Geographical Setting of Zone III

The present zone is associated with the western bank of Bhagirathi including the Mayurakshi Plain and the lower Ajay river valley comprising the present districts of Birbhum, Murshidabad and the north-eastern and central parts of Burdwan (Fig. 2.9). Here we could identify two different geo-physical traits i.e., the eastern alluvial section of this zone with close parallels to the main Ganga plain landscape whereas the western part is gentle sloping towards the east and it is the eastern extension of the Chhotanagpur plateau. This western land is full of lateritic and rocky tracts which have hills in some areas (Chakrabarti 2001:103).

The districts of Birbhum and Murshidabad fall within this zone and both of them bear geographically unique features. In district Birbhum one can observe the continuation of the Chhotanagpur plateau, gradually merging into the Gangetic alluvium zone. The main rivers, from south to north, are Bansloi, Brahmani, Dwaraka, Mayurakshi, Bakreshwar, Kopai and Ajay. These rivers carry a great volume of water in the rainy season, often resulting in floods (Chakrabarti 1993: 174). On the other hand the river Bhagirathi flowing from north to south in Murshidabad district divides it into two almost equal halves. The tract to the west of the river is locally known as Rāḍha and the tract to the east known as Bāgḍī^[1].

L.S.S. O”Mally (1997: 2-3) described the western tract of this district as:

…. a continuation of the sub-Vindhyan region of lateritic clay and nodular limestone. The land is, as already stated, high and slightly undulating, but is interspersed with numerous swamps and beds of old rivers……..The soil grayish or reddish, mixed with lime and oxide of iron; and beds of nodular limestone (kankar) are scattered here and there.

The main rivers in this tract are the Bhagirathi, Bhairab, and Mayurakshi.

The present zone also includes the north-eastern and central parts of District Burdwan. Geo-morphologically this part of Burdwan district is different from its north-western part. The latter is characterized by undulating and occasionally rocky landscape (this portion of the Burdwan district is including in the zone I of the present study). The north-eastern and central parts of the district are geo-morphologically the part of alluvial plains on middle Holocene terraced sediments and para-deltaic fan deposits combined with “Late Pleistocene (?)” to early Holocene terraced sediments brought by the Ajay rivers and many of their tributaries and now dried up palaeo-channels (Ghosh and Majumdar 1991: 7-40), thus representing evidently younger geomorphological phenomena.

Figure 2.9. Map showing the zone III of the present study area (with colour)

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The Bāgḍī or the eastern tract is basically the alluvial plains formed by the rivers Ganga, Bhagirathi and Jalangi. This land mass is geo-morphologically very much new and hardly we found any archaeological antiquities from this area. Till date none of the Jain antiquities are reported from this area and during our survey we also felt to trace the any type of Jain remains from this part of the Murshidabad district. This Bāgḍī can be explaining as the Bengali form for Vagghaaḍi or Vagghaḍī, which represents in Prakrit the Sanskrit form Vyāghrataṭī. This Vyāghrataṭī may correspond to the whole delta between the Ganges and the Brahmaputra including the present city Calcutta. In the absence of definite proof it is very difficult to denote the actual geographical limits of the region. The Vyāghrataṭī became Vyāghrataṭī-maṇḍala (Sircar 1982/2009: 90), a political division during the reign of Dharmapāla (8^th century or early 9^th century CE). In this context it should be remind us that though the Bāgḍī and “Vyāghrataṭī” seem to be akin to each other from the linguistic point of view, it need not be regarded as certain that Bāgḍī of later times was the exact geographical replica of the Vyāghrataṭī of the earlier period.