Paharpur Buddist Bihar, Bangladesh

Paharpur, Bangladesh

Ruins of the Buddhist Vihara at Paharpur

Paharpur(Somapura Mahavihara) is an important archaeological site in Bangladesh, situated in a village named Paharpur under the Badalgachhi Upazila of Naogaon district. Shri Dharmapala Dev (61-621), the second king of the Pala dynasty, was building this monastery in the late eighth or ninth century.  Sir Alexander Cunningham was discovered this huge structure in 179 AD.

Image Source Banglpedia

According to UNESCO, Paharpur Monastery or Sompur Buddhist Monastery is the second largest Buddhist monastery in the southern Himalayas. It was used as a very famous Buddhist teaching center for 300 years. Buddhists not only from different parts of the subcontinent but also from China, Tibet, Myanmar (then Burma), Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. came here to store religious knowledge. In the 10th century AD. Atish Dipankar Srigyan was the Acharya of Bihar.

Location of Paharpur

Once Upon a time,Sompur Bihar was located between the capital of Pundravardhana(Pundranagar)and Kotivarsha. 

It is located in the flood plain of North Bengal in the lowlands of the Pleistocene period called Barindra. The soil is reddish due to the presence of iron in the soil and this soil is covered with sediment in most places now. It survives as a hilly structure about 30.30 m above the surrounding plains. The locals used to call it  Paharpur, although its real name is Sompur Bihar.

Now it is located at Paharpur village in Badalgachhi Upazila of Naogaon district in the Rajshahi Division. The place is connected with the nearby Railway station Jamalganj, Jaipurhat town, and the district town Naogaon by a highway. Its distance from Jamalganj railway station is only 5 km to the west. 

 Discovery & Excavation

Archaeological excavations at Paharpur can be divided into two parts. 

Firstly, in the pre-independence period of Bangladesh mainly in the British era, and Secondly in the post-independence period in the eighties. 

Cunningham took the first initiative in 189. But he had to stop by digging only the top of the central mound in opposition to the zamindar of Balihar. During the excavation, a chamber about 7 m high with protruding parts was discovered. Shortly afterward, excavations resumed in 1923 with the joint efforts of Calcutta University, the Barind Research Council, and the Archaeological Survey of India, and with the financial support of Sarat Kumar Roy, a member of the Dighapati zamindar family. This year, excavations were carried out in the southwestern part of the site under the leadership of the historian DR Bhandarkar, and a series of rooms and courtyards arranged in the north-south part was found.

Rakhaldas Bandopadhyay excavated the main mound north of the central mound in 1925-26 and discovered a mandapa or hall house on the north side with terracotta plaques and a detour. As a result, for the first time, an idea was found about the land planning and murals of this monastery. In 1930-31 and 1931-32, GC Chandra excavated the southwest corner of Bihar and the adjoining courtyard. The excavations were re-excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1933-34 under the supervision of Kashinath Dixit.

It contains the remains of a monastery and the rest of the temple and the ruins of a star temple with a bunch of stupas in Satyapir's Vita. After World War II, Rafiq Mughal conducted deep excavations in several rooms on the eastern side.

In the post-independence period, in 1981-83, the Bangladesh Archaeological Department began the second phase of excavation work to "search for new information and confirm the findings of the previously discovered rooms of Dikshit."

Re-excavation was carried out in 1986-89 to ensure an orderly drainage system by removing unnecessary debris and accumulated soil from previous excavations so that existing waterlogging in Bihar is removed and salinity is reduced.

 History

Several monasteries arose during the Pāla period in ancient India in the eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of Bengal and Magadha. According to Tibetan sources, five great Mahaviharas (universities) stood out: Vikramashila, the main university of the time; Nalanda, past her prime but still famous; Somapura Mahavihara; Odantapur; and Jaggadala. The Mahavihara formed a network; "All of them were under the supervision of the government" and there was "a system of coordination between a group of institutions", and it was common for great academics to move easily from one position to another. Xuanzang from China was a well-known scholar who worked at Mahavihara (the largest university in ancient India) resided in Somapura, and Atisa travelled from Bengal to Tibet to preach Buddhism. The earliest form of the Bengali language emerged in the 8th century. Excavations at Paharpur and the discovery of seals with the inscription

ShriSomapure ShriDharmapaladevaMahavihariyaryabhiksusangghasya identified the Somapura Mahavihara was built by the second king Pala Dharmapala (ca. 781-821) of the Pāla dynasty. Tibetan sources, including the Tibetan translations of Dharmakayavidhi and Madhyamaka Ratnapradipa, the Taranatha story, and PagSamJonZang, mention that Dharmapala's successor, Devapala (c. 810-850), built it after his conquest of Varendra. The inscription on the pillars of Paharpur bears mention of the fifth year of the reign of Devapala's successor, Mahendrapala (approx. 850–854) along with the name Bhiksu Ajayagarbha.

Maranatha’s Pag Sam Jon Zang reports that the monastery was repaired during the reign of Mahipala (c. 995-1043 AD).The Nalanda inscription of Vipulashrimitra records that the monastery was destroyed by fire, which also killed Vipulashrimitra's ancestor Karunashrimitra, during a conquest by the Vanga army in the 11th century.

Over time, Atisha's spiritual master, Ratnakara Shanti, served as sthavira of the vihara, Mahapanditacharya Bodhibhadra served as a resident monk, and other scholars spent part of their lives at the monastery, including Kalamahapada, Virendra, and Karunashrimitra. Many Tibetan monks visited Somapura between the 9th and 12th centuries. During the reign of the Sena dynasty known as the Karnatadeshatagata Brahmaksatriya, the vihara last began to decline in the second half of the 12th century. One scholar writes: "The temple ruins and monasteries at Pāhāpur bear no weight. The downfall of the establishment through desertion or destruction must have occurred sometime amid widespread unrest and displacement of the population as a result of the Muslim invasion. . " An engraving from the Gupta era (A.D. 479)

 Structures outside the monastery area:

Central temple

Image Source Banglpedia

Consequently, most of the works done so far are mainly based on the findings of the archaeological excavation and studying the artifacts from the archaeological perspective. The first study on this monument with documentation was by archaeologist K. N. Dikhist in his Paharpur, Memoirs of Archaeological Survey in India (1938). Dikshit was concerned with the documentation of the archaeological findings and concentrated on their interpretation and analysis. He attempted to suggest a probable architectural treatment of the missing parts of the structure through studying the archaeological remains. Till today, this study is considered the most authentic record of the Sompur Mahavihara. The purpose of this central structure in the midst of the courtyard remains unsolved since its discovery. Hence, most of the debates generated hitherto on the architecture of Sompur Mahavihara are centered on the identification of its missing superstructure. The reason may be manifold, but the most important one is the non-availability of a substantial amount of first-hand resources including comprehensive architectural documentation at the disposal of the researchers. There are different arguments regarding terminating top of the central structure of Sompur Mahavihara.

Badeghat

There is a Badeghat 48 m from the outer wall of the monastery towards the southeast corner of the monastery. It does not run parallel to the southern wall of the monastery but is slightly sloping to the north. On both sides, there is a parallel wall paved with brick and concrete edges. The head of the ghat is laid out with huge blocks of stone and masonry 3.6 m long. It descends in a gradual slope to 12.5 m, where there is a strip of limestone slabs. The ghat bed is also covered in sand, indicating the existence of a nearby stream. A ghat-related tradition is still common among the locals that Sandhyavati, the daughter of a king named Mahidalan, bathed in the ghat every day and that she is said to be Satyapir's mother by immaculate conception. Consequently, this is known as Shandhabati Ghat.

Buddha, Bronze sculpture, Paharpur

The Gandheshvari Temple, southwest of the Ghat at a distance of approximately 12.2 meters, is an isolated structure known locally as the Gandheshvari Temple. The lotus medallion and floral-patterned bricks on the front wall, as well as the mortar used between the brick joints, are sufficient indications that this building was built during Muslim times. It is a rectangular room measuring 6.7 x 3.5 m on a side with an octagonal brick column base in the middle. In the middle of the west wall, there is a ledge that contains a small space of approximately 1.5 m². It was used as a sanctuary and the four small niches in the side walls contained other objects of worship. In front of the door is a circular platform with a diameter of 7.3 m and a brick floor.

At a distance of about 27 m from the outer wall of the south wing, there is an open platform measuring 32 x 8 m, which runs parallel to the monastery. It is located approximately 3.5m above the adjoining ground floor and is accessible via a raised hallway through room 102.

 This corridor is 5m wide. Between the walkway and the monastery wall, there is an arched corridor that runs parallel to the wall, which is probably used for the free passage of people outside the enclosure from one side to the other. Its arched construction is paramount.

 As far as we know, it is one of the first and very rare examples of this type of construction, showing that the vaults were known in ancient India before the arrival of the Muslims. The entire south side of the platform is marked with a series of water slides, each 30 cm wide and 1.30 m long, 1.2 m apart. The channels are provided with fine-jointed masonry. It was probably used for both ablution and bathing.

 Badeghat

 Post-release excavations Aside from confirming the findings of disk blows in the cells, the post-release excavations revealed two new unexpected events. First, under the original (?) Dikshit Monastery, the remains of another phase of the monastery were discovered, probably the monastery of an earlier period. Newly discovered evidence shows that the monastery was the same size in the previous phase and that the alignment of the surrounding wall and the front wall was the same. They used the original monastery for a long time and then they removed the old floors and destroyed the old partitions, built new ones, and thus changed the arrangement of the cells. In the course of this reconstruction, they either completely destroyed the old partitions in some places and built entirely new ones, or they removed the old ones on their upper floors and kept intact the basal parts on which they built the new ones. The old cells measured 3.96m inside, clearly showing that the cells of the original monastery were larger than those of the upper monastery or the first phase monastery of K N DIKSHIT. So in later periods, the number of cells increased.

 Second, in some limited areas (northeast corner of the monastery, north half of the east wing, and northeast side of the central sanctuary) remains of buildings (brick walls and paved floor, terracotta fountains) and cultural objects (A TERRACOTTA chief of the El Gupta period became a large number of ceramics that came to light under the monastery and temple. The orientations of the walls are not related to those of the monastic plan or the central temple. Due to the very limited exposure of these remains, their nature could not be determined). It is worth noting that Dikshit discovered 3 periods of occupation (floors) in the cells of the monastery and 4 periods of occupation in the central temple. Recent excavations have uncovered another period in the monastery. Thus, a total of 4 periods of the monastery correspond to those of the central temple. Now the question arises: which monastery did Dharmapala build? Is it the earlier monastery recently discovered or the monastery discovered by Dikshit? Here it is interesting to note that Dikshit originally believed that there was a Jain monastery at Paharpur, of which no trace has survived. Somapura Mahavihara, founded by Dharmapala in the late 8th century, would have been the successor to this Jain institution. Many later authors have accepted the Dikshit hypothesis. Therefore, one might now suspect that these recently discovered remains under the monastery excavated by Dikshit belong to this ancient Jain settlement. However, your claim must await further extensive excavations inside and outside the monastery complex.

 Moving objects

Among the moving objects discovered at the site are the most important stone sculptures, terracotta tiles, copper plates, inscriptions on stone pillars, coins, stucco and metal paintings, ceramics, etc.

Stone sculptures Up to 63 stone sculptures were found in the basement of the temple. All images represent the Brahmin faith, with the exception of the single Buddhist image of Padmapani. It seems quite strange that such a large number of Brahmin deities should settle in this magnificent Buddhist establishment. The appearance of Brahmanic sculptures in a Buddhist temple indicates that they were collected from earlier monuments on the site or in the neighborhood and affixed to the main temple.

 These sculptures belong to different eras and can be divided into three different groups according to their style and artistic excellence. In the first group, numerous sculptures show scenes from the life of KRISHNA. There are several other panels depicting the most popular themes from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and various other incidents from the daily life of the rural population. Their features and appearances are clumsy and sometimes crude, without proportion or definition of form. Although art is technically crude and imperfect, its social content is deeply human, very alive, and therefore artistically significant.

 Despite the general heaviness of the sculptures in the second group, there are some panels that are characterized by lively action and movement. Therefore, it is a compromise between the first and third groups that uphold the Eastern Gupta traditions. The soft and delicate modeling, the sophistication and delicacy of the features commonly associated with Gupta's classicism mark the third group. There is also a great difference in attitude, theme, temperament, and general technique between the first group and the other two groups. The sculptures of the other two groups generally represent cult deities conforming to the dictates of the Brahmin hierarchy. The stones used in it are sandstone or basalt with gray and white spots. Of all the loose stone images found in the excavations, the most interesting is the fragmentary image of Hevajra in close embrace with her shakti, or female counterpart.

 Terracotta plates play the predominant role in the decoration of the temple walls. There are still more than 2,000 plates decorating the faces of the walls, and about 800 loose ones have been registered. Most of these plates are at the same time as the building. No regular sequential arrangement was followed to attach these panels to the walls. The size of the plates varies in the different sections of the walls. Some are unusually large, measuring 40 x 30 x 6 cm, and some are made in a special size of approximately 18 square meters. cm, but most have a standard height of 36 cm x 22/24 cm.

 Representations of deities of hierarchical religions are few and far between. Both Brahmanic and Buddhist gods are represented equally on the tablets. They are the main variants of Shiva and other Brahmin gods like Brahma, Visnu, GANESHA, and Surya. Buddhist deities, mostly from the Mahayana school, including Padmapani Bodhisattva, Manjushri, and Tara, are mentioned here and there. Known stories from the Panchatantra are presented with clear humor and pictorial expressiveness. The imagination and imagination of the terracotta artists in Paharpur seems to be mainly evident in the various movements of men and women who have different professions. The artists responded fully to their surroundings and every imaginable theme of ordinary human life finds its place on the panels. The animal’s snakes, deer, lions, tigers, elephants, wild boars, monkeys, jackals, rabbits, fish, and duck goose were shown in their typical actions and movements. But the representations of the flora are comparatively poor. The lotus and the ribwort tree are represented in the tables. It seems that this art must have been very popular in Bengal and through these panels we get an insight into the social life of the people of that time.

Inscriptions The discovery of an inscribed COPPER PLATE and some stone INSCRIPTIONS helped us determine the chronology of the different eras. The engravings found in the northeast corner of the monastery date from the Gupta era in 159 (AD 479). It documents the purchase and concession of land by a Brahmin couple to maintain the worship of the Arhats and a resting place at the Vihara, which is led by the Jain master Guhanandin. This vihara, located in Vatagohali in the 5th century AD, must have been an institution of local celebrities.

 It is worth noting that the same name Vatagohali is found on a shattered copper plate from bigram dating to 128 GE (448 AD). The mention of the name Vatagohali in a record from Barigram, which is located about 30 km north of Paharpur, indicates that the two places Vaigrama and Vatagohali should not be far from each other. The Guhanandi Vihara in Vatagohali must have shared the fate of other Jain institutions in Pundravardhana when Bengal was anarchy in the late 7th or early 8th century AD. Eventually, peace was established and the Pala Empire was safely established in Bengal in the 8th century AD. and DHARMAPALA in Somapura built a magnificent temple along with a huge monastery. Dikshit believes that the monks of the new Buddhist vihara may have received royal permission to appropriate the land of the Jaina vihara and keep the original letter in their possession. According to him, "this assumption alone may explain the discovery of the plaque in the ruins of the Buddhist Vihara."

 Several stone pillar inscriptions have been discovered at the site containing the pillar donation records related to the Buddha or the three jewels. The dates assigned to them are from the 10th and 12th centuries AD. All the donors have names ending in garbha, namely Ajayagarbha, Shrigarbha, and Dashabalagarbha, with the exception of one that shows a fragmentary record of a person whose name ended in "Nandin". . It is possible that these indicate continuity or succession of monks in Paharpur Vihara.

 Stucco Some stucco heads were recovered from Paharpur, but this art was not as developed as in the Gandhara period. The common feature of all the Buddha heads found in Paharpur are the protruding eyelids and in some of them, the hair is represented in curls.

Metal images Only a few metal images were found. The ornamental image of HaraGouri, a standing nude Jaina, and the bronze figures of Kuber and Ganesh are the only significant images discovered at Paharpur during excavations prior to Bangladesh. But post-liberation excavations (exactly 198-182) uncovered the torso of a large and very important bronze Buddha statue. Due to fire damage, only the upper half up to the thighs has been preserved. However, it can still be seen that the figure once represented the standing Buddha. The preserved part of the image is approximately 1.27 m, so the total height of the original should be approximately 2.40 m. For its style and the bronze layer found, the sculpture can be attributed to the 9th or 10th century. The only other known bronze Buddha figure from roughly the same time and roughly the same size as the famous painting of Sultanganj in Bihar, now in the Birmingham Museum Art Gallery. 4,444 coins Up to five-round copper coins were discovered in a room near the main portal complex of the monastery. Three of them are unique and show a rather clumsy bull on the front and three fish on the back. A silver coin from HarunurRashid, the Khalifa of Baghdad, is dated 127 AH (788 AD). Another series of six coins from SHER SHAH (AD I54045), two from Islam Shah (I 54553 AD), three from Bahadur Shah (16th century AD), two from DAUD KARRANI, one from AKBAR (15561605 AD), and one from Sultan Hussain. Shah Sharki from Jaunpur. All of these coins are made of silver, except for the last one, which is made of copper. However, we are still not sure how these coins got into this vihara.

Pottery The pottery discovered during the excavations at Paharpur was numerous and varied. Most of them belong to the middle or late period from the end of the 10th to the 12th century AD. A class of goods that can be attributed to the early Pala period (ca. 9th century AD). These are only decorated with cross lines on the bottom or on the sides. Only a few large storage vessels (one inside the other) were found in situ in some cells of the monastery. These large jugs were placed in the corner of the room by cutting through the floor of the third-period monastery (the disc hits the second period). But no grains or other objects were found in the glasses. These were full of dirt. Several complete saucers were recovered from the monastic plain. This ceramic can be attributed to the pre-pal period (approx. 6th to 7th centuries AD). Generally, ceramic is well fired red or yellowish, with red grout applied in strips or over the entire surface except for the bottom. Almost all containers had a wide base and a projecting center, while large storage containers had a pointed or conical base. In addition to a series of glasses in the form of modern handis and aerosol or lotus vases, there are also glasses with narrow necks and mouths with a cylindrical body. Various ceramic lids, bowls, saucers, and lamps have been found to contain a multitude of round bowl vessels with or without a rim on the edge near the wick. Other common antiques are the raw terracotta female figures, the animal model, parts of end pieces, truncated cone-shaped swabs, flat discs, seals, and cylinder-shaped beads. Numerous decorative stones were found in the pattern of the step pyramid, lotus flower petals, checkerboards, rectangular medallions with half lotus flowers, etc. Preservation. 

But in the last half-century its condition has deteriorated so much that the very existence of this monument has been threatened by some terrible problems mainly due to waterlogging and salinity. The waterlogging undermined the foundations of the central temple and contributed to the deterioration and distortion of the terracotta and stone sculptures that adorn the base of the temple. There was great salinization or efflorescence throughout the monument. The government's attempt. because the preservation of the monument was not enough to do justice to the increasingly deteriorating situation. Then the government. of Bangladesh appealed to UNESCO in 1973 to protect this monument and the mosque city of Bagerhat as part of the world cultural heritage. Consequently, an international mission drew up a master plan in 1983, and both sites were added to the World Heritage List in 1985. A project to implement the recommendations of the master plan was started in 1987, which was continued in three phases and completed in 2002. As part of this project, many issues were addressed such as the preservation of Vihara's structural remains, drainage problems, construction of a MUSEUM and other infrastructures, etc. To stop these partially solved problems and deal with other problems such as tourism pressures, heritage management, protection of ancient landscape, etc. He recently started another project.

*Most of the information is from Banglapedia, Wikipedia & World Heritage.