A farmer’s plough catches on something in the mud. He picks it up and rubs it clean: a woman in clay no bigger than his palm, with heavy earrings and her hair piled high, smiling.
She has been in that field for about two thousand years.
Chandraketugarh is a cluster of villages around Berachampa in North 24 Parganas, about 35 km north-east of Kolkata as the crow flies. Beneath them lie the remains of a city that was lived in from at least the third century BCE until the Pala and Sena period, more than a thousand years later. In its prime it was a river port, trading down the Ganga delta and out to sea.
What the earth gave up
Between 1957 and 1968, the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art of the University of Calcutta excavated the site. They, and the farmers before and since, found:
- Terracotta plaques of extraordinary delicacy: goddesses and yakshis, couples, dancers, animals, scenes from daily life. They are among the finest early terracottas anywhere in India.
- Seals and inscriptions in Brahmi script, some showing ships, and one, by one reading, mentioning Tamraparni, the old name of Sri Lanka.
- Coins, including silver punch-marked coins and a gold coin of the Gupta king Chandragupta I with his queen Kumaradevi.
- Fine pottery and beads, including Northern Black Polished Ware, the luxury tableware of the Mauryan age.
Was this Gangaridai?
Greek and Roman writers spoke of a powerful people at the mouths of the Ganges, the Gangaridai, so strong in war elephants that, the story went, Alexander’s army had no wish to face them. Where exactly they lived has never been settled. Chandraketugarh, a wealthy port of the right age in the right place, is one of the strongest candidates. It is a hypothesis, not a proven fact, and other sites in the delta have their supporters too.
A city scattered
Chandraketugarh’s sad story is what happened next. Because farmers found terracottas on their own land for decades, many pieces were sold, and they are now in private collections and museums around the world. Much of the site has never been scientifically excavated, and the chronology of the finds is still being worked out.