Odisha

Odisha, known as Orissa until 2011, is a state on the eastern coast of India. It ranks as the eighth-largest state by area and the eleventh-largest by population, home to more than 41 million people. The state has the third-highest number of Scheduled Tribes in the country. Its coastline stretches 485 kilometers along the Bay of Bengal. Odisha shares borders with Jharkhand and West Bengal to the north, Chhattisgarh to the west, and Andhra Pradesh to the south. The region is also called Utkaḷa, a name that appears in India’s national anthem, *Jana Gana Mana*.

The ancient kingdom of Kalinga, which Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty invaded in 261 BCE—leading to the devastating Kalinga War—roughly corresponds to parts of modern Odisha and included areas of present-day Andhra Pradesh and possibly other regions. The state’s current borders were set by the British Indian government, and the Orissa Province was established on April 1, 1936, combining Odia-speaking areas from the Bihar and Orissa Province, the Madras Presidency, and the Central Provinces. This date is celebrated as Utkala Divas, or Odisha Day. Cuttack was founded around 989 CE by Anantavarman Chodaganga and later served as the capital under many rulers through the British era until 1948, when Bhubaneswar took over that role.

The names Odisha and Orissa come from the ancient Prakrit term “Odda Visaya,” found in a 1025 inscription of Rajendra Chola I. In the 15th century, the poet Sarala Das called the region “Odra Rashtra” in his Odia translation of the *Mahabharata*. Inscriptions of Gajapati King Kapilendra Deva (1435–67) on Puri temple walls refer to it as Odisha or Odisha Rajya. In 2011, the English spelling was changed from “Orissa” to “Odisha,” and the language from “Oriya” to “Odia,” through the Orissa (Alteration of Name) Bill and the Constitution (113th Amendment) Bill, passed by the Lok Sabha on November 9, 2010, and by the Rajya Sabha on March 24, 2011. The Hindi rendering was also updated from उड़ीसा to ओड़िशा. These changes aimed to match the Odia transliteration, though the underlying Odia texts were still transliterated incorrectly under the official Hunterian system, which would have given “Orisha” and “Oria.”

Prehistoric Acheulian tools from the Lower Paleolithic era have been found across the region, indicating early human settlement.