"Pir Gorachand Raji, and Budhan, and Birth of Chaitanya Story (Part
IV)"
Generally speaking high caste Hindus were not interested in Chaitanya
story till the early part of the nineteenth century. Before that
several Ghoshes became rich due to land-holding (zamindary) or money-
lending (mahajani) business.
As we shall explain in Part III of our "Kutil History is Peeling Off,"
earlier public
perception of Chatus was not high in Bengal. But in the new political
environment im****tance of Chatu pundits increased.
Intelligent Dattas, Datta could be a Bactrian Greek legacy, now losing
the status in comparison with the Chatu pundits started brainstorming
to reform Hinduism.
Suspicion for a Bactrian Greek legacy was raised because it is
unlikely that datta meaning given could become a surname, and it is
more likely to be Greek -dotus as the identification of Dattamitra
with Demetrius indicates.
The Bactrian Greek legacy came to Bengal before or during the Sen
period like the Yavanas, Kambojas and Bagdis. It was familiar with
higher religions such as Buddhism and Christ-Krishna devotional cults.
Some members played im****tant role in these religions in much ancient
time.
As we shall see later an official by the name Madanmohan Datta
connected to Jessore where Bagdi population was significant possibly
played an obscure but apparently im****tant role in the early phase of
the Chaitanya story.
Some Baishnabs connected to Chaitanya cults and who became rich by
"collecting fees" from their cult members got ample op****tunity to
invest their wealth in money-lending and buying zamindaris in the
aftermath of 1757.
But unlike some land-holders ruining their wealth in frivolous
activities they invested in modern education and newspaper business.
This inspiration must have come from Christian missionaries.
At the turn of the nineteenth century Chaitanya followers almost
superseded all other sects of Bengali Hinduism.
In 1868 Sisirkumar Ghosh (1840-1911) started the Amrit Bazar Patrika
(Feb 20). Initially it was a weekly and was published from Jessore.
Sisir Ghosh belonged to a jotdar family in Jessore. The paper started
to be published from Calcutta in 1871. It became an English weekly in
1878 and an English daily in 1891.
In addition to propaganda through newspapers and literary activities
increasing appeal of easy Bengali and popular Bengali lyrics among the
new generation of educated Bengali Hindus gave Chaitanya followers an
advantage over other Hindu sects and schools attached to dead
Sanskrit.
Many leading Hindus, such as Rammohan and Tagore, did not show much
interest in neither Chaitanya nor Krishna because during their boyhood
these stories were not that developed. In fact Tagore knew what was
going on. He himself forged "Vanu****ngher Padabali."
He admitted this forgery. We believe Tagore did so only to embarrass
Ni****kanta Chatterjee who gave up his fascination with Brahmoism,
embarrassed his padre professors by comparing Buddhism with
Christianity in public lectures and by showing the later deficient and
eventually embraced Islam publicly.
Ramkrishna and Vivekananda Datta also did not show much influence of
Chaitanya. But parallel to their efforts on Hinduism, Aurobindo Ghosh
and Kedarnath Datta (1838-1914) were responsible for creating the
general Hindu interest in Chaitanya.
Kedarnath Datta, mentioned in Part I, was a deputy magistrate. He is
now known as Bhaktibinod Thakur. He was behind the modern movement of
Chaitanya. He took over the work left by Ganga Govind Singh and his
grandson Lala Babu.
During the first quarter of the nineteenth century when the Bengali
Hindu community started to feel the wealth and influence of Chaitainya-
Baishnab money-lenders and land-holders, Ka****nath Tarkapanchanan,
also a Baishnab, tried to prove that Chaitanya was simply another name
of Krishna.
British colonial influence spread into Jaipur, Rajasthan, and Mathura
following the defeat of the Marathas who were sup****ting the Mughals.
Lala Babu himself went to Mathura and procured zamindaris in the
neighborhood.
The effort to give Chaitanya story a solid historical footing started
vigorously in the twentieth century. It culminated in the work of
Professor Bimanbehari Majumdar.
At the final stage of the development of the Chaitanya story
Professors Bimanbehari Majumdar and Sukhomay Mukhopadhdhay brought it
to an apparent level of certitude that was lacking in the works of
earlier historians.
It appears from the style of both Rakhaldas Banarjee and Momtazur
Rahman Tarafdar that both were critical, possibly even suspicious, of
various elements of the Chaitanya story.
Just as Muslim authors did not know Chaitanya, Budhan was not
im****tant in Bengali Hindu literature. In fact given the fuss Budhan
created among Hindustani Muslim historians one wonders why Bengali
Hindus were not that interested in him.
By the time Brahmans became interested in anything Bengali, Budhan
story was forgotten. Thus there arose a time lag between the murder of
Budhan in 1499 and the death of Chaitanya in 1534.
Some more respectable biographies of Chaitanya did not mention
Chaitanya's death. This has been explained away by saying that
devotees ****ed away from mentioning a sad event.
It is possible that they could not reconcile the story of the death
with the god status of Chaitanya without learning Christian
somersaults. However it is also possible that Budhan's memory existed
and was fresh along Katwa-Orissa axis during that time, and so they
could not talk about the death lest people identify Budhan as
Chaitanya.
Otherwise we believe that they would have mentioned his death
connecting it with some astronomical event.
In fact one book did exactly so. However by the time this death story
of Chaitanya came to light Budhan was forgotten except in some
Hindustani historical descriptions of Sikandar Lodi's rule, and
possibly locally in some obscure villages in Orissa and West Bengal.
M. A. Jabbar mentioned one Birbhadra (page 41) of Najarnagar.
Birbhadra took away the Madanmohan Thakur from Dol Pinrri of Svet-
Ganga to Kharadaha.
It is said that Birbhadra Goswami, son of Nityananda, visited Dhaka to
spread Chaitanya cult. In Ekrampur mahalla of Dhaka a Birbhadrashram
was founded.
Of course founding of a missionary lodge in a Muslim quarter of Dhaka
is only possible in the later part of the eighteenth century, and that
creates anachronism with the fact that Nityananda was a play-mate of
Chaitanya.
There is a clear indication when Baishnabs appeared in Dhaka. "Dhakar
Bibaran" by Kedarnath Majumdar (p584 in Kamal Chowdhuri ed. "Dhakar
Itihas") says that majority of Baishnabs of the old district of Dhaka
were disciples of Rajnagar Akhra (lodge) which existed in the middle
of the 19th century.
This Rajnagar was built by Rajballabh at a place earlier called
Bildaaoniya, and is now under water disappearing in c.1869 (BY1276).
Still there is a town called Rajnagar but I do not know its relation
with the older one under water if there was any such relation.
A comparison of Rajballabh and Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia can be
found in our article on Isa Khan.
The other two centers of Chaitanya Baishnabs in East Bengal were Gupta
Brindaban in the Madhupur Forest, Tangail, and Bithalanga, Sylhet.
Discussing the mystery of the origin of Gupta Brindaban of Madhupur,
Khandakar Abdur Rahim in his "Tangailer Itihas," suspected its late
origin.
In 1963 Ahmad Sharif called Birbhadra, son of Nityananda,
("Nityanandaputra Birbhadra baa Birchandra") a disciple of Madhabbibi
and Madhabbibi a female disciple of Faqir Aulchand [Ahmad Sharif,
"Baaul Tattba," Bangla Academy Patrika, 1370BS 7th Year no. 4th.
Reprinted in Sudhir Chakrabarti ed. "Banglar Baul-Faqir," 1999].
Faqir Aulchand died in the fateful period of 1769-70. We believe that
he was killed.
Nityananda was a leelaa-sahaayak (play-mate) of Chaitanya. Kedarnath
Datta, the arch-founder of modern Chaitanya movements, associated with
a group of Chaitanya Baishnabs who followed Nityananda's memory.
It also appears that Birbhadra's taking away of the Madanmohan Thakur
from Dol Pinrri to Kharadaha is possible only after 1757 when Raja
Krishnachandra of Nadia and Ganga Govind Singh who turned a Bairagi
were influencial.
Muhammad Abu Talib in the discussion of "Premratna" (1853) of
Jamaluddin ("Bangla Sahitter Ekti Harano Dhara," 1985, Islamic
Foundation Bangladesh) mentions the re****t that a Muslim woman by the
name Madhab Bibi initiated Birchandra.
In Jamaluddin's obscene poetic work, obscenity could be the product of
the extremely brutal torture Muslims of this part suffered from the
time of colonial revenue farmer Devi Singh, facts and fictions are
surrealistically mixed-up, people change *** frequently, and a Hindu
son marries his mother by not recognizing her.
Thus many people would shy away from Jamaluddin's "Premratna." Still
one may suspect that Jamaluddin was exposed to some degenerate
esoteric cults of Bairagis, or ***ual activities of a group of trans-
gender spiritualists.
Jamaluddin says that Birchandra was converted to Islam by a Sayyid's
daughter when he visited Medina. Jamaluddin called Chaitanya Muslim
but it is not clear whether he believed Chaitanya to be of historical
plane.
According to Abu Talib villagers believed that "Premratna" was banned
several times by the colonial government. He suspects that it was
probably banned after 1912.
There are other indications that much of the materials in the
Chaitanya story came from the period after 1757.
The tomb and matth of Mahesh Pandit, one of the twelve Gopals of
Chaitanya, is at Palpara, Chakdaha (pages 48, 53, "Itihaser Pathe:
Palpara O Chakdaha," by Nitai Ghosh, 2002).
Re****tedly Mahesh Pandit was the younger brother of Jagadish Pandit of
Jashara. This Jagadish Pandit is considered at the same time a
companion ("paarshad") of Chaitanya and a contem****ary of Raja
Krishnachandra who granted him land to construct a temple.
In this respect the story of the shepherd named Madan connected to the
neighborhood of the village now called Birahi is interesting for two
aspects. This story is described in the book by Nitai Ghosh.
One aspect is the general connection of the Madangopal Krishna with
Jesus story. Here the Bengali shepherd boy Madan disappeared inside a
jackfruit tree being chased by the villagers. In the Sabian-Nazarene
story Hazrat Zakariya, father of John the Baptist, hid inside a tree
and was then felled by pursuing Bani Israilis.
In the Bengali story the servants of Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia cut
open the tree in search of Madan only to discover an idol of Krishna.
According to this story Raja Krishnachandra then founded a temple of
Modangopal at Birahi.
Thus we see again that folklore remembered Raja Krishnachandra of
Nadia, a collaborator of Clive, to be the person responsible for the
changes in the religious background of this region.
One should not forget the re****t that his deputy burned down Balanda
town (see Part II of this article) and Gazir Hat in 1775. Nitai Ghosh
cited a hearsay that Madanpur was named in 1770 (page 61).
If we go a little south in the village of Anowarpur and hear the
stories of Ekdil Shah, one of the twenty-two Auliyas mentioned in Part
II of this article and re****tedly a friend of Pir Gorachand, we would
be surprised by his similarity with the shepherd boy Madan.
The second aspect is the question how strong was the old Sabiun-
Nazarene influence in this region when the European Christian
missionaries arrived. The stronger it was more zealous would be the
missionaries to eradicate it so that they can plant their version of
the Jesus story.
Thus countering the partially-Muslim disciples of the Muslim Faqirs
was not the only concern Christian missionaries had when they
patronized people like the rajas of Nadia and Bairagis like Ganga
Govind Singh.
Like the stories of Ekdil Shah many practices of the Faqirs were also
taken over.
We talked about the efforts of Sattari Sufis to reach Hindus in the
previous part of this article. It is well-known that Sattaris studied
Indian yogic practices. In general they studied Hindu religious and
cultural vocabularies more deeply than other Sufi orders.
Abdullah Sattari's (d.1485) habit of leading procession with drums and
display has been noted by Indian Muslims. It is most likely that such
a practice of attracting attention and imagination of people by
Sheikhs was not new in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh many Sufis and Qalandars were in the army. Several
im****tant generals were saintly Gazis. One famous saint is called Mahi
Saowar. Although figuratively a leader can be called a Mahi Saowar, a
Mahi Saowar usually rode the horse carrying the mahi.
A mahi is the direction indicating arrowhead used to lead the army
procession or any big procession. Persians used a mahi in the form of
a fish and hence the name. Muslims possibly used sacred calligraphy
written in the shape of a fish.
Sometimes they used a panja. A panja is a similitude of palm with five
fingers reminding the number five. Five was im****tant for the five
members of the Holy Family, or for the Prophet (SM) with the four
ra****dun Caliphs.
At present Muslims of Bangladesh totally forgot the mahi. Hence we
find the stories that Mahi Saowar came to Bangladesh on the back of a
fish or in a fish-shaped boat.
The most im****tant disciple of Abdullah Sattari was Sheikh Muhammad
Ala Bangali (d.1495), the person responsible for the spread of the
Sattari tariqa in Bengal and Bihar.
Sattaris were mostly interested in Hindustan. Also earlier influences
of Firdusiya and Madariya Faqirs in Bangladesh were strong and
popular. Thus Sattaris might not get much chance to affect Central
Bangladesh as much as they affected West Bengal and Bihar.
Coming back to the veiled references of the period after 1757 in the
Chaitanya story we note that a similar anachronistic description
occurs in the story of Kastakata Jagannath Das of Dhaka. He was
considered to be a disciple of Chaitanya, and at the same time he got
a land-management grant at Kathadia from the Nobab Sarkar.
Had he been a disciple of Chaitanya, it is more likely that we would
hear about Man Singh or "Ekabbar Badshah" instead of the Nobab Sarkar
of Mur****dabad.
In Jayananda's Caitanya-Mangala (ed. By Bimanbihari Majumdar and
Sukhamay Mukhopadhyay, The Asiatic Society, 1971) King of Gaur
promised to Kali that he would re-establish Nadia:
<FONT size=3D4>
নবদ্বীপ
বসাইব আজি
প্রাণ
রাখﺍ ﺍ  </br>
</br>... Then the king orders ...</br>
পূর্ব্বে
জেমত ছিল
নবদ্বীপ
রাজধানীﺍ 
</br>
তার শতেক
গুণ অধিক
যেন
শুনিﺍ ﺍ 
</br>
নবদ্বীপ
সীমাএ যবন
যদি দেখﺍ 
</br>
আপন ইত্সাএ
মার প্রাণ
পাছে
রাখﺍ ﺍ 
"Purbe jemat chhilo Nabadvip raajdhaanee,
Taar shatek gun adhik jena shuni.
Nabadvip seemaaye jaban jadi dekha,
Apan itsaaye maara pran paachhe raakha."
</br>...Poet comments ... </br>
রাজার
আজ্ঞাএ
নবদ্বীপ
পুন
সৃষ্টিﺍ 
</br>শরতকালে
রাত্রিশেষে
হইল
পুষ্পবৃষ্টù=
5;ﺍ ﺍ 
</FONT>
"Rajar aaggaaye Nabadvip puna srishti,
Saratkaale raatrisheshe hoilo pushpabristi."
We suspect that this autumnal event occurred in 1757 sometime between
June 23 (the battle of Palasi) and October.
Possibly it was the out of time (akaalbodhan) festival for the spring
goddess organized by Raja Krishnachanrda of Nadia in the autumn
(saratkaal) in juxtaposition with the victory celebration of the
battle of Palasi with Clive as the chief guest.
Spring goddess is called Baasantee. She was mistakenly identified with
Durga (fort goddess). This mistake could happen in Bangladesh quite
late. It is also possible that some Majhi cult was misunderstood as
the cult of the spring goddess.
Bengalis had only three kaals (seasons): Rainy Season, Foggy Season
and the Sunny Season. Saratkaal fell partly in bari<KH>aa or
barshaakaal and partly in ********r (or him or sheetkaal, winter).
Similarly there was no kaal called basanta (spring) between ********r
and dhoop (or nidaagh or garamkaal, summer).
Ritu was not a Bengali word, possibly even the first letter in its
spelling was absent in Bengali, nearest Bengali word being itu.
It is not clearly stated when the autumn (saradiya) festival for Durga
started in Bangladesh. In an article published in www.dailyinqilab.com
(13 October, 2005) Sirajul Hossain Khan called the event organized in
1757 to be the first autumnal Durgapuja in Bangladesh.
In the same issue an article by Manimohan Biswas Mani informs that
Kangsha Narayan, a zamindar of Rajshahi, started the present form of
the saradiya festival.
In Hindustan navaratri in Kumvar (Aswin) was an ancient festival.
Although Hindus in the Mughal service brought elements of Hinduism in
Bengal before 1757, it is not clear how they affected the festivities
of non-Muslim population of Bengal lumped later as Hindu.
In this case one wonders how Kangsha Narayan, a zamindar of a small
region like Tahirpur in North Bengal, can influence all Hindus of
Bengal. He was a land-holder of the pre-Mur****d Quli Khan period. We
see how later post-colonial concepts of the status of a zamindar and
Bengali Hindus as a community have been imposed retrospectively.
Stories of Hindu zamindars in Bengal before 1757 are highly dubious
like the genealogical literature of Bengali Hindus that started to
spring up soon after 1757.
Besides the name Kangsha Narayan itself is problematic as he got
prominence by being identified with Kans Shah (Raja Ganesh) at some
point, and the same argument that is applied regarding the name of
Kans Shah namely a Kangsha is to a Hindu as a Herod is to a Christian
applies as regards his name too.
In fact in Kangsha Narayan's case it applies more fittingly because
the variant Kangsha for Kans Shah or Kansi Shah is based on mere
assumption.
"At that time when Shreekrishna Chaitanya appeared raja Kangshanarayan
was influential" according to Prembilas (Premavilaasa) of Nityananda.
Lies after lies finally produce the Chaitanya story we know now.
About Kangsha Narayan see also "Tahirpur Zamindar Bangsha, Barender
Raja o Zamindar" by Md. Mahbubur Rahman. In this article the author
commented on the mistaken idea that Kanghsa Narayan patronized
Krittibas in writing his Ramayana. To quote the author, "Ataeb ei
matabaadtio bhraanta."
However he did not doubted the re****ted connection of Kangsha Narayan
with the introduction of the Durgapuja in Bengal.
The principle that an old re****t should be shun only when proved wrong
should not be followed when there is a general suspicion, in fact an
almost sure possibility, for large-scale forgeries and history
creations such as that happened in Bangladesh after 1757.
In such a situation a better principle to follow is "any doubt leave
out." Otherwise garbage hinders the effort of writing a continuous
history, a history that interpolates smoothly between the realities of
the present and better known past.
পূর্ব্বে
জেমত ছিল
নবদ্বীপ
রাজধানীﺍ 
</br>
তার শতেক
গুণ অধিক
যেন
শুনিﺍ ﺍ 
The sentiment matches very well with the description of Nadia by
Missionary Thompson in his "Rabindranath Tagore Poet and
Dramatist" (page 22):
" =85 Nadiya, seat of the old Sen kingdom : a place which is Bengal of
the Bengalis, legendary, haunted with memories of their vanished
independence, sacred as a place where a God or Hero was last shown on
earth. Here you find the purest Bengali spoken; =85"
Or on page 4: "With him went into exile, till another handful of
invaders gradually brought it back, the nationality of Bengal."
When Nadia was founded, and whether it was the same Nadia as the Sen
capital, and whether it meant Nabadvip (nine islands), those questions
we shall ask in a later part of this article. What the local people
thought of the raja that was exiled and his father we shall describe
in Part III of our "Kutil History is Peeling Off."
(To be continued)
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