Books
The first odia printed book, New Testanment, came out in 1807 from the Serampore Press in the neighbouring Bengal. Interestingly it was followed in 1811 by a ‘Word Book’ titled ‘A Vocabulary: Ooriya And English For The Use Of Students’. With the establishment of English schools need for text books arose and these were also printed at Serampore.
Thus most of the Odia books printed before 1850 were reliogious books, text books on grammar and general topics and dictionaries. Author of most of these books were European Missionaries who had learned the language with help from their Odia assistants. Most notable of these was a dictionary in 3 volumes by published during 1841-43. The text book on physical science – ‘Padarthabidya Sara’ – by Amos Sutton published in 1832 was the first science book printed in Odia.
The table below lists most of the digitized books available on this site. These can be sorted as desired by clicking on the arrows next to the headers in the first row. The number of entries to be displayed on a page can be set on the ‘Show__entries’ window and the entire database can be searched through the ‘search’ window on the right. Several other books are to be found under Compilation and Reference categories which can be accessed through the links on the left.
All books listed in the table below can be opened/downloaded via the links given in the last two columns. The ‘preview’ links will show a few pages to give an idea about the book. The complete book can be downloaded by clicking on the ‘Download’ link OR by clicking while pressing the control key OR right clicking on it and choosing open/save as desired.
Lists of the books included in the table below and the list of contributors can be viewed/downloaded in pdf format by clicking on the links below.