The struggle for the Bay : the life and times of Sandwip, an almost unknown Portuguese port in the Bay of Bengal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

This article places Sandwip, a lesser known salt trading island and port in the Bay of Bengal within the nexus of global trade and politics in the seventeenth century. Sandwip is now a part of Bangladesh but at the time under review it was successively part of the medieval kingdoms of Bengal, Tripura and Arakan. Sandwip was, briefly, held by the Portuguese and is referred to in Portuguese annals as a ‘minor’ settlement, part of their ‘informal empire’ in the Bay. The article argues that we should not read such settlements of the Portuguese in Southasia as ‘formal’ or ‘informal’, ‘minor’ or ‘major’, and make thereby artificial distinctions between categories. We need to, instead, refocus and study Portuguese expansion as a multi pronged enterprise in which local exigencies and imperial vision were braided all over the Bay of Bengal

Putting the Rafts out to Sea: Talking of Bera Bhashan in Bengal

Bera (raft) bhasan (sending out) is a ritual linking two societies and two landscapes: the maritime and the agrarian. After the monsoon, palm or plantain rafts are placed on the river to placate the gods. The bera bhasan that is practiced today is an amalgam of earlier practices of two communities-the Islamic and the Hindu. Arab merchants introduced this practice into Bengal when they prayed for safe passage at sea before venturing out. Similarly Hindu peasants would observe a variant of Bera Bhasan called sedo on the last day of pous or January, whereby they would placate the rain and river gods by setting out small rafts on water. On these flowers, sweets and lamps were placed to ensure a good harvest the following year. Therefore two worlds came together in this practice, the maritime and the rural, signifying two kinds of activity, mercantile and agrarian. In seventeenth-century Mughal Bengal it developed from a folk belief into a community practice. In eighteenth-century Nawabi Bengal it was co-opted by the state as pageantry and it is now a state-sponsored enterprise linking the Hindu and Muslim communities

Geoff Wade et Li Tana (eds.), Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012

Mukherjee Rila. Geoff Wade et Li Tana (eds.), Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012. In: Archipel, volume 86, 2013. pp. 277-278

Geoff Wade et Li Tana (eds.), Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012

Mukherjee Rila. Geoff Wade et Li Tana (eds.), Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012. In: Archipel, volume 86, 2013. pp. 277-278

Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani et Geoff Wade (eds.) Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, 2011

Mukherjee Rila. Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani et Geoff Wade (eds.) Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, 2011. In: Archipel, volume 86, 2013. pp. 263-264

Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani et Geoff Wade (eds.) Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, 2011

Mukherjee Rila. Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani et Geoff Wade (eds.) Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, 2011. In: Archipel, volume 86, 2013. pp. 263-264

É. Vallet, L’Arabie marchande (2010)

Mukherjee Rila. É. Vallet, L’Arabie marchande (2010). In: Topoi, volume 18/2, 2013. pp. 717-719

É. Vallet, L’Arabie marchande (2010)

Mukherjee Rila. É. Vallet, L’Arabie marchande (2010). In: Topoi, volume 18/2, 2013. pp. 717-719