Odisha (Odia)

The coast between Bengal and the Telugu country, with a history that turns on a single battle fought against it. Kalinga was an independent power when Ashoka invaded around 261 BCE, and his own inscriptions record that the slaughter - a hundred thousand killed, many times that displaced - produced the remorse that turned him to Buddhism and to a policy of conquest by dharma. It is the only case in ancient history of a victorious emperor publishing his regret. The region recovered its independence and under the Eastern Ganga dynasty built the Sun Temple at Konark and the Jagannath temple at Puri, whose annual chariot procession gave English the word juggernaut. Odia sailors traded with Java, Bali and Burma, commemorated still in the Bali Jatra festival. The region resisted incorporation longer than most of eastern India, falling to the Mughals in 1568 and to the British in 1803. Colonial administration split it between three presidencies, which is why the Odia language movement of the late nineteenth century mattered: Odisha became the first Indian province created on linguistic grounds, in 1936, twenty years before the general reorganisation. The Odisha famine of 1866 killed around a third of the coastal population while grain was exported. The state holds a large share of India's iron, coal and bauxite. Cyclones from the Bay of Bengal strike it regularly. Bhubaneswar is the capital and holds hundreds of medieval temples. Konark and the Sun Temple are a World Heritage site. Chilika is Asia's largest brackish lagoon. The 1999 super cyclone killed around ten thousand people.

• Existed: 1100 CE – present
• Type: Entity