In its early years, Calcutta University also had affiliated colleges in which…

British India's affiliating-university system, set up by the Universities Act of 1857, gave a university authority to examine and confer degrees on colleges within a jurisdiction assigned to it. In the decades before separate regional universities were established across British India, that jurisdiction could extend far beyond a university's home province, even to institutions outside British India's own borders.

Calcutta University, established in 1857 as one of British India's first three universities, held a jurisdiction of this kind in its early years. Its affiliated colleges during this period included Jaffna College and other institutions on the island of Ceylon, which later came under a separate university's jurisdiction.

• Kashmir: colleges there fell within the jurisdiction of Punjab University, which was founded in 1882 at Lahore, not Calcutta University's.

• Afghanistan: remained outside British India's territory and administration altogether, so its institutions never entered any Indian university's affiliating jurisdiction.

• Goa: continued under Portugal's own separate colonial education administration, run independently of the British Indian university system.

Hence, among the given options, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is the region whose colleges were affiliated to Calcutta University in its early years.