Duarte's work was included in Ramusio' s

Duarte's work was included in Ramusio' s Italian work published from Venice in 1563. A Portuguese manuscript, found at Lisbon, was published in 1813. The Spanish version of the Mss exists in Barcelona and Munich. The first English translation was made by Lord Stanley (Hakluyt Society, 1865) and the second one by ML Dames from the Portuguese text in 1918.

Barbosa described Africa, Arabia, Persia (Arabian Persia) and the countries of Southeast Asia. His remarkable description of the wealth of the Abyssinians at the beginning of the sixteenth century has remained a classic. Barbosa was one of the earliest to describe the trade between India and West Asia as well as the method by which the Portuguese managed to turn that trade to the Cape of Good Hope route, thus striking a blow against the Turkish Empire. Barbosa's account of the operation on the female children among some tribes in the southwestern coast of the Red Sea has been confirmed since.

Barbosa has described the failure of Albuquerque to take Aden, the key to the control of the Red Sea trade. He showed also that by controlling Hormuz, Portugal was able to restrict the Red Sea trade with India and Southeast Asia, thus reducing the revenue of the Turks. He has also described the Portuguese controlled rich horse trade of the southeast coast of Arabia that gave them (the Portuguese) dominant position in the Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan as well as the kingdom of Vijayanagar.

He visited Gujarat and has left a detailed description of the people and their customs as well as their rich trade. Although he tended to lump all Muslims as 'Moors', elsewhere he divided them on racial basis as Turks, Arabs, Persians, Khorasanis etc. In case of the Hindus, he mentioned Rajputs and Brahmins. He has also mentioned the Jain banians, who would not eat any flesh and pay to the Muslims for bringing even live insects. He also mentions the different languages spoken by the Muslims of Cambay, some of who were immigrants and some were converts with their extravagant life style. He has mentioned the industries of Cambay particularly cotton and silk stuff manufactured by the 'cunning artisans'. The description of Barbosa of the ports of the West Coast of India throws much light on the rich Indian trade during the Portuguese arrival. His description of the city of Vijayanagar and the affluence accruing from the trade and the toleration of the king has been of singular importance.

He was however dependant on others for information on Bengal. His reference to the city of Bengala has caused quite a bit of controversy. Some scholars have identified it as Saptagram. The account of Barbosa of the life style and trading practices of the Muslim merchants, who also dealt with the trading of eunuchs, remains particularly attractive. Barbosa's absence of reference to the Hindu merchants of Bengal seems to confirm the view that the overseas trade was totally under the Muslim merchants who possessed a number of ships. Their trading of cotton cloth and sugar suggest a rich trade particularly with the south east Asian states. The account of Barbosa is important not only for his observations on trade and political events during a transitional period but also for throwing up ethnological details of the times, most of which were gathered by him from other sources. [Aniruddha Ray] (Last Part).

Bibliography EF Oaten, European Travellers in India, Lucknow, 1973; ML Dames (tr & ed), The Book of Duarte Barbosa, 2 Vols, ASEA, Indian reprint, 1989.

Barbosa, Duarte was a Portuguese

Barbosa, Duarte was a Portuguese factor at Cannanore and Cochin in between 1503 and (about) 1517 and had left behind an interesting account on trade and political events of the southeast including Bengal. His father Diogo Barbosa, a man of good family, was in the service of Duke of Braganca and sailed to India in 1501. Duarte Barbosa's uncle, Goncalo Gil Barbosa, had gone to India in 1503 with the fleet of Pedro Alvarez Cabral; and was left at Cochin as a factor. It is probable that Duarte had joined Cabral's fleet and remained with his uncle at Cochin. By 1503, he had learnt Malayalam to act as interpreter to Francisco D' Albuquerque on his visit to the King of Cannanore. From the published letter of Duarte, then writer at Cannanore, written on 12 January 1513 to the King of Portugal, it is clear that he did not get the coveted post of head writer and that the people of the country were up in arms against the Governor Diogo Correa. Duarte Barbosa returned to Portugal sometime after 1515 and finished his book by 1518. He had then joined his brother-in-law, Fernao de Magelhas and sailed with him in 1519 for the Philippines. Magelhas died on 21 April 1521 near the Isle of Sebu, whose King massacred the Spaniards, including Duarte Barbosa, on 1 May 1521. (To be continue.....1/2)

Frederick saw

Frederick saw thirty to thirty-five big and small ships at Satgaon with rice, cloth, lac, sugar, long pepper, oil and many other goods. He found 'Satgaon a reasonably fine city for a city of the Moors', abounding with all things. He found a large number of merchants there. The number of ships being only thirty to thirty-five Satgaon, however, must have begun to decline by that time. The Mughal invasion of Bengal had not yet taken place. Interestingly Frederick spoke of the large number of fairs held every day in one or other place on the bank of the Ganges selling goods at cheap price. He also found a large number of Hindus worshipping daily the Ganges River.
From Bengal Frederick travelled to Pegu and a number of other places before returning to Venice via Hormuz in 1581.
The interesting aspect of the account of Frederick is the description of Satgaon and Bettore in their declining days. Later historians accepted his description since he was perhaps the last European traveller who had seen the ships anchored in front of Satgaon. His account throws the interesting suggestion that the Saraswati by which he had reached Satgaon from Bettore was called the Ganges then. Obviously the Hughli channel had not become navigable then. Sultanate Bengal on the eve of the Mughal conquest seems to be prosperous in his account. It seems that the capital of Bengal was then in the process of transfer from gaur to tandah, which might have prevented Frederick from visiting the capital, although he did not mention it.
[Aniruddha Ray] (2nd part or last part)
Bibliography EF Oaten, European Travellers in India, Lucknow, 1973, reprint of 1st ed. 1909; Purchas and His Pilgrimages, Hakluyt Society, Edinburg, 1911.

Frederick, Caeser a Venecian

Frederick, Caeser a Venecian who had travelled in the East from 1563 to 1581 and has left behind an account about some important cities, ports and business centres of India and of Bengal. His account covers the socio-economic and cultural life of the people.
Frederick returned to Goa to travel to Cochin. He threw interesting details on the life of the Nairs. From there he went to Quilon and thence to Ceylon. He then seems to have gone to Negapatnam from where he travelled to Orissa and Bengal. Frederick was one of the earliest European travellers to have visited Sandwip Island, which he found inhabited. The Island was very fertile and a river channel divided it into two parts. The inhabitants set up a market on the beach after seeing the ship. He was amazed by the cheapness of the provisions. The people were Muslims ruled by a Muslim King. The Island belonged to the King of Bengal.
Frederick then moved to Chittagong where he found a great store of rice, cloth and sugar for export to various parts of India. Coming through the Ganges, he entered satgaon (Saptagram) and reached the mouth of the Ganges by boat after eighteen hours of rowing with the tide. He had first come to Bettore, opposite Howrah, and it is probable that he had taken the Saraswati, which had begun to silt by that time. He says that from there "upwards the river is very shallow" with little water. Frederick found Bettore with infinite number of people and ships anchored in front. (1st part, To be continue.......)

French, The had set up trading posts on

French, The had set up trading posts on the west and east coasts of south India in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1674 Francois Martin founded Pondicherry, the future capital of French India, on a small piece of territory ceded by a native ruler, 85 miles south of Madras. In the same year contact was set up with Bengal though formal trading posts were established much later. A factory was built at Chandernagore (chandannagar) on the Hughli in 1690, 16 miles above Calcutta on a site given by the nawab earlier in 1674. In January 1693 the French received a farman on payment of Rs. 40,000/- in installments. Besides Chandernagore, factories were also built in kasimbazar and Balasore.
The European war saw the fall of Pondicherry to the Dutch in September 1693 and the French now concentrated on Bengal since their Surat factory was heavily in debt. Deslandes could procure saltpetre and silk from the armenians but could not send the ships as the dutch had blocked the mouth of the Ganges. The revolt of shobha singh and rahim khan had allowed the French to add a ditch and two bastions at Chandernagore, although the rebels plundered their factory at Kasimbazar. By 1695, the French had received another parwana from the dewan Kafayet Khan allowing them to pay 4% customs duties, as did the Dutch. With the return of peace, two French ships laden with goods could leave Europe in 1697. Yet the French were in difficulties, as they did not have the cash to advance to the weavers.
From 1700 it had become difficult for the French to continue trade and commerce in Bengal, mainly because of financial problems. The chowkies of tolls on the river added problems for the French as the lack of liquid cash had increased the prices of goods, excepting those of costly varieties of textiles. The French Company, starved of funds at home, had begun to send ships with more European goods than bullion, but these could not be easily sold in India. The outbreak of another European war and the Dutch blockade of the French ships in Bengal created further problems. Du Livier, succeeding Deslandes, could not improve matters.
At the end of 1708, when Flacourt took charge of Bengal, the French had incurred a debt of more than 300,000 livres. The employees were living miserably by selling saltpetre from stores and begging in the streets of Chandernagore. The situation was further aggravated when the ships of the merchants of St. Malo, who had taken over the rights to the Indo-China trade arrived in Bengal. They did not pay the debts nor did they pay the salaries. The creditors had complained to the dewan who gave the French one year to clear the debts. From 1715, the Companyof St. Malo began to pay the debts in France while their debt in India went up to 5 million livres, including half a million in Bengal, although the St. Malo Company had sent ships regularly to India.
In 1719, Jean Law formed a new Companyin Paris with enormous funds. Hardancourt, the new Director in Bengal, acquired several villages on which Chandernagore stood. In 1719, he managed to get a farman from the Emperor farrukh siyar by which the customs duty was reduced to 2BD. This was confirmed by a parwana of Nawab murshid quli khan issued in 1721. The new company had sent more than four million livres to pay off their debts and to purchase saltpetre and costly textiles. By 1721, the intra-Asian commerce of the French was organised on a big scale with the export of rice, sugar and textiles to Persia. Private commerce was still forbidden, including the commerce of slave girls. But Paris did not object to sending slave boys to the island of Bourbon where plantations had been started.
The French however needed another farman from the new emperor Muhammad Shah without which they were forced to pay more taxes, often leading to violent clashes with customs officials. Meanwhile there was a reorganisation of the structure of the company in France. By an Edict of 27 January 1726, private intra-Asian trade was allowed. Dumas was sent to Pondicherry to reorganise finance and Dirois was sent to Bengal. This gave new life to the French establishment as ships began to come from Persia, the Red Sea and African coasts where the French had been trading.
The renewal of commercial activities brought weavers and other artisans to Chandernagore. Dirois bought marshy land full of stagnant water at Chak Nasirabad, which was cleared. The settlement extended with Boroguichempore becoming one end of the colony. Dirois also reactivated the Kasimbazar factory and in 1726, got the permission to open a factory at Dhaka.
It appears from the Memoirs of F. Martin (died 1705) that Deslandes used to purchase goods from Dhaka in 1689 and was trying to build a factory there, but was unable to do so due to the outbreak of European war. He had sent Gregoire Butet, who later left the service, to Dhaka, but there was no acquisition of land. Martin, who gave details of purchase of land in the Hughli area, did not mention the failure. The French house at Dhaka was bought in 1752, which was located in the site of the latter day ahsan manzil. The French also had a garden at Tejgaon.
With the opening of private trade, despite its restriction to intra-Asian trade, the prosperity of Chandernagore began to increase from 1723 onwards. By 1726, commercial transactions had averaged one and a half million livres annually, which rose to 250,000 livres by 1730. The import of bullion was nearly two million livres annually in some years. The profit after sale in France came to nearly 200% on average though rice and saltpetre were bringing in more than 300%. After deduction of all costs, in France and in India, this profit was reduced to 10%.
The description of Chandernagore by the visiting Chevalier d'Albert in 1737 showed that among the three European settlements on the Bhagirathi, the French one was the least well-fortified. There were four bastions but the gates were weak. The houses of the Director, merchants and other employees and warehouses, chapel and barracks of soldiers were commodious. The houses, aligned on the riverbank, were of one storey. Both the Jesuits and Capuchins had churches and there were also some Hindu temples. At that time, there were nearly 500 Europeans, including portuguese, apart from the Armenians, Hindus and Muslims. There were nearly 1500 Christians, probably of Indian origin, and slaves. The French had taken land extending up to four miles for an annual payment of Rs. 2000/-. The French administered justice within the town according to their laws, the final appeal resting on the Pondicherry Council. The French continued to purchase different varieties of muslin of sonargaon along with other goods.
Without a farman, relations between the French and the nawab's men often deteriorated, as in 1728. A French officer was insulted at Kasimbazar and the French decided to get satisfaction from the nawab, who refused to recognise the French without a farman. French boats were stopped and two Frenchmen were killed. The French decided to start a war on the Ganges. At this moment, Dupleix came to Chandernagore as Director and settled the affair amicably. The French continued to pay 2BD% as customs duties. The same kind of incident occurred again in 1732 and Dupleix once again pacified the nawab by sending some presents in cash and kind.
In eastern Bengal, the French were given permission to open a factory in Dhaka in 1722, but they did not utilise the permission. In 1735, the Jougdia factory, now on the seabed near Sandwip, was opened. Two Asian Christians, Ignace and TechE8re, were sent there to collect garas, buftas and sanas. It is difficult to find out the exact position of this factory, which was controlled from Dhaka. In 1757, it was about three kilometres away from the river. In 1735, the French purchased cloth worth Rs. 40,000/-.
In 1736, a French ship returning from Pegu stopped at Chittagong and the local officials seized the merchant Vige and a part of the cargo, as the French had no legal right to stop there. Dupleix wanted to have a parwana like that of the English who had got it in 1736 for customs free trade there. Haji Ahmed however claimed so much money that Dupleix gave up the idea.
The English and the Dutch had the parwana to take foreign coins and bullion to the Bengal mint for conversion into Mughal coins without going through a broker or Shroff. Deslandes was given this permission long ago, but the French did not utilise it then. Dupleix had been trying to get this parwana since 1731 but Fatehchand, who controlled the exchange, thwarted him. In 1737, this reached a crisis point and Dupleix had to pay Rs. 50,000/- to the nawab for getting the parwana, which was issued on 10 January 1738.
On reaching Bengal, Dupleix had got a parwana from the nawab, allowing the French to pay 2BD % customs duty like the Dutch. By that time funds were flowing in as in 1731 for the purchase of garas, sanas, rumals, malmal, tany silk, tanjeb, nayansukh etc. Often Dupleix used to take loans and used to load goods more in value than the investment sent by the Company. By 1736, the Companybegan to invest more than two lakh rupees for Bengal goods. In 1740, Dupleix received more than eight lakhs.
Dupleix had organised his private trade in intra-Asian commerce, often by forming a Companywith the English, French or Dutch merchants, some of whom he used to invite for entertainment to his villa at Satgachia. It is difficult to determine the private investment of Dupleix, which hovered around Rs. 80,000/- for a particular enterprise, giving him a profit of between 20 to 50%. From Chandernagore, he organised voyages to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Maldives, Achen, Malacca and Manila.
After the departure of Dupleix to Pondicherry in 1741, Bengal factors got permission in 1747 to open a factory in Chittagong. Chevalier was sent to organize the Assam trade from Goalpara in 1753, but it did not succeed. His successor, Laval, also failed and the factory was closed down. Yet from Dhaka, the French did export, between 1746 and 1755, goods worth 28.5 lakh rupees (on an average Rs. 28,000/-annually), through the Dhaka brokers.
While Dhaka supplied luxury items the Jougdia factory was supplying coarse textiles and it was brought under the control of Chandernagore. Albert was the chief of the Jougdia factory in the pre-Palashi period. Even when the English factory had shifted in 1755 from Jougdia to Lakhipur, the French continued there. Jougdia was important to Chandernagore as late as April 1786. After the departure of Albert, the factory was managed for six years by one Sobharam, broker of Aminabad, when a Frenchman, Broclay, was sent. He dismissed Sobharam and had appointed one Mallick as the banian. By that time, however, the situation of the French had undergone a change in Bengal.
The English captured Chandernagore on 24 March 1757. It was restored to the French on 25 June 1765, by which time the old Fort D'Orleaons lay totally destroyed and most of the buildings in ruins. The population had come down from 60,000 in 1757 to only 20,000 in 1765. By the treaty of Paris, 1763, the French had got back their commercial rights but their operations were constantly obstructed by the English despite the continuous protests of the French.
In 1769, the French company was dissolved in France and commerce was opened to private individuals. In 1778, Chandernagore again fell into English hands, who restored it along with five other subordinate factories in early 1785. A separate Anglo- French commercial convention in 1787 eased the problem of the French a little, by which time a new company of Calonne had started in France. A revolutionary committee, on the line of Pondicherry, was set up in Chandernagore. With the capture of Chandernagore by the English on 11 June 1793 its bickering finally ended and the French ceased to be an effective commercial and political power in Bengal. [Aniruddha Ray]

Portuguese.........

(Portuguese, 2nd part)
After 1579, the Portuguese settlement at Hughli began to take definite shape in contrast to their seasonal settlement at Bettore. Abul Fazl's description of the visit of Pratab Bar Feringhi to the court of akbar would suggest that Satgaon had remained under the control of the Mughals, although Abul Fazl had stated categorically that both Satgaon and Hughli ports had remained under the Portuguese. The building at Satgaon mentioned by Abdul Hamid Lahori, seen by the contemporary French traveller Vincent Le blance, must have been demolished sometime after. It is plausible that more water was flowing through the Hughli once the silting of the Saraswati had begun. Despite the growth of the Hughli, Van Linschoten (end of 16th century) had found the Portuguese living 'like wild men and untamed horses', where 'every man is Lord'.
On the eastern coast, the Portuguese buccaneers often helped their supporter to victory. In 1586, Tripura wrested Chittagong from the Arakanese with Portuguese help, but soon they shifted their support towards Arakan, whose king Sikandar Shah finally wrested it in 1588. Chittagong continued for nearly a century in the possession of Arakan.
The Portuguese, who captured Sandwip under Antonio de Sousa Godinho in 1590, did not like the growing power of the Arakanese. Their hold over Sandwip was temporary. Pierre Du Jarric, who compiled the history of this region in the seventeenth century, tells us that KEDAR RAI of vikramapura wrested it from Godinho, possibly with the help of another set of Portuguese mercenaries. After the defeat and untimely death of Kedar Rai, the island passed to Domingo Carvalho, who has been made immortal in later Bengali literature. The rising of the non-Portuguese population of Sandwip was brutally suppressed and Carvalho, sharing power with another Portuguese, was ennobled by the king of Portugal for reasons not clear.
Once again the Portuguese ascendancy was temporary. Although Carvalho could defeat an Arakan invasion, he and his like-minded Portuguese had to leave the island. They found employment, with jaigirs and lucrative trading opportunities, as artillerymen and naval crew in the semi-autonomous coastal kingdoms of Sripur, Bakla and Jessore. Carvalho was however wounded in an encounter with the Mughals and had to leave for Hughli, where he recuperated from his wounds.
Reverend james long had stated that the Portuguese had built a fort at Hughli with four bastions and a ditch. Father Hosten denied the existence of any such fort. Khafi Khan however mentioned a fort although the contemporary travellers remained silent. According to Pierre Du Jarric, Carvalho had seized a fort constructed by the Mughals on the opposite side of the river. At Chittagong, the Arakanese had constructed a fort and had allowed the Portuguese to settle around.
The Portuguese had also settled in the inland areas of western Bengal. The letters of the visiting Jesuit Fathers at the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries spoke of such settlements on the mouth of the Hughli River. Reverend Long had referred to a Portuguese settlement at Diamond Harbour on the basis of a map no longer extant. Portuguese settlements in eastern Bengal at the turn of the century were referred to by the Jesuit Fathers, particularly at Sripur and Jessore, where Carvalho along with other Portuguese were imprisoned by the zamindar of Jessore, pratapaditya. It seems that the Portuguese settled between Ishwaripur and Dhumghat, which had created tension within Jessore society, leading to the murder of the Portuguese police chief. The Jesuits later ransomed some of the imprisoned Portuguese.
One of the reason of the hatred of the local people towards the Portuguese, apart from their unrestrained style of living, was the enslavement of coastal people by some Portuguese pirates operating jointly with Arakanese moving in fast boats. The account of Shihabuddin Talish contains such information. Francois bernier had referred to one Bastian Gonsalves (Sebastian Gonslaves Tibeau) as chief of the pirates. The attitude of sheer hostility of the coastal zamindars towards the Portuguese as well as towards the Jesuits developed particularly after 1605 from an earlier attitude of warm reception with permission to build churches and to convert, could only be explained against the background of such piracy and slave-trading.
After the departure of Carvalho, Manoel de Mattoo controlled Sandwip. With his death, Fateh Khan took over after killing the Portuguese. Gonsalves Tibeau who also killed the entire male Muslim population there killed him in turn. But Tibeau, being a trader earlier, developed Sandwip as a commercial mart, particularly for salt, which attracted merchants from Bengal and the Coromandel. Tibeau then seized Dakshin Shabazpur to be free from Bakla under which he was operating till then.
While the Mughals were advancing towards the cost, Tibeau married the daughter of the fugitive king of Arakan, Anuporam (sister according to some version) and allying with the king of Arakan seized Bhulua. But the Mughals managed to get Tibeau out of the alliance and routed the Arakanese, whose ships were seized by Tibeau. In 1615, Tibeau, who had left Arakan, proposed to Goa to seize Arakan. Goa's fleet of sixteen ships was defeated by the Dutch squadron supporting Arakan and Tibeau had to fall back to Sandwip to be defeated by Arakan in 1616.
The reason of the anarchical nature of the Portuguese settlements on the eastern coast, in contrast to that of the western, perhaps lies in the fact that the Portuguese colonies on the eastern coast did not legally form part of the dominion of the Portuguese King. These were the settlements of the Portuguese private merchants and adventures, often with blurred distinctions, paying taxes to local authorities and enjoying certain privileges. These were different from other European factories established in Bengal since the mid-seventeenth century.
By 1580, some Portuguese traders had settled at Dhaka and Sripur, from where they had begun to export muslin, cotton and silk goods to Europe and Southeast Asia. The establishments in the inland areas did not have forts and from evangelical documents one finds the Portuguese settlements doing well till the early eighteenth century, often with Churches set up by the Portuguese Augustine Fathers. These could be seen in the districts of Dhaka, Barisal, Noakhali and particularly at Lorical, 28 miles south of Dhaka, where the Augustinians had built a church at the end of the sixteenth century.
There were rich Portuguese merchants like Nicolo de Paiva at the end of the seventeenth century. At Bhulua there were many converts made by the Portuguese. In Tamluk, the Portuguese settlement had a church built in 1635. The flourishing slave market at Tamluk in the seventeenth century was mentioned by Shihabuddin Talish. In 1724, Valintine had mentioned the wax trade at Tamluk, while Carreri in 1695 had found Tamluk under Portuguese control.
With Chittagong passing into Arakanese hands, the principal Portuguese settlement was at Hughli, to which the Portuguese historian Cabral paid rich tribute. He referred to the payment of one lakh rupees annually as customs duty to the Mughals by the Portuguese for the salt trade, but the figure seems to be exaggerated. Despite the flourishing trade at Hughli, the Portuguese Empire, annexed to Spain by the third decade of the seventeenth century, was on the road to decline. The Portuguese governor of Ceylon, who was losing one possession after another to the Dutch, governed the Portuguese east. The Portuguese did not have either any funds or any systematic policy.
The King of Portugal nominated the captain of the Portuguese settlement of Hughli. There were four administrative assistants to the captain annually elected by the Portuguese inhabitants - all of them nominally under the governor of Ceylon. Inside Hughli town, the rich Portuguese, as in Goa, usually led the life of a rich Muslim with a harem. Below them, the numerous half-breeds (mesticos) supervised the menial work of the slaves and the Indian peasants. The Portuguese priests formed the top layer of the social order, although there is no evidence of any inquisition as seen at Goa in the seventeenth century. The Bengali artisans and labourers (Garibos in Portuguese) stood apart and had no interest in sustaining Portuguese rule.
In 1632, the Mughals appeared before Hughli to drive the Portuguese away from the Hughli River. The accounts of Mirza Nathan and Shihabuddin Talish describe the piratical activities of the Portuguese and Magh raiders, which resulted in Hughli turning into a flourishing slave market. Cabral, however, opined that it was because the Portuguese fleet had deserted shahjahan in his hour of need that the Mughals were provoked to attack.
The Mughals captured Hughli on 13 September 1632, thanks to the total desertion of the Bengali families living in the suburbs and to the support given to the Mughals by Martin Alfonso de Mello. Some Portuguese escaped to Sagar Island. Cabral mentions that one hundred Portuguese were killed in the Mughal cannonade, which seems to be accurate. Later English and Dutch documents speak of the return of the Portuguese to Hughli. European documents of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century refer to a farman of Shahjahan, now not extant, giving 777 bighas of land to the Portuguese at Hughli. The charge of the settlement, particularly at Bandel, was given to a Father of the Bandel church, which seems to be confirmed by a parwana of the subahdar shah shuja in 1641. The Augustine priests, who had built a church at Bandel in 1600, almost at the same time as the church at Jessore was built, had worked out a peace formula with the Jesuits of Goa in 1632.
In 1660 Nicolao manucci had found many rich Portuguese merchants at Hughli enjoying a monopoly in the salt trade. A few years later, Bernier was not so enthusiastic and mentioned nine thousand Portuguese and mesticos living in poverty in Bengal. In 1670, Thomas Bowrey found ten thousand Portuguese mainly working in the ships at Hughli, out of twenty thousand in the whole of Bengal. Some of these rich Portuguese paid handsome donations to the Church as could be seen in the rebuilding of Bandel church in 1761 by a rich Portuguese.
Even after the departure of Gonsalves Tibeau, the coastal area of Chittagong had remained open to the piratical activities of the Portuguese, often in alliance with Arakanese, with the base at Sandwip. As usual the Portuguese-Arakanese alliance was a temporary one and the Mughals could capture Chittagong the 26 January 1666, largely due to the help of other Portuguese. They also supported the Mughals in 1681 when the Arakanese were driven away from Sandwip, which reduced coastal piracy to a great extent. Manucci's statement that, after the conquest, shaista khan killed many of the Portuguese and sent many of them to be settled around Dhaka cannot be confirmed. By the end of the eighteenth century some of the Portuguese had become important traders, as we can gauge from references to one Cosmo Gomes flourished from the end of the seventeenth century to the third decade of the 18th century. The Portuguese inhabitants of Bandel had also earned the gratitude of the Mughal authorities when they successfully resisted the passage of the rebels, sobha sing and rahim khan, on their way to Hughli through Bandel. By the early eighteenth century, the Potuguese settlements on the southeastern coast were located at Dianga, Feringhee Bazar in Chittagong district and in the municipal ward of Jamal Khan in Chittagong.
With the growth of French commerce, the Portuguese merchants had moved from Hughli to Chandernagore (chandannagar) under the French. Chandernagore municipal records of the eighteenth century show a large number of rich Portuguese merchants living in their own houses with slaves. Although some of the Portuguese had settled at Calcutta, the English in 1733 ordered their servants not to deal with the Portuguese. Yet Hughli was not abandoned, as we find the arrival of a Portuguese ship there in 1740. By then the Portuguese had lost their ambition and resources to dabble in politics. Some of the mesticos were employed in the army of the nawabs at a small salary. However, it was in the field of culture that the Portuguese left a lasting impression.
The Portuguese brought exotic fruits, flowers and plants, which became part of Bengali civilization and culture. The potato, cashew nut, papaya, pineapple, kamranga (Averrhoa carambola), guava and the Alfonso mango, among others were brought by them, showing their zeal for agri-horticulture and became part of Bengali life. Even the Krishnakali (Mirabilis jalapa) plant, with its varied colours, is a gift of the Portuguese.
From the early days of their arrival, the Portuguese did not object to marrying local women, although the top jobs were reserved for white Portuguese men from Portugal. As a result, many Portuguese words like chabi, balti, perek, alpin, toalia have come into the Bengali vocabulary. This process was perhaps facilitated by the Portuguese interest in the Bengali language. The first printed book in prose in Bengali was by a Portuguese, as was the first Bengali grammar and dictionary. In 1599, Father Sosa translated a religious tract into Bengali, which is not extant now. But another religious work in Bengali was written by a Bengali Prince of Jessore, who was enslaved and then converted into Christianity with a new name, dom antonio. His superior, Mansel de Rozario, wrote a dialogue in Bengali along with a Bengali grammar and a dictionary, which was printed in Lisbon in 1743. Although the Portuguese set up the first printing Press at Goa in 1556, they could not follow it up in Bengal due to the unstable nature of their establishments in Bengal. [Aniruddha Ray]

Coin Gold

Portuguese, The were first.....

Portuguese, The were first among the Europeans to come to Bengal. Since the early 15th century they had embarked upon seafaring enterprises. The arrival of Vasco da Gama at Calicut in August 1498 was followed (a couple of decades later) by the arrival of the Portuguese in Bengal. From the end of the fifteenth century, the quest for spices from Asia led to the Portuguese explorations in an attempt to bypass the Venetians and the Arab merchants. The development of the caravel ship around 1445 and the capacity of the Portuguese to use the quadrant to determine onwards latitude from 1456 helped the process that was patronised by Prince Henry and later by King Joao II.
It was after the conquest of Malacca (1511) that the Portuguese effort to move inside the Bay of Bengal succeeded from where the supply of rice and textiles could be assured. The first indirect contact with Bengal was made in 1512-13. The map of Asia, drawn in 1516 by Diego Reinel, gives an outline of the Bengal coast but not the islands and the ports, which possibly were not yet known to the Portuguese. The appointment of Lopo Soares as governor after the death of Albuquerque marked the end of state controlled commercial activities and the liberal policy that followed saw the arrival of the Portuguese in Bengal.
While a private Portuguese trader, Martin Lucena, was living at gaur, capital of Bengal, the first Portuguese merchant to have reached the Ganges was Joao Coelho, who was sent by Giovanni de Empoli, a Florentine merchant, around 1516. Soares sent a fleet of four ships commanded by Joao de Silveria, who after plundering ships from Bengal, anchored at chittagong on 9 May 1518. Intermittent war and peace with the governor's men followed. This was complicated by the help demanded by the King of Arakan from Silveira to recover Chittagong from the Bengal sultan. But Silveira preferred to leave for Ceylon and thus ended the first official Portuguese contact with Bengal.
Diego Lopes, who succeeded Soares, was far more interested in the Coromandel and Pegu. However he sent three ships to Bengal commanded by Antonio de Britto, whose unnamed interpreter has left an invaluable account of Britto's visit to Gaur from Chittagong (October 1521). Britto carried a letter from the Portuguese governor of India to the sultan of Bengal along with presents and goods for sale. His job was made difficult by the arrival of another Portuguese mission led by Rafael Prestelo a few days befor. Rafael's representative, Christovao Jusarte, an old Bengal hand, had gone to Gaur to obtain permission to reduce the customs duty to 10%. Britto sent Gonsalves Travers to the sultan with the proposal to exempt the payment of custom duties for the Portuguese in Bengal. The arrival of two embassies, both claiming official status, created confusion and finally led to an actual fight between them at Chittagong, in which the Turkish merchant Agha Khan took the side of Rafaelo.
At the court of Gaur, Jusarte had managed to persuade the officials to declare Britto's interpreter as a spy, who was finally allowed to leave Bengal with the promise that the Portuguese would be exempted from paying customs duties. This perhaps led the Portuguese to send ships regularly to Bengal. In 1526, Ruy Vaz Perceira came to Chittagong and plundered the ship of a Persian merchant, Khwaja Sahabuddin, whose friendship with the governor of Chittagong led to reprisals.
Thus from the early sixteenth century, both private Portuguese merchants as well the official Portuguese representatives had begun to come to Bengal regularly, which often led to violent conflicts between them, a hangover of the contradiction prevailing at Lisbon for sometime. The involvement of the Portuguese in local politics created further complications. In 1528, Khuda Baksh Khan imprisoned the Portuguese stranded at Chakaria district of Chittagong after a storm. The negotiations for their release by Martin Alphonso Jusart de Mello having failed, the prisoners tried to escape but were caught. After the young nephew of de Mello was put to death, the prisoners were ransomed by the merchant Sahabuddin, on condition of getting help from Goa for Sahabuddin's enterprise against the Bengal sultan nusrat shah.
The expedition from Goa of five ships led by Jusart came to Chittagong after the death of Nusrat Shah. Jusart sent a mission to Sultan ghiyasuddin mahmud shah at Gaur to obtain a treaty. But the sultan imprisoned the Portuguese members of the mission for plundering a Muslim ship while Jusart along with the other Portuguese was arrested at Chittagong. Five of them were killed and the rest were imprisoned at Gaur. Goa sent a strong expedition to obtain the release of prisoners. The negotiations at Gaur failed and Jorge Alcocorado, who was leading the Portuguse delegation, barely escaped after putting fire to the city. The appearance of sher shah in Bengal however changed the situation.
Facing the new danger, Ghiyasuddin Mahmud held talks with Diego Rabello, perhaps the first Portuguese who had advanced to Gaur by the Ganges. Mahmud released the prisoners in lieu of assured Portuguese help against Sher Shah. The encounter with Sher Shah went against Mahmud Shah despite Portuguese help. Sher Shah left Gaur soon after getting 13 lakh gold coins paid by Mahmud against the advice of the Portuguese. The sultan now permitted the Portuguese to build factories with custom houses in Bengal. Nuno Fernandez Freire was appointed to Chittagong with special power to collect rent from houses. Joao Correa took charge of the custom house of satgaon. The Portuguese prisoners were released. Sher Shah's return to Gaur saw some resistance by Mahmud, but the expected help from Goa arrived too late to save the dying sultan, whose death ended the Hussain Shahi dynasty. The custom houses of Satgaon and Chittagong remained under Portuguese control.
The Portuguese control of Chittagong port was ephemeral, as it had become the bone of contention between Arakan, Tripura, Bengal and Burma since the mid-fifteenth century. In 1559, the Portuguese viceroy of Goa concluded a commercial treaty with Parmanand Ray of Bakla, in which the Portuguese would be able to buy goods on payment of duties. They offered military help in lieu of Bakla supplying provisions to visiting Portuguese ships. Perhaps the Portuguese wanted to direct the Chittagong traffic to Bakla with monopoly concessions. Chittagong continued to be under Portuguese control. In 1569 caesar frederick saw eighteen Portuguese ships anchored at Chittagong.
While the official Portuguese efforts aimed at consolidating their foothold in Bengal with bullion and gunpowder, the Portuguese mercenaries were indulging in piracy off the Bengal and Arakan coasts. The pirates found a convenient base on the island of Sandwip, famous for its salt, where private Portuguese merchants had also begun to operate. The Afghan families living there did not look with favour either on the piracy or the Portuguese attempt to control the island, with whose chequered history the Arakanese ambition to develop it as a springboard to attack the mainland was increasingly linked up.
Thus Portuguese society in Bengal was gradually segmented into official and private merchants, adventurers and pirates, though the distinction often became blurred. The gradual disintegration of the Hussain Shahi dynasty saw the emergence of the Arakan and Orissan powers in coastal Bengal, often penetrating inland; the segmented Portuguese groups, without any central control, began to establish their individual sway based on slave trading.
The first Portuguese settlement on the Bhagirathi was at Satgaon, and not at Bandel, founded by Affonso de Mello. It seems that the Portuguese were not permitted to establish a factory at Satgaon, which was, in reality, a customs shed. By 1554, the Portuguese called Satgaon Porto Pecquono (small port) in contrast to Chittagong, which was called Porto Grandoi (grand port). In the seventeenth century, Abdul Hamid Lahori suggested that some Portuguese from Sandwip had come to Satgaon where they had erected some buildings with fortifications. After the decline of Satgaon, they got some land around hughli at low rent. Their settlement at Triveni or perhaps at Bansberia, whose eighteenth century temple still bears the memory of the Portuguese in their wall sculptures, would thus pre-date Akbar's farman of 1579. The narrative of Frederick showed that the Portuguese settlement was not at Satgaon proper and was located between Adi Saptagram station and the now dry bed of the settled Saraswti River. There was no Portuguese settlement at Hughli ie on the Bhagirathi, prior to 1565, since the Portuguese used to transfer the goods from Bettore (opposite Howrah) by smaller boats to Satgaon. One of the reasons of the Portuguese use of Bettore instead of Triveni on the Bhagirathi was perhaps the occupation of Triveni by the Orissa King between 1560 and 1567.

(To be continue.....)

Bronze Sculptures

Danes, The started their eastern trading activities

Danes, The started their eastern trading activities in the early seventeenth century. King Christian IV of Denmark founded the Danish Company of the Indies by a letter patent issued on 17 March 1616. Till 1640, only 18 Danish ships were sent to India that brought back spices, porcelains, diamonds etc. Rolald Grappe, the chief of the company, set up a factory at Pipli in 1625, followed by another at Balasore. The Danes did not have a farman and hence their relation with the local officials began to deteriorate soon. In 1642, local inhabitants ransacked the Pipli factory and the Danes had to leave both Pipli and Balasore. The situation worsened when a Danish ship, St. Jacob, wanted to anchor at Pipli in a violent storm. The faujdar refused permission and the ship was scuttled with loss of sixteen persons. The faujdar rejected the demand for compensation and the Danes began to seize ships and boats on the Bengal coast. Between 1638 and 1645, the Danes had captured seven ships. Excepting one of 180 tons, the rest were sampans, which hardly produced the result the Danes were looking for. Other Europeans, particularly the dutch, were against such attacks.
In 1645 shah shuja, the subahdar of Bengal, offered to pay Rs 80,000/- as compensation, which was refused by the Danes. Till the end of 1646, the piracy and the negotiations continued. A settlement was probably reached at the end of 1647. With the death of King Christian IV in 1648, the company got into difficulties in Denmark.
Meanwhile Danish piracy was continuing on the Bengal coast. In 1661, they captured a Bengal ship laden with rich cargo. The crew and the passengers were sold as slaves at Achen. Even Dutch mediation did not bring any settlement. By 1670, thirty Bengal ships were captured or scuttled by the Danes. By 1676, an agreement was reached allowing the Danes to settle at Pipli, Balasore and Hughli. The Mughal emperor approved of it and fixed the payment of 2BD % as custom duties. The Danes now began to plan for the purchase of silk, opium and saltpetre from Bengal. They would sell Tranquebar salt, European copper, iron and spirits in Bengal. The settlement did not last and the Danes began their piracy after evacuating Balasore.
While the demand for Bengal sugar, saltpetre and textile was increasing in Denmark, the company began negotiations with Bengal authorities from 1690. AndrE9 Andras could sign the accord in 1698 by which the company would forsake all claims for compensation and enjoy earlier commercial privileges. They were permitted to set up a factory near Chandernagore, which was called Danemarknagar. The warehouse and other buildings were enclosed by a wall and the number of personnel was nearly forty. The company however never received the promised farman.
It appears that the freight trade from Bengal to Tranquebar did not bring any profit. The project of the Bengal factor, Jean Jonchim, who had bought a big ship, was unsuccessful. Some of the factors acted so highhandedly with the local inhabitants, often maltreating the Bengali employees, two of whom died as a result, that serious problems arose. Wolf Ravn, one of the factors, was condemned by the company and was imprisoned for life. The report of the Danish governor, Erasmus Hansen Attrup, who came as governor in 1711, found the factory without stock and without credit while the local inhabitants were determined to drive the Danes away.
The Danish settlement in Bengal, about one and half mile from Chandernagore, had been receiving immigrants, and the Danes had begun to settle people in nearby villages before any permission was received from the subahdar. After several years, the Bengal government demanded rent from these villages, including arrears. In October 1714, on the refusal of the Danes to pay, the Karori Ramkrishna Ray led an attack, which was easily repulsed. Another attack by him in December also failed. By that time the Danes had no funds as no ship had come for several years. Their complaint to murshid quli khan was turned down. The Danes then evacuated their settlement and seized a big Moor ship rich in cargo, in front of Baranagar. They then collected about 350 Christian mercenaries and moved towards the mouth of the river. Attempts by the English and the French to mediate failed.
As a result the settlement of Danemarknagar was plundered by the faujdar of Hughli. Before leaving the Ganges, Attrup had declared war on the Mughals and accused Ramkrishna Karori of having received Rs 30,000 for the farman which he never delivered. Peace however came by the end of 1716 and the Danes again took possession of their settlement, in which there was no commerce. Without funds and without commerce, the factors ceased to have any noticeable existence. In 1721, the Danes sold their factory to the portuguese. The local authorities however took possession of the factory on the plea that the required payment had not been made.
Till 1744, the Danes made unsuccessful efforts to re-establish their settlement at Danemarknagar. However, in 1755, Alivardi Khan permitted the Danes to settle at Serampore, thanks to the mediation of the English, who were interested in sending money accrued from their private commerce to Europe through the Danes. Englishmen like robert clive, warren hastings, robert orme and others had collaborated with the Danes through country trading in the pre-Palashi period by sending Danish bills of exchange, prepared at Tranquebar, to Europe. As a result, the Danes never lacked cash for their trading venture in Bengal.
After 1757, the Danes like other non-English Europeans, found difficulties in freighting non-English ships, while the English monopolised the saltpetre and opium trade. In 1777, the Danish King took over the company and allowed Danish private merchants to trade in Asia. During the American war of Independence, the Danish company could increase their export from Bengal as a neutral country. With the peace in 1783, the situation changed and the Danes began to face stiff competition from other European nations. From 1785, Serampore was receiving American ships and missionaries. From the 1790s, Serampore became a centre of proselytisation and literary activities. The serampore mission, serampore mission press and serampore college had a far reaching effect on the social, religious and cultural life of Bengal. [Aniruddha Ray]

Architectures of Bongo/ Bangla

Gaur (City of) one of the largest medieval cites

Gaur (City of) one of the largest medieval cites in the Indian subcontinent, was the capital of Bengal from c. 1450 AD to 1565 AD. Located on the eastern strip of land between the Ganges and the Mahananda rivers, in lat. 24°52' N. and Long. 88°10' E., south of the present town of Malda, its ruins spread over nearly twenty miles in length and four miles in breadth.
It has been postulated that the earlier city of Laksmanavati (later Islamised as lakhnauti) was located at the same site. Alexander cunningham, however, placed Laksmanavati to the north of the ruins of Gaur on the basis of Hindu place names and the existence of the ruins of a fort traditionally associated with vallalasena. It has also been held that laksmanasena had transferred his capital to nadia in order to spend his last days on the bank of the Ganges, which is difficult to accept since the Ganges was flowing past the city of Laksmanavati as well. MM Chakrabarty held that at an earlier period the Ganges was flowing through the Mahananda but had gradually begun to detach itself from the Mahananda to move towards the west. james rennell has recorded its westward movement at the end of the eighteenth century as he found the Ganges nearly ten miles west of the ruins of Gaur. The existing palaeo-channels clearly mark such movements. In that case, Laksmanavati would be located on the western side of the Ganges-Mahananda channel, whose memory was perhaps embodied in the sketches of Lopo Homes (1519) and Gastaldi (1548), showing Gaur on the west of the river. One could surmise that Laksmanavati was abandoned by the Sena king due to the westward movement of the Ganges that might have washed away his capital. The remains of the sandy soil over a long area in palaeo-channels can still be seen. However, the pre-Muslim artifacts, both Buddhist and Hindu, are found only in the higher ground located to the south of the medieval Gaur fort.
The first inscription of Gaur, dated December 1457, during the reign of Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud I (1435-1459), on a bridge erected by him on the road from the kotwali darwaza (gate) in the south to the north of the city, suggests the date of transfer of the capital from pandua. One may not, therefore, accept abm habibullah's view that the capital was transferred in the early part of the fifteenth century during the reign of Sultan Jalaluddin. The visiting Chinese delegates during his reign clearly mentioned going to Pandua, then the capital of Bengal.
Gaur remained the capital of Bengal till 1565 when sulaiman karrani transferred it to tandah in the west. The Mughal general munim khan brought it back to Gaur in 1575 and was perhaps instrumental in constructing the lukochuri darwaza the eastern side of the fort, which is generally ascribed to shah shuja, subahdar of Bengal in the first half of the seventeenth century. But Shah Shuja had never lived at Gaur. Gaur was finally abandoned in 1575 due to the outbreak of plague.
Minhaj-us Siraj, visiting the renamed capital forty-five years after its conquest in 1205 by bakhtiyar khalji, saw mosques and madrasas built by him, which are not extant today. Since the embankments protecting the city were constructed in 1227, these buildings could not have been washed away by the river.
Apart from the Kotwali gate, ascribed to the fourteenth century on the basis of design, there were no other architectural remains of the 13th-14th centuries. Abid Ali, in the early twentieth century, identified the northwest area of the big Sagar Dighi between the Durbhasini and Phulwari gates (now disappeared) as the commercial centre of the old Laksmanavati, with the port of Gaur served by a canal. This seems highly unlikely since no pre-Muslim artifact has been found there. Ziauddin Barani in the fourteenth century had given the description of a long market with rows of shops on both sides stretching nearly two miles and leading to the old palace of the Senas. The Phulwari fort, two miles north of the present ruins of the fort of Gaur, has been termed a Hindu fort by Cunningham, and was used, according to Barani, by the son of Balban. However, excepting some black basalt stone slabs, no pre-Muslim artifact has been found there. On the other hand, while according to local tradition the fort was used by Shah Shuja, glazed bricks, broken pieces of clay pipes, inscribed porcelain pieces as well as coarse pottery found inside the walled fort (there is a ditch) would suggest its use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
From the early fifteenth century, Gaur and Pandua were becoming populous. Perhaps it was the pressure of population that led Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud to shift the capital to Gaur from Pandua. The rise of the overseas port of Saptagram/satgaon took place around the same time. Since then, the immigration to Gaur continued at a brisk pace while other towns on the Bhagirathi also began to grow, mostly acting as suppliers of textile to Saptagram and Gaur. It is significant that the city of Gaur began to grow towards the south beyond the wall, whose remains have been recently explored by a Bangladesh team.
Henry Creighton, an indigo planter living near Gaur, gave a description of the morphology of the city in 1786, including a sketch of the place and superb drawings of its monuments. He found the ruins of the city extending up to ten miles in length and one and half mile in breadth, lying between the Ganges and the Mahananda; the latter became a lagoon by the end of the fifteenth century, as Castenhada de Lopez noted, and was named by Abul Fazl as Chatia Patia. The city had two big paved roads, parallel to the river, in the north-south direction, crisscrossed by smaller lanes and canals, some of which still exist.
Creighton's description was modified by James Rennell, Alexander Cunningham and JH Ravenshaw, who found the ruins extending up to twenty miles in length and four miles in breadth (later confirmed by aerial survey and explorations), thus extending beyond the boundary wall to the south.
Creighton's chief credit lies in sketching the fort and the palace, with the principal gate in the north, called the dakhil darwaza, probably built in the early part of the fifteenth century and later added to by successive rulers till nusrat shah in the early sixteenth century. From this gate an anonymous Portuguese interpreter who has left a valuable memoir went straight to the darbar hall of Nusrat Shah in 1521, who was then watching a game of polo being played on the plains below.
On the basis of the writings of Creighton and Francklin, Ravenshaw divided the palace into three compartments. The palace was enclosed by a high wall, called Baishgazi. A ditch enclosed the three sides of the palace and was connected to the Ganges, which guarded the western side of the fort. According to a contemporary Vaisnava poet, Sultan Alauddin husain shah saw a procession led by chaitanya on the opposite bank of the river.
It is clear that the first compartment from the north was the darbar, so clearly described by the Portuguese interpreter in 1521. Halfway from the Dakhil Darwaza there was a gate under which flowed a channel of water to supply a fountain, as recorded in the inscription of Sultan ruknuddin barbak shah (1466). According to the testimony of the Portuguese and the celebrated Bengali poet, Krittivasa, the road from the Dakhil Darwaza to the darbar had nine well-guarded gates at least two of which could be identified today.
The second compartment from the northern side is termed the living quarter of the sultan, where the multi-coloured tiled floor, described with admiration by humayun's companion, reminds one of the rich lifestyle of the pre-Mughal sultans of Bengal. The third compartment has been termed as Haram Sara or zenana mahal, as was attested by the visiting Frenchman Vincent Le Blanc in 1575. While from the third compartment nothing worth speaking has been found, the other two compartments have yielded extensive deluxe artifacts including multi-coloured bricks and porcelain pieces inscribed in Chinese, the first such find in Bengal of the period. Ruins of a building in the northeastern part of the first compartment have been called a treasury, but this cannot be confirmed.
The citadel wall in the east has two gates. The earlier, called gumti gate, has been dated from the reign of Alauddin Husain Shah, while the latter one, called Lukochuri, is generally ascribed to Shah Shuja, but possibly was built by munim khan after his victory over daud karrani in 1575. North of this gateway, among a group of buildings, the first one, a Bangla type low building, has been identified, on the basis of legends, as the tomb of Fath Khan (son of Dilir Khan), who allegedly died here in pursuit of Shah Shuja. The next building, kadam rasul, where the footprint of the Prophet (Sm) has been kept, was earlier thought to be a mosque. Close by this building, there are a number of ruins with pavilions. This is the graveyard of the Sultans of Gaur. Henry Creighton saw the black stone tombs of Alauddin Husain Shah and Nusrat Shah, which have disappeared, allegedly carted away by the English.
Further north, outside the citadel, there is a tower, probably used as a watchtower. There is another such tower opposite Malda. The Portuguese interpreter in 1521 saw that the entry from that side to the Dakhil Darwaza was barred for ordinary people by a heavy iron chain. He also mentioned a big mosque round the corner, obviously bara sona mosque, identified so long by an inscription (not in situ) which gives 1526 as the date of construction. The reference of the Portuguese clearly indicates its construction prior to 1521, during the reign of Alauddin Husain Shah, who had constructed a similar mosque (chhota sona mosque) on the southern side beyond the Kotwali gate.
Inside the citadel, in a straight line to the west of the Gumti gate, is a building, generally called chika building. Although the ground plan resembled that of the eklakhi mausoleum at Pandua, it is not a mausoleum, as no grave has been found. It is not a mosque either and figures of Hindu deities in relief were used on the lintels inside the building. According to the account of the Portuguese, it seems to be the Diwan-i Mazalim, where the Portuguese was tried as a spy. It was not used as a prison after Sanatan, a prisoner during the reign of Alauddin Husain Shah, had bribed the guards and jumped to the river Ganges to escape. From here, there is no direct access to the river.
The citadel area is strewn with ruins of black basalt stone slabs. Some of these are still standing, giving the impression of offices with the ruins of a gate in the south. Big basalt stone slabs lie embedded, giving an impression that it was part of old Laksmanavati.
Local legends identified the high area south of the citadel, from where Buddhist and Hindu icons have been found, as the commercial centre of Gaur. Traditionally it is termed Lal Bazar, while a section of it is called Mahajan Tala. Contiguous to the citadel and of one mile in square area, where cowries and coarse pottery are found in profusion, the ruins indicate the existence of several mahallas or wards dating from pre-Islamic days. The Portuguese found the streets well mapped out and arranged. Certain types of goods, like weapons or sweetmeats or food, were sold on separate streets, as in other large medieval cities of the Indian subcontinent. The Portuguese favourably compared this city with Lisbon.
The city seems to have been densely populated. The Portuguese interpreter in 1521 speaks of a high density of population. He found it difficult to move through the crowded streets while the nobles used to employ a number of retainers to clear the way. Fariya Y Sousa, and following him others, put the number of inhabitants at twelve lakhs while the visiting Frenchman put the population at forty thousand hearths. Taking five persons per family, the population would come to two lakhs, quite close to two lakh twenty-thousand of contemporary Fathepur Sikri. The density at Gaur would however be over two thousand persons per square mile in an eighty square mile area. The analysis of revenue data, given by Abul Fazl in 1595-96, obviously based on earlier revenue figures, would give an idea of the tremendous draw of the Gaur area and its high density of population.
Castenhada de Lopez left a description of the houses. The buildings were low-lying, wrought with gold and bluish tiles and they had numerous courtyards and gardens. The floors of each house were covered with ornamental tiles. Humayun's companion, author of the Waquiyat-i Mustaqui stated that Humayun was struck by the Chinese tiles, which were used on the floors as well as walls of the rooms. There is no mention of any double-story house at Gaur, although the Portuguese interpreter has described the underground room of the darbar hall.
Between the citadel and the eastern embankment, a ruined structure, alleged to be the house of a legendary merchant, Chand Saudagar, has been identified as the belbari madrasa, the only one found so far within the walled city. Beyond the southern wall the darasbari madrasa has been excavated by the Bangladesh Archaeological Survey. East of the Belbari Madrasa lies a big tank, the Chhota Sagar Dighi, connected to canals winding through the different areas of the city. One can still see the parallel double canals running towards the Ganges, one carrying the waste.
As seen on the survey map of 1849-52, the canal cuts the Nawabganj-Pandu road twice, with bridges on them. The three-arched bridge over the canal flowing past the Belbari Madrasa is still intact. Since the eastern part of the land is higher than the city, the water of the lagoon flowed through holes in two embankments to supply water to the city; the Chhota Sagar Dighi served as the reservoir. The principal canal runs in front of the Chamkathi (leather cutter) Mosque. The bridges, having one to seven arches, would indicate the volume of water flowing by. That there was a sewerage system, mostly of clay pipes under the ground, could be seen in one of the ruined houses of the area between the Ganges and the Bara Sona Mosque. The raised land on both sides of the canal from the Belbari Madrasa to the west, where fine ceramics have been found, would suggest that it was an area inhabited by upper class people. The frontal area of the land gradually slopes down to the canal. The area from the Chhota Sagar Dighi to the eastern embankment seems to have been occupied by marginal people as no ruins or artifacts have been found.
Coming closer to the citadel from the east, one finds mosques situated in close proximity. The earliest mosque, Chamkathi, built in 1475, was followed by two others, lattan mosque and Tantipada (weavers' locality) mosque, both built in 1480. The names would suggest association with manufacturing groups. The brief span of time of the building of these mosques, within a radius of two miles, would suggest a rapid growth of population after 1470. This acceleration of urbanisation began to take place during the reign of Sultan Ruknuddin Barbak Shah (1459-1474) and continued till the end of the second decade of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese interpreter witnessed the problems of the immigrants in 1521, and found people lying dead in the streets in the winter mornings. He also saw the distribution of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food on certain occasions by the sultan, which would indicate the presence of homeless and jobless people of both communities at Gaur.
The city was extending to the south, although one of the mosques, gunamanta, probably built by jalaluddin fath shah (1481-1486), was located on the bank of the river (now there is only a palaeo-channel) near Mahdipur village. The extensive exploration work done by the Bangladesh team shows the existence of several mosques and tombs of saints as well as a tahkhana, supposed to have been built by Shah Shuja. This confirms the statement of the Portuguese on the expansion of the city, possibly in the south, since nothing has been found in the north beyond the Bara Sona Mosque. It seems that a second wave of expansion started from the early sixteenth century under Alauddin Husain Shah(1494 -1519), whose construction of the Chhota Sona Mosque suggests such growth.
The Bangladesh team has identified Jahaz Ghata, southwest of the citadel on the river, beyond the walls. Although tome pires had called Gaur a port city, yet the area seems to be part of an inland port, where the Portuguese interpreter saw about 130 boats of varying sizes at anchor, including the one which looked like a Portuguese galley.
Most scholars have referred to the shifting of the river course to the west as the reason for the decline of Gaur. Although the capital was finally transferred from Gaur to Tanda in 1575 after Munim Khan's death in the plague, the Bengali poet Mukundaram Chakrabarty's merchant-cum-zamindar had gone to Gaur, which was a city of pleasure as well as of artisanal manufactures. Since this was written at the end of the sixteenth century, it may be presumed that the city lingered for sometime after the transfer of the capital.
James Rennell found that the river had shifted nearly ten miles to the west of Gaur at the end of the eighteenth century. The two European travellers, Father manrique (1648) and Robert Hedges (1687), did not mention the shifting of the river and clearly described their anchoring of boats in front of the palace, which the latter found to be bigger than that of Constantinople. Besides, there was no reason for Sulaiman Karrani or the Mughal authorities a decade later to shift the capital to Tanda, towards the west in the same direction in which the river was moving. The description of ralph fitch at the end of the sixteenth century would suggest that the river had started moving towards the west, which had perhaps prompted man singh to shift the capital to rajmahal on the eastern bank.
The principal reason of the decline of Gaur appears to be political instability. While the port of Chittagong had become the bone of contention between Arakan, Tripura and Bengal, later joined by the Portuguese adventurers, the Bhagirathi area, particularly its upper part, had become unstable with the conquest and plunder of Gaur by sher shah from the end of 1538. Humayun, whose life of pleasure for three months made him term the city Jannatabad, while the Husain Shahi dynasty was being extinguished. Then came the invasion from Orissa, whose ruler seized Saptagram. While the Portuguese merchants had settled first at Saptagram and then at hughli, their adventurous countrymen began their depredations in the coastal areas affecting the trade route. The final onslaught came in the wake of the Mughal-Pathan contest, which practically devastated the northern part of Bengal.
Such continuous anarchy resulted in the neglect of the maintenance of the overcrowded city. The canals linking the lagoon and the Ganges and serving as the lifeline of the city had to be properly maintained. In 1575, Vincent Le Blanc saw waterlogging in parts of the city, which would suggest that the canals were not properly maintained. This resulted in the outbreak of a severe plague, which carried away three hundred persons per day, in which Munim Khan also lost his life. It is possible that the connection between the Mahananda and the Ganges through the canals of the city had snapped due to lack of maintenance as much as due to the beginning of the westward movement of the Ganges.
The Portuguese occupation of Malacca from the early sixteenth century created problems for the Muslim merchants carrying on trade between Gaur-Saptagram and the southeast. It may be presumed that the trade links between the Bhagirathi and southeast Asia were being controlled by the Portuguese and this affected the flow of silver into Bengal. Coupled with political instability and anarchy, the commercial and financial world of Gaur was gradually declining. The Mughal conquest and the shifting of the capital from Tanda to Rajmahal to the east of the river signified a new situation putting a stamp on the fall of Gaur.
From the late nineteenth century, Bengali nationalistic writings focussed on Gaur as a symbol of independent Bengal. akshay kumar maitreya, ramaprasad chanda, rakhaldas bandyopadhyay, Rajani Kanta Chakrabarty, Charu Chandra Mitra and others dwelt on the political history of pre-Mughal Bengal focussing on Gaur as a symbol of Bengal's independent entity and not as a part of regional history. With the exception of a few, the ruins as well as the city remained beyond the purview of historians, making Jannatabad of Humayun a lost and forgotten city. [Aniruddha Ray]
Bibliography Henry Creighton, Ruins of Gaur, London, 1817; JH Ravenshaw, Gaur, Its Ruins and Inscriptions, London, 1878; M Abid Ali Khan, Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua (ed & revised by H Stapleton), Calcutta, 1986 (reprint of 1924 ed.); Aniruddha Ray, "Archaeological Reconnaissance at the City of Gaur: A Preliminary Report", Pratna-Samiksha (Calcutta), 1995, No 2-3, 245-63; ABM Hussain (ed), Gawr-Lakhnawti, Dhaka, 1997.

Conti, Nicolo de a Venetian traveller

Conti, Nicolo de a Venetian traveller who has left behind a reliable description about India (and Bengal). Born of a noble family in Venice, Nicolo de Conti had gone to Damascus as a trader in his youth in 1429. From there he travelled further east (date not mentioned), went overland to Persia and took a dhow (ship) to go to Malabar. From there, he came to the Vijayanagar kingdom. He then sailed, along with his wife and two children, to the Islands of Ceylon, Sumatra and Java. Then he reached the south of China and returned through the Red Sea along the Coast of Ethiopia. He crossed the desert and reached Cairo, where his wife and two children died from causes not very clear.
Nicolo became a Muslim to save his life and reached Venice in 1444. He got absolution from the Pope Eugene IV on condition of relating his adventure to the Secretary of the Pope. The latter wrote it in Latin. It appears that it was printed at Lisbon in Portuguese, from which the Italian version was made. The original Latin version surfaced at Paris in 1723, from which the first English translation was made.
Conti's account of Vijayanagar is of paramount importance. From Vijayanagar he moved towards the Coromandel Coast to reach a maritime city, called by him Malepur (Meilapur) in the coast of Bay of Bengal. Here he saw the beautiful Church in which the body of St. Thomas lay buried. The Nestorian Christians were the residents and worshipped there. Conti then moved to a city, called Cabila by him, where pearls were found. He also mentioned palmyra tree with long leaves. Conti next reached Ceylon, where he found the cinnamon trees. Leaving Ceylon, he moved on to Sumatra, a rich emporium and a city that was of six miles in circumference. There he remained for one year. Then Conti reached the Andaman Islands after twenty days of sailing. Here he found the inhabitants as cannibals. Both men and women wore earrings of precious stones and used cotton and silk dresses that reached the knee. Polygamy was current. They lived in low houses. They were all idolaters. The Island produced pepper, camphor and gold. In one part of the Island, human flesh was eaten and heads of the enemies were considered valuable property.
Sailing through the stormy seas, Conti entered the Ganges River, where he found a large and wealthy city, called by him Cernova. He found the river extremely large, in some places exceeding fifteen miles. On both banks, he saw bamboo trees along with villas, plantations and gardens. Sailing for three months up the Ganges and leaving four big cities on the route, Conti reached a very big city, called by Maarazia, where he found plenty of aloe-wood, gold, silver precious stones and pearls. From there he moved towards the eastern mountains and returned to the city of Cernova. From there he proceeded to the city of Buffetania. From here he took the ship to reach the city of Arakan. One may identify Cernova with sonargaon and Buffetania with chittagong. He then moved through the mountains to reach the Irrawadi River in Myanmar on which he had left a detailed account.
Niccolo then had gone to Peking, called by him Kambala and had seen the Great Wall of China. After going through Pegu he arrived at Quilon, a big city of twelve miles in circumference. Here he saw the python among other snakes. Then he came to Cochin and proceeded to Calicut, a city of eight miles in circumference. It had pepper, ginger and cinnamon in abundance. He had noticed polyandry and wrote in details about it, mentioning that that the inheritance goes to the grand children. After visiting Cambay, he went to the Island of Socotra and then sailed to Jedda in the Red Sea. From there he reached Venice.
This remarkable account in the middle of the fifteenth century shows an opulent India (and Bengal) with different social customs and manners. The identifications of some of the places mentioned creates problems, but Major's suggestion of the identification of Maarazia with Mathura and Buffetania with Burdwan may not be certain.
[Aniruddha Ray]
Bibliography RH Major (ed.), India in the Fifteenth Century, New Delhi, 1994 reprint of 1857 ed; EF Oaten, European Travellers in India, Lucknow, 1973, reprint of 1909 ed.