A town about twenty miles from gaur and twelve miles from the modern
town of Maldah in West Bengal, India, emerged as a mint town and the capital of
Bengal during the time of Shamsuddin iliyas
shah (1342-1358 AD). Pandua is said to have been derived from Panduya
< Panduviya. Cunningham contradicts the Hindu claim that the place derived
its name from the Pandus and is inclined to believe that the name rather
originated from Pandubis (water fowls) with which the place abounds.
Pandua was already a place of note before it acquired the distinction of a
capital city in 1342. The presence of numerous remains of Hindu sculpture and
architecture in the place points to its antiquity. But it was never as old and
great a city as Gaur. It was about four and a half miles long and two miles
wide. In 1353 Iliyas Shah renamed it Firuzabad probably after Shamsuddin firuz shah (1301-1322 AD), an earlier
independent sultan of Bengal.
The fifteenth century Chinese accounts
record that Pandua had very imposing walls and suburbs. Its bazars were
well arranged with series of shops full of every kind of goods. The city
remained the seat of government up to mid - fifteenth century. But it continued
its status as a mint town till the time of sher
shah (1540-1545) whose silver coins minted there are dated 1540-41 AD.
The suburbs of the city attracted saints like jalaluddin
tabrizi (13th c) and nur qutb alam
(15th c) who founded their khanqah (hospices) there. This is why
it also came to be known as Hazrat Pandua.
With the Mahananda changing its course
and the transfer of the capital to Gaur in around 1450 Pandua declined. In
early nineteenth century (1808) Buchanan Hamilton noticed some remains of
bridges, gates, palaces and forts, though these are now non-extant. The extant
relics of some monuments and sites, like the tombs of the saints cited above,
by the side of Maldah road, the adina
mosque and the eklakhi mausoleum
on the right side of Maldah-Devkot road, the Danuj Dighi, Satashgarh Dighi
etc still bear witness to its historic past. [Md Akhtaruzzaman]
Bibliography A Cunningham, The Archaeological
Survey of India Report, XV, Calcutta, 1882;Abid Ali Khan & HE
Stapleton, Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua, Calcutta, 1931.