Jalesar

Jalesar is Jaleswar in northern Odisha, an old border town on the road between Bengal and the Odishan coast. Its position appears in accounts of religious travel as well as warfare: the district history records Chaitanya passing through Jaleswar and Remuna on his journey from Bengal to Puri in 1510.

The later sixteenth century brought successive changes of government to this frontier. Afghan forces took Odisha in 1568; in 1592 Raja Man Singh defeated the Afghans near the Subarnarekha and secured its incorporation into Akbar's empire. Jaleswar then gave its name to one of the province's three Mughal revenue divisions, alongside Bhadrak and Kataka. This was a district-scale administrative role, larger than the town itself. Maratha rule from 1751 and the British conquest of Odisha in 1803 altered the surrounding provincial order again. The town's history is therefore anchored in a particular crossing between Bengal, inland authority and the route to Puri.