These two sites require a dedicated half-day by car and are best combined as an add-on to a second day in the circuit. They reward visitors with strong interests in archaeology, pilgrimage, or simply the pleasure of finding deeply significant places that receive far less attention than they deserve.
Pandu Rajar Dhibi: The First City of Bengal
In a field beside the Ajay River, in Panduk village in the Ausgram II Block, a series of low mounds rise from the agricultural plain. From a distance they could be natural hillocks. They are not. The site represents the compacted remains of a continuous human settlement. This occupation began, at the earliest, around 2000 BCE during the late Chalcolithic (Copper Age) period and persisted through subsequent phases until roughly the 11th century CE. The main mound, 200 metres by 170 metres and standing 5 metres above road level at its centre, is Pandu Rajar Dhibi: the Mound of King Pandu.
The name comes from popular legend: locals associate the mound with King Pandu of the Mahabharata, the father of the five Pandavas. The archaeologists who excavated here found something both less legendary and more astonishing. In 1962, archaeologist Paresh Chandra Das Gupta of the West Bengal Directorate of Archaeology identified this as the first Chalcolithic (Copper Age) site ever discovered in Bengal. Between 1962 and 1985, five excavation campaigns were conducted, revealing evidence of Bengal's first known urban culture, a sophisticated proto-historic civilisation. This culture showed six distinct occupation periods, spanning a long duration from approximately 2000 BCE to the 11th century CE.
From the Chalcolithic layers emerged black-and-red pottery, copper bangles and fish hooks, terracotta figurines of the Mother Goddess and storage vessels with incised geometric patterns. The food evidence was striking in its continuity: the people ate rice and fish, just as Bengalis do today. There were skeletal remains of 14 individuals; their long-headed build resembles the Santal and Sabara peoples. Remarkably, comparisons can be drawn between certain pottery styles and finds from Crete and the Aegean. This suggests to some researchers the existence of a trading network that reached the Mediterranean world. A terracotta seal with a still-undeciphered linear inscription was found in the 2nd-millennium BCE layers, suggesting a possible early writing system.
The site is, in the honest assessment of those who have studied it, among the most significant and most neglected archaeological sites in India. The 4,500+ artefacts recovered are scattered across multiple museums and university collections. The true value of a visit lies in the sheer discovery: the feeling of standing on the site of one of eastern India's oldest known human settlements, observed only by the Ajay River and the surrounding paddy fields, in total isolation.
Attahas Shakti Peeth
In a forest beside the Ishani River (locally known as the Kandor), approximately 5km from Nirol in the Katwa subdivision, a marble shrine rises from dense vegetation. This is the Attahas Shakti Peeth, one of the 51 Shakti Peethas of the Hindu tradition, the sacred spots across the Indian subcontinent where the body parts of the goddess Sati fell to earth following her self-immolation in the Daksha Yajna fire.
The word Attahas comes from the Sanskrit atta (‘excessive’) and hasa (‘laughter’), meaning ‘profound laughter’. According to the Puranic myth that underlies all Shakti Peethas: after Sati’s death, the inconsolable Shiva carried her body on his shoulders and began his cosmic Tandava dance, whose violence threatened to destroy the universe. Vishnu dismembered the body with his Sudarshan Chakra to release Shiva from grief; the pieces fell across the subcontinent; where each piece landed, Shakti manifested in a local form and a temple was raised. At Attahas, the goddess’s lower lip fell. The name of the manifested goddess here is Phullara (or Phullora); her Bhairava consort is Vishvesh. The main cult object in the temple is a 15-foot stone that represents the lower lip of the goddess.
The temple building itself is not architecturally grand (it’s a renovated marble structure) but the setting is extraordinary: deep forest, the Ishani River, an adjacent pond from which, according to legend, Lord Hanuman once collected 108 blue lotuses for Rama’s worship of Durga. The temple’s antiquity is unknown; a terracotta inscription (shila lippi) found at the site is still being studied and its script has not yet been fully deciphered. A natural pond sits next to the complex.
Outside the main religious pilgrimage seasons, the temple has a wonderful quietness. The Attahas forest is also documented as a significant wildlife habitat: over two thousand Asian Openbill Storks have been recorded roosting here, along with fruit bats and a variety of butterflies. Attahas stands out on the circuit because of the unusual combination of a sacred Shakti Peeth and a forest teeming with birdlife.
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