Barabar-Nagarjuni Hills- A Biography of the Twin Sites

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This work is an outcome of some presentations which I had made over a stretch of a year and a half; finally our second visit to the sites led to the breaking of the ice. It was in 2012 that I first visited Barabar and Nagarjuni hills with my colleague Dr. Sayantani Pal and Mr. Sanjeev Sinha and Mr. Manas Ranjan. I was attracted by the minor epigraphic records engraved on the walls of these caves. As the major inscriptions had already been published I thought of working on the pilgrims' and travelers' records and understanding the site through its visitors' eyes. I presented a paper on these records in the Paschim Banga Itihas Samsad in 2012. When I communicated the basic idea of my paper to Dr. Bijoy Kumar Choudhary, Director of the K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute and Bihar Heritage Development Society, he very generously invited me to a seminar organised by the K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute on 'The History of Ideas in Pre--Colonial Bihar' in the month of March 2013. Here I presented a paper on the Minor Pilgrim and Traveler Records in the Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills which focused on the idea of engraving one's name and the yearning for immortality associated with it in a place of religious significance or a historical place. This paper also dealt with the religious ideas associated with this site. It was an irony of fate that the scholar who had been assigned to write a monograph on these twin sites, due to some unavoidable reasons or due to the unseen hands of destiny, could not accomplish this project and finally Dr. Choudhary approached me with this proposal of writing this monograph in August 2013. I was more than happy to receive this offer and instantly agreed to his proposal. I then broached the idea with my Ph.D and M.Phil students and Dr. Sharmistha Chatterjee that we would make a team and visit the site. Their enthusiasm was at its height and so was mine. We visited the sites from 24th to 27th of August 2013. It was a right decision at the right moment as this teamwork really made the research most fruitful. We visited all the sites together except for Yogeshwar, which is located in an inhospitable terrain.

am extremely grateful to the K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute for providing me this opportunity to explore the Barabar and Nagarjuni group of hills and enrich my knowledge and finally accomplish this work. At the outset I would like to mention that I had visited these twin sites before August 2013 with my colleague Dr. Sayantani Pal and other members of the K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute like Mr. Sanjeev Sinha and Mr. Manas Ranjan. During my second visit to these sites and also Kauvadol hills, I asked Dr. Sharmistha Chatterjee, my Ph.D and M.Phil scholars Ms. Chandrima Das, Ms. Smita Halder, Mr. Rituparna Chattopadhyay, Mr. Brijesh K.Singh and Mr. Sandip Pan to accompany as a research team. I thank all of them for their support. This research is an outcome of this teamwork which all of us greatly enjoyed.

We would like to profusely thank the Director of the Institute, Dr. Bijoy Kumar Choudhary, for his invaluable suggestions and encouragement. He has been a constant source of inspiration. We are obliged for his support in each and every possible way during the course of the entire exploration. We are thankful to the staff members of the K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute especially Mr. Sanjeev Sinha for accompanying us in the field trip. Our sincere thanks to Mr. Anantasutosh Dwivedi for joining us in the exploration work. We are extremely thankful to the Archaeological Survey of India, Patna Circle, for providing us the accommodation facilities in Patna.