Calingae

What it is

The Calingae, also written Calingi, appear in ancient accounts as a people of India whose lives were said to be extraordinarily brief: Pliny the Elder gave them eight years from birth to death. Pliny spread them over a wide territory, split them into branches, and named their leading towns. Modern readers treat the eight-year span as an inflation of the sort found elsewhere in his writing, and match the name to Kalinga, a historical land on the eastern coast. The subject belongs to legend rather than to practice: it is a marvel about human lifespan, carried through classical writing on India and its wonders.

Where it comes from

The account that has come down is Pliny the Elder's. He described a people spread across a wide tract of India, divided into a main body and two offshoots, and credited them with eight-year lives. He also recorded, of the Mandi of India, that they became parents at seven, and readers have judged both reports to be exaggerations in the same vein. The name and the territory point toward Kalinga: the threefold division may echo the Tri-kalinga, the 'Three Kalingas' of the Puranas, and the region he described is thought to match the Northern Circars, today's Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Sudama Misra, a political scientist, sets the original Kalinga janapada over the Puri and Ganjam districts.

Peoples and places

Pliny pictured the Calingae across a broad territory, not one small corner of it. He listed three divisions: a parent group bearing the name alone, then the Gangarides-Calingae and the Macco-Calingae. The ground he assigned them is thought to line up, more or less, with the Northern Circars, a coastal tract now divided between the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Two towns stand out in his account as their main seats, Dandagula, also written Dandaguda, and Parthalis, or Protalis. Sudama Misra, working as a political scientist, places the early Kalinga janapada, a term for a historical territory, over the area of the Puri and Ganjam districts.

What people believe

The claim at the heart of the story concerns the span of a human life: a Calingian was said to pass from childhood to old age in about eight years. Pliny reported a comparable wonder of a nearby people, the Mandi of India, whom he credited with becoming parents at seven, and readers have taken both as stretched figures rather than careful observation. Buddhist eschatology, the teaching on the end of the world, mentions a race whose lives are similarly short, so the motif of humans who burn through their years quickly is not unique to Pliny's page. Within the old accounts, the Calingae are people like any other, only faster.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Modern commentary treats the eight-year life as an exaggeration, and points to Pliny's report about the Mandi, said to become parents at seven, as a stretch of the same kind. Beyond the lifespan, scholars have tried to identify who the Calingae were. The threefold division may correspond to the Tri-kalinga, the 'Three Kalingas' named in the Puranas, a body of early Indian texts. The extent he describes is thought to sit near the Northern Circars, now divided between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Sudama Misra argues that the Kalinga janapada, the early Kalinga territory, took in the Puri and Ganjam districts. On this reading, a real region and its people lie behind the name.

Compare and confuse

Two comparisons recur. The first is the Mandi, another Indian people in Pliny's pages, whose early childbearing is read as exaggeration of the same kind as the Calingae's short lives. The second is a race with brief lives mentioned in Buddhist eschatology, the teaching about the world's end. As for the name itself, the suggestion is that Pliny's three divisions echo the Tri-kalinga, the 'Three Kalingas' of the Puranas, so the legend and the historical Kalinga may share one source.

Questions people ask about Calingae

Good reading and sources

• Calingae on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data