Chowringhee

Chowringhee (also spelt Chourangi) () is a neighbourhood in central Kolkata, earlier known as Calcutta, in the Indian state of West Bengal. Jawaharlal Nehru Road (earlier known as Chowringhee Road) runs on its western side. A neighbourhood steeped in history, it is a business district, as well as a shopper’s destination and entertainment-hotel centre

Etymology

The name ‘Chowringhee’ has defied etymologists. There is, however, the legend of a yogi, Chourangi Giri, who discovered an image of the goddess Kali’s face and built the first and founded the original Kalighat temple.Nair, P. Thankappan in The Growth and Development of Old Calcutta, in Calcutta, the Living City, Vol. I, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, pp. 14-15, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-563696-3.

History

The village

In the seventeenth century or prior to it, the area now occupied by the Maidan and Esplanade was a tiger-infested jungle. At the eastern end of it was an old road, which had once been built by the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family from Barisha to Halisahar. Beyond it there were “pools, swamps and rice-fields, dotted here and there with the straggling huts of fishermen, falconers, wood-cutters, weavers and cultivators. In that region were three small hamlets – Chowringhee, Birjee and Colimba.Cotton, H.E.A., Calcutta Old and New, 1909/1980, p. 19, General Printers and...
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