Munger represents the unbroken continuity of the Indian civilization, surviving centuries of Islamic iconoclasm and colonial shifts to remain a vital node of Hindu memory and heritage.
TO A CULTURALLY ROOTED Indian, Munger is an inseparable part of Sītāyana — Sita Mata’s sanctifying journey. It fell under the domain of her father, Janaka, the emperor of Mithila. In Yudhishtira’s fabled Rajasuya Yajna, Bhimasena conquers a city known as Modagiri lying in the vicinity of today’s Munger. At various points, it was also called Mudgagiri — meaning, the hill (or region) abounding with Mudga (Moong dal); other texts like the Nirukta aver that it was founded by Rishi Mudgala. Colonial historians set their imagination on a wild flight — Alexander Cunningham for example, derives its name from the Munda jana-jaati while Oldham derives “Munger” from Muni-griha
In fact, there is a sizeable body of scholarly literature dedicated to exploring the antiquity and vagaries of Munger’s history — it encompasses the full gamut from the sublime to the absurd. The British spelled Munger as Monghyr or Monghir.
But recorded history traces the founding of Munger to Chandragupta Vikramaditya’s sixth century rock inscription at the Kashtaharani ghat. Ever since, it was known as Guptagadh.
In the post Gupta period, Munger came under the Palas, the Gahadavalas, the Karnataka kings of Mithila and lastly, under the Sena rule. And then, Bhaktiyar Khalji discovered it. Its fortune altered for the worse ever since. For the next six hundred years, Munger groaned under the heel of successive Muslim regimes until the East India Company pocketed it a year before the fateful Battle of Buxar.
FORTY YEARS LATER, Viscount Valentia’s account of his sojourn in Munger gives a picture of a devastated city struggling to rebuild itself. He stays there for just a day but his chronicle compresses a wealth of history in less than five pages. His description of Monghyr is a simple declarative sentence: “Monghyr is a large fort surrounded by a wall and deep ditch, and is a place of very considerable antiquity.”
In the ancient Indian town-planning parlance, Monghyr was a typical Kaṭaka — roughly meaning, fort-city. Other meanings of the word include, “the side or ridge of a mountain,” “an army camp,” and “a royal capital or metropolis.”
With few exceptions, every major capital since Kautilya’s time was a Kaṭaka. For example, Devagiri, the capital of the Sevunas was an impregnable Kaṭaka. Its unfortunate ruler Ramachandra had left the city below unguarded and thus left it open to Ala-ud-din Khalji’s depredation. The inscription that narrates Khalji’s raid specifically calls the city as a Kaṭaka. And then, the most splendid Kaṭaka in Dakṣiṇāpatha’s history was Vijayanagara. To understand the unbroken continuity of this civilisational building block, we have Cuttack, one of the main cities of Odisha; the word is a corruption and misspelling of Kaṭaka.
Valentia’s rather elaborate description of Munger shows an exact physical match to the word’s original connotations and is worth quoting in some detail.
It is most beautifully situated on a bend of the Ganges, which, in the rainy season, forms here a prodigious sea of fresh water… It is too extensive in its present state (being above two miles round) for defence… When you have once passed the gateways, there is nothing to inform you that you are in a fort… The view… is uncommonly fine, taking in the river, mountains, and intermediate plains richly cultivated. I prefer it to any thing I have yet seen in India.
In Valentia’s portrayal, Munger was akin to a decayed paradise and he supplies reasons for the decay drawing from its contemporary history. As Governor of Bengal (1640-60), Shah Jahan’s second son, Shah Shuja, had built a magnificent palace inside the Munger fort. That construction came at a terrible cost for Hindus.
There is a tolerably handsome Hindoo temple…It had five arched entrances, facing each of which were richly carved niches, meant to contain idols. Sultan Suja removed them, and converted the building into a mosque. It is now the residence of some invalid soldiers.
The exact location of this “handsome Hindoo temple” compounds the tragedy. It was “directly above” the sacred Sitakund, a hot water spring. As the name suggests, it is derived from Sita Mata, who performed a Punya-Snana after her Agni Pariksha. Its sanctity is truly dateless and birthed the enduring festival, colloquially known as the Maghi Mela (Magha Snana), celebrated during the Kārtika and Māgha Māsas. The Snana undertaken on Māgha Poornima is the most auspicious. In scale, this pilgrimage is a younger cousin of the Kumbha Mela.
Valentia who was present there in February testifies to the “prodiguous crowds” of “Hindoos” who “visit the rock of Monghyr and purify themselves in the Ganges.”
As a pious Muslim, Shah Shuja did what all pious Muslim rulers have done. He levied extortionate taxes on Hindu pilgrims attending the Maghi Mela and converted the aforementioned temple into a mosque after destroying its Murtis. Thankfully, the temple was restored in later years, and the whole site is under the care of the ASI.
Shah Shuja also shared the fate of all bigoted Muslim kings who tormented Hindus: suffering and painful death, to put it mildly. Valentia’s assessment of his reign in Munger is unsparing in its candour.
It was the chief residence of Sultan Suja, during his government of the province of Bengal. At the time that he, as well as his brothers Aurungzebe and Morad Buksh, were in rebellion against their father Shaw Jehan [Shah Jahan], he fortified it as well as he could. It however soon fell into the hands of his enemies, and he was driven into Aracan [Myanmar], there to experience a series of misfortunes, which the history of other branches of his own family alone can equal.
But before Shuja fled from Munger, he unleashed a savage horror on the members of his own family. He physically annihilated his Zenana but left his palace, Diwan-Khana and other buildings unharmed. Then he did something worse.
Near to the palace is a very large well, to which you descend by a long and wide flight of steps: it is never dry… This is called the singing well; and the natives firmly believe, that every seven years is heard, at the bottom, the noise of singing and music, such as was produced by the nautch girls in the neighbouring Zenana. They say that when Sultan Suja was obliged to fly to Rajamahal, he put to death all his women whom he could not take with him, by immuring some in the walls of the well, and by throwing the others into it.
By the second half of the 18th century, Munger was under Mir Qasim for a brief spell. The East India Company, under John Carmac’s leadership, wrested Munger after a seige of nine days, and according to Valentia, “[S]ince that period, it has remained in our possession, and as a frontier town is become a place of considerable importance, and a depot of arms and ammunition.” After Cornwallis entered the scene, he reduced Munger to a place of “little importance” and shifted the seat of British power to Allahabad.
Valentia returned from his day-long excursion to the home of the late Major General Edward Ellerker and “dined with his widow.”
His next destination was Patna — specifically, Bankepur, which was then a cantonment.
To be continued
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