Page:A brief history of the Hughli district.djvu/12

2 hands of the English Sovereign. But, had the English succumbed to the French, there can be no doubt that they would have subdued the whole country, as the English have done; the sovereignty would not have remained with the native powers.

I propose to consider the history of the district under the following heads, most of which, however, must necessarily overlap each other:—

1. Early history, to the end of the sixteenth century.

2. The Portuguese, and Bandel.

3. The English, up to 1760.

4. The Dutch, and Chinsura.

6. The French, and Chandarnagar.

6. The Danes, and Serampur.

7. History of the district, since 1760.

1. Early History.—But little is known of the early history of Hughli district, and that little is chiefly comprised in the one word, Satgaon. This portion of Bengal was known as Rarh in early times; the boundaries of Rarh are not known, but it is supposed to have included a large tract round the mouth of the Hughli river, comprising the present districts of Bardwan, Midnapur, Hughli, Howrah, the 24-Parganas, and Nadiya. Satgaon is supposed to be the "Ganges Regia," described by the geographer Ptolemy, the capital of the Gangaridæ, a nation who lived in the country round the mouths of the Ganges. Satgaon was the ancient royal port of Bengal. Sarkar Satgaon was one of the administrative divisions of the Mogul Empire, and included the 24-Parganas and Nadiya, as well as the present Hughli district. When the Portuguese first began to frequent Bengal, about 1530, Satgaon was still a great and flourishing city. They called it Porto Piqueno, the Little Haven. But the silting up of the Saraswati appears to have begun about the commencement of the sixteenth century, and by the middle of the century Satgaon was getting difficult of access; though in 1565 it was still "a reasonable fair citie," abounding in all things, and in it "the merchants gather together for their trade," according to Cæsar Frederick (Hakluyt I, 230, quoted by Wilson). The Revd. J. Long, in an article on the Banks of the Bhagirathi, in the Calcutta Review for 1846, makes some further quotations from Frederick, whom he quotes as describing a place called Buttor:—

Also—

"Buttor has an infinite number of ships and bazars, while the ships stay in the season, they erect a village of straw houses, which they burn when the ships leave, and build again the next season; in the port of Satgaw every year they lade 30 or 35 ships great and small with