Karatoya
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Karatoya
Old river of Eastern Bengal and Assam, which rises in the Baikuntpur jungle in the extreme north-west of Jalpaiguri District in 26 degree 51' N. and 88° 28' E., and meanders through Rangpur, until, after a course of 214 miles, it joins the Halhalia, in the south of Bogra District, in 24 38' N. and 89° 29' E. The united stream is known as the Phuljhur, and it eventually finds its way into the Jamuna (3). The Karatoya bore in ancient times, as we learn from the Puranas, a high character for sanctity; and its mermaid goddess, whose image has been found among the ruins of Mahasthan, was widely worshipped, and this place is even now a favourite place of pilgrimage. The river is mentioned in the Jogini Tantra as the western boundary of the ancient kingdom of Kamariipa, which it separated from Pundra or Paundravardhana, the country of the Pods, whose capital was at Mahasthan. It was along its right bank that Muhammad-i-Bakhtyar Khilji, the Muhammadan conqueror of Bengal, marched upon his ill-fated invasion of Tibet in 1205 ; and in the narrative of that expedition the Karatoya is described as being three times the width of the Ganges. It was no doubt the great river crossed by Hiuen Tsiang on his way to Kamariipa in the seventh century, and by Ala-ud-din Husain on his invasion of the same country in 1498.
The topography of the river is attended with numerous difficulties ; changes of name are frequent, and its most recent bed, which ultimately joins the Atrai some 30 miles east of Pabna, is known indifferently as the Burhi ('old') Tista and the Karto or Karatoya. It appears that at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Ganges and the Brahmaputra were still 150 miles apart, the Tista united with the other Himalayan streams to form one great river. The elevated tract of stiff clay known as the Barind, which spreads over a considerable part of the modern Districts of Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Malda, and Bogra, formed an obstacle which could not be so easily pierced as the more recent alluvium round it, and the outlet of the Himalayan streams was thus diverted to one side or the other. Sometimes when the trend of the rivers was eastwards, they flowed down the channel of the Karatoya, which is shown in Van Den Broucke's map of Bengal {circa 1660) as flowing into the Ganges, and was, in fact, before the destructive floods of 1787, the main stream which brought down to the Ganges the great volume of Tista water. South of the Padma there is now no trace of any river bearing this name; and, since the main stream of the Tlsta broke away to the east in 1787, the Karatoya has gradually silted up, and it is at the present clay a river of minor importance, little used for navigation.
