Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v2.c39: Chapter XII. Transformation of Bengal Under Mughal Rule

The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v2.c39

Language
English

Contents

Chapter XII. Transformation of Bengal Under Mughal Rule

I. The Chief Factors

v2.c39.s1.1

It was only in the reign of Jahāngir that Mughal administration really started in Bengal, because Akbar's time and the first eight years after Jahāngir's accession were the age of conquering generals, when the province was not yet ready to accept and work a settled civil government. It was only Islām Khan's success in crushing out—and not, as under his predecessors, merely defeating in skirmishes—the old heads of local rebellion, that made regular peaceful Mughal rule in this province possible. Though Bengal had been included among the eleven subahs to which Akbar in November 1586 sent out orders for setting up his new type of uniform provincial administration, the order took a quarter of a century to be actually enforced. Hence the beginning of the reign of Jahāngir is a convenient place where we can pause in the narration of events and take a general survey of the Mughal age in Bengal and its effect upon the province. The subject has been briefly touched in Chapter X section I; it will now be studied in detail.

v2.c39.s1.2

The period of Mughal imperial rule over Bengal witnessed the working of certain new forces which have completely transformed Bengali life and thought and whose influence is still operating in the province. In one word, during the first century of Mughal rule (1575-1675 A.D.), the outer world came to Bengal and Bengal went out of herself to the outer world, and the economic, social and cultural changes that grew out of this mingling of peoples mark a most important and distinct stage in the evolution of modern Bengal. Indeed, there has been nothing in our province's past history at all comparable to it except the modernisation which we owe to the British influence.

v2.c39.s1.3

True, the Mughal Emperors did not deliberately introduce these forces, but the political change which accompanied their conquest and the administration which they imposed on the conquered land made the triumph of the new forces possible and easy. These two forces were the growth of a vast sea-borne trade and the organisation of the Bengal Vaishnavs into a sect.

II. European Trade and Its Effect

v2.c39.s2.1

The first of these forces originated many thousand miles away. The Wars of Religion in Europe ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the flight of Charles II, after Worcester (1651). And the energy and enterprise of Europe, released from ruinous conflict at home, felt itself free to go out and impinge upon this fabled land of gold. Even while the Wars of Religion were still raging, salt-petre (an essential ingredient of gun-powder) was so much in demand all over Europe that it was keenly sought after and largely exported from its chief source in North Bihar (Lālganj) by the river route through Bengal. Next came a rapid development of Bengal's export trade in silk stuffs, indigo, fine cotton goods and coarse cotton textiles (the last being for Asiatic consumers). The volume of Bengal's trade in the outward direction can be judged from the fact that in the four years 1680-1683 taken together, a single European nation the English, imported into Bengal silver worth £200,000 to pay for their purchases. The Dutch annual investment in Bengal was at least as large in amount as this, because they were firmly set in this province earlier than the English. Now, this English investment, at the then rate of exchange, amounted to 4 lakhs of rupees per annum, when the rupee had twenty times its purchasing power of our own days (taking the last prewar year, 1938). Thus the equivalent of eighty lakhs of rupees was thrown into the Bengali market every year by only one European Company, in the form of silver bullion coined into rupees at the Mughal mints of Rajmahal and Dacca. (In 1681 the total value of the Indian products exported by the English E. I. Co., from Bengal alone, reached £230,000, or 18½ lakhs of rupees, equivalent to over three and two-thirds krors of rupees in the money of our own day).

v2.c39.s2.2

This huge influx of silver effected a sudden and profound change in Bengal's economy. During early Muslim rule, the products of our fields and looms could be sold for money only to a very small extent, as the sole foreign purchasers were a few Chinese (importing silver), Malayese, Arabs (from the head of the Persian Gulf) and Portuguese voyaging to Bengal once in a year or two; we had besides these, a small amount of coastal trade with our equally poor neighbours Orissa and Teleguland. For internal consumption barter was the practice wherever possible, and prices in terms of money were exceedingly low. This is proved by the universal use of small conch-shells (cowries) as the money unit and medium of exchange, except at the top level and for very large transactions. The use of cowries as the people's currency lingered in Calcutta itself as late as 1880 and in the villages for 20 years more.

v2.c39.s2.3

Witness also the incredibly low price of the menu at the dinners given to the Vaishnav saint Chaitanya by his devotees at Puri about the year 1520, as recorded in his biography by Krishnadās Kavirāj, (Antya, viii. 38, 51, 85).

v2.c39.s2.4

All over Orissa and in many parts of Bengal too, the land-rent could be collected only in the form of grain, and the collectors had the greatest difficulty in paying the Government revenue in cash, as the conversion of crops into rupees involved heavy losses.

v2.c39.s2.5

For many years the only tribute which the Mughal Emperors used to get from Bengal was in the form of elephants and art objects manufactured in the province, but no cash. Only just before Jahāngīr’s death (1627) that Emperor bound his viceroy in Bengal to send him five lakhs of rupees from the province every year as a personal offering (khasah) for himself and the same amount for his queen,—but no surplus revenue was even then paid into the Central Exchequer of Delhi. How long even these ten lakhs were really paid we do not know;¹ certainly not during the costly and chronic warfare with Assam which filled Shah Jahān’s reign and one-half of Aurangzib’s. In 1682 Shāista Khan began paying 5 lakhs annually.

v2.c39.s2.6

But the growth of European trade by bringing huge quantities of silver into the country and passing the money on to the Bengali peasants and artisans, at last enabled the Mughal viceroy to send tribute in money to his master in Delhi. Thus the surplus revenue from Bengal came to be the mainstay of the Emperor’s family and army during the latter years of Aurangzib’s reign and all through the first forty years of the 18th century.

v2.c39.s2.7

Again, by providing Bengal with an universally accepted medium of exchange, the European traders enabled us to buy the products of other provinces and countries to an extent inconceivable in the earlier times, when barter was the chief method of our trade.

v2.c39.s2.8

1. The only record of such a cash payment is under 8 May 1635, when the Emperor received from Azam Kh. the ex-subahdar of Bengal, in addition to elephants &c., (worth seven lakhs of Rs.), five lakhs of rupees in cash—“which had been paid to the subahdar by the zamindars of that province, it being a standing rule that the zamindars should once (ek martaba) pay that amount as peshkash to whomsoever was appointed subahdar of the province and that the latter should send it to the Emperor along with his own tribute [really, nazar or present ] before his removal from that office.” [Abd. Hamid, i. B. 100.]

v2.c39.s2.9

Therefore the fiive lakhs of rupees in cash demanded by Jahangir for himself from Bengal was payable by each subahdar only once during his tenure and not every year, though the continuation of the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri (Sy. Ahmad’s ed. p. 420) wrongly says har sal (annually).

v2.c39.s2.10

True, in this way money prices and money wages rose sharply in Bengal from the middle of the 17th century, but that did not necessarily mean any increase in the real wages of labour, as every student of economics knows. The upper classes of our society certainly grew richer, and came to possess more articles of luxury than before; and the Government officials and revenue-collecting middlemen made money on a very much larger scale than in Akbar’s days.

v2.c39.s2.11

At the same time the European exporters gave a tremendous impetus to industrial production in Bengal. Here was a vast market for our saltpetre, cotton goods, silk yarn, and indigo; the buyers stood ready with unimaginable cash in hand for almost any quantity that our peasants and artisans could offer. These foreign exporters also organised our industrial production with a view to making it more efficient and economical. By their chain of agents at every mart, by their system of advances (dadan) to the workmen, by their setting up of workshops for Indian labourers in their factories² (where they could work under European supervision), and by their bringing out from England dyers and “twist-throwers” who taught the indigenous artisans better methods,—they raised Bengal’s industrial production to a higher level of quality, besides immensely increasing its quantity.

v2.c39.s2.12

² Bernier wrote (about 1666)—“The Dutch have sometimes seven or eight hundred natives employed in their silk factory at Kasimbazar, where in like manner the English and other merchants employ a proportionate number.........I have been sometimes amazed at the vast quantity of cotton goods which the Hollanders alone export.” (p. 439). Tavernier wrote, “Qasimbazar can furnish 22,000 bales of silk annually,” weighing 50 seers each [i. 2,] “The Dutch invest at least £200,000 yearly [in Bengal and the East Coast]”—acc. to Balesore Eng. factors’ letter of Dec. 1654.

v2.c39.s2.13

Bengal’s economic isolation was now broken. Closer contact was established with her western neighbour Bihar, from which all the saltpetre and some of the indigo for shipment abroad came down the Ganges to our ports of embarkation.

v2.c39.s2.14

The new trade began also, but very imperceptibly and slowly, to sap the foundations of our cultural isolation. The European commercial settlements—Calcutta (1690), Chandernagar (1690), Chinsura (about 1650) were destined at the end of the 17th century to be fortified and thus to provide havens of refuge to the oppressed and the affrighted rich in the Mughal dominions, and serve as seed-beds of a new and richer culture. But that was long in coming.

v2.c39.s2.15

The influence of the Protestant missionaries on Bengali society and literature in the early nineteenth century is well-known, and these teachers are gratefully remembered as the fathers of the Bengali renaissance. But the work of the Portuguese missionaries in Bengal in the 17th century the historian gets only a few tantalising glimpses. From Du Jarric's account of the visit of two Jesuit Fathers to the Court of Raja Pratāpāditya (1599—1600) we learn of the high estimation they had won by their purity of character, but we know nothing definite about their civilizing influence upon Bengali society. Except for enriching the stock of words in the Bengali language, the Portuguese in Bengal have left no cultural trace and exercised no influence on the literature of the province. The mass converts baptised in Southern India by Roberto di Nobili and Francis Xavier, degenerated in three generations into a caste which did no credit either to India or to Christianity. The Portuguese half-breeds and poor Christians of pure Indian race, shepherded by the Catholic priests in East Bengal, Chittagong and North Orissa (Balasore) belonged to the latter class and have failed to add anything to Bengal's heritage.

III. The Spread of Vaishnavism

v2.c39.s3.1

During Mughal rule the entire religious life of Bengal was transformed by Vaishnavism. The basic principle of this creed is *bhakti* or personal devotion to God (as Krishna Vāsudeva) with an intensity of emotion akin to conjugal love. The theory of it had been known long before and in other parts of India too. But Chaitanya (1486-1533) by his teaching made it a reality to the masses of Bengal and Orissa. He, however did not found a church, and his spiritual influence would have ended with the death of the last of his personal disciples, after which he would have been dimly remembered as one of the thousands of God-intoxicated *sadhus* of India who had through the ages inspired and elevated their respective generations and then passed into the mists of oblivion. Such would have been the history of Jesus Christ but for Peter and Paul who created a Church and a theology after the passing away of their Master.

v2.c39.s3.2

The permanence of Bengali Vaishnavism is due to the organisation of a sect—its ritual, its rules of life, its discipline, and its financial basis, by Nityānand and the creation of a special theology by the Seven Fathers of the Church (*Sapta-Goswami*). It is they who gave fixity and material form to the pure light which had emanated form the lips of their Master, though the word Church as understood in Christian Europe, is inapplicable to the countless loose groups of local subsects comprehended under the general name of Vaishnavs in Bengal, whose sole bond of union is a common spiritual heritage and differentiation from all other sects in the land. But despite this lack of disciplined organisation and of control by a hierarchy of priests acting under one common supreme pontiff, the new religion of Chaitanya has made Bengali Hindu society what it is today. It has all but extinguished (except among the lowest classes) the worship of the Divine Creative Energy in its female form (*Shakti*) which used to prevail all over Bengal before the advent of Chaitanya. Shakti-worship which is better known under the name of Tantrikism—has declined almost universally in West Bengal and in a less marked degree in East and North Bengal; the new movement has left many of the lower castes unconverted, especially those living in the fringe areas covered with hill and jungle. But Vaishnavism, in the vast spaces of Bengal which it dominates, has produced two wholesome fruits: we owe to it the present-day almost total abolition of the ritualistic sacrifice of animals and the drinking of strong wine (*karan-bari*) as a religious duty. The unabashed prevalence of drunkenness in our polished society is now a thing of the past; witness the orgy of blood and wine in the Court of Raja Pratāpāditya on the day that Basant Ray was killed (*circa* 1600). Where the drink habit is now found among the Bengali Hindus (above the lowest castes), it is admitted as a vice and is practised under the veil of secrecy. This is the homage that the vice pays to Vaishnavism.

v2.c39.s3.3

Even greater than this moral reformation of the upper and middle classes, has been the work of Vaishnavism in uplifting the lower ranks of society and the illiterate masses, by carrying religion to their doors through the device of Nām-sankirtan or chanting processions—which is spoken of as the unique contribution of Chaitanya to the spiritual life of the modern age. The new creed, like Methodism in England born two centuries later,—has opened a new life of knowledge and spirituality to the lower castes, and under its life-giving touch they have produced many Vaishnav saints and poets, scholars and leaders of thought. This was not possible in the old days of orthodox Brahmanic domination over society. Thus Vaishnavism has proved the saviour of the poor; it has proclaimed the dignity of every man as possessing within himself a particle of the divine soul (*Jiv-atma*). One of its greatest poets has sung :—

v2.c39.s3.4

Listen, brother man!
Man is the greatest thing in the world,
Nothing else is so great.

v2.c39.s3.5

The female sex, though to a lesser extent than the men,—have shared in the cultural uplift among the Vaishnavs and the door of knowledge has been opened to them by allowing them to read.

v2.c39.s3.6

The new life breathed into Bengal Hinduism by Chaitanya’s creed, burst forth in another direction. The Vaishnav Gosāins set themselves to converting the aboriginal tribes and thus brought a new light into their lives after ages of neglect, contumely and superstition.

v2.c39.s3.7

Sanskrit literature is the root of our general culture, no less than of theology, throughout Hindu India. A revived and widespread study of Sanskrit among all castes—(and not confined to the Brahman and physician castes) and the creation of a new Bengali literature with a marked popular appeal, are among our gains from this creed during the Mughal age. It has vivified and sweetened Bengal’s intellectual life, no less than the spiritual,—and greatly broadened the basis of our culture. The Vaishnav leaders (including Chaitanya himself) were passionate collectors of Sanskrit manuscripts from the other parts of India.

v2.c39.s3.8

The educative effect of this creed was helped and enhanced by the pilgrimages from Bengal to Jagannāth Puri and Mathurā-Vrindāvan, which became extensively popular with the establishment of Mughal peace, and which brought Bengal into close contact with the life and thought developed in the heart of this rich Empire, at the capital cities of Benares and Allahabad, Agra and Delhi (—the last place *en route* to Kurukshetra). Vrindāvan became a cultural colony of greater Bengal. In short, Vaishnavism is our abiding gift to Orissa and Assam.

v2.c39.s3.9

The spirit of the new Vaishnavism had the closest affinity to the dreamy and emotional Bengali character and intensified these natural tendencies of our race. Wherever it spread it generated a deeply felt tenderness for children and the weak, which gave a new tinge altogether to our domestic life and popular literature. But at the same time by its exaltation of pacifism and patient suffering,—“humility lower than that of the trodden grass, endurance greater than that of the felled tree,”—it sapped the martial instinct of the race and made the people too soft to conduct national defence. Vaishnavism has taught millions of Bengali Hindus to abstain from meat and even fish, and live on a purely vegetarian diet. The Vairāgis of Rajputana, like the Vaishnavas of Bengal who bore the same popular name of *Vairagis*, were householders and married men, but they formed a sect of fighting monks and hired themselves and their weapons out for the defence of kingdoms and temples. So also did the Nāgā Gosāins, famous in our 18th century history, who however were worshippers of Shiva and vowed to celibacy. Hence the spread of Vaishnavism in Assam naturally alarmed its kings: In the reign of Supātphā (Gadādhar Singh, 1681—1696), “the country was full of neo-Vaishnav preceptors and their followers, who claimed exemption from the universal liability to fight . . . This caused serious inconvenience . . . Gadādhar Singh feared the physical deterioration that might ensure if his people obeyed the injunction of the Gosāins and abstained from eating the flesh of cattle, swine and fowls, and from indulging in strong drinks . . . He therefore resolved to break the power of the Gosāins.” (Gait, *Hist. of Assam*, 168, also 184.) The same was true of Bengal Vaishnavism; it relaxed the fibres of the national character in the field of action, though it undoubtedly prompted holy living and noble thinking.

v2.c39.s3.10

Sanskrit learning, except in the form of dry logic and barren philosophical wrangling, had been greatly crippled in Bengal by the disappearance of Court patronage at the fall of Hindu independence at the end of the 12th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries it greatly revived under the influence of Vaishnavism; but this renaissance was the work of the people themselves. The direct action of the Government, however, fostered our education in another and quite unexpected direction. Todar Mal’s organisation of the State revenue service had forced the Hindu clerks and account-keepers to learn the Persian language, in which all records of this department had henceforth to be written. In Bengal Todar Mal’s elaborate land system (*zabti*) was never applied; but ambitious local Hindus and Muslims (of both of whom the mother tongue was Bengali) were now forced to learn the Persian language in order to get some share in the vastly extended secretarial work of the Mughal provincial administration. In Bengal, the State revenue was collected through middlemen or zamindars in the lump (and not as in Upper India from the cultivators directly); hence the accounts were kept in Bengali (the sole language of the peasantry and of the army of local revenue underlings), and therefore before the Mughal conquest very few Bengalis had any occasion to learn Persian. Under Mughal rule the higher posts in the revenue, accounts and secretariat departments were reserved for Muslims and Hindus from Upper India, such as Khatris from the Panjab and Agra and Lālās from the U. P. It was only when Murshid Quli Khan established a local dynasty in Bengal that these high posts passed into the hands of Bengalis, many of whom were Hindus well versed in Persian composition. Unlike the independent Sultans of Bengal, the constantly changing subahdārs of the Mughal times had no occasion to learn Bengali, and hence the agents (*vakils*) of the local zamindārs at their Courts had to be masters of Persian. Gradually (and notably in the 18th century) Persian culture infiltrated from the subahdār’s Court to that of the great Hindu Rajahs—such as those of Nadia and Burdwan. This is best illustrated by the varied learning of Bhārat Chandra Rãy Gunākar, the Court poet of Nadia.

v2.c39.s3.11

But the Mughal provincial administration was so much more developed than that of the foregoing Sultans and ramified into so many branches with the advance of civilisation, that an adequate number of hands could not be imported from Upper India, and a large number of Bengalis had to be employed in its middle ranks, and these had to master the Persian language as a qualification for office. Thus Persian literature and a special school of Sufi poetry spread in Bengali Hindu society no less than in Muslim.

v2.c39.s3.12

The local study of Persian helped to bring the higher minds among the conquerors and the conquered together in Sufi brotherhoods. In the 18th century there was a fairly prolific crop of Sufi verses written in Persian in Bengal; though worthless as poetry, they are of value as illustrating the fusion of cultures.

IV. Changes in Muslim Society

v2.c39.s4.1

Islam in Bengal, too, experienced a new birth in consequence of the Mughal conquest. Apart from the highly cultured subahdārs and generals—some of them of the royal blood and some intimately connected with the Emperor,—and learned chancellors and secretaries, who were deputed to Bengal in regular official succession and who brought into the local Muslim society the fresh breath of a higher culture from the imperial capital,—numbers of scholarly Muslims from Upper India made their homes in this rich province after it had become a permanent and well-administered part of the Empire of Delhi. The great increase of oceanic communication between Bengal and the western lands due to the vast expansion of our sea-borne trade in the middle 17th century, tempted cultured Shias of Persia—scholars, physicians, traders—to come and settle in Bengal. A voyage from Bandar Abbas or Basra to Hughly was much cheaper and easier than the land-journey across Upper India, either through the Afghan passes or via the port of Surat. This immigration of eminent Persians into Bengal was accelerated when in the late 17th century the Safavi royal house of Persia fell into rapid moral decay, and misgovernment and official tyranny made life in the homeland intolerable to many a worthy son of Irān. The climax of the movement was reached after Murshid Quli Khan had established in Bengal what was practically a Shia dynasty, ever ready to welcome and honour the wandering talent and piety of the centre of that creed.

v2.c39.s4.2

Wandering saints and preachers had been used to visiting Bengal long before the Mughal conquest. But this stream became ampler in volume after the annexation of the province to the Empire of Delhi. In the wake of the officials and troops who marched from the west to the east regularly once every three or four years, came religious teachers, Sufi philosophers and religious mendicants calling themselves darvishes and auliyas. The wealth of this province—

v2.c39.s4.3

“hell well-stocked with bread,” *duzakh pur az nan*,—also attracted from abroad passed scholars in Arabic, in search of some less crowded market for their talents. Muslim society in Bengal derived full advantage from this infusion of fresh light from the west. What the Vaishnav religion did for the Hindus of Bengal, was done for their Muslim neighbours by the Mughal conquest; this province was intimately joined to the general religious and cultural movements of the rest of India; its narrow isolation was broken.

V. The Enemies of Mughal Peace and Unification—The Bara Bhuiyas

v2.c39.s5.1

A false provincial patriotism has led modern Bengali writers to glorify the Bāra Bhuiyās of Bengal as the champions of national independence against foreign invaders. They were nothing of the sort. Firstly, they were nearly all of them upstarts, who had in their own persons—or one generation earlier—grabbed at some portion of the dissolving Karrāni kingdom of Bengal and set up as masterless Rajas in their different corners of the country, especially in the inaccessible regions of the sea-coast in Khulnā and Bāqarganj or beyond the mighty barrier of the Brahmaputra in Dacca and the still remoter jungles of North Mymensingh and Sylhet. These mushroom captains of plundering bands have been likened to the hereditary chieftains of the Sisodiā and Rāthor clans of Rajputānā who fought the Mughals in defence of the homes they had bought with the blood of their ancestors through centuries of struggle.

v2.c39.s5.2

The height of absurdity is reached when our dramatists call Pratāpāditya of Jessor as the counterpart of Mahārānā Pratāp Singh of Mewār. It is therefore necessary to debunk the Bengali “hero” by turning the dry light of history on him. His father was Srihari, a Kāyastha writer in the service of Dāud Karrāni, who rose to be that chief’s confidant after the murder of the worthy wazir Ludi Khan [*Ak.* iii. 172]. On the fall of Dāud, Srihari fled away with his own wealth and the Government treasure in his custody, and set up for himself in the extreme south of the Khulnā district—to which the sea was very much closer then than now. In this marshy land intersected by a maze of channels, he built a home for his family and a safe refuge for fugitives from the advancing tide of invasion. The ex-‘amla took the grandiloquent title of the Indian Charlemagne,—Maharaj Vikramāditya, and could give his son and heir a no lesser title than Pratāpāditya,—reminiscent of the official designations of the great Gupta Emperors of antiquity. Pratāpāditya never once defeated any Mughal army in pitched battle; his son and general Udayāditya took to flight at the first sign of a losing naval battle (at Sālka), and Pratāpāditya himself tamely submitted to the Mughal general without holding out till he was assured of safety to life and honour. If we call such a man "the Pratāp Singh of Bengal," then we must admit that the great hero of Haldighāt, in his transit to Bengal

v2.c39.s5.3

Had suffered a sea-change
Into something mean and strange.

v2.c39.s5.4

As for Kedār Rāi, his son Chānd Rāi allied himself with the Afghan freebooters who had broken out of Orissa and were ravaging South Bengal, but he was killed in making a treacherous attack on his dear allies. The father, in a wiser alliance with ‘Isā Khan, fought well and died in action. But where was the nation in all this?

v2.c39.s5.5

We must not confound the Bāra Bhuiyās with the Rājahs of Tipperah Kāmrup and Kuch Bihār, who were representatives of long established tribal chieftains. Pratāpāditya and Kedār Rāi, ‘Isā Khan and Ānwār Ghāzi were not tribal heads, nor scions of any old and decayed royal house. They were at best bloated zamindars, who whould have been glad to save their estates by paying annual revenues if the Karrāni dynasty had not been subverted and a strong Sultan like Sulaimān had filled the throne of Bengal. The eclipse of royal authority at the centre of the Government of Bengal was the opportunity of these usurpers of neighbours’ territories; they had their brief day in the twilight between the setting Afghan kingship and the rising Mughal empire in Bengal; and when the Mughal power came out, under Islām Khan, in full splendour, they vanished into the obscurity from which they had risen.

v2.c39.s5.6

If the Mughals who came in 1574 must be called foreign invaders, so were the Karrānis who came in 1560 and the Lohānis who were mere servants of the Karrānis.

VI. East Bengal's Isolation Broken

v2.c39.s6.1

We know really nothing definite about the state of civilisation and the condition of the people in East Bengal in the Hindu period. There were no doubt rich Courts with a developed culture and art of their own in the southern and more civilised portion of it, such as Dacca, Comilla and Chittagong. But no detailed or clear account of these capitals, not even complete genealogies of their kings, have come down to us. As for the common people, especially those living in the back villages, the huge fertile sandbanks (char-land), and the deltaic swamps of Bāqarganj and Khulnā, their unceasing strife with the capricious forces of nature and labour to wrest a bare livelihood from the soil, left them no leisure to develop any noticeable civilisation, art or commerce.

v2.c39.s6.2

But one thing seems certain. The force of Aryan colonisation (however meagre in volume) and Aryan culture (however diluted with Dravidian cult and culture) was all but exhausted when they reached the country east of the Brahmaputra and old Tistā rivers and north of an east-west line drawn through the middle of the Pabna district. In these regions the people up to the footholds of the hills were Mongoloid by race, spirit-worshippers by religion, and speakers of many local dialects which had no written literature and were foreign to the literary Bengali of Gaud, Varendri and Rārh. By the inexorable force of geography, the people of west Bengal, especially in the Gangetic valley were more largely and more deeply subject to the Aryan or Aryo-Dravidian influence that filtrated through Anga (Bhāgalpur) than the natives of East Bengal. In an earlier age Buddhism had dominated the country from Kāmrup to Chittagong, and evidence of it is still to be found in literary references and antiquarian remains. But at the time of the Muslim conquest (1230 A.D.) and for some centuries before it, the religion of the masses in East Bengal—and indeed of many of the gentry too—was Tāntrik Hinduism, which could be hardly distinguished from the spirit-worship and magic of later Buddhism, as still found in Tibet. In the Hindu period, Sanskrit scholars, Hindu physicians, and eminent Brāhman priests from the west freely crossed the river barrier and settled in East Bengal; and, in the opposite direction, pilgrims from East Bengal used to visit the Courts and famous shrines of west Bengal. But they represented only the thin upper crust of society, and were concentrated in the large towns and rich monasteries of Banga-desh. But on the fall of Nadia and Gaur to the Muslims even this little interchange of cultures ceased. For some time after, the mass of the people east of the Tistā and the Brahmaputra remained Hindus, but their religion was not akin to that of the Hindus of Gaur or Rārh. They had no learned Brāhman priesthood, no Sanskrit scriptures, no Vedic ritual. Their worship was almost everywhere conducted by illiterate animistic priests or more properly witch-doctors.

v2.c39.s6.3

Despised and neglected by the educated Aryan priesthood, with no resident Brāhman clergy to look after their religious instruction or conduct their rites properly, the Hindu masses of East Bengal remained as sheep without a spiritual shepherd, just like their Mongoloid Buddhistic brethren of Kāmrup and Arakan. Hence, when Shāh Jalāl (of Sylhet) and other missionaries of the Crescent arrived to preach Islam to them, no worthy priests of Hinduism came forth to accept the challenge, and the masses of East Bengal were easily converted to Islām *en masse* from spirit-worship (call it later Buddhism or Tantrik Hinduism as you please, these are only two names for the same thing). This is the underlying meaning of the legends still current about the early missionaries of Islam in Sylhet and Rājgir (south Bihar) and their success in defeating the local Hindu priests (called jogis) by superior miracle-working power.

v2.c39.s6.4

Even after the last Hindu royal house in Dacca had been extinguished, the Islamic power in East Bengal was often at war with the Islamic power of Lakhnāvati or Sātgāon.

v2.c39.s6.5

This isolation was finally and fully broken when Mughal rule was established in Bengal and that province was made a normal subah of the Empire. The trans-Brahmaputra country was henceforth closely connected westwards with the rest of Bengal and the whole of Upper India. The civilising of East Bengal (if I may be permitted the expression) began with Islām Khan’s conquests from Dacca as his base, and the process was completed when the later viceroys made that city the seat of their government. But we had to wait for Murshid Quli Khan before Mymensingh and Sylhet, Barisal and Jessore were made regular tribute-paying districts of the Bengal subah.

VII. List of Mughal Viceroys of Bengal

v2.c39.s7.1

Conquering generals :—

v2.c39.s7.2

1. Mun'im Khan, Kh-i-Kh., appointed 1574, died 23 Oct. 1575 (of illness.).

v2.c39.s7.3

2. Husain Quli Beg, Kh-i-Jahān, appointed and given congee, 15 Nov. 1575, died of illness 19 Dec. 1578. Ism'ail Quli (brothers of no. 2) officiated for four months after him.

v2.c39.s7.4

3. Muzaffar Kh. Turbati, arrives Apr. 1579, murdered by mutineers, 19 April 1580.

v2.c39.s7.5

Usurpation by mutinous officers, 1580-1582.

v2.c39.s7.6

4. Kh-i-'Āzam (Mirzā 'Aziz Kokah), given congee 6 Apr. 1582 "for subduing Bengal," enters Teliagarhi, 20 March 1583,—from Bengal sent off to N. Bihar, 18 May 1583. Wazir Kh. officiates during interval.

v2.c39.s7.7

5. Shāhbāz Kh. given congee 18 May 1583, reaches Bengal, end of Oct. 1583—absent in his Bihar fief, Oct-Dec. 1584,—transferred to Bihar, c. 3 Mar. 1585.

v2.c39.s7.8

6. Sādiq Kh. appointed c. 3 Mar. 1585. Shāhbāz Kh. returns to Bengal, 30 Jan. 1586, is removed Nov.

v2.c39.s7.9

7. Wazir Kh. app. subahdār 24 Nov. 1586—dies of illness. early Aug. 1587.

v2.c39.s7.10

8. Sa'id Kh. app. 26 Aug. 1587,—May 1594.

v2.c39.s7.11

9. Mān S. Kachhwā, app. 17 March 1594,—leaves Court at Lahore on 4 May 1594 for Bengal. End of 1599, Mān S. permitted to live at Ajmir,—Māha S. acts as deputy during his absence. End of 1600. Mān S. hastens back to Bengal. Feb. 1605, leaves Bengal for Agra. c. Sep. 1606, transf. from Bengal to Bihār.

v2.c39.s7.12

10. Qutbuddin Kh. Kokah (Shaikh Khuban). c. Sep. 1606.—c. May 1607, murdered.

v2.c39.s7.13

11. Jahāngir Quli Beg (orig. a slave) app. c. May 1607; died in Bengal April 1608.

v2.c39.s7.14

*Regular administrators :—*

v2.c39.s7.15

12. Islām Kh. (Shaikh 'Ala-ud-din Chishti) app. in May 1608, reaches Rajmahal early June 1608. Dies 21 Aug. 1613. Shaikh Hushang officiates.

v2.c39.s7.16

13. Qāsim Kh. Chishti (also entitled Muhtasham Kh. younger brother of No. 12) app. mid, Sep. 1613, took over charge 6 May 1614. Recalled April 1617.

v2.c39.s7.17

14. Ibrāhim Kh. Fath-i-Jang, (br. of Nur Jahān), joined at Rajmahal, early Nov. 1617. Killed in battle, c. 20 Apr. 1624. *Interregnum*: Shah Jahan's viceroy Dārāb Kh.

v2.c39.s7.18

15. Mahābat Kh. appointed early March 1625, left Bengal early Feb. 1626,—his son Khānazād Kh. officiates.

v2.c39.s7.19

16. Mukarram Kh., Chishti Shaikh, app. mid. 1626. drowned early Feb. 1627.

v2.c39.s7.20

17. Fidāi Kh. (Mirzā Hedāyet-ullah) app. late March 1627. dismissed, 4 Feb. 1628.

v2.c39.s7.21

18. Qāsim Kh. Juyini (son of Mir Murād) app. at Agra 4 Feb. given congee 6 Aug. 1628. Died 19 Sep. 1632. (Married Nur Jahān's sister.)

v2.c39.s7.22

19. 'Āzam Kh. Mir Md. Bāqar, (also Irādat Kh.) app. end of Oct. 1632, removed 12 Mar. 1635.

v2.c39.s7.23

20. Islām Kh. Mashhadi, given congee, 11 Apr. 1635; recalled (Jan. 39), reaches Court 23 Oct. 1639. Saif Kh. officiates.

v2.c39.s7.24

21. Prince Muhammad Shujā', given congee, 23 Feb. 1639, is granted subahdāri of Orissa also, May 1642. Reaches Court in Kabul, on recall, 19 May, 1647. I'tiqād Kh. officiates during Shujā's absence. Shujā' again given congee for Bengal, 16 Feb. 1648; in July gets Orissa in addition. Reaches Court in Kabul 17 April 1652. Leaves for Bengal, 21 July 1652. Is given Bihār by Aurangzib, July 1658—leaves Patna for Agra Oct. 1658;

v2.c39.s7.25

is defeated at Khajwa (5 Jan. 1659) and pursued into Bengal,—abandons Dacca and Bengal, 6 May 1660.

v2.c39.s7.26

22. Mu‘azzam Kh. (Mir Jumlā), Kh-i-Kh. app. June 1660—dies at Khizirpur, 31 Mar. 1663. Interval—Dilir Kh. in charge, pending arrival of Dāud Kh. who arrives at Khizirpur 27 Sep. 1663.

v2.c39.s7.27

23. Shāista Kh. (br. of Mumtāz Mahal), Āmir-ul-umāra. app. May 1663, reaches Rajmahal on 8 March 1664,—reaches Dacca Dec. 1664. Gets Orissa in addition March 1676. Recalled from Bengal, reaches Court May 1678.

v2.c39.s7.28

24. Fidāi Kh. (‘Āzam Kh. Kokah, Muzaffar Husain), app. early in 1678 (?), is dismissed but dies at Dacca 24 May 1678.

v2.c39.s7.29

25. Prince Muhammad ‘Āzam (Orissa also)—app. June 1678, reaches Dacca 29 July 1678; leaves Dacca on recall 12 Oct. 1679. Shāista Kh. reapp. 9 Sep. 1679, reaches Dacca Jan. 1680. Leaves Bengal on transfer to Agra, c. June 1688.

v2.c39.s7.30

26. Kh-i-Jahān (br. of No. 24), reaches Dacca in July 1688. dismissed c. May 1689.

v2.c39.s7.31

27. Ibrāhim Kh. joins at Dacca June 1689. Leaves Bengal, Jan. 1698.

v2.c39.s7.32

28. Prince ‘Azim-ud-din (later ‘Azim-ush-shān) app. c. June 1697, reaches Burdwan, Nov. 1697. In Jan. 1703 gets Bihār also, and under orders of Aurangzib removes from Dacca to Patna, which he was allowed to name ‘Azimābād. Held in absentia the subahdāri of Bengal, till his death (8 March 1712). His son Farrukh-Siyar held the post of deputy subahdār on his behalf, till July 1710, when Khān-i-‘Ālam (Khān-i-Jahān II, Sipahdār Kh.) was appointed deputy subahdār of Bengal, while Farrukh-Siyar held a similar agency for his father in Bihār. During Jahāndār Shāh’s short reign (1712) Kh-i-‘Ālam continued as substantive subahdār of Bengal, but was removed from that office on the accession of Farrukh-Siyar (Delhi, 9 Jan. 1713) and the viceroyalty of Bengal was conferred on paper on the new Emperor’s infant son Farkhunda Siyar, with Murshid Quli as his deputy. The infant died in a few months (2 May 1713) after which the Bengal subahdāri was conferred on Mir Jumla (‘Ubāidullah, Muzaffar Jang, Khān-i-Khānān, Mu’tamid-ul-mulk), in absentia, with Murshid Quli as his deputy. Mir Jumla continued to stay at Court, and was given congee for his charge on 4 Dec. 1714, but after reaching Patna on 18 June 1715, did not proceed further and finally sneaked back to Delhi (10 Jan. 1716.)
29. Murshid Quli Kh. (name Md. Hādi, titles Kārtalb Kh. 1697, Murshid Quli Kh. 1703, Ja'far Kh. 1714, 'Ala-ud-daulah Ja'far Kh. Nasiri, Mutaman-ul-mulk,—latterly known officially as Ja'far Kh.) formally appointed subahdār of Bengal before Aug. 1717, and continued as such till his death on 30 June 1727.
30. Shujā'-ud-din Md. Kh. 1727—1739 (d. 13 March 1739.)
31. Sarfarāz Kh. 1739—1740 (d. 9 Apr. 1740.)
32. Aliwardi Kh. Mahābat Jang, 1740—1756 (d. 9 Apr. 1756)
33. Sirāj-ud-daulah, 1756—1757, (d. 4 July 1757).

VIII. List of Mughal Governors of Orissa

v2.c39.s8.1

The province was placed in charge of the Bengal subahdār for some years after its first conquest. The line of its separate subahdārs begins in Jahāngīr's reign.

v2.c39.s8.2

1. Hāshim Kh., 26 Sep. 1607—24 May 1611.
2. Rajah Kalyān (son of Rajah Todar Mal) 1611—1617.
3. Mukarram Khan 1617—
4. Hasan Ali Kh. Turkmān, 1620—
5. Mīrzā Āhmad Beg Kh. (son of Nur Jahān's brother), 1621—1624. *Interregnum* : Shah Jahan's rebellion, 1624—1628.
6. Bāqar Kh. Najam-i-Sāni, 1628—1632.
7. Mu'taqad Kh. (Mīrzā Maki), 1632—1641.
8. Shāh Nawāz Kh. 1641—1642.
9. Prince Muhammad Shujā', app. 7 Mar. 1642, governs by his deputies—
(a) Md. Zamān Tehrāni, 1642—45. Mu'taqad Kh., (a second time) 21 Nov. 1645—26 July 1648. Prince Muhammad Shujā' given Orissa again, July 1648, governs by his deputies—
(b) Jān Beg Haravi, 1648—51.
(c) Muhammad Hayāt, 19 Nov. 1651—
(d) Mir Samsām-ud-daulah Ānju app. 3 Oct. 1654; dies Mar. 1655.¹ (e) Rashid Kh. app. 14 Apr. 1655?
(f) Tarbiyat Kh. (Shafi'-ullah Barlās)? 1655—1657.
10. Ihtishām Kh. (Shaikh Farid Chishti, also entitled Ikhlas Kh.) Nov. 1659—Sep. 1660:
11. Khan-i-Daurān (Sayid Mahmud, son of Kh. Daurān Nasrat Jang Naqshbandi), Sep. 1660—Sep. 1667; died in Orissa, news of his death reached Emperor on 7th Dec. 1667.
12. Alawardi Khan (J'afar Saljuq, eldest son of Alawardi Kh. I. who was slain by Shuja') app. at Court 7th Sep. 1667.
13. Tarbiyat Khan Barlas, 1667—Oct. 1669.
14. Safi Khan, app. Oct. 1669, (M.A. 90).
15. Sa'dullah Kh.?
16. Rashid Khan?—Mar. 1676.
17. Shāista Khan, Amir-ul-umara, March 1676—Dec. 1677.
18. Prince Md. 'Āzam, through his deputy Nurullah, July 1678—Oct. 1679. Shāista Khan again, Jan. 1680—Jan. 1688, governs through deputies: Buzurg Ummed Kh. (his eldest son), Irādat Kh. (s. of Shāista), app. Oct. 1682, but cancelled. Abu Nasar (s. of Shāista) app. 14 Jan. 1683, (after some time made substantive subahdār).
19. ? 1689—1698, probably Ibrāhim Kh. (Subahdār of Bengal).
20. Ghaznafar Kh. June 1698—Aug. 1700, dies in Orissa.
21. 'Askar Kh. Sep. 1700—Dec. 1702, dies in the province.
22. Murshid Quli Kh. 1703—1710.
23. Khan-i-'Ālam (also Khan-i-Jahān II.) Jan. 1711—6th May 1714? Murshid Quli Khan again, May 1714—1727. governs through his deputy Shujā'-ud-din Md. Kh. c. 1717—1727.
24. Shujā'-ud-din Md. Kh. 1727—1739, governs through his deputies Md. Taqi (who died 1734) and Murshid Quli Kh. II. (Mirzā Lutfullah, Rustam-i-Jang) 1734—1741.

v2.c39.s8.3

¹ Of Mir Samsam-ud-daulah we learn from the Muraq'at-i-Hasan (p. 228 of my ms.) that he died on the way at Jajpur before reaching Cuttack (to assume his office). Of Rashid Kh. (son of Iftikhar Kh. and grandson of Asalat Kh.) we learn only of the appointment but there is no reference at all to him in the Muraq'at,

v2.c39.s8.4

nor his actual joining and removal in Waris; his was evidently a paper appointment which was soon afterwards cancelled. As for Tarbiyat Kh. we learn from the Masir-ul-umara, i. 494. and from no other source, not even Waris, that in Shah Jahan's 29th year (29 Mar 1655—16 March 1656) he was app. deputy subahdar of Orissa as agent of Prince Shuja'. He was serving in these eastern provinces when Mir Jumla was appd. imperial wazir (July 1656); but on 20 Dec. 1657 T. was appointed subahdar of Oudh, being then present at the imperial Court at Agra, (Kambu, Bib. Ind. iii. 271)—his Orissa tenure having ended before that date.

v2.c39.s8.5

Alawardi Kh. No. 12 as governor is mentioned in the Akhbarat only, which are silent about Tarbiyat Kh.! The Akhbarat incidentally mention a Saf Shikan Kh. as a predecessor of Shaista Kh. in the government of Orissa.

v2.c39.s8.6

25. Sarfaraz Kh. 1739—1740. Murshid Quli II. continues as his deputy.
26. Aliwardi Kh. (Mahābat Jang) 1740—1745, governs through his deputies Sayyid Ahmad (Saulat Jang) 1741, Shaikh Ma'sum 1742, and Raja Durlabh Rām 1745. Double Government till 1751, when ceded to the Marathas by treaty.

v2.c39.s8.7

STATE OF BENGAL UNDER JAHĀNGIR.

I. Broad Features of Bengal History Under Jahāngir

v2.c39.s9.1

The reign of Jahāngir forms a definite landmark in the history of Bengal. Under Akbar, Mughal rule in Bengal was more like an armed occupation than a settled administration. The governors of Akbar's time, notably Rājā Mān Singh, contended themselves with securing the nominal submission of the old independent Afghan and Hindu zamindars, the ‘Bāra Bhuiyās’ being the most important of them, and did not make any serious attempt to subjugate them and bring them under the direct control of the Government. It was early in the reign of Jahāngir that organised and effective steps were taken to crush all the independent zamindars and impose a uniform administrative system over the entire territory. For accomplishing this task, a new policy was adopted, which proved eminently successful. While the governors of Akbar's time adopted a simple, straightforward, and uniform policy in regard to the zamindars and allowed them to enjoy practical independence so long as they professed loyalty and paid tributes to the Emperor, the governors of Jahāngir's reign especially, Islām Khan, followed a more diplomatic and tortuous line of action. The zamindars, big and small, seem to have been played off one against the others, with promises of imperial favour and reward, sometimes in the shape of territories, obviously with a view to preventing a unified and concerted resistance, until all of them, one after another, were deprived of their independence and reduced to vassalage.

v2.c39.s9.2

The reign of Jahāngir also witnessed the greatest extension of the political influence and authority and the territorial limits of the Mughal empire on the north-eastern frontier. Kuch Bihar was subjugated (in 1609), and Kāmrup conquered and made a part and parcel of the Bengal subah (in 1612), so that the frontier of Mughal India reached as far as the bank of the river Bar Nadi.

II. Bāra Bhuiyās and Other Local Potentates

v2.c39.s10.1

A review of the political geography, and, particularly, of the distribution of political power in Bengal at the beginning of Jahāngir's reign is necessary if we are to understand the gradual process of conquest and consolidation.

v2.c39.s10.2

Political Geography: The subah of Bengal proper at the beginning of Jahāngīr’s reign formally comprised a larger tract of territory than is included in the present-day British province of Bengal. On the north and the west it included a few mahals now belonging to the Bhāgalpur and Purneā Districts of Bihar, while towards the east it included Sylhet, now forming part of the Assam province. Orissā, though included in the rent-roll of the Bengal subah in the *Ain-i-Akbari*, remained, to all intents and purposes, a separate administrative unit with its own governor. The frontiers of Bengal at this time seem to have run from the famous pass of Teliāgarhi in the north-west to Jogdiā, occupying the south-eastern portion of the Noakhali District in the south-east; (Chittagong remained really outside the control of the Mughal Emperors till its conquest by Shāista Khan in 1666); and from Patgong (west of Kuch Bihar) in the extreme north, and Baritalā opposite Hātsilāh, in the Kari Bāri hills in the north-east, to Hijli (south-eastern portion of Midnapore) on the south-west.

v2.c39.s10.3

The effective control of the Mughal Emperor was, however confined to very narrow limits, and did not stretch far beyond the capital city and the few fortified posts set up by the imperial faujdars throughout the country. Rāj-mahal (which was established by Raja Mān Singh in 1595) continued to be the capital at the beginning of Jahāngīr’s reign. As regards the fortified thānahs of the Bengal subah of this period, the *Akbarnamah* and the *Baharistan* mention the more important amongst them. Ghorāghāt, on the right bank of the Karatoyā, at present included in the Rangpur District, was a fortified post of great strategic value, standing on the south-western border of the Kuch Bihar State. As the rebellious Afghans frequently sought asylum in Kuch Bihar through Ghorāghāt, this region was parcelled out amongst faithful Afghan vassals, and attempts were also made to establish friendly relations with the kings of Kuch Bihar. At Sherpur¹, in Mymensingh, was another fort made by Raja Mān Singh, and named, after Prince Salim, as Salimnagar, Alapsing, a well known pargana in Mymensingh, facing Bokāinagar, the stronghold of Khwaja 'Usman, was another important thānah. A number of thānahs were made around the post of Dacca: Bhawāl, about 16 miles north-east of Dacca, Tok, about 22 miles north of Bhawāl, opposite Egarasindur, and Trimohāni, marking the confluence of the Ganges (i. e. the Padma), Lakhyā and the Brahmaputra (Megnā) near Narayanganj, were the most important. Outside these *thānahs* lay the domain of numerous zamindars holding practically independent sway.

v2.c39.s10.4

¹ This was Sherpur Atāi, not to be confounded with Sherpur Murchā in the Bogrā district.

v2.c39.s10.5

From the *Baharistan*, we get a fair idea of the prominent zamindars who flourished in Bengal at the beginning of Jahāngīr’s reign. On the west, three noted zamindars are mentioned whose territories lay adjacent to one another—Bīr Hamīr, holding sway, in Bīrbhūm and Bānkurā, Shams Khān in Pachet on the south-west, and Salīm Khān in Hijli, to the south-east of Pachet. All of them seem to have tendered only nominal submission to Islām Khān. For they did neither attend the viceregal court nor render personal service like the other vassals. Again, all of them appear to have shaken off their vassalage during the interregnum following Islām Khān’s death, and a punitive expedition sent by Qāsim Khān against them, did not yield any satisfactory result. After Salīm Khān’s death, his nephew Bahādur Khān proved to be more refractory than the rest. He openly rebelled in the time of Ibrāhīm Khān Fath-jang, and was disarmed after a good deal of fighting. A few small zamindars are also mentioned, ruling in territories now included mostly in the Midnapore district: Bīrbhān or Chandrabhān, zamindār of Chandrakonā, his minor relative Dalpat, zamindār of Bardā and Jhakra (Jharagrām ?), of whom the former seems to have followed the neighbouring zamindārs in their frequent defiance of the imperial authority.

v2.c39.s10.6

East of the territories of Bīr Hamīr, Shams Khān and Salīm Khān, lay the domain of three other zamindārs stretching along the Ganges, now forming part of the Rajshahi and Pabna Districts: Pitambar, the progenitor of the Putia Raj-family, and his nephew Ananta, ruling in Chilājuwār, forming part of the pargana of Bhāturiābāzu, and Ilah Bakhsh son of Barkhūrdār, ruler of Alāipur, south-east of Putia, all of whom submitted to the Mughals after some resistance.

v2.c39.s10.7

Further to the east, three other zamindārs are mentioned, ruling between them the greater part of the Pabna District: Mīrzā Mūmin, son of Ma‘sūm Khān Kābuli, who was a powerful ally of ‘Isā Khān and had fought hard against the officers of Akbar till his death in May, 1599, with Chātmohar as his seat of power, Dariya Khān, son of Khān ‘Ālam Bahbūdī, and Madhu Ray, zamindār of Khalsi. All of them were close followers of Mūsā Khān and fought against Islām Khān under his inspiration and guidance. Closely associated with them in their hostility to the Mughals was Binod Ray, zamindār of Chāndpratāp, a well-known pargana in the Mānikganj subdivision of the Dacca District. Another noted zamindār ruling in Shāhzādapur in the north-east of the Pabna District was Raja Ray, who was one of the earliest to submit to Islām Khān.

v2.c39.s10.8

Fathabad, modern Faridpur, was the seat of Majlis Qutb, who was in close alliance with Mūsā Khān and fought hard to preserve his independence. A very prominent zamindār of this region was Raja Satrajit, son of Raja Mukunda. He was the ruler of Bhushnā, and his territories covered portions of modern Jessore and Faridpur. Satrajit also was one of the earliest to accept the imperial vassalage, and his eventful and chequered career forms an important part of the history of Bengal under Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān for more than a quarter of a century (1609—1636). He played a prominent part in the consolidation of the Mughal authority in Bengal, and played a no less conspicuous part in the Mughal conquest of Kamrup and in the administration of the conquered territory. He also participated in the Mughal expedition against Assam.

First 93 of 142 passages. Read on

Cites (5)