Paricharcha Quarterly Magazine: news and essays on culture and heritage.
Konark's Sun Temple remains Odisha's sole entry on the World Heritage List since 1984. December 2025 brought a fresh candidacy: the Diamond Triangle of Ratnagiri, Udayagiri, and Lalitgiri, nominated as a serial property tracing Buddhism's evolution across a millennium. Sarnath's long path offers both precedent and caution for the dossier ahead.
The chautisa, a thirty-four-stanza structure keyed to the Odia alphabet, fuses literacy instruction with philosophical instruction on impermanence. A child taught to read through such verse absorbs, in the same breath, a lesson on detachment and mortality, a convergence of script and soul that has carried Odia identity through village recitation rather than institution or monument.
Bhaktacharan Das's Manabodha Chautisa addresses the individual soul, warning against the illusions of wealth, kinship, and bodily permanence across thirty-four letters. A century later, Bhima Bhoi's Chautisa Madhu Chakra retained the same alphabetic discipline while redirecting its address toward caste hierarchy and hollow ritual.
swipe up for more
