USABHITASA is a major text in Oriya riti kavya tradition. Upendra Bhanja (1670-1740) is con- sidered the foremost voice in this tradition. With the discovery of Usabbilasa pothi its author Sisushankar who lived between 1560 and the end of 16th century, is being recog nised as a pioneer in this tradition. He influ enced not only Upendra Bhanja but also sever- al poets of later period. This illustrated potbi is remarkable both as a Kavya and as a work of art.
Orissa had a thousand-year-old temple-building tradition that culminated in the magnificent Sun-temple at Konark where the Oriya builders and sculptors "built like giants and finished as jewellers". On faceless, cold stubborn stones the anonymous artists carved out myriad delicate images and patterns pulsating with life. From the stone to the seasoned palmleaf, from the chisel to the lekbana or iron stylus, it seems to have been only another step, a different but parallel endeavour. One hallmark of Orissan culture has been to treat all art-creations literary, performing and visual as integral to each other. Forms and figures that were carved on stone, were also etched on palmleaf; they were described in words and the words were set to music which accompanied the dance-forms. One finds in Orissa's traditional culture this remarkable continuity and integration of the literary, visual and performing art-forms.
Bulk of ancient and medieval Oriya literature was written on palmleaf manuscripts or Potbis. Besides the Oriya Mababbarata, Bbagahata, and Ramayana hundreds of other literary works were also composed/copied on seasoned palmleaves with the help of iron stylus. In the light of earthern lamps, in the semidarkness of the rural night, the writer or scribe would go on etching words on the palmleaf. No doubt words are not stones. They are not nameless or faceless. When the artist in words takes. them up they have already acquired myriad associations, names and faces, distinct identities. And yet the author would go on building structures of emotion in their various combinations and collages. And when completed, the folios of the manuscript, would be tied up, generally with two flat pieces of smooth wooden planks, plain or coloured, placed at the two ends of the bundle to give it stability and strength. Each folio of the entire manuscript would be pierced in the middle with a string passing through, with which it would be tied up as a book. The seasoning of the palmleaf was an art and science which had been taken to a point of perfection. Its life depended on the degree of proper seasoning to withstand the vagaries of time. What care, what love went into the making of literature through this laborious process! At the end of the work the writer would recount how he had strained his eyes and hands, bent his neck forward for days on end and created the piece of potbi. For all his pains he would expect and beseech the reader to treat it as a son, putrabat paripalayet. In fact hundred of such pothis must have been lost over time, though even today the Pothi Division in Bhubaneswar State Museum has the largest number of potbis in India. Some have many folios broken up or rendered too brittle by the passage of time. Others are still in fairly good condition.
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