Ujjayanti Palace, the famous royal house built by one of the Manikya kings

The trio had been missing from the list of Tripura’s Manikya dynasty rulers in Rajmala — royally sponsored court chronicle of the state down 400 years. There was no reference to kings Bir Bhadra Manikya, Ishwar Manikya and Dharma Manikya-II who ruled and died in quick succession between 1599 and 1601, a critical period in princely Tripura’s history.

The prevalent ideas on princely Tripura’s history, chronicled in Rajmala, had to be revised after leading numismatist Jawhar Acharjee discovered three coins, separately issued by the three kings and covered a major gap in history. They are now safely preserved in Acharjee’s private museum, Rajendra Kirtishala. Apart from Rajmala, the basic source material for Tripura’s history has always been scanty, till Rajendra Kirtishala came up in 1977 with a rich collection of more than 2,500 coins, terracotta pottery, images, tribal costume jewellery, folk art and hunting tools and plenty other items.

It is now the inevitable destination of all research scholars and students of Tripura’s history and there is a guideline for students of history in Tripura University to visit Rajendra Kirtishal to prepare for the two papers on the state’s history.

The historical base of the mixed populated state of Tripura is that it was consolidated as a kingdom by a tribal king of Indo-Mongoloid origin, who later assumed the dynastic title of Manikya. It is notable that one of the enlightened Manikya rulers, Maharaja Birchandra Manikya Bahadur, was a friend of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who visited Agartala at the invitation of the former. Tagore immortalised Tripura in his novel Rajarshi and drama Visharjan, based on the legends of the Tripura kings.

“The idea of floating a museum had been in mind even when I was a school student in Brahmanbaria of present Bangladesh, as I would be spell-bound by looking at the trident, earthen pots and copper and brass utensils preserved by my forefathers over 150 years of Durga Puja in our ancestral home,” said Jawhar Acharjee, an officer in the menpower department of the state government. It was during his posting as an officer in Agartala Museum that the idea of collecting coins and archaeological items took concrete shape, in 1970. In fact, an exhibition of the entire collection of the museum was also held in the Ujjayanti Palace.

As far as history writing and collecting source materials was concerned, Tripura then was virgin soil. Frequenting the rural and hilly hinterlands of Tripura, Acharjee struck gold in the form of rare coins, archaeological items and materials related to tribal culture. “My major discoveries include coins issued by Arakan king Min Raja Gayi, Bengal king Shashanka of the seventh century, many coins issued by Tripura kings — some featuring even names of the queens and rich collection of 150 Harikel coins,” he said.

Acharjee’s collection in the museum is also enriched by coins from different parts of Northeast, including two “discoveries” in the form of coins issued by Cachari kings Nirbhar Narayan and Megha Narayan. The collection in Rajendra Kirtishala has helped shed new light on Tripura’s history and rewrite it authentically. At present he is working jointly with British numismatist Nicholas Rhodes to interpret the inscriptions in ancient Brahmi script on Harikel coins. “I have a coin issued by a Muslim sultan of Bengal with the words “Ram” and “Hari” inscribed on it and it clearly proves the rulers of medieval period gave as much importance to India’s multi-cultural heritage as we do now,” Acharjee said.

Shedding new light on Tripura’s history, he said that the tribals of Tripura had settled here in the thirteenth century. Before that, two kingdoms, Samatat and Harikel had flourished in Comilla, Noakhali, Chittagong and parts of Sylhet districts of plainland Bengal (present Bangladesh), bordering Tripura from the first century to the 12th century. “Shashanka’s coin was issued after he had conquered Samatat in early 7th century,” Acharjee said, adding that Maynamati hill areas of Comilla was possibly the capital of both Samatat and Harikel.

Through painstaking research and discovery of coins, Acharjee has brought to light a significant chapter in Tripura’s relation with Assam. In 1685, Assam’s powerful king Rudra Singha had sent two emissaries, Ratna Kundali and Arjun Das to Tripura to hold discussions with king Ratna Manikya-II, for making a joint front against the predatory raids of Mughal army deputed by emperor Aurangjeb, in areas close to Assam and Tripura. He recently presented a paper on relations between Tripura and Assam, at a seminar organised by the Assam Academy for Cultural Relations (AACR).

Acharjee’s first book, a collection of research papers entitled Puratoni Tripura, will be published at the Agartala book fair next year. “But I have already started preparing to write five more books on history of Tripura, Harikel and Samatat. A life member of Numismatic Society of India and Northeast India History Association, he will submit a paper on a newly discovered coin. His dream project, Rajendra Kirtishala, is located in his house and he has already registered a society to run the museum in his absence. “I hope to get a grant from the Union ministry of cultural affairs and after construction of the building within my own house, the museum will be bequeathed to posterity with the society as its guardian,” Acharjee said.