Sarala Dasa

Sarala Dasa was an Odia poet of the fifteenth century, the age of Gajapati Kapilendra Deva (d. 1466), honoured as the Adi Kabi, or First Poet, of Odia literature. Born into a farming family with little formal schooling, tradition tells that the goddess Sarala heard him singing while ploughing his father's field and granted him the gift of poetry.

He was the first major writer to compose in Odia rather than Sanskrit, giving ordinary readers the Sarala Mahabharata, the Vilanka Ramayana and the Chandi Purana.