Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Dulmi

by Joseph David Freedone Melik Beglar

DULMI.

Twenty-five miles west of Barâ Bâzâr (which itself is 25 miles south-east of Puralya) on the banks of the Subanrikhá river (the Suvarnarikhsha), is the small village of Dulmi, marked in the lithographed map of 8 miles to the inch as the site of some ruins; the village is known as Dyápar Dulmi, and contains numerous remains. A plan of the place, with the sites of most of the ruins, accompanies, but there are others to the north and north-east of the village.

The ruins consist, with one single exception of low brick and stone mounds, the only standing structure being a small temple of brick oil a small isolated hill south of the village and close to the river banks; it is built of brick set in mud, smoothed and ornamented with plain lines of mouldings, the bricks for the purpose being cut to shape; the roof is a semicircular arch internally, of bricks, cut to shape and set edge to edge; the bricks are 14" × 10"; the entrance is of the usual pattern of bricks in overlapping courses; the temple appears to have been Saivic, But there were probably other temples on the hill; one of the fragments of sculpture represents a Female seated on a peacock.

About ¼ mile to north by a little east are the walls of a small fort or citadel; a portion of it has been carried away by the river; the walls were of brick, and were probably strengthened with earth behind; the place was a simple enclosure of no strength.

Of the numerous mounds there is not much to say; some are of stone, others of brick, and are clearly the ruins of temples of the respective materials; the sculptures show that there were Vaishnavic, Saivic, and Buddhist or Jain temples; the last were all exclusively at the extreme north end of what was probably the old city, extending a distance of 3 miles along the river banks; the Hindu ones were in groups; some groups being exclusively Saivic, others as exclusively Vaishnavic. One statue alone of Aditya, on the banks of a small tank, where lie also some fragments of Ganeça, &c., is inscribed, in characters of probably the tenth century; judging from the sculpture, the temples would date to about that period, but it appears that the place continued long in a flourishing condition, for, though some of the sculpture and ornamentation are very good, others are markedly inferior; there is nothing of any special note in the sculpture, but it is almost certain, from the great superiority of the Buddhist or Jain sculpture, that that was the religion which was in the ascendant first, having been succeeded by Hinduism. Some of the sculpture is clearly Jain, and it is not impossible, but on the contrary probable, that the others regarding which there can be any doubt are also Jain; there must accordingly have been a large Jain establishment here in the ninth and tenth centuries, succeeded, say, about the eleventh century, by Hinduism.

The largest tank in the place in known as the Chhátá Pokhar, and is so named from a chhátá or chhátri in the tank. This chhátri is built of stone, in what was once perhaps the middle of the tank; the superstructure consists of a couple of stout pillars, supporting a round slab, ornamented in the usual way, and surmounted by smaller ones in the usual way. This chhátri is traditionally said to be the spat where Vikramâditya used to perform puja before going to bathe. He used, it is said, to rub oil on his body at Telkupi, and perform his puja here; the manifestly absurd story is firmly believed by the people.

The stone used for the sculpture is the soft, dark-colored slate, masses of which crop up in picturesque confusion in the bed of the river. The stone is easily water and weather-worn, and the sculpture has suffered greatly in consequence. A more active agent of destruction is the trade of the place, which consists chiefly of cut-stone cups, plates, &c., cut out of the blocks lying among the ruins; the stone-cutters select such pieces as will give them the least trouble to cut into shape, without any scruple as to whether the piece be a sculpture or not; to this I ascribe the total disappearance of all inscriptions, inscribed slabs answering capitally for large plates.

There are ruins south of the hill on which the temple still existing stands, and they extend to a distance of nearly one mile south, so that a length of four miles must, in all probability, be taken as the length of the city, which, however, was not wide; the extreme width could not have been more than half a mile, as I have seen no ruins further than half a mile from the river banks.

There are numerous kistvaens in the village; these are the graves of the Bhumiyas; they are formed mostly of large slabs of rough stone, set on four rude pieces of stone set upright in the ground. Some of the slabs forming the roof are very large, nearly 15 feet square, and have most probably been used more than once; the bodies are not buried, but burned, and the ashes and bones put into an earthen (or other) vessel, buried, and a slab set up as a roof over the spot; some may even be called family vaults, as the ashes of more than one man are buried in them; the custom is in force among the Bhumiyas, or aborigines; special spots in particular villages are set apart for this sole purpose; they are not to be found in every village, but in most villages of importance.