Soma-vamsi Yayati I (circa A.D. 922–55) has been called as ‘the father of modern Orissa’ by no less a person than K.C. Panigrahi, the celebrated historian of Odisha. As the ancient king Jajati Kesari, supposed to be Somavamsi Yayati I, occupies an important place in the Odisha’s traditions, public memory, Odia literature and in Odisha’s historiography such a claim appears to be quite natural. Panigrahi’s claim rests primarily on the legendary traditions centring round the king Jajati Kesari and medieval Odia literary texts such as Mahabharata by Raja Krushna Singh and the fifteenth century epic Sarala Mahabharata. Recently, however, scholars such as Snigdha and Tripathy, Susmita Arp and Hermann Kulke have challenged the authenticity of the Mahabharata by Raja Krushna Singh and these legendary traditions, as being unreliable. This article, attempts to closely examine the reliability and acceptability of these legendary traditions and literary texts, and focuses on the Sarala Mahabharata as a possible historical source material. In addition, it will also seek to show how in the early years of Odia identity construction historians as well as other men of letters of the Odia speaking tracts made an endeavour to make Yayati Kesari an icon of Odia identity which, in turn, might have indirectly induced Panigrahi to advance such a claim.
