Origin of Bangla Seventh Part Ghoti Children of the Land of Five Male Rivers E-Book

Dibyendu Chakraborty

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Naru, a curious Bengali by birth, was influenced by the presence of large ferocious rivers around his birthplace since his childhood. It occurred to him that the rivers of his birthplace have something to say, and he needs to lend a careful ear to the message that the rivers wanted to convey.

The land of the five rivers has a special place in Indian tradition. The ancient Indian scripts and texts contain references to the land of five rivers that was considered blessed and sacred. Naru grew up by listening and reading many of such texts. Nobody could identify the concerned rivers as well as the location of that region of five male rivers. That issue always eluded the Indians.

It was the convergence of many aspects of his life that he could see the issue of the land of five male rivers in a new light. This book is about the establishment of a relationship between that unresolved issue and the Rarh region of Bengal and a group of Bengalis known as ‘Ghoti’.

Leseprobe

Dibyendu Chakraborty

Origin of Bangla Seventh Part Ghoti Children of the Land of Five Male Rivers

ॐ श्री विष्णवे नम: (OM SHRI VISHNAVE NAMAH) Late Hiranmoyee Chakraborty, My Grandmother BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Prologue

Naru reached the Indian state of Sikkim in his mid-thirties. Before that chapter, his work life took him to several different corners of India. Naru was able to breathe a sigh of relief after many, many years. With all his capabilities, he was continuously evading the chasing creature called life, which was hell-bent to throw him to oblivion. Among many other things, the touch of the very gentle Nature of Sikkim helped Naru in composing himself back. He got the chance to look back to the issues related to Bengal and Bengali that had been bothering him for a long time. That time, he matched those issues with his gathered experiences thus far and could realise that those had started to create a complete conceptual model in his mind. He felt encouraged and embarked on a new journey to make that conceptual model fuller. One belief was firmly established in his mind that life was showing him many clues, which had the capacity to resolve the issues that were disturbing him.

Sikkim and Teesta have same flavours. The Teesta, enlivened in dusky aura, injected new life into Naru. That creation of heavenly beauty, though it was merciless to many, showed an unexpected bias to Naru, as if it thrown a protective-cover over him. He also tried to listen to her. The revelation of the most important clues related to Naru's search was the result of that process of patient observation that he later tried to refine.

Continual migration had been a part of Naru's life for decades. One day Naru arrived in Sikkim, the land of Teesta, as a migrant and subsequently spent a long time there. Again, one day, closing that chapter of migration for good, he returned back to his home in the region of the Ganges. Teesta said goodbye to Naru after infusing a new life into him and providing enough clues in his quest, perhaps saying ‘I am with you’. Teesta remains busy with her own regular activities of breaching the banks and destroying the homes as well. That is her compulsion. However, interestingly, the hope of establishment of new settlements arises through that process only. She maintains relative calm in the region of the mountains.

Chapter One Introduction

At the very beginning of the 1990s, Naru had the opportunity to experience the manifestation of the Nature of his dreams, one evening, inside the almost dry, wide channel of the River Dwarkeswar. That region is almost at the centre of Radha (Rarh) Bengal, westernmost part of the Bengal Basin. Imbibed in the all-pervasive magical Nature, horizon-wide loneliness and silence, Naru felt as if the river wanted to say something that evening. Naru thought, what else someone might want in life. People have been living in those areas for thousands of years with the help of such rivers and fertile soil.

In the process of settlement of the unresolved questions that had arisen in Naru’s mind at an adolescent stage about Bengal, he also got attracted to the epical phrase ‘Panchanader Desh’ which literally means ‘the land of the five male rivers’. He came to understand that the presence of five male rivers was never there in the present Punjab region. That region maybe identified as ‘Panchanodir Desh’ (the region of five rivers of any denomination) at the best, following the words of Rabindranath Tagore. An elaborated account of the phrase ‘Panchanader Desh’ has been made available in the book titled “Origin of Bangla Sixth Part Illusive Land of the Five Male Rivers”.

He could deduce that Punjab was the name given to the region of the western part of the Indian subcontinent where the ribcage-like ridges of the outer Himalayas merged into the flat land, which used to be covered occasionally by the overflowing river water.

The geography in which ribcage-like ridges (Panjar, पञ्जर in Sanskrit) and overlapping and consecutive flood plains (Abr, आवृ in Sanskrit) coexist that may be termed Punjab according to the Indian system of word formulation.

There is no need for the forceful introduction of five male rivers in that region to prove the veracity of the name Punjab and give it scriptural sanctity.

The temporarily covered land with the shallow-flowing water layer is a very interesting feature, which fascinates people. Geographical regions of that feature have been given a separate distinct status by people throughout the ages. Large areas within the Bengal Basin were named after Abr or Abar.

Talented people do possess the capability to provide precise expression effortlessly. A few lines written by the poet Kumud Ranjan Mallick express the whole picture of an ‘Abar’ area in a neat way.

বাড়ী আমার ভাঙন

ধরা অজয় নদীর বাঁকে,

জল যেখানে সোহাগ

ভরে স্থলকে ঘিরে রাখে ৷

In English, it may be translated as “My home is on the bend of the River Ajay that has a propensity to breach the bank, a place where water affectionately nudges the land.”

The gentle relationship of reciprocal affection between water and land characterise the ‘Abr’/ ‘Abar’ region.

Ajay is one of the two rivers, the other being the Damodar, that personify the Rarh Region of the Bengal Basin. The western margin of the Rarh region was the oldest inhabited area within the Bengal Basin.

Naru, a Bengali by birth, was shown by destiny that the process of peopling India had happened along the ‘Ancient Elevated Highway Systems of India’. Adivasis came first, and then a different group followed them to be settled in the highlands. In Bengal the members of this new group later became known as ‘Ghoti’. The area, where the Ghotis created their inhabitation within the Bengal Basin, was and still is referred to as the Rarh region.

Ghoti is essentially a term associated with and derived from the base word ghat.

In the Bengali language, a little elevated land on the shores of a water body that slopes down into the water gently is termed as a ‘Ghat’. In the English language, there is no exact word to describe such a geographical feature, thus the word Ghat has been adopted in the English language. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a ghat as ‘a place at the edge of a river.’ That definition does not take into account the relative height associated to a ghat in that context.

The experts have opined that the areas within the Bengal Basin had started to become inhabitable (from its earlier lagoon-like format) sometime between 5000 and 3000 years BP. The higher places around the Bengal Basin have hilly set-up. The areas, which could have been exposed first, naturally had a rocky set-up. It may be said that the advent of cultivable land, which could accommodate a whole clan, started to happen at around 4000 years BP, as four is the average of five and three. That was the period when the ancient residents of Mehrgarh disappeared. The geographical set-up of Mehrgarh was a hilly one. It was a hilly region on the banks of a huge river.

There were rivers in the newly-created Rarh region. Certainly, there were ghats along those rivers. A group of people may acquire their identity from the fact that they were the first group of people to occupy and use those areas. But that could very well be the case at many other places along the northern fringes of the Uttarapath also. Starting from the Aravalli mountains, to the northern margin of Chota Nagpur Plateau, non-Adivasi population created settlements at a very early stage of the present history. Many rivers were there along that stretch of Uttarapath. The ghats areas were there everywhere, which the dwellers of those regions made a part of their lives. For example, Varanasi is located at the northern margin of the South Indian Craton and has world famous ghats. Human settlement there is very old. Those people were not called Ghoti. Thus, the simple characteristic of using the ghat areas along the rivers in daily life certainly could not set the identity of a group of people as Ghoti. There must have been a ghat of higher relevance and importance in the Rarh region in earlier times.     

Indus Basin has the presence of a number of significant rivers; at least five, if not seven. Punjab region in the Indus Basin has been considered as the land of five rivers. The land of the five male rivers did find a very special place in the ancient Indian texts.

Chapter Two Five, the number

As in the case of the phrase ‘land of the five male rivers’, the number five has huge importance on human life and Indian society too.

The following are some of the examples of a large number of words related to five ( पञ्च , पंच, Panch ) in Sanskrit and related languages.

Panchabhuta ( पञ्चभूत , पंचभूत ) - The world in which man exists has been explained as created from the five main elements (क्षिति or Kshiti i.e. Earth, अप or Ap i.e. means Water, तेज or Tej i.e. Fire, मरुत or Marut i.e. Air, व्योम or Byom i.e. the Cosmic Void).

Panchendriya ( पञ्चेन्द्रिय , पंचेन्द्रिय ) - The five sensory systems (eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin) present in the human body.

Panchanan ( पञ्चानन , पंचानन ) - A name of Lord Mahadev.

Panchatattva ( पञ्चतत्व , पंचतत्व ) - The five incarnations of Lord Krishna.

Panchatapa ( पञ्चतप , पंचतप ) - the asceticism for the Sun practised by facing five directions.

Panchadeep ( पञ्चदीप , पंचदीप ), Pancharati ( पञ्चारती , पंचारती ), Panchamrit ( पञ्चामृत , पंचामृत ),  Panchadal Pushpa ( पञ्चदल पुष्प , पंचदल पुष्प ), Panchapallava ( पञ्चपल्लव , पंचपल्लव), Panchagras ( पञ्चग्रास , पंचग्रास ), Pancharatra ( पञ्चरात्र , पंचरात्र ), - Various components of Hindu way worship process.