It was a few years ago that we
stumbled upon the document. An almost brittle, yellowish paper with the main
text typed in using a typewriter and finally signed off at the end in style by
the creator of the document. It emerged from a case full of papers, which had
not been looked at for a few decades to say the least. However, the document
was a startling revelation for it opened the doors to our past and aimed at
connecting our family lineage to history and to times which we could only
imagine of.
This case, belonged to my
grandfather Satyen and he was the creator of the document. The yellow brittle
pages held the trajectory of our lineage and the details of generations that
had passed before us. We were surprised to see the amount of detail mentioned
in the document titled ‘The Gautama
Baidik clan’. Not only two or three generations before us, the document
listed seventeen generations with the names of our forefathers! If that was not
enough, there was even paragraphs with notes citing where the lineage came from
in the years of old and how the same progressed over centuries to reach its
present day form: both geographically and socially.
The document was signed by
grandfather Satyen personally and dated in early 1975, within a few months of his
return to England from his last trip to India. It was clear that during that
trip, he must have spent good time in searching for these details and had the
passion and wish to record the same in a single document pattern for the ease
of knowledge and reference for the future generations of the family to come.
Once this document was discovered
from his case in England, Atul Uncle (grandfather Satyen’s son and my uncle)
and I started making enquiries and investigations into how grandfather had
compiled such a precious data and how could the source be validated. While Atul
Uncle investigated the enormous amount of information left behind by his father
in his diaries, notes, letters and memos, in an attempt to gather more
information towards this specific search, I commenced some enquiries locally in
the family circles in Kolkata in the hope of gaining some clues into my
grandfather’s research on the family lineage. We soon were able to deduce that
during his last visit to the family home in Kolkata towards the end of 1974, he
had collated all the information and had completed the missing links from his
earlier bookish research.
My father provided the most
important clue, in saying that on one occasion he had accompanied grandfather Satyen
to a place called Harinavi, about 60 km south of Kolkata, and wherefrom the
family hailed originally. (Well, so we had thought until we read grandfather
Satyen’s research and learnt that Harinavi was not the original home of the
family and that the lineage could be traced well beyond that, both in terms of
time and location).
What we learnt was that
grandfather had made enquiries and visited some people in Harinavi and taken
lot of notes from books and records held with a family there. Apparently, there
still exists a family-group amongst the Gautama
Baidik clan in Harinavi, who maintain the records of the Gautama Baidik family tree and its
branches. It however is the responsibility of each Gautama Baidik family to come back and update the main records with
the details of the current generations in the family tree. This way, the entire
book of records can be maintained and updated.
It was this family-group that
grandfather Satyen met in Harinavi in 1974, and upon inspecting the book of the
Gautama Baidik clan, was able to note
and validate the details of our forefathers till seventeen generations before.
Surprising as it was for us to imagine, someone like grandfather Satyen who had
spent the major part of his life in faraway England, to have undertaken this
research and assimilated the past threads and connections in one place for the
entire family and to have recorded the lineage.
Alongside the names of our
forefathers, the notes mentioned that the family had its original roots in the
historic city of Kanyakubja in the
region what was then called Aryavarta.
The earliest available date mentioned was 753 AD, where the family lineage
could be traced back to a Brahmin scholar named ‘Jahnukar’ who lived in Kanyakubja.
The other side notes state that
in 1019 AD, around the time of Mahmud of Ghazni’s second attack on Kanyakubja,
ransacking of the city along with destruction of the Hindu temples and
institutions of learning, many Brahmin scholars fled the city carrying their
books and scriptures, in an attempt to save them. Though grandfather’s research
does not mention how many generations of the family lived in Kanyakubja before
they fled from there along with the other Brahmin scholars of the time, we
could make an assessment of that as the indicative time periods have been
mentioned in the notes.
The family then escaped to the
jungles of Orissa (then Kalinga) and
set up temporary abode in ashramas (settlements)
near the present-day Jajpur-Keonjhar area. They would have lived there for a
few generations for sure (as indicated by the time period), and the temporary ashramas would have transformed into
villages over time.
The next indication of flight is
mentioned around 1570 – 1585 AD, when Mughal Emperor Akbar’s army invaded
Orissa, after the conquest of Bihar and Bengal. The family, over this period of
time relocated and took shelter in Jessore (in present-day Bangaldesh), where
the Hindu King Pratapaditya was ruling at that time. The King magnanimously
gave shelter and protection to all the Brahmin scholars who had traversed all
the way from Orissa, Bihar and other parts of Bengal escaping the wrath of the
Mughal army.
However, the stay of the family
in Jessore was brief, as when King Pratapaditya was defeated and overthrown by
the Mughal-Rajput general Raja Man Singh, during the reign of Emperor Jahangir,
(time period : 1608-12 AD), they had to flee from the Mughal army once again as
the Jessore fort lay conquered and ransacked. The family finally came to rest
in a small village called Harinavi in south Bengal, the area being mostly
shrouded by forests and being sparsely populated, was apparently a peaceful and
unnoticed shelter.
From the history chronicles it is
assumed that though entire Bengal at that time was under Mughal rule, smaller
provinces within the region had been given as ‘jagirs’ to local Hindu Kings who ruled over the villages and
smaller towns within the ‘jagirs’,
paying tribute to the Mughal ‘subahdar’
(governor). The location of the Harinavi village suggests that it would have
been a part of the ‘jagir’ given to Lakshmikanta
Gangopadhyay, who was placed on the throne of Jessore by Raja Man Singh after
Pratapaditya’s fall. Lakshmikanta was also accorded the titles of ‘Ray’ and ‘Choudhury’ in accordance as the de-facto administrator of the region, and his descendants later on
assumed these titles as their family surname. This family is popularly known as
the ‘Sabarna Roy Choudhury’ family
and is closely linked to the founding history of Kolkata and the surrounding
region.
It can well be assumed that under
the benevolence of the local Hindu ‘jagirdars’,
the Brahmin scholars could continue professing their knowledge and education in
Sanskrit, and continue establishing and running schools (known as ‘tol’ in the-then colloquial Bengali) in
the region. Our family forefathers also followed the same path and were in the
forefront of running such ‘tol’s in
Harinavi village.
This peaceful and settled life
for the family in Harinavi village went on till about 1824, when one of our
great-grandfathers, Hariprasad, was invited to become a teacher in the
Government Sanskrit College being set up in the city of Calcutta. The tradition
of teaching in the Sanskrit College continued for yet another generation, until
Hariprasad’s grandson Heramba, himself a leading Sanskrit scholar of his times,
decided to finally take up residence in Calcutta in 1888.
Heramba is 4 generations above
me, and I can well recall the stories about these 4 generations in between,
from my grandfather and grandmother in my childhood. The family has since
stayed in Calcutta, though we have shifted residences a few times. Further in
another logical development of the family branch, grandfather Satyen’s own
family branch is now in England and very much like another arm of the family back
in India.
While, the research done and
recorded by my grandfather Satyen was certainly very revealing and went a long
way in establishing the lineage and past of our family, it also intrigues us
with questions which still remain unanswered.
To my mind, is there a further research
we could do to throw light on the following areas:
- Where was Kanyakubja and how did the family begin in that ancient city?
- Is Jahnukar the first of our lineage, or can we still find his forefathers and trace our lineage further behind into history and the Vedic times? (After all, the clan is titled ‘Gautama Baidik’, which means it starts from Gautama rishi (sage) of the Vedic times!)
- Whilst we know the names of our forefathers onward from Jahnukar (753 AD) till present, is it possible to logically place them alongside the historical time-lines and events in Indian history?
That then would be my research,
something that can further enrich the work done by grandfather Satyen in 1974-75,
and provide a detailed historical chronicle of the family and our lineage.
Whilst I shall write more about
my findings on the above questions in my next blog on this series, here’s a
sneak-peek into the beginning:
Kanyakubja, from the ancient times, was a very prominent city in
Northern India. Right through the ages of the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata,
and even in Indian mythology we find worthy mentions of this city as capital of
kingdoms, and a great seat of scholarly learning. Even the advent of the Kanyakubja Brahmins is a fine tale if we
are to believe the mythological stories. History places Kanyakubja as the last Hindu capital of unified India, under King
Harshavardhan (606 – 647 AD). Kanyakubja
is present-day ‘Kannauj’, a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh in Northern
India on the western banks of the Ganges River.
Part 2 … coming soon!
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