The Ruins of Gour: Read an excerpt from a book on Bengal’s lost cities
Henry Creighton, a Scotsman working at an indigo factory, stumbled upon the ruins more than 200 years ago. His 1817 book notes what it was like. An excerpt.
The extent of the city appears, from the old embankments, (which enclosed it on every side) to have been ten miles long, and from one to one and a half broad. The banks (some of which are faced with bricks) were sufficiently capable of guarding it from floods, during the height of the rivers, when the adjacent country was inundated; as well as a good defence to the place, being mounds of earth from thirty to forty feet in height, and one hundred and thirty to two hundred feet in breadth at the base, with broad ditches on their outside.
On the eastern extremity there are two embankments, two hundred feet broad, running parallel to each other, at five hundred and eighty feet asunder; probably for greater security against a large lake in that quarter, which, in stormy weather, is driven with great force against the bank, during the season of the inundations. The passes through the banks had high gateways, of which one at the south, and another at the north end, are still standing, and the remains of others, that have been destroyed, are still clearly to be ascertained.
Two grand roads have led through them, the whole length of the city, raised with earth, and paved with brick, terminating with the Cutwaly Gate, at the south end, and which, passing through other gates in the intermediate banks, lead through the northernmost bank... Where drains and canals intersect the roads, there are remains of bridges built over them.
The mosques have been very numerous, the... stones of which still remain, and serve to point out the places where they stood. Two of them, distinguished by the natives with the epithet of “ Golden”, were, undoubtedly, the best buildings of that kind.
The Fort, or Palace, is rather less than a mile in length, and not quite half a mile broad, enclosed with a bank or rampart of earth, forty feet high, with bastions, and has a deep ditch surrounding it... Within this enclosure is part of a brick wall, forty-two feet high, which surrounded a space seven hundred yards long, by three hundred wide, parted into three divisions, supposed to have contained the King’s apartments, with gates leading to them. Within it also some remains of Shah Husain’s tomb are still visible, but covered with trees, and full of bats and reptiles, as the ditches and reservoirs are of alligators.
The whole of this extensive boundary, including the city and fort, is furnished with innumerable tanks, or ponds, of various sizes, and intersected with drains and ditches in every direction. In forming these, the earth thrown up raised the ground considerably above the level (of the) country on which they built their houses... while the excavations plentifully supplied them with water for every purpose. These excavations being generally full of water, overgrown with grass and reeds, and much infested with alligators, render the whole site nearly impassable, during the rainy season; but, in the dry season, when the grass is burnt, the whole enclosure becomes perfectly accessible.
The water is very good, but propagates such swarms of mosquitoes, as to render the stay among the ruins after sun-set impossible. The Sagar Piggy, a reservoir one mile in length by half a mile in breadth, is a work of great labour; and there are two other pieces of water of nearly equal dimensions in the place. There is one tank, where they make offerings to the alligators, which are so tame, or so bold, that they come at once to the shore for what is offered (to) them. Bricks are everywhere scattered over the ground, and by the operation of ploughing become gradually mixed with the soil.
Beyond the boundary of the city, a smaller embankment has been carried forward in a southerly direction, on the western side next the Ganges, for seven miles further, in which space are also found mosques, tanks, and other signs of human habitation; and the same indications are evident for two miles to the northward, forming a kind of suburb at each end, which altogether made an extent of continued population, for nineteen miles long, by a mile and a half wide.
In passing through so large an extent of former grandeur, once the busy scene of men, nothing presents itself but these few remains. Trees and high grass now fill up the space, and shelter a variety of wild creatures, bears, buffaloes, deer, wild hogs, snakes, monkies, peacocks, and the common domestic fowl, rendered wild for want of an owner. At night the roar of the tiger, the cry of the peacock, and the howl of the jackals, with the accompaniment of rats, owls, and troublesome insects, soon become familiar to the few inhabitants still in its neighbourhood...
(Excerpted from The Ruins of Gour by Henry Creighton, published by Black, Parbury & Allen, booksellers to the East India Company, Leadenhall Street; 1817)
