and temple building activities for about 2500 years during her recorded history. Endowed

with nature’s beauty and bounty, Orissa boasts of a rich cultural heritage and tradition of

music, dance, dramatics, art & crafts of many splendoured varieties and forms; which

elegantly emanate from its magnificent monuments, ancient caves, rock-cut sculptures

and innumerable temples found still intact with all its prestine glory and grandeur. This holy

land with a hoary past, offers the quintessence of the multifaceted cultural profiles of Indian

panorama. Art in all its myriad forms is so deeply ingrained in this state that the routine

chores of the folk styles take sublime aesthetic expression of magnificent diction in intangible

performing art idioms

The wooded hinterland of the state beyond Eastern Ghats is the store house of earliest

rock paintings. At Ushakothi and Manikmunda in Sundargarh district, Bikramkhol in

Jharsuguda district and Gudahandi and Yogimath in Kalahandi, there are upper Paleolithic

rock paintings (in red ochre or Hematite) and rock bruising. The painting on the facade of

a cave at Gudahandi is exuberantly realistic. The hunting scene of a man throwing a stone

missile at a running bison is of high artistic excellence.

The history of Orissan art and architecture is corelated with her early history which

starts from 261 B.C., when Ashok conqured Orissa, then known as Kalinga. The earliest

specimen of Orissan art is the colossal figure of the foreport of an elephant carved on the

top of the boulder containing Ashoka’s edicts at Dhauli about five miles from Bhubaneswar.

There was also an Ashokan pillar now enshrined inside Bhaskareswar temple in

Bhubaneswar which has been converted into a Shivalingam later on. These Ashokan

monuments thus marked the beginning of Orissan art and architecture.

The magnificent specimen of Orissan secular monuments of the pre-Christian epoch

is provided by Sisupalgarh, situated about a mile to the east of Bhubaneswar. The ruins of

this ancient fort represent a well planned and well-fortified city. The excavations carried on

here by the ASI during the years from 1947 to 1949, unearthed some antiquities which

take the origin of the city back to the fourth century B.C.

The next stage of the development of Orissan art and architecture is marked by the

caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri which stand side by side about five miles to the west ofBhubaneswar. These hillocks have been honey-combed with rock-cut caves meant for Jaina

ascetics. The graphic account of emperor Kharavela’s reign and campaigns of 1st century

B.C. are found in the Hatigumpha inscription of the Udayagiri hill. The grand and excellent

art and architecture of these caves bear base-reliefs which depict the Jaina pantheons

and objects of devotion, panoramic views of the worship of the sacred tree or symbols.

The sculptures carved out in these caves are specimens of fine artistic excellence marked

by vigour and simplicity and share characteristics in terms of antiquity with the sculptures of

Bharhut, Sanchi and Bodhagaya. The political history of the period following emperor

Kharavela is described as the dark period of the Orissan history. The Naga and Yakshya

images discovered in Bhubaneswar and presented in the Orissa State Museum can

however be assigned to this dark period. They are similar to the Naga and Yakshya images

found at Sanchi, Mathura and Rajgir and can safely be placed in the 1st or 2nd century A.D.

Evidently there were Stupas in Bhubaneswar of which these images are the survivals. They

also indicate that the Naga and Yaksha worship was popular in Orissa after the fall of

Kharavela’s dynasty, when Jainism appears to have received a setback.

It is still a disputed point whether the Gupta’s ever held their direct sway over Orissa,

but the classical Gupta age did not fail to spread its influence over the Orissan monuments.

Several images have of late been discovered, which bear the Gupta characteristics. One

very definite specimen of Gupta art in Orissa is a mural painting found at Sitabhinji in the

Keonjhar district, which depicts a royal procession with a line of writing below the scene,

recording the name of the Bhanja king ‘Disabhanja’ which is palaeographically assigned

to 4th & 5th century A.D. No Gupta temple has yet been discovered in Orissa, but the

earliest Orissan temples definitely bear the Post-Gupta influences both in respect of art

and architecture. There are a very large number of sculptural and architectural specimens

found at cultural centres of Orissa like Puri, Bhubaneswar and Jajpur and these probably

belonged to the temples no longer in existence. These remnants provide an interesting

study which, when pursued is likely to bridge the gap of the so-called Dark Period.

Architecture and sculpture made notable progress in the medieval period under the

patronage of Sailadbhavas, Bhaumakaras, Somovansis and the Gangas. The development

of different religions was the basis of such abundant output of art. The best specimens of

Buddhist art are found at Puspagiri, Udayagiri, Lalitagiri, Solanpur, Khadipada, Ayodhya,

Khiching, Kuruma, Boudh, Banpur and other places. Perhaps, the finest establishment of

the Buddhism was at Ratnagiri in Cuttack district. Excavations have revealed the remains

of a magnificent main Stupa, two spacious Viharas, several votive Stupas and numerous

Buddhist sculptures of great artistic excellence. The figures of Boddhisatwas discovered

from Lalitagiri and Langudi are distinguished by unsurpassed grace and slender suppleness.

Achutarajpur (near Banpur) in Khurdha district has yielded the largest hoard of Buddhist

bronze images of exquisite workmanship. Noteworthy among these bronze images arerepresentation of Buddha, Tara, Trailokyavijaya etc. Recent excavation in Langudi hill has