Epigraphic Discoveries in East Pakistan (An Old and Rare Book)

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Perhaps no field of academic studies has felt the devastating effects of the partition of India more severely for the last twenty- five years than Indian history and archaeology. Political division of the sub-continent has made it next to impossible for scholars in India and Pakistan to be in touch with one another and exchange their views and publications on topics bearing on the country's common past. Since the division of the body-historic had not (to the utter chagrin of some political gods 1) accompanied that of the body-politic, the situation had necessarily imposed vital limitations to our historical and archaeological investigations and left important gaps in some aspects of our studies in these fields. In the circumstances the Calcutta Sanskrit College Research Series can congratulate itself on being able to include the present highly interesting and valuable monograph entitled Epigraphic Discoveries in East Pakistan in its publications. East Bengal (formerly East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) has always been a region rich in archaeological remains and the inscriptions surveyed and analysed in the volume were discovered here during the time when it had formed the eastern wing of the state of Pakistan. The records are of the highest importance from the point of view of the history of ancient Bengal. In fact they furnish fresh material which has enabled scholars entirely to revise and rewrite some aspects of the history of the Chandra Dynasty. It must be counted as a singular piece of good fortune that the epigraphs have been handled here by the most competent living epigraphist of India, Dr. Dinesh Chandra Sircar. His masterly treatment has made this slim volume indispensable to all students of the early history of Bengal and we are only too happy to place it before the scholarly world. Meanwhile the emergence of independent Bangladesh has once more brought the basic unity of Bengali Culture to a focal point and one is led to hope that the limitations and deficiencies, that the scholars of the two Bengals had so far inevitably to accept in their respective fields of study, will be gradually removed in the near future.

The present monograph embodies my lectures delivered a year ago in April, 1971, and the readers' attention requires to be drawn to a few facts in this connection.

The most important of such facts is that what was then 'East Pakistan' (i. e. the eastern wing of the State of Pakistan) is now 'Bangladesh. The emergence of this new independent State, which was then unthinkable, reminds us of Kalhapa's remarks at the end of his description of the fall of the mighty Sthis of Uttaripatha with the defeat of Trilocanapala (1013-21 A. D.). The Rajatarangişi says, "That empire of the Sihis (whose greatness on the earth has been briefly indicated in the account of king Sankaravarman's reign) now one asks oneself whether, with its kings, its ministers and its court, it ever existed or not.

"Nothing is impossible to Fate. It effects with ease what even in dreams appears incredible to man, what human fancy fails to reach."

Of course the impossible has been rendered possible largely by the unwise policy followed by West Pakistani leaders like Yahiya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; but the patriotism and heroism of the Bengalis and the help they received from India also contributed greatly to the creation of Bangladesh. Other factors were the popularity and leadership of the East Pakistani politician, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the sagacity of the Indian Prime Minister, Sm. Indira Gandhi. We greet the new sovereign State of Bangladesh whose rise is as important in the modern history of our sub-continent as the creation of Pakistan quarter of a century ago.

The second notable point in respect of these lectures is that no satisfactory and comprehensive account of the excavations on the Mainamati-Lalmai ridge has as yet been published and one has to depend on the inadequate (and sometimes unintelligible or conflicting, ef, below, pp. 57-58) notices in F. A. Khan's (1) Excavation at Salban Raja Palace Mound on Mainamati-Lalmai Ridge, (2) Further Excavations in East Pakistan-Mainamati (1956), (3) Third Phase of Archaeological Excavations in East Pakistan (1957); and (4) Mainamati a Preliminary Report on the Recent Archaeological Excavations in East Pakistan, Karachi, 1983; cf. B. C. Law Volume, Part II, pp. 213 ff.; Pakistan Archaeology, No. 1, Karachi, 1964, pp. 18-20; Journ, Anc. Ind. Hist, Vol. V, pp. 179 ff. Only two of Khan's reports were available to me through the kindness of Prof. A. B. M. Habibullah of the University of Dacca. B. M. Morrison's Political Centres and Cultural Regions in Early Bengal, 1970, has just reached me.

The third point to which we are inclined to draw the readers' attention relates to the political geography of East Pakistan, ie. the present Bangladesh, about which our knowledge was inadequate during the long years beginning with the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Thus we have referred many times to the 'Tippera District' though it appears that the name was changed by the Government of Pakistan to 'Comilla District.' Likewise, it appears that a separate District was created out of the old Tangail Sub-Division of the Mymensingh District.