The name Bankipore has been explained as meaning the city of the banks or fop, on account of its being the quarter of women of ill-fame to which fashionable men resorted. Another suggestion, however, is that it means merely the city on the bank of the river.
Bengal District Gazetteer, Patna, 1907
On 17th January we reached Patna, the capital of Bihar, or rather the railway junction at Bankipore which was adjacent to it. Because we were short of time we had had to travel there by train. It had meant missing Ghazipur, where we had heard that there was still some cultivation of the opium poppy which we were both interested in seeing. Nevertheless, we decided to miss it and concentrate on the lower reaches. We were determined to arrive at Calcutta by water; and we had very little time in which to do so. We experienced the same frustrated sensations as the hero of John Buchan’s Greenmantle stuck in the woods on the north bank of the Danube with only eighteen days in which to get to Constantinople.
Neither Patna nor Bankipore now merited the aspersions that had been cast on them in former times. Murray’s Handbook to Bengal, 1882, warned travellers against descending from the train at Patna, ‘which is not a desirable place for Europeans to alight at.’ Without specifying why it was unsuitable, it advised them to get down at Bankipore station. But it then went on to describe it as ‘inconvenient’ and was uncomplimentary about the cabs.
A number of what were quite possibly the same horse-drawn vehicles still stood in the station yard at the Junction. Some resembled broken-down droshkies; but the most extraordinary were what the porters referred to as ‘boogis’, perhaps a derivation from buggies, although they looked nothing like buggies. They were really palankeens on wheels, carriages the shape of a match box in which the fare crouched or lay fully extended as the spirit moved him. They were fitted with sliding doors which, if they were both closed while the passenger was inside, would ensure his death by asphyxiation in a matter of minutes.
We set off on foot to see the town, or rather the three towns which stretched for more than nine miles along the right bank of the river – the Old City of Patna, and the ‘new’ City of Patna which was separated from the old, rather mysteriously, by Bankipore: the result being that during the time we were there we were never certain which city we were in.
There was yet another city, but this one, like the sacred river Sarasvati at Allahabad, was for the most part invisible, hidden under the others. This was the enormous city of Pataliputra, the capital of the Mauryan Empire whose three Emperors, Chandra Gupta, Bindusara and Asoka the Buddhist Emperor had in the years between 321 and 231 B.C. extended it from Afghanistan to the Godaveri river in the Deccan, an empire which was kept going at least in its formative stages, by a system of spies and informers. Pataliputra was ten miles long and two miles wide. The houses were built of wood. The city was moated on the landward side and it was surrounded by a wooden palisade which had 570 towers and 64 gates set in it. Megasthenes, who was sent as ambassador to the court of Chandra Gupta in 303 B.C. by Seleukos Nikator, King of Syria, after his master had suffered a humiliating military reverse which had forced him to withdraw from Afghanistan, gave an interesting account of what the city was like. It was the Emperor Asoka who turned it from a city of wood into a city of stone palaces, temples and dwelling houses surrounded by stone walls; stones which are still much prized by the dhobis for walloping dirty linen on when, from time to time, they come to the surface. At this time it was said to have 450,000 inhabitants.
When the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Thsang visited Pataliputra towards the middle of the seventh century he found a small town of not more than a thousand houses on the banks of the Ganges surrounded by a deserted city with the remains of monasteries, Hindu and Buddhist temples in hundreds and the foundations of the wall of the city. It is possible that the Huns sacked it at the end of the sixth century. The final destruction was carried out by the iconoclastic Sasanka, king of Central Bengal.
Most of the public buildings in New Patna dated from the 1920s – not a particularly happy period for official architecture anywhere. On the north was the Maidan which contained within it a racecourse and a golf links, both of which were disused. To the south were the district jail, a lunatic asylum, the Dak bungalow at which we had put up and an enormous post office, in which somewhere, we were certain, all our mail was secreted. There was also the Oriental Library which was supposed to contain the only volumes which survived the sack of Cordova by the Moors.
The most impressive building was the Gola, or granary, an immense structure ninety-six feet high with walls twelve and a half feet thick built of brick which resembled half an egg, a beehive, an observatory or a great steamed pudding done up in a white cloth, according to how the spirit moved one. It had been constructed at the instigation of Warren Hastings by Captain Garstin of the Engineers who completed it in 1786 and it had taken two and a half years to build. It was intended as a safeguard against famine, and its capacity was said to be 137,000 tons of grain. No one had ever succeeded in filling it, because the only way to do so was through a hole in the top and the builders had designed the doors at the foot in such a way that they would only open inwards. If two people stood on opposite sides of the interior it was said to be possible to duplicate the effect of the whispering gallery in St Paul’s. For many years it had been used for storing furniture but now it had reverted to the use for which it had been intended.
When we arrived there in the afternoon the approaches to the entrance doors were blocked by bullock-carts and men were carrying sacks into the vast domed interior. Because of the din it was not possible to make the whispering test.
On the outside two sets of stairs spiralled up to the top. The thought of men being expected to carry 137,000 tons of grain to the summit sack by sack was an awe-inspiring one, but as it had never happened and the filling hole at the top had always remained sealed there was no need to feel very worried about it. The only person who is remembered as having climbed the steps, other than as a sightseer, was the Jang Bahadur of Nepal who is said to have ridden a horse to the top and down again.
From the summit the river could be seen flowing down in a great curve past the city, half a mile wide at this season and beyond it to the north the flats stretched away as far as the eye could see, having just received the waters of two other rivers, the Gogra and the Son, the junction of which took place some fifteen miles upstream in the middle of gigantic wastes of sand and islands of alluvial silt.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century the India General Steam Navigation Company had operated a steamer service on the Gogra as far as Fyazabad, the one-time capital of the king of Oudh a hundred and fifty miles up, which at one time was known by the delightful name of Bungle, as well as on the Ganges to Allahabad and beyond. During the Mutiny the Government hired the entire fleet to carry troops up the river.
In the ’60s the shipping companies began to go into a decline as the trade in indigo, on which the steamers had relied for their return cargoes, had collapsed with the introduction of chemical dyes (most of the outward freight upriver was piece goods from Manchester) and in 1860 the East India Railway reached Patna. In the ’70s the India General started to carry jute from East Bengal to the mills on the Hooghly and the Ganges became more and more neglected as a trade route. By the end of the century, apart from some craft of shallow draught the regular service only extended upstream as far as Patna. Finally in 1957 the Company ceased to operate on the Ganges altogether. A hundred years previously there had been at least five feet of water in the river all the year round as far up as Allahabad. By 1957 the depths upstream of Patna were between three feet and two feet six in the dry season.
Now out of the murk big country boats called pansuhi or bhurs came running down the river under a single square set on a rough yard which was slung from an equally rough mast. They had high sterns, low bluff bows and triangular rudders, and they were completely decked in with what looked like a nissen hut made from bamboo and thatch.
Moored alongside the staging at the principal ghat there was an ancient stern wheeler. Further upstream there was another vessel, this one with side-paddles, high and dry on the shore, which would never sail again; and down by the burning ghats a gentleman said that they were putting in electric ovens; but as he also said that the boats running downstream would reach Calcutta, which was over 400 miles away by rail, in thirty hours it was difficult to know whether to believe him.
Disregarding the advice of the Handbook to Bengal, ‘The traveller, if he pleases, may make an excursion to Dinapur, and then to the confluence of the Soane, but there are no buildings of any interest to be seen there’, we walked for miles up the river bank through brickfields and the suburbs of Dinapore. It was not an inspiring walk and when, just as the sun was setting, on impulse I suggested that we should go on board one of the bhurs which was just about to set off downstream to Bankipore, Wanda was not enthusiastic.
‘We’ll be there in half an hour with this wind,’ I said, and she allowed herself to be persuaded, sinking as I did up to my knees in mud as we struggled aboard. No sooner had we done so than the wind died away completely. Our bhur was one of a fleet of half a dozen similar vessels and their crews, as soon as the wind died, put out sweeps with three men to each of them, all of whom worked with a will. All except the crew of our bhur, which consisted of only two men of a markedly languid disposition (they only had one sweep anyway and they showed no inclination to use it). Soon the other boats out-distanced us and disappeared downstream into the darkness and we were left alone crouched on the thatched roof of a dud bhur drifting down the Ganges, and it was damnably cold.
We begged the boatmen to either put us ashore or start rowing; they affected not to understand. They were in no hurry. Perhaps wherever they were bound for was worse than the middle of the river on a near freezing moonless winter night. As a result it took us two and a half hours to cover three miles and we arrived at Patna more dead than alive. A long ride in a cycle ricksha to the Dak bungalow where there was no water, no glasses to drink from and no way of obtaining any as the custodian had gone off, ended this fearful excursion and after an equally fearful dinner eaten in a restaurant which, apart from ourselves, was empty, we returned to the bungalow to sleep in a pair of narrow beds, separated from one another by swathes of mosquito netting, bad-tempered, exhausted and cast down by the fact that we had found no mail at the post office although we were convinced that it was waiting there.
At five a.m. the next morning we were woken by a maniac who circled the building chanting. There was still no one to ask for water and it was in these circumstances, and partly because of my ill-considered boat trip, that Wanda announced her departure for Delhi.
‘No one has ever treated me like this,’ she said tragically. ‘I am going and I am never coming back to you ever.’
Genuinely terrified at losing my only companion and one who had put up with me so much, I apologised to her, and to make up for everything took her to the railway station where she was served with a particularly ghastly breakfast. When we returned to the bungalow we found that our room and all the others in the building had been bespoken by the delegates to a Birth Control Conference who were already swarming on the steps and looking through our keyhole. We had to leave immediately and we did, pursued by the keeper of the Dak bungalow who, having been invisible since our arrival now had the impertinence to demand baksheesh.
In spite of this unpromising beginning we had a good day; really because of the kindness of the head of the Water Transport Board who himself acted as guide. Like a Londoner entertaining a visitor from abroad, in the process he himself saw a number of things which he did not know existed,
We saw what remained of the Opium Godown, the oldest European building in Patna. It was the headquarters of the Government Press and Mr Chatterjee, the head of it, rang bells vigorously to summon various old men who might remember what it was like when it was a centre of the opium traffic. Unfortunately there was not much for them to remember, as most of the warehouses had collapsed in the course of an earthquake in 1934; but the high old brick walls which had enclosed it were still standing and one immense, two-storeyed building on the ground floor was full of compositors. The upper floor was equally crowded with clerks who stood up like schoolboys as we all trooped through – for by now we formed a large body of persons.
Underneath the building there was a vaulted cellar with greasy black marks on the walls which one of the old men said were made by opium, and in a dark corner there was the entrance to an underground passage which another old man said led to Delhi.
The preparation of the opium which for centuries was the principal industry in the district was a long, drawn-out business. The poppies, a white variety, flowered in January and February, and the cultivators agreed in advance to deliver all the opium which they produced to the Government at a fixed rate. The actual cultivation was extremely hard work and involved much ploughing, weeding and manuring. In February and March, after the petals had been removed and made into a sort of cake which was later used as a package for the actual opium, the capsules of the plant were lanced in the afternoon and the drops which they exuded collected the following morning. In April the country people brought it in for weighing. The manufacture of ‘provision’ opium, opium intended for export, began at the end of April and continued until the end of July. What eventually resulted from the various processes was a sphere the size of a twenty-four-pound cannon ball made from the poppy leaves and held together by a paste of opium which contained the opium – each of which weighed 1 seer 7½ chittacks.30
The local consumption was considerable. Most of it, however, went to China. But even in the 1900s the cultivation was decreasing, due to the amount of work it involved and the increase in the prices fetched by other crops, particularly cereals.