Orissa Museums, Orissa Tourism, Orissa Tourism Info, Orissa Tourism Guide, Orissa Tourism Information, Orissa Tours, Orissa Travel Guide, Orissa Tour Guide, Orissa Tourism Guide, Orissa City Guide, Orissa Travel Information, Orissa Tour Information, Orissa Tourism Information, Orissa Travel Info.

The Orissa State Museum began as a subsidiary of Ravenshaw College's Department of Histoiy. However, over the years it has become one of the premier institutions of the state with a wide range of antiquities representing the region's rich cultural heritage. The galleries cover archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, armoury, mining and geology, painting, anthropology and manuscripts.

The manuscript gallery here is significant as it contains some rare palm leaf manuscripts. The 50,000 manuscripts, some of which are beautifully illustrated, cover subjects as diverse as religion, philosophy, astronomy,astrology, poetry, science, medicine, mathematics, warfare and the crafts. The oldest manuscript dates to the 15th century though evidence reveals that this art existed as far back as the 6th century AD.

Palm leaves were dried and the Oriya script was incised into the leaf with a stylus.The manuscripts are incredibly rich in exquisite penmanship and are a repository of artistic expressions of that time. The costumes, jewellery, hairstyle and facial features are very similar to the Orissa temple sculpture. The scenery depicted is highly stylised and symbolic. The earliest palm leaf manuscript i the Abhinava Gita Govinda b-Chandra Das Dibakar Mishra by Sridhar Sharma, dated 1496.

A 1690 illustrated manuscript of Gita Govinda written by the 12th century poetjayadeva has 80 folios It displays the advanced writing technology of its time in its drawings on both sides of palm leaves, in rich primary colours undiminished bv time.

Rare epigraphic records are preserved in the Epigraphy Gallery. Stone inscriptions copper plate grants and a number of plaster cast impressions of originals depict earlier patterns of writings, following different dialects and languages. The most coveted acquisition is the Bhadrakali inscription in Prakrit dating to the 3rd century AD.

Orissa State Museum
Gautam Nagar
Opp Hotel Kalinga Ashok
Bhubaneswar 751 014

Timing: 10.00 am to 4.00 pm
Closed on Mondays and government holidays.

Orissa State Museum, Bhubaneshwar