Job Charnock
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Job Charnock (d. 1693) was a British agent who was baselessly regarded by few as the founder of Calcutta.[1]
He went out to India in 1655 or 1656, apparently not in the East India Company's service, but he soon joined it thereafter. He was first stationed at Cossimbazar, and subsequently at Patna. In 1685 he became chief agent at Hughli, a Portuguese trading settlement on the river of the same name. Being besieged there by the Mughal viceroy of Bengal, he put the Company's goods and servants on board his light vessels and dropped down the river 27 miles to the village of Sutanati, a place well chosen for the purpose of defence, which occupied the site of what is now Calcutta. It was only, however, at the third attempt that Charnock finally settled down at this spot, though as a fugitive running away from the Mughol soldiers.
He was always a faithful man to the Company, which rated his services very highly[citation needed] . He is said to have married a Hindu widow and they had three daughters. His tomb, with its Latin epitaph, can still be seen in the graveyard of St. John's Church. It is the oldest building in Calcutta. His tombstone is made from a kind of rock named after him as Charnockite.
He instituted a practice (adopted across British-ruled India by 1812) that sati had to be completed in the presence of an official. Such practices had been required across the Mughal empire since the time of Humayun, though they were not always enforced. Charnock was involved in reducing the incidence of sati arguably in part because [1] he wed a woman whom he rescued from her first husband's pyre. The official required to attend was to ensure that the widow was not under the age of 16, not pregnant, not the mother of children under three nor drugged. This implies both social and legal acceptance without those conditions, and the existence of incidences with those conditions. Of course, these officials were Indian and not British officials simply by sheer number. In 1829 the practice was banned, to be re-instated as legal after the Indian rebellion of 1857. (see Thankappan Nair, Job Charnock: The Founder of Calcutta (Calcutta: Engineering Press, 1977) or the Encyclopedia Britannica.)
The Calcutta High Court ruling (May 16, 2003) [2] based on the Expert Committee Report pronounced that a "highly civilized society" and "an important trading centre" had existed on the site of Calcutta long before the first European settlers came down the Hooghly. The place then called Kalikatah was also an important religious centre due to the Kali Temple at Kalighat. The first literary reference of the city is found in Bipradas Piplai's magnum opus Manasa Mangala which dates back to 1495. Abul Fazl's Ain-I-Akbari dating 1596 also mentions about the place. The Sabarna Roy Choudhury family was granted the Jaigirdari of Kalikatah by Emperor Jehangir in 1608. Therefore Job Charnock cannot be regarded as the founder of Kolkata. [3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Bangiya Sabarna Katha Kalishetra Kalikatah by Bhabani Roy Choudhury, Manna Publication. ISBN-81-87648-36-8
- ^ Gupta, Subhrangshu. "[http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030518/nation.htm#3 Job Charnock not Kolkata founder: HC Says city has no foundation day]" (HTML), The Tribune online edition, May 17, 2003. Retrieved on December 17, 2006. (English)
- ^ Bangiya Sabarna Katha Kalishetra Kalikatah by Bhabani Roy Choudhury, Manna Publication. ISBN-81-87648-36-8
- H.E. Busteed Echoes from Old Calcutta (Calcutta) 1908
- Bhabani Roy Choudhury Bangiya Sabarna Katha/ Kalishetra Kalikatah
[edit] External links
- Banglapedia
- Encyclopedia article on Charnock
- Charnock's article at the website of William Carey University
- Job Charnock: Banglapedia
- Job Charnock's memorial in Calcutta
- Website of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury Family
- [2]
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.bn:জব চার্নক
fr:Job Charnock zh:約伯·查諾克
