Bangladesh Unlocked

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN CEMENT, BANGLADESH

2012-03-06T22:55:00.000+06:00

It would be churlish, on visiting many of the 19^th Century masterpieces of architecture that are many of the 120 and more palaces that grace the land of Bangladesh, to fail to notice that some of the most enduring features of the buildings, so many of which are decaying beyond repair or have already fallen into ruin, is the intricate cement work of the neo classical columns, and especially the capitols

Acanthus leaves worked intricately in concrete can be seen in so many of these impressive establishments and, like the ceramic mosaic work that embellishes many of these places, is clearly a masterpiece of craftsmanship.

At first glance, it is hard to believe that countless fascias are not of marble, or at least granite or Portland stone, finely worked by expert masons and architectural sculptors, but such is the advancing decay of the columns that it is not hard to tell that all are of brick, faced with concrete.

Hard stones, such as basalt, marble, and granite are unknown in the deltaic lands and little used in building since the 1st millennium when extensively imported and used in the many Vihara of the developing Buddhism.

We are told that, in Europe in the middle of 19^th Century, on the palaces of which period this feature is first noticeable, craftsmen had no skills for such intricate work. And the endurance of the work bears greater testimony to the craftsmanship of the period!

AN ASHOKAN PILLAR IN BANGLADESH?

2012-03-01T22:04:00.000+06:00

In rural Bangladesh, a Buddhist pillar stands in a rice field.

In the corner of a far-flung rice field, in a remote part of Rajshahi, close to the Indian border, stands the 12 foot remains of a broken black Basalt pillar. The edifice leans, a little drunkenly, it appears an attempt to bring the monument down instead broke it, and left it at its angle of slant.

The Pillar, possibly placed by Ashoka, now stands broken and at a slant.

The engravings of lotus petals around the base mark the likelihood of Buddhist origins. And basalt, not a local stone, but one imported from the distant Himalayan foothills, was certainly the favoured material for much of the sculpted architectural detail as well as the sculptures themselves, placed in the large number of ruined Buddhist Vihara which abound in the area.

Inscriptions surround the base of the Basalt Pillar

Famous Vihara, such as the great Paharpur and fascinating Jahagadhal, are not far distant from this site. The basalt column stands close to a hill that is fairly evidently itself covering, in mud and brick, the site of yet another previously unlisted vihara, now adopted as a Hindu place of worship. Indeed the local Hindu community has also very evidently adopted the Buddhist pillar as an object of veneration.

Bhima's Pillar, Mongolbari, Joypurhat, Rajshahi

Graffiti abounds on the column, some clearly dated in the 18^th century, deeply inscribed. But by far the most fascinating of the inscriptions is a large, skilfully executed panel of copy in an ancient script, not immediately identifiable.

We know that the 3^rd Mauryan Emperor, Ashoka, whose conversion to Buddhism is well documented, placed pillars to mark where the Buddha himself taught, such as the famous pillar in Delhi.

Script on the Ashokan pillar in Delhi, India.

We are also fairly certain that the Buddha, under the patronage of his first notable convert, the 5^th Century BCE King of Magadha, Bimbisara, preached across the Magadha Kingdom, which reached as far as the Old Brahmaputra. The 3^rd Century CE Chinese Monk Fa Xiang notes the existence of Ashokan pillars in a number of locations in what are now the lands of Bangladesh.

Script on the broken pillar in Rajshahi, Bangladesh

However, it appears that whatever stream of history was responsible for the termination of the rich Buddhist history in Bangladesh... so rich that describing the area as ‘The cradle of Buddhism’ is probably reasonable... made concerted efforts to both destroy the architectural evidence, and, in many cases, recycled the basalt, granite, and marble used by Buddhists into more recent constructions including mosques and temples. And it may well be that the state of this great pillar with a diameter of about the 18inches, represents a small part of that orgy of destruction.

The size, stone, location, evident age, and the panel of script, are all characteristic of these rare but famed pillars. This may well prove to be the only such pillar still standing in the lands of Bangladesh.

If it should prove to be so, it would be the first tangible evidence of the place of these ancient lands around the very ancient Southwest Silk Road, in the unique history of the Buddhist faith.

An Ashokan Pillar in Bangladesh?

SMALL GOLDEN MOSQUE (CHOTA SHONA), CHAPAI NAWABGANJ

2012-02-28T02:12:00.000+06:00

Chota Shona (Small Golden Mosque) in Chapai Nawabganj

There were, it seems, two mosques in ancient Gaur with gold leaf covered domes. The one that now stands in Chapai Nawabganj is the smaller of the two, but said to be the prettier.

Architectural Detail; Chapai Nawabganj

Constructed in the 15^th Century it, like the famous Kasumba Mosque, makes extensive use of Buddhist basalt architectural pieces to clad the brick built form. There is even said to be one piece of basalt that bears Islamic inscription on one side and Buddhist on the reverse!

It is apparent however, that the builders ran out of such cladding for about a third of the rear, which remains brick clad, and with evidence of an abrupt termination of the use of basalt.

Black Basalt surrounding brick; Small Golden Mosque

The approach to the Ladies gallery is ruinous, and the entry arch has not been well restored, but the paved courtyard is impressive, as is the interior with its jigsaw puzzle of decoration.

One of the oldest, and certainly, one of the finest examples of its kind, like Kasumba, more ‘accessible’ than, for example, the huge so called ’60 Dome Mosque’ of Bagerhat in Khulna Division, which is more or less contemporary as a piece of pre Mughal work.

Its splendour is arguably overshadowed by the nearby Mughal mosques at Takahama, but it is certainly one of the ‘must visits’ of an area crowded with the archaeology of the extraordinarily rich history of virtually the whole of Bangladesh.

Chota Shona Mosque, Chapai Nawabganj Bangladesh

SHIVA TEMPLE, MANIKGANJ

2012-02-22T03:37:00.000+06:00

Shiva Temple, Bangladesh

Amongst a large store of photography of the many hidden treasures of Bangladesh, it is a picture of this late19th Century temple that seems to arrest the attention of, far and away, the majority of visitors.

Clutched in the embrace of the sacred Bodhi tree, the remains of this sacred building seems, almost, to be a metaphor for the archaeology and rich religious history of Bangladesh.

Bodhi (Sacred Fig) Tree

It marks the considerable wealth of the country that could afford its building, not much over 100 years ago; one of literally thousands of such Hindu shrines and Temples that are sadly being neglected and left to ruin across the country. It also seems, in its own way, to represent the unique fusion in the lands of Bangladesh of the Hindu and Buddhist religions.

Shiva Temple

The tree is regarded as sacred in many belief groups, and is often found at a social centre of communities but is especially associated with Buddhism since the Buddha himself found enlightenment beneath one such tree. Thus to have a Bo tree wrapped around the Hindu remnant seems almost symbolic. And that both appear to be not much longer for this world may sadly be just as symbolic in this country.

KITE RUNNERS AND FIRE EATERS IN DHAKA, BANGLADESH

2012-02-17T06:24:00.000+06:00

A paper kite flying over Old Dhaka

Flying Kites at Pouch Sankranti

Who needs an excuse for a celebration? In Dhaka, on January 14^th every year (it is rumoured that in a Leap Year like this, it could be 15^th! But we saw no evidence of that this year), the young people of the Old City celebrate Pouch Sankranti.

Kites for sale in Old Dhaka

Dhaka, as the many temples and shrines bear mute testimony, was once a predominantly Hindu city, and Pouch Sankranti is the last day of the Bengali month of Pouch, which has its traditions in ancient harvest festivals with a strong animist flavour.

Kites flying over the skyline of Dhaka in celebration of the festival

Whatever the cause of the celebration, the Kite Festival probably goes back as far into the mists of time as the festival immortalised in Khaled Hosseini’s, ‘The Kite Runner’, as the heart of this day’s kite flying is also the drama of kite fighting and kite cutting.

Days before, the shops of the Old City are full of kites of many colours and designs, together with the great hand rolls of thread.

The real work of the aficionados lies in the mixing of the gel and the ground glass which, when applied to the kite threads, is capable of cutting through the threads of other kits. Aerial combat at its most primitive!

Dhaka Kite Festival, 2012

From early afternoon, the rooftops of the city are crowded with the young people fulfilling this rite of passage. Whilst the old hands say there was a time when the sky was full of kites, today the young men, especially, drag themselves away from their video games in sufficient numbers to make the spectacle quite thrilling.

As the twilight rapidly falls beacons illuminate the skyline and it is then that the Fire eaters take to the kerosene.

Fire Eaters at the Pouch Sankranti festival

‘Great balls of fire’ may, to many, be a cliché of early Rock and Roll, but here on the night skyline of Dhaka as a festive day draws to a close, it is easy to see just what it means, and the bravado that makes it such a show.

Blowing Fire, Bangladesh

The festival may have its roots in tradition, and even in the ancient Hindu religion that evolved from its prehistoric roots in the lands around this ancient city, but the integration, even fusion of the four great religious traditions of Bangladesh, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Islam, is conspicuous in this ancient capital which today houses one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, the Suni Muslims of Bangladesh.

Kite flying is popular across the South Asian region and can be seen any evening in many of the ancient towns. Once a year though, in this teeming, densely populated old capital on the banks of the Old Ganges, the skies and skyline are taken over by this spectacle; the most harmless fighting tradition imaginable.

FIELDS OF MUSTARD. BANGLADESH

2012-02-14T06:00:00.000+06:00

As winter deepens in this country that lies athwart the Tropic of Cancer, the landscape is coloured, across the country, with vast swathes of fields of Mustard, lending an impressive, almost magical quality to the almost endless views across the deltaic plains.

The seeds are squeezed in mills to produce Mustard Oil, widely used domestically in cooking, and also dried as the basic ingredient of the yellow condiment much loved on the dining tables of the world and that so enriched the Colman family of Victorian Britain. The plants are mulched back to feed the already rich soils.

A by product of Mustard, courtesy of the legendary busy workers on whom it depends, is the Mustard Seed honey. Many corners of the apparently endless fields of mustard are taken up with the tiny homes of these busy bees, to produce one of the tastiest honeys in the world.

SHAPLAPUR FISHING FLEET

2012-02-07T23:04:00.000+06:00

Fishing Boats at Shaplapur, Bangladesh

Few fishing communities in the world today can perhaps be home to such a numerous fleet of fishing boats. Add to that, the distinctive and unique curvature of the hull shapes, the brightly painted bows, and the multicoloured signal flags and you have a great photograph.

Shaplapur, named curiously for the lotus flower, of which none are visible and frankly, so close to the beach, none expected, lies about half way along the 120 km world’s longest continuous sea beach south of Cox’s Bazar. Getting the catch to market used to be a tortuous business, but the recently constructed coast road, offering wonderful vistas of this largely unspoilt beach, has now been built as far as this small community, en route for Teknaf, on the Myanmar border.

No visit to this coastal resort area can possibly be complete without making the journey, a mere hour or so from the town of Cox’s Bazar. The people are still unused to visitors and find time, even whilst readying the boats to put to sea for a long night of fishing, for smiling, and even chatting, their welcome clear.

HARVESTING THE DATE PALM JUICE

2012-02-02T00:41:00.000+06:00

Date Palm Tree in Bangladesh

Date palms, said to originate in the Gulf area of the Middle East, were probably brought to the lands of Bangladesh by the Arab Traders who traded here during the early last Millennium BCE and are still commonly found in Bangladesh today.

By scraping the soft part of the stem below the cluster of leaves, a sweet juice can be encouraged to ooze into a jar attached to the tree below the scrape.

Harvesting Date Palm Juice

The juice is often crystallised into sugar, although around South Asia it may also be served as a bitter sweet beverage or sometimes distilled into a wine with a rather high alcoholic content.

More commonly seen in the north of Bangladesh where the summer temperatures suit the palm better, these plants are a common sight throughout the country.

KOROTIA RAJBARI, TANGAIL

2012-01-28T22:08:00.000+06:00

Korotia Rajbari

The last Zaminder of Korotia, Wazid Ali Khan Panni, was, for a while, in 1921 imprisoned for his membership in the anti British association Swadeshi. Subsequently chairing the meeting at which the Muslim League was formed, his independence activism earned him the nickname ‘Atiar Chand’.

He was the grandson of Sa’dat Ali Khan Panni, who seems to have acquired the Zamindari of Korotia in the latter part of the 19^th Century. But his family history goes back hundreds of years, including the last Pashtun King of Bengal Daud Khan Karrani who was executed on the orders of the all conquering Akbar, the first of the great Mughal Emperors.

Korotia Rajbari, Tangail

The family of Daud’s brother, Sayeed Khan Panni, having won the favour of Aurangzeb, the 6^th Mughal Emperor, was awarded an estate at Atia in Tangail, and so this distinguished family arrived in the area.

One of the pavilions at Korotia Zamindari

The two main pavilions of the Rajbari were built in 1899 and 1906, both splendid examples of the architecture of their time with Chinese, Islamic and neo classical influences detectable on the palace built in 1906, which is now occupied by a school.

The grandson of the great Wazid still lives in the earlier palace and is active in local affairs, as one might expect of the grandson of a man so distinguished, but whose history cannot rescue the Rajbari from its steadily advancing state of decline.

Korotia Rajbari

It is probable that the history of the Zaminders of Korotia is more accessible than most, not only because of the lineage and their involvement in the independence movement, but also for the considerable patronage given to enhancing the lives of the those within the influence of the zamindari, especially in the field of education through the founding of local schools and colleges.

Heading from Dhaka to Jamuna, many tourists pass close to this fascinating illustration and illumination of the rich history of Bangladesh, but sadly few are aware that only a short detour from their route would lead to discovery.

RAMU: SIGNS OF ANCIENT RICHES

2012-01-25T05:58:00.000+06:00

The town of Ramu, on the South East coast of Bangladesh close to the rather better known seaside holiday destination of Cox Bazar, is, as we have remarked before, probably one of the most ancient towns in the whole of the Indian sub continent. But what makes it stand out most clearly, in an ever growing pantheon of ancient towns and cities in Bangladesh, is the fact that it is marked, by name, on Ptolemy’s 2^nd Century CE map of the area.

Since the major dwellings and other buildings of what was once the Kingdom of Arakan, before being finally annexed by the British to the lands of Bengal in the mid 19^th Century, were built almost entirely of wood, there remain few signs of the lifestyle of the aristocracy, or plutocracy, of the area.

At Sikderpara, close to Ramu, what is clearly the ancient burial ground of a Mosque that has been replaced, perhaps many times over the years, stand the decaying remains of these unusually fine Mazars, with legible dating to the early 19^th Century.

The name Sikder, still to be found as a family name in Bangladesh, like so many of the family names, including the common Chowdhury, denotes a title, rather than simply a name, a landholder in the complex hierarchy of ancient administration and control.

The villagers tell that there used to be a rather grand wooden house which was the family home of those whose mortal remains lie in this burial ground, revealing in their decaying splendour the riches that were once an everyday sight of hereabouts.

DARASHBARI MOSQUE AND MADRASSA, CHAPAI NAWABGANJ

2012-01-22T05:29:00.000+06:00

It is quite apparent from first glance that this outstanding, Mughal period structure encapsulates the religious history of the area.

The banked approach immediately suggests the rising ground of the not completely excavated Buddhist Vihara, and the large amount of clearly Buddhist architecture, as well as spare pieces of black basalt, confirms the impression.

Built, it seems fair the guess, in the mid 17^th Century, this is a large building, constructed, perhaps, to match the size of the earlier Buddhist structure. There are also grounds for suspecting Hindu architectural work within the building.

Unlike the nearby Small Golden Mosque and the famous Kasumba Mosque, there has been no attempt to face the mosque with Buddhist architectural pieces.

However, Buddhist pillars were evidently a mainstay of the large structure, and jigsaw puzzles of what looks like Hindu terracotta work line the special parts of the walls, especially the line of the mihrab, that betray its use as a Madrassa, with a number of teachers.

A little barn like now, it must have been an impressive sight in its heyday, about the time the English took control of governance of the area.

BANGLADESH. YES, WE HAVE SOME TOMATOES!

2012-01-19T03:42:00.000+06:00

Rajshahi is generally regarded as the ‘Garden of Bangladesh’, especially for its incredible summer fruit crops including Lychee and, above all, something like 2,000 varieties of tasty, juicy Mangoes.

But the verdant agricultural riches certainly don’t stop there! In an area that was once famous for producing Indigo as well the world’s highest quality Opium, the fields are now turned to less controversial crops of vegetables.

Driving through the Ganges side lands in the south of the Division at this time of year, the fields can be seen to be bright with the tomato crops; especially where the fruit/vegetable has been picked and is gathered for sale, storage and no doubt many other uses, though in truth, no one seems to know about Tomato Chutney.

And certainly there seems to be no suggestion of Spanish style tomato fights! But as a colourful scene, they make for great pictures.

REOPENING THE TREASURE CHEST AT WARI BATESHWAR

2012-01-16T01:38:00.000+06:00

As the onset of winter dries the last of the summer deluges, the 11^th season of excavation opens at Wari Bateshwar, in Narshingdhi near Dhaka.

Under the direction of Professor Sufi M. Rahman of Jahangirnagar University, the annual excavations are slowly proving what 70 years of surface finds in the community had suggested, that this was a flourishing community from well before the Common Era.

Semi precious stones and precious metals, beads, jewellery, tools, weapons and ornaments of iron and bronze, a trove of punch marked silver coins carbon dated to 600BCE, pottery, and evidence of manufacturing all this treasure have confirmed that this was part of an industrialised and commerce based community from at least the early centuries of the 1^st Millennium BCE.

It is becoming clear that the industrial civilisation of the Gangetic Plains, one of the earliest civilisations in the world, emerging probably in the late 3^rd or early 2nd Millennium BCE, reached as far as the Ganges Delta. Which is unsurprising considering the evolution of industrial production assumes trade as a factor, and there is considerable circumstantial, documentary, archaeological and tangible evidence that the Ganges Delta remained a centre of trade for thousands of years until, probably, as late as the mid twentieth century.

The Governor of the Bangladesh Bank was Chief Guest at the ceremonial cutting of the turf. Senior officials of two supporting financial institutions, who are financing this year’s work, were also present as was Special Guests Rosemary Arnott, Director of the British Council, and Tim Steel, Adviser to Tiger Tours, whose publication, ‘Bangladesh. The Silk Road Runs Through’, released in 2011 focussed on the Southwest Silk Road through the Ganges Delta and contextualised the excavations.

Mr. Tim Steel, author of 'Bangladesh: The Silk Road Runs Through'

The Governor, in his address, picked up on the theme of both Ms Arnott and Tim Steel, of the contribution that such archaeology can potentially make to social and economic development in the country.
The nation’s deficit in Travel and Tourism is currently running at about $3 billion. If Bangladesh were to reach the international average contribution to GDP and employment, as it has been, more or less, by most South Asian countries, it could produce a surplus of $6 billion and create 4million new jobs.

Over the years of excavation extraordinary discoveries have been made, including a Bronze Age Pit Dwelling and a brick lined tank of considerable dimensions.

The Cambridge University Professor of Indian Archaeology Dilip Chakrabarti has identified the site with the Ptolemaic City of Sounagora, and regards it as one of the most significant in the sub continent.

With the shortage of resources available in the country, at the present rate it may take a century to reveal all the treasure that the site holds, but, year by year it creates increasing interest in international academic circles.

We will surely report on this year’s finds, next spring.

Tiger Cack

2012-01-08T03:36:00.000+06:00

As great fans of the little known or appreciated local ‘Deshi’ snacks and pastries, it is always a pleasure to find another of the reputed 50 or so varieties that tickle the taste buds and delight the eye of the beholder.

Before these local specialities and delicacies are overwhelmed by the internationally ubiquitous ‘danish’ of which there seems to be a globalisation plot, the traveller should make time to sample and enjoy these unique Bangladesh treats.

Not in the ever expanding urban centres, but in the innumerable village stalls across the country, where the open flame cooking ensures real hygiene. Food poisoning is not uncommon in Bangladesh, but this writer has only ever encountered it eating in the ‘best’ restaurants in large towns and cities. Never from these great wayside supply depots across the country.

One of our favourites has been, for some time, a small, Cajun walled and roofed stall beside the ferry that crosses the river at Ramu.

Tiger Cack!

It was there our attention was called to a pleasant round cake, made, it seems, from rice, flour and molasses, and rather like around doughnut. A friendly elderly Buddhist man insisted trial of this unknown cake, and when it was pronounced ‘delicious’ he announced, with abroad grin and to the evident pleasure of his audience, that the cake was called ‘Tiger Cack’, which, for the benefit of the less well educated reader, translates into Tiger Poo.

Great sense of humour these out of town, Bangladeshis have!

CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC ART IN BANGLADESH

2011-12-29T21:53:00.000+06:00

As is so often the case, it doesn’t take grand designs to represent the real charm of religious art. Here in Bangladesh, few pieces, perhaps, better represent the art of the liberal Muslim majority of this secular country than this charming minaret.

A wayside mosque in Ruhitpur Bazar, a small community south of Dhaka, surrounded by Hindu temples and grand palaces and mansions, this work arrests the attention of any, even half vigilant, passer-by.

It is interesting to wonder about the influences on the decoration of this simple adjunct to the town centre mosque. Local palaces, rich in ceramic mosaics from mid-18^th Century, when the clearly South East Asia inspired work arrived in Zaminder palaces, and nearby Nawabganj has more than its fair share of such embellishment of fine neo classical facades, but for the floral garlands of this minaret no inspiration springs immediately to mind.

A real treat for the eye, and the mind, far removed from those gloomy Taliban inspired images of contemporary Islam!

RAMU: THE RIVERSIDE RESORT

2011-12-24T09:45:00.000+06:00

There is probably more to interest the visitor in Ramu than in nearby Cox’s Bazar.

Even the river beaches, relatively unspoilt, and replete with fishermen, travellers and traders with such exotic merchandise as timber and bamboo, are far less crowded and rather more interesting than the resort beaches at Cox’s Bazar.

Cox’s Bazar, despite its relatively recent naming, about 1800, for Captain Hiram Cox a notable of the east India Company administration in India who died there in 1799, thereby gaining some immortality, has, itself, some history, but none as notable as that of Ramu.

As a centre for shopping, sightseeing, luxuriating in a river boat ride, and such rides can be taken too as two or three day camping trips into the Bandarban, or just relaxing in the excellent ‘Tea Stall’ snackeries on either side of the river, this could well make an ideal holiday destination.

BARA KATRA, DHAKA

2011-12-21T09:48:00.000+06:00

The remaining, ruinous, visible part of this palace in Old Dhaka might well serve as a metaphor for the life of the man it was built for.

Constructed between 1644 and 1646, it was built as the residence of the second son of the immortal Shah Jahan, the Mughal Emperor who constructed the Taj Mahal in memory of his wife.

Shah Suja didn’t have long to enjoy the home as the Viceroy of Bengal. He was soon recalled to Delhi and became embroiled in an internecine strife the likes of which few dynasties or imperial families can match. Aurangzeb, Suja’s younger brother, seized the Peacock Throne, defeating and murdering the eldest brother, imprisoning the father, and pursuing Suja himself into exile.

Bara Katra, Dhaka

Suja, in fact, left a further trace in Bangladesh. Kolatoli Beach in Cox’s Bazar was once an area known as Palongki, named for the train of 1,000 palanquins that carried Suja and his family to Arakan. The envoy rested for a time where Cox’s Bazar now stands and left some of the royal retinue at Ramu, the nearby ancient sea port.

In Arakan, Suja was robbed of his treasure and his wife raped on the orders of the King. Suja then fled, it seems, to Tripura, where his brother’s writ did not run, and there he disappears from history.

His palace in Dhaka he left in the care of his agent. 22 shops were created to generate income to support the building as a hostelry for travellers and a hostel for the homeless. An early example of sustainable charity!

In an ancient city in which palaces, mosques, temples and churches are regularly demolished, it is unsurprising that surrounded by encroaching shops and a clutter of unplanned development, the original grandeur of the building is almost impossible to distinguish.

As the traveller passes through the ancient archway, they should take a good look. It may well not be around much longer!

BUDDHISM AND JAINISM IN BANGLADESH. MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARANCE

2011-12-16T11:48:00.003+06:00

Whilst there are a few Buddhists remaining in Bangladesh, amounting to less that 1% of the population, they are mostly followers of the Theravada School, and come from the small community of indigenous peoples of Tibeto/Myanmar origins.

A thousand years ago however, it was a very different story. By the 12^th Century archaeologists are agreed that there were probably around 300 Vihara flourishing in the country, which was, a significant part of the Ganges Basin, described as the ‘Cradle of Buddhism’, as well as being the homeland of Jainism. It was almost certainly within this concentration of Buddhist establishments that the Mahayana School of Buddhism developed, including associated practices such as yoga and tantra, and where Jainism flourished.

Pagoda commemorating Atish Dipankar

Estimates for the population of these Vihara vary widely, but if we consider reports that the ‘University’ in Vikrampur left by Atish Dipankar to respond to the invitation of the King of Tibet to help restore Buddhism, was the study place of 8,000 students; and the archaeological evidence of the few Vihara excavated that they housed up to 750 monks and more, we can easily estimate the population of Buddhist clerics alone at well over 150,000. Then we also have some considerable circumstantial evidence of the early existence of Jain communities in Bangladesh, including partially identified ruined Jain temples, and some more recent reasonably intact temples.

The most intriguing evidence however is from the Journal of Ralph Fitch, the late 16^th Century English merchant who visited Bangladesh in 1586. His vivid description of the wealthy merchants of Sonargaon leaves little doubt that they were Jains.

It has long been speculated who was responsible for bringing the 1,500 year history of Buddhism in Bangladesh to its close. There are those who hold the 13^th Century Sena, Hindu, dynasty of kings, with their strong Brahmanic tradition, responsible, and that might well explain the demise of the many Vihara in North Bengal, though not that of the many Vihara in the South east, including the 50 or more establishments at Comilla, where Sena influence seems not to have percolated.

The proposition that ‘Peace is the natural consequence of trade’ seems to have held good in the lands of the Ganges/Brahmaputra for over 1,500 years, with clear evidence of peaceful coexistence of emerging Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, even arriving Islam, and it is hard to imagine what ended than peacefulness.

The suggestion that the Muslim Khilji raiders from Afghanistan, who raided throughout the 12^th Century and then settled early in the 13^th, were responsible bears consideration, but perhaps the existence of the Jain merchants in Sonargaon contradicts that view, since from Fitch’s journal it is clear these merchants operated under the benign eye of Isa Khan, the last of the Khilji rulers.

This perhaps brings us to the name of that well known militant Muslim, the 6th Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, committer of fratricide and imprisoner of his father, who famously waged war against so many Hindu rulers in the subcontinent.

Added now to the mystery is why, when Buddhism seems to have been overwhelmed in the 13^th Century, Jainism apparently survived.

It would probably require a considerable effort of archaeology to begin to answer these questions, and the lack of resources and poor management of those that exist make such an effort unlikely to be undertaken any time soon.

Bangladesh is, of course, sadly, no stranger to genocide. However, the eradication of as many as 150,000 monks, or even more, within a century does conjure up some fairly gruesome images and raises fascinating questions that would be interesting to answer.

THE ROBINSON CRUSOE CONNECTION

2011-12-13T11:09:00.002+06:00

The most commonly available version of the early 18^th Century classic ‘The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’ is the ‘children’s’ adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s famous novel.

Every child knows, or perhaps one should say used to know, before the days of Harry Potter, of Crusoe’s famous stranding on a desert island where he was eventually joined by the equally famous ‘Man Friday’, the native he rescued from cannibals.

In fact the original novel, written in 1719, is a lengthy adventure story, commencing with Crusoe’s leaving home in Yorkshire and running away to sea from the port of Hull.

His first great misadventure was certainly not his shipwreck on the desert island, but rather a more prosaic shipwreck in the North Sea whilst en route to nowhere more romantic than London!

Apparently accident prone, his second great adventure sees his next berth captured by Tunisian Pirates, famous perils of the trading routes of the early 18^th Century.

His arrival in Brazil, successfully developing an estate, and then becoming shipwrecked on the desert island in the Caribbean, en route for a slaving voyage to Africa, are all parts of his adventures.

But to those interested in Bangladesh, literally translated as ‘the land of Bengal’ of which ancient area the modern nation comprises the major part, it is Crusoe’s last adventure that offers the greatest appeal.

Rescued from his island, returned to Britain and becoming a wealthy adventurer, he decides to set out with his nephew for a trading expedition to the Spice Islands.

These islands, it is worth remembering, were the source of enormous potential riches and, in Defoe’s days, were romantic and enigmatic, but also a kind of contemporary version of Microsoft.

Crusoe, however, finds himself instead marooned in Bengal by his nephew and crew for objecting to the massacre of Madagascan natives on the voyage east.

His last great adventure then is a trading venture out of Bengal, trading in gems and opium.

‘On our return to Bengal I was very satisfied with my adventure... but it is little matter for wonder when we consider the innumerable ports and places where they have free commerce’ writes Defoe/Crusoe.

It is well known, of course, that the lands of Bengal/Bangladesh were at that time the main source of high quality Opium, which was traded by the merchants of the region, especially the East India Company, for tea from China that was in such demand in Europe.
Gemstones, in Crusoe’s case evidently diamonds, deriving from the Ganges Basin of North India, were just one of the valuable commodities traded around the countries of the region including Burma, Thailand, Java and Sumatra, along the routes out of the region into Central Asia to the north, and Europe to the west, from the flourishing centre of international trade that was the estuary of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers.

AN ARMENIAN CONNECTION

2011-12-11T11:53:00.000+06:00

One of the best preserved attractions in Old Dhaka is the rather interesting Armenian Church. It is, perhaps, the most obvious and enduring symbol of a very lengthy and fascinating connection between the somewhat elusive Armenian people and Bengal and Bangladesh.

It was an enduring connection. These fascinating people are natives of the ancient Armenian nation in Asia Minor, with a very long history and tradition of trade. Today the Armenians are struggling to re-establish a sovereign nation after millennia of occupation and oppression, until then continuing to be exiles and wanderers. The Armenian relation to India first appears in the Army of Alexander the Great, who famously decided, first, to head to the lands of the Ganges Delta, referred to by Megasthenes the 3^rd Century BCE commentator as Gangaridai: ‘a nation that possesses a vast force of the largest sized elephants’. After being advised that his army may not be able to deal with such a formidable enemy, Alexander the Great began his retreat back towards the Mediterranean.

That he planned to head to the Ganges may have had something to do with his ambitions for the rich trade that, by then, was already well established between the increasingly wealthy nations of the east and the growing Empires of the west.

Since the Armenians who accompanied his army seem to have been administrators, and probably book keepers, it may well have been on their advice that he had headed east in the first place.

The ‘Southwest Silk Road’, a description of the ancient trade route from ancient China, through Burma, Assam, and Bengal/ Bangladesh that didn’t appear until the late 19^th Century, seems, in fact, to have been one of the best kept secrets of international trade, even to the present day.

It is evident that the merchants of Sichuan and, especially Yunnan, were reluctant to disclose the existence of this route, even to emissaries of the great Chinese Han Dynasty of Emperors, and share the wealth it generated even with their remote overlords, but it also appears that, in Bangladesh/ Bengal, there existed a similar conspiracy of silence.

A strong community of Armenian merchants developed in Bengal/ Bangladesh, from the 1^st Millennium. A community of whom strong traces still exist in Dhaka and Kolkata in the form of great mansions, that might even be described as palaces, and churches dedicated to their unique strand of Christian faith that dates from the earliest days of the Christian religion, and is akin to the Eastern Orthodox religion.

A diaspora of highly educated, close knit trading peoples, more financiers than traders, there is no doubting their tight grip on the trade that flowed through Bangladesh for two thousand years from those earliest days of their association with Alexander.

That grip is perhaps clearest when examining their role in trade at the time of the British East India Company. The wealthy Armenian merchants played their part in the British acquisition of the control of trade in the 18^th Century. But from the earliest days of European trade with the area, the Armenian merchants acted as middle men and suppliers to the European nations, including the British, who gathered in the area from the 16^th Century. A major source of their immense wealth.

Even after the British took control of their own trade, famously, as the great Robert Clive put it in a report to the Directors in 1765: ‘defray(ing) all the expenses of the investment, furnish the whole of the China treasure, answer the demands of all your other settlements in India ‘, the Armenian merchants turned from acting entirely as middle men, and began buying the zaminder rights to land and financial administration and tax gathering.

Indeed, one of the last great, largely intact palaces of Bangladesh, the famous ‘Pink Palace’ in Old Dhaka, was financed by Armenian wealth.

The question may well be asked, were these Armenians, themselves a very close and closed community, the guardians of the secret of the Southwest Silk Road at its southern end? There is no doubting the vast wealth that they, as a community, derived from the trade; the evidence remains in those mansions and palaces in the old cities of ancient Bengal, modern Bangladesh and India.

RAMU: THE ANCIENT TEMPLES

2011-12-08T15:24:00.000+06:00

Ramu, once the centre of a large administrative division of the ancient Kingdom of Arakan, and clearly marked by name on the Ptolemaic map of the Ganges Delta drawn in the 2^nd Century CE, is still one of the centres of the Buddhist religion that once dominated Bangladesh, and appears to have coexisted peacefully alongside both the emerging Hindu religion and the Jain faith that emerged more or less alongside it in the lands of the Ganges basin.

Despite the ‘Islamification’ of the area, especially since the partition of 1947, in which it became a part of the Sunni Muslim dominated secular state of Bangladesh, Buddhism continues to be the belief set of many of the rural poor, especially those from the tribal groups who have lived in the area for millennia.

In the town of Ramu itself, which betrays little of its ancient origins, and it’s probably role as a major centre of trade, there are still a number of old Temples.

The fine, simple structure of Lamarpara Buddhist Temple, or Buddha Bihar, has been enriched by the 50 year old addition of a fine reclining Buddha, and is inhabited by both monks and bikkhu, the young ‘trainee’ monks.

An early 19^th Century structure is not dissimilar, but rather more highly decorated, whilst the mid-19^th Century Kawar Khol Buddha Bihar is certainly the most ornate in its fine decor, though exploring the town can certainly turn up further architectural gems, with their accompanying Banyan trees!

It is, perhaps, a little ironic that, whilst the lands of Bangladesh almost certainly saw the development of Buddhism from the earliest times when the Buddha himself almost certainly taught here, and is also where the famous liberal School of Mahayana Buddhism with its Yogic traditions evolved, and from where in the 11^th Century Atish Dipankar took it to Tibet when he was asked to assist in restoring Buddhism there, the remnants in the country adhere, firmly, to the more traditional and conservative Theravada School.

Nevertheless, these fine wooden structures, upon which a few remaining traditional homes of community leaders may be modelled, are a treat to visit and explore, the lingering vestiges of an ancient devotion.

The Mystic Lalon

2011-12-05T19:00:00.000+06:00

Rabinranath Tagore, the first to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in this subcontinent, writes, "These people roam about singing their songs, one of which I heard years ago from my roadside window, the first two lines roaming inscribed in my mind:

‘Nobody can tell whence the bird unknown
comes into my cage and goes out.’”

These texts undoubtedly refer to the Bauls, a group of people with unique lifestyle that goes ‘beyond the materialistic world as we know it, a lifestyle that celebrates folk music and culture’. The words are of none other but to whom the title King of Bauls belongs, Lalon.

Lalon, though not widely known for little publicity, is among the greatest philosophers of the subcontinent and a spiritual guru to many. He was born in Kushtia, located in the western part of the country, in 1774. Abandoned by his real family after suffering from a contagious disease during his childhood, he was rescued from the banks of Ganges and nursed to life by a Muslim family. There he met Siraj Shai, a devout Muslim and a spiritual guide for Lalon. However, Lalon had always refused to identify himself by association with a community or religion. Rather, long before the arrival of the “free thinkers” we now know of, Lalon had already composed around a thousand songs on class discrimination and identity issues. He had the strongest stand against racism and communalism, which is reflected in his countless pieces of literature-poems and songs.

Everyone wonders, "What's Lalon faith?"

Lalon says, "I've never 'seen' the face of Faith with these eyes of mine!

Some wear a garland and some the tasbi,

that's what marks the Faiths apart.

But what marks them apart when one is born or at the time of death?”

“Lalon” is a completely new genre of songs and philosophy. Many claim that “Lalon Geeti” or Lalon Songs fall under the Baul genre even though the fundamentals of the two philosophies are different. A Baul puts behind all the earthly pleasures and notions, in search of the divine entity, roaming about with no permanent place or address. Lalon philosophy dictates differently, accommodating the earthly notions into the process of searching the divine enlightenment. He believed in the power of music as a tool to reach the intellectual and emotional state to be able to understand and appreciate life itself and its Creator. He believed in achieving the divine mental state and finding true meaning of life through appreciating the gifts life has to offer and accepting them. As a result, he settled in the village Cheuria, Kushtia, and even got married. His thoughts influenced countless people, including his parents and once mentor Siraj Shai, turning them into his disciples. Despite not having any formal education, his literature has influenced even the most educated minds throughout time; including the American poet Allen Ginsberg, his tributes paid in his poem “After Lalon”, included in the poetry collection “Cosmopolitan Greetings.” Ginsberg adopted Lalon’s unique style of writing- repeatedly referring to self in the writing, as “Lalon bole” or “Lalon says..” .

To date, tens and thousands of people nourish his philosophies at heart, receiving spiritual guidance through distress and confusion, influencing them to become better human beings in all aspects of life. He has a large number of followers living in Kushtia, who completely follow his lifestyle, and practice his songs and rituals on a regular basis, keeping his legacy alive. “Lalon Mela”, a summit of Bauls from all over the country and even West Bengal in India, takes place twice a year for three to five days; once in the Bengali month of Falgun (February-March), and once on Lalon’s death anniversary in October. The “Mela” or Fair is observed through celebrating Lalon music, discourse of his philosophies, concerts and competitions; with the message of living a meaningful life of a “Shahaj Manush”, or “Simple Man” as Lalon called it. This attracts over a hundred thousand people from all around the country to Lalon Fakir’s shrine, many come just to pay a casual visit, many out of curiosity, many to encounter the Baul lifestyle first hand, and many from the inner urge of pursuing spirituality. Besides that, the Lalon community is known for being very friendly and warm, welcoming the visitors and the tourists, sometimes accepting them to join in their everyday rituals and practice, giving the curious a firsthand touch of the real Lalon tradition and culture.

Many academics claim that authentic Lalon practice has reduced nowadays, in many instances being replaced with intake of exotic things, which, as claimed, Lalon himself never did. Another viewpoint dictates it is not unnatural for such creative minds of those days to take drugs like opium or marijuana. However perceived, the name Lalon creates a resonance unlike anything else among his followers. Lalon philosophy has done nothing but providing spiritual guidance; helping the purity of life to surface, making humanity prevail.

SIGNIFICANT BUDDHIST REMAINS, KOTBARI, MAINAMATI, COMILLA, BANGLADESH

2011-12-01T11:07:00.000+06:00

Cambridge University Professor of Indian Archaeology Professor Dilip Chakrabarti shares, in his fine work ‘Ancient Bangladesh’, that there are over 50 Vihara sites in Mainamati, close to Comilla on the Tropic of Cancer, in South East Bangladesh.

On yet another of the Pliocene ridges upon which much of the 10,000 year archaeology of Bangladesh stands, this extraordinary 12 mile row of ancient sites represents one of the largest concentrations in the world. Remarkable, even by the standards of Bangladesh, where the presence of at least 300 such sites represents the world’s most intense concentration and justifies assumptions that, from the time of the Prince Gautama, who himself certainly shared his teachings here under the patronage of the Magda king, his first noble convert in the early 5^th/late 6^th Century BCE, Bangladesh was one of the main areas in which Buddhism developed, alongside the evolving Hindu religion, and the contemporary Jain faith.

At Kotbari in Mainamati, standing in close proximity to each other, five such Vihara are easily visited.

The hill top, pyramid structure of the largest of these...it is hard to distinguish between the natural hill, and the hill topping structures...has views across dozens of miles of the surrounding deltaic plains. Facing east, close to the top, are the remains of what was probably a twelve foot Buddha in the classic ‘Lotus’ position. Decapitated by whosoever terminated the Buddhist study, education and worship hereabouts, and the culprit remains unclear, it may well have originally been clad in gold, the glinting of the sun and its high position making it visible from a great distance.

It is apparent that, as with most archaeological sites in Bangladesh, a country with limited resources for such work and many more desk bound archaeologists than field workers, the sites are largely unexplored. Even the largest stands on ground that continues to fall away sharply below the excavated line, suggesting further layers yet to be uncovered.

Whilst dating plaques have been found for the land grants of 12^th Century, excavations so far suggest that the developments reach back to at least the 7^th Century and early Pala period. However, excavations in the North Bengal of some of the more famous sites, such as Paharpur, have revealed Mauryan Period (3^rd Century BCE) brickwork, and since excavations at Kotbari are clearly fairly superficial, it may well be that construction of a far earlier date remains to be exposed.

An hour or so spent in Kotbari will give a glimpse to the interested visitor of the astonishing extent of Buddhist remains in the country.

RAMU. THE REAL JOY OF BOAT RACING IN BANGLADESH

2011-11-22T12:57:00.000+06:00

The finals of the local boat racing season were held in ancient Ramu last week. It’s very tempting to wonder for how many centuries this colourful sport has been enjoyed in the this ancient centre of trade.

In fact, we know that the sport was revived here not too long ago, but there is every reason to suppose that it dates back as far as the more famous Dragon Boat racing of other places in Asia.

In Ramu, it is carried out on a more modest scale than in many other parts of the country. Six paddlers, cox’n and headman seem to be the more common crew size, and the craft themselves, sleek and streamlined, are far more modest than those with up to 120 paddlers and a full accompaniment of spearman, drummers, cheerleaders and other assorted spurs to victory not uncommon elsewhere.

It may be, of course, that the tradition in Ramu differs from that in ancient Bengal, since this was through most of recorded history territory of Arakan and Burma rather than Bengal. Regardless, the annual racing season, as the crowds on the bank testify, is greeted with great enthusiasm in the rivers of the Cox’s Bazar area.

Keenly contested, the prize is more in the pride of winning than anything mercenary; a real, amateur sport to entertain and inspire.

Yet another of the many attractions of this fascinating ancient town.

STRABO, THE GRECO ROMAN GEOGRAPHER

2011-11-19T12:18:00.000+06:00

Born in Pontus, in Turkey, in 64 BCE, this aristocratically connected young Greek, who spent much of his life in Rome and travelling the Roman Empire, was conspicuously well educated. As well has having extraordinarily good connections both in Rome, and throughout the burgeoning Empire.

His interest to any student of the history of Bangladesh revolves, particularly, around his ‘Rerum Geographicarum’, completed probably in about 17CE, during the reign of Tiberius.

In his discourses he states: ‘Regarding these merchants who now sail from Egypt...as far as the Ganges, they are only private citizens and they are of no use regarding the history of the places they have seen’.

That the merchants who travelled to the Ganges Delta should be ‘only private citizens’ is unsurprising; Augustus Caesar was one of the first rulers to pass a ‘Sumptuary Law’, forbidding the wearing of silk in Rome.

Strabo’s dismissiveness of ‘private citizens’, who were, basically not to be relied upon for information, may also not be surprising given his very strong academic background. Much travelled himself, to a degree (including visits to Egypt, Ethiopia, the Mediterranean, and the Near East); his own experience meant he brought meticulous research to his writing, certainly an early example of excellent academic publication.

Map of the world according to Strabo

We know, from the ‘Periplus of the Erythraean Sea’, published perhaps 25 years after Strabo, that one of the attractions of the Ganges Delta to traders was raw silk from what the merchants believed was, ‘the inland city of Thina’. Clearly, Strabo was right to suspect the information of such merchants, if they understood the source of their silk to be an inland city!

The Roman Empire’s concern with silk was largely due to the drain of such trade on the economy. In a prescient echo of the 21^st Century perhaps, historians have assessed that China, under the Han Emperors, were doing a brisk and successful business selling silk, which was cheap for them to produce, at a high premium, thereby transferring the wealth of Rome to the coffers of China.

It is clear that awareness of the wealth and opportunities for trade in the Ganges was, indeed, widespread in the ancient world; Strabo, just one of many clarifying that knowledge.

THE MOSQUES OF BAGERHAT

2011-11-16T13:18:00.000+06:00

Despite archaeological evidence of Buddhist origins in the area, as well as unsurprising evidence of the Hindu religion in an area where, before partition in 1947 the population is said to have been 87% Hindu, the Muslim city of Bagerhat contains some remarkable examples of pre Mughal architecture.

The ‘City of Mosques’, which Forbes Directory has listed as one of the 15 lost cities of the world, was founded in 1429 by a soldier of Turkish origin, Khan Jahan Ali, under the Bengal Sultan, Mahmud Shah.

Arriving with what was apparently a considerable force of followers, the man is revered as one of the earliest Islamic missionaries in Bangladesh, although, in fact, there is evidence of Muslim traders arriving even during the lifetime of the Holy Prophet, and a late 7^th Century mosque in the north of Bangladesh bears testimony to the growth of Muslim communities from that time. Regardless, Khan Jahan Ali and his followers appear to have developed a considerable city for their base.

The so-called ‘Sixty Dome Mosque’, which actually has sixty pillars within and probably 72 domes on the roof, is regarded as the most famous of these monuments, there are around 50 Islamic constructions in the area, in what is rated by UNESCO as World Heritage Site.

But for many visitors, it is perhaps some of the smaller mosques that are the most lovely. There are at least two very accessible single dome mosques and a very fine six dome mosque. But time spent at leisure in the area, as well as revealing the remains of palaces, shrines and tombs, can also reveal traces of the roads and bridges built in the 30 years that Khan Jahan lived and worked here, spreading his influence over a great part of the region.

It is not without interest to note, however, that ruins of palaces within the Sundarban Mangrove forest that adjoins the area suggest that the jungle was considerably reduced for agriculture, perhaps during his time or later as result of his efforts, the forest appears to have been pushed back, especially during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, when a combination of Arakanese and renegade Portuguese pirates were regularly reported to raid the area, causing the population the move further inland.

It appears that, indeed, the forest may well have overgrown the City of the Mosques itself, and it is only in the past century that much of it has been rescued from the overgrowth and re-discovered.

There is, however, no doubting the simple beauty of the rather large collection of places of Islamic worship in the vicinity. The passing tourist may miss a great deal by giving insufficient time to a proper exploration of these fine examples of 15^th Century Islamic masterpieces.

Dhamrai Day Trip

2011-11-14T12:25:00.000+06:00

Check out this video of a day trip to Dhamrai Palace. The excursion was organized and sponsored by

Tiger Tours Lmited

Been There Bangladesh

and

Crowdsourced Travel

2011-11-07T13:13:00.000+06:00

Eid Mubarak!

Muslims all over the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha this weekend, including the largely Sunni majority in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh the festival is also known as Qurbani Eid, which roughly translates to 'Festival of Sacrifice' or 'Feast of Sacrifice'. The holiday is celebrated on the tenth day of the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar and commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to show his obedience to God.

Many Muslims mimic Abraham's eventual sacrifice of a ram by sacrificing a domestic animal, in Bangladesh often a cow or a goat. The meat from the animal is divided into thirds: One third kept by the immediate family, One third given to extended family, relatives, friends and neighbors, and One third donated to the less fortunate.

Trains and Buses have been packed with residents leaving Dhaka to spend the holiday in their home villages with extended family. Whether in the city or the countryside, the holiday will be celebrated with communal prayers and large family feasts. Family and Food, not so different from another holiday to be celebrated in November, American Thanksgiving!

THE GANGES BASIN

2011-10-31T13:30:00.000+06:00

Archaeology has still not managed to answer the question, ‘When, and why, did settlements and trade and industry commence in the Ganges Basin?’

The Basin is part of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna basin that drains about 1 million or so square kilometres of Tibet, Nepal, India and Bangladesh, though, of course, throughout the past 4,000 years no one would have recognised those political divisions, apart perhaps from Tibet, being as all were a part of what was known as ‘North India’.

The Basin is between 350 and 700 km wide and stretches from where the 2,500km long river, which originates in an ice cave in the Himalayas 10,300 feet above sea level, reaches the North Indian plain, to the old Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers in Bangladesh.

Thus far, archaeology has revealed that settlements began about 1,500 BCE, the commencement of what is known as the Vedic Period; so named because of the early form of Sanskrit writing that emerged from the nascent civilisation just as, over the ensuing thousand years, did the Hindu religion grow out of the shamanic and animist traditions of earlier times. So too did the evolutions of that religion, Buddhism and Jainism, which is a kind of hybrid between the other two.

The unanswered question is, were the original settlers refugees from the Harappan civilisation of the Indus which fell into decay in the five centuries before 1,500 BCE, possibly as a result of the early consequences of climate change that produced disastrous flooding in the Indus Valley, or possibly in the face of the aggression of Aryan nomads, who arrived from Iran seeking better pastures for their herds?

It could even be a fusion of the two. Harappan culture, named for the city of Harappa, the first discovered, was urban, Aryan, nomadic. But even nomads, like the early hunter gatherers, recognise, eventually, the need to settle as numbers increase, and open lands diminish.

It seems, from written and circumstantial evidence that a ‘true’ civilisation emerged in the Ganges basin between 1,000 and 500 BCE.

Mahasthangarh, in North Bangladesh, has been identified as the easternmost boundary of that civilisation, although excavators have yet to dig beyond the 3^rd Century BCE. It seems likely that habitation will eventually be traced, because of the geography, back to the Stone Age, it leaves open the question of how far the emerging archaeology of Wari Bateshwar might extend that definition.

And, indeed, given the early evidence of industry and trade, recognising the Ganges Delta as the natural outlet for, particularly, South East and Central Asian trade, just how early such settlements as Vikrampur might have been established.

From the collection of Varendra Museum in Rajshahi, there is clear cultural fusion between the emerging religions of the area, and although the next two millennia or so would see occasional upsurges in Brahmanic persecution of the other two religions, it is fairly clear that, where the Ganges Basin found its centre of trade at the Ganges Delta, the rulers and peoples who lived by such trade and industry never tolerated Brahmanic persecutions of the others.

It has been observed that, for a European, appreciation of the role of Brahmin may be best understood by examining the limited knowledge they may have of Druid culture in the Aryan migrants into Europe. And it certainly appears that those nomadic migrants moved both south east into India and West into Asia Minor and Europe.

Raw materials traded out of the Basin from 1,000 BCE include agate, crystal, carnelian, jade, amethyst, bloodstone, flint, quartz, marble, lapis lazuli, ivory, shells, gold, silver, copper and iron. Most of which have emerged, in sizeable quantities, from the excavations at Wari Bateshwar.

We can also add Wari Bateshwar to the list of sites with evidence of iron smelting and working, also the working of silver, not least in the coining. Pottery crucibles too, for smelting jewellery, and waste chips of semi precious stones, as well as tools for working them, reveal the manufacture of jewellery.

It is equally clear, within the surrounding areas, that trade in many such raw and manufactured materials was common, from at least the middle of the first millennium BCE. And it is probably no coincidence that the first of the Mauryan Emperors, in the 3^rd Century BCE, built the Grand Trunk Road from Patna, towards the western end of the Basin, to the Indus valley, to facilitate such trade both in the region and beyond.

The Ganges basin, much of which is now in Bangladesh, almost certainly has many of the secrets of its early development yet to give up. Such secrets are likely to be slower in being revealed in Bangladesh than in India, simply because of lack of resources, with, perhaps, a touch of lack of motivation, in an Islamic state that seems unaware of the Holy Prophet’s injunction, ‘Seek ye knowledge, even unto China’.

SHAKESPEARE AND BANGLADESH

2011-10-27T10:58:00.001+06:00

In 1583, the first recorded British visitor to Bangladesh set sail from London, together with two companions. Ralph Fitch was a successful London merchant with an evident penchant for exploration.

Their expedition was financed by the Levant Company, a trading association of merchants; one of a number set up with the patronage of Queen Elizabeth the 1^st during the rapid expansion of trade undertaken in her long reign.

Their first destination was Aleppo, in Syria, whence they sailed in a trading vessel called Tyger.

The voyage was evidently no secret, at least amongst the well connected, noble circle, to which the great playwright, William Shakespeare belonged. In his great tragedy, Macbeth, in Act 1, Scene 3, one of the three witches cackles: ‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, Master of the Tyger’.

From Aleppo, Fitch travelled to the Euphrates and down that ancient trading route to the Gulf, then onward to India. In Goa he was arrested as a spy by the Portuguese, which, in commercial terms, he certainly was. Bailed out by an English born Jesuit he escaped to travel on to visit the court of the great Mughal Emperor Akbar, probably at Agra, before heading on by the Yamuna and Ganges to Patna, and thence into Bengal, from where he explored the source of trade in South East Asia, and possibly even as far north as Tibet.

On his return to London in about 1589 or 1590, his reports inspired the London merchants to seek the ready approval of the queen for setting up the East India Company. They finally received a Charter in 1600.

Perhaps close examination of Shakespeare’s later plays may reveal more references to the ‘mysterious east’!

MONEY COWRIES

2011-10-24T12:51:00.001+06:00

The use of sea shells as a currency was widespread across the ancient world, before metal coinage and even paper money, or bullion came into use as the medium of payment.

Money Cowrie Shells

The Maldives and other such Indian Ocean beaches as Sri Lanka and the Nicobar Islands were a common source of these shells. The photo illustrates some collected on one day on a hundred metre stretch of a Sri Lankan beach.

Perceived value, it is possible to suppose, derived from the fact that these shells were commonly used for personal decoration...a kind of popular equivalent of gems!

Parts of China, especially Yunnan, used the shells as currency from as early as 1,000 years before the Common Era. The shells have been found in tombs long before the Common Era, especially in the Southwest corner of China.

It seems reasonable to speculate that such use, which only began to fade with the 17^th Century and remained not uncommon until much more recently, derived from the Southwest Silk Road, with trade between Sichuan and Yunnan especially (through Burma and Assam) flowing to the trading crossroads of much of the world at the mouth of Ganges, present day Bangladesh.

The shells remained as a currency, particularly for small, local transactions, in the Bengal of the east India Company, now mostly Bangladesh, well into the 19^th Century.

In Sylhet, a district in Bangladesh, once part of Assam province during British rule and which bordered the Kingdoms of Northeast India such as Tripura and Jaintha, there are records of the use money cowrie shells for payment of dues and taxes. The late 18^th Century ‘Collector’ (district level representative of the East India Company) Robert Lindsay, cousin of the famous novelist William Makepiece Thackeray, whose own connection to Bengal comes from being born in Calcutta, records, for the purposes of tax collection in Sylhet, exchange rates of Rupees and Sterling to cowries as 3,500 and 45,000 respectively.

Cowries may be more common in Asia than elsewhere in the world, but other varieties of shell currency were commonplace in North America, Africa and the Pacific region.

To the student economist, studying the international trade of the last two or three millennia, who has caught up with the astonishingly contemporary history of Chinese trade...the way in which the Han Dynasty, selling low cost products, such as silk, to high demand markets such as Europe and Middle east, managed to make such markets so indebted as to threaten their economies through export of bullion to pay for imports, may find the concept of money that, whilst not exactly ‘growing on trees’, but lying on beaches, an additional twist to economic studies that beggar belief!

Somewhere in Bangladesh, and other parts of the great international trading centre of the Ganges, one suspects, there may be hoards of shells, lying in wait to confuse future archaeologists!

THE GANGES DELTA

2011-10-17T17:27:00.000+06:00

Known also as the Ganges/Brahmaputra/Meghna Delta, it is the world’s largest river delta covering about 100,000 sq.km, and is 350km wide across at the coast of the Bay of Bengal.

About 150 million people live on these rich fertile, but frequently flooded lands, about 80% of which lie in Bangladesh.

It is not, of course, only the agriculturally valuable land that is fertile, the rivers and coastal waters are also rich in the nutritious sedimentary particles carried by the waters, from as far away as the Himalayas through innumerable towns and cities along the way, making the waters rich in fish to support the traditional diet of the also highly fertile peoples, evidenced by the rapidly growing population.

Lovely as the agricultural lands are, even more so is the enormous mangrove forest the Sundarban, teeming with wildlife and home of the Royal Bengal Tiger, which lines about half the delta coast. However, even more so than these environmental marvels, it is perhaps the human history that is by far the most spectacular.

The Ganges Delta is the entry and exit of the Ganges Basin, where one of the earliest industrialised civilisations in the world developed from about 1,500 BCE.

The origins of this civilisation are still rather obscure. Some believe its origins lie in the decline of the Dravidian Harappan civilisation of the Indus, which seems to have melted away about the same time. Whether that civilisation, with its cities and culture, which has been shown to have been in decline for a few centuries, was ended by the changing climate that caused catastrophic flooding, or crumbled under assault by nomadic Aryans moving south east from Persia seeking new grazing for their herds, is not clear. Neither is it clear if the new arrivals were Dravidian, Aryan, or a combination of the two.

That there was an agricultural component seems likely; the Harappan culture shows no evidence of horses, which the Aryans had as did the Ganges basin culture.

What seems certain is that around the 7^th Century BCE there was an urbanisation of the civilisation, and industrialisation too. The working of metals and stones, including the very available semi precious stones, and minerals such as silver, gold and copper is much in evidence.

Until recently most, or even all of the evidence of such industry was to be found in that part of the Basin now in India, Bangladesh lacking the resources for real archaeology.

However, quite apart from excavation work at Mahasthangarh, the city originally believed to mark the eastern spread of Basin culture, recent work at Wari Bateshwar and Vikrampur, on the course of the old Brahmaputra and close to the saline waters of the delta, has shown not only remarkable similar industrial activity, but such evidence of considerable trade as silver coinage contemporary with the earliest known coinage in the world from Mesopotamia.

Apart from the strong circumstantial evidence of about 250 to 300 ruined Buddhist Vihara in Bangladesh, and countless Hindu Temples and Islamic Mosques, palaces, mansion and forts, all of which demonstrate wealth involved in their building and maintenance, there is also the documentary evidence from Megasthenes in 3^rd Century BCE, through the Roman Strabo in the 1st Century, to Lord Clive in the 18^th Century, bearing testimony to the wealth and trade of the Delta area, as well as countless maps from the 5^th Century BCE onward that acknowledge the delta, in increasing detail underlining the familiarity of the ancient world with these waters.

A crossroads of the ancient world, this great delta certainly was, and even today, nations such as India and China are seeking use of the waters as outlets of their contemporary industrial cultures.

These waters may not be deep, but wide and valuable they remain, even 3 or 4 millennia after mankind first recognised their commercial potential!

THE OLDEST COIN IN THE WORLD?

2011-10-10T13:55:00.001+06:00

This tiny piece of silver may well lay claim to being the oldest coin in the world.

Recovered from Wari Bateshwar in Bangladesh, the site of what was clearly a community from Stone Age times, with Bronze Age settlements too. Archaeologists are recovering considerable evidence of the city as a major centre of both trade and industry.

Enclosed within the 5.3 km ramparts, on the banks where the Old Brahmaputra and Bhairab rivers link, secrets are emerging during each season of excavation.

In Wari Bateshwar, as in other sites in Bangladesh including Mahasthangarh, silver punch coins similar to coinage of about 600 BC found in Lythia (in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) have also been found.

Looking as though punch marked into soft silver, producing a free shape, and dated to the same period. But a trove of these tiny coins, apparently cut from a sheet of soft silver also punch marked, and also dated to the same period appear unique, and may suggest an earlier origin.

It is not clear exactly why traders, who, at the time, traded in exchanges of goods, found the need to exchange goods for bullion, and even less clear why they were punch marked unless, simply, providing some form of early guarantee.

We do know that, towards the 1^st Century BCE, trade through here in silk was bought for bullion, causing the Roman Empire to forbid the wearing of silk. And it may well be that even earlier exchange trade was not always available, necessitating bullion, even in small pieces.

Somehow, there seems something slightly odd about handling such treasures in one of the world’s poorest countries!

SOUTHWEST SILK ROAD. ALL ROADS LEAD TO CHINA!

2011-09-24T12:28:00.001+06:00

Water was certainly the favourite highway of the ancient world being safer, easier and more comfortable than land alternatives. Why, then, do so many assume that these ancient merchants would set off from the great trading centres of the ancient Mediterranean world on foot, to walk or ride five or six thousand miles across the hostile terrain of Central Asia? A route which not only involved seasonal horrors of snow and blistering heat, but also the customs collectors of innumerable small nations, dangerous bandits and the unpredictability of rising and falling empires.

It is no great surprise that the Romans, having lost an army to the Parthians (Caesar famously worked hard to recover the lost legionary Eagles) should seek an alternative route for trade. According to the 3^rd Century BCE traveller Megasthenes, they favoured a route that Alexander the Great once took an interest in. Half way across India, the emperor was persuaded by his army not to tackle the forces of ‘Gangaridai, a nation that possesses a vast force of the largest sized elephants’.

Strabo, the Greek geographer and historian, writing of 1^st Century CE trade comments that ‘regarding the merchants who now sail from Egypt...as far as the Ganges River, they are only private citizens’.

That the ‘People and the Senate of Rome’, the public administration, would not sponsor such trade is unsurprising. The senate enacted legislation to ban the wearing of silk because the fabric becoming a ruinous drain on the exchequer. But quite apart from Strabo’s commentary, current excavation reveals Roman artefacts at Wari Bateshwar, the ancient trading centre on the banks of the Old Brahmaputra, from which has also been recovered punched silver coinage dated from as early as the 6^th Century BCE.

Another 1^st Century writer, of the ‘Merchants handbook’, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, comments on the Ganges Delta as ‘a source of raw silk…from the great inland city of Thina’.

Ptolemaic Map of Trade Routes of the Ganges Delta

That Ptolemy’s 2^nd Century map of the Ganges Delta should be remarkably accurate is no great surprise. His source was usually Phoenician merchants from Lebanon. And it should not be wondered how such traders reached the Ganges since, in the 1^st Millennium BCE, the Egyptians constructed a canal from the Nile Delta to the Red Sea.

It was Malaysian tin, found in the Chinese bronze of the 1^st Millennium BCE which first raised suspicion that there was an ancient trading route to China; similarly the finds of Money Cowries from the Indian Ocean in 3^rd Century BCE tombs of the in Yunnan Province of China raise the same questions.

Perhaps, above all, it is the ancient trading centres, the hundreds of Vihara and temples, the numerous palaces and forts that line the water ways of Bangladesh, as well as the greedy eyes of European nations that drew them to this remote corner of South Asia, that bear testament to the great wealth. A wealth generated by the rich trade that unquestionably passed through this great crossroads of the world. Which was, incidentally, also the gateway to the Ganges Basin, now shared by Bangladesh and India, and the site of one of the world’s first industrialised civilizations.

Beads and stones from Archaeological Excavations

But a glance at a world map can easily explain how so many routes led, by land and by sea, to this great ‘Singapore of the ancient world’

A map of trade routes of the 1^st century reveals that, with the famous Maritime Trade Route not yet opened (by Da Gama in the early 16^th Century), there were alternatives to the Central Asian routes more conventionally associated with Von Ricthofen’s ‘Silk Road’.

By land or river, it was possible to make the way, down the famous Euphrates, or across Arabia, to cross the Arabian Sea to the ancient civilisations of the Indus. Heading north up the Indus, where there were unquestionably great opportunities for trade, there were two choices; to head North West into Afghanistan and then join the traditional Central Asian routes, or to head east. We know that, in the 3^rd Century, the original Grand Trunk Road was constructed by the first of the Mauryan Emperors to reach from the Indus to the Ganges at Patna, thus facilitating a fairly short transit to head by water to the Brahmaputra. No doubt that this great highway was built to facilitate trade.

Traders travelled to the Delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, from such places as the great sources of gems in Sri Lanka, Java, Sumatra and Thailand, as well as locales specializing in spices and other commodities

From the Delta, the Brahmaputra carried merchants north. In what is now North Bangladesh, three routes divided; the Teesta River to Sikkim and thence to Tibet, via land to Cooch Behar and through to Bhutan into Tibet, or north east up the Brahmaputra to North Assam and thence by the ancient Ledo Road through Burma, passing close to fabled Mandalay, into Yunnan and Sichuan, from where the headwaters of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers were easily accessed as routes to the heart of Chinese civilisation.

In the 16^th Century, the Grand Trunk Road was extended, in the West to Kabul, and in the East to Sonargaon in Bangladesh, marking acceptance of the vital importance of the trade routes to the Mughal Empire. It was, indeed, the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, who famously described the land around the Ganges as ‘the Paradise of nations’, because of the wealth that trade engendered; and Robert Clive, the British victor of Plassey in 1757, explaining to the directors of the East India Company the benefit of gaining Diwani, Tax Collecting, rights to Bengal, Behar and Orissa, that the wealth they could anticipate would ‘ defray all the expenses of the investment, furnish the whole of the China treasure, answer the demands of all your other settlements in India’.

By then, of course, the draw of the Spice Islands of the East, had opened the Maritime Silk Road, that by the middle of the 19^th Century had become the main route of trade between East and West. But for, perhaps, as much as 2,000 years or more, there is little doubt that the Southwest Silk Road was one of the main, if not the main, route of trade between the great trading centres, and Empires of East and West.

THE PERILS OF POSSESSION

2011-09-14T13:22:00.000+06:00

Possessing foreign lands in the way that Britain colonised much of the world for so many generations is often facilitated by disunity amongst those colonised. The Scots and Welsh certainly found this to be true in their efforts to resist English advances in earlier times, as did India from the mid-17^th century.

However, although even in India regular attempts were made to loosen the British grip, it is often the efforts of outsiders that can sometimes prove most troubling. As the British found out for themselves in India.

The incident of 18^th November, 1809 is perhaps a vivid example. In the spring of 1809 the beleaguered French managed to get a small squadron of two Frigates and a Corvette past the British blockade of French ports. They were destined for the Bay of Bengal, where they intended to inflict the maximum possible economic damage on Britain’s valuable trade which was substantially financing the war between Britain and France. Arriving a few months later they wrought some carnage on the commercial and smaller naval vessels that were part of the British operations in India.

On November 18^th they encountered a small convoy of ‘East Indiamen’, as the lightly armed cargo vessels of the east India Company were known, outward bound to Bengal. The ships were under the command of Captain John Stewart; their cargo 200 passengers, mostly newly recruited officers for the all important East India Company army.

On sighting the French ships, Captain Stewart signalled for the two other members of his convoy, the Charlton and United Kingdom, to close with his ship, the Windham, in order to jointly pick off the French ships one by one.

Ship for ship, the French frigates outgunned the British; and worse, the British crews were mostly ‘lascars’, many of them Bangladeshis from Sylhet, excellent sailors, but untrained with guns.

They might have still had a chance, if they had worked together, however the captains of the other British vessels declined to close, with the result that the French were able to capture the English ships one by one.

Putting prize crews aboard the captured ships, captain Hamelin began the journey back to France with his captives, surviving a hurricane along the way. However the captured ships were not all destined for France, blockading British naval ships were able to recapture The Windham and release the imprisoned British soldiers aboard.

The history of the British in India is far from one dimensional. It was indeed a rich and colourful history, and the affair of November 18^th was but one of countless such reversals of fortune over the two hundred years of British occupation of the sub continent.

Lalbagh Fort

2011-09-07T12:57:00.002+06:00

Lalbagh Fort

Also known as Fort Aurangabad after the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, in whose reign the construction commenced, the fort was probably designed to fulfil the same defensive, protective and residential role as the more famous Red Fort in Delhi.

Walls of Lalbagh Fort

Within the huge walls, substantial sections of which remain intact, and the three gateways there are only three standing structures. However, excavations have revealed the foundations of as many as 27 structures as well as complex water and sewage systems and decorative gardens and fountains.

These recent discoveries point towards not only an earlier history for the site, but also a remarkable complex of administration, residential and leisure facilities.

Gate, Lalbagh Fort

Construction was commenced in 1678, by the then Viceroy of Bengal Prince Muhammad Azam. Azam’s immediate successor was Shaista Khan whose daughter Pari Bibi died at the fort; her mausoleum is one of the three buildings in the complex. After the death of his daughter, Khan felt the location to be ominous and construction was never completed.

Mausoleum of Pari Bibi

He may well have been right. In 1857 the fort garrison joined the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ but were defeated by the army of the East India Company and those who were captured were publicly hanged in nearby Victoria Park (now known as Bahadur Shah Park after the leader of the failed rebellion).

Dewan-i-Aam

The visible buildings within the fort walls are the Dewan-i-Aam, a mosque, and the tomb of Bibi Para. The Dewan-i-Aam is essentially the citadel and headquarters, including guest accommodations for VIPs.

Quilla Mosque

The mosque, known as the Quilla Mosque is a three domed structure in the same Mughal style as the rest of the buildings. The tomb of Pari Bibi is rare in its interior decoration made of black basalt, white marble and coloured tile. Further structures including arrangements for water supply and fountain courts, sewerage, gardens, stables, barracks, and residential accommodation have been identified by the Archaeology department.

Excavations have also revealed strata of earlier occupation of the site, including terracotta plaques and heads from a pre Muslim period, probably from the time of Buddhist occupation after 7^th Century.

THE SOUTHWEST SILK ROAD

2011-09-05T11:16:00.001+06:00

The Ganges/Brahmaputra Delta has been the subject of international interest for over two millennia.

Megasthenes, the Greek traveller, wrote, in about 300BCE of the people of ‘Gangarida’, that it was ‘a nation that possesses a vast force of the largest size elephants’.

His interest was presumably stirred by Alexander the Great’s decision not to advance and come into conflict with the legendary strength of these people!

Strabo, the 1^st Century Roman writer, mentions the deltaic lands: ‘Regarding merchants who now sail from Egypt…as far as the Ganges, they are only private citizens...’

Beads from Wari Bateshwar

His comments are unsurprising, too, since finding Roman beads and other materials at Wari Bateshwar, the ancient city with roots from before the Bronze Age presently being slowly excavated beside the Old Brahmaputra in Bangladesh.

The 1^st Century ‘Periplus of the Erythraean Sea’ makes an interesting joint reference that more or less supports other contentions that the great trading centre that was the Ganges/Brahmaputra Delta had early connections to China trade, referring to the accuracy of the description of the Ganges delta, but mentioning China as ‘the great inland city, Thina, that is the source of raw silk’

Such reference, of course, implies that traders to the delta assumed the silk they were acquiring came from China, but without any real idea of where, or even what, China was.

Ptolemaic Map of the Ganges Delta

A hundred years later, Ptolemy’s map of the Ganges Delta, a remarkably accurate piece of mapping, to which we have referred before in this blog, showed quite clearly that his informants knew all about the course of the Brahmaputra River, crossing through the Himalayas, then bending westward to its source in Tibet.

No one seriously doubts that this delta was a major international trading centre, almost certainly from much earlier than the Common Era. The industrialisation of the Ganges basin, which commenced, perhaps, as early as 1,000 years before the Common Era found its most convenient shipping outlet down the Ganges itself, although the Grand Trunk Road was probably built between Patna, in the basin, and the Indus River, to facilitate trade.

Coin excavated from Wari Bateshwar

The Malaysian Tin identified in Chinese Bronze of the ancient times, and Money Cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean found in tombs in Yunnan of 3^rd Century BCE support the belief that trade with China also commenced at an early period. We also know that gemstones and other merchandise from such as Thailand and Java were traded in the delta and through it.

Clearly, this history of such rich trade goes a long way to explaining some of the more improbable aspects of the archaeology of a country more commonly associated with poverty.

Paharpur

With over 250 identifiable remains of Buddhist universities/monasteries and a vast and rich trove of both Buddhist and Hindu sculpture and architectural pieces dating back to before the Common Era, indeed, from the time of the Buddha himself, it clearly required considerable wealth to build and maintain such treasures. Equally, some of the architectural gems and sculpture of a great Hindu tradition from both the early times and more recent, especially the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, and the countless great Mughal and pre-Mughal mosques, together with over 150 palaces, in various states of repair, forts, infrastructure and public buildings all speak of considerable riches which are, at present, scarcely imaginable.

Ahsan Manzil, The Pink Palace

But it is perhaps the recent work of the Chinese archaeological writer Bin Yang whose work, ‘Between Winds and Clouds; The Making of Yunnan’, published in 2004 by the University of Colombia, that confirms, most powerfully, the work of earlier writers and archaeologists, such as D.P. Singhal and Janice Stargardt, in identifying this much neglected route of international trade.

He identifies a number of sub routes of the of the road: Sichuan-Yunnan-Burma-Assam-Bangladesh.

Much of his consideration of the route is of its most recent uses, especially from 12^th Century CE, when, for example, he believes it was used to ship bullion from Yunnan (Gold and Silver being amongst the minerals in which Yunnan is rich), through Upper Burma, into Bengal, making use of the ancient route, known as the Ledo road, through Burma, which also passed through famous Mandalay, and from there, the Brahmaputra valley through Assam and modern Bangladesh.

Well, we might think, did Robert Clive of India the victor of Plassey, writing in 1765 to the Directors of the East India Company, explaining the importance of buying the Diwani rights (tax collection) to Bengal, Behar and Orissa, speak of ‘the whole of the China treasure’; and the great Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb describe Bengal as ‘the Paradise of the Nations’.

Even Robinson Crusoe, in Daniel Defoe’s famous novel, written in 1719, commented on his last adventure, ‘on our return to Bengal I was very satisfied with my adventure...but it is little matter for wonder when we consider the innumerable ports and places where they have free commerce’.

Curzon Hall, Dhaka

Or Ralph Fitch, the London merchant who explored the commercial possibilities in 1586, producing the report that resulted in the East India Company being formed, describing Sripur in Bangladesh as ‘a flourishing centre of trade and shipbuilding’.

Indeed, one wonders why so many of the pieces published about Silk Roads, a description of the trade routes between the great Empires of the world invented by Baron von Richthofen in the late 19^th Century, which has acquired a gestalt all of its own, have consistently failed to identify this Road through the Delta.

Hemnagor Palace

The answer may lie in the interests of Chinese traders who wanted to keep it secret, and merchants in Bangladesh and India, especially Armenian traders. And of course, in today’s classic ignoring of Bangladesh as a remote corner of India, steeped in poverty and corruption, and disaster prone. Not a place one would normally associate with being an historic centre of world trade!

However, the emerging evidence of the ancient cities of Bangladesh, in particular Wari Bateshwar, Mahathangarh, Bhitagarh, Vikrampur, Egarasindhur and Sonargaon will, surely, eventually help the world to recognise what may be one of Global trade’s last great secrets .

Please remember, you heard it here, first!

KUSUMBA MOSQUE: MEDIAEVAL RECYCLING IN BANGLADESH

2011-08-18T13:13:00.004+06:00

Kusumba Mosque

This startlingly elegant work of pre Mughal architecture was built between 1558 and 1559, by one Sulaiman, evidently a high official at the court of one of the last of the Afghan Suri rulers.

An unusual six dome piece in design, it is even more unusual in construction. In a land substantially, almost completely, devoid of stone most structures are built of brick, and indeed the basic structure of Kusumba is brick.

What raises it from the average is its cladding of black basalt. And that stone is clearly recycled architectural stone from one, or more, of the many Buddhist Vihara that were plentiful in the area.

Close examination of surface decoration on the exterior reveals that neither insert panels of decoration, nor even the infilling of arches contrived in the construction, are balanced or matched. Even roseate decoration varies in size.

Exterior, Kusumba Mosque

But the most compelling evidence comes from the decor of the pillars, both internal and external, in which the basalt is sculpted with ‘V’ shaped designs. Even a casual examination of such pillars in museums, or scattered across the sites of vihara, reveals identical decoration.

Pillar, Kusumba Mosque

Internally, an unusual ‘gallery’ is also clearly constructed of reassembled interior work from a vihara, possibly even the surrounding of a frame Buddha statue. In fact, this may be the most substantial assembly of Buddhist architecture in Bangladesh.

The aggregation of sites from which such architectural, or sculptural material has been recovered in Northern Bangladesh is more than 50, so there were clearly, at the time, about 300 to 400 years after the devastation of the considerable Buddhist presence in the area during the Hindu rule, where Buddhism developed, even from the time of the Prince Gautama himself, many places from which such material could be salvaged.

A large heap of off cuts of basalt and marble rich rocks, together with substantial other architectural pieces, betrays the eventual carelessness of the considerably skilled builders in tidying up the site at the completion of their work.

The result is, certainly, one of the most attractive amongst the large number of very beautiful mosques in the country; made all the more appealing by the superb craftsmanship that made so much of the materials at hand. As far as we can tell, perhaps this mosque is the first such environmentally friendly piece of recycling in this environmentally vulnerable country!

THE STATELY HOMES OF SAVAR

2011-07-28T13:40:00.000+06:00

The history of Savar, now one of the centres of the flourishing Ready Made Garments industry in Bangladesh, is an ancient one. The site of a Buddhist Vihara, probably from an early period, since some believe that there is evidence in nearby Dhamrai that it was one of the places in Bangladesh where the Lord Buddha himself preached, lies in the centre of the bustling town.

Remains of Buddhist Vihara near Savar

More contemporarily, are the monuments to the considerable activity in the area of freedom fighters during the 1971 Liberation War, including the National Monument.

It is probably unsurprising to find the Vihara almost certainly incorrectly described as the palace of a Buddhist King, Harish Chandra, but also unsurprising to find two ‘Stately Homes’ nearby.

Stately Home of a Zaminder, Savar Bangladesh

Both evidently 19^th Century in origin, with 20^th Century additions, there were probably the residences of Zamindari. The presence of Hindu Temples suggest that both were the homes of Hindu Zaminders, who may well have fled at the time of Partition in 1947, or certainly at the time of the abolition of the Zaminder office in 1950.

Hindu Temple, Savar Bangladesh

At the time of abolition, there were about 150 Zaminders working in the lands of Bangladesh, and that means that there are about 150 such palaces and stately homes across this fertile land.

Having been evidently acquired by businessmen, both homes seem to be in a reasonable state of conservation, if not preservation.

THE BODHI TREE, THE SACRED FIG

2011-07-23T11:12:00.001+06:00

Sacred Fig Tree

North Bengal, particularly has plentiful examples of the sacred tree, known to Hindus as ‘The King of Trees’

Leaves of a Banyan or Bo Tree

With its distinctive heart shaped leaves, it can grow to great age and size, and is often the centre of village life, referred to as a Banyan Tree. In Bengali, it is called Peepal Tree, and is, in fact, sacred to followers of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.

Bodhi Tree in a village center

The name Bodhi Tree comes from the tree at Bodhi, in North India, close to the India/Bangladesh border, under which Prince Gautama, the Buddha, meaning ‘the enlightened one’, first achieved enlightenment.

Revered in Sri Lanka as Bo Tree, and across South East Asia, they are known as a symbol of happiness, prosperity, longevity and good luck. As well it might be; quite apart from its religious associations, it is used in traditional medicine for treating many disorders, including asthma, diabetes, diarrhea, epilepsy, stomach problems, inflammations and sexual disorders!

Bo trees are a symbol of Happiness and Prosperity

Time spent beneath the shading branches of the great tree might well be well spent!

RAJSHAHI SILK

2011-07-20T13:59:00.001+06:00

Rajshahi Silks

There are probably few luxuries to compare with the image, the aura, and especially the feel of silk.

And it comes as no surprise that, in Northern Bangladesh, on the edge of the historic and ancient Southwest Silk Road, a silk industry flourishes, as it has for a very long time.

Spools of Silk

Quite how long, no one knows for sure; there are even those who claim, a little like the old argument about whether Marco Polo took noodles from Italy to China or brought them back from China, that silk moth cultivation originated in this corner of ancient India, now Bangladesh, and taken to China!

Silk Loom - Rajshahi Silk Manufacturing

What is certain is that the industry was flourishing hereabouts when the English Merchant, Ralph Fitch, visited these parts in 1586 doing research work that led to the formation of the Honourable East India Company. It may, in fact, have been one of the many attractions of the area that were reported back to London. It may even have been what brought the Dutch to set up a base for trading in Rajshahi.

Rajshahi Silk Manufacturing

Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that both traditional manufacturing, and the production of Errandi, or non-violent silk produced without boiling the pupa and killing the embryonic moth, are crafts of a great age in these lands with a history of over 2,500 years of international trade.

Silk Thread spun onto Spools

Today, from Mulberry bushes to hand painted decoration, the entire process from unravelling the average mile of silk thread from each cocoon to marketing the luscious lengths of sheer silk are undertaken in a thriving industry, with markets both at home and abroad, by highly experienced and skilled work forces of both men and women.

Hand Stitched Rajshahi Silk

A major employer in an area more famed, perhaps, for it agriculture, especially the delicious annual crop of mangoes, and where so much of the population is more seasonally employed than fully.

Apart from the silk, of course, the area is rich in archaeology and history. So much the more reason the visit!

THE 19 PALACES OF NAGARPUR, TANGAIL, BANGLADESH

2011-07-04T10:05:00.000+06:00

Palace at Nagarpur

The Brindaban Chandra Bigroho complex in this sprawling market town in Tangail District of Bangladesh, an area famed for its fine weaving industry, and its sweets, is one of the most remarkable palace complexes, probably in Asia.

Sprawling across many acres, it contains no less than 19 ‘pavilions’, each a self contained palace that must have catered to the extended family of the wealthy Hindu businessman who evidently became Zaminder in the late 19^th Century.

Some of the pavilions are as recent as the 1930s in construction, and the oldest, probably late 19^th Century.

Unlike so many of the palaces, known properly as Zaminderbari, of Bangladesh, where the neo classical is certainly a favoured style of architecture, and where artisans wrought wonders of architectural detail in concrete with such as Corinthian capitols readily mistaken for Portland Stone, this complex might more easily be mistaken for such as the great Palace in Jaipur. The style is grand, but distinctively of the Indian subcontinent in concept.

Both mosaic and impressed patterns are readily discovered in the many fine buildings that include a couple of temples.

Impressed Patterns

Occupied now by a women’s teacher training college, with teachers enjoying the somewhat dubious privilege of occupying the best preserved of the ancient buildings, hours are required to explore, completely, the exteriors and the shells of the many buildings. For the follower of the great diversity and architectural and contracting skills employed in the more than 100 palaces of Bangladesh, this location is a veritable feast.

Yet a further illustration of the enormous wealth that lies in the history of what the world now regards as an impoverished, disaster prone corner of the Indian subcontinent, there is no mistaking this as further compelling evidence of the past as a great and flourishing centre of trade, the routes from which reached out, for more than 2,000 years, across most of the known world. And of the enormous wealth that derived from that trade.

Even amongst such as the great Stately Homes of Britain, constructed in the 18^th and 19^th centuries for the great merchant princes and bankers such as the Rothschilds and Sassoons, few could compete in scale with this complex.

An easy day trip from Dhaka, though exploration of others of the great palaces of the area would certainly take longer!

BANGLADESH, TRAVEL WRITERS AND TOURISM.

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The first recorded tourist arrived in Bangladesh in the 3^rd Century. Fa Xiang was a Chinese Buddhist monk whose comprehensive account of his travels has provided us with some insight into the history of the region, and particularly to the enormous part played there in the development and spread of Buddhism.

In the 7^th Century another Chinese Buddhist Monk followed much the same route as Fa Xiang, and it seems that a few hundred years had done nothing to diminish the great monuments that the Emperor Ashoka erected in the 3^rd Century BCE to mark the progress of The Buddha.

On the Jamuna River

The greatest travel writer of them all, Ptolemy, in the 2^nd Century CE shows that his informants were very familiar with the lands of Bangladesh, listing cities that are, only now, being identified. Not the least of them, the possibility that his Ramu is the same Ramu that still exists close to the great tourist destination of modern times, Cox’s Bazar.

Ptolemy's Map of the Ganges Delta

The first recorded outbound tourist was probably another Buddhist, Atish Dipankar, known within the religion as the ‘Second Buddha’, the man who restored the religion in Tibet. He is recorded, as a young man, taking his own ‘Gap Year’, and travelling with a group of Gem Merchants to Java and Sumatra in the 11^th Century.

Pagoda built to commemorate Atish Dipankar

These days, Bangladesh is widely neglected by tourists and writers alike. Despite its rich and colourful history, and one of the finest natural environments in the world, contemporary travellers seem less savvy than those of ancient times, regarding Bangladesh, apparently, as an almost invisible adjunct to India.

Tajhat Palace

One travel company in Bangladesh has developed the rather aggressive proposition, ‘More History than India, More Beaches than Malaysia, and More Buddhism than Nepal’. All of which, of course, is true. And it is ironic that it was probably the Silk Road, and traffic to and through it, that accounts for much of the tangible history that India can show today, to entice the writers and the travellers, the same Silk Road which, of course, ran through present day Bangladesh.

Hemnagor Zaminderbari

2011-06-22T14:01:00.001+06:00

The Main Entrance

The detail and the jewel like quality of the intricate mosaic work of the fascia and entrance of this remarkably well preserved palace, close to the east bank of the Jamuna River, reveals a probable date of construction.

Intricate, Skilled Mosaic Work

Dhamrai Palace, the ‘Glass Mosque’ at Saidpur, and mansions and palaces at Sonargaon all date from the same decade, around the 1850s. All these buildings were evidently sufficiently well built, or sufficiently far from the epicentre to survive, unlike so many others, the disastrous 1897 Great India Earthquake. In this case however, the palace, known as The Angle House, is said to have been constructed around 1890. More research will be needed to attempt to establish the origins and development of this particular architectural skill!

The Entry Vestibule

Such mosaic work, created from broken pieces of pottery, porcelain or glass, is a common feature of ‘shop houses’ of South East Asia, such as in Malacca, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Crest above the Main Entrance

It seems reasonable to suppose that around 1850 Chinese craftsmen were brought into Bangladesh by the then rulers, the East India Company. Whether it is likely that the same great skills would have been available 50 years later seems debatable.

Mosaic Columns at Hemnagor Zaminderbari

Whatever the truth, this lovely construct, said to have been built by Hem Chandra Chowdhury a Hindu, property developer and businessman who was certainly the incumbent Zaminder in 1900 when he constructed Hemnagar Shashi Mukhi English High School named after his mother, is certainly one of the least decayed of the 100 or so palaces in Bangladesh.

Fine Architectural Detail

Is it possible, one wonders, that Hem Chandra Chowdhury only acquired the rights of Zaminder late in the 18^th Century and acquired the palace with his acquisition? There is, of course, an answer to such a question, and perhaps, when we tire of unlocking Bangladesh, we might find time to search the records of the India Office, or, indeed, of the East India Company itself, for some answer.

Concrete and Mosaic Columns

Meanwhile, what we can say is that Hem Chandra Chowdhury’s greatest claim to fame, perhaps, is having been involved in the Sub Continent’s first legal case about real estate development, in the late 19^th Century.

The Neo Classical Inner Courtyard

A Hindu himself, he is possibly responsible for the nearby community of Hindu pottery craftsmen, who still practice their skills where they have for over a hundred years.

BALIHAR PALACE, NAOGAON.

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Balihar Palace

This fascinating palace reveals at least three generations of construction, making it one of the most interesting sites in Bangladesh.

The Mughal influence is quite clear in the fairly well preserved remains of what is clearly the most ancient part of the palace, which suggests that, like Natore Rajbari not so far away, its origins lie in the earliest Zaminder developments of the late 16^th Century.

Outstanding Mughal period features lie behind a late 19^th Century entrance in the neo classical style. The Temple, which lies beside this older part of the palace, appears to be of the same period. This structure confirms that the Mughals too found Hindu Zaminders as acceptable as the later East India Company seems to have found them desirable, presumably the latter based on the tried and tested British Imperialism tradition of ‘divide and rule’.

The fascia of the temple has, as is often the case, been defaced with a corrugated iron canopy, but both on the temple, and within the courtyard of the palaces, fine terracotta panels show scenes of life and faith.

'Staircase to Nowhere', Balihar Palace

Intriguing is the broad, tall stairway to nowhere that lies facing the temple, and at right angles to the palace. It might be assumed it was once the grand entrance, as at Tajhat Palace in Rangpur, to another palace building. One, perhaps, that collapsed, like so many, in the Great India Earthquake of 1897.

The greater, more contemporary, neoclassical palace lies behind the original Mughal structure. This may support the theory of a disappeared building since the earlier extant palace obviously survived the earthquake and the newer construction dates from the late 19^th century or early twentieth century.

Part of this building has been used, most recently, as a school building, though it is impossible to judge whether that meant it was better maintained, or more abused. The great building is certainly in a semi ruinous state.

There is more to see here than at most estates, and perhaps more for the architectural historian to consider. Altogether, even in an area with so many palaces and an extraordinary number of remains of ancient Buddhist Vihara, visitors will find it is worth the time and trouble to find and explore Balihar Palace.

FLAME TREES OF BANGLADESH

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Delonix Regia

Between April and June Bangladesh is ‘on fire’ with the extensive blooming of the ‘Delonix Regia’ along highways, byways, streets, paths and parks.

Known in English as Royal Poinciana, and one of the species of tree referred to around the world as Flame Trees, in Bangladesh, with its delicate, fern like leaves, and its flamboyant scarlet and crimson covering of blossom, it is called ‘Krishnachara’: the Crown of Lord Krishna.

The tree has extensive root systems which are sometimes regarded as nuisance, preventing undergrowth, but it is hard not to forgive that for the two months or so it so enlivens the environment.

Flame Tree or Royal Poinciana

With yellow and purple blooming varieties as well it is certainly one of the stars of a spring in Bangladesh that is famed for its luxuriant palette of colours, including a far wider variety of green shades than the average water colour box!

MAHAYANA BUDDHISM. BORN IN BANGLADESH.

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The home of Mahayana Buddhism is often regarded as being Tibet. In fact however, there is growing evidence that a hitherto unconsidered location may be where this more ‘liberal’ school of Buddhism first emerged. Bangladesh, one of the world’s largest Islamic states with a strong cultural tradition in its Sunni majority, has long been recognized as having a considerable Buddhist background that was, almost literally, wiped out by the 12^th and 13^th Century raiders and invaders from Afghanistan and Persia.

Varendra Research Museum

A survey of the Buddhist collection of the Varendra Museum reveals art, sculptural and architectural detail from over 50 locations in North Bangladesh alone. Such a large concentration of sites in such a small area of the world certainly justifies consideration.

Buddhist Sculpture, Varendra Museum

Early investigation of the Buddhist history of Bangladesh commenced in the mid and late 19^th Century, largely under the influence of British archaeologists. With partition in 1947 and the very emotive environment surrounding that process, and later, the disastrous and genocidal Liberation War in 1971, meant there was neither the incentive, not the resources to continue the work that was first effectively formalized in 1910, with the foundation of Varendra Research Museum in Rajshahi
.

There is little doubt that Prince Gautama, the Buddha himself, while under the patronage of King Bimbisara the Magadha ruler, preached in North Bengal the north western province of Bangladesh. Indeed Early Chinese visitors in the Common Era noted Ashokan Pillars erected to mark the places of the Buddha’s preaching as well as a stupa, also erected by the great emperor, built over a bodily remain of the great prince.

It was about the same time, in the 5^th and 4^th Centuries BCE, that the earliest of the Aryans are believed to have followed the Dravidians into the largely forested lands of the Ganges Delta, bringing with them early Vedic Hindu beliefs. These beliefs show a considerable merging with more traditional and pagan beliefs, not least the worship of Saura, the Sun God, the worship of whom is believed by some historians to have motivated the flow of the great Aryan diasporas, including the Celts, who are said to have travelled in search of the resting place of the Sun God during his nocturnal disappearances, and the famous Mother Goddess, whose worship continued in Europe through Roman times.

Bodhisattva Sculpture

The result, in these Gangetic lands, was fusion of a number of developing faiths and philosophies. Much of the evidence of that fusion as the foundation of Mahayana Buddhism lies in the art recovered from the many ruined Vihara that are numerous across the vast plains of the delta.

Those who describe Mahayana Buddhism as ‘originating in India’ are, perhaps, being a little disingenuous; ancient India comprised the entire subcontinent, including both Pakistan and Bangladesh. The ‘rediscovery’ of the extent of Buddhist archaeology, particularly in northern Bangladesh, and suggested reason for its heartland around the wealth and communications, as well as the peaceful environment around the great trading routes, reinforces the view that the ‘power house’ of development was less limited geographically than previously thought.

Votive Stupa

The Mahayana School, of course, is actually a collection of philosophical approaches to attaining enlightenment: Zen, Pinyin (Pure Land), Tendai and Nichiren, as well as the ‘esoteric’ traditions that are regarded as associated with Shingon and Tibetan Buddhism.

Zen, the attainment of enlightenment through experience rather than theory, seems very likely to have found early expression in Bangladesh, where Buddhism is so clearly part of a strong commercial and trading tradition.

Pinyin, or Pure Land, derives from the example of Amitabha Buddha, who is said to have been a king who gave up his throne after attaining enlightenment. The location of this origin is unknown, though theorized across the Buddhist world. The assortment of ‘realms’ or kingdoms surrounding the South West Silk Road must clearly widen the field of contenders, at the very least. But, once again, the intensity of the concentration of monasteries/vihara in Bangladesh, together with the identification of Vihara such as Paharpur(Somapara) and Jagaddala as both major centres of learning, and with evidence such as the reproduction of Paharpur design in Cambodia, Java and Sumatra, suggest that there was, at least, considerable development from within the area.

Ruins of Jagaddala Vihara

Tendai, or ‘Lotus School’, is in many ways, even more interesting since the unearthing of a 3^rd/6^th Century Lotus Temple in the great trading centre at Wari Bateshwar on the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. The 13^th Century development in Japan of Nichiren, based on the Lotus Sutra, surely derives from such centres of international study as that at Vikrampur in Bangladesh, known, in the middle of 11^th Century to be a very considerable centre of study, from which Atish Dipankar left to travel to Tibet.

Pagoda built by the government of the People's Republic of China to to commemorate Atish Dipankar

The emerging evidence of the existence of a further ‘Silk Road’ which passed between West, South and South East utilizing the Brahmaputra for access towards the Himalayan passes through Tibet, and Myanmar/Yunnan, a route accessed by Grand Trunk Road from Indus and Arabian Sea, and by Ganges, as well as, of course, the sea itself, that carried Malaysian Tin to the developing Bronze Age in China, and such as Money Cowries from Bay of Bengal and Southern Ocean, centuries before the Common Era, explains, too, both the wealth that financed the development, and the routes by which early Buddhism spread across Central, East and South East Asia.

Buddhist Vihara Somapura, Paharpur, Naogaon

The art recovered includes an astonishing number of Hindu images from Vihara, as well as early Bodhisattva images commonly associated with Tibetan Buddhism. It is widely accepted that Vajrayana and associated exotic practices such as Tantric and Yogic meditations derive from the Mahayana school, and represent this very close fusion with other and more ancient beliefs and practices.

Buddhist Sculpture

It is, under the circumstances of identifying this unique environment of history, study, peace and wealth, unsurprising that it may now be thought likely that, after all, the cradle of these beliefs, still so strongly held and practiced, especially amongst Buddhist followers in East and South East Asia, as well as amongst the huge diversity of others seeking de-stressing practices in their lives, across the world, has finally been identified, in Bangladesh!

SOMAPURA VIHARA, PAHARPUR, BANGLADESH

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The design of this Buddhist ‘monastery and university’, the largest and one of the most important in South Asia, is rather unusual.

Mahavihara Somapura, Paharpur, Naogaon

The only other Vihara of similar pattern are found in Burma, Java, and Cambodia, which tends to confirm the growing appreciation that Bangladesh may well have been the ‘Cradle of Buddhism’. The great flow of trade that passed between China, Tibet, and the rest of the world, from well before the 6^th Century BCE, was not only what financed such early developments, but also the means by which the religious teachings were spread.

Buddist Vihara Somapura, Paharpur, Naogaon

North Bengal, the lands of western Bangladesh, are rich in the sites of vihara, most of which have either never been excavated or have not been properly excavated, having only been dug in the most superficial levels.

Paharpur Vihara, recorded under the ancient name of Somapura, is widely recognized as a Pala Period development, between middle of the 8^th Century CE and the late 12^th Century CE.


Buddist Terracotta, Paharpur, Naogaon

In fact, there is evidence that predates such conservative estimates. Excavation has revealed brickwork of the Mauryan Period, 321 to 185 BCE. Additionally Chinese travelers of the early period of the Common Era noted the existence of a Stupa to mark a place where the Buddha himself preached, presumably one of the many known to have been erected by Ashoka, the third Mauryan emperor, who converted to Buddhism and was an enthusiastic patron.

Terracotta Sculpture, Paharpur, Naogaon

Early writings in India identify Somapura as one of the five great vihara of India, with neighbouring Jaggadad Vihara, yet largely unexcavated and unexplored, as another. In fact, at the last count, there are at least ten vihara in North Bengal, all no doubt flourished, as vihara were prone to do, in the massive flow of traffic and trade along the Silk Route through Bangladesh.

Terracotta ViharaWall, Paharpur, Naogaon

Somapura is now recognised as a World Heritage Site, it attracts large numbers of local visitors every year, most of whom are unaware of the great history the place represents. There is a small site museum, but many more of the rich treasures excavations have revealed are either in the Rajshahi Museum or the National Museum, although, sadly, it is believed many more may be found in the antique shops around the world and the private houses of collectors.

Terracotta Vihara, Paharpur, Naogaon

Somapura is well worth a visit, especially as a part of a larger tour exploring the extraordinary history of the area as the ‘Cradle of Buddhism’.