Odisha Trivia
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49 free Odisha trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Odisha gave English one of its most forceful words, turned a Mauryan emperor into a pacifist, and still hauls three towering chariots through a seaside pilgrim town every summer. Its coast has the world's biggest nesting beach for one sea turtle, a beach where the sea walks five kilometres out at low tide, and an offshore missile range renamed for a president. The 49 questions cover the state's ancient kingdom and its inscriptions, the 1817 rising it calls a first war of independence, the makers of modern Odia letters, the rituals and food of the great pilgrimage, harvest and womanhood festivals, tiger reserves, waterfalls and mangroves, cloth painting, filigree and tie-dye weaving, and the sprinters, sand artists and politicians who made the state's name. It works for a pub quiz round, a school general-knowledge test or a Utkala Dibasa celebration. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for the table.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Odisha shrine, called the Black Pagoda by European sailors, is built as a huge stone chariot on carved wheels?
Konark Sun Temple
Konark Sun Temple's dark tower was a landmark for ships in the Bay of Bengal, so sailors called it the Black Pagoda; Puri's Jagannath Temple was their White Pagoda.
Q 02Which English word for an unstoppable force comes from the deity whose chariot is hauled through Puri each year?
Juggernaut
Juggernaut is an old English spelling of Jagannath; early European travellers told lurid, probably apocryphal tales of pilgrims crushed under his giant chariot, and the name stuck to anything unstoppable.
Q 03Which Mauryan emperor, sickened by the slaughter of his own Kalinga War, renounced conquest for Buddhism?
Ashoka
Ashoka had his remorse cut into rock: his thirteenth edict admits that 100,000 people were killed and 150,000 deported when he conquered Kalinga.
Q 04Which brackish Odisha lagoon, cut off from the Bay of Bengal by a long sandbar, is home to endangered Irrawaddy dolphins?
Chilika Lake
Chilika Lake was choking on silt and joined Ramsar's danger list in 1993; engineers cut a new mouth to the sea, the fish came back and the lake was taken off the list.
Q 05Which classical dance from Odisha's temples, revived by four gurus around 1950, is known for its tribhangi pose?
Odissi
Odissi is often called the oldest surviving classical dance of India, and the tribhangi and chauka poses it uses appear in Jain Kalpasutra manuscripts discovered in Gujarat.
Q 06When Parliament respelled Orissa as Odisha in 2011, what else did the same bills rename?
Its language
Its language: Oriya became Odia in the same 2011 bills, which Parliament passed after the state assembly asked for English spellings closer to how the names are said.
Q 07Which planned city, laid out by German architect Otto Königsberger, was founded as Odisha's new capital in April 1948?
Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar was drawn up by Königsberger as a string of self-contained neighbourhoods close to nature, laid out beside a temple town many centuries older.
Q 08Which dam across the Mahanadi near Sambalpur, opened by Nehru in 1957, drowned old temples that still resurface each summer?
Hirakud
Hirakud drowned the temples of the villages its reservoir flooded; the heritage trust INTACH has been recording the ruins that the falling water bares each summer.
Q 09Which syrupy sweet won Odisha its own geographical indication tag in 2019, after a long origin feud with West Bengal?
Rasgulla
Rasgulla is central to Odisha's claim: in Puri temple legend, Jagannath returns from his chariot festival to find Lakshmi has locked him out, and wins her round with the sweet.
Q 10Which sport's senior men's World Cup did Odisha host twice within five years, in 2018 and again in 2023?
Hockey
Hockey got a home built for it: for the 2023 edition Odisha raised a brand-new stadium, which Guinness certified as the world's largest fully seated hockey arena.
Q 11Which Odisha city, the state capital until 1948, was the 1897 birthplace of freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose?
Cuttack
Cuttack is squeezed onto a strip of land between two rivers; floods and the lack of room to grow cost it the capital, though the state's high court stayed behind.
Q 12Which hill beside the Daya river, the presumed site of the Kalinga War, holds a peace pagoda built with Japanese help?
Dhauli
Dhauli's rock carries the emperor's edicts with a telling gap: the one confessing the Kalinga bloodshed is left out, replaced by two special edicts telling local officials to govern justly.
Q 13Which 1817 uprising against Company rule, led by Jagabandhu, is hailed in Odisha as the first war of independence?
Paika Rebellion
Q 21To which shrine, said to be the deities' aunt's home, are Puri's chariots hauled each Rath Yatra?
Gundicha Temple
Gundicha Temple stands empty most of the year; the trip comes after a bath of 108 pitchers is said to leave the gods with a fever, and they are kept out of sight until it breaks.
Q 22Which Rath Yatra ritual has the Gajapati king of Puri, the deity's foremost servitor, ceremonially sweep the chariots?
Chhera Pahanra
Chhera Pahanra has the king sweep the chariot floors with a golden broom, a show that before Jagannath even a monarch is only a servant.
Q 23Which tree supplies the wood for Puri's Jagannath idols, carved afresh in the rare Nabakalebara rite?
Neem
Paika Rebellion fighters rallied behind Lord Jagannath as a symbol of Odia unity, and in 2017 the state formally asked Delhi to rank their rising above the 1857 revolt, a request the Union government turned down in Parliament in 2021.
Q 14On what basis was Odisha carved out as a separate province in 1936?
A shared language
A shared language: the province stitched together Odia-speaking districts from Bihar and Orissa, the Madras Presidency and the Central Provinces, after a campaign that began in 1903.
Q 15Which dynasty's ruler Anantavarman began the present Jagannath Temple at Puri in the early 12th century?
Eastern Ganga
Eastern Ganga kings tied their throne to the god: a century later Anangabhima III declared Jagannath the true ruler of the realm and styled himself merely the deity's deputy.
Q 16Which lawyer, honoured as Utkal Gourab, founded the Utkal Sammilani in 1903 to campaign for a united Odisha?
Madhusudan Das
Madhusudan Das never saw it happen: he died in 1934, two years before the united Odia-speaking province he had campaigned for came into being.
Q 17Which Odisha chief minister, a pilot who flew Indonesian leaders past the Dutch, funded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize?
Biju Patnaik
Biju Patnaik flew Sjahrir and other leaders out of Jakarta in a Dakota in July 1947 on fuel from abandoned Japanese dumps, and his donation created the science-popularisation prize in 1952.
Q 18Who, hailed as the father of modern Odia literature, wrote Chha Maana Atha Guntha, about a landlord fleecing poor villagers?
Fakir Mohan Senapati
Fakir Mohan Senapati ran it as a magazine serial from 1897; the title, 'six acres and a third', is the small plot his scheming landlord uses the new colonial courts to seize.
Q 19Which 12th-century poet's Gita Govinda, a lyric on Krishna and Radha, is sung every night in the Jagannath Temple?
Jayadeva
Jayadeva's poem is so bound into the temple's closing rite that the robes the gods wear for the night have lines from the Gita Govinda woven into the silk.
Q 20Which giant wooden chariot, built anew every year, carries Jagannath himself at Puri's Rath Yatra?
Nandighosha
Nandighosha lasts a single festival: once the gods are home, the chariots are dismantled and their timber is burned as fuel in the temple kitchens.
Neem wood does not last like stone or metal, so the idols are periodically carved anew and the old ones buried in a garden inside the temple grounds.
Q 24What wheel of eight-metal alloy tops the Jagannath Temple in Puri, flying a different flag every day?
Nila Chakra
Nila Chakra means blue discus, and the flag tied above it, changed every day, is revered as the equal of the idols in the sanctum below.
Q 25Which Odisha festival of womanhood, when girls play on swings, marks the menstruation of Mother Earth?
Raja Parba
Raja Parba gives the earth the rest owed to a menstruating woman: while it lasts nobody ploughs or digs the soil, and women and girls are excused from housework.
Q 26Which western Odisha harvest festival, held the day after Ganesh Chaturthi, celebrates the season's new rice?
Nuakhai
Nuakhai's new rice goes to the deity first and only then to the family, many of whom travel home for it, before the young greet their elders in the Nuakhai Juhar.
Q 27Which Bargarh festival drama, billed as the world's largest open-air theatre, turns the town into Kansa's kingdom of Mathura?
Dhanu Yatra
Dhanu Yatra gives the actor playing Kansa real sway for eleven days: he tours Bargarh on an elephant and can fine any citizen or official he summons.
Q 28Which Kartik Purnima fair on the Mahanadi bank recalls the overseas trading voyages of ancient Odia mariners?
Bali Jatra
Bali Jatra means 'voyage to Bali', and on the festival morning Odias float tiny boats of paper, banana bark and cork on rivers and ponds in memory of the Sadhaba sailors.
Q 29What name is given to food cooked in earthen pots over firewood in the Jagannath Temple and sold at Ananda Bazaar?
Mahaprasad
Mahaprasad earns the name only after a second offering: food served to Jagannath is carried to the goddess Bimala, and then shared by every caste alike.
Q 30Which peak in Koraput district, rising about 1,672 metres, is the highest point in Odisha?
Deomali
Deomali tops Odisha but not its own range: across the state line in Andhra Pradesh, Arma Konda stands a few metres higher.