Jaigaon: A Search for the Name's Meaning
Dr. Sonam B. Wangyal
In order to find the etymoloy of any place one has to try and find out
the first recorded mention of the place so that a fairly accurate
pronunciation of the name is obtained. Having done that one can then
decide on the language of origin and ferret out any associated history
with the name. For example let consider the name 'Banarhat'. It is
generally explained that it stands for a 'congregation of monkeys'
(haat, congregation or gathering; bandar, monkeys). The original name
was from the Mechi composite words, 'Panar-haat', where pana stands fo
water. In that area the Mechi congregated to collect drinking water but
after River Diana changed its course the place became very prone to
floods and over the years the name changed to Banarhat (bana in Mechi is
floods).
Keeping in
mind that in interpreting a meaning, phonetic similarities to a
language of popular currency can be misleading I ventured in the past.
My search first led me to Grunning's Jalpaiguri District Gazetteer
(1911) but Jaigaon was conspicuous by the absence of any reference and a
much more recent Jalpaiguri District Gazetteer (1981) proved no
better. W.W.Hunter's statistical accounts of Jalpaiguri (1876) to
refused to acknowledge he existence of Jaigaon. A minor reward came my
way in John Claude White's book on Sikkim and Bhutan of 1909. White had
traveled from Sikkim via Tibet to Bhutan to attend the enthronement of
the First King of Bhutan in 1907 and returned following the watercourse
of the Toorsa River. His entry reads as follows, "I was not sorry to
reach Jaigaon. Mr. Trood's comfortable bunglow, where I was most
hospitably entertained, and where I stayed for three days to recruit and
transact some work with some of the tea gardens in the frontier.
White's entry of 1907 strongly establishes four facts: (i) the place in
question was called Jaigaon even in 1907, (ii) the village existed prior
to that year, (iii) there was a te garden, and we know form other
sources that the plantation was called Jaigaon Tea Estate, later named
Toorsa Tea Estate and (iv) since a tea plantation existed there must
have been a reasonable amount of people living there. At this juncture
the temptation to conclude that Jaigaon was a Hindi/Nepali term meaning
'village of victory' (Jai, victory, gaon village) was quite overpowering
but the historical absence of any battle being contested here compelled
me to try for a Bhutanese antiquity, after all the place once did
belong to Bhutan. The sheer lack of reference baffled me and the few
Bhutanese sources I contacted were more baffled then I was.
The next
best thing I could do was to look up the records of the various missions
sent by the British to Bhutan for minutely detailed accounts had been
maintained of each undertaking. However, these Missions (George Bogle,
1774; Dr. Hamilton, 1775; Kishikanta Bose, 1815; Samuel Turner, 1783;
Pemberton, 1837/38; and Ashley Eden, 1864) never once mentioned Jaigaon
in their reports. Just when all the sources were drying up and I was
about to through in the towel in I chanced upon a map drawn by
Lieutenant Samuel Davis, a surveyor who had accompanied Turner's Mission
of 1783. The map gives a fairly detailed picture of the route taken by
the Mission with temples villages and forts inserted and in the bottom
of half of the map a village is marked 'Jaygong'. The phonetic
similarity was too much to ignore but what was even more astounding was
the location: it was almost the precise location of the present day
Jaigaon. The village is placed just to the east of the Toorsa River and
directly west of Suntalabari. In the north-westernly direction was
Buxaduar and about thirty miles north, as the crow flies, was Chhuka.
'Jaygong' was unmistakenly 'Jaigaon'. The location is interesting
because today we know that Jaigaon lies approximately 26O North and 89O East and 223 years ago Davis had put Jaigaon just short of 26O North and a faction over 89O
East. Considering that the name was Jaygong, according to and during
the time of Davis, which was much before any influence from the plains
of India could penetrate into Bhutan, the Bhutan word had to be
Bhutanese (Dzongkha). It is my belief that 'Jay probably stood for
'Jhya', the Bhutanese word for tea and there is a good possibility that
some tea trees could have grown wild in this area. For the difference
in spelling we must keep in mind that Davis was notorious for
mis-spelling and of the many examples we will choose just three: he
chose to write Bootan and Boutan for Bhutan. Dalai became Delai and
Wangdu Phodrang became Wangdipore. The second half of the name 'gong'
is obviously '(s) gang' meaning a hill, spur or ridge. A more positive
proof of 'gong' being a corruption of 'gang' is found in the Spelling
of Parogang which Davis spells as Parogong. The exactly the same
location of the village Jaygong and the present day town of Jaigaon and
the phonetic similarity of the two names are too strong points to
ignore. I therefore would like to, till some more meaningful
explanations come to the surface, conclude that Jaigaon is a distortion
of the Bhutanese 'Jhyagang' meaning a ridge of tea plants.