Bikrampur (Munshiganj)

Bikrampur, now part of Munshiganj District in Bangladesh, is a historic region on the Padma River in eastern Bengal. It became an administrative centre under the Chandra kings in the tenth century and later a regional capital of the Sena dynasty, whose king Lakshman Sen withdrew there after his defeat in 1205. In the Buddhist world of Pāla-era Bengal it is remembered as the birthplace, around 982 CE, of Atiśa (Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna), most probably at the village of Vajrayogini; he became a senior scholar at Vikramaśīla before leaving for Tibet in 1040. Under the Mughals it was a pargana, and in modern times many Bengali families traced their roots to the area, including that of the physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose.