Kalinga

Kalinga was an Indian Kingdom, bordered to the east by the Bay of Bengal that included the whole of present day Odisha, parts of Chhattisgarh, and the northern part of Andhra Pradesh. The kingdom was well in existence when Chandragupta Maurya founded the Mauryan Empire.

The kingdom of Kalinga is mentioned in the Mahabharata. The ancient kingdom of Kalinga according to the Mahabhrata was also located in present day Odisha, so it’s been there for some time. Its capital is given as Rajapura and the daughter of Chitrangada who was the king of Kalinga at the time was married to Duryodhana.

The Kalinga lineage extents all the way back to the five adopted sons of King Vaali or as he was more commonly known, Bali Asura, a devout worshiper of Vishnu.

While Chandragupta Maurya expanded the Mauryan Empire, from its capital, Pataliputra, in Bihar, an empire that would eventually cover the whole of north and central India, Kalinga remained more or less what it was, and the fact that Chandragupta Maurya, despite all the resources that were available to him, including the treatise written by the Hindu Brahmin minister, Chanakya or as he was better known, Kautilya, was unable to acquire Kalinga, is a testament to the resoluteness of the Indian Kingdom. 

The kingdom was heavily involved in Maritime trade, with numerous South East Asian Kingdoms, and prospered because of this trade and it was a wealthy kingdom. From all accounts its coffers were filled to the brim and that would to some extent explain why the kingdom stretched no further south of the Godavari River, which is located in the northern part of Andhra Pradesh. There was simply no real need for land expansion, not when it had a large maritime fleet at its disposal and most of its revenue came from seaborne trade.

The kingdom flourished up to about the 8th year of Ashoka’s reign, or 261 BC or BCE, when the Mauryan Emperor decided to invade the kingdom. Most historians agree that Ashoka invaded the kingdom of Kalinga because he wanted to gain control of its lucrative maritime trade, and the resulting war devastated both kingdoms, and started a mass exodus outwards, possibly across the Bay of Bengal.

A successful Asoka annexed the kingdom and after its defeat, it became a part of the Mauryan Empire, but Kalinga’s history may have not ended there and its descendants may have founded other ancient kingdoms that stretched from the isles of Malaysia to Cambodia.

Copyright © 2020 by Dyarne Ward and Kathiresan Ramachanderam