Wari-Bateshwar Fort-City Open air Museum, Narsingdi.
Prof. SS Mostafizur Rahman believes that Wari-Bateshwar is the rich, well planned, ancient emporia (a commercial city) “Sounagora” mentioned by Greek geographer, astronomer, mathematician Ptolemy in his book Geographia. The other emporia mentioned in Ptolemy’s work include Arikamedu of India, Mantai of Sri Lanka, Kion Thom of Thailand. All of these were the most ancient civilizations in their respective regions, each was a river port, and all of them produced monochrome glass beads. The artifacts found at Wari-Bateshwar bear similarity with those found in the other emporia sites.
Mathematician Narayan Chandra Ghosh, a resident of Kolkata visited his birthplace of Satirpara-Narsingdi and explored Wari-Bateshwar on 30 June 2016 to collect detailed information about mathematical concepts used there. He has popularized the word ‘Folk Mathematics’ that he has found at Wari-Bateshwar also. He has written articles on Wari-Bateshwar in Daily Desher Katha (Published from Agartala), Chalojai published from Kolkata.
Image Source: Google, Wikimedia Commons, The Daily Star.
References:
i) MM Hoque and SS Mostafizur Rahman, Wari-Bateshwar, Banglapedia: The National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Retrieved: 20 February 2012
ii) Kamrul Hasan Khan (1 April 2007). “Wari-Bateswar reminds Ptolemy’s ‘Sounagoura'”. The Daily Star.
iii) Excavation at Wari-Bateshwar: A Preliminary Study. Edited by Enamul Haque. Dhaka, The International Centre for Study of Bengal Art, 2001, ISBN 984-8140-02-6
iv) Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti (1992). Ancient Bangladesh. Dhaka: Oxford University Press. pp. 64–65. ISBN 0-19-562879-9.