ABSTRACT
The state of Orissa is located in eastern India, bordered by the Bay of Bengal to the east and by the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh to the north, west, and south, respectively. Its physical features range from a plateau in the north and river valleys (the Mahanadi, Brahmani, and Vaitarini) in the central region to the mountainous area in the south. Forty-two percent of the land is jungle. In 300 b.c. the emperor Ashoka conquered Orissa, then known as Kalinga; the land was considered to be beyond the pale of Aryan civilization, which had been introduced by Indo-European-speaking peoples entering India in the second millennium b.c. It was here that Ashoka, realizing the futility of war and violence, embraced Buddhism and began a campaign propagating both the Buddhist religion and nonviolence. The later Jain, Satavahan, Gang, Bhaumakar, Soma/Kesari, and Surya dynasties ruled over the territory until 1568, when the Afghan sultan of Bengal took power and introduced Islam to the region. Thereafter the Mughals gained supremacy, although the Europeans began establishing trading centers in the early sixteenth century; British rule came in 1803. Until the recent past, the southern parts of Orissa were influenced by the Dravidian culture of the South Indian states.
