ORISSA, a province of British India, forming a division or commissionership under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, situated between 19° 28' and 22° 34' 15" N. lat. and between 83° 36' 30" and 87° 31' 30" E. long. It forms the extreme south-western portion of Bengal, bounded on the N. and N.E. by Chutiâ Nâgpur and Lower Bengal proper, E. and S.E. by the Bay of Bengal, S. by Madras, and W. by the Central Provinces.
Orissa consists of two distinct territories—a fertile alluvial delta, comprising the three British districts of Cuttack, Balasor, and Puri, occupying an area of 8056 square miles; and a wild region of sparsely populated tributary Hill States, with an area of 16,084 square miles, the latter walling out the former from the central Indian plateau. In the latter district the two small territories of Angul and Banki (area 997 square miles) are subject to British management. Including these, the area of British Orissa is 9053 square miles.
British Orissa.— The Orissa delta is formed from the deposits of the Mahânadi, the Brâhmani, and the Baitarani, which converge towards the coast, to within 30 miles of each other, upon Orissa. The three rivers, together with two minor streams, the Sâlandi and Subanrekhâ, represent an accumulated drainage of 63,350 square miles, which, during the height of the hot weather, amounts only to a discharge of 1690 cubic feet per second. The average cold-weather discharge is 5360 cubic feet, but during the rains it rises to 2,760,000 cubic feet. This enormous mass of water falls suddenly upon a narrow level strip of country in which the river-beds are altogether inadequate to carry it off. The Orissa canal-system now affords an outlet to much of this surplus water, which it also utilizes for irrigation....
The population of the British districts was 3,730,735 in 1881, distributed over an area of 9053 square miles. The Hindus form the great mass of the population (3,634,049 in 1881), Mohammedans numbering 85,611, and aboriginal tribes still following their primitive modes of worship 10,923. The population is entirely rural, the people living almost solely by husbandry. In 1881 there were only five towns in the province containing upwards of 5000 inhabitants Cuttack (42,656), the headquarters of the provincial administration, and the starting-point of the great system of canals which irrigate the province; Puri (22,095), the capital of the third district of Orissa, and the religious capital of the province; Balasor (20,265), the official headquarters of the district of the same name, and the site of the earliest British factory on the seaboard of Bengal; Kendrapâra (15,969); and Jaipur (11,283), also a great religious centre, with numerous ruined Sivaite temples.
The whole of Orissa is holy ground. On the southern bank of the Baitarani shrine rises after shrine in honour of Siva, the AllDestroyer. On leaving the stream the pilgrim enters Jaipur, literally the city of sacrifice, the headquarters of the region of pilgrimage sacred to the wife of the All-Destroyer. There is not a fiscal division in Orissa without its community of cenobites, scarcely a village without consecrated lands, and not a single ancient family that has not devoted its best acres to the gods. Every town is filled with temples, and every hamlet has its shrine. The national reverence of the Hindus for holy places has been for ages concentrated on Puri, sacred to Vishnu under his title of Jagannäth, the Lord of the World.
Rice forms the great staple, every variety of it being grown, from the dwarf plant, 18 inches high, on the dry uplands, to the long-stemmed paddy which rears its head above 6 or 7 feet of water. Other crops consist of wheat, many varieties of pulse, oil-seeds, hemp, tobacco, cotton, sugar-cane, betel-leaf, tubers, and vegetables of many kinds. Besides its copious water-supply in time of high flood, the province has a local rainfall of 62⅜ inches per annum. Nevertheless, the uncontrolled state of the water-supply has subjected the country from time immemorial to droughts no less than to inundation. Thus the terrible famine of 1865-66, which swept away one-fourth of the entire population, was followed in 1866 by a flood which destroyed crops to the value of £3,000,000. Since then much has been done by Government to husband the abundant water-supply.
The early history of the kingdom of Orissa (Odra-desa), as recorded in the archives of the temple of Jagannath, is largely mythical. A blank in the records from about 50 b,c. to 319 a,d. corresponds to a period of Yavana occupation and Buddhist influence, during which the numerous rock monasteries of Orissa were excavated. The founder of the Kesari or Lion dynasty, which ruled from 474 to 1132 A.D., is said to have restored the worship of Jagannâth, and under this line the great Sivaite temple at Bhuvaneswar was constructed. In 1132 a new line (the Gangetic dynasty) succeeded, and Vishnu took the place of Siva in the royal worship. This dynasty was extinguished in 1532-34, and in 1578, after half a century of war, Orissa became a province of the Mogul empire. In 1751 it passed to the Marhattas and suffered great miseries under their rule till the British conquest in 1803.
Orissa Tributary States.— These form a cluster of eighteen dependent territories or chiefships in the mountainous background of the Orissa division, occupying a succession of wooded mountain and rocky ranges, enclosing the rich valleys of the Mahânadi, Brâhmani, and Baitarani. The following table gives a list of the states, with their area in square miles and their population. [table]
The largest town in the whole of the Tributary States is Khandpâra, with 5543 inhabitants. It lies on the right bank of the Mahanadi, and is a considerable seat of trade.
Tillage is conducted in two methods, common to the whole Tributary States: (1) rice cultivation in hollows and on low lands which have a command of irrigation; (2) upland or tâila cultivation, upon newly-cleared patches of land, which depends entirely on the local rainfall. In the valleys, where the mountain rivulets can be utilized, the peasants throw a dam across the stream and store up the water. The lower levels thus secure a supply of moisture the whole year round, and wet rice cultivation goes on throughout the twelve months. In the uplands the forests are cut down and burnt upon the spot; and the soil, thus enriched with salts, yields abundant crops of early rice, oil-seeds, and cotton. At the end of four or five years such clearings are abandoned for new ones, and the land relapses into jungle.
The states are under the political superintendence of the British commissioner of Orissa.
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