Anga & Seemanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
This region's history is corridor history, and its periods are set by who controlled the passage rather than by who ruled a capital. Its ancient period belongs to Anga, a kingdom absorbed by Magadha in the sixth century BCE and then, for fifteen hundred years, a river frontage on the route between the middle Ganga and the sea. Its medieval period begins around 1200 with the collapse of the Pala monastic order at Vikramashila and the opening of the Teliagarhi defile to armies moving between Bihar and Bengal - a gap barely two kilometres wide that decided the fate of Bengal three times in three centuries. Its modern period begins in 1765, and unusually it begins in the hills rather than the plain: the first sustained colonial encounter here was with the Paharia communities of the Rajmahal uplands, not with the towns. East of the Kosi, in Seemanchal, an administrative record barely exists before 1770, because the Company created the district of Purnea before it had any idea what was in it.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
Anga was one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, with its capital at Champa on the Ganga near present Bhagalpur, and it was rich before Magadha was: Buddhist and Jain texts treat Champa as a merchant city with river traffic running downstream to the sea. Bimbisara's annexation in the sixth century BCE ended it as a state and gave Magadha the port it needed, and from then on the tract was a province of whoever held the middle Ganga. Its second moment came under the Palas, when Dharmapala founded the Vikramashila mahavihara at Antichak, downstream of Bhagalpur - a monastery of two hundred and eight cells around a square courtyard 330 metres a side, whose graduate Atisha Dipankara carried its teaching to Tibet in the eleventh century. The Mahabharata's association of Karna with the kingship of Anga belongs to epic tradition rather than to record, but it is the reason the region still calls itself Anga.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 6th century BCE | Anga is one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, with Champa on the Ganga as its capital and river port. |
| c. 6th century BCE | Bimbisara of Magadha annexes Anga, defeating the king named in Buddhist tradition as Brahmadatta; the kingdom does not recover its independence. |
| c. 5th century BCE onward | Champa is a regular stop in the Buddhist and Jain textual record; Jain tradition places the birth of Vasupujya, the twelfth tirthankara, in the city. |
| late 8th-early 9th century CE | The Pala emperor Dharmapala founds the Vikramashila mahavihara at Antichak, near Kahalgaon. |
| 11th century | Atisha Dipankara, trained at Vikramashila, travels to Tibet, where his teaching becomes foundational to the Sarma traditions. |
| c. 1193 | Vikramashila is destroyed in the campaigns of Bakhtiyar Khalji; the site is lost until it is identified and excavated between 1960 and 1982. |
For five centuries this stretch of the Ganga was the door between Bihar and Bengal, and the door was the Teliagarhi pass, where the Rajmahal hills come down almost to the river. Whoever held it controlled the only practicable land route east. Man Singh recognised the point and moved the capital of the Bengal subah to Rajmahal in 1595, renaming it Akbarnagar; Shah Shuja rebuilt it as his seat between 1639 and 1660 and raised the Sangi Dalan there. The last act of the pattern came in 1762, when Mir Qasim moved his capital upstream to Munger, fortified it, and set up an arsenal to make muskets and cannon - an attempt to build a Bengal army out of range of Calcutta that ended in a single campaigning season.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1200 | The Teliagarhi and Sakrigali defiles between the Rajmahal hills and the Ganga become the fixed gateway between Bihar and Bengal for every army moving in either direction. |
| 1576 | Daud Khan Karrani, the last independent Sultan of Bengal, is defeated near Rajmahal by Mughal forces; Bengal becomes a subah. |
| 1595 | Man Singh establishes the capital of the Bengal subah at Rajmahal, renaming it Akbarnagar for its command of both the river and the Teliagarhi pass. |
| 1608-09 | Islam Khan moves the Bengal capital from Rajmahal to Dhaka; Rajmahal is restored as a seat only briefly thereafter. |
| 1639-1660 | Shah Shuja holds Rajmahal as his capital as subahdar of Bengal and builds the Sangi Dalan, the stone audience hall. |
| 1762 | Mir Qasim moves his capital from Murshidabad to Munger, fortifies it and establishes an arsenal manufacturing firearms and artillery. |
| 1763 | Mir Qasim's army is defeated at Udhua Nala near Rajmahal; Munger falls to the Company later the same year, and Buxar follows in 1764. |
The colonial century opened here in the hills. The Rajmahal uplands were held by Paharia communities whose raiding into the plain the Company could neither stop nor tax, and the response, worked out by Augustus Cleveland as Collector of Bhagalpur between 1779 and 1784, was to grant an allowance to hill chiefs and to raise a corps of hill men under their own headmen. When that settled little, the Company demarcated the Damin-i-Koh in 1832-33 and invited Santal families to clear and cultivate the foothill belt; within two decades the debt and tenure arrangements that followed produced the Hul of 1855, the largest rising in eastern India before the revolt. In the plain the story is commercial rather than political: Bhagalpur reeled and wove tussar for a national market, Purnia grew indigo and then jute and maize, and the railway reached Katihar and made it a junction. Congress organisation arrived late and unevenly, and the region's mass moment was 1942.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1765 | The Diwani passes to the East India Company; Bhagalpur and the newly formed district of Purnea come under Company revenue administration. |
| 1779-1784 | Augustus Cleveland serves as Collector of Bhagalpur and raises a corps of Paharia hill men under their own headmen. He died of fever aboard ship in January 1784. |
| 1832-33 | The Damin-i-Koh is demarcated in the Rajmahal foothills and Santal families are encouraged to settle and clear it; the population of the tract multiplies within twenty years. |
| 1855-56 | The Santhal Hul begins on 30 June 1855 in the Damin-i-Koh and spreads across the Bhagalpur and Rajmahal country; martial law is declared on 8 November 1855 and lifted on 3 January 1856. |
| 12 June 1857 | Sepoys at Rohini, near Deoghar, attack their officers; the outbreak is put down and executions follow, and Bhagalpur and Purnea remain under Company control. |
| 1 April 1912 | Bihar and Orissa are separated from Bengal; Bhagalpur, Munger and Purnea become divisions of the new province. |
| 1942 | Quit India reaches Bhagalpur and Banka; police firing at Belhar on 29 November 1942 kills Shashi Prasad Singh, and Bhagalpur Central Jail becomes the site of the region's most cited execution of the movement. |
Rulers and commanders
Named in Buddhist tradition as the king of Anga defeated by Bimbisara of Magadha. The annexation ended Anga as an independent kingdom and transferred its Ganga port at Champa to Magadha, which is one reason Magadha could out-trade its rivals.
Dynasty: Anga. Seat: Champa
Founded the Vikramashila mahavihara at Antichak in this region, second only to Nalanda among the eastern monastic universities, and endowed it on a scale that supported over a hundred teachers. Its destruction around 1193 ended organised Buddhist learning in eastern India.
Dynasty: Pala. Seat: Pataliputra and Gaur
The last independent Sultan of Bengal. His defeat near Rajmahal in 1576 brought Bengal into the Mughal empire as a subah and made this stretch of the Ganga an internal frontier rather than a border.
Dynasty: Karrani. Seat: Tanda
Moved the capital of the Bengal subah to Rajmahal in 1595 specifically for its command of the river and the Teliagarhi pass, and renamed it Akbarnagar. The choice made this region the administrative hinge between Bihar and Bengal for the next century.
Dynasty: Mughal service. Seat: Rajmahal (Akbarnagar)
Governed Bengal from Rajmahal for twenty-one years and built the Sangi Dalan, the stone audience hall whose remains still stand above the river. His departure in 1660 ended Rajmahal's period as a capital.
Dynasty: Mughal. Seat: Rajmahal
Moved his capital from Murshidabad to Munger in 1762 and reorganised revenue collection to pay for a re-equipped army manufactured in his own arsenal. The attempt failed within a year; after defeats at Katwa, Giria and Udhua Nala in 1763 he lost Bengal, and the defeat at Buxar in 1764 ended the independent Nawabi.
Dynasty: Nawabs of Bengal. Seat: Munger
An Armenian officer who commanded and drilled Mir Qasim's reorganised army at Munger and oversaw the arsenal there. He was killed in 1763 during the campaign against the Company.
Dynasty: In the service of Mir Qasim. Seat: Munger
Framed the Company's first settlement with the Paharia communities of the Rajmahal hills, granting allowances to hill chiefs and raising a corps recruited from the hills under its own headmen. He died of fever aboard ship in January 1784, aged twenty-nine; a memorial to him stands at Bhagalpur.
Seat: Bhagalpur
The history of Anga & Seemanchal from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)