About
"ଦି ସ୍ମରଣିକା" / “The Smaranika” (thesmaranika.blogspot.com) has its roots in Odisha, the eastern state of India and the land of Lord Jagannath. The official language of Odisha is Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ), which has received classical status from Government of India for having a long literary history and not having borrowed heavily from other languages.
"The Smaranika" is a community project, primarily aimed at Odia community & people having interest in Odia language & culture across the globe, where content is predominantly provided in Odia & English. Presenting content in English language will certainly help non-Odia speakers experience the sweetness of Odia language. It is worth noting that "The Smaranika", depending upon the need, also presents some content in various other languages including but not limited to: Sanskrit, Hindi, English, Bangla, Awadhi, Marathi etc.
Why The Smaranika?
As of 2020, it is estimated that there are around 44 million (44,270,000) native speakers of Odia language all over the world out of which 0.2 million (237,000) reside outside India*. * Sources: (1) Census India, (2) Wikipedia
Although there are around 44 million speakers of Odia language all over the world, there is a dearth of digital content available in Odia language script compared to other major languages in India. This could be the reason why search engines like Google and Bing are unable to find and index enough content written in Odia language script on the web and hence are unable to offer “ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Odia)" as a language to search on their search platforms. As of September 2020, the list of Indian languages that Google and Bing offer to search on their search platforms are:
- हिन्दी (Hindi)
- বাংলা (Bangla)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- मराठी (Marathi)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- ગુજરાતી (Gujarati)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- മലയാളം (Malayalam)
- ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi)
Unfortunately, “ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Odia)” language is not there in the list above. “The Smaranika” tries to address this gap of availability of digital content in Odia language script on the internet. Every aspect of “The Smaranika” revolves around Odia language and Odia culture. The sole purpose of existence of “The Smaranika” can be summarized as:
- To promote Odia language and culture
- To enhance public access to Odia literature/artworks/culture worldwide
- Present literary works of other languages to Odia community in Odia language
- To encourage more users to read and write in Odia language on digital platforms such as smartphones, computers etc.
- To encourage publishers to write in Odia language instead of transliterating Odia in English
- To help search engines like Google and Bing index more digital content in Odia language script so that they can offer “ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Odia)” as an option to search on their platforms
- To help individuals and organizations in their works related to Odia language, especially in digitizing content in Odia language script
A Brief History of “The Smaranika”
To keep our users informed, we will present a brief history of "The Smaranika" here. It was launched on Blogger as “thesmaranika.blogspot.com”, on Friday, 24th February 2012. After the launch, a few posts were published in the initial days and slowly work on “The Smaranika” almost stopped due to unavoidable reasons. However, the work started again in full swing in 2018.
Image : First post published on “The Smaranika” on 25th February 2012
Table : The Smaranika's journey since inception
