Cuttack to Sambalpur along the Mahanadi
- Mughal and Maratha rule
- British colonial
Boats went far up the Mahanadi river from the coast to Sambalpur. They carried salt, spices and pots inland, and came back loaded with diamonds, iron, silk and grain.
Boats went far up the Mahanadi to Sambalpur, swapping coastal salt for inland diamonds and silk.
Boats went far up the Mahanadi river, from the coast to Sambalpur. They carried salt, spices, coconuts and brass pots. Old records call this “the great road leading along the Mahanadi to Sembelpur.” Traders once sent more than 300,000 maunds of salt this way each year. [Stirling, 1825, pp. 194, 218]
Boats came back down loaded with different goods. They carried cotton, wheat, oil-seeds, ghee, iron, turmeric, silk cloth and rice. [Hunter, 1872, vol. ii, Appendix III, p. 74]
Diamonds worked near Sambalpur, at Hirakud, moved along this route too. Later, salt began arriving by rail instead of by river boat. This shows the river carried it first. [Imperial Gazetteer of India (Orissa entries), n.d., vol. XXII, pp. 12-13 (Sambalpur District)]
For scholars
Sambalpur sits roughly 300 km inland. This river route never reached the sea. Cuttack stands in here as the nearest major river hub. All three sources describe real two-way traffic, goods moving both up and down river, not just two places that happen to exist. That places this route above some of the inferred land routes in this atlas. None of the three sources gives a boat type, a date, or a mapped course. The line shown is schematic. [Stirling, 1825, pp. 194, 218; Hunter, 1872, vol. ii, Appendix III, p. 74; Imperial Gazetteer of India (Orissa entries), n.d., vol. XXII, pp. 12-13 (Sambalpur District)]
Facts
- Mode
- River
- From
- Cuttack
- To
- Sambalpur
Ports on this route
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Cuttack
Cuttack stands on a tongue of land where the Mahanadi river splits in two. Boats carried its fine cloth and silver work down the river and out to sea.
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Sambalpur
Sambalpur is a town far up the Mahanadi river, deep inland. Boats carried salt, spices and pots up to Sambalpur and came back loaded with diamonds, iron, silk and grain.
Goods carried on this route
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Salt
Boats carried salt upriver to Sambalpur and came back loaded with cotton, wheat, oil-seeds and rice.
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Diamonds
Hirakud means 'diamond island': searchers called Jharias sifted the Mahanadi's sand and were paid in land.
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Sal timber
Tolls on timber in Ganjam were so steep that a shilling's worth cost one shilling and fourpence to move 42 miles.
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Iron
Sambalpur still had 160 village furnaces turning out about 1,120 hundredweight of iron every year.
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Tasar silk
Tasar silk comes from wild forest silkworms, and a whole caste, the Kostas, made their living dealing in it.
Scholar notes
Sambalpur is roughly 300 km inland; this corridor never reached the sea, and Cuttack stands in as the nearest major river hub, as in the 'sambalpur' port entry. All three sources describe actual two-way traffic (salt, spices, pots up; diamonds, iron, silk, grain down), not just two places that exist, so this sits above the inferred land routes elsewhere here. None gives a vessel type, a date, or a surveyed course; the line is schematic. Stirling's 'formerly' and the Gazetteer's 'now brought by rail instead of river' both suggest the river trade predated the railway.
- Andrew Stirling. *An Account, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical, of Orissa Proper or Cuttack*. in Asiatic Researches 15. 1825. public domain , pp. 194, 218 ('Formerly salt was an important article of export by way of the great road leading along the Mahanadi to Sembelpur and Berar ... more than three lacs of maunds being exported annually.')
- William Wilson Hunter. *Orissa: Or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province under Native and British Rule*. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1872. public domain , vol. ii, Appendix III, p. 74 (Mahanadi river towns 'carry salt, spices, cocoa-nuts, and brass utensils up to Sambalpur ... bringing thence, in exchange, cotton, wheat, oil-seeds, clarified butter, oil, molasses, iron, turmeric, tasar cloth, rice.')
- *Imperial Gazetteer of India (Orissa entries)*. n.d. public domain , vol. XXII, pp. 12-13 (Sambalpur District) (Diamonds worked at Hirakud 'when Sambalpur was under native rule'; salt 'now brought by rail instead of river as formerly' - implying the river itself carried it before the railway.)