Bhanj

The Bhanjas were one of Odisha's oldest chiefly lines, emerging in the Khinjali and Khijjinga mandalas as feudatories of the Bhauma-Kara kings. Two Bhanja princesses occupied that throne in the tenth century. The Khinjali branch was centred on Dhritipura, modern Boudh.

In the fourteenth century a childless Brahmin chieftain of Baudh adopted a Bhanja nephew of the raja of Keonjhar, who ruled as Ananga Deva and founded the Baudh line. In 1498 the Daspalla appanage of a younger son broke away from Baudh. Other branches held Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and Ghumusar, where the poet-king Upendra Bhanja made his court a centre of Odia letters.

The Bhanja states served the Eastern Gangas and the Gajapati Empire before passing under British paramountcy. Ghumusar was annexed in 1835 after the Ghumusar rebellion of 1835–36, while Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar survived as princely states.