Orissa joins name-change club

It's a christening that has the blessings of Lord Udisanatha himself. Orissa will soon be known as ‘Odisha’ and Oriya, the language, will from now be referred to as Odia. It was only on Thursday, though, that the Union Cabinet gave its stamp of approval to the state government’s proposal for a much-waited name change. The state Assembly resolved to change both names in August last year in deference to the manner in which the name of the state is pronounced in the local language. But this required an amendment to the Constitution in order to take effect. The proposed amendment is likely to be introduced in the next session of Parliament. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government in Orissa has been urging the central government to change the name of the state to Odisha. The state was spelt “Orissa” in the Indian Constitution adopted in 1950. BJD, though, espoused the view that this wasn’t the correct spelling for the name of the state. In the local script and language, the name of the state is spelt as it is pronounced: “Odisha.” In Schedule I in Devanagari, the name of the state and its language is mentioned as Udisa and Udia, respectively. BJD’s own convictions on the manner in which the name of their home state and language had to be spelt and pronounced were, no doubt, derived from regional literature from the 15th century onward, when the land of the Oriya people was referred to as Udisa or Odisa. In the Tantric literature of the mediaeval period the word Udisa has been frequently used and in Tantrasara, Jagannath has been referred to as Udisanatha. Poet Sarala Das mentions both the words Odra Rastra and Odisa in his famous treatise Mahabharata while Gajapati Kapileswaradeva (1435-1467 AD) in his proclamation inscribed on the temple walls of Jagannath calls his territory as Odisa Rajya. In Sanskrit, the region was referred to as Odra Vishaya or Odra Desa. Both Pali and Sanskrit Literatures mention the Odra people as Oddaka and Odrah, respectively. In the Mahabharata, the Odras are mentioned along with the Paundras, Utkals, Mekalas, Kalingas and Andhras.