Nuakhai
Some researchers found the fundamental idea of the celebration can be traced back at least to Vedic times when the rishis (sages) had talked of panchayajna, the five important activities in the annual calendar of an agrarian society.In view of this, Nuakhai may be seen as having evolved out of the third activity, namely pralambana yajna, which involves cutting the first crop and reverently offering it to the mother goddess.In his efforts to build an independent kingdom, Raja Ramai Deo realized the significance of settled agriculture because the subsistence economy of the people in the area was primarily based on hunting and food gathering.During state formation in the Sambalpuri region, Nuakhai as a ritual festival played a major role in promoting agriculture as a way of life.The priest consults the panjika (astrological almanac) and announces the sacred muhurta (a period of time equal to about 48 minutes) when nua is to be taken.Today, however, the system of setting the tithi and lagna and calling elderly persons for a consensus does not happen in urban areas.[12] According to Singh, evidence can be found of the Nuakhai festival been observed by nearly all the major tribes in central and eastern India, with a minor difference in nomenclature.Russel and Hiralal [14] have mentioned the Nawakhani festival of the Paraja, a small tribe found in the Bastar region and Odisha .Bhaduri (1944:149-50)[17] presents a short note on the celebration of a festival of the Tripura known as Mikatal where Mi stands for rice and Katal means new.People from the Odisha now living in Rajasthan Bangalore, Bhopal, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Surat and Visakhapatnam have been celebrating Nuakhai in their new cities for the past few decades.It has lost some of its enormity and variety with the passage of time, but Nuakhai is still an occasion which endorses the patrimonial nature of the Sambalpuri culture and society.