Sarala Sahityara Shakta Dharma Odia Book By Dr. Dharanidhar Nayak

 Sarala Dasa (born as Siddheswara Parida) was a 15th-century poet and scholar of Odia literature. Best known for three Odia books — Mahabharata, Vilanka Ramayana and Chandi Purana — he was the first scholar to write in Odia and his revered as the Adi Kabi (First Poet) of Odia literature.As an originator of Odia literature, his work has formed an enduring source of information for succeeding generations.

As well as the three books for which he is best known – Mahabharata, Vilanka Ramayana and Chandi Purana - Sarala Dasa also wrote the book Laxmi Narayana Vachanika. The Adi Parva Mahabharata opens with a long invocation addressed to the Lord Jagannatha of Puri, from which it is known that Sarala Dasa started writing his Mahabharata in the reign of Kapileswar, otherwise known as Kapilendra Deva, the famous Gajapati king of Odisha (AD 1435–67). He tells us that Maharaja Kapilesvara with innumerable offerings and many a salute was serving this great deity and hereby destroying the sins of the Kali age.

Though Sarala Dasa followed the main outline of the Sanskrit Mahabharata in writing the Odia Mahabharata, he made numerous deviations and added to it copiously the stories of his own creation and various other matters known to him. In the final form Sarala Dasa's Mahabharata is a new creation analogous to Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa based on the Ramayana.