The Archaeology of Coastal Bengal

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Research work on coastal Bengal has mostly focused on maritime trading networks. In a clear departure from the existing scholarship, this volume questions the linearity of considering trade as the sole determinant of creation of settlement in the coastal regions. Focusing on settlement strategies, Chattopadhyay unravels how human societies, through successive generations, have adapted to the coastal environment and bio- regime.

First-hand data, procured through extensive fieldwork, forms the sound basis of this work. From structural remains, ceramic and bone implements, and stone tools, to terracotta figurines and inscriptions, a vast array of sources, including epigraphic and literary sources, is analysed. Significantly, the volume also highlights the interconnection between coastal geography and the hinterland.

Chattopadhyay's meticulously researched work offers a geographical and temporal frame which allows the research on coastal Bengal to be viewed as an integral part of the archaeological developments in not only the subcontinent but also the adjoining region of the Southeast Asian

Rupendra Kumar Chattopadhyay is Paresh Chandra Chatterjee Professor of History, Department of History, Presidency University, Kolkata, India. He has published widely in national and international journals on various issues related to the archaeology of the middle and lower Ganga valley, the eastern Indian plateau, and the eastern Indian littoral. He has also written on eastern Indian prehistory, protohistory, Indian religions, Indian art and iconography, the political history of the Satavahanas and the western Kshatrapas, and the ancient Indian caste system. His major publications include Bankura: A Study of Its Archaeological Sources (2010).

Maritime archaeology or underwater archaeology in the research arena of New Archaeology is nowadays a very serious academic pursuit since the methodology of such an exercise or investigation involves many sensitive aspects of or data related to the physical and social sciences. Any attempt to reconstruct the rise and growth of human settlements or societies of the coastal region, including the history of human activities-seafaring or otherwise certainly requires or demands scientific investigation. In the context of geoarchaeology, it involves the documentation of excavated and explored data and the study of the ethnoarchaeological parameters. I have limited expertise to encounter, combat, or entertain the new dimension of research methodology based on scientific archaeology. Therefore, the term 'coastal archaeology' coined here may not be visualized in terms of scientific dimensions. However, being an orthodox archaeologist who has spent a large part of his life being fascinated with reconstruction of the cultural past, I opted for a thorough documentation of grass- roots data related to the littoral society in order to trace the emergence of coastal life, including the involvement of the aquatic people, through a long chrono-cultural period.

The eastern littoral of the subcontinent, that is, from the Arakan- Chittagong coast to the Coromandel, has enough evidence for the reconstruction of the fascinating littoral society. The literary sources, the memories of long, traditional sea-faring activities including navigation, and, above all, the discoveries of numerous artefacts and archaeological remains attract both professional historians and amateurs, and hence we are confronted with several major and minor historical discourses. It may not be unwise to record that maritime trading networks and long-distance contacts established either through trade and commerce or through religious ambitions are the major issues that we generally encounter. So far as coastal Bengal is concerned, the trends show that research is mostly concerned with trade, traders, and trading commodities and communities. From the classical sources to the Mangalkavyas, the concerned epigraphic sources, and, of course, the innumerable diagnostic types of artefacts, mostly all have been visualized and interpreted in terms of the same context, that is, the involvement of the trading communities or travellers, both indigenous and foreign; the monitoring agencies, royal or otherwise, operating in this region; and the rituals behind sea voyages. While the existing discourses certainly enrich our knowledge and, in reality, raise several questions regarding the validity of some of the recon- structed strands of coastal life, it is this situation that stimulated the present attempt and the rationale behind it. However, while compiling the present work I have been forced, due to constraint of space, to leave out a significant part of my field data.

I started this work during the 1980s in association with the late Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das, my mentor, and the research activities undertaken by the now-defunct Bangiya Puratattva Parishad, Kolkata, India, under the leadership of N. Mukhopadhyay. I undertook several explorations with them at the sites of coastal Bengal mainly in and around Chandraketugarh. We also made several trips to Atghara, Sitakundu, and the adjoining sites, and that was the time when I had the privilege to study the antiquities in the collection of the Parishad. This initial period of involvement received a break when I went away to Delhi to pursue my career. My research interest in coastal Bengal was renewed again during the 1990s when a major project of Professor Dilip K. Chakrabarti on the archaeological geography of the Ganga plain resulted in several field visits to the different regions of coastal Bengal. It is obvious that I am indebted to Professor Chakrabarti not only for my special research interest in the region concerned but also for my overall academic career.

The definition of coastal archaeology and the methodology of the reconstruction of coastal history in the context of ancient Bengal are subject to serious challenges. With the immediate plateau region partially adjoining the coastal line, that is, the bordering hinterland, it is often difficult to conceive the prehistoric antecedence and its reciprocation with both the adjoining plain as well as the coastal line on the basis of the available findings. Both the environmental and climatic changes of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene are not well documented as explanatory devices so far as the mentioned study area is concerned. Therefore, the formative phase of village settlements including the origin of agriculture cannot be determined with certainty. Similarly, the hinterland constituting the lower Ganga plain had witnessed a definite protohistoric settlement matrix, which again interacted with the littoral society, though the process of reciprocation is inadequately known to us. The littoral space, therefore, can never be treated in isolation. Culturally, it is not a secluded entity.

There are anomalies in the interpretative or reconstructed part and we carry morsels of mysterious imagination conjured by portrayals of the coastal landscape made by colonial painters or, for instance, by the elaborate descriptions in medieval and late medieval texts of the route traversed by Chaitanya and others. Even the imagery of the narrative of Chand Saudagar and of other episodes recorded in the Mangalkavyas in the eastern Indian psyche is quite amazing.