Long buried in the sediment of the Ganges delta, the kingdom of Gangaridai was one of ancient Bengal’s most powerful cultures — a force so formidable that Alexander’s army refused to cross the Ganges. Greek and Roman historians described Gangaridai as a land fortified by war elephants, vast infantry, and a thriving port city named Gange. 20th-century excavations at Chandraketugarh in West Bengal, India, and links to sites like Wari-Bateshwar in present-day Bangladesh have revealed a sophisticated, interconnected deltaic world shaped by trade, urban innovation, and maritime routes. Together, they resurrect Gangaridai as a lost Bengal empire whose reputation alone altered the course of world history.
“When Alexander insisted on crossing the Ganges, they (the Macedonian army) opposed him outright. The river, they were told, was four miles across and one hundred fathoms deep, and the opposite bank swarmed with a gigantic host of infantry, horsemen and elephants. It was said that the kings of the Gangaridae and the Praesii were waiting for Alexander’s attack with an army of eighty thousand cavalry, two hundred thousand infantry, eight thousand chariots and six thousand fighting elephants.”
In the Greek and later Roman philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest Plutarch’s ‘Life of Alexander’, written 400 years after Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BC, the author speaks of the Gangaridai (or Gangaridae), a powerful Indian kingdom with a battle horde of war elephants that frightened the Macedonians so much that they were finally forced to turn back. Although Plutarch doesn’t mention anything about Gangaridae beyond this, the name appears in several historical sources from the Greek and Roman periods.
The story of Gangaridai’s military strength struck fear and awe in Greek and Roman historians and chroniclers. In books II and XVII of his magnum opus ‘Bibliotheca Historica’, Diodorus Siculus (or Diodorus of Sicily) describes Gangaridai’s army as consisting of 60,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry, and a colossal 700 war elephants. This impressive display of power, rumoured to surpass any Alexander had encountered before, frightened his troops, leading them to mutiny and refuse to advance further east. For the first and only time, Alexander was compelled to retreat. Gangaridai remained the last, great, unconquered eastern frontier of his legendary campaign.
Yet, the name Gangaridai does not appear in any Indian historical records, partly due to the tradition of shruti or the strong emphasis on oral tradition for knowledge preservation and the lack of durable writing materials like paper in ancient India. Although historians speculated that the name Gangaridai derived from the Sanskrit ‘Gangahridai’, meaning ‘the land with the Ganges at its heart’, the location of the formidable kingdom remained shrouded in mystery. For centuries, Gangaridai was little more than a phantom in classical texts. Where exactly was its capital, called ‘Gange’ by the Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy (circa 150 CE)?
Modern archaeology points strongly to a remarkable site in West Bengal, approximately 30 kilometres northeast of Kolkata: Chandraketugarh.
Chandraketugarh was discovered in 1907 by a local doctor, Tarak Nath Ghosh, during routine road construction in the area. Although the Archaeological Survey of India showed little initial interest in the site, renowned archaeologist Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay visited the location, documented numerous artefacts, and published a preliminary report in 1909. This eventually led to excavations by the Ashutosh Museum of Indian Art in 1955 which uncovered remains dating from the pre-Mauryan period (circa 4th-3rd century BCE) to the Pala period (circa 8th-12th century CE), confirming Chandraketugarh’s importance as an ancient urban and trading centre.
Although it might seem like a minor settlement today, Chandraketugarh is significant in the works of Ptolemy and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, two important early non-Indic sources frequently referenced in historical studies. These sources identify it as the ancient capital of Vanga and possibly the kingdom of Gangaridai.
Further excavations at Chandraketugarh have uncovered a vibrant urban centre that thrived from the pre-Mauryan era, coinciding with the peak of Gangaridai, through the Pala period. These discoveries portray a prominent port city dominating key trade routes in the Ganges delta. The presence of silver punch-marked coins — including a ‘dolphin-type’ coin indicating seafaring activity — numerous seals, and imported pottery affirms its status as a thriving international harbour. Finds such as rouletted ware and other luxury items suggest extensive trade links reaching Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Greco-Roman regions in Europe, the Middle East, and central Asia.
Other significant sites, such as Wari-Bateshwar in present-day Bangladesh, have yielded similar early urban architecture and artefacts, further confirming the existence of a vast, interconnected civilisation stretching across the entire Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta. Scholars now widely believe that Chandraketugarh, strategically located on the banks of the now-silted Bidyadhari River — which once connected directly to the Bay of Bengal — was likely the great port city of Gange, the economic powerhouse of the Gangaridai kingdom which spanned across the Bengal region.
These discoveries have given Gangaridai a new life. Although largely unexplored, it has once again emerged through Bengal’s land as a vast, enduring, prosperous kingdom whose military strength was so legendary that it could influence world history without even firing a single arrow.
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