Discovering Odia Culture

Who created culture? This question is often asked. Sometimes, it is created by an individual and it gets accepted and appreciated by the community; sometimes it is created by a group of people while sometimes it is created by the desire of those in power. When these creations enter and influence the life flow of a community, it becomes culture. But, as it is driven by the force of the spirit, all creation, including the purely material, is spiritual in nature. Since the time of birth of consciousness, Nature and her workings have preoccupied human thought and attention and the mysterious benign and malignant forces of Nature have begun to be represented, variously, as gods and goddesses and demons and devils. It became necessary for these forces to be appeased or controlled and this gave rise to the worship of stones and trees and the moon and the sun. Gradually, the human desire for beauty and perfection gave birth to magnificent stone carvings and houses for the gods, and wondrous abstract forms of expression in the form of rituals and norms to guide and celebrate life and living. In this book, the author has focused on the typically Odia forms of such expression. In doing so, she has brought home to the readers an awareness of the distinctiveness of Odia culture as also an understanding of the connectedness of the Odia tradition with the cultures of the wider world around us.