People and the Culture of Bengal (A lecture for the student of Theology at Parashmani, Bolpur, Santiniketan on 24th July, 2012)

The Root of Bengali Culture

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a few Europeans started a historical and cultural inquiryIndia. Perhaps it was assumed they had no cultural traditions of their own different from the Vedic Aryan. It was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that a few Bengalee scholars started to enquire specifically into the culture and history of Bengal. Consequent research indicated that the cultural tradition of the pre Aryan people or more generally the people of Eastern India is distinct in many features from that of the dominant Vedic Aryan civilization of Northern India.

into Aryan civilization. However, no similar effort was made towards exploring the civilization of the different regional peoples of pre-Aryan

Haraprashad Shastri, one of the pioneers of research into the history of Bengal, characterized the Bengalees as “self-oblivious”. According to him, the beginning of the Bengali history are so uncertain, that for all anybody can tell, it may be quite as old as Egypt, Babylon and China: “ When the Aryan had reached the Punjab, Bengal had already attained a high level of civilization, and when they had advanced up to Allahabad, they begun to abuse Bengalees as speechless and devoid of religious sense-presumably, being jealous of their distinctive culture. Before the birth of Buddha, Bengalees had become so powerful on land and sea that a disinherited son of Bengal conquered Ceylon (Sri Lanka) with seven hundred men, and gave the island its name Simhal.”

 “We have the long standing
tradition that, Vijay came to Ceylon from Bengal and founded and expired here in the 6^th century BC. This belief is confirmed by the evidence of Mahavansa, Dipavansa and other works and is supported by the striking resemblance between the feature and appearance of Bengalees and Buddhist population of Ceylon. (P. Shilananda, Buddhist Priest and professor of Shinhalise, Calcutta University)        

Excavation at Pandurajar Dhibi and Mahisadal, both in Ajay Valley in the Bardhaman district, have since established the existence of a copper age culture in this part of this country. The absolute date of this culture, established by Carbon-14 tests, is about 1300 BC, almost the same that is assigned to the Aryan incursion into North-West India.

Prehistoric archaeological finds in Bengal are almost invariably located in the western fringes where the Chhotanagpur plateau just into alluvial Bengal at a large number of points. Pioneers like Valentine Bell discovered lots of ‘chipped stones’ in Burdwan, Bankura, Midnapore and the neighboring district of Jharkhand like Manbhum and Singbhum between 1865 and 1878. The stones implements pointed to a remarkable convergence of different races coming from all over the subcontinent.

It has been suggested that the Pandu Rajar Dhibi represents the ruins of a trading township. The people “carried on trade not only with the interior regions of India, but also with the countries overseas. They were predominantly a sea-faring people, and in ships made by themselves they could traverse the Seven Seas of the world.” The discoveries at Pandu Rajar Dhibi show that the Traders of Bengal (SAODAGAR) had intimate trade relations with Crete and other countries of the Mediterranean world.     

Excavation of Tarafeni Valley in North-West Midnapore (1997) shows the evolution of Stone Age culture covering Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Artifacts were found isolated over wide areas including riverbeds and cultivated field.

It is when we come to the rich find of Chandraketurgarh (from around 500 BC onward) that the real archaeological history of Bengal begins. The beads discovered in large numbers as well as the rich terracotta artifacts and murals uncovered at several places in this area reveal a high developed civilization. Several efforts have been made to identify Chandraketurgarh with places mentioned in Greek and Roman texts such as Periplus of the Erythrian sea and the work of Ptolemy. He describes ‘Gange’ as the capital city of the Gangaridai people situated in the deltaic southern Bengal. In the wake of Alexander’s invasion of North-western India (now Pakistan), the Greek writers repeatedly speak of two mighty powers in the East, the Gangaridai and the Prasii. Diadorus refers, “ Xandramas had gathered 2,000,00 solders, 8,000 chariots and 80,000 horses to resist Alexander’s mighty army, and the Greek army withdrew from India rather than face the eastern power.  

Another site almost as ancient as Chandraketurgarh is Tamluk or Tamralipta. Ptolemy describes a famous port town called ‘Tamilitis’, a flourishing port town on the Ganges in the second century, which was a gateway to go to countries like Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Tamralipta also figured in the account of Chinese travelers Itsing, Fahien and Hiuen Tsang. Rich archaeological finds have been made from the area all around Tamluk by excavating tanks. The numerous changes in the course of the rivers Ganges and Rupnarayan appears to have played destruction with many of the ancient ruins.Vast geographical changes had in fact occurred in between the visits of Fahien and Hiuen Tsang. While Fahien describes Tamralipta as situated on the seaboard, but at the time to visit in Bengal Hiuen Tsang noticed that it was situated on a creek somewhat away from the main Bay of Bengal. According to Hiuen Tsang this port town spread over about 250 miles and was the point of convergence of the land and the sea trade route.

 The Name

In ancient Indian literature different name are used to indicate different territorial divisions of this part of South Asian subcontinent. Some of the historical references are to “Gaur” referring to the region of which Gaur (near present Malda town in West Bengal) was the principal town, “Samatat” referring to the middle portion of present Bangladesh, “Banga” referring to the eastern part of Gangetic Delta, “Harikela” referring referring to the Chittagong area, “Chandradwipa” referring to an area in eastern Bengal, “Varendra-Pundra Vardhana” referring to the Rajsahi division and “Radha” (Rar) referring to the west part of Hugli river.

The name “Vanga” finds mentioned in the epic Mahabhrata and Kalidas’s Raghuvansam. We have the reference to ‘Vangalam” in an inscription in the “Vrihadeshwara” temple at Tanjore in South India as one among the countries overrun by the Cholas. This is perhaps the earliest reference to Bengal as such.       

The English expression Bengal is indeed a derivation from Vanga and Vangla. Vanga occurs in early literary records as the name of both the country and the people inhabiting it. Bangla is also mentioned in both literary and epigraphic records as the name of a part of ancient Bengal.

In the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri and Tarikh-i- Firuzshahi, the regions attached to the town of Satgaon (Hugli), Sonargon (East of Dacca) and Lakhnauti (Gaur) are called Deyar-i-Banga, perhaps a verbal translation of the old Bangadesh. But the word Bengal or Bangla  does not occur in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri. It is, however, in a passage of Ghazal by Hafiz that the form Bangla occurs. The Muslim writers in the Mughal period (13^th century) used the term Bangla to denote the deltaic region of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. It has transformed into Bengala by the Portuguese and Bengal by the English people. This Bengal today is divided into two distinct regions and states whish have been named a West Bengal and Bangladesh.             

Land and the People

Bengal comprises Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura, the district of Cachhar, Karimganjm and large portion of Goalpara and Dhubri in the Indian state of Assam, some Bengali-speaking tracts of the district of Dhanbad, Singbhum, Santhal Parganas of Jharkhand, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur and Purnia in the state of Bihar and some pockets in Balasore, Maurbhanje, Saraikilla in Orissa. Traditioinally poets of Bengal have conceived of their land as bounded by the Himalayas in the North, the Bey of Bengal in the South, the Brahmaputra river and the hill ranges of Meghalaya and Mizoram in India and Chittagong hills in the East and Santhal Parganas and the district of Darbhanga and Purnia in the West. The original Bangladesh had politically split into a number of separate units that lie roughly between latitudes 27 9’ and 20 50’ North and longitudes 86 35’ and 92 30’ East. It comprises 143,998 sq km of Bangladesh and 88,752 sq km of West Bengal. According to the 1991 Census, Bengali is the seventh most-spoken language in the world spread over 189 million people in India and Bangladesh. It is the second most-spoken language in India.

Physical Features: The Greater Delta

The history of Bengal has been deeply influenced by its river system. The extensive network of rivers and canals facilitated both irrigation and trade, and thus Bengal was called a “land blessed with abundance” by Ibn Batuta the 14^th century Moroccan travelers, and “ the granary of the east’ by Van Lindolan a 16^th century Dutch merchant. Bengal can literally be called the child of two river systems: the Ganga or, by its anglicized spelling, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra (son of the Supreme God).

Since the Pleistocene period, the Bengal delta has been formed with heavy loads of alluvium from the mountain ranges in the north. It has been presumed that about 30 million years ago there was a great convulsion of nature, which was responsible for bringing down the landmass on both side of this subcontinent and thereby forming the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. Then again, a mighty convulsion brought into existence of the Himalayas. Regarding the creation of Himalayas Dr. Rajkumar Gupta a famous geologist describes in his book ‘The living Himalayas,’ “Himalayas are the youngest of the mountains and were once part of an ocean, the Tethys Sea, for nearby 600 millions years. After 70-80 millions years ago some signs of development of this mountain belt might have been visible but the softest mountain belt were build up with the last 10 millions year”.

 The upliftment of the Himalayas form the bosom of the sea as testified to by palaeontological records gave rise to a curious depression between the northern mountain ranges and the Deccan plateau, which has been termed as the Indo-Gangetic trough. This deep trough filled up the deposits of detritus of mountains for millions of years, which formed the regions covered now by the states of the Punjab, Uttar-Pradesh and Bengal. A large number of rivers flowed downwards from the Himalayas. The Ganges and her tributaries carrying a huge quantity of silt formed the present deltaic region of Bengal. The Brahmaputra rises in South Central Tibet, travels 700 miles to the east under the name Tsangpo, swoops down to the Indian plains through a gap in the Himalayan chain, makes a U-turn and travels from the East to West and meet the main branch of the Ganges. The rivers like Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Meghna and their tributaries have indeed built up the whole landmass of Bengal making it a region of most fertile alluvial plains for human habitation. The alluvial plains of Bengal may be conveniently divided into four parts: i) Western Bengal, ii) Eastern Bengal, iii) Central Bengal and iv) North Bengal.  

Origin and Racial Affinities of the Bengali-speaking Race 

There is enough anthropological and archeological evidence to indicate that the Bengali-speaking peoples. The Bengali-speaking people are a conglomerate of several racial elements with different ethnic origins. They were welded together into a new ethnic entity in the course of the last thousand years of history, primarily by the impetus given by the Bengali language and by a shared lifestyle that grew out of the fertile reverie land, the salubrious climate and a common history.

Four principal racial elements came together to merge as the Bengalee ethnic entity. The original settlers in Bengal were of the Austric stock and were present in Bengal well before the Aryan invasions from the Northwest around 2000-1500 BC.

The earliest Aryan settlers referred to these tribes as Kiratas, Vratyas or Nishada. The racial strains of these original inhabitants of this land survive in the communities, which are known as Sabara, Dom, Chandala, Pulinda, Kola and Hadi.

There were three other major racial elements, which also came together to form the Bengalee race, the Dravidians, Mongolians and finally the Aryans. There was substantial intermarriage between the Dravidians, from the South-west, and the Mongolian races from the North-eastern Himalayas and Chittagong hills. Later, a relatively small-scale migration of Aryans took place from the West. All these layers combined together to form the Bengalee race.

In an interesting study of thirty modern caste of North India Prof. P.C. Mahalanobis came to the following conclusion about the seven castes of Bengal, viz. Brahman, Kayastha, Sadgopa, Kaibarta, Rajbansi, Pod and Bagdi, ( JASB NS XXIIIpp. 301-33):

a)      The Brahman in Bengal are the only group to have a clear resemblance with the upper castes of North India, but they are much closer to the Bengalee caste than to the Brahman from North India.

b)      There is a close relationship between a caste’s social statuses its resemblance with the Bengalee Brahmans. That is to say, the higher position in the social hierarchy, the greater is the resemblance with the Bengalee Brahmans.

 

c)      The Kayasthas, Sadgopas and the Kaibartas are the typical indigenous castes of Bengal and have some resemblance with the people of Bihar. The Kayasthas are also very close to all the middle caste of Bengal such as Sadgopas, Kaibartas and Podas (Paundra Kshatriyas). The Kaibarta show less affinity with upper caste than with lower caste.

Anthropological and historical at times differ strongly on the origin of the race. Herbert Risley had traced the round-headed Beengalee race to admixture of Dravidian and Mongoloid elements. His views have been opposed by R.P. Chanda who argued in favor of the Bengalee race originating from the Homo-alpines type of people that came from the Pamir region and spoke an Indo-European language.

  

The conclusion seems inescapable that the Bengalees arose out of the admixture between several different elements; some whom were the first settler, and others migrants.      

Thus, it is anthropologically and archaeologically established that, the Bengal region had a well-developed civilization before the Aryan migration into this region. Clearly, Bengal was not in the Aryan sphere of influence up to the later Vedic period. Even as late as the early Buddhist and Jain periods, it remained outside of North India.