Dhanuyatra of Bargarh, the world's biggest open-air theatre, is unique in many respects. It is a theatre having the biggest assembly of actors that a play can ever have, with almost the entire population of Bargarh, a small town of Orissa state and its nearby villages, making up the cast. It is a cultural extravaganza where the same lila pastime play is enacted year after year, but neither the audience nor the actors seem to get tired.

Pandit Samanta Chandra Sekhar Harichandan Mohapatra, locally known as "Pathani Samanta", was the illustrious author of Siddhanta Darpan - a systematic record of his life-long relentless work composed in beautiful metrical Sanskrit verses . Siddhanta Darpan is an astronomical treatise in elegant Sanskrit verses, developed and improved upon the Surya-Siddhanta and the Siddhanta- Siromani of the past.