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People & Lifestyle of Orissa
Ancient Orissa was a confluence of racial streams that
kept on invading the state leaving their own imprints
thus affecting the life style a lot. Historians believe
that Aryans entered Orissa from the northeast,
subjugated the primitive people living there and imposed
on them their language and culture. But on reflection we
conclude that the people then living in the land were
not perhaps all of the primitive type, nor were they
subjugated culturally. What might have happened probably
was a racial and cultural amalgamation.
Geographically Orissa stands as a coastal corridor between
the northern and southern India. It is natural therefore
that an assimilation of the races and cultures of the
Aryans and the Dravidians; must have taken place here in
the days of gore. At the same time successive racial and
cultural tides might have surged up from the different
sides, rolled in and broken over this bound culminating
in the indo-cultural synthesis.
In spite of being rural, people of Orissa, have still
retained India's earliest civilization in its pristine
form by keeping their traditional values still alive.
Not only in their secluded hamlets, but also in the
countless thousands of villages in the country side one
can catch a glimpse of the dwindling horizon of
humanity, through the innocent and benign outlook of
tile villagers. A sensitive person who happens to be a
prisoner of the modern society with its stress and
strain will not, while in a typical Oriya village, fail
to mark the relationship of its common people with God,
nature and their fellow men. |
