Odisha's story begins long before written records, with Stone Age tools found along its river valleys and early farming settlements in its coastal plains. In ancient times the region was known as Kalinga, a powerful maritime land whose traders sailed to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Around the 3rd century BCE the Mauryan emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga, and the terrible bloodshed of that war is said to have turned him towards Buddhism and non violence. His rock edicts can still be seen at Dhauli, just outside Bhubaneswar, and at Jaugada in the south.
After the Mauryas, Kalinga rose again under King Kharavela of the Mahameghavahana line, who ruled around the 1st century BCE. His achievements are recorded in the Hathigumpha inscription at the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves near Bhubaneswar, a cluster of rock cut chambers carved for Jain monks. Nearby, the ruins of Sisupalgarh reveal a large fortified city of the same era. Buddhism also flourished here for centuries, and the monastery sites of Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri and Udayagiri in the Jajpur and Cuttack area, often called the Diamond Triangle, are rewarding places to explore.
In the early medieval period a series of dynasties, including the Shailodbhavas, Bhaumakaras and Somavamshis, shaped the region's distinctive temple architecture. Bhubaneswar became a temple city, and visitors can still see the graceful Parasurameswara and Mukteswara temples and the towering Lingaraja temple. The Eastern Ganga dynasty, which rose to power around the 11th to 12th century, gave Odisha its most famous monuments. King Anantavarman Chodaganga is credited with building the great Jagannath Temple at Puri, and in the 13th century King Narasimhadeva I built the Sun Temple at Konark, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site shaped like a giant stone chariot.
From the 15th century the Gajapati rulers of the Suryavamsi line held a large kingdom stretching far beyond present day Odisha. In the second half of the 16th century the region fell to the Afghan rulers of Bengal and then to the Mughals, and in the 18th century the Marathas controlled much of it. The British East India Company took over in 1803. Resentment against the new order led to the Paika Rebellion of 1817, led by Bakshi Jagabandhu. A devastating famine struck in 1866, and in the following decades a strong movement grew to protect the Odia language and unite Odia speaking areas, led by figures such as Madhusudan Das and his Utkal Sammilani.
That movement succeeded when Orissa became a separate province on 1 April 1936, a date still celebrated as Utkal Divas. Odisha also played its part in the freedom struggle, with leaders like Gopabandhu Das and a salt satyagraha at Inchudi on the coast. After independence in 1947, the many princely states of the region, including Mayurbhanj, were merged into Orissa between 1948 and 1949. The capital moved from the historic city of Cuttack to a newly planned Bhubaneswar, built beside the old temple town from the late 1940s onwards. In 2011 the state's name was officially changed from Orissa to Odisha.
For travellers, Odisha's past is unusually easy to touch. In a single trip you can stand where Ashoka's edicts were carved, climb into Jain caves, wander among Buddhist monasteries and watch pilgrims gather at Puri, all within a few hours of Bhubaneswar.
Photo: Subham9423, CC BY-SA 4.0
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