ORISSA, a province of British India, which was occupied in September and October 1803, with Behar, Chutia Nagpur, Bengal proper, and Chittagong, and is under the administration of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. It is at the head of the Bay of Bengal, at its western side, and lies between lat. 19° 28' and 22° 34' 15" N., and long. 83° 36' 30" and 87° 31' 30" E., with an area of 23,901 square miles, and, in 1872, a population of 4,317,999, partly in the deltas of the river Maha nadi on the south, the Brahmany in the centre, and the Baitarani on the north, and in part in 17 mahals or states which are tributary to the British, and cover an area of 16,218 square miles, and a population of 1,283,809. Orissa table-land rises on the southern side of the Maha nadi, in some places to 1700 feet, backed by the chain of E. Ghats, Amarkantak, jungle table-land, lat. 22° 40' N., long. 81° 5' E., 3500 feet. Its delta is fertile ; its rivers discharge 2,760,000 cubic feet per second in time of floods, and it has a rain fall of 62f inches ; but it has suffered from floods and from droughts. There was a great famine in 1770, aggravated by the ravages of mutinous Mahratta soldiers. In 1823, a cyclone and storm wave swept the coast ; in 1834-35 and 1837-38, a famine was caused by inundations, and it suffered severely in 1866-67 from deficient rains.
A special inquiry into the mortality caused by the famine in Orissa in 1865-66 was made by deputy collectors, with the aid of corrected returns made by the zamindars. The total population in 1865 was 3,015,826 ; of these, 814,469 perished, and 115,028 either emigrated or disappeared, making a total loss of 929,497, and leaving 2,086,329 surviving.. The percentage of deaths to popula tion was 27, which, added to the percentage of emigrants or missing, gives a general per centage of as loss of population during the famine. In 1866 a great flood inundated 1052 square miles of the delta. In October 1831 the sea made a breach in the road which passes through the province from north to south, where it is nine miles from high-water mark. All having life—human beings, cattle, wild beasts, etc.—were drowned, and left in heaps eight and ten feet high against the road. This was north of Balasor. South of Balasor, late in the evening, said the sole survivor of a village, the wind was very strong on shore, and the tide rising. Several of the inhabitants went down to the beach. Those who had witnessed the storm of 1823 proposed to go inland ; the younger ones would not believe that the sea harm them, and voted for remaining. All were drowned except one, who
was up in the tree under which we were standing, and twice the sea went over him. When he came down, all was dry, but, as he expressed it, not a cat left. In this hurricane 22,500 were drowned in half an hour, and several thousands more died of starvation and exposure. There was another hurricane in 1832, but the wind was off shore when most violent, and no lives were lost. These calamities induced the British India Government to endeavour to prevent their recurrence. The seven rivers —Mahanadi, Brahmany, Byturni, Lahundi, Borabahiny, Subunreka, and the Cossya—are all more or less deltaic in character, and in the case of four rivers almost form one delta during the floods. The point before the engineer was to husband the water that came down at the south-west monsoon, and distribute it so as to save the districts from droughts, from which Orissa has suffered so terribly. At the same time protection against the floods was to be secured. The area of land to be taken up for the scheme comprised the five alluvial districts con tained between the frontier in the district of Ganjam and the Hoogly near Calcutta,—in all about 6000 square miles. The operations began in 1862, and much has been effected.
Bhuiya, Bhumij, Bathudi, Gond, Kandh, Khaira, Kol, Pan, Santhal, Savara, and others, form about a fourth part of the population, mostly in the mountainous jungle tract of Morbhanj, Keunjhar, and Bod, and 75,531 are in the tributary states. A record in the Uriya language, preserved in the temple of Jaganath, called the Vansavali and Raja Charita, and supposed to have been com menced in the twelfth century, after the usual detail of the mythology, and of the early kings of India down to Vikramaditya, gives as the first sovereign of this kingdom, in A.D. 142, Bate Kesari, who commenced the Kesari Vansa or Kesari dynasty. After an interregnum of 146 years, during which the Yavana reigned, the Kesari Vansa dynasty was restored in A.D. 473 by Jajati (Yayati) Kesari, capital Jajpur. He was a warlike and energetic prince, but it is not known who he was or whence he came. He was the founder of the Kesari or Lion line, which ruled Orissa until A.D. 1131. The Ganga Vansa dynasty commenced with the invasion of Churang, Saranga Deva, or Chor-ganga, and ended with Raja Narsinh - deo, who in 1277 built Kanarak, the Black Pagoda. The Surja Vansa rajas then reigned from 1451 to 1550. After them came the Zamindari races, Khurda rajas or Bhui Vansa, from 1580 to 1804, when Mukund-deo was deposed by the British.