72 H. Beveridge— Were tie Sundarbans inhabited in ancient times? [N 1 



Sondip itself was, it is true, cultivated in Ctesar Frederick's ti 

 (1569), but so it is now, and there is no reason to suppose that its civilization 

 was greater then than it is at present. It may have, but then it certainly 

 had, some thirty or forty years later, one or two Forts, which were marks 

 of insecurity rather than of prosperity, and which do not exist now, simply 

 because the Aracanese and the Portuguese pirates are no longer formidable 

 Ealph Fitch visited Bacola in 1586, and describes the country as being very 

 great and fruitful. He does not, however, expressly say that Bacola was a 

 city, and it is possible that the people lived then as now in detached houses 

 and did not lodge together in any great town or mart. But even if we take 

 the words " the houses be very fair and high builded, the streets large" ( a 

 most unlikely thing in any oriental city) to mean that there was a city of 

 Bacola and give full credence to Fitch's statements, the next clause of the de- 

 scription, viz., " the people naked, except a little cloth about their waist" 

 does not suggest the existence of much civilization or refinement. 



Moreover, there is nothing to show that Bacola was in what are now 

 known as the Sundarbans. It probably was the same as Kochua, which, 

 according to tradition, was the old seat of the Chandradip Rajas. But 

 Kochua is at this day one of the most fertile and best cultivated 

 parts of Bakirganj, and is the only place in the south of the district 

 which contains a large Hindu population. No doubt there has been 

 a great amount of diluviation near Kochua, and the river between the main- 

 land and Dakhin Shahbazpur has become much wider than it was in old times. 

 In this way the old city of Bakla and much of its territory may have dis- 

 appeared, and to this extent there probably has been a decay of civilization, 

 but this is a different thing from the supposition that the tract now existing 

 as forest was formerly inhabited by a civilized people. It seems to me also 

 that Fiteh cannot have been a very observant traveller, as otherwise he 

 would have noticed the terrible storm which overwhelmed Bakla only a 

 year or two before his visit, and that therefore we should not press his 

 statement too far. Possibly all physical traces of the storm had disappeared, 

 but surely people must still have been telling of it, and Fitch must have 

 heard of it if he stayed at Bakla any time or had any intercourse with the 

 inhabitants. 



Another thing which indisposes me to believe in the early coloniza- 

 tion of the eastern part of the Sundarbans is the terrible hardships 

 which the crew of the " Ter Schelling" suffered on this coast in 1661. The 

 " Ter ^Schelling" was a Dutch vessel which sailed from Batavia for Ongueli 

 (Hijli) in Bengala on 3rd September, 1661, and was wrecked off the coast 

 of Bengal in the first half of the following month. The narrative of the 

 voyage and shipwreck, and of the subsequent adventures of the passengers 

 and crew was written by one of them. The author was, I believe, a 



