North Konkan · Western Coastal Strip
North Konkan's modern period begins in 1534, close to three centuries before the rest of Maharashtra's, because on 23 December that year the Sultan of Gujarat ceded Bassein, its territories and its islands to Portugal, and from then on this coast was governed by treaty rather than by conquest. Its medieval period is unusually well defined at both ends: Silahara rule from Thana runs almost unbroken from about 800 to 1265. And its ancient period is the oldest documented in Maharashtra, because Ashoka's administration reached Sopara and left two rock edicts there. The pattern the whole history follows is set by the estuaries. Whoever held the creek mouths held the province, and the creek mouths changed hands by negotiated transfer far more often than by battle: Gujarat to Portugal in 1534, Portugal to the English Crown in 1661 and to the East India Company in 1668, the Marathas to the Company in 1782 and 1802. Only Bassein in 1739 changed hands by siege.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
This was the coast where the western trade came ashore. Sopara, the Shurparaka of the inscriptions, appears in Ptolemy as Soupara and traded to Mesopotamia, Egypt, Arabia and East Africa; Kalyan up the Ulhas was the inland port. What that traffic paid for is a chain of Buddhist excavations along the routes from the creek heads to the ghats, of which Kanheri on Salsette is the largest, cut over some nine centuries and carrying inscriptions in Brahmi, Devanagari and Pahlavi that name the donors, the cisterns and the trading towns. The great cave at Gharapuri, cut in the middle of the sixth century, belongs to the end of this period and to a different religion, and is the point at which the coast's wealth stops being visibly Buddhist.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 3rd century BCE | Ashoka's eighth and ninth major rock edicts are set up at Sopara; the fragments were found near Ramkund by Bhagvanlal Indraji in April 1882, and a fragment of the eleventh edict was found at Bhuigaon in 1956. |
| 1st–3rd century CE | Kanheri is cut on Salsette, eventually running to 109 excavations, and becomes the principal Buddhist establishment of the coast; its inscriptions name Sopara, Kalyan, Nashik, Paithan and Ujjain among the towns it was connected to. |
| c. 170–199 CE | Inscriptions of the Satavahana ruler Yajna Sri Satakarni are cut at Kanheri, recording gifts of water cisterns. |
| 494–495 CE | A Traikutaka inscription at Kanheri fixes the dynasty's presence on this coast. |
| second quarter of the 6th century | The great cave at Gharapuri, the island the Portuguese later called Elephanta, is excavated. It is attributed on numismatic and stylistic grounds to the Kalachuri ruler Krishnaraja, an attribution scholars regard as probable rather than certain. |
From about 800 the northern coast was held by the Silaharas, a line that ruled for four and a half centuries with its seat at Thana on the creek, acknowledging Rashtrakuta and then Chalukya overlordship and running the ports on its own account. Their end came from the plateau above: the Yadavas of Devagiri absorbed the coast in the 1260s, and Delhi absorbed the Yadavas half a century later. In the inland hills a different kind of authority persisted throughout, and still does in the record: the Koli chiefship at Jawhar, whose rulers were recognised with the hereditary title of Raja by Delhi in 1343 and who held their hill territory continuously into the twentieth century. The period ends with a treaty rather than a battle, when Bahadur Shah of Gujarat ceded the whole coastal province and its islands to Portugal in 1534.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 800–1265 | The northern Silaharas rule the coast from Thana; the line ends with Someshvara, who reigned from 1255 to 1265. |
| 5 June 1343 | The Koli chief of Jawhar is recognised by Delhi with the hereditary title of Raja and the name Nim Shah. The family's own tradition dates the founding of the chiefship to 1306, which is tradition rather than record; the 1343 grant is the documented event. |
| 1260s | The Yadavas of Devagiri take the coast from the Silaharas; Yadava authority itself ends with the Delhi conquests of the early fourteenth century. |
| 15th century | The Gujarat Sultanate holds the northern coast, with Bassein, Thana and Kalyan as its ports; a Portuguese traveller describes Vasai in 1514 as a town with a good seaport belonging to the king of Gujarat. |
| 23 December 1534 | By the Treaty of Bassein, Bahadur Shah of Gujarat cedes Vasai, its territories, islands and seas to Portugal, including the islands that became Bombay. |
For two centuries Bassein was the seat of the Portuguese Provincia do Norte, second only to Goa, and the East Indian Catholic villages of the Vasai and Palghar plain date from that administration. The islands went separately: to the English Crown in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza's marriage settlement, and to the East India Company in 1668 at ten pounds a year. Bassein itself fell to a Maratha force under Chimaji Appa in 1739 after a two-year siege, and the sea war along this coast was fought for a generation by the Angre fleet from Kolaba and by the Siddi state at Janjira, which no power on this coast ever reduced. British authority arrived by treaty in 1782 and 1802 and by annexation in 1818. Then the island city changed scale: a railway to Thane in 1853, cotton mills from 1854, and a labour force drawn from the whole coast and the plateau above it, which is the population that made Bombay the place where Indian national politics was invented.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1534–1739 | Bassein is the seat of the Portuguese Provincia do Norte; the East Indian Catholic villages of the Vasai and Palghar plain date from this administration. |
| 1661 and 1668 | The Bombay islands pass to the English Crown as part of Catherine of Braganza's marriage settlement, and are made over to the East India Company in 1668 for ten pounds a year. |
| 6 June 1674 | Shivaji is crowned at Raigad, in the hills above the Savitri, and the fort remains the capital of the Maratha state until his death there in 1680. |
| 1737–1739 | A Maratha force under Chimaji Appa besieges and takes Bassein, and with it the Portuguese mainland province north of Bombay. |
| 1782 and 1802 | The Treaty of Salbai confirms Salsette to the Company in 1782; the Treaty of Bassein of 31 December 1802 puts the Peshwa under Company protection. |
| 16 April 1853 | India's first passenger railway runs from Bori Bunder to Thane, along the creek edge; the first cotton mill in the city opens the following year. |
| 28–31 December 1885 | The Indian National Congress holds its first session at Bombay. |
| July 1908 | Mill workers in Bombay strike for six days after the conviction and sentencing of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in what is generally treated as the first political general strike in India. |
| 8 August 1942 | The All India Congress Committee, meeting at Gowalia Tank in Bombay, adopts the Quit India resolution; the leadership is arrested the next morning. |
Rulers and commanders
The great cave at Gharapuri is attributed to his patronage on the evidence of coins found on the island and of the style of the carving. The attribution is scholarly inference rather than an inscription, and should be read as such.
Dynasty: Kalachuri.
The last of a line that had held the coast from Thana for four and a half centuries; the Yadavas of Devagiri took the coast at the end of his reign.
Dynasty: Silahara, northern Konkan line. Seat: Thana
The hill country behind the Vaitarna plain was held not by any of the coast's states but by a Koli chiefship, whose head was recognised by Delhi in 1343 with the hereditary title of Raja. Its territory shrank steadily under Maratha pressure through the eighteenth century until it was effectively landlocked in the hills, but the line itself was never displaced.
Dynasty: Mukne, a Koli chiefly family. Seat: Jawhar
Moved his capital to Raigad in the hills above the Savitri, was crowned there on 6 June 1674 and died there in 1680. Taking Kalyan in 1657 gave the new state a working shipyard, which is the beginning of the Maratha fleet that the Angres later commanded.
Dynasty: Bhosale. Seat: Raigad
Commanded the Maratha fleet from bases at Kolaba, Khanderi and Underi, holding the coastal traffic to a system of passes and repelling repeated English, Portuguese and Dutch attacks on his forts between 1717 and 1724. Under the 1713 agreement with Balaji Vishwanath his command was confirmed along with ten forts and sixteen fortified posts. His tomb is at Alibag.
Dynasty: Angre. Seat: Kolaba, at Alibag
Conducted the siege that took Bassein in 1739 and ended the Portuguese mainland province north of Bombay after two hundred and five years.
Dynasty: Bhat, the Peshwa family. Seat: Pune, commanding on this coast
A small state on an island fort off the Raigad coast, held by a Siddi line whose forebears came to the Deccan from the Horn of Africa, initially under Ahmadnagar and then under Bijapur and the Mughals. The tradition that the fort was taken in 1489 by hiding soldiers in merchants' crates is a story rather than a record. Janjira was besieged repeatedly by the Marathas, including a campaign by Bajirao I in 1733, and was never taken.
Dynasty: Siddi, of Abyssinian descent. Seat: Murud-Janjira
Founded the Bombay Association on 26 August 1852, the city's first political body, and sat on the first board of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. He established schools including the first girls' school in the city in 1849, and was the first Indian nominated to the Bombay Legislative Council under the Indian Councils Act of 1861.
Dynasty: Held office by appointment, not by descent. Seat: Bombay
The history of North Konkan from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)