Bengal District Gazetteers Puri

Abstract

The district of Puri, the southernmost district of the Orissa Division and of the Province of Bengal, is situated between now. 9°. 28' and 20° 26/ '*north latitude and between 84° 56' and 86° 25' east longitude. It extends over an area of 2,499 square miles and contains a population, according to the census of 1901, of 1,017,284 souls. The district is named after its headquarters Purl, situated on the shore of the Bay of Bengal in 19° 48' N. and 85° 49' 13. The place is known to up-country Hindus as Jagannath and locally as Purushottam Kshetra, the abode of the best of beings, i.e., Jagannath, ‘%he lord of the world, whose shrine has, for centuries' past, attracted devout pilgrims from all t parts of India. The name Purl means simply the city and .seems ever to have been in use before the British conquest of Orissa ; it believed to be merely an abbreviation of Jagannat Puri, the city of Jagannath. The distriot- Is boudQed on the north and north-east by Bound- Outtaok; on the south-east and south by the Bay of Bengal; on the west by the distriot of Ganjam in the Madras Presidency; and on the north-west by the Tributary States of Nayagarh, Ranpur and Khan’dpara. Physically, Puri contains three distinct traots. Along the sea Configurastretches a belt of sandy ridges, which, towards the Madras tl0n‘ frontier, forms a long bare spit of land dividing the great Ohilka lake from the ocean. This belt, formed by the strong monsoon and the violent currents which sweep from the south during eight months of the year, varies from four miles to a few hundred yards in width, and in some places rises into lofty cliffs. It effectually prevents all but two of the rivers finding an exit .to the sea, and they are thus diverted to the ohilka which is the great basin into which, the rivers of the delta find their way Behind this barren strip lies a fertile alluvial tract forming th< south-western part of the Mahanadi delta. This is* a rich, flat region of yillages and rice fields, watered by a network of channels, through which the waters of the Koyakhai, the most southerly branch of the Mahanadi, find their way to the sea.