Text and Context in the History, Literature and Religion of Orissa

Anthropologists, historians, literary critics, philologists and historians of religion deal with the multi-layered interplay between texts and contexts in past and present Orissa. Orissa, renowned for the cults related to the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, is marked by a rich, cultural diversity. In dealing with the interdependence between text and context the essays contained here provide fresh insights to the complexity and fluidity of cultural contexts that use text as stable points of reference. The tradition of Orissa are considered in their uniqueness as well as in their relationship to South Asian cultural contexts on a larger scale.