Zamindar family

The great zamindar family of Dinajpur, who ruled the district for two centuries, could be traced back to the reign of Akbar. In 1600 AD, for administrative reasons, Akbar divided his empire into 15 subas and appointed his son prince Selim as Subadar of Bengal. The Suba was further subdivided into 19 sarkars and parts of four of those sarkars namely sarkar Ghoraghat, sarkar Tejpur, sarkar Panjara, and sarkar Barbakabad fell within the limits of Dinajpur District.According to Calcutta Review vol. 55. 1872, "About the time of Akbar's settlement there was at Dinagepoor, at the place from which Gonesh, less than two centuries before, derived his title, a man, maybe of the blood of Gonesh, in possession of a considerable part of what are now the districts of Dinagepoor and Maldah. Buchanan calls him Kasi, but whether he is correct or not, the name is now entirely forgotten. His grave is shown at the door of the mondeer in the Rajbari." and clothes, curd, rice, etc. are still given as offerings on his grave. He is identified by the local people as a holy man and he is spoken of as a Shannayashi, Brahmachariand Mohanta or Gosain. There is a local tale which denotes that he built a temple on his park where he installed Kali or Kalika image and later, in addition to this image, he also installed another image called Kaliyamardana, which is one of the forms of Krishna avatara(incarnation). He endowed the whole Sarkar or Havele of Panjara for the maintenance of the temple. The Dinajpur estate was repeatedly mentioned in the old records as Havele of Panjara.He (Kashi) then left his estate to one of his disciple named Sremanta Datta Chowdhury(1608-1642)), who belonged to Kayastha caste and migrated in this area from the east. He had two children, a son and a daughter. The son died without having any issue but the daughter had a son named Sukdhev Roy.