Fisherman’s discovery to help rewrite history of Sunderbans

The historical discovery at Sunderbans was carried out by a fisherman named Biswajit Sahu. As per Mishra, Sahu was educated as a young boy on certain aspects of the Harappan civilisation. He did not have any knowledge of archaeology but as part of his interest he started collecting a few objects he found when he went fishing. Incidentally, these objects did not belong to some yet undiscovered dynasties in Sunderbans.

At present, the historicity of the Sunderbans stretches back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, with a significant amount of information available for the Mughal period. The first attempt at mapping the Sunderbans was made in 1764 after the region was brought under the East India Company from the Mughal emperor Alamgir II. The area came under proper government administration only from the 1860s when the forest department was established.

WATCH VIDEO: New Archaeological Finding In Sunderbans Pushes Back Its History To The Mauryan Period

Material collected by Biswajit Sahu will be of much use in refuting the claim of the British to have written the history of the region in all its accuracy.

“Up till now whatever we knew about the Sunderbans has been restricted to the flora and fauna there. There has been no proper archaeological discovery. The British used to visit the region and large Gothic buildings  present there is good testimony to that. However, they never made a detailed archaeological study of the area,” said Mishra.

Artifacts discovered by Sahu include pottery, terracotta beads, terracotta figurines, figures of Mother Goddesses, large number of human and animal skeletal remnants.

Asked about how Mishra was able to trace the history of these objects back to the 3rd century BC, he said that there are certain patterns in archaeological artifacts which can be traced back to specific historical periods. For instance, the Northern Black Polished Ware is a specific kind of pottery that can easily be traced back to the Mauryan period.

Mishra went on to explain that now that such artifacts have been discovered the biggest challenge is to excavate them in situ. “I plan on conducting a proper scientific excavation in Sunderbans in the coming days in order to put together a detailed study on the time period,”said Mishra.