Madhusudan_Das

XI
MADHUSUDAN AND THE RENAISSANCE
OF ORISSA
RAGHUNATH DAS
It had been wiped off the map of India. No trace of the tract that
the Mahabharat and the Puranas had extolled to the skies as the Land
of Fine Arts. Who are the people to whose dialect Bharat in his Natya
Sastra referred to as the Odra ? Scholars were left to wonder where the
land of the valiant people was that offered bloodbath to the mighty
Asoka and stripped him of the royal robes turning him a mendicant
preaching peace and brotherhood to mankind. Where was the kingdom
of King Kharabela who smashed Satakarni, brought the Magadhan
rulers to their knees and forced the mighty army of the Greeks to beat
retreat, whose empire extended from the banks of the Jamuna to that
of Kavery ? Who are the people that in the medieval days sent fleets
carrying merchants to Java, Borneo and Sumatra on the far east and
even to distant China and on the west to Persia and Egypts spreading
their culture On remote alien shores ? Where was the University of
Puspagiri located that according to Huen-Tsang far excelled Nalanda ?
The poetry on stones in the exquisite temples of Konark and at Puri or
at Bhubaneswar could for certain not be product of the sculptural skill
of an inferior race.
The Oriya-speaking tracts lay dismembered in alien Presidencies
and outlying Provinces and numerous Feudatory States. Orissa had
lost her identity. Her culture had been obliterated beyond recognition.
Utkal's heritage was a lost chapter of history. Flood devastated her
fertile fields. Famished farmers and artisans fled the land to hire
themselves out to kerosine kings of Burma or to serve as slaves in the
tea plantations in Assam. It was considered a fortune if one could get
the job of a motia/coolie in any of the jute mills on the Hoogly or be a
behera (bearer) in the bungalow of a Bengali Baboo. In spite of the
numerous temples strewn all over the land, it was a godforsaken region