History of Bengal

In the waters of the Calabrian Ionian Sea, off Isola di Capo Rizzuto (Crotone, Italy) and at a depth of 26-29 m, lies the wreck of Bengala, an iron screw-steamer foundered in 1889. She was built and launched in 1871 in Sunderland (Great Britain) in the yards of Iliff, Mounsey, and Co. (Sunderland), with the name of Mecca and her British owner was Mr. Ralph Milbanke Hudson Junior. In 1872 she was sold to the Lloyd Italiano company and was rechristened as Livorno. In 1876 her ownership changed once more and she became part of the fleet of the Genoese shipping company Rubattino and Co. with the name Bengala. The steamer was sold for the last time at the launch of the Navigazione Generale Italiana in 1881, one of the largest shipping companies in Europe. Until now, no scientific study has been dedicated to this topic and the few references in the literature are often incorrect. For this reason, in the pages that follow, a broad historical account of the events concerning the steamer is offered for the first time, linking them to the complex events of the Italian merchant navy of that period. This is followed by the analysis of underwater archaeological evidence, with a view to carrying out more detailed investigations in the near future.

The biggest law college (madrasa) in Mecca during the first millennium of Islam was established by a Bengali ruler. It was known as Banjāliyya madrasa and became one of the premier institutes in the city, only to be followed two decades later by another college established by a second Bengali sultan, born and brought up as a Hindu. This article explores the nuances of the founding of these two colleges and the implications of their history for the existing historiography of the Middle East, South Asian Islam, and the Indian Ocean world in terms of legal interactions. The first foundation project, overseen by an Abyssinian agent, demonstrates the ways in which law provided shared vocabularies and common ground for Asian, African, and Arab Muslims to exchange and negotiate their cultural, economic, political, and diplomatic aspirations. The very notions surrounding legalistic projects opened up possibilities which would otherwise have been inconceivable, and went beyond law as a religious doctrine. This story of an Afro-Asian-Arab triangle of interactions prompts us to rethink existing ideas about premodern Islam and Islamic law. Instead of seeing Arab regions as the sole exporters of Islam and its law, and believers in Asia and Africa as mere receivers, we need to recognize the reciprocal exchanges that existed from the premodern period on. The histories of the Bengali law colleges in Mecca shed light on these Afro-Asian-Arab interconnections and their role in the formation of South Asian Islam in particular and that of the Indian Ocean in general.

The Jesuit father Nicolas Pimenta's report mentions one of the first Christian missions to Bengal (1598–1604). Based on fresh translations of the chapters in the report describing the Bengal mission, this article examines interreligious relations in contemporary Bengal characterised by the dialectic of coexistence and disjunction. Local kingship or lordship was the keystone in the structure of interreligious coexistence in Bengal. The Christian preachers carried an incompatibilist and exclusivist approach to interreligious relations that was at odds with the inclusivist and com-patibilist approach prevalent among the Bengal lords. The welcome accorded to the preachers by the lords reflected the inclusive approach. The eventual persecution and expulsion of the fathers was due to political exigencies rather than interreligious antagonism.

This essay presents two late 18 th century European travelers' encounters with and perceptions of religion in Chinese and Indian societies. While C.L.J De Guignes made an extensive tour of Chinese pagodas, Balthazar Solvyns was depicting Bengali people in 1794. Both traveler's works reveal a lineage of ideas involving exoticism and early-modern orientalism. While creating images of religion based on superstition and alterity, they did not take into account how the gaze was reversed unto them. While Solvyns created images of 'the Hindoos', Bengali artists were depicting the European colonial presence in scroll paintings and temple sculptures. These depictions may be considered as mimetic practices subverting the relational gaze, incorporating the European presence in order to overcome it. Contrasting early ethnographical European descriptions of Asian religions with their original contexts, a subverted gaze shines back upon the self-image of early modern European scholars seeking to make exotic Asian religions 'known'.

The 19th- and 20th-century Bengal Province in India was a nerve-centre with hosts of socio-cultural and religious reform movements due to its early association with secular liberal western education. Modern institutions of higher learning, established by colonial rulers, European missionaries and contemporary social reformers, led to the awakening of Bengali educated communities. This Bengal Renaissance had contributed towards strengthening production of Bengali literature and the development of the Bengali language. Socially active reformers established community libraries as community learning space in their respective localities. Many century-old libraries are still in existence. These community libraries extended their access to the youth, students, industrial workers and lifelong learners. With this background, this paper aims at in-depth analysis of the legacy of the Bengal Renaissance in the development of public libraries in India during colonial British rule. This paper also looks into the role of the individual reformist genres in the design and delivery of effective public library services and library outreach services in the province.

This book offers a significant and original contribution to critical race theory. Georgie Wemyss offers an anthropological account of the cultural hegemony of the West through investigations of the central and pivotal constituent of the dominant white discourse of Britishness – the Invisible Empire.

She demonstrates how the repetitive burying of British Empire histories of violence in the retelling of Britain’s past works to disguise how power operates in the present, showing how other related elements have been substantially reproduced through time to accommodate the challenges of history.

The book combines ethnographic and discourse analysis with the study of connected histories to reveal how the dominant discourse maintains its dominance through its flexibility and its strategic alliances with subordinate groups.

Contents: Introduction; Part I: Introduction to Chapters 1 and 2; Terra nullius to the shrouding of Milligan: White histories on the Isle of Dogs; Competing colonial anniversaries in 'postcolonial' Blackwall: White memories, White belonging. Part II: Introduction to Chapters 3 and 4; Subjects of the invisible empire: 'outside extremists', 'White East Enders', 'passive Bengalis'; 'The East End' marketing strategy and the consolidation of the White East End. Part III: Introduction to Chapters 5 and 6; Tolerance, the invisible empire and the hierarchy of belonging; 'Lascars', colonial genealogies and exclusionary categories. Conclusion: exposing the invisible empire: towards commonality and metropolitan belonging; Bibliography; Index.

South Asian Archaeology 1989, Papers from the Tenth International Conference of  South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, Paris, France, 3-7 July 1989, ed. C. JARRIGE, Monographs in World Archaeology n° 14, Madison Wisconsin: Prehistory Press, 1992, pp. 301-308.

Bringing together scholars from across the disciplines of social and intellectual history, philology, theology, and anthropology to systematically investigate Vaiṣṇavism in colonial Bengal, the book highlights the significant roles—religious, social, and cultural—that a prominent Hindu devotional current played in the lives of wide and diverse sections of colonial Bengali society.

In this article I show how certain schemes of infrastructural development of a space often do not produce the desired effect, but instead they set in motion a whole range of activities that brings forth many other issues. Through the study of the building of the New Fort William and the project of construction of a dockyard in Calcutta in the second half of the eighteenth century, I focus on some of the key issues that shed light on the urban settlement in the post-Plassey period. The building of the New Fort William and the dockyard were important projects that shaped the space of the town. But the projects themselves did not have the intended effect on the settlement—the fort took a long time to get completed and the dockyard could not be built in the first attempt. The halted and aborted efforts did leave a mark on the space of the town, brought in new forms of labour regulations and put forth questions of proprietary rights of individual and the Company. These projects also shed light on the relationship between the Company settlement and the rest of the province.

This paper is an attempt to study some aspects of the unemployment problem in Bengal during the period under review. Since the unemployment question was a wide one affecting as it did the various sections of the community in various ways and in different degrees, we have restricted our field of study to the unemployment problem among the educated middle class Bengali community only. Thus this paper intentionally leaves aside the unemployment problem prevailing among the Anglo-Indian community and other sections of the society as it is virtually impossible to study the entire problem of unemployment in the course of such a short paper.

The Bengal State Aid to Industries Act was passed in 1931 to enable state aid to be given mainly for the purpose of encouraging cottage industries on a small scale. The Act was the outcome of a recommendation made by the Indian Industrial Commission in 1918 which stated that "assistance... be given to small and cottage industries by the local Departments of Industries in the shape of small Government loans or by financing the purchase of plant on the hire-purchase system". This recommendation the Indian Industrial Commission made in view of the lack of financial facilities which stood in the way of extension of small and cottage industries and of those industries which were new to the economy of India. Moreover, it was felt that government financial assistance would also create a favourable environment for investors who till now were unwilling to invest money in undeveloped industries with uncertain prospects until government associated itself with those.

In this paper an attempt has been made to examine certain aspects of the Bengal State Aid to Industries Act, 1931. This has been done in three parts. Part I deals with the course of events leading to the passing of the Act. Part II is a critical study of its working while Part III evaluates its performance in Bengal till 1947. The various moves made to amend the Act and the Rules enacted thereunder are also discussed in Part III.

The Inner Asian International Style, 12th -14th Centuries, Papers Presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz, 1995, ed. DEBORAH E. KLIMBURG-SALTER and EVA ALLINGER, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998, pp. 15-65. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Denkschriften, 267. Band; Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, General Editor: ERNST STEINKELLNER, volume VII).

Money in any society is a social convention, but in advanced societies it is also an institutional arrangement to measure and to settle debt. When stable institutions were involved, the clearance of debt often involved book-keeping entries or their analogues. In other circumstances, tangible money such as cowries might be involved. In contrast, a predilection for the use of coin was characteristic of statecraft practiced by ruling elites of a certain background.
Prior to 1200, many of the major empires and kingdoms of India derived the majority of their state revenue from agricultural taxes, and often relied on intangible moneys of account to administer this system. Notable was Bengal, which was ‘cashless’ under the successive Palas and Senas (eighth to late twelfth centuries). In these monetary systems, tangible circulating media, where they existed, often comprised huge quantities of cowries.
Increasingly after 1200, as the Central Asian model of centralized state formation expanded in India, this indigenous mixed monetary system was replaced by a coin-based one. Hence the Indian demand for coinage metals rose progressively and sharply from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.

El ensayo representa un intento por entender el esfuerzo individual de mujeres bengalíes para introducir orden y disciplina en la cocina bengalí a inicios del siglo XX, en el contexto del discurso nacionalista de élite con inherente carga de género, el cual no sólo convertía a la "nueva mujer" en el signo crucial de la diferencia cultural de India, sino que también daba a la salud familiar una importancia clave al hacerla base de una nación saludable.

The Bengal Delta is a place of many migrations, cultural transformations, invasions and religious revolutions since prehistoric time. With the help of archaeological and historical records, this essay present the hypothesis that, albeit there were multiple waves of large and small scale socio-cultural assimilations, every socio-political change did not brought equal formidable outcome in the Delta. The study further illustrates that, the majority of cultural components were formulated by IndigenousAryan-Buddhist assimilations in early phase, whereas the Buddhist-Aryan-Islamic admixtures in relatively forbearing and gracious socio-political background of medieval period contributed the final part in the formation of Bengal Civilization.

Government-aided vernacular schools introduced " human physiology " as a subject in 1859. I use the first couple of schoolbooks and the debate running up to the introduction of the subject to open up the particular and specific histories through which modern anatomo-physiological knowledge was vernacularized in colonial Bengal. In so doing I have two interconnected goals in this article. My first goal is to analyze the precocious decision to teach human physiology to colonial schoolboys, at a time when this was the norm neither in Great Britain nor indeed in traditional Bengali schools. My second goal is to use this case to further develop "vernacularization" as a conceptual tool. In pursuing these twin objectives, I simultaneously hope to move the debate on modern anatomo-physiological knowledge in South Asia away from the level of epistemic superiority and onto-politics to the level of concrete historical particularities.

Although women constituted a significant part of the total labour force in the mines of India, yet till the end of the First World War very little was done to promote their health and welfare. In the absence of welfare legislation and voluntary work, women faced serious hardship and privation especially during the period of their confinement. Not only were they not paid any wages for the period of their absence, in some cases they lost their jobs and incurred heavy debts to defray the expenses of this critical period of their lives. The International Labour Organisation, founded at the end of World War I to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions for labour, in their very first conference held at Washington in 1919 recommended to its member states, including India, the necessity of providing adequate maternity benefit to their female labour employed in the industrial establishments. The main provisions of the draft convention (stipulated in articles 3 and 4) were: (a) rest periods of six weeks before and after confinement; (b) sufficient maintenance for the mother and child including the provision of free attendance by a doctor or a midwife; (c) an allowance of half-an-hour twice daily for nursing the child; and (d) security against dismissal on account of absence due to confinement. Ever since the adoption of this convention at Washington, the question of maternity benefit had become a subject of debate and discussion in India both inside and outside the legislature.

As it is not possible to study in detail all aspects of the issue in such a short paper, we intend to limit ourselves to certain aspects of it. Section I examines the working of voluntary maternity benefit schemes in the British Indian mines. Section II deals with the enactment of the Indian Mines Maternity Benefit Act, 1941, which was put in the statute book 'to regulate the employment of women in mines for a certain period before and after childbirth and to provide for payment of maternity benefit to them'. It also critically examines the main provisions of the Act. Section III is a study of the working of the Act.

The Mahāvidyās are the representative Tantric feminine pantheon consisting of ten goddesses. It is formed by divergent religious strands and elements: the mātṛ and yoginī worship, the cult of Kālī and Tripurasundarī, Vajrayāna Buddhism, Jain Vidyādevīs, Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava faith, Śrīvidyā, the Brahmanical strand of Puranic traditions, etc. This volume is the first attempt to explore the historical process, through which these traditions culminated in the Mahāvidyā cult and the goddesses with different origins and contradictory attributes were brought into a cluster, with special reference to socio-political changes in the lower Gaṅgā and Brahmaputra Valley between the 9th and 15th centuries CE.

Based on a close analysis of Purāṇas, Tantras and inscriptional evidence, and on extensive field research on archaeological remains as well as sacred sites, Jae-Eun Shin discusses the two trajectories of the Mahāvidyās in eastern Śākta traditions. Each led to the systematization of Daśamahāvidyās in a specific way: one, as ten manifestations of Durgā upholding dharma in the cosmic dimension, and the other, as ten mandalic goddesses bearing magical powers in the actual sacred site. Their attributes and characteristics have neither been static nor monolithic, and the mode of worship prescribed for them has changed in a dialectical religious process between Brahmanical and Tantric traditions of the region.

This is the definitive work for anyone seeking to understand goddess cults of South Asia in general and the history of eastern Śākta traditions in particular. To aid study, the volume includes images, diagrams and maps.

One of the less emphasised aspects of a widely-studied phenomenon like the so-called—for right and wrong reasons—'Bengal Renaissance' is that of the intercultural gastronomic spectrum it opened up. The Bengali-speaking elites and subalterns, in their own ways, delighted in being considered 'khādya-rasik'-s (gourmets, connoisseurs of the 'rasa'-s implicit in food, bordering on gluttony) and capable of hybridising 'bileti' (<vilāyati=foreign, European) dishes to suit their epicurean and/or eclectic tastes. This meant that the mid-nineteenth-century English workers' staple 'fish and chips', itself a hybrid fashioned from the original 'pescados fritos' by the Iberian Marrano-s as early as the sixteenth century and first made into a commercial success, in 1860, by “Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant newly arrived from Eastern Europe,” became the 'fish-fry' that is one of Bengal's favourite heavy snacks. This paper looks at the ways in which mid- and late-colonial Bengali society practised culinary hybridisation, the products of which were cherished by the hybrid-figure of the Bengali detective, and the extent to which the modern Bengali palate is a composite, even cosmopolitan one.

Four Hindu deities held a particular position in the late Buddhist iconography as paintings and sculptures illustrate it, i.e. Brahmä and Indra/Sakra, Siva and Visnu. The first two gods appear since an early period in Indian art, and in Buddhist literature, they are present at various moments of Säkyamuni's life In the art of Eastern India, they are commonly seen in the depictions of the Birth or the Descent from the Heaven of the TrayastririrSas.

Believing as the British did in the exclusive notions of state authority contrary to 'divisible' or 'discrete' perception of authority practised by Indians, the British Raj tried from the very inception to impose their absolute supremacy on Indian society by establishing law and order. In so doing, they showed their utmost concern in collective criminal actions which were perceived as most threatening to their existence in India. Dacoity, which was considered as the most defiant form of collective action against state authority and which was widespread in the then Bengal, was at once thought to be a challenge and a reflection on the empire's ability to rule. Moerover, collective actions of this kind was susceptible to stimulation by widespread economic and social unrest over such matters as famines, scarcities, tenancy grievances, onerous burden of taxation and the like. Hence, to contain open violence before it became contagious, and of course, to impose the will of the state, the British government in Bengal from the onset adopted vigorous measures to stamp out the crime of dacoity.

In this article, an attempt will be made to throw some light on the activities of the Dacoity Commission instituted in April, 1852 for the suppression of dacoity in Bengal. Part I is a background leading to the institution of the office of the Dacoity Commissioner along with a short account of the early efforts at controlling dacoity. It also discusses the organizational set-up of the Office of Dacoity Commissioner and the methods employed for the apprehension and committal of criminals. The drive against the suppression of professional gangs, both in land and in water, in the various districts of Bengal is the subject-matter of Part II. The results of the campaign is discussed in Part III, along with a brief commentary on the reasons for the abolition of the Office of Dacoity Commissioner.

John Woodroffe (1865–1936) can be counted among the most influential authors on Indian religious traditions in the twentieth century. He is credited with almost single-handedly founding the academic study of Tantra, for which he served as a main reference well into the 1970s. Up to that point, it is practically impossible to divide his influence between esoteric and academic audiences – in fact, borders between them were almost non-existent. Woodroffe collaborated and exchanged thoughts with scholars such as Sylvain Lévi, Paul Masson-Oursel, Moriz Winternitz, or Walter Evans-Wentz. His works exerted a significant influence on, among many others, Heinrich Zimmer, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, Mircea Eliade, Carl Gustav Jung, Agehananda Bharati or Lilian Silburn, as they did on a wide range of esotericists such as Julius Evola. In this light, it is remarkable that Woodroffe did not only distance himself from missionary and orientalist approaches to Tantra, but he also identified Tantra with Catholicism and occultism, introducing a universalist, traditionalist perspective.
This was not simply a “Western” perspective, since Woodroffe echoed Bengali intellectuals who praised Tantra as the most appropriate and authentic religious tradition of India. In doing so, they stressed the rational, empirical, scientific nature of Tantra that was allegedly based on practical spiritual experience. As Woodroffe would later do, they identified the practice of Tantra with New Thought, spiritualism, and occultism – sciences that were only re-discovering the ancient truths that had always formed an integral part of “Tantrik occultism.” This chapter situates this claim within the context of global debates about modernity and religion, demonstrating how scholarly approaches to religion did not only parallel, but were inherently intertwined with, occultist discourses.

Tobacco was a very popular intoxication content in colonial Bengal. Though several countries imposed certain restrictions on the use of tobacco, the colonial period became a mark on the growth of tobacco consumption and trade. Due to the growing demands, there was a need to improve quality and quantity of tobacco in India.  A  number of scientific approaches were suggested and adopted for the improvement of quality and quantity of tobacco. Princely states of Cooch Behar took keen interest in this matter. The main aim was to make the tobacco trade of Cooch Behar a profitable one. The Commissioners of Cooch Behar and Maharaja Nripendra Narayan had taken various experimental measures for the improvement of tobacco.  A  modern farm was established for that purpose. Prince Gojendra Narayan was also interested in tobacco cultivation. Victor Nityendra Narayan, visited famous tobacco growing countries. Though the investment and efforts on these experiments were much, the success rate was not satisfactory. There was always a fluctuation in the quantity, quality and rate of the tobacco in Cooch Behar mainly owing to rainfall and hailstorms.

Up to the present day Suhrawardy remains a controversial figure in both parts of Bengal, with Hindus often seeing him as their fierce persecutor and Bangladeshi Muslims hailing him as their country's forefather and preacher of communal unity. This article analyses his actions during the period of his Prime Ministership (1946-1947) looking for the sources of the above dichotomy. It argues that although Suhrawardy displayed a mild communal bias at times, circumstances made him inconsistent, being as he was trapped between right wing of Muslim League, the Hindu masses unwilling to trust him and (until the end of 1946) Congress ambitions to inherit the whole Raj. The need to act quickly due to Viceroy Mountbatten's haste, as well as the PM's lack of social skills were other factors contributing to failure of his last initiative-United Bengal Scheme-despite his genuine efforts towards Hindu-Muslim settlement and agrarian reforms.

The policy brief contextualizes the foundational period of the Rohingya movement between approximately 1947 and 1964. It presents political and cultural aims, mobilization, achievements, and implications of the territorialization and selfidentification process. The brief does not aim at giving an exhaustive account, but puts forward a concatenation of contexts and events as a basis for further discussion.

This article investigates the entanglement of knowledge regarding vegetable gardening in early colonial Bengal through the prism of the yearly vegetable exhibitions organized in Calcutta by the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India (AHSI, founded in 1820). The European members of the society thought that there were not enough vegetables grown in Bengal and that the commonly eaten vegetables were nutritionally inadequate. In order to 'improve' local vegetable cultivation, the society held a yearly exhibition in which Bengali gardeners received prizes for growing new vegetables, such as cauliflower and cabbage. To supply these exhibitions, the society ordered large shipments of seeds and then distributed them to malis (Bengali gardeners) around Calcutta. In the 1830s they extended this practice to their satellite societies across India. The end result was an increase in the cultivation of these vegetables, and eventually their absorption into local cuisine. Yet, Bengali gardeners continued to bring other vegetables to the exhibitions which were not from the AHSI seed. Eventually, the society's officers reacted to these unsolicited contributions by including awards for them. However, many members were anxious and unsure about these changes, constantly trying to make the vegetable exhibitions mimic the vegetable market at Covent Garden in London. In order to contain the changing exhibitions, they reiterated a divide between 'native' and 'foreign' vegetables by holding separate exhibitions for each. As such, this article reformulates the idea of mimicry, focusing more strongly on British ambivalence and anxiety as they tried to reiterate colonial boundaries with mixed success.

One of the foundational objectives of this paper is to engage with the archaeology of `Early Medieval' and `Medieval' period. This engagement is inevitable in the context of archaeological studies in the region under investigation. The rules of engagement, moreover, are formulated and refashioned within a conceptual framework that attempts to problematize and question the taken-for-granted assumptions and narratives on the 'early medieval' and 'medieval' or 'ancient' and 'medieval'. The engagement is going to raise questions about the parameters and standards that have institutionalized them as normalized and fixed temporal categories or periods in the disciplinary practice of history and archaeology. The focal area is a sample from the northwestern part of Bangladesh. This space covers parts of the southern part of present Dinajpur District, parts of Rangpur, Gaibandha and Joypurhat Districts and reference to part of Bogra District of present Bangladesh. References to the studies on archaeological places and landscape in the northern part of present West Bengal, India and the southern part of Dinajpur, Thakurgaon, Panchagarh, Rangpur and Nilphamari Districts of present Bangladesh are, additionally, made in this paper for a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of this part of the Indian Subcontinent.

This essay investigates the well-known, yet understudied, Bengali Theosophist Mohini Mohun Chatterji. In this essay, Mohini Chatterji's life and career will be discussed in relation to the Theosophical Society. His case will be seen as an example of how Bengali Theosophists played a significant role in the transcultural, entangled history of the global Theosophical movement, thus connecting Vedantic philosophy with occultism.

As novel research, this book chapter treats the 18th century Austrian-Netherlandish GIC or General Imperial India Company's history in early modern Bengal through both its aspects of 'high culture' courtly encounters at Murshidabad, as well as the organisation of its common life in the Company's Banquibazar and Cossimbazar factories. As both themes have not been taken into account in previous historiography, this may contribute to a new glance on these aspects of the social & cultural history of early-modern Bengal. It also gives some theoretical references to how such a history can be approached. The chapter is a contribution to a very warmly recommended book on Early Modern Bengal, portraying the current State of the Art around its many aspects: travel narratives, piracy, European trading companies, courtly life at Murshidabad, smuggling, the salt economy, religion, textuality, folk culture, resistance, and colonial collecting. Published with Manohar in New Delhi. Full reference:
Aquil, R.; Mukherjee, T. (Ed.) (2020). An earthly paradise: trade, politics and culture in Early Modern Bengal. Manohar Publishers: New Delhi. ISBN 978-93-88540-91-9. 595 pp.

This text is the author's preferred version in proof, which may slightly differ from the final product. No changes in content have been made.

The aim of this article is to present the different canons that have developed since the 20 th century CE for the study of late medieval Bengal temples. The prime focus is also to present the different notions of past which governed and constructed the present understanding of the terracotta temples by the scholars. It also presents how apart from an exception, all the dominant and 'popular' art-historical canons were unwilling to transgress their boundaries of culture based interpretation of the temples. The article concludes with the idea of development of that possible canon which would not study the society through the temples, rather study the society to understand the temples.

Bangladesh, a riverine country, is famous as the largest delta of the world. Blessed with about 700 rivers; which have been the lifelines for not only the rural areas but also for the urban settlements throughout history. Since gaining independence in 1971, the nation has made commendable economic growth, especially from the 1990s. Along with the economic development, came unplanned rapid urbanization and large infrastructural construction projects often without considering the environmental consequences. The blessings of the riverine landscape have been lost gradually, specifically in the cities. Construction of roads, culvert, bridges etc. for better, reliable and faster connectivity has encroached rivers, canals and creeks. Many of them suffered from obstructed flow and navigability, as a result. In the end, the water bodies and waterways lost their importance and deemed unnecessary for the urban areas, where land prices skyrocketed. Shrinking rivers became canals and clogged canals turned into drainage or part of the sewer network with only few feet of the remaining width.

This paper makes an attempt to locate, depict and overview the transformation of the water bodies of three cities namely, Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet, with present and historical map. It will also provide brief description of the current situation of them.

According to the Department of Archaeology, Bangladesh, there is about 423 listed archaeological sites in the country. But, there are many more yet to be unrevealed. Their true value remains unseen to the world if not taken proper action and acknowledgement. Khan Jahan Ali, on his famous journey from Khalifatabad (present day Bagerhat) to Champanagar (currently in Barobazar, Jessore); he crossed quite a few remote areas and set up human settlements. On his way he built roads, dug large water bodies for fresh supply of water, established mosques and houses for the inhabitants. His unique construction style is quite evident on the structures along the 112.7 km long road distinguished by an old earthen embankment, traversing through (i) Barobazar, (ii) Murali-Qasba, (iii) Poyogram-Qasba and (iv) Khalifatabad (Bagerhat) The road is still known as Khanjali Road. The first segment of this road, known as Hakimpur-Barobazar road contains eleven sultanate mosques of which only three has been documented properly by the authorities and the rests are barely mentioned. This study aims to fill up this gap, explore more into the contribution of Khan Jahan Ali on the four settlements he set up and their history by linking them with the monuments.

SUMMARY: This article attempts to delineate and plot the contours of the intercultural contributions of Gerasim Lebedev in a linguistic-cultural domain totally alien to him, in early-colonial Calcutta. It also seeks to contextualise the intense polysemy between 'microcosmic' personal and literary journeys and the 'cosmopolitan' acculturation that came with Lebedev's socio-cultural background and travels. Though, as will be seen in the essay, Lebedev's path-breaking maverick effort was largely a shot in the dark, his achievement is seen, in almost the entire theatrical fraternity in West Bengal and Bangladesh, in terms that can be described as larger than life. The essay will seek to understand the extent to which Lebedev's personal and professional choices reflected deep cross-cultural sympathies, thus making him an enthusiast with a difference.

referred to the images from Ghyasabad (our no. 29), for which he summarized the iconographic description provided by ANDERSON 1883: 253-254; Garui (our no. 22); Sonarang (our no. 23), for which he stated that "[t]he presence of the figure of the Dhyånï Buddha Amitåbha over the head of this figure along with some of the emblems held in the hands proves the affinity of this class of images between Vaish½ava images proper and Loke¸varas"; and Sagardighi, a bronze specimen (our no. 16). He concluded that "[t]his particular class of specimens, therefore, indicates a blending of the older Bhågavata class of Vaish½ava images and the Loke¸varas of the later

This book is an intensive study based on archival data stored in old Bengali literature and the author has made painstaking research for more than 10 years at the libraries of the University of Calcutta and Bangiya Sahitya Parishad.The book was published by the University of Calcutta in 1935 and was purchased by my father late Ajit Kumar Guha on 08.08.1946.My uncle late Raghabendra Guha wrote interesting notes from related book by reputed scholars in the margins of the book.

Ltude la plus detaill6e sur Lahtd Devi a ete menee par M.-Th. de Mallmann dans son travail sur l'Agni-Purana. I1 nous est apparu interessant de relever diff6rents el6ments qui echapperent & l'attention de ce chercheur et dont l'Ptude permet de poser un regard plus precis sur l'volution de l'image de la Devi avant qu'elle ne devienne 'a proprement parler Lalitd (Devi). L'etude stylistique de la statuaire en pierre d'epoque Pdla-Sena que j'ai entreprise nous est dans le domaine si particulier de l'iconographie des plus precieuses, en nous permettant de tirer des conclusions fort probables sur la chronologie des ceuvres consideries.z Des maintenant, soulignons que la multiplicit6 des descriptions contenues dans des textes iconographiques comme le RRpama dana ou l'Agni-Purd a4, en temoignant des hesitations rencontrees par les thdoriciens-mimes de ces ouvrages, repond "a la diversite temoign6e par le materiel artistique. D'une part, comme de l'autre, il est difficile d'etablir des identifications definitives. I M.-Th. de Mallmann, Les enseignements iconograpbiques de l'Agni-Purdna, Paris, 1963, pp. -138 et svtes. 2Voir Claudine Picron, <<Les stdles Pdla-Sena, 6volution et chronologie>>, dans Au service d'une biologie de Part, par Jean Naudou, Philippe Stern et Claudine Picron, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, 1978, PP-57-97, ou notre Histoire d'un art, Sculpture en pierre au Bibhr et au Bengale du VIII6 au XII* siecle (en preparation).

Taking the source material of the Ostend Company's 18th century maritime trading activities into China and Bengal as a vantage point, this article explores its potential for a comparative history on cultural interaction in the Indian Ocean world. It compares how agents from this Company engaged in cultural interaction as a prerequisite for further economic interaction. Beyond a colonial or econocentric approach, it takes an anthropological perspective considering cultural interaction as a performative learning process, revealing how these agents participated in and made sense of foreign customs and policies. By comparing the diaries of a 1723 merchant-diplomat in Bengal and a 1726 merchant in Canton, it shows similarities and differences in their learning process in both maritime trading environments. This provides a summary of several key themes for a comparative history of cultural interaction, such as performative courtly rituals, the role of informants and information on learning how to interact, and the personal reflections of European merchants. The article also demonstrates the potential for a collaborative approach, via the inclusion of a comparison with older Chinese sources, in establishing a longue durée perspective on specific cultural phenomena as aspects of the learning process, such as the differing significance of clothing, or the ritual use of tea or tobacco in the receiving of guests. Its focus on interaction also reveals the mediating role of Persian or Armenian merchants. Finally, the article also points at the role of unexpected occurrences such as shipwrecks or robbery, as hazardous aspects of maritime trading environments, and the human response to these on both direct and institutional levels. Against an overtly structural approach, this reveals how human-environment interaction also contained an element of unpredictability.

Late 19th-early 20th century Bengal witnessed a
renewed interest on behalf of Bengali scholars,
to engage with the ruins of Gour and Pandua,
from what has on retrospect been regarded as
a Nationalist perspective. These nationalist
narratives were however communally pluralised
in correspondence to the religiously informed
politics of the period. Gour-Pandua soon became
a site of communal contestation on account of
its multiple pre-colonial identities: that of a
Hindu capital till the reign of Lakshmanasena
and of a Muslim capital thereafter. This paper
intends to analyse the multiple imaginations such
accounts develop, viewing the ruins as a site for
legitimisation of Hindu and Muslim nationalist
sentiments and delegitimisation of colonial rule.