From its earliest known history, the land roughly corresponding to present-day Odisha has been known by several names, most notably Utkala (or Okkala), Kalinga, and Odra Desha (or Oddaka), which were used in ancient literature to refer to specific tribes. The ancient Greeks knew the latter two groups as Kalingai and Oretes. These names eventually became associated with specific territories.

In the early stages of Indian history, Kalinga was already a prominent and powerful political entity. Buddhist texts mention the rule of King Brahmadatta in Kalinga at the time of Buddha’s death, which falls between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. In the 4th century BCE, Mahapadma Nanda, the founder of the Nanda dynasty and the first empire builder of India, conquered Kalinga, but Nanda rule did not last long. In 260 BCE, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga and fought one of the greatest battles of ancient history. Following this, he renounced warfare, converted to Buddhism, and propagated peace and non-violence both within and outside India. In the 1st century BCE, the Kalinga emperor Kharavela conquered vast territories, which together constituted the Kalinga Empire.

In the 1st century CE, Kalinga emerged as a maritime power. Its overseas activities likely included the establishment of the Shailendra kingdom on the Southeast Asian island of Java (now in Indonesia) in the 8th century. During the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries, Kalinga was ruled by the powerful Bhauma-Kara dynasty, followed by the Soma kings until the 11th century. The construction of the 11th-century Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar, one of the largest Shiva temples in India, was initiated by the Soma king Yayati.

Under the rule of the Ganga dynasty, Kalinga witnessed a golden age. The Ganga ruler Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva (1078–1147) established Cuttack as his capital and ruled from the Ganges River to the Godavari River. He initiated the construction of the Jagannath (“Lord of the World”) temple in Puri. Narasimha I (1238–64) built the Sun Temple (Surya Deula) at Konark, one of the finest examples of Hindu architecture. In the 13th and 14th centuries, when much of India came under Muslim rule, independent Kalinga remained a stronghold of Hinduism, philosophy, art, and architecture.

The Ganga dynasty was followed by the Surya dynasty. Its first king, Kapilendra (1435–66), conquered territories from his Muslim neighbors and greatly expanded the Kalinga kingdom. His successor, Purushottam, barely managed to maintain these conquests. The next and last Surya king, Prataparudra, became a disciple of the great Hindu saint Chaitanya and adopted a pacifist stance. After Prataparudra’s death in 1540, the kingdom’s power declined, and in 1568, when King Mukunda was killed by his own countrymen, it lost its independence to the Afghan rulers of Bengal.

It was during the period between the 11th and 16th centuries that the name Kalinga fell into disuse. It was replaced by the older tribal name Odra Desha, which gradually evolved into Odisha (or Uddisha, or Orissa), which became Orissa in English; this spelling persisted until the original Odisha was reinstated in the early 21st century. The language of the region came to be known as Odia.

The Mughal emperor Akbar conquered Odisha from the Afghans in 1590–92. When the Mughal Empire declined in the mid-18th century, part of Odisha remained under the Nawabs of Bengal (provincial governors of Mughal India), but the larger portion passed to the Marathas, who ruled much of southern India between the 16th and 19th centuries. The Bengal portion came under British rule after the Battle of Plassey (near present-day Palashi) in 1757, and the Maratha portion was annexed by the British in 1803. Although the British controlled the entire Odia-speaking region after 1803, it continued to be administered as two separate units. It was not until April 1, 1936, that the British heeded demands for linguistic unification and constituted Orissa as a separate province. However, 26 Odia princely states remained outside the provincial administration. After India’s independence in 1947, the territory of Odisha was expanded to include all the princely states except for Seraikela and Kharsawan, which were merged into Bihar. Odisha became a state of India in 1950.