Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Gondwa

by Joseph David Freedone Melik Beglar

GONDWA.

Sixteen miles south by a little west from Barâ Bâzâr, on the road leading from it to Cháibasá, near the villages of Gonda and close to the Demna Nala, are several rock inscriptions in large characters; the rock is known as Bijak Páhár; the inscriptions are cut on a rock at the foot of a hill to the east of the road. There are no remains of any sort about the place. The inscriptions are four in number, two in the curious shell characters, and two in a transition form of Uriya; these last, knowing that Rájá Mukunda Deva of Orissa at one time held Hugli, must be ascribed to some time near his reign; tradition ascribes the inscriptions to a Banjâra, and it is so far correct that the long inscription in the transition characters reads "Lakshmana prathama Banjara;" this, therefore, is a most curious record, showing that for a long time previous to Mukund Deb's reign no traffic was carried on, at least through this pass; but we cannot allow that this Lakshmana Banjâra was absolutely the first of his tribe who ever used this pass; for the records in the shell characters are undoubtedly older, and must have been written at a period long prior to Mukund Deb's reign, when the pass was used. The second record in the transition characters is worn and of no interest apparently, being a fragment. Of the two inscriptions in shell characters I can make nothing; they are injured to a great extent; whatever of them can now be made out I give here; one is
the other is
I would ascribe these records to the reign of Sasangka, when we know the country to have been in a highly flourishing state; the form of the characters is certainly as old as the sixth century of our era.

If, then, those records belong to the century when Çaçangka reigned, and the later ones to Mukund Deb, we have a period of about 500 years (ascribing Çaçangka to the seventh century, and Mukund Deva to the sixteenth, and allowing even so much as four centuries after Çaçangka as a period of comparative quiet, if not of actual prosperity), during which traffic through Singbhum appears to have ceased. We know, from the remains of Telkupi and elsewhere in Mânbhum, that the country was flourishing at least in the tenth century, and perhaps even in the eleventh century, but from that time to the time of Rájá Mân Singh not a single temple or sculpture appears to have been executed; the Banjâra’s record is, indeed, the very earliest record of the revival of trade in the country. Coupling this with the fact that the fertile country of King Çaçangka appears to have been occupied by the votaries of Brahmanical or Jaina or other Aryan deities, but is now occupied by non-Aryan tribes who reject Brahmanical as well as Jaina deities, the conclusion seems irresistible, that the sudden collapse of all trade and industry was due to the irruption of the Kolarian tribes at some period between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries. On this point, for further observations, facts and legends, I refer to Colonel Dalton’s great work.