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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 27state. The vibrancy of the culture during that time can be discernedfrom the proliferation of written discourse and translational activity.However, the distribution of translated texts and creative worksamong the various Oriya speaking regions was uneven. Thisunevenness can be explained by the socio-political context thatfollowed the fall of Gajapati kings. Most of the historians ofmedieval Orissa like B.C. Ray (1989) and M.A. Haque (1980) havefailed to develop a coherent narrative of the context because of theirinability to understand the regional dynamics within the Oriyaspeakingpeople. The three main regions of Orissa had separatetrajectories of socio-cultural growth because of the varying political–economic contexts.At the beginning of the 16 th century, the western region ofOrissa was already under the control of Chauhan ruler. Their rulecontinued for more than four hundred years, unhindered even duringthe Muslim rule over the rest of Orissa. Only small parts of theregion came under direct British administration after 1849. Thesocio-political character of western Orissa thus had a trajectory ofgrowth different from that of the rest of Orissa. Of course thecultural affinities between the western and eastern segmentsestablished during the Somavanshi kings in the 10 th centurycontinued in some form, but the effect of the cultural upheaval afterSarala Das was not felt in these areas. 3 The difference between thespoken languages of these regions could be one of the reasons forthe lack of growth of a uniform literary tradition across the variousregions. The spoken language of western Orissa was derived from adifferent strain of Prakrit than the spoken language used in theeastern part.Secondly, the Chauhan rulers claimed that they were ofRajput origin and had migrated from north India. They patronizedSanskrit and Hindi, which were popular in north India at the expenseof Oriya. Therefore, before the 19 th century we come across stray