Bhagalpur

Bhagalpur stands beside the Ganges, where the river skirts the northern edge of the Chota Nagpur uplands. The town became renowned for silk, especially cloth woven from wild tussar cocoons gathered in the forest country to the south. Spinners, dyers, weavers and merchants turned these fibres into fabrics sought far beyond the river valley.

In the late seventeenth century striped and checked tussar and cotton fabrics were exported to European markets. The East India Company valued cloth made at Bhagalpur, and the trade drew on raw materials from the neighbouring uplands. Farther east along the Ganges stood Vikramashila, the Buddhist monastery founded by the Pala king Dharmapala in the late eighth century. Its teachers and students made it a major centre of learning long before Bhagalpur’s later prominence in the silk trade.