A History of Assam c19: Chapter XIII. Sylhet

A History of Assam c19

Language: English

Chapter XIII. Sylhet

Although Sylhet may at times have formed part of the ancient kingdom of Kāmarupa, it was never during the historical period included in Assam, as the term was understood prior to 1874. But when the Chief Commissionership of Assam was created in that year as narrated in Chapter XVII, Sylhet was incorporated in the new Province. It is therefore necessary to refer briefly to its ancient history. This unfortunately is very obscure. Sylhet, is scarcely mentioned in the old legends, but from the circumstance that Bodo-speaking tribes are found both north and south of it, it may be conjectured that in early times it was inhabited by people of the same stock and was ruled by Bodo kings. The tract north of the Kushiāra river was at one time divided into three petty kingdoms—Jaintia (already dealt with) Laur, and Gaur, or Sylhet Proper. The latter word perhaps survives in the "Goārār Jangal," the name of two old embankments which run from the Ghogra to a former bed of the Barāk river in the Rājnagar pargana of Cachar. The more westerly of these embankments is in places a hundred feet broad at the base and ten feet in height, and there is a buried brick wall 140 feet long by six feet broad. There is a tradition that they were erected by some invaders called Goārs.

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The tract south of the Kushiāra was often under the kings of Tippera. According to a document purporting to be a copy of two old copper-plates (no longer available) found in the possession of a Brāhman who claimed to be a descendant of one of the original grantees, Dharmaphā, and Sudharmaphā, kings of the mountains of Tippera, made to certain Brāhmans grants of land situated, in the former case, between the Kushiāra, Barāk and Hāskātā rivers, and in the latter, on both banks of the Manu. The kings in question were the eighth and ninth rulers of Tippera according to the local *Rājmāla*, of which an analysis has been given by the Rev. J. Long.*

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Two copper-plates that were found in the foundations of a ruined building on a hillock near Bhātarābazar, which is reputed locally to have been the palace of Raja Gaurgobind, have been deciphered by the late Rājendralāla Mittra.† They record grants of land by two kings of the lunar line, Gobind *alias* Keshab Deb and his son Ishān Deb. Their genealogy is as follows:—

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† “Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal” for 1880.

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(i) Nabagirvān *alias* Kharavān.
(ii) Gokul.
(iii) Nārāyan.
(iv) Gobind *alias* Keshab Deb.
(v) Ishān Deb.

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The date on Ishān Deb's inscription gives only his regnal year. That on Gobind Deb's is doubtful. It has been assumed to refer to the Kāli Yuga, and the decipherer of the plates read it as the equivalent of 1245 A.D. The first two figures however are very indistinct, and he seems to have been influenced by the supposed necessity of accommodating the date to that of the invasion of Sylhet by Jalāluddin Khani, whom he wrongly identified with Shāh Jalāl, the traditional conqueror of the country for the Muhammadans. Both plates record grants of land, Gobind Deb's for the upkeep of a temple of Siva, and Ishān Deb's for that of a temple of Vishnu. The measurement in both cases is given in *hāls*. A *hāl* is equal to four and four-fifths acres, and it is still the best-known unit of measurement in some parts of the Surma valley.

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The prime minister of Ishān Deb was a Baidya, and the writer of his inscription was a Dās or Kaibartta. Rājendralāla Mittra suggests that these kings were sovereigns of Cachar, because they professed to be of the dynasty of Ghatotkacha, son of Bhim, one of the Pāndu princes, by Hidimba, the daughter of an aboriginal cannibal chief, and, according to him, the Kachāri kings claimed a similar descent. This, however, is by no means conclusive. It is quite possible that the same genealogy did duty for successive converts to Hinduism amongst the ruling chiefs of the Surma valley just as did that of Narak and Bhagadatta for those in the valley of the Brahmaputra.

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∗ “Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,” Vol. XIX, page 533. The inscriptions are dated respectively in the 51st and 164th year of the Tippera era, corresponding, according to the *Rājmāla* to 641 and 753 A.D. This difference of 113 years in the dates of two successive princes shows that there is something wrong somewhere, but it would be useless to pursue the matter in the absence of the original plates and in view of the legendary character of the *Rājmāla*.

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The conquest of Gaur by the Muhammadans is ascribed by tradition to Shah Jalāl of Yemen.* The legend is well known, but it contains scarcely any historical facts. The Saint is said to have died in 1189 A.D., but on the other hand, he is said to have come to Delhi during the reign of Sultan Ala-ud-din (1296 to 1316 A.D.)) and to have gone to Sylhet with the army commanded by Sikandar Shah, the Sultan's nephew. This tradition is confirmed by a Muhammadan inscription of 1512 A.D. in which it is said that the conquest of Sylhet was effected by Sikandar Khan Ghazi in the reign of Firuz Shah (of Bengal) in 1303 A.D.† It may therefore be concluded that the north-west portion of Sylhet fell into the hands of the Muhammadans in the early part of the fourteenth century.

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† J. A. S. B. 1922, p. 43.

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The name of the conquered Hindu king is given in the Shah Jalāl legend as Gaur Gobind, Gaur or Gor being, it is alleged, the name of his capital, as it was also of the country. Rājendralāla Mittra identified him with the Gobind Deb of the Bhāterā copper-plates but this seems unlikely. The latter was succeeded on the throne by his son Ishān Deb, and the identification is possible only if we assume that the conquest was incomplete, and that, while one part of his dominions passed under Muslim rule, the other part remained independent, at least for some years.

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∗ The short account of Shah Jalāl, given by Dr. Wise, in the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1873," p. 278, seems to be based on the Suhel-i-Yemen compiled in 1860 by Nasiruddin Hāldār. The original Persian text was published in Calcutta in 1894, and a metrical translation into Musalmāni Bengali by Ilāhi Baksh was printed in the Bengali year 1278.

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The oldest historical record is an inscription on a stone inside the famous shrine of Shah Jalāl at Sylhet. This record was made in the time of Shamsuddin Yusuf Shah, which ruled in Bengal from 1474 to 1481, but unfortunately only part of it is decipherable in its present position.

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Whenever it took place, the original conquest did not extend to Laur or to Jaintia. The Rajas of these tracts continued to rule north of the Surma, while in the south, the Tipperas probably held a considerable area.* The Raja of Jaintia was still unsubdued at the time of the British conquest. The small State of Laur remained independent until, in Akbar's time, the Mughals became masters of Bengal, when the Raja made his submission to the Emperor. He undertook to protect the frontier from the incursions of the hill tribes, but he was not required to pay anything in the nature of tribute or revenue. In Aurangzeb's reign, the Raja, whose name was Gobind, was summoned to Delhi, and there became a Muhammadan. His grandson, it is said, removed his residence to Baniyachang in the open plain, and an assessment was gradually imposed on the family estates.†

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† Professor Padmanāth Bhattāchārya quotes a local tradition that Baniyachang had previously been the capital of Kesava Misra, the Brāhman ancestor of Gobind Deb, who came from the north-west and settled there. A fort was was subsequently constructed at Laur, as a protection against raids by the Khāsis.

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The relations between the Muhammadans and the Tipperas are very obscure. Various collisions are mentioned in the Rājmāla, and several victories are claimed by the Tippera kings, as well as occasional conquests of Sylhet, but, in the end, the Muhammadans extended their rule over the whole of the plains, and the Tippera Raja was compelled to pay revenue on his estates there.

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The Governor of Sylhet in the days of the independent kings of Bengal held the rank of Nawāb. Under the Mughals, Sylhet was governed by an Amil. This official was subordinate to the Nawāb of Dacca, but he was himself known locally as Nawāb. The *Amils* seem to have been constantly changed, and the names of about forty of them can still be gathered from their seals. One of the best was Fasād Khān, who held office at the end of the seventeenth century and constructed numerous roads and bridges. An inscription on a bridge, which still bears his name, records its construction by him in 1085 A.H. or 1673 A.D.

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∗ In the *Ain-i-Akbari*, Jaintia and Laur are mentioned amongst the eight *mahals* of the *sarkar* of Sylhet, but this does not necessarily mean that they actually formed part of Akbar's dominions.

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Sylhet was the birthplace of Chaitanya, the great Vaishnava reformer of Bengal, and of Advaita, another famous Vaishnava divine, of Raghunāth Siromani, the logician, Vanināth Vidyāsāgar, the grammarian, and other men of light and learning.

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In early times the Sylhet district supplied India with eunuchs, but Jahāngir issued an edict forbidding its inhabitants to castrate boys.

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The state of affairs in the early days of British rule.

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Sylhet passed into the hands of the British in 1765, together with the rest of Bengal. Thirteen years later, a Mr. Robert Lindsay became Collector, after he had been only two years in the country, by means of an intrigue in the Dacca Council, which was at that time in charge of Sylhet; and his vivacious account of its condition at that time is reproduced in the *Lives of the Lindsays*.* At that time there was little silver or copper in circulation, and the revenue of the district amounting to Rs. 2,50,000, was all paid in cowries, or small shells, of which 5,120 went to the rupee. The management of this ponderous currency was most troublesome; and its storage and transport to Dacca, where the cowries were sold by auction, "occasioned a cost of no less than ten per cent. exclusive of depredations on the passage down." In those days the Company's servants were allowed to trade on their own account. Mr. Lindsay soon made a fortune by dealing in lime, while he, at the same time, relieved the officials at Dacca of the vexatious business of disposing of a cargo of 1,280 millions of cowries. He obtained the lease of the lime quarries in the hills below Cherrapunji from the Khāsi chiefs who owned them, used the cowries to meet the charges for extracting and burning the stone, and paid his revenue at Dacca in rupees realized from the sale of the lime in the markets of Bengal.

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∗ Vol. III, pp. 163, seq.

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Mr. Lindsay experimented with the cultivation of indigo and the silk worm, but he was not very successful, owing to the heavy floods. He also grew some coffee, but did not persevere in its cultivation. He imported a quantity of wheat and distributed it amongst a number of the zamindars, but they did not attempt to plant it out. The crops in his time were generally good; in 1781, however, there was an exceptionally heavy flood, which swept away the granaries and reduced the people to such straits that one-third are said to have died of starvation.

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The military force at first consisted of about a hundred up-country sepoys, but the climate was prejudicial to their health and the mortality amongst them was very heavy. Mr. Lindsay accordingly obtained sanction to replace them by a locally recruited Militia corps, which he accompanied himself whenever any difficult task had to be performed. On one occasion, during the Muharram, the Muhammadans in Sylhet rose and set fire to the town in several places. Only fifty of the Militia were on the spot, but with these Mr. Lindsay marched to the place where the crowd had collected and dispersed it, killing the ringleader, who attacked him with a sword, by a shot from his own pistol.