The First Humans on Rarh

Human beings originated at a few particular points on this planet.

When forests appeared on earth, dense forests spread over the hard [e.g., granitic] rock, the metamorphic rock, the igneous rock and the sedimentary rock of Ráŕh.

This very forest of that time provided vital nectar to Ráŕh as a human habitation.

This very forest reined in the rivers of Ráŕh. Again, it was this forest, after the erosion of the snow-covered mountains, that invited rain clouds to Ráŕh.

The rain-god conferred his abundant and inexhaustible blessings on Ráŕh. This is our land of Ráŕh – a living onlooker to many a cycle of creation, preservation and destruction, a mute witness to a host of changes.

Countless were the wild creatures in the forests of Ráŕh.

Human beings appeared on the soil of Ráŕh after the ice age had retreated from its heart. The enormous animals were gradually becoming smaller.

The mammoths (aerávatas in Sanskrit) had been frozen in ice and fossilized, leaving behind elephants as their descendants.

The age of gigantic dinosaurs, guntosaurs and kakt́esiyás was over, and other kinds of large animals took their place.

The forest-dwellers of Ráŕh, clad in leaves, bark and animal skins, lived by hunting.

They were the epitome of simplicity.

Afterwards, those people learned how to tend animals, and slowly learned a little agriculture.

The flaming colours of the palásh [Butea monosperma] forests in the month of Phálgun [mid-February to mid-March, when the palásh tree blooms] set their minds as well into a colourful dance.

A fire for self-expression stirred their hearts as well. This was many thousands of years ago. Surely, they did practise tapasyá [suffering or austerity for the attainment of a certain goal].

But what was it for? How did they do it? Who taught them?

No one but the Lord of their inner world, the Supreme Master of their life, taught them – “Search, search, someone is there – someone is coming – someone will give you what you need to journey forward, and help you properly direct your efforts to reach the target.”

This was their nameless, silent tapasyá. When the Aryans started coming into India, at a time when some had already come, and some were about to start from the barren, arid lands of Central Asia – Lord Sadáshiva, that great personality, the life and soul of everyone, was born.

The people of Ráŕh came in touch with His eternal gospel and infallible guidance and received the much-desired touch of the enlivening wand of their Abhiiśt́a.

Thus Ráŕh became the cradle of civilization.

Ráŕh was not only the starting-point of civilization. It represented the first-ever steps towards cultural progress.

The intermingling of the basins of small and big rivers, and the exchange of activities and ideas, laid the foundation for the civilization and the culture of Ráŕh, whose splendour in turn ushered in a golden dawn not only in Ráŕh, but also in the life of all of the underdeveloped humanity of that dark age.

People of many lands started converging on Ráŕh to hear the páiṋcajanya, the clarion call, of humanity, and to join in singing the paean of humanity.

China called Ráŕh as “Láti” Greece called it “Gauṋgá Rid́i” the Aryans called it “Rát́t́ha”.

This civilization and culture of Ráŕh were not confined to Ráŕh alone – they could not be confined, and it would have been wrong to confine them. They sailed by sea from its port of Támralipta [modern Tamluk], responding to the call of its far-off nameless and unknown friends.

Ráŕh’s contribution to the building of a social structure was also extraordinary.

There was no stratum of life, no vein in the tender leaf of life that did not throb to Ráŕh’s touch. The ancestral land of the majority of the Brahmans of modern Báḿlá was Ráŕh. Hence they call themselves Ráŕhii Brahmans even today.

Wherever they are now, the Bandopadhyays (of Bandyaghati village of Birbhum), the Mukhopadhyays (of Mukhoti village of Bankura in western Ráŕh), the Chattopadhyays (of Chatuli village of Burdwan in Ráŕh), the Gangopadhyays (of Gangoli village of Burdwan) and the Ghosals(18) (of Ghosali village of Manbhum) had their roots in Ráŕh and subsequently set off for other parts of the world.

Intellect is what makes a human being most venerable, one’s kśátra shakti [soldierly strength] and kśátra shaoryya [soldierly valour] can in no way be ignored.

Vijaysingha, the son of Singhabahu the king of Singhapur(19) of southern Ráŕh, conquered Lanka [now Sri Lanka], and as a mark of his victory gave it the name Singhal.

Pandu Basudev was the nephew of the sonless Vijaysingha. He ascended the throne of Singhal in c. 534 BCE and conquered the south-western coast of India.

The transplanted people of Bengal laid the foundation of the Nair society of Kerala.

The Ráŕhii Brahmans of Bengal set sail for the coast of Konkan where they set up the Gaoŕiiya Sárasvata Brahman society.

Sahasrabahu, another prince of Singhapur, founded the Thailand dynasty and named the country Shyámdesh. None of the above went as a conqueror; wherever they went they became sons of the soil and merged with the local inhabitants. This is a matter of great joy.

The superiority of Ráŕh did not lie, as a hidden agenda, in the conquest of those lands; it lay in devoting themselves to the service of those new places. This was Ráŕh – Ráŕh the starting-point of civilization.

1981, Kolkata