Bhojpur & Purvanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Bhojpur's periods are set on the stretch of the Ganga where the river turns east, and they do not follow the national dates. The ancient period belongs to Kashi and to Sarnath, and to the Chunar quarries below Varanasi that supplied the stone for the Mauryan pillars. The medieval period has two centres rather than one: the Sharqi sultanate at Jaunpur from 1394, which built in an idiom found nowhere else, and the Rohtas and Sasaram country that produced Sher Shah Suri, who ruled northern India from 1540 to 1545 and whose tomb stands in a tank at Sasaram. The modern period begins in 1764, not 1857, because the battle at Buxar on 22 October that year was fought inside this region and the Company's revenue authority over eastern India dates from it. And the largest modern fact about the region is not a date but a flow: the indenture emigration of 1834 to 1917, which took the language, the Ramcharitmanas and the song forms to four continents and made half of Bhojpur a place outside India.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
Kashi was one of the sixteen mahajanapadas and Varanasi its principal city, and Sarnath, a few kilometres north, is where the Buddha's first discourse is placed. The pairing gave this stretch of river an unusual density of institutions very early — monasteries, teaching lineages and, later, the workshops that supplied them. The material link is Chunar: the fine buff sandstone quarried on the river south of Varanasi is the stone of the Mauryan polished pillars, including the lion capital at Sarnath, and it is the stone of the Gupta-period Sarnath Buddhas seven hundred years later. A single quarry supplying two of the defining sculptural moments of Indian art is a regional fact, not a national one.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 6th century BCE | Kashi is one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, with Varanasi as its principal city. |
| c. 5th century BCE | The Buddha's first discourse is placed at Sarnath, north of Varanasi. |
| 3rd century BCE | An Ashokan pillar is set up at Sarnath; its lion capital is carved from Chunar sandstone quarried on the river below Varanasi. |
| c. 5th century CE | The Sarnath school produces the seated preaching Buddha, in the same Chunar stone. |
| 7th century CE | Xuanzang records Varanasi and the monasteries at Sarnath. |
| 1194 | After the defeat of the Gahadavalas at Chandawar, Varanasi and the country east of it pass under Delhi's authority. |
Two things distinguish the medieval history of this region from the Awadh plain to its west. The first is Jaunpur, where a governor's family established an independent sultanate in 1394 and held it for eighty-five years. Its architecture — the Atala Masjid of 1408 and the Jama Masjid, with enormous pylon-like screens fronting the prayer hall — is a local invention with no close parallel, and the court is credited in later musical writing with the early development of khayal. The second is the Sasaram country south of the Ganga, where Sher Shah Suri, a jagirdar's son, defeated Humayun at Chausa in 1539 and at Kannauj in 1540 and then ran northern India for five years, in which time the silver rupiya, the sarai and postal network and the extended trunk road were all established. In the eighteenth century the Ujjainiya Rajputs held the Sone–Ganga country from Jagdishpur, and at Banaras a family of revenue managers turned their office into a raj.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1394–1479 | The Sharqi sultanate rules from Jaunpur; the Atala Masjid is completed in 1408. |
| 26 June 1539 | Sher Shah defeats Humayun at Chausa, in what is now Buxar district. |
| 1540–1545 | Sher Shah rules northern India; the silver rupiya, the sarai and dak network and the extended trunk road date from these five years. |
| 1545 | Sher Shah's tomb is completed at Sasaram, built on an island in an artificial lake. |
| 17th–18th century | The Ujjainiya Rajputs hold the Sone–Ganga country from Jagdishpur. |
| 1730s–1740s | Mansa Ram and then Balwant Singh convert a revenue farm at Banaras into an autonomous raj under the Nawab of Awadh. |
The Company's authority over eastern India was settled at Buxar in this region in 1764, and the consequences arrived here first. Banaras was transferred to the Company in 1775; Chait Singh's refusal of escalating war demands produced a rising in 1781 that briefly drove Warren Hastings to shelter at Chunar, after which the raj was reduced to a landholding based on Ramnagar. From the 1830s the region's principal export became people: recruiters working the Bhojpuri-speaking districts sent hundreds of thousands under indenture to Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, Fiji and Natal between 1834 and 1917, which is why Bhojpuri is a living language on four continents and why the region's best-known theatre is about departure. In 1857 the region produced the most persistent rebel command in eastern India, and in the twentieth century two of the sharpest turning points of the national movement — one that stopped it and one that briefly replaced the administration — both happened here.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 22 October 1764 | The Company defeats the combined forces of Awadh, Mir Qasim and the Mughal emperor at Buxar; the Treaty of Allahabad follows in 1765. |
| August – October 1781 | Chait Singh's rising at Banaras against Warren Hastings' financial demands; Hastings withdraws to Chunar before the rising is suppressed and the raja is deposed. |
| 1834–1917 | Indenture emigration from the Bhojpuri-speaking districts to Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, Fiji and Natal. |
| 1857–58 | Kunwar Singh occupies Arrah on 27 July 1857 and campaigns through Awadh and the Rewa border country before returning to Jagdishpur in April 1858. |
| 4 February 1922 | A Non-cooperation procession and the police clash at Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district; the police station is burned and twenty-two policemen are killed. Gandhi suspends the movement nationally on 12 February. |
| 2–11 July 1923 | Nineteen men are hanged for the Chauri Chaura killings after the Allahabad High Court judgment of 30 April 1923; fourteen others are sentenced to life. |
| 19 August 1942 | A parallel administration is declared at Ballia during the Quit India movement; it is displaced within a week. |
Rulers and commanders
Under him Jaunpur became an independent capital with an architecture of its own — the Atala Masjid of 1408 set the pattern of the great screen front that later Jaunpur mosques repeat, and it is found essentially nowhere else.
Dynasty: Sharqi of Jaunpur. Seat: Jaunpur
Born at Sasaram to a jagirdar's family; defeated Humayun at Chausa in 1539 and Kannauj in 1540 and ruled northern India for five years. The silver rupiya, the sarai and dak system and the extended trunk road are his. He died of wounds at Kalinjar on 22 May 1545 and is buried at Sasaram.
Dynasty: Sur. Seat: Sasaram, then Delhi
A revenue manager under the Awadh administration who obtained the zamindari of the Banaras districts for his son — the clearest case in the region of an office being converted into hereditary property.
Dynasty: Banaras raj. Seat: Gangapur, near Banaras
Turned the family's revenue farm into an autonomous raj with its own fort at Ramnagar, its own troops and a working independence from Awadh.
Dynasty: Banaras raj. Seat: Ramnagar
Refused escalating war levies demanded by Warren Hastings and was placed under arrest at Banaras in August 1781; the rising that followed drove Hastings to Chunar before it was put down. He was deposed and a relative installed in his place.
Dynasty: Banaras raj. Seat: Ramnagar
Took command of the mutinied regiments at Danapur on 25 July 1857 at the age of nearly eighty, occupied Arrah two days later, and campaigned for nine months across Bihar, Awadh and the Rewa border before returning to defeat a British force near Jagdishpur on 23 April 1858. He died three days later.
Dynasty: Ujjainiya Rajputs of Jagdishpur. Seat: Jagdishpur
Kunwar Singh's brother, who took over the command in April 1858 and ran a parallel administration in Shahabad district for months afterwards — the longest-surviving rebel civil authority in eastern India.
Dynasty: Ujjainiya Rajputs of Jagdishpur. Seat: Jagdishpur
The history of Bhojpur & Purvanchal from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (7)