Jain Remains of Ancient Bengal

by Shubha Majumder | 2017 | 147,217 words

This page relates ‘Geographical as well as Geo-political unit of Zone III’ of the study on the Jain Remains of Ancient Bengal based on the fields of Geography, Archaeology, Art and Iconography. Jainism represents a way of life incorporating non-violence and approaches religion from humanitarian viewpoint. Ancient Bengal comprises modern West Bengal and the Republic of Bangladesh, Eastern India. Here, Jainism was allowed to flourish from the pre-Christian times up until the 10th century CE, along with Buddhism.

Geographical as well as Geo-political unit of Zone III

This zone forms part of two geo-political units of ancient Bengal i.e., Rāḍha and Gauḍa. According to Dilip K. Chakrabarti (2001: 123-125)

The ancient political unit of Gauḍa has generally supposed to have its main focus in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal, especially in view of the location of Karṇasuvarṇa, the capital of the Gauḍa king Śaśāṅk in the seventh century AD in the Chhiruti area, located on the bank of an old course of the Bhagirathi. Excavations in this area led to the identification of the Buddhist monastery of Raktamṛttikā which was also visited by Hsuan Tsang (Das 1968). There are other reports of the finds of later historic antiquities from Murshidabad, both from the Chhiruti area and elsewhere. However, it should not be forgotten that the Kandi area which is not far from Chhiruti has a traditional geographical linkage with the Sainthia area of Birbhum, and if the core–area of Gauḍa was in Murshidabad, that must have included parts of Birbhum too. In fact, N.L.Dey (1899) defines Gauḍa as falling both in Murshidabad and Birbhum. In this whole area only Kotasur is a large and fortified early historic site. This site is near Sainthia and on the bank of the Mayurakshi. I have no hesitation identifying modern Kotasur as the capital of Gauḍa in the early historic period. The ancient name of this capital is not mentioned in any ancient source.

From the post-Gupta period onwards, Gauḍa territory emerged as one of the powerful political units under the leadership of Gauḍa king Śaśāṅka (7th century CE). He ruled his area from Karṇasuvarṇa[1]. However, during this period “Gauda practically became a synonym for Bengal” (Sen 1942: 125). The region stretched between Puṇḍra and Rāḍha, and had Karṇasuvarṇa on the west bank of the Bhagirathi in Murshidabad as its centre (Chakrabarti 2001: 124). Sen (1942: 63-66) consider that the Karṇasuvarṇa not only as Śaśāṅka’s capital but also as a geographical territory. If that be the case, then Gauḍa and Karṇasuvarṇa were may be synonymous (Chakrabarti op. cit.).

The remaining parts of this zone III was known as Rāḍha, another ancient geo-political unit of ancient Bengal and traditionally the region falls to the west of the Bhagirathi course (Dey 1910: 599-618). The Rāḍha region was divided into two parts i.e., the Uttara-Rāḍha and Dakṣiṇa-Rāḍha. In the above pages, we have already discussed about Dakṣiṇa-Rāḍha and we may now talk about its northern counterpart i.e., Uttara-Rāḍha. The zone 2 is the core area of Uttara-Rāḍha. The earliest reference to Uttara-Rāḍha is found in the Indian Museum Plates of Gaṅga king Devendravarman (Chhabra 1984: 73-78) dated 9th century CE. The Tirumalai Rock inscription (early 11th century CE) of Rājendra Cola (Hultzsch 1981: 229-33) mentions Uttira-Lāḍam i.e., Uttara-Rāḍha. The division of Rāḍha is also found in the Belava Copper-plate of Bhojavarman (Majumdar 1929: 14-24; Basak 1982: 37-48) and Naihati Grant of Vallālsena (Majumdar 1929: 68-80). The latter mentions UttaraRāḍha as maṇḍala belonging to Vardhamana-bhukti. However, in the Saktipur Grant of Lakṣmaṇasena this Uttara-Rāḍha region is mentioned as forming a part of Kaṅkagrāma-bhukti (Ganguly 1984: 218).

Archaeologically, this region (Uttara-Rāḍha) has noticeable archaeological potential and several discoveries confirm a strong agrarian setup with a complex social organization and extensive expansion of rural agricultural landscape existed from as early as the Black and Red Were-using cultural phase. Mangalkot is the main habitation site in this area and extensive excavations at the site suggest that it could have been a capital of Uttara-Rāḍha[2] (Chakrabarti 2001, 124-5). This development also continued during subsequent early historic as well as early medieval periods. Quire interestingly, a terracotta Naigameṣa was found during excavation from the Kuṣāṇa level at Mangalkot (Ray & Mukherjee 1992: 120). Naigameṣa as a folk-cult figure is closely associated with Jainism and the find suggests the possibility of penetration of Jain ideology at the folk level from an early date[3]. The evidences, however, are too meager to build up a complete theory.

There is some ambiguity regarding the southern limit of Uttara-Rāḍha. Earlier river Ajay was usually regarded as constituting the boundary line between north and south Rāḍha. However, on the basis of different epigraphic records we may assume that northern Rāḍha comprised the western parts of the modern district of Murshidabad, Birbhum, including some parts of Santal Parganas, and the northern parts of District Burdwan (Raychaudhuri 1971: 22). The river Damodar became the boundary line between Uttara-Rāḍha and Dakṣiṇa-Rāḍha and the southern extension of the Uttara-Rāḍha, apparently covered, the entire Burdwan district area up to the Damodar (Chakrabarti 2001: 125).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

According to Xuanzang’s itinerary we can imagine that he moved from Tan-mo-li-ti to the country of Kie-lo-na-su-fa-la-na and very close to this there was a Buddhist monastery known as Lo-to-mi-chi (Watters 1904-05: 191).

[2]:

According to Dilip. K. Chakrabarti “If a kingdom’s capital was at Mangalkot, it is easy to imagine that the control of a nodal point on the route coming from northern India and going eventually to the Orissan coast was important in the affairs of this kingdom” (2001: 125).

[3]:

According to Jain Kalpa-Sūtra Mahāvira spent some time in Asthikagrāma (Jacobi 1897: Lec. V, Sec 122). The commentary says that it was formerly known by the name Vardhamāna (Jacobi 1984: SBE, Vol XXII: 264/2). According to Dilip. K. Chakrabarti “the modern town of Burduan or Varddhamana/Bardhaman is not an early historic site. Only Mangalkot can be identified with the ancient city of Varddhamana” (2001: 124-25).

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