Historical Geography of Odisha: Regions, Names & Routes

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Historical geography is the study of how places, regions and landscapes were organised and understood in the past. It asks where people lived and why, how territories were named and bounded, which routes connected settlements, how rivers, mountains and coasts shaped economic life and political power, and how the meaning of a place changed over time. For a region like Odisha, these questions are not a mere preliminary to history. They lie at its very heart. The great events of the region’s past, from the Kalinga war to the building of the Jagannatha temple, cannot be understood without reference to the land on which they took place and the ways in which that land was perceived and organised.

Odisha presents the historical geographer with an especially rich and challenging case. The modern state, covering about 155,707 square kilometres, brings together landscapes of striking diversity: a broad alluvial coastal plain built by the deltas of great rivers, the forested ranges of the Eastern Ghats, and the plateaus and rolling uplands of the west and north. (Britannica: Odisha) For most of its history this territory was not a single political or cultural unit. Different parts of it were known by different names, including Kalinga, Utkala, Odra, Tosala, Kongoda and Dakshina Kosala, and these names were used with shifting meanings by different authors and dynasties. The boundaries they denoted expanded and contracted with the fortunes of kingdoms, and at times the same name was applied to quite different areas.

The historical geography of Odisha must therefore be reconstructed patiently from many kinds of evidence. Inscriptions record the names of territorial divisions and the boundaries of granted villages. Literary texts preserve the names of peoples and countries. Foreign geographers list ports and cities. Archaeology reveals the actual locations of settlements and the distribution of material culture. The present article draws these sources together. It begins with the physical setting, then traces the evolution of regional names and territorial units, and goes on to examine political divisions, capitals, routes, ports, sacred centres and frontier zones. Throughout, it pays attention to the scholarly debates that surround many of these questions and to the evidence on which competing interpretations rest.

1. The Physical Setting: The Land that Shaped History

The physical geography of Odisha has exercised a profound and lasting influence on its history. The distribution of fertile land and water determined where dense populations could be supported. The orientation of rivers and hills governed the routes along which people, goods and armies moved. The coast opened the region to the wider world of the Bay of Bengal. And the forested interior long remained a zone of tribal societies and small hill kingdoms. Understanding these physical foundations is the necessary starting point for any study of the region’s historical geography.

Physiographic divisions

Geographers commonly divide Odisha into five major physiographic regions on the basis of relief, continuity and landform character. These are the coastal plains in the east, the middle mountainous and highland region of the Eastern Ghats, the central plateaus, the western rolling uplands, and the major flood plains of the river valleys. (Government of Odisha: Topography; Wikipedia: Geography of Odisha) Each of these regions has played a distinctive part in the region’s history.

The coastal plains, sometimes called the Utkal Plains, are depositional landforms of recent geological origin. They were built up by the sediments of six rivers, the Subarnarekha, Budhabalanga, Baitarani, Brahmani, Mahanadi and Rushikulya, and for this reason the coastal plain is often described as a “hexadeltaic region” or the “gift of six rivers”. (Government of Odisha: Topography) The northern coastal plain is formed by the deltas of the Subarnarekha and Budhabalanga. The broad middle coastal plain, the widest and most fertile part, is formed by the combined deltas of the Mahanadi, Brahmani and Baitarani. The southern section around the Chilika lake and the Rushikulya is narrower and drier. This fertile coastal belt has always been the demographic and political heartland of the region. It was here that the early historic cities of Sisupalgarh and Radhanagar, the great temple centres of Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konark, and the capitals of most major dynasties were located.

The Eastern Ghats rise abruptly behind the coastal plain as a discontinuous chain of hills and mountains, broken by river valleys and passes. Locally they are sometimes called the Garhjat hills. Their forested slopes and valleys were home to many tribal communities and, in later centuries, to numerous small princely states. The central plateaus, forming the western slopes of the Eastern Ghats at elevations of roughly 305–610 metres, and the western rolling uplands, lower and more gently undulating, make up much of interior Odisha. (Government of Odisha: Topography) This interior region, broadly corresponding to ancient Dakshina Kosala, had its own historical trajectory, often distinct from that of the coast. Within it, the basins of Kalahandi, Balangir, Hirakud and Jharsuguda offered fertile pockets capable of supporting agriculture and political centres. (Britannica: Odisha)

Rivers and their historical role

Rivers have been the arteries of Odishan history. The Mahanadi, rising in the hills of Chhattisgarh and draining a catchment of over 141,000 square kilometres, is the largest. It links the western uplands with the central coast and forms the great delta on which Cuttack stands. Its valley served for millennia as the principal corridor between the coast and Dakshina Kosala. (Government of Odisha: Topography) The Brahmani and Baitarani, flowing from the Chotanagpur plateau, water the northern part of the central delta. Their valleys contain some of the most important archaeological sites in the state, including Radhanagar, Langudi, Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri and Udayagiri, as well as the sacred centre of Jajpur on the Baitarani. The Rushikulya in the south, on whose banks Jaugada (ancient Samapa) stands, and the Vamsadhara and Nagavali further south linked coastal Kalinga with the Andhra country. In the west, rivers such as the Tel, Indravati and Kolab connected the uplands with central India and the Godavari basin.

These river valleys determined the pattern of settlement in a way that the historian can still trace on the map. Early farming villages, early historic cities, Buddhist monasteries and later temple towns cluster along their banks and at their deltas. River mouths provided the sites of ports, and the river valleys offered routes into the interior for traders, pilgrims and armies alike. At the same time, the rivers posed constant dangers. Floods, shifting channels and silting have repeatedly altered the coastal landscape, burying or eroding ancient sites and changing the location of ports.

The Chilika lake and the coast

The Chilika lake, a vast brackish-water lagoon separated from the Bay of Bengal by a narrow sand bar, is one of the most distinctive features of Odisha’s geography. Its sheltered waters and its connection to the sea made its shores a natural location for ports from early times, Manikapatana and Palur among them. Its fisheries, salt and waterfowl supported coastal communities. The coastline of Odisha as a whole, though relatively straight and lacking deep natural harbours, offered numerous river mouths and lagoons that served as anchorages for the coastal and overseas shipping of the Sadhabas. Coastal processes such as sand-bar formation, the migration of river mouths and erosion have continually reshaped this shoreline. The location of ancient ports therefore often lies some distance from the present coast.

Climate, forests and resources

Odisha lies within the tropical monsoon zone. Its agriculture depends heavily on the south-west monsoon, and the region is also exposed to cyclones from the Bay of Bengal. Rainfall is heavier in the Eastern Ghats and lighter on the coast south of Chilika, the driest part of the state. (Britannica: Odisha) The abundant rainfall of the coastal plain supported intensive rice cultivation from the Neolithic–Chalcolithic period onwards, as archaeobotanical studies at sites such as Golbai Sasan have shown. The forests of the interior supplied timber, elephants, ivory, honey, lac and other forest products that figure in ancient trade. They also sheltered the forest peoples (atavikas) mentioned in Ashoka’s edicts. The region’s mineral wealth, especially its iron ore, though exploited on a large scale only in modern times, was also known in antiquity. The elephants of Kalinga, praised in the Arthashastra and maintained in large numbers by Kalinga’s kings according to Pliny, were themselves a product of this forested environment and a key element of the region’s military power.

2. Ancient Regional Names and Territorial Units

One of the central problems of Odisha’s historical geography is the multiplicity of names under which different parts of the region were known in antiquity. Kalinga, Utkala, Odra, Tosala, Kongoda, Dakshina Kosala and Trikalinga all appear in ancient sources, sometimes side by side, sometimes interchangeably, and often with shifting meanings. These names were not fixed administrative units with permanent borders. They were regional designations whose extent varied with the political circumstances of each period and with the knowledge and purposes of each author. The task of the historical geographer is to determine, as far as the evidence allows, what each name meant at a given time.

Kalinga

Kalinga is the oldest and most widely known name associated with the region. In ancient Indian literature it generally denotes the eastern coastal tract between the Mahanadi (or at times the Ganga delta) and the Godavari. Its core territory corresponds to central and southern Odisha and the northern coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. Its precise limits, however, changed considerably over time. (Wikipedia: Kalinga (region)) Kalinga appears as a people and kingdom in the Mahabharata and in early Buddhist and Jain literature, and as a recognised country in Panini’s grammar. Pliny the Elder, drawing on Megasthenes, distinguishes between the Calingae proper, the Gangarides-Calingae and the Macco-Calingae. This suggests that the name could embrace a wide area extending northwards towards the Ganga delta. Ashoka’s edicts at Dhauli and Jaugada show that in the 3rd century BCE Kalinga included both the Mahanadi delta (around Tosali) and the Rushikulya valley (around Samapa). (Mittal, An Early History of Orissa) In the early medieval period the name was used above all for the southern coastal region ruled by the Eastern Gangas from Kalinganagara.

Utkala

Utkala is a name of great antiquity and enduring significance; it is still used today as a poetic and cultural synonym for Odisha. Its etymology has been much discussed. One common explanation interprets it as ut-Kalinga, “northern Kalinga” or “the region beyond Kalinga”, reflecting its position north of the Kalinga heartland. (Wikipedia: History of Odisha) The Mahabharata lists the Utkalas among the eastern peoples, alongside the Odras, Mekalas, Kalingas and Andhras. Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsha describes Raghu crossing the Kapisa river into the land of the Utkalas before entering Kalinga, which indicates that by the Gupta period Utkala was regarded as a distinct region to the north of Kalinga. The earliest epigraphic reference to the extent of Utkala appears in the Midnapur plates of Somadatta. (History of Odisha: Historical Geography) Over time Utkala gradually came to be identified with the region as a whole. In Somavamshi and later records it appears alongside Kalinga, Kongoda and Kosala as one of the principal regions of the kingdom.

Odra (Udra)

Odra, also written Udra or Odraka, is the name from which the modern word “Odisha” derives. The Odras appear in the Mahabharata and other early texts as a people of the east, and the name came to designate their homeland, the Odra-desha or Odra-vishaya. The earliest epigraphic reference to Odra as a territorial unit (vishaya) appears in the Soro copper plates of Somadatta, which place it within Uttara Tosala. In the 7th century the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described the kingdom of Wu-tu or Wu-cha (Odra) as a large coastal kingdom with numerous Buddhist monasteries. Kongoda lay to its south. (History of Odisha: Historical Geography; Wikipedia: Pushpagiri Vihara) Odra thus referred broadly to the northern and central coastal plain, overlapping with Utkala and with northern Tosala.

Tosala (Tosali)

Tosali first appears in Ashoka’s Dhauli edict as a city, the seat of a Mauryan prince-viceroy and the capital of the Kalinga province. Ptolemy, in the 2nd century CE, lists Tosalei as a metropolis. Over time the name came to denote not only the city but the surrounding region, Tosala. Jain texts such as the Avashyaka Niryukti describe Mahavira’s wanderings in Tosali. In early medieval inscriptions the region appears divided into Uttara Tosala (northern Tosala) and Dakshina Tosala (southern Tosala), usually understood as lying north and south of the Mahanadi. (Wikipedia: History of Odisha; Mittal, An Early History of Orissa) Under the Bhaumakaras, Tosala became the name of a powerful kingdom that, at its height, united the coastal regions from Dandabhukti (the Midnapore area) to Kongoda.

Kongoda

Kongoda (also spelled Kangoda) was the region around the Chilika lake and the coastal tract between the Mahanadi delta and the Mahendragiri hills. It corresponds broadly to parts of the present Ganjam, Khordha and Puri districts. It was the homeland of the Sailodbhava dynasty, which ruled it as Kongoda-mandala from the 6th to the 8th century CE. The historian Snigdha Tripathy has suggested that Kongoda-mandala was first organised as a province by the Gauda king Shashanka, who installed Madhavaraja II as his feudatory there. Its capital, also called Kongoda, lay on the Salima river and has been identified with modern Banapur. Xuanzang, who visited the region around 638 CE, called it Kong-yu-to. After the decline of the Sailodbhavas, Kongoda became a province of the Bhaumakara kingdom. (Wikipedia: Shailodbhava dynasty)

Dakshina Kosala

Dakshina Kosala (“southern Kosala”), distinct from the Kosala of the Gangetic plain, comprised the upper Mahanadi basin. This area today forms western Odisha (the Sambalpur, Balangir, Sonepur and Kalahandi region) and much of Chhattisgarh. (Wikipedia: History of Odisha) It appears in the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta through the person of Mahendra of Kosala. It was later ruled successively by dynasties including the Sharabhapuriyas, the Panduvamshis of Sripura (Sirpur) and the early Somavamshis. The Somavamshi kings, originating in this region, later extended their power to the coast. They styled themselves lords of Kosala, uniting the uplands and the coastal plains under a single rule for the first time.

Trikalinga

The term Trikalinga, literally “three Kalingas”, appears in copper plates of the Somavamshis, the Eastern Gangas and the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi, and has been the subject of prolonged debate. B.C. Mazumdar and Binayak Misra identified it with three regions, Kalinga, Utkala and Kongoda. R.D. Banerji divided ancient Kalinga into Kalinga, Tosala and Utkala. Other scholars, however, have noted that several inscriptions name Kalinga, Kongoda and Utkala separately in the same passage, as the Jatesinga-Dungri grant of the Somavamshi king Yayati does. This suggests that Trikalinga was a distinct region rather than an umbrella term for these three. D.C. Sircar and V.V. Mirashi therefore considered Trikalinga a separate territory. Sircar tentatively placed it between Kalinga and Dakshina Kosala, while H.K. Mahtab suggested it corresponded to much of western Odisha. (Puratattva: The Somavamshis of Odisha; Wikipedia: Trikalinga) The question remains unresolved and illustrates well the difficulty of fixing the meaning of ancient regional names.

Summary of ancient regional names

Name	Approximate area	Key early sources	Notes
Kalinga	Coastal tract between the Mahanadi (at times the Ganga delta) and the Godavari	Mahabharata, Panini, Pliny, Ashokan edicts, Hathigumpha	Extent varied greatly; later centred on the Ganga kingdom in the south
Utkala	Northern and central coastal Odisha	Mahabharata, Raghuvamsha, Midnapur plates	Interpreted as “northern Kalinga”; later a synonym for Odisha
Odra (Udra)	Northern and central coastal plain	Mahabharata, Soro plates, Xuanzang (Wu-tu)	Source of the name “Odisha”
Tosala	Mahanadi delta region; divided into Uttara and Dakshina Tosala	Ashokan edicts, Ptolemy (Tosalei), Bhaumakara plates	City (Tosali) gave its name to the region
Kongoda	Chilika lake region; parts of Ganjam, Khordha and Puri	Sailodbhava plates, Xuanzang (Kong-yu-to)	Kongoda-mandala of the Sailodbhavas
Dakshina Kosala	Upper Mahanadi basin; western Odisha and Chhattisgarh	Allahabad pillar inscription, Somavamshi and Panduvamshi plates	Distinct from northern Kosala
Trikalinga	Disputed: a distinct region, possibly between Kalinga and Kosala	Somavamshi, Ganga and Eastern Chalukya plates	Meaning still debated

3. From Odra to Odisha: The Evolution of a Name

The modern name “Odisha” is the product of a long linguistic and political evolution, and tracing it illuminates the process by which a single regional identity gradually emerged from the plurality of ancient names. Historians generally agree that the name derives from the ancient Odra or Udra, the people and territory of the northern and central coastal plain. (Odisha Review, April 2021: “From Orissa to Odisha”) In Prakrit and early vernacular forms the name appears as Odda, and the land of the Odras as Odda-desha or Oddavishaya. From such forms developed the names Odivisa and Odisa, which appear in medieval texts. The Tibetan historian Taranatha, for example, writes of Odivisa.

The gradual extension of the name Odra from a particular sub-region to the whole of the coastal kingdom reflects the process of political integration that took place between the 10th and 13th centuries. The Somavamshis united Dakshina Kosala with the coastal plains, and the Eastern Gangas created a kingdom stretching from the Ganga delta region in the north towards the Godavari in the south. Under these dynasties, and especially under the later Gajapatis, the older regional names such as Kalinga, Tosala and Kongoda gradually fell out of use as political designations. Odra-desha, along with the literary name Utkala, came to stand for the kingdom as a whole. The growing use of the Odia language in inscriptions from the 11th century, beginning with the Urajam inscription of 1051 CE, accompanied and reinforced this emerging regional identity.

Muslim chroniclers of the Delhi Sultanate referred to the kingdom by another name, Jajnagar. This term probably derives from Jajpur (Yayatinagara) or from the Ganga capital, and the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri uses it in describing the raids of the 13th century. Under the Mughals the region, then much reduced in extent, appeared as the province of “Orisa” or “Orissa”. The British adopted the anglicised spelling Orissa, which became the official name of the province created in 1936, the first Indian province formed on a linguistic basis, and later of the state within the Indian Union.

The final stage of this evolution came in the early 21st century. On 28 August 2008 the Orissa Legislative Assembly resolved that the name of the state be changed to “Odisha” and that of its language from “Oriya” to “Odia”, in conformity with their pronunciation in the Odia language. Parliament enacted the Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act, 2011 (Act No. 15 of 2011). The change came into force on 1 November 2011, and the Constitution (Ninety-sixth Amendment) Act, 2011 correspondingly altered the name of the language in the Eighth Schedule. (India Code: The Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act, 2011; Wikipedia: The Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act, 2011) The renaming brought the official form of the name into line with the ancient Odra and with local usage, completing a journey of more than two thousand years.

Period	Form of the name	Context
Ancient	Odra, Udra, Odraka	People and region of the northern coastal plain (Mahabharata, early inscriptions)
Early medieval	Odda, Odra-desha, Odra-vishaya	Territorial unit in copper plates; Wu-tu / Wu-cha in Xuanzang
Medieval	Odivisa, Odisa; also Jajnagar (Persian sources)	Name extended to the integrated coastal kingdom
Mughal and colonial	Orisa, Orissa	Mughal suba; British province of Orissa (1936)
Modern	Odisha	Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act, 2011, in force from 1 November 2011

4. Political and Administrative Geography

The political map of ancient and early medieval Odisha changed repeatedly as kingdoms rose, expanded, fragmented and fell. Yet beneath these changes certain enduring geographical patterns can be discerned. These patterns help to explain why political power so often took the forms it did, and why certain regions repeatedly emerged as the bases of independent kingdoms.

Nuclear areas and the structure of regional power

An influential framework for understanding these patterns was proposed by Hermann Kulke in his study of state formation in Odisha, published in Studies in History (vol. 4, no. 1, 1982). Kulke identified a series of nuclear areas: zones of irrigated rice cultivation, usually located in river valleys and deltas, that could support dense populations and the surplus required by royal courts. These nuclear areas were separated from one another by hills and forests, which were still largely inhabited by tribal communities. On the coast he distinguished several such areas: the region south of the Mahendragiri; Kongoda-mandala on the western shore of the Chilika lake, homeland of the Sailodbhavas; Dakshina Tosala in the southern Mahanadi delta, the region of Tosali and of Kharavela’s capital; and Uttara Tosala in the northern Mahanadi and Brahmani deltas, the base of the Bhaumakaras. Inland, further nuclear areas lay in the middle Mahanadi valley around Baudh and in the upper Mahanadi plains of Dakshina Kosala. (Kulke, “Fragmentation and Segmentation versus Integration?”, Studies in History 4(1), 1982)

Kulke observed that the Mahanadi delta as a whole was too large to be controlled from a single centre in the early period. The political history of the region could therefore be read as a long process in which separate nuclear areas were first ruled by distinct dynasties, and then progressively integrated into larger kingdoms. The Bhaumakaras first united Uttara Tosala, Dakshina Tosala and Kongoda under one rule in the 8th century. The Somavamshis later combined the coastal plains with Dakshina Kosala. Finally, the Eastern Gangas created a kingdom that embraced almost the whole of the region and extended beyond it. This model has been widely used by later scholars and offers a valuable way of linking geography, economy and political history.

The sequence of political geographies

The successive phases of political organisation can be summarised as follows. In the Mauryan period (3rd century BCE), Kalinga formed a province of the empire with its capital at Tosali and a second centre at Samapa, as Ashoka’s edicts show. Under Kharavela (c. 1st century BCE), Kalinga became the centre of an expansive kingdom whose campaigns, according to the Hathigumpha inscription, reached Magadha in the north and the Deccan in the south. In the Gupta period, the Allahabad pillar inscription reveals a landscape divided among several local rulers, including Mahendra of Kosala and the rulers of the forest kingdom of Mahakantara.

Between the 5th and 8th centuries, regional dynasties such as the Matharas, the Vigrahas and Mudgalas, and the Sailodbhavas ruled parts of Kalinga, Tosala and Kongoda. They often did so as feudatories of greater powers such as the Guptas, Shashanka of Gauda or Harsha. The Bhaumakaras (8th–10th centuries) built the first large coastal kingdom of the early medieval period, Tosala, which at its height reached from Dandabhukti (the Midnapore region of Bengal) in the north to Kongoda in the south. The Somavamshis (9th–12th centuries) moved from Dakshina Kosala to the coast and united the uplands with the coastal plains. Finally, the Eastern Gangas (11th–13th centuries), who had ruled southern Kalinga from Kalinganagara since the early medieval period, extended their control over the whole of Odisha after Anantavarman Chodaganga’s conquests in the early 12th century, and moved their capital to Cuttack.

Administrative units: vishaya, mandala, bhukti and others

The copper-plate grants of these dynasties reveal a hierarchy of administrative and territorial units, although terminology varied between dynasties and periods. The most common unit was the vishaya, a district-level division often named after its principal town or river. Odra-vishaya and Tosala-vishaya are examples. Larger units included the bhukti, as in Dandabhukti, and the mandala. The term mandala had a special significance in early medieval Odisha: it was often used for the territory of a subordinate ruling family that acknowledged the overlordship of a paramount king while retaining considerable autonomy. Many of these mandala states are known almost entirely from their copper-plate grants. They include the Kodalaka-mandala of the Sulkis, the Yamagartta-mandala of the Tungas, the Airavatta-mandala of the Nandas, the Svetaka-mandala of the Gangas and the Khinjali-mandala of the Bhanjas. (Acharya, Inscriptions of the Minor Ruling Dynasties of Odisha, 2022) Below the vishaya, grants refer to smaller divisions and groups of villages, and to the boundaries of individual villages, marked by rivers, ponds, hills, trees and roads.

The historical geographer finds these grants especially valuable for this reason. By identifying the villages, rivers and boundary markers named in them with modern places, scholars have been able to map the approximate extent of many ancient administrative units. In doing so they have traced the spread of Brahmin settlements (agraharas), the expansion of cultivation into forested areas, and the shifting frontiers between kingdoms. The identification of ancient place names with modern ones is, however, often uncertain, and different scholars have proposed different locations for many of the units named in the grants.

5. Capitals and Urban Centres

The location of royal capitals is one of the clearest indicators of the geography of political power. A capital needed a productive agricultural hinterland, access to communication routes and defensible terrain. It often also needed proximity to sacred centres that conferred legitimacy on the ruler. The capitals of ancient Odisha cluster in the river valleys and deltas identified above as nuclear areas. Their movement from one location to another often reflects the shifting balance between coast and interior, and between different parts of the coastal plain.

The earliest known capitals belong to the Mahanadi delta. Tosali, the Mauryan provincial capital named in the Dhauli edict, and Kalinganagari, the capital of Kharavela named in the Hathigumpha inscription, are both commonly located in the area of Bhubaneswar. Many scholars identify one or both with the great fortified city of Sisupalgarh, though some favour Dhauli itself or, for Tosali, Radhanagar in Jajpur district. Samapa, the second Mauryan administrative centre, lay at or near Jaugada on the Rushikulya. Further south, Buddhist tradition remembered Dantapura as the capital of Kalinga and the home of the tooth relic. It has often been identified with Dantavaram near Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, but its location remains uncertain. (Wikipedia: Kalinga (region); Wikipedia: Dantapuram)

In the early medieval period, capitals multiplied as regional dynasties established their own centres. The Sailodbhavas ruled Kongoda-mandala from Kongoda, on the Salima river, identified with modern Banapur near the Chilika lake. The Bhaumakaras established their capital at Guhadevapataka or Guheshvarapataka, identified with Gohiratikar near Jajpur, close to the sacred centre of Viraja on the Baitarani. (Wikipedia: Jajpur) In Dakshina Kosala, the Panduvamshis ruled from Sripura (Sirpur in Chhattisgarh). The early Somavamshis had their capital at Suvarnapura (Sonepur) and later at Vinitapura (Binka) on the Mahanadi, which King Yayati may have renamed Yayatinagara after himself. When the later Somavamshis moved to the coast, they adopted the old Bhaumakara capital near Jajpur and renamed it Abhinava-Yayatinagara, “the new city of Yayati”. They also issued grants from Kataka, identified with Chaudwar near modern Cuttack. (Wikipedia: Somavamshi dynasty) Scholars differ, however, on some of these identifications. Biswarup Das, for example, associated Yayatinagara with Jajpur.

The Eastern Gangas originally ruled from Kalinganagara, identified with modern Mukhalingam near Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. After Anantavarman Chodaganga overthrew the Somavamshis in the early 12th century, the dynasty’s centre of gravity moved northwards. The Nagari plates of Anangabhima III name his capital as Abhinava-Varanasi-Kataka, identified with modern Cuttack on the Mahanadi, and later Ganga records continue to name Varanasi-Kataka as the capital. It is not certain which of Chodaganga’s successors first transferred the capital. The evidence of the Nagari plates, together with the tradition preserved in the Madala Panji, suggests that Anangabhima III was the builder of the new capital city. (JainQQ, epigraphic note on Abhinava-Varanasi-Kataka) Cuttack, strategically placed at the apex of the Mahanadi delta, remained the principal political centre of Odisha for many centuries thereafter.

Capital	Modern identification	Dynasty / period	Evidence
Tosali	Dhauli / Sisupalgarh area (or Radhanagar, disputed)	Mauryan province (3rd century BCE)	Dhauli edict; Ptolemy
Samapa	Jaugada, Ganjam	Mauryan province	Jaugada edict
Kalinganagari	Bhubaneswar area, often Sisupalgarh (disputed)	Mahameghavahanas (c. 1st century BCE)	Hathigumpha inscription
Dantapura	Uncertain; often Dantavaram near Srikakulam	Early Kalinga (tradition)	Buddhist texts; Dathavamsa
Kongoda	Banapur, near Chilika	Sailodbhavas (6th–8th century)	Sailodbhava plates; Xuanzang
Guhadevapataka	Gohiratikar near Jajpur	Bhaumakaras (8th–10th century)	Bhaumakara plates
Sripura	Sirpur, Chhattisgarh	Panduvamshis of Dakshina Kosala	Panduvamshi plates
Suvarnapura; Vinitapura / Yayatinagara	Sonepur; Binka	Early Somavamshis	Somavamshi plates
Abhinava-Yayatinagara	Jajpur	Later Somavamshis	Somavamshi plates
Kalinganagara	Mukhalingam, Srikakulam	Eastern Gangas (early phase)	Ganga plates
Abhinava-Varanasi-Kataka	Cuttack	Eastern Gangas (13th century onward)	Nagari plates of Anangabhima III

Beyond the royal capitals, Odisha’s urban geography included important religious and commercial centres: the temple cities of Ekamra (Bhubaneswar), Purushottama (Puri) and Viraja (Jajpur), the Buddhist monastic centres of the Brahmani–Baitarani valleys, and the port towns of the coast. Many of these places combined political, religious and economic functions. Their histories show how closely urban development in Odisha was tied to royal patronage, pilgrimage and trade.

6. Routes, River Valleys, Ports and Maritime Geography

Odisha’s position on the eastern seaboard of India, between the Gangetic plain to the north, the Deccan and the Andhra country to the south, and central India to the west, has made it a land of passage as well as of settlement. Routes by land, river and sea connected its nuclear areas with each other and with the wider world. Over these routes moved armies and pilgrims, merchants and missionaries, ideas and artistic styles. The historical geography of these routes helps to explain both Odisha’s distinctive regional identity and its deep integration into the larger worlds of South Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Land routes

The principal land route of eastern India ran along the coastal plain, linking the Ganga delta and the port of Tamralipti in Bengal with the coastal districts of Odisha and continuing southwards into Kalinga and the Andhra country. This coastal corridor, hemmed in between the sea and the Eastern Ghats, was the natural route for armies moving between north and south. It was probably the line of march followed by Ashoka’s forces in the Kalinga war, by Kharavela’s expeditions, and by later invaders from both directions. A second great axis followed the Mahanadi valley westwards from the delta into Dakshina Kosala and on towards central India. It provided the main link between the coastal kingdoms and the upland regions, and it was along this axis that the Somavamshis moved from Kosala to the coast. The Allahabad pillar inscription suggests that Samudragupta’s southern campaign passed through the forest country of Mahakantara before reaching the eastern coast. This indicates the existence of routes through the forested interior linking the Gangetic plain with the eastern seaboard.

The passes and river valleys of the Eastern Ghats provided further routes between the coast and the interior. These were often less frequented and more difficult, and they passed through the territories of forest peoples whose cooperation was necessary for safe passage. Ashoka’s Separate Edict II, addressed to the frontier peoples, can be understood in part as reflecting the importance of securing these interior routes and frontiers.

Ports and maritime routes

The sea has been central to Odisha’s history. In classical Indian usage the Bay of Bengal was sometimes known as the “Kalinga Sagar” (the sea of Kalinga), a testimony to the region’s maritime importance. Ancient Odisha possessed both river ports and coastal ports. Its sailors, the Sadhabas, traded with Sri Lanka, the Andaman region, Burma and the islands and kingdoms of Southeast Asia. (Odisha Review, Nov 2014: “Ports in Ancient Odisha”)

The principal ports known from literary and archaeological evidence can be grouped by period. To the north, Tamralipti (Tamluk in Bengal) served as the great port of eastern India in antiquity and was used by merchants and missionaries from Kalinga. On the Odishan coast, Palur in Ganjam, Ptolemy’s Paloura, was a port by the 4th–3rd century BCE. Ptolemy places just south of it the apheterion, the “point of departure” from which ships set out across the Bay of Bengal towards Southeast Asia. (Buddhistdoor; e-PG Pathshala: Ports of the east coast of India) Manikapatana on the Chilika lake served as a port from the early historic period to the 18th century. Some scholars identify it with the port of Che-li-ta-lo (Charitra) described by Xuanzang. (Wikipedia: Manikapatna; i-scholar, Current Science: Indo-Arabian stone anchor of Manikapatana) Khalkattapatna on the Kushabhadra river near Konark was active between the 12th and 14th centuries CE. Further south, Kalingapatnam and Dantapura in the Vamsadhara region linked southern Kalinga with overseas markets. Ptolemy also lists other places on the Kalinga coast, such as Nanigaina, Katikardama and Kannagara, which scholars have tentatively associated with Puri, Cuttack and Konark respectively, though these identifications are uncertain.

Archaeology has confirmed the international character of these ports. Finds from Manikapatana, Palur, Radhanagar, Sisupalgarh and Talapada include Roman rouletted ware, amphora sherds, lamps and terracotta bullae bearing Roman portraits, together with Chinese celadon, Arabian glazed wares and pottery from Burma and Thailand. A study in Current Science notes that Roman finds are relatively scarce in Odisha compared with peninsular India, which suggests that the region’s overseas connections were oriented chiefly towards Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. (i-scholar, Current Science) This maritime orientation is remembered in the festival of Bali Jatra, held on Kartika Purnima at Cuttack, and in the custom of floating miniature boats, which recalls the voyages of the Sadhabas to the islands of Southeast Asia.

The geography of Odisha’s ports was never stable. Shifting river mouths, the growth of sand bars, silting, coastal erosion and cyclones repeatedly altered the coastline. Ports flourished and declined accordingly, and the sites of many ancient ports now lie inland or have been lost to the sea. Recent studies of Khalkattapatna, for example, document erosion of the site along the Kushabhadra river and the consequent loss of archaeological evidence. (i-scholar, Current Science: Khalkattapatna port) The historical geographer must therefore reconstruct the ancient coastline before the location and significance of ancient ports can be properly understood.

7. Sacred Geography: Kshetras, Tirthas and Religious Landscapes

Alongside its political and economic geography, Odisha possesses a rich sacred geography: a network of holy places, pilgrimage routes and religious landscapes that shaped the movement of people, the patronage of rulers and the formation of regional identity. In few parts of India is the relationship between sacred space and political power so close. Many of the region’s capitals were located near major sacred centres, and rulers sought to legitimise their authority through association with the deities of these places.

The most important sacred centres of Odisha lie on the coastal plain and are known in traditional literature as kshetras (sacred fields). Four are especially celebrated. They are often associated with the four attributes of Vishnu: the conch (shankha), discus (chakra), mace (gada) and lotus (padma). Purushottama Kshetra or Shankha Kshetra is Puri, the seat of Jagannatha. Ekamra Kshetra or Chakra Kshetra is Bhubaneswar, the city of Lingaraja and of hundreds of temples. Viraja Kshetra or Gada Kshetra is Jajpur on the Baitarani, the seat of the goddess Viraja. Arka Kshetra or Padma Kshetra is Konark, the seat of the Sun god. The Puranas and later regional texts describe the sanctity, boundaries and pilgrimage circuits of these kshetras in detail. Viraja and the Baitarani are already associated with pilgrimage in the Mahabharata, which describes the Pandavas visiting the river during their journey through Kalinga.

The distribution of these centres reflects the geography of political power discussed above. Viraja-Jajpur lay close to the Bhaumakara and later Somavamshi capitals. Ekamra-Bhubaneswar grew in the shadow of ancient Tosali and became the great temple city of the Somavamshis. Purushottama-Puri rose to supreme importance under the Eastern Gangas, whose construction of the Jagannatha temple and whose ideology of kingship, in which the king ruled as the deputy of Jagannatha, transformed it into the religious centre of the whole kingdom. As Hermann Kulke and his collaborators have shown, the development of the Jagannatha cult was closely bound up with the process of political integration. The regional deity became the focus of a shared identity uniting the diverse regions of the kingdom. (Heidelberg University catalogue: The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa)

Other religious traditions produced their own sacred landscapes. Jain sacred geography centred on the Kumari hill, the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves near Bhubaneswar, which was made famous by Kharavela’s patronage. Buddhist sacred geography was concentrated in the valleys of the Brahmani and Baitarani, in the monastic complexes of Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri, Udayagiri and Langudi, and in the Pushpagiri monastery described by Xuanzang. The Mahendragiri mountain in southern Odisha, revered in epic and Puranic tradition, was an important sacred centre for the Eastern Gangas, who worshipped Shiva there as their tutelary deity. In western Odisha and the forested interior, the cults of powerful local goddesses and deities of tribal origin formed regional sacred centres. Some of these were later integrated into the wider Hindu tradition. The sacred geography of Odisha thus records not only the history of religion but also the gradual integration of diverse communities and regions into a shared cultural world.

8. Forest and Frontier Zones

Any account of Odisha’s historical geography that focused only on the fertile river valleys and coastal plains would be seriously incomplete. A large part of the region, especially the Eastern Ghats and the plateaus and uplands of the interior, was covered by forest for most of its history. It was inhabited by communities whose ways of life differed markedly from those of the agrarian heartlands. These forest and hill regions were not empty spaces between kingdoms. They had their own societies, economies and political structures, and their relationship with the states of the plains is one of the central themes of Odishan history.

The ancient sources provide glimpses of these regions and their peoples. Ashoka’s Separate Edict II at Dhauli and Jaugada is addressed in part to the unconquered peoples on the frontiers (anta) and to the forest peoples (atavikas). It assures them of the emperor’s goodwill while also implying his power to compel their obedience. This is one of the earliest documents anywhere in India concerned with relations between a state and forest communities. In the 4th century CE, the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta refers to Mahakantara, “the great forest”, ruled by a king named Vyaghraraja. It also refers to the rulers of the forest kingdoms (atavika-rajyas), whom the emperor reduced to subordination. Mahakantara has been located by many scholars in the forested regions of central India and western Odisha, though its precise location is debated. (Fleet, CII vol. 3, 1888; Wikipedia: Mahendra of Dakshina Kosala)

The forested interior was also a zone of opportunity and of state formation. Forest products such as elephants, ivory, timber, lac, honey and resins were essential to the economy and military power of the plains kingdoms, and they figure in the ancient trade of the region. Many dynasties of early medieval Odisha appear to have emerged from the margins of the forest or from hill regions. They consolidated power by bringing forest areas under cultivation and by integrating local communities and their deities into new political and religious structures. Kulke’s analysis of state formation emphasises this process of the expansion of agrarian society into forested areas, and of the integration of tribal communities through royal patronage of local cults. The growth of small mandala states in the hill regions, and later of the numerous small princely states of the interior known as the Garhjats (literally “fort-states”), reflects the persistence of this pattern into the medieval and early modern periods.

The frontier zones of Odisha also had a broader geopolitical significance. To the north, the region bordered the Gangetic world of Magadha and Bengal, from which invaders came repeatedly, from the Nandas and Mauryas to Shashanka and the Palas. To the south lay the Andhra country and the Deccan, home of the Satavahanas, the Eastern Chalukyas and the Cholas, the last of whom raided the Somavamshi capital in the 11th century. To the west lay the forest belt of central India, through which Samudragupta and others passed. The changing relationships of Odisha’s kingdoms with these neighbouring regions, through war, alliance and cultural exchange, are inscribed in the historical geography of the frontier.

9. Sources and Methods of Historical Geography

The reconstruction of Odisha’s historical geography depends on the same broad range of sources used for its political and cultural history. Each source, however, is read with particular questions in mind: where, how far, along which route, and by what name? Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each source for these purposes is essential for the research scholar.

Inscriptions are the most precise source. Copper-plate grants name territorial divisions (vishaya, mandala, bhukti), the capitals from which grants were issued, and the villages granted, often with detailed boundary descriptions that mention rivers, hills, tanks and neighbouring villages. When these places can be identified with modern localities, they allow the extent of ancient administrative units to be mapped with some confidence. The Ashokan edicts fix the locations of Tosali and Samapa, while the Hathigumpha inscription names Kalinganagari and the places Kharavela campaigned against. Literary sources such as the epics, Puranas, Buddhist and Jain texts preserve the names of peoples and regions and their relative positions. They rarely give precise boundaries, and their geographical statements may reflect conditions at the time of composition rather than of the events described. Foreign accounts, especially Ptolemy’s Geography and Xuanzang’s travel record, provide lists of places, distances and directions. These can be invaluable but are often difficult to reconcile with modern geography.

Archaeology locates actual settlements, forts, ports and religious sites. It reveals the distribution of material culture, which can indicate trade networks and cultural regions, and it can test the identifications proposed on the basis of texts. Place-name studies (toponymy) trace the survival of ancient names in modern ones: Dhauli from Tosali, Jajpur from Yayatinagara and Jaugada near ancient Samapa are commonly proposed examples, though some such derivations are disputed. Finally, the methods of physical geography and geomorphology, including the study of river migration, delta formation and coastal change, are essential for reconstructing the landscape as it existed in antiquity, especially along the dynamic coast.

Case study 1: The boundaries of Kalinga

The extent of ancient Kalinga illustrates the difficulty of fixing regional boundaries from the sources. Most scholars accept that Kalinga’s core lay between the Mahanadi and the Godavari. Pliny’s reference to the Gangarides-Calingae, however, and the Mahabharata‘s association of the Baitarani with Kalinga, have been cited to argue that at times the name extended northwards as far as the Ganga delta. (Wikipedia: Kalinga (region)) Ashoka’s edicts confirm that Kalinga embraced both the Mahanadi delta and the Rushikulya valley in the 3rd century BCE. In the early medieval period, though, the name came to be applied principally to the southern region ruled by the Eastern Gangas, while the north was known as Utkala, Odra or Tosala. The boundaries of Kalinga were thus not fixed but historically contingent. They expanded and contracted with political circumstances, and their meaning differed between authors.

Case study 2: The location of Dantapura

Dantapura, the capital of Kalinga in Buddhist tradition and the home of the Buddha’s tooth relic according to the Dathavamsa, has been sought in several places. The most common identification is with Dantavaram (Dantapuram) near Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, on the basis of the similarity of names and the presence of early historic remains. (Wikipedia: Dantapuram) Other scholars have proposed sites in Odisha, and the excavator of Radhanagar has suggested that it might correspond either to Dantapura or to Tosali. No inscription has yet confirmed any of these identifications. The case illustrates how a famous name preserved in literary tradition may resist precise location on the ground.

Case study 3: Locating Xuanzang’s Pushpagiri

Xuanzang’s description of the Pushpagiri monastery in Odra has prompted a long search for its site. Scholars in the 20th century proposed locations in several parts of Odisha, including the Phulbani–Ghumsur region on the basis of geographical details in Xuanzang’s account. More recently, excavations by OIMSEAS at Langudi hill in Jajpur district, which revealed a stupa, rock-cut votive stupas and Buddhist images, have led some scholars to identify Langudi with Pushpagiri. Others think the name may have applied to the wider complex of monasteries in the Lalitgiri–Ratnagiri–Udayagiri region, or that the true site has not yet been found. (Wikipedia: Pushpagiri Vihara; Buddhistdoor) The search for Pushpagiri shows how foreign travel accounts and field archaeology can be combined in historical geography. It also shows the caution required before an identification can be regarded as secure.

The Changing Map: Regions and Powers Through Time

Period	Dominant power(s)	Principal regional units	Political centre(s)
Before c. 4th century BCE	Independent Kalinga; Nanda conquest	Kalinga; Utkala and Odra peoples	Uncertain (Dantapura in tradition)
c. 261–185 BCE	Mauryan empire	Province of Kalinga	Tosali; Samapa
c. 1st century BCE	Mahameghavahanas (Kharavela)	Kalinga	Kalinganagari
4th–6th century CE	Gupta overlordship; local rulers	Kosala; Mahakantara; Kalinga; Tosala	Various local centres
6th–8th century CE	Sailodbhavas; Gauda and Harsha overlordship	Kongoda-mandala; Uttara and Dakshina Tosala; Dakshina Kosala	Kongoda (Banapur)
8th–10th century CE	Bhaumakaras; Panduvamshis and Somavamshis in Kosala	Tosala (from Dandabhukti to Kongoda); Dakshina Kosala	Guhadevapataka (Jajpur); Sripura; Suvarnapura
10th–12th century CE	Somavamshis	Kosala united with Utkala and the coast; Trikalinga claimed	Yayatinagara; Abhinava-Yayatinagara (Jajpur)
11th–13th century CE	Eastern Gangas	Kalinga, Utkala, Kosala integrated	Kalinganagara (Mukhalingam); Abhinava-Varanasi-Kataka (Cuttack)

Dates and identifications follow the standard regional histories and remain approximate. Several identifications are disputed, as discussed above.

Odia Historians and the Historical Geography of Odisha

Odia historians have made some of the most important contributions to the historical geography of their region. Their intimate knowledge of local place names, river systems and landscapes has allowed them to identify the villages, vishayas and mandalas named in copper-plate grants with a precision that outside scholars could rarely match. Their work has also shaped the major debates about the meaning and extent of the ancient regional names.

Binayak Misra and the early mapping of regional names

Pandit Binayak Misra‘s Dynasties of Mediaeval Orissa was valued from the outset for its treatment of the ancient geography of Odisha. It supplemented R.D. Banerji’s History of Orissa for the period c. 600–1100 CE by drawing systematically on the place names in the copper-plate grants. (Exotic India: Dynasties of Mediaeval Orissa) On the question of Trikalinga, Misra, together with the Sambalpur-based scholar B.C. Mazumdar, identified the “three Kalingas” with Kalinga, Utkala and Kongoda. (Puratattva: The Somavamshis of Odisha) This interpretation was influential for several decades. It was later challenged by scholars who noted that inscriptions such as the Jatesinga-Dungri grant name Kalinga, Kongoda and Utkala separately.

H.K. Mahtab and the western Trikalinga

Harekrushna Mahtab proposed a different solution. He suggested that the whole of western Odisha was probably the ancient Trikalinga region. He also argued that Odra and Utkala had nothing to do with Trikalinga, since they are mentioned separately in Somavamshi records. (Puratattva: The Somavamshis of Odisha) This view placed Trikalinga in the uplands between the coast and Dakshina Kosala. It anticipated, in some respects, D.C. Sircar’s suggestion that Trikalinga lay between Kalinga and Dakshina Kosala.

N.K. Sahu and the forest regions

Nabin Kumar Sahu, in the Utkal University History of Orissa, offered influential interpretations of the historical geography of the interior. He identified the “abode of the Vidyadharas” mentioned in the Hathigumpha inscription with the eighteen forest kingdoms (sarvatavika-rajya) of Samudragupta’s Allahabad pillar inscription and with the eighteen Vidyadhara settlements of Jain tradition. This linked Kharavela’s campaigns to the forest belt of central India and western Odisha. (Wikipedia: Kharavela)

Capitals, Kongoda and Tosala

Odia historians have also contributed substantially to the identification of ancient capitals and territorial units. Biswarup Das, in his study of the Bhaumakaras, associated the Somavamshi capital Yayatinagara with Jajpur, which was also known as Yayatitirtha, rather than with Binka. (History of Odisha: The Somavamsis) Snigdha Tripathy has argued that Kongoda-mandala was first organised as a province by the Gauda king Shashanka, who installed the Sailodbhava Madhavaraja II as his feudatory. (Wikipedia: Shailodbhava dynasty) Sadasiba Pradhan‘s Archaeological Sites of South Kosala (Sambalpur, 1989) documented the archaeology of the western uplands, a region long neglected in favour of the coast. (Exotic India: Sadasiba Pradhan, Rock Art in Orissa)

Archaeology and the location of Tosali and Pushpagiri

In recent decades, Odia archaeologists have reopened several classic questions of historical geography through fieldwork. Debraj Pradhan, as director of the Odisha Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies, argued from the excavations at Radhanagar that the site could be the ancient capital of Kalinga: either the Tosali of Ashoka’s Dhauli edict or the Dantapura of the Sri Lankan Dathavamsa. He also linked the stupa and Buddhist remains at Langudi hill with Xuanzang’s Pushpagiri. (Organiser: report of Debraj Pradhan’s findings) Sunil Kumar Patnaik, who directed the Radhanagar excavations of 2010–13, has examined the trade routes and urbanisation of early Odisha. His works include Taksasila to Tosali: Trade and Urbanisation in Early Odisha (2017) and Maritime Heritage of Early Odisha: Recent Researches (2022). (Sunil Patnaik, Academia profile) R.K. Mohanty‘s work at Sisupalgarh has provided the archaeological basis for the rival identification of Tosali or Kalinganagari with that site.

Popular syntheses

The historical geography of Odisha has also been presented to a wider public through regional websites and magazines. The History of Odisha website, edited by Brajabandhu Mahanta, has drawn on the epigraphic evidence to trace the earliest references to Utkala in the Midnapur plates of Somadatta and to Odra as a vishaya in the Soro plates of Somadatta. It has also summarised the division of Tosala into Uttara and Dakshina Tosala. (History of Odisha: Historical Geography of Odisha)

Historian	Work	Contribution to historical geography
Binayak Misra	Dynasties of Mediaeval Orissa	Ancient geography from copper plates; Trikalinga = Kalinga, Utkala and Kongoda
H.K. Mahtab	History of Orissa	Trikalinga = western Odisha, distinct from Odra and Utkala
N.K. Sahu	Utkal University History of Orissa, vol. 1	Vidyadhara territory = eighteen forest kingdoms of central and western India
Biswarup Das	The Bhauma-Karas (1978)	Yayatinagara identified with Jajpur
Snigdha Tripathy	Inscriptions of Orissa	Kongoda-mandala as a province created by Shashanka
Sadasiba Pradhan	Archaeological Sites of South Kosala (1989)	Archaeology of the western uplands
Debraj Pradhan	OIMSEAS excavation reports	Radhanagar as Tosali or Dantapura; Langudi as Pushpagiri
Sunil Kumar Patnaik	Taksasila to Tosali (2017); Maritime Heritage of Early Odisha (2022)	Trade routes, urbanisation and ports
R.K. Mohanty	Sisupalgarh excavation reports	Archaeology of the Mahanadi delta capital

Limitations of the Evidence

The reconstruction of Odisha’s historical geography faces several persistent difficulties. Ancient regional names were used inconsistently, and their meaning shifted over time and between authors. Inferences drawn from a single source about the extent of a region can therefore be misleading. Many place names in inscriptions and texts cannot be identified with confidence, and competing identifications have been proposed for major sites such as Tosali, Kalinganagari, Dantapura and Pushpagiri. Literary sources rarely give precise boundaries, and foreign accounts, though valuable, often present distances and directions that are difficult to reconcile with the actual landscape.

The physical landscape itself has changed significantly. River courses have shifted, deltas have grown, coastlines have advanced and retreated, and forests have been cleared. The location of ancient ports and settlements must therefore be interpreted in light of a landscape that no longer exists in its original form. Finally, archaeological exploration has been uneven, concentrated on the coastal plain and especially the Mahanadi delta, while western Odisha and the forested interior remain comparatively little studied. Our picture of the historical geography of these regions is correspondingly less complete.

Open Questions for Future Research

Several questions offer particularly promising directions for future research. The precise meaning and extent of Trikalinga remain unresolved, and a systematic study of all inscriptions using the term, together with the places they name, could clarify its geography. The identification of major ancient sites, including Tosali, Kalinganagari, Dantapura, Pushpagiri and Mahakantara, awaits inscribed evidence from excavation. The reconstruction of the ancient coastline and river courses, using geomorphological methods, remote sensing and coring, is essential for locating and interpreting ancient ports. Finally, the historical geography of western Odisha and the forested interior, including the routes that linked the uplands with the coast and with central India, deserves far greater attention than it has so far received. The application of digital mapping and geographic information systems (GIS) to the abundant data in copper-plate grants also holds considerable promise for mapping administrative units and settlement patterns with new precision.

Conclusion

The historical geography of Odisha reveals a land whose history has been shaped at every stage by its physical setting. The fertile deltas of the Mahanadi, Brahmani and Baitarani provided the nuclear areas in which cities, capitals and temple centres arose. The river valleys and the coastal corridor carried armies, pilgrims and traders. The coast and its ports opened the region to the maritime world of the Bay of Bengal. And the forests and hills of the interior sheltered distinct societies whose gradual integration formed a central theme of the region’s history. The plurality of ancient names, Kalinga, Utkala, Odra, Tosala, Kongoda, Dakshina Kosala and Trikalinga, reflects the long period during which these regions developed separately. The eventual emergence of a single name, Odisha, derived from the ancient Odra, reflects the slow and complex process by which they were brought together.

For the research scholar, the historical geography of Odisha is not a settled background but an active field of inquiry. Many of its central questions, from the boundaries of Kalinga to the location of Tosali and the meaning of Trikalinga, remain open. Each new inscription, excavation and advance in the study of the physical landscape has the potential to refine our understanding of how the land and the people of Odisha shaped one another over more than two thousand years.

Glossary of Technical Terms

Term	Meaning
Historical geography	The study of places, regions and landscapes as they existed and were understood in the past
Nuclear area	A zone of intensive agriculture able to support a royal centre (Kulke)
Vishaya	A district-level administrative division named in inscriptions
Mandala	A territorial unit, often the domain of a subordinate ruling family
Bhukti	A larger administrative division, as in Dandabhukti
Agrahara	A village or land granted to Brahmins
Kshetra	A sacred field or pilgrimage region, such as Purushottama Kshetra (Puri)
Atavika	Forest people or forest territory
Garhjat	The small hill or fort-states of interior Odisha in later periods
Apheterion	Ptolemy’s “point of departure” for ships crossing the Bay of Bengal
Toponymy	The study of place names and their origins
Geomorphology	The study of landforms and their change over time

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is meant by the historical geography of Odisha? It is the study of how the land of Odisha, its regions, names, boundaries, capitals, routes and sacred places, was organised and understood in the past, and how geography shaped its history.

2. What were the ancient names of Odisha? Parts of the present state were known as Kalinga, Utkala, Odra (Udra), Tosala, Kongoda, Dakshina Kosala and Trikalinga, each referring to a different region with changing boundaries.

3. From which word is the name “Odisha” derived? It derives from Odra or Udra, the ancient people and region of the northern and central coastal plain.

4. When was Orissa renamed Odisha? The Orissa (Alteration of Name) Act, 2011 changed the name, with effect from 1 November 2011. The language name was changed from Oriya to Odia at the same time.

5. What is Trikalinga? A term meaning “three Kalingas” found in early medieval inscriptions. Its meaning is debated: some scholars see it as three regions, others as a distinct territory, possibly between Kalinga and Dakshina Kosala.

6. Which were the main ancient capitals of Odisha? They include Tosali, Samapa, Kalinganagari, Kongoda, Guhadevapataka (Jajpur), Yayatinagara, Kalinganagara (Mukhalingam) and Abhinava-Varanasi-Kataka (Cuttack).

7. What are the four sacred kshetras of Odisha? Puri (Purushottama or Shankha Kshetra), Bhubaneswar (Ekamra or Chakra Kshetra), Jajpur (Viraja or Gada Kshetra) and Konark (Arka or Padma Kshetra).

How to Cite This Article

History of Odisha. “Historical Geography of Odisha.” historyofodisha.com, 2026. https://historyofodisha.com/historical-geography-of-odisha/ (accessed [date]).

This article is a survey intended as a guide. For research, cite the primary sources, epigraphic editions and specialist studies listed below directly.

Sources and Further Reading

Web sources consulted

Research journal articles and magazines

Standard books for further reading (classic and specialist works)

Historical Geography of Orissa (New Delhi: D.K. Printworld)
A. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathi (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa (New Delhi: Manohar, 1978)
H. Kulke, Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia (New Delhi, 1993)
D.C. Sircar, Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India (Delhi, 1971)
R.D. Banerji, History of Orissa, 2 vols. (1930–31)
K.C. Panigrahi, History of Orissa (Hindu Period)
N.K. Sahu (ed.), History of Orissa, Vol. I, Utkal University
Amar Chand Mittal, An Early History of Orissa (Jain Cultural Research Society)
Subrata Kumar Acharya, Inscriptions of the Minor Ruling Dynasties of Odisha (Agam Kala Prakashan, 2022)
Biswarup Das, The Bhauma-Karas: Buddhist Kings of Orissa and Their Times (New Delhi, 1978)

Works by Odia historians

Binayak Misra, Dynasties of Mediaeval Orissa
H.K. Mahtab, History of Orissa
N.K. Sahu (ed.), History of Orissa, vol. 1 (Utkal University, 1964)
Biswarup Das, The Bhauma-Karas: Buddhist Kings of Orissa and Their Times (1978)
Snigdha Tripathy, Inscriptions of Orissa, vol. 1 (ICHR, 1998)
Sadasiba Pradhan, Archaeological Sites of South Kosala (Sambalpur, 1989)
Sunil Kumar Patnaik, Taksasila to Tosali: Trade and Urbanisation in Early Odisha (Delhi, 2017); Maritime Heritage of Early Odisha: Recent Researches (Bhubaneswar, 2022)
OIMSEAS, Excavations at Radhanagar (Kankia) (Bhubaneswar, 2015)

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