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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 61linguistic basis. The norm of linguistic province became morewidespread subsequently.2. Various scholars like Nilakantha Das, B.M.Padhi, S.N.Das andK. C. Mishra trace the origin of the Jagannath cult to aboriginal,Jaina and Buddhist sources. However, towards the 11 th centuryJagannath was worshipped as mainly a Vaishnav deity.3. If the dates ascribed to Chaitanya Das by J.K. Sahu (1969:46)are to be believed, there were instances of literary activity in theOriya language in this region during Sarala’s time. ChaitanyaDas, who flourished during Prataparudra Dev-I of Patnagarh,Bolangir between 1470 and 1490, was the author of twovoluminous Oriya theological texts titled Nirguna Mahatmyaand Bishnugarbha Puran. Like Sarala he had come from abackward caste and his works were neither translations noradaptations. His concepts like “sunya”, “nirguna” etc. weredeveloped later by the writers of eastern and central Orissa, butthere was no concurrent development in the western Orissa.4. A number of palm-leaf manuscripts containing the text ofMahabharata are available in Orissa State Museum. These areascribed to Jagannath Das. R.N. Ratha of the Satyabadi Press,Cuttack, has also printed this set of Mahabharata between 1927and 1928. Nevertheless, the most curious thing is that, historiansof Oriya literature like Suryanarayana Das, Bansidhara Mohantyand Surendra Mohanty are silent about the existence of such atext.While editing the minor works of Jagannath Das, BansidharaSarangi and Kunjabihari Mohanty, have classified Jagannathdas’s writings into three categories viz. works that have beenconclusively proved to be written by Jagannath, works that areprobably by him and works that are definitely not by him.According to them, this Mahabharata belongs to the first