contested’.
However—and this concerns directly the issue of representation—these
ideas and models run the risk becoming ‘centristic’ and dominating paradigms
themselves. This, of course, is certainly not the intention of any of the authors
just mentioned. Indeed, they are all aware of the dangers of essentializing ideas
about society and social life. Moreover, they would certainly agree that, in
order to prevent further essentializations, these ideas are explicitly to be seen
as models themselves that need to be engaged with indigenous conceptions of
social relations in every empirical case. In other words, though there is no
question that all models (both scientific and indigenous ones) are constructed,
whether society is also negotiated and contested needs to be shown as being
based on empirical and local notions of culture and society. How, I ask, do
these scientific ‘master’ models relate to indigenous ideas and representations
of social life and society? To what extent, according to indigenous models,
are social relations negotiated, flexible, and contested, or systematic, fixed,
and rules-guided? This paper will address those questions and explore, based
on field research among two Indian communities, how and what kinds of
models these cultures construct.
It is in particular the late R. Burghart’ and, when one shifts to Orissa, G.
Pfeffer® who seriously began to take up those questions. Burghart? explicitly
argued for a hermeneutic and what he called an ‘intracultural’ approach. He
foregrounded the fact that social relationships are not only the object of scientists
but also of the people ‘on the ground’, so to speak. Notwithstanding the fact
that empirical models will always be subject to retranslation into the language
of scientific discourse, from this point of view, rather than starting from a
uniform and total concept of society, we expect a plurality of social representations
‘on the ground’.
Thus, to cite just one instance, Burghart showed that eighteenth-century
documentary sources from the kingdom of Nepal reveal ‘that Dumont’s theory,

*Dirks 2001.
‘Das 1995.
*Raheja and Gold 1994.
*Ibid., 22.
’Burghart 1978, 1983.
*Pfeffer 1997.
*Burghart 1983.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 375

for example, only pertains partially to Hindu society as it actually existed in

its recent but pre-modern past. The evidence from royal, ascetic, and
Brahmanical sources indicates’, to Burghart, ‘that the value of purity, far from
being a sole fundamental value, both relativised and was relativised by other
values’. Thus, ‘the brahman, ascetic, and king each presented a hierarchical
model of Hindu society and . . . each person claimed the supreme rank according
to his own hierarchical model of social relation’.'®
These findings modify Dumont’s model of India in showing the extent to
which local and regional perspectives vary and even may compete with one
another. The same holds true for Orissa, where Pfeffer in particular argued for
a comparative perspective which takes the diversity and unity of ideas and
social practices as an object of study and not as a ‘theoretical given’. Arguing
that Dumont’s single system approach, expressed, as it were, in terms of the
varna system, tended ‘to remove tribal categories from the agenda’"’ and that
empirically tribal ideas may follow a ‘different rationale when compared to
the Hindu or “Western” order’, he pleaded that we concern ourselves with ‘the
tribal idea of life’.'?
These studies indicate a shift from a single system and centristic view to
local perceptions and interpretations ‘in between’ the master models of Indian
social anthropology, and they encourage the empirical study of the plurality
and variety of models and social representations. This does not preclude, of
course, that we look into the emergence of systematic patterns and configurations
across cultures—it simply demands that one accounts for them in each specific
case before one begins comparison on a higher cross-cultural level. This does
not mean, however, that we must ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ and
assume that neither Dumont’s nor Raheja’s models match the facts. As, for
example, Vincentnathan makes clear,'’ the social concepts of the higher castes
do closely correspond indeed to the ideas of Dumont.
Comparable evidence is provided by Hardenberg’s study of the Orissan
Nabakalebara ritual.'* This performance, celebrated in the heart of Puri, while
periodically instantiating the new birth of Jagannath, represents central ideas
of the social order in quite Dumontian and classical Hindu terms. When the
performers move into the forests while their families remain in Puri and “at
home’, they are enacting prime oppositions in the social system, very much
in Dumont’s terms, namely, the contrast between ‘people out of the world’
and ‘people in the world’, between the ascetic and the householder, between
the individual and society, between egalitarian relations and hierarchy and, if
I understand correctly, also purity and impurity.'°

‘Burghart 1978, 519.

'' Pfeffer 1997, 5.
'2Tbid., 25-6.
'3Vincentnathan 1993.
'4Hardenberg 1999.
'SThid., 417.
376 ULRICH DEMMER

However, once we shift the view from the centre, its rituals and main deity
to the regions ‘in between’, we encounter other models of social order and
values. According to Vincentnathan’s ideas, low-caste Dalit or Harijan groups
often do not seem to follow the hierarchical and binary logic that is taken by
many to be inherent in the Hindu system.'® And when we turn to the broad
spectrum of tribal communities, the expectation is great that here as well we
will find specific models of the social order. In fact, as Pfeffer points out, ‘a
vast array of tribal and so-called scheduled caste people do not necessarily
follow the varna model of social relationships’.'’ Thus, at the level of ideas,
the difference between coastal and tribal Orissa is evident: “the varna model
is the frame of reference for all castes of the coastal area, but it cannot be
discovered in the tribal hills at all. No estate of intellectual ritualists is opposed
to the holders of secular power or segregated from the general peasant
community’.'®
A more appropriate nomenclature would differentiate those who traditionally hesitate
to communicate with the plains people and those who do not serve as accepted culture
brokers within an ongoing symbiosis. The former are of a higher status and non-
marriageable in relation to the latter.'
If we only concentrate on inter- and intra-tribal relations, it is the ideas of
seniority, affinity, and reciprocity that govern tribal conceptions. Thus seniority
is seen to order relations
between subtribes and between clans and even at the village level members of a single
clan subdivide into closely interrelated ritual groups of different standing. [...] status
categories and groups are seen interrelated, mutually dependent seniors and juniors.
[i -J3y

And with respect to affinity, reciprocity, and symmetric exchange, we can see
that
the relationship between intermarrying lineages or between the living and the recently
deceased is that of an overall symmetry. Temporarily the ‘wife-givers’ will have a
status advantage that will be levelled [however] because of the rule of [...]
reciprocity.”

THE KOYA

The Koya, who are also known as the Bison Horn Maria,” are settled in the
southernmost part of Orissa in what is today Malkangiri district, and large

'°Vincentnathan 1993.
Pfeffer 1997.
'8Thid., 11.
'Tbid., 25.
Ibid.
"Ibid.
Cf. Grigson 1938.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 377

* All Phratries have

exogamous ‘brother’
clans
* All Phratries can
intermarry
(organizing principle
= affinity)
* ‘Dravidian type’
Kinship Terminology
* Alliance as a key
value

Fig. 17.1: The Social Organization

of the Koya

sections also live in the eastern parts of Bastar in the neighbouring state of
Chhattisgarh. The Koya I am referring to in this chapter live in the southernmost
part of Malkangiri district, in settlements close to Mottu village.” As traditional
slash-and-burn cultivators, they are farmers who practise cultivation (e.g. rice
and millet), but they also herd cattle and buffalo or work in the fields of
neighbouring farmers.
Linguistically the Koya language belongs to the Dravidian family of
languages, which in Orissa embraces languages of tribal cultures like the Khond
and Oraon and the many sections of the Gond.* The Koya communicate easily,
however, in other local languages too, in particular Telugu. In fact, although
without doubt a distinct language of its own, as Tyler shows, the Koya language
itself is linguistically closer to Telugu then to any other language in the
region.”
Koya society is organized in terms of what can be called a ‘group model’
of society. In contrast to, for example, the Jenu Kurumba of south India (see
below), the Koya represent their social organization in the form of a clear-cut
network of kinship-based groups. According to this model, their social
organization consists of five exogamous phratries, namely Ko:vasi, Ma:di,
So:di, Markami and Podiya:mi.”° Each phratry in its turn is constituted by a
number of patrilineal clans (katta), with each phratry and clan having their
own totem. Both units, that is phratries and clans, are exogamous units, in the

2Cf. Demmer forthcoming.

4Cf. Tyler 1969, 1965.
*Tyler 1969.
26Grigson (1938, 306) mentions the Kuhra:mi (or Kadiari) phratry instead of Podiya:mi.
My own inquiries, however, found no evidence of the former.
378 ULRICH DEMMER

Parallel Relatives Cross Relatives (Affines)

da:da:1 (FF), ta:ta:1 (MP),
emma (FM) ka:ko (MM)
tappe (F, FB), ma:ma:l (MB, FZH, WF, HP),
evva (FBW, M, MZ) po:ye (FZ, MBW, WM, HM)
enna (eB, FBeS), ba:ta:1 (FZeS, MBeS, eZH),
ekka (eZ, FBeD) en[/n]ge (FzeD, MBeD, eBW)
tammund[/nd]u (yB, FByS), erund[/ndJu (FZyS, MByS, yZH),
e:la:di (yZ, FByD) e:nda (MByD, FZyD, yBW)
mari (S, BS), a:ne (ZS, DH),
maya:di (D, BD) kodiya (ZD, SW)

Fig. 17.2: Classification of the Koya Kinship Terms

sense that all the phratries intermarry, marriage within the clan or phratry
being prohibited.
While actual kinship on the personal level is certainly the dominant factor
in the structuration of domestic and local units, locality is no longer thoroughly
structured by clan affiliation. Even in the times of the early ethnographer
Grigson,”’ this was no longer the case.
The linkages between the segments are determined by the kinship system,
which is of the Dravidian type, differentiating all kin into two categories,
namely those with whom one can have marriage ties and those with whom
one cannot. The former category, of affinal relatives, is termed akomama. The
latter category, those with whom marriage is forbidden, are the dadabhai.*
This classificatory system is employed on the clan level as well, so that ego
has a number of dadabhai clans, with whom he or she cannot intermarry, and
a number of akomama clans with whom marriage is conducted. This conforms
to an overall Middle Indian pattern, where, as Pfeffer has pointed out, affinity
is a key social principle organizing the society as a whole.” This is the case
among the Koya too, where the category of akomama plays a central affinal
role. Not only are the phratries seen as affinal categories but the clans too,
since Koya can talk, for example, of akomama (affinal) clans. Moreover, as
the analysis in the present chapter shows, actual kinship relationships, as well
as both social and ritual life, are also based on ‘affinity as a key value’.
However, these kinship-based social structures are not fixed per se but have
to be renewed and maintained. It is in rituals like the death ritual where the
meaning and significance of this principal value is reinforced and kept alive.
The same holds true for relationships between humans beings, the deceased,
and the deities, all of whom are seen as members of the society, which has an
extended character. As among many other cultures in the world, Koya society

7Grigson 1938.
*Cf. Grigson 1938, 244-5.
Pfeffer 1982.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 379

is not confined to human beings but includes the dead and deities as well.
Among the latter, it is in particular the clan deities (pe{/é]n) and the earth,
worshipped as the village mother in every settlement, that are significant. All
of these deities, that is, the clan deities as well as the village mother, influence
the well-being of the community and are worshipped in the course of the many
rituals (padum) that are associated with the fertility of the soil, prosperity and
agriculture. Moreover, people also communicate and talk with them in times
of difficulties. This ‘divine discourse’ is only practised in the séances, where
Koya shamans embody the deities and act as their medium.
Like the deities, the dead too are regarded as important and active members
of the society. In fact, they are really a part of everyday life. In every Koya
house, the part of the storage room (w{/vJijalon) where the ‘pot of the departed’
(hanal kunda) and the ‘hearth of the departed’ are set up is kept separate.
Usually the dead are thought to live in the underworld, but during ceremonies
and rituals they are thought to dwell in the pot, in front of which they are
offered food, drink, and the smell of incense sticks. Moreover, in most of the
padum that are associated with the prosperity of the land, the Koya also seek
to maintain good relationships with the dead in order to secure fertility and
well-being. The burning down of bushes on the land can also be done only
with the help of the dead, because a burning log from their hearth must be
used to kindle the bush fire. But even in everyday life, the dead are regarded
as active beings with whom good relationships must be secured.
In sum, the Koya have a rather clear-cut idea of what their society looks
like. According to the image represented in the death rituals, it is seen as a
system of exchange and of marriage relations between groups, namely, the
phratries and clans. Society, then, is seen here in terms of a group model of
social order, which consists of five phratries, all connected through exchange
and marriage relations. These relationships also include the other-than-human
beings and, building on the kinship system and its normative implications,
they are seen to constitute the basis for the exchange of services and gifts.
Society is therefore conceptualized as a rule-guided system of exchange
relations with relatively clearly outlined structures. Imagined as a network of
exchange and alliance among rather clear-cut social categories, it is conceived
to rest primarily on values like seniority, exchange, and affinity.
These findings correspond clearly to a whole spectrum of other tribal
societies in Middle India, where affinity and exchange relations are the central
parameters of the society.” In other cases, however, the idea of a group model
of society is less pronounced and eventually shifts towards a notion of moral
community which is based primarily on interpersonal kin relations rather than
on groups and exchange.
The Orissan sections of the hunting-and-gathering Birhor, for example,
seem to articulate such a social concept. According to study by Adhikary, the

Cf, Pfeffer 1982.

380 ULRICH DEMMER

Birhor draw a sharp contrast between internal relations and the broader Indian
society.*' The former, their own social configuration, is conceptualized in
terms not of society, hierarchy, stratification, and status, but of personal
relationships within a moral community:
They divide their universe on the earth into disum and muluk. By disum they mean
the region of hills and forests, their own territory, and by muluk, the peasant villages
and the markets, the territory of ‘other people’. The Birhor have developed adaptive
strategies of participation and social interaction in these two sets of environment: a
morally ordered gemeinschaft in disum and a rationalist-utilitarian gesellschaft
orientation in muluk.””
Though we need not agree with the above thesis that a society is a rationalist-
utilitarian environment, it is evident from Adhikary’s descriptions that the
Birhor do draw a contrast between it and the moral community. Making frequent
reference to terms like ‘groups’ and what we call hierarchy, status, system and
the like, the muluk indeed seems to refer to what we have called a group model
of society. Unfortunately more details about the Birhor conception of com-
munity are not available. Therefore, it is necessary to travel to the furthest
periphery beyond Orissa to obtain a fuller idea of how a moral community is
conceptualized in contrast to ‘society’. The Jeénu Kurumba in southern India
present these ideas very explicitly.

THE JENU KURUMBA

The Jénu Kurumba are numerically the largest gatherer-hunter people (around
fifteen to twenty thousand people) in south India. Their home range stretches
along the western side of the Ghat forests, which today form parts of Kerala,
Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. These forests are the traditional foraging areas of
the Jenu Kurumba, but since the establishment of reserve and forest areas and
the wildlife sanctuaries of Mudumalai and Bandipur (in the middle of this
century), they have been deprived of their rights to forage in these forest
regions. Today they are forced to live in settlements, comprising from one to
twenty-five conjugal families each, on the periphery of the sanctuaries and
reserve forest areas. In the latter they are, however, entitled to gather minor
forest products (honey, tamarind, tree moss, soap nuts, etc.). Moving through
the reserve forest areas in small, flexible camps, they gather these products
throughout the year and usually sell them to non-tribal (private or public)
agents. In addition they are employed as wage-labourers on tea and coffee
plantations, farms or in wildlife sanctuaries.
As is typical of many gatherer-hunter cultures, the Jénu Kurumba do not
have either political or juridical institutions, such as chief, tribal council, village
assembly, court, etc., nor do they have any corporate and stable groups like

' Adhikary 1984.

*Tbid., 22.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 381

clans, moieties or the like. Social life is thus not based on a group model of
society but unfolds exclusively on the level of the community and interpersonal
relations.
The Jénu Kurumba live in communities of approximately three hundred to
four hundred people, scattered over a wide area. Sociality within the community
is predominantly based on kinship relations, but in contrast to the micro-castes,
the networks of the Jénu Kurumba are not denoted by names nor situated in
a hierarchical organization—therefore they do not exist as indigenous categories
of the social order.** This, in turn, is related to the fact that an explicit repre-
sentation of their society as a totality (be it as a verbalized model or in myth-
ology) does not exist. Likewise the Jeénu Kurumba do not conceptualize a
clan or moiety system for the network or for the jati as a whole.
Since there are no lineages, unilineal or agnatic descent groups which act
or define themselves as corporate units, the social order is not framed in a
group model of society but rather in terms of interpersonal sociality. People
in the network are situated in a chain of mutual obligations, a moral order of
kinship which stresses filiative and affinal bonds. Affines or ba:-mayika, that
is, all those who are bound together through repeated marriages (genealogical
and terminological cross-cousins: ZH-WB, MB-ZS, FZ-BD, WF-DH, HM-SW,
as seen in Fig. 17.2) should share among themselves and should support each
other if one of them runs into difficulties (having no clothes, money, cigarettes,
food, etc.).
As already noted above, as is typical of many gatherer-hunters, the Jénu
Kurumba have no headmen, no tribal council, or any other institution of political
authority. Though all these features clearly differentiate them from the Koya,
what they share with the latter is that concepts of social life and community
are constructed most explicitly in death rituals. In fact, their death rituals™ are
organized around three ‘key metaphors’, which articulate a performed allegory
of a moral community. In the first metaphor, the performance depicts their
society as a moral community and a cooperative household. The second
metaphor depicts it as an encompassing community that not only consists of
the living, but also encompasses ancestors and the deceased as well. Finally,
the third metaphor represents this encompassing community as a ‘tradition
of argumentation’, where people are continuously required to engage in ver-
bal debates on the values of community and the quality of actual social
relations.

THE COMMUNITY AS A HOUSEHOLD

A death ritual takes the form of a successive number of symbolic actions or

scenes. In the first sequence, called the ‘cutting and bringing of leaves’, all
male participants walk in a kind of procession to a nearby river or waterhole.

For these aspects and a general ethnography, see Demmer 2001a.

mance.
34Se¢e¢ Demmer 2001b for a detailed description and analysis of the perfor
382 ULRICH DEMMER

Guided by musicians who play a special tune, they go to collect branches with
green leaves which are needed later on with which to build a small hut. The
ancestor and the spirit of the dead person will be made to sit in this hut, being
entertained with music, dance and food, and thus be made happy.
After reaching the river, the ritual priest (yajman) selects a special tree
(on[/n]ge-mara) with green leaves and performs a puja at its root. A little later,
one of the younger participants climbs the tree and cuts down enough green
branches with which to build a small hut. Thereafter all the other participants
carry these branches ceremonially back to the ritual place. Holding the branches
above their heads and accompanied by music, they walk in a line and shout
joyfully. Once they have reached the ritual site, they circumambulate a prepared
wooden frame anti-clockwise three times and place the leafy branches on the
frame or simply drop them on to a heap. Then the musicians stop playing
the first sequence. .
After a period of rest, the second scene, called the ‘bringing of water’, is
performed, in which everyone present walks back to the river, again in a kind
of procession led by the musicians. The women carry water vessels while the
ritual priest takes two small clay pots. After reaching the river bank, the yajman
performs a puja (as before with an offering of bananas, coconut, incense and
parched rice) in front of the water vessels and the small clay pots.
Then one of the small clay pots is ceremonially filled with water, and from
now on the ancestor is said to reside in it. Later the whole group ceremonially
returns to the ritual site. Two children carrying the small clay pots walk behind
the musicians and are followed by three or four women carrying large water
pots on their heads, which have already been filled with water from the river.
When they approach the ritual site, the other male participants join them with
foodstuffs (bags of rice, oil, vegetables, etc.), and firewood. Finally the group
circumambulates the wooden frame and the heap of green branches three times,
screaming loudly and joyfully in a rhythmic voice.
Immediately after the circumambulation, the small clay pots, the foodstuffs
and the large water pots are set down and a fire is made with the burning
firewood. Then the ritual priest builds a small hut (udi-ma[/a]ne) with the
green branches, and the two small clay pots are placed at its centre. If any
green branches are left over, they are used to build a larger leaf hut alongside
the small one. It is in the larger hut that the cooking, undertaken by some of
the male participants, takes place. Finally, the yajman erects a wooden pole
(ranga khambha) in the vicinity of the udi-mane, adorns it with small green
branches, and performs a puja in front of it. Then the musicians gradually start
to play, and the people start to dance in circles around the ranga khambha.
This dancing lasts through the night, and the dancers will only take a break
when the food is ready. First, the ancestor and the spirit of the dead will receive
an offering of cooked food and incense. Then the living will also be served
by those who have cooked the food. As with every other action in the ritual
context, this communal eating is performed ceremonially, the people sitting
and eating in a square.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 383

Finally, the following day the unification of the dead and the deity is enacted
ceremonially. The spirit and the deity, both still in their clay pots, are now
brought in a procession, again led by the musicians, to a tree in the forest. At
the foot of the tree the ritual priest places a small stone (approximately seven
inches in height), performs a puja (as usual with incense, bananas, coconut,
and parched rice), and then pours the water of both pots on to the stone. This
is interpreted by the participants as their ultimate contribution to, as they say,
‘making the spirit sit in the company of the deity’.
The death ritual thus articulates a key metaphor of this culture, namely, the
community as a cooperative household. Through the process of the ritual,
people realize an image of the community as a space of actually lived solidarity
and cooperation. This concept is further developed in the wake of the discourses
and dialogues within the performance. Thus, a good social life is imagined
verbally as the “pleasant and protected camp’, as the ‘cool spot’, the ‘shady
place in the forest’, or else is likened to the ‘calm and peaceful camp under
trees that offer shade’. Other verbal images depict it as a nest in which humans
support one another ‘like eggs in a nest that mutually support one another and
prevent any from tipping over’, and so forth. . . .

THE ENCOMPASSING COMMUNITY

The second image that is performed at the death ritual also relates to the Jénu
Kurumba conception of sociality. This metaphor depicts the community as
an encompassing social fabric which includes not only the living but also
the ancestors and the dead. According to the Jénu Kurumba world-view, the
ancestors and the dead live in the underworld. Nevertheless, the latter can
interact and verbally communicate with the living. This, however, only happens
in ritual contexts. In ritual performances the ancestors and the souls of the
deceased can embody themselves in the shamans of the tribe, and thus embodied,
they are able to interact with and to talk to their living relatives.
In the death ritual, this is performed in several scenes. In the first sequence
it is the ancestors who distribute the green branches to the living. In fact, the
living need the ancestors’ cooperation to perform the first scene and bring the
branches to the ritual site. The same holds true for the second phase. When
the living have performed the puja at the river bank, they invite the spirits of
the deceased to join the ritual. Moreover, when the spirits come and embody
themselves in the shaman, participants also fetch water from the river and
distribute it to the women. Without the support of the dead, the living cannot
enact this second scene and are unable to bring the water to the ritual site.
Thus the ancestors and the dead demonstrate their solidarity with the living
and their membership of the moral community.
However, their relationship with the living is not a one-way street. The
ancestors and the dead not only help and support the living, they also demand
solidarity and assistance for their parting. Thus, as the performance proceeds,
the ancestors may indicate with gestures that they want to drink a cup of water,
384 ULRICH DEMMER

or the dead may demand to smoke a bidi, a type of cigarette. Usually the living
provide them with both. Apart from these ‘worldly’ desires, the supernatural
beings, and in particular the dead, are shown to have very human feelings also.
Thus they point out their sufferings and their need for help, bend down and
hold the side that pains them, are given a stick to walk with if they indicate
weakness, and complain, cry, or even embrace their close relatives. At other
times, however, they also show their happiness and start to dance in a circle
with their living relatives.
The most important act of solidarity, however, is the achievement of the
death ritual itself. According to Jenu Kurumba beliefs, a person continues to
live after his death. Yet, the spirit of the dead needs to reach the underworld,
where the ancestors and the other dead are already ‘at home’. Otherwise the
deceased will only exist henceforth as an angry and lonely spirit roaming
around in the forests of the upper world. It is therefore the ultimate aim of the
death ritual to help the dead reach the underworld and its inhabitants. From
this it follows that the dead need the help and solidarity of their living relatives.
This image is celebrated most elaborately in the final scene of the ritual.
After the nightly demonstration of good and happy relatedness between the
living, the ancestors, and the dead, the living help the dead to move down into
the underworld and join the ancestors. To achieve this, the participants bring
both of the small water-filled jugs in which the ancestor and the dead are still
dwelling to a tree in the forest. Once the procession reaches the tree, a small
stone is decorated and a puja is performed. Finally, the yajman pours the water
of both jugs on to the stone, and through this act the ancestor and the dead go
down together into the underworld.
Another mode of visualizing the significance of the ancestors and the dead
for the community is to underline and dramatize their presence. The act of
embodiment is itself a dramatic performance. When the shamans are becoming
possessed they tremble violently, stumble around, throw their arms up into
the air or fall down to the ground. This latter, however, is always prevented
by some of the relatives who stand close by and quickly catch them. Once the
shamans are embodying the supernatural beings, their peculiar style of
movement serves to focus attention on them. At these times the ritual site
becomes a kind of arena, in the centre of which the shamans pace back and
forth. Sometimes they stop walking, but even then they appear restless, their
speech disjointed and breathless. Many of the living are accorded the role of
spectators, keenly observing the shaman in the centre, but others are picked
out by the shaman and brought forward to stand in a row facing him, in order
that they may talk to the ancestors and the dead.
These performed images make it clear that the moral community not only
rests on cooperation and solidarity, but that it is also basically an encompassing
unit unable to exist without the support and moral guidance of supernatural
beings. The ‘good community’ is only realized as an encompassing order
which includes the ancestors and the dead as active, negotiating members of
the social fabric.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 385

This idea also emerges in verbal dialogues. People describe themselves as

‘the children of the deities’ or address the shamans as the ‘favourite children’
of the deities, ‘sitting in their lap and being taken care of nicely’. In turn the
deities are imagined as parents who hold human beings ‘like children by their
hand’ and who keep the living ‘like infants in their lap’, ‘lulling them to sleep
like children’, and so forth.

THE NEGOTIATED COMMUNITY

The third image depicts the community as being based on the discursive
engagement of persons in dialogue. This is made visible in the very performance
of the dialogues, which are not only public, but also highlighted, dramatized,
and in fact ‘staged’ as an arena of debate. But this idea, which might be called
‘dialogic sociality’, is a crucial topic in verbal discourse as well. In fact, the
reason why moral sociality must be dialogic in character is explained in
discourse itself. First, speakers frequently state that they are in need of moral
knowledge and orientation. Only if they are able to speak with non-human
beings about ‘what is good and bad’ can they walk on the ‘right and good
footpath’. Without it, they lament, there is no justice, no allocation of
responsibility, one cannot recognize the correct way of living with other people,
etc.
One of the crucial features of social life that these dialogues point out, then,
is that communal life is inherently uncertain and prone to dilemmas, its
outcomes and overall development always open and at stake. The consequence
of this is that, in order to live in a good way or, as the Jeénu Kurumba say, in
a ‘shady and protective camp’, people are required to attend morally to one
another. Moreover, in order to live such a moral life in a good way, people
must respond to one another and constantly negotiate and justify their
relationships and behaviour. What emerges in the death ritual is a concept
according to which moral sociality is kept alive only through continuous
engagement in public debate. What the Jénu Kurumba discourse tells us, then,
is that without debate, there can be no foundation (nele) for the moral
community. The latter can thus be seen as a ‘tradition of argumentation’, where
people continually argue with each other over who or what they are.”

CONCLUSION

This paper has explored empirically local conceptions of social order and
society. In order to overcome centristic and dominating discourses, two rather
marginalized tribal cultures were analysed, the ways in which they represent
and articulate concepts of social life through ritual performance. The emerging
models can fruitfully be related to the main paradigms that dominate Indian
and Orissan anthropology.

35This concept is explained in more detail in Demmer 2006.

386 ULRICH DEMMER

As it turned out, the Koya of southern Orissa present a concept of society

‘that corresponds in certain aspects to the classical ideas put forward by Dumont
and structuralist thought. In accordance with other Orissan cultures classified
as ‘tribal’, they conceptualize their social fabric in terms of a kinship-based
model and a system of exchange. In the performance of the death ritual, it is
represented as having a relatively clear structure of interrelated segments and
thus appears to be firmly organized in terms of a group model of society.
Other cultures, by contrast, like the Birhor of Orissa or the Jenu Kurumba
in south India, imagine their social world as a moral- and discourse-based
community. In foregrounding negotiation and flexible relationships and in
imagining their social environment as a moral community which must constantly
be worked out through debate and argumentation, they come much closer than
the Koya to Raheja’s conceptualization of social life as an ongoing process of
negotiation and contestation.

REFERENCES
Adhikary, A.K. 1984. Society and Worldview of the Birhor: A Nomadic Hunting and
Gathering Community of Orissa, Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India, Government
of India.
Burghart, Richard 1978. ‘Hierarchical Models of the Hindu Social System’, in Man (n.s.)
13, 519-36.
———1983. ‘For a Sociology of Indias? An Intracultural Approach to the Study of Hindu
Society’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 17, 2, 275-99.
Das, V. 1995. Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India,
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Demmer, U. 2001a. “The Social Structure of the Jeénu Kurumba’, in G. Pfeffer and D.K.
Behera (eds.), Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies, vol. 4, Delhi: Concept.
2001b. ‘Always an Argument: Persuasive Tools in Jenu Kurumba Death Rituals’,
in Anthropos 96, 475-90.
2006. ‘The Rhetoric and Poetics of Ritual Performance: The Jenu Kurumba (A
interactive multimedia cd-rom)’, in U. Demmer, Rhetorik, Poetik, Performanz: Das
Ritual und seine Dynamik bei den Jenu Kurumba. Berlin, New York: LIT.
2007. ‘Memory, Performance, and the Regeneration of Society among the Koya
(Middle-India)’, in A. Malinar and C. Mallebrein (eds.), Time in India: Concepts and
Practices, Delhi: Manohar, 192-208.
Dirks, N. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Dumont, L. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Grigson, W.V. 1938. The Maria Gonds of Bastar, London: Oxford University Press.
Hardenberg, R. 1999. Die Wiedergeburt der Gétter, Berlin: Weissensee Verlag.
Pfeffer, G. 1982. Status and Affinity in Middle India, Wiesbaden: Steiner.
1997. ‘The Scheduled Tribes of Middle India as a Unit: Problems of Internal and
External Comparison’, in D.K. Behera and G, Pfeffer (eds.), Contemporary Society:
Tribal Studies, vol. 1, Delhi: Concept, 3-27.
Prakash, G. 2000. ‘Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from
Indian Historiography’, in V. Chaturvedi (ed.), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the
Postcolonial, London and New York: Verso.
 SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ‘IN BETWEEN’ 387

Raheja, G.G. and A.G. Gold. 1994. Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and
Kinship in North India, Berkeley, London: University of California Press.
Tyler, S.A. 1965. ‘Koya Language Morphology and Patterns of Kinship Behaviour’, in
American Anthropologist 67, 1428-40.
——— 1969. Koya: An Outline Grammar, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Vincentnathan, L. 1993. “Untouchable Concepts of Person and Society’, in Contributions
to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 27, 1, 25-53.
 CHAPTER 18

Dulduli: The Music

‘Which Touches Your Heart’
and the Re-enactment of Culture

LIDIA GUZY

INTRODUCTION

Dulduli is the name given to the regional tradition of instrumental orchestral

music in western Orissa. In the traditional rural setting, it is known as ganda
baja and is played exclusively by the (formerly) Untouchable communities of
the Ganda (also called Pano).' The ganda baja is a ritual inter-village orchestra
that carries with it indigenous concepts of rhythms, instruments and goddesses,
and is associated with marriage alliances and religious ceremonies. Since the
music combines gods and humans in a sensual manner, it is never absent during
weddings or rituals for local gods and goddesses. In the urban setting, the
inter-village orchestra transforms itself into dulduli, a form of folk art on stage,
also known as Sambalpuri music. Dulduli players are generally urban middle-
class musicians, who perform mainly on stage in a range of cultural con-
texts.
The present chapter, which represents work in progress,” describes a musical
tradition in its diverse cultural settings and in a process of social change. In

'The phrase ‘instrumental orchestra’ signifies an ensemble of instruments with a choral

character drawn from the different voices of the instruments, but in this context it does not
signify any form of vocal ensemble. It is important to note that an instrumental orchestral
tradition in South Asia is very different from the Indian traditional (classical) form of modal
music. Modal music in classical Indian music is characterized by the individual solo
performer and solo compositions (Daniélou 2004, 10-11); it lacks the choral character of
instruments as voices which play together. The choral character of the South Asian orchestral
tradition otherwise resembles classical European orchestras (chamber orchestra, opera
orchestra, etc.). The differences from the classical European tradition lie in the fact that
(a) the musicians are restricted to specific social groups or ethnic categories, (b) that the
music is restricted to special occasions (Sachs 1923, 2-3), and (c) that it represents specific
regional traditions of ensembles of regional instruments (see Sachs 1923, 3-11), for example,
that known as the Naykhibaja of the Newar (Wegner 1988) or the Damai baja (Helffer
1969a/b), also known as the Pancai baja, of the Damai (Tingey 1994), both from Nepal.
21 am grateful to the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for
a generous research grant (from 2003 to 2005), which enabled me to conduct research in
Sambalpuri music.
390 LIDIA GUZY _

so far as music represents a society, it can only be understood in its specific

cultural context.’ This study thus attempts to differentiate between the rural
and urban features of local music in western Orissa. When local performing
arts evolve to become urban folklore on stage, the character of the cultural
performances also changes. Urban folklore in western Orissa is directly
connected with the music industry, the media, and the World Wide Web. Urban
folklore is also related to the constitution and rise of regional ethnicity, in so
far as this can be considered a political agent.
The first part of this chapter deals with the traditional settings of the
instrumental orchestral music of western Orissa. The second part sketches a
profile of the transformation of a performing folk art into urban folklore and
thus draws attention to the political implications of music.

THE TRADITIONAL CONTEXTS OF DULDULI

Traditionally in western Orissa,* music and dance are embedded in the local
belief system, where instruments and rhythms represent the speech of local
goddesses. The voices of the different goddesses appear in different rhythms.
In the rural context no socio-religious ceremony, such as marriage or puja to
the gods and goddesses, can be celebrated without baja. The musicians are
invited by means of the symbol of turmeric powder, which is sent to them by
different local communities, such as the Binjal, Gouro, Dhol Khond, Mali, or
Kulta, to perform in their villages. The music played by the Ganda musicians
connects local communities, places, and religious concepts. In its linking and
communicative function, it can be considered an inter-village orchestra, whose
mediators are the Ganda musicians.°
The ensemble of the folk instruments is also called a panchabadya,° which
itself refers directly to the five instruments assembled in the inter-village
orchestra. The orchestra, consisting ideally of five instruments, might have
between five and seven instrumentalists. The ensemble represents three
categories of instruments: membranophones (dhol, nissan, tasa, also called
timkiri), an aerophone (mohuri), and idiophones (kastal/jhang or jumka).
The ganda baja/panchabadya of western Orissa:
(1) dhol (4) mohuri
(2) nissan _ (5) kastall/jhang or jumka
(3) tasa or timkiri

‘See Blacking 1973; Blacking and Kealiinohomoku 1979.

‘The data drawn from Sambalpur and Bargar Districts, especially the rural Padampur
and Boro Sombar region. I am thankful to Surendra Kumar Sahu from Padampur who
assisted me in my research with that whole of his musical knowledge and devotion for the
local music of this region.
*For comparison of the Pano in Koraput, see Pfeffer 1994, 14-20.
°See here the similarity with the Nepalese pancha baja of the Damai musicians (Tingey
1994).
 DULDULI 391

DHOL

The dhol, which is the leading instrument, is a large membranophone. The

large, long drum (90 cm to 1.5 metres in length) is made from the trunk of a
tree and is stringed with cowhide (gai chomora) on two sides. The dhol also
has strips of cowhide (badi) and rings for the strips (kol kola). The tali is the
right-hand side skin and is made from calf’s skin; the dhaya, the left-hand one
is made from cowhide. Tali are slightly smaller (37 cm in diameter) than the
dhaya (38 cm in diameter), and the left side is played with one rubber stick
(khanda/nara) of around 40 cm in length. The dhol player is called the dholya,
who typically directs all changes of rhythm played by the ganda baja group.
All the rhythms are spontaneous, but they are still directed by the dholya. The
musicians learn the rhythmic and melodic compositions by listening to various
rhythms from early childhood on.

NISSAN

The nissan, another membranophone, has a tapered form like half a melon. It
is often considered to be the most ancient instrument of the village orchestra.
A nissan is made of wooden and iron sheets, and is played with two rubber
sticks (chimta). The leather (chipra) that creates the sound is made of cowhide
or goatskin, and is often decorated with colourful paintings.
The nissan is always played with maximum strength and thus has a deep,
penetrating sound. In the Sambalpur area it is decorated with deer antlers,
though these have begun to disappear, as deer hunting is now forbidden.

TASA

The fasa, a small membranophone, is a drum made from clay (matul) and
stringed with cow’s leather (gai chomra), called mola. Its shape is tapered to
a base,’ and it is played with two thin bamboo sticks. The sound the asa makes
is high and thin.

MOHURI

The mohuri is an oboe-like instrument. Its sound, the Ganda say, is a crucial
element in changing the character of the music. Usually it is associated with
the seductive voice of a capricious woman, but it can also be related to the
desperate voice of a mother crying for her dead son.

KASTAL

The kastal or jhang are iron cymbals; the jumka, which may be used instead
of the cymbals, is basically a rattle.

7The tasa has also leather strips.

392 LIDIA GUZY

All the instruments play together in both tune and rhythm. The most
important criteria for a Ganda musician are to listen to what the other musicians
are playing and to learn to play along with them. Playing baja also implies a
sophisticated culture of listening. The musical specificity of the ganda baja
seems to lie in its instrumental orchestral character. Through the beat of the
right hand, tali side of the dhol, the dhol provides orientation for the tasa,
which then beats a double rhythm. The beat of the left hand, dhaya side of the
dhol provides orientation for the nissan, which then strikes a counter-rhythm
to the beat of the dhaya. As the sound of the mohuri must often resemble the
flirting of a women’s voice, it is played in an extremely alluring way.
All the instruments in the inter-village orchestra are worshipped before
being played. They themselves are used in the worship of gods and goddesses,
but they also require worship.
Even if the orchestral character ganda baja can be compared with some
structural features of the orchestral traditions of Nepal (Helffer 1969a/b, Tingey
1994, Wegner 1988), ganda baja seems to represent a regional specificity of
western Orissa/Chhattisgarh.®

THE GANDA BAJA AND THE WORSHIP OF THE GODDESS

The dhol, nissan, and tasa are used in inducing trance. For instance, the nissan
represents the voice of the goddess Nissani and thus becomes identical to her.
This identification between drum and goddess can be observed in a Nissani
temple near Padampur in Bargar District, where the goddess Nissani is
considered to be, and where there are three nissan drums on the temple
altar.

GANDA BAJA AND BOIL: AN EXAMPLE OF A

TRADITIONAL POSSESSION CULT

The relationship between ganda baja and the local worship of goddesses is
illustrated by the local possession cult called boil in the Padampur/Borosombar
region of western Orissa.

THE RITUAL SCENE

Every Monday during Dasara (October) in the Boro Sombar region, when the
Goddess Durga is to be worshipped, she appears in the body of her priest. At
this time, boil comes upon the pujari (priest). Meanwhile the ganda baja
accompanies the act of possession, which is embodied in the dance and speech
of the priest.

‘According to personal communication (August 2005) with Dr Nicolas Prévot, at the

Department of Ethnomusicology in Paris, similar musical structures can be found in
Chhattisgarh.
 DULDULI 393

DEFINITIONS OF BOIL

Boil is a polysemic religious concept. It can be translated as either the ‘divine

dance’ or the “dance of gods and goddesses’. This concept refers to the religious
specialist and his or her ritual involvement. The pujari who becomes boil is
transformed into a sacred dancer of the Goddess Durga.
Boil can also be understood as the ‘opening’ of the local pujari to the entry
of a divine power and can accordingly be identified with ‘goddess spirit
possession’.? Boil can also be translated simply as a divine power, a procreative
and creative power, which comes upon the pujari. The phrases boil asile or
boil asi (boil came) and boil asibe (boil will come) indicate the wild dance of
the pujari, who, while dancing, represents and becomes boil. On the one hand,
boil is a condition, a state of trance. On the other hand, it is the personified
manifestation of the Goddess Durga. During boil, the boil himself may even
completely lose contro! and fall down if he is not held or helped. Generally
the boil of the Goddess Durga is a man, but a man with feminine attributes.
Boil have long, open hair and wear a red sari during the boi! ritual.
Boil charibe, jibe (boil will leave) signals the end of the ecstatic dance and
the end of the presence of the divine power. After the divine power withdraws,
the boil is left numb and then returns to his or her original state as the daily
priest.

GANDA BAJA RHYTHMS AND THE RITUAL TRANSFORMATION

The ganda baja is of central importance in the ritual transformation of the

human priest into a boil, the divine manifestation of the Goddess Durga and
of other goddesses and gods.
The concept of bol or par, the rhythm, plays a critical role in the ritual
performance of boil possession. The trance itself is expressed in rhythms which
become representative of the goddesses. The ganda baja, which is essentially
polyrhythmic, leads the possession performance, particularly by playing the
so-called borua par, the holy sixteen rhythms of boil possession.

BORUA PAR

The borua par, the rhythms of the divinely possessed, have a structure of
sixteen rhythms, also called sulo par. Sulo par are the rhythms represented in
the boil, the possessed priest (pujari) of a goddess. Different goddesses will
appear via different rhythms (par) in the body of the possessed. Sulo par, the
sixteen possession rhythms, represent sixteen different goddesses. The rhythms
are named after the goddesses and are aurally recognized by the musicians."
Locally, the identifications of rhythms and goddesses can vary.

*Roche 2000, 288-95. |

Such as Durga Par; Maha Kali Par; Ma Magala Par; Ma Tarani Par; Oila Devi Par;
Subakesi Par; Tulsa Devi Par; Bontei Devi Par; Chandraseni Par; Ganga Devi Par; Parvati
ari Par.
Par; Lakshmi Par; Boiravi Par; Buri Ma Par, Patmeshwari Par; Samleshw
394 LIDIA GUZY

‘The ganda baja or inter-village orchestra accompanies the ritual of

possession and the worship of the gods and goddesses. The music of the
(formerly) Untouchable musicians in itself represents an ‘Untouchable’ entity
of the sacred, channelling intangible local concepts of the divine as a wild,
uncontrolled power, which is expressed by the rhythms and dance of the
possessed priest. On the one hand, the baja transcends local communities in
its function as a ritual inter-village orchestra. On the other hand, through its
rhythmic expression of the transcendence, the baja enables the sensual
experience of the local community and its communication with the holy
sphere. vy

THE GANDA BAJA AS AN EXPRESSION OF LOCAL IDENTITY

The ganda baja not only provides a form of religious expression, it also
transmits to its listeners a strong emotional connection with local beliefs and
identities.'' To quote a Ganda musician: ‘Listen to the baja. It touches your
heart! It is the sound of the thunderstorm. It is the sound of your heart beat.’
For all those whose life has been accompanied by baja, this music represents
part of a local cultural totality, and as such the music reinforces a feeling of
cultural interconnectedness. The inter-village orchestra can be considered a
crucial component of cultural identity. As the ganda baja communicates with
other cultural clusters—teligious rituals and local communities—it signifies a
feeling of local and religious identity. The ritual musical performance expresses
an abstraction of the experience of the local community.
Having dealt with the topic of music and situated it in its traditional context,
I shall now discuss recent transformations in an urban setting, where tradition
is becoming more and more reinvented.

THE URBAN CONTEXT

In the urban context, the play of culture and local identity is expressed on
stage. In urban western Orissa one can discern a high degree of creativity in
the performing arts. Traditional music and dance are revitalized on stage and
create a kind of urban folklore, the so-called Sambalpuri music. In Sambalpur
it is striking that no less than two generations are searching for a ‘lost cultural
identity’. The second and third generations of urban migrants continually ask
themselves what they have lost due to the industrialization and modernization
of their world.
In this context, in recent years many cultural institutions and centres have
appeared and grown in order to revitalize a ‘forgotten’ local culture. These
cultural groups conduct research on traditional dance and music in order re-
create these customs on stage in a proper traditional manner. The aim of this

''On the relationship between music and emotion, see Feld 1982.
 DULDULI 395

wave of research in the most remote areas is to collect the ‘wild’ (yet not
urbanized) rhythms and information about them before these traditions change
or disappear. Many urban activists are going to the field and documenting
these still vibrant traditions in remote villages, where they observe, learn, and
finally teach their young urban students how to protect and understand their
cultural identity through music and dance.
Cultural programmes, such as Loko Mohotsav, the annual Folklore Festival
in Sambalpur, which started in 1998, deal with the changing world and with
the persistent search for cultural identity. Modern media and technology are
used to promote local cultural performances on stage and to transfer them to
the World Wide Web. In various ways local musicians are invited to Sambalpur
and encouraged to continue performing their local art traditions, for which
they receive recognition and money.
The Loko Mohotsav in Sambalpur is an example of the ongoing process of
creating and re-creating urban folklore on stage in a manner which connects
it with a globalized world. In the Loko Mohotsav, local life is re-enacted and
projected on to the global community. For urban cultural activists, west Orissan
folklore is becoming one of the centres of musical and cultural expression.
The sacredness of the traditional baja is being transformed into the sacredness
of a performance which will be broadcast to the world.
Because of the vital work of these urban activists, art traditions are being
preserved on stage, where, however, the re-enacted local traditions become
fragmented by an earlier socio-cultural totality. On stage, the du/duli is no
longer a ritual inter-village orchestra played by the (formerly) Untouchable
Ganda. Instead it represents a regional folklore which is mostly being played
by an urban middle class, who have migrated from the villages and have settled
in the cities in the past two or three generations. Together with the cultural
nostalgia being catered to by the music industry, the traditional baja has since
become ‘touchable’. With its tangibility, urban folklore is in danger of being
transformed into an ever simpler and secular form of entertainment.

MUSIC AND ETHNICITY

Together with its cultural revival on stage, a growing regional ethnic awareness
can be witnessed with regard to dulduli or Sambalpuri music. Ethnicity is the
process of constructing group identity with regard to a constructed history,
common origin, and culture.'? The discourse on culture in western Orissa is
strongly connected with its impact on music and language. Cultural and political
activists are trying to combine language, music, and culture in order to construct
a distinct regional and cultural identity. The regional uniqueness of Sambalpuri
culture will be expressed by Sambalpuri music and language. Sambalpuri

'2For definitions and discussion, see Guibernau and Rex (eds.) 1997; Waltzer, Kantowicz,
Higham and Harrington 1982; Ben-Ami, Peled and Spektorowski (eds.) 2000.
396 LIDIA GUZY

music thus conveys political self-awareness and self-esteem. Potentially, this

cultural distinctiveness may one day become the basis for the creation of
Koshala,'? an autonomous regional administration within India.
On stage, dulduli music demonstrates the cultural and political self-awareness
of an urban middle class, since it reflects its relationship with local folk music
and its power to create a regional ethnicity in urban western Orissa,'*mirroring
a recent example of cultural metamorphosis on stage. The former socio-
ritualistic ganda baja is being transformed into secular Sambalpuri music,
with implications for political, cultural, and regional distinctiveness.
e

'SKoshala is the name of a mythological kingdom of this region.

'*For comparisons, see Stokes (ed.) 1994.

REFERENCES
Ben-Ami, S., Y. Peled and A. Spektorowski (eds.) 2000. Ethnic Challenges to the Modern
Nation State, Houndsmills and New York: Macmillan Press and St. Martin’s Press.
Blacking, J. 1973. How Musical is Man? Seattle and London: University of Washington
Press.
Blacking, M. and J.W. Kealiinohomoku (eds.). 1979. The Performing Arts: Music and
Dance, Paris and New York: Mouton.
Daniélou, Alain 2004 (1975). Einfiihrung in die indische Musik. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel;
Ist edn. Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichhofen.
Feld, S. 1982. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weepings, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expressions,
2nd edn., Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
Guibernau, M. and J. Rex (eds.) 1997. The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism
and Migration, Cambridge: Blackwell.
Helffer, Mireille 1969a. ‘Fanfares Villageoises au Nrpal’, in Objets et Monde 9, 1, 51-8.
Pfeffer, Georg 1994. ‘Music in Context: Ethnography and Meaning’, in Beitrdge zur
Musikethnologie 30, 14-20.
Roche, David 2000. ‘Music and Trance’, in Alison Arnold (ed.) Garland Encyclopedia of
World Music, vol. 5, South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent, New York: Garland
Publishers, 288-95.
Sachs, Curt 1923. Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens, 2. Aufl. Berlin/Leipzig:
Vereinigung Wissenschaftlicher Verleger Walter de Gruyter & Co. (Handbiicher der
Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin).
Stokes, M. (ed.) 1994. Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place,
Oxford and Providence: Berg.
Tingey, Carol 1994. Auspicious Music in a Changing Society: The Damai Musicians of
Nepal, London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
Waltzer, M., E. Kantowicz, J. Higham and M. Harrington 1982. The Politics of Ethnicity:
A Series of Selections from the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,
Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Wegner, Gert-Matthias 1988. The Naykhibaja of the Newar Butchers, Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner Verlag.
 CHAPTER 19

Discourses, History and Modernity:

In Search of Orissan Civil Society

GEORG BERKEMER

The German people, united in its tribes. . . .'

This is the last of the Salzau Conferences of the Second Orissa Project. Allow
me, therefore, in this essay, to bring up those matters which concern and trouble
me most in Orissa, a place which has become our home away from home. I
do not want to contribute scientifically to the already rich material on Orissa
here, but rather shall use my time to formulate some thoughts on open issues
from the point of view of a foreigner, a subaltern, and a historian.
From the beginning, this project was not able to do research in as wide a
field as envisaged by its planners. It was crippled by the more or less complete
absence of some key subjects such as sociology, and literary and political
sciences. These, together with anthropology, philology and other subject areas,
provide necessary partners and critical companions in the research of historians.
This lack and some ill-timed cuts in the funding of our work on historiography
have made it difficult to cover to our satisfaction such contemporary issues as
are deeply rooted in one or more of Orissa’s pasts. Orissa has at least three
sets of such pasts: a partially ambiguous colonial past, a much cherished
imperial past, and a multitude of local and subregional pasts—some contested,
but mainly forgotten or disdained.
It is not only since the shift to post-modern paradigms that we have come
to realize that any historical past is created by the present at least as much as
the present is formed by the collectivity of such pasts. Consider the following
example from places far away from Orissa, namely, Pakistan and Germany:
in a two-part editorial in the Daily Times (Lahore) Georg Pfeffer’ has described
how horrified German visitors usually are when confronted with their Indian
or Pakistani hosts’ undiminished admiration of Adolf Hitler. While travelling,
most of us Germans have had similar experiences, not only in South Asia, but
also in Africa or South America. This naiveté is quite unsettling for a post-war
German: Adolf the Horrible, the greatest of all mass murderers, the cause of

' Beginning of the Preamble of The Reich Constitution of 11 August 1919 (the Weimar
Constitution) of the first German democracy.
Pfeffer 2003.
 398 GEORG BERKEMER

unimaginable destruction and suffering, the personification of all the evil of

the twentieth century—these epithets may suffice to illustrate the politically
correct opinion about him in Germany—suddenly rises from his unknown
grave as the nemesis of the British empire and ally to a host of freedom struggles
most Germans either are in favour of, or have never heard of. After coming
to grips with this embarrassment from his own past, the visitor from Germany
usually understands that a different present indeed shapes a different past.
The past is often seen as a one-dimensional chain of events linked by cause
and effect, leading straight to the New World Order after the end of the Cold
War. The victory of global capitalism over its enemies is often presented as
the natural precursor to global democracy and liberty. On the other hand, what
our contemporaries have to endure in those countries that have been most
affected by the recent global changes make many nostalgic for the good old
times of stability and clear front lines. There are indeed problems with post-
colonial and post-socialist democracy, new and untested, often imported from
foreign parts as a ready-made commodity like crates of Coke and fleets of
BMW cars. The American brand of democracy, a by-product of Capitalism
labelled ‘Liberty’ or ‘Freedom’, is indeed open to a fair amount of criticism.
As Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet, has put it: ‘The poor stay poor and the
rich get richer; that’s how it goes, everybody knows.’
Globalization and capitalism, population pressure and unemployment,
religious extremism and the consequences of the greenhouse effect . . . all this
makes people feel insecure. The more you know about it, the less you like this
little planet of ours. It is quite easy to call for the strong hand at the top or
for
the one and only ideology or creed that promises to keep the centrif
ugal
tendencies at bay and the much cherished values of old intact.
In the Moscow daily Prawda of 8 May 2003 a commentator
noted in the
context of Iraq that for some countries the price of democracy is
too high. And
he asks: ‘Isn’t a dictatorship simply better for some peoples
than democracy?”
We Europeans would deny this, but it is not easy to convi
nce people facing
seemingly insurmountable obstacles that there are other
ways to solve their
problems than resorting to matsya-nyaya, or following
avika-marga, the way
of the sheep. Not only in Russia, but everywhere
from eastern Europe to
Afghanistan, democracy is often seen as a liability,
a burden to be shouldered
for the sake of foreign capitalists or a newly rich
minority.
Is all this relevant for Orissa? I think it is, even
though, if one looks from
the problems of the Near East to South Asia,
India has recently been hailed
as a haven of stability and is not counted amo
ng the likely candidates ready
to sacrifice democracy for a strong national
leader. India, it seems, has inherited
the better part of the British colonial legacy
by opting to become a constitutional
and parliamentary democracy instead of
adopting a presidential system. And
Orissa—so snugly ensconced, despite
its undeniable problems, in its memory

Quoted in Berliner Zeitung, 9 May 2003

, p. 4.
 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 399

of a golden pre-colonial past and hopes for a better future—seems somewhat

like a Switzerland in India. Rooted in its traditions and enjoying internal peace,
it has indeed a few things in common with Switzerland—far-fetched as this
comparison may seem at first glance: from the day of acknowledged nationhood,
neither have ever lost their freedom, but have retained their traditions and
struggled as an avant garde to find their own path into the future. Switzerland,
however, has had a few centuries more to carry out this task, gaining freedom
gradually between 1291 and 1648, while in Orissa many still remember the
first and the second days of independence, in 1936 and 1947. There is more
that the two states have in common than one may imagine: until the eighteenth
century, the map of Switzerland consisted of territories of dominant, allied
Sovereign Cantons (Souverdne Kantone) and their clients (zugewandte
Kantone), interspersed with territories of shared authority and high mountains
where state authority was merely a theoretical presence. This reminds one of
Orissa’s garhjat states. And not least is the fact that both have in their history
as states so far avoided the dangerous, dark side of democracy, as we know
it from both India and Europe.*
Does this dark side contain pitfalls which are all but unavoidable in the
long run if a political system is to be founded on sentiments of national unity?
Is democracy always based on the exclusion the ‘other’, i.e. of those groups
whose language, culture, skin colour, religion, past, etc., do not fit the accepted
norm? Europe was and still is full of such incidents, some centuries old, like
the conflicts in Northern Ireland and in Kosovo, but many are less deep-rooted
in the past than commonly assumed. I have quoted some examples in the call
for papers for this conference to illustrate the fact that South Asia is not far
behind in time in its creation of national sentiments based on allegedly ‘ancient’
traditions which were actually made up in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.
There is the strict refusal of Catalan nationalists to collaborate with the ‘foreign’
Spanish government in cultural matters, the outrage of Gaelic nationalists in
the 1980s when cultural anthropologists showed that the alleged deep-rooted
adversity against the ‘Saxon’ English was a fabrication, and there is the necessity
to justify
to resort to cultural symbols produced in modern times in order
Ossian
claims to ancient cultural independence (e.g. in the eighteenth-century
n of
in Scotland, the nineteenth-century Finnish Kalevala and the fabricatio
around the
an anachronistic Medieval ‘French’ or ‘German’ Empire, centred
past has been (re-)
figure of Charlemagne or Karl der Grosse, etc.). Here, the
nationalism.
created as a support for the newest fashion in political thinking:
in my opinion is an
I am not in favour of stating ‘laws of history’—history
events and their long-
agglomeration of more or less unconnected contingent
ve, and not determined
term consequences, which are statistical and accumulati

let the Hindu-fascists add a chapter

‘Despite being culturally similar, Orissa has not yet
Gujarat, nor has there been genocide in
of communal mass murder to its history like
1991; Mann 2006).
Switzerland like in Germany (see Anderson
400 GEORG BERKEMER

_by any physical or metaphysical principle that we know of—but there seems
to be a strong correlation between nation-building and strong sentiments against
those who are seen as outsiders. There is a whole repertoire of actions which
can make sure that everyone knows their place: to construct a handy conspiracy
theory, to denounce the collaborators and the lukewarm, to sentimentalize
one’s own kind in language, culture, religion and the past—usually by evoking
mother- or fatherlands and the biological equivalent of the nation (the
Volkskorper or the Japanese koku-tai: the nation conceived as one collective
body), to propagate the exemplary fate of the martyrs for the case at hand,
and, in order to perpetuate the sentiment, to make sure that everybody knows
that there are still some scores to be settled. There are territories still in the
hands of the enemy (the terrae irredentae) and stray fellow countrymen to be
gathered home into the fold (‘Where Serbs Live There is Serbia’; Slobodan
Milosevic). And again there is the bygone glory, the heroic days, the old empire
to be resurrected. This list could go on and will inevitably end with horrors
such as genocide, ethnic cleansing and the industry and bureaucracy of death,
so masterfully put into homicidal practice in Germany during the Second
World War. The twentieth century is full of such incidents, in Turkey, South
Asia and later in Cambodia and the Balkans, to mention only a few.
While a good nationalist holds out the structural duality of ‘us’ versus ‘them’
and may as a politician win votes with such platitudes, praxis looks somewhat
different. A colleague of mine who was a member of the municipal council
of her home town found that, as soon as anyone from abroad starts to engage
himself in communal activities such as sports or gardening clubs, welfare
societies or political parties, the common interest can become stronger than
the person’s ‘foreignness’. But there are degrees of this: the more somebody
actively integrates himself, the easier is the process. The better he speaks the
language, the longer he lives in the region (not in the country), the more he
knows about local affairs, the more he ‘becomes one of us’. The continuum
has many dimensions. Take for instance Germany: depending on peoples’
upbringing, there might be the problems of skin colour, country of origin,
religion and of course education and wealth. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Swiss,
Austrians, Danes, Italians and a few others might be seen as less than half
foreign, other EU citizens, especially when being Christian or not ostensibly
non-Christian, and not dependent on the dole, will also have not much of a
problem. Like them are Americans, Japanese, South Asians, South Americans
and eastern Europeans. Integration is easier for individuals or single families
than for larger groups, but virtually impossible for those who want to keep
themselves aloof from the dominant culture.
While India is undergoing a new step in the formation of nationhood, in
which a growing middle class discovers a common interest in modern, if not
global, ideas and commodities, more traditional sectors of society demand the
strengthening of region-based statehood. This discourse can also be observed
in Orissa. As a Nation in a Nation, between 1936 and 1947 Orissa saw its
 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 401

share of conflicts between the proponents of statehood and the advocates of

a nation-wide Independence movement. In 1936 Orissa, as the oldest of the
language states of the Indian Union, represented a new dimension of statehood
which set an example for others after Independence. This not only produced
conflicts between the National Congress and several non-Congress governments,
but also brought to light the backwardness of many of the Oriya-speaking
princely states, where political awareness was rare and where the rulers had
no interest in joining any quest for nationhood, be it within the Oriya movement
or the INC. Now, two generations later, most of the old resentments have died
down, but many of the problems Orissa has inherited from older times are still
unsolved, and many new ones have arisen. The task in its quest for nationhood
was and is not only to integrate Oriya-speakers of different social backgrounds,
such as city, tribe, and countryside. There was also the task to turn Oriya from
a peripheral ‘dialect’ in the Bengal Presidency or from a minority language °
without rights in Madras into a state language.
Much has been written about this cultural process of asserting the status
of Oriya as a language of literary value as well as a tongue fit for school,
administration and collective memory. Less, however, has been said about the
inevitable result of this process of forming a national language: the very process
of creating a centre within the Oriya-speaking tracts made ‘deficient’ those
who do not speak the Oriya of the administrative elite of the centre. This,
besides forming a national territory, is the one process which has been
considered necessary for true nationhood all over Europe—with the exception
of Switzerland—in the heydays of nationalism. It is the foremost distinctive
mark a person carries, if not in their face, then on their tongue. From here
arises the ‘Dark Side of Democracy’ whose excesses Orissa has so far avoided.
However, no democratic state system remains free of it, and Orissa, as we
shall see, has had its share of attempts to consolidate its centre at the expense
of its peripheries.
Orissa is ‘one’ when the point of view is that of the centre, but ‘diverse’
when seen from its periphery. Then again, it seems to have many peripheries
if we compare the cultural idioms in which these peripheries express themselves.
As Flueckiger has shown, many of these peripheries have fuzzy boundaries
which are not congruent at all with modern state boundaries. Over the centuries,
traditional identities have been created and lost, amalgamated and split apart,
and built layer upon layer of collective representations and memories. Any
one of them can be taken up by interested parties, remodelled according to the
latest fashion in self-representation, garnished with late modern or post-modern
newsspeak, and delivered to the public as an urgent political or religious
agenda.”
In Orissa, not much of this has made itself felt so far. Is there a danger that
it may be ripped apart by centrifugal forces if certain ‘peripheral’ traditions

5See Flueckiger 1991, 1996; Flueckiger (ed.) 1991; Berkemer 2003.

402 GEORG BERKEMER

unite with a modern political will to create a new political unit out of parts of
Orissan territory? The Koshal movement is the best example here, the southern
Desia another. It seems that the Koshal movement has started like the various
Oriya movements a century earlier: as the brainchild of intellectuals who were
dissatisfied with their personal career prospects and others’ low regard for
their local identity and cultural background in the political centres of their
time. Getting away from these centres was one part of the agenda; finding a
new focus in an old, but so far rather peripheral centre was another. From a
Calcutta point of view, Puri was a ‘centre out there’, a nice place somewhere
out in the sticks at the borders of the Bengal Presidency. But being the focus
of a living tradition, one could build a new collective identity upon it.
Lacking such an old centre, however, the Koshal movement® may be in a
less advantageous position. Here, as in the Oriya movement earlier, the
combination of cultural tradition and historical construction with modern
political ideas and means of dissemination are believed to do the trick. Whether
it will is doubtful because, while the original Oriya movements took shape in
the heyday of national sentiment, other issues are now to the fore. Globalization
creates its own forms of modernity or post-modernity, and many of those to
whom the intellectuals of a hundred years ago gave the only acceptable voice
now have a whole set of strategies to choose from in order to make themselves
heard. Political parties and ideologies, religious movements, NGOs, international
human rights groups, terrorist cells, profit-seeking or non-profit business
organizations—they can all provide a platform with which to link one’s own
small world with global ideas. The world which any contemporary in Orissa
perceives as his ‘own’ is probably much bigger now than a hundred years ago,
and emotional attachments that were once reserved for a very small part of
the globe make themselves felt in a much wider context. Take, for instance,
sports events, space flights, elections in a foreign country, the oil price or
floods and earthquakes: things you know and have sentiments and opinions
about become to a degree your own concern. This changing and widening
point of view can also provide a means to ‘modernise’ outside mainstream
society by helping to create the ability to think globally, or, in more scientific
terms, to experience the relativity of one’s own ‘societal reference’ and ‘self-
identity’.
Take, for instance, an example that Richard Eaton provides: there were
Naga chiefs around 1880 who asked the British administration to send
missionaries, even though they had no previous exposure to Christianity. The
Nagas’ explanation was that, in a world in which their fate was decided from
as far away as London, they needed a god whose influence could be felt not
only in their own area, but all over the British Empire. This is modernization
by degrees. Maybe the Desia, when they are finally forced to take to political
action against the exploitation and alienation of their land by national and

®°Cf. S.K. Panda in this volume.

 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 403

international industries, the logging mafia, the employees from the plains in
the new industries and future oustees from land submerged by rising sea levels,
will have a more ‘modern’ stance for their struggle to keep a foothold in their
“periphery’.
The Orissa Project has provided us with many data on social change showing
how Orissa has opened up to the world. It seems to me that we are a long way
from the 1980s, when even educated ladies would ask a visitor from abroad
to bring them an American sari. The fictitious American sari is a good example
of the universalization of one’s own cultural frame of reference. Now, twenty-
five years later, such ladies know from TV or personal experience that there
are no saris in America. They have no problem to perform a process of
relativization of their own frame of reference. I have seen tribals’ in remotest
Koraput discuss Osama bin Laden and the Taliban war in Afghanistan. News
media provide information that allows everybody tocompare their own situation
with those of others, far and near.
I am not saying that things are better now than they were twenty or two
hundred years ago, only that they are certainly different. For a long time in
the past, the worlds of the common man and those of his rulers and spiritual
leaders were parts of the same social system, or at least parts of very similar
social systems. This prompted anthropologists like Robert Redfield to construct
yet another of those dyadic oppositions which in the twentieth century seemed
to explain the world of many societies: the Little versus the Great Tradition.
Now the social reality in India is by far too complicated to be described in a
sufficiently precise way by such a simple opposition. It became apparent in
the first and even more so in the second Orissa Project that Orissa as a region
was itself too complex for dyadic oppositions such as ‘great’ and ‘little’, ‘tribal’
and ‘Hindu’, ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’, ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, etc.
Complex as social reality is and was, have we solved any of the terminological
and nomological conundrums that faced British administrators when they tried
to simplify the complexity they observed? As Bernard Cohn, Nicholas Dirks
and others have demonstrated, the colonial powers have amassed whole archives
of information which, taken at face value and transferred from the original
context into a European one, is not much more than meaningless data and
sometimes even accounts of grotesque intercultural misunderstandings.* I think
that one of the few things we discovered is that only a few or perhaps even
none of our terminologies and vocabularies have worked so far to make things
easier to understand. We, the academics, are now more aware that we as
‘experts’ from all over the world are in the same situation as any other person:
our understanding of what we study is very limited. But at least we are trained
to express how we came to understand that we do not understand. We have

7The word ‘tribal’ is used throughout this essay as it is utilized as an administrative

or
technical term provided by the Constitution of India. It is never meant as an analytical
‘scientific’ term denoting a certain social or moral order.
®&Cohn 1987, 1996; Cohn, Dirks 1988; Dirks 2001, 2006.
404 GEORG BERKEMER

words to construct our at best partial solutions—that is, our academic training—
as well techniques of deep immersion into that ‘other’ that we are studying.
As long as we manage to surface again, our voice may be heard over yet
another cultural divide: that between our world of academic area studies and
a public ‘at home’ who might think that what we do is useless and a waste of
money. How do we argue against such a utilitarian point of view when we are
confronted with the question: what is the use of studying the other, when the
other in the process of globalization is expected to become what we are already?
Maybe the best answer is a question: what is globalization but a new form of
cultural imperialism?
In our area of study, we may,be confronted with global as well as more
localized forms of cultural imperialism. I suppose that we all were dragged
into rivalries between factions and contesting groups who want to make us a
part of their arsenal of arguments against their opponents. Whether the RSS
agitator who wants a foreigner to confirm his right to ‘convert’ tribals to
Hinduism; the frustrated country school teacher who wants to get back to the
city as soon as possible and needs somebody to commiserate with him; the
fundamental Christian sectarian who wants ‘uplift’ by conversion but who
does not see why the said foreigner does not support his absurd world-view;
the disgruntled descendant of a zamindar who believes that everything was
better way back when—they all have their strategies and arguments and maybe
also a strong belief that theirs is the only solution to malnutrition, a lack of
education, the wrong language, the lack of awareness of cultural heritage, etc.
Going back to our levels of cultural imperialisms, we see that the common
local people are in all these examples constructed as the ‘other’ which has to
be linked with one’s own level, the national in case of the RSS worker, the
combination of global and sectarian in case of the missionary, the state-centralist
in the care of the teacher and the subregional in that of the ex-zamindar.
All these people except the last have one feature in common: they all want
to change somebody’s future by creating a short cut between the small world
of the local people and the wider world as they see it. In other words, they
universalize their own existential particularism and its past. Thus they base
their raison d’étre on the same mental structure as any nationalism, European,
South Asian, or otherwise. Their temporal frame is rarely a very long-term
one—perhaps the time of a legislative period, the time until their retirement,
the time period a money grant will last. But social change is a matter of
generations rather than of years. There cannot be a highway to the future built
by one group of people for others in lieu of tortuous and difficult paths of
‘relativisation of self-identities’’ and the realization of the relativity of one’s
own social and cultural categories.
Let us take a closer look at the last example in this file of disillusioned
characters: the ex-zamindar or little king and his dispossessed descendant. He

” A phrase used by Arjun Appadurai.

 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 405

is the only one whose complaints are not motivated by the peoples’ stubborn
refusal to embark on the one and only correct journey into the future. He rather
tells tales of past ingratitude, and he and his brethren in spirit will recall the
good old times when the king always had an ear open for the petitions of the
subjects, and when judgements and sentences were passed and executed swiftly
and justly according to a traditional law that was understandable to each and
every one. It is easy to comprehend that such people may call for the strong
hand in the way I described at the beginning of this essay. However, they do
not long for a modern national leader like Saddam Hussain, but for the traditional
ruler, who they believe to be the closest indigenous equivalent to the modern
dictator. Such a figure in their traditional guise can definitely not be the solution
to problems of change and modernity. The little king from the past might have
been a nice figurehead in party politics during the formation of Orissa, but he
was rarely a genuine politician due to his lack of any professional attitude."
Unfortunately we never had a political scientist in our Orissa Project who
could have studied the political roles of the kings in the 1930s and compare
them to contemporary minor royalty, the modern ‘rajas’ who get elected as
MPs and MLAs. The kings of the twenty-first century might even become
what their more conservative grandfathers were not: symbolic figures of a
multi-faceted local modernity. What they share with their forefathers, however,
is their potential role as integrators of diverse social systems on the local
level.
Orissa, with its large tribal population and a Hindu majority split into many
traditional and modern communities, its contrast between cities and rural areas,
industrial belts, agricultural and forest economies, is presently building the
monopolistic social infrastructure which, as a result of national and global
trends of modernization for instance in Germany or France, gives whole
countries that sort of suburban uniformity in architecture and mentality that
provides all the necessary accoutrements of a boring life for boring people.
One can only hope that Orissa is spared such a fate of becoming ‘united’ as
yet another clone of uniformly modern society.
In what respect could the ongoing social and cultural changes be different
in a globalizing Orissa as compared to most western countries? Some sug-
gestions come to mind, based on three foci of change: (1) a local and regional
within the state; (2) a national in India; (3) an international in the global
world.
The state of Orissa still has on its soil what seems at first glance just a relic
from a pre-modern past, something which most Western societies have
eradicated in their course of modernization: a large population of ‘others’ who
still have a considerable amount of autonomy. Orissa as a state has so far not
done in a systematic way what other dominant social groups did throughout
the world: to destroy either the physical existence or the cultural identity of

!Berkemer 2007.
406 GEORG BERKEMER

the ‘other’. The milder form, ‘re-education’ into the dominant culture of those
who were already socially marginalized has been a state programme for some
time in countries such as Australia (Aborigines), Norway (Sami), Japan (Ainu)
and Canada (First Nations).'' The more brutal dislocation (Soviet Union, South
Africa, USA, China) or outright state sponsored genocide as in Nazi Germany
should not concern us here.
Entangled histories are a part of entangled identities. In our context of
centres and peripheries or levels from local to global—and being aware that
opposites and gradations are simplified models constructed for the sake of
clarity—one can make up combinations of epithets which may seem non-
sensical at first glance. Pairs of labels from a whole range of identity markers,
such as ‘Oriya’, ‘tribal’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Indian’, ‘Townsman’, ‘Villager’, ‘Muslim’,
‘Christian’, etc., often conceived as sets of direct and mutually exclusive
antonyms, which do not have spatial connotations per se, can be placed on a
mental map of Orissa as provided by the centre. As history shows, however,
what is now conceived as mutually exclusive, might not have been so in a
certain period of time in the past.
Modernization in Orissa, however, inevitably has its impact on those who
cannot or want not participate in the mainstream culture and society.'? Following
Akio Tanabe, who discusses the emergence of early modern Oriya patriotism
from local patriotisms in this volume, we can ask what the difference may be
between Oriya patriotism and Orissa patriotism.
Several questions follow therefrom: How does one express the entangled
histories of the centres out there and other subaltern groups and localities in
the languages and discourses of the superior powers? It is difficult enough to
succeed in the attempt to give a voice to the subaltern for those who are trained
to do so, the more difficult it is for the subaltern’s voice to be heard at a centre
where one more insignificant voice is just one more irritating factor.'*
From the above-mentioned list of identity markers, some pairs appear to
be more problematic on the level of the state of Orissa than on the level of the
Indian nation: it is quite possible to be Indian and non-Hindu (e.g. a Muslim
or atheist), or Indian and tribal (e.g. a Naga). In Nagaland, tribality is the
state-level reference for ethnic identity.
Orissa is a more difficult case. Obviously, not everybody born in Orissa is
automatically an Oriya. There are other requirements to be met beyond being

''This is not to say that there were not much more violent cases of ‘solutions’ in such
countries as well as in those without such policies. I am just taking examples where state
governments believed it was their task to ‘civilize’ or ‘integrate’ the marginalized. Death
squadrons hired by cattle barons, mining, logging and oil companies, proxy and civil wars,
etc., are a different matter.
"There are warning voices stating that even well-meaning changes of legislature can
enforce the marginal status of the lowest (Kurup 2008).
"This is not to imply that the subaltern doesn’t speak, or at least uses his means of
communication to express his ideas and desires. It is just stating the fact that speaking alone
does not constitute a dialogue, and even less a contribution to a dominant discourse.
 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 407

born in the territory.'* Does one need to speak Oriya? Not always, as one can
be an Oriya—without knowing the language or being born there—by being
the son (and maybe daughter?) of Oriya parents. But, it seems, this only works
if you are a proper Hindu as well. One could assume that one criterion for true
Oriya-ness is to be allowed to enter the temple of Jagannath in Puri.
So far, the construction excludes the tribals, the Muslims and Christians
living in Orissa, and of course any ‘foreigner’. When being a member of a
minority community who are not allowed darshan there, maybe you have to
love Orissa and Oriya culture to be an Oriya? And if so, what exactly is it,
one is required to love? School books written in Oriya might provide an answer.
And how much does it help to have visited an Oriya speaking school to pass
that test for being a cultural Oriya? This may solve the issue for Muslims and
Christians, and even for Indianized foreigners, since the identity construct
contains the necessary loopholes. Therefrom follows, that Oriya patriotism or
nationalism are constructs aiming for an imagined community in the sense of
Benedict An -
But is it possible to be Oriya and tribal? In the case of Orissa, the state’s
foundation myth is so strongly based on constructions of linguistic and cultural
unity, that this is hard to imagine. Those groups who were already inside the
territory the Oriya movement struggled for, and whose members did not or
could not help to make the patriotic dream come true, had to be labelled
‘backward’ in order to both deny them their own voice for the time being and
make them eligible for uplift, i.e. give them the chance to join the already
established mainstream voices. Such administrative thinking simply continues
the old colonial categories.'® In a Gandhian utopia, local tribality might go
along with Oriya-ness or any other state level nationality in India, as long as
the local level’s cultural identity, its local values and ideas of autonomy are
surrendered at the gate of the larger world of cultural and political patriotism."’

'4This discussion can be found all over the world, and it is significant in the present
context that it is the website Tamilnation.org where Ernest Renan’s famous speech ‘What
is a Nation?’ can be found on the net (Renan 1882, 1992). Renan argues for the jus soli,
‘right of soil’, according to which the territory of birth determines the citizenship, and
against the jus sanguinis, ‘right of blood’, as in the German concept of ‘objective nationality’,
whose basis is blood, race or language. See also literature and web discussions on meta-
ethnicity.
'S Anderson 1991.
'6For a typical example how the dominant discourse uses such labels see Bulliya et al.
2001. Here much of the colonial attitude, e.g. John Stuart Mill’s, towards India and its
inability to govern itself (Mill 1977, 1990) is repeated on the micro level in the way the
contemporary centrist administrator and functionary views the people at the peripheries.
‘For the preceding reasons, it is in general a necessary condition of free institutions, that
the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities’
(Mill 1977 [1859]: 548). According to Mill, not even in the European states of his time
had this been achieved. There are numerous studies of failed interventions of the respective
centres in present-day India (e.g. Kothari 1996; Kurup 2008, Meher 2001).
'7Berkemer 2003; Fox 1989.
408 — GEORG BERKEMER

This Gandhian approach might be a patriotic vision, but it is neither modern

nor democratic.
In today’s reality, such a utopian tribality will only be possible in India/
Orissa, if the state administration and the majority of voters accept the local
values as different, but important enough to be accepted as voices in the supra-
local discourses.'* Here again we come back to Switzerland, which recently
(2008) was referred to as arole model for the future constitution of the republic
of Nepal. Swiss national identity is indeed a mix of various linguistic, cultural,
religious and historical backgrounds. It is an example of the survival of multi-
ethnic societies in a modern and nationally defined, culture and society.
Educational institutions’? there provide their government and other interested
parties with the information on such multicultural federal states.
It seems to me that subregional centres may be a key to both local autonomy
and local modernity, both in the sense of the individual and the politico-religious
and cultural units. Since local units below the regions and the state provide
the first level of centrality above villages and small towns, they are also the
first level on which different social groups have to interact with each other
outside their own traditional and maybe self-created, social sphere. At this
level, little kings come into the picture. But, as we know from various
contributions in the previously published volumes of the Orissa Project as well
as from contributions to this one,” religious cults, their officiants and the little
kings in their role as ‘first devotees’ (adi-sevaka) and protectors of the goddess
and her cult, can have different meanings for different people. What happens
on the ground is being integrated in different systems of norms and values,
tribal, Hindu, administrative, and others. These different interpretations of the
same phenomenon indicate that we are confronted with a social reality in
which social institutions have no totality any more. Here, for instance, the -
boro/sano (elder vs. younger) distinction, which permeates all of the traditional
Middle Indian tribal world, is merely one hierarchy among others. Kinship
continues to provide a frame of reference as on the local level, but wealth and
political power, authority through traditional and modern education, and many
other forms of social status make themselves felt as well.
There is still the chance in Orissa that the tribal social order will survive
on the periphery of the historically grown traditional structure of the little
kingdoms, with their networks of market towns and administrative centres.

'SFor an opposing voice to such multi/trans-cultural tolerance see Anonymous 2001.

'Foremost the Universities of Fribourg and Berne (Fleiner 2003, Kalin 1997, 2002,
2003, 2003a, 2004).
Gutschow 2003, 2004, and in the present volume; Kulke 1980, 1984, 1984a, 1992,
1992a, 1993a, 1993b, 2004, 2006, and in the present volume; Mallebrein 1996, 1999, 2004,
2004a, 2004b, 2007, 2007a, and in the present volume; Nanda 1997, 1999, 2003, 2007,
and in the present volume; Schnepel 1994, 1995, 1996, 2001, 2004; Skoda 2001, 2002,
2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, and in the present volume; Tanabe 1995, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005,
2006, 2006a, and in the present volume.
 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 409

That is, if the structural level I have introduced here in a somewhat essayistic
way in the figure of the little king and his descendants, continues to exist and
becomes recognized as a necessary counterpart and opponent to the central
administration in Bhubaneswar. Maybe this development is already on its way.
I do not know whether the new district boundaries follow old border lines by
design or by administrative accident, perhaps because these lines are the only
surveyed sections of some forested belts, or because they have been used as
local boundaries ever since the abolition of the princely states and
zamindaries.
These little kingdoms, which were the political clones of the empire and
the units that kept its memory long after it was gone, were not its clones in
terms of culture; rather, they were the focal points of local cultures and religious
practices. From the point of view of the little kingdom, it is easy to see that
there is a connecting line between forest cults and Puri Jagannath, a connection
which, due to its polythetic nature, is easily overlooked from either one of two
opposite ends. The memory attached to the little kingdoms is an ambiguous
one: they were for a long time integrators of the local cultures and social
systems within their sphere of influence, as well as a channel of influence
from larger centres. They provided a mental map in terms of both geography
and time for cults and wars, markets and collective memories. They gave
people the chance to change social roles by channelling migrations and
providing specialist occupations. To them were attached local epics, styles of
textiles and painting, styles of speech and dialects. They provided the home
for learned specialists of Astronomy, Dharmashastra and Ayurveda, for tantric
knowledge and non-Brahman holy men, for mathas and temples. But in the
twentieth century, their image became tarnished by the stand they took against
popular campaigns. They were the focus of opposition to the national movement
and all the Indian National Congress stood for, and they opposed all attempts
at land reforms. This made the little kingdoms (more than the kings themselves)
non-entities on the political map for a long time. While the kings continued
to be integrating traditional figures on a somewhat reduced scale, they had
little say in the way the central administration treated their former
kingdoms.
There is one more aspect to the problem of the strong hand. While most
people will probably agree that they themselves feel better under an elected
leader, they might be tempted to deny that freedom to others. I remember,
back in the 1980s, an article in India Today about the ‘tribal problem’ in Orissa
and a politically very incorrect quotation from a state official who had—off
the record, and hopefully as a joke—said that the best way to get rid of the
tribal problem was to get rid of the tribals. We might conclude from this that
one does not necessarily need a dictator to make sure that some people have
no say about their own future. Neither the USA not the British empire have
ever been totalitarian states, but in the first instance we have historical cases
of large-scale genocide on the state’s periphery in the nineteenth century, and
410 GEORG BERKEMER

in the latter we can at least say that some indigenous people, such as the Zulus,
the Australian Aborigines, the Egyptians and Sudanese, the Burmese and of
course many Indian groups, were denied their cultural and political autonomy,
and in cases of ‘white’ colonies such as Australia, attempts at ‘re-education’
and ‘civilization’ of indigenes in boarding schools and prisons were official
state policy for some time. India is still using the old colonial administrative
division between ‘tribals’ and the rest of the population. Insignificant as this
may be from a modern anthropological point of view, it still constitutes a part
of people’s fragmented modern identities.
Would it be too utopian, too fantastic to hope that this middle ground, this
stage between the local and the central, could bear the weight of one more
dimension in addition to this already existing multi-dimensionality: the
dimension of a functioning civil society? Can we imagine one person or group
being tribal and a modern citizen both at home and outside? We can imagine
it in the case of Hindus, Muslims, or Christians. We can do this under two
conditions: (1) the existence of a civil society in which the principle of
subsidiarity (or ‘devolution’ as the British say) is radically enforced: a flat
bureaucratic hierarchy in which nothing that can be decided on a local level
will be referred to a higher level; and (2) an awareness of one’s own role as
a world citizen and the relativity of one’s own cultural and social position.
This opens a door out of the trap of conflict over traditional identities in
modern, essentialistic thinking. }
On the other hand, I don’t see how the roles of a traditional tribal and a
traditional Hindu can be combined, because tribal social values and traditional
Hindu social values are constructed as mutually exclusive in colonial times,
and contradict each other on a fundamental level. That is why I don’t believe
that one can ‘convert’ tribals into traditional Hindus without destroying
everything tribal society is based on. On the other hand, in a civil society one
can be a religious Hindu and an ‘ethnic’ tribal, because there is—ideally—no
collective pressure on the belief system.
These reflections have led us far away from harsh reality, but I think that
an essay like this is the right place to turn the whole world upside down like
an image and see whether it makes any more sense that way. And it does make
more sense in this case because the modern ‘tribal’ actually exists. After a
long history of bloodshed, displacement and racist oppression, in both Canada
and the USA, Native American people, the First Nations of the continent, have
successfully struggled for the right to determine for themselves how to integrate
traditional ways of life into their existence as modern citizens. The situation
in these countries is far from ideal, but it provides material for comparison
with the Indian situation. Other countries, such as South Africa, Russia, Brazil,
Great Britain and even Germany”! and the EU, could be used for comparative
studies and political models.

*'T am referring here to the special privileges the German Constitution provides for the
minorities of the Sorbs (people speaking a Slavonic language) in the federal states of Saxony
and Brandenburg, and the Danish minority in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.
 DISCOURSES, HISTORY AND MODERNITY 411

We cannot say that—as in post-modern epistemology—the result of our

deliberations is only dependent on perspective. It is not a question of the
personal point of view whether we emphasize the centrist or the local views
of the world. In the realm of historical narratives this maybe so, but as soon
as we think about the consequences, the dominant discourse comes into view
and with it the politics of everyday life and its representation in political
institutions.

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 Contributors

SUSMITA ARP, freelance journalist, Hamburg, formerly Department of

Indology, Hamburg University and Department of History, University of Kiel,
Germany.

GEORG BERKEMER, Department of South Asian Studies, Humboldt

University, Berlin, Germany.

BRAJADULAL CHATTOPADHYAYA, Kolkata, retired from Jawaharlal

Nehru University, New Delhi.

GAGANENDRA NATH DASH, Bhubaneswar, retired from Berhampur

University.

ULRICH DEMMER, Institute of Anthropology, University of Munich,

Germany.

NIELS GUTSCHOW is specialized in architectural and urban history of Nepal

and India, works and lives in Abtsteinach (Germany) and Bhaktapur
(Nepal).

LIDIA GUZY, Institute of Religious Studies, Free University Berlin,

Germany.

BEATRIX HAUSER, Visiting Professor, Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and

Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows’,
University of Heidelberg, Germany.

HERMANN KULKE, retired from University of Kiel, Germany.

CORNELIA MALLEBREIN, Department of Indology and Comparative

Religion, University of Tiibingen, Germany.

BASANTA KUMAR MALLIK, Department of History, Utkal University,

Bhubaneswar.

CHANDI PRASAD NANDA, Department of History, Ravenshaw University,

Cuttack.

SHISHIR KUMAR PANDA, Department of History, Berhampur University,

Berhampur.

BISWAMOY PATI, Department of History, University of Delhi.

420 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

BHAIRABI PRASAD SAHU, Department of History, University of Delhi.

UWE SKODA, Assistant Professor, South Asian Studies, Aarhus University,

Denmark.

AKIO TANABE, Graduate School of Asian and African Studies, Kyoto

University, Japan.

GAYA CHARAN TRIPATHL, retired from Indira Gandhi National Centre for
the Arts, New Delhi, National Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies,
Shimla.
%
 Index

Abhimanyu 151, 307 atavika-rajyas 40

abhiseka 101, 286, 291, 292, 294, 296 Atharvaveda 96, 97
Gcarya(s) 50, 99, 286 Athgarh 66, 72-5, 92, 246
accountants 199, 233, 239, 240, 357 Athmallik 77, 144
accounts, genealogical 137, 141, 142, 151-8, authority 46-8, 69, 77, 90, 102, 125, 133,
163, 164, 170, 177, 273; legendary 68, 151, 152, 156-64, 167, 168, 171, 230,
75, 134, 139, 140; oral 307 235-48, 330, 340, 362, 363, 367, 381,
Acharya, P. 78, 116 399, 408; all-Orissa level 235; political
activists, student 339, 340; urban 395 46, 65, 164; politico-ritual 235, 237;
actors 284, 294, 297; dancers, female 181, ritual 64, 65, 237, 243; royal 47, 100,
182, 356, 360; sacred 393 105, 156, 237, 239, 240, 242, 243, 286;
Adibhafija 85, 86, 163 spiritual 105, 156; subordinate 239, 247,
adivasis 157, 158, 162, 171, 237, 328-43, 257
360 axis mundi 108, 274; ritual 196, 198-200,
Afghans 135, 312 207, 211, 214-18; spatial 196-200, 207,
Aghrias 161, 162, 306, 320, 333, 334 211, 214-22
Agra 162, 303, 310-12, 314-15, 320-3 Ayurveda 95, 409
agrahara 32, 104
agriculture 30, 49, 162, 203, 317, 319, 322, Baidyanath 52-5
379 Balabhadra 11, 70, 94, 98, 99, 197, 208
Akbar 63, 235, 246 Baladeva 96, 102, 103
Alaud-din Khalji 139 Balaramadeva 136, 145
Allahabad prasasti of Samudragupta 40, 42, Balasore 47, 175, 185, 340, 341
46 Bali-Raja 265
Anangabhima 90, 103, 112, 113 Baliardeva 12, 135, 136, 145
ancestors 88, 91, 100, 117, 142, 143, 223, BalunkeSvara 197, 198
224, 232, 238, 239, 281, 283-5, 293, 294, Bamanghatty 332
296, 313, 314, 333, 349, 351, 353, 360, Bamra 160, 273-7, 281-8, 292-6, 300, 301
381-4; ritual 319, 359 Bandsura 280, 289
Andhra 24, 29, 41, 90 Bandhagadha Dandapat 98
Andhra Pradesh 256, 359, 360 BaneSvar 279, 280, 289, 295
Anga 26, 290 Bankada 258, 259
Angul 65, 66, 72, 186 Banki 64-8, 72, 73, 77, 157, 246
Anka reckoning 107, 245 Banpur 64, 66, 238, 258-60, 269
anthropology 9, 15, 23-5, 231, 366, 373, 375, bada danda (bada danda) \1, 70, 71, 196,
385, 397, 399, 403; Orissan 373, 385 199, 200, 214, 215
Arang 45, 49, 50, 52, 54 Barabhum 133, 143, 161
Asanpat 87, 89 Baramba 66-9, 72, 73, 77, 157
ascetics 309, 318, 363, 375; Saivite 54 Bargarh 48, 390, 392
Asiatic Society of Bengal 176 Baripada 73, 341, 343
Asoka 28, 29 Barunai 233
ASokan edicts 40 Behera, Jayadev 154, 155
a§ramas 27, 47, 85 Bengali 29, 31, 32, 118, 175-7, 187
astrologers 15, 47, 100, 101 Berhampur 185, 348, 353, 356-60
Asurgarh 40, 42, 43, 45 Bhagavadgita 126, 198
asvamedha 12, 74, 111, 113, 114, 117, 119 Bhagavata mandapa 198
ASvaSsastra 95, 98 Bhagavata Purana 180
422 INDEX

Bhagavati 258-60, 265, 269 240, 257, 260, 261, 274-7, 280, 282,
Bhakta-vinoda 94 291-4, 303, 311-14, 317, 318, 328, 335,
Bhaktibhagavata 118 338, 339, 357, 358, 375
Bhanja, Jayanti 185, 188 Brahmanism 127, 222
Bhafija, Balabhadra 107 British 21, 99, 119, 162, 184, 186, 328, 335;
Bhafija, Dhanafijaya 12, 103, 177-81 colonial writers 273, 285; colonial legacy
Bhanja, Dhanurjay 292 398; conquest of Orissa 10, 193, 235,
Bhafija, Gadadhara 99, 103 238; government 10, 167, 261, 275, 329,
Bhafija, Gopinatha 97, 103 331, 333, 339, 403; imperialism 71, 398,
Bhanja, Jagannath 96 402; Orissa 79, 344; period 185, 239,
Bhaja, JagateSvar 98 258, 275, 322; territory 175, 186
Bhafija, Janardana 87, 98, 103 Buddhism 32, 35, 42, 46, 50, 52, 53, 361
Bhaja, Krushna Chandra 332 . Budhikomna 48, 51, 52
Bhanja, Narasimha Narayana 97, 98, 285, 291 Budhigarh 43, 45, 58
Bhanija, Narayan 285
Bhanja, Raghunatha 96, 97 calanti pratima 11, 68, 69, 207, 218, 219,
Bhaja, Ramachandra 63, 331, 332 259, 265, 286
Bhanja, Trilocana 92 Calukyas 90, 312
Bhanja, Trivikrama 98, 177, 179 camara 66, 286, 287
Bhafija, Udaya 92 Camunda 258, 259
Bhanja, Upendra 12, 87, 88, 176-88 Candalas 127
Bhanja, Vanadeva 89 Candali 32
Bhanija, ViSveSvara 99 Candanayatra 95, 98
Bhafijas 11, 47, 62-4, 76, 85-92, 99, 100, Candi Purana 125, 126, 128
103, 106, 140, 144, 182, 184, 190 car festival 11, 71, 76, 79, 95, 96, 197, 202
Bharatavarsa 22, 25, 26 Carccika 259
Bhattacharya, Kantichandra 175 castes 25, 32, 39, 40, 50, 91, 92, 125, 127,
Bhaumakaras 87, 89, 112, 116-18, 144 129, 130, 242, 303, 306, 313, 317-24,
bheti 78, 330 329, 330, 337-40, 343, 357, 362-9, 376;
bhoga 46, 47, 202, 241; mandapa 201; pati dominant 314, 319, 329; immigrant 277;
46 indigenous 162; micro- 381; upper 91,
Bhoi caste 143; dynasty 103 94, 329, 338, 339, 343, 366
Bhubaneswar 8, 102, 131, 185, 189, 409 categories, indigenous 374, 381
Bhuiyans 11, 89, 91, 92, 97, 100-3, 154, centrality 8, 10, 27, 31, 34, 39, 149, 150,
156-72, 273-5, 278-96, 331, 334; leaders 171, 227, 239, 242, 408
86, 152, 157-72, 273, 275, 279-83, centre-periphery 39, 149, 150, 314, 406
287-93, 296, 333; Rajakuli 86, 100, 291 centres 24-6, 30, 31, 34, 39, 79, 104, 150,
Bhumjis 133, 143, 331, 332 153, 188, 189, 193-9, 224-8, 235, 274
bhita 349, 352, 368 313-16, 319, 323, 376, 394, 401, 409;
Bhuvane$vari 98, 198 cultural 10, 12, 13, 25, 50, 62, 71-4, 78,
Bilaspur 40, 42, 44-6, 49, 51, 154, 311, 322 79, 85, 95, 96, 108, 128, 134, 177, 182,
Birajai 258, 259, 270 184, 187, 189, 342, 395; of exploitation
Birakesari 72, 73, 185, 186 13, 62, 78, 79, 342; imitation of 203, 224;
Birhors 379, 380, 386 of learning 10, 12, 71,72, 74, 128, 134,
Bison Horn Marias 372 177, 187; of little kingdoms 188, 189,
Bolangir 12, 40, 43, 47-9, 71, 73, 136, 258, 193, 195, 197-9, 224, 225, 274; multiple
261, 320 8, 26, 34, 35, 227, 228, 266, 313-23; of
Bonai 77, 144, 159, 160, 262, 273-81, Orissa 235, 246, 322, 323, 401, 406; out
285-90, 295, 296 there 9-12, 61, 62, 67-70, 72, 73, 77-9,
Brahma 99, 117, 129-31, 241, 278 175, 188, 189, 193, 342, 402, 406;
Brahmanas 12, 13, 15, 39, 44, 49, 50, 54, 55, political 35, 62, 69, 70, 74, 108, 112,
68, 74, 90-7, 99, 102-5, 111, 117-19, 126, 151, 194-7, 222, 245, 255, 265, 275, 303,
127, 136-9, 144, 164, 167-71, 212, 222, 315, 323, 408; ritual 203, 222; royal 69,
 INDEX 423
265, 275; sacred 23, 35, 40, 46, 48, 51, royal 10, 11, 35, 69, 71, 72, 74, 98, 106,
68, 70, 76, 95, 107, 129-32, 195-7, 203, 125, 126, 137, 143, 172, 181, 182, 255-8,
207, 221, 222, 234, 245, 255, 256, 259, 275, 277, 278, 295, 310, 315
265, 266, 303, 322, 323; subregional 9, culture, Brahmanic 91, 145, 146, 156; folk
11, 408; urban 41, 48, 197, 394 7, 107, 150, 389, 390; local 31, 35, 150,
Chakra Bisoyi 186 294, 394, 395, 409; of listening 392;
chamu citaus 65, 66, 81, 82, 135 Orissan 94, 96, 373, 386; pan-Indian 96,
Chasas 175, 328-30, 332, 338 105; regional 10, 61, 94, 96, 227, 229;
Chaudwar 113, 116 tribal 91, 151, 373, 377, 385
Chauhan, Narasimha !41 Cuttack 47, 65, 70, 91, 94, 96, 114-16, 153,
Chauhan Rajputs 12, 133, 134, 136, 139, 175, 184, 185, 187, 189, 193, 236
140-2, 145; of Western Orissa 76-8,
133-46, 161, 165, 166, 260, 281 Dadhivamana 94, 95, 99
Chhatra Sai 136, 138 Daita priests 103, 127, 129
Chhattisgarh 10, 39, 40, 46, 48, 88, 139, 153, Daityas 105
154, 256, 264, 321-3, 377, 392 Daksina KoSala 39-41, 44-6, 50, 54-66, 134
chiefs, from outside 161; military 155, 159, Daksinapatha 32, 40
239; senior 262; tribal 77, 100, 127, 158, Dalabehera 238, 239
Dalits 14, 376
162, 166, 237, 262, 273-7, 281, 282,
285-97 Dalton, E.T. 159-62, 273, 285, 290, 292
Damodarpur 94
chieftaincies, autonomous 238; smal! 235, 239
danda 100, 165; nata 198, 359; ndyaka 44;
Chikiti 72, 74, 180
yatraé 198, 210-12, 225
chronicles, local/little 11, 63, 75-7, 86, 98,
Dandadevi 91, 97, 102, 295
118, 119, 124, 195-7, 200-3, 207, 222-4,
daru devata 69, 130
256, 282; royal 11, 12, 63, 64, 67, 75, 76,
Das, Jagannath 180
86, 118, 145, 195-7, 282, 306, 316, 324;
Das, Nilakantha 188
temple 64, 75, 77, 112, 113, 118, 123,
Das, Sarat Chandra 341
124, 134
DaSahara festival 170, 207, 257, 259, 261,
Cobden Ramsay, L.E.B. 76, 139-41, 162, 264-6, 276, 281, 293, 296, 392
273, 279 Daspalla 65, 74, 75, 88
Codaganga, Anantavarman 90, 116, 152 death, inauspicious 349; premature 165, 359;
communities, imagined 187, 247, 407; rituals 378, 381-6
indigenous 55, 145, 157, 161-3, 358; dehuri 74, 93, 97, 168, 170, 262, 263, 271,
local 35, 55, 233-5, 242, 243, 390, 394; 289
micro-regional 239; moral 231, 235, deities 11, 30, 51, 53, 66, 67, 94, 96, 97, 103,
379-81, 383-6; sacrificial 242, 243; tribal 127-31, 197, 218, 263, 264, 282, 348-53,
9, 157, 162, 172, 198, 255, 261, 262, 275, 357-69, 377, 389; autochthonous 10, 11,
294, 321, 373, 376; values of 381 43, 93, 127, 153, 158, 159, 167, 193, 256,
consciousness, altered state of 263, 350, 369; 257, 260, 265, 276, 277; congregation of
national 71 221; family (non-royal) 351, 352; heroic
construction, nationalist 327; of identity and 53; imperial 201, 203, 213, 245; local 67,
society 8, 77, 119, 123, 183, 187, 188, 69, 132, 155, 168, 171, 219, 225, 260;
231, 262, 303, 373, 374, 381, 395, 407; non-iconic 195, 207, 225; on earth 263;
historical 237, 402 pan-Indian 277, 363; Puranic 33; regional
copper plate grants 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 207, 225, 376; royal/state 155, 164-71,
85-90, 93, 117, 186 193-6, 201, 203, 213, 219, 245, 256-62,
coronation 10, 93, 100-3, 136, 165, 168, 170, 283; subregional 34; tribal 10, 11, 93,
171, 221, 261, 262, 273-97 100, 127, 153, 167, 193, 203, 255, 256,
court, Brahmanas 94, 95, 136, 138, 142, 145, 260, 275-7; territorial 217, 221, 222, 225;
146, 257, 261, 274, 277, 286; history tutelary 10, 11, 67, 69, 106, 200, 221,
274, 282-5; poets 126, 133, 134, 136, 225, 236, 237, 247, 256, 260-6; Vedic
138, 142, 144, 145, 178, 179, 180, 278; 107
424 INDEX

demons 107, 130, 131, 279, 280, 349, 350, family 362; deities 102, 164, 167, 256-62,
* 361, 362, 366, 369; female 349 265, 351, 352; elders 15; histories 76, 85,
Deo Kesari 152, 154, 157, 158 135, 139, 264, 279; priest 167, 169, 314;
Deogarh 274-6, 293 tradition 47, 99, 284, 308
devadasis 99, 181, 182 festivals 11, 71, 76, 79, 95-7, 103, 106-8,
Dharmasastra 53, 93, 95, 99, 101, 106, 274, 129, 144, 170, 182, 185, 196, 197, 202,
409 203, 207, 210-13, 218, 224, 225, 241,
Dhenkanal 62, 65, 66, 68, 72, 75, 77, 79, 256-66, 293, 330, 331, 356, 362, 395;
246, 275, 327-30, 338; Prajamandal 338 annual 257, 260, 263, 265, 259; of
Disabhaiija 87, 89 punishment 210, 212; royal 68, 144, 293
discourses, academic 7, 14, 347, 348, 360, feudal enclaves 328, 330, 336, 343; system
364, 369, 373, 374, 385; hegemonic 150, 78, 159, 161, 327, 328, 337-40
369; western medical 361 ‘s feudatory rajas and states 9-12, 14, 61-79,
disease 258, 353, 368 89, 91, 144, 150-2, 156, 159, 163, 177,
distribution of land, honour, and positions 193-5, 201, 235, 243-6, 256, 273, 274,
171, 240, 241 285, 287, 295, 296, 324, 332
diversity, cultural 9, 21, 24, 25, 32, 34, 46, fire sacrifice 108
mae, 229, 358, 367,478 fire-walking 211, 359
divisions, administrative 26, 45-8, 234 First World War 332, 337, 338
Divyasimhadeva 136 fishermen 198, 224, 280, 359
diwan 154, 199, 207, 222, 275, 330, 342 Folklore Festival 395; regional 395; urban
Dolagovinda 214, 216, 217 390, 394, 395
Dolamelana 11, 69, 182, 196, 197, 213, 217, forests 26, 40, 48, 49, 90, 127, 143, 159,
7 | 219, 255, 258-60, 279, 280, 328, 331-43,
Dombs 329, 330, 342 380, 383, 384, 405
dominance, of Bengali/Sanskrit 29; political fort 42-4, 65, 68, 129, 139, 141, 153, 155,
63, 156, 166, 228, 244-6; sphere of 35 166, 169-72, 195-200, 210, 233-41, 247,
Dubey, Prahllad 138, 140, 141 261, 284, 295; born polities 9, 63, 193;
Dumont, Louis 373-5, 386 deities 236, 237, 261, 295
durbar 137, 139, 140, 142, 146, 162, 169, full moon day 105, 107, 196, 203, 213-21
257, 276, 296, 330-2, 336, 339-41
Durg 40, 42, 45, 53 Gajapati kings 62-4, 67, 70, 75, 76, 78, 92,
Durga 34, 68, 92, 93, 97, 101, 128, 130, 131, 93, 95, 103, 112, 119, 124-6, 135, 136,
170, 257, 259, 286, 288, 293-6, 359, 392, 143-5, 156, 186, 193, 195, 228-30, 235,
393; puja 68, 69, 195, 207, 210, 265 236, 243-8, 258, 279, 310, 311, 315, 316;
downfall of the 10, 70, 156, 193
economy, agrarian 30, 39, 50; colonial 337, Gana Virabhadra 88, 99
344 Gandas 389-95
Ekamra Kshetra 129, 131 Gandhara 26, 128
empire, Orissan 124, 125, 129, 235, 245 Gandhi, M.K. 79, 340, 407, 408
evidence, historical 25, 28, 29, 35, 43, 256, Ganga (goddess) 52, 211
265, 266 Ganga dynasty 87, 90-2, 103, 112, 114, 152,
evolution, political 46; socio-historical 35, 153, 201, 281, 295
39, 46-50 Gangadhar Guru 136
exchange, economic 257; networks and Gangadhar Sekhar Deo 152, 159, 163-9, 282,
systems of 45, 213, 228-35, 239, 241, 283
242, 247, 248, 331, 376, 379, 386 Gangaimati 153, 155, 166
Gangpur 10-12, 14, 149-71, 274, 277, 282,
families, local 46, 152, 170, 171, 224, 294, 283, 285, 287, 288, 292, 295, 296, 333,
297; royal 86, 89, 97-100, 135, 146, 154, 342, 343
155, 158, 161-4, 170, 172, 199, 256-9, Ganjam 88, 96, 103, 187, 258
262-5, 273-85, 288, 290, 294, 303, 306, Garh Manitri 233, 240, 241
309, 316, 320; ruling 133, 134, 138, 140, Garh Sahi 91
144-6, 160, 264, 277, 284, 324, 335 Garh Sambhar 138-43
 INDEX 425

Garhjat 193; Mahals/states 10, 11, 63-7, Gundica 96, 103, 196, 197, 200, 207, 208
70-4, 78, 146, 156, 193, 235, 399; kings Gupta influence 31, 32, 42, 45, 48, 50, 51,
64, 70 54, 87
Garuda 45, 130, 155, 158
gatherer-hunter 13, 30, 373, 379-81 Haihayavamsa 139
Gaudas 50, 155, 168, 332 Hamiradeva 134, 139, 141
Gauri 211, 213 Hanuman 97, 129, 198, 265, 358
gazetteers 139, 141, 146, 308, 332 Harijans 340, 376
geography 23, 31, 46, 264, 406; historical heads, sacrifice of 67, 68, 129, 236, 237,
22, 137 310, 312
German Orissa Research Project 7, 8, 11, 13, Hemgir 152-5, 158, 159, 165, 166, 333
227, 397, 403, 405, 408 hierarchy 13, 25, 50, 56, 124, 172, 259,
Ghatgaon 69, 255 316-18, 337, 339, 340, 343, 375, 376,
Ghumsar 12, 72, 74, 75, 78, 87, 175-89 381
Ghumsar Raj vamsavalis 177, 185, 186 Hindi 98, 138, 184
Ghumsar Kavya 184 Hindu-tribal frontier 17, 171
gifts, exchanges of 231, 240-2, 318, 319; of Hinduism 25, 257, 347, 348, 362, 404;
women 231; of food 231, 241, 260, 352, classical/high-caste 46, 53-5, 99, 100,
379, 382; of land 32, 40, 41, 46-9, 53, 108, 369; popular 350, 362; Tantric 92,
126, 144, 145, 222, 242, 328-31, 333, 93
339 Hinduization 70, 97, 100, 106, 127, 144,
Gitagovinda 71, 99, 188 150, 151, 158, 172, 236, 316
goddesses 30, 34, 69, 88, 89, 97, 100, 102, Hinduized tribal deity 193, 275
106, 116, 125, 126, 130, 135, 144-6, Hindutva movement 198
154-8, 164, 168-70, 195-8, 207, 211, 219, Hingula 68, 263, 271
230, 233, 234, 236, 237, 260, 264, 266, historians 12, 13, 15, 23, 76-8, 111, 114,
267, 286, 288, 293, 307, 348, 349-64, 139, 155, 156, 275, 331, 343, 373, 397
367-9, 390, 392-4, 408; Brahmanic 210; histories, dynastic 67, 76, 144, 170, 177,
disease 258, 353; fierce 30; indigenous 261; oral 237, 238, 240, 281, 294;
237; jungle/tribal 11, 62, 91, 97, 98, 146, regional 22, 124, 146; oral 237, 238, 240,
157, 193, 195-8, 207, 210, 237, 255, 259, 281, 294
265, 276, 294, 295; mother 34, 68, 108, historiography 22, 78, 149, 150, 152
195, 211, 221, 259, 263, 354, 359, 363; history, social 15, 149, 150, 155, 163
oracles 351, 353, 364; non-iconic 195, homogenization, processes of 21, 23, 26, 36,
197, 198, 207; possession 356, 369, 393; 55, 123, 228, 230, 248, 307
protective 211, 219, 234, 256-8, 263, Hos 154, 166, 172, 280, 332
294; river 52; tantric 257, 265, 287; Hunter, W.W. 159-61, 176, 177, 182, 183
territorial 67, 69, 91, 128, 156, 219, 220,
236, 237, 243, 245, 248, 256, 287, 294; ideas 53, 225, 306, 320, 400; Hindu 46, 53-5,
tribal 11, 62, 91, 97, 98, 146, 193-8, 207, 159, 375; movement of 50, 324; networks
210, 295; tutelary 10, 11, 68, 196, 216, of 22; of self 369; oppositional 373-5,
217, 220, 221, 233-7, 240, 245, 256-65, 386; political 248-50, 409; popular
285 248-50, 374, 375; Puranic 46, 53-5;
Gokarneswar 129, 130, 132 regional 230, 249, 407; tribal 255, 278,
Gonds 62, 161, 281, 290, 294, 328, 329, 377 375, 376, 380
Gopabandhu, Utkalamani 179, 180, 182, identities, based on history 241; collective
188 221, 262, 265, 395, 406; cultural 55, 123,
gotra 88, 99, 101, 153 126, 128, 294, 394, 395, 405, 407; female
gountias 333-6 347; formation 14, 29, 40, 56, 247; local;
Govindabhanja 11, 92 77, 131, 149, 277, 394, 402; in Orissa 14,
grama 26, 49, 104; devata 67, 106; kata 47 111, 123, 126-8, 227, 229, 231, 248;
gram$ri 288, 293, 295 local 9, 77, 129, 132, 149, 158, 227, 394;
grant, land 40, 41, 46-9, 53, 54, 90, 93, 98, markers of 13, 146, 406; multi-layered
126, 144, 145, 153, 255, 328-33, 339 150; national 61, 123, 227; regional 39,
426 INDEX

230, 247; religious 394; sub-regional 7, Jajpur 12, 13, 74, 99, 103, 111-20
9-12, 14, 62-4, 74, 76, 129, 132, 149, Jalandhar Sekhar Deo 164-8
158, 225, 227, 230, 242, 247, 248, 277; Jamadeipur 223, 224
traditional 401, 410 janapadas 9, 22, 25-30, 45
identity, sense of 247, 256; separate 100, Jaya Chandrika 138, 141
108; separate — of western Orissa 134, Jayadeva 23, 178, 185
145, 146; spacial 28 Jénu Kurumba 377, 380, 381, 383-6
ideology, Brahmanic 46, 50, 53, 55 jewel serpent 67, 195, 196, 219
idioms, cultural 401; ritual 318; religious Jhankar 141, 336
347-9, 360, 368 Jhankar village 125, 126
impurity 27, 319, 365, 366, 373, 375 Juangs 100, 275
India, central 39, 40, 43, 45, 46, 133, 143, Jugsaipatna 262, 284-8, 293, 295, 296, 299
144, 161, 321; construct of 21, 23, 34, « jungle 65, 69, 139, 141, 196, 203, 222, 224,
375; eastern 12, 128, 133, 142-4, 161; 235, 260, 287
historiography of 21, 22 Jyotibhanja 85, 86, 91, 92, 102, 163, 284,
Indian National Congress 78, 79, 340, 342, 2964: ©
401, 409
Indra 34, 105, 107, 108 Kalachuris 39, 51, 53, 141, 152
Indradhvaja Yatra 106-8 Kalahandi 14, 40, 45, 71, 73-5, 78, 257, 262,
Indradyumna legend 127 265, 272, 274-7, 284, 285, 287, 292-6,
Indrotsava 107, 108 334-7, 342, 343; district 42, 43, 46, 48,
Indrotsavavidhi 107, 108 51
inscriptions 29, 40, 41, 44, 49, 52-4, 61, 62, Kalapat 288-90, 295, 296
67, 77, 85-90, 113-16, 131, 134, 142-4, Kaleiposh 278, 280, 281, 288-90, 295, 296
152,165; 174 Kali 135, 168-70, 211, 300
integration 8, 9, 10, 15, 24, 25, 51, 123, 132, Kalidasa 23, 26, 129
237, 400; conceptual 243-6; feudatory Kalikapurana 106
243-6; modes of 23, 25, 243-6; Orissan Kalindi Bipra 129
244; regional 228, 229; religious 67, 69, Kalindi Vaishnavas 130
243-6; socio-political 15, 46, 69, 243-6; Kalinga 26-8, 40, 41, 46; Pascima 151
territorial 213, 228, 229; tribal 10, 40, 67, Kalinga Historical Research Society 78
69, 236, 245 Kamanaghar 198, 211
istadevata, 52, 92-100, 154, 195, 221, 236, Kanaka-Durga 101, 170, 177, 259, 286, 288,
276, 277, 287-95; martyr 67, 68, 236, 237 293, 295
Kanauj 12, 13, 74, 111, 117
Jagannath (king) 168 Kanchi-Kaveri episode 63, 76, 92, 102, 123
Jagannath Deva 284 Kanika 64, 65, 75, 244
Jagannatha 7, 11, 34, 62, 64, 66, 67, 70, 75, Kanto Bhuiya 281, 293, 295
76, 92-6, 101, 103, 111, 112, 118, 119, Kanyakubja 117
124, 126-8, 130, 132, 135, 138, 140, 145, Kapila Kesari 153-5, 157
150, 195-9, 203, 207, 208, 213, 214, 216, Kapila Samhita 130, 131
219-21, 225, 227-30, 235-7, 240, 243-8, Kapilas 129, 131
255, 259, 266, 279, 310, 311, 315, 316, Kapilendra 62, 125, 128
318, 323, 337, 375, 409; country 230, Karamgarh/Karmagarh 152-5
244, 247, 248; five ‘ministers’ of 196, Karanas 15, 46, 47, 55, 66, 91, 92, 199, 233,
214, 216, 221; temple 11, 70, 71, 92, 94, 239, 240
96, 98, 103, 107, 108, 169, 195, 196, 201, Kashinath Sekhar Deo 163, 167, 169, 282
205, 206, 214, 215, 217, 218, 223; of Kashipur zamindari 334, 342
Puri 11, 62-6, 71, 94-6, 99, 102, 105-7, KatakarajavamSavali 91, 118
112, 123, 125, 127, 169, 181, 201, 202, Kausambi 45
204, 222, 401; renewal of cult 135 kavyas 71, 95, 98, 99, 177-9, 182, 186, 188;
Jagannathapur 96, 223 historical 12, 134
Jahni Osa 353, 355 Keonjhar 11, 12, 14, 63, 64, 69-77, 85-108,
 INDEX 427

140, 144, 156, 160, 161, 163, 255, 256, Kandhmal 186, 260
274, 275, 284, 285, 287, 288, 290, 291, Kondhs cf. Khonds
295, 296; dynasty 86, 87, 89, 91-3, 97, Koraput 316, 390, 403
100, 102, 105, 256, 262, 288; Jagannatha KoSala 40-2, 46, 50-2, 54-5, 90, 114;
temple at 70, 98, 103, 107, 108; palace identity 14, 55; movement 402
library 73, 74, 96-8, 101-3, 107 KoSaladhipati 47, 55
KeSaris 89, 90 KoSalanagara 48
Kesari dynasty 77, 282 KoSalananda Kavya \2, 41, 74, 88, 133-46
Kesari of Gangpur 151-66, 171, 172 KoSalendra/KoSaleSvara 51-5
Khallikot 64, 66, 73-5, 259 Kosali language 145, 146
Khambeswari 53, 130, 144; temple Koya people 376-9, 381, 386; language 377
inscription 153 Krsna 52, 93, 94, 98, 197, 213, 214, 217,
Khandayats 92, 154, 235-8, 260, 333, 338; 219, 220, 266
Bhuyan 154, 333; purified 238 Krsna Simha | 13, 114
Khandpara 65, 66, 71, 144, 219 Ksatriya status 142, 144, 306-11, 314, 318,
khanja \and grants 233, 241, 328, 330 319, 322
Khariar 12, 43, 133, 136, 137, 139, 141, 146 Ksatriyas 88, 92, 93, 106, 134, 143-5,
Kharliagarh 43, 45 157-65, 169-72, 238, 262, 274, 279, 281,
Kharod 48, 51, 52 282, 287, 294, 303, 311, 313, 314, 319,
Khijjinga Kota 85, 163 323, 328, 330, 338
Khijjinga Mandala 62, 85-9, 91, 100, 163, 164 Kujang 64, 66, 235, 244
Khilamunda 69, 197, 203, 207, 210 Kultas 335, 338, 390
Khifijali 47; Mandala 62, 88, 90, 106
Khonds (Kondh, Khanda, etc.) 13, 258, 260, labour, forced 78, 329, 330, 336, 337, 343
261, 274, 281, 284, 285, 287, 293-6, labourers 233, 336, 342, 380; agricultural
328-30, 335, 342, 377, 390; Khond chief 329-31, 334, 336, 357; female 329
237, 239; Khadangid 261; goddess 237; Laksmi 96, 101, 104, 108, 197, 202, 207,
priest 233, 236 208, 214-17, 286
Khurda 10, 11, 14, 63-71, 79, 95, 103, 112, land, alienation of 332, 402; attachment to
135, 143, 145, 186, 193, 194, 229, 230, 229, 230; grants 32, 40, 41, 46-50, 53,
233-48 54, 93, 97, 104, 126, 134, 144, 145, 154,
Kimedi 75, 258 159, 171, 222, 232, 234, 240-2, 248, 311,
kingdoms, autonomous tributary 236; Hindu 328-35, 339; revenue 162, 163, 328-35;
54, 151; in the jungle 193, 203; local 294, rights, lack of 337
297; subregional 229, 235, 236, 242, 243 Lanjigarh 262, 293-5, 334
kings, as donor 86, 104, 145, 240; as the legitimation, royal 240, 242, 261; sacred 256,
centre 242-4; as sacrificer 237, 240-3, 262
246, 248; duties of 274; first 86, 100, letters, royal 65, 66, 81, 82, 135
139, 141, 197, 278, 279, 284; Hindu 94, liberties, civil 339, 341
145, 163, 193, 274, 315, 316; imperial libraries, royal 95, 97, 98, 107
10, 11, 62-4, 70, 87, 112, 124, 143-5, linga 51, 69, 116, 117, 129, 155, 158, 214
152, 153, 156, 193, 222; jungle 196, 224, literature, Puranic 113, 114, 125; tantric 97
278; new 100, 103, 165, 275, 276, 280, little kingdoms 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 75, 145,
282, 285, 287-93, 297; tribal origin of 193-5, 203, 207, 217, 221, 222, 227, 229,
140, 142, 144, 158, 167, 273 230, 235, 243-5, 303, 320, 404, 405, 408,
kingship cf. royalty; Hindu 65, 70, 171, 195, 409
197 logic, binary 376; of parasitism 333, 335
kinship 316, 378, 408; Dravidian 378; Hindu loyalty 65, 66, 92, 100, 196, 197, 213, 221,
77; system 377-9, 381, 386 256
Koili Baikuntha 201, 202
Kols 176, 331, 332, 341 Ma Kuajiri 295; Tarini 255
Konarka 129-31, 184 Maddala Paniji 64, 65, 75, 77, 91, 95, 112,
Kondh Patmaji of Merkul 276, 284, 285, 295 113, 118, 124, 134, 135, 186
428 ; INDEX

Madhava 76, 195, 200, 201, 203 Brahmanas 49; of Chauhans 137, 143; of
Mahabharata 15, 53, 113-16, 123-31, 278, peasants 303; to Orissa 49, 137, 143, 260,
308, 309, 314, 323 307, 309-16, 322; urban 394
Mahapatra, Balki 159 mining 13; coal 263, 329, 338, 339
Mahapatra, Birajal 291 ministers 136; five of Jagannatha 196-8, 207,
Mahapatra, Brundaban Kuanar Guru 186 208, 214-20; of the Little King 199
Mahapatra, Jadumani 179, 180 Mishra, Gangadhar 12, 74, 133-6, 138, 142-6
Mahapatra, Kedarnath 72, 78 Mishra, Godabarish 188
Mahapuru 349, 351 Misra, Narasimha 94
MahASivagupta Balarjuna 47, 50-9 Mitra, R.L. 175
Mahendra of KoSala 42 modernity 149, 397, 403; colonial 61, 343;
Mahendraditya 42, 45, 46 local 405, 408; non-western 15
Mahisasura 128, 131 % modernization 13, 15, 61, 79, 394, 402, 405,
Mahisasuramardini 53, 68, 130, 159 406
Mainpuri 136-42 Mohapatra, Jagat Singh 158
Majhi, Anand Singh 166 Mondai festival 264
Majhi, Mansingh 158 Mughals 10, 63, 65, 70, 193, 240, 245, 246,
Majhi, Pratap 167 Siz, 313, 315, 318
Majhi, Sansadhar 166 Muktimandapa Pandit Sabha 103
Malhar 40-2, 44, 45, 48, 51, 52 Mukunda Deva Harichandana 311, 312; of
Malis 214, 390 Khurda 64, 66; of Puri 223
Malkangiri 376, 377 Munda Raj 133: rebellions 150, 161, 171
Maltby, Thomas J. 176, 177 Mundas 161, 334, 342
Manabhanja Kesari 155, 157, 172 music 14, 35, 51, 170, 179, 180, 184, 214,
Manbhum 164, 282 233,.289, 290, 359, 360, 382, 383,
mandala 48, 107, 211, 212 389-96; industry 390, 395; orchestral
Mandasa 180 389, 390; Sambalpuri 389, 394-6
Mangala 198, 353, 354 musicians 15, 214, 233, 290, 359, 360, 382,
Manika 236, 237 383, 389-5
ManikeSvar 155, 156, 158 Muslims 186, 312, 315, 316, 324, 406, 407,
Manikesvari 154, 257, 258, 265, 271, 276, 410; cemetery 199; community 198; rule
285, 287, 293, 295 112, 119, 322; saints 98, 361
Maninaga 195-8, 203, 207, 219
ManinageSvari 193, 195, 197, 200, 216-21, Naanka famine 329, 332
225 nadu 25, 28, 234
Manmunda 42, 44, 45 Nagpur 64, 133, 154, 331
Mansingh 63, 135, 146 Nagra 158, 159, 165, 333
mantras 93, 97, 98, 101-6, 202, 286 Nalas 39, 51, 144
Manu 27, 105, 278 Narasimha 53, 153, 217, 351, 352, 358, 359
Marathas 10, 63-5, 71, 72, 193, 195, 245 Narasimha Deva II 131
Mastani Brahmanas 92, 93 Narasimha Deva III 91
mathas 197, 217, 218, 264, 409 Narasimha Garuda 153
Maufisia Kondh 261 Narasimhanath 139, 142
Mayurbhanj 14, 62-4, 66, 74, 75, 78, 85-7, Narayana 102, 286
98, 140, 144, 163, 284, 331, 332, 340, Narayani 198, 210, 259
343 Nataraja 87, 89
Mekala 40, 41 nationalism 15, 22, 123, 124, 150, 161,
Merkul 276, 284, 287, 295 399-404; Oriya 181, 185, 188, 189, 247,
middle class 366, 368, 389, 395, 396, 400; 248
colonial 332; in princely states 338, 343; Navakalevara 95, 375
Oriya 331, 338 Nayagarh 66, 71, 74, 144, 157
Middle India 316, 378, 379, 408 Nehena 42, 43
migration 409; myths 260, 261, 278; of Nepal 107, 374, 392, 408
 INDEX 429
Netrotsava-vidhi 95 88, 95, 123-5, 128, 129, 175-83, 187,
Nettabhafija 88, 89 189, 331, 401; middle class 331, 338;
networks 22-6, 28, 35, 228, 230, 256, 257, Mahabharata 15, 113, 125, 126;
258, 260, 381; exchange 45, 228, 230, movement 123, 183, 187, 401, 402, 407;
257, 379, 408; of goddesses and kings nationalism 124, 181, 185, 189;
258, 261; ideas 22, 23; kinship-based patriotism 230, 406; poets and writers 12,
groups 31, 377, 381; multi-layered 232; 29, 72, 87, 98, 113, 176-80; society 128;
of moral obligations 381; economic 337; traditions 76, 126, 182
religious 69, 132, 261; social 231, 232
Nilamadhava 127, 201 Paddhatis 101, 106
Nilgiri 79, 331, 340; Prajamandal 340 Pahudi Bhuiyan 290, 295
Nishadas 130 paik bidroha 79, 186; paikas 260, 290, 328,
Nishadpuri 130 338
nissan 390-2 pakhdla 240, 241
Nissani 392 palaces 11, 43, 68-75, 91, 93, 95, 97, 100-2,
Nrusinghapur 224 105, 113, 138, 150, 168-70, 193,
Nuagaon 198, 199, 224 196-200, 203-7, 211, 217, 221, 241,
Nuapada 43, 51 256-8, 261, 264, 265, 271, 272, 275, 277,
286, 292-6, 300; and sacred sites,
Odissi dance 180-4 construction of 11, 12, 32, 42, 50, 70, 71,
OdradeSa 49 91, 94, 103, 104, 130, 143, 145, 169, 185,
offerings, sacrificial 213, 215, 217, 241, 257, 195-9, 237, 255, 256, 266, 277. 285, 288,
263, 265, 292, 313, 382; to Jagannath 289
126, 213; to Patkhanda 261; to palanquins 66, 169, 213, 214, 217-19, 289
Ramachandi 233; to Siva BaneSvar 289; Pallahara 86, 162, 274, 275, 277, 283, 285,
to Tarini 255 288, 292, 293, 295, 296
Oraons 161, 334, 377 palm-leaf manuscripts 12, 72, 73, 75, 95, 97,
order, Brahmanic 125, 126, 160, 171, 261, 155, 179, 182, 224, 240, 286
274, 337, 338, 360; moral 13, 14, 274, Panchakot Kashipur 164, 167, 282
380, 381; spatial 21, 25, 28, 197, 199, Panchet 160, 163, 164
219, 225 Pandit Sabha 95, 103
organization, sacrificial 234, 237, 242, 247 Panduvarhsis 41, 42, 47, 49-52, 55
Orientalist notions 13, 150, 175, 328 Panigrahi, K.C. 78, 111-15, 119
origin, colonial 21; from Kanauj 13, 117, Panos 329-31, 389
222; from Puri 153, 156, 222, 225; pantheon, Hindu 97; royal 67-9, 74, 195;
legend of 119, 156; local 67, 75, 145, Vedic 107
151, 171; non-tribal 161; Rajput/ paficadola padia 214, 216, 220
Kshatriya 12, 77, 134-46, 161, 283, 308, Pancadolayatra 11, 69, 197, 211, 213, 216,
314; tribal 11, 68, 69, 126, 131, 140-44, 218, 220, 221, 224
151, 157, 158, 167, 193, 211, 225, Paramara family 152, 164, 165
257-62, 273 Parikud 66, 259
Orissa, colonial 9, 13, 123, 189, 327; Parlakimedi 14, 64, 66, 73-5, 180, 187, 244,
construct of 407; patriotism 406; 250, 258, 271
pre-calonial 129, 149, 163, 227, 228, Parvatipur 223, 224
235, 242, 245; Sammilani 331; State Patkhanda 260, 261, 265, 289, 293
Peoples’ Conference 340; western 10, 12, Patnagarh 12, 75, 78, 133, 135-44, 146, 165,
14, 15, 39, 40, 44, 48, 76, 77, 115, 133, 167, 168, 260, 281, 296, 311
134, 137, 141-6, 149, 153, 161, 165, patriotism, early modern 248, 406; medieval
389-96 242; Oriya 230, 406, 407; political 234,
Oriya, identity 7, 8, 64, 123, 125, 127, 128, 407; primordial 231, 234; proto-national
183, 184, 187-9, 401, 406, 407; literature 15; regional 227, 229, 235, 243, 246-8,
71, 72, 94, 95, 98, 99, 113, 124, 125, 250
128, 129, 176-88; language 12, 29, 73, Patua dance 359
430 INDEX

peacock 279-81; state emblem 278, 281; priests 99, 119, 124, 255, 257, 260, 355, 368;
feathers 66, 368 Brahmanic 105, 106, 127, 142, 207, 236,
performance, cultural 347, 369, 390, 395, 240, 277, 303, 313, 314, 366; female 360,
396; dramatic 384; female 364; of 362, 364; low caste 68, 129, 130, 311,
penance 211; of sacrifices 12, 99, 113, 356, 359, 392-4; royal 93, 99, 168-71,
117-19; ritual 94, 197, 203, 264-6, 274, 286, 318; tribal 68, 74, 93, 97, 129, 130,
294, 297, 306, 363, 364, 375, 383-6, 158, 159, 198, 207, 233, 236, 258, 261,
393-5; royal 69, 266, 274, 294, 297 287, 382, 383
permanent settlement 195, 328 princely states 9, 13, 61, 71, 77-9, 133, 145,
peshkash 246, 328, 331, 335, 338 146, 149, 150, 151, 156, 157, 175, 212,
pilgrimage 66, 69, 114, 141; places of 51, 213, gee, 225, 273, 277, Seeeeee, 351,
113, 116, 255, 361; to Puri 134, 136, 138, 334-8, 341-3, 401, 409
140, 143, 203, 283 P princes 64, 85, 87, 100, 102, 135, 136, 138,
plough agriculture 49, 162, 303, 317, 330, 141, 149, 164, 176, 180, 185, 188, 262,
336 281, 287, 295; kidnapped 86, 100, 163,
poita 92, 129, 162, 291, 303, 311, 317 283; romanticising of 328
post-Orientalist Orientalism 13, 328 Prithviraj Chauhan 136, 137, 139
pots, sacred 210, 261, 356, 357, 379, 382, Prithviraj Raso 134
383 Prithviraj Vijaya 134, 137
pottery 42-5 problems, economic 14, 127, 332, 362,
power, centres of political 62, 69, 70, 74, 363
108, 112, 151, 194-7, 222, 245, 255, 265, processes, cultural 21, 23, 401; historical 9,
275, 303, 315, 408; colonial 61, 186, 278, 23-35, 40, 42, 46, 227, 237, 250, 262;
403; creative 393; divine 131, 257, 260, long-term 50, 404; social 77, 144
263, 276, 347, 363, 369, 393; psycho-medical view of possession 349, 361,
legitimation of 193, 203, 225, 240-3, 256, 365, 368, 369
262, 263, 274-6, 278, 306, 316, 338, 343; puja 93, 99, 166, 169, 170, 236, 286, 291,
local 63, 85, 195; military 94, 239; 292, 296, 304, 351-4, 382-4, 390
political 15, 27, 46, 50, 53, 100, 108, pujari 241, 392, 393; Brahmana 240
193, 245; protective 196, 213, 219, 276, Pulakesin II 41
319; royal 46, 48, 71, 86, 91, 92, 105, Puranas 46, 95, 101, 106, 117, 125, 145, 178,
225, 230, 237, 240; secular 266, 376; 180
spiritual 102, 126; structure 265, 334, Puri 7, 8, 11, 12, 47, 64-6, 70-2, 74, 76, 102,
335 111, 118-20, 124-30, 134-8, 143-5, 153,
Prabodha Chandrika 142, 143 156, 169, 175, 182, 184, 187, 189, 193,
practices, cultural and religious 23, 34, 52; 195, 197, 204, 207, 224, 225, 235, 236,
cultural and social 13, 15, 23, 33, 52, 92, 255, 280, 283, 303, 310, 313, 315, 316,
100, 150, 151, 230, 336-8, 342-4, 351, 323, 375, 402, 407; Jagannath of 65, 70,
375; gendered 347, 360; Hindu 155, 350; 94-6, 99, 103, 112, 125-7, 150, 181,
indigenous 171; religious 34, 93, 96, 98, 201-3, 222, 409; raja of 95, 99, 101,
100-2, 106, 155, 157, 171, 172, 230, 349, 105-7, 136, 223, 224, 258, 279, 312
350, 360, 364, 368, 409; ritual 347, 369; Purusottamacandrika 118
tribal 92, 98, 100, 104, 151, 157, 172; Purushottamadeva 92-4, 96, 102
Vedic 100 Purusottama Jagannatha 103
Pradhan, Madan 152-8, 161, 164-6, 282 Purushottamakshetra 134
Pradhan, Medini 158 Purushottama Mahatmya 178
Pradhan, Panu 158 Purusottama temple 94
Praja Sabha 341 Pusyabhiseka 105, 106
Prajamandal movement 78, 328, 338-42
Prasannamiatra 43, 45 queens 89, 128, 141, 154, 155, 158, 166,
prasastis 40, 46, 53, 77, 145 172, 185, 186, 222, 223, 286, 308, 309;
Pratap Deo 279, 280, 296 pregnant 139, 141-3, 154, 166; sati 139,
Pratap Keshari Deo 276 141, 154, 155; widowed 139, 141, 142
 INDEX 431

Raiboga 167, 168, 334 93, 97, 103, 104, 135, 165, 233, 328,
Raigarh 40, 46, 154, 158, 168, 322 334; grain 330, 336; quit 65, 193, 235;
Raipur 40, 42, 45, 46, 49 remissions 47, 49, 336; standardization of
Raj Gond kingdom 133 — assessments 340; structure 159, 163,
Rajabhoga Itihasa 124, 186 340
Rajaguru, Satyanarayana 78, 88, 115, 116 resistance 64, 78, 79, 151, 157, 168, 171;
Rajapurohita 99, 289, 292 anti-colonial 79, 186; centres of 79; tribal
Rajasthan/Rajputana 28, 75, 88, 135, 137, 10, 150, 157, 161, 166, 171, 186
138, 141, 144, 145, 280, 281, 367, 310, resources, 63, 93; disappropriation of 330,
315, 321 335-8, 343; economic 26, 30, 32, 50, 52,
rajgurus 68, 69, 207, 222, 282, 285, 287, 104, 237, 239, 331, 343; restricted 203;
293, 295 ritual-economic 231
Rajim 48, 51-3 revenue, dedication of 103, 135, 223;
Rajput, affiliations 12, 55, 77, 133-46, 161, collectors 303, 328, 341; increase 163,
273; prince 143, 262; traditions 146 316, 331, 332; politics 162; settlement
rajputization 12, 77, 133, 144, 146, 165 163, 328; sources of 48; terms 47
rajtilaka 287, 288, 292, 293, 295, 296 Reveda 102, 104, 108
rajyabhiseka 100, 101, 105, 274, 286, 287, rice 40, 127, 234, 263, 329, 336, 341, 382;
293 balls 117, 313, 319; cooked 279;
Rama 92, 97-9, 129, 130, 198, 265; bhakti cultivation 40, 250, 334, 377; paddy
97 lending 341; parched 382, 383; price of
Ramagatha 94 337; sprouts 211
Ramachandi 129, 130, 233 rights to fruits and productsof the land 241,
Ramacandra of Khurda | 12, 119, 236 247, 380; civil 338, 339
Ramachandra II of Khurda 185, 186 rites, Agamic 106; votive 353
Ramadeva 135-44 rituals, annual cycie 203; autumnal 195;
Ranabhafijadeva 87-9 Brahmanic 102, 144, 277, 285-7, 291,
Ranipur-Jharial 48, 51, 52 294, 296; of healing 360, 361; of
Ranpur 10, 11, 14, 62, 64, 66-9, 71, 73-6, 79, installation 274-6, 285, 288; of
193-225, 246, 330; Prajamandal 339; purification 211, 214; of renewal 195,
RajavamSa Itihasa 195 196, 207, 221; of sitting on the tribal
rastra 46, 47; devata 102, 195, 236, 245; chief's lap 291, 296; royal 10, 67, 69,
devi 93; mukhya 278 171; sites of 50, 382-4; tantric 127, 257;
Ratan Kesari 153, 154 urban 197, 198, 203, 213, 214, 219
Ratanpur 139, 154, 166, 172 Roy, Sarat Chandra 273, 285
rathayatra 71, 95, 96, 103, 203, 208, 209, rulers, local 155, 195, 236, 240, 256, 259,
214, 259, 330, 338 260, 266, 279, 280, 296; sovereign 22,
Ray, Gourishankar 183, 187, 188 90, 93, 102, 106, 239, 243-6
Ray Radhanath 183 Russelkonda 185, 187
rebellions 150, 161, 162, 171, 186, 247, 275,
315, 332, 334 sacrifices 27, 54, 117, 118, 153, 261, 170,
recruitment for First World War, forced 332; 263; animal 27, 97, 257, 261, 263, 265;
of forced labour 336 of humans 67, 68, 154, 170, 236, 237,
relations, between micro-regional and 238, 262, 290, 291, 297; of horses 12, 74,
subregional 230; personal 380; quality of 111, 114, 117, 119; of self 262, 319;
social 381; state and community 240; Vedic 99, 108
with goddess 237; with the dead 379 sahi 70, 196, 199
religion 95, 124, 150, 229, 230, 348, 399, Sahoo, Apudu 342
400; Brahmanic 53; history of 266, 348; Sahu, N.K. 64
multiple forms of 52; Puranic 48; tribal §ailodbhava dynasty 144, 259
100, 156, 157, 172, 350 §aivism 51, 52, 131, 219, 220
rent 165, 328-30, 333-5; assessment 336, Sakta pitha 43, 127
340; excessive 331, 341, 342; freedom of Sakti 53, 356
432 INDEX

Saktism 93, 97, 349, 368, 369 96-9, 103, 134, 186, 193, 199, 222-4,
Salapgarh 284, 296 277, 328; rural 46-9
Salzau Conferences 8, 14, 397 sevakas 65, 199, 265, 408
Samalai/Samlei/Samaleswari 68, 144, 145, shamans 350, 362, 379, 383-5; female 358,
168, 169, 170, 258, 260, 261, 283, 287, 360; Rajasthani 362
293, 295 Siddhesvari 259, 260
samanta 62, 67, 280, 288, 295 Sikharbasini 169
Sambalpur 12, 40, 48, 64, 66, 68, 72, 74, Sikharbhum 160, 163, 164
133-46, 153, 162, 272, 303, 311, 322, Sikhareswar 131, 132
333, 389, 391, 395 Silpasastra 97
Samudragupta 40, 42, 46 simhasana 293; mela 291, 296; puja 286
Samukhasahi 196, 222 Singh, Baliar 74, 134, 135
sanads 167, 333, 334 % Singh, Bimbadhar 158
Sanakimedi 258 Singh, Hitambar 138
Sangam 9, 29-31 Singh, Jayant 138
Sanskrit 12, 14, 29, 31, 33, 71-3, 87-99, 107, Singh, Madan Mohan 158
113-18, 124-6, 129, 133-5, 177-80, 188, Singh, Maneswar 159
365; inscription 45, 87; mantras 97, 105; Singh, Ratan 136
texts 100, 103, 137 Singh, Samar 143
Sanskritization 7, 32, 277 Singh, Uddhava 201, 203
Santosi Ma 358 Singhbhum 88, 162, 280
Sarabhapuriya dynasty 42, 43, 46-9 Sinha, Surajit 12, 77, 133, 144, 161
Sarala Dasa 71, 123-32, 309 Sirat-i Firazsahi 115
Sarangadhara 202, 223, 224 Sircar, Dines Chandar 88, 111, 112, 114-16
Sarangadharpur 223 Sirpur 42, 46, 48, 50, 52-4
Sarangagarh 116, 138 Sita 99, 128
Sarapagarh 158, 159, 166, 333 Sitabhinji 87
Sargipalli 158, 159, 163-8, 170, 282, 283, Siva 34, 52-5, 85, 92, 98, 116-18, 129, 131,
287, 292, 293, 295, 333 155, 156, 211-14, 218-20, 259, 266, 280,
sarva-bhumi 22 289, 309
sarva-kara-sameta 47 Siva-Linga 51, 68, 116, 117, 129, 155, 158,
sarva-pida-varjita 47 214
Sasana 12, 70-4, 93-9, 103-5, 130, 134, 138, society, civil 249, 397; Hindu 375; local 40,
199, 222-5 53, 67, 229, 245, 275; regional 228; tribal
Sasanakaranam 103 13, 274, 324, 410; urban 196-9, 203, 213,
Sastras 46, 49, 127 214, 224, 390, 394
sati 141, 154, 155 Somavamsa Rajputs 135, 146
Satrubhafija 86, 88, 89 Somavam4Si dynasty 13, 39, 41, 47, 49, 51-4,
Satyabadi 307 56, 89, 90, 111-19, 135, 151, 152
Satyabadi School 188 Sonepur 12, 40, 47, 50, 52, 57, 66, 71, 77,
Savaras (Sabara, Sora, Saora) 67, 68, 127-32, 88, 89, 116, 133, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142,
236, 238, 274, 283, 284, 287, 293, 294, 144, 146, 151, 153, 170
328-30, 360 sources, indigenous 236; oral 138, 307, 328
Sawar Raja 288, 295, 296 sovereignty 229, 241, 243; ritual 245, 246,
Sekhar dynasties 163, 282 248; sharing of 239
Senapati, Fakirmohan 29, 185 space 23, 28, 35, 221, 224; bounded 23, 228;
Senapati, Nilamani 332 ritual 197, 225
service, military 63, 159, 246; tenures 232, specialists, religious 134, 365, 393;
233, 336 ritual 15, 313, 350, 356, 358, 362-4,
service holders, ritual 265 366, 368
settlement, axial division 198; operations 76, spirits of the deceased 349, 352, 360, 361,
332; reports 76, 329, 331 368, 382-4
settlements, Brahmanic 46, 55, 70-2, 94, Sripura 42, 46, 47, 51
 INDEX 433

State, authority 48, 399; colonial 13, 61, 62, territorial units, construction of 21, 23, 32,
78, 123, 162, 166, 329, 332, 334, 343; 35, 40, 124, 170, 232, 395
deity 155, 166, 193, 195, 196, 245; territory 210, 211; centre-oriented 228;
ex-feudatory/princely 149-51, 156, 163, divine 195, 218, 221, 261; expanding 48,
273, 274, 285, 287; formation 9, 12, 40, 50, 197, 222; royal 196, 210, 213, 218,
46, 77, 133, 229, 235; jungle 193, 196, 221, 256-62; tribal 151, 193, 207; urban
203; language 401; modern 239, 243; 197-9, 207, 214, 224, 390
modern boundaries 401; monopolies 339; Thakurani 68-71, 74, 77, 349; Yatra 356
officials 44, 47, 290, 338, 341, 409; Tigiria 65, 66, 71
pre-modern 151; regional 46, 47; tikka 261, 262, 276, 283
subregional 46, 47; tribal 93, 100, 274 tilaka 100, 159, 160, 261, 262, 276, 283,
status categories 376; social 127, 162, 212, 286, 287, 288, 290, 292, 295, 296
275, 279, 352, 361, 366, 408 firthas 51, 105, 113, 134, 182
stratification, cultural 124; economic 124, titles and epithets 45-8, 95, 152, 231, 242, 245
363, 366; social 124, 150, 159, 163, 198, Titlipada 281, 295
199 Tivaradeva 41, 49
structure, agrarian 330, 331; ofcommand Tosali 28
239; of oppression 332; of tribal society town-planning 11, 69, 103
13; political 48, 240, 408; tradition, localization of 76, 108, 123, 132;
politico-cultural 228, 230, 232; oral 101, 150, 307
socio-political 50, 233, 237, 240 traditions, cultural 100, 131, 182, 402;
Subaltern, strategy 365; Studies 15, 373 indigenous 51, 236; invented 12, 75, 76,
subalterns 79, 151, 166, 361, 366, 397, 406 156, 158; littleAocal 10, 11, 68, 75, 77,
Subhadra 94, 98, 101, 197, 208, 209 86, 119, 134, 145, 146, 150-3, 156-8,
Sudramuni 124, 125, 128 163, 164, 170, 227, 256, 284, 395;
Sudras 125, 129 marginalized 14; pan-Indian 7, 22, 55,
Sukhabandh 152-5 75, 76, 126, 132, 146, 227; peripheral
Sulepal 284, 288, 293, 295, 296 401; Purdnic 75
Sulkis 62, 144 transformation, historical 40, 237, 242;
Sundargarh 149-52, 168, 169, 322 internal 45, 230, 235, 240, 243; into
sunia 242, 330; vethi 339; year 107 feudatory states 70; socio-cultural 39, 45,
SiryavamSi Gajapatis 92, 103 49, 55, 93, 151, 171, 237, 315, 390, 394;
Svapnesvara 196, 197, 216, 217, 259 to Hinduism 171, 263
swords 66, 153, 155, 157, 158, 170, 207, tribal people 13, 14, 40, 67-9, 76, 79, 86, 92,
239, 240, 260, 263, 286, 289, 291, 293, 100, 101, 127-32, 144, 149, 151, 157-63,
310-12, 316, 318 172, 237, 255, 260-4, 273-81, 284, 285,
287, 291, 292, 294, 295, 303, 315, 333,
Tagore, Rabindranath 185 350, 376, 386, 397, 403, 406, 410
Tala 48, 51-3 tribe, dominant 159, 164, 273, 275-7, 281,
Talamaninaga 195, 198 287, 294
Talcher 65, 68, 79, 144, 263, 271, 329, 330, turban, royal 170, 171, 262, 281, 289, 291,
337; Prajamandal 339 293, 295
Tamil Nadu 9, 28-31, 365, 366, 368, 380 Tustikara 43, 46, 53, 67
Tantra 92, 93, 97, 127, 257, 265, 287 i.
Tara 91, 303 Udit Pratap Deo 262,276 © /> }
Tarini 91, 93, 198, 255, 288, 295 umbrella, ceremonial 66, 100, 153, 164, 168,
taxes 335; chaukidari 341; income 342 (cf. 207, 214, 217, 259, 265, 280, 283,
revenue, rent) 286-93
Telugu 29, 33, 176, 184, 358, 359, 377; untouchables 198, 319, 320, 329, 338-40,
Cédas 39 358, 389, 394, 395
temples, brick 43, 48, 52; Hindu 70, 71, 361 Utkal 111, 151, 152, 156, 311, 312
tenants 310, 328, 329, 331, 333, 334, 336 Utkal Dipika 183, 187
Terasinga 43, 46, 53 Utkal University 141
434 INDEX

Utkal Sammilani 343 West Bengal 31, 164, 282

widows 15, 87, 126, 128, 139, 288, 330, 352;
Vakatakas 39, 40, 51 remarriage of 126, 330
vamsavalis 14, 63, 75, 149, 150, 177, 185, wife-givers 376
186, 190 women 27, 29, 86, 128, 137, 217, 231, 263,
Varahamihira 101, 105, 108 334, 336, 337, 348, 351, 353, 356-69,
Varaha, Pratap 280, 281 382; Brahman 363; Hindu 347; in
Varanasi 99, 202, 289, 361 southern Orissa 347, 351, 360; possessed
varna 27, 124, 375, 376 348, 351, 358-60, 363, 364, 369;
Vasata 53, 54 religious practices 347, 348, 349;
Vasistha 85, 88, 99 violence against 362
vassals 90, 152, 156, 159, 160, 273 worship, of goddesses 256, 266, 349, 392; of
Vedas 49, 95,99, 101, 104, 125, 130, 131, 292 the sword 158; solitary 351
Vichitra Ramayana 125, 126, 128
Vidarbha 40, 51-3 yajamana/jajman 104, 382, 384
viharas 42-4, 52 Yajurveda 101, 104
VijayadaSami 167-70, 207, 282 yatras 11, 69, 71, 95, 96, 98, 103, 108,
Vijayanagar (Vizianagaram) 66, 75, 129, 140 195, 197, 198, 203, 208-20, 225, 239,
villages 12, 26, 70-2, 74, 79, 136, 154, 162, 259, 261, 263, 266, 338, 351, 356, 359,
165, 267, 213, 218, 221, Baeeees7, 258, 368
264, 283, 290, 333-6, 380, 390, 395, 408; Yayati I 13, 95, 111, 113, 115, 116, 156
Sasana 93-9, 103-5, 199, 222-5 Yayati II 13
Virabhadra (god) 359; (king) 85, 88, 99 Yayati KeSari 12, 13, 74, 111, 112, 114, 116,
Viraja 116, 117 weg, 418, 119
Visaladeva 136, 137, 142 Yayati KeSari legend 13, 74, 112, 117-20,
Visnu/Visnuism 52, 53, 92, 93, 98, 99, 104, 156
107, 108, 116, 213, 214, 219, 220, 286 Yayatinagara 47, 112, 114-17
Visvanatha 98, 99, 202 Yayatipatana 113, 114
Yayatitirtha 113
wages 331, 334, 337, 338
wage-labourers 380 zamindars 64, 66, 138, 141, 154, 155, 159,
war 64, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 91, 126, 130, 141, 160, 163-72, 239, 257, 260, 262, 283,
154, 155, 157, 164, 260, 280, 311, 313, 287, 289, 290, 292, 293, 328, 329, 332-5,
332, 337, 338, 400, 403 338, 343; tribal 169
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