The Two Banaras of Akbar - Atak and Katak

Several hundred cities across the world have been founded by adding the prefix “New” to an existing name, in various languages. Yet some cities possess a far more unusual, almost biblical pattern of etymology. The Greek emperor Alexander the Great established several settlements and attached the name Alexandria to them, of which one survives to this day in Egypt. Rome, another immensely influential city, held such symbolic power over rulers of the past that when a new Roman capital was established at the tip of the Bosphorus, it was called Roma Constantinopolitana, which gradually simplified to Constantinople and eventually became Istanbul. In a similar manner, a rare and largely unknown phenomenon unfolded on the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century, linked to one of the holiest and oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world — Varanasi.

The holy city of Varanasi has had many names over time, the most popular — and still occasionally used — being Banaras, or as the British spelled it, Benares. Another ancient name was Kashi, which provides a useful starting point here. Cities such as Uttarkashi, Kashipur, Kashipura, Kashigarh, and Kashigaon all originate from the root word “Kashi,” reflecting not merely a place name but a supreme spiritual identity. Its influence remains so profound that it continues to appear in personal names such as Kashibai, Kashiram, and Kashinath. By the 17th century, however, the word Banaras gained prominence and was used in a similar fashion for two cities situated at opposite ends of the subcontinent. One lay near Peshawar along the Indus River, known in the colonial era as Campbellpur and today as Attock, while the other stood at the mouths of the Mahanadi on the ancient Kalinga coast — the city of Cuttack. The figure connecting these two cities through the name Banaras was the Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar.

Cuttack, or Katak as it is natively spelled, was already a well-established town long before the Mughals arrived on the subcontinent. In the 13th century, when Anangabhima III of the Eastern Ganga Empire shifted his capital from Kalinganagara to this new city, it was named Abhinaba-Baranasi-Katak, which translates to “New Varanasi Capital.” In effect, the medieval city at India’s eastern coast was consciously envisioned as a “New Varanasi.” Even when the name later evolved into Bidanasi Katak, its roots still traced back to Varanasi, Baranasi, or Banaras. By the time the Mughals consolidated power, they were well aware of this association, and Akbar is known to have referred to the town as Katak-Banaras.

Turning to the other city, Attock — or Atak — it was established by Akbar in the 16th century as a strategic frontier settlement. The word “Atak” derives from the idea of a barricade or blockade, reflecting its position at the northern boundary of the Mughal Empire. The attachment of Banaras or Varanasi to Atak appears to have stemmed from Akbar’s vision of it as a “divine frontier,” giving rise to the name Atak-Banaras. This symbolic pairing effectively marked the empire’s extreme frontiers, and since the eastern limit already carried a historical association with Banaras, extending the same suffix to the northern boundary created a conceptual symmetry.

Over time, however, the Banaras suffix disappeared from both cities. Atak was renamed Campbellpur in 1908 and later restored and standardized as Attock in 1978. Meanwhile, Katak was anglicized in the early 19th century to Cuttack, a name that has endured. Yet unlike Attock, a small town named Varanasi still exists roughly 337 kilometers south of Cuttack in Odisha’s Gajapati district.

Below is a recreated portion of a map originally sketched by Daniel Lizars in 1818. Notably, it depicts Attock and Banaras as two adjacent settlements at the northernmost edge of the Lahore province, situated near the confluence of the Kabul and Indus rivers close to Peshawar.

Byzantium of Konkan

In the year 667 BC, the ancient city of Byzantium was founded by Greek colonists at the conflux of Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn and Bosphorus. This city, would later acquire numerous names over the course of history, instrumental in changing the course of Europe, Africa and Asia plenty of times. Augusta Antonia, New Rome, Roma Constantinopolitana, and Constantinople before finally changing it's current name in 1930 to Istanbul. But this post, isn't about Istanbul or even about Türkiye. But, it's about the name 'Byzantium' and how it got sailed to the most oddest locations from Europe - to the Konkan coast of western India. 

When the Europeans started mapping the Indian subcontinent, they gave some Hellenized names to Indian towns. Bharuch was written as Barygaza, Ponnani in Kerala was Tyndis, and a list of places whose current names are hard to decipher - Brama, Hipocura, Chersonesus etc. It was in the same fashion, that old maps find a place on the Konkan coast, called as Byzantium (or Byzanteion / Byzantine). This theory is stated by the Pleiades Project and by historians S. Tripati, A.S. Gaur and S.N. Bandodkar (1998). 

But how did a 'Byzantium' land on the Konkan coast? Neither was/is Vijaydurg in any way resembling Istanbul, nor was there any direct linkage between the two towns. There are numerous speculations but none have concrete answers. The ancient Greeks used the word 'Chersonesus' to describe the area around Goa, which has a literal meaning of 'peninsula'. But that logic cannot be applied to Vijaydurg here, as it wasn't technically a peninsula. The local towns of Bharukachha (modern day Bharuch) and Muchhiripatnam became Barygaza and Muziris. By this logic, Vijayadurg must be having some name that may have been Hellenised as Byzantine. But there was another theory proposed by W.H. Schoff in 1924, that Byzantium may correspond to the Karnataka town of Banavasi (in Uttara Kannada district) which had it's former names Vaijayanti or Vaijayantipura or Jayanthipura, which can be misread in Hellenistic way as Byzantium or Byzanteion. But at the same time, Banavasi isn't a port so either a port area close to Banavasi was labelled as Byzantium, or it's Vijayadurg itself with some unexplained reason as why it was called as Byzantium. 

But old maps says otherwise. A 1865 dated map by Karl Spruner von Merz recreates the Ptolemic map of Asia and mentions Byzantium straight south to Musopalle and north of Tyrannosboas, denoting Jaigad and Malwan (both in today's Sindhudurg district). Many of these Hellenistic names actually had literal Greek meanings and so as they saw the town's geography, they gave these names. But Byzantine is an exception and as described above, it has multiple meanings to it's placement in India. There is another theory that states these Hellenistic names were basically geographical placeholders and cartographic reference points. Having said that, a Byzantium in India with no connection the the actual Byzantium city is actually pretty interesting. 

Going a bit more with the Karl Spruner von Merz map, it's important to point out the literal translations of some places the map had deciphered and published, back in 1865. 

Calcutta, Belize: Indian Settlement History and Origins

The nineteenth century was, in many ways, an age of rapid political upheaval. Across the world, maps were being redrawn as empires weakened, nations emerged, and rebellions, wars, and technological shifts altered long-standing orders. Some of the era’s strangest outcomes were born from this turbulence: freed African American slaves founding a republic on the coast of West Africa, Belgium privately ruling the Congo, Indian soldiers serving in police forces as far away as Shanghai, more than ninety percent of Paraguay’s male population perishing during the War of the Triple Alliance, and Algeria being absorbed directly into France. Global politics was volatile, and because empires and societies were not as interconnected as they are today, such anomalies did not appear unusual at the time. This post examines one such peculiar nineteenth-century outcome that continues to exist today: the settlement of CALCUTTA in BELIZE.

At first glance, it seems odd for Belize to carry the name of an Indian city, but a closer look makes the connection clearer. The Kingdom of England established the Crown Colony of Jamaica and its Dependencies in 1655, a colonial structure that expanded westward to include British Honduras by around 1670—territory that largely corresponds to present-day Belize. The same administrative network later extended to the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, both of which remain British Overseas Territories even today. Until 1884, British Honduras was governed directly from Jamaica, and it was during these decades of Jamaican control that an unexpected Indian dimension entered the region’s history. While the wider system of indentured labour had already begun transporting Indians to overseas colonies, it was the aftermath of the 1857 Indian Rebellion that decisively altered British imperial policy.

After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, many Indian revolutionaries were officially classified as convicts by the British state. Along with their families, they were deported across the empire to distant colonies including Mauritius, Singapore, the Andaman Islands, Hong Kong, Burma, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca, Aden, Fiji, Trinidad, and Guyana. In the same period, several hundred Indians were transported to the narrow northern coastal stretch of British Honduras, where they were settled at the Corozal Plantation. This estate lay at the extreme northern edge of the colony, close to what is today the Mexico–Belize border, barely ten to eleven kilometres away. The sugar estate came to be known as 'Calcutta', largely because Calcutta was the Indian port from which many of these individuals had been shipped.

This means that a place named Calcutta exists today barely eleven kilometres from Mexico.

This movement marked only the first phase of Indian settlement in the region. A second wave arrived in 1872, when indentured labourers were transferred from Jamaica to this small settlement under promises of improved living conditions. A third group arrived from neighbouring Guatemala, where Indians had previously been employed on coffee plantations in the Cuchumatanes, often referred to locally as the Café Mountains. Notably, unlike most Caribbean sugar colonies dominated by European planters, several of the sugar estates in this region were operated by American owners. Calcutta was also not the only site of Indian settlement; communities expanded into nearby estates such as San Andrés, San Antonio, Estrella, Carolina, and Ranchito, as documented by researchers Sylvia Gilharry Perez and Kumar Mahabir.

Over time, the settlement grew and Indian cultural influences initially spread through food practices, domestic customs, and community life. Today, only a small percentage of Corozal’s Calcutta village identifies as East Indian. The town of Corozal itself has an earlier origin, founded by the Cruzo’ob Maya—refugees who fled south from Yucatán during the Caste War of 1848. Within the span of just over a decade, two very different displaced communities settled within minutes of each other: Maya refugees from Mexico and Indians transported from South Asia. Unlike many other Indian diaspora settlements, however, Calcutta’s residents no longer speak Indian languages. Spanish, Creole, and regional tongues dominate daily life, while Awadhi, Bhojpuri, and Hindi appear to have disappeared within a few generations. Even so, individuals of East Indian descent later entered government service, education, transport, and local politics, and a handful of family-run businesses and restaurants continue to reflect this heritage.

The settlement’s name has remained unchanged. Today, Calcutta appears clearly on maps, with the Philip Goldson Highway running through it. It lies between Xaibe and Ranchito to the north and San Joaquin to the south, roughly four kilometres from the coastline of Corozal Bay, which opens into the Caribbean Sea. The New River flows a short distance to the south, marking the closest major waterway. Below are two maps: one showing the present-day settlement of Calcutta, and another drawn from an 1857 map of British Honduras, based on the work of Henry Darwin Rogers and Alexander Keith.