REDISCOVERING GAUR SOURCE MATERIAL IN THE PUBLIC COLLECTIONS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM by Pratip K. Mitra

Journal of Bengal Art, Vol. 15, 2010, 9-48

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REDISCOVERING GAUR: SOURCE MATERIAL IN THE PUBLIC COLLECTIONS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Pratip Kumar Mitra

The Background:

The medieval city of Gaur (Maldah district, West Bengal) was abandoned during the reign of the Afghan Sultan Sulaiman Kararani in AD 1562. The city was never inhabited except for brief periods of occupation by the Mughal General Munim Khan in AD 1575 and prince Shah Shuja in the first half of the seventeenth century, respectively. After the city was deserted, its noble structures were systematically stripped off over a period of more than two hundred years for building materials to be used elsewhere. When the East India Company took over the administrative control of the province of Bengal in the later half of the eighteenth century, the city was an ‘uninhabited waste’,1 ‘concealed in deep jungle, and situated in one of the least civilized districts of Bengal Presidency’.2 Yet the ruins of Gaur were frequently explored and sketched by the British as they passed up and down the Ganges. These sketches or ‘water colour drawings’ as they were known in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were undertaken to meet the various needs of: aesthetic pleasure for picturesque drawing, romantic rendering of a lost city, appendages to journals and reports, or merely spending a few leisure hours. Gradually, from the sixties of the nineteenth century these painted sketches were replaced by photographs when the use of camera came into vogue. The ruins of Gaur were now documented and illustrated with photographs and albums were compiled. Although not very frequent, the members of the East India Company’s civil and military services and their families visited the ruins of Gaur and left diaries or journals of their visit. There were compiled a few but excellent archaeological reports, both as a monograph or parts of a larger survey on its monuments. These paintings, photographs, journals, reports and diaries, compiled mainly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, help us to re-discover a lost medieval city and as factual records of ancient remains they make a contribution to archaeology as a permanent value. Architectural antiquities from Gaur were simultaneously carted off to the U.K throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by East India Company officials, merchants, bureaucrats and other Europeans from time to time for a wide range of motives: from ephemeras from a colonial country to tools of serious archaeological research. Ceramics and stone architectural fragments were also officially procured from Gaur during the late nineteenth century for European museums.

The object of this paper is to take a stock of these invaluable source materials on the archaeology of the medieval city of Gaur, which are still lying unpublished or scantily noticed in the major public collections of the United Kingdom. In doing so, recourse to well-known and published materials have been taken to, in the discussion, either incidentally or for further elaboration of some debatable issues.

JOURNAL OF BENGAL ART 10

At the British Library, London:

Visual Records on Gaur:

The Prints, Drawings and Photographs Section of the Asia Pacific & Africa (formerly referred to as the Oriental & India Office) Collections of the British Library contain a number of visuals on the medieval city of Gaur, which have not been made use of by modern researchers. These visuals are in paintings, drawings, and sketches belonging to the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries done by the European artists, soldiers, bureaucrats as well as Indian artists in the employ of the British. From the sixties of the nineteenth century photographs of the principal monuments of these medieval cities are also available.

Plate 1.1: Ruined gateway in the Baisgazi wall with the remains of a hexagonal tower, Gaur.

Plate 1.2: Ruins of Firuz Minar, Gaur.

William Baillie (1752/3 - 99), 3 first a cadet in the Bengal Army and then a lieutenant in Bengal Engineers, has left behind three drawings (listed under nos. W 3953, 3954, and 4096) of the ruins of Gaur which were probably intended for inclusion in his proposed publication entitled Picturesque ruins at Gaur, advertised in the Calcutta Gazette, 5 December 1798. These unpublished drawings in ink and grey wash on paper capture the views of two important monuments and an unidentified gateway of Gaur. These drawings drafted on the spot during the year 1784 are the earliest visual records of the monuments of Gaur.

The drawing of the dilapidated and desolate gateway (no. WD 3953) is labelled as ‘Ruined Gateway in the Baisgazi wall with the remains of a hexagonal tower’. The gateway (Plate 1.1) shown in the drawing has polygonal engaged bastions that would have originally supported a high central arch. It is brick-built, with only the door frame in stone, and is likely to have been decorated with brightly coloured terracotta tiles. The sunken panels have the decorative motifs of stylized ‘hanging lamp’ (resembling chain and bell). Through the door frame are visible the arched

Plate 1.3: Kotwali Darwaza, Gaur.

REDISCOVERING GAUR: SOURCE MATERIAL IN THE PUBLIC COLLECTIONS 11

door of a structure in the near distance and the Firuz Minar far away. The gate does not exist now and could not be definitely identified with any recorded gateway within the citadel of Gaur. From the view of the Firuz Minar in the distant background, the remains of a wall in close proximity in the south, the locality vaguely resembles the north-east corner of the Bais-Gazi wall outside the Gaur Palace. In this area within the citadel of Gaur there once stood a gateway leading to the treasury within the Bais-Gazi wall. From the inscription once affixed to this gateway and now preserved in the Minarowali mosque, Mahadipur,4 we know that it was a middle gate between the judicial court and the treasury. The gate was built on AH 871(AD1466-67) during the reign of Sultan Rukn al-din Barbak Shah. This gateway leading to the treasury was noticed by William Francklin5 and his Munshi, Shyam Prasad6 during the earlier part of the nineteenth century. Shyam Prasad states that ‘the door of the treasury house’ has the distinction of being wide and large. It was adorned with bricks and stone and has such a breadth that a rider can pass easily through it. Francklin adds that this gateway (Khazzanah Cotelle) ‘is 25 feet high and the arch through which you enter is 15 by 6 in breadths’. The area around the proposed site of this gateway, locally known as Banglakot, had several structures including the famous tomb of Sultan Husain Shah,7 although none exists at present. A scientifc clearance work undertaken in this area by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2005 unearthed the base of a structure with four minarets at corners.8 Baillie’s drawing is faithful to the locale, with tall coconut trees and shrubs of bamboo set in the background. His sketch seems to have been drafted on the spot, to be worked on and given picturesque dimension and colouring at a later time.

Of William Baillie’s two other drawings, the one (Plate 1.2) on the Kotwali gate, Gaur (WD 3954) helped us to form a full idea of the architecture of the southern gateway of the city with its arch still in view. The arch was razed to the ground by an earthquake in 1897. In 1784 the gateway was in an even better state of preservation than when Creighton painted the same gateway a few years later. Moreover, Baillie’s view was relatively free from romantic or picturesque overtones of Creighton’s drawing. It gives us a full and faithful depiction of the structure consisting of a lofty brick archway which is flanked, on the outer side, by massive round protruding bastions, pierced with two rows of machiocolis. On the face of the archway tapering semi-circular turrets project from the walls. Upon the wall, both inside and outside of the turrets, are carved deep niches having trefoil arches supported on colonettes. The archway was contained within a frame of panels and topped by tiers of moulding. The Kotwali gate, now, is in

utter ruin. The only feature remaining, besides the enormous inner core, is a small niche of bricks. The gate marked the southern end of the city. Today it marks the border between western Bengal in India and the Chapai - Nawabgunj district of Bangladesh. Baillie’s view captures the

Plate 1.4: Ancient tower among the ruins of Gaur (Bengal)


gateway from the Bangladesh side. The crumbling and unkempt edifice with deep-rooted vegetational growths is rendered in a brilliant manipulation of light and shade in the sketch.

The remaining drawing of Baillie (WD 4096) depicts Firuz Minar (Plate 1.3), the elegantly designed tower, lying outside the citadel area that was thought of as the most picturesque subject among the ruins of Gaur by all the official and amateur artists.

Firuz minar is situated on the eastern side of the citadel of Gaur on the north-eastern edge of an elevation. This tower is the subject of a great deal of controversy regarding its name, functional purpose, and its builder. The name Firuz or Firuza has given rise to many conjectures.

For example, some think that it is derived from Pir Asa, and is a corrupted form of the name loosely applied by the local people. Others take it to refer to Sultan Saif al-din Firuz Shah (AH 893-896/AD 1487-90), the Abyssinian ruler. According to Alexander Cunningham, Firuza Minar means simply ‘Blue Tower’, from the turquoise-coloured glaze with which it was faced.9 The method by which Francklin,10 Cunningham11 and Syed Mahamudul Hasan12 ascribed the name of this tower from a broken inscription found at the Goamalti indigo factory, Gaur (now in the British Museum, London) linking only the name of a ruler, Saif-al-din to Sultan Saif-al-din Firuz Shah is questionable. Similarly, scholars have variously regarded this edifice as ‘tower of victory’, a ‘lat’ or a circular column, chiragh minar, resident of a saint, an observatory, etc.13 The visual materials on Gaur, at the British Library, do not help to resolve any of these controversies, but such material afforded

some idea regarding the shape, surroundings and the progressive state of preservation of this marvellous edifice during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The importance of William Baillie’s sketch (WD 4096) lies in the fact that it is the earliest visual record of Firuz Minar. His view of the tower, taken from the south-eastern side, is set in the wide perspective of a somewhat unnatural background. The huge earthen walls of the citadel, present even today, are absent in the drawing. The division between the polygonal storeys forming the first to the third and the circular storeys comprising the fourth and the fifth is also not pronounced in the drawing. Moreover, the embellishments in the surface of the tower, in the form of hanging bell within niches, Lancelot designs, still extant, are left out in this streamlined drawing. But Baillie has faithfully reproduced the bare plinth, the broken doorway and the windows of the Minar. Further, this drawing is the only visual record to show that there was a place for affixing an inscription tablet above the entrance doorway. Baillie’s drawing also confirms that the top storey of the tower had an open-arched room covered by a dome, as seen in the paintings of Thomas Daniell (1791),14 Henry Creighton (c.1795)15 and others. That was changed by a modern restorer into an open-flat roof as seen today.

Plate 1.5: Tower among ruins, Gaur (Bengal)


Compared to Baillie’s drawing, the painting (Plate 1.4) of Samuel Davis of this famous tower (WD2414) is more realistic. Samuel Davis (1760-1819),16 first a cadet in the Madras Infantry then a civil servant of the East India Company and finally its Director, was a fine amateur artist. Davis visited Gaur sometime around 1791 from Bhagalpur, possibly in the company of the Daniells, and painted only one monument of Gaur,17 the Firuz Minar. Davis’s view in water-colour is taken from the south-western side at a much closer distance. This painting helps us to form a clear idea of the state of conservation of Fires Miner in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The eminence on which the tower once stood is well defined. The basement of the tower from the ground to the door sill in the midst of random rubble, denuded of its facing, as seen in the painting of Creighton, 18 is more faithfully depicted here. Alexander Cunningham19 visiting Gaur nearly a century later found the basement of the tower exactly as it has been depicted by Davis. But comparing it with its drawing by Baillie it seems that this portion of the tower had in the interim20 undergone some repair work. This is evidently a civil work, undertaken at the instance of Creighton, as no one else would have been interested in the renovation of a crumbling edifice in those days of wanton rape of historical monuments. The supposition made by Abid Ali21 and others that the basement was originally faced with polished stones in the form of steps all around could not be confirmed from either this or other visual records of the tower. Had it been so, it could have been removed before the first drawing of the Minar made by William Baillie. There is also nothing to show its shape, which could have been circular or octagonal as Cunningham was to remark. There is at present no easy means to check the lower portion of the tower as the base has been filled with earth and turned over by the Archaeological Department in 1911 in order to strengthen the monument as well as to facilitate an easy access to the entrance doorway. The Minar proper with its first three storeys having polygonal exterior and the top two circular demarcated by black stone chajja are very well delineated in Davis’s painting, as are the damaged open-arched room covered by a dome in the last storey, the broken windows in each storey, the brick string courses dividing the polygonal exterior of the lower storeys and the small elongated openings along the circular staircase inside. But like Baillie, Davis in his painting has omitted the shallow niches with the bell and chain motifs and other decorations which articulate the exterior of the Minar.

Plate 1.6: Capital of a coloumn in the Golden Mosque (Sona Masjid), Gaur (Bengal)

Plate 1.7: The five storeyed towers at Gaur known as the Pir Asa Minar or Firoz Shah Minar.


Robert Hyde Colebrooke (1762-1808),22 an outstanding surveyor and draughtsman, entered the East India Company’s service as an Officer of the Bengal Infantry but much of his service was devoted to his work in the Bengal survey department. He ultimately became the Surveyor-General in 1808. From 1794 until 1797 Colebrooke undertook survey work in various parts of the river Ganges making a record of its channels.23 In the course of this work he visited Gaur in 1794 and made a drawing of only one monument which had attracted him most, needless to say, the Firuz Minar. Colebrooke’s drawing (Plate 1.5) in water colour (WD 337) captures the Minar from an entirely different angle, from its north-eastern side beyond the road leading to the Qadam Rasul complex and beyond it a fine tank which Cunningham saw during his visit in 1879-80.24 This tank was evidently excavated to obtain earth to fill in the raised platform of the monument which had once stood on the mound. The drawing shows that the environs of the Firuz Minar had not changed much since the close of the eighteenth century and the area was devoid of any other major structure. The main structure in the drawing does not show any change in the state of its preservation from Davis’s view, as one would expect. Since it was taken from a different angle, this drawing does not show the entrance doorway or the windows and only vaguely suggests the basement of the tower with its unfaced rough stone work. The drawing is inscribed in ink: The City of Gour in Bengal possesses within its walls and neighbourhood a series of ruins, principally mosques etc.25 One wonders then why a tower-like edifice had become the favourite subject of so many European painters when there were such magnificent mosques like Sona, Lattan, Tantipara and Gunmant among the ruins of Gaur. Perhaps, an elegant tower was more familiar and attractive to the western audience than the Saracenic architecture blended with complex Indo-Islamic geometric designs that formed the basic scheme of a Gaur mosque.

Plate 1.8: The interior of Qadam Rasul enshrining the Prophet’s footprint at Gaur.

Plate 1.9: A ruined chattri by a tank looking out to a distant prospect, Water-colour

Major William Francklin (1763-1839)26 of East India Company's Bengal Native Infantry visited Gaur during the winter of 1810. The account of his visit can be found in his Journal discussed later. During his visit he prepared several architectural drawings of the details of the monuments of Gaur and Pandua and made sets of facsimiles from them. He used thirteen drawings to illustrate his Journal; from among the rest, both original and facsimile, he presented fifteen drawings to the India Office Library through General Gastin on 16 January 1816. Thirteen of these belong to the Adina mosque in Pandua and its architectural designs, etc. the detailed


listing (listed under WD 318 to 330) of which is available in Mildred Archer’s India Office Library Catalogue of British Drawings.27 Of the two unpublished drawings on Gaur (listed under WD 331 and WD 332) by Francklin, one depicts (Plate 1.6) the capital of a column in the Bara Sona mosque. Francklin describes the context of this drawing in the following words: ‘6 minarets or columns of brown stone, faced with black marble, adorn the building, bands of black marble about 12 inches in breadth embrace the column from the base to the capital which are adorned with a profusion of flowered work, carved in the marble.’28 A closer examination reveals that it is in fact the drawing of an arched niche supported by a pair of pilasters. The spandrel and architrave of the ogival arch bear floral decorations including rosettes and within the niche is a floral ornament suspended from a chain. The composition resembles the form of mihrab which is a recurrent theme in the architectural ornamentation of the buildings of Gaur and Pandua, appearing mostly as wall decorations. Good examples of such arched niche are available in Chhota Sona mosque29 in Firuzpur, Gaur. But the capital of the buttressed octagonal cornered towers of the Bara Sona mosque does not display this design now. Creighton, however, in his illustration, gives the whole front of the building the same ornamentation as its smaller namesake.30 His other drawing on Gaur antiquities (WD 332) is also of some importance. It includes designs of six enamelled bricks collected from the ruins of Gaur, three of which bear similarity ‘to the same kind of blue and white composition’ as perceived on the sides of the enclosure of the Husain Shah’s tomb at Gaur.31 The enamelled or glazed bricks, produced by indigenous techniques were profusely used in all major secular and religious buildings of Gaur. After Gaur was finally abandoned and fell into decay the technique was lost to the local people. The glazed bricks and tiles, collected in heaps from the fallen buildings, became an object of curiosity and an item of collection for their brilliant appearance, even in the days when Father Manrique32 visited Gaur (AD 1640).

Plate 1.10: Blind arches with sculptured niches on the façade of the Darasbari Mosque, Gaur

Plate 1.11: East view of the Bera Mosque, Gaur.

Francis Rawdon (1754-1826), second Earl of Moira, afterwards the first Marquees of Hastings, was sent to India as Governor-General of Bengal and Commander-in-chief from 1813 to 1823. Lord Hastings made a small sporting expedition to upper Bengal in early 1817 when he visited the ruins of Gaur and other sites. Indian artist Sitaram33 was in his entourage. Sitaram has


left behind nine paintings of some of the monuments of Gaur and Pandua (listed under Add. or 4881 to Add. or 4883 and 4886 to 4891). His six views on Gaur include a painting of Firuz Minar (Add. or 4888).34 Sitaram’s painting of Firuz Minar (Plate 1.7), although artistically brilliant, is of not much use for the archaeological documentation of this important edifice. The focal point of this painting is a Palash tree with its brilliant salmon-pink flowers in the foreground while the tower is relegated to a distance within a romantic and unrealistic background. Sitaram did not pay much attention to the architectural details of the minar either, as there are quite a few mistakes in the depiction of structural components of the monument. Sitaram’s two other drawings on the Qadam Rasul monument (Add. or 4886 and 4887)35 are equally idealized. The one showing the exterior view delineates the facade with its ponderous columns simplified and its details painted fancifully. There is also a notable mistake in perspective. The musafirkhana in front of the building from where the view seems to have drawn appears in much greater distance from the building proper than it actually is. It seems that Sitaram made the sketch of the monument in situ but while preparing the final drawing had confused its surroundings. The interior view (Plate 1.8) of the Qadam Rasul is also confusing (Add. or 4887). The cusped arches and shallow niches of the interior wall, so typically Mughal in style, are not organic to the structure and do not exist today. It is probable, that some sort of temporary alteration work in stucco was carried out over the original wall during the governorship of Shah Shuja, who is alleged to have taken a great interest in the conservation of this sacral monument. Within the interior chamber and behind the pure dais where the sacred footprint of the Prophet is kept, there is another taller dais. The latter does not exist today and if Sitaram did not make any mistake while preparing his final drawing, it probably represents the wooden box table, formerly inlaid with gold and silver work, in which the sacred footprint was preserved by Husain Shah after its removal from Pandua to Gaur.36 Sitaram has drawn three paintings37 of the Palace walls from both its outside and inside. The one showing the walls of the Palace with Hastings’s encampment in the foreground (Add. or 4889) provides an excellent view of the Bais Gazi wall as it existed during the early part of the nineteenth century. This view taken from the north-east of the Palace, atop the citadel wall, shows that the eastern and northern segments of the Palace wall were in a tolerable shape of repair then, which is not the case at present. Sitaram has drawn an inside view of the same segments of the Palace wall (Add. or 4890) with ruined structures and heaps of bricks lying around. But perhaps the most interesting drawing of the three is a painting (Plate 1.9) of a ruined wall with a watch tower (Chhatri) at its top. Through the broken part of a ruined and stunted wall a single square - chambered structure with a dome is visible in the distance. The landscape, the setting and the ruins help us identify this place as the locale surrounding the western side of the Palace proper, just at the edge of the beginning of the second compartment. The western wall of the Palace is not extant now barring a few fallen portions forming eminence here and there. But the depressed landscape with water bodies is still extant. The watch-tower and the single domed structure in the background are evidently Mughal in architectural style. Such structures, along with Lukochuri gate, the musafirkhana in front of Qadam Rasul, were probably added to the Sultanate Citadel during the governorship of Shah Shuja, which are radically different from the architecture of the earlier period. In a recent archaeological excavation carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India in this area, a semi-circular bastion like stone structure has been exposed which formed a portion of the western wall enclosing the Palace. The top of this wall where the watch-tower was located is destroyed but the excavator could notice that the wall was repaired and mended during Mughal period as evinced from its facing made of Lakhauri brick.38


Markham Kittoe (1803-1853),39 an officer in Bengal Sixth Native Infantry (1848-53) left 168 drawings bound in three parts forming Volume I of his collection (WD 2877 ff 1/50) depicting sculptures, bronzes and architectural details from sites in U.P., Bihar, Bengal and Orissa, prepared between 1846 and 1853. Folio 11 of the volume sketches a sculpture of Hindu pantheon found in Gaur without stating its find-spot and therefore could not be related to any sculpture bearing sites of Gaur or its vicinity.

Photographs:

The Asia Pacific & Africa (formerly referred to as the Oriental & India Office) Collections of the British Library contain a superb collection of archaeological and architectural photographs taken by the Archaeological Survey of India between 1850s and 1920s.40 The earliest series of photographs are prints from glass and calotype negatives known as ‘India Museum Series’ from the place of its official deposit. Prints from negatives in the India Museum Series are arranged in 46 volumes, with their negatives listed by T. Bloch.41 Of these, Volumes 2 and 3 include 29 photographs of Gaur by Joseph David Beglar, the archaeological surveyor and an assistant to Alexander Cunningham in the Archaeological Department. Beglar and his men made an extensive archaeological survey of the Eastern India in 1870s42 in course of which these photographs were taken ... The albumin prints of the photographs listed under Photo 1002/ (91) to 1002/ (119) are available in the Prints and Drawings Section. There is also a duplicate set of prints listed under 1003/ (91) to 1003 (119). These photographs capture the views (general and detail) of the following monuments of Gaur: Kotwali gate (91 & 92), Lukochuri gate (93), Bera mosque (?) (94 & 95), Chamkati mosque (96), Darasbari mosque ( 98 to 101), Lattan mosque ( 102 to 105), Qadam Rasul (106 & 107), Bara Sona mosque (108 & 109), Chhota Sona mosque ( 110 to 112), Tantipara mosque (113 to 115), Firuz Minar (116 & 117), Fath Khan’s tomb (118) and Hussain Shah’s tomb (?) (119). The prints are not in a good state of preservation. Almost all of them are faded and some soiled and discoloured. Nevertheless, they form one of the earliest groups of photographs of the monuments of Gaur where the edifices are found in ruinous and overgrown condition. Beglar’s photographs of the Darasbari and Chamkatti mosques are the first photographic documentation of these late fifteenth-century mosques of Gaur. The snaps of the details of Darasbari mosque (Plate 1.10) showing the blind arches with sculptured niches on the façade are superb. These frames capture clearly the details of many ornamental designs executed in terracotta including a parasitic climbing plant that comes out of the trunk of a palm tree and fills all the available space. Such detailed photographs are as good as architectural drawings and set the trend for future photographic documentation of archtectural components of historical buildings. Beglar’s photographs of the interior of Lattan mosque and the details of Tantipara and Chhota Sona mosques are equally brilliant. There are three photographs in the series which cannot be identified properly. Two of these (94 & 95) are attributed to an edifice named ‘Bera Mosque’. No mosque of this name was ever known to have existed at Gaur. An accompanying note in Bloch's list reads, 'no such building is known to me. Both plates are discoloured, and show merely parts of a jungle.' One of the views (Plate 1.11), looks towards buildings which is entirely overgrown with vegetation and nothing could be made out of it. However, on a closer examination of the other it is found to be of a square building covered by a single large dome vaguely resembling the Chika monument within the citadel of Gaur. Although the features of the building are barely visible through thick vegetational overgrowth, its identification with Chika building is a distinct possibility. A comparison of the photograph with Photo No. 125 from the


Richard Temple Collection, taken about the same time (discussed below) supports such possibility. However, the photograph (119) labelled as ‘interior of Husain Shah’s Tomb, Gaur’ is certainly a view of the pendentives and partially collapsed dome of the Chika building before its conservation. The tomb of Husain Shah or its remnants were completely destroyed in an eathquake in the year 1846 and there is no way Beglar could photograph it in 1870s.

Photographs of Gaur can next be found in the albums known as ‘Circles Series’. The Circles series consists of 64 volumes of prints from the various Circles of the Archaeological Survey of India. The prints are described in the lists of photographs included in the annual reports of each circle which are, with a few exceptions, bound with the prints. The prints of Bengal (later Eastern) Circle are arranged in five volumes under shelf marks Photo 1005/1 to Photo 1005/5 dated 1902-3 to 1920-21. Photographs of the monuments of Gaur are available in all the five volumes and are listed as under:

Year Shelf mark Number

of prints

Monuments covered Remarks

1902-3 Photo 1005/1(36) to 1005/1(48)

13 Gates: Dakhil (1), Lukochuri(2); Mosques: Bara Sona(2), Chhota Sona (2), Tantipara (2), Lattan (2) Sacral & other Monuments: Qadam Rasul (1), Chika (1).

Photographs taken under the direction of the Archaeological Surveyor, a post held at the time by T. Bloch.

1904-5 Photo 1005/1(371) to 1005/1(372)

2 Mosque : Bara Sona (2) Ditto.

1906-7 Photo 1005/2(431) to 1005/2(444)

14 Gate: Dakhil Darwaza (2); Mosques: Bara Sona (3), Tantipara (3), Chhota Sona (3), Lattan (1); sacral & other monuments: Qadam Rasul (1), Firuz Minar (1).

Ditto. The Circle was renamed as Eastern Circle.

1908-9 Photo 1005/2(655) to 1005/2(662)

8 Mosques : Chhota Sona (5), Tantipara (3)

Ditto.

1911-12 Photo 1005/3(789) to 1005/3(796)

8 Mosques: Bara Sona (2), Gunmant (2); Lattan (1); Gate: Dakhil (1); Sacral & other monuments: Qadam Rasul (1), Firuz Minar (1).

Photographs taken under the direction of D.B. Spooner, Superintendent, Eastern Circle.

1916-17 Photo 1005/4(1346) to 1005/4(1357)

12 Gates : Gumti(1), Dakhil(1); Mosques : Darasbari(1), Gunmant(2), Tantipara(1), Chamkatti(1) Bara Sona (1); Sacral & other monuments: Qadam Rasul(1), Chika(3).

Ditto.

1920-21 Photo 1005/5(88) to 1005/5(95)

8 Mosques : Chamkatti(3), Darasbar(2), Bara Sona(1); Others : Bais Gazi wall(2)

Photographs taken under the direction of K.N. Dikshit, Officiating Superintendent, Eastern Circle. New Series.


Strangely enough, there is not even a single photograph of the Kotwali gate in the entire series. Gunamant mosque and Gumti gate were first photographed as late as in the years 1911-12 and 1916-17 respectively. Nevertheless, the photographs of Gaur in the Bengal (Eastern) Circle series are a rich visual document as how the ruinous and overgrown edifices found by Beglar were transformed into scientifically conserved monuments of the present day. These photographs capture the views of progressive stages of conservation: from clearance of debris, eradication of vegetation growth to repair, restoration and preservation.

Along with ‘Circle Series’, a centralized Archaeological Survey set up under John Marshall in 1902 published its own annual reports and took its own photographs. This series of photographs generally termed as ‘Director-General’s Series’ also includes photographs of the monuments of Gaur. There are 14 prints listed under Photo 1010/3(115) to 1010/3(128) accompanying the Director General’s Report for 1904-5. The prints enframe general and detailed views of the following monuments: Bara Sona, Tantipara, and Lattan mosques, Dakhil Darwaza, Firuz Minar and Qadam Rasul. The photographs are documentative in nature. With the reorganization of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1921, no further photographs were sent to the India Office, London.

Apart from the photographs of the Archaeological Survey of India, there is a set of 21 photographs in the Prints, Drawings and Photographs Section listed under shelf mark Photo 125/1(104) to 125/1(124), taken in 1870 by an unknown photographer. On looking through the envelope containing the photographs, a small note was found addressed to Richard Temple, Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal stating ‘H.H/ will remember that these photos were presented to him by Mr. Campbell, Soory-Beerbhoom’ with the initial F.B. and a date of 24.4.95.’ Written below this note in handwriting we come across the name, Francis. G. Campbell, ICS, Suri, Birbhum district, Bengal. Asst/Collector. It would thus transpire that Mr. Campbell, the Assistant Collector of Suri, Birbhum presented these photographs to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. This set of photographs includes two interesting snapshots respectively, of the Kotwali Darwaza (125/1(119)) and the Lattan mosque (125/1(108)) with European groups. One

could note the shape of the eastern gateway of the Lattan mosque facing the principal façade which was then still extant even though in a dilapidated condition. The photograph of the Kotwali Darwaza (Plate 1.12) with a European couple and an Indian attendant in the foreground shows the full arch of the gateway preserved still in tolerable shape. The set includes general views of

Plate 1.12: Kotwali Gate, Gaur with European couple in the foreground.


Bara Sona mosque (125/1(112), and Dakhil Darwaza (125/1(109) looking ruined, desolate and overgrown; Qadam Rasul (125/1(120) and the tomb of Fath Khan (125/1(105) in tolerable repair.

A photograph in this set unidentified and labelled as ‘Ruined Mosque, Gaur’ (125/1(121)) is a view of Chika monument within the citadel of Gaur covered with thickets and jungles.

There are two further sets of photographs, one comprising of 17 (listed under nos. 364/14(1) to 364/14(17)) taken by M/S Johnston and Hoffmann, the professional photographer of Calcutta in 1910 and the other consisting of 7 (listed under nos. 430/73(38) to 430/73(44)) taken around 1899 by an unknown photographer who forwarded his photographs to Walter Lawrence Esq., ICS, CIE, at Viceregal Lodge, Simla. The former belonged to an album of ‘Views of Gaur and Pandua’ presented by the people of Malda in 1909 to 2nd Marquees of Zetland, Governor of Bengal, 1917-22. The latter came from the collection of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, and 1899-1905. These photographs portray the general views of some of the major monuments of Gaur.

Plate 1.14: Enamelled Bricks at Nuttin musjid

Plate 1.13: Specimens of Enamelled Bricks at the Kings tomb (Husayn Shah’s tomb) in Gaur.



Illustrated Manuscript:

The OIOC of the British Library has in its collection two illustrated Persian manuscripts which are reported to have been produced from the court of the Bengal Sultans. The first (OR 13836) is a royal copy of the first part of Nizami’s Sikandarnama, otherwise known as Sharafnama, which describes the conquests of Alexander the Great. The manuscript has an inscription on folio 72 verso giving the date, 938 AH/ AD 1531-32 as well as the name of the scribe; Ahmad called Hamid Khan ibn Mahmud, and a dedication to the Sultan Nasir al-dunya wa’l din Abu’l-Muzaffar Nusrat Shah son of Sultan Ala al-din Hasayn Shah. Before its acquisition to the British Library a notice of its discovery was published with illustrations in a sale catalogue of London.43 The other manuscript (Or 4535) a copy of Jami’s Yusuf wa Zulaykha which was suspected to have been produced during Nusrat Shah's father Ala al-din Husain Shah’s reign at Gaur.

There are nine illustrations in the Iskandarnama manuscript (on folios 14v, 18v, 30r, 35v, 39v, 41v, 51v, 59r and 64r), the only known illustrated manuscript produced at the court of the Bengal Sultans. Robert Skelton44 has made note of the indigenous elements in architecture, flora, fauna, the details of weaponry and contrivances in these paintings. The repetitive panels of blue and white fish tail tiles, the decorative brick work, the combination of brick and tile in the buildings, the mango groves, the plantain tree, are all very familiar to Gaur. But the heavily conceptual treatment of the architecture and the landscape, a feature of the medieval Indian and Iranian painting, belies any real comparison with the actual buildings and settings of the Palace of Gaur of which, a contemporary description is available in the account of an anonymous Portuguese interpreter.45 Yet in a couple of paintings (fol. 30r, 51v) the locale is vaguely reminiscent of the present-day ruins of the city of Gaur, with mango and plantain trees beset with structures and water bodies in the background. In another painting of Alexander and Nushaba enthroned (fol. 35v) there is a pair of interesting contrivances hanging over the heads of the royal couple. The device, resembling a lamp, is made up of three ceramic flasks of unequal size attached to a horizontal stick and suspended from key-stone of the cusped arch of the pavilion. The biggest of the three flasks bear the flame of the lamp encased in an elliptical glass cover.46 Flasks of similar shapes or slightly dissimilar ones are found from the field explorations at Gaur. This painting47 provided a clue to their probable use as oil bearing vessels. The manuscript includes rare illustrations of a couple of episodes for subjects of miniatures like, Alexander and his forces defeating the army of men of Zang, the Abyssinians (fol. 14v) and Dara's messenger presents polo stick and ball and sesame seeds to Alexander (fol. 18v). These subjects may have a special appeal for Sultan Nusrat Shah, first in view of his father Husayn Shah’s victory over the Abyssinian tyrant Sultan Muzaffar Shah and second because Nusrat Shah was a keen polo player and a patron of the game.48 The final folio of the manuscript (fol. 70v) has an Arabic inscription written in alternate gold and blue naskh, within an ogival medallion, which served both as ex-libris and colophon. The language and palaeography of the inscription conform to the standard formula of the text of the stone inscriptions49 of the Bengal Sultans, found in different places in West Bengal and Bangladesh.

The twenty-six illustrations in the Yusuf wa Zulekha manuscript, on the contrary, betray no Gaur or Bengal feature. The manuscript has been certainly not produced at the court of Bengal Sultans or at the atelier of another Eastern Indian Sultanate as some scholars would make us believe.50 The


manuscript is written in clear and well-formed nastaliq which was not in vogue in Bengal during the Sultanate period. The suggestion made by some scholars (based on a note in the first page of the manuscript stating that it was bought for the library of Sultan ‘Ala al-din Sikandar Shah in AH 913 /AD 1507-08) that the patron of this manuscript was Sultan ‘Ala al-din Husain Shah of Bengal or Sultan Sikandar Lodi who annexed Jaunpur to his kingdom in the early sixteenth century is, therefore, farfetched.

European Manuscripts on Gaur:

Major William Francklin (1763-1839),51 of East India Company's Bengal Native Infantry and a keen amateur archaeologist, made a journey from Rajmahal to Gaur in the cold weather of 1810. The description of this journey can be found in his Journal entitled Journal of a route from Rajemahal to Sooty, from thence to Gaur: with an account of the Ruins of that ancient city, in the months of November and December 1810. Francklin’s Journal is bound up with four other manuscripts and preserved in the European Manuscripts Section of the British Library under Shelf Mark Add. 26602. The handwritten Journal covers folios 170 to 235 of the bound volume and has the following contents:

ff. 170 to 173 v - Rajemahal

ff. 173v to 175v – Journey to Gaur

ff. 176 to 199v – Gaur

Section 2

ff. 200 to 203r –Excursions to Goamalty to the great Sagar or ‘tank’to the

tombs of Makhdum Shah Zehaneean and other illustrious or holy persons in

the vicinity of the great Sagar. 23 November.

ff. 203v to 217r – Purroah ancient capital of the Patan Princes who reigned

in Bengal.

ff. 217r to 222r – Concluding remarks. Rajemahal December 13th 1810.

ff.223 v to 226v-A chronological series of the kings who reigned at

Lucknawati or Purroah and Tarrah, the ancient capitals of Bengal, from Rajah Luckmeesi,

a Hndu Rajah, to Mahomed Akbar Badshah, Emperor of Hindusthan,

Selected from native Historians commencing with the year of the

Hijerah 510 or Anno Domin 1117 and ending 973 Hijerah corresponding

with AD 1566, embracing a period of 463 years.

ff. 227v to235v – Historical Memorandum relating to Gaur from a

Persian Manuscript.


The manuscript of this Journal when sent on loan to India in the early years of the twentieth century was found to be of such interest that it was reproduced in print by the then Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam from Shillong in 1910.52 However, the publication covered the text of the Journal only. It excluded twelve superb architectural drawings in Indian ink and watercolour with which the manuscript of the Journal is embellished. These drawings, the details of which are given below, still remain unpublished:-

179v – Specimens of Enamelled Bricks at the Kings tomb in Gaur. Numbered ‘2’ above.

181r - Enamelled Bricks at the Kings tomb. Numbered ‘2’ in pencil.

192 – Double page illustration entitled ‘Enamelled Brick at the Nuttin musjid’.

193r – Enamelled Bricks at Nuttin musjid.

194r – Enamelled bricks at the Nuttin musjid at Gour.

197r - Enamelled bricks at the Nuttin musjid.

208r – Sculptured Bricks at the Adeena.

210r – The takht or Elevated Platform at Adeena.

214v & 215r – Untitled. Designs of ornamentations in Adina mosque.

216 – Double page illustration entitled ‘Funeral Urn at the Adeena Mosque at Purooah’- Drawn 1810.’

218v & 219r – Ornaments at Adeena.

Facsimilies of seven of these drawings on Adina mosque (208r, 210r, 214v, 215r, 216, 218v and 219r) are preserved in the Prints and Drawing Section discussed above. The remaining seven according to the inscriptions in Francklin’s own handwriting, depict specimens of enamelled bricks collected from the ‘king’s tomb’ (Husain Shah’s tomb) and ‘Nuttin musjid’ (Lattan mosque), two monuments of Gaur most famous for their glazed decorations. Lattan mosque is extant and even at present day retains some of its brilliant glaze work on its exterior. But the ‘Kings tomb’ or the tomb of Sultan Husain Shah was completely destroyed on an earthquake in 1846. Fortunately, one can form an idea of its superb glazed ornamentation from an account found among Robert Orme’s papers53 and a painting of its gateway left by Henry Creighton.54 To Francklin, the glazed ornamentations of this tomb appeared ‘curious’ and ‘peculiar’ as he troubled to describe the compositions through words and drawings:

You enter by a handsome arched gateway built of stone, the sides and front of this doorway are incrusted with a peculiar kind of composition, blue and white China tiling, which has a singular appearance; at four corners are large roses cut in stone, of which drawing no. 1 is a specimen. The minarets which flank the building are ornamented with curious carved works of trees, flowers, etc. Within the doorway is a large enclosure containing the bodies of Shah Sultan Hosein and other branches of the royal family. The sides of the enclosure are incrusted with the same kind of blue and white composition and no’s 3, 4 and 5 give a facsimile of these curious ornaments.55

Francklin’s drawing no.1 was not found in the Journal. The drawing (Plate 1.13) at folio 179v is numbered ‘2’ above and shows a square bevelled brick/architectural component glaze


painted with floral motifs within circles in white on a dark blue ground. Folio no. 181r is also numbered ‘2’ in pencil above but could well be Francklin’s drawing no’s 3, 4 & 5 as it has drawings of three bi-chrome glazed bricks collected from the ‘Kings tomb’. The bricks are rectangular in shape having designs of flowering plants, florets with hanging bells, lanceolated ornaments with a fleuron in the inner field, etc. painted in white on a dark blue ground. Francklin was fascinated by the glazed ornamentation of the ‘Nuttin’ or Lattan mosque and writes eloquently:

Its whole exterior is adorned with the most beautiful tile work of variegated colours, consisting of very dark blue, yellow, green and white tiles resembling marble, eight double Minarets made of brick, and incrusted with variegated tile work of fanciful support the building on outside, extending to the base of the dome. The entrance is through a very superb arched virrandah, 35 feet in height, 36 in breadth, and 50 feet in length excluding the dome. It is supported by three domes, the interiors of which are entirely faced with variegated tiling. From this virrandah you enter the body of the building which is a square of 36 feet, crowned at the top with a Syrian roof, consists of 12 several divisions, having arched doorways supported by as many pillars of black stone of very ancient architecture; these pillars though slender in dimensions afford a most wonderful and solid support to the stupendous dome overhanging. The pillars are 10 feet high by one and half in breadth; the inside of these arched doorways are faced throughout with tile work, see specimens 1, 2, 3, 4, which, though of great age, still preserves in many places its original liveliness in colour. The facing of the arch is composed of bricks cunceated or wedged into the roof lengthways or what is more properly termed by the builders dovetailed, the 6 centre arches are of dark blue and white, the other six are alternately diversified with blue, white, green and yellow tiling, the whole of the inner surface of this building faced with the same kind of tiling up to the base of the dome, from whence a series of most beautiful inlaid and enamelled work extends to the summit. Near the top are two circular borders of blue and white enamelled work, the fronts of the arched doorways are executed with great taste, and have besides a profusion of the tile work above-mentioned, corresponding roses of carved brick work over the plinths of the doors ... I have not myself met with anything superior to it either for elegance of style, lightness in construction, or tasteful decoration of ornamentation in any part that I have visited in upper Hindusthan.56

Francklin has drawn six specimens of glazed brick/tiles from Lattan mosque as illustrations covering four folios of his Journal. The drawings although not numbered are evidently the same as specimens 1, 2, 3, 4 mentioned in the Journal. These glazed bricks/tiles belonged to the architrave and spandrel of the inside of the arched doorways of the mosque. Folio 192 is a double-paged illustration of a rosette, glaze painted in white on a dark blue ground. From its four successive inner circles it appears to be an imperfectly drawn representation of an embossed tile. Folio 193r has the facsimile of two merlon-shaped tiles (Plate 1.14), one with a design of intertwining coils of snakes glaze painted in dark blue on a white ground with dark-blue borders; the other having a creeper painted in white, orange and green on a deep-blue ground. In folio 194r there are drawings (Plate 1.15) of two polychrome merlon-shaped tiles, one with a lotus flower and the other with an ovoloid medallion glaze painted in combination of yellow, orange, green and white on a dark-blue ground. Finally, folio 197 has the representation (Plate 1.16) of a diamond-shaped tile with lotus flower painted in orange, yellow, and turquoise glazes over a dark-blue ground and an orange border.


In 1826, after his return to England on retirement, William Francklin donated these specimens of glazed terracottas collected from the ruins of Lattan mosque and Husain Shah’s tomb to the Royal Asiatic Society, London. The pieces, as we shall see in the following pages, ultimately found their way to the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where these are preserved today.

E. G. Glazier in Appendix A (no.26) of his report on the district of Rungpore (1873),57 published a short account on the city of Gaur with descriptions of four inscriptions in Arabic by an anonymous writer, which he found among old letters of the Collectorate. An almost identical account was found among the papers of Robert Orme, the Historiographer to the East India Company, in the India Office Records (Mss Eur Orme 65 no.25) of the British Library. Apart from the words Glazier could not read from the old and worn-out paper, there is a difference of only few words between Glazier’s published account and the Orme’s manuscript record. The identity of account in the Rungpore MS regarding the despoliation of the tombs of Husain Shah and

Nusrat Shah by Captain Adams with that quoted by Creighton58 from Orme, gave rise to the speculation that this MS is a transcript copy of Orme’s account of his visit to Gaur. H. E. Stapleton59 and Henry Beveridge60 suggested this probability. However, from a note to the translation of the Siyar-ul-muta’akhirin61 we learn that Captain Adams’s spoliation took place about 1766. Therefore, if Orme had visited Gaur, the visit should have taken place sometime after the year 1766. But Robert Orme left Bengal in 1752 and finally left for England from Madras by October 1758 after resigning from the East India Company’s service in India. There is no record that he ever returned to India.62 A closer perusal of the text of these accounts also reveals that Orme cannot be its author. In the paragraph on Qadam Rasul, Gaur, the accounts says that ‘it was brought from Medina 250 years since, and carried to Moorshedabad by Surajah Dowlah, but returned again by Meer Jaffar at the instance of his priests.’63 Even if the restoration of the Qadam Rasul was one of the first acts of Mir Jafar after he came to power, the incident could not have taken place earlier than mid-1757, by that time Orme had already left Bengal and was posted at Madras. The clue to the authorship of this short account on Gaur probably lay on the words: ‘I made a few Memorandums at each, which I transmit for your Information, together with Copies of all the Inscriptions…’ etc., in the opening passage.64 Orme was constantly looking for memorandum on historical sites and geographical material on his return to England with which to accompany and illustrate his History. It was on his demand an officer of the Rungpore district may have visited Gaur, compiled the account and forwarded it to Orme.



Plate 1.17: Stone carving from Gaur used as a Chimney piece

Plate 1.18: Remains of a Mosque near Gour

Dr Francis Buchanan (later Buchanan-Hamilton 1762-1829)65 was an officer of the Bengal Medical Service between 1794 and 1815, but during most of his career he was employed on special missions involving survey work. In 1807,66 Buchanan was directed to make a statistical survey of the Bengal Presidency and to enquire into a host of subjects including topography, history and antiquities. Accompanied by his assistants and Indian draughtsman, he carried on this work until the summer of 1814. His survey reports on the districts of Purnea, Dinajpur, Shahabad, Bihar, Patna and Bhaghalpur were published by the Bihar Government in the twenties and thirties of last century. But his drawings and maps remain largely unpublished, except for some which were made use of by R.M. Martin in his famous work The History, Antiquities, Topography and Statistics of Eastern India.67

MSS Eur D 97 of the Asia Pacific & Africa collections (formerly OIOC), British Library is a compilation of 26 maps and plans. Seven of which relate to the Bengal Presidency surveys prepared by the assistants of Buchanan including Kamal Lochan. Map no. 2 is a plan of the city of Gaur which was reproduced by Martin68 in vol. III of his book. This map is based on Henry Creighton’s survey map of Gaur (1801) and in the words of Buchanan ‘having procured the original survey, I have given a copy on a reduced scale.’69 This summary drawing of Creighton’s detailed survey map contains no additional information on the morphology of the city of Gaur. The only point of interest in the map is the minute delineation of the eastern boundary wall of the city with its double embankments and the marshy Bhatia lake beyond. In the words of Buchanan-


... towards the east the rampart has been double, and in most parts of that face there have been two immense ditches, and in some parts three. These ditches seems to have been a good deal intended for drains, and the ramparts were probably intended as much to secure the city from inundation as from enemies; notwithstanding, part of eastern side is now very marshy70

This has been indicated in the map by men travelling on boats and others busy in draining water from the lake.

The Appendix (pp. 2-10) of Buchanan’s Topographical Account of Dinajpur (MS.162. Eur D 71), vol. II contains a chronological table of Muhammadan rulers of Gaur and the vol. I (pp. 72-83) have a historical memorandum on them. These were published, word for word, by Martin71 in his The History Journal and included, word for word, in William Francklin’s Journal.72 H. Beveridge73 has traced the common origin of this historical memorandum to some Persian manuscript, procured by Henry Creighton, from Pandua which Francklin and Buchanan found in the Goamalty indigo factory and the former translated it into English and handed over a copy to his friend Francis Buchanan. This historical memorandum has generated a great deal of interest among the modern researchers, since the account, more often than not, tallies with the chronology of the Bengal Sultans, reconstructed through recent numismatic finds. The section in the original manuscript (ff 76-8) on Raja Ganesa and the period succeeding provides an interesting story of the war between Jalal al-din Muhammad Shah (AD 1415-31) and an unknown king Ibrahim Shah. It was so

far believed that the Ibrahim Shah, mentioned in the account, is the Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi (AD 1401-1440) of Jaunpur74 who outlived Sultan Jalal-al-din Muhammad Shah75 of Bengal. But this historical memorandum clearly states that Jalal-al-din put Ibrahim Shah to death and seized his government (fol. 77). Therefore, could this Ibrahim Shah be an ephemeral ruler who declared himself independent in some part of Bengal and contested the sovereignty of Jalal al-din Muhammad Shah? Coins of some pretenders bearing the name of ‘Ibrahim Shah’ or ‘Shahim Shah’ discovered in the recent past point to this possibility.76 The section also provides a different view regarding the succession of Sultan Nasir al-din Mahmud Shah (AD 1436-59) and the story of the ‘so-called’ restoration of the Ilyas Shahi house.

Plate 1.19: Golden Mosque Gour, Interior


The manuscript (MSS Eur B 260) entitled Scenes in the Cities and Wilds of Hindostan by Private Robert George Hobbes (1821-99), Bengal Army 1839-43, clerk on the staff of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Province devotes a small section (pp. 390-91) on Gaur where the despoliation of its structures and the re-use of their material in the modern buildings of ‘distant towns and even in Calcutta’ are recalled to remind us of the days of wanton rapacity of historical monuments by men of easy conscience. The manuscript also includes an interesting note on the great durability of the ‘ancient asiatic masonry’.

Frances Eden (1801-49),77 the eighth daughter of William Eden, First Baron of Auckland,

accompanied her sister Emily and her brother George (Lord Auckland), to India while George was Governor-General (1836-42). Fanny Eden, like her sister Emily, was a keen amateur artist who has left us a Journal in four volumes, kept at various periods between February 1837 and December 1838, illustrated with drawings. The Journal has been incorporated in its entirety by Janet Dunbar in her book Tiger, Durbar and Kings78 and some of the drawings in her other work Golden interlude,79 but the five drawings, in pen and ink, on the ruins and antiquities of Gaur, made during the journey from and to Calcutta through Bengal, on a tiger shooting expedition in the Rajmahal hills have remained unpublished (MSS Eur C.130 ff. 37-41). George Eden’s party arrived at Gaur on 23 March 1873 from Malda and pitched their tents somewhere between Kotwali gate and Chhota Sona mosque at Gaur. While encamped near Malda the previous day, Fanny Eden was informed by the Magistrate of Malda that ‘in the factory there was a very curious black marble chimney piese’ evidently stolen from Gaur in the first instance and afterwards bought by a European, who now offers to sell house, garden and the chimney piese for rupees hundred, ‘the house being half in ruins but the chimney piese quite perfect in every sense of the word.’ Miss Eden saw the chimney piece at the Malda factory and told the Magistrate ‘to try and get it for George’. ‘We will pack it up bodily and send it to England. I see it in the hall of Knightsbridge with my large tiger skin as a rug,’ she wrote. She made an ‘elaborate sketch’ (in fact a rough sketch) of this piece in folio 37 of her Journal (Plate 1.17) to impress upon George what a treasure she had found for him. The drawing shows an arched opening resembling the face stone of a richly embellished mihrab with floral scrolls and other motifs typical of the Husain Shahi period (AD 1493-1519). The façade is formed by two pillars and a lintel with ogival scalloped arch. While sketching the Chhota Sona Masjid in situ the next day (23rd March), it

Plate 1.20: Golden Mosque Gour, Exterior


became quite clear to Miss Eden that ‘our chimney piese was stolen from there.’80 The Chhota Sona mosque in Gaur was denuded of a considerable part of its embellishments in the nineteenth century, when, for example, a whole mihrab from its qibla wall was taken out and transported to Scotland, as we will see in the following pages.

Miss Eden seems to have stopped on her way from Malda to Gaur and sketched the façade of a mosque in utter ruins, drawings of which appear in folio 38 (Plate 1.18) under the title ‘Remains of Mosque near Gour.’ From such cursory drawings of indifferent skill it is very difficult to relate the sketch with any known mosque of Gaur. Three mosques, respectively, Chamkati, Tantipara and Lattan fall on the present route from Malda to Kotwali Gate. Of the three, the sketch bears a faint resemblance to the Tantipara mosque with its five arched entrances, three extant and two destroyed. But the shape of the arches in the sketch, cusped instead of pointed, belies such an attribution. Henry Creighton’s map of Gour 180181 does not show any definite route from Malda to Kotwali gate except some discontinuous, brick paved raised, roads interconnected with narrow footpath inside the city of Gaur. Ravenshaw’s map82 of 1847-49 clearly shows a proper road from Malda to Chhota Sona mosque but does not pass by the aforesaid mosques or through the Kotwali gate. The Journal of Miss Eden does not describe the route from Malda to

Kotwali (except to state that in some places there is hardly any road) and it is quite possible that the party followed the road shown in Ravenshaw’s map upto small Sagardighi in Gaur city and then made a detour to pass through Kotwali gate. In that case, Miss Eden may have sketched the ruins of a mosque near small Sagardighi namely, Mahajantola or Sonarganj (as shown in Ravenshaw’s map) which are no longer extant. The sketches of Chhota Sona mosque, appearing at folio’s 39 and 40 of the Journal, are much easier to identify. Folio 39 (Plate 1.19) depicts the middle of the three longitudinal aisles of the mosque with rows of four stone pillars surmounted by pointed arches forming five bays each roofed by a dome. The black stone pillars with their moulded string courses, cubical pedestal and square abacus, preserved till today, are rendered in a summary fashion, bereft of much details in this sketch; so is the case with the richly decorated interior of the domes which hardly reveals the traditional designs of bamboo-framework. The sketch however, includes some interesting figures of natives, both male and female, in contemporary attire, frequenting the mosque. Folio 40 captures a general view (Plate 1.20) of the

Plate 1.21: Guddry Mosque Gour (?)


mosque, probably from its south eastern side. The five arched entrances of the façade with their multi-cusped arches, the chauchala domes and the octagonal towers at the corners, are more realistically delineated in this sketch, which shows that the mosque was in a tolerable state of preservation then, though affected by vegetation growths. The mosque was extensively damaged during the earthquake of 1897. The sketch in folio 41 (Plate 1.21) of the Journal has a title relating it to the ‘Guddry Mosque Gour’. No mosque of this description was ever known to exist in or reported from Gaur. On a closer examination of the drawing it was found to be a sketch of the Tahkhana complex, about half a kilometre to the north-west of the Chhota Sona mosque. The Tahkhana complex ‘at present consists of a residential palace of a moderate size, a Jami Masjid nearby and the tomb of Shah Niamatullah, the patron saint of Shah Shuja, the Mughal prince and subahdar, who built the complex in honour of the saint.’83 The Palace had been built on the west bank of a large tank with a cold space (and hence tahkhana) probably as a khanqa of the saint. Miss Eden's sketch provides a good view of this building complex, including the tahkhana and the Jami Masjid and the large tank with bathing ghats in the foreground. But how she associated the name ‘Guddry Mosque’ to this complex is a mystery. At the British Museum, London:

Inscriptions from Gaur:

Major William Francklin during his visit to Gaur in 1810 discussed earlier, collected at least seven, but probably more, inscriptions in Arabic belonging to its monuments. He found majority of these inscriptions preserved in the Indigo factory at Guamalti, right among the ruins of Gaur. Henry Creighton, the Manager of the indigo factory, was an excellent amateur painter who, in order to find subjects for his paintings used to frequent the ruins of Gaur at his leisure hour. Gradually, from his off-time pastime, Creighton developed a serious interest in the ruins and antiquities of Gaur. He took considerable pains to redeem the antiquities and the detached inscriptions from the deep jungles with which the Gaur was abound, and preserved them at the courtyard of his factory at Guamalati. Francklin visited Guamalti factory three years after Creighton’s premature death, which took place in October 1807, and seems to have taken possession of the inscriptions collected there. Francklin himself collected an inscription from the jungles near the Bara Sona mosque and a large number of famed glazed bricks from among the fallen ruins of Husayn Shah’s tomb and Lattan mosque.84 Francklin took these inscriptions and bricks with him to Bhagalpur where he was then posted as Regulating Officer. In Bhagalpur, he preserved these in a small museum along with his collection of sculptures, maps and drawings of monuments, manuscripts, copies of rock inscriptions, geological samples, etc. collected in course of his travel and duties. In 1824, one year before his retirement, Francklin, now raised to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, was permitted by the Government of Bengal to send to England free of freight, his collection of ‘Curiosities’. The Bengal Public Consultations dated 11 November 1824 has a list of packages (Plate 1.22) from Francklin’s museum sent to England. The list includes Arabic inscriptions and Gaur bricks.

In 1826, on his return to England after retirement from East India Company’s service, Francklin donated to the British Museum eight unequal fragments of inscriptions from Gaur belonging to three different epigraphs. An entry dated 11 November 1826 in the Donation Register85 of the Department of Late Medieval Antiquities, British Museum, records the gift of


‘Eight Arabic Inscriptions on slabs of black marble from Ruins of Gaur from Col. William Francklin.’

Syed Mahmudul Hasan in pursuit of his doctoral thesis entitled, ‘The Development of Mosque Architecture with special reference to Pre-Mughal Bengal’86 examined these inscriptions and subsequently published these fragments in the following order:

1. Inscription of Yusuf Shah dated Comprising 2 unequal Muharram AH 883.87 Type of building fragments attached to: Jami Mosque. Attributed to: Chamkatti Mosque

2. Inscription of Yusuf Shah dated Comprising 3 unequal 14 Muharram AH 885.88 Type of building fragments attached to: not mentioned. Attributed to: Tantipara Mosque, arched entrance, eastern facade.

3. Inscription of Saif al-din Firuz Shah. Comprising 1 fragment. Fragmentary. No date.89 Type of building attached to: not mentioned. Attributed to: Firuz Minar

The fragments grouped into three different epigraphs in the above list would add up to six instead of eight inscribed pieces as recorded in the Donation Register. Hasan, while studying inscription no. 2 above, made the error of omitting its two fragments which he probably could not locate. Many years later, Sutapa Sinha90 traced out the two misplaced fragments in the Arms Basement Store of the Oriental Antiquities department at the British Museum and reconstructed the full text (Plate 1.23) of the inscription. It refers to Sultan Shams al-din Yusuf Shah with his full regal title and a date Sunday, the 14 Muharram, AH 885 (AD 1480), but curiously the purpose of construction of the building which it belonged to was left out in the epigraph. Sinha, also contested91 Hasan’s attribution of the inscription to the Tantipara mosque.

Francklin, however, did not donate the better specimens from his consignment of Gaur inscriptions to the British Museum. These, as we shall see in the following pages, went to the collection of Thomas Hope of Deepdene (1770-1831), a celebrated antiquarian of his time.

Besides the group of inscriptions from Col. Francklin’s collection, there are two more inscriptions of the Bengal Sultans from Gaur in the British Museum collection. One, belonging to the period of Sultan Jalal al-din Fath Shah (AD 1481-8) was also published by Syed Mahamudul Hasan.92 This epigraph was previously affixed to the wall of the residence of an English County gentleman, and was locally known as Rose Hill House, Hunton Bridge, in Hertfordshire. When the holding was destroyed the stone tablet bearing the inscription was transferred to the British Museum as a gift received through the courtesies of one Mr S. A. Nicholson of the Watford Rural


District Council. The inscription records the construction of ‘a mosque for five daily prayers’ by one Mansur son of Malik Takar (?) in the year AH 893 (AD 1487-88). According to the accession records the inscription was transported from the ruins of Gaur. The information that the mosque was built for five daily prayers is unique in the whole range of Bengal Sultanate inscriptions.93

The other inscription records the excavation of a siqayah (tank) in AH 910 (AD 1504-05) during the reign of Sultan Husain Shah. There is a striking similarity between its text and another inscription of Husain Shah of same date and purport, preserved in a modern mosque at Haidarpur, Malda.94 The Haidarpur inscription is traditionally associated with the excavation of the Sagar Dighi tank in the northern suburb of the medieval city of Gaur. The British Museum inscription of the same date and purport may have referred to the excavation of Chhoto Sagar Dighi within the walled city of Gaur, a significant public work undertaken by Sultan Husayn Shah. The edited texts of these inscriptions have been published by Sutapa Sinha.95

Plate 1.22a & b: List of packages from Colonel Stone Sculptures from Gaur:

The Oriental Antiquities Department has in its collection two stone images from Gaur, each carved with Buddhist deities on one side and decorative designs on the other. The decorative


designs on the reverse were carved prior to their introduction into an Islamic architectural setting. The first image (Plates 1.24 & 1.24a), on an upright slab of dark grey schist, measuring 84.1cm x 44.8 cm x 21cm, was acquired by the British Museum in 1880. It’s one face has the carving of a seated image of Buddha flanked by two standing Bodhisattvas, in a badly mutilated condition. The other face bears a decorative panel, complete except for the missing right and left ends of the upper frieze. The second image, on a rectangular slab also of schist, measuring 69.2 cm x 37.5 cm x 13.6 cm, with an image of Marici on one side and the other side carved with ‘two rows of cusped roundels formed of a pair of stems, arranged vertically and horizontally and each roundel intertwined with other.’ The stone was originally acquired by General Charles Stuart and subsequently by the British Museum as a part of bequest received from the family of Mr James Bridge, the famous antiquarian. Since Ralph Pinder-Wilson96 has very elaborately described and situated these stone slabs to the Chhota Sona mosque at Gaur, a further discussion here on these antiquities becomes unnecessary97. In the Oriental Gallery of the British Museum there is a stone pillar on view which may have been collected from Pandua. At the Royal Asiatic Society, London:

Colonel William Francklin was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. During the later years of his life he became its librarian and member of the Council. In 1826 on his return to England, Francklin donated an assorted collection of antiquities, manuscripts, copies of rock inscriptions, manuscript survey, drawings of images and monuments, geological specimens, etc. to the Royal Asiatic Society. An entry dated 4 November 1826 in the Register of Donations for the period from April 1823 to March 1831 lists the objects donated. The following objects from Gaur, as quoted below, were cited in the list:

(a) ‘Bricks etc. from the Kings tomb & gateway and the Nutten Musjid at Gour. They were found in the jungle near the Mosques.’

(b) ‘Copy of An Arabic Inscription in the Togray character from the Sonah Musjid at Gour. The original found in the jungle near the Mosque is presented to Mr T. Hope Esq. New Norfolk Street Park Lane.’

The famed glazed bricks and tiles of Gaur acquired by Francklin in 1810 from the fallen ruins of the tomb of Sultan Husain Shah and Lattan mosque, finally ended their long journey and found a place among the collections of the Royal Asiatic Society. However, these glazed architectural components were in turn donated by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1924 to the then South Kensington Museum, now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Plate 1.23: Inscription of Sultan Shams al-din Yusuf Shah, dated 14 Muharram 885 A.H. (A.D. 27 March 1480)


Before Francklin found the Sona Mosque inscription lying detached in a jungle near the mosque, it was noticed by Henry Creighton98 and the anonymous writer on Gaur in Orme papers99 and Glazier’s account.100 The inscription was fixed over the central doorway of the mosque, in their time. From a remark of Creighton, it appears that epigraph got detached from the mosque in the closing years of the eighteenth century. The anonymous writer first gave a reading of this inscription which, except a few words here and there, tallies with the reading given in Francklin’s Journal.101 According to these readings, the epigraph recounts the construction of a Jami Mosque in AH 932 (AD 1525-26 A.D) during the reign of Sultan Nasir al-din Nursat Shah. The inscription was engraved in tughra character and the letters were about nine inch in length. Beyond this information given by Francklin nothing is known about this epigraph which is still untraceable. Even the copy of the inscription could not be traced among Francklin’s papers in the Royal Asiatic Society.

Francklin presented the Sona Mosque inscription along with another famous inscription which belonged to the Nim gate of the Gaur citadel to Mr. Thomas Hope (1770-1831), a celebrated antiquarian of his time. Thomas Hope was best known as a collector of Greek and Roman vases and sculpture, and it was at his country estate at Deepdene, near Dorking, Surrey, he housed his art collection. The Nim Darwaza inscription of Gaur Citadel was found by Francklin in Guamalti factory, and was in his custody when he wrote his Journal. This inscription was located by Creighton102 near Chand Darwaza, another gate of the citadel, a short distance away. This epigraph, 103 known for its brilliant calligraphic style and ornamentation, was sold as a part of the Hope heirlooms in The Christie’s, London, on 24 July 1917, lot. 166.104 The inscription thereafter travelled to the Philadelphia University Museum, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., where it is preserved now. But the Sona Mosque inscription did not feature in the Christie’s auction. It was probably dispersed from the Hope collections before the auction. So were two other inscriptions from Gaur strongly believed to have passed from Francklin’s consignment to the Hope collection, as we shall see shortly.

Plate 1.24: Seated image of Buddha flanked by two standing Bodhisattvas. Gaur

Plate 1.24a: Decorative Panel. Gaur


Two other items in the Francklin’s bequeath list deserves mention. The first is a copy of an Arabic inscription the provenance of which is not given. The second is two drawings of the architectural details of Adina Mosque, Pandua, from the several copies prepared by Francklin, discussed before.

Markham Kittoe (1803-53), officer in Bengal 6th Native Infantry (1848-53) is the only other person to have donated antiquities from Gaur to the Society. An entry dated 2 March 1844 in the Register of Donations records the donation of two specimens of sculpted bricks from Gaur by him.

At the Victoria and Albert Museum, London:

The Indian Section, of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has in its collection one dedicatory inscription in Arabic recovered from the Gaur region, few architectural fragments in stone and a large number of the glazed bricks and tiles, from Gaur.

Plate 1.25: Arched niche. From the ruins of Gaur. Plate 1.26: Architectural fragment: Column.

Inscription from Gaur region:

The stone tablet bearing an inscription is preserved at the Indian Section of the Museum under Accession number IS 154-1984. The inscription records the construction of a gateway on the 20th day of Rajab AH 900 (corresponding to 6 January 1495) during the reign of Sultan Ala al-din Husain Shah of Bengal. The inscription was previously in the possession of Hon’ble


Robert Erskine of London and was edited and published by Simon Digby105 in 1973. Digby’s article included a notice on another interesting inscription of Husain Shah’s period, recording the construction of a Jami Mosque by the Prince Daniyal in AH 905 (AD 1500) now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Acc. no. 1981.320). This inscription once belonged to Mr Howard Hodgkin (also of London) and had been bought from the same antique dealer in London as Mr. Erskine’s. According to Simon Digby, an oral tradition suggests that these inscriptions once belonged to the celebrated collector Thomas Hope of Deepdene (1770-1831) and were possibly transported to England from the metropolitan area of the Bengal Sultanate (Gaur, Malda) more than a century ago for, ‘had they been in situ there in the later nineteenth century they would probably have attracted the attention of H. Blochmann or J. H. Ravenshaw’.106 This leads to two possibilities: the first, that the inscriptions do not belong to Gaur at all and the second that these were transported to England from Gaur in the late eighteenth or earlier part of the nineteenth century. The texture, calligraphy and style of execution of these inscriptions do not match with the inscriptions of similar incipit and texts from other urban areas of the Sultanate and unmistakably points out their origin to the metropolitan Gaur. The fact that there was no mention of a builder in the V&A inscription also suggested that the gateway must have been a public work executed under the orders of the Sultan himself in a Royal quarter. Although we have on record the despoliation at Gaur carried out by Captain Adams in 1766, very few Europeans visited Gaur in the late eighteenth century and those who did were interested in procuring building materials for the ever-growing city of Calcutta rather than collecting archaeological specimen of a lost city. It was only after the arrival of Henry Creighton at Gaur in the last decades of the eighteenth century the archaeological investigation on a lost mediaeval city

Plate 1.27: Polychrome tiles. Gaur.

Plate 1.28: Bi-chrome glaze painted Bricks. Gaur.


made its beginning. Although Creighton collected a large number of antiquities and inscriptions from Gaur in his factory at Guamalti, he did not have the opportunity to send them off to England since he met with a premature death in 1807. Therefore, the most likely means of transfer of these inscriptions to England had been through William Francklin. Francklin visited Gaur in the winter of 1810, after the death of Henry Creighton and, as discussed earlier, took possession of several inscriptions collected by the latter at the Guamalti factory and shipped them off to England. He also collected inscription from the ruins of Gaur as in the case of Sona Mosque inscription. Out of this consignment of inscriptions, one does not know how large, aside the British Museum bequest, he donated at least two, the famous Gaur Citadel (Nim Darwaza) inscription of Sultan Barbak Shah dated AH 871 (AD 1466-7) and the Sona mosque inscription of Sultan Nasir al-din Nursat Shah dated AH 932 (AD 1525-26) to Thomas Hope of Deepdene. It is quite likely, that the inscriptions under discussion also found their way to the Hope Collection from the same source. Architectural Fragments from Gaur and Pandua:

There are several black stone fragments (carboniferous shale?) in the depository of the Victoria and Albert Museum which are reported to have been collected from the ruins of Gaur. One of these is exhibited in the Indian Section of the Museum and the rest preserved at the Battersea Store Reserve Collection. The one at display in the Indian Section (3396-1883 I.S.) is an exquisitely curved arched niche probably belonging to the qibla wall of a mosque (Plate 1.25). Collected in three broken fragments, the niche comprised of two upright slabs and a lintel carved in the form of an engrailed arch. The ornamentation scheme included lotus roundels, arabesques and split palmette scrolls.107 A similar archway (3395-1883 I.S.) collected in seven fragments richly carved with floral designs (Plate 1.26) of a more traditional nature is preserved in the Battersea Store along with a stone pillar (3397-1883 I.S) with its front and part of one side carved in low relief with conventional floral decoration in vertical bands. According to the accession record of the Museum the aforesaid architectural fragments were ‘brought from the dismantled factories of Goamalti and Chandri, buildings erected at the close of the eighteenth century with materials taken from the ruins of the ancient city of Gaur. Presented by Reginald Porch, Esq.’ Mr. Reginald Porch was the Magistrate of Malda during the last decades of the nineteenth century and he donated these fragments to the Museum in 1883, presumably after his retirement and return to England. Contrary to what is written in the accession record, we have a piece of evidence to suggest that some of these architectural fragments may belong to Pandua rather than Gaur. J. D. Beglar, 108 Archaeological Surveyor and assistant to Alexander Cunningham, inspected the ruins of Gaur and Pandua during the late nineteenth century. While camping at Malda, Beglar saw ‘in the compound of the Magistrate of Malda late Mr. Porch, a set of lintels obtained from Pandua, which he (Mr. Porch), when going on his last furlough, packed up and carried off to England’.108

Syed Mahmudul Hasan109, however, attributes these architectural fragments to Guamalti mosque, popularly known as ‘Meena Mosque’ which was situated a couple of hundred yards south east of thé Guamalti indigo factory, in the heart of the ruins of Gaur. Westmacott110 describes the ruined mosque in thé following words:


Plate 1.29: Glazed Structural Components. Plate 1.30: Unglazed Surface Tiles. Gaur.

A row of four granite pillars, ten feet apart, and a corresponding pilaster ; the northern wall built of brick with a course of granite, some of which is cut into a moulding ; and a pinnacle at thé south-western angle, still remain to shew that it was a fine building, with probably ten domes, in two rows, thé length of thé building from N. to S. being divided by thé row of pillars.

Now, except the four pillars set ten feet apart, nothing of the mosque remains. The archway of the V&A collection collected in seven fragments (3395-1883 I.S) may well belong to this mosque. F.P. Layard111 and Sayyid Ilahi Bakhsh112 sketched and described this mosque, respectively, in the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century, when some portion of the mosque was still extant. These were removed immediately thereafter. An inscription of Sultan Saif al-din Firuz Shah dated 15 Safar, 894 A.H. (18th January, 1489 A.D.) found by Westmacott in the Guamalti factory is related by some scholars to this ruined mosque.

There are two further architectural pieces in the Battersea Store alleged to belong to Gaur. These pieces were donated to the Museum in 1914 by one Dudley B. Meyers, Esq. of Orleans Club, Kings Street, St James, London and listed under IM 418-1914 and IM-419-1914, respectively. According to the accession record IM 418-1914 it is a part of a door lintel in stone having interlacing designs in arabesques and rosettes within square borders formed by Persian inscription while IM 419-1914 ‘is a fountain of white marble and mosaic work of sand stone, slate and glazes earthenware’. These fragments are of dubious origin and do not belong to Gaur at all. Syed Mahmudul Hasan suggests that the marble basin may belong to one of the many marble fountains, erected at Sangi Dalan or Marble Palace at Rajmahal by Prince Shah Shuja.113


Glazed Architectural Ceramics from Gaur:

A sizeable collection of glazed ceramics in the form of bricks, tiles and other architectural pieces, salvaged from the ruins of Gaur, is preserved at the Battersea store of the Museum, and seven of these exhibited at the Indian section. The material is listed under four serial numbers respectively, IM 565, 9363 (IS), 9364 (IS) and 9592 (IS) and must have therefore entered the Museum in four lots. IM 565 series, comprising of eleven individual pieces and one tile panel was donated to the Museum by the Royal Asiatic Society of

London in 1924. The series with the numbers 9363 (IS), 9364 (IS) and 9592 (IS) were transferred to the V&A (then known as the South Kensington Museum) in 1879 and accessioned in 1880. They came from the India Museum, which was founded in 1801. On the demise of the East India Company in 1858, the collections of the India Museum were transferred to the India Office, and thence, in 1879, most of them came to V&A. There are some additional pieces also which do not bear any accession number. The IM 565 series donated to V&A is obviously the collection of William Francklin, of which reference had been made previously. These architectural pieces comprised of glaze painted red clay structural and surface tiles, embossed or plain, with painting in bi-chrome or polychrome. The polychrome glazes include a dark blue, white, yellow, orange, green and turquoise which have been applied to both the embossed and plain tiles. The bi-chrome glazes consist of blue and white. The glazes are of uneven character and although thick in terms of their surface application the colours do not seem to run into each other. The tiles are of various shapes but diamond, merlon, square, lenticular, lotus and rosette predominate. There are also some unglazed embossed tiles in the collection. From the functional point of view, these architectural ceramics can be further subdivided into the following classification:

Plate 1.31: Assorted panel of glazed tiles. Gaur.

Plate 1.32: Sculptured Pillar. Gaur or Pandua.


Ceramics Thickness Examples a. Surface tiles

Polychrome glaze painted, >2.5 cm <4.6 cm 93641/11 to 9364 7/11, square, merlon or diamond 9364 9/11; Shaped. Embossed or plain. 9363 14/62, 18/62, 25/62,

( Plate 1.27) 9363:27 (?), 28/62, 29/62, 32/62, 33/62, 46/62, 50/62(?) I.M. 565 7/11 1924, 9/11, 11/11 b. Bricks

9363 35/62, 36/62, 42/62,

Bi-chrome glaze painted. 9592 (?). Plain. Mostly rectangular. ( Plate 1.28)

c. Structural components

(Used in wall friezes, >2.2 cm <4.2 cm 9363 2/62, 4/62, 16/62, 17/62 moldings, pilasters, 19/62, 43/62, 44/62, 45/62

cornices, architraves, 59/62,62/62; dovetail, flanges, etc.) 9363: 3(15), 5(15), 15(15), bi-chrome or polychrome 22(15), 45(15); 9364 11/11 Glaze painted. Various shapes, 9592, seven unnumbered Mostly plain, one embossed. pieces in Tray-5 and one in

( Plate 1.29) Tray-2 of Battersea Store. d. Surface tiles

Unglazed. >2.3 cm <5.0 cm 1M 565 1/11-1924, Embossed. Square and 2/11-1924, 4/11-1924 rectangular shapes. 5/11-11924; Lotus rosette, chequer and IPN 29-69 (?) bird-like flower motifs.

(Plate 1.30)

The V& A collection also include an interesting tile panel (Plate 1.31) comprising of fifty-six assorted terracotta glazed bricks (I.M. 564-1924 measuring 82.5 cm x 45.5 cm) of varied forms, painted with blue, white, yellow, orange and turquoise glazes which came from Francklin’s donation. The merlon and square shaped plain tiles painted with lotus and other flower motifs are put together with embossed tiles, representing repeating diamonds, squares, lenticular forms, pilasters, a cornice, a plantain tree and a lotus rosette. Although arbitrarily


assorted, the panels certainly belong to the wall frieze of a major monument in Gaur, probably Lattan mosque.

The majority of these glazed architectural ceramics, commonly called as glazed bricks or tiles, were collected from the fallen ruins of Lattan mosque and the cemetery complex around Husayn Shah’s tomb in the Banglakot area of the Gaur citadel. Few types, however, bear resemblance with the glazed terracotta pieces found on the following monuments/places of Gaur:

Chamkati. exterior wall: Type 565 5/11 Chika. exterior wall: Types 9364 10//11, 9363 62/62 Gaur palace (General type): Types 9363 6/62, 9363:29(IS), 9363 42/62, 9592 Gaur palace. First compartment: Types 9363 34/62, 9363 35/629363 36/62. At the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh:

Architectural Fragments from Gaur:

In the earlier part of the twentieth century Abid Ali Khan114 reported that the whole structure of one of the prayer niches (mihrab) of the Chhota Sona Masjid ‘is now in a Museum in England’. This elaborately carved prayer niche belonging to the western (qibla) wall of the Chhota Sona Masjid was located by Syed Mahamudl Hasan at the Royal Scottish Museum now under the National Museums of Scotland at Edinburgh. This mihrab from Chhota Sona Masjid was brought to Scotland by Mr James William Grant115 of Wester Elchies, Morayshire and presented to the Elgin and Morayshire Literary and Scientific Association in 1852. Mr Grant served the East India Company in Bengal from 1805 to 1849 when he retired to Elchies. The mihrab was acquired by the Royal Scottish Museum in 1958 under Accession no. A. 1958.80 by purchase at a price of ₤100.

There are 29 blocks in all comprising the architectural piece, which once formed the central prayer niche of the Chhto Sona Mosque in Gaur. The architectural pieces are the component parts of one of the five mihrabs that once belonged to the qibla or western wall of the Chhota Sona Mosque, Gaur. It conforms in style and decoration to the other extant subsidiary mihrabs in the mosque.

The Royal Scottish Museum mihrab in dark grey basalt consist of deep recesses and are faced with engrailed arches carried on beautifully carved pilasters. The whole composition is enclosed within rectangular frame enriched with scrolls forming loops at intervals. Syed Mahamudul Hasan117 reconstructed the mihrab with dimensions of the component parts as below:

Height of the pilasters: 5'6" Height of lintel: 2"-1"; width 4'-5" Height of the blocks between pilasters and lintels: 8"

“The interior curves into slightly more than a semi-circle, with an average arc of 5"-10", the top sections curve inwards to form a dome. It is carved, from the bottom to the top, as follows:


Plate 1.33: Sculptured Pillar.Gaur or Pandua. Plate 1.34: Pair of Stone pillars (pilasters) in stone.

(a) “Three horizontal blocks, carved at the bottom with interlacing, and above with a band of arabesque. Height of blocks –9 ½"

(b) Six blocks forming nearly five panels of carving. The panels are bordered all around and horizontally through the middle with a guilloche band, each loop of guilloche containing a lotus head in profile. The ten rectangles thus formed contain arches with implicated pillars and lintels similar to the main lintel of the mihrab. Each arch contains a formalised inverted flower, the foliage filling the top of the arch, the flower head and a pair of stiff leaves hanging between the pillars. Each of the rectangles differs in small details from its fellows. The pairs at the extreme left are cut off, lacking their left-hand pillars and guilloche border. Height of blocks- 3'3".

(c) Three blocks forming a border of long pendant flower heads with a slightly projecting band of shorter upright flower heads above. The left hand block is deeper as it has at its bottom the guilloche border belonging to this top of the two panels below. Height of the block at right hand side – 6 ¼".

(d) Three blocks (one broken), forming a horizontal border of guilloche containing lotus flower head. Height of border 3 ¼".

(e) Four blocks forming an overhanging border of petals with vertical border of lotus buds above. Height of blocks – 4 ¾".

(f) Five blocks curving inwards to form a dome (half). The bottoms of the blocks carved with a narrow order of sloping petals, the blocks forming five panels containing inverted pendent tulip like flower, the panels being divided by bands of guilloche containing lotus


flowers. Height of blocks 1'8". Arc at top of block 2 ½". The top stone of the dome is missing.”

The Royal Scottish Museum also has in its collection two pillars (Plate 1.32 & 1.33) from the Gaur-Pandua region in West Bengal. These pillars were brought to Scotland by Reverend W. G. Allan M.A., B.D. of Wallace Street, Ayr.,118 in the late nineteenth century and donated to the RSM in 1906. The pillars are wrongly recorded as ‘Eight-sided column sculpted in black basalt with projecting mouldings and compartments enriched with floral ornamentation: Indian, from a temple in Agra and Oudh, Gupta period, 5th cent. A.D.’ and are on view in the ground floor display gallery of the museum. On a closer examination of these elaborately carved pillars it appeared that technically these are pilasters, since full-length portions of two adjacent sides remain uncarved. These pilasters bears strong resemblence in decorative details to the pilasters of the subsidiary mihrabs of the Adina mosque119 at Pandua, a structure dated to AD1374-75 and may have been carried off from this mosque. Identical pilasters were also located in the collection of the British Museum, London, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford120 (Plate 1.34) and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham. Aknowledgements:

The study of source material on Gaur in U.K. was made possible through travel grants received from the Nehru Trust for Indian Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Society of Antiquaries of London. The author is indebted to these institutions. Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya helped the author in copy editing the text of the article and Shri Subir Sarkar in arranging the visuals. The author remains grateful to them.

Notes and References: 1. Henry Creighton, The Ruins of Gaur Described and Represented in Eight Views with a Topographical

Map. Compiled From The Manuscripts and Drawings of the Late H. Creighton, Esq., London, 1817, p.1.

2. J.H. Ravenshaw, Gaur: Its Ruins and Inscriptions, London, 1878, p.1. 3. Patricia Kattenhorn, British Drawings in the India Office Library, vol. III, The British Library,

London, 1994, pp. 47-8; V. C. P. Hodson, List of Officers of the Bengal Army, pt. 1, London, 1927, p. 74.

4. For Minaron Wali Mosque Façade Inscription, see, Pratip Kumar Mitra, 5. “Late Dr Z.A. Desai and the Provisional Study of Some New inscriptions of the Bengal Sultans”,

Indo-Iranica, vol.58, no’s 3&4, Kolkata, 2005, pp. 11-17, fig.3. William Francklin, Journal of a Route from Rajemahal to Gour, AD. 1810-11, Shillong, 1910, p. 4; The British Library, London, MSS. Add 26602.

6. A. H. Dani (ed.), ‘Ahwal Gaur Wa Panduah’ of Munshi Shyam Prasad, Appendix to Muslim Architecture in Bengal, Dacca, 1961, p.14.

7. Creighton, op. cit., plate VIII. 8. Bimal Bandyopadhyay, ‘Recent Excavation at the area adjacent to Baisgazi wall at Gaur and scientific

clearance at some adjoining areas, District: Maldah, West Bengal’, Journal of Bengal Art, Vols. 9&10, Dhaka, 2004-2005, p.33.


9. Alexander Cunningham, A Report of a Tour in Bihar and Bengal in 1879-80. From Patna to Sonargaon. Archaeological Survey of India Reports, vol xv, New Delhi, 2000 (reprint), p. 58.

10. Francklin, op. cit., p. 2. 11. Cunningham, op. cit. 12. Syed Mahmudul Hasan, Gaud and Hazrat Pandua. Romance in Brick and Stone, Dhaka, 1987, pp.

129-32. 13. Ibid. pp. 118 ff. 14. The Daniells visited Gaur from Bhagalpur in the winter of 1791 when the painting of Firuz Minar was

prepared. See, H. E. A. Cotton, ‘The Daniell’s in India. An Unpublished Account of their Journey from Calcutta to Garhwal in 1788-89’, Bengal Past and Present, Vol.XXV pts. I & II, serial no’s 49-50, January-June, 1923, p. 41. See also, Maurice Shellim, India and the Daniells. Oil Paintings of India and the East by Thomas Daniell RA 1749-1840 and William Daniell RA 1769-1837, London, 1979, p. 123.

15. Creighton, op. cit., No. I. 16. Hodson, op. cit., pt. II, London, 1928, p. 35; pp. 159-61. 17. Samuel Davis appears to have sketched more than one monuments of Gaur. In the Christie’s, London,

on 24 September 2003, came up for sale a water-coloured sketch of Samuel Davis depicting the Kotwali gate. Davis sketched the gate from a great distance, unobscured by foliage and incorporates the figure of an Englishman sketching nearer the gate. This is almost certainly Thomas Daniell, cf., Christie’s, London, Arts of India, Wednesday 24 September 2003, Lot 24, p. 37.

18. Creighton, op. cit. 19. Cunningham, op. cit., pp. 58-59. 20. The repair work was probably carried out by Henry Creighton of Guamalati Indigo Factory, Malda.

The author is grateful to Subir Sarkar of American Institute of Indian Studies, Kolkata, for his suggestion in this regard.

21. Khan Sahib M. Abid Ali Khan and H.E. Stapleton, Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua, Calcutta, MCMXXXI, p.54.

22. Mildred Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library.Vol I. Amateur Artists, London, 1969 pp. 142-43; H. H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, vol. I, Dehra Dun, 1945, pp. 326-29, vol. II, Dehra Dun, 1950, pp. 368-91.

23. R. H. Colebrooke, ‘Course of the Ganges through Bengal’, Transactions of the Asiatick Society, vol. III, 1797, pp. 1-31.

24. Cunningham, op. cit., p. 59. 25. On the back of the drawing written in pencil: ‘View of an ancient tower in the ruins of Gour’, 1794. 26. Archer, op. cit, vol. I, p. 199. 27. Ibid. pp. 200-1. 28. Francklin, op. cit, p. 6. 29. Ralph Pinder-Wilson,’Stone Sculptures of Gaur’in John Guy (ed.), Indian Art and Connoisseurship.

Essays in Honour of Douglas Barett, In dra Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in Association with Mapin Publihing Pvt. Ltd, London, n.d., pp. 252-4. Syed Mahmudul Hasan, Mosque Architecture of Pre-Mughal Bengal, Dacca, 1979, frontispiece.


30. Creighton, op. cit., in notes to No.v states ‘the front of the edifice, is formed of a beautifully sculptured dark grey stone...’

31. Francklin, op. cit., p. 2. 32. L. C. Eckford, Travels of Fray Sebastian Manrique, 1629-43, Oxford, MCMXX-VII, Chapter LIII, p.

120 ff. 33. J. P. Losty, ‘Early Views of Gaur and Pandua by the Indian Artist Sitaram,’ Journal of Bengal Art,

vol. I, Dhaka, 1996, pp. 189-205. figs 1-13. 34. Ibid. fig. 8. 35. Ibid. figs 3 and 7. 36. Abid Ali Khan and Stapleton, op. cit, p. 63. 37. Losty, op. cit., figs 4, 5, and 6. 38. Bimal Bandyopadhyay, op. cit., p.23. 39. Mildred Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library: Official and Professional Artists, vol.II,

London, 1969,pp. 466-8; Dilip K. Chakrabarti, A History of Indian Archaeology: From the Beginning to 1947, New Delhi, 1988, p. 49.

40. For details see, R. Hamilton, Archaeological Survey of India: Photographs in the India Office Collections in the British Library, London.

41. T. Bloch, A List of the photographic negatives of Indian antiquities in the collection of the Indian Museum: with which is incorporated the list of similar negatives in the possession of the India Office, Calcutta, 1900.

42. Chakrabarti, op. cit., p. 85. 43. Robert Skelton, ‘A Royal Sultanate manuscript dated AH 938 1531-2 AD’, Indian Painting. Mughal

and Rajput and a Sultanate Manuscript, P & D Colnaghi & Co. Ltd, London, 1978, pp. 133-52. 44. Ibid. 45. G. Bouchon and L. P. Thomaz (ed.), Voyage Dans Les Deltas Du Gange Et De L' irraouaddy, 1521,

Paris 1988 (English version), pp. 318-36. 46. Skelton thinks that this device represents an elaborate version of the swinging fan (pankha), Skelton,

op .cit, p. 140. 47. Pinder-Wilson suggested that the leaf-like elements at the junction of the cusps on the upper side of

the archivolt of the arched pavillion in the painting are a ‘reminiscence of the flames of the nimbus represented in Buddhist and Brahmanical images’, Pinder-Wilson, op. cit., p. 253.

48. Buchon and Thomaz, op. cit., p.321. 49. Abdul Karim, Corpus of The Arabic and Persian Inscriptions of Bengal, Dhaka, 1992, p. 327 ff. 50. Cf., Norah M. Titley, Persian Miniature Painting, London, 1983, pp. 182-3; M. R. Tarafdar, ‘Some

Illustrations of the Period of Nusrat Shah,’ Journal of Bengal Art, vol. I, Dhaka, 1996, pp. 182-3. 51. Archer, vol. I, op. cit. p.199. 52. Entitled, Journal of a route from Rajemehul to Gour, A.D. 1810-11, Shillong, 1910 53. Gawre: Description of its ruins with four inscriptions taken in the Arabic copy, The British Library.

Orme Ms OV. 65:25, folio 172. 54. Creighton, op. cit., No. VIII. 55. Francklin, op .cit. p.2. 56. Ibid. pp. 7-8.


57. E. G. Glazier, A Report on the District of Rungpore, Calcutta, 1873, Appendix A no. 26, and p. 12. 58. Creighton, op. cit., Notes to plate No. VIII. On the despoliation of Husain Shah’s tomb in Gaur,

Creighton writes, ‘The greatest part of the materials which formed these tombs have now disappeared. Mr. Orme, the

historian, who many years since visited these ruins, tells us, that they were removed by a Captain Adams, for the use of some public works in Fort William; and that there were then lying by the waterside ready for transportation, five pieces of black stone, highly polished, each measuring twelve feet in length, and two feet in breadth and thickness, which formed part of the steps’

The description is almost identical to what is written in Glazier’s published account or in Orme Ms, which is as follows:

‘From this place Capt. Adams removed the two finest Tombs in the City, said to contain the Remains of two Kings named Husseen Shah & Nusserrut Shah. What became of the most principal parts of these Tombs I cannot learn, but I believe they are in Calcutta, and there are now by the water side five pieces of black marble, polished on two sides, twelve feet in length, two feet high, and two feet thick, which were part of it.’

59. Abid Ali Khan and Stapleton, op. cit., p. 63, note. 60. H. Beveridge, ‘Note on Major Francklin’s Manuscript description of Gaur’, Journal of the Asiatic

Society of Bengal, Calcutta, 1894, p. 90, note. 61. The Sier Mutaqherin, vol. III, Delhi (reprint), 1990, p. 386, fn 271. Charles Grant, writing from Malda

in 1784, says that the stones from the Husayn Shah’s tomb were removed by Major Adams about 15 years ago. See, Soumitra Das, ‘Gour to St. John’s’, The Telegraph, Calcutta, Sunday, 22 June 2008.

62. Sinharaja Tammita Delgoda, ‘Nabob, Historian and Orientalist’. Robert Orme: The Life and Career of an East India Company Servant (1728-1801)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, vol. 2, pt. 3, London, November, 1992, pp. 364-9.

63. Orme, MS, folio 172, Glazier, op. cit, p, 107. 64. Orme, MS, fol. 171, Glazier, p. 107. Glazier missed the words ‘which I transmit for your information’. 65. Archer, op. cit, vol. II, pp. 397-400. 66. Chakrabarti, op. cit., p. 27. 67. M. Martin, The History, Antiquities, Topography and Statistics of Eastern India, vols. I-IIII, London,

MDCCCXXXVIII. 68. Ibid, vol. III, p. 72 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid, p. 74 71. Ibid, pp. 616-621. 72. Francklin, op. cit., pp. 16-21. 73. Beveridge, op. cit., pp. 91-93, says that the MSS material was procured by Buchanan from James

Ellerton, who succeeded Creighton as the Manager of the Guamalti residency. 74. J. N. Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal, vol. 2, Dacca, 1948, pp. 126-7; Abdul Karim, Banglar

Itihas: Sultani Amal (in Bengali), p. 197ff. 75. Mian Muhammad Saeed, The Sharqi Sultanate of Jaunpur, Karachi, 1972, p. 61. 76. Muhammad Rezaul Karim, ‘Biyanibazar Bhandarer Kichhu Dusprapya Mudra O Banglar Sultander

Kalakram’ (in Bengali), Sylhet: Itihasa O Aitihya, Bangladesh Itihas Samiti, Dhaka, 1999, pp. 548-9; Singapore Coin Auction. Taisei-Baldwin-Gillio. Catalogue 28, 4 March 1999, Lot 820; A Critical


Study of the Coins of the Independent Sultans of Bengal (From 1205-1538 AD), Unpublished thesis, University of Dhaka, December, 2001, pp.286-9.

77. Archer, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 184-7. 78. Janet Dunbar, Tiger, Durbar and Kings. Fanny Eden's Indian Journals: 1837-1858, London, 1988. 79. Idem., Golden interlude, London, 1955. 80. Idem., 1988, pp. 42-4. 81. Creighton, op. cit., map. 82. Ravenshaw, op. cit., map. 83. A. B. M. Husain (ed.), Gawr-Lakhnawti, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1997, p. 109. 84. See, supra, pp. 28-9. 85. pp. 57ff. The author is indebted to his colleague Sutapa Sinha for this information. 86. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of London, 1965. 87. Syed Mahmudul Hasan, ‘Two Bengal Inscriptions in the Collection of the British Museum’, Journal

of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1966, pp.1417; Mosque Architecture of Pre-Mughal Bengal, Dacca, 1979, pp. 190-4, pl. XLIII (a); Glimpses of Muslim Art and Architecture, Dhaka, 1983, pp. 3-9, photograph 1; Gaur and Hadrat Pandua, Romance in Brick and Stone, Dhaka, 1987, pp. 84ff, Ins. 1.

88. Hasan, op. cit, 1979, pp.195-6, pl. XIII (b); 1983, pp.10-13, photograph 2-4; 1987, pp.106-8, Ins.3. 89. Hasan, op. cit., 1983, pp. 21-27, photograph 6; Asian Review (Art and Letters), New Series, London,

August 1965, vol. II, pp.79-83. 90. Sutapa Sinha, ‘A Note on The Inscriptions of Bengal Sultans in the British Museum’, in Enamul

Haque (ed.), Hakim Habibur Rahman Khan Commemoration Volume, Dhaka, 2001, pp.133-43, pls. 7.1 and 7.2.

91. Ibid 92. Hasan, 1983, op. cit., pp.14-21. 93. Abdul Karim, op. cit., p. 212. 94. Ibid., p. 267. 95. Sinha, op. cit. 96. Ralph Pinder-Wilson, op. cit. 97. There is a similar stone slab having in its one face a mutilated image of Durga and on the other face

elaborate carvings, in the Indian Museum, Kolkata, see, Adris Banerji, ‘The Character of Early Muslim Architecture in West Bengal,’ Indian Museum Bulletin, vol. V, no.2, Calcutta, July 1971, p.87, figs 1 & 2.

98. Creighton, op. cit, notes to plate No.V 99. Orme, MS., folios 173, 176 & 177. 100. Glazier, op. cit., pp. 109-10. 101. Francklin, op. cit., pp. 6 and 7. 102. Creighton, op. cit., no. III. 103. Now preserved in the University Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., see, W. E. Begley,

Monumental Islamic Calligraphy from India, Illinois, 1985, no. 26, pp. 60-2. For the circumstances leading to its acquisition to the Philadelphia Museum, see, N. A. Faris and G. C. Miles, ‘An Inscription of Barbak Shah of Bengal’, Ars Islamica, 7(1940), p.145.


104. The author is grateful to Mr J. P. Losty, Curator, Prints and Drawing Section, The British Library, London, for searching out the relevant sale catalogue on his behalf.

105. Simon Digby, ‘The Fate of Daniyal, Prince of Bengal, in the light of an unpublished inscription’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, vol. XXXVI, pt. 3, London, 1973, pp. 588-602.

106. Ibid., p. 588. 107. Robert Skelton, ‘Islamic and Later Hindu Architectural Decoration’ in Robert Skelton and Mark

Francis (ed.), Arts of Bengal. The Heritage of Bangladesh and Eastern India, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1979, no. 32, p. 31.

108. J. D. Beglar, Report of the Archaeological Survey of Bengal, pts. I & II, Calcutta, 1888. 109. Ibid., p. vi. 110. Hasan, op. cit., 1987, p.115. 111. Quoted by H. Blochmann in Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal (Muhammadan

Period), Calcutta, 1968, p.127. 112. Unpublished album preserved at Chelmsford, Essex, England. 113. H. Beveridge, The Khurshid Jahan Numa of Sayyid Ilahi Bakhsh al Husaini Angrezbadi, Journal of

the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No.3, Calcutta, 1895, p.215. 114. Syed Mahmudul Hasan, ‘Archaelogical Miscellany: Some Lost Treasures of Bengal from the Muslim

Period’, Journal of Bengal Art, vols. 9&10, Dhaka, 2004-2005, p. 147. 115. Abid Ali Khan, op. cit., p. 82. 116. Mr James William Grant was a Commercial Resident at Malda from 27 December 1822 to 3 May

1833. By the time Lord Auckland visited Malda, Grant was in charge of the Board of Trade, a post he took on 1 September 1835. Cf., E. Dodwell and J. S. Miles, Alphabetical List of the Honourable East India Company's Bengal Civil Servants from the Year 1780 to the year 1838, London, 1838.

117. Hasan, op. cit., 1979, pp. 199-200. 118. W. G. Allan is the author of the book, The Monks of Melrose: Lectures on Early Border Church

History, Hawick, 1892. 119. Cf., Naseem Ahmed Banerji, The Architecture of the Adina Mosque in Pandua, India: Mediaeval

Tradition and Innovation, The Edwin Mellen Press, Ontario, 2002, pls 23 and 33. 120. J.C. Harle and Andrew Topsfield, Indian Art in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1987, pp. 40-41.

REDISCOVERING GAUR SOURCE MATERIAL IN THE PUBLIC COLLECTIONS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM by Pratip K. Mitra

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