Kharagpur : Nomenclature

Collage of pics taken by me, click to enlarge

Not enough good articles we have on Kharagpur in internet, not even good books in English. So I thought to start my Kharagpur series in this blog. It will mostly contain historic and cultural information of my home town, a city of more than 100 years but a place of thousands of years.

The name of every place has its own meaning, so the word Kharagpur should have something; however there is no literary meaning of the word ‘kharagpur’ in Bengali dictionary. Thus this must have been inherited from some themes, subjects.

From my childhood I knew that Kharagpur is named after the old Khargeswar temple. But recently I was reading a book where it claims that Khargeswar temple was founded 400 years back, but Kharagpur exists from the age of Mahabhat. So, definitely the so called nomenclature history is not true, rather the fact is on the other way around.

Regarding this matter thorough research has done by Shyamapada Bhowmik in his book Kharagpur: Itihas O Sanskriti.

“One of the popular hearsay is the place is named after the king of Bishnupur,
Khargamalla at 841AD. But that time Kharagpur was ruled by Bengal King Devpal
(810-850), an emperor per-excellence of Pal dynasty, whose far-flung kingdom was
extended from Bramhaputra to Sindhu River and even in south India, which means
almost the whole India was under him. So it is most unlikely that the place will
be named after some other King. Thus this is again a rumor.”

If we split the word in two parts Kharag – Pur , then we have separate meaning. The literal meaning from the Samsad Dictionary are given below.

Kharag –n, a large falchion for immolating beasts; a large falchion; the horny
appendage on the nose of the rhinoceros.

Pur –n, a house, an abode, a city, a town, a village.

The combination gives a meaning of the word --- “A place inhabited with armed (with scimitar or sword or falchion) people”.

This meaning can be accepted as no other logic can prove the nomenclature of the place.