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JANUARY, 1975
About Jaina activities at Dacca in the seventeenth century, we know that the Rajasthani merchant Hiranand of the Svetambara Jaina community founded a number of business centres in Eastern India with his headquarters at Patna. One such centre was established at Dacca, which later became the property of Manikchand, the youngest of the seven sons of Hiranand. Manikchand transferred his business headquarters to Muksudabad or Murshidabad. Manikchand's adopted son Fatechand (c. 1664-1745 A.D.) obtained the title 'Jagatseth' from the Mughal emperor early in the eighteenth century. It may be conjectured that the Jaina religious establishment at Dacca, referred to in the inscription under study, owed its existence to the local business centre run by Hiranand and Manikchand. But they belonged to the Svetambara community while the inscription speaks of Digambara association. Sri B. S. Nahar informs me that there was once a Svetambara Dadabadi at Dacca besides a Jaina temple and that certain Jaina poems were composed at Dacca, the most celebrated among them being the Vṛnda Satsai. He furthr says that little is known about the fate of the Jaina religious establishments at Dacca after the Jainas had left for Murshidabad, but that the inscribed stone slab now in the Patna temple must have been originally in a Jaina temple at Dacca and was later carried by some one to Patna.
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A second geographical name mentioned in the inscription is Serapura. There are two places called Sherpur in Bangladesh, one near Jamalpur in the Mymensingh District and the other near the chief town of the Bogra District. Both of them are Thana (Police Station) headquarters, but the first of the two places called Sherpur is not far from Dacca and may be the same as Serapura mentioned in our record. As already indicated above, the fragmentary nature of the transcript makes it difficult to determine whether there was a Jaina religious establishment at Sherpur or certain object were made there for their installation elsewhere.
I shall be grateful if anybody traces the inscribed stone slab in the Patna temple and let me have a few inked impressions, so that I can see if the unread passages can be deciphered and if they throw any further light on the Jaina religious establishments in Bangladesh flourishing during the seventeenth century.
It may be said in this connection that the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art attached to the University of Calcutta is said to have, in its collection, a few late mediaeval Jaina sculptures secured from areas now in Bangladesh.
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