A dream come true for Swarup Bhattacharyya, a well-known anthropologist and maritime ethnographist, the project, which is being funded by Britain’s Endangered Material Knowledge Program, aims at building a square rigged, cutter craft called ‘Chhot’ (Runner), which used to be built in this area for several centuries.
Just across the river Rupnarayan, from the ancient port of Tamralipta or Tamluk, is a tiny football field called Amberia, where behind a bamboo goal post a hand-tooled sea-going boat is being recreated by the last surviving craftsmen who can build such ships.
A dream come true for Swarup Bhattacharyya, a well-known anthropologist and maritime ethnographist, the project, which is being funded by Britain’s Endangered Material Knowledge Program, aims at building a square rigged, cutter craft called ‘Chhot’ (Runner), which used to be built in this area for several centuries.
“No one is sure when the technology to build these V-shaped boats, similar yet very different from Europe’s Viking boats, emerged. But we know that the boats were used for long to ply in the Bay area. However, now for many decades, such boats have been replaced by motorised ones and the know-how to build these crafts is disappearing,” Bhattacharyya told PTI.
A team of artisans working under the stewardship of 70-year-old Panchanan Mondol, one of the last boat builders adept at the craft has drawn large crowds of fishermen and river craft pilots for whom the attempt to build the ancient boat has become a matter of pride.
Tamralipta, which became a thriving port in the third-century BC, finding mention in the works of Greek geographer Ptolemy and Roman philosopher Pliny, served as the entrepot for not only ancient Bengal but also for the pan-Indian Mauryan empire. It was but natural that a boat-building enterprise using local wood as well as teak sourced from forests, which could be accessed by the river route, grew up since time immemorial.
“We have direct evidence of ships plying in the Bay of Bengal, leaving from the port of Tamralipta, to Sri Lanka and different regions of Southeast Asia. The third century Jatakas talk about merchants going to Suvarnabhumi (possibly Java and Sumatra) with ships laden with riches from mostly this port,” said Professor Suchandra Ghosh of the University of Hyderabad, who has written several books on India’s ancient links with Southeast Asia.
The first recording of these ‘Chhot’ boats that have unique left-to-right downward sloping planking, held together by iron staples and rivets, is in a painting by Flemish painter FB Solvyns which was published in his book on India in 1799.
Indian records of ships used, drawn from temple carvings, are mostly of royal barges and decorative craft, neglecting recording of the engineering details of practical ships which were more popularly used.
“The V-shaped structure of the ‘Chhot’ gives it an ability to navigate high waves, which would allow this boat to negotiate through seas, possibly as a coast-hugging craft. As it has the ability to cut through waves, it is a fast ship which suggests there could have been military usage for it. Though we can only guess this,” said Zeeshan Sheikh, marine archaeologist from Britain who is collaborating with Bhattacharyya.
Others involved in the project include archaeologists Professor John P Cooper of Exeter University and Professor Vasant Shinde of central University of Haryana.
Sheikh, who has earlier worked on maritime archaeology and ethnography projects in the Red Sea and Gulf areas, said this boat-building technique seemed “unique to Bengal and Bangladesh and very different from what we find on the west coast or in the Gulf”.
The boat being built by Mondol and his team is thirty-five-and-a-half-feet long and nine-and-a-half-feet long in the middle. However, “this is scalable and in ancient times larger boats up to 100 feet may have been built”, Bhattacharyya said.
The boat project which started in early October is expected to be completed this week and the ship with a single mast and square sail may then sail down the river Rupnarayan in the presence of a host of dignitaries before being transported to the National Maritime Museum at Lothal. The recording of the local technology, which till now was passed on by ship-builders to their sons through practical training and word of mouth, will be digitised and the knowledge preserved in the British Museum for posterity to learn from.
