Darbhanga, one of oldest cities of Bihar, India

We reached Darbhanga around 8.30pm. We were tired but happy to have accomplished so much in such a short time!

Our purpose of stopping over at Darbhanga was mainly because we wanted to visit one of the oldest cities of Bihar. Darbhanga has so much of history that it definitely warrants a visit. The other reason was to visit Madhumbani, I am a huge fan of Madhubani paintings and I wanted to visit the source of these wonderful paintings.

Some historic facts about Darbhanga. I had found the name a bit weird and could not resist finding out about the origin of the name before my visit:

This is what I found from Wikipedia (the -paragraph in italics has been taken for Wikipedia)

The name Darbhanga is the mutated form of "Dwarbanga". That is, it is the combination of words "Dwar"(Gate) and "Banga" (Bengal) meaning "Gateway of Bengal". If one notices Bengali and Maithili, he will find many a phonetic similarities particularly in the main verbs of both the languages which ends with word sounding "Chhe".

Some scholars say that Darbhanga was named after Dar (Dwar) and Bhangaa which means broken gates. It is assumed that the gates of the Qila (at Qilaghat probably) were broken (by cannons or elephants) in 1326 AD when Tughlak forces attacked the last independent North Indian Hindu king.

Interesting!

I believe the city is as old as the Ramayana. Videhas were the first to settle in Darbhanga. They came to be ruled by kings called Janaks. This area is also known as "Mithila, after one of the kings who was named “Mithi”. Sita belonged to this part of India. She was the daughter of King Janak Sirdhwaja, who was also a very cultured scholar.


In British times; the zamindar estate of Darbhanga was perhaps the  richest. Maharaja of Darbhanga, Maharajah Sir Lakhmishwar Singh, was very popular because of his progressive leadership. Darbhanga also happens to be the cultural capital of Bihar because of its rich musical and folk-art history.

We did not have much time because we planned to spend the day in Madhubani and reach Muzaffapur by evening. But we did manage to see some beautiful structures inside the fort.