Where is Kalinga?

Where is Kalinga?

Traditionally, if you take the reference of rivers, Kalinga country was defined as the coastal strip between Mahanadi and Gautami (Main distributory of Gadavari) with its capital on the banks of R. Nagavali. Therefore, the coastal districts between Puri and Rajahmundry may be called Kalinga. 

The region was divided into three distinct regions – North, Middle and South. There was a reference to the adjoining forested region – Kalinga-aratta, which may comprise the Eastern Ghats between Sabhalpur and Bhadrachalam. 

All the ancient capitals of Kalinga are in the Middle Kalinga. The temple of Mukhalingam near Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh is probably a corruption of Madhya-Kalingam. The other cities Kalinga Nagaram, Dantapuri are present day Kalingapatnam and Palloor. 

R. Narmada and the Vindhya Range had been the traditional boundary between North and South. This is true of the western half of the peninsula. The highway called Dakshinapatha (Southern Path) took off from the confluence of R. Yamuna and Ganges, passed Ujjain in Malwa and ended at the R. Narmada. The mouth of Narmada had been the gateway to the Arabian Sea. Beyond R. Narmada was an amorphous Dark Continent, variously called Dandakaranya, Andhrapatha etc. etc. 

But in the eastern half of the peninsula, the coastal strip alternates between broad river valleys and impassable thickly forested hills. The knowledge of the region south of the Ganges Delta was little, with Tamralipti being the entry to the Bay of Bengal. 

In early Sanskrit literature, the knowledge of South India had been very sketchy. By the time of Ramayana and the later parts of Mahabharat, we see a slight increase in the awareness of South. Based on various references in the epic tradition we may arrive at an overlapping map of the inhabited regions in South India. (See map)

Kharavela’s (A Kalinga King of 2^nd Century BCE) inscription mentions that the Andhra country was to Kalinga’s west. The map is consistent with that fact. The Satavahana kings between 2^nd Cent BCE to 2^nd Cent CE had their capital at Paithan which falls on the same latitude as the capital of Kalingas (Mukhalingam). 

In the ancient times we know of two campaigns of Magadhan kings into Kalinga country. One was by Mahapadma Nanda as mentioned by Kharavela. It was said that he had taken a Jaina relic from the Kalingas and the same was brought back by Kharavela when he freed Kalinga. The other campaign was the famous Kalinga War of Asoka. A single battle was fought on the right bank of R. Mahanadi, the traditional northern frontier of Kalinga.  Again is consistent with the tradition.

It was only in the recent (Medieval) times, we see Cuttack becoming the capital. It was built by the later Gangas and the Gajapatis made it their capital. They were called Odhras. But their rule extended to the R. Krishna valley and beyond, and naturally called themselves Kings of Kalinga. 

Now, is Odhra the same as Kalinga? 

This question was answered by a Chinese pilgrim in 7^th Century. Yuan Chwang travelled from Bengal to South India and returned to Gujarat and beyond. If you go by his travelogue and the observations that occur in his book called Hsi-yu-chi, we may chart his route. (See map) The unit of distance ‘Li’ may be approximately converted as one fifth of a kilometer. 

There are certain places referred by him that can be identified with reasonable exactitude. 

They are…

TAN-MO-LIH-TI = TAMRALIPTI = TAMLUK

TE-NA-KA-CHE-KA = DHANYAKATAKA = DHARANIKOTA / AMARAVATI

KAN-CHIH-PU-LO = KANCHIPURA = KANCHI

PO-LU-KA-CHE-PO = BHARUKACCHA = BHAROCH

There was confusion created by lack of knowledge of Kanaganahalli, which was excavated only in 1994, and both Rhys Davis and Watters thought KUNG-KA-NA-PU-LO was Konkan instead of Kanaganapura. 

PING-CHI-LO was thought to be Vengi. The capital of Andhra country falls between Kosala and Dhanyakataka on a North-South line. There are two contenders for this in 7^th Century. One is Vemulavada and the other Kolanupaka (Kulpak). Vengi is too far to the east to be a candidate, and it was part of the Eastern Chalukya’s Kalinga kingdom. 

Let us trace the route. From Tamluk the pilgrim travelled 700 li (140 km) SW to U-TU (Odhra) country. From there 1200 li (240 km) SW to KUNG-YU-T’O, and this may be Cuttack or some other site in Mahanadi delta. Cunningham says it is near Chilka Lake. 

From here he travelled another 1400 li (280 km) SW to reach KA-LENG-KA. Therefore Kalinga of the pilgrim started somewhere SW of Visakhapatnam. From here he had to make detour. He could not go to Kalinga capital as there was some political unrest. The political turmoil probably was due to the new regime of Eastern Chalukyas. Their traditional capitals are Vengi and Pishtapuram (Pithapuram near Kakinada). This makes the Eastern Chalukyas lords of Kalinga country. 

From near Visakhapatnam he took a NW route to South Kosala (1800 li = 360 km). The route he took was across Eastern Ghats and thick forest lands. He probably had reached Chattisgarh. From there a short distance west to a hill monastery called PO-LO-MO-LO-KI-LI and was connected with Nagarjuna. There were some speculations identifying it as Nagarjunikonda and even Ajanta Caves. But from the distances mentioned by the pilgrim the place could be east of modern Nagpur still within Kosala country. And from Kosala he travels south 900 li (180 km) to AN-TO-LO (Andhra). Even epic traditional tells us that the country south of Vidarbha is Andhra. Pilgrim’s Andhra was not a large country, it was only 3000 li in circuit, about half the size of Odhra (7000 li) or Kalenga (5000 li). From Andhra he travelled 1000 li (200 km) S to TE-NA-KA-CHE-KA (Amaravati). 

From Dhanyakataka he travelled 200 km SW to CHU-LI-YA ( Choliya – Telugu Cola capital Chippili in Cudappah District of AP) and from there 300 km onward to Kanchi. We are not sure from the records if he had really travelled to Kerala and Ceylon, but that doesn’t concern us. On his return he travelled north from Dravida Country to Maharashtra via Kanaganahalli and from Maharashtra westwards to Bharoch.  

CONCLUSION

The record of the pilgrim and the geo-political references in Epic and Kharavela traditions place Kalinga country in North Coastal AP and included areas south of Chilka Lake in Ganjam District at times. Therefore the language of Kalingas was Telugu and the name Telugu itself may be a derivation of phrases Ten-kalingam (South Kalinga) or Tri-kalingam (Three Kalingas).

GOOGLY

Ironically, the original Andhra was never a part of the currently residual Andhra Pradesh, but the newly formed state Telangana. The residual Andhra Pradesh was anything but Andhra, it was a combination of two distinct political entities – Kalinga (North Coastal AP between Krishna and Ganjam) and Renadu (the Telugu Chola heartland consisting of most of Rayalasima, and South Coastal AP). After Telugu Chodas moved south, the region south of R. Krishna became Pallava Nadu (Palanadu/Thondainadu). It was the Kakatiyas who had united all these regions with their capital at Warangal (Andhranagari) in Andhra heartland presently called Telangana, giving the entire region the name Andhra.

So… what’s the big deal? If Orissa has appropriated the name Kalinga, let it be. But it’s good to raise these issues at times just to trigger a little interest in history that’s dear.

Shiva – The God of Harappans

Shiva – The God of Harappans

- SAI PAPINENI

Tripurantaka - Annihilator of Three Cities

Adherents of Aryan Invasion paradigm explain the religion of IVC as non-Vedic and that it belongs to the same set of aboriginal belief systems, latter assimilated into the mainstream. Today the imagery around Shiva is so complex it can be used to explain every, and any, word, picture or artifact, – not only of Indian origin but from anywhere in the world of any period – as in some way or other, connected to it. Therefore, it is convenient to label every pictogram or the script symbols as non-Aryan and somehow connect them to this godhead. Even the new age fiction writers with no understanding of mythology or history have not spared him, trying to portray him as an aboriginal character fighting invading barbarians is height of absurdity. 

Nevertheless, the progress of Rudra complex within Vedic literature gives us clues to the identity of the God of the Harappans. Rudra primarily is a minor beneficent god in its earliest books, especially the second mandala of Ṛgvéda. He is called fair-lipped, youthful, tawny, decked with golden ornaments, rides a chariot and a physician of physicians. But in the later sections of the same codices, the first and the last, his character begins to mutate – prayers are addressed to him, instead of asking for favor, they are aimed at seeking deliverance from his wrath. This wrathful imagery takes a definite shape in the latter books and is developed into a huge theistic complex towards the end of the Vedic age. The logical way to fix a chronology for the events in the Vedic tradition and the Gods of IVC is to find correspondences from historical sources and the evolution of sacred complexes in contemporary cultures.

We are reasonably sure that the earliest sacred complex of the human beings is built around a female entity – the Mother Goddess – and the Venus figurines found across the globe bear evidence. In the Paleolithic – Hunter-Gatherer – societies, the subsistence depended on whatever the Earth Mother provided. Woman was the main bread-winner. Human being, per say, is not a big game hunter. It had been the woman that gathered trapped and processed food and produced offspring. Man had been a subservient adjunct and probably contributed an insignificant morsel as a result of a communal sport called hunt. It was only with the coming of Neolithic subsistence system, an understanding of male component in the process of procreation dawned on the collective consciousness. Animal breeding and cultivation had made the ‘seed’ as important as the ‘womb’. When did this process begin in Indian context? 

Preparing the Seed - Mehrgarh

Megasthenes gave us the first clue. Dionysius came to India into its northwestern hills in circa 6363 BCE – based of course on existing native tradition then. The date coincides with the beginnings of Neolithic complexes in the region. Do we have any corresponding reference in Ṛgvéda to support this statement?  In the creation hymn of Ṛgvéda the first job of Rudra was to prepare the seed for ‘the father’. Who was this Rudra? He was an archer, poised to shoot the very same father when he wanted to waste it on his virgin daughter. It was this act of shooting – an attempt at parricide – that allows the earth to receive the spilled seed. He was called Vāstoşpati, Lord of Vāstu – The Site. Vasusthali was the name of the city at the foot of Méru. So-po-fa-so-to (Subha-Vāstu) was the name given by Hsuen Tsang to the Zhob Valley.

Read… http://saipapineni.blogspot.in/2012/08/finding-mount-meru.html

Doesn’t this give us a reason to assume that the Vedic tradition has the remembrance of this very early event? 

Tryambaka and Tri-Puras

This primordial understanding of sacred male began to grow with the progresses in subsistence technology. Even in the Early Neolithic milieu, the woman’s contribution to the community table continued to be predominant. It was only the child bearing and rearing compulsions that had taken some of the productive activities away from the female domain. 

See table.

The female became house-bound and the male a wanderer. When the early urbanization reached the Indus-Saraswati basin, three subsistence systems came together – Three peoples, Three Lokas and Three Mothers. The river system was an amalgam of male and female – they were called the Twins, Ila and Ilā – or Yama and Yami and their union Yamuna the Twin River. Tāntrik tradition still remembers them as two parallel streams – they called them nāḍi – between them rose Kunḍālini, the field of Siddhi. Ila and Ilā are the primordial twins whose incestuous union resulted in the rise of the civilization. In time, the male stream Ila came to be known as Indu, a single conspicuous dot in the night sky, moon, by dropping the semi vowel ‘V’ from Vindu/Bindu. But there was no threat yet to the primordial sacred feminine. She continued to be the queen in the collective consciousness even today – and addressed as such – a position reserved only to the goddess Saraswati. The Bālā Tripura Yantra, an esoteric representation of the primordial virgin mother begins with three equally-spaced dots – a symbol vocalized as the syllable ‘i’ in Brahmi. Brahmi is another name for Ilā/Saraswati. The syllable ‘i’ pronounced as English letter ‘E’, for Ilā became its first letter, with reason, at least until the male god asserted his dominance and the ‘Man’ sign for ‘A’ (ʞ) took precedence.

In the earliest strata – Ṛgvéda, Yajurveda and the Brahmana of Hundred Paths, he was called Tryambaka – he was associated with a lady or three ladies. Some called them his mothers, some consorts and still some his sister. In classical Sanskrit, Ambaka meant ‘Eye’. He added a third eye on his forehead – a vertical representation – a symbol for the female generative organ and a source of fire, Agni. Purānas called him Tripurāntaka, the annihilator of the Tripuras and built a myth around it. But the kernel of the memory was not lost. The archer shoots only when the three dots converged to become one – The Bindu. A confused account of Nāda and Bindu as the brother of the sacred feminine continues in our Tāntrik tradition even today. Nada with a short second letter means a male river as opposed to Nadi, the female. 

Iśāna and Sthānu

The conflict was real and the man relentless, he was not satisfied until he received his wont. As the civilization began to grow, he also began acquiring new cognomens. He cried and howled until they are granted. Śatapatha Brahmaṇa relates his ascent in a story …  

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When the Child cried, the Father said to him “Thou art Rudra”. And Agni took that form. Rudra and Agni became one. But the Child is not content. He cried for more. Then the Father said to the Archer, “Thou art Śarva”. And he became one with the Waters. Because from water comes everything*. But the child is not happy. Then the Father gave more names, called him Paśupati, Ugra, Aśani, Bhava, and Mahadeva. And the plants, wind, lightning, rain, and moon became one with him in that order. Yet he is unhappy. Finally, the child smiled, when the Father called him Iśāna, making him one with the Sun, Lord of all, that he surveyed.

(*Here is a blunder committed by the authors of SB … Sarva and Śarva are two different words. Śarva comes from the root Śaru, the arrow while Sarva (without the diacritical mark) means ‘All’. Where is the connection between arrow and waters? I shall address this later.)

Mukhalingam- Phallus with a Face

In the Mature Harappan context, most of the productive activities have already moved to the male domain.The preponderance of female figurines in Neolithic Mehrgarh is replaced by the male elements in Harappan iconography – symbols of phalluses and bulls outnumber. The god takes a new name, once again. 

Gudimallam 1st Century CE

He called himself Sthānu, a column a pillar a symbol of male productivity. The sacred feminine – the mother goddess becomes a consort of the male god. The father of the river – Lord of the People – Prajāpati will be forced to acknowledge his preeminence. This new consort is called Umā or simply ‘His Companion, Sati’. But their matrimony doesn’t last long. Unfortunately, she leaves him.

Where did she go?

Kushan Coin

There are many clues left scattered across different historical milieu. One of them is a quarter stater of the Kushān emperor, Hüvişka. It has on its obverse surface a pair of gods, male and female, and the legend ‘Oesho and Nana’. It is accepted as an early-historic material reference to the existence of the divine couple, Shiva and Pārvati. The engraver of another coin struck in gold by the very same emperor, now in British Museum, was a little more helpful. He called the lady ΩΜΜΩ – OMMO. This is not an unfamiliar name. In Babylon she is called Ummu or Ummi. The Akkadians also called her Ummi. Scythians, of course pronounced it as Ommo. In South India we call her Amma. And, in the north she’s called Mā. 

The clue is in the unity of Ummi and Nana.

Here let us travel laterally for a few hundred miles to the west, to another Twin River and a different civilization – Mesopotamia. En Merker legend states that goddess Inanna deserted the people of Araṭṭa during the reign of Al Suguir-anna and her disfavor led to a famine. The civilization tottered on the brink of collapse. If we identify this king of Araṭṭa with Sagara, we may get some clues to the economic and political state of the civilization. For details you may read my earlier post on a new paradigm of Pargiter’s genealogies called … http://saipapineni.blogspot.in/2012/12/history-of-indus-valley-civilization.html

For the discussion here it may suffice to say that Sagara, an Ikşvāku king of Ayodhya was instrumental in annihilating the Asura overlords and also during his reign, there occurred a riparian crisis due to the drying up of lower river basin in which 65000 households of his subjects suffered from a prolonged drought. An irrigation channel that he had planned to build to revive the old course failed and was only completed after a few generations. This period also foreshadows the rise of an indigenous movement of a sacrificial cult, led by Viswāmitras and their descendents called Bharatas. It was in the hands of these Bharatas, the religious and historical tradition of antiquity was codified.

And, our Rudra suffers the biggest crisis in his career. To understand the crisis, we must understand the power complex of Rudra that drew its nourishment as much from the popular Neolithic substructure as from the political and economic superstructure of the urban culture. What was this political superstructure? Ikşvākus ruled from their capital Ayodhya (Harappa) and they lived for generations in a constant dread of the alien overlords called Asuras. There is a natal connection between the Asuras and the various cultures of Mesopotamia. Trade flourished between the cultures, but there seems to be a coercive element that favored the aliens. Tradition is thick with evidence of Rudra favoring these Asuras. 

The sacred complex of Mesopotamia consisted of Anu the supreme male god and Ea the hermaphrodite Earth god – a clear parallel to Stha-Anu (Rudra) and his concert Umā/Nana. Inanna was the goddess of the river. With the annihilation of Asuras and the unprecedented famine, it is no wonder the general confidence in him dwindled. Figuratively, Rudra goes on a self-imposed exile and ceases to be the chief god of the civilization. In Mesopotamia, the preeminence of Anu also suffers. Marduk ascends the ziggurat as the chief. 

Rise of the Sun God

Like Ra of Egypt and Marduk of Sumer a warrior solar god arose in India also.

He is Indra with his coterie of Dévas. The Solar powered Ādityas took over and Rudra is relegated to the frontier lands. He becomes the god of thieves, wanderers, aborigines and the dead. He survives there for a millennium and rises like phoenix with the revival of early historical civilization. Probably, the crisis forced his followers to fan out wide and identify themselves with the lower social strata that are more numerous, while the brāhmaṇic Indra becomes an instrument in the hands a handful. 

By the first millennium BCE, in Kena-Upanishad, this primordial god takes a new name and a damsel from the mountains as his concert. For the first time in tradition, he’s called Shiva. 

Conclusion

Ṛgvéda… if one still considers it as the earliest book of IE tradition, its memories go back to the earliest context of post Holocene events in the subcontinent. A reasonable connection can be made based on the references to Rudra-Agni complex with the Pre-Harappan events. Secondly, significant presence of Sumerian-Akkadian element in the early Ṛgvédic hymns is visible, only if one sheds the conventional colored glasses.

Before I set my case to rest, I want to draw your attention to some recent headway made in this direction – here I am not referring to the extreme jingoist views but some objective research – Sullivan Code, for one. Though I am not fully convinced about her reading of all the script values, I see some of the individual signs do have promise. Here, I want to bounce off two of the most common terminal signs – the Arrow and the Pot – as I feel that they are relevant to this post.

232 Signs

Sullivan’s reading of the Arrow sign as ‘Ni’ is the most common terminal letter for the feminine names in Ṛgvéda. Indra-ani, Varuna-ani, Rudra-ani and the names of Shiva’s consorts – Bhava-ani, Śarva-ani, Shiva-ani – the list is exhaustive. If the seals actually proclaimed the names, there is a good reason to assume that a significant number of legends ending with the Arrow are female names. The next is the Pot sign. To me it always looked like a stylized frontal view of a bovine head with a pair of horns and ears. 

1696 Signs

Sullivan and IM read this as ‘An’. If one looks at the Shiva-ite Tāntrik sects, there is a strong tradition of suffixing the proper names with that of the Lord – Shiva, Śambhu, Bhairava etc. If Shiva in Harappan context had carried the same name as his counterpart in Sumer, it is eminently possible that a good number of masculine PNs ended with the letter An, Anu or even Anna as in Suguir-anna. 

Let me close this post with a caveat …

A-Sh-Sh-Ani----Ma-Anu - Aśani-Manu

We may not be able to find all the answers from the Vedic tradition since the tradition that is handed over to us is a result of codification that had taken place after the Mahabharata War – and the event or process could not have taken place earlier than IVC – and is clearly sectarian in character. We must draw data from other sources – Purānic, Tāntrik and contemporary records from the neighboring cultures – before making any inferences. With the current state of knowledge, the conclusions above will not pass muster – they can only be termed hasty speculations – but I am sure they point towards the need for some serious research in this direction. 

Hail Aśani the Original Man!