A peek into the past Bhopal was Bhoj Nagari The seat of the great Hindu empire How Bhojpal became Bhopal

The glory of Raja Bhoj… One thousand years of a legend

The Bhoj temple near Bhopal is the greatest example of the mixture of art and geometry in ancient India. The sheer size of the temple and the Shivlingam speak volumes of the greatness of traditional Indian architecture and technology. The great Bhojraj did not stop here. Using his understanding and knowledge of geography, he went on to create massive water reservoirs using traditional technology including the upper lake in Bhopal and of course, the biggest man-made reservoir in ancient history, the great Bhimkund, that had a total spread of 648 square kilometres. This massive reservoir is extended from Bhopal to Goharganj down south and had the Bhoj temple on its south-eastern bank.

Raja Bhoj was a legendary ruler of Malwa from 1010 to 1053 who played a key role not only in protecting and institutionalising culture and knowledge, but also chased away Mahmud Ghazni from India. This great King was the founder of Bhopal, which is unfortunately today called the city of the nawabs and the real history of Bhopal is deliberately brushed under the carpet. In an effort to bring back the true history of Bhoj and Bhopal the writer has photographed, researched and documented the unknown facts about Bhojraj. Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal has put up an exhibition of this work under the heading ‘Bhojpal / Bhopal 1000 years of cultural journey’ with the aim of starting 1000-year celebrations of the great Bhoj.

RAJA Bhoj or Bhojraj (1010-1053) was one of the greatest kings in India. Although his works and vision spread far and wide, very little has been written and published on this great ruler of central India, who played a key role in saving India from foreign invasions in the eleventh century. Bhojraj was the son of the great conqueror Sindhuraj of the Parmar dynasty in Malwa.

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Although the great Bhoj was a brilliant general and a brave conqueror, he is remembered more for his reverence to arts and knowledge and for institutionalising the traditional knowledge system of India. Himself an encyclopaedic author and a master of many subjects, Raja Bhoj documented this elaborate knowledge in 84 encyclopaedias that include Samrangana Sootradhar on architecture and town planning, Yukti Kalpataru on shipbuilding and navigation, Rasmriganka on extraction of metals from ores, Ayurved Sarvasya on ayurved and naturopathy, Tatva Prakash on spirituality, Jyotish Mriganka on astrology and Saraswati Kanthabharan on Sanskrit poetry and phonetic text, to name a few.

A deliberately concealed fact of history by many, but revealed by Turkish author Gardizi is that it was the military offensive of Raja Bhoj that compelled Mahmud Ghazni to flee India through the desert of Sindh in 1024. Earlier, Bhojraj had also sent military aid to King Bhimdev of Pattan (Gujarat) who was facing the aggression of Ghazni at Somnath. Later, the great Bhojraj not only had the Somnath temple rebuilt, he formed an alliance of many Indian kings against any future Islamic invasions. His vision worked when Mahmud Ghazni send his son Salar Masood to India to loot the wealth in Indian cities that he had missed due to the offensive of Bhojraj. The forces of Bhoj surrounded and killed Salar Masood in the month-long battle of Behraich, thus avenging the destruction of Somnath from Mahmud Ghazni. Bhojraj then, along with King Bhimdev and other Kings, went on to liberate far-off territories including Hansi, Thaneshwar and Nagarkot (Himachal Pradesh) from Ghazni’s rule.

Despite his great military achievements Bhojraj is remembered more as a King who was the protector and promoter of arts and knowledge, and as one who made every effort to document and institutionalise them in order to ensure their use and survival. In fact, he went one step further to implement this great knowledge system and show the world the greatness of Indian knowledge system. Using the technology described in the eighty three chapters of Samramgana Sootradhar, his epic on architecture and design, Bhojraj built great cities like his capital Dharanagari (Dhar), Bhojpal (Bhopal) and Mandap Durg (Mandu). The Bhojshalas at Dhar, Mandu and at Qutub Minar Delhi are beautiful examples of his architectural brilliance. The Bhoj temple near Bhopal is the largest example of the mixture of art and geometry in ancient India. The sheer size of the temple and the Shivlingam speak volumes of the greatness of traditional Indian architecture and technology. The great Bhojraj did not stop here. Using his understanding and knowledge of Geography, he went on to create massive water reservoirs using traditional technology including the upper lake in Bhopal and of course, the biggest man made reservoir in ancient history, the great Bhimkund, that had a total spread of 648 square kilometres. This massive reservoir extended from Bhopal to Goharganj down south and had the Bhoj temple on its south eastern banks. Bhojraj understood the harmful impacts of large reservoirs better than the engineers today, and understanding the threat the upperlake could cause to the city of Bhopal, he created and overflow duct that carried the flood waters of the upper lake to the much larger Bhimkund. This rivulet was named Kalia Srot, after Kalia Gond, the engineer who designed it. This incident clearly highlights the fact that Bhojraj gave education and promoted knowledge in local communities including Gonds, who were the original inhabitants of Bhopal. The Kalia Srot is till date an essential component of the eco system of Bhopal. This great reservoir was later destroyed in the fifteenth century by Hoshangshah (1404 – 1435) who grew jealous of the legend of Bhojraj that refused to die, even four hundred years after his death. Folklore has it that it took three years for the water in the reservoir to drain out and another thirty years for the land to become cultivatable. Even today, this fertile land is called the Taal Pargana meaning fertile land from the reservoir and is a rich harvesting area. The only island or dweep in this great reservoir became the market or mandi for this harvest and is till date called Mandi Dweep, which is now a flourishing industrial town near Bhopal. The upper lake is till date the largest source of water and biodiversity, in fact the reason for the survival of the city of Bhopal.

The model management and governance of Raja Bhoj did not stop here. He understood that the cultural identity of India would be the primary target of future invasions, and also deeply understood the role of Sanskrit language and Indian arts, traditions and practices in safeguarding the same. So he created the Bhojshalas, that were not just temples of Goddess Saraswati, but were institutions where scholars and performers of art, Sanskrit, and various sciences could present, educate, document and be rewarded for their works. Such Bhojshalas can be seen in Dhar, Mandu, Vidisha, and adjacent to Qutub Minar, now called the ‘Qutawal Islam’ mosque. The design of these Bhojshalas is identical with detailed Indian designs and deities on their pillars. Interestingly, the Vijay Mandir Bhojshala in Dhar has a ‘Vijay Stambh’ similar to the iron pillar inside the Qutawal Islam mosque near Qutub Minar. The only surviving statue of Godess Saraswati from the Dhar Bhojshala is now kept at the British Museum in London, and much needs to be done to bring it back and restore its dignity back.

The mastermind and visionary that Bhoj was, he understood the necessity to conserve trees and forests as early as the eleventh century. So when he started one of the earliest paper industries in known history, he chose to cultivate lotuses over hundreds of acres of land. The tubes of the lotuses was used to create the pulp from which paper was manufactured. The village Nalcha on Dhar-Mandu road in Madhya Pradesh-was the site of cultivation, and owes its ancient name Nalkakshpur to the lotus project of Raja Bhoj (nal is the tube of the lotus). The village where the pulp was mixed in huge tanks to manufacture paper is till date called ‘Kagzipura’ (the town of paper) and is located near Nalcha. It still has three mixing tanks surviving from the original 152 that were used in the industry. The evidences of the quality of this paper can be seen in two books, Mista-ul-Fazal and Niyamat Nama that are life style magazines of Mandu, dating the fifteenth century and are till date preserved at the British Museum, London.

The book Samrangana Sootradhar of Bhoj has its chapter 31 dedicated to mechanics, where interestingly, he describes the design of the jet engine in detail. “A large bird like shape made of a very tough material, that has a cylinder within where an inflammable chemical spray is ignited filling the tank with fire. The pilot uses this energy and the energy produced by the movement of the two wings against the winds to activate the machine within and fly at very high velocity to long distances creating beautiful scenery in the sky.” This clearly is not imagination. In the eleventh century, when the west was yet deciding whether it is the Sun that orbits the earth or the earth that orbits the Sun, Indians had mastered aircraft design, and it would have been interesting to know what the Wright brothers would have to say about it. Also it would be interesting to know the reaction of Boeing and Airbus in context of the patent laws imposed by the west on the rest of the world today.

Raja Bhoj was not just a King, he was a visionary who added steel to the foundations of a great civilisation. He ruled vast territories from Himachal Pradesh in the north to Telangana down south, and from Malwa in the west to Bengal in the east, from his capital Dharanagri. The great Bhoj had many great scholars in his court, but unlike other ‘great’ kings, he did not have a single biography written on himself, nor had any poetic marvels composed praising his achievements, neither any statues carved to make himself immortal. Instead, he used all available strength to institutionalise and protect the knowledge banks, traditions and culture of the land he loved, lived and died for.