The Political Framework of Orissa

The political history of early medieval Orissa is fairly complex, and includes the rise to power and the fall of many dynasties, some of them assuming sovereignty over the other but never quite destroying the tributary powers. Orissa’s political development was characterized by the gradual integration of varied scattered nuclear areas under the control of single dynasties. The period ad 300-1147 was one of intensive state formation and political development in which royal grants played an important integrative role. The physiography of the region, B. P. Sahu points out, along with socio-political and technological factors, influenced the proliferation of local and sub-regional polities in the early medieval times. In the early twelfth century, the Imperial Gangas conquered the Mahanadi delta, and united their homeland of Kalinga with other nuclear areas in south, west and central Orissa, thus forming the ‘great medieval Orissan empire’.