Bengal Delta · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
The delta's periods follow its water. Its ancient period belongs to the ports - Tamralipta, and whatever the Greek writers meant by Gangaridai - and ends with the Sena collapse around 1204. Its medieval period is a sultanate period rather than an imperial one: from 1352 Bengal was independently governed for two centuries, and its capitals sat on the western channels while those channels still carried water. The modern period begins here in 1757, on a mango grove at Palashi in Nadia district, and this is one of the few regions in India where the national date and the regional date are the same, because the event that changed the subcontinent happened in this region's own countryside. Everything after it - the move of the administration from Murshidabad to Calcutta in 1772, the Permanent Settlement, the ports, the presses and the politics - follows the same eastward drift of the live water and the westward drift of the state.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
What the delta had that the plains did not was the sea. Greek and Latin writers describe a people of the Ganga mouths called the Gangaridai, formidable for their elephants, without naming a city that can be located; the archaeology that answers to it is at Chandraketugarh in North 24 Parganas, occupied from about the third century BCE and unusually rich in moulded terracotta. Tamralipta, at the estuary, was the port from which Faxian sailed for Sri Lanka in about 411 CE. Political names shifted with the channels - Vanga, Samatata, Gauda - and the Palas, whose founder Gopala was raised to the throne in about 750 by an assembly of regional chiefs after a period of disorder that a later grant calls matsyanyaya, held the delta for four centuries before the Senas took it. Each of these capitals and ports sat on a channel that the Ganga has since abandoned, which is why so little of the period is visible on the ground.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 4th century BCE onward | Greek and Latin accounts describe the Gangaridai of the Ganga mouths; no capital named in them has been securely identified with a site. |
| c. 3rd century BCE | Occupation begins at Chandraketugarh near Berachampa, excavated between 1956 and 1968, whose moulded terracottas are the fullest surviving record of early delta life. |
| c. 411 CE | The Chinese monk Faxian sails from Tamralipta for Sri Lanka after two years there; the port is the delta's outlet to the eastern sea trade. |
| c. 750 CE | Gopala is raised to the throne, founding the Pala line; a later Pala grant describes the accession as ending a period of disorder it calls matsyanyaya, the rule of fish. |
| c. 1097-1206 | The Sena line rules from Nabadwip and Vikrampur; Lakshmana Sena's court is the last major Sanskrit literary establishment in the delta. |
| 1204 | Bakhtiyar Khalji's force takes Nadia; Lakshmana Sena withdraws east, and Sena rule survives only in the eastern delta for a further generation. |
From 1352, when Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah brought Lakhnauti, Satgaon and Sonargaon under one authority, Bengal was an independent sultanate for two hundred years, and the delta developed a court language and a literature of its own: Bengali translations of the Sanskrit epics were made under sultanate patronage, and the mangal-kavya cycles took written form. Chaitanya was born at Nabadwip in 1486 and took sannyasa in 1510, and the Vaishnava movement he began reorganised the religious life of the whole delta around congregational singing. The European river stations followed the trade rather than the flag - the Portuguese at Hooghly, taken by Mughal forces in 1632; the Dutch at Chinsurah from 1656; the French at Chandernagore from 1673; the English at Sutanuti from 1690; the Danes at Serampore from 1755 - four of them within thirty kilometres of one another on the same tidal reach. In 1704 Murshid Quli Khan moved the provincial capital from Dhaka to Maksudabad and renamed it Murshidabad, which put the government back on the western channel just as that channel was beginning to fail.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1352 | Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah unites Lakhnauti, Satgaon and Sonargaon; Bengal becomes an independent sultanate governed from Pandua and later Gaur. |
| 1486 and 1510 | Chaitanya is born at Nabadwip in 1486 and takes sannyasa in 1510; the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement reorganises devotional life across the delta and gives it its kirtan repertoire. |
| 1580s-1632 | A Portuguese settlement grows at Hooghly on the tidal reach and is taken by Mughal forces in 1632. |
| 1656-1755 | The Dutch establish themselves at Chinsurah in 1656, the French at Chandernagore in 1673, the English at Sutanuti from 1690 with Fort William from 1700, and the Danes at Serampore in 1755. |
| 1704 | Murshid Quli Khan moves the capital of the Bengal subah from Dhaka to Maksudabad, renaming it Murshidabad; he becomes Nawab-Nazim in 1717. |
| 1740 | Alivardi Khan takes the Nawabi after the engagement at Giria and governs Bengal for sixteen years. |
| 1742-1751 | Five Maratha incursions cross the western delta before a treaty in 1751 ends them; Murshidabad and Nadia are among the districts affected. |
The engagement at Palashi on 23 June 1757 was fought in this region's own countryside, and its consequences were administrative before they were political: the Diwani in 1765, Warren Hastings's transfer of the treasury and administration from Murshidabad to Calcutta in 1772, and the Permanent Settlement of 1793, which fixed a landholding structure across the delta for a century and a half. Calcutta grew into the largest city in Asia outside China and, with it, the institutions - presses, colleges, associations, courts - through which organised Indian politics was first conducted. The partition of the province in 1905 turned that apparatus into a mass movement within weeks; the annulment in 1911 was accompanied by the transfer of the capital to Delhi. The last decade of the period contains the two largest recorded events in the delta's modern history, the famine of 1943-44 and the partition of the province in 1947, and both are set down here as dated facts.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 23 June 1757 | The engagement at Palashi in Nadia district; Siraj-ud-Daulah is defeated and killed shortly afterwards, and the Company installs Mir Jafar as Nawab. |
| 1765-1793 | The Diwani passes to the Company in 1765; Warren Hastings moves the treasury and administration from Murshidabad to Calcutta in 1772; the Permanent Settlement of 1793 fixes the revenue demand and the zamindari structure. |
| 1859-1862 | The indigo revolt begins at Chaugacha in Nadia in March 1859 and spreads across the delta districts; an Indigo Commission reports in 1860, Dinabandhu Mitra's play Nil Darpan is published the same year, and the Indigo Act of 1862 ends compulsion. |
| 16 October 1905 | The partition of Bengal takes effect and is met with a boycott and swadeshi agitation across the delta; the partition is annulled in 1911, when the imperial capital is also moved to Delhi. |
| 8 December 1930 | Benoy Basu, Badal Gupta and Dinesh Gupta enter the Writers' Building at Calcutta and shoot the Inspector-General of Prisons; none of the three survived the following months. |
| 1943-44 | Famine across Bengal. Mortality estimates range from about 800,000 to over three million, with recent scholarship centring on roughly two million; deaths from starvation peaked in November 1943 and disease mortality continued into 1944. |
| 15 August 1947 | The province is partitioned; the delta is divided between West Bengal and East Bengal. |
Rulers and commanders
Founded the Pala line. A later Pala copperplate describes his accession as the act of regional chiefs ending a period of disorder, which is unusual enough in Indian dynastic records to be worth noting, though the language is formal and its literal reading is debated.
Dynasty: Pala. Seat: Gauda
The last Sena ruler to hold the western delta. His court supported Jayadeva's Gita Govinda and the compilations that fixed Bengali smriti practice; his withdrawal east after 1204 ends the Sanskrit court culture of the region.
Dynasty: Sena. Seat: Nabadwip and Vikrampur
Brought Lakhnauti, Satgaon and Sonargaon under one authority in 1352, creating an independent Bengal sultanate. The unification is the point at which Bengal becomes a single political region rather than three, and Bengali begins its rise as a court and literary language.
Dynasty: Ilyas Shahi. Seat: Pandua
Diwan and then Nawab of Bengal. He moved the provincial capital from Dhaka to Maksudabad in 1704 and gave it his name, and reorganised revenue collection into a system of farmed contracts that made Bengal the most productive province in the empire and its remittances the largest.
Dynasty: Nasiri. Seat: Murshidabad
Took the Nawabi at Giria in 1740 and spent most of his reign on the Maratha incursions into the western delta, concluding the treaty of 1751 that ended them. He kept the European companies to trade and out of territorial politics, which his successor could not.
Dynasty: Afshar. Seat: Murshidabad
Alivardi's grandson and successor. He took Calcutta in June 1756 in a dispute over the Company's fortification and duties, and was defeated at Palashi on 23 June 1757 when part of his army did not engage. He was killed shortly afterwards; the Nawabi survived as a pension for another century.
Dynasty: Afshar. Seat: Murshidabad
Commanded the part of the Nawab's army that actually fought at Palashi and was killed by artillery fire early in the engagement. His death, and the withdrawal that followed it, decided the day.
Dynasty: In the service of Siraj-ud-Daulah. Seat: Murshidabad
Moved the treasury and the machinery of revenue administration from Murshidabad to Calcutta in 1772, ending the dual system under which the Company held the revenue and the Nawab the government. The decision made Calcutta a capital and Murshidabad a town of palaces with nothing to administer.
Seat: Calcutta
The history of Bengal Delta from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)