Calcutta-from a ditch, Dravidians or unslaked lime?

CALCUTTA, DEC. 25. Did Calcutta/ Kolkata derive its name from the mundane excavation of the Maratha ditch, or from the land of the Kols of antiquity, or the presiding deity of Kalighat?

A look back into history reveals that Job Charnock, a man who flogged his servants, and reported to have secured a Hindu wife by snatching her from a Sati funeral pyre, set foot in Sutanati village for the second time on August 24, 1690 where he was to establish his settlement and rise to become the East India Company's agent in (undivided) Bengal. Sutanati, together with Gobindapur and Kalikata, was to grow up into the bustling metropolis of today.

It has been suggested that `Khal-Kata', derived from the digging of the Maratha ditch in 1742, is the source of the Anglicised version of the name, while the Bengali Kalikata originated from `Kali-Kota', the abode of goddess Kali at Kalighat or a corruption of `Kalighatta' or `Kalishetra'.

It could equally have been derived from `Kol-ka-Hata', the land of the `Kols' of Dravidian origin, but there is no record of this community having inhabited lower Bengal, according to the authoritative Calcutta: The Living City, a collection of articles edited by Mr. Sukanta Chaudhury, Professor of English, Jadavpur University and a writer on Calcutta.

A warehouse?

Another explanation suggests that the place was a kata a warehouse, or kiln for kali or unslaked lime. Also, it might have been a derivative of `Kilkila' an ancient province measuring 21 yojanas equivalent to 160 square miles.

``Ironically, Kalikata or Calcutta was much less important than Sutanati or Gobindapur... It's very unimportance, and consequent emptiness, afforded the British room to settle there,'' Prof. Chaudhury writes.

Full-time urban historian and a fellow of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Mr. P. Thankappan Nair, in his article `The Growth and Development of Calcutta', says Sutanati and Gobindapur feature in old maps, such as Thomas Bowrey's of 1687 and George Heron's of 1690, but Kalikata, situated between the two, finds no mention there.

``Calcutta had no legally defined boundaries before 1794. In popular parlance the name was confined to the Fort William region old (1696), or new (1757), the rest being European `suburbs' or `native town'.

Fixing the boundaries

The first attempt at definition came from Alexander Hamilton, an inhabitant and house-owner, in 1708: ``The Company's colony is limited by a landmark at Governapore (Gobindapur) and another near Barnagul (Baranagar) about six miles distant: and the salt- water lake bounds it on the land side.''

The earliest official description dates from 1754: ``The Company's settlement of Calcutta is situated upon on a bow of the river Ganges, the points of which are Salmons Garden to the southward and Perrin's Garden to the northward. Our bounds extend inland in a kind of curve too, the greatest distance of which from the river is about a mile and a quarter.''

In 1774, Warren Hastings proposed the boundaries of Calcutta for policing purposes as ``South - Carry Jurie, (a village under Mathurapur Thana); North - Palta (a village in Calcutta Pergunna); East - Baddacherry (Bidyadhari river); West - Ganges.'' The charter of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, set up in the same year, does not spell out the court's area of jurisdiction.

At last, in 1794, the Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, fixed the boundaries of Calcutta for municipal and judicial purposes practically as they were to remain till 1867. A proclamation of September 11, 1794 gives a detailed account, which is adequately summarised in an Act of 1840. ``North, Marhatta ditch; East, circular road (which was constructed along the eastern portion of the ditch); West, the Hooghly; and South, Lower Circular Road to Kidderpore Bridge and Tolly's Nullah to the river, including the Fort and Cooly Bazar (Hastings),'' according to Mr. Nair.

- PTI

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