Dantan

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Dantan
Dantan
State - District(s)	West Bengal - Paschim Medinipur
Coordinates	21.56° N 87.16° E
Area - Elevation	- 24 m
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Population (2001) - Density	-

Dantan (Bengali: দাঁতন), often also spelled as Danton, is a border town in Kharagpur subdivision, Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal state in India, bordering Sonakonia in Orissa. The name also gives rise to two subdivisional blocks, Dantan-I and Dantan-II.

1 History
2 Geography
3 Weather
4 Transportation
5 Education
- 5.1 College
- 5.2 Schools
6 Famous people
7 References

[edit] History

Dantan was a thriving town on the route to the Jagannath Temple in Puri when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu reportedly passed through here in the 16th century.^[1] According to one version, the name Dantan was given to the village when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu brushed his teeth here, daant being the Bengali word for teeth.^[1] According to another version, the name is derived from Dandabhukti, which was an ancient territorial unit of Bengal comprising much of what are today Purba Medinipur and Paschim Medinipur in West Bengal, and the state of Orissa.^[2]

Dantan is the location of at least three temples from the nineteenth century, the Jagannath Temple, the Shyamaleswar Temple, and the Chandaneswar Temple. ^[3]. All three temples are built in the curvilinear rekha style that is common to temples of Orissa.^[3] Near the town are two major tanks, the Bidyadhar and the Sarasankha. The Bidyadhar tank was created by Pratap Rudra Deva, the minister of the ruler of Warangal^[1]. The Sarasankha tank is attributed to the king Shashanka who ruled in the seventh century A.D.^[4].

[edit] Geography

Dantan is located at 21.56° N 87.16° E^[5]. It has an average elevation of 24 metres (74 feet).

[edit] Weather

The climate in Dantan follows a hot-tropical monsoon pattern with highs in the mid 40s°C in the summer (generally April to June), mid 30s°C during the monsoon season (June to August) and low 30s°C for most of the other times of the year. Winters (December to January) are usually mild with lows in the 10s°C and high in the low to mid 20s°C. Most of the precipitation is from the southeast monsoon which may bring in excess of 1500 mm of rainfall.

Tornados are relatively rare in West Bengal and Bangladesh, but one did occur on March 24, 1998 killing over 250 near Dantan.^[6] Initially, this tornado was reported as a cyclone with wind speeds of close to 200 km/h that caused the destruction of an estimated 9,000 houses and injuries to 3,000 people.^[7] Later the event was characterized as a tornado. ^[8]

[edit] Transportation

Dantan is connected by road from Kharagpur via Belda and from Orissa through Sonakonia. The Dantan rail station is between Kharagpur and Balasore in the Kharagpur Division of the South-Eastern Railways.