The Sun Temple of Konark

Post monsoon, the air was still somewhat humid. Temperatures were still in the range of early summer levels. Yet sunshine was welcome, bringing an end to several months of extreme wet weather. Grass had begun to reclaim lands of slush and the air was pure. The air was full of anticipation of a festive season. It had something for everyone.

In October 2011, we set out to the east – a land that worships Goddess Durga. We found ourselves in the midst of a festive season, when we arrived at Bhubhaneswar. The festivity was augmented by the fact that we were being hosted and joined by two of our best friends respectively. The itinerary had no time to waste and we drove to our destinations straight from the airport. We spent a day and a night in a little village on shallow waters. The village had no direct electricity and we were supplied through a diesel generator by our hosts at the village. Thereafter, post a day’s rest at my friend’s place in Bhubhaneswar, we headed to my favourite monument – the Sun temple of Konark. The place wasn’t quite finding a fit in our tight itinerary and had to be slipped in as my part of the bargain.

The grand Sun Temple had undergone a massive change since my first visit more than two and half decades ago. By early 1980s, the Temple was falling apart. More harm was done to it in the century post its discovery by modern India, than all of the previous time, Islamic invaders and nature put together. A British hobbyist discovered the Sun Temple accidentally in early 19^th century. He discovered some ruins in deep wild, buried halfway in the earth. Very little realization had dawned on India that its greatest monument ever, lay discovered and vulnerable. Indian princes carried off its exquisite statues to decorate their homes. The stones of Konark were carried off as building material for temples and other edifices. Yet, Konark was about much more than that. Much of it was still beneath the earth, waiting to be excavated.

The Temple which consisted originally of a taller structure had only the stouter structure standing when it was discovered – which today comes across as the main temple in the absence of the lost principal structure. The smaller structure itself it too big for ordinary imagination and is the principal attraction. It is closed from all sides. When I visited in 1984, the ASI was trying to restore the structures and stop the pillage. The former could not be achieved without the latter. The restoration plan included shutting out intruders. The taller structure was still standing partially, with its four walls towering at around 20-25 feet above the ground (a fraction of its original height). A historical anecdote notes that after the conquest of Orissa by Muslims in the 16^th century, the general asked his finest archer to aim his best arrow to the temple’s top. The invaders had never seen a Hindu structure as big as that. The arrow is reported to have fallen after halfway journey. The main structure (now fallen) must have been over 350 feet high. The archer was probably a Mughal (Mongol), whose arrows traveled the largest distance – key to their conquest of China and West Asia – with their bows being made of yak bone.

 In June 1984, the area was full of watery mud with monsoon showers. And I stole my chance to climb atop the walls with Mahapatra uncle from Cuttack’s music academy, and who was taking care of us at Orissa. I also then climbed down to the open area that these tall walls had enclosed. I was disappointed on not finding a hidden treasure. We got ourselves a photograph – the black & white photograph of me with my parents and the Wheel of Konark adorns a family album.

Konark captured minds and imagination for the better part of a millennium of its existence. The medival (12^th to 13^th century) holy Hindu text Brahma Puran, details this as one of the greatest places of its time. It details the rituals of worshipping, the running expenses and the edifice itself. The Arab and European sailors when eventually sailed to the South East Asian spice hubs, the Sun Temple of Konark was a landmark – called the Black Pagoda. The ‘black’ understandably comes from the dark color of the stones, seen from a distance.

When built, the Sun Temple was located on a wonderful beach, much like today’s Ganpati Temple at Ganpatupule, near Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. But the sea withdrew over the next few centuries, leaving the Temple a kilometer or more inland.

 

 

 

Who built this great temple edifice? An edifice bigger and grander than anything the subcontinent had seen. In what times was the Konark erected? Time of great Hindu revival in peacetime, or a period of consternation?

By the 13^th century, much of India was already in the hands of Muslims. Kalinga (ancient name for Orissa) was on tenterhooks and lived nervously. Narasimha took over the throne of Kalinga in the year 1238 and may have spent some time in settling down. The Turk invaders, ruling rest of India, were by now a trained war machinery of several generations. They chipped away seemingly powerful countries (such as Kalinga) by making small incursions, make plunder, rape and kill, and retire if confronted by a formidable force. This practice was followed for years/decades before weakening the enemy and making a big assault. This was working. It was chipping away the Kalinga state. Between 1100 and 1238, Kalinga saw many such attacks --- inflicting damage to Narasimha’s country.

Izuddin Tughan Khan was the successful Turk ruler (Governor appointed by Delhi Sultanate) of Islamic Bengal. Rulers in Delhi were changing in quick succession, with emperors being murdered one after another. Razia Sultana was one of the Delhi rulers to fall (and be murdered) during Tughan Khan’s tenure as governor. New rulers needed allegiance of the governors, making Tughan Khan important. He was ruling the province with the highest revenue earning – 3 times more revenue than rest of Delhi/India Sultanate.

Instead of succumbing to pressures and surrendering a district or two, Narasimha was planning an offensive. In 1243, Narasimha set out with his army to Bengal, probably in the spring. He was leading the charge himself, supported by his general Paramaideva (also his brother-in-law). Reading from the swiftness of his movements, this may not have been a vast army.

King Narasimha may have been welcomed in southern Bengal --- the districts around modern day Calcutta. Turk penetration in southern Bengal was relatively recent then and the imposed religious restrictions were being resented by the Hindu masses. Khan was probably taken aback by the Kalingan offensive. Initially, either he left the task of repelling Kalinga army to the district forces, or, may have learnt of Narasimha’s army’s advance belatedly. Starting around the spring, Narasimha began to plunder Muslim quarters of Bengal. Khan counters the Orissa army a couple of months later at Katasin (in modern day, around southern part of Medinipur district --- probably not far from Kharagpur), with his own army. At charge of the army himself, Narasimha ensures a gross defeat of the Khan’s army. Tughan Khan deserts his men and runs for his life, seeking shelter at the walled city of Gaur, his capital. Narasimha’s army goes on a mass plunder of Muslim districts of southern and central Bengal. And just before the arrival of monsoon, Narasimha retires back to his Kingdom.

Around the time of next spring, 1244, Narasimha was back in Bengal. By now Narasimha’s army knew Southern Bengal quite well, and neither was there any resistance. During that time the Turko-Afghan rulers of Bengal, their population and standing armies were concentrated in the northern Bengal, stretching 100 km east from district of Malda in present day West Bengal. This means that their colonies were divided by the great river Ganga. To the west of the river lay the provinces called Radha (with core at present day Birbhum district). And to the east lay provinces called Varendra (present day northern Bangladesh, consisting of old districts of Dinajpur and Rajshahi – both of which have now been broken into smaller districts within the republic of Bangladesh). Further north, lay the greatly fortified capital of Gaur (also spelled Gaud). The Kalinga army marched right through the southern districts of Burdwan, Howrah and Hooghly. A great battle took place as Narasimha’s army sacked the provinces of Radha. The Turk armies were defeated by Orissa’s warriors. Turks and Afghans were killed in great number and their cities were plundered. Radha’s heaquarter Lakhanor was reduced. For the soon would-be Sultanate of Bengal, this was disaster at epic proportions. The Narasimha Army crossed the mighty river Ganga and took on the remaining Muslim forces in provinces of Varendra, killing the foreigners in great numbers. It is said that not enough men lived among them to carry on the task of burying the dead. According to one description of Radha after the war (roughly translated) --- The River Ganga was blackened by the kajal washed from the tears of weeping Muslim women, grieving their dead men (inscriptions of Narsimha II & III, R D Banerji – Vol I).

The maker of Konark then orders his army to march north right into the walled city and capital of Gaur, where a defeated governor Tughan was holed up. An alarmed Tughan Khan had begged help from Delhi and the Sultan of India had sent the governor of Awadh, Taimur Khan to Tughan’s aid. But Narsimha’s siege was ferocious and overwhelming. Taimur prefers to be a bystander. In Monsoon 1244, King Narasimha retired to his Kingdom, with the addition of Southern Bengal districts as his new possessions.

Irrespective of who ruled the Sultanates around Kalinga, King Narasimha was just too mighty to be picked on. An attack on him meant that King Narasimha dealt a crashing defeat to his enemies. Narsimha the ruler of Kalinga then on becomes King Narasimhadeva --- the God King and the protector of religion.

King Narasimhadeva brings home not just wealth of Gaur, he brings home something more valuable. The Lion among men (Narasimha) brings back Muslim oppressed sanyasis of Radha and Gaud to rehabilitate and resettle them near the Bhubaneswar area (Lingraj Temple inscriptions, Donaldson).

As we drove from Bhubhaneswar to Konark, we checked in at the government run Yatri Niwas just post noon. The lunch took forever to arrive after we settled for some ‘quick’ Chinese dishes. After an easy afternoon dotted with naps, we headed for siesta – holidays are always tales of over-eating for me. We walked to the Temple well after the sun had faded out of the sky. My host friend Param thought the temple at night would look good. And it did. As we made in through the entry point, my photographic tripod stand was confiscated by a group of casually dressed boys. They said they represented Archeological Survey of India and tripods were not permitted. They were right, Param found from the rules on the ASI website later. The motive of confiscation however was not clear. I doubted safe custody of my tripod, but parted nevertheless to move in the Temple.

My friend was right about the scene post sunset. Lit by electric focus lamps, the temple was gently glowing. There was darkness everywhere else. It helped me imagine what Narsimhadeva’s evening visits to the Temple would have been like. The Temple would have glowed under the light of hundreds of vegetable-oil-fired lamps, placed on the walls and peripheries. The God King would have alighted from his Royal elephant and walked in amid heads of common folks bowing in appreciation, blessings of holy-men and wishes of priests, all gratuitous of the keeper of Hindu religion. The King would take a full circle around the temple spending his gazes at countless sculptures on the walls, depicting his wars, sexual feats, his people, tales of gods, all lit by lamps beneath them. And he craned his neck up to admire scale of his creation. The God King would enter through giant gate of the temple – a gate so big that dwarfed his elephant stabled outside to a puppy. The inside of the temple was kept warm and lambent with lamps burning clarified butter. The gleaming interiors resonated with hymns from the holy books, sung in priestly chorus. As he moved in further, the inner sanctum was a building of unimaginable proportions. Its ceiling heaved up, beyond what the craned neck could keep up to, and melted into the sky. The God King came to worship the Sun God. If the temple dedicated to him is so grand, how grand would the idol image of Sun God be? My vivid imaginations ended there abruptly. We have very little idea of the idol. No one knows where it did go.

 

 

As the king came out of the Temple, he settled at the Natya Mandir, opposite the Temple. The God was worshipped in dance dedicated to him – the Odissi. The lit Natya Mandir would have echoed in songs, dancing feet and musical instruments.

My country surprises me every now and then. Nothing can be taken for granted. Two days ago, Rural village folks, hosted their first urban guests in us, but served us the finest chicken pakoda and other stuff I had eaten ever. And now my tripod was safely returned.

Next morning when I revisited the temple at the break of dawn, it seemed very different. Looking from the east, the Sun’s rays fell directly on the temple face with the break of dawn. Lit under the orange sky dotted with white clouds, it made a terrific scene. I was looking at every piece of art carefully. The sculptures positioned on the top of the temple were really big, probably taller than six feet and made of solid stone. I put on my telephoto lens to look. The beautiful statues of gods, nymphs and heavenly musicians were beautiful, but devoid of great detail. Two things struck me. One, the strength of the temple must be phenomenal, to house such mammoths for centuries. Two, the size of sculptures got bigger, as they got higher. The builders were trying to keep the sculptures easily comprehensible and constant in size as seen by the naked eye from the ground level. That may explain why the higher sculptures were not invested with details. There is a large sculpture of an elephant on the north side, just near the boundary walls. The uniformed man guarding the sculpture shooed away crowds in the temple, shouting from a distance, the moment he feared they were getting dangerously intimate with a piece of sculpture or structure. As I photographed the sculpture of elephant holding a man rolled in his trunk from a length, the guard took interest in my camera. He invited me to have a closer look if I liked. We chatted as I wondered why such cruel depiction of man being killed by elephant. The man appeared to me a musician, holding a hand-drum in one hand, even when rolled up in elephant trunk. Was it commonplace in Kalinga to punish people like this? The guard pointed to another compound behind, sheltered from the sky by dense tress, some of them banyan trees with many hanging roots. The compound was littered by a large number of stone blocks. The guard, whose job was to watch it all day, put it in perspective. He said the stones when put together could form a temple bigger than the present! These were stones from the fallen portions of the Konark complex. Where did so much stone come from? Noted author on the subject, Donaldson, notes that stones were transported by river from distance. This was in a location to the south west along the great Chilka lake, where the king had located a quarry. Now dry, the river Chandrabhaga must have been used to transport the stones to the site, by placing them on a raft – probably just the way the gigantic staff at Quatab Minar Complex was transported long distances on Yamuna. Human pulled cranes (tying stones with ropes and then pulling them in position) were employed to convert the stones into the Temple structure.

 

 

The temple complex is a massive work in stone, like nothing built in scale or complexity before. With so many meaningful signs and sculptures, the thought is haunting -- what was the maker of the temple trying to convey to us?

Sun has been important among of the Aryan gods. Sun was worshipped from the time immemorial. Sun and fire did not however over time remain central as much to the Indian lands as they did in Persia. Shiva and Vishnu worshippers gained in numbers and sun retracted to being one among the gods. For centuries, if not over thousand(s?) years, the greatest pilgrimage on Indus lands was a visit to the sun temple of Multan (Mulsthan?). The temple is believed to be as old as Hinduism itself. The temple stood on the banks of life-nourishing Chandrabhaga river (now called Chenab), resonating with devotees from even the most far-flung areas of the Hindudom.

In the year 712, Caliph’s General Abdul Bin Quasim sacked Multan. The Sun Temple of Multan was the biggest attraction for the invaders, for it was probably the biggest store of gold in the world. It was customary (even today is; e.g. at Tirupati Balaji Temple) for Hindus to gift gold to their Gods as a token of gratitude for fulfilled desires, such as settlement of a dispute, or birth of a son. Remember, gold also represented currency in those times. The cumulative gold in the Temple could have represented a significant share of Persia’s GDP then (for the sake of illustration). Hiuen Sang describes the gorgeous sun temple in his account when he visited. The ascending Gods, Shiva and Buddha were given their due respect, with idols dedicated to them in the Temple, as later development.

On sacking Multan, Quasim gained control of the temple, violated it, but left it functioning as it was source of great income from pilgrims all over Hindu lands, some as far away as in South East Asia. But incessant Islamic invasions by usurpers inflicted continuous damage to the temple. Two and half centuries after Quasim’s invasion, the greatest Temple of Hinduism was razed to ground by the brutal invader Mahmud (Governor) of Ghazni (a province of Afghanistan). With the loss of its greatest symbol, Hindudom sank in grief. Over the next several years, the sad news traveled to various parts of the Hindu continent.

At Kalinga, Islamic advance was consistently checked. And under Nasimha, finally, five centuries of Islamic advance was reversed. It was time to announce Hinduism’s comeback in the grandest way. The God King - Narasimhadeva started by healing its wounded soul. Sanyasis from Muslim dominions were rehabilitated in Kalingan territories. And it seems likely (I am speculating, given the huge and free – unlike in medieval Europe -- internal immigration, that has characterized India in time) that Narasimhadeva’s Kalinga became a haven for the Hindu asylum seekers from elsewhere. The King wanted to thank the God he worshipped. The King wanted a symbol to express his gratitude to the God who empowered him. His tribute to the God would be worthy of the tribute if it surpassed anything that the world had seen. To celebrate his reign as one of religious and military victory, King Narasimhadeva needed a grand symbol. A symbol so grand that it would have no peer.

He and his architects envisioned one. The Konark Sun Temple, dedicated to the Sun God.

Historians note this with some surprise. King Narasimhadeva was the greatest of the Ganga Dynasty – a dynasty not known for worshipping Sun as its principal deity. It is thought that when Narasimhadeva was eager and anxious, like any other ruler, for a male heir to take his line forward, it was the worship of Sun that proved fruitful. Narasimhadeva named his son Bhanudeva in gratitude --- the first solar name in the Ganga dynasty. It is also important to understand that we Hindus seldom disrespect a God even if the deity of choice is another. The older, original and smaller temple in the Konark complex (called the Mayadevi Temple) is also dedicated to the Sun God (although the only surviving idol is of Mayadevi -- the consort of Sun God). Therefore, I guess that this dynasty had been reposing faith in the God of Luminance for centuries.

It is important to note that as per records, the temple’s building was paid for by contribution from the God King’s personal treasure, as distinct from the state treasury. I have not been able to understand the intention behind this action.

 Donaldson and others date the older temple of Sun (Mayadevi Temple) to late 11^th century, or early 12^th century. To me it does NOT seem to be a mere coincidence that the Mayadevi temple comes up shortly after the fall of the great Sun Temple of Multan. Had the worshippers of Sun at Multan moved in to Kalinga? Are therefore the images on the walls of Mayadevi Temple (and then at the giant Sun Temple itself a century and half later) have some representations from the Multan Temple? I would like to think so. There is a theme in the matter of dresses that adorn all the sculpture characters. The King or the subjects of Kalinga are shown in dresses that we know as our ordinary wear – dhotis and angavastrams for men, for example. But the Gods or celestial beings wear tight muslin-like clothes to cover their legs, topped with equally body fitting ornaments. Where does that come from? It resembles ancient Persia. Were these two categories of sculptures sculpted by sculptors from two different civilisations?

The Purans (ancient and medieval Hindu texts) describe the erection of the Sun Temple by Samba, the son of God Krishna. This legend resonates in most explanations on why and how the Sun Temple was built. The legend describes the Temple being on the banks of the holy river Chandrabhaga. This is ancient name for the river Chenab, now in Pakistan. And the ancient text refers actually to the Sun Temple of Multan, on the banks of Chenab/Chandrabhaga river. The texts refer to the Magi Sun Worshippers of Iran as the priests at Multan temple. King Narasimhadeva had a vision. The Konarka Sun Temple was perhaps his attempt to restore the lost pride of Hinduism with a thunder, making a Temple bigger and grander than the original, but retaining its principal characteristics. The same legend of Multan temple is also applied to the Konark in religious texts. There was a stream near the Konark Temple by the name of Chandrabhaga, running into the sea. The stream perhaps has disappeared in time, but the beach near Konark is called Chandrabhaga Beach – perhaps it is here that the stream ended. Hiuen Tsang describes the grand idol of Multan as being made up of gold and its eyes were made of rubies. We don’t know what did the idol at Konark look like.

Inscriptions or praises of the builder have not been left on the Temple. In Kalingan tradition of greatness, it was not the done thing for a king to leave his written tale or praises on a holy creation. This was probably considered outright advertisement. Irrespective of the size of creation, a temple was a public property and could not be claimed by individuals for propaganda, even if it were the king. However, this practice diluted a little with time, note historians and eventually there was some relaxation. The signatures could be left in general pictures, not specific writing. This explains images in some temples even predating Konark. At Konark, fortunately there is substantial material for us to understand bits and speculate, but not sufficient to have crucial understandings and to draw conclusions.

When back in Mumbai, I looked at photographs of sculptures over and over again. I was thinking of the musician rolled in Elephant’s trunk. It dawned that this was a war elephant holding an enemy in trunk before crushing him to death. The item in the man’s hand was not a drum, it was a shield. The hair of the man was distinct – made up of locks, not flowing hair. The depiction was perhaps of a siddi (African slave) of the Bengal army, being about to be crushed by God King’s war elephant. The Turko Afghans in Delhi, North India and Bengal played it safe, by sending in their African slaves at the most dangerous and difficult situations. They were also the most formidable in wars and ruled the Bengal Sultanate towards the end of the fifteenth century, overthrowing their masters. The African slaves were brought in ships by Arab slave traders at the ports of Konkan, most notably at Chaul (near present day Alibag).

As we moved around the temple, the Giant wheel was calling all the attention. The carvings on the axle and spokes of the wheel portrayed a royal lady’s day. It has left rich information for posterity. There were 12 such wheels. The builders of the Sun Temple seemed to have an obsession with the number 12. To count some of these: The temple is themed as a giant chariot having seven horses and 12 giant wheels. The temple was completed in the 12^th year of the King’s reign. Depending on the account, 1200 or 12,000 men were employed to accomplish the building (even if it is a deliberated reporting – the number 12 is important). There is a legend about the crown of the temple, once built was very tough to be fitted. The legend talks of a 12 year boy accomplishing the task.

The architecture and design of great Hindu temples is simply astonishing. Comparing over the European or Islamic architectures, the Indian temples contain highly intricate and ornamental sculptures and designs and yet as you retract a few steps and move away from the monuments, what dominates your eyes is the structure and architecture of the edifice, not the sculptures. The details are always meant to melt into the larger body.

 

 

Archeologists are today certain that stones were first put in position and then carved out. This means that there was no room for any error for a sculptor. Each sculpture had to be performed to perfection. Considering that there were over a thousand sculptors on the site, I am wondering who these people were. Extremely accomplished and in large numbers.

As we walked backwards to the eastern side, behind the main temple, there is a half preserved structure of an older temple. It is characterized by some great sculptures and carvings. The one which struck me the most is of crocodile. Orissa is criss-crossed by rivers. The rivers of the region have always been known to have crocodiles in great numbers. Even today, I read in newspapers of sporadic incidents in Bengal, Orissa and Andhra, of crocodiles injuring humans. This is understandable given the overfishing in rivers, enormously increased human presence in the rivers and reduced water, must all be forcing confrontation between humans and crocodiles. Things must have been quite different 10 centuries back, when the older Sun Temple was built (the Mayadevi Temple). Humans and crocodiles must have had lot more space to each other. The Mayadevi temple shows several crocodiles as full sculptures (like statues, and unlike engraved images) on its outside walls. One of those has a fish in its mouth. The fact that a crocodile is shown with its natural food, and not shown attacking humans or vice versa, shows that this civilization obviously knew a lot about the natural world, and was confident --- not suffering misinformation and fear/phobia of crocodiles that we have today.

As you enter through the main gate, you are confronted with the staircase of the Natya Mandir. Two large statues on either side of the staircase, at floor level, deliver the level of awe that the builders probably had in mind. Each statue depicts a great lionoid in an extremely ferocious mood, with an elephant floored under the weight of its torso and in turn, the elephant crushing a man. It is possible though that the lionoid is only towering above the elephant-man scene in a symbolic manner, except that the floored elephant leaves room for doubt. It is a strange sight, one of awe. The expression and appearance has very little resemblance with anything that we know in India today. Some similarity with South East Asian depictions? But historians note that those of SE Asian depictions are greatly influenced by India. I am then encouraged to look inwards. The 200 year old sketches of Henry Creighton, capturing the ruins of Gaur as he watched then, depicts the same lionoid elephant scene. The sculpture that Creighton sketched was older than Konark (Hindu histoty of Gaur ended much before Narasimhadeva’s birth). The sculpture must be lying in some museum in the world, I don’t know where – or may be lost.

The sexual scenes on the Konark walls are interesting. It is also interesting to note that there is a pattern. The scenes disappear as sculptures move higher up on the walls. There are several theories, mostly speculation. One goes about the tantric form of worship that the King practiced, and the practice believed in spiritual attainment via sexual feats. Another goes that the king was trying to arouse sexual interest in an indifferent people. Yet another says that the king was advertising his vitality. Yet another says that the portrayals were displaying the world of hell outside emanating from sexual desires, to contrast it with the godly pleasures of worship inside the temple. And so on. You can choose a theory of your liking. As for me, I believe that sex was a very respectable thing in Narsimhadeva’s open and liberal society. The society greatly encouraged sex and held those with greater firepower in higher esteem. For such a society it would be quite odd if the walls were devoid of sexual scenes. Afterall, Tamerlane headed to India after being attracted by a report that women in India made love in its streets and bazaars. He may have heard it right.

It was broad daylight by now and my cellphone rang. I was being summoned back to the hotel for a timely breakfast. I had clicked over 500 pictures and my memory card was nearing capacity. I and Param wished we could stay here longer. But phone-calls from wives cannot be taken lightly. We headed back instantly.

Battle Finale -- The Alibag Fort

In Alibag city we looked for a paan shop, and not just any paan shop, for we had a connoisseur among us. At a traffic roundabout we turned left and I drew the car to halt by the side. There was a bustling marketplace around the traffic circle. My friend invested a few glances and concluded that paan shop of our liking eluded us. But I had found something more valuable. It was probably just north of this circle that the large and modern Portuguese army had camped for a few days, three centuries ago, in the Anglo-Portuguese pursuit of a great objective. The objective of controlling Indian coasts un-resisted.

The year was 1721, and it was the 10th day of December. A common threat makes strange bedfellows. The two otherwise European adversaries -- the Portuguese and the English --- pooled their infantries, cavalries, guns and warships with the clear objective of demolishing the Colaba fort – better known to us as the Alibag fort. The Dutch joined them as a distant third. For the Europeans it was not just a question of subduing a last Indian stronghold on the coast (and the only one at sea). It was a question of survival. For, if “Conajee Angria” was not checked, the Europeans would remain only traders, paying taxes for using Indian waters and being forced to pay custom duties once they landed.

Conajee Angria is a distortion of the name Kanhoji Angre. The chief of the Konkan coast had turned the Colaba fort as his capital. Angre acted (though thought nominally so) as admiral to the Maratha Monarch. Angre sacked English ships at regular intervals for not paying marine taxes (dastak). This was a problem for the Europeans, who were lords of the ocean since the end of the fifteenth century. As for Angre’s raids, the recipients were sometimes European merchant ships, sometimes the European naval ships and sometimes it was a formation of both. None were spared. For a while, Angre’s actions seemed par for the course. But all that changed ever since Angre raided armed ships Bombay and Gadolphin in the years 1707 and 1710. The English were seething with anger. The English never quite recovered from the shock. “Angria” had become a forbidden word for the English sailors. It was believed that if you took this name on Indian waters, the ghost pirate Angria would appear in the darkness of night from nowhere and kill every man on board with his crooked blade. For the brave and mighty that follow Angre’s trail, find to their horror that Angria’s ships disappear in the mist wall – into his abode -- the Suvarnadurga – a place beyond mist and beyond horizon. You can follow him through the mist wall at your peril, for no man has ever returned. Suvarnadurga is a distortion of the sea fortress Suvarndurg – the golden fort – 200 km south of Mumbai. (To be fair, this folklore was used collectively for reigns of Kanhoji and SriSumbhaji – Kanhoji’s son, who the Europeans dreaded even more.)

The reputation was formidable and so was the fear. However as a matter of fact, Angre was not a bloodthirsty admiral and killed only in exceptional circumstances. He almost always took people captive, and released them after ship owners paid the tax dues. The English on their part have a nasty habit of coloring history. Every loss in a war is portrayed as a battle of unequals and brushed off. One such occasion was propagating that the Gadolphin was purely a merchant ship with no defenses. That was nonsense. Gadolphin was a navy ship fortified with an array of canons. Another stale style put to ink with regularity was to brand losses as involving a few English merchants that doubled as soldiers. However for every victory, report was of a band of professional English soldiers defeating a vast native army.

Whatever be the motive of colored history, the English ruled Bombay was preparing hard to take on Angria. With a decade in preparation for this ultimate attack on the Colaba Fort, a big number of warships were built at Bombay mostly under the personal supervision of East India Company’s Governor at Bombay, Charles Boone. Another major groundwork for an all-out attack on Angre was branding him a sea pirate, not recognizing him as the legitimate authority of Konkan land and sea. This was in my understanding, principally to keep open the possibility of acquiring official/government help in the form of warships and naval aid from the British Crown. The Europeans engaged in a lot of paperwork and letter writing, trying to establish that the King of Colaba as a sea pirate.

For the Portuguese, the agenda was different. Haunted by their former glory, the erstwhile conquerors of India’s West Coast were now at risk of being marginalized. Two centuries ago they had pressed into Konkan and parts of Malabar like hot knife through butter. They were the solitary power to have hand-held fierce gun power, long before Moguls got them in small quantities. Konkan fell abjectly and its sons were reduced to being targets for shooting practice, bleeding to death everyday, much like the Japanese Rape of Nanking. The invaders harvested our daughters for their nocturnal pleasures. Portugal’s centuries of total control had started crumbling away more than half a century before this attack on Colaba, when Shivaji challenged Bijapur and then Goa. Goa did not fall, but its territories had shrunken to very little. The two major strongholds continued to be Basein (today’s Vasai) and Chaul (today’s Revdanda). Chaul was one of the biggest international trading cities from the time predating the Christ’s birth. Maratha wars had encircled everything around Chaul, creating all the uncertainties that were detrimental to a trading city. But the Portuguese continued to be lords of the sea even in the year 1700, collecting taxes at will, and freighting goods to maintain their clear lead, if not monopoly, on the spice trade. The only other minor force on sea came from the sea citadel of Janjira, manned by a meritocratic order of immigrant Africans. But Janjira was sporadic at best, for it had no friends, no popular support in a land that was not theirs. Janjira would not risk extinction by taking on the Portuguese. The convenient equilibrium had persisted for centuries. For the Portuguese, the equilibrium of power was now upset. Angre demanded taxes from them and seized their ships on non-compliance. This was unthinkable even at the turn of the century (1700). For the Portuguese, it was a matter of survival. The native naval force of Angre needed to be eliminated, else Portuguese would lose more possessions every passing year.

The Dutch had small possessions on the Konkan, but were powerful fighters, highly alert to any moves made by Indians that harmed Dutch interests.

Now the three had come together. A naval fleet had surrounded Alibag Fort from south-west to the north-east. As per the Europeans’ mutual agreement, the naval force was largely supplied by the English and the land forces by the Portuguese. The navy consisted of about dozen large ships with heavy gunpower, something the English had put together assiduously over the preceding decade, for this very attack. There were probably a large number of smaller vessels, making their formation at a further distance, to avoid fury of Alibag Fort’s guns. In all, Alibag’s sea fort was surrounded by ships and boats from all sides except the east.


Standing at the traffic circle in Alibag town of present day, I spent my thoughts on the Portuguese army that had arrived here 291 years ago. They had camped for ten days. The Portuguese had brought in a large and modern army of more than 6000 soldiers, complete with guns, canons, ammunition and tents. Most were white soldiers, but a portion consisted of African soldiers in Portuguese service, probably as slaves. The English army being less than half of that number, camped its forces somewhere half-kilometer south from our present-day location at the traffic roundabout. The combined army of the Europeans was a multiple of Kanhoji’s inside the fort. There was some help from a Detachment of the Maratha army, under General Pilaji Jadhav, numbering 2500 men. Still, much smaller in number. Remember, given the technological advance and superior management, Europeans could swallow our native armies several times their own size. At the battle of Plassey that was over in a single day, the Nawab’s soldiers had outnumbered the English at five to one.

Over the next few minutes, we drove off from the traffic circle towards the sea fortress, hoping to find a paan shop now only on our way back. We came face to face with the promenade along the beach, crowning the walls that protected the land from sea’s encroachment. There lay an open ground to our right, where we could easily find a parking space. We stood exactly east of the sea fortress now, the land side, which was occupied by the Euroepan armies, with the remaining sides being blocked by ships.

The special thing about the fort is that the sea recedes at low tide post-monsoon, providing a walkthrough to the sea fortress from the land side. This window of access is available every day for a few hours. This was a matter of strength for the fort, as well as its greatest weakness. Late in the afternoon, we had chosen our visit to coincide with the low tide. It was now possible to walk there. It had been a long day already and given my general laziness, I was at loath to walk. So we took a horse-cart instead. The horse-carts had queued up in good number and one had to avail them from the formal queue. There was to be no bargain and each passenger was to be to be charged 100 rupees. The twin-horse driven cart got us at the fort’s entrance speedily. Once there, the horse man set us a time limit. Water would start rising after 5.30, he informed us. In the same breath he warned us that he would leave us to spend the night inside the medieval fort, should we not return in time.

The fort is made of large and solid rocks. The sea forts like these predate the ornate aesthetic of the Mughal era, dating back to an era where instability was order of the day and rebellions many. Authority was hard to enforce and challengers plenty. The Ahmedashahis who ruled the north of Deccan struggled to consolidate power and their rule in far flung areas was often punctuated by invasions from Bijapur or Golkonda. Biggest challenge however lay from Muslim factions within the court – a threat that prompted the Ahmedshahis to nurture Hindu contingents. The calm open sea at Alibag fort has witnessed many wars and lived under constant stresses of preying eyes from the land and ocean. That explained the hard rock build of the fort. My friend asked me about the fort’s origins. It was built by BIjapur, later won by Shivaji, I misinformed him. Next day as I sipped coffee quietly in office, I recollected that the Colaba (Alibag) fort was the last fort built by Shivaji. Why did I make that mistake, I thought. As I compared photographs of various sea fortresses of Konkan, shot over the years, I found reasons to excuse myself. The Colaba fort looked remarkably similar to the ones built by Bijapur (later won by Shivaji), such as the Angre “abode” Suvarndurg. While Suvarndurg was built with Bijapur money and diktat, its architects and engineers were very much the sons of Konkan. The very same people also built the Colaba fort. It is therefore not wholly surprising that the Bijapur-built Suvarndurg looks identical to the Maratha-built Colaba. According to the late Manohar Malgonkar (noted historical writer on war and warfare), Colaba draws its name from its location. Kul means rock and aap means water. The rocky mass of Colaba Fort was therefore Kul-aap, distorted to Kulab and then to Colaba.

Kanhoji Angre was reported to be calm and composed even when faced with the biggest and the most sophisticated European force ever seen on Indian Territory. The English ships consisted of the largest ships such as the Victory (24 canons) to ship Leopard (6 canons). The English armada was led by Commodore Matthew, from his flagship the Lion. It was the morning of 24th December, the Christmas Eve. The English vessels, more than 50 in number, had covered the entire sea side from south to the north, forming a semi-circle. The English canons atop the Company’s ships spat fire all day, preventing Angre’s Maratha warships from other bases to come to Colaba’s aid, probably even damaging some. The Company canons also kept firing on the fort. The fort must have trembled under constant firepower, but it is unlikely that Kanhoji Angre would have wasted his gunpowder on ships anchored far away. The western side gate where we later photographed ourselves must have been the most dangerous place to be standing in --- being in direct line of fire.

Functionality dominates the Alibag fort. But it seemed to be in much better condition than the original Angre bastion of Suvarndurg. While the latter was reduced to a rubble during the British bombing of the fort in 1850s, the Alibag Fort has some parts still standing. As we entered through the gate – a gate that the Portuguese and the British had dreamed of opening -- we found ourselves in a wide passage guarded by walls on both sides and clear sky over it. The passage curved sharply to left and brought us very much inside the fort. We found ourselves standing at a corner where two walls of the fort formed a right angle, and next to what looked like a very old well. Yes, a sweet water well in the sea! Using the age-old pulley system, buckets full of water were being drawn out for consumption. The walls were those that guarded the fort from sea waters, wind and enemy – from land or sea, depending on the time of the day. We climbed atop the formidable walls that had long, running parapets on them. We found two tiny canons positioned on one of the fort’s 17 bastions. I touched the canons, trying to feel their weight. The tiny canons seemed very heavy. These canons were most certainly of Indian origin, lacking any mobility component of their own. On my way back though, I found the canons juxtaposed. The canons were found by overenthusiastic men, I thought. Further up and towards the north-western end of the fort, we found ourselves at the highest remaining scalable part of the parapet, overlooking the wide open sea. This end of the parapet, hosted two largish canons with narrow mouths. My military knowledge is too limited and could not tell if these canons posed a threat to the English ships that were anchored to the southwest in the battle of 1721. But surely these canons could keep ships from veering very close to the fort. One thing could be said with reasonable confidence: that the canons were distinctly English. Were these the ones that Kanhoji procured from the English earlier and turned it on them? Or were these the trophies from the English rout at his gates? (very unlikely, given the fact that these goliaths could not have been dragged through the sandy beach). A third possibility could be that this was the war machinery for Sri Sumbhaji (Kanhoji’s great warrior son). Under open skies, the rusting canons sit majestically facing the west, as if waiting to pour their gunfire on the huge English armada that covered vision in every direction in the ocean.

To the southwest of the sweet water well, lay much of the fort. As we walked along, there lay massive remains to our left, in the form of vegetation interspersed with debris. To the right, lower half of walls of the ground floor of a building remained, with nothing in it. Stone/cement floor in it (if original and not ASI built) is testimony that the building probably housed people. The building must have been more than one floor vertically, given the limited space within the fort and the need to maintain large troops inside. Then there was the Angre household too. Did they stay here? One of the fallen buildings was a huge granary. Further down there is a temple standing. Given the accessibility of the fort by land during certain hours, I imagine it would not have ever been abandoned. As a result the temple thrives. Its build shows old and the new --- pointing to its restoration and rebuilding. Nothing else in the fort seems to have received a reconstruction ever since the Angre days. Opposite the temple is a water reservoir complex. A modest yet beautiful gate leading to what must have once been a splendid reservoir of fresh water amid the endless expanse of brine. The water is now still, green and opaque. The round shaped reservoir has several steps running on its circumference, the topmost and widest of which is intersected by a twin-entrance (on either sides), single window (facing water) dwelling, probably meant for leisure for the noble ladies of Angre family. Tall walls stand firmly behind the circumference, guarding it from outside view. That could mean that it may have also been used as bathing pool for the women’s quarters. Further down after more wild and debris on both sides, we passed through what seemed big for a gate complex with sentry posts on both sides. If it was a guest house, then the guests would have to put up with highly constrained conditions, and in that case a thoroughfare in it seemed bizarre. We stopped there to take photographs. A while later it struck me that this must have been the Naqqarkhana --- the drum house! Naqqar (Nagara in hindi) stands for country drums. As we walked past the Naqqarkhana, we ended up at a large gate which overlooked rocky masses and wet sands some 20-30 feet below. In an hour’s time the sea waters would have risen to hide the masses below and touch the bottom rung of the gate. I thought that this must have been the main gate then, given the Naqqarkhana and one we entered through must be the rear gate – although most sources say the opposite. The rocky mass beneath was then curious. Was it to misguide unsuspecting enemy ships/boats headed for the gate, to crash into these rocks? Or was the rocky mass itself a landing dock?

By afternoon of 24th December 1721, as the tide lowered and the fort’s eastern side was exposed, The East India Company army moved in to storm the fort. The moment had arrived for the Colaba guns, as it fired on the Company’s army. Our tiny canons on the eastern bastions must have had their feast. Fierce battle raged at the spot our horse-cart waited impatiently for our return. The guns took down many Company soldiers. The rising casualty among English soldiers was being watched nervously by the large Portuguese army, which had moved in closer and now camped exactly where my car was parked in a ground. The Portuguese were to enter the battle just when the English would open the fort’s gates. It was at this point in time that Kanhoji Angre sent a word to Maratha General Pilaji Jadhav, stationed north of Alibag, to take the Portueguese by surprise through a full-scale cavalry attack.

In no time, a good number of East India Company soldiers scaled the walls and entered the fort to force open gates. Portuguese army was now ready to charge. Just then, the terrifying war cries of “Har Har Mahadev” was heard in a distance. Before the source of sound could be placed, the cries had become loud enough to a scale of thunder. Pilaji’s Cavalry had arrived. Over the next half hour, the Portuguese were mowed down by Pilaji’s horsemen with their thick and curved swords. Meantime, inside the fort, the English soldiers were being cut piece by piece, not one reaching the gates. By sunset, the remaining soldiers of the East India Company had deserted their ranks and guns and rushed to the ships --- I am sure, promising themselves not to disembark ever on Alibag soil. The remaining Portuguese ran for their base camp, near our present day traffic circle. There were rumours of a very large fleet of Kanhoji Angre coming from Sindhudurg. The battle was over.

This was near sunset for us too. Our horse-cart man was now making the right noises that had got two of us sacred. The thir among us, my friend, whose family had hosted a sumptuous fish and meat lunch earlier in the day, was undeterred. He asserted that we could stay longer. At this point the sacred lot of the two of us ran out of the fort’s gate, hoping that he will follow. As we emerged out of the fort’s gate, I noticed the stretch of land on which the horse-cart was parked. This stretch of non-sandy land was the battleground for a large number of white English soldiers of the East India Company. The elevated piece of land before the gate holds itself up, showing off the trees on its soil like hoisted trophies, even after the salty waters reclaim everything around it. Once the battle was lost, the English abandoned their guns, light canons and few hundred dead buddies --- right on this stretch of land. We soon headed back. I could see the point the horseman was making. Once the water starts rising, it does so in rapid strides. I wished I could stay over here through the twilight and through the moonlit night.

As we reached the ground where my car was parked, we were very close to the twilight. The timing and location could not have been better. Some 291 years ago at the same time at the same place, a giant and aggressing foreign army lay here --- bare and cut open, demolished and defeated. My headache was getting worse and my friend had to take over the wheels, as I treated myself to a paracetamol. As we drove out of the parking ground, I felt the car trampled over a field of dead Portuguese soldiers.

The Alibag fort was the last attack on Kanhoji Angre by the Europeans. The total defeat meant that there was no retaliation from either the East India Company or the Portuguese for the rest of his life, even as Kanhoji went about tormenting European properties at sea in the decades that followed.

It had been a hectic day and we drove back through the dark highways only at modest speeds, discussing history, spirituality and our lives in general. By now I too was desperate for the paan shop. Two and half hours later, at Panvel, we had found our paan shop.

Ruins of Gaur: Empires over Empires

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I had always thought that Gaur was a mythical city. May be my impression was imported from excessive exposure to the words ‘Ruins of Gaur’, without ever hearing anyone, or reading anyone, who had been there. The ignorance was dispelled when I was reading about the historic St John’s Church of Calcutta. After the land grant by Raja Nabo Krishna Deb, Warren Hastings began work on the church. The stones that built the strong church were sourced from the ruins of Gaur, transported on bullock cart trains to Calcutta. I was sad to read the reference, because I read ‘plunder’ of our heritage. Those were still barbaric times, though in the garb of civility. During the sack of Delhi's Red Fort by the redcoats (aided by the Sikhs) in 1857, the commanding officer demolished the world's most gorgeous palaces to make way for stables for the horses. Today's red fort is merely a skeleton. On revisiting the giant sea-castle of Janjira, I was not so sure if I should be sad. There, people had carried off building material by ripping off old structures. And then it all vanished into private homes, forever. At least, the Gaur stones rest near BBD Bag in Kolkata (at St John’s Church) - a mixed sentiment that would come back to me on visiting Gaur.

It was dark outside and I was monitoring the progress of my train on my phone-based GPS system. I was enjoying the journey along the eastern banks of the Hooghly, travelling upwards on this giant delta of West Bengal, formed by the bifurcation of Ganga into the Hooghly to the west and Padma (also referred to as Ganga in continuation) to the east. The river was getting narrower as we were fast approaching the point of bifurcation. Then we suddenly moved eastwards, crossing the great Ganga just before it broadens to upto 10 km. The sheer width of the river was at once fascinating and intimidating. Its width could swallow whole towns on its banks and so it has done with periodic regularity in history. After crossing Ganga near the Farakka station, we moved further east and Malda was now just around 30 km away. Rather innocently, I had expected to see a town with overgrown mango trees when I was headed to Malda this February. This is what I had heard from elders. I arrived at midnight on a chilly night and waited until the morning to look outside. It turned out to be another Indian town crumbling under population and erratic road traffic. So I concentrated on my sister-in-law’s wedding that had brought me here.

When my hosts offered to make arrangements to visit Gaur, I just lapped it. I hadn't known that it was actually quite close. We were there in 30 minutes. As we branched off from the highway into a smaller road, my earlier impressions began to find reality. Water bodies covered any area that trees had left unoccupied and vegetation squeezed in even at the impossible of places --- in all, making the whole place a canvas in shades of green. When the English rediscovered Gaur towards the end of 18th century, it was hard to tell where vegetation ended and crumbs of erstwhile glorious edifices began. Englishmen reported that this jungle was the abode of tigers and wild boars.

We saw few people amid the greenery of this vast garden. The contrast with the town we had left behind could not have been more stark. Next, we saw walls of gigantic proportions. It seemed that walls of a great fort had strayed into a garden, standing all alone, and lost. Our entourage was enjoying the cool weather and the solitude. It was hard to imagine that we were moving within what was for centuries a giant walled city of a population of over 1.2 million inhabitants. Going by the reports of its size (7.5 miles x 2 miles), it must have been a crowded city. Bengal was ruled from these confines for over 1500 years. Until the middle of the 16th century, it was reputed to be India's "most magnificent city" and very rich. Gaur was probably also the busiest port. Ships carried freight to and from between Gaur and the sea. Great Hindu dynasties ruled from Gaur from the time immemorial until beginning of 13th century. In 1202, a Muslim General (Bhatiyar Khalji) dispatched from Delhi, defeated the Hindu King Ballal Sen. A lot has been made out of the fact that this army consisted of only 17 cavalry men. The claim appears rubbish as Bengal was infested with swamps and deadly forests, and possibly by the time Khalji reached Gaur, nature claimed most of his horses and he had only his infantry with him. Gaur passed into the hands of Muslim invaders in the beginning of 13th century and there started a series of Islamic Sultanates. The Muslim invaders shifted the capital to Pandua, some kilometers to the east.


My mind was looking for the pre-Islamic structures. The quest for the times of Hindu kings had fascinated me. But anything about that era was elusive. We visited an excavation site. Nothing has been said about it yet, with slow research working in. What lay in front of us was only the base of a big building, with unique cylindrical structures, at regular intervals. The people guarding it said it was very old, very-very old, but could not put any date to it. Could it belong to the pre-Islamic period? May be this was the palace of Ballal Sen that Khalji destroyed. I was in for disappointment because this structure was much younger than that. We didn’t understand the significance of these short height cylinders. It would take the combined knowledge of architecture and archeology to understand why these cylindrical structures were employed, preferred over solid bases. Over these structures, once stood the palace of Barbak Shah, who ruled for 15 years, from 1459. Early analysis suggests the palace housed a Court Hall, Sultan's quarter and Harem. I recently came across a report on this exciting excavation, published in an english daily and contained a color photograph. It briefed that Archeological Survey of India (ASI) found glazed floor on the site. The photograph showed a small, 100 square feet area containing blue glazed tiles. Obviously, very little of the tiles have survived the time, and ASI must have carried these off because we saw none on the site. I have no idea where do these stuffs go after excavation. You can't even find a publication or website which lists the museums/safes where Harappan relics are scattered over. For the commoners, I guess this will just disappear forever. Then I remembered having seen a portion of that tile somewhere. It was at a tea stall at Gaur. The tea stall guy stored a lot of these things in a hut behind his stall. When I asked whether they were available at a price, he answered firmly in the negative. He said he found these and will hold it until proper agencies recover it from him. Well, that's what he said. We entered the hut and had a look at things that lay all over. We were attracted to what was the partial remain of a blue tile. White designs on the blue background made it look pleasing. Similar blue glazed tiles (older than this) at the Mumbai museum dazzles your eyes with its restored looks and some good lighting, prompting you to imagine what the floor that adorned it was like. Better than any contemporary floor I've seen. Barbak Shah surely lived in great style. After all, he was Sultan of a rich empire. We got a photograph of this tile (see below). Barbak's father Nasiruddin Shah had risen to become the Sultan in 1442, restoring power to their family. Their family had ruled Bengal from Pandua nearly half a century earlier, the then capital. The capital was shifted back to Gaur after the family lost throne towards the end of 14th century. Barbark relied heavily on black slaves to retain power. His palace was a place of distrust and conspiracies, with a vast number of black eunuchs. In all, he employed 8000 Africans as part of his elite guard force, eunuchs (mostly harem guards) and armed forces. Africans brought from Ethiopia and elsewhere, were physically superior to the Afghans and other Muslims in India, and we (Hindus) feared them a lot. They were seen as completely alien on this land, with their look, physique, ways, fighting abilities and diet. Because they were slaves, their masters often used them to subdue/murder opponents, without caring if the black slave lost his life in the process. That created a fear about them, generally associated with suicide bombers in today's world. You have to fear someone who fights with no regard to his life. Tactics were employed to create more intrigue and fear of them. For example, one such black slave ruler of Jaunpur, Bakr, regularly ate a whole goat in public view, to the sheer astonishment of viewers who assumed he was an avatar of demon and stayed away. Barbak also built some gateways and in general kept up the work of capital rebuilding and accretion activity at gaur, started by sultan Jalaluddin many years ago. We will come back to Jalaluddin later.

Chika or Chamkan Mosque was interesting. It looked less sophisticated in comparison to some of the other structures at Gaur, but is a large stout structure, resembling more the blunt structures of Tughlaqs of Delhi that preceded it, than the beauties that were produced by combining Rajput styles with Mughal tastes later in India. It nevertheless stands firmly in its place (albeit, with ASI help) and we could walk in. May be I am being harsh. It could have looked beautiful, had its minarets been still standing, and its exterior surface of painted tiles survived. It was dark inside. Historians don’t seem to think it was really meant to be a mosque. May be it was so originally, when Shamsuddin Yusuf Shah built it. He had inherited the sultanate from his father Barbak. I would come back to Chika mosque later, on two occasions.

Next we visited a tower that lay by the side of a little lake. I was taken by the tower, unable to connect such engineering with a place remote as this. An ASI board read that the tower was built by Firoz Shah -- an Abyssinian, 1486-89. The tower was erected in the late 15th century (1486) by Firoz Shah, a black King of Bengal, Muslim and from Africa. I was at once intrigued and wanted to know more about the times in which it was built. At 26 meters height, this tower was an engineering marvel of its times. The tower never lost its bottom half and restoration had to resurrect only its top portions. The physically endowed blacks of Barbak's employment had grown very powerful by the time his childless son, who built the Painted and Tantipara mosques, passed away. Fath Khan who took over as Sultan, tried hard to bring the increasingly defiant Africans under control. The forces unleashed by Barbak had grown quite powerful by then, subduing the Afghan, Arab and Persian nobles and soldiers alike, at will. It was already too late. The capital was taken over from within, toppling the nobles and Fath Khan being murdered by the Africans, led by a man who was ironically, known as Barbak himself. This Barbak was a eunuch (indeed, the chief of eunuchs) at the capital city. He assumed the throne under the title of Sultan Shahzada and began a period of rule of Bengal, from Gaur, by Africans. The African slaves were to prove to be the most barbaric rulers of Bengal. For every problem, they fell on their tested strength --- repression though torture, killing, rapes and ripping people off. Bengal entered a period of unrivalled State terror, for the common Hindu Bengalis, as well as for the erstwhile noblemen of foreign origin. Shahzada was murdered by another black African called Jallaluddin (again, a repeat name of earlier sultan), who had served earlier as commander-in-chief and now became the Sultan under the name Firoz Shah. He commenced work to build the tower we were now looking at, in 1486 and probably had finished it by the time he was murdered by another person of his community, 3 years later. Murders after murders followed and Gaur saw a succession of black Africans, as sultans of Gaur -- each one more tyrannical than the previous.

The tyranny was not to last forever though. In 1493, Muzaffar Shah was the black African Sultan at Gaur. The oppressed nobles and subjects of Bengal grouped under Alauddin Hussain Shah – the Sultan's Vizier, to lay siege of Gaur's Fort from outside, with supporters and troops sourced from elsewhere in the kingdom. Hussain was of Arabic descent, and was a person of refined tastes and qualities in comparison to the sultan he was fighting. The blacks were not giving up easily. A lot of Hussain's people were captured, brought inside the fort, tortured, killed, and their severed heads sent to Hussain Shah as a form of stern message. Hussain was made of sterner stuff. At the end of 4 months, he stormed the fort, killed the black sultan. He sought restraint from his people from pillaging and sentenced a few thousand soldiers of his own camp to death for plunder. But he was more unforgiving to the blacks and had their necks rolling, literally. This saw the end of blacks in Bengal, forever, even as they continued to flourish in other parts of India for much more time. During his rule of nearly 2 decades, Hussain continued to heal many wound that Bengal's soul had endured. He brought political order and a semblance of justice, and used the Chika (mosque?) as his gaol within the city perimeter. A short walk away from the Chika mosque, is another structure --- Gumti Darwaza, smaller than Chika. See the picture of Gumti Darwaza by the side: it sill has a few painted tiles left. Its flanks are curved down in the Bengal temple style and has a facade of minarets. It may have been gate to the fort and is a slight improvement over the earlier architectures such as Chika. Among the structures built by Hussain during his reign, this probably is the only one that survives. An architectural marvel of that time is the Small Golden Mosque (Chhota Sona masjid), but sadly we could not see it. This one was a little further South on the main road and everyone preferred to get back early for lunch instead. The Chhota Sona mosque has ornate design, and its aesthetic was ahead of its time. The mosque was built by a private individual called Wali Muhammad. I am imagining him to be a rich merchant of Arabic descent. In the words of Duarte Barbosa who visited Gaur around the time Wali Muhammad built the Chhota Sona Masjid: merchants and nobles of Gaur are "dressed in long morisco shirts reaching to the instep, white and slight texture….silken sash round the waist, and a dagger set with silver...many jewlled rings on their fingers...They are luxurious people". Hussain used his level head and leadership to expand Bengal. He brought more parts of Bengal under his control and invaded Orissa. He then went on to attack and invade Assam. This was to prove a mistake. No Muslim power could ever occupy Assam. Just as the invading army was getting ready for the spoils, a force of regrouped Assamese mowed down the sultan's army.


Our driver was familiar with Gaur and dropped us in front of a gate of stone. The gate was imposing with its stone arches that towered over us. As we entered, we found gardens in front of us and to our right, a large rectangular building with grand arches and multiple domes of shallow height. This was Sona Masjid, popularly translated as Golden Mosque. I thought Gold Mosque would be a more appropriate translation. The garden was in its time, the front yard where people prayed, and must have been paved in stone.
The gate we entered through was the side gate, with the main gate facing the mosque, lying to our left. The Mosque was built in 1525 by Nasrat Shah, Hussain Shah’s son. Hussains were one of the most powerful rulers of the Muslim era in Bengal. A lot is said about Hussain Shahis being liberal rulers of Bengal. I am not as sure. It was during this period that Chitanya Mahaprabhu found it difficult to preach in Bengal. On persecution, he moved to Jagannath Puri, where he preached for life. More likely therefore, the Hossainis were only less restrictive to Hindus than other Sultans in Bengal and may have abandoned the policy of forced conversions to Islam. A large part of the mosque is now gone. But what remains is testimony to its grandness. I stood in the open yard, dotted by occasional pillar-bases that have survived the assault of weather and time, and plunder by men. It must have been a very large mosque for its times. In scale it is much smaller than Delhi's Jama Masjid or Lahore's Badshahi Mosque. When Nasrat shah succeeded his father, it was routine for a king to kill or blind all brothers on coronation, in order to eliminate any possibility of competition. Nasrat Shah was an exception in history. He spared his 18 brothers, and their eyes. He expanded Bengal by invading Bihar and annexing lands northwards right up to Azamgarh, in present day UP.
We visited another building. Much more remained here than elsewhere. The large complex walls still stand in their place, albeit blackened at places. It houses the Kadam Rasool mosque.It has a footprint cast in stone, believed to be of the prophet himself. Nasrat Shah brought this from Arabia and built a mosque around it. The mosque was always looked after, long after the city faded and rest of it was claimed by the wild. My son and I passed through a tomb of a dead general of the Mughals, constructed in the days well after the city's twilight years. The tomb's top was styled as a four-eaved hut, resembling the rural Bengal terracotta temple roofs. We now entered the ruins of a building that had numerous rooms, none very large, with ceilings long lost. This was a rest house facing the Kadam Rasool mosque, providing a privileged view for the pious guests of the sultan.












Our next stop was Dakhil Darwaza. A colossal of red bricks and terracotta. Dakhil means to enter. This was too large for a gate and helped to put in perspective the size of the walled city. What stands now is a gate, nearly 200 feet from the end you get in to the one you get out. Once inside, we were dwarfed by its height. It was cool and gave a feeling of dampness. The little one had fixed his gaze on the ceiling where a few bats seemed unsettled by our presence. Two galleries ran parallel to the main passage and were darker and cooler. The erstwhile fort entrace had four minarets at its corners. The minarets survive with loss of some portion from the top. Who built it? Strangely, the ASI board dates it to 1425, and then attributes it to Barbak Shah (1459-1474) in the same board. Obviously a mistake. Some of the other sources I have referred to also date it to 1425, but then don’t attribute to Barbak. The one that attributes it to Barbak, doesn’t date it at all. After going through several references, I have come to the conclusion that it was build in 1425 and it was not the creation of Barbak Shah. May be parts of it were restored by Barbak. In that case, the Dakhil Darwaza was built by Sultan Jalaludddin – a person I would come to in a later paragraph.

We visited next what seemed to be a big gate, but poor in comparison to the Dakhil Darwaza. Luckochuri gate, built in the late 17th century by a Mughal prince. Parts of it have collapsed. There are quarters on the side, being the Naqqarkhana (the Drum-room).

When the governors of Bengal successively declared independence in the middle of 16th century, they had not realised that the emperor in Delhi was more powerful than anything the Muslim rule in India had ever seen. Sultan Daud Shah attacked Akbar's territories. When Akbar dispatched an army to crush him, he met them with force, sending boats loaded with 2000 severed heads of Mughals and their non-Mongol soldiers. Enraged Akbar reinforced the forces with his Rajput general. A few months later, a Mughal courier rushed to Delhi with the severed head of Daud Shah, something the emperor wished to see personally (a painting of the scene of Daud Shah being taken prisoner by the General is captured in a painting made in 1550, by an artist by the name Lal. The painting is lodged at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London ). Calm descended on Bengal. Akbar enforced vegetarianism in villages in Bengal as demanded by the Hindus.

Gaur was now reduced to a provincial capital, from being the capital of the richest independent sultanate in the subcontinent. But worse was yet to come. In around 1575, the Ganga swelled with the monsoon more than it did every year, marooning everything but the walled city that was at a slight height. In October, when the waters receded, the Ganga had changed course forever, shifting several kilometers westwards. Gaur was left with sands and wet marshes on its periphery, exactly where once the Ganga provided life, unleashing a deadly crop of mosquitoes. Disease killed too many people. Burying or cremating the dead became a daily burden for the living. Only around a tenth of this large city finally survived. Murshidabad became the new provincial capital.

We stopped opposite the Kadam Rasool mosque, for resting and feeding ourselves. A stall sold Jhhal Moori -- spiced puffed rice mix, a typical taste across Bengal that I love so much. It was here that I bought some tea from the stall, where I saw the blue tiles. There was much more to be seen here. When Italian traveller Ludovico di Varthema visited Gaur around 1506 (during Hussain Shah’s reign), he described it as the most magnificent city that he had seen. Some historians think Varthema visited Chittagong, not Gaur. But in Varthema's own words, the sultan maintained an army of 200,000 ready for war at all times --- a number equal to the East India Company's total forces at its pinnacle. This could not be a town on the fringes of the empire then. The city was crisscrossed by canals, much like Varthema's own hometown Venice. He met Christian merchants, fair in skin and then travelled with them to Sumatra. He was referring to Chinese merchants of Christian faith. With this account as background, the fine translucent bone China wares at this stall, that have been dug up by locals, began to make sense.




We were now to head back. What about the pre-Islamic period? Some years ago, I watched a program on the great Angkor temples and the pyramids of Egypt. While the former was built from seasonal availability of labour, the latter was a product of forced labor (slaves). The expert researchers said that no matter which of these is applicable to a monument, builders always leave some clues. On the inside walls of Chika, some tiles have Arabic writings carved out. Well, at least that's what you see at the first glance. On closer look, these are Hindu images, fixed upside down. The material for the Chika was evidently sourced by demolishing Hindu temple(s). It implied instinctively that on all tiles, the images of Hindu gods were fixed in such a way that these faced the mortar, leaving their erstwhile mortar faces to the viewer. The Hindu builders left some stone pieces in exactly the opposite orientation, leaving us to see Saraswati playing Veena and an image of Lord Ram (See the pictures, rotated upside-down). There were Hindu lamps at the tea stall and also a traditional Hindu Bengali kharga (a curved axe) used for religious sacrifices.


Bengal was ruled by the Ilyas Shah clan, notably, Ilyas Shah and his son Sikandar Shah through the 14th century, in their capital Pandua. Sikandar ruled for 31 years, right into the twilight of the 14th century. He built the gorgeous Adina mosque at Pandua. Sikandar was killed by his son Ghyasuddin Azim (reign: 1396-1406), over the matter of succession. Azim ruled for 10 years well. And then, Raja Ganesh, the powerful Hindu ruler of Bhaturia (present day Dinajpur distt in Bangladesh) moved into the capital, and forced himself as the Vizier. Nobles would not accept the Raja as Sultan, for he was a Hindu. So, he turned his son Jadu (Jatmal) into a muslim. Jadu assumed the throne at Gaur as Sultan Jalaluddin. He ruled for 17 years (1414-1431). He moved the capital back to Gaur from Pandua and started its restoration and augmentation. The grand Dakhil Darwaza was his creation – the masterpiece of his capital rebuilding activity. Amid the sultanate period coins at display in the Mumbai museum, there is a unique coin. It is the only coin with non-Arabic inscriptions on it -- the writing is in Bengali. The museum provides no clue on what it is. This is probably among the coins minted during Raja Ganesh's period, by Jalaluddin.

Raja Ganesh's home in Dinajpur still has a temple standing, built by his family. The temple's architecture draws a very strong point -- the Gaur architecture was inspired by the Hindu temples. Pika Ghosh - an architect of repute and a specialist in sultanate period buildings, writes in her piece* that Gaur edifices have strong Bengali stamp on it. It was inevitable. The builders and their material were all local. She then draws attention to the four-eaved hut shaped roofs of a mosque and Fath Khan tomb, both being based on the thatched roof of local huts in Birbhum district of Bengal. She also refers to temples by Raja Ganesh, which I could not locate.
(*The Architecture of Indian Sultanates -- Marg Publications, Mumbai)

Ruins of Gaur were introduced to the world through the detailed descriptions and sketches of Henry Creighton, in the form of a book published in 1817. Apart from the ruins that I saw, Creighton describes Hindu sculptures. Bhavani seated on lotus with a sacred book in Hand. An exquisite statue of Vishnu's Vraha Avtar. Most stunning was the image of an elephant caught beneath the claws of a giant lion. Is this the inspiration for Konark's sun temple, which is replete with this same image?

None of it is now visible anywhere. Probably, these have been plundered and have ended up being destroyed or reside at private homes. More probably, these are stocked in some store/museum of the Museums of India. No catalog could be found online. No mention could be gathered from anywhere. For the general man in quest like me, it is lost forever.


Englishmen found tigers and wild boars at the ruins of Gaur when they were making merry, by stripping its stones. While the poor Indian laborers and their skinny bullocks toiled hard to carry the stones to Calcutta, the Gora Sahibs amused themselves by hunting these animals, and big copper shells poured out of their guns. We saw one such shell at the hut, deep brown from aging, with an engraving "Prince". The Prince shell factory obviously must have closed down long ago, for I could not trace its mention in books that I laid my hands on. At Gaur everything is history.