Contai
Contai is a coastal and subdivisional city and a municipality in Purba Medinipur district, West Bengal, India. It is the headquarters of the Contai subdivision. It is the second most populated city of the district.According to the geologists, the present geographical dimension of Contai came into existence with the great natural disaster of the third century AD (flood), which created Chilka lake out of the Chilka Bay. Kanthi, that is Contai, means "sand-bound reefs" or sand walls. The name Contai may thus be an English expression of the local jargon meaning "sand heaps".
In the 5th century, during the visit of Fa-Hien, Contai was uninhabited and had no name for the outside world. In Valentine's travelogue, a harbour, Petua by name, was mentioned. This harbour was on the bank of the river Rasulpur, a short distance from the Rasulpur estuary. Later the harbour was shifted to the present site of the Contai Town. However, it is said, the name of the abandoned port was retained for its new location, In foreigners tongue, Petua is said to have changed first to Cauntee and finally to Contai, whereas in local tongue it has changed to Kanthi (কাঁথি).
But linguists raise serious doubts about such change of pronunciation. They offer other suggestions. Yogesh Chandra Sarkar thinks that the name Kanthi owes its origin to outstretched sand-dune, about 27 miles from Rasulpur estuary to Peeplipattan, that from the sea looked like a long wall or Kanth (কাঁথি) as it is called by local people. Some suggest that the name may originate from the custom of local people to build long walls or Kanths around their habitation in order to keep off wild beasts like buffaloes, tigers and rhinoceroses that were found in abundance then and these Kanths gave the place its name.
Yet, some people, conversant with the local history, give another explanation. They say on the sand dunes lived Saints and Fakirs or witch doctors to whom afflicted people often came for cure and who asked them affectionately in somewhat Hindi, "Kanha thee?" meaning to say, "where are you from?" Gradually the cure-seeking people coming from distant places came to identify this unnamed place by those two words "Kanha thee", and in course of time the words merged into one to give the virgin or Ahalya land a name.
In the 5th century, during the visit of Fa-Hien, Contai was uninhabited and had no name for the outside world. In Valentine's travelogue, a harbour, Petua by name, was mentioned. This harbour was on the bank of the river Rasulpur, a short distance from the Rasulpur estuary. Later the harbour was shifted to the present site of the Contai Town. However, it is said, the name of the abandoned port was retained for its new location, In foreigners tongue, Petua is said to have changed first to Cauntee and finally to Contai, whereas in local tongue it has changed to Kanthi (কাঁথি).
But linguists raise serious doubts about such change of pronunciation. They offer other suggestions. Yogesh Chandra Sarkar thinks that the name Kanthi owes its origin to outstretched sand-dune, about 27 miles from Rasulpur estuary to Peeplipattan, that from the sea looked like a long wall or Kanth (কাঁথি) as it is called by local people. Some suggest that the name may originate from the custom of local people to build long walls or Kanths around their habitation in order to keep off wild beasts like buffaloes, tigers and rhinoceroses that were found in abundance then and these Kanths gave the place its name.
Yet, some people, conversant with the local history, give another explanation. They say on the sand dunes lived Saints and Fakirs or witch doctors to whom afflicted people often came for cure and who asked them affectionately in somewhat Hindi, "Kanha thee?" meaning to say, "where are you from?" Gradually the cure-seeking people coming from distant places came to identify this unnamed place by those two words "Kanha thee", and in course of time the words merged into one to give the virgin or Ahalya land a name.
Map - Contai
Map
Country - India
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Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. (a) (b) (c), "In Punjab, a dry region with grasslands watered by five rivers (hence ‘panch’ and ‘ab’) draining the western Himalayas, one prehistoric culture left no material remains, but some of its ritual texts were preserved orally over the millennia. The culture is called Aryan, and evidence in its texts indicates that it spread slowly south-east, following the course of the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers. Its elite called itself Arya (pure) and distinguished themselves sharply from others. Aryans led kin groups organized as nomadic horse-herding tribes. Their ritual texts are called Vedas, composed in Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit is recorded only in hymns that were part of Vedic rituals to Aryan gods. To be Aryan apparently meant to belong to the elite among pastoral tribes. Texts that record Aryan culture are not precisely datable, but they seem to begin around 1200 BCE with four collections of Vedic hymns (Rg, Sama, Yajur, and Artharva)."
Currency / Language
| ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| INR | Indian rupee | ₹ | 2 |
| ISO | Language |
|---|---|
| AS | Assamese language |
| BN | Bengali language |
| BH | Bihari languages |
| EN | English language |
| GU | Gujarati language |
| HI | Hindi |
| KN | Kannada language |
| ML | Malayalam language |
| MR | Marathi language |
| OR | Oriya language |
| PA | Panjabi language |
| TA | Tamil language |
| TE | Telugu language |
| UR | Urdu |