ForeWord

Orissa, known to the ancient world as Kalinga, Odra and Utkala, has been a prominent historical and geographical entity from time immemorial. The varied ethno-linguistic character of its human geography provides a composite foundation to its cultural history, which can be traced in numerous places, ranging from the pre-historic cave arts in Chichidakhol to the appliqué work in Pipili and the Pattachitra in Raghurajpur. Geography and culture are closely inter-related. The environment determines the needs, the skills and the habits and thereby the culture of a community. A change in the course of a river could change the contours of cultural geography. To recognise human presence in Orissa's geographic space through readings of cartographic symbols from a spatial-temporal perspective is an exciting exercise.

Temples, sculptures, handloom designs, fairs and festivals, mask dances and other performing arts of Orissa exhibit some unique features. The geographical locations of Buddhist monuments and Jaina sculptures and their pre-dominance in certain areas deepen our understanding of the course of history. The concentration of Neolithic sites in western Orissa, the high density of tribal population in Koraput region, where wild paddy was first domesticated, and the multiplicity of built-monuments in the Prachi valley provide an insight into the genesis and growth of civilisation in this part of the world.

Orissa has a rich cultural heritage. A survey reveals that there are about four thousand monuments of different categories in the State. Structural conservation of most of these monuments is necessary for the prevention of their imminent collapse or disappearance.

The timely award of funds by the Tenth and Eleventh Finance Commissions has enabled us to set in motion a process of conservation. Hundreds of these monuments have been conserved and stabilised. The need for preparing a cultural map and an atlas was felt in the post-conservation phase. It would motivate people to maintain their built heritage. In the course of planning, it was felt necessary to incorporate other important aspects of Orissa's cultural heritage in this initiative.

The preparation of this atlas is the first step in this direction. There is still the need and scope for more micro-level thematic maps. We need to study the various aspects of the cultural heritage of Orissa in relation to its immediate environment in terms of hills, rivers, sacred streams and groves, their locations in time and space and the perception of place within local communities.

I hope scholars as well as readers will find this atlas useful.

R. Balakrishnan, IAS
Commissioner cum Secretary
Department of Culture
Government of Orissa

Similarly, we express our thanks to Dr. Mona Sharma, IAS, Director, Textile and Sri P K. Tripathy, Director, Handicrafts, for providing major inputs for the theme maps on Handloom and Handicrafts of the State.

We have adopted the map published by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, published in their Linguistic Survey of India - Orissa, depicting the theme "Distribution of Population by Major Languages and Scripts." We hereby convey our heartfelt thanks to his kind offices.

We acknowledge our indebtedness to the Department of Forests and Tourism, Govt. of Orissa as well as the Archaeological Survey of India, the Ministry of Forests & Environment, Govt of India, for the date incorporated in the Atlas.

We would be failing in our duty if we do not express our sincere thanks to Dr. K. K. Basa, Department of Anthropology, Utkal University and Dr. Sadasiva Pradhan, Department of History, Sambalpur University who provided us with valuable data about the culture during the prehistoric period.

Dr. Jeevan Patnaik, Asst. Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India has helped in providing data on prehistoric sites and deserves our special thanks.

In the preparation of the Cultural Map and Atlas Sri R Balakrishnan, IAS, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Culture spearheaded the task force. The following team members, supervised the overall planning, design and implementation of the project:

· Sri N.M. Mohanty, IAS, Ex-Director, Culture
· Sri G. N. Mohanty, IAS, Director, Culture.
· Dr. B. K. Rath, Superintendent State Archaeology & Project Co-ordinator, Project Orissa Cell.
· Sri Aswini K. Satapathy, Asst. Curator, State Archaeology
· Sri Panchanan Mishra, Chemical Assistant, State Archaeology.

We are grateful to all of them.

We are also thankful to Mr.Michael Weston, Sri Anup Nayak and Sri K.L. Purohit for their collections of photographs on tribal life and wild life. We extend our thanks to Sri K.K.Rath for his valuable advice on colour combination and Sri Jagabandhu Pati for his assistance in the work. We are also thankful to Sri Akalabya Das, of ORSAC for his technical guidance.

We extend our gratitude to Sri Haripada Satpathy for taking the onerous responsibility of editing.

Last but not the least, we would like to thank Sri Debesh Patra, Sri Debidatta Samal, Srimati Pushpita Pattanayak, Mr. Akil Akhtar, and Sri Anil Pal of M/s Geo Infotech for their efforts in compiling, creating, designing and preparing the layout of the Atlas and photographs in GIS format.


Gopinath Mohanty.
Director, Culture, Orissa.

Bhubaneswar
24-02-04