VIZAGAPATAM.
describes it as consisting of three divisions, which may have given rise to the name Trikalinga under which it is referred to later. Isolated references to scattered kings of the territory occur elsewhere, but they cannot be combined into any connected account.
Inscriptions show that in the sixth century A.D., Kalinga was conquered by the Chalukyas of Bádámi in Bombay and in the seventh by their offshoot the Eastern Chálukyas. A result of this latter campaign was the establishment of the Vengi kingdom (the ruins of the capital of which still stand at Pedda Végi, six miles north of Ellore) under the Eastern Chálukya king Vishnuvardhana I (615-33 A.D.). Copper grants of this monarch found at Chipurupalle in this district show that he once ruled as far north as that village.
The chronicles are continued by the grants of a series of kings who describe themselves as of the Ganga family, lords of Kalinga, and worshippers of the Gókarnasvámi (Siva) on the Mahéndragiri hill in Ganjám (where the ruins of cyclopean shrines still stand), and as ruling from Kalinganagara, which has been identified with Mukhalingam on the bank of the Vamsadhára in Ganjám, where notable temples and inscriptions yet survive.
The period when this dynasty flourished is doubtful, as their grants are all dated in an era the initial point of which has yet to be determined. The names of eleven of them are known, and their inscriptions have been found in several places in Ganjám and at Álamanda and Vizagapatam in this district, but the material at present available supplies no connected account of the doings of any of them.
The Eastern Chálukyas of Vengi appear to have constantly interfered in the affairs of Kalinga, and Vimaláditya of that line seems to have conquered much of it, since an inscription on Mahéndragiri states that the Chóla king Rájarája I of Tanjore overthrew him in 999-1000 and set up a pillar of victory on that hill.
Kalinga was apparently further attacked from the north, for the kings of Kósala in that direction, who have been tentatively assigned to this same eleventh century, claim to have made themselves 'lords of Trikalinga.'
The Gangas were followed by a later line of the same name who, as they also worshipped the Gókarnasvámi on Mahéndragiri and ruled from Kalinganagara, were apparently of the same family. Calculations from dates in copper grants show that they
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