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APRIL, 1874.)
MISCELLANEA AND CORRESPONDENCE.
123
MISCELLANEA AND CORRESPONDENCE. RELIEF WORKS IN BENGAL.
well-nigh forgotten Tajpoor, once the scene of The relief works which have been commenced more than one battle between the imperial troops in the afflicted districts of Bengal, to give employ. and the revolted soldiery under the Kakshals; the ment to the people, consist principally in the site of a European judgeship for the first twenty construction of new roads, or the repairs of old years that the English held the Dewanee, and a ones. It is curious to observe how, when the military post for some years later. Here roads are new roads are being marked out, there occur, here being made, one along the Nagor, where a high a few hundred yards of embankment, there the embankment still marks out the Nawabee Rasta, remains of a bridge, built of stones whereon the to the capital city Poroowa, and the others still carven gods indicate the Hindoo temples from along the line which has ever led travellers eastwhich they were taken, to span channels long ward from the banks of the Kosee toward the since deserted by the stream. These are the re- Brahmapootra. An old man says that the last mains of the ancient works of the Mohamadan time the road was touched was in the year when rulers of the country, and are known to the in- the new jail at Tajpoor was built-an event the habitants of the neighbouring villages to this day family may have had reason to remember; that as "the Nawab's Road," or "the Road of Hosen," it was then repaired as a famine work. As the meaning that Hosen Shah who ruled Bengal in Judgeship of Tajpoor was abolished in 1785, the the beginning of the sixteenth century, and whose reference is probably to the famine of 1770. We name survives still in the memory of the people. know from the Minhaj-us-Siraj that travellers It may be that Hosen Shah, an enterprising from the north-west came across the Kosoe towards military leader, repaired the lines of communica- Debkot, and from the lowness of the country tion existing betwoen his several posts, and further south, and its liability to inundation, it is perhaps formed other new ones; but many of the probable that the road crossed the Nagor no roads are certainly as old as the days of Hisam- further south than Tajpoor. ud-din, one of the rulers of Bengal before the close | The roads eastward towards Ghoraghat generof the first century of Mohamadan dominion, and ally terminate abruptly near the Atrayee, indimay possibly have been only restored by him on cating perhaps changes in the course of that river the foundations laid by still earlier Hindoo princes. which have obliterated the work of man, but care
Where the policy of the rulers, or the con- ful search might still find remains of the Mohamvenience of the people, needed roads seven hundred adan roads. Ghoraghat was always an important years ago, it is on the selfsame lines that it is post. When the Korotoya was in all probability resolved to make roads now, and this seems to a much larger river than it is now, Ghoraghat was show how little the physical formation of the the position that commanded the passage by country, or the distribution of the people, has which travellers left the Mohamadan dominions altered in the interval. And yet there have been for the independent country called sometimes changes. Debkot, the first Mohamadan capital, Komota, sometimes Kamroop, sometimes the land in Dinajepoor, is a centre from which half a dozen of the Koch, and now Rungpoor. Its remains roads radiated, communicating with the post of show it to have been a considerable place, even if Ghoraghâț to the east, that of Tajpoor to the west, we did not know it from the Tabakat-i-Nasiri, with the ancient city of Gour on the south, and and other works. It is frequently mentioned in with other points which are uncertain. It was all notices of military operations in that part of probably on the frontier of Islam, menacing an the country. enemy to the north. There are now in the neighbour- Our object in making these notes in an archahood a police station, and a few marts, of no great ological publication, is the knowledge that wheresize, on the Poornabhoba river; nothing to make ever Mohamadan lines of road exist, there are it an important centre. A road passing through it found remains of military positions, of mosques, from Dinajepoor on the north along the Poornabhoba of bathing-ghâts, of saints' Dargahs, and of other river is the line most wanted; then a road to buildings, in many of which exist inscriptions that communicate eastwards with the Dinajepoor and may prove of great historical value; and in many Rajshahye road, and with the marts on the cases persons who would otherwise interest themAtrayee; and another westward with the Tangon selves in procuring rubbinge of them, do not do and the road from Dinajepoor to Maldah, and for 80, merely from not knowing what to look for. each of them an old line may be followed.
The Debkot or Gangarampoor inscriptions have The road from Dinajepoor to Purneah is non- been given in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic existent between Bindol and Raneegunj police Society by Professor Blochman, but we know of station. A line is marked out and touches the 'no rubbings of inscriptions known to exist at
