Chandraketugarh: A missing piece in the Bengal puzzle

The unmetalled track makes its way through grassy mounds of earth, sometimes winding past rows of tall trees, sometimes hiding under a mask of vibrant green and sometimes laying bare a random layer of red bricks, before losing itself abruptly in a sea of jute fields that surround it on three sides. It’s the middle of monsoon. The green is lustrous, the earth soft and the sun gentle. It could be a prototype of village idyll.

I stand on the track, facing north, and look at the lush green fields below. It’s harvest time and the men are cutting the crop, tying it up in bundles and stacking them neatly on the track, readying them to be transported. I close my eyes and try to imagine myself in a time machine. I turn the clock 2,500 years back.

As the hands whirr backwards, the track, the trees, the calm fields fade out and make way for a rich, robust town full of life. It’s a fort-city and I’m standing on the brick ramparts. Immediately below me is a bustling hub of potters, their ware stacked up neatly against the rampart. It’s peak hour for trade and well-dressed men adorned in necklaces of colourful beads animatedly haggle for a good bargain. About a mile ahead, the spires of a massive polygonal brick temple proudly hold their heads high. Signs of opulence are evident in every corner of the ancient city.

Voices of men wake me up from my reverie. A few more piles of the crop have arrived to be dumped on the rampart, which the vagaries of time have reduced to a nondescript village track that goes nowhere. Much like the story of Chandraketugarh.

========================================

It was sometime in 2010 or ’11 when I first chanced upon Chandraketugarh while idly surfing the Net on a night shift at work. It was like discovering hidden treasure in the backyard of your house where you have lived forever.

Several months later, when I had nearly forgotten about this conversation, he suddenly told me one day, “I’m going to Chandraketugarh for a story. Do you want to join in?” Do I need say what my answer was?

So, early in the morning on July 8, 2011, he picked me up in the office car and we set off on our date with a slice of Bengal’s history. We had a third person in the team — my colleague’s cousin, who is an archaeologist.

Around 9.30am, we stopped for breakfast at a modest roadside eatery — a shack rather — called Sobuj Restaurant (‘sobuj’ literally means green). Our ‘green restaurant’ had a delightful ‘red board’ (instead of a ‘rate board’) that promised interesting items like ‘sanruiss’ and ‘bonchop’ on the menu, but unfortunately, only the mundane luchi-tarkari was available at that time.

Even as we ate our breakfast, I didn’t know how close we were to our destination. In about 10 minutes after we started again, we were in Berachampa — the modern gateway to Chandraketugarh — merely 38km from Kolkata, under Deganga police station in the district of North 24-Parganas. 

The road forked off here, with one going straight, another going left and the third going right. We went right. The road was quiet, surrounded by tall trees and green fields, no shops or dwellings in sight apart from a small shack that served as a tea stall.

In about five minutes, we came across the first Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) signboard, declaring the ‘protected’ status of the site. The signboard itself was grand proof of how well protected the site actually is. Its iron frame rusting away, the moth-eaten board declares that this ‘P__TECTE_ _ONU____’ is of ‘national importance’ and lists the actions — much of it indecipherable — that can be punishable under the laws of the land.

We got off the car there and walked ahead to find another ASI signboard in Bengali that bans picnics on the ‘protected monument’. Though I had already read up about Chandraketugarh, I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like for someone who chanced upon this site. Mounds of earth, jute fields, and a tree-lined village road off which grazed a cow and on which frolicked some goats and kids. Anyone might ask, “Where exactly is this ‘monument’?” The answer is, “You’re standing on it.”

A little way ahead, on either side of the unmetalled track were the last of the ASI signboards, one in English and one in Bengali, both giving the same message. I will produce the message verbatim because it says a lot about Chandraketugarh, though not everything. Here it is:

“This extensive site comprising an earthen fortification is popularly known as Chandraketugarh being named after a mythical king Chandraketu. Excavation by the Ashutosh Museum of Calcutta University from 1956-57 to 1965-66 revealed continuous sequence of culture divided into six periods from pre-Mauryan to Pala times.

Famous as a repertory of exquisite Sunga terracotta, the site has yielded silver punch marked coins, cast copper coins, coins of Kushana and Gupta periods, beads of different materials, bone objects and many other antiquities. From the nature of ruins and finds it is evident that Chandraketugarh was a prosperous early historical urban settlement.”

========================================

At first sight, the red bricks peeping out of the surface of the unmetalled track make it seem as if the road had been metalled once and years of neglect have worn the top layer off. There seems nothing extraordinary about the bricks. But once you know that they are thousands of years old and you’re actually standing on the ramparts of a fort that might have been built 2,500 years back, it’s a strange feeling.

When I compared Chandraketugarh to buried treasure, it was no exaggeration. Treasure — of the historical kind — is buried just about everywhere in that area. Like the oriental monarchs of yore, King Chandraketu must have been pretty munificent, too. His ‘garh’ (fort) has to this day loyally continued with that tradition, scattering its riches and jewels liberally all around. And that is the biggest problem.

We knew about the potshards. So, we started looking for them immediately once we were on the rampart. But no one has to look too hard. They are everywhere, peeping out of the earth — big and small, some plain, some moulded with a striped pattern on the surface.

As I said, it was mid-monsoon when we went. With the topsoil washed away, more and more of the potshards had come up on the surface. There was literally an overdose of potshards. Our archaeologist friend said he believed there was a hub of potters in this part of the fort, next to the rampart. “That could explain so many potshards,” he said.

“How can you tell if these potshards are new or old,” I asked him. “These could have come at a later age, from bhnars (earthen tea cups) too,” I said. “No, these are old,” he said, and snapped one of the shards in half. “Look,” he said, pointing at the cross section. It was coal-black. “Had it been new, the cross section would have had the colour of the surface,” he explained.

But the potshards are the cheaper jewels, put on mega sale for the proletariat. There are more expensive ones, priceless actually. Earthen figurines — dancing girls, yakshis, couples making love, Hindu deities, the Buddha, floral patterns, animals like rams and elephants, playthings and plaques — are mined in hundreds daily from the 2.5sqkm fort-city that is spread across 11 villages today.

And these priceless antiquities — our past, our 2,500-year-old heritage — leave the country every day for buyers in the First World, making a few people here richer by a few lakhs every time. You’ll find them on sale on Christie’s and Sotheby’s. But I’ll get back to that later.

========================================

A freshly dug excavation site on the rampart, by the side of the track, had already caught our attention. One of the villagers who use the track as an access road to their jute fields told us the people who had been digging the site had left just before the monsoon. Had the ASI renewed excavation at Chandraketugarh then? It seemed so.

The only extensive excavation that has been carried out in Chandraketugarh ever since it was discovered nearly a century back is by the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art, as the ASI board mentions. The site was found accidentally in 1906 when locals found relics while digging tanks. A local resident, Tarak Nath Ghosh, immediately requested the government to investigate the area. A year later, ASI’s A H Longhurst visited the spot and found a huge number of bricks and pottery, but strangely reported that “the ruins are of little or no interest”.

Two years later, in 1909, Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, who would go on to discover the ruins of Mahenjo-daro more that a decade later, visited the site and published his opinion in the Bengali monthly Basumati. Finally, in November 1920, the government announced a few mounds of Chandraketugarh as ‘protected places’ under the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act.

But it was apparently Kalidas Dutt, an author of the archaeology of southern Bengal, who inspired Deva Prasad Ghosh, Kalyan Kumar Ganguly and Kunja Govinda Goswami to take notice of the site. It was due to their efforts that the site was finally excavated by the Asutosh Museum.

Post-2000, some excavations have taken place, but none at a major level.

The trench that we found was also a small one, around 10 feet by 12 feet and about a foot and a half deep. We scanned it to see if we could find something, but there was nothing.

Four local kids were watching us intently as we went about our job. Presently, my senior approached them and after a little small talk, asked them if they had ever got anything from the mounds. It wasn’t too difficult to get them talking and the eldest of the lot, aged around 12, admitted that they regularly get stuff from the site.

We spent the time scanning the mound for something more than potshards — at least beads — but found nothing. It didn’t take long for the boy to return. He had four beads, two amber-coloured and two black-and-white. The black-and-white ones were cylindrical in shape and of the two amber-coloured beads, one was spherical and the other barrel-shaped. The question was, were they genuine?

My senior asked the boy if he would sell the beads. He replied that his uncle was on his way and we would have to strike the deal with him. The skies were already overcast and soon, we were caught in a sharp spell of rain. As we ran for our car, we found that out of nowhere, a bunch of men had gathered nearby, under a temporary thatched-roof shed.

========================================

If Chandraketugarh is a missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of Bengal’s history, Chandraketugarh itself is a puzzle with most of the pieces missing. And there are some pieces that may be a part of the puzzle, or may not. In short, every piece, every story leads to nowhere, just like the rampart-turned-village track, as I’ve said before.

First comes the question: Who was Chandraketu? The undisputed answer: A mythical king. Now what is the local myth associated with King Chandraketu? He seems to be most famous for having a conflict with Hazrat Syed Abbas Ali alias Pir Gorachand, who came to his land to spread Islam.

Apparently King Chandraketu had magical powers. When the Pir asked him to adopt Islam, he showed the Pir a trick. He produced champak (champa) flowers on a fence (bera in Bengali) out of nowhere, giving Berachampa its name.

In fact, all the 11 villages comprising Chandraketugarh today — Berachampa, Rankhola, Ghorapota, Dhanpota, Chuprijhara, Singerati, Shanpukur, Jhikra, Mathbari, Hadipur and Gazitala — have some association with the myth. For instance, Rankhola gets its name from the word ‘rann’ (war); apparently the battle between Chandraketu and the Pir was fought here. Ghorapota and Dhanpota get their names from ‘ghora’ (horse) and ‘dhaan’ (paddy) respectively, for apparently housing the stables and the granary during the king’s reign.

What interests me in all this is the fact that Gorachand seems to be a historical character. His mausoleum (unless it’s a hoax) and dargah lie a few kilometres from Chandraketugarh, in Haroa, where a fair is held annually. The question is, how did a historical character and a mythical one land up in the same folktale?

Secondly, a lot of Bengal’s history is known today. It dates back to prehistoric times, at least 20,000 years back. Stone-age tools have been found in the state. The people find mention in the Puranas and the Mahabharata. Known history says that Bengal (the geographical boundaries changed from time to time) was sometimes unified into a single powerful kingdom, sometimes split up into small independent ones and sometimes merged into a central kingdom, say during the Mauryas or the Guptas.

Except for a period of around 150 years from circa 625 AD to 750 AD, when Bengal suffered under what is called the ‘Matsyanyaya’ — a state of anarchy where the big fish eat up the small fish, that is petty chieftains fought one another for power in the absence of a central ruler — there is a record of Bengal rulers. But it’s also true that much of the history in the Pre-Gupta times is obscure.

The question is, how did all of it completely vanish from local collective memory? Instead of all the ‘real’ rulers who reigned over this region for 1,500 years, how did a mythical king manage to stake claim over the fort-city?

Now comes the third piece of the puzzle. Or rather, a piece that may or may not be a piece of the Chandraketugarh puzzle but is a tremendously strong contender. Ptolemy’s Gangaridai. Several ancient Greek and Latin historians — including Megasthenes, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch — suggested that Alexander withdrew from India fearing a joint counterattack by the mighty Gangaridai and Prasii empires. The latter is located in present-day Bihar. But where was Gangaridai located?

According to Ptolemy, Gangaridai occupied the entire region covered by the five mouths of the Ganges and the royal residence was in the city of Gange. There are several accounts of Gangaridai — Greek, Latin and Egyptian, spelling it sometimes as ‘Gangaridae’, ‘Gandaridai’, ‘Gangaritai’ or ‘Gangaridum’ — but all suggest that it was located in the deltas of southern Bengal.

The city of Gange has never been found. Is Chandraketugarh the lost city?

Its geographical location suggests so. The discovery of a large number of seals with images of ships implies that Chandraketugarh was a port city. Though it’s nowhere close to a river today, the site’s located in the delta of the mighty Ganga, which is notorious for changing course.

Besides, even today, the site lies merely 10km north of the dying Vidyadhari, which used to be a strong navigable river once that opened up to the Adi Ganga, the original course of the Ganga which has been reduced to a mere canal now. Through this route, the kingdom of Chandraketugarh could have had easy access to the sea.

Now comes the fourth and last known big piece of the puzzle: Khana-Mihirer Dhipi (the mound of Khana-Mihir) — the only site that saw massive excavation by the Asutosh Museum in the 1950s and ’60s, which revealed a massive polygonal north-facing Vishnu temple dating back to the Pala Period (previously thought Gupta Period). And it’s this site that we presently headed for.

Astrologers' mound

The question in the fourth piece of the puzzle is, how did Khana, Varaha and Mihir come to be associated with Chandraketugarh? Varaha-Mihir (some say it was one person, some say it was a father-son duo) was one of the Navaratnas (nine jewels) in the court of Chandragupta II, also known as Chandragupta Vikramaditya. He (or they) was an astrologer, mathematician and astronomer.

A little adventure

All six pics above were clicked at Khana-Mihirer Dhipi

That's a combination of history and 'fake history'. All left to rot together in cement sacks in the open

Five of these pieces cost Rs 500. The 'price' of priceless treasure

Any hope?

Terracotta plaques in Dilip Maite's private museum

Chandraketugarh Seals with Brahmi inscriptions in Dilip Maite's private museum. Similar seals were found in Mohenjo-Daro, too

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(I have referred to some sites for information on the history of Bengal and Chandraketugarh. The links are here:
1. http://www.historyofbengal.com
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bengal
In anyone thinks some of the information provided in this piece are incorrect, please feel free to let me know.
And here is the link to the story my senior did after our Chandraketugarh trip.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JS00vMjAxMS8wNy8yMyNBcjAwMjAw&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom )