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Heritage

Photos: Biman Nath

Mysterious remains: The ruins at Berachampa.

There are many versions of her legend. The common theme is that the famous scholar Varahamihira from Ujjain had a son, and he was horrified by the horoscope he had cast for the newborn. He thought his son would die within a year, and abandoned the child inside a vessel and let it flow with the river. The child was rescued and brought up in a distant land by demons, and named Mihir. He later married a brilliant woman, and they travelled together to Ujjain to face his father. In the royal court, Mihir’s wife defeated Varaha in a debate. She exposed and ridiculed his mistakes in public. Unable to bear the shame, Varaha ordered his son to cut his wife’s tongue.

In the version of the legend from Orissa, she came to be known after this bloody incident as “Khona” which means “dumb” in Oriya. In the Bengali version, she was given the name “Khona” by her father as he had thought she was born at an auspicious moment, a good “Kshana”. Although the Bengali version says that she was brought up by “demons” in Sri Lanka, it is possible that the “demon-land” was the then Bengal itself. Some medieval works like Kalhan’s Rajtarangini referred to Gauda, the then Bengal, as the kingdom of demons.

The ruins that bear her name lie about 40 km northeast of Kolkata, at a place called Berachampa near the town of Barasat. These ruins have not yet been excavated and studied well, and they straddle both sides of the highway from Kolkata. On the southern side, there are the remnants of what was probably an ancient fortified rampart, traditionally known as the fort of king Chandraketu. People living here routinely come across antique objects while digging — coins, beads, stone and terracotta sculptures, ivory and so on. The sheer number of these antiquities, and their sophistication and beauty, are impressive. They end up in museums abroad, but there exist only private collections here.

The ‘Mound of Khona-Mihir’.

There have been some excavations in this area in 1950s, and historians think that the story of the place dates back to as early as the third century BC, judging from the Roman and Mediterranean coins found here. Archaeologists have also found artefacts from ancient times to the Maurya and the Gupta period. But the inscriptions on the potsherds and round seals are yet to be deciphered — and so the history of this place (and the identity of king Chandraketu) remains buried in the shroud of time.

On the northern side of the highway stands the ruin of a monumental brick structure. It is polygonal and elongated — curiously aligned in north-south direction — with some other structures surrounding it. Traditionally this is called the “Mound of Khona-Mihir”. Historians have guessed it as a temple from the Gupta period, but there are no hard evidences for a temple in the form of idols (apart from some in the uppermost layers, probably from a later period) or inscriptions.

One really wonders how Khona’s name has come to be tagged to this site. Her fame in folklore has nothing to do with this particular ruin, but is linked to some verses she is thought to have coined. These verses (popularly known as “Khona’s sayings”) are mainly to do with weather forecasts and agricultural advice: what sort of weather is good for crops and when should a certain crop be sowed, and so on. There are also some verses dealing with astrology, which taunt Khona’s father-in-law, Varahamihira, for his ignorance.

The bewildering mix of these folk verses, the peculiar legend of her rivalry with Varahamihira and the torture, and the curious ruin in Berachampa makes one wonder about it all. Was she simply an astrologer who had different ideas about horoscopes, or is there more to the story? Was the structure in Barasat something other than just a “temple” — an observatory, perhaps? (Traditional observatories are built along the north-south direction.) Did she find something unpalatable to the medieval scholars like Varahamihira who lived in the last years of the Gupta age?

Luckily, the area with the “Mound of Khona-Mihir” seems to have now received the attention it deserves. The Archaeological Society of India has built brick walls surrounding it and also the ramparts of “Chandraketu-garh”. Digging and construction in this area have been prohibited by government orders, and there is talk of more excavations. When I took a bus from Kolkata to wander around the ruins, I found some of the shopkeepers anxious about their fate, in case they were asked to shift. But some thought that tourism might help their trade. The illegal smuggling of idols abroad would probably be stopped, and a detailed study of these ruins will certainly shed light on a forgotten episode of history.

But shall we ever find out who Khona really was? Or, will her identity remain mute and tongueless forever?

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