Chandraketugarh

A port-city? Chandraketugarh is located in the dynamic alluvial delta of the mighty Ganges, where the rivers continuously change their courses. In general, due to new land formation, the well-known ancient coastal towns are now found far inside the mainland. It is therefore difficult to obtain any hard facts regarding the geography of ancient Chandraketugarh. Although not adjacent to any major navigable sea-bound water channel at present, Chandraketugarh lies only ten kilometers north of the dying stream of Vidyadhari river. Vidyadhari once used to be a strong navigable river opening up to the Adi Ganga, the ancient course of the Ganges. Through this route, the Chandraketugarh site probably had easy access to the sea.

A depiction of the immediate surrounding of Chandraketugarh with the Vidyadhari river can be found in this map (in Bengali), courtesy: Dilip Maite.

There are two formidable difficulties facing the scholars studying Chandraketugarh. First, the relatively small scale of excavation at Chandraketugarh (by Asutosh Museum) is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of the society and culture of such an extensive site. Except for last year's short-lived excavation, we do not know if ASI, under whose custody the site is presently preserved, ever planned or executed any excavation since Asutosh Museum suspended theirs in 1967. Second, no detailed report on Chandraketugarh has ever been published by the scholars involved in the excavation of the site. All we have are the annual articles of the ASI Review, which, though they are indeed very useful, do not have the scope to present an assimilative view of several years of exploration. We probably will never have such a report written by one of the original excavators.

Due to the inconsistencies in the ASI Review reports and lack of crucial data it is extremely difficult to draw a comprehensive and reliable stratigraphical picture of the site. Enamul Haque has presented an occupational sequence by studying the ASI Review reports and allowing for marginal adjustments. Let me reproduce it:

Period I	Pre-Maurya, 600-300 B.C.
Period II	Maurya, 300-200 B.C.
Period III	Sunga, 200 B.C. - 50 A.D.
Period IV	Kushan, 50-300 A.D.
Period V	Gupta, 300-500 A.D.
Period VI	Post-Gupta, 500-750 A.D.
Period VII	Pala-Chandra-Sena, 750-1250 A.D.

Chandraketugarh excels in the beauty of its terracotta art. Even a cursory glance at one of its hundreds of terracotta plaques will astonish the viewer with its elegance and unusual precision of craftsmanship. For their artistic values these plaques are easily comparable to, if not surpassing, those found from relatively better known sites such as Kaushambi and Ahichhatra. In fact, terracotta plaques from these sites often carry similar motifs executed in nearly identical fashion. This points to an established communication link and common cultural heritage among these sites.

A full-scale excavation, as soon as possible, is certainly the ideal step to take at this point. (It was the ideal step to take 50 years ago!) Any self-respecting society inheriting such a priceless treasure would have done so. However, the pessimism among the researchers and the interested parties run so deep that even a serious official recognition of the importance of the site by ASI will be a welcome sign. Meanwhile artifacts decay and are lost forever. More importantly, the interest of art collectors are focused on Chandraketugarh and as a consequence a large number artifacts find their way to personal collectors and museums within and outside India, often to be permanently away from researchers' access.

About the last point, it is interesting to consider the following argument successfully driven home by Dr. Dilip Chakrabarti (Department of Oriental Studies of Cambridge University. I quote from the minutes of Memorandum submitted by the Museums Association in the House of Commons, Culture Media and Sport (click here for a direct link). "He drew attention to three items in a Sotheby's catalogue for a sale of Asian antiquities, that were labelled "Probably Chandraketugarh, West Bengal, second and first century BC". Dr Chakrabarti explained that this site, north of Calcutta, has never been professionally excavated and was not discovered until the mid-1950s, by which time India's law forbidding the export of archaeological material was already in place. Therefore, any material from Chandraketugarh has by definition been illegally excavated and illegally exported from India."

Despite this, it is public knowledge that Chandraketugarh artifacts are "owned" by several individual collectors and are sold in the international market by art dealers (Some such links can be found in these pages). So, we won't even know what we have lost.

They allowed me to take photographs of their collections without any hesitation. Why is this unusual? Because, and I do not know the actual reason, you cannot take any photograph in the single largest collection of Chandraketugarh materials at the Asutosh Museum of the Calcutta University. I have visited the museum and the collection is simply impressive, but I don't have any photo to show you. Also, going by their published catalog, there is another collection of Chandraketugarh materials at the venerable Indian Museum, Kolkata. But it is not even open to public, so forget about photo.

Click on the following links to visit two photo albums:

• Asad-uj-Jaman and Dilip Maite for allowing me to visit and take photographs at their collections.
• the organizers of the "Exhibition on the life and art of Chandraketugarh" at the (West Bengal) State Archaeological Museum for a superb exhibition and for allowing me to take photographs.
• Dr. Dilip Chakrabarti of Univeristy of Cambridge provided me with significant feedback on my efforts, given me some of his paper preprints, and above all, written an article on Chandraketugarh for this website.
• Dr. Sima Roy Chowdhury for maintaining an informative conversation with me regarding her work on Chandraketugarh and for providing me with short descriptions on the photos from the State Archaeological Museum.
• Indrajit Chaudhuri, with whom I visited Chandraketugarh for the first time almost 20 years ago. He has given me a stack of papers on Chandraketugarh, provided me with most of the information and accompanied me to all the exhibitions.
• Suvro Datta who virtually taught me photography (again, 20 years ago). He has been an immense help while I was going through the painful first steps of setting up this website. He is a sensitive photographer with an eye for composition and simple beauty in unusual places. You can visit his website at suvro.com to see mesmerizing pictures of India and other places.
• Rochelle Kessler, Assisstant Curator of LACMA (South and Southeast Asian Art) for a reprint.