Kamatapur

Kamatapur was the capital of the Kamata kingdom, a fortified city on the plain of northern Bengal, whose mounds are identified with Gosanimari near Dinhata. It lay where the Bengal plains give way to the foothills and the roads toward Assam. Earthen ramparts and ditches ringed the royal enclosure, and the kingdom behind them stood as a buffer between the western Kamarupa country and the Bengal Sultanate.

Tradition says the capital was moved here after 1257, and the Khen kings were its last rulers. In 1498 Alauddin Husain Shah of Bengal took Kamatapur and ended Khen rule, setting his son over the conquered land. His hold lasted only a few years before a confederation of local chiefs drove his men out. In 1515 Biswa Singha removed those chiefs and founded the Koch dynasty, whose kings ruled from a new centre at Koch Bihar and still styled themselves lords of Kamata. The old city's sanctity survived its fall: in 1665 a Koch maharaja built a temple at Gosanimari for Kamateshwari, the goddess of old Kamatapur, and endowed her worship.