Māṭhara dynasty

Lords of Kalinga

The Māṭharas, also called Pitṛbhaktas — devoted to their fathers, an epithet used in their charters — held the coastal country between the Mahanadi and the Godāvarī from a capital at Siṃhapura. Their plates, issued in Sanskrit, record village grants to brahmins and use the imperial-sounding title Kaliṅgādhipati.

They are among the southern kings whose territory Samudragupta's campaign passed through, though the identification of individual names in the Allahabad pillar inscription with Māṭhara rulers is disputed.

Māṭhara authority gave way in the later fifth century to the Eastern Gangas, who took over the same region and the same title and held it for nearly a millennium. The Māṭharas are thus best understood as the link between Khāravela's Kalinga and the Ganga centuries.