ORISSA
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ORISSA
animals, etc., which show that at that date the plastic and mechanical arts were in a more advanced state in that part of India than they were in England.
Orissa maintained its position as an independent mon- archy till 1558, when, its royal line having become ex- tinct, it was made an outlying province of the empire of the Great Mogul. On the breaking up of this empire, the more valuable portions of Orissa were seized by the nizam of Hydrabad. The French, who had taken pos- ses.sion of a part of the country long known as the Northern Circars, attempted to drive the English (who had also formed commercial settlements on the coast) out of India. The Mahrattas, who had seized a portion of Orissa in 1740, were forced to surrender it to the English in 1803. The soldiers of the East India Com- pany were marched into Orissa at the opening of the present century, and an engagement was subsequently entered into between the company and the native chiefs and princes, by which the former bound themselves to perform certain services for the country (as maintaining the river-banks in good repair), while the latter en- gaged to pay a yearly tribute. Of the many principal- ities into which the country was divided, a large num- ber got into arrears with the government, and the re- sult was that numbers of the estates were sold, and the government, as a rule, became the purchaser. Much of the territory originally forming a portion of this king- dom thus fell into the hands of the British.
Orissa is divided into three civil districts, viz. Puru in the south, Cuttack in the centre, and Balasore on the north. The sea-coast, which is the eastern part of the province, is level, and far more populous than the cen- tral and western divisions, which are mountainous and covered in many places with primeval forests, inhab- ited by wild beasts, or men almost as untamed and rude as they. The climate, soil, productions, animals, in- sects, birds, reptiles, and fish of Orissa are similar to those of Bengal and other adjacent portions of Hindos- tan lying near the tropic of Cancer. The villages, houses, food, clothing, dress, literature, and trades of the Orissans are also much like those of the Bengalese and the people of other large portions of India. The present population of Orissa is principally made up of Hindus, Mohammedans, Santals, and Bhumijas, the Hin- dus constituting by far the larger number. From its lia- bility to inundation, the country is not much inhabited for three or four miles inland from the sea. Beyond this low tract the plains are sufficiently elevated for security, and are highly cultivated and densely peopled. Farther inland the country becomes mountainous, cov- ered in part by forests, where are found the Oriyas, Gonds, Koles, Surahs, Santals, and Bhumijas. The Gonds or Khonds are believed to be the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. This tribe occupied an area extending from north of the Maha- naddi, south to the banks of the Godavari. Their mountain-haunts are admirably suited for defence, as the districts which they inhabit are almost inaccessible ; and although they do not yet appear to have adopted fire-arms, they manage their battle-axes and bows and arrows with an adroitness and courage that make them formidable enemies. The Khonds are a totally distinct race from the inhabitants of the plains, and there is but little resemblance between them and the other hill- tribes. See Khonds. Some ethnologists claim the Sanials to have been the aborigines of Orissa, but there does not seem to exist very good ground for such asser- tion. See, however, Santals.
In Orissa, as elsewhere in India, the history of the people resolves itself for the most jiart into the history of their religion. As Buddhism faded away, successive forms of Vishnu and Siva worship took its place. Bhu- vaneswar, with its 7000 shrines, now reduced to less than 600, attested the prevalence of Siva-worship un- der the long line of Kesari, or Lion-kings, who displaced the Yavanas. Thousands of high-caste Bratimins im- ported from Oude commended the new worship to their
future countrymen. In the twelfth centurj- the milder worship of Vishnu rose into the ascendant under a new line of kings, and about the same period architecture reached its zenith, producing one of its noblest master- pieces in the temple of the sun at Kanarak, on the Orissa shore. In the holy city of Puri, sacred to Vish- nu under his title of Jagannath, the Lord of the World, these and other religions find their common meeting- place. " The fetichism and bloody rites of the aborig- inal races, the mild flower-worship of the Bedas, and every compromise between the two, along with the lofty spiritualities of the great Indian reformers, have here found refuge." Once every year the holy city of Puri is the attraction to the poor, ignorant natives, drawn thither simply by a superstitious veneration, which formerly cost the lives of millions. The humane policy of the British has largely done away with hu- man sacrifices in every form. But though the car of Jaggernaut (q. v.) no longer crushes out the lives of thousands, and the Mei-iuh (see art. Khonds, Re/ir/ious Eites and Sacrifices') victims are saved from a horrible death, thousands yet fall a prey to an impure atmos- phere and unwholesome food to which the 90,000 pil- grims are subject while they are packed for weeks to- gether into 5000 small lodging-houses of two or three windowless cells each, in the very height of India's rainy season, with a temperature ranging from 90° to 105^ in the shade, in streets and alleys innocent of drainage, and fed for the most part on ill-cooked com- pounds of putrefying rice. And if any escape all this uninjured, they are sure to be further tried in their homeward journeys — oftentimes hundreds of miles long — through the pouring rain, sleeping many of them on the grass or mud, and consequently dying of exposure in numbers bj' the way, or carrying home with them the seeds of life-long suffering. It is reckoned that at least 10,000 people perish every year in Puri or on the way, and the number was far greater some years ago, before the government took measures to alleviate the worst horrors of this deadly ])ilgrimage.