Preface

 

A century ago, somewhere in the middle of present-day Bangladesh, north of Tangail city, a village named ‘Roail’ existed within the limits of the service area of ‘Kaloha’ post office. Clan members of an extended family constituted the majority of the households in that village. For the members of that clan who resided in that village at the beginning of the twentieth century, Madhab Chandra Chakraborty was the doyen. At that time, the family members were fully aware that, from some forgotten root, their ancestors had arrived at that place three or four generations back. Probably, that was the time when that land started becoming inhabitable by changing its character from an immersed area to a somewhat dry land. During the time of the partition of India, they were Bengalis and ‘Bangal’ to the core.

 

From the descriptions that Naru heard from his grandmother, he could very well imagine that area as being one of the most cut-off areas, even by the standards of the then Bengal province. That village had no specialty to speak of and, for all practical purposes, was nondescript. Generation after generation the heads of the family pursued medicine as a profession. At the end of their basic education, they used to go to Calcutta for the study of medicine. What Naru could manage to make out from the narrations told by his grandmother was that this was the practice followed for at least three generations of their family before the independence of India. Though the family owned a significant amount of land, the family members were never associated with cultivation activities. Their lives revolved around the management of the cultivation related activities and around the activities of the dispensary that the head of the family used to run. British doctors had close connections with the dispensaries run by them. Naru’s grandfather was the last one in that chain. The chain was broken because of the happening of guardian-less partition of India. Naru's grandfather died a pauper in one remote village in India. The surviving members of the family had a strong reluctance to discuss the chapter of the partition of the country. Naru found a book in their residence, which was the second part of a two-book series on medicine, written by his grandfather, Dinesh Chandra Chakraborty and published in Calcutta around 1920 AD.

 

Naru found exceptional enthusiasm in his ancestors, particularly in his grandma, in describing the physical environment of the ancestral land that they left. Other senior members of their family did not enjoy the luxury of spending sufficient time on those types of discussions, then also they showed good amount of enthusiasm whenever they took part in such discussions. That land became Naru’s land of imagination.

 

The most captivating of all the physical features of that land was that it used to go under water for a long time every year. In the first phase of that event of prolonged inundation, that land was used to becoming flooded without any rainfall. From the northern direction, water would flow towards that area. A lot of fish used to appear there, along with the freshly arrived water. That used to be a festive time for the younger members of that clan. They would select and pick fish at will, according to their palatal preferences, and take those to their respective mothers.

 

That area used to remain waterlogged for the next few months until the end of the monsoon. With the advent of the first flow of water, the process of cultivation of the most important crop would start. The only function to be performed was to sprinkle the seeds of paddy on the land that had just started to become submerged. In the mean time, the monsoon used to arrive, and with the joint effect of the two supply sources, the water cover on that land would increase slowly. At the peak of the rainy season, the water cover used to attain a depth of 10–12 feet on the farmlands.

 

During the next few months i.e., after the arrival of first flow of floodwaters, the seedlings sprouted from the paddy seeds, sprinkled on the farmlands, used to grow taller continuously, keeping pace with the gradually rising water level. Eventually, those plants used to attain a height of more than 10–12 feet. Inflorescences that had appeared over the water level would ripe while floating over the water and would be harvested by using boats.

 

Young Naru could hardly find anything similar to that geography in his known world at that time. Something started to disturb him. He faced some difficulty in conceiving of that description in a logically consistent manner. A journey started. Water was central to that journey.

 

Any journey towards the grey past of the Bengal Basin ultimately hits an unsurpassable roadblock in the word ‘Banga’. To date, no logically sound and consistent explanation of the origin of that word has been found. Naru had also remained stuck up at that roadblock for a long time.

 

Although the majority of the theories related to the origin of the word ‘Banga’ available today are like opinions in character, a couple of explanations are also available which are backed up by facts to varying degrees. There are problems associated with those explanations also. When one starts progressing with any of those explanations, it is revealed that those explanations are incapable of covering all the aspects related to the concept of ‘Banga’. For example, the advent of the term ‘Banga’ was proposed to be associated with the ancient cultivation of cotton in the ‘Rarh’ region, situated in the westernmost part of the Bengal Basin. That approach might have the backing of some facts, but it fails in associating the north-central parts of the Bengal Basin with the word ‘Banga’ in an inseparable manner. The north-central parts of the Bengal Basin are the core areas that carry the mantle of the idea of ‘Banga’. That is one of the necessary conditions to be fulfilled for any explanation in relation to ‘Banga’ to pass the acid test. That region is all-important to be associated with, so far as any viable explanation of 'Banga’ is concerned.

 

It is undeniable that the word ‘Banga’ has found direct mention in the Sanskrit texts of ancient origin that refer to events and places that were prehistoric. Various scholars have repeatedly mentioned that in their writings. It is by no means plausible and reasonable to assume that those who composed the structure of the Sanskrit language (grammar) were victims of the habit of corrupting words that had been created by them at the dawn of the current civilisation. They were the ones who created or adopted the terminologies and documented them.

 

The majority of ancient Indian literature that has reached the hands of modern people is related to Hinduism. Any contemporary issue discussed today assumes another dimension when a link is established between such an issue and the ancient Sanskrit literature. Various reasons may be attributed to that phenomenon.

 

It may be learnt that the experts have found the oldest mention of the word ‘Banga’ in Aitareya Aranyak, a part of the Rig Vedic literature. The period when the Aitareya was composed is said to be at least 3000 years earlier than the present time.

 

The presence of the word ‘Banga’ is essential for the coining of the word 'Bangail'. Without the existence of the word 'Banga', it cannot be said that the territory of ‘Banga’ has been reached i.e., ‘Banga Ail’ in Bengali. (Origin of Bangla Fifth Part Bangal)

 

Again, in the Bengali language, except for the word 'Vanga' (broken), the presence of a word close to 'Banga' is absolutely missing. According to Naru's own logic, the word 'Banga' cannot be a corrupted form of 'Vanga'. The presence of the word 'Banga' in ancient Indian writings, long before the advent of ‘Vanga Janapad’, unequivocally establishes that argument. According to the research of many experts, the presence of the word ‘Banga’ even predates the origin of the Sanskrit language and that opinion sounds logical.

 

Upon reaching that juncture, all discussions about another very important word ‘Bangal’ become haywire like the river Mahananda at Kisanganj.

 

Naru also reached a situation where if he could not find an acceptable explanation for the coining of the word ‘Banga’ at a period when inhabitable land had just started to emerge within that basin, he would be forced to accept the explanation that he was taught in school. His search would also remain as one more example of an incomplete assumption, just like the others.

 

In the early stages of the maturation of the Bengal Basin, the Rarh region, the Teesta Fan, and the Barind region emerged as habitable large areas. Perhaps that is why those regions came to be known as Rarh Bangla and Barendra (Barind) Bangla, as there was no ‘Bangla’ (Bengal) present outside of those two regions.

 

It was not only Naru, it was not only the others who reached the ‘Boro’ area of Assam, the ones who tried to trace the link to the Tibetan language in search of the term Bangla; even the official accounts of the Mughals reached the areas east of the Karotoya River to explain ‘Bangal’. Upon learning that, Naru became even more motivated.

 

Naru began to organise his thoughts and experiences in his late forties. During that phase, he frequently realised that the most difficult roadblock to attaining a logically consistent explanation that may unravel the basin's mysterious past lies in unearthing the root of the word ‘Banga’ and substantiating that explanation with tangible evidence. The most demanding part of such an explanation would be to direct the whole focus relating to ‘Banga’ to the geographical area lying to the east of the ‘Karotoya’ and ‘Padma’ rivers.

 

From the widely recognised and accepted facts put forward by the scientific community, it may be learnt that some 11,000 years ago, most of the Bengal Basin was part of a shallow marine environment. Since then, that lagoon started to change its character and, over time, has gradually turned into a landmass. That is what well-renowned geologists and other scholars have been saying over and over again for at least a hundred years now. The book ‘Origin of Hindu (Second Part): Arya Never Was Aryan’ attempted to provide a somewhat detailed account of that process. It is reasonable to assume that the highlands, which were present at the western and northern edges of the Bengal Basin, emerged out of the water in the initial phase of that transition process.

 

It has been observed in the book ‘Origin of Bangla First Part A Mythical Voyage’, that the Tibetans coined the term 'Bango-la' by adding the Tibetan word ‘La’ to a pre-existing word ‘Banga’ based on the physical features of the geography in the south of the Kalimpong area, at the northernmost tip of the Bengal Basin.

 

By the application of reason, one may realise that even if the Tibetans reached Kalimpong or its adjoining areas, it would not have been possible for them to engage in trade unless the migration of people from the plains had begun to the nearby areas of Kalimpong by that time. Even if the Tibetans who reached the northern end of the Bengal Basin had decided that the vast territory to the south deserved to be considered a ‘La’ (‘Origin of Bangla First Part A Mythical Voyage’), there was no possibility of that territory becoming ‘Banga-La’ alias ‘Bango-La’, unless ‘Banga’ had already been named. On the other hand, if the inhabitants had already coined the name ‘Banga’, it did not take a long time for ‘Banga-la’ to be coined. The coining of the name ‘Banga-la’ became possible only when human settlements were established in the land adjacent to the foothills of the Himalayas in the northernmost part of the Bengal Basin. That naming process was independent of the period of arrival of the Tibetans, i.e., irrespective of whether they came before or after the creation of such human settlements. Whether the arrival of the Tibetans happened before or after the naming of ‘Banga’, the journey of ‘Banga-La’ began, when they, the Tibetans, arrived at the northern fringe of the Bengal Basin and 'Banga' was named.

 

‘Banga’ is not a Tibetan word.

 

All the native people of the Indian part of Bengal call their home state ‘Bangla’ in their mother tongue. The desire to unravel the process that happened in the ancient time that formed a distinct, language-based human group, which would later assume a distinct political identity, provided fuel to Naru’s lamp of quest.  (‘Origin of Bangla Second Part Ghoti The Highlander’)

 

For any of the known historical names that the Bengal Basin identifies itself with, such as ‘Bang-Long’, ‘Bangla’ or ‘Banga’, the presence of some variant of the syllable 'Bang', in the form of ‘Baṁ’ or ‘Ban’ or ‘Bān’ or ‘Baṅa’ or ‘Baṅ’ or ‘Baṅg’ or ‘Baṅga’ is inevitable. That syllable plays a pivotal role in naming that geography and at the same time defining its character. That word ‘Banga’ is the corner stone.

 

If the name ‘Banga’ is accepted to have originated from cotton cultivation in the ‘Rarh’ region, then it automatically qualifies the concept that the more the Ganges moved eastwards and opened up new lands, the farther the area called ‘Banga’ expanded to the east. But that was not the real situation. Traditionally, the region that was primarily denoted by the word ‘Banga’ was not physically linked to the ‘Rarh’ region; it was never an extension of the Rarh region. Even today, the word ‘Bangadesh’ generally refers to the geography of the country known as Bangladesh, situated to the east of the Ganges. Almost all of that geography called ‘Banga’ extends to the far east of the boundary of that branch of the Ganges, which is known as Bhagirathi-Hooghly and cuts off the ‘Rarh’ region from the rest of the Bengal Basin.

 

Poet Krittibas Ojha, the great Bengali litterateur of yore, is also known to have applied that judgment. He referred to the geography on the east bank of the River Padma to indicate ‘Banga’ region. Therefore, it is very clear that no feature of the ‘Rarh’ region could have been the basis for naming ‘Banga’.

 

Considering the antiquity of their presence in India, it may be assumed that if the word ‘Rarh’ was coined by the Adivasis (literally meaning natives in English), the tribal people of the Chota Nagpur Plateau, the word ‘Banga’ has all the likelihood of having originated from their vocabulary only. A number of scholars have already discussed the relationship between the name ‘Rarh’ and the Adivasis in great detail. There is a lot of vagueness present about how the word ‘Banga’ came into existence. Although the word ‘Bonga’ has some similarities with the ancient word ‘Banga’, there are valid reasons to doubt the application of that term also.

 

The root of the naming process of the ‘Rarh’ region is embedded in the environmental and geographical features of that region. There are numerous references to that region in ancient authentic texts such as the ‘Acharanga Sutra’ (Jain literature), the writings of Megasthenes, and other Greek scholars.

 

It may be quoted from the book titled ‘Origin of Bangla Seventh Part Ghoti Children of the Land of Five Male Rivers’ :

 

“Experts are said to have been able to establish relationship between the Rarh region and various historical names such as ‘Gangaridai’, ‘Lodh’, ‘Lara’, ‘Lala’, ‘Lati’, ‘Rotta’, ‘Rara’, ‘Suhma’, ‘Sumbha’, etc. Key words like ‘Rarh’, ‘Larh’ etc., are related to natural features. Some special natural features of that region were reflected in its naming. It is also worth noting that many of those words belong to the vocabulary of the earliest inhabitants of India. At first glance, the use of the word Rarh seems appropriate. In the language of the Adivasis (the earliest inhabitants of India), that word means the region of ‘Rangamati’ (red soil). That is the clear primary identity of that region, as clear as the daylight, even today.

 

The Rarh region of that meaning is a specific region, identifiable through its own geographical features that can be accepted as a distinct geographical unit.”

 

When it is said that the word ‘Bangal’ was derived from the construction of large dykes in the northeastern parts of the Bengal Basin, then a question arises in mind: if the Adivasis were there since time immemorial, then how did the people of the northeastern part of the Bengal Basin get the chance to define the identity of the entire basin through one of their activities? At that time, there were much more important groups, kingdoms, etc., in other parts of that basin who could easily stamp their own choice name on that region. The answer, in one word, is ‘impossible’. Such an explanation is beyond the domain of logic and common sense. An assumption that no member of the Adivasi clan was able to cross the river Ganges and reach its eastern parts would be untenable. Tangible evidence vouches for otherwise. [Origin of Bangla Fifth Part Bangal].

 

Any acceptable explanation of the term ‘Banga’ must refer to some basis that predates the period of the creation of the known scripts of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat, since the word 'Banga' has been mentioned to refer to a geographical region in India in both of those two epics.

 

Naru’s own search has led him to the same conclusion. Therefore?

Chapter One Introduction

 

Introduction

 

Probably, it was the wish of destiny that Naru got in touch with the ‘will-o-the-wisp’. Creating its own light, ‘Wisp’ also embarked on a journey to seek, to find, and to enjoy the indescribable delight of finding. Shackled by its own constitution and bound by nature, the ‘Wisp’ could not delink itself from the touch of the land completely and, thus, could not expand the vision far enough to see some of the finer details, but wandered a lot on the ground. One day, the ‘Wisp’ whispered to Naru, "Are you willing to go to a place named ‘Chalsa’? That is a very beautiful place, and you may consider that the place of my origin". Naru, then, was sunk knee-deep in his struggle for survival. Until that period of his life, he was chained thoroughly to that task and could not accompany the ‘Wisp’. The more life went on burdening Naru, the more he increased the range of his mind's flight. There was no compulsion for the mind to remain anchored to the ground. Like many other constituents of nature, the ‘Wisp’ also set out to draw Naru's focus on 'Chalsa' and the surrounding areas. Was it the beckoning of destiny? That might be so. Situated near the northern end of the state of West Bengal, the larger identity of ‘Chalsa’ and its adjoining areas is the ‘Dooars’ (or gates).

 

There are routes of winding roads that descend from the heights of the Himalayas in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh to the plains of Punjab. There are routes from the Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand and adjoining Nepal to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. There are ways to descend from the higher altitudes of the Himalayas of Sikkim and Bhutan to the plains of West Bengal and Assam. There are similar paths available in Arunachal Pradesh to descend to the plains of Assam. Similarly, from the highlands of Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura, landing routes are available to the plains of the Bengal Basin, which is now known as Bangladesh. In the entire stretch of the Himalayas, which is about three thousand kilometres long, there are not many places having names related to 'dwar', ‘dooar’ or 'duar'. All of those words have the same meaning, i.e., a gate.

 

For various reasons, the continuity of the flow of the culture and tradition of ancient India was severely disrupted. For the later Indians, it had not been possible to maintain the uninterrupted practise of the ancient cultural traditions on a countrywide scale.

 

Consequently, down the line, people lost touch with the true connotations of most of the cultural details that were created on the basis of logic-based Vedic knowledge and the Sanskrit language that had been handed down from a distant past. The uninterrupted chain of reasoning that was ingrained in that culture was broken. Some sequences of words, which had lost their authoritative connotations and true meanings, were handed down to the subsequent generations.

 

Why were only a few places near the foothills of the northernmost part of the Bengal Basin named ‘Dooar’ or ‘Duar’ (door) in the thousands of kilometres-long stretch of the Himalayas? The authoritative explanation of that naming process was lost forever. When the British took control of India, there existed a few places called ‘Duar’ or ‘Dooar’ (door) in the northern part of geographic Bengal, around an area where the southernmost extension of the Himalayas, i.e., Siwalik, was broadly absent. All those places were collectively named 'Dooars' or 'Duars'. That naming process reflects an excellent example of combining the Sanskrit, Bengali, and English languages.

 

There are some generalised explanations available for that naming policy. But, like anything that is built on a loose foundation, those explanations are also devoid of any ability to explain all the aspects related to that naming process. Following those explanations, there are supposed to be innumerable place-names throughout the southern margin of the Himalayas related to the word ‘door’, but in reality, that is not the case. There are plenty of opportunities to focus on that issue separately.

 

At the dawn of the present history of the human race, groups of people of African origin settled in the South Indian highlands and across various parts of the Vindhya mountain range. It is not known whether there exists any argument against that theory. Many parts of the plains of present-day northern India, and almost the whole region that is referred to as 'Bengal Basin' today were like gigantic wetlands around five thousand years ago. That great wetland made it almost impossible for any person coming from the eastern direction of India to reach the highlands of the Vindhya Mountains via the land route. The eastward movement of the people advancing along the Vindhya Range from the west was also blocked at the eastern boundary of the highlands of the Chota Nagpur Plateau.

 

The remnants of that gigantic swamp were located across the northern and north-eastern sides of that plateau, and on the eastern end, there was a shallow sea that stretched up to the eastern horizon. In all probability, snow-capped mountain peaks were sometimes visible on the northern horizon from the northern-most areas of that plateau, i.e., from the Rajmahal area. At some point in time, at least 5,000 years ago, that gigantic wetland began to be transformed into fragmented mud-land under the influence of forces of geological, geographical, or any other type that may be classified today as natural or supernatural. As far as the evolution of the Bengal Basin is concerned, the institutional experts, based on physical evidence, have endorsed the idea of that all-crucial period time and again.

 

Those who crossed continents and reached the Chota Nagpur Plateau region at the western border of the Bengal Basin, they, or at least some of them, set out for that snow-capped mountain range visible to the north of the Chota Nagpur Plateau, at the first opportunity. Though highlands were available in that region near the foothills of the Himalayas, they were not as high as most of the other parts of the Himalayas. Therefore, the explorers faced little difficulty in moving through those areas. The dense forest of evergreens located at the foot of that mountain range was not of the same nature as the traditional habitat of those explorers.

 

The foothills of the Himalayas in that region at its southernmost edge were not, and still are not, ideal for those forest dwellers to settle down in large numbers. Prevailing environmental factors that permit very rapid growth of flora could be considered a major hurdle contributing to that unsuitability. Almost all the ancient human settlements in the Himalayas that have found mention in the earliest available Indian literature were located in the higher reaches, in the relatively open areas, or in the valleys at higher altitudes. The ancient tribes living in the Himalayas are still not really considered forest dwellers in the true sense of that term. The forest dwellers of India live mainly in the highlands south of the Gangetic plain. Compared to the Himalayas, in those areas, the display of prowess by the herbs, shrubs, and plants in covering the forest floor in a very short time is much less. Human movements on the relatively thinly covered floors of those forests are much easier.

 

In Sikkim, at an altitude of around 5000 feet, in the middle of the rainy season, Naru himself has seen saplings with bare roots, devoid of water and soil, to survive under a shed for about two to three months. The geography of that region is not in line with the needs of the people who survive by gathering food from the forest floor. The bushes and straight trees present in the Vindhya mountain range, in combination with a much more arid climate, provide a favourable living environment for traditional forest dwellers.

 

It is not known that the explorers who started their journey from the Chota Nagpur area settled in

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Bildmaterialien: Dibyendu Chakraborty and Google
Cover: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Lektorat: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Korrektorat: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Satz: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.02.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-0711-9

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Widmung:
Late Bishupada Chakraborty My Father Born : 1941, Village 'Roail', Post Office 'Kaloha', Tangail, India (present day Bangladesh). Died : 2014, Bardhaman, West Bengal, India.