Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Urajam inscription of 1051 CE stands as the earliest surviving evidence of Old Odia. This royal charter from the Eastern Ganga dynasty marks a clear departure from earlier Sanskrit usage in the region.
Sarala Das wrote the Sarala Mahabbarata in the fourteenth century to establish a literary foundation. His work earned him the title of Vyasa of Odisha among later generations.
The 2011 census recorded 37.52 million Odia speakers making up 3.1% of India's total population. Ninety-three percent of these speakers reside within the state of Odisha itself.
Odia retains thirty consonant phonemes alongside two semivowel sounds and six vowel phonemes in its inventory. The language preserves the voiced retroflex lateral approximant among Eastern Indo-Aryan languages.
The first Odia newspaper Utkala Deepika launched in 1866 under editors Gourishankar Ray and Bichitrananda. British colonial policies once threatened to abolish Odia Vernacular Schools in favor of Bengali instruction.