CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DS 485.B41H94 1897 
 
 Annals of rural Bengal / 
 
 3 1924 024 069 878 
 
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THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL 
 
{All Rights Reserved^ 
 
Annals of Rural Bengal 
 
 Sir WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER. K.C.S.I., 
 
 M.A., LL.D. 
 
 SEVENTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, AND CO. 
 
 1897 
 

 
THE ETHNICAL FRONTIER OF LOWER BENGAL 
 
 WITH THE ANCIENT PRINCIPALITIES OF 
 
 BEERBHOOM AND BISHENPORE 
 
 Scholars will kindly bear in mind that the linguistic sections of this book were 
 written from such lights as had reached ayoang worker in India in 1866. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 Broomhill House, 
 ifh March 1868. 
 
 My Dear Sir Cecil, 
 
 The forthcoming State Papers on the popularity 
 and results of British rule in India, furnish a seasonable oppor- 
 tunity for a work which portrays the state of the country when it 
 passed under our care. These pages, however, have little to say 
 touching the governing race. My business is with the people. 
 To no one could such a volume be more fitly dedicated than 
 to a statesman who, by the development of municipal institutions, 
 by popular education, and by an enlightened respect for native 
 rights, has laboured during more than thirty years to call forth 
 that new life and national vigour which are now working among 
 the rural multitudes of Bengal. 
 
 I therefore inscribe it with your name. 
 
 I am. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 W. W. HUNTER. 
 To 
 
 Sir CECIL BEADON, K.C.S.I., 
 Cirencester. 
 
CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 1765. The Emperor appoints the Company to the Fiscal 
 Administration of Bengal. 
 
 1765-72. The Company collects the revenues by native agents. 
 
 1772-86. The Company's experimental efforts at rural admi- 
 nistration by means of English officers. 
 
 1786-90. Lord Cornwallis' Provisional System. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The Absence of Rural History, . 
 The Materials of Rural History, . 
 The Functions of Rural History, 
 The Sources and Scope of this Work, 
 
 rACE 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 9 
 
 II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY WHEN IT PASSED UNDER 
 BRITISH RULE. 
 
 The Old System of Government under Native Princes, . 
 
 It breaks down, and the Country passes under British Rule, 
 
 Permanent Effects of the Great Famine of 1769-70, 
 
 The Crops of 1769, 
 
 Distress anticipated, but the Land-Tax raised, 
 
 The Famine declares itself, 
 
 One-third of the People perish, . 
 
 The Living feed upon the Dead, . 
 
 The Desolation of Gour, . 
 
 The December Harvest (1770) restores Plenty, 
 
 But to a silent and deserted Province, 
 
 Who was to blame ? . . . 
 
 Character and Scale of Relief Measures, 
 
 But such Measures always inadequate, . 
 
 The Famine intensified by Interference with Private Enterpri; 
 
 Orissa isolated in 1866 ; Bengal isolated in 1770, 
 
 The normal Effect of Famine in Bengal, 
 
 The Specifics for Famine, .... 
 
 The Ruin of the ancient Aristocracy, 1770, 
 
 13 
 15 
 19 
 20 
 
 23 
 24 
 24 
 26 
 29 
 31 
 31 
 34 
 36 
 40 
 
 43 
 45 
 49 
 SS 
 S6 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 The Relations of Labour and Capital transposed, 1776, 
 From 1770 to 1789 one-third of Bengal lies waste, 
 Severe Revenue Measures, ... 
 
 The Western Districts made over to Tigers and wild Elephants, 64 
 Rural Industry at a stand, . • • • .69 
 
 Bengal in the Hands of Banditti, . . • • • T^ 
 
 The ' Debateable Land,' ....•• 75 
 Beerbhoom in 1789 ; the Warding of the Passes, . • 76 
 
 Bishenpore in 1789 ; the Hill-men burst through the Passes, . 78 
 The ancient Capital sacked by Banditti, . . • .81 
 
 Estimate of Losses caused by their Devastations, . ■ 83 
 
 Results of our first efforts to establish Order, . . -84 
 
 The Western Frontier obtains Rest : its condition then and now, 85 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ETHNICAL ELEMENTS OF THE LOWLAND POPULATION OF 
 BENGAL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 59 
 61 
 
 63 
 
 The Aryans and Aborigines, 
 
 The Struggle for Life in Ancient India, . 
 
 The Aryan Race, .... 
 
 Its Line of March through Bengal, 
 
 Aryan Civilisation, as portrayed by Manu, a Local System, 
 
 A rigid fourfold System of Caste unknown in Lower Bengal, 
 
 The Five component Parts of the Population of Bengal, 
 
 The primitive Children of the Soil, 
 
 The Aryans and Aborigines contrasted ; first, as to Speech, 
 
 Second, as to Colour, 
 
 Third, as to Food, .... 
 
 Fourth, as to Religious Conceptions, 
 
 Fifth, as to their Belief in Immortality, . 
 
 Aryan Funeral Rites, , . 
 
 The Future Life described. 
 
 Whence these Conceptions ? 
 
 Aboriginal Funeral Rites, 
 
 Influence of the Aborigines on the Aryans ; first. 
 
 Second, as to Religion ; Demon-worship and Human Sacrifices, 127 
 
 Siva and the Hindu Village Gods borrowed from Aborigines, 129, 194 
 
 Third, Influence of the Aborigines on the Political Destiny and 
 
 Character of the Indo- Aryans, . . . .136 
 
 The Future oi the Indian Races, . . . 140 
 
 89 
 
 90 
 92 
 
 97 
 100 
 107 
 109 
 112 
 114 
 "5 
 "5 
 117 
 119 
 121 
 122 
 124 
 as to Speech, 126 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ABORIGINAL HILL-MEN OF BEERBHOOM. 
 
 The Black Races of Bengal, a new Field of Study, 
 
 The Santal Tribes of Western Beerbhoom, 
 
 Santal Traditions : the Creation, the Dispersion, etc., . 
 
 Analogies to the Mosaic and Aryan Accounts, 
 
 The Legend of the Creation rather a Legend of the Flood, 
 
 Santal Pre-historic Reminiscences, 
 
 Santal Speech, ...... 
 
 The present Classification of Languages unscientific, 
 The New Lights, ...... 
 
 Santali examined by the New Lights : its Inflections, . 
 Its Place among Languages, .... 
 
 The Confluence of Languages in Bengal, 
 
 A Uniform Method for studying non-Aryan Speech, 
 
 Roots common to Aryan and non-Aryan Speech, 
 
 Santali Words in Prakrit, 
 
 Prakrit Words in Santali, 
 
 General Deductions concerning Santal Speech, 
 
 Santal Religion, . . . , 
 
 Family and Village Gods, 
 
 Tribe Gods, .... 
 
 The Race God, .... 
 
 The Santal Trinity, 
 
 Identity of the Santal Race God with the Hindu Siva, 
 
 The Hindu Family Gods, Village Gods, and Siva, borrowed 
 
 from the Aborigines, ..... 
 Connection between the Aboriginal Rites and Buddhism, 
 Connection between the Aboriginal Rites and Modern Hin 
 
 duism, ...... 
 
 Caste unknown among the Santals ; the Seven Clans, 
 The Six Great Ceremonies in a Santal's Life, 
 Admission into the Family and into the Clan, 
 Admission into the Race, . 
 Union of his own Clan with another ; Weddings, 
 The Santal faithful to one Wife ; Divorce, 
 Dismission from the Race ; Santal Funeral Rite; 
 The Santal's Conceptions of a Future State, 
 Reunion of the Dead with the Fathers, . 
 The Santal as a Cultivator and as a Hunter, 
 Santal Sport, .... 
 
 Santal Agriculture, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Santal Hospitality and Courtesy, 
 
 Santal Village Government, 
 
 Frankness and Easy Decorum of the Santal Women 
 
 Dance, . • • • 
 
 The Santal's Aversion to Strangers, 
 The Santals as Depredators, 
 As Colonists and Day-labourers, . 
 They migrate Northwards to Rajmahal, . 
 They furnish the Sinews of Enghsh Enterprise in Bengal, 
 Pressure of the Population in the East and the West, 
 The Santal Colonists oppressed by Hindu Traders, 
 Our Courts fail to give Redress, . 
 The Santals, in Despair, fly to the Jungle, 
 Hindu Usury develops Slavery, . 
 English Capital renders Freedom profitable, 
 The Santals grow restless ; Warnings and Portents, 
 They collect in Armed Masses, . 
 They break out in Rebellion, 
 Martial Law delayed, . • - • 
 
 Personal Narrative of the Rebellion, . 
 The Rebellion at its Height, 
 Martial Law declared ; the RebeUion put down, 
 The Wrongs of the Santals redressed. 
 The Railway abolishes Slavery, . 
 The Hill-men migrate to the Tea Districts, 
 The Perils of Ignorance, .... 
 Statistics an indispensable Complement of Civilisation, 
 
 TAGS 
 2l6 
 
 217 
 
 their 
 
 . 218 
 16-218 
 
 . 219 
 
 . 220 
 
 . 222 
 
 . 224 
 
 . 226 
 
 . 228 
 
 . 230 
 
 . 232 
 
 • 232 
 ■ 234 
 - 236 
 . 238 
 . 240 
 
 • 243 
 
 • 247 
 . 250 
 . 251 
 . 252 
 
 • 255 
 . 256 
 
 • 259 
 . 260 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE company's FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RURAL ADMINISTRATION — 
 1765-1790. 
 
 Administration by 'Black Collectors,' 1765, . . • 261 
 
 The Supervisors, 1769-1772, ..... 263 
 
 Hastings' Plan ; Period of Experiment and Error, 1772-1786, . 266 
 
 Lord CornwaUis' Provisional System, 1786-1790, . . 267 
 
 Cost and Character of Rural Administration, 1788 and 1864, . 269 
 
 The Land-Tax and Excise before 1793, .... 271 
 
 Ancient Intemperance and present Sobriety of the Bengali, . 275 
 
 The Temple-Tax, its History, and how levied, . . „ 279 
 
 The District Government Bank, ..... 287 
 
 The Government Bank stops Payment, 1790, . . . 289 
 
 The Guarding of Treasure, ..... 291 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Xlll 
 
 State of the Rural Currency, 
 
 Variety of Coins ; Inadequacy of the Coinage, 
 
 The Mussulman System of a Single Circulating Medium, 
 
 The ideal Standard of Value, 
 
 The Company's first Currency Reform, 1766, 
 
 The Gold Coinage of 1766, its Failure, 
 
 Permanent Drain on the Currency of Bengal, 
 
 Currency Crisis, 1769, 
 
 Gold Coinage of 1769, its Failure, 
 
 History of the Currency, 1769-1789, 
 
 Currency Reforms of 1790, 
 
 Currency Crisis of 1790-91, 
 
 Final Triumph of the Reforms, 1794, 
 
 The Frontier and Fiscal Police before 1792, 
 
 The Rural Criminal Administration, 
 
 A Regular Police formed, 1792, . 
 
 The Village Watch, its inherent Defects, . 
 
 Mussulman Jail Discipline, 
 
 The Rural Civil Courts, 1790 and 1864, . 
 
 Natural Sources of Excessive Litigation in Bengal, 
 
 The Character of Civil Justice before 1792, 
 
 The recognised Functions of the Company, 1765-1792, 
 
 293 
 295 
 298 
 300 
 301 
 302 
 30s 
 307 
 308 
 
 309 
 313 
 317 
 321 
 
 323 
 
 328 
 
 331 
 333 
 337 
 339 
 341 
 344 
 347 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE COMPANY AS A RURAL MANUFACTURER. 
 
 The District ' Investment,' 
 Little Centres of Rural Industry form. 
 The Commercial Resident as a Labour-employer, 
 As Magistrate and Judge, .... 
 As a Private Speculator, .... 
 The ' Adventurer,' Mr. Frushard, . 
 His Misfortunes and Contests with the Collector, 
 His ultimate Triumph, .... 
 'Adventurers' and 'Interlopers,' their Legal Status, 
 English Enterprise in Rural Bengal, 1789 and 1866, 
 The Company as a Rural Administrator and Manufacturer. 
 1765-1790, 
 
 350 
 351 
 353 
 355 
 356 
 358 
 360 
 362 
 364 
 365 
 
 368 
 
CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 PAUK 
 
 The gradual Growth of the Companys Rural Government, . 369 
 The true Function of the Indian Historian, . . .371 
 
 The Rights of the People still unascertained, . . -372 
 
 Analogy of the Muhammadan Tenures in Turkey to those in 
 
 Bengal, 374 
 
 Conclusion, . . . • ■ • '375 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. Bengal in 1772, portrayed by Warren Hastings, 
 
 B. The Great Famine of 1770, described by Eye-witnesses, 
 
 C. The Cook's Chronicle of Beerbhoom, . 
 
 D. The Pandit's Chronicle of Beerbhoom, 
 
 E. The Pandit's Chronicle of Bishenpore, 
 
 F. The Family Book of the Princes of Beerbhoom, 
 
 G. Santal Traditions, ..... 
 H. A Skeleton Santali Grammar, 
 
 I. Santal Festivals, ..... 
 
 K. A few Official Papers on the Santal Insurrection, 
 L. Revenue and Cost of District Administration before the 
 
 Permanent Settlement, .... 
 
 M. Present Revenue and Cost of District Administration, 
 N. List of Rupees, 1794, ..... 
 O. The Coins in Use at Six Indian Ports, 1763, 
 
 379 
 399 
 
 422 
 426 
 
 439 
 447 
 450 
 
 454 
 463 
 465 
 
 470 
 
 471 
 472 
 
 473 
 
To facilitate reference certain letters are appended to quotations 
 from manuscripts indicating where the originals may be found. The 
 following are the contractions used : — 
 
 I. O. R. . MS. Records (English), in the India Office, White- 
 hall. 
 
 C. O. R. . MS. Records (English and Persian), in the Calcutta 
 Offices. 
 
 B. R. R. . MS. Revenue Records (English and Persian), in the 
 Beerbhoom Offices. 
 
 B. J. R. . MS. Judicial Records (English, Persian, and Ben- 
 gali), in the Beerbhoom Courts. 
 
 B. D. A. . MS. Domestic Archives (Persian and Bengali) of 
 the Rajahs, and other families, in Beerbhoom. 
 
 Bn. R. . MS. Records (English and Persian), in the Burd- 
 wan Courts and Offices. 
 
 Bh. R. . MS. Records (English and Bengali), in the Ban- 
 corah Courts and Offices. 
 
 Be. D.A. . MS. Domestic Archives (Persian and Bengali) of 
 the Rajah of Bishenpore. 
 ■ I. O. L. . MSS. and rare Tracts in the India Office Library. 
 
 O. C . . Ootaparah Collection, being a series of rare Tracts 
 and Newspapers of the last century, belonging 
 to Babu Jaikissen Mukarji of Ootaparah, in 
 Bengal. 
 
THE 
 
 ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 /^N the frontier of Lower Bengal, fifty miles 
 ^^^ west from the field of Plassy, are to be 
 traced the landmarks of two ancient kingdoms. 
 They lie along the intermediate country between 
 the lofty plateau of Central India and the valley 
 of the Ganges.' The primeval force which had 
 upheaved the interior table-land here spent itself 
 on fragmentary ridges and long wavy downs. On 
 the west rise the mountains, covered to the summit 
 with masses of vegetation. Gorgeous creepers first 
 wreathe with flowers, then strangle their parent 
 stems, and finally bind together the living and the 
 dead in one impenetrable thicket. Here and there 
 an isolated hill with a flat top stands out like a 
 fortress on the plains. From ravines, arched over 
 with foliage, turbid cataracts leap down upon the 
 valley, there to unite into rivers which, at one 
 season of the year, pour along in volumes of water, 
 VOL. L . A 
 
J THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 half a mile broad and twenty feet deep, and at 
 another season, dwindle to silver threads amid wide 
 expanses of sand. Over the uplands the jungle 
 still holds its primitive reign, affording covert to 
 wild beasts and cool glades for herds of cattle. In 
 general the plains undulate gently eastward, dotted 
 with fruit-bearing groves, enamelled with bright 
 green rice fields, and studded with prosperous 
 villages. The soil, although less fertile than the 
 swamps of Eastern Bengal, returns in low-lying 
 grounds two crops each year ; and the bracing 
 atmosphere makes ample amends to the cultivator 
 for the additional labour demanded by his fields. 
 The forest yields a spontaneous wealth of timber, 
 gums, and brilliant lac-dye ,v the valleys produce 
 the finest indigo ; cotton, jute, sugar-cane, oil-seeds, 
 and cereals grow abundantly ; from the mulberry 
 shrubs are still derived the silks that adorned the 
 beauties of the imperial seraglio; silver ore has 
 been dug out of the mountains ; copper is found 
 on their slopes ; small particles of gold have been 
 washed from the river beds ; and the country has 
 long been famous for its iron and coal. 
 
 This well-watered land, rich in noble scenery,' 
 
 • ' A land of hill and dale, wood and water, abounding in scenery 
 interesting to the geologist and lover of the picturesque. The climate 
 also changes: the nights are cool and clear; the damp and fog of 
 Calcutta are left behind.'— The Grand Trunk Road, its Localities, 
 p. 1 8. Pamphlet, 8vo. Calcutta. The same traveller somewhat 
 too enthusiastically calls the Beerbhoom highlands,, ' the Switzerland 
 of Bengal' This and several other of the pamphlets by the Rev. 
 James Long, subsequently quoted, appeared originally as articles in 
 the Calcutta Revkw, 
 
THE ETHNICAL FRONTIER. 3 
 
 and enjoying during five, months of the year an 
 exquisite climate, formed the theatre of one of the 
 primitive struggles of Indian history. It stood as 
 the outpost of the Sanskrit race on the west of 
 Lower Bengal, and had to bear the sharp collisions 
 of Aryan civilisation with the ruder types prevailing 
 among the aborigines. On its inhabitants devolved, 
 during three thousand years, the duty of holding 
 the passes between the highlands and the valley of 
 the Ganges. To this day they are a manlier race 
 than their kinsmen of the plains, and from the 
 beginning of history one of the two kingdoms has 
 borne the name of Mala-bhumi, the Country of the 
 Wrestlers, — the other the appellation of Vir-bhumi, 
 the Hero Land. 
 
 It is a matter of regret that an ethnical frontier 
 which must have seen and suffered so much: that 
 would be interesting to mankind to know, should 
 be without any record of the past. Every county, 
 almost every parish, in England, has its annals ; but 
 in India, vast provinces, greater in extent than the 
 British Islands, have no individual history whatever. 
 Districts that have furnished the sites of famous 
 battles, or lain upon the routes of imperial pro- 
 gresses, appear, indeed, for a moment in the general 
 records of the country; but before the eye has be- 
 come familiar with their uncouth names, the narrative 
 passes on, and they are forgotten. Nor are the 
 inhabitants themselves very much better acquainted 
 with" the history of the country in which they live. 
 E^ch field, indeed, has its annals. The crops which 
 
4 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 it has borne during the past century, the rent which 
 it has paid, the occasions on which it has changed 
 hands, the old standing disputes about its water- 
 courses and landmarks, all these are treasured up 
 with sufficient precision. But the bygone joys and 
 sorrows of the district in general, its memorable 
 vicissitudes, its remarkable men, the decline of old 
 forms of industry and the rise of new, — in a word, all 
 the weightier matters of rural history, are forgotten. 
 Life wants the outdoor element which it possesses 
 in so remarkable a degree in England. Men of the 
 upper classes come less frequently into contact with 
 each other; caste and religious differences dwarf 
 the growth of good fellowship and limit the inter- 
 change of hospitalities ; and anything like society 
 in the European sense of the word is prevented 
 by the seclusion of the female sex. The strong 
 county feeling which knits together the magnates 
 of an English shire has not had a chance of 
 being developed among the landed gentry of 
 India, Each house scrupulously preserves its 
 own archives, but carefully conceals them from its 
 neighbours. Indeed, it never strikes the listless, 
 rich native, that what to him are dull contempo- 
 raneous events will in time possess the interest of 
 history ; nor are there any antiquarians to gather up 
 such meagre records as vanity or selfishness may 
 have framed. English history owes much of its 
 value, and still more of its pathos, to the stores of 
 private documents which the strong individuality of 
 bygone Englishmen has left behind ; but in India, 
 
tliE MATERIALS OF RURAL HISTORY. % 
 
 one rural generation dreams out its existence after 
 another, and all are forgotten. 
 
 Not many family archives of importance have 
 passed into my hands. The Rajahs placed at my 
 disposal a portion of the manuscripts in their dilapi^ 
 dated palaces ; the representatives of other dis- 
 tinguished houses followed their example ; Pandits 
 were employed to go about the country in order to 
 gather materials for a history of each district from 
 their own point of view ; and several native gentle- 
 men co-operated with me in collecting the folk-lore. 
 The result of these inquiries, however, was too 
 meagre and too unreliable for publication. But 
 four years ago, in taking over charge of the District 
 Treasury, I was struck with the appearance of an 
 ancient press, which, from the state of its padlocks, 
 seemed not to have been opened for many years, 
 and with whose contents none of the native officials 
 was acquainted. On being broken open it was 
 found to contain the early records of the district 
 from within a year of the time that it passed 
 directly under British rule. The volumes pre- 
 sented every appearance of age and decay ; their 
 yellow-stained margins were deeply eaten into by 
 insects, their outer pages crumbled to pieces under 
 the most tender handling, and of some the sole 
 palpable remains v/ere chips of paper mingled with 
 the granular dust that white ants leave behind. 
 
 Careful research has convinced me that these 
 neglected heaps contain much that is worthy of 
 being preserved. For what trustworthy account 
 
6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 have we of the state of rural India at the com- 
 mencement and during the early stages of our 
 rule ? Eloquent and elabofate narratives have 
 indeed been written of the British ascendency in 
 the East ; but such narratives are records of the 
 English Government, or biographies of the English 
 Governors of India, not histories of the Indian 
 people. The silent millions who bear our yoke 
 have found no annalist.^ 
 
 The only extensive investigations into the rural 
 statistics of India are those conducted by the 
 Survey Department, and no witness could give 
 more telling evidence in proof of our ignorance 
 than this, the single one we have to cite in our 
 favour. The important parts of Bengal , Proper, 
 from a historical point of view, are unquestion- 
 ably those that lie around the three cities which 
 three successive races fixed upon as the head- 
 quarters of their rule. The Origin and History 
 of the district that has Calcutta for its capital are 
 disposed of in rather more than one page, a con- 
 siderable portion of which is taken up by a feeble 
 account of the Black Hole, and the often narrated 
 hostilities that ensued. The Origin and History 
 of Moorshedabad, the ancient focus of Moslem 
 magnificence, are dismissed with half a page ; and 
 Maldah, the Hindu metropolis of Bengal, with its 
 
 * The author of 'The Grand Trunk Road, its Localities' (p. 1 6), 
 states that Vir-bhumi ' is quite unexplored.' This was written 
 scarcely ten years ago of a district lying within one hundred miles of 
 Calcutta, and only a five hours' railway journey from it. The extent 
 of our information as to remoter provinces may be inferred. 
 
THE ABSENCE OF RURAL HISTORY. 7 
 
 long line of kings, its gigantic walls and arches, its 
 once stately palaces now the kennels of jackals, and 
 the vast untenanted city which has been left stand- 
 ing as a spectacle of desolation and warning to 
 those who now are to India what its builders once 
 were, is treated as if it had been a sandbank which 
 the river silted up last October, and will swallow 
 down again next June. In a thin folio, not a single 
 page has been devoted to its history. 
 
 This, too, with the richest and most authentic 
 materials for rural history at our command. Valu- 
 able private stores of documents are indeed want- 
 ing; but for their absence the abundance of official 
 records makes ample amends. In the chief Govern- 
 ment office of every district in Bengal are presses 
 filled with papers similar to those I have described. 
 They consist of reports, letters, minutes, judicial pro- 
 ceedings, and relate, in the words of eye-witnesses 
 and with official accuracy, the daily history of the 
 country from the time the English took the admini- 
 stration into their own hands. Many of them are 
 written in the curt forcible language which men use 
 in moments of excitement or peril ; and in spite of 
 the blunders of copyists and the ravages of decay, 
 they have about them that air of real life which 
 proceeds not from literary ability, but from the fact 
 that their authors' minds were full of the subjects 
 on which they wrote. We learn from these worm- 
 eaten manuscripts that what we have been accus- 
 tomed to regard as Indian history is a chronicle of 
 events which hardly affected, and which were for 
 
^ TH& ANNALS OP RURAL BENGAL 
 
 the most part unknown to, the contemporary mass 
 of the Indian people. On their discoloured pages 
 the conspicuous vicissitudes and revolutions of the 
 past century have left no trace. Dynasties struggled 
 and fell, but the bulk of the people evinced neither 
 sympathy nor surprise, nor did the pulse of village 
 life in Bengal move a single beat faster for all the 
 calamities and panic of the outside world. But 
 these volumes, so silent on subjects about which we 
 are already well informed, speak at length and with 
 the utmost precision on matters regarding which the 
 western world is profoundly ignorant. They depict 
 in vivid colours the state of rural India when the 
 sceptre departed from the Mussulman race. They 
 disclose the complicated evils that rendered our 
 accession, for some time, an aggravation rather than 
 a mitigation of the sufferings of the people. Thej'' 
 unfold one after another the misapprehensions and 
 disastrous vacillations amid which our first solid 
 progress was made. They impartially retain the 
 evidence of low motives and official incompetence 
 side by side with the impress of rare devotion and 
 administrative skill. But taken as a whole, they 
 reveal the secret of England's greatness in the East. 
 They exhibit a small band of our countrymen 
 going forth to govern an unexplored and a half- 
 subdued territory. Before the grave heroism and 
 masterful characters of these men the native mind 
 succumbed. Our troops originated for us a rude 
 Mahratta-like supremacy ; but the rural records 
 attest that the permanent sources of the English 
 
THE OFFICIAL RECORDS. 9 
 
 ascendency in Bengal have been, not their brilliant 
 military successes, but deliberate civil courage and 
 indomitable will. 
 
 Besides the value of these memorials as a 
 groundwork for an accurate and a yet unwritten 
 history, they possess a special interest to those 
 who are charged with the government of India at 
 the present day. When the East India Company 
 accepted the internal administration of Bengal, it 
 engaged to rule in accordance with native usages ; 
 and the first step towards the fulfilment of its pro- 
 mise was to ascertain what these usages really 
 were. To this end instructions repeatedly issued 
 during a period of thirty years directing all local 
 officers to institute inquiries, and even after the 
 formal command was removed the habit of collect- 
 ing and reporting information continued till 1820. 
 
 'The period at which the rural records open in 
 the western districts is one of peculiar interest. It 
 stands on the border ground between the ancient 
 and the modern system of Indian government. 
 The evidence on which to form a permanent 
 arrangement of the land revenue was in process 
 of being collected, and not a single subject of 
 fiscal legislation nor a detail in the agricultural 
 economy of each district escaped inquiry. The 
 tenure of the landholders and their relations to 
 the middlemen ; the tenure of the cultivators, their 
 earnings and their style of living, their clothing 
 and the occupation of their families at odd hours ; 
 the price of all sorts of country produce ; the rent 
 
to THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 of various qualities of land ; the mineral products 
 of the district; the condition of the artisans and 
 manufacturers, their profits and their public bur- 
 dens ; the native currency and system of excTiange ; 
 the native system of police; the state of the dis- 
 trict jail ; lastly, cesses, tolls, dues, and every other 
 method of recognised or unrecognised taxation, — 
 formed in turn the subject of report. In a word, 
 the whole fabric of the rural life of Bengal, with 
 its joys, sorrows, and manifold oppressions, is dis- 
 sected and laid bare. 
 
 The sweeping revenue reforms inaugurated at 
 the close of the first quarter of the present century, 
 and the demands for a more exact administration 
 that every year has brought forth since, have left 
 neither leisure nor inclination for such studies. 
 The labours of a previous school of officers soon 
 became a subject of indifference to their successors ; 
 the quick decay of a tropical climate began its work; 
 and of the researches that had occupied the ablest 
 administrators during the first fifty years of our rule, 
 —researches that they had designed as the basis of 
 a consistent system of Indian rural law, — the greater 
 part has, during the second fifty years, been made 
 over as a prey to mildew and white ants. 
 
 What proportion has perished can never be 
 known. What part survives can only be perma- 
 nently preserved by the intervention of the State. 
 Among a highly cultured people the writing of 
 national history may well be left to private efforts ; 
 but in modern India no leisurely and lettered class 
 
THE SOURCES OF THIS WORK. n 
 
 has yet been developed to conduct such researches.' 
 In truth, government . among imperfectly civilised 
 societies has to discharge many functions which, in 
 a more advanced stage, may, with great wisdom, be 
 made over to individual enterprise. No one can 
 be more sensitively conscious than the writer of the 
 imperfections of a work written in the jungle, eight 
 thousand miles distant from European libraries, 
 amid the changes and daily exactions of an Indian 
 career. But this isolation, while productive of 
 sufficiently obvious defects, has enabled him to 
 essay several things not attempted before. The 
 manuscript Indian archives in London, in Cal- 
 cutta, and in the provincial offices of Bengal have 
 for the first time been compared, and their infor- 
 mation brought to a common focus. Learned 
 natives have been employed to compile district 
 histories, and the Ancient Houses of Bengal have 
 been induced, for the first time in the English annals 
 of the Province, to open up their family record- 
 rooms. The whole body of missionaries — Episco- 
 pal, Baptist, and American Dissenters — who labour 
 among the lapsed races on the ethnical frontier, 
 have heartily joined in the work, each favouring me 
 with the results of his own researches into the 
 
 ' Dr. Buchanan, who was engaged in a statistical and historical 
 survey of the districts north of Beerbhoom (1807-1814), could not find 
 a single antiquarian or a single historical document throughout the 
 great province of Bahar. — The History, Antiquities, etc., of Eastern 
 India, compiled from the Buchanan MSS., in the East India 
 House, by R. Montgomery Martin, 3 vols. 8vo, 1838, vol. I., p. 21. 
 This work would form an excellent basis for a history of rural 
 Bengal, were it not confined to a few districts only. 
 
12 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 languages and habits of the hill-men. If It were 
 not invidious to particularize any single class of 
 my coadjutors, it would be to thesei learned and 
 reverend gentlemen that I should wish to return 
 especial thanks. 
 
 Whatever may be the shortcomings of this pre- 
 liminary volume, the author believes that it will 
 lead to the discovery, and he hopes to the rescue, 
 of a vast store of materials frorn which an invalu- 
 able work might be educed ; materials which will 
 enable the Indian Government to discharge two 
 hitherto neglected duties ; the duty which it owes 
 to our own nation, of preserving the only circum- 
 stantial memorials of British rule in Bengal, and the 
 duty it owes to other nations, of interpreting the 
 rural millions of India to the western world.^ 
 
 < It is due to the Bengal Government to state, that I was relieved 
 during a short time from other duties, in order to be enabled to pro- 
 secute the researches of which this volume is the first-fruits. But 
 hardly had the arrangement been made when the famine of 1865-66 
 came, and the services of every officer were required for practical 
 work.- 
 
THE HEREDITARY CHIEFS. 
 
 CHAPTER fl. 
 
 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY WHEN IT PASSED 
 UNDER BRITISH RULE. 
 
 (~\^ the .29th of March 1787, the British Govern- 
 ment undertook the direct administration of 
 the two great frontier principalities of Lower Bengal. 
 Situated on the extreme verge of unwieldy jurisdic- 
 tions, and separated from headquarters by rivers and 
 swamps, and almost impassable jungle, they had, 
 up to this time, been permitted by the English to 
 remain pretty much as we had found them, in the 
 hands of their hereditary princes.^ The position of 
 these noblemen was ia many respects analogous to 
 that of wardens of the marches in feudal times. 
 They held their territory partly as semi-indepen- 
 dent chiefs, partly upon a military tenure from 
 the Viceroy of Bengal, paying only a small tribute, 
 
 1 Beerbhoom had been temporarily placed under supervision in 
 1769; it was formally 'visited' by the Committee of Circuit in 
 1772, but the local administration remained in the hands of the 
 Rajah as Amil. — Consultations of the Revenue Council of Moor- 
 shedabad, dated 23d October 1770, 28th February 1771, etc. ; the 
 Rajah's petition, in Proceedings of the Select Committee, dated 
 28th April 1770, I. O. R. ; Family Book of the Princes of Beer- 
 bhoom, B. D. A. 
 
r4 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 and being held responsible for the defence of the 
 western frontier. But during the half-century pre- 
 ceding 1787 their power had rapidly declined. In 
 the northern district Vir-bhumi, literally Hero 
 Land, or as it is commonly written in English 
 documents, Beerbhoom, an unsuccessful rebellion 
 had subjected the people to double burdens, and 
 a painful disease had prevented several successive 
 princes from heading their troops in the field. In 
 the southern district, anciently called Mala-bhumi, 
 the Land of the Wrestlers, but now known as 
 Bisheiipofe, matters were still worse. ^ Faniily 
 feuds had wasted the inheritance, and the reign- 
 ing prince, a white-haired,' feeble man, had sunk 
 beneath an accumulation of misfortunes. In 
 neither district was the hereditary chief in a posi- 
 tion to provide for the security of his people. 
 Bodies of marauders congregated'upori the frontier, 
 where the mountain system slopes down upon the 
 Gangetic valley, and in 1784 the evil had grown 
 so ; serious as to require the interference of the 
 British power;*' In May 1785, the collector, of 
 Moorshedabad, at the extreniity: of wTios6 jurisdic- 
 tion Beerbhoom lay, ;formally declared the ; civil 
 authorities 'destitute of any force capable of mak- 
 ing head against such an armed multitude,' and 
 petitioned for troops to act against bands of 
 
 » Bishenpore is at present divided between the districts of Ban- 
 corah and Midnapore. Bh. R. 
 
 =* Letter from Edward Otto IveS, Esq., Magistfate Of Moorshe- 
 dabad, to the Governor-General and Gentlemen of the Council of 
 Revenue, dated 15th August 1784. B. J. R. 
 
THE OLD SYSTEM BREAKS DOWN, 15 
 
 plunderers four hundred strong.* A month later, 
 the banditti had grown to ' near a thousand people,' 
 and were preparing for an organized invasion of 
 the lowlands/ Next year we find the freebooters 
 firmly established in Beerbhoom ; strong positions 
 occupied by their permanent camps ; the hereditary 
 prince unable to sit for an hour on his state cushion^ 
 much less to appear in the field ; the public revenue 
 intercepted on its way to the treasury, and the com- 
 mercial operations of the company within the dis- 
 trict at a stand,® It was clear that the old system 
 of things' could not last much longer. A British 
 civil officer was accordingly despatched from Mopr^- 
 shedabad to support the Rajah against the marau- 
 ders, to inquire into the grievances of the peasantry, 
 and to ascertain the amount of revenue which the 
 principality, if relieved of the incidents of a mili- 
 tary tenure and brought directly under British rule, 
 could afford to pay.' 
 
 No records of; this gentleman's administration 
 have been discovered. It does not appear that he 
 increased the public burdens, nor indeed was time 
 allowed him to do so. Lord Cornwallis, when re- 
 adjusting the divisions of Bengal in 1787,* saw tliat 
 
 * Letter from the same to the same, dated Moorshedabad, 26th 
 May 1785. B. J. R. 
 
 5 Letter from the same to the same, dated 30th June 1785. 
 B. J. R. 
 
 8 Many factories were abandoned altogether.. B. R. R. 
 
 ' Miscellaneous proceedings : Coinmittee of Revenue, Fort- 
 William. The deputation of Mr. G. R. Foley, the gentleman in 
 question, received sanction on the 9th oi February. 1 7 86, C, 0.,R. 
 
 » Board of Revenue's MS. Record?, C. 0, R. 
 
1 6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 this was not a case for half-measures or makeshifts, 
 and that Beerbhoom would never be free from the 
 hill plunderers so long as it remained a remote de- 
 pendency of Moorshedabad. The southern district, 
 Bishenpore, had '• before this reached a state that 
 demanded the presence of a responsible repre- 
 sentative of the Government, and Lord Cornwallis 
 determined to unite the two border principalities 
 into one compact British district. Accordingly, 
 in the Calcutta Gazette of the 29th of March 
 1787, the following appointment was announced : 
 ' W. Pye, Esq., confirmed Collector of Bishenpore 
 in addition to Beerbhoom, heretofore superintended 
 by G. R. Foley, Esq.'' 
 
 It does not appear that Mr. Pye ever visited 
 Beerbhoom except in pursuit of banditti who had 
 sacked some towns in Bishenpore, and he suddenly 
 quitted the district for a distant part of Bengal three 
 weeks after the above appointment appeared,^" His 
 successor was Mr. Sherburne, a gentleman whose 
 history and misfortunes will hereafter occupy some 
 
 ' The Calcutta Gazette, or Oriental Advertiser, folio and quarfo, 
 a weekly paper published on Thursdays, with . Gazettes Extraordi- 
 nary for special orders of Government and other news. The most 
 perfect series of this journal is in the India Office Library: it ex- 
 tends from 1784 to 1805, with a break between 1802 and 1804. Two 
 volumes of selections have been compiled from a less perfect copy 
 in India by Mr. W. S. Seton-Karr, of the Bengal Civil Service one 
 of Her Majesty's Judges in the Supreme Court of Bengal. I. O. ■ L. 
 
 1° Bishenpore had been placed under Mr. Pye on the 2Sth April 
 1786; he left the United District on the 19th April 1787. Having 
 got scent of promotion he did not wait for the arrival of his successor 
 but made over charge to his assistant.— MS. Office Memo. Book^ 
 Board of Revenue. C. O. R. 
 
THE NEW S YSTEM IN A UG URA TED. 1 7 
 
 pages.*^ During his brief administration of a year 
 and a half the capital of the united district was 
 transferred from Bishenpore, on the south of the 
 Adji, to Soorie the present headquarters in Beer- 
 bhoom, on the north of the river ; the larger bodies 
 of marauders were broken up, and the two heredi- 
 tary princes reduced to the rank of private country 
 gentlemen. Mr. Sherburne ruled sternly, as a 
 governor of a newly subjected frontier ought to 
 rule, and his name remains in the mouths of old 
 inhabitants to this day. In those times, however, 
 the only result of placing an energetic man at the 
 head of a district was to disperse the banditti into 
 the adjoining jurisdictions, and in October 1 788 the 
 Calcutta newspaper announced that a Beerbhoom 
 treasure party had been attacked on the south of 
 the Adji, the military guard overpowered, five men 
 slain, and more than three thousand pounds worth 
 of silver carried off.^^ 
 
 Early in November 1788, Mr. Sherburne was 
 removed under suspicion of corrupt dealings, and 
 after a short interregnum Mr. Christopher Keating 
 assumed charge of the united district.^^ Mr. Keat- 
 ing found the local administration in full working 
 
 11 Appointed, 4th April 1787 ; received charge, 29th April 1787 ; 
 delivered over charge, 3d November 1788. Board of Revenue Re- 
 cords. C. O. R. 
 
 12 Sieca rupees 30,000. Calcutta Gazette of Thursday, i6th 
 October 1788. The attack took place within the district of Burdwan, 
 Thanna Manirampore. 
 
 I'' Appointed, 29th October 1788 ; received charge of the dis- 
 trict, 14th November ; gave over charge to his successor and left 
 the district, 6th August 1793, after an administration of nearly five 
 years. C. O. R. 
 
 VOL, L B 
 
1 8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 order, under the experimental system which forms 
 the distinguishing feature of the first four years 
 of Lord Cornwallis' reign. During the eighteen 
 months of Mr. Sherburne's rule, the two frontier 
 principalities had passed from the condition of 
 military fiefs into that of a regular British district, 
 administered by a collector and covenanted assist- 
 ants, defended by the Company's troops, studded 
 with fortified factories, intersected by a new military 
 road, and possessing daily communicatron with the 
 seat of government in Calcutta. The local records 
 are preserved without interruption from this date, 
 and the short interval between 1786 when the 
 district was entirely under its native chiefs, and 
 1 788, the period with regard to which our informa- 
 tion becomes exact, although it changed the position 
 of the Rajahs and the form of the local administra- 
 tion, could not in any important degree have altered 
 the condition of the people. The inhabitants of 
 Beerbhoom and Bishenpore in November 1788 
 were, so far as regards their numbers, their habits, 
 their burdens, and their social welfare, precisely in 
 the circumstances in which Mr. Pye found them in 
 March 1787. The benefits which they enjoyed 
 and the evils which they suffered, they owed not 
 to English but to native government, and their 
 condition may be assumed to fairly represent the 
 state of similar semi-independent principalities at 
 the period of their passing under our rule. This 
 state, viewed from the other side of the globe, 
 mellowed by the lapse of time, and regarded with 
 
THE GREAT FAMINE OF ii^-^a, 19 
 
 that tenderness which spontaneously goes forth to 
 ancient types that have passed away, has been 
 depicted as happier and infinitely better suited to 
 the natives of Bengal, than their subsequent con- 
 dition under British governors. Whether such 
 pictures are borne out by closer inspection, the 
 rural records, written by eye-witnesses and without 
 any view to history, will show. 
 
 In the cold weather of 1 769 Bengal was visited 
 by a famine whose ravages two generations failed 
 to repair. English historians, treating of Indian 
 history as a series of struggles about the Com- 
 pany's charter enlivened with startling military 
 exploits, have naturally little to say regarding an 
 occurrence which involved neither a battle nor a 
 parliamentary debate. Mill, with all his accuracy 
 and minuteness, can spare barely five lines" for the 
 subject, and the recent Famine Commissioners con- 
 fess themselves unable to fill in the details.^' But 
 the disaster which from this distance floats as a 
 faint speck on the horizon of our rule, stands out 
 in the contemporary records in appalling propor- 
 tions. It forms, indeed, the key to the history 
 of Bengal during the succeeding forty years. It 
 places in a new light those broad tracks of 
 desolation which the English conquerors found 
 
 " Vol. iii. p. 486. 8vo. i860. 
 
 IS < \ye have not yet been able to obtain any details of the great 
 famine in Bengal of 1770.' — Papers, etc., relating to the famine in 
 Bengal and Orissa (1866), presented to Parliament by Her Majesty's 
 command. Folio. Vol. i. p. 228. Further on, however (p. 345), 
 <ome information is given. 
 
eo THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 everywhere throughout the Lower Valley; it un- 
 folds the sufferings entailed on an ancient rural 
 society, by being suddenly placed in a position in 
 which its immemorial forms and usages could no 
 longer apply ; and then it explains how, out of the 
 disorganized and fragmentary elements, a new order 
 of things was evolved." 
 
 Lower Bengal has three harvests each year : a 
 scanty pulse crop in spring ; a more important rice 
 crop in autumn ; and the great rice crop, the harvest 
 of the year, in December. In the early part of 
 1769 high prices" had ruled, owing to the partial 
 failure of the crops in 1768, but the scarcity had 
 not been so severe as materially to affect the 
 Government rental. In spite of the complaints 
 and forebodings of local officers, the authorities at 
 headquarters reported that the land-tax had been 
 
 i« Besides the official papers subsequently quoted, the following 
 pamphlets, some of them I believe uniques, have been used as 
 materials for this chapter : ' A Narrative of what happened in Bengal 
 in 1760 ;' no title-page. ' Memoirs of the Revolutions in Bengal,' 
 1760. ' Lord Clive's Letter to the Proprietors of the East India 
 Stock,' 1764. ' Dangers, etc., from the East India Company's build- 
 mg their own Ships,' 1768. ' Original Papers relative to the Dis- 
 turbances in Bengal from 1759 to 1764' (a most valuable collection), 
 1765. ' An Account of the Trade to the East Indies,' etc., with two 
 other tracts, 1772. ' Essay on the Rights of the East India Company,' 
 1776. ' Letter from G. Dodwell, Esq., to the Proprietors,' 1777. Two 
 tracts upon the Company's building their own shipping, 1778. ' Con- 
 siderations on the East India Bill now depending in Parliament,' 
 1779. After 1780 the pamphlets and newspaper articles relative to 
 Bengal become too multitudinous for enumeration. The number 
 consulted exceeds 130. O. C. and I. O. L. 
 
 1' Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated Fort William, 30th September 1769. Proceedings of the 
 Select Committee, ist February 1769, etc. I. O. R. 
 
THE HARVESTS OF ii^i). 21 
 
 rigorously enforced ;" and the rains of 1 769, although 
 deficient in the northern districts, seemed for a time 
 to promise relief.^* In the Delta they had been so 
 abundant as to cause temporary loss from inunda- 
 tion ; and during the succeeding year of general 
 famine, the whole south-east of Bengal uttered no 
 complaint."" The September harvest, indeed, was 
 sufficient to enable the Bengal Council to promise 
 grain to Madras on a large scale,^" notwithstanding 
 the high prices. But in that month the periodical 
 rains prematurely ceased, and the crop which de- 
 pended on them for existence withered. ' The 
 fields of rice,' wrote the native superintendent of 
 Bishenpore at a later period, ' are become like fields 
 of dried straw.' Calamitous predictions, however, 
 were at that time so common on the part of local 
 officials, that the Governor declined to transmit 
 the alarm. The only serious intimation of the 
 approaching famine to the Court of Directors in 
 1 769, is not signed by the President, Mr. Verelst, 
 but by Mr. John Cartier, the second in Council, 
 who was to succeed him.^^ The Government had 
 deemed it necessary to lay in a supply for the 
 
 1' ' The Revenues were never so closely collected before.' — Resi- 
 dent at the Durbar, 7th February 1769. I. O. R. 
 
 1^ Mr. Rumbold, chief of Bahar, at consultation of the i6th 
 August 1769. 
 
 18" Mr. Becher, Resident at the Durbar, 30th March 1770, etc. 
 I. O. R. 
 
 ^^ Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 25th September 1769. Public Consultation, August 7, 1769. 
 
 21 From the same to the same, dated 23d November 1768, paras. 
 8, 9, 10. Mr. Verelst's omission to sign was probably intentional, as 
 he took part in the proceedings and signed another letter of the same 
 
2 2 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 troops, — a piece of foresight at that period common 
 when a harvest was either very abundant or very 
 scanty, and one which Mr. Cartier wholly failed to 
 carry out in the present instance. 
 
 On the 24th of December, after the last harvest 
 of the year had been gathered in, Mr. Verelst laid 
 down his office, without having conveyed to his 
 masters a single intimation of the true nature of the 
 impending famine. ^^ 
 
 On the same day Mr. Cartier took over charge 
 of the province, but he seems to have intimated to 
 his masters no further anxiety until late in January 
 1770. In the fourth week of that month he writes 
 that one district was suffering so severely that some 
 slight remission of the land-tax would have to be 
 made;^ but ten days afterwards he informs the 
 Court, that although the distress was undoubtedly 
 very great, the Council had not 'yet found any 
 failure in the revenue or stated payments.' ^* 
 
 New hopes had also arisen, for the spring crop 
 
 date. The letters of the 25th and 30th September only express 
 apprehensions for the revenue, not of general famine in Bengal. 
 
 22 From the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 26th December 1769. Postscript. In Appendix B, ' The Great 
 Famine of 1770 officially described,' extracts from the original docu- 
 ments will be found. The reader should discriminate between the 
 apprehensions of local officers and the general facts as ascertained 
 and accepted by Government. 
 
 ^' Letter from the same to the same, dated 25th January 1770, 
 para. 48. The proposed remission was about ;^3o,ooo, out of a total 
 revenue which in 1787 amounted to ^450,000 sterling. Letter from 
 the Governor-General in Council to the Court of Directors, dated 31st 
 July 1787. I. O. R. 
 
 " Letter from the same to the same, dated 4th February 1770, 
 paras. 4, 5, and 6. I. O. R, 
 
THE SPRING OF 1770, 23 
 
 now covered the fields and promised a speedy 
 although a scanty relief. It was ascertained, more- 
 over, tha:t both banks of the Ganges, in the north of 
 the province, had yielded an abundant barley and 
 wheat harvest.^' The people suffered intensely, 
 — how intensely, it seems to have been as difficult 
 then as now for the Central Government to ascer- 
 tain until too late ; and notwithstanding alarming 
 reports from the districts, up to the middle of 
 February the Council believed the question to be 
 chiefly one of revenue. The utmost that could be 
 expected from Government, it wrote, would be a 
 lenient policy towards the husbandmen whom a 
 bad harvest had disabled from paying the usual 
 land-tax.^" It was common at that period to make 
 temporary remissions and advances whenever a 
 harvest proved deficient; but during 1769-70, al- 
 though such indulgences were constantly proposed, 
 they were not, except in a very few isolated in- 
 stances, granted. Various charitable schemes were 
 proposed, but no other relief measures at this 
 period are specified in the letters home, and the 
 local efforts, as will be afterwards seen, were on a 
 sadly inadequate scale. In April a scanty spring 
 harvest was -gathered in ; and the Council, acting 
 upon the advice of its Mussulman Minister of 
 Finance, added ten per cent, to the land-tax for the 
 ensuing year." 
 
 2' Consultation of the 9th June 1770. I. O. R. 
 ^^ Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 4th February 1770, para. 6. I. O. R. 
 
 ^' Letter from the same to the same, dated nth September 1770, 
 
24 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 But the distress continued to increase at a rate 
 that baffled official calculation.^* The marvellous 
 and infinitely pathetic silence under suffering which 
 characterizes the Bengali at length was broken ; and 
 in the second week of May, the Central Govern- 
 ment awoke to find itself in the midst of universal 
 and irremediable starvation. 'The mortality, the 
 beggary,' they then wrote, ' exceed all description. 
 Above one-third of the inhabitants have perished 
 in the once plentiful province of Purneah, and in 
 other parts the misery is equal.' ^' 
 
 The inability of the Government to appreciate 
 the true character of the calamity is rendered more 
 remarkable by the circumstance, that at that period 
 the local administration continued in the hands of 
 the former native officers.'" A Mussulman Minister 
 of State*' regulated the whole internal government ; 
 native revenue farmers covered the province, prying 
 into every barn, and shrewdly calculating the crop 
 on every field ; native judges retained their seats in 
 the rural courts ; and native officers still discharged 
 the whole functions of the police. These men 
 knew the country, its capabilities, its average yield 
 and its average requirements, with an accuracy that 
 
 para, $. The financial year commenced on the loth of April. The 
 revenue was raised from j£ 1, 380,269 to ;^ 1,524, 567 during the famine 
 year. I. O. R. 
 
 *' The spring crops proved deficient Letter from the President 
 and Council to the Court of Directors, dated 9th May 1770. I. O. R. 
 
 ^8 Same letter, para. 3. 
 
 *" It was not till 1772 that the Company stood forth as the civil 
 administrator of Bengal. 
 
 •' The celebrated Mahomed Reza Khaii. 
 
BENGALI RETICENCE. 25 
 
 the most painstaking English official can seldom 
 hope to attain to. They had a strong interest In 
 representing things to be worse than they were ; for 
 the more intense the scarcity, the greater the merit 
 in collecting the land-tax. Every consultation is 
 filled with their apprehensions and highly-coloured 
 accounts of the public distress ; but it does not 
 appear that the conviction entered the minds of 
 the Council during the previous Winter months, 
 that the question was not so much one of re- 
 venue as of depopulation. This misconception, 
 strange as it may appear, is susceptible of explana- 
 tion. From the first appearance of Lower Bengal 
 in history, its inhabitants have been reticent, self- 
 contained, distrustful of foreign observation, in a 
 degree without parallel among other equally civi- 
 lised nations. The cause of this taciturnity will 
 afterwards be clearly explained ; but no one who is 
 acquainted either with the past experiences or the 
 present condition of the people, can be ignorant 
 of its results. Local officials may write alarming 
 reports, but their apprehensions seem to be 
 contradicted by the apparent quiet that prevails. 
 Outward palpable proofs of suffering are often 
 wholly wanting; and even when, as in 1770, 
 such proofs abound, there is generally no lack of 
 evidence on the other side. The Bengali bears 
 existence with a composure that neither accident 
 nor chance can ruffle. He becomes silently rich 
 or uncomplainingly poor. The emotional part of 
 his nature is in strict subjection ; his resentment 
 
26 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 enduring, but unspoken ; his gratitude of the 
 sort that silently descends from generation to 
 generation. The passion for privacy reaches its 
 climax in the domestic relations. An outer apart- 
 ment, in even the humblest households, is set apart 
 for strangers and the transaction of business, but 
 everything behind it is a mystery. The most 
 intimate friend does not venture to make those 
 commonplace kindly inquiries about a neighbour's 
 wife or daughter, which European courtesy demands 
 from mere acquaintances. This family privacy is 
 maintained at any price. During the famine of 
 1866 it was found impossible to render public 
 charity available to the female members of the 
 respectable classes, and many a rural household 
 starved slowly to death without uttering a com- 
 plaint or making a sign. 
 
 All through the stifling summer of 1770 the 
 people went on dying. The husbandmen sold their 
 cattle ; they sold their implements of agriculture ; 
 they devoured their seed-grain ; they sold their 
 sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of 
 children could be found ;'^ they ate the leaves of 
 trees'^ and the grass of the field; and in June 1770 
 the Resident at the Durbar affirmed that the living 
 were feeding on the dead.'* Day and night a 
 torrent of famished and disease-stricken wretches 
 
 '2 Petition of Mahomed Ala Khan, Foujdar of Purneah. — Con- 
 sultations, 28th April 1770, etc. I. O. R. 
 
 3s Petition of Ujaggar Mull, Amil of Jessore.— Consultations of 
 28th April 1770. I. O. R. 
 
 ** Letter of the 2d June. Consultation of 9th June 1770. I. O. R. 
 
THE SUMMER OF 1770. 27 
 
 poured into the great cities. At an early period 
 of the year pestilence had broken out. In March 
 we find smallpox at Moorshedabad, where it 
 glided through the Viceregal mutes, and cut off 
 the Prince Syfut in his palace.^' The streets were 
 blocked up with promiscuous heaps of the dying 
 and dead. Interment could not do its work quick 
 enough ; even the dogs and jackals, the public 
 scavengers of the East, became unable to accom- 
 plish their revolting work, and the multitude of 
 mangled and festering corpses at length threatened 
 the existence of the citizens. 
 
 At the beginning of the famine, a young civilian 
 landed in Calcutta who was destined to reach the 
 highest post that a British subject can aspire to in 
 the East. John Shore, afterwards Lord Teign- 
 mouth, was a man of singular honesty, and one 
 who held in especial disdain the art of colouring 
 or exaggerating. The scenes of 1770 left an im- 
 pression on his mind that neither an eventful career 
 nor an unusually prolonged period of active life 
 could efface. When in high office he always dis- 
 played a peculiar sensitiveness with regard to the 
 premonitory signs of scarcity, and elaborated a 
 system by which he hoped to avert famine. His 
 most historical act'" was prompted by the effects of 
 
 "" Letter from the President and Council to the Court«of Direc- 
 tors, dated i8th March 1770. I. G. R. 
 
 '" His opposition to Lord Cornwallis with regard to making the 
 settlement of 1789 permanent at once. Shore thought that a country 
 only half-peopled and with one-third of its surface lying waste, was 
 not ready for such a measure. 
 
28 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the depopulation occasioned by the calamity we are 
 describing, and nearly forty years afterwards, when 
 many of the later incidents of Eastern service had 
 passed from his remembrance, his undying recollec- 
 tion of the horrors of 1770 found expression in 
 verse. It is to be regretted that the only non- 
 official description we possess by an eye-witness is 
 a metrical one ; but it should be remembered that 
 John Shore's poetry adheres as closely to the facts 
 as many men's prose : — 
 
 ' Still fresh in memory's eye the scene I view, 
 The shrivelled limbs, sunk eyes, and lifeless hue ; 
 Still hear the mother's shrieks and infant's moans, 
 Cries of despair and agonizing moans. 
 In wild confusion dead and dying lie ; — 
 Hark to the jackal's yell and vulture's cry, 
 The dog's fell howl, as midst the glare of day 
 They riot unmolested on their prey ! 
 Dire scenes of horror, which no pen can trace. 
 Nor rolling years from memory's page efface.' ^' 
 
 Christian humanity and enlightened government 
 have rendered modern statesmen ignorant of the 
 meaning of the words pestilence and famine in their 
 ancient sense. The recent calamity in Bengal has 
 indeed given us a hint as to what the latter term 
 might come to mean ; but even the local officers who 
 saw it at the worst, will hardly be prepared for the 
 effects of a famine under the old ydgime. Lest any 
 one should be tempted to consider Shore's verses 
 coloured, or my own pages strained, I copy a 
 
 "■ Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of John Lord Teign- 
 mouth, by his Son. Vol. i. pp. 25, 26. 8vo. London, 1843. 
 
THE DESOLATION OF GOUR. 29 
 
 description, faithfully drawn from the Mussulman 
 writers, of the calamity that befell Gour several 
 centuries before. ^^ As the famine of 1770 stands 
 an appalling spectre on the threshold of British rule 
 in India, so the year in which Bengal was incor- 
 porated into the Mogul Empire is marked by a 
 disaster from which the Hindu metropolis never 
 recovered. ' Thousands died daily,' writes the 
 historian of Bengal. ' The living, wearied with 
 burying the dead, threw their bodies into the river. 
 This created a stench which only increased the 
 disease. The governor was carried off by the 
 plague. The city was at once depopulated, and 
 from that day to this it has been abandoned. At 
 the time of its destruction it had existed two thou- 
 sand years. It was the most magnificent city in 
 India, of immense extent, and filled with noble 
 buildings. It was the capital of a hundred kings, 
 the seat of wealth and luxury. In one year was it 
 humbled to the dust, and now it is the abode only 
 of tigers and monkeys.' ^ 
 
 In 1770 the rainy season brought relief, and 
 before the end of September the province reaped 
 an abundant harvest.*" But the relief came too late 
 to avert depopulation. Starving and shelterless 
 crowds crawled despairingly from one deserted vil- 
 
 '* The precise nature of this calamity is uncertain ; probably 
 pestilence proceeding from famine. 
 
 " History of Bengal, by J. C. Marshman. Third edition. Seram- 
 pore. 
 
 *" Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 24th December 1770, para. 22. I. O. R. 
 
JO THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 lage to another, in a vain search for food, or a resting- 
 place in which to hide themselves from the rain. 
 The endemics incident to the season were thus 
 spread over the whole country, and until the close 
 of the year disease continued so prevalent as to 
 form a subject of communication from the Govern- 
 ment in Bengal to the Court of Directors.*^ Millions 
 of famished wretches died in the struggle to live 
 through the few intervening weeks that separated 
 them from the harvest, their last gaze being probably 
 fixed on the densely covered fields that would ripen 
 only a little too late for them. ' It is scarcely pos- 
 sible,' write the Council at the beginning pf the 
 September reaping, ' that any description could be 
 an exaggeration.' ^ 
 
 Three months later another bountiful harvest, 
 the great rice crop of the year, was gathered in. 
 Abundance returned to Bengal as suddenly as 
 famine had swooped down upon it, and in reading 
 some of the manuscript records of December, it is 
 difficult to realize that the scenes of the preceding 
 ten months have not been hideous phantasmagoria 
 or a long troubled dream. On Christmas Eve the 
 Council in Calcutta wrote home to the Court of 
 Directors that the scarcity had entirely ceased and, 
 incredible as it may seem, that unusual plenty had 
 returned. ' There is already,' they added, ' a great 
 quantity of grain in this place, and a prospect of 
 
 *' Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 12th December 1770, para. 9. I. O. R. 
 
 <^ Letter from the same to the same, dated Fort William, i ith 
 September 1770, para. 4. L O. R. 
 
THE RETURN OF PLENTY. 31 
 
 much more abundance in a short time.'*^ So 
 generous had been the harvest, that the Govern- 
 ment -proposed at once to lay in its mihtary stores 
 for the ensuing year, and expected to obtain them 
 ' at a very cheap rate.' 
 
 The season of scarcity was indeed past/^ In 
 1 77 1 the harvests again proved plentiful;*' in 1772 
 they were so superabundant, that the land revenue 
 could not be realized in consequence of the exces- 
 sively low price of grain;** and in 1773, notwith- 
 standing a temporary apprehension for the crops 
 in the northern districts,*' the earth again yielded 
 unwonted increase, and exportation went on briskly 
 to less favoured provinces.** 
 
 The famine of 1770 was therefore a one year's 
 famine, caused by the general failure of the Decem- 
 ber harvest in 1769, and intensified by a partial 
 failure of the crops of the previous year and the 
 following spring. In the preceding year, 1768-69, 
 high prices had ruled ; but there had been nothing 
 like famine, nor even a deficiency in the crops suffi- 
 cient to materially affect the rents.*" On the other 
 
 ■" Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 24th December 1770, para. 22. See also a letter from the 
 same to the same, dated 12th December 1770, para. 9. I. O. R. 
 
 ■•♦ Public Consultation of the 14th November 1770. I. O. R. 
 
 *^ Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated loth January 1772, para. 16, etc. 
 
 ^^ Letter from the same to the same, dated loth November 1773, 
 para. 33. Also Letter of the 30th December. I. O. R. 
 
 *' Letter of the loth November 1773, para. 32. I. O. R. 
 
 *^ Letter of the 30th December 1773, para. 9. I. O. R. 
 
 •*" I deduce this from the Revenue Statements of 1768-69. The 
 local officers, as usual, are loud in their forebodings; but, on the whole. 
 
32 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 hand, the one year of scarcity was followed by 
 three years of extraordinary abundance, and nature 
 exerted herself to the utmost to repair the damage 
 she had done. 
 
 That she failed to do so, the records of the next 
 thirty years mournfully attest. Plenty had indeed 
 returned, but it had returned to a silent and de- 
 serted province. Before the end of May 1770, 
 one-third of the population was officially calcu- 
 lated to have disappeared ; in June the deaths were 
 returned ' as six is to sixteen of the whole inhabit- 
 ants ; ' and it was estimated that ' one half of the 
 cultivators and payers of revenue will perish with 
 hunger.' During the rains (July to October) the 
 depopulation became so evident that the Govern- 
 ment wrote to the Court of Directors in alarm 
 about ' the number of industrious peasants and 
 manufacturers destroyed by the famine.""" But it 
 
 the land-tax was ' closely* realized. Warren Hastings in 1772 quoted 
 the receipts of the year 1768-69 as a sort of standard, and took credit 
 for having brought up the revenue after three plentiful years, and by 
 means, as he confesses, of cruel severity to the same amount. In 
 1770, Mahomed Reza Khan, the Financial Minister and Minister of 
 the Interior, recommended an increase of the land-tax. The sum he 
 proposed was ;^i,524,567. The actual receipts in 1768-69 were 
 ;^i, 525,485. Had there been any serious deficiency in the crops of 
 1768, the land-tax must have suffered (as it did in 1769-70), and the 
 receipts of 1768 would not have been accepted as a standard. 
 Again, had the country in 1769 been seriously impoverished by a 
 scarcity in 1768, it could not have paid so large a portion of the 
 land-tax for 1769-70 as it did. Out of a total demand amounting to 
 ^1,380,269, only .£65,355 were remitted during the famine year.— 
 Letters from the President and Council to the Court of Directors 
 dated nth September 1770, para. 5 ; of the 3d November 1772, para! 
 6 ; and other documents. I. O. R, 
 
 "" Mr. James Alexander, Supervisor of Bahar ; Consultations of 
 
DEPOPULATION. 33 
 
 was not till cultivation commenced, for the follow- 
 ing year (1771), that the practical consequences 
 began to be felt. It was then discovered that the 
 remnant of the population would not suffice to 
 till the land. Packet after packet came home, 
 laden with the details of ruin. Indeed, whatever 
 may be the subject of a communication to begin 
 with, it seems irresistibly to slide into the great 
 topic of the day ; and in one of two letters bearing 
 the same date, and both adverting to the depopula- 
 tion, the Council plainly avow that there has been 
 ' such a mortality and desertion among the ryots, as 
 to deprive the (revenue) farmers of the possibility of 
 receiving the rents' in arrear.^^ Notwithstanding 
 the abundant crops of 1771, the country continued 
 to fall out of tillage ; and the commissioners ap- 
 pointed in 1772 to visit the various districts, found 
 the finest part of the province ' desolated by famine,' 
 'the lands abandoned, and the revenue falling to 
 decay.' °^ Two years after the dearth Warren 
 Hastings wrote an elaborate report on the state 
 of Bengal. He had made a progress through a 
 large portion of the country, instituting the most 
 searching inquiries by the way, and he delibe- 
 
 the 9th June 1770, and Mr. Ducarel of Purneah, i6th February 
 1770. I. O. R. 
 
 "1 Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Direc- 
 tors, dated 12th February 1771, para. 44. In another letter, same 
 date, they speak of 'the great reduction of people.' In one, a few 
 months before, they lament 'the number of industrious peasants' and 
 manufacturers destroyed by the famine.' I. O. R. 
 
 ^^ Letter from the same to the same, dated Jth September 1772, 
 para. 10. I. O. R. 
 
 VOL, T, C 
 
34 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 rately states the loss as ' at least one-third of the 
 inhabitants.'^^ This estimate has been accepted 
 by all official and by the most accurate non- 
 official writers/* It represents an aggregate of in- 
 dividual suffering which no European nation has 
 been called upon to contemplate within historic 
 times. Twenty years after the famine the remain- 
 ing population was estimated at from twenty-four 
 to thirty millions ; and we cannot help arriving at 
 the conclusion, that the failure of a single crop, fol- 
 lowing a year of scarcity, had within nine months 
 swept away ten millions of human beings. 
 
 The question as to who was responsible for 
 their death, is the first idea that suggests itself to 
 an Englishman of the present day : it would have 
 been one of the last to strike either our country- 
 men or the natives of India at the period of which 
 I write. Until 1772 Bengal was regarded by the 
 British public in the light of a vast warehouse, 
 in which a number of adventurous Englishmen 
 carried on business with great profit and on an enor- 
 mous scale." That a numerous native population 
 
 *' Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Direc- 
 tors, dated 3d November 1772, para. 6. This admirable letter, which 
 gives a vivid and accurate description of the whole country, and 
 system of rural administration at the beginning of Warren Hastings' 
 rule, is printed in full in the Appendix A, under the title of ' Ben- 
 gal Portrayed, A.D. 1772.' 
 
 " For example, by Mill (vol. iii. p. 486, ed. 1840) and by Auber 
 (Rise and Progress, vol. i. p. 414, ed. 1837). 
 
 "' How tardy and uncertain were the steps by which the internal 
 government of Bengal passed into English hands, will be shown in 
 a subsequent chapter on ' The Company's First Attempts at Rural 
 Administration.' 
 
WHO WAS TO BLAME? 
 
 35 
 
 existed, they were aware ; but this they considered 
 an accidental circumstance, and one in which they 
 took rather less interest than we at present feel in 
 the aborigines of Natal or Sierra - Leone. The 
 orator who was destined to clothe the unrealized 
 millions of India in flesh and blood, and to set 
 them breathing and suffering before the British 
 nation, had taken his seat for Wendover barely 
 four years before the calamity occurred, and .was 
 still known as a literary Irishman who had got 
 into Parliament as , private secretary to a noble 
 lord. To the native mind, on the other hand, th^ 
 question of responsibility probably would not occur 
 in such cases even at this hour, except within the 
 narrow circle influenced and instructed by the 
 Anglo-Indian Press. The loss of life was ac- 
 cepted as a natural and logical consequence of the 
 loss of the; crop. The earth had yielded no food ; 
 and so the people, in the ordinary and legitimate 
 course of things, died. 
 
 But an Englishman, reading that tragical story 
 at the. present day, cannot rest content with this. 
 It is just to add that neither were the English 
 Council in Calcutta satisfied to do so. At an early 
 period they issued proclamations against hoarding 
 or monopolizing grain, and took much trouble in 
 seeing that their edict received due effect.*" Of 
 
 •* The precise date at which these measures were introduced, dpes 
 not transpire in the records. They are frequently referred to, how- 
 ever, e.d. : Letter from the President and Council to the Court of 
 Directors, dated gth March 1772, paras. 46 and 47 ; letter of the 5th 
 
36 THE ANNALS OF R URAL BENGAL. 
 
 the real value of this measure I shall have after- 
 wards to speak ; but there is ample evidence to 
 show that its projectors conscientiously devised it 
 as a specific for the disease. They also laid an 
 embargo on the exportation of grain, and thus en- 
 deavoured, according to their lights, to make the 
 most of the scanty stock of food in the province. 
 Mention is likewise made of public contributions 
 and the importation of rice. But these operations 
 were conducted on a painfully inadequate scale. 
 Districts in which men were dying at the rate of 
 twenty thousand a month received allotments of 
 a hundred and fifty rupees. A provincial council 
 gravely considers and magnanimously sanctions a 
 grant of ten shillings worth of rice per diem for 
 a starving population numbering four hundred 
 thousand souls;" and the council, after being 
 warned that 'one-half the cultivators and payers 
 of revenue will perish with hunger,' fixed the con- 
 tribution by the Company towards the sustenance 
 of thirty millions of people during six months, at 
 ;^4000.°* Any expenditure above this sum must 
 be defrayed, they stipulated, by the native gran- 
 dees. The latter seem to have done their duty so 
 
 September 1772, para. 5. The Home authorities laid quite as much 
 stress on these edicts as the Council in Bengal did, and ordered an 
 official inquiry into alleged breaches of them in the several districts 
 I. O. R. 
 
 " Letter of the Supervisor of Rungpore, dated 26th September 
 1770. Consultation Prov. Council, Moorshedabad, 4th October 
 I. O. R. 
 
 «8 Letter from Mr. Becher, Resident at the Durbar, dated 24th 
 December 1770. Petition of the Naib Diwan, ist February 1771. , 
 
STATE CHARITY GRUDGED. 3^ 
 
 far as their means permitted/" To the Company's 
 ;^4000 they added ;^4700, and made themselves 
 liable for any extra expense that might be incurred. 
 The total, however, proved wholly insufficient to 
 touch the evil, and before the managers of the fund 
 were aware, ;^ 15,000 had been expended in impor- 
 tation, besides ;^3ioo of supplementary charity in 
 Beerbhoom and the other frontier districts.^" Much 
 confusion and some recrimination resulted from this 
 excess of expenditure, rendering it difficult to ascer- 
 tain the amount contributed by the State. But, on 
 the one hand, the native princes had made them- 
 selves responsible for the surplus ; on the other, 
 the Secret Committee, considering the large sums 
 the natives had already given, recommended that 
 they should not be called upon for more ; and 
 finally, we are assured that the total disbursed from 
 the Company's treasury amounted to ;^6ooo.*' 
 Assuming that the ;^3000 in the western districts 
 was in addition to this, the utmost that the Coun- 
 cil, when pressed by the Court of Directors as to 
 Government relief efforts, could show was a distri- 
 bution of ;^9000 among thirty millions of people, 
 of whom six in every sixteen were officially ad- 
 mitted to have perished."^ 
 
 '^'^ Note by the Secret Committee, ist February 1771. Report on 
 Mahomed Reza Khan's trial, 1772. 
 
 " Petition of the Naib Diwan. 
 
 •» Note by the Secret Committee, ist February 1771. I. O. R. 
 
 "^ Add to this the native subscription of £moo, and we get a 
 total of ^13,700 from all sources. The sale of imported rice returned 
 a profit of ;^6759, which must be deducted from the general outlay. 
 —Memorandum on rice sales, ist February 177 1. The accounts are 
 
3§ THE ANNALS OP RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 This sum represents the total distributed in 
 charity and allotted for importing grain. Indeed, 
 when we turn to the latter operation, a scene of 
 corruption and heartlessness is disclosed, which 
 raises suspicions as to whether the pittance nomi-: 
 nally granted by Government ever reached the 
 sufferers. The whole administration was accused 
 of dealing in grain for its private advantage. It 
 was in vain that the Court of Directors wrote one 
 indignant letter after another, demanding the names 
 of the culprits. No satisfactory investigation was 
 ever made ; and the native agents of the governing 
 body remain to this day under the charge of carry- 
 ing off the husbandman's scanty stock at arbitrary 
 prices, stopping and emptying boats that were 
 importing rice from other provinces, and ' compel- 
 ling the poor ryots to sell even the seed requisite 
 for the next harvest.'"^ Not without reason does 
 the Court express its suspicion that the guilty 
 parties ' could be no other than persons of some 
 rank ' in its own service ; and, curious to relate, the 
 only high official who was brought to trial for the 
 offence was the native Minister of Finance who had 
 stood forth to expose the mal-practices of the Eng- 
 lish administration. It is fair to add that he was 
 acquitted." 
 
 very confused, and I have given the Council the benefit of any doubt- 
 ful point. 
 
 ^' Letters from the Court of Directors to the President and 
 Council in Bengal, dated loth April 1771, 28th August 1771, etc. 
 I. O. R. 
 
 ^* Mahomed Reza Khan. The investigation of the case against 
 
OTHER MMASUrMS WITMHELA ^9 
 
 The only other relief measures proposed were 
 the movement of the troops from the afflicted parts, 
 and the remission of the land-tax. The first was 
 not carried out, on pretence of general orders from 
 home, — orders which a powerful administration 
 would have suspended during so exceptional a year. 
 The heat of the weather was also enlarged upon 
 and unfounded apprehensions were expressed of the 
 political danger incident to such a change. The 
 troops were marched, however, from one famine- 
 stricken part to another, the movement being re- 
 presented to the king as made for his benefit ; and 
 so far from the English administration having laid 
 in a sufficient stock of grain for the army at the 
 commencement of the famine, the peasantry com- 
 plained that the military wrung from them their 
 last chance of subsistence."* * 
 
 Remissions of the land-tax and advances to the 
 husbandmen, although constantly urged by the local 
 officials, received little practical effect. In a year 
 when thirty-five per cent, of the whole population 
 and fifty per cent, of the cultivators perished, not 
 five per cent, of the land-tax was remitted, and ten 
 per cent, was added to it for the ensuing year 
 (1770-71).^" 
 
 the Rajah Schitab Roy was a public amende for his apprehension 
 rather than a trial. 
 
 *^ Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 9th May 1770, para. 3. Correspondence of Mr. Alexander, 
 Supervisor of Patna, General Sir Robert Barker, Colonel Gallier, 
 Captain Harper ; and Consultations, May and June 1770. The failure 
 of certain efforts to import grain for the troops also appears. I. O. R. 
 
 *'' For the severities practised, see Appendix A, ' Bengal Portrayed 
 
4° 
 
 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 To those who are acquainted with the efforts of 
 the Bengal Government during the recent Orissa 
 famine, this catalogue of relief measures in 1770 will 
 appear inhumanely inadequate. But they should be 
 careful not to over-estimate either the good effects of 
 such measures, or the evil effects of their absence. 
 In a country so devoid of the means of intercom- 
 munication and transport as Bengal then was, and 
 as Orissa still is, no human efforts can avail much 
 after a famine has once set in. According to the 
 Bengali proverb, it is watering the top of a tree 
 whose roots are cut." All such attempts have 
 proved, and will continue to prove, insufficient; 
 and their inadequacy will appear more or less 
 appalling, in proportion as the public gaze is more 
 or less steadily fixed upon them. Thrice during 
 the last hundred years has a famine, in the strong 
 Indian sense of the word, visited the Northern 
 Presidency. In 1770 the English Government 
 knew very little about the country, and did still 
 less for its inhabitants. Yet, in spite of efforts to 
 exaggerate"^ what was in sober truth more than 
 sufficiently sad, the Council at Calcutta escaped, so 
 far as regards the scale of their charities, without 
 
 in 1772 ;' letters from the President and Council to the Court of 
 Directors, dated nth September 1770, 3d November 1772, etc. 
 Different letters represent different remissions. Before September 
 1770 the balance was only ;£8o,332 ; it was afterwards reduced to 
 ;£65,355 out of a total demand of ;£i,38o,269. 
 
 '"' ' Gora katiya agayajal dhala.' 
 
 68 Warren Hastings complained of such efforts as early as 
 November 1772. Letter to the Court of Directors. 
 
£ UTSUCH MEASURES AL WA YS INADEQ UA TE. 41 
 
 the faintest censure/' In 1837-38 the State efforts 
 were more extended, but they were under the 
 observation of an Anglo-Indian press, and the 
 Government received no lenient handling/" At 
 that time British public opinion in Bengal merely 
 meant the sentiments of the Anglo-Indian com- 
 munity and its organs ; but since the country passed 
 directly under the Crown, the public opinion of 
 England has been brought to bear directly on its 
 great dependency, and English praise or blame 
 in Bengal is no longer the praise or blame of a 
 small section of our countrymen resident in India, 
 but of the English nation. In 1866, therefore, the 
 inadequacy of the Government efforts, although 
 carried out upon a scale and with a zeal never 
 previously displayed, was patent not merely to the 
 Anglo-Indian press, but to the whole English people. 
 The benefits of this scrutiny, although occasion- 
 ally unpalatable and on rare occasions unjust to 
 Indian administrators, have nowhere been more 
 conspicuous than in the history of the recent famine. 
 The analogy it presents to the calamity of 1770 is 
 in many points striking. In both cases, the im- 
 mediate cause of the dearth was the premature 
 cessation of the autumnal rains, resulting in the 
 general failure of the December harvest and the 
 
 " The Court seemed well satisfied with the relief measures of the 
 Council, but reproached it with conniving at the monopoly and 
 private trade in grain. 
 
 ^^ In the Calcutta and Agra newspapers of that day. One of the 
 most valuable memorials of the famine is the Diary of an Invalid on 
 his Journey down the Ganges, by J. O'B. Saunders, Esq., a well- 
 known Indian journalist. 
 
42 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 partial failure of the spring crops. In both cases, 
 the Government failed to perfectly appreciate, or to 
 deal with the true character of the calamity until 
 the suffering amounted to actual starvation. In 
 both cases, the general grain-stock in the province 
 seems to have been below the average at the com- 
 mencement; and in both, an abundant September 
 harvest came to the relief of the people and the 
 ensuing December crop brought the , famine to a 
 close. Even as regards the maximum price reached 
 the analogy holds good, in each case rice having 
 risen in general to nearly twopence, and in par 
 ticular places to fourpence, a pound ; and in each 
 the quoted rates being for a brief period in several 
 isolated localities merely nominal, no food existing 
 in the market, and money altogether losing its inter- 
 changeable value.'^ In both, the people endured 
 silently to the end, with a fortitude that casual 
 observers of a different temperament and widely 
 dissimilar race may easily mistake for apathy, but 
 which those who lived among thfe sufferers are un- 
 able to distinguish from qualities that generally pass 
 under a more honourable name." 
 
 '^ Papers, etc., relative to the famine (i865) presented to Parlia- 
 ment by Her Majesty's command : Part i. p. 345. Letter of Mr. 
 Becher, Resident at the Durbar, dated i8th June 1770. Representa- 
 tion of the Naib Diwan, ist February 1771. The Cook's Chronicle 
 of Beerbhoom (Appendix C). 
 
 '•''■ During 1866, when the famine was severest, I superintended 
 public instruction throughout the south-west division of Lower 
 Bengal, including Orissa. The subordinate native officers, about 
 eight hundred in number, behaved with a steadiness, and, when 
 called upon, with a self-abnegation beyond praise. Many of them 
 ruined their health. One died while on circuit, almost in his 
 
THE FUNCTION OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE. 43 
 
 But here the analogy ends. In 1770, the 
 Government, by interdicting what it was pleased to 
 term the monopoly of grain, prevented prices from 
 rising at once to their natural rates. The province 
 had a certain amount of food in it and this food 
 had to last nine months. Private enterprise if left 
 to itself would have stored up the general supply 
 at the harvest, with a view to realizing a larger 
 profit at a later period in the scarcity. Prices 
 would in consequence have immediately risen, com- 
 pelling the population to reduce their consumption 
 from the very beginning of the dearth. The 
 general stock would thus have been husbanded and 
 the pressure equally spread over the whole nine 
 months, instead of being concentrated upon the last 
 six. The price of grain, in place of promptly rising 
 to three-halfpence a pound as in 1865-66, continued 
 at three-farthings during the earlier months of the 
 famine.'" During the latter ones it advanced to two- 
 pence and in certain localities reached fourpence. In 
 1866 the Government perceived this. So far from 
 arbitrarily interfering with, and thus discouraging, 
 private trade, it clearly realized that its only chance 
 was to stimulate private trade. In 1770, respect- 
 able men shrank from having anything to do with 
 grain-dealing : it was impossible to traffic without a 
 stock ; it was impossible to collect a stock without 
 
 palanquin. The touching scenes of self-sacrifice and humble heroism 
 which I witnessed among the poor villagers on my tours of inspection 
 will remain in my memory till my latest day. 
 
 '^ Representation of the Naib Diwan. — Consultations, ist February 
 177 1, Appendix B. 
 
44 THE ANNALS OP ttURAL BENGAL. 
 
 becoming amenable to the law. In 1866, respect- 
 able men in vast numbers went into the trade ; for 
 Government, by publishing weekly returns of the 
 rates in every district, rendered the traffic both easy 
 and safe. Every one knew where to buy grain 
 cheapest, and where to sell it deariest, and food 
 was accordingly brought from the districts that 
 could best spare it, and carried to those which 
 most urgently needed it. Not only were prices 
 equalized so far as possible throughout the stricken 
 parts, but the publicity given to the high rates in 
 Lower Bengal induced large shipments from the 
 upper provinces, and the chief seat of the trade 
 became unable to afford accommodation for landing 
 the vast stores of grain brought down the river. 
 Rice poured into the affected districts from all 
 parts, — railways, canals, and roads vigorously doing 
 their duty. 
 
 It is impossible to say whether the Government, 
 without the assistance and counsel of the English 
 press in India, would have struck out this course ; 
 but it is certain that from the very commencement 
 the press urged this course upon the Government. 
 It is equally certain, that in all the districts of Lower 
 Bengal in which a non-official class of Englishmen 
 resided and upon which English public opinion had 
 in consequence been brought to bear, those measures 
 obtained a high degree of success. Wherever the 
 English planter or merchant goes, roads, railways, 
 or canals are sure to follow him; and wherever these 
 facilities for transport existed, the distribution of 
 
OJilSSA ISOLATED IN 1866. 45 
 
 the general grain-stock took place to an extent that 
 prevented scarcity from passing into famine.'* But, 
 unhappily, there was a corner of Bengal in which 
 the non-official Englishman seldom penetrates. The 
 south-western districts, comprised under the general 
 name of Orissa, possessed no English mercantile 
 public, and had never expressed any desire for the 
 means of intercommunication which is the first 
 demand that such a public makes. They do not 
 belong to the rest of the province either geographi- 
 cally or historically, and no attempt had been made 
 to unite them with it.'^^ As far back as the records 
 extend, Orissa has produced more grain than it can 
 use.'® It is an exporting, not an importing province, 
 sending away its surplus grain by sea, and neither 
 requiring nor seeking any communication with 
 Lower Bengal by land. During the earlier months 
 of the scarcity it was known to have suffered like 
 the rest of the province ; but neither the public nor 
 the Government were aware that a greater propor- 
 tion of the crops had been lost in Orissa than in 
 the other districts ; " and the native merchants, 
 relying on the general superabundance of grain, 
 
 '* That there is a practical distinction between scarcity and 
 famine, and a well-recognised point at which the former passes into 
 the latter, the highest authorities acknowledge. — Papers, etc., relating 
 to the famine in Bengal, presented to Parliament. Vol. i. p. 364. Folio. 
 
 ^* Famine Commissioners' Report (1866), Part i. sees. 32, 46, 
 412, etc. 
 
 '■* Famine Commissioners' Report (1866), Part i. sec. 47, etc. 
 
 '■' Indeed, it was impossible to estimate the return, as the Com- 
 missioners truly observe, till the grain was threshed out in January ; 
 the amount of straw being, under the circumstances, a fallacious index. 
 — Report, Part i. sec. 112, 
 
46 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 while curtailing their export transactions saw no 
 necessity for importing/* Towards the middle of 
 February, however, it began to be perceived that 
 there was something special in the condition of 
 Orissa. The truth was, that the abundant importar 
 tion and distribution which had tended to make 
 good the failure of the harvest in the rest of the 
 province had never reached Orissa. 'No one had 
 suspected that it would pay to carry grain by a long 
 sea route to districts that have always a large 
 quantity to export, and which, long after the rest 
 of the province had begun its preparations for a 
 year of famine, allowed a million and a half pounds 
 of the precious commodity to leave its shores. In 
 March, when at length it became generally underr 
 stood that Orissa was destitute of rice, exportation 
 and importation were alike impossible. The south- 
 west monsoon had set in. The harbours of Orissa, 
 never open more than a part of the year, had 
 become impracticable. The only landward route 
 was wholly unfit for the transport of sufficient food 
 for the country, and the doomed population found 
 themselves utterly isolated, ' in the condition of 
 passengers in a ship without provisions.' '' 
 
 " The general idea, both among the best informed officials and 
 non-officials, was, that large private stores existed in the hands of 
 speculators. ' The populace held it very decidedly ;' and the Com- 
 missioner thought there was ' enough to supply the market for a 
 couple of years.' In the total absence of a system of rural statistics 
 there was no evidence to controvert these views. — Report, Part i. 
 sees. 192, 193, 195, 196, etc. 
 
 " Famine ' Report : ' On all the coast of Orissa, False Point 
 excepted' (and its own peculiar difficulties the Commissioners else- 
 
BENGAL ISOLATED /A^ 1770. 47 
 
 This condition was precisely that in which the 
 whole .province of Lower Bengal found itself in 
 1770. The want of means of intercommunication 
 and transport rendered distribution impossible, even 
 if Government had not deterred private merchants 
 from undertaking the task. Importation on an 
 adequate scale was impossible for the same reason. 
 A single fact speaks volumes as to the isolation of 
 each district. An abundant harvest, we are re- 
 peatedly told, was as disastrous to the revenues as 
 a bad one ; for when a large quantity of grain had 
 to be carried to market the cost of carriage swal- 
 lowed up the price obtained.^" Indeed, even if the 
 means of intercommunication and transport had 
 rendered importation practicable, the province had 
 at that time no money to give in exchange for food. 
 Not only had its various divisions a separate cur- 
 rency which would pass nowhere else except at a 
 ruinous exchange,*^ but in that unfortunate year 
 Bengal seems to have been utterly drained of its 
 
 where explain), ' vessels of the ordinary size could only lie outside, 
 exposed to the full force of the sea, and unload very slowly and with 
 extreme difficulty during breaks of the boisterous monsoon weather.' 
 — Sec. 290, Part i. Several vessels were wrecked or lost their cargo 
 in the attempt. 
 
 *» Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Direc- 
 tors, dated loth November 1773, para. 33. Autobiography of the 
 Honourable Robert Lindsay, Collector of Sylhet, 1778-88, in the 
 ' Lives of the Lindsays,' by Lord Lindsay, vol. iii. p. 297. 8vp. 
 London, 1849. 
 
 *' For example, the Narainy rupee of Bahar, the cowrie currency 
 of Sylhet (of which little shells more than 2500 w€nt to a shilling), 
 etc.— Bengal letter, dated loth November 1773, para. 4. I. O. R. 
 Proceedings in the Public Department, Fort William, October 24, 
 1792. C 0. R. Lives of the Lindsays, vol, iii. p. 170, etc. 
 
48 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 specie. Complaints of the deficiency of the currency 
 are so common in the Manuscript Records as to 
 blunt the reader's perception to the public distress 
 implied. In 1769-70 things appear to have reached 
 their worst point. In September 1769, the total 
 balance in the treasury amounted to only ^3482, 
 and the whole reserve in the Company's treasure 
 chests to ;;^4679.'^ Its commercial agents could 
 not procure sufficient silver to make the customary 
 advances for the investment, while private persons, 
 finding it impossible to recover even good debts on 
 account of the debtor's inability to obtain coin to pay 
 them in, refused to have any commercial dealings, 
 and trade came to a stand.^ This was the state of 
 affairs at the beginning of the famine ; towards the 
 end they were if possible worse. In August 1770, 
 the Council, while quite willing to let Madras have 
 the usual supply for its investment, are forced to 
 confess that they have no specie by means of which 
 to remit it.'* 
 
 The absence of the means of importation was 
 the more to be deplored, as the neighbouring dis- 
 tricts could easily have supplied grain. In the south- 
 east a fair harvest had been reaped, except in 
 circumscribed spots ; and we are assured that, during 
 the famine, this part of Bengal was enabled to export 
 without having to complain of any deficiency in 
 
 ^2 Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Direc- 
 tors, dated 25th September 1769, para. 125. I. O. R. 
 
 83 Ibid. para. 39. I. O. R. 
 
 '* Letter from the same to the same, dated 25th August 1770, 
 para. 26, L 0. R. 
 
THE ANCIENT EFFECTS OF FAMINE. 49 
 
 consequence.^*" The north-western districts at first 
 seemed equally fortunate, and the Central Commit- 
 tee, in reply to the lamentations of the Supervisor 
 of Bahar, bitterly remark : ' Your neighbours, enjoy- 
 ing the blessing of almost a plentiful season, whilst 
 you are suffering the evils of dearth and famine, 
 exhibits but an unpleasant contrast and rather 
 wounds the credit of English policy.' *^ Indeed, 
 no matter how local a famine might be in the last 
 century, the effects were equally disastrous. Sylhet, 
 a district in the north-east of Bengal, had reaped 
 unusually plentiful harvests in 1780 and 1 781, but 
 the next crop was destroyed by a local inundation, 
 and notwithstanding the facilities for importation 
 afforded by water-carriage one-third of the people 
 died. The same thing took place in 1784 when 
 two-thirds of the cattle perished.^* 
 
 In 1866 the existence of an extensive trade 
 with Europe enabled Bengal, with the exception of 
 Orissa, to purchase as much food from other pro- 
 vinces as it required. Importation of grain was a 
 profitable investment for capital, and capital flowed 
 abundantly into that channel. The whole harvests 
 of Northern India were laid under contribution to 
 make good the deficiency of a single province, thus 
 reducing the inevitable suffering to a minimum, and 
 
 '♦• Consultations, 28th April 1770, etc. 
 
 85 Consultations, 3d May 1770. Importation from the north was 
 subsequently prohibited, and high prices ruled there also. 
 
 '* Report of the Honourable Robert Lindsay, Collector of Sylhet, 
 dated 3d September 1784; Famine Report, 1866. Lives of the 
 Lindsays, by Lord Lindsay, vol. iii. 208 (1849). 
 
 VOL. 1. D 
 
so THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 preventing the loss of life, deplorably great as it 
 undoubtedly was in isolated places, from anywhere 
 amounting to depopulation. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of dearths I wish to 
 explain the two circumstances which regulate their 
 intensity, and the method by which they may be 
 counteracted. Famine in India is caused by natu- 
 ral scarcity, resulting from the deficiency of the 
 crops, and more or less severe in proportion as the 
 crops have been more or less completely destroyed. 
 Inundations may cause temporary scarcity, but the 
 losses of low-lying localities are usually made up 
 by the subsequent abundance on the high grounds. 
 On the other hand, drought, when sufificieritly 
 intense to destroy the December harvest, results 
 in famine. The practical effects of famine depend, 
 however, on its actual pressure as indicated by the 
 rise in prices. Under native government and in 
 1770 under the Company's first attempt at admini- 
 stration, the actual pressure of a famine held a direct 
 ratio to the natural scarcity. If the crops perished 
 the people died : the actual pressure was in propor- 
 tion to the natural scarcity, and the natural scarcity 
 to the actual pressure. But the whole tendency 
 of modern civilisation is to raise up intervening 
 influences which render the relation of actual pres- 
 sure to natural scarcity less certain and less direct, 
 until the two terms which were once convertible 
 come to have very little connection with each other. 
 This is what has taken place in India during the 
 last fifty years, as the two following examples show. 
 
FAMINES OF 1837 AND 1861, 51 
 
 The north-western provinces of Bengal have 
 twice been visited during that period by a season 
 of terrible drought. On both occasions the pro- 
 portion of the crops destroyed appears to have 
 been the same, and the official estimate reports the 
 natural scarcity as nearly equal.*' The first took 
 place in 1837, the second in 1860-61. In 1837, 
 India was on the point of being thrown unreservedly 
 open to European enterprise, but the change had 
 not taken place. Railways were not; roads and 
 watercourses were scarcely more numerous than 
 in the time of Aurungzebe ; non-official English 
 influence, and the facilities for transport that such 
 influence everywhere procures, were confined to the 
 immediate vicinity of the great towns ; nor had that 
 vast store of surplus capital, ever keenly on the look- 
 out for investment, been developed, which forms 
 so striking a feature in the mercantile economy of 
 Bengal at the present day. In short, the break- 
 waters which modern civilisation raises up between 
 natural scarcity and its actual pressure had not yet 
 been constructed and the ancient monotonous story 
 of starvation was repeated. Notwithstanding the 
 efforts of the Government, then presided over by 
 a nobleman of remarkable private humanity, the 
 deaths rose to twelve hundred per diem in two of 
 the principal towns ; '* in the open country the 
 
 *' Colonel Baird Smith's Report. — Papers presented to Parliament 
 (1867) relative to the Bengal famine. Folio. Vol. i. p. 230. 
 
 *' This statement is based upon the correspondence of a member 
 of the principal Relief Committee. The statistics are more fully given 
 in my ' Rural Sketches,' published in Calcutta. 
 
52 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 people perished by villages, and nine months of 
 famine left the whole rural system disorganized. 
 But during the next quarter of a century India 
 advanced towards civilisation by forced marches, 
 and the drought of i860 found its effects checked 
 by a hundred counteracting influences unknown in 
 1837. The natural scarcity was the same, but 
 abundance of capital existed to buy food from 
 other provinces, and the newly constructed railways 
 with their network of roads cheaply and rapidly 
 effected its distribution. The Grand Trunk Road, 
 a work of Roman solidity, is officially reported to 
 have been worn out in fifteen days;^° 'every cart, 
 bullock, camel, donkey, in short, every means of 
 conveyance available in the country' was pressed 
 into the service, and the principal railway stations 
 were at length blocked up with grain."" While 
 private enterprise thus intervened between the 
 natural scarcity and the actual pressure, private 
 charity provided for that section of the people 
 whose earnings just suffice to keep them alive in 
 seasons of ordinary fertility ; a section which will 
 always be thrown upon the public benevolence 
 during a scarcity, as long as the present relations 
 of labour and capital continue in Bengal. 
 
 The second example is derived from the two 
 famines that have visited the lower provinces in 
 1770 and 1866. In this instance very little evi- 
 dence exists for comparing the natural scarcity. 
 
 '" Famine Commissioners' Report (1866), Part i. para. 73. 
 »» Idem. 
 
FAMINES OF 1770 AND 1866. 53 
 
 But we know that in 1866 one corner of Bengal — 
 Orissa — was, so far as the intervening influences 
 which prevent natural scarcity passing into actual 
 pressure, exactly in the position of the^ whole pro- 
 vince in 1770. In these similarly situated parts the 
 actual pressure, as indicated by the price of rice, 
 was precisely the same in both famines, the maxi- 
 mum being fourpence and the average over two- 
 pence a pound. It should be remembered, however, 
 that silver was dearer then than now. The propor- 
 tion of the crops lost seems also to have been equal. 
 In the districts of Orissa which suffered most in 
 1866 and in Rajmahal, one of the districts which 
 suffered most in 1770, the preceding harvests were 
 officially estimated to have yielded less than one- 
 half their average produce,'^ and any superiority 
 of the early Orissa harvests in 1865 to those of 
 Rajmahal in 1769 was more than counterbalanced 
 by subsequent exportations from the Orissa sea- 
 board. It may be inferred, therefore, that the 
 natural scarcity was the same. The actual pressure 
 happily proved very different. In 1770 the natural 
 scarcity passed in a direct and unmitigated form 
 into actual pressure. Before the middle of the year 
 ten millions of the general population had perished ; 
 at the end of it, an official reports that of a certain 
 poor class — the lime-workers — only five out of one 
 hundred and fifty were living,'^ and one-third of 
 
 "' Famine Commissioners' Report (1866), Part i. para. 74. Re- 
 port of Mr. Harwood, Supervisor of Rajmahal, Consultations, 28tli, 
 April T770, etc. 
 
 '^ Consultations, iith February 1771, 
 
54 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the country had returned to jungle. In 1866, roads, 
 railways, canals, toiled day and night in bringing 
 grain from other provinces, till at length the port "* 
 at which the railway taps the river system of Lower 
 Bengal became unable to afford accommodation for 
 landing the unprecedented cargoes, and the Railway 
 Company had to seek the assistance of the autho- 
 rities to prevent native shipmasters from unlading 
 on its lines and sidings. One corner of Lower 
 Bengal, however, continued in the same isolated 
 state in 1866 in which the whole province found 
 itself in 1770, and it was reserved for the unhappy 
 people of Orissa to experience what happens when 
 the actual pressure of a dearth is equal to the 
 natural scarcity, and to illustrate to modern times 
 the meaning of the ancient word famine. 
 
 The preventives of famine belong to two dis- 
 tinct classes ; those that tend to avert natural 
 scarcity, and those that are directed towards the 
 development of intervening influences between 
 natural scarcity and actual pressure. Natural 
 scarcity may be averted either by Government 
 undertaking works of irrigation and drainage at 
 its own expense, or by giving the landed classes a 
 permanent title to the soil, — thus inducing them to 
 enter on such works by securing to them the profits. 
 Orissa in 1866 was in this respect in the position of 
 the whole of the province in 1770 : it had neither a 
 permanent settlement " nor any adequate irrigation 
 
 ®^ Kooshtea. This incident took place in my own court. 
 
 "< Just before the famine commenced, the native landholders of 
 
THE SPECIFICS FOR FAMINE. 55 
 
 works maintained by the State, and it was the only 
 part of Lower Bengal in which the scenes of 1770 
 were re-enacted.'^ 
 
 The second set of preventives, those that tend 
 to raise up breakwaters between natural scarcity 
 and actual pressure, is a very large one. Every 
 measure that helps towards the extension of com- 
 merce and the growth of capital, every measure 
 that increases the facilities of transport and distri- 
 bution, comes under this class. Whatever tends 
 to develop the natural resources of a country, to 
 call forth a spirit of enterprise among its inhabit- 
 ants, to render each part less dependent on itself, 
 and to bind up the commonwealth by the ties of 
 mutual assistance and common interest, tends to 
 mitigate the actual pressure of a famine. The 
 whole list may be expressed by four words — 
 enlightened government and modern civilisation. 
 These are the specifics for famine. Where they 
 exist, scarcity will never result in depopulation ; 
 where they do not, the utmost endeavours of 
 Government may mitigate but they cannot avert. 
 Nevertheless, the two formal specifics may be 
 assisted by subsidiary relief efforts, such as public 
 works and organized public charity. 
 
 Where natural scarcity passes directly into 
 actual pressure,' two exceptional measures have 
 
 Bengal had represented the discouragement to cultivation which the 
 postponement of a permanent settlement caused in Orissa. 
 
 '* Except that in 1866 there was no cannibalism, and the total 
 loss of population in all Bengal was three-quarters of a million 
 instead of ten millions. 
 
56 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 been employed, with various degrees of success, to 
 take the extreme edge off famine. The one is an 
 embargo on exportation, the other is importation 
 at the State expense. Both are dangerous ex- 
 pedients, and their success (when successful) im- 
 plies that the ordinary laws of political economy 
 cannot be applied to the case ; in other words, that 
 modern civilisation and enlightened government 
 have yet to begin their work. This was the 
 condition of Lower Bengal in 1770 and of Orissa, 
 its south-western corner, in 1866.^* 
 
 Before the commencement of 1771, one-third 
 of a generation of peasants had been swept from 
 the face of the earth and a whole generation of 
 once rich families had been reduced to indigence. 
 Every district reiterated the same tale. The 
 revenue farmers — a wealthy class who then stood 
 forth as the visible government to the common 
 people — being unable to realize the land-tax, were 
 stripped of their office, their persons imprisoned, 
 and their lands, the sole dependence of their 
 families, re-let." The ancient houses of Bengal, 
 who had enjoyed a semi-independence under the 
 Moghuls and whom the British Government sub- 
 sequently acknowledged as the lords of the soil, 
 fared still worse. From the year 1770 the ruin of 
 
 '^ The Famine Commissioners, while admitting that cases may 
 occur in which Government may wisely undertake importation, deny 
 that it should ever interfere with exportation. I suspect Mr. Mill's 
 arguments apply to both cases. 
 
 "■ Letter from the President and Council to the Court ot Direc- 
 tors, dated Fort-William, loth November 1773. I. O. R. 
 
THE ARISTOCRACY RUINED. 57 
 
 two-thirds of the old aristocracy of Lower Bengal 
 dates. The Maharajah of Burdwan, whose province 
 had been the first to cry out and the last to which 
 plenty returned, died miserably towards the end of 
 the famine, leaving a treasury so empty that the 
 heir had to melt down the family plate, and when 
 this was exhausted to beg a loan from the Govern- 
 ment, in order to perform his father's obsequies."* 
 Sixteen years later, we find the unfortunate young 
 prince unable to satisfy the Government demands, 
 a prisoner in his own palace." This was the repre- 
 sentative of a line which had possessed houses and 
 lands along all the principal routes, so that how- 
 ever far its chief might travel, he never slept out 
 of his own jurisdiction. The present Maharajah 
 enjoys a revenue reputed to exceed a hundred 
 thousand sterling, and administers his estates by 
 means of a body of advisers that closely imitates 
 the Imperial Council in Calcutta. The Rajah of 
 Nuddea, another powerful nobleman of the last 
 century,^"" emerged from the famine impoverished 
 and in disgrace, very thankful, it would seem, to 
 have the management of his estates taken out of 
 his own hands and vested in his son.*"^ The pro- 
 
 '' Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Direc- 
 tors, dated 25th August 1770, para. 52. I. O. R. 
 
 '' From the Collector of Burdwan to the Board of Revenue, dated 
 l6th May 1786. Bn. R. 
 
 i"" An account of this family is preserved in the Kshitisha Ban- 
 savali Charitam. Ed. Berlin, 1852. 
 
 101 Letter from the President and Council to the Court ot 
 Directors, dated Fort-William, loth November 1773, paras. 8, 11, 
 etc. 
 
58 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 prletrix of Rajshie,^"^ a lady of remarkable talent 
 for public business, retained the control of her 
 district ; but soon afterwards, being unable to pay 
 the revenue, was threatened with dispossession, the 
 sale of her lands, and the withdrawal of her Govern- 
 ment allowance.^"^ It would be easy to multiply 
 examples. We shall afterwards view the ruin of 
 the western districts more in detail. Meanwhile 
 it is enough to say that when the local records 
 open, they disclose the Rajah of Beerbhoom hardly 
 permitted to pass the first year of his majority 
 before being confined for arrears of revenue, and 
 the venerable Rajah of Bishenpore, after weary 
 years of duress, let out of prison only to die. 
 
 In a country whose inhabitants live entirely by 
 agriculture, depopulation is always followed by a 
 proportionate area of the land falling out of tillage. 
 Bengal had lost one-third of its people and one- 
 third of its surface speedily became waste. Three 
 years after the famine, so much land lay unculti- 
 vated that the Council began to devise measures 
 for tempting the subjects of native princes to 
 migrate into its dominions."* While the province 
 in general was rack-rented to supply the pressing 
 necessities of the Company in England, Warren 
 Hastings interposed on behalf of the frontier, in 
 order that there might be such a show of lenity as 
 
 '"^ The Rani Banwari. 
 
 i»3 Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Direc- 
 tors, dated 15th March 1774, para. 6. 
 
 "* From the same to the same, dated loth November 1773, para. 
 16. 
 
CULTIVATORS NOT TO BE HAD. 59 
 
 to ' procure a supply of inhabitants from the neigh- 
 bouring districts of the Nabob Vizier.' In 1776 
 the scarcity of cultivators had completely transposed 
 the relations of landlord and tenant in Bengal. 
 Formerly there had been more husbandmen want- 
 ing land than could obtain holdings ; the only means 
 of earning a livelihood was agriculture ; emigration 
 was unknown ; the whole peasantry fell into the 
 power of the landlords or revenue-farmers, and a 
 cry of rural oppression arose such as has never been 
 heard before or after. To this state of things, the 
 result of a series of unusually plentiful crops at the 
 beginning of the century,^°° the famine of 1770 put 
 an end, and even a new-comer could see that there 
 was more land awaiting cultivation than there were 
 husbandmen to till it. 'In the present state of the 
 country,' wrote Mr. Francis in 1776, 'the ryot has 
 the advantage over the zemindar. Where so much 
 land lies waste, and so few hands are left for culti- 
 vation, the peasant must be courted to undertake 
 it.' ^"^ By degrees the agricultural population divided 
 itself into two classes : the so-called resident culti- 
 vators"" who, from attachment to their ancient 
 homes, or, as was much more frequently the case, by 
 reason of indebtedness to their landlord, continued on 
 
 ""' One year rice sold at more than a hundred pounds for a 
 shilling ; and tradition relates that a governor of Dacca shut up a 
 gate until the price should again fall to the lowest rate reached during 
 his reign, viz. one hundred and fifty pounds for a shilling. 
 
 1"* Minute by Mr. Francis. — Revenue Consultations of the 5th 
 November 1776. I. O. K. 
 
 lo' Khud-kasht. 
 
6o THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the same estate as before the famine ; and a more 
 adventurous class, termed non-resident or vagrant 
 cultivators/"' who threw up their previous holdings 
 and went in search of new ones at the lower rates 
 to which depopulation had reduced the market 
 value of land. Within six years after the famine 
 this classification had distinctly taken place, and the 
 non-resident ryots who had previously formed an 
 insignificant and degraded order continued during 
 thirty years the most prominent feature in the rural 
 system of Bengal, In old times, the non-resident 
 cultivators wandered weariedly through the pro- 
 vince because they could nowhere find land ; after 
 1770, cultivators joined the non-resident class be- 
 cause they could find land everywhere cheaper than 
 the old rates, and a collector, when wishing to 
 imply that an English gentleman had received his 
 land on advantageous terms, briefly describes him 
 as a paikasht ryot (non-resident cultivator). 
 
 For the first fifteen years after the famine de- 
 population steadily increased. During a scarcity it 
 is the children on whom the calamity falls with the 
 heaviest weight, and until 1785 the old died off 
 without there being any rising generation to step 
 into their places.^"' To add to the general misery 
 the most violent feuds broke out among the landed 
 proprietors. One-third of their land lay unculti- 
 
 "8 Paikasht. The English renderings given above are those of 
 Hastings and Francis. 
 
 1"' In Beerbhoom, for example.— Letter from Christopher Keating, 
 Esq., Collector, to John Shore, Esq., President of the Board of Re- 
 venue, dated 3d July 1789. B. R. R. 
 
BENGAL RETURNS TO JUNGLE. 6v 
 
 vated and each began to entice away the tenants 
 of his neighbour, by offering protection against 
 judicial proceedings and farms at very low rents."' 
 As they became more impoverished they went on 
 bidding more eagerly against one another for the 
 husbandmen, till at length the non-resident class 
 obtained their holdings at half-rates/" The resident 
 cultivators, una;ble to compete on these terms, threw 
 up their farms. They had formerly been the 
 wealthiest order of the tillers of the soil, but now 
 they began to look on themselves as an injured 
 class, and so general became the desertion that in 
 1784, Parliament, acquainted with the signs of out- 
 ward decay but ignorant of its causes, ordered an 
 inquiry into the reasons that had compelled the 
 agricultural classes ' to abandon and relinquish their 
 lands.' ^'^ A province cannot be re-peopled, how- 
 ever, by Act of Parliament. The land remained 
 untilled, and in 1789, Lord Cornwallis, after three 
 years' vigilant inquiry, pronounced one-third of the 
 Company's territories in Bengal to be ' a jungle in- 
 habited only by wild beasts.' ^^^ 
 
 1^" Letter from Christopher Keating, Esq., Collector, to John 
 Shore, Esq., President of the Board of Revenue, dated 30th August 
 
 1789. From the Board of Revenue to the Collector, dated loth May 
 
 1790, etc. B. R. R. 
 
 m Strictures and Observations on the Mocurrery System of 
 Landed Property in Bengal, by Gurreeb Doss ; with Replies. 8vo. 
 London, 1794. This is a reprint of a somewhat acrimonious dis- 
 cussion between Mr. J. Prinsep and Mr. Thos. Law in the Morning 
 Chronicle during 1792. O. C. 
 
 "2 24 Geo. HI. 39. O. C. 
 
 11' Minute of the Governor-General, September 18, 1789. See 
 also his letter to the Court of Directors, dated 2d August 1789. 
 
62 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Such was the general state of the province when 
 it passed under British rule. The western princi- 
 palities, Beerbhoom and Bishenpore, which form 
 the special subject of this volume, had borne their 
 full share of the national calamity. In 1765, four 
 years before the famine, Beerbhoom had been culti- 
 vated by close on six thousand rural communes, 
 each with a hamlet in the centre of its lands."* 
 In 1 77 1, three years after the famine, only four 
 thousand five hundred of these little communities 
 survived."' The cultivators fled from the open 
 country to the cities ; but ' even in the large towns,' 
 wrote a Beerbhoom official in 1771, 'there is not 
 a fourth part of the houses inhabited.' ^'^ The 
 following year, 1772-73, is memorable for the first 
 attempt which Warren Hastings made to adjust the 
 land-tax independently of the Mussulman Minister 
 of the Interior, and the native subordinates, eager 
 to find favour with the redoubted Englishman, 
 returned the number of communes at nearly a 
 hundred more than in 1771-72."^ But the fact 
 could not be concealed : depopulation went steadily 
 on till 1785, when the number had sunk to four 
 thousand four hundred, and of the six thousand 
 prosperous communes in 1765 close on fifteen 
 
 11* Letter from the Collector to the Board of Revenue, (fated 3d 
 July 1789, etc. B. R. R. 
 
 1^^ Hustabood Accounts and Papers for the Bengali Year 1178 
 (a.d. 1771-72). Board of Revenue. C. O. R. 
 
 ^1' Report of the Supervisor, Mr. Higginson, dated 22d February 
 177 1. I. O. R. 
 
 11' Beerbhoom Hustabood. — Letter from Collector to Board of 
 Revenue, dated 3d July 1789. B. R. R, 
 
SEVERE REVENUE MEASURES. 6,3 
 
 hundred had disappeared and their lands relapsed 
 to jungle.^^* Even among those that were not 
 altogether abandoned many square miles of the 
 richest country lay untilled, and one set of revenue 
 agents after another failed to wring the land-tax out 
 of the people. In 1772, the old farmers having 
 thrown up their task in despair were superseded 
 and dragged down to the debtors' prison in Cal- 
 cutta for arrears. At each new adjustment of the 
 revenue the same thing took place ; the hereditary 
 prince excusing himself from remitting the land-tax 
 to the English treasury, on the grounds that the 
 revenue agents could not collect it, and the revenue 
 agents being cast without mercy into dungeons. 
 When the British undertook the direct management 
 of the district, nearly twenty years after the famine, 
 they found the jail filled with revenue prisoners, 
 not one of whom had a prospect of regaining his 
 liberty."' For this state of things the Rajah was 
 not alone responsible. While the country every 
 year became a more total waste, the English 
 Government constantly demanded an increased 
 land-tax. In 1771 more than one-third of the 
 culturable land was returned in the public accounts 
 as ' Deserted ;'^^'' in 1776 the entries in this column 
 exceed one-half of the whole tillage, four acres 
 lying waste for every seven that remained under 
 
 ^^* The exact number was 1445. 
 
 "9 Letters from Collector to Board of Revenue, dated ist August 
 89, etc. B. R. R. 
 
 12* Palatika. Hustabood accounts of Beerbhoom for the Bengali 
 year 1 1 78. C. O. R. 
 
64 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 cultivation.^"^ On the other hand, the Company 
 increased its demand from less than ;^ 100,000 
 sterling in 1772, to close on ;^i 12,000 in 1776. 
 The villagers were dragooned into paying the land- 
 tax by Mussulman troops, but notwithstanding the 
 utmost severities the receipts seldom amounted to 
 much more than one-half of the demand.'"" 
 
 The state of Beerbhoom at the end of the famine 
 of 1770 will be found ofificially described by eye- 
 witnesses in Appendix B. Ten years later we find 
 the district a sequestered and an impassable jungle. 
 In ancient times it had been the highway of armies, 
 the favourite battle-field on which was more than 
 once decided the fate of Bengal ; in 1 780 a small 
 body of Sepoys could with difficulty force their way 
 through its forests. For 120 miles, says a con- 
 temporary newspaper correspondent, probably one 
 of the officers of the party, ' they marched through 
 but an extensive wood, all the way a perfect wilder- 
 ness ; sometimes a small village presented itself in 
 the midst of these jungles, with a little cultivated 
 ground around it, hardly sufficient to encamp the 
 two battalions. These woods abound with tigers 
 and bears, which infested the camp every night, but 
 did no other damage than carrying off a child and 
 
 ^21 Hustabood accounts of Beerbhoom for the 
 
 Bengali year 1183 
 
 O.R. 
 
 
 Government Demand. 
 
 Actual Receipt. 
 
 ''' 1772, .... ;£99,4i3 
 
 ;£55,207 
 
 1773, .... 103,089 
 
 62,365 
 
 1774, .... 101,799 
 
 52,533 
 
 1775 100,983 
 
 53,997 
 
 1776, .... 111,482 
 
 63,350 
 
BEERBHOOM MADE OVER TO TIGERS. 65 
 
 killing some of the gentlemen's hackery bullocks.' ^^' 
 The narrator, judging by the obstacles of the route, 
 and ignorant of the past history of the district, 
 magnified the march into an achievement never 
 before accomplished, and nine years later, the 
 jungle continued so dense as to shut off all com- 
 munication between the two most important towns, 
 and to cause the mails to be' carried by a circuit 
 of fifty miles through another district,''^* 
 
 As the little rural communities relinquished their 
 hamlets, and drew closer together towards the centre 
 of the district, the wild beasts pressed hungrily on 
 their rear. In vain the Company offered a reward 
 for each tiger's head, sufficient to maintain a peasant's 
 family in comfort for three months ; an item of ex- 
 penditure it deemed so necessary, that when, under 
 extraordinary pressure, it had to suspend all pay- 
 ments, the tiger -money and diet allowance for 
 prisoners were the sole exceptions to the rule.'^' 
 A belt of jungle, filled with wild beasts, formed 
 round each village ; the official records frequently 
 speak of the mail-bag being carried off by wild 
 beasts ;^^^ and after fruitless injunctions to the land- 
 holders to clear the forests. Lord Cornwallis was 
 at length compelled to sanction a public grant to 
 keep open the new military road that passed through 
 
 '^^ Hickys Gazette, Calcutta, 29th April 1780. 
 
 124 Bill for Contingent Charges, dated 29th May 1789. B. R. R. 
 
 12s Letters from the Accountant-General to the Collector of Beer- 
 bhoom, dated 29th December 1790 and 28th January 1791. B. R. R. 
 
 i2« Letters from Board of Revenue to Collector, dated i ith Febru- 
 ary 1789, etc. B. R. R. 
 
 VOL, I. E 
 
66 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Beerbhoom.'" The ravages of the wild elephants 
 were on a larger scale, and their extermination 
 formed one of the most important duties of the 
 Collector for some time after the district passed 
 directly under British rule. In two parishes alone, 
 during the last few years of the native administra- 
 tion, fifty-six villages with their communal lands 
 ' had all been destroyed and gone to jungle, caused 
 by the depredations of the wild elephants i'^''* and 
 an official return states that forty market towns 
 throughout the district had been deserted from the 
 same cause. The Rajah petitioned the Company 
 to use its influence with the Nawab of Bengal'^' to 
 procure the loan of the Viceregal stud of tame ele- 
 phants, in order to catch the wild ones."" The bag 
 was to be made over to his Highness as payment. 
 This assistance not being obtained, the Rajah for- 
 mally applied for a reduction of the land-tax, in 
 consequence of the district being depopulated by 
 wild elephants. The Collector reported the claim 
 to be just. ' I had ocular proof, on my journey to 
 Deoghur,' he writes ; ' marks of their ravages re- 
 maining. The poor timid native ties his cot in a 
 tree, to which he retires when the elephants ap- 
 proach, and silently views the destruction of his 
 
 *'^ Letters from Board of Revenue to Collector, dated nth Februr 
 ary 1789, 30th April 1790, etc. B. R. R. 
 
 ^28 From the Collector of Beerbhoom to the Board of Revenue, 
 dated April 1790. B. R. R. 
 
 >29 Mabarak-ad-Daulat. 
 
 ISO From the Collector to the Board, dated 15th October 1790 j 
 and the Board's reply, dated 26th idem. B. R. R. 
 
DEVASTATED BY WILD ELEPHANTS. 67 
 
 cottage, and all the profits of his labour. I saw 
 some of these retreats in my journey, and had the 
 cause of them explained. In Bealputta very few 
 inhabitants remain ; and the zemindar's fears for 
 the neighbouring purgunnahs will certainly be real- 
 ized in the course of a few years, if some method 
 is not fallen on to extirpate those destructive 
 animals.'^" 
 
 It is difficult for Englishmen, accustomed from 
 boyhood to fire-arms, to comprehend the defence- 
 less state of a peasantry armed only with spears 
 and bows against the larger sorts of wild beasts. 
 It is not lack of courage, as every Englishman who 
 has hunted with beaters in the jungles will testify. 
 Indeed, the intrepid skill with which a band of 
 Beerbhoom hill-men surround a tiger, never ceases 
 to astonish those who know the risk. But the 
 herd of elephants is resistless ; lifting off roofs, 
 pushing down walls, trampling a village under foot, 
 as if it were a city of sand that a child had built 
 upon the shore. ' Most fortunately for the popula- 
 tion of the country,' wrote the greatest elephant- 
 hunter of that period, ' they delight in the seques- 
 tered range of the mountain ; did they prefer the 
 plain, whole kingdoms would be laid waste. '"^ In 
 many parts of the country the peasantry did not 
 dare to sleep in their houses, lest they should be 
 
 181 From the Collector to the Board, dated 6th August 1791. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 132 Autobiography of the Hon. Robert Lindsay, Collector of 
 Sylhet ; circ. 1778 to 1789. Lives of the Lindsays, by Lord Lindsay, 
 vol. iii. p. 190. 
 
68 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 burled beneath them during the night, and as 
 late as 1810 the surveyor of a district a Httle to 
 the north of Beerbhoom reports : ' The alarm that 
 the elephants occasion is exceedingly great. One 
 night that I lay close to the hills, although I had a 
 guard, the men of the village close by my tents 
 retired at night to the trees, and the women hid 
 themselves among the cattle, leaving their huts a 
 prey to the elephants, who know very well where to 
 look for grain. Two nights before, some of them 
 had unroofed a hut in the village, and had eaten 
 up all the grain which a poor family had preserved 
 in its earthen store. '^'^ It is right to add, that wild 
 elephants, although they may have become more 
 troublesome as the jungle absorbed the cultivated 
 land after the famine, were dreaded devastators 
 long before 1770. Even in the most prosperous 
 period of the Mussulman rule they infested what 
 are now the richest districts of Bengal, and formed 
 the chief, sometimes indeed the sole, revenue that 
 could be obtained from large and fertile pro- 
 vinces.'^* 
 
 The evil seems to have reached its climax about 
 1786. From this year English supervision, more 
 or less direct, dates in Beerbhoom. The agri- 
 culturalists were by no means the only class who 
 fled before the tiger and wild elephant. The 
 
 ^^^ History, Antiquities, etc., of Eastern India, from the Buchanan 
 Papers in the E. I. House, vol. ii. p. 14. 
 
 ^^* Analysis of the Bengali Poem Raj-Mala, by the Rev. James 
 Long, p. 19. Pamphlet, 8vo, Calcutta. Lives of the Lindsays, 
 vol. iii. p. 163, etc 
 
RURAL INDUSTRY STANDS STILL. 69 
 
 earliest English records disclose the forest hamlets 
 of the iron-smelters deserted ; the charcoal-burners 
 driven from their occupation by wild beasts ; many 
 factories and market towns abandoned ; the cattle 
 trade, which then formed an important branch of 
 the district's commerce, at a stand ; and the halting- 
 places, where herds used to rest and fodder on their 
 way from the mountains to the plains, written down 
 as waste. ^'^ 
 
 But tigers and wild elephants were not the most 
 cruel enemies of the peasant. The English found 
 Bengal in the hands of banditti, and the names 
 of successful leaders of the last century, such as 
 Strong-fisted Khan,^'* to be found in every native 
 history, tell a story of rapine and oppression not 
 difficult to read. Many of the principal families 
 throughout the country, being dispossessed by the 
 Mussulman tax-gatherers in whole or part of their 
 lands, lived by plunder ; the only difference between 
 the highland and lowland proprietors being, that 
 the former marauded more openly and on a larger 
 scale. The latter, indeed, found it more profitable 
 to shelter banditti on their estates, levying black- 
 mail from the surrounding villages as the price of 
 immunity from depredation, and sharing in the 
 plunder of such as would not come to terms. 
 Their country-houses were robber strongholds, and 
 the early English administrators of Bengal have left 
 
 15' Letter from the Collector of Beerbhoom to the Board of Re- 
 venue, dated 9th October 1789. B. R. R. 
 
 136 Zabbar-dast Khan, famous in the adjoining district of Burdwan. 
 
70 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 it on record, that a gang-robbery never occurred 
 without a landed proprietor being at the bottom of 
 it."' Bands of cashiered soldiers, the dregs of the 
 Mussulman armies, roamed about, plundering as 
 they went. They frequently dressed themselves 
 in the Company's uniform, with a view to wholesale 
 extortion from the villagers, — a fraud rendered so 
 plausible by the disorderly conduct of our own 
 troops on the line of march, that a series of stringent 
 enactments failed to put it down. Lawlessness 
 breeds lawlessness, and the miserable peasantry, 
 stripped of their hoard for the winter, were forced 
 to become plunderers in turn. Early in 1771, the 
 local officers report ' the frequent firing of villages 
 by the people, whose distress drives them to such 
 acts of despair and villany. Numbers of ryots, 
 who have hitherto borne the first of characters 
 among their neighbours, pursue this last resource to 
 procure themselves a subsistence.'"* They formed 
 themselves into bands of so-called houseless de- 
 votees,"' and roved about the country in armies 
 fifty thousand strong. ' A set of lawless banditti,' 
 wrote the Council in 1773, 'known under the name 
 of Sanyasis or Faquirs, have long infested these 
 countries ; and, under pretence of religious pil- 
 grimage, have been accustomed to traverse the 
 chief part of Bengal, begging, stealing, and plunder- 
 
 ^'' Answers to Interrogatories, circulated in 1801. 
 1'' Letter of Mr. Rous, the Supervisor of Rajshie, dated 13th 
 April 1771. I. O. R. 
 '** Sanyassis. 
 
Bengal HELD BY BANDITTI. 71 
 
 hig wherever they go, and as it best suits their 
 convenience to practise.'"" In the years subsequent 
 to the famine, their ranks were swollen by a crowd 
 of starving peasants who had neither seed nor 
 implements to recommence cultivation with, and 
 the cold weather of 1772 brought them down upon 
 the harvest fields of Lower Bengal, burning, plun- 
 dering, ravaging, ' in bodies of fifty thousand 
 men.'"^ The collectors called out the military ; 
 but after a temporary success our Sepoys ' were at 
 length totally defeated, and Captain Thomas (their 
 leader), with almost the whole party, cut ofif.'"^ It 
 was not till the close of the winter that the Council 
 could report to the Court of Directors, that a 
 battalion, under an experienced commander, had 
 acted successfully against them ; "' and a month 
 later we find that even this tardy intimation had 
 been premature. On the 31st March 1773, Warren 
 Hastings plainly acknowledges that the commander 
 who had succeeded Captain Thomas ' unhappily 
 underwent the same fate;' that four battalions of 
 the army were then actively engaged against the 
 banditti, but that, in spite of the militia levies called 
 from the landholders, their combined operations 
 had been fruitless. The revenue could not be col- 
 lected, the inhabitants made common cause with 
 
 !■"' Letter from the President and Council (Secret Department) to 
 the Court of Directors, dated 15th January 1773, para. 13. I. O. R. 
 
 1^1 From the same to the same, dated ist March 1773, para. r6, 
 etc. I. O. R. 
 
 '^' From the same to the same, dated 15th January 1773. I. O. R. 
 
 '''I Letter of 1st March, para. 16. L O. R. 
 
7i tHE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the marauders, and the whole rural administration 
 was unhinged. Such incursions were annual epi- 
 sodes in what some have been pleased to represent 
 as the still life of Bengal. 
 
 Besides those whom destitution or natural de- 
 pravity had driven to rapine, there existed numerous 
 and prosperous clans who practised robbery as a 
 hereditary calling. The Thugs and Dacoits thought 
 none the worse of themselves for their profession, 
 and were regarded by their countrymen with an awe 
 which in India at that time could hardly be dis- 
 tinguished from veneration, ' I am a Thug of the 
 royal records,' one of them was good enough to 
 explain to an English officer ; ' I and my fathers 
 have been Thugs for twenty generations.' ' I have 
 always followed the trade of my ancestors,' urged 
 a celebrated Dacoit ; ' my ancestors held this pro- 
 fession before me, and we train boys in the same 
 manner,' said another. So much has been brought 
 to light by the Thuggee and Dacoitee Commissions, 
 that I must confine myself to the five-and-twenty 
 years during which the rural administration was 
 slowly passing into English hands.^** ' The Dacoits 
 of Bengal,' so runs a State paper written in 1772, 
 'are not, like the robbers in England, individuals 
 driven to such desperate courses by sudden want. 
 They are robbers by profession, and even by birth. 
 They are formed into regular communities, and 
 
 ^** An account of Thuggee and Dacoitee in later years will be 
 found in Mr. Kaye's admirable 'Administration of the East India 
 Company,' part iii. chap. ii. and iiL 
 
WHOLE C J TIES BURNED DOWN. 73 
 
 their families subsist by the spoils which they bring 
 home to them.'"^ These spoils were frequently 
 brought from great distances ; villages high up the 
 Ganges lived by housebreaking in Calcutta ; and 
 Warren Hastings distinctly realized that, if the 
 crime were to be put down, not only the actual de- 
 predators, but also the remote sharers in the booty, 
 must be united in one common punishment. He 
 went about the work in that straightforward, incisive 
 manner which he always adopted when he had 
 an unpleasant task in hand. He commanded that 
 every convicted Dacoit should be executed ; that he 
 should be ' executed in all the forms and terrors of 
 the law ' in his native village ; that his whole family 
 should be made slaves ; and that every inhabitant 
 of the village should be fined. In spite of these 
 severities, however, Dacoitee continued to flourish 
 for more than three-quarters of a century in Bengal. 
 The Dacoits generally effected their depredations in 
 bands of from five to one hundred, by armed attacks 
 in the villages, and in the large towns under cover 
 of confusion occasioned by fire. The conflagrations 
 that resulted threatened to destroy whole cities. In 
 March 1 780, a fire occurred in Calcutta that burned 
 down fifteen thousand houses. Nearly two hundred 
 people perished in the flames."^ Clear cases of in- 
 cendiarism are constantly recorded, and at length 
 
 '*' Letter from the Committee of Circuit to the Council at Fort 
 William, dated Cossimbazaar, 15th August 1772. 
 
 1*^ Calcutta in the Olden Times, its People, by the Rev. J. Long, 
 p. 37. Pamphlet, 8vo, Calcutta. 
 
74 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 it was gravely 'recommended that those owning 
 straw-houses should have a long bamboo with three 
 hooks at the end to catch the villains.'"' Organized 
 outrages were committed within ear-shot of what 
 are now the most fashionable resorts of the capital. 
 ' A few nights ago,' the Calcutta paper of 1 780 
 announced, ' four armed men entered the houses of 
 a moorman near Chowringhee, and carried off his 
 daughter.' Old inhabitants remember the time 
 when no native would venture out at night with 
 a good shawl on ; and it was the invariable practice, 
 even in English mansions, for the porter to shut the 
 outer door at the commencement of each meal, and 
 not to open it till the butler brought him word that 
 the plate was safely locked up. 
 
 In Beerbhoom and along the western frontier 
 these disorders had reached a pitch hardly to be 
 distinguished from chronic civil war. ' For ages '; — 
 an accurate antiquarian thus describes the inhabit- 
 ants of the country adjoining Beerbhoom on the 
 north — ' they were untamed thieves and murderers, 
 engaging in forays on the plains ; while the Mussul- 
 man zemindars, in reprisal, shot them as dogs.'"' 
 The Rajah of Beerbhoom's territory embraced a 
 large tract of low country, where the people lived 
 within walled cities in a state of constant siege; 
 and an undefined but extensive highland region, 
 inhabited by a race different in origin, in language, 
 
 '*' Calcutta in the Olden Times, its People, by the Rev. J. Long, 
 p. 37. Pamphlet, 8vo, Calcutta. 
 1^* Rajmahal. Pamphlet, p. 21. 
 
Tiii. i)£:£ATnA£LE LAND. 75 
 
 in religion, from the people of the plains, and sepa- 
 rated from them by deadly and immemorial feuds. 
 ' From the time of the Mahomedan kings,' writes 
 the revenue surveyor of an adjacent district, ' these 
 hill people were the scourge and terror of the neigh- 
 bouring districts, from whose inhabitants they levied 
 black-mail ; and when that could not be obtained, 
 armed bands, fully equipped with powerful bamboo 
 bows and arrows, descended from the hills, murdered 
 all who opposed their progress, pillaged the country 
 far and near, and retreating to their jungly fortress, 
 where no one dared to follow them, defied their 
 victims.'"' In the province to the north of Beer- 
 bhoom, for a hundred miles along the Ganges, no 
 boat dared to moor after dark on the southern 
 bank; the mails were constantly robbed; treasure 
 parties were cut off; all traffic on the imperial road 
 for a time ceased ; and a line of crumbling forts 
 stretching south-west from Bhaugulpore still bears 
 witness to the insecurity of life and property in the 
 old debateable land. 
 
 General statements, however, do not tell so 
 strongly as particular facts ; and, lest some dulcet 
 strain of Indian Bucolics, under hereditary chiefs, 
 should' still linger in the reader's memory, I shall 
 relate minutely the experiences of Beerbhoom and 
 Bishenpore during the first two years of which a 
 complete record exists. The disorders which in- 
 duced Lord Cornwallis to place the districts under 
 the direct supervision of an English officer, have 
 
 "» Captain Sherwill's Report, p. 26. Folio. C. O. R. 
 
76 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 been already narrated. The last letter referring 
 to Beerbhoom under its native chief, gives notice 
 that an organized raid by an army of banditti a 
 thousand strong was about to take place. ^^'' The 
 first letter in the records of the English local ad- 
 ministration thankfully acknowledges the arrival of 
 a full company of Sepoys, and shortly after the 
 detachment had to be doubled.^" There is every 
 reason to believe that, during the brief period which 
 had intervened between these letters, the efforts of 
 Mr. Sherbourne to repress the banditti had been, so 
 far as the time permitted, successful ; and the fol- 
 lowing pages present a picture modified and toned 
 down, rather than exaggerated, of the state in which 
 the English found Bengal, and of the legacy of 
 troubles bequeathed to them by Mussulman mis- 
 rule. 
 
 The chief English officer exercised, under the 
 style of Collector, the functions of Commander-in- 
 Chief and Civil Governor within his jurisdiction. 
 The military side of his duties, indeed, received 
 during several years undue prominence. At the 
 beginning of each cold weather, when the great 
 harvest of the year approached, he furnished the 
 officer at the head of his troops with a list of passes 
 which the Sepoys were to defend until the ban- 
 ditti should retire into quarters for the next rainy 
 
 15" From Edward Otto Ives to the Governor-General in Council. 
 B. J. R. 
 
 151 From Christopher Keating, Esq., Collector, to the Board of 
 Revenue, dated 22d November 1788. B. R. R. 
 
BEERBHOOM IN 1789. 77 
 
 season. On a proposition being made to reduce 
 the strength of his force, he plainly stated that he 
 would not be responsible for holding the district ; 
 and a folio volume, labelled ' Military Correspond- 
 ence,' barely contains his communications with the 
 senior captain during three years. Mr. Keating,^*^' 
 the first Collector whose records survive, had not 
 enjoyed his appointment two months before he 
 found himself compelled to call out the troops 
 against a band of marauders five hundred strong, 
 who ' had made a descent on' a market town within 
 two hours' ride from the English capital, and mur- 
 dered or frightened away the inhabitants ' of be- 
 tween thirty and forty villages.''*^ A few weeks 
 later (February 1789), the hill-men broke through 
 the cordon of outposts en masse, and spread ' their 
 depredations throughout the interior villages of the 
 district.'^'* Panic and bloodshed reigned ; the out- 
 posts were hastily recalled from the frontier passes ; 
 and on the 21st of February 1789, we find Mr. 
 Keating levying a militia to act with the regulars 
 against the ' banditti who were sacking the country 
 towns ' in parties of three and four hundred men, 
 well found in arms.' The evil was not to be so 
 easily dealt with, however, and the Governor- 
 
 ^^^ Christopher Keating landed in Calcutta July 1767, as a writer; 
 appointed Collector of Beerbhoom 29th October 1788 ; appointed 
 Senior Judge of the Court of Moorshedabad from ist May 1793, but 
 did not leave Beerbhoom till the 6th August ; appears as a Senior 
 Merchant in the Civil List of 1804. C. O. R. 
 
 15» Letter from the Collector to Lieut. J. F. Smith, dated loth 
 January 1789. B. R. R. 
 
 "* MiUtary Correspondence, p. 15. B. R. R, 
 
78 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 General in Council had eventually to direct the 
 Collectors of the several adjoining districts to unite 
 their whole forces ; all questions of jurisdiction were 
 sunk;"* a battle was fought, and the banditti were 
 chased far into the mountains. But a piece of petty 
 official jealousy prevented the success from being 
 complete. The confederates had omitted to take 
 the Collector of a neighbouring district into their 
 councils, and the bandits found shelter within his 
 jurisdiction. ' By a wounded Sepoy, who is arrived 
 from our parties,' wrote the indignant Mr. Keating, 
 ' I understand they have had a smart skirmish with 
 the thieves near the borders of Pacheate ; but in 
 their pursuit were stopped by the Collector's guards, 
 who, instead of assisting the business, prevented 
 their advancing into that district, and sheltered 
 some of the banditti's followers. The Sepoy tells 
 me that, in consequence of [this Interference by] the 
 Pacheate people, ours have thought it expedient to 
 seize four or five of them who are coming In to 
 answer for their conduct.'^*® The wrath of the 
 Pacheate Collector at the capture of his guards by 
 a military force in time of peace, and the mutual 
 reproaches which followed, may easily be con- 
 ceived. 
 
 The disorders in BIshenpore would, in any less 
 troubled time, have been called rebellion. The 
 Rajah had been imprisoned for arrears of the land- 
 
 "« From Christopher Keating to Laurence Mercer, Collector of 
 Bjrdwan, dated i6th February 1789. B. R, R. 
 
 156 From the same to the same, dated 9th April 1789. 
 
BISHENPORE IN 1789. 79 
 
 tax ; the head assistant to the Collector, Mr. Hesil- 
 rige,^" was in charge of his estates, and the inhabit- 
 ants made common cause with the banditti to oppose 
 the Government. In June 1789, a detachment was 
 hurried out to support the civil power ; eight days 
 afterwards a reinforcement followed, too late how- 
 ever to save the chief manufacturing town in the 
 district from being sacked in open day - light.'^* 
 Next month, Mr. Keating reported to Govern- 
 ment that the marauders, having crossed the Adji 
 in ' a large party armed with tulwars (swords) and 
 matchlocks,' had established themselves in Beer- 
 bhoom, and that their reduction would simply be 
 a question of military force. 
 
 The rainy season, however, came to the aid of 
 the authorities. The plunderers, laden with spoil, 
 and leaving a sufficient force to hold Bishenpore 
 as a basis for their operations in the next cold 
 weather, retreated to their strongholds ; and Mr. 
 Keating took advantage of the lull to devise a 
 more elaborate system for warding the frontier. 
 He represented"' to Lord Cornwallis, then Gover- 
 nor-General, that the existing military force was 
 insufficient to hold the district ; that the contingents 
 furnished by the hereditary wardens of the marches 
 
 '"' Afterwards Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Bart. Landed as a writer in 
 1773 ; assistant and occasionally acting Collector of Beerbhoom or 
 Bishenpore, from 25th April 1786 to 9th July, when he was removed 
 on a charge of embezzlement ; clears himself and is appointed Col- 
 lector of Jessore from the ist May 1793. Appears as Senior Merchant 
 in the Civil List of 1804. 
 
 '•''' Elambazaar on the Adji. 
 
 159 Letter dated i6th October 1789. B. R. R. 
 
8o THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 were undisciplined, faint-hearted, more disposed to 
 act with the plunderers than against them ; and that 
 to secure peace to the lowlands, it was absolutely 
 necessary to station a guard of picked soldiers from 
 the regular army at each of the passes. A nucleus 
 would thus be formed round which the irregular 
 troops might gather. By return of post, with a 
 promptitude that lets us into the secret of Lord 
 Cornwallis' success as an Indian administrator, came 
 back an answer ' that the Commander-in-Chief has 
 been requested to detach' a sufficient force which 
 the Collector ' will station at the different ghauts 
 (passes), through which the Dacoits generally make 
 their inroads into the low country.' In November, 
 the six most important passes were occupied, a 
 detachment was stationed in Bishenpore, another 
 occupied the chief manufacturing town on the Adji 
 (the one that had been sacked the previous sum- 
 mer), to prevent the banditti from crossing the river. 
 The Adji divides the united district into two parts, 
 Bishenpore on the south, Beerbhoom on the north ; 
 and these measures, while they restored compara- 
 tive quiet to the former, left the latter defenceless. 
 ' Scarce a night passes,' wrote Mr. Keating, ' with- 
 out some daring robbery.' The military, harassed 
 by night marches, and scattered about in small 
 bands, were unable to cope with the banditti, or 
 even to protect the principal towns. On the 25th 
 of November 1789, the commanding officer re- 
 ported that only four men remained to guard the 
 Government offices in the capital ; and a few weeks 
 
THE DISTRICT CAPITAL SACKED. 8i 
 
 later he declared himself unable to furnish an escort 
 sufficient to ensure the safet)' of a treasure party 
 through the district. At length, on the 5th of 
 June, Raj-Nagar, the ancient capital and the seat 
 of the hereditary princes, fell into the hands of the 
 banditti."" More than five centuries had elapsed 
 since a similar calamity had befallen Beerbhoom. 
 In 1244 A.D., the wild tribes from the south-west 
 had sacked the city, and history, repeating itself in 
 the fortunes of the obscurest district not less faith- 
 fully than in the revolutions of empires, discloses 
 the same outrages at the close as at the commence- 
 ment of Mussulman rule. 
 
 Mr. K eating's position was a difficult one. He 
 had to guard Bishenpore on the south of the Adji, 
 Beerbhoom on the north, and above all, the passes 
 along the western frontier. Beerbhoom, as the 
 headquarters of the English power, was of the first 
 importance ; but if he called in the troops from 
 Bishenpore, the calamities of the preceding year 
 would be repeated ; and if he withdrew the out- 
 posts from the western passes, the entire district, 
 north and south, would be at the mercy of the 
 hill-men. He decided that it was better to let the 
 marauders riot for a time on the south of the Adji, 
 than to open up his entire frontier. An express 
 summoned the detachments from Bishenpore by 
 forced marches to the rescue of Beerbhoom ; but no 
 
 1'° Gya, the capital of the adjoining province of Bahar, had been 
 sacked by marauders a year before. — Letter from A. Seton, Esq,, 
 Acting- Collector of Bahar, to the Collector of Beerbhoom, dated 23d 
 April 1789. 
 
 VOL. L F 
 
82 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 sooner had they crossed the river than tidings came 
 that Bishenpore was itself in the hands of ' insur- 
 gents assembled in number nearly one thousand.' 
 The rebellion spread into adjoining jurisdictions, and 
 the Collectors on the south bitterly reproached Mr. 
 Keating with having sacrificed the peace of many 
 districts for the sake of maintaining intact the 
 outposts along the frontier of his own. The more 
 strictly these passes were guarded, the greater the 
 number of marauders who flocked by a circuitous 
 route into the unprotected country on the south of 
 the Adji. Their outrages passed all bounds ; the 
 approaching rains, by suspending military opera- 
 tions, threatened to leave them in possession of 
 Bishenpore for several months ; till at last the 
 peasantry, wishing for death rather than life, rose 
 against the oppressors whom they had a year ago 
 welcomed as allies, and the evil began to work its 
 own cure. The marauders of Bishenpore under- 
 went the fate of the Abyssinian slave-troops in 
 Bengal three hundred years before, being shut out 
 of the walled cities, decoyed into the woods by twos 
 and threes, set upon by bands of infuriated peasants, 
 and ignobly beaten to death by clubs. In mid- 
 summer 1790 Mr, Keating ordered the senior 
 captain ' to station a military guard with an officer 
 at Bishenpore, whose sole business I propose to be 
 that of receiving all thieves and Dacoits that shall 
 be sent in.' 
 
 Thus ended the first two years of which we 
 possess a complete record of British rule in Beer- 
 
BEERBHOOM IN 1792. 83 
 
 bhoom. From their calamities we can imagine 
 what had gone before. The amount of property 
 destroyed by the plunderers may be estimated from 
 an entry in a state document drawn up a few years 
 previously. ' Deduct,' saith the deed for the 
 Benares district for the year 1782, 'deduct the 
 devastations, etc., of two months' disturbances, Sicca 
 rupees 666,666 : 10 : 10,'"^ or over ;^7o,ooo ster- 
 ling. If this were the result of two months, what 
 must have been the destruction during two years ? 
 Some time afterwards, when quiet had been imperi- 
 ously enforced, Mr. Keating calmly and rather 
 despondently reviewed the result of his labours. 
 ' Beerbhoom,' he wrote, ' is surrounded on the 
 south-west and west by the great western jungle, 
 which has long protected from the vigilance of 
 justice numerous gangs of Dacoits, who there take 
 up their refuge and commit their depredations on 
 the neighbouring defenceless ryots. Towns once 
 populous are now deserted; the manufactures are 
 decayed ; and where commerce flourished, only a 
 few poor and wretched hovels are seen. These 
 pernicious effects are visible along the whole course 
 of the Adji, particularly in the decay of Elambazaar 
 (the town sacked in 1789), and the almost complete 
 desertion of the once large trading town of Sacara- 
 coonda. When these places on the frontier became 
 from their poverty no longer an object to the 
 Dacoits, their depredations were extended into the 
 
 i«i Treaties and Engagements with the Native Princes, etc., of 
 Asia, p. 93. Quarto (1812). 
 
84 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 heart of the district, and towns have been plundered 
 and people murdered within two coss (four miles) 
 of the Collector's house, by banditti amounting to 
 upwards of three hundred men.' ^'^^ 
 
 This unvarnished picture of devastation is best 
 left without any finishing stroke. From that period 
 to the Santal war, thirteen years ago, armed oppo- 
 sition to the Government has been unknown in 
 Beerbhoom. Even during those first troubled 
 years of British rule, the peasantry obtained a 
 degree of protection that they had not enjoyed for 
 many years previously. Tillage extended ; and 
 between the time that Mr. Foley was sent to 
 ' superintend ' Beerbhoom and that at which Mr. 
 Keating finally elaborated his system of frontier 
 passes, three hundred and twenty-eight rural com- 
 munes had been repeopled and brought once more 
 under cultivation."' This represents an increase of 
 more than seven per cent, to the total number of 
 communes in the district. During the two calami- 
 tous years with which we are most familiar, the 
 improvement was rapid. In November 1788 Mr. 
 Keating found the banditti free to roam over 
 the district. He established outposts to check 
 the constant invasions of marauders from the hill 
 country ; but his frontier passes were forced, and 
 to all appearance the district was no safer in 1 789 
 than when he took over charge. The disasters of 
 
 ^*2 From the Collector to the Board of Revenue, dated ist June 
 1792. B. R. R. 
 
 1^' Statistics in a Report from the Collector to the Board of 
 Revenue, dated 3d July 1789. 
 
THE AMENDING HAND. 85 
 
 his first winter, however, had taught him what was 
 needed. The outposts, strengthened by reinforce- 
 ments, were maintained intact; and the banditti, 
 unable to find an entrance, made a detour to the 
 south, and massed themselves on that side of the 
 Adji. Before the rains of 1790 set in, the inha- 
 bitants had joined heartily with the Government 
 against the common enemy ; and the robber-hordes 
 of Beerbhoom, like the men of Gaza, seemed to 
 have been assembled in one spot only to render 
 their destruction more complete. 
 
 As soon as order was established, the amending 
 hand rapidly made itself felt. Organized robberies 
 and armed feuds between the landholders have from 
 time to time disturbed the repose of the district, but 
 on a scale so trifling as barely to keep alive the 
 remembrance of the old troubles, as the names of 
 Singh-bhum (Lion-land), Sher-ghar (Tiger-town), 
 Sher-ghati (Tiger-ford), Shikar-pur (Hunting-ham- 
 let), stand as scarcely recognised memorials of the 
 days when the margin of cultivation receded before 
 wild beasts. In 1802 Sir Henry Strachey mentions 
 Beerbhoom as a part of the country remarkably free 
 from gang-robbery ; it is now, perhaps, the very 
 quietest district in Bengal; and a recent public 
 document, in curious unconsciousness of the past, 
 describes it as still enjoying ' its old immunity from 
 crime.' 
 
 Nor has the change been less marked with 
 regard to wild animals. It is now impossible to 
 find an undomesticated elephant, and very rarely 
 
86 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL, 
 
 possible to hear of a tiger throughout the length 
 and breadth of the district. The last tiger-hunt 
 took place in May 1864. A band of hill-men, in 
 number about five hundred, beat many square miles 
 of jungle, but not a bear or a leopard, much less a 
 tiger or an elephant, could they turn out. The 
 largest thing we saw was a small spotted deer. 
 Bears and leopards still survive in the recesses of 
 the woods, but they never trouble the inhabitants, 
 and their capture is as much an event as the shoot- 
 ing of an eagle in the Scottish Highlands. 
 
 For the disorders which the English found in 
 Bengal the native aristocracy cannot be held re- 
 sponsible. At that period, Mussulman oppression 
 and public calamities had reduced them to a state 
 in which they could no longer discharge their func- 
 tions as the natural leaders of the people. But the 
 immemorial miseries of the Bengali spring from a 
 much deeper source. A strong spirit of nationality 
 would have rendered such protracted oppression 
 impossible; the want of this spirit in an Asiatic 
 country during the spread of Islam rendered 
 conquest and national abasement inevitable. At 
 a time when English statesmen in Bengal are 
 labouring to develop a self-supporting national life 
 among the heterogeneous millions over whom they 
 have been called to rule, it is well accurately to 
 understand the reasons why a people so industrious, 
 so patient, and yet so shrewdly quick-witted, have 
 never been a nation. As the same reasons lie at 
 the root of much that is otherwise inexplicable in 
 
THE BENGALIS NEVER A NATION. 87 
 
 the home Hfe and agrarian system of the Bengali, 
 such an inquiry, although it will lead away from my 
 immediate subject-matter, may with great propriety 
 be conducted in a preliminary volume of Rural 
 Annals. The two following chapters, therefore, 
 will treat at some length of the elemental and 
 structural defects that have hitherto incapacitated 
 the hybrid multitudes of Bengal from becoming a 
 nation. 
 
88 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ETHNICAL ELEMENTS OF THE LOWLAND 
 POPULATION OF BENGAL. 
 
 T N the year 1790 the United District, after a full 
 half-century of invasion and rapine, obtained 
 .rest, and its new rulers had leisure to survey the 
 population that had passed under their care. In 
 Bishenpore the Rajah, his aristocracy, and the whole 
 people were Hindus. On the other bank of the 
 Adji the Beerbhoom house, with several Mussul- 
 man families who had grown rich in its service, 
 asserted Afghan or Pathan descent, and disdained to 
 mingle their northern blood with the misbelieving 
 natives. Separated from their subjects by religion, 
 a foreign speech, and the pride of birth, they formed 
 a class socially important, but numerically small. 
 The mass of the people consisted of two races 
 which in intellect, language, and in everything that 
 makes a nation great or ignoble, have been selected 
 to represent the highest and the lowest types of 
 mankind. The aboriginal tribes of Bengal, pushed 
 back from the rich valley by the Aryans, made a 
 final stand for existence among the highlands of 
 Beerbhoom ; and the same mountains which were 
 
THE ARYANS AND ABORIGINES. 89 
 
 fixed in pre-historic times as landmarks between 
 the races, accurately demarcate their territories at 
 this day. The composite people evolved from two 
 stocks, belonging to very unequal degrees of civili- 
 sation, when brought closely and permanently into 
 contact, presents one of the most interesting ques- 
 tions with which history has to deal. How the 
 Aryan and the Aboriginal solved this problem, the 
 terms on which they have to a certain extent united, 
 and the ethnical compromises to which they have 
 had to submit, form the subject of this chapter. 
 
 The inquiry leads us back to that far-off time 
 which we love to associate with patriarchal stillness.^ 
 Yet the eghoes of ancient life in India little re- 
 semble a Sicilian Idyl or the strains of Pan's pipe, 
 but strike the ear rather as the cries of oppressed 
 and wandering nations, of people in constant mo- 
 tion and pain. Early Indian researches, however, 
 while they make havoc of the pastoral landscapes 
 of Genesis and Job, have a consolation peculiarly 
 suited to this age. They plainly tell us, that as 
 in Europe, so in Asia, the primitive state of man- 
 kind was a state of unrest ; and that civilisation, 
 despite its exactions and nervous city life, is a state 
 of repose. 
 
 Our earliest glimpses of the human family in 
 
 • ' The India of the Vedic books presents to M. Michelet's view a 
 domestic picture of purity, dignity, and sweetness,' says the Saturday 
 Reviewer of M. Michelet's 'Bible de I'Humanitd' (Paris : Chamerot, 
 1864). Little as is known of Sanskrit history, enough has been ascer- 
 tained to dispel M. Michelet's pretty illusion of the millions of medi- 
 tative Aryans chaunting the Ramayana during three or four thousand 
 years. 
 
90 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 India disclose two tribes of widely different origin, 
 struggling for the mastery. In the primitive time, 
 which lies on the horizon even of inductive history, 
 a tall, fair-complexioned race passed the Hima- 
 laya. They came of a conquering stock. They 
 had known the safety and the plenty which can 
 only be enjoyed in regular communities. They 
 brought with them a store of legends and devotional 
 strains ; and chief of all, they were at the time of 
 their migration southward through Bengal, if not at 
 their first arrival in India, imbued with that high 
 sense of nationality which burns in the hearts of 
 a people who believe themselves the depositary 
 of a divine revelation.^ There is no record of 
 the new-comers' first struggle for life with the 
 people of the land. We know not the date of 
 their setting out, nor the names of their leaders. 
 We have no tales to tell like those which have 
 interested seventy generations in the weather-beaten 
 band who drew up their galleys on the sands of 
 Cumae. The philologer can only assert that a 
 branch of a noble stock won for themselves a home 
 
 ^ European scholars have assigned the Vedic claims to inspiration 
 to the commentators rather than to the composers of the hymns. 
 The commentators unquestionably developed these claims, but 
 Hindu faith has ever asserted the inspiration of the sacred texts. 
 Such passages as the following in the Vedas themselves leave the 
 devout but unsceptical pundit little room for doubt. ' The holy sages 
 of old who talked about divine truths with the gods.' — Rig Veda, i. 
 179. ' The wise, the well-knowing one, who hath taught us, he hath 
 declared the secrets of the heavens.' — Rig Veda, vii. 87. ' The gods 
 gave birth first to the hymn, then to the fire, then to the offering.' — 
 Rig Veda, viii. 88. The question is comprehensively discussed in 
 Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Part iii., London, Octavo, 1861. 
 
THE ARYANS. 91 
 
 among numerous but inferior tribes, and that before 
 the dawn of history the children of the soil had 
 been reduced to villeinage, or driven back into the 
 forest. 
 
 The emigrants belonged to that prolific race 
 which, under the title of Aryan, literally Noble, 
 radiated from Central Asia to the extremities of the 
 ancient world. One branch established a powerful 
 state and a highly spiritual creed on the borders 
 of China ; another founded the Persian dynasty ; a 
 third built Athens and Lacedaemon ; a fourth, the 
 City of the Seven Hills. A distant colony of the 
 same race excavated silver ore in pre-historic Spain ; 
 and the earliest glimpses we get at our own Eng- 
 land disclose an Aryan settlement, fishing in its 
 willow canoes and working in the mines of Corn- 
 wall. The Aryan speech has formed the basis of 
 the languages of half of Asia, and of nearly the 
 whole of Europe; it is now conquering for itself 
 the forests of the New World, and carrying Indo- 
 Germanic culture to island empires in the Southern 
 Ocean. The history of the ancient world, as under- 
 stood by classical scholars, is the history of a few 
 Aryan settlements on the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean ; and that wide term, modern civilisation, 
 merely means the civilisation of the western families 
 of the same race. 
 
 The Vedic literature exhibits the Indian branch 
 of the Aryans, settled in their new homes. By 
 whatever route they travelled, there is little doubt 
 that their first settlements lay in the well-watered 
 
92 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 valleys of North-western Hindusthan. The seven 
 rivers of the Punjab, indeed, would seem to form 
 a common remembrance of both the Indian and 
 Persian branches of the race ; and this circumstance 
 gives additional probability to the views of those 
 scholars who maintain that the schism between the 
 Vedic and the Avestic faiths took place on the 
 Indian side of the Himalaya.^ In its subsequent 
 wanderings through India, the Sanskrit race has 
 never forgotten its primitive northern home. The 
 land of pure speech ;* the source of divine know- 
 ledge ; the fountainhead of holy waters ; the scene 
 of the birth, the trials, and the glorious espousals 
 of Uma;^ the realm of the mystic king Himalaya;* 
 the region in which Arjuna strove single-handed 
 with the Great God,' and, although defeated like 
 Jacob of old, won a blessing and the irresistible 
 weapon from the Deity; — these and numberless other 
 
 ' The Hapta Hendu of the Vendidad are plainly the same as the 
 Sapta Sindhavas of the Vedic Hymns. This is only one of many 
 coincidences indicating a common origin of the now widely severed 
 faiths. Haug points out that the thoroughly Sanskrit Mantra appears 
 in the Zendavesta as Manthra, and that Zoroaster was the Minthran, 
 or giver of the Avestic Manthras. (Aitareya Brahmanam, 2 vols., 
 Triibner, 1863.) Spiegel has shown, in his Introductory Discourse to 
 the Avesta, that Yima is the same as the Sanskrit Yama. Cf. Muir's 
 Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii. pp. 293, 294, and his admirable pamphlet 
 'Yama,' 8vo, London 1865. 
 
 * Sanskrit Texts, ii. 338. 8vo, i860. 
 
 * The beautiful legend of Uma formed the introduction to the 
 Kumara Sambhava, and is now all that remains of it. 
 
 " Kumara Sambhava, by Kalidasa. Canto i. 
 
 ^ Mahadeva. ' Uttara Kuru, the Elysium in the remotest north, 
 may be most properly regarded as an ideal picture created by the 
 imagination of a life of tranquil felicity.' — Lassen, Ind. Antiq. i. p. 
 5u. 
 
THEIR NORTHERN HOME. 93 
 
 epithets and legends all point to the time when the 
 Sanskrit race, still on its pilgrimage, halted for a 
 while in its beloved north. There was its Olympus ; 
 there eloquence descended from heaven among 
 men ; and there the abodes of the blessed cluster 
 beneath the shadow of the golden mountain, or 
 cast their reflections on the twin sacred lakes.* 
 One valley in particular left an ineffaceable im- 
 pression. It has become the Holy Land of the 
 Indo-Aryans, and the river® that watered it was 
 long remembered with the affection and devout 
 regard which the Jordan excites among the dis- 
 persed of the Jews. 
 
 From this happy valley the settlers threw off 
 colonies east and south, and before the compilation 
 of their customs into a national code had conquered 
 all Bengal. Manu has some curious verses on the 
 Sanskrit geography of his time, which, as recently 
 illustrated by the scholarship of Dr. Muir, throw a 
 new and conclusive light on the spread of Aryan 
 civilisation in India. Manu's civilised World is in 
 the shape of a comet, with its eye in the north-west 
 of India, and a broad tail spreading south-east to 
 the Bay of Bengal. He divides it into four regions, 
 each less pure as it is more distant from the starting- 
 point in the north, and each representing Aryan 
 migrations at widely-separated epochs. 
 
 First there was the northern valley, the Holy 
 Land itself, described by Manu as ' lying between 
 
 * Manosaravara and Ravana-prada. 
 
 • The Saraswati. 
 
94 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the two sacred rivers/" fashioned of God and called 
 by the name of the Creator,'" South-east of the 
 Holy Land, and adjoining to it, lay the Land of the 
 Sacred Singers." This marks the first advance of 
 the Sanskrit Pomoerium. The later portion, at 
 least, of the Vedic hymns was composed within it, 
 and the places of pilgrimage at every confluence of 
 its streams bear witness to a sanctity hardly less 
 venerable than that of the Holy Land itself. ' From 
 a Brahman born in this land, let every man on the 
 earth learn each his own duties.' ^^ 
 
 But not even this extension would suffice for 
 the growing numbers of the people, and the next 
 stride was a wide one. It embraced what Manu 
 accurately calls the Middle Land,^* including the 
 whole river system of Upper India, from the Hima- 
 layas on the north to the Vindhya ranges on the 
 south, and from Allahabad on the east to where the 
 sacred river was fabled to hide itself from the im- 
 pure races beneath the sands of the western desert. 
 The colonization of this vast tract seems not to 
 have commenced till the close of the Vedic era, and 
 it must have been the slow work of ages. In it 
 the simple faith of the singers was first adorned 
 with stately rites, and then extinguished beneath 
 them. It beheld the race progress from a loose 
 
 1° The Saraswati and the Drishadvati. 
 
 11 Devanirmittam desham Brahmavarttam. Manava Dharma 
 Sastra, lib. ii. sloka 17, Cox and Bayhs, 410, 1825. Muir's Sanskrit 
 Texts, ii. 418. 
 
 12 Brahmarshidesha. 
 
 1^ Manava Dharma Sastra, ii. 2a 
 I'' Madhya-desha. Id. ii. 21. 
 
ARYAN COLONIZATION OF BENGAL. 95 
 
 confederacy of patriarchal communities into several 
 well-knit nations, each secured by a strong central 
 force, but disfigured by distinctions of caste, destined 
 in the end to be the ruin of the Sanskrit people. 
 The compilers of the land-law recorded in the Book 
 of Manu, if not actual residents of the Middle Land, 
 were so closely identified with it, as- to look upon 
 it as the focus of their race ; and it is certain that 
 the treatise which goes by Manu's name could not 
 have been written till after the Indian Aryans had 
 settled down into the sort of civilisation which the 
 Middle Land developed. 
 
 These three regions must long have furnished 
 sufficient territory for the race ; and no one who 
 knows what a terrible thing an Indian river is, with 
 its midnight hurricanes, its uncontrollable currents, 
 its whirlpools and sheets of treacherous calm, will 
 wonder that the Aryans hesitated to embark for 
 the lower valley of the Ganges. But river courses 
 have ever formed the high roads of nations, and 
 sooner or later the Ganges gave a direction to the 
 Sanskrit line of march through Bengal. Like the 
 hordes of Northern Europe under similar circum- 
 stances, ' they followed the unknown course of the 
 river, confident in their valour and careless of what- 
 ever power might oppose them ;'^® and before the 
 compilation of their National Customs, a work pro- 
 bably performed by several hands, but popularly 
 ascribed to Manu, they had spread themselves over 
 the whole of Bengal, 'from the Eastern even to 
 
 ** Gibbon. 
 
96 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the Western Ocean.'" This tract Manu calls the 
 Aryan Pale. It comprised the entire Sanskrit 
 world of his time. Beyond it all was terra incognita^ 
 peopled, according to Sanskrit writers, by giants 
 and raw-eaters, — regions where the black antelope 
 refused to graze, and in which the sacrificing Aryan 
 was forbidden to dwell. 
 
 We are too much accustomed to speak of India 
 as a single country, and of its inhabitants as a single 
 nation ; but the truth is, that as regards its history, 
 its extent, and its population, India displays the 
 diversities rather of a continent than of a single 
 State. Our mistake arises from the customs or 
 beliefs of particular parts being falsely predicated 
 of the whole, and from isolated facts being magni- 
 fied into general conclusions. The popular English 
 mind, accustomed to regard the Indian Empire as 
 a political unit among British dependencies, has 
 come to look upon the component parts of that 
 unit as historically and socially one. Wide dif- 
 ferences of race and creed are known to exist, but 
 the recognition is dim and speculative, rather than 
 practically and substantially realized. Setting aside 
 the Mussulmans and their faith, it is generally 
 supposed that the inhabitants of India are, and 
 for ages have been, Hindus ; that the religion of 
 India since the beginning of history has been the 
 Hindu religion ; and that from time immemorial 
 Indian society has been artificially divided into four: 
 classes, known as the Hindu Castes. Such opinions 
 
 '• Manu, ii. 22. 
 
MANU'S SYSTEM A LOCAL ONE. 97 
 
 have led to a complete misunderstanding of the 
 Indian people, — a misunderstanding which warps 
 our whole political dealings with India, and which 
 stands as a barrier between our eastern subjects 
 and that new order of things, with its more active 
 humanity and purer creed, of which England is the 
 messenger and representative to the Asiatic world. 
 
 The civilisation which is popularly supposed to 
 have been the civilisation of ancient India, and 
 which is represented by the Brahmanas and the 
 Book of Manu, was in its integrity confined to the 
 northern country, termed by Manu the Middle 
 Land, and now known as the North-west Provinces 
 and Punjab. The active duties of life pressed 
 lightly upon the conquerors in the thoroughly 
 vanquished north. An age of reflection followed 
 an age of exertion, and the Aryans subsided into 
 the mild-eyed philosophers whom Megasthenes 
 found conversing amid their mango groves chiefly 
 on life and death. The sacred texts were anno- 
 tated, and their simple prayers elaborated into a 
 complicated and costly superstition. A meditative 
 generation went to work on the sayings of their 
 practical fathers, determined to elicit hidden mean- 
 ings from everything. The objective was fined 
 down to the subjective ; an observation on the 
 weather furnished a saving doctrine of religion ; 
 and from a thanksgiving for victory a whole theo- 
 logical system was evolved. Schools wrangled, 
 sects split words, ceremony was piled upon cere- 
 mony, till at length the highest object of Aryan 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
98 THE ANNALS OF R URAL BENGAL. 
 
 existence became the propagation of grammatical 
 enigmas, or the successful performance of a sacrifice 
 which should occupy three generations, and extend 
 over more than one hundred years." Of such 
 refinements the Aryan emigrants in Lower Bengal 
 knew nothing. At the time of their setting out, 
 their countrymen were workers rather than thinkers : 
 philosophy did not easily travel through the jungles 
 of the southern valley ; and the settlers had to con- 
 sider not so much why they existed, as by what 
 means they were to continue to exist. Their 
 opponents were not rival pandits armed with new 
 interpretations, but the black squat races with sharp 
 spears and poisoned arrows in their hands. It was 
 not till historic times that the Hindus of Bengal 
 Proper accepted Hinduism in the full sense of the 
 word. Buddhism, which found arrayed against 
 it in the north a stately phalanx of religious beliefs, 
 a host of time-honoured rites and vested interests, 
 obtained in Lower Bengal a fair hearing, such as a 
 new creed might receive from a people who had 
 not developed a high form of religion for them- 
 selves. Moreover, Buddhism won its easiest and 
 most permanent conquests in the countries out- 
 side the Middle Land; and to this day its monu-, 
 ments, now turned into Hindu temples, form the 
 most conspicuous pieces of architecture in the dis- 
 tricts adjoining Beerbhoom. The settlers in the 
 
 " Haug speaks of sacrificial sessions lasting even one thousand 
 years, and refers to the Mahabharata iii. 10513 for an example.— 
 Aitareya Brahmanam, vol. i. p. 6 and footnote. 
 
B UDDHISM IN LO WER BENGAL. 99 
 
 Lower Valley must either have quickly forgotten 
 the distinctive doctrines of Aryan faith as professed 
 in the Middle Land, or they must have started 
 southwards before those doctrines were evolved. 
 They make their first appearance in history as 
 Buddhists, not as Hindus : their kings were abori- 
 ginal, not Aryan ; and the Celts had listened to 
 Christian anthems in lona centuries before the 
 mixed Bengali people accepted their present religion. 
 After their conversion they repeatedly and con- 
 sciously supplemented their meagre Hinduism with 
 importations from the Middle Land ; and one of 
 their first traditions, in which we touch firm historic 
 ground, represents the King of Gour bringing 
 priests from the north to initiate his Brahmans in 
 sacrifices common for ages in Upper India, but 
 which the priests of Bengal Proper knew not how 
 to perform. No one can study minutely the local 
 monuments and traditions of the Lower Valley, 
 without coming to the conviction that the Hindu 
 creed, as laid down in Manu and the Brahmanas, 
 is a comparatively modern importation from the 
 north, and that Buddhism was the first form of 
 an elaborated religious belief which the Bengali 
 people received.^* 
 
 '^ I limit the above remarks to Bengal Proper, the province tc 
 the south-east of Magadha (Bahar), in which latter, from its proxi- 
 mity to the Middle Land, Brahmanical influences were stronger. 
 Until the fourth century a.d. the celebrated tooth of Buddha 
 was kept at Jagannath, then the Jerusalem of the Buddhists, as it is 
 now of the Hindus. Prinsep, Lassen, and Burnouf have proved, 
 partly from manuscripts, principally from inscriptions, that Bud- 
 dhism was prevalent in many parts of India from 300 B.C. to 400 A.D. 
 
loo THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 But the habit of predicating of the whole of 
 India what are in reahty local customs or beliefs, 
 has exercised a less injurious effect upon the popu- 
 lar ideas concerning Indian faith, than upon the 
 views which statesmen have adopted with regard 
 to the social institutions and practical life of the 
 Indian people. We have been so long accus- 
 tomed to hear Indian society termed rigid and 
 artificial, that it will require a somewhat lengthy 
 disquisition to prove that caste, as described by 
 Manu and popularly predicated of the whole Hin- 
 dus, is in truth only predicable of the Middle 
 Land. It will be found, however, that Indian caste 
 in general, and particularly in Lower Bengal, is 
 neither rigid nor artificial, but is built upon the 
 universal and natural basis of an ancient society — 
 the conquerors and the conquered. Manu's four- 
 fold classification of Brahmans, Kshatryas, Vaisyas, 
 and Sudras, has a stiffness and an inertia about it 
 very discouraging to Indian social reformers, and 
 affords an excuse for inaction that might otherwise 
 
 The Chinese travellers Fa Hian and Hiuan Thsang are evidence of 
 its existence down to the seventh century. The kings of Bengal, 
 with Gour as their capital — a dynasty that reigned from 785 to 1040 
 A.D. — were Buddhists at least until 900 A.D. ; and the creed lurked 
 in various out of the way places, such as the highlands of Beer- 
 bhoom and Orissa, until the time of the English Plantagenets. The 
 chief temple within the present district of Beerbhoom is of Buddhist 
 origin.- — Rajmahal, p. 19, etc. Notes and Queries suggested by a 
 visit to Orissa, 8vo pamphlet, p. 2. History, etc., of Eastern India, 
 from the Buchanan Papers, vols. i. and ii. Survey Report of Beer- 
 bhoom, p. 14, by Captain Sherwill, 410, Calcutta 1855. Saint- 
 Hilaire's 'Le Bouddha et sa Religion,' 8vo, Paris 1863, Sir L 
 Tennent's Ceylon, parts iii, and iv. 
 
CASTE. 10 1 
 
 be stigmatized as sloth. The following pages will 
 show this alleged inertia and fourfold classification 
 to be disproved by the history of the people, and 
 will exhibit the population of Bengal as naturally 
 composed of two distinct ethnical elements. 
 
 In the Middle Land, peace and civil security 
 developed social distinctions which the southern emi- 
 grants, engaged in constant warfare with the abori- 
 gines, had neither leisure to think of nor wealth to 
 support. It is impossible to give the date at which 
 the rise of caste took place, but it is easy to say at 
 what epoch it did not exist, when it was beginning to 
 make its influence felt, and when it had grown into 
 a full-blown dominant institution in the land. The 
 Rig Veda knows little or nothing of caste, although 
 it contains verses which were afterwards twisted into 
 an authoritative sanction for it.^' As the religious 
 system of the Hindus developed, so also did their 
 social distinctions ; and the Yajur Veda places be- 
 yond doubt, that in the district in which it was 
 written, Brahmanism had already introduced com- 
 plicated religious forms, and that society had 
 acquiesced to a certain extent in the cruel differ- 
 ences between man and man that Brahmanism 
 implies. Before the compilation of national cus- 
 toms known as the Book of Manu, caste had 
 attained its final development. The Book of 
 Manu, however, accurately represented the state 
 
 1^ The Purusha Sukta (R. V. x. 90). The allegorical nature of 
 this hymn is set forth in the Sanskrit Texts, part i. Dr. Muir, how- 
 ever, has kindly shown me the proof sheets of his 2d edition, provmg 
 that the R. V. was not so unconscious of caste as some have alleged. 
 
102 THE. ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 of Indian society in only a single province — the 
 Middle Land. On the west, caste never crossed 
 the Indus, and it is doubtful whether it reached by 
 some hundreds of miles the bank of that river. The 
 Rajputs did not accept a fourfold classification until 
 within historic times. Beyond the Indus stretched 
 the Bahika land, peopled with Sanskrit-speaking 
 tribes, who held that God had made all men equal, 
 and that He was to be worshipped by no priestly 
 formulas. Beyond them, again, the whole Aryans 
 of Cashmir are said to be of one caste i^" and 
 indeed everywhere west of the Middle Land, a for- 
 mal fourfold classification of the people such as 
 Manu records is unknown. These Sanskrit-speak- 
 ing nations on the west, who, rejecting the civilisa- 
 tion of the Middle Land, stood out for the simple 
 faith and customs of their ancestors, are everywhere 
 spoken of in the Brahmanical section of Sanskrit 
 literature with scorn and hatred. The accepting or 
 rejecting of caste implied the accepting or rejecting 
 of the whole Brahmanical ritual, and so in process of 
 time it became the great issue between the Aryans 
 of the Middle Land and those of the west. The 
 Brahmanized Hindus tried to force their system on 
 their fellow-countrymen ; sometimes peaceably or 
 by the bribe of admission into the highest caste,^^ 
 
 ^'' I limit this statement expressly to the Aryan population of 
 Cashmir : the remains of an aboriginal race, with the mixed castes 
 that sprung from it, exist there as elsewhere throughout in India. 
 
 2' More than one Sanskrit legend relates how princes belonging 
 to the inferior classes were adopted into the Brahman caste. The 
 Brahmans tell the stories to suit their own purposes ; but I believe 
 that these legends record, under a thin disguise, the spread of the 
 
THE BOUNDARIES OF CASTU. 103 
 
 but more often by a fierce religious warfare, which 
 has left its intolerant stamp upon all Sanskrit litera- 
 ture subsequent to the Vedic hymns, and one of 
 whose episodes forms the first national struggle 
 recorded in Sanskrit history. ^^ Caste soon became 
 the differentia of the Brahmanized Aryans ; and 
 Manu, hitting the truth nearer than he guessed, 
 held that the Greeks and Persians were sprung 
 from errant Kshatryas who had lost their caste.^^ 
 
 Manu gives the Himalayas as the northern, 
 and the Vindhya range as the southern boundary 
 of the Middle Land. Beyond those mountains it 
 is certain that caste, as represented by the rigid 
 fourfold classification in Manu, never penetrated. 
 Entire communities of Aryans in southern India 
 claim to be of the Brahman caste, and when a 
 Kshatryan family or colony is found among such 
 a population, its foreign origin or comparatively 
 recent migration southwards can generally be ascer- 
 tained. Mixed castes abound to the south of the 
 Vindhyas, as to the north, east, and west of them ; 
 but these mixed castes arose not from intermarriage 
 between the first three castes mentioned in Manu, 
 but by cohabitation of the Aryan settlers with the 
 aborigines. 
 
 Brahmanical civilisation before the caste system of the Middle Land 
 was firmly fixed. 
 
 22 The conflict of Parasu-Rama with the Kshatryas, and his final 
 triumph over them. MUUer compares this war of the castes to the 
 long struggle in Greece which ended in the erection of republics upon 
 the ruins of despotism. 
 
 2' The Yavanas and Pahlavas. The Vishnu Purana takes the 
 same view. 
 
io4 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 As Manu's artificial classification of the people 
 never passed in its integrity beyond the Middle 
 Land to the north, west, or south, so on the east, 
 where Lower Bengal begins, there caste as a fourfold 
 classification ceases. In North Bahar, which borders 
 on the ancient Middle Land, it is just apparent.^* In 
 South Bahar, which adjoins Lower Bengal, it is un- 
 known ; and the population are divided, not into the 
 four castes of Manu, but into Aryans, non- Aryans, 
 and mixed classes. 
 
 One important difference, however, is observable 
 in the caste to which the Aryans on the east and 
 those on the west of the Middle Land claim to 
 belong. At the period when the race passed the 
 Indus it was a confederacy of fighting tribes, and 
 among the colonies it left on the west of that river 
 war long continued to be the chief business of life. 
 When, therefore, the Brahmans of the Middle Land 
 formed their fourfold classification, the Western 
 Rajputs and the other tribes of the ancient Bahika 
 land were naturally set down as clans of the mili- 
 tary caste. In the Holy Land, where the race 
 pitched its tents after leaving the Indus, and still 
 more in the Land of the Sacred Singers, peace 
 developed literature, and mental attainments rather 
 than physical or warlike qualifications became the 
 
 ^* Kshatryas exist in Bahar, but they always give a distinct 
 account of themselves as migrating in small bodies from the north, in 
 comparatively recent times. For an example, see ' The History, 
 Antiquities, etc., of Eastern India,' from the Buchanan MSS., vol. ii. 
 p. 121. The Kshatryas of Bahar claim to be of greater antiquity 
 than any of the isolated families in Lower Bengal. 
 
CASTE IN LOWER BENGAL. 105 
 
 fountain of honour.^' The 'religious conceptions 
 and sacred usages which,' to quote a noble sen- 
 tence of Roth's, ' even in the hymns of the Rig 
 Veda we can see advancing from a simple and 
 unconnected form to compact and multiform shapes, 
 had now spread themselves over the entire life of 
 the people, and in the hands of the priests had 
 become a power predominant over everything else.' 
 At the time when the subsequent Aryan emigrants 
 started for Lower Bengal, the priestly class had 
 been recognised as the head of society, but no sharp 
 distinctions among the general mass of the people 
 seem to have been formed. The settlers in Lower 
 Bengal naturally set up as Aryans of the highest 
 class in their new homes, just as every Englishman 
 in India during the last century claimed for him- 
 self the title of Esquire.^* The Aryans were the 
 aristocracy of Lower Bengal, the Brahmans were 
 the aristocracy of the Middle Land ; and when a 
 rigid division of the people took place in the parent 
 country, the aristocracy of the distant province 
 claimed the same rank and the same title as the 
 aristocracy of the fatherland. This rank was never 
 
 ^* ' It is only after the Aryan tribes had advanced soutliward, and 
 taken quiet possession of the rich plains and beautiful groves of 
 Central India, that they seem to have turned all their energies and 
 thoughts from the world without them to that more wonderful nature 
 which they perceived within.' — Max Miiller's History of Ancient San- 
 skrit Literature, 8vo, London 1859, p. 25. 
 
 2* Witness ' The Humble Petition of Mr. ' in the Calcutta 
 
 Gazette of the 15th January 1789. I have seen an advertisement in 
 an early Calcutta paper, in which a military man notifies that he 
 disclaims the title of Esquire. 
 
io6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 fully given, however. The mere name of Brahmans 
 the Aryans of the south-east settlements might 
 easily usurp, but the Brahmans of the Middle Land 
 never admitted them to equal honour with them- 
 selves. The Brahmans of Lower Bengal bore to 
 the Brahmans of Oudh the same relation that the 
 landed gentry of Canada or Australia bears to the 
 landed gentry of England. Each is an aristocracy, 
 both claim the title of Esquire, but each is composed 
 of elements whose social history is widely different, 
 and the home aristocracy never regard the success- 
 ful settlers as their equals in rank. The Brahmans 
 of the Middle Land went further : they declared the 
 Brahmans of Lower Bengal inferior not merely in the 
 social scale, but in religious capabilities. To this 
 day, many of the north country Brahmans do not eat 
 with the Brahmans of the Lower Valley ; and con- 
 victed felons from the north-west will suffer repeated 
 floggings in jail for contumacy, rather than let rice 
 cooked by a Bengal Brahman pass their lips. For 
 ages, the Lower Bengal Brahmans were incapable of 
 performing the more solemn sacrifices, and the jus 
 connubii appears to have been cut off between the 
 Brahmans of the south-east and those of the Middle 
 Land. Later colonies of northern Brahmans could 
 form no legal connection with Aryan women of the 
 Lower Valley, and the children born to them by such 
 mothers were renounced as illegitimate. 
 
 The population of Lower Bengal consists, ac- 
 cording to the pandits, of five elements, who came 
 into the country in the following order : \st. The 
 
THE ETHNOLOGY OF LOWER BENGAL. 107 
 
 aboriginal non-Aryan tribes ; 2d, The Vaidic and 
 Saraswati Brahmans, who formed the first Aryan 
 settlements ; 30^, Kshatryan refugees, who escaped 
 the extermination of their caste by Parasu-Rama, 
 with isolated Vaisya families, few or none of whom 
 penetrated below Bahar; /\.th, A later migration of 
 Brahmans, circ. 900 a.d., represented by the story 
 of the five Brahmans brought from Canouj by Adis- 
 wara; 5/^, Recent emigrants and military adventurers 
 from the north, Rajputs, i.e. Kshatryas, Afghans, and 
 Mussulmans of diverse races. In all this there is 
 nothing of the rigid fourfold classification described 
 by Manu. The native legend regarding the intro- 
 duction of the fourth element is briefly this. King 
 Adiswara of Gour, wishing to perform sacrifices 
 for which the Brahmans of the Lower Valley were 
 not competent, brought five Brahmans from Canouj. 
 These Brahmans first settled on the east side of the 
 Ganges, and forming connections with the women 
 of the country, had many children, whom they 
 called Varindra. When they were fairly estab- 
 lished, their lawful wives followed them from 
 Canouj, and the husbands, leaving their concubines 
 and illegitimate children on the east of the Ganges 
 (at Bikrampur in Dacca), crossed the river with 
 their legal wives and their offspring. From these 
 legitimate children the Rari, i.e. the Brahmans of 
 the western districts of Lower Bengal, are de- 
 scended. This took place about 900 A.D., and 
 the rival claims of the old and the new settlers 
 soon became a source of national disquiet. Two 
 
io8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 centuries afterwards, Ballal Sen, the last Hindu 
 sovereign of Bengal, found it necessary to settle 
 questions of precedence by a comprehensive classi- 
 fication of his Aryan subjects. Many of the older 
 families of the province were amalgamated with the 
 new-comers. Almost all of pure Aryan descent 
 were admitted to equal rights, and of the ancient 
 settlers very few recognised descendants now pre- 
 serve their identity." Several mixed castes were 
 derived from the followers of the Canouj Brahmans 
 (such as the Cayasths) ; but of the other two 
 Twice- Born castes, as described by Manu, viz. 
 the Kshatryan and the Vaisya, scarcely a single 
 family exists in the southern valley, which cannot 
 trace its origin to the north within comparatively 
 recent times, and the rigid fourfold classification of 
 society laid down by Manu is practically unknown 
 in Lower Bengal. 
 
 1 am aware that this conclusion is capable of 
 being misunderstood, and likely to be mis-stated. 
 The actual condition of society, with its cruel dis- 
 tinctions, will be cited against me. Jagganath, 
 Gya, nay, the Holy City within the district of 
 Beerbhoom itself, will be enumerated as abiding 
 testimonies to the thoroughgoing character of Hin- 
 duism in Lower Bengal. The superstitions of those 
 celebrated shrines, however, are easily accounted 
 for by the strong reaction in favour of Hinduism 
 
 2' This account is abbreviated from the statements of my pandits, 
 and from reports of professional Hindu genealogists. See also Cole- 
 brooke's Examinations of the Indian Classes, As. Res. vol. v., and 
 Essays, vol. ii. pp. 187-90, 8vo, 1837. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE RACE. 109 
 
 after the expulsion of Buddhism only eight cen- 
 turies ago. The social distinctions, more cruel in 
 Lower Bengal perhaps than in any other part of 
 India, proceed from a different cause. 
 
 The Sanskrit-speaking settlers found the land 
 already peopled. Their predecessors are still an 
 ethnological mystery, and except in a few frontier 
 districts like Beerbhoom, they succumbed so com- 
 pletely beneath the new-comers, that their separate 
 existence has been forgotten for more than a thou- 
 sand years by the composite people which they 
 helped to form. As countless species of animals 
 once covered the earth's surface which have left 
 no type in the zoology of the present day, so vast 
 races of the human family have lived and worked 
 out their civilisation and vanished, with regard to 
 whom history has up to the present been mute. 
 Geologers tell us that, in a primeval age, myriads 
 of gigantic birds, of which no representative 
 remains, left their footprints in the sands of 
 Connecticut ; that they waded in boundless shal- 
 lows now dried up into solid stone, feeding upon 
 mail-covered fishes, which now lie side by side with 
 them in the rock, and preyed upon by monsters 
 still larger than themselves, but equally extinct 
 before man was born. The primitive races of India 
 resemble in many ways these birds of the Lias. 
 Like them, they perished in prehistoric times ; and 
 of many of them, all that can with certainty be said 
 is, that they once were and now are not. Philology, 
 which speaks so clearly with regard to other extinct 
 
no THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 races, has hitherto had nothing definite to say 
 respecting them. To this day they remain an 
 unclaimed, ignoble horde, of whose origin we know 
 nothing, with whom not one of the great races will 
 acknowledge relationship, and who occupy the 
 background of Indian history as the jungle once 
 covered the land, only to prepare the soil for higher 
 forms of life.^' 
 
 The conflict with the children of the soil is the 
 first historical fact related in Sanskrit literature, 
 The passions it excited intrude themselves alike in 
 the hymns of the priest, the maxims of the lawgiver, 
 and the legends of the epic poet. Many of the 
 Vedic chants, like some of the Psalms of David, 
 were poured forth as prayers for deliverance, or 
 as thanksgivings for victory. They describe the 
 enemy in the strong, telling words which men use 
 in moments of excitement; and in judging of the 
 aborigines from the delineations of Sanskrit writers, 
 we must remember that the picture is by an un- 
 friendly hand. After the actual struggle was over, 
 and the beaten races had fallen back into the forest, 
 another element came into play still further to dis- 
 tort the Aryan accounts of them. They shared the 
 fate of the children of Rephaim^^ in Semitic history, 
 
 28 Lassen barely refrains from denying their existence. 
 
 2^ The giant aborigines of Palestine, ' who belonged so entirely to 
 the dim distance, that their name " Rephaim" was used in after- 
 times to designate the huge " guardians," or the shadowy ghosts of 
 the world below.' — Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, by 
 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., 8vo, London 1863, p. 208. Cf. also 
 the Shepherd Tribes of Egypt (Milwan's History of the Jews, vol. 
 i,), and the Typhonians, or subjects of the Eastern Pharaohs who 
 
THE TWO ETHNICAL ELEMENTS. iii 
 
 and became the demons and fallen angels of San- 
 skrit literature.^" 
 
 The population of Lower Bengal ethnically con- 
 sists, therefore, of two elements : first, the Aryan 
 invaders, almost all of whom assumed the rank of 
 Brahmans ; second, the aborigines whom these 
 invaders found living in the land, and whom they 
 speedily reduced to the alternative of serfdom on 
 the open country or flight into the jungle. The 
 great gulf between the conquerors and the con- 
 quered has never been bridged ; and the social 
 distinctions that disgrace Hindu society are not 
 distinctions between various ranks of the same 
 people, but distinctions between too widely diverse 
 and long hostile races. Manu's fourfold classifica- 
 tion, which we have seen is strictly predicable only 
 of the Sanskrit Centre or Middle Land, is based upon 
 a twofold classification applicable to Lower Bengal 
 and every other part of India — to wit, the Aryan, or 
 Twice- Born, as Manu calls them, and the non- Aryan 
 tribes. Kshatryas and Vaisyas are to be found in 
 
 opposed Mencheres, but in Greek literature are associated with the 
 Hellenic giant and demon Typhon. — Osburne's Monumental History 
 of Egypt, vol. i. p. 350, 8vo, 1854. 
 
 *" The Rakhshasas, from whose power the ancient sacrifice im- 
 plored the protection of the Sanskrit gods, and who are represented 
 in the person of Ravana {i. e. Rakhshasendra) and his imps at Ben- 
 gali theatricals to this day. The aborigines of Ceylon had the same 
 opprobrious name affixed to them, as Chinese travellers and Cingalese 
 chroniclers attest. Sir Emerson Tennent writes the word as ' Yakko,' 
 evidently the same as ' Rakko,' which is the colloquial form of the 
 Sanskrit Rakhshas. — Mahawanso, cap. vii. Rajavali, p. 172 ; quoted 
 in a note to Sir Emerson Tennent's Ceylon, vol. i. 332 ; qf. ^Iso 328, 
 370, etc., third edition. 
 
112 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL, 
 
 large numbers only within a limited circle ; but the 
 Brahman and the Sudra, with the mixed classes that 
 sprang from them, form the unalterable elements of 
 the whole Hindu population throughout India. 
 
 How these ethnical distinctions became em- 
 bittered, it is not difficult to understand. The 
 superiority on the side of the Aryans was so great, 
 that they looked upon the aborigines as lower 
 animals,'^ in the same way as the Beerbhoom 
 Brahman of the present day who goes to settle 
 in the adjoining Santal highlands despises, and 
 until recently enslaved, the humble tribes he finds 
 there. In every point in which two races can be 
 compared, the aborigines, called in early Sanskrit 
 literature Dasyans,'^ were painfully inferior. Their 
 speech was of a broken, imperfect type. The Aryan 
 warrior used to pray for victory over ' the men of 
 the inarticulate utterance"* and 'of the uncouth 
 talk."* From the lips of the Aryan flowed a 
 language instinct with tenderness and power; a 
 
 '^ They appear in the great epic under the name of the Monkey 
 Tribes ; in the Himalayas and Ceylon as the Snakes (Nagas), in 
 which form they may also be seen at Hindu theatricals of the present 
 day. They come upon the stage dressed up as the demon inhabitants 
 cf the lower regions (Patala), with human faces, a serpent's tail, and 
 sometimes with broad hoods representing the expanded neck of the 
 Cobra (Coluber Naga). 
 
 "'^ The word appears as Dasyu and Dasa. The latter survives, 
 unchanged, as a family name among the Hinduized aborigines at 
 this day, and is popularly spelt Doss. 
 
 38 Mridhravach. But cf. Bohthngk and Roth. 
 
 5* Anasa, Mlechha. Of these words diverse interpretations have 
 been brought forward. The rendering above given has ample autho- 
 rity on its side, and after Professor Goldstucker's criticisms this is as 
 much as can be said of many Vedic epithets. 
 
SANSKRIT SPEECH. i j 3 
 
 language equipped with the richest inflections and 
 a whole phalanx of grammatical forms ; one which 
 clearly uttered whatever it was in man's lot to suffer, 
 and whatever it was in his mind to conceive, and 
 which from the beginning of recorded time stands 
 forth in one form or other as the vehicle of his 
 highest intellectual efforts. It is not difficult to 
 understand the contempt with which the Sanskrit- 
 speaking conquerors regarded a speech squeezed 
 into such narrow and so ignobly objective moulds 
 as that of the ancient Dasyans or their descendants, 
 the present hill -tribes of the northern frontier. Of 
 this language the most striking features are its 
 multitude of words for whatever can be seen or 
 handled, and its absolute inability to express reflex 
 conceptions of the intellect ;*° the absence of terms 
 representing relationship in general, and conspicu- 
 ously the relationship of cause and effect;^" its 
 meagreness in giving utterance to the emotions, 
 those higher forms of consciousness in which pas- 
 sion is happily blended with reflection ; and its total 
 barrenness of any expressions to shadow forth the 
 mystery of man's inward life ; " — a language of 
 
 '^ In Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimal, there is not a single vernacular 
 word to express matter, spirit, space, instinct, reason, consciousness, 
 quantity, degree, or the like. — Essay on the Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimal 
 Tribes, by B. H. Hodgson, Esq., late of the Bengal Civil Service. 
 Vocabulary, p. 1 1 et seq. 
 
 5^ In Bodo and Dhimal, cause and effect cannot be expressed at 
 all, and in Kocch only by words borrowed direct from Sanskrit. — 
 Id. p. 13. 
 
 '^ Nor have the above languages any terms for earth, heaven, 
 hell, this world, or the next. The Dhimal-speaking tribes have 
 adopted pure Sanskrit words to express these ideas. The Bodos 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
114 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 sensation rather than of perception ; of the seen 
 rather than of the unseen ; of the present rather 
 than of the future and the past. 
 
 Perhaps the circumstance which more than any 
 other single cause tended to widen the gulf between 
 the races, was their difference in colour/* The in- 
 vaders came of a northern stock, and deeply felt 
 that repugnance which the white man everywhere 
 entertains to the black. The ancient singer praises 
 the god who ' destroyed the Dasyans and protected 
 the Aryan colour;'^^ and 'the thunderer who be- 
 stowed on his white friends the fields, bestowed the 
 sun, bestowed the waters.'^" Whatever obscurity 
 may attach to the latter passage, there can be no 
 doubt of the abhorrence with which the singers 
 speak again and again of 'the black skin.'" They 
 tell us of the ' stormy gods who rush on like 
 furious bulls and scatter the black skin;' and of 
 ' the black skin, the hated of Indra,' being swept 
 out of heaven.*^ ' Indra,' runs another text, ' pro- 
 tected in battle the Aryan worshipper, he subdued 
 the lawless for Manu, he conquered the black 
 skin,'^^ and the sacriiicer poured out thanks to his 
 
 have a word for the visible arch of the sky, but beyond it their imagi- 
 nation does not rise. 
 
 '* Hair's Original Sanskrit Texts, part i. p. 43 ; part ii. p. 284, 
 p. 323, etc. The following Vedic quotations are taken direct from 
 the Texts, as I have not at present the means of referring to the 
 hymns. 
 
 ss Rig Veda, iii. 34, 9. ■"> Id. i. 100, 18. 
 
 " 'Krishnam twacham,' Rig Veda, ix. 41, i, etc.; an epithet 
 which reappears, says Muir, in the Sama Veda, i. 491, and ii. 
 242. 
 
 « Rig Veda, ix. 73, 5. « Id. i. 130, 8. 
 
' THE VILE DASYAN colour: 115 
 
 god for ' scattering the slave bands of black descent,' 
 and for stamping out 'the vile Dasyan colour.'" 
 
 A third source of detestation on the part of the 
 Aryan for the aborigines was their repulsive habits 
 of eating. They respected not the life of animals ; 
 some of them ate horse-flesh ; others human flesh ; 
 others, again, fed on the uncooked carcase ; and all 
 made use of animal food to a degree which shocked 
 the nicer sensibilities of the Aryan. The Vedic 
 singers speak of them as gross, gluttonous savages, 
 and concentrate the national abhorrence into one 
 stinging epithet — 'The Raw-Eaters.'^° 
 
 Another source of deep and abiding aversion was 
 the paganism of the Dasyans. The Aryan brought 
 with him highly developed beliefs, and a stately 
 array of religious rites." He found himself among 
 a people without any intelligible faith, and in bond- 
 age to the basest fears. The two noblest doctrines 
 of pre-Christian religion — ^the unity of God and 
 the immortality of the soul — appear in the earliest 
 Sanskrit writings, and have never for a moment, 
 amid centuries of defeat and political degradation, 
 been wholly lost sight of by the Sanskrit-speaking 
 
 ^* Rig Veda, ii. 20, 7, and ii. 12, 4. The ' Dasam Varnam 
 adharam' of the latter verse is still in the mouths of many pandits 
 who never had a copy of the Veda in their hands. 
 
 *5 ' Amad.' For a variety of phrases indicating this repugnance, 
 sec Original Sanskrit Texts, part ii. 435. 
 
 •" Those who wish to realize how deeply the early Indian thinkers 
 penetrated the problems of modern ethics, may compare the beautiful 
 Hindu behef, that whatever we love is loved not for itself, but as the 
 dwelling-place of the First Self, with Jonathan Edwards' ' Theory 0/ 
 Degrees of Being.' 
 
ii6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 race. The truth has been debased and overlaid 
 with error, but the truth has always remained. At 
 a very early period they fell into a mistake natural 
 to an imaginative people, and, by recognising the 
 Almighty too vividly in His more solemn mani- 
 festations, became practically polytheists, worship- 
 ping the work more than the Worker, the creature 
 rather than the Creator. But an intellectual recog- 
 nition of the unity of the Deity appears equally 
 amid the supplications to gods many in the Veda, 
 and the multitudinous superstitions of more recent 
 Hinduism. The ancient Aryans' ' highest object of 
 religion was to restore that bond by which their 
 own self was linked to the Eternal Self;'" and the 
 modern pandit's reply to the missionary who 
 accuses him of polytheism is : ' Oh, these are 
 only various manifestations of the one God ; the 
 same as, though the sun be one in the heavens, 
 yet he appears in multiform reflections upon the 
 lake. The various sects are only different en- 
 trances to the one city.'** 
 
 ■*' Miiller's History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 19. Dr. 
 Muir, in part iv. of his Texts, shows how each of the great sects 
 worships his own deity as the one supreme god. ' Glory to thee,' 
 prays the Krishna-worshipper, ' thou maker of all, thou soul of all, 
 thou source of all, Vishnu, Conqueror, Hari, Krishna.' Then follows a 
 list of the various names under which he is implored. — Sanskrit Texts, 
 iv. p. 223. 
 
 *' This answer is mentioned by Mr. Long in his pamphlet entitled 
 Notes on Visits to Pandits, p. i, 8vo, Calcutta. I have more than 
 once received the same reply. For a philosophical description of the 
 multiplication of gods, see Whately's Dissertation, Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, vol. i. p. 465, eighth edition : ' And it would often 
 happen that one set of men would venerate one image, and others 
 
THE DASYANS WITHOUT GODS. tiy 
 
 The aborigines, so far from having a distinct 
 conception of the unity of God, seemed to the 
 Aryan to possess no conception of a God at all. 
 Their highest religious emotion was vague dread ; 
 and four Vedic epithets, with others equally full 
 of detestation, depict them as the ' Rejectors of 
 Indra,' ' not sacrificing,' ' without gods,' and 'without 
 rites.'*" 
 
 With regard to another point — a point which 
 forms the theological differentia of man as con- 
 trasted with the beasts that perish — the invaders had 
 been vouchsafed a peculiarly full illumination, while 
 the aborigines remained buried in primeval night. 
 The Aryans possessed an unwavering assurance of 
 a future life. The lonely journey of the soul after 
 its separation from the body formed, indeed, one of 
 the first mysteries with which their national mind 
 had grappled, and, like all the imaginative races of 
 antiquity, they devised a being more divine than man, 
 though originally not equal to the gods, to guide 
 them on the dark passage. While the Egyptian 
 monarch lay wrapped in essences beneath the pyra- 
 mid, Theut conducted his soul to the judgment of 
 the dead. Hermes performed the same office for 
 the Greeks, and the Romans placed the caducens 
 
 another somewhat different, though originally designed to represent 
 the same being. And there would also be some difference in the 
 kind of worship paid to each of these images, and in the tales related 
 concerning it, so that by degrees some of them would come to be 
 considered as so many distinct gods.' 
 
 *' 'Anindra,' 'Ayajyu,' 'Adeva,' 'Avrata.' That these epithets 
 were not applicable to all the aboriginal tribes, will appear in the next 
 chapter. In some places they probably refer to Aryan schismatics. 
 
ii8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 in the hand of Mercury. Azrail, under various 
 names, has guided the Semitic tribes of all ages and 
 creeds to one ultimate neutral ground. Yama was 
 the Nekropompos of the Aryan race. The earlier 
 form of his story is preserved on the Persian side 
 of the Himalayas. Yima, runs the Zend legend, 
 was a monarch in that primitive time when sorrow, 
 sickness, and death were unknown. By degrees 
 sin and disease crept into the world, the slow neces- 
 sity of death hastened its step, and the old king 
 retired with a chosen band from the polluted earth 
 into a kingdom where he still reigns. The Sanskrit 
 version belongs to a later and more subjective 
 period. According to it, Yama was the first man 
 who passed through death into immortality. Hav- 
 ing discovered the way to the other world, he 
 obtained for himself a kingdom in it, and the tenth 
 book of the Rig Veda represents him as guiding 
 other men thither. In one verse he is seen feast- 
 ing under a leafy tree;'" in others, as enthroned in 
 the innermost heaven, and granting luminous abodes 
 to the pious.*^ Meanwhile his two brown dogs, 
 ' broad of nostril and of a hunger never to be 
 satisfied, wander among men,'°^ or, like Cerberus, 
 guard the avenue to his palace along which the 
 departed are exhorted to hurry with all possible 
 speed. ' Reverence to Yama, who is death ; to him 
 who first reached the river, spying out a road for 
 
 ""Rig Veda, x. 135, i. Atharva Veda, xviii. 4, 3. 
 " Rig Veda, ix. 113, 7, 8. Id. x. 14, 8, 9, and 10. 
 ^2 Rig Veda, x. 14, 11, and 12. The dogs are elsewhere called 
 Ijlack and spotted. Atharva Veda, viii. t, 9. 
 
ARYAN IDEAS UPON IMMORTALITY. 119 
 
 many ; who is lord of the two-footed and the four- 
 footed creatures.*^^ ' Worship with an offering King 
 Yama, the assembler of men, who departed to the 
 mighty waters, who, spied out a road for many.'" 
 
 Incremation suggested itself to the devout Aryan 
 as the most solemn method for severing the mortal 
 from the immortal part of the dead. His faith, like 
 our own, taught him to look upon death as a new 
 birth rather than as the annihilation of being ; and 
 for him the fire performed the office of a liberator, 
 not of a destroyer. As a man derived his natural 
 birth from his parents, and a partial regeneration, or 
 second birth, by the performance of his religious 
 duties ; so the fire, by setting free the spiritual 
 element from the superincumbent clay, completed 
 the third or heavenly birth. His friends stood 
 round the pyre as round a natal bed, and com- 
 manded his eye to go to the sun, his breath to the 
 wind, his limbs to the earth, the water and the 
 plants whence they had been derived. But ' as for 
 his unborn part, do thou. Lord (Agni), quicken it 
 with thy heat ; let thy flame and thy brightness 
 kindle it ; convey it to the world of the righteous.'"^ 
 
 Thirteen years ago, Professor Miiller published an 
 essay on the Funeral Rites of the Brahmans, in which 
 
 ^^ Atharva Veda, vi. 28, 3. But cf. Max MuUer's Lectures, 2d 
 Series, p. 515. 
 
 ^* Rig Veda, x. 14, i. Those who would pursue the subject 
 further, may do so with great facility in Dr Muir's ' Yama ', Journal 
 R. A. S., part ii., 1865, whence the above quotations and those 
 immediately following are derived. 
 
 °^ Funeral hymn to Agni, to be chanted while the boay was bting 
 burned. 
 
I20 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 he cites a sort of liturgy with which the Aryan used 
 to bid farewell to his friend while the body lay upon 
 the pyre. ' Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient 
 paths to the place whither our fathers have departed. 
 Meet with the ancient ones;°* meet with the Lord 
 of Death ; obtain thy desires in heaven. Throw- 
 ing off thine imperfections, go to thy home. Become 
 united with a body ; clothe thyself in a shining form. 
 Go ye; depart ye; hasten ye from hence.'" The 
 responses might then fitly come in : ' Let him depart 
 to those for whom flow the rivers of nectar. Let him 
 depart to those who through meditation have ob- 
 tained the victory, who by fixing their thoughts on 
 the unseen have gone to heaven. . . . Let him depart 
 to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have laid 
 down their lives for others, to those who have be- 
 stowed their goods on the poor.'** Returning to 
 the direct form of address : ' May sweet breezes 
 blow upon thee. May the water-shedding angels 
 bear thee upwards, cooling thee with their swift 
 motion through the air, and sprinkling thee with 
 dew.' ' May thy soul go to its own, and hasten to 
 the fathers.' The service might fitly conclude with 
 a chorus from the Veda : ' Bear him, carry him ; let 
 him, with all his faculties complete, go to the world 
 of the righteous. Crossing the dark valley which 
 spreadeth boundless around him, let the unborn 
 soul ascend to heaven. . . . Wash the feet of him 
 who is stained with sin ; let him go upwards with 
 cleansed feet. Crossing the gloom, gazing with 
 
 =» The Pitrs. " Rig Veda, x. 14. »» Id. x. 154. 
 
THE FUTURE LIFE DESCRIBED. 121 
 
 wonder in many directions, let the unborn soul go 
 up to heaven.' ^^ 
 
 Of the doctrine of transmigration there is not a 
 trace in the earlier Veda. The circle round the 
 pyre sang with the firm assurance that their friend 
 went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion 
 with the loved ones who had gone before. ' Do 
 thou conduct us to heaven (O Lord), let us be with 
 our wives and children.'^" ' In heaven, where our 
 friends dwell in bliss, having left behind the infir- 
 mities of the body, free from lameness, free from 
 crookedness of limb, there let us behold our parents 
 and our children.'" The wife also is to be united 
 with her husband.^^ ' Place me, O Pure One, in 
 that everlasting and unchanging world, where light 
 and glory are found. Make me immortal in the 
 world in which joys, delights, and happiness abide, 
 where the desires are obtained. '** ' Truly,' says 
 Roth, ' we here find, not without astonishment, 
 beautiful conceptions on immortality, expressed in 
 unadorned language with childlike conviction.' 
 
 It was only to those, however, who had lived 
 righteously on earth that this bright world was 
 open. The idea of a future state as one of retri- 
 bution did not receive full development till a later 
 period than that to which the foregoing hymns 
 
 ^^ Atharva Veda, ix. 5, i. *" Atharva Veda, xii. 3, 17. 
 
 *i Atharva Veda, vi. 120, 3. 
 
 '2 Colebrooke's Essays, i. 116, etc., 8vo, 1837. Atharva Veda, ix. 
 
 5,27. 
 
 *^ Address to Soma, the abstract deified form of the libation, — 
 Rig Veda, ix. 113, 7 and 11. 
 
122 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 belong ; but one of the theological treatises, which 
 had for their object the interpretation of these 
 hymns, contains the following remarkable sentences : 
 ' In the next world they place a man's good and 
 evil deeds in a balance. Which of the two shall 
 turn the scale that he shall follow, whether it be 
 for good or for evil. Now, whosoever knows this, 
 places himself in the balance in this world, and is 
 freed from being weighed in the next' 
 
 The Vedic texts cited in the foregoing pages 
 evince a faith in immortality infinitely firmer than 
 anything to be found either in Semitic writings,** or 
 in the subsequent Aryan literature of Greece and 
 Rome. The Veda represents the departed soul as 
 taking a tangible but more glorious body, and as 
 living in blessed reunion with former friends and 
 kinsmen. Homer's world is a dim uncertain region, 
 peopled with shadows — mostly unhappy ones ; a 
 world so repugnant to our inborn love of life and 
 sunshine, that Achilles tells Ulysses he would 
 rather be a servant upon earth than reign over all 
 the departed. In the decline of paganism, the 
 philosophers of the court of Julian, reading Plato 
 by the light of St. Paul, could find much that was 
 consoling to mortality in his pages. But we have 
 the amplest evidence that the uninspired philosophy 
 of Greece and Rome afforded no certain hope of 
 immortality to its most accomplished disciples. 
 ' We are sufficiently acquainted,' writes Gibbon, 
 
 f"* Even the Jewish Bible fails to inculcate a future life as an 
 inducement to virtuous conduct in the present one. 
 
WHENCE THESE CONCEPTIONS 1 123 
 
 ' with the eminent persons who flourished in tlie 
 age of Cicero and of the first Csesars — with their 
 actions, their characters, their motives — to rest 
 assured that their conduct in this Hfe was never 
 regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards 
 or punishments of a future state.' The Tusculan 
 Disputations found their argument for a state of 
 eternal bliss on a false dilemma, and what Cicero 
 professes to revere in the Grove, he scoffs at in the 
 Forum. We rise from the dream of Scipio, or 
 from the arguments by which the philosophic pagan 
 obtains the consoling assurance that death is but 
 a change of life, and turning to a speech by Cicero 
 on behalf of a friend*^ on trial for a capital crime, 
 we find that a future life is a matter for recluses to 
 amuse themselves with, but which no man of the 
 world would allow to regulate his ordinary actions. 
 
 The question is a deeply interesting one. How 
 comes it that these old singers in Northern India 
 had clearer and more profound conceptions of man's 
 destiny than the philosophers of Greece and Rome ? 
 How was it that the child knew more than the 
 man, and that the light of nature waxed dimmer 
 and dimmer, till it altogether disappeared ? Were 
 the strong simple beliefs of the earlier time echoes 
 of those lessons which Adam listened to in the 
 cool of the day^ — if modern research would still 
 permit us to accept the beautiful Hebrew story — 
 echoes which, according to old, if fond, opinion, 
 floated down fainter and more faint to generations of 
 
 '^'^ Pro Cluentio. 
 
t24 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 prehistoric man, till they died away amid the 
 clang of contending schools, and the arrogance of 
 unaided reason ? This view interferes not with 
 any sound theology. ' In the career of Balaam,' 
 says Dr. Stanley, ' is seen that recognition of divine 
 inspiration outside the chosen people, which the 
 narrowness of modern times has been so eager 
 to deny, but which the Scriptures are always ready 
 to acknowledge, and, by acknowledging, admit 
 within the pale of the universal church the higher 
 spirits of every age and of every nation."'^ 
 
 In humiliating contrast with the Aryans' assur- 
 ance of immortality are the words with which the 
 aboriginal tribes of the northern frontier dismiss 
 their dead from this world. Of eternity they have 
 not the slightest conception ; in some of their 
 languages the longest period of time that can be 
 expressed is the duration of a man's life, and in 
 one aboriginal tongue the highest number is seven." 
 The great object of these aborigines is to get their 
 dead out of their sight. The north-eastern hill-men 
 hide the corpse in a hole as soon as the breath has 
 left it. No stately rites are observed. The kins- 
 men wash themselves at the nearest stream, and 
 return to their usual work immediately after the 
 interment. Among the tribes that have developed 
 funeral ceremonies, a burial is only an occasion for 
 
 *^ Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, p. 190. Whately 
 also concedes a true inspiration to Balaam. — Dissertation on the 
 Rise, Progi'ess, and Corruptions of Christianity. 
 
 "^ Bodo language. — Essay on the Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimal 
 Tribes, by B. H. Hodgson, p. T17. 8vo. Calcutta, 1847, 
 
ABORIGINAL FUNERAL RITES. 125 
 
 gluttony and drunkenness. When the feast is got 
 ready, they repair to the newly made grave, and, 
 presenting food and drink to the dead, bid farewell 
 in the following sentences : ' Take and eat. Here- 
 tofore you have eaten and drunken with us ; you 
 can do so no more. You were one of us ; you can 
 be so no longer. We come no more to you ; come 
 you not to us.'** The parting is a final one. The 
 Aryan requiem looked forward to reunion above ; 
 that of the aboriginal tribes shrinks from the dead 
 as from an undefined horror, and, so far from speak- 
 ing of a meeting hereafter, begs that they may be 
 spared the terrors of a visit. 
 
 I have dwelt at length on the unequal degree 
 of enlightenment possessed by the Aryan and 
 aboriginal races, because I believe that it affords 
 the true explanation of those cruel social distinc- 
 tions which divide the existing population of India. 
 The Dasyan appears in Sanskrit history first as an 
 enemy, then as an evil spirit, then as a lower animal, 
 and finally as the slave of the nobler race.*' The 
 difference was infinitely greater than that between 
 
 *' Essay on the Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimal Tribes, p. 180. The 
 southern aborigines exhibit a higher class of funeral rites. 
 
 ** The monkey owes the respect with which the Hindus regard 
 him to the friendly reception that some of the aboriginal nations 
 (the so-called Monkey tribes) gave to the Aryan immigrants who 
 afterwards enslaved them. Signor Gorresio has fully discussed the 
 subject of the Monkey Races, in his ' Dissertations on and Notes to 
 the Ramayana.' Tlie gradations of the aborigines — as (i) enemies, 
 (2) demons, (3) lower animals, (4) slaves of the Aryans in Ceylon 
 — are well marked. — Mahawanso, chap.' xxxvii. Rajavali, p. 237. 
 Rajarat-nacari, p. 69. Referred to in Tennent's Ceylon, i. 370, etc., 
 note, 3d edition. 
 
126 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the composite parts of other nations of antiquity ; 
 so also was the contempt of the superior for the 
 inferior people. This contempt has left its mark 
 on every page of Sanskrit literature, and we can 
 imagine the haughty Prakrit-speaking lord regard- 
 ing his bondsman's broken utterances — his go-ho 
 (man), go-dum ([&g), po-ta (belly) '^'' — not with the 
 placid contempt of the Patrician for the Plebs, or 
 even with the deeper disdain of the Hellene for his 
 Helot, but rather with the hatred and loathing of 
 Swift's Houyhnhnms for the sputterings of their 
 Yahoos. 
 
 Nevertheless, two races cannot live for ages 
 together without each affecting the other. The 
 superior may force the inferior into its own moulds, 
 but it cannot help being itself influenced in turn ; 
 and the aboriginal tribes have done much to alter 
 the language, religion, and political destiny of their 
 conquerors. The influence of the aboriginal ele- 
 ment made itself felt at a very early period in the 
 Apabhransa or vernacular form of Sanskrit used by 
 the low castes. It is termed ' a provincial jargon' 
 by Donaldson, following Colebrooke, and has been 
 elaborately discussed by Dr. Muir.^^ The vernacu- 
 lar language of India is divided by native gram- 
 marians into two parts, one derived from Sanskrit, 
 the other from the aboriginal tongues. In Bengal 
 the aboriginal element is called the Bhasha ; in the 
 
 '" A valuable list of aboriginal words will be found in the Sanskrit 
 Texts, vol ii. p. 36 et seq. 
 
 '1 As. Res. vol. vii. reprint New Cratylus, p. 85, 8vo, 1839. 
 Sanskrit Texts, part ii. chap. i. 
 
INFLUENCE OF DASYANS ON ARYANS. 127 
 
 south of India it passes by various names, such 
 as Atsu-Telugu, or more generally Desya. The 
 patois of Lower Bengal, particularly as spoken by 
 the common people in Beerbhoom and other dis- 
 tricts on the ethnographical frontier, is full of words 
 not to be derived from Sanskrit ; and although such 
 words are carefully excluded from written Bengali, 
 they are ever in the mouths of the husbandman, the 
 herdsman, and the forester, and they have furnished 
 the domestic language of affection in which the 
 mother speaks to her child. In religion, the Aryans 
 of the Lower Valley have unquestionably borrowed 
 much of their demon-worship from the aborigines, 
 and of that anxiety to propitiate the malignant 
 rather than serve the beneficent deities, which now 
 forms so marked and so degrading a feature of 
 Hindu superstition. Indeed, I shall afterwards 
 show that the Sivites — a sect which during the past 
 six centuries has drawn within itself the great 
 majority of the Indian people — derived its object 
 of worship from the aboriginal tribes. Whatever 
 mythology Siva or Rudra may originally have 
 belonged to, there can be no doubt that Siva- 
 worship, as performed in Lower Bengal, is the 
 reverse of the Aryan spirit of devotion, and repre- 
 sents the superstition of the black races. Signer 
 Gorresio points out how in the old times the chief 
 object of adoration among the aborigines was this 
 terrible deity, whom they appeased with human 
 blood. The first aim of the British Government 
 on acquiring a province has always been to put 
 
128 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 down such sacrifices ; but in seasons of scarcity, the 
 priests of Lower Bengal still offer up children to 
 the insatiable demon who terrified the forest tribes 
 three thousand years ago. 
 
 During 1865-66 such sacrifices were had re- 
 course to in order to avert the famine. They were 
 few in number, the police being specially on the 
 alert, and the authorities having got warning by 
 the publicity which the press gave to the two cases 
 that were brought to light. The following are the 
 details of a human sacrifice in 1866 in the Jessore 
 district, one of the oldest settled and most enlight- 
 ened parts of Bengal : ' A Mahommedan boy about 
 seven years of age was found in the scaffold-room 
 adjoining a temple of Kali (the wife of Siva), at 
 Luckipassa, with his neck in the harcat, or wooden 
 scaffold, and his neck cut. The tongue was fixed 
 between the teeth, the eyes open, clotted blood on 
 his body, which was quite exposed, and two cuts of 
 a khundah were visible on the neck. The sacrifice, 
 it seems, was not completed, for the object is entirely 
 to sever the head from the body. In a late case at 
 Hooghly, the. head was left before the idol decked 
 with flowers.'^^ Among the aboriginal tribes to 
 the south-west of Beerbhoom I heard vague reports 
 of human sacrifices in the forests, with a view to 
 procuring the early arrival of the rains. 
 
 The same proneness to demon-worship and 
 deprecatory rites exhibits itself in every part of 
 India, and always with a force in proportion to the 
 
 " The Englishman Qi'Csx^iOiih}A3.y i%(£. Calcutta. 
 
INFLUENCE OF ABORIGINAL RITES. 129 
 
 Strength of the aboriginal element in the local 
 population. In Northern India, throughout the 
 whole Middle Land of Manu, the aborigines com- 
 pletely succumbed beneath the Aryans, and demon- 
 worship hardly appears. In Lower Bengal, where 
 the Aryan element did not wholly overpower the 
 aboriginal, demon-worship in a mitigated shape 
 forms part of the popular rites ; among the forest 
 tribes of the central table-land, where the Aryans 
 never settled, it is the only religion known ; and in 
 Ceylon, where they settled in comparatively small 
 numbers, it lies at the root of the whole rural wor- 
 ship. The strictest of the Hindu kings of Ceylon 
 found himself compelled to support the village 
 devil-dancers at the public cost. Buddhism over- 
 powered Hinduism, but it wholly failed to put 
 down, and at length was fain to connive at demon- 
 worship ; the Portuguese and Dutch clergy could 
 convert the people from Buddhism, but lament their 
 inability to weaken the tenacity of the Cinghalese 
 to devil-sacrifices ; and Wesleyan and Baptist mis- 
 sionaries in Ceylon, while able to make Protes- 
 tants of Roman Catholics, cannot purify their most 
 promising catechumens of these aboriginal supersti- 
 tions.'^ 
 
 A more pleasing subject is the worship of the 
 village and household gods in Lower Bengal, — a 
 harmless superstition which the Hindus have unmis- 
 takeably derived from the aboriginal tribes. How 
 this worship is carried on by the hill-races, I shall 
 
 '3 Sir Emerson Tennent's Ceylon, i. 542, 3d edition. 
 VOL. I, I 
 
130 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 afterv/ards describe. On the plains, the village god 
 has ever been an object of veneration with the low 
 castes of mixed descent, rather than of the Brah- 
 mans, and in many places the worship has alto- 
 gether died out among the higher ranks. At the 
 beginning of this century, however, Buchanan found 
 it existing everywhere throughout the north-western 
 districts of Lower Bengal. ' The vulgar,' he says, 
 ' have never been entirely able to abandon the wor- 
 ship of the village deities, and imitate their ancestors 
 either by making such offerings as before mentioned 
 (betel, red lead, rice, water) to an anonymous deity, 
 under ,whose protection they suppose their village 
 to be, or call by that name various ghosts that have 
 become objects of worship, or various of the Hindu 
 Devatas. The ghosts, in fact, and the others called 
 village deities, seem to be the gods most usually 
 applied to in cases of danger by all ranks, and their 
 favour is courted with bloody sacrifices and other 
 offerings. They are not in general represented by 
 images, nor have they temples ; but the deity is 
 represented by a lump of clay, sometimes placed 
 under a tree, and provided with a priest of some 
 low tribe,' ^* i.e. sprung from the aboriginal element 
 in the population. Several of these village god& 
 are older than the. Aryan settlement, being deified 
 personages sprung from the aboriginal tribes, whose 
 distinctive nationality has been forgotten for ages 
 in the districts where their representative men are 
 
 " History, etc., of Eastern India, from the Buchanan MSS., vol. 
 i. p. 190, 
 
THE VILLAGE GODS. 131 
 
 Still worshipped. Everywhere the ceremonies bear 
 the stamp of the old superstitious terrors, and the 
 carnivorous, gluttdnous habits of the black races. 
 Indeed, Buchanan well describes them as ' sacrifices 
 made partly from fear, and partly to gratify the 
 appetite for flesh.' ^* The fierce aboriginal instincts, 
 even in the mixed castes, who approach nearest to 
 the Aryans, and accept in a greater degree than 
 their neighbours the restraints of Hinduism, break 
 loose on such festivals ; and cowherds have been 
 seen to feed voraciously on swine-flesh, which at all 
 other times they regard with abhorrence. In Beer- 
 bhoom, particularly in the western border-land, this 
 worship is very popular, and once a-year the whole 
 capital repairs to a shrine in the jungle, and there 
 makes simple offerings to a ghost who dwells in a 
 Bela-tree.^* In spite of the tree being, at the most, 
 seventy years old, the common people claim the 
 greatest antiquity for the shrine ; and tradition says, 
 that the three trees which now mark the spot 
 neither grow thicker nor increase in height, but 
 remain the same for ever. As in all ceremonies 
 which partake of the aboriginal worship, blood is 
 
 '* History, etc., of Eastern India, from the Buchanan MSS., vol. 
 i. p. 194. 
 
 "'^ The shrine is situated far in the jungle between Pattra village 
 and Nagri, some distance past Buttaspore. It consists of three trees : 
 a Bela tree on the left, in which the ghost resides, and which is 
 marked at the foot with blood ; in the middle is a Kachmula tree, and 
 on the right a Saura tree. Devotees throw down their offerings of 
 earth, rice, and money before the trees, while a priest stands ready to 
 strike off at a single blow the heads of such victims as are presented, 
 returning the body with his blessing to the offerer. 
 
132 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 copiously poured forth, and the day ends with a 
 feast upon the victims. The very offerings bear> 
 witness to the primitive state of the tribes among 
 whom the superstition took its rise. Only the rich 
 sacrifice goats, the ordinary oblation being a handful 
 of earth thrown down before the divinity, with a 
 few grains of rice or a copper coin from those who 
 can afford it. 
 
 The difference between the worship of the abori- 
 ginal Siva and of the village deities is, that the 
 former has been adopted by the Brahmans or 
 Hindus of pure Aryan descent, while the latter 
 have remained in the hands of the mixed mass of 
 the population. Yet, in ancient times, Siva-worship, 
 now universal throughout the whole lower valley of 
 the Ganges, seems to have been as unpopular with 
 the Brahmans as the simple village divinities now 
 are ; while even the most despised of these latter 
 relics of antiquity at the present day finds some 
 needy priest of the sacred class to officiate at its 
 shrine. Siva is not, indeed, the only aboriginal deity 
 who has risen to distinction among the mixed people 
 of Bengal ;" but he happened to resemble in many 
 particulars a Sanskrit divinity with whom he became 
 identified, and whose name he now bears. It is 
 curious to notice that Siva-worship, like demon- 
 worship and the adoration of the village gods, has 
 a hold on the people always in proportion to the 
 
 '' Buchanan speaks of a village god of quite modern origin, Malik 
 Baya by name, who was universally worshipped in Bahar and the 
 adjoining countries. Many others might be mentioned. 
 
THE ABORIGINAL GOD SIVA. 133 
 
 Strength of the aboriginal element. His great 
 shrines are among the hills which separate the 
 aboriginal from the Aryan races, or on some other 
 frontier of Sanskrit civilisation. The scenes of his 
 adventures are placed among the Himalayas, and 
 thousands of pilgrims travel every year to his altars 
 in the highlands of Beerbhoom. As Professor Wil- 
 son justly remarks, Siva-worship has ever been one 
 of mystery ; a worship bare of the charming legends 
 which grew up so luxuriantly around the objects 
 of adoration of the more cultivated race, and one 
 whose sole visible representation is a rude emblem.'* 
 Yet Siva-worship is the only form of religion which 
 has now any hold on the masses in the Lower 
 Valley. Krishna or Vishnu is the god of the 
 higher castes, and his worship is looked upon as 
 a spectacle or entertainment rather than as a serious 
 office of religion. In all time of need it is on Siva 
 — a deity scarcely known to the earliest Aryan 
 writers — that the Bengali populace calls. 
 
 I hope that my desire fully to bring out the 
 effect of the aboriginal superstitions on the religion 
 of the Hindus has not led me to overstate the 
 truth. The impossibility of applying the Aryan 
 faith, as represented in classical literature, to the 
 existing religion of Lower Bengal, first attracted 
 my attention to the subject. Conversations with 
 learned Brahmans suggested that the wide differ- 
 
 " Essays and Lectures on the Religion of the Hindus, by H. H. 
 Wilson. Collected Works, i. 189, Triibner, 1862. The origin of 
 Siva- worship will be minutely discussed in the following chapter. 
 
134 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 ence between their own doctrines, even when most 
 orthodox, and the popular beHefs of Hinduism, was 
 a difference not only in degree, but in kind, — a differ- 
 ence not of education, but of race. In this difference 
 lies the explanation of the esoteric and the exoteric 
 religions of the Hindus ; the former representing 
 the faith which the Aryan settlers transmitted to 
 their children of pure descent, the latter the patch- 
 work of superstitions which the mixed population 
 derived from the black-skinned, human-sacrificing, 
 flesh-eating forest tribes. The widespread corrup- 
 tion of Aryan faith which followed, according to 
 Sanskrit authors, immediately on the mingling of 
 the two races and the consequent growth of mixed 
 castes,^' affords strong corroborative proof of this 
 view; and the religion of the inferior Eurasians, 
 sprung indiscriminately from Portuguese, Dutch, 
 French, English, Hindu, and Mussulman parents, 
 is as degrading, if not so idolatrous, as that of. the 
 mixed castes of ancient India. But what eventually 
 led me to diverge so widely from the commonly 
 received view was a three years' residence on the 
 border-land between the Hindus and the aborigines. 
 The population of the hills and of the plains glide 
 into one another, carrying with them their respective 
 customs, beliefs, and superstitions. From the black 
 squat tribes who inhabit the tops of the mountains, 
 to the tall olive-coloured Brahman of the capital ot 
 Beerbhoom, with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, 
 
 '9 Known to English readers as the ' Burrun Sunker.' — Halhed's 
 Gentoo Code, Preface, p. 103, 8vo, 1781. 
 
■S/VA AND THE VILLAGE GODS. 135 
 
 and high but narrow head, there are a hundred 
 imperceptible gradations through the aborigines of 
 the slopes and the low castes of the valleys.'" So, 
 too, with their religion. It is easy to point out 
 superstitions which in some parts are considered as 
 purely aboriginal, and which the Brahmans regard 
 with all the aversion that the Levites entertained 
 toward the abominations of the Canaanites, but 
 which in other districts hold a position more than 
 half-way between the two religions. This is par- 
 ticularly noticeable in the worship of the village 
 deities. Where the population is entirely aboriginal, 
 such rites are held to be purely aboriginal, and no 
 respectable Brahman would pollute himself by offi- 
 ciating at them. Where the population is mixed, 
 and the semi- Aryan masses worship the old village 
 or forest deities, the worship is deemed half Hindu, 
 and some necessitous priest is found to undertake 
 the office. In still more perfectly Hinduized dis- 
 tricts, a little fraternity of Brahmans may be found 
 attached to each favourite village god, and in some 
 places such deities form the popular worship of the 
 whole Hindu people. From the ghost-worship in 
 the Beerbhoom jungle, and the sacrifices to Malik 
 Baya and similar deified personages in Bahar, to the 
 worship of Siva, is only a step ; and it is impossible 
 to study the border population without coming to 
 the conclusion, that Siva, now universally adored 
 
 '" Bowries, Bagdis, etc., are found both in the hills and on the 
 plains. In the courts of justice it is constantly necessary to ask wit- 
 nesses belonging to these castes whether they belong to the Hindu or 
 the Santal {i.e. aboriginal) families of the same patronymic. 
 
13^ THE -ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 by the Bengali people, with his colleges of priests 
 in every city, his conical shrines on every road-side, 
 and his noble flights of steps at every few miles 
 along the holy river, is only the last and highest 
 link of an uninterrupted chain of superstitions which 
 unites the two races. 
 
 Marked as the influence of the aboriginal tribes 
 has been upon the language of Bengal, still more 
 marked and pernicious as their influence has been 
 upon its religion, they have exercised an infinitely 
 more abiding and more baneful effect upon the 
 social condition and the political destiny of the 
 people. It is chiefly to the presence of a hetero- 
 geneous population of mixed descent, the Bengalis 
 owe it that they have never been a nation ; for 
 two races, the one consisting of masters, the other 
 of slaves, are not easily welded into a single na- 
 tionality. Concession must precede union, and a 
 people has to make some advance towards being 
 one socially before it can becorne one politically. 
 During ages the Sanskrit element kept disdainfully 
 aloof from the aboriginal, denying it every civil, 
 political, and religious right. Not to speak of the 
 JUS suffragii, or the jus honorum, the jus commercii 
 was granted only under the severest restrictions^ 
 and upon the most unfavourable terms, to the servile 
 race. The meanest trades alone were open to it; 
 and while the twice-born tribes retained all the 
 more profitable and honourable branches of in- 
 dustry as their heirlooms, they could at any time 
 set up as rivals to the low castes in the wonted 
 
THE ABORIGINES DEGRADED. 137 
 
 occupations of the latter, if necessity or conveni- 
 ence urged them so to do. There was one law 
 of inheritance for the Aryan, another for the non- 
 Aryan •,^ and of the humanizing influences by which 
 intermarriage reconciles hostile races they knew 
 nothing. Cohabitation between the ruling and the 
 servile castes fell in certain cases within the penal- 
 ties of sacrilege and incest ; and to this day the most 
 enlightened Hindu would regard such a union with 
 all the abhorrence that the Romans felt towards the 
 marriage of their emperor with the German princess 
 who, though according to international equity the 
 wife, has come down in history as the concubine of 
 Gallienus. 
 
 For this disdain the Aryans of Lower Bengal 
 have had to pay dearly. It is a bad thing for a 
 race to be able to get other people to do its work 
 during three thousand years. The higher classes 
 of Hindu society, by their inbred dislike and con- 
 tempt for manual industry, disabled themselves 
 from becoming a wealthy or powerful people, and 
 are at this moment being ousted from many posts 
 of emolument by the despised mixed multitude who 
 have for ages done the work of the country, but 
 who now for the first time are secured by an im- 
 partial government in the fruits of their labour. 
 Even in education, the immemorial monopoly of 
 the Brahmans, the competition of the non-Aryan 
 element is beginning to be felt. In the Beer- 
 bhoom public school, which stands first of three 
 
 •' Manava-dharma-sastra, ix. 156, 157. 4to, 1825. 
 
138 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 hundred educational institutions in the south-west 
 division of Lower Bengal/^ a man belonging to 
 what used to be considered a very degraded caste 
 is now head-master ; and throughout the whole 
 country, thousands of Brahman boys are instructed 
 by teachers whose family names (Dass) proclaim 
 them the descendants of the enslaved aboriginal 
 tribes (Dasyu). Accustomed to look upon toil as 
 a mark of slavery, the Hindus have never worked 
 more than was necessary to supply their wants. 
 Capital, therefore, the surplus of production above 
 consumption, has never existed ; and in the absence 
 of capital, any high advance in material civilisation 
 is impossible. Another element of such an advance, 
 co-operation, has been equally unknown. Division 
 of labour, in its literal sense of giving to every man 
 a separate employment, has indeed been carried to 
 its utmost length ; but the division of labour, in its 
 economical signification as a method of co-operation, 
 has been rendered impossible by the contempt 
 which divides man from man. On this subject, 
 false appearances, and inaccurate names for these 
 appearances, have led many writers into error. 
 Division of labour, as a term of Political Economy, 
 means a division of processes in order to an ulti- 
 mate combination of results. Division of labour, 
 as predicable of Indian art or manufacture, means a 
 division of results (each man being able to do only 
 one thing) effected by a combination of processes 
 
 '^ Report on Public Instruction. Lower Provinces, 1865-66. 
 Appendix, p. 235. 
 
INDO-AR YAN PROGRESS STOPPED. 139 
 
 (each man performing the whole of the processes 
 requisite to produce the single result). The Indo- 
 Aryans have paid a heavy penalty for debasing 
 the humbler children of the soil, by that stagna- 
 tion and incapability of national advancement which 
 has formed the most conspicuous difference be- 
 tween them and other families of the same noble 
 stock. They refused to share their light with the 
 people who dwelt in darkness^ and for ages any 
 further illumination has been denied to themselves. 
 But this has not been their whole punishment. 
 In the pride of intellect, they condemned a people 
 strong-armed, but of meagre intelligence, to per- 
 petual slavery while living, and refused them admit- 
 tance to their own bright world when dead. Hence 
 the reticence of the Bengali people, each caste 
 keeping its sympathies for its own members, dread- 
 ing the classes above it as conquerors or tyrants, 
 and disdaining to admit the classes below it into 
 its confidence. In their turn, the Aryan population 
 of India have been subdued by successive waves 
 of conquerors, inferior to them in their boasted 
 intellect, but able to wield the sword with a more 
 powerful right hand than is given to a people who 
 shift the labour of life on to servile shoulders. 
 Afghan, Tartar, and Mogul, found the Indo- 
 Aryans effeminated by long sloth, divided amongst 
 themselves, and devoid of any spirit of nation- 
 ality. Thus for seven centuries has Providence 
 humbled the disdainful spirit of Hinduism beneath 
 the heel of barbarian invaders, grinding together all 
 
I40 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 classes and sects as upon the nether millstone, and 
 slowly bringing on the time foretold in the Sanskrit 
 Book of the Future,*' when the Indian people shall 
 be of one caste, and form one nation. That this 
 time is now not far off, no one who is acquainted 
 with the Bengalis of the present day will doubt. 
 They have about them the capabilities of a noble 
 people. What they want is social amalgamation, 
 to be effected, not as the Sanskrit prophet predicts, 
 by the universal corruption of the Indian races, but 
 as the Christian devoutly hopes, by their universal 
 regeneration." 
 
 Having thus unfolded the terms upon which the 
 Aryan and aboriginal races combined to form the 
 mixed Hindu population of the lowlands, I proceed 
 to examine the condition of the tribes who, among 
 the hills and western fastnesses, have preserved 
 their primitive descent intact. 
 
 8^ The Bhavishya Purana. 
 
 '^ Throughout this chapter I have stated my own views without 
 enlarging upon, or sometimes even adverting to, the existence of dif- 
 ferent opinions. I have done so not from want of respect for the 
 views of others, but because the nature of the work precluded the 
 discussions that such statements would lead to. To take a single 
 instance. Vedic scholars are at variance as to the meaning of Dasyu, 
 some translating it as ' demon,' others understanding it to refer to the 
 aborigines. I have accepted the latter view without comment ; and 1 
 notice that Max MUUer, in his ' Chips,' gives his authority to it. Un- 
 fortunately, his admirable volumes did not reach me till this chapter 
 was in type, and I have therefore been unable to make use of or refer 
 to them. 
 
THE HILL AND FOREST TRIBES. 141 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ABORIGINAL HILL-MEN OF BEERBHOOM. 
 
 ' T N every extensive jungly or hilly tract through- 
 out the vast continent of India, there exist 
 hundreds of thousands of human beings in a state 
 not materially different from that of the Germans 
 as described by Tacitus.'^ With these words the 
 investigator of the Indian aborigines introduced 
 what he intended to be the first of a series of 
 volumes on the Black Races of Bengal. That 
 a section of the human family, numbering not 
 less than thirty millions of souls, should have 
 lived for a century under British rule, and that 
 their origin, language, and manners of life should 
 be still unknown to the civilised world, affords 
 abundant matter for reflection. While the fair- 
 skinned race which usurped the plains has be- 
 come the favourite child of modern scholarship, 
 the dark-faced primitive heritors of the soil have 
 continued as we found them, uncared for, despised, 
 
 1 The Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimal Tribes, by B. H. Hodgson, Esq., 
 of the Bengal Civil Service, p. 2, preface. 8vo, Calcutta 1847. 
 
142 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 hiding away among their immemorial mountains 
 and forests. The study of Aryan speech has done 
 more in half a century to explain the history of man, 
 than all the previous efforts of fifty generations of 
 scholars. From the discovery of Sanskrit a new 
 era of human thought dates. Sanskrit grammar 
 forms the keystone of philology, and Sanskrit ethics 
 have left their impress deeply graven on modern 
 philosophy. But the other races — races which have 
 a history more ancient and perhaps not less in- 
 structive than the Aryans, if we could only find 
 it out — -have been wholly overlooked. The few 
 inquirers who at an early period interested them- 
 selves in the subject, were cut off or otherwise 
 interrupted before their researches went far enough 
 to attract, or indeed to merit, the attention of 
 European scholars, and Government has too gene- 
 rally dealt with the aborigines of Bengal as with 
 tribes incapable of improvement — as a race from 
 whom the best that can be hoped is that it will keep 
 quiet till it dies out. 
 
 The aborigines in Southern India have received 
 a little more attention, but their past is still un- 
 explained. In Madras and Bombay the purely 
 aboriginal element appears in such strength in the 
 vernaculars — forming three-quarters of the whole 
 Telugu vocabulary — that it was impossible wholly 
 to overlook the races from which it was derived.'' 
 
 ^ Atsu-Telugu or purely aboriginal words form one-half of the 
 whole vocabulary : Tatsaman and Tadbhavan, or words directly or 
 indirectly derived from the Sanskrit, form one quarter ; Anya desyam, 
 or words borrowed from aboriginal dialects other than the Telugu, 
 
A NEW FIELD OF STUDY. 143 
 
 Some acquaintance with non-Aryan philology be- 
 came a political necessity. But in Bengal the San- 
 skrit entirely overpowered the aboriginal element, 
 and any researches into the primitive tribes have 
 been prompted by disinterested motives. To Mr. 
 Hodgson and the few inquirers who have followed 
 at a distance in his steps, greater honour is due than 
 the actual results obtained would seem to justify. 
 
 In the hope that I may be able to interest both 
 the scholar and the statesman in these lapsed races, 
 I purpose in the following chapter to set forth what 
 I have been able to learn regarding the history, 
 the language, the manners, and the capabilities of 
 the mountaineers of Beerbhoom. The scholar will 
 find that their language and traditions throw an- 
 important light on an unwritten chapter, in the 
 history of our race. The Indian statesman will 
 discover that these Children of the Forest are not 
 so. utterly fallen away from the commonwealth of 
 nations as he has supposed, that they are prompted 
 by the same motives of self-interest, amenable to 
 the same reclaiming influences as other men, and 
 that upon their capacity for civilisation the future 
 extension of English enterprise in Bengal in a large 
 measure depends. 
 
 For ordinary purposes, the twofold division of 
 the Indian races into Aryans and aborigines is suffi- 
 
 form one quarter. When the labours of Mr. Ellis of the Madras 
 Civil Service, the Rev. Dr. Caldwell, and Mr. A. D. Campbell, in 
 Southern India, are seconded by researches among the aboriginal 
 tribes of the north, scholars will have sufficient evidence to pronounce 
 upon the existence of a primitive Tamulian stock. But not till then. 
 
144 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 cient. But when we come to look narrowly into 
 the matter, it appears that, while the Aryans embrace 
 a single family only, under the term aborigines are 
 included at least several races differing from each 
 other as widely as the Japanese differs from the 
 Egyptian or from the Dane. The physiologist, 
 judging from the features and bodily structure, 
 pronounces that certain of the Indian aboriginal 
 tribes bear a strong affinity to the Malay race ; that 
 others are equally closely related to the Chinese; 
 and that others, again, are unconnected, or very 
 distantly connected, with either. Philology has up 
 to this time given forth no certain sound on the 
 subject ; and, • indeed, all that linguistic research 
 has done, is to involve the question in still greater 
 mystery, by revealing a multitude of languages 
 apparently devoid of affinity to each other. In a 
 single thinly-peopled tract, one inquirer counted 
 twenty-eight distinct dialects, mutually unintelligible 
 to the different tribes who use them;^ and the whole 
 number of aboriginal tongues throughout India is 
 not less than two hundred. Whether, like the 
 hundred and thirty languages that Pliny says were 
 spoken in the Colchian market-place, these will 
 ever be shown to be long separated members of 
 the same family, is a point on which no one in our 
 present state of knowledge can pronounce ; but such 
 
 * In the district between Kamaun and Assam. Among the Naga 
 tribes also, Hving in a small district near Assam, about thirty diiiferent 
 languages exist, affording a striking proof of the tendency of unwritten 
 speech to split up into numerous4ialects. An intervening hill, a ravine 
 or a river, is enough to divide the language of a district. 
 
THE ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES. 145 
 
 a union can only result from a careful scrutiny of 
 the isolated members. 
 
 When this chapter was begun, four years ago, I 
 had intended to append to it a comparative grammar 
 and vocabulary of six aboriginal languages, includ- 
 ing that of the highlanders of Beerbhoom, as a con- 
 tribution towards a more exact knowledge of the 
 non-Aryan races . of India. But in the course of 
 subsequent researches in the India Office Library, 
 two large trunks of manuscripts, the result of Mr. 
 B. H. Hodgson's labours during thirty years among 
 the Himalayan tribes, passed into my hands. At 
 first it was proposed to incorporate this unpublished 
 collection with the present chapter ; but I found 
 that, to do Mr. Hodgson's discoveries justice, the 
 entire volume would barely suffice. It has there- 
 fore been determined to compile a distinct work on 
 the aborigines of Northern India, based upon Mr. 
 Hodgson's researches ; and it seems unnecessary to 
 swell this book with vocabularies, which will find a 
 more suitable place among the eighty non-Aryan 
 languages which I hope to bring together in the 
 proposed volume. 
 
 The Santals or hill-tribes on the west of Beer- 
 bhoom belong to that section of the aborigines 
 which physically resembles neither the Chinese 
 nor the Malay. The Santal is a well-built man, 
 standing about five feet seven, weighing eight stone, 
 without the delicate features of the Aryan, but un- 
 disfigured by the oblique eye of the Chinese, or the 
 heavy physiognomy of the Malay. His skull is 
 VOL. I. K 
 
146 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 round, rather than broad or narrow ; his face is also 
 round, rather than oblong or square ; the lower jaw 
 is not heavy ; the nose is irregular ; the lips are a 
 little thicker than the Aryan's, but not thick enough 
 to attract remark; the cheek-bone is higher than 
 that of the Hindu, but not higher in anything like 
 the degree in which the Mongolian is, rather as the 
 cheek-bone of a Scotchman is higher than that of 
 an Englishman. He is about the same height as 
 the common Hindu, shorter than the Brahman of 
 pure Aryan descent, heavier than the Hindu, hardier 
 than the Hindu, more squarely built than the Hindu, 
 with a forehead not so high, but rounder and broader; 
 a man created to labour rather than to think, better 
 fitted to serve the manual exigencies of the present, 
 than to speculate on the future or to venerate the 
 past. 
 
 The Santals inhabit the whole western frontier of 
 Lower Bengal, from within a few miles of the sea to 
 the hills of Bhagulpore. Their country is the shape 
 of a curved strip, about four hundred miles long by 
 a hundred broad, giving an area of forty thousand 
 square miles. In the western jungles they are the 
 sole population ; in a large tract towards the north 
 they form nineteen-twentieths of it ; in the plains 
 the proportion is much smaller, and indeed the race 
 gradually slides into the low-caste Hindus. They 
 certainly number a million and a half and probably 
 approach two millions of human beings, claiming 
 a common origin, speaking one language, following 
 similar customs, worshipping the same gods, and 
 
SANTAL TRADITIONS. 147 
 
 forming in all essentials a distinct ethnical entity 
 among the aboriginal races. 
 
 The present generation of Santals have no de- 
 finite idea of where their forefathers came from. It 
 is a race whose subsoil of tradition is thin and poor. 
 Written documents they have none. Go into one 
 village, mark what appears on the surface, listen to 
 the chants of the young men, hear the few legends 
 which the elders relate at evening under the shade 
 of the adjoining Sal Grove, and subsequent investi- 
 gations will not materially change first impressions. 
 
 The earliest fact of which the race seems to 
 have been conscious, was the vicinity of stupendous 
 mountains. Before man was, the Great Mountain 
 talked to himself in solemn solitude. The Moun- 
 tain communes with the Creator at man's birth ; 
 clothes him, and teaches him to produce the first 
 comforts of life. The Mountain, by bringing 
 together the first pair in marriage, stands as the 
 fons et origo of the race. Their legend of the 
 creation runs thus. In the old time that was before 
 this time, the Great Mountain stood alone among 
 the waters. Then the Great Mountain saw that 
 birds moved upon the face of the waters, and he 
 said within himself, Where shall we put these 
 birds ? let us put them on a water - lily in the 
 midst of the waters, and let them rest there. 
 Then were huge prawns created, and the prawns 
 raised the rocks from under the waters, and like- 
 wise the water-lily. Thereafter the rocks were 
 covered with diverse manner of creeping things ; 
 
148 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 and the Great Mountain said, Let the creeping 
 things cover the rocks with earth, and they covered 
 them. And when the rocks were covered, the Lord 
 of All commanded the Great Mountain to sow grass ; 
 and when the grass grew up, the first man and 
 woman arose from two duck's eggs that had been 
 laid upon the water-lily. Then the Lord of All 
 asked of the Great Mountain, What are these ? 
 And the Great Mountain answered. They are man 
 and woman ; since they are born, let them stay. 
 After that the Lord of All told the Great Moun- 
 tain to look once again, and behold the man and 
 woman had grown up, but they were naked. So 
 the Lord of All commanded the Great Mountain to 
 clothe them, and the Great Mountain gave them 
 cloth, to the man ten cubits, and to the woman 
 twelve cubits ; and the man's clothing sufficed, but 
 the woman's sufficed not. 
 
 Then the man and woman being faint, the Great 
 Mountain commanded them to make strong drink. 
 He gave them a handful of leaven, saying. Place it 
 in a pitcher of water, and after four days come 
 again. So they put it in a pitcher, and after four 
 days came again, and behold the water had become 
 the strong drink of the Santals. Then the Great 
 Mountain gave them leaves wherewith to make 
 cups, but commanded them, before they drank, to 
 pour forth an offering unto him. 
 
 Thereafter the Great Mountain said. The land is, 
 the man is, and the woman is ; but what if the man 
 and woman should die out of the land ! Let us 
 
SANTAL LEGEND OF THE CREATION. 149 
 
 make them merry with strong drink, and let children 
 be born. So the Great Mountain made them merry 
 with strong drink, and seven children were born.* 
 
 So the man and the woman increased and multi- 
 plied, and the land could not hold all the children 
 that were born. In this time they dwelt in Hihiri 
 Pipiri, but when the land would not hold them 
 they journeyed to Chae Champa ; and when Chae 
 Champa would not hold them they journeyed to 
 Silda; and when Silda would not hold them they 
 journeyed to Sikar, and from Sikar they journeyed 
 to Nagpur, and from Nagpur to the north, even to 
 Sir. 
 
 Such is the story of the creation and dispersion 
 as related in the western jungles of Beerbhoom by 
 men who know not a word of Bengali, and who 
 dread the approach of a Hindu towards their village 
 more than the night-attack of a leopard or tiger. 
 Legends almost word for word the same are told 
 by the Santals of the south and of the north ; and 
 if it be possible for ignorance, hatred, and terror of 
 the stranger to keep the legends of a race free from 
 foreign elements, then these represent purely abo- 
 riginal traditions. I do not believe, however, that 
 perfect seclusiveness is possible ; and after a minute 
 research into such scraps of history as exist, and a 
 careful examination of their language, I am inclined 
 to think that they have unconsciously grafted San- 
 skrit incidents and scenery on what are at botton,, 
 distinct aboriginal legends. 
 
 * Modesty compels this part of the legend to be curtailed. 
 
ISO THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 I give in an appendix'' a literal translation of six 
 legends, as delivered to the Rev. Mr. Phillips by 
 the Santals of Orissa, two hundred miles distant 
 from the section of their countrymen among whom 
 the foregoing were gathered, and separated from 
 them by jungles, rivers, and the absence of any 
 means of written communication. 
 
 No one can fail to be struck by the analogies 
 which these traditions bear to the Mosaic and to 
 the Sanskrit accounts of the creation. The earth 
 covered with water, the raising up of the land, its 
 preparation for mankind, the nakedness of our first 
 parents, the divine provision for clothing them, 
 and the subsequent dispersion, are points in com- 
 mon ; but I belive that in the Santal Genesis, as 
 in that of other races not of Aryan or Semitic 
 descent, the tradition of the creation is mixed up 
 with one of a deluge, when indeed the creation 
 with these less gifted tribes does not begin with a 
 flood. The Aryans, who have distinct traditions 
 relative to both events, speak in very different terms 
 of the two. Their legend of the creation is wrapt 
 up in mystery hardly less solemn than the brief 
 majestic verses of Moses, while their legend of the 
 deluge is one of practical details. ' Then there was 
 neither entity nor nonentity,' runs the Vedic account 
 of the creation ; ' there was no atmosphere, nor any 
 sky beyond it. Death was not then, nor immor- 
 tality ; there was no distinction of day or night 
 The One breathed calmly with nature ; there was 
 * Appendix G. 
 
RATHER A LEGEND OF THE FLOOD. 151 
 
 nothing different from It or beyond It. Darkness 
 there was.' On the other hand, the Sanskrit story 
 of the deluge, like that in the Pentateuch, makes no 
 mystery of the matter. A ship is built, seeds are 
 taken on board, the ship is pulled about for some 
 time by a fish, and at l3.st gets ashore upon a peak 
 of the Himalayas. 
 
 The Santal legend describes rather the subsidence 
 of waters than a creation, and the striking features 
 of such a subsidence are accurately detailed. The 
 Great Mountain first stood forth from the deep, 
 while marine fowls and aquatic plants continued to 
 live upon the surface of the water. As the flood 
 went down, rocks appeared, with shell-fish, prawns, 
 and other crustaceous animals. On its further sub- 
 sidence, it would leave the earth covered with 
 worms and the countless creeping things with which 
 the slime of a retreating tropical river teems. Then 
 would spring up a luxuriant covering of grass, and 
 the earth would be ready for its human occupants. 
 The prominent mention both in the Mosaic and the 
 Santal legends of the use of strong drink, and of in- 
 decencies committed under its influence, is certainly 
 a curious coincidence ; perhaps it is nothing more. 
 
 Another coincidence — I do not venture to call 
 it an analogy — is to be found in the number of 
 children born to the first pair. As the Santal 
 legend immediately divides the human species into 
 seven families, so the Sanskrit tradition assigns the 
 propagation of our race after the flood to seven 
 Rishis. 
 
152 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 The mountain home from which the Santals 
 issued, and to which their earHest traditions point, 
 was unquestionably among the Himalayas. The 
 hills, or rather the table-lands of Central India, 
 are not of a character sufficiently striking to have 
 left so permanent an impression on the Santal 
 mind, and there is no evidence of their ever hav- 
 ing been near the higher Vindhya ranges. Nor 
 is it possible to understand how they could have 
 reached the Central Table-land, unless from the 
 north. With the Malay type and with the Malay 
 language their features and their speech have no 
 affinities ; of the sea or of the larger marine fishes 
 they have no traditions ; and we can believe their 
 legendary mountain home to have been in the 
 south instead of in the north, only if we are willing 
 to concede that they are a distinct race, created 
 among the hills of Central India, and not descended 
 from the same first parents as the rest of mankind. 
 
 But the traditions and religious beliefs of the 
 Santals are stamped with the influence of another 
 natural phenomenon besides the Great Mountain. 
 A mighty river always affects more or less per- 
 manently the people who dwell upon its banks, and 
 such a river forms the second fact in the outward 
 world of which the Santal race display conscious- 
 ness. In the country which they now chiefly in- 
 habit, and have lived in for ages, mountain streams 
 abound ; but none of them attains the dignity of a 
 great river.* The largest of them, the Damooda, 
 
 5 This paragraph refers to the Santals adjoining Beerbhooin, nol 
 
PREHISTORIC REMINISCENCES. 153 
 
 IS fordable even in a carriage during many months 
 of the year. While, therefore, the aborigines of 
 the north-east frontier, living in a land of mighty 
 waters, have a crowded Pantheon of river deities or 
 demons,' the aborigines of the Santal country have 
 not been able to find a single stream worthy of 
 being erected into a national god. Nevertheless a 
 faint remembrance of the far-off time when they 
 dwelt beside great rivers, still exerts its influence. 
 The only stream of any consequence in their present 
 country — the Damooda — is regarded with a venera- 
 tion altogether disproportionate to its size. Thither 
 the superstitious Santal repairs to consult the pro- 
 phets and diviners, and once a year the tribes make 
 a pilgrimage to its banks, in commemoration of 
 their forefathers. The ceremony is called the Puri- 
 fying for the Dead ; and the influence anciently 
 exerted by great rivers on the Santal beliefs has 
 been of so permanent a character, that to this day 
 the omission to visit, at least once a year, the single 
 river they possess, is visited among some families in 
 the Beerbhoom highlands by loss of social privileges. 
 The same influence makes itself apparent in the 
 touching and beautiful rite, by means of which they 
 unite the dead with the fathers. However remote 
 the jungle in which the Santal may die, his nearest 
 kinsman carries a little relic of the deceased to the 
 
 to those of Orissa in the extreme south, or of Rajmahal on the 
 northern frontier of the race. 
 
 '' See the Ust of deities worshipped by the Assamese hill-men, 
 given in Mr. Hodgson's Essay on the Kocch, Bodo, and Dhimal 
 Tribes, p. 166. 
 
IS 4 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 river, and places it in the current, to be conveyed to 
 the far-off eastern land from which his ancestors 
 came. Instances have been known of a son follow- 
 ing up the traces of a wild beast which had carried 
 off his parent, and watching, without food or sleep, 
 during several days for an opportunity to kill the 
 animal, and secure one of his father's bones to carry 
 to the river. 
 
 The value of this ceremony, from a historical 
 point of view, is as little affected by the circum- 
 stance that the present generation of Santals can 
 give no account of its origin, as its beauty is im- 
 paired by the fact that the Damooda never reaches 
 the great river of the East, by which, in all proba- 
 bility, their ancestors travelled. These rites point 
 distinctly to the influence once exerted on the race 
 by the presence of mighty streams ; and the waters 
 of the Damooda, laden with offerings of filial piety, 
 mingle at last in the common ocean with the waters 
 of the great eastern river which in bygone times 
 received their forefathers' bones. 
 
 I have enumerated the various countries through 
 which the Santals say they travelled towards their 
 present territory, not because I can derive much in- 
 formation from them myself, but in the hope that 
 other inquirers may, by identifying them, establish 
 conclusively the Santal line of march. Where 
 Hihiri Pipiri may be, or where Chae Champa and 
 Silda may be, I know not for certain ; but it is 
 worth mentioning that Pipiri-am means in Santali 
 a butterfly, and that Hihiri is merely a reduplicative 
 
THE SANTA L LINE OF MARCH. 155 
 
 form of it. If Hihiri Pipiri signify the Butterfly 
 Land, it would be in the temperate climate which 
 the Himalayas afford. Neither Hihiri nor Pipiri 
 occurs in Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, or Urdu. The 
 second country, Chae Champa, where the Santals 
 are said to have first become numerous, is possibly 
 the Land of Flowering Trees, the term being a 
 reduplicative plural of Champa, a flowering tree. 
 This would have been in the higher valleys of the 
 Brahmaputra. With Sikar, the fourth on the list, 
 we touch solid ground. It lies upon the Damooda, 
 almost within the ancient district of Beerbhoom, and 
 now forms one of the chief places of pilgrimage of 
 the race. While the Santals to the south of the 
 Damooda say they come from the north, those to 
 the north of it point to the south as their former 
 country ; so that it may be assumed that they 
 reached the valley of that river not from the north 
 or the south, but from the east or the west. As 
 they moved westwards from Sikar to Nagpur, within 
 historic times, the east remains as the direction from 
 which they came, being pushed gradually on from 
 the open country to the mountains, as the Hindu 
 population advanced. That this was their general 
 route, an examination of their manners and habits 
 of life will place beyond doubt. They have neither 
 the sullen disposition nor the unconquerable laziness 
 of the very old hill-tribes of Central India; they 
 have carried with them from the plains a love of 
 order, a genial humanity, with a certain degree of 
 civilisation and agricultural habits, which hundreds. 
 
156 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 perhaps thousands, of years have not been able to 
 efface. Their very vices are the vices of an op- 
 pressed and a driven-out people who have lapsed 
 from a higher state, rather than those of savages 
 who have never known better things. 
 
 The language of the Santals, that intangible 
 record on which a nation's past is graven more 
 deeply than on brass tablets or in rock inscriptions, 
 is as rich a field of inquiry as their traditions are 
 meagre and barren. It belongs to the order of 
 speech which, starting from monosyllabic roots, 
 form their inflections by the aid of pronominal 
 particles. It is therefore distinct from the Chinese 
 types, devoid as they are of inflectional structure, 
 and still further apart from the Semitic tongues, 
 starting from characteristic verbal bases consisting 
 of three letters.* As its roots are inflexible, it is 
 equally repudiated by that great family of languages 
 based upon biliteral flexible radices, to which our 
 own belongs, and of which Sanskrit exhibits the 
 most perfect development. Never subjected to 
 the conservative influences which written docu- 
 ments exert, and indeed devoid of any written 
 character whatever, it has come down to the present 
 generation shrivelled and disintegrated, rather the 
 debris of an ancient language than that ancient' 
 language itself Nevertheless it still survives as a 
 breathing linguistic organism connecting the present 
 with an unfathomed past, and furnishing hints of 
 
 ' A. W. von Schlegel's Observations sur k langue et litt^rature 
 Provengales, p. 14, 
 
SANTA L SPEECH. 157 
 
 grammatical forms infinitely more numerous and 
 complicated than were guessed of by Panini. 
 
 In the Appendix^ will be found an outline of the 
 Santali grammar, from which scholars who work at 
 leisure, and surrounded by the appliances of philo- 
 logical research, may perhaps derive wider and 
 sounder conclusions than I can. The following 
 pages bring to a common focus the results which 
 the few and scattered investigators of the Santal 
 race have arrived at ; and even if some of my deduc- 
 tions should be proved to be unsound, the facts will 
 remain at the service of those who may make a 
 better use of them." 
 
 In excavating the Santal language, the first 
 feature that attracts notice is, that although it pos- 
 sesses no letters or written character, the Sanskrit 
 alphabet exactly represents all its sounds. How- 
 ever copious an alphabet may be, it never precisely 
 fits a language of a different stock from that for 
 which it was made. Thus the Perso-Arabic alpha- 
 bet, one of the most exhaustive that has been framed, 
 possesses no equivalents for at least two of the 
 Sanskrit vowels, for two of the Sanskrit nasals, and 
 probably for the Sanskrit v sound. The Sanskrit 
 alphabet, on the other hand, has no equivalents for 
 the five z sounds in the Semitic tongues, and is 
 forced to the barbarism of using a / roughly to re- 
 present them. Nor has it an equivalent for the hard 
 
 * Appendix H. 
 
 1° Besides MS. contributions placed at my disposal, I have made 
 constant use of the Rev. J. Phillips' Introduction to the Santal Lan- 
 guage, Calcutta 1852, with MS. additions by other missionaries. 
 
iS8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Semitic aspirate, nor for the second k sound, nor foi 
 ain and ghain. Tradition relates how the Greek 
 alphabet, at first consisting of the primitive sixteen 
 Semitic characters, had to borrow four other signs 
 to represent Greek speech ; and if any one will write 
 a line of Homer with only the original sixteen letters, 
 and then try to read it out, he will realize the diffi- 
 culty of representing speech belonging to one of the 
 great families, by an alphabet constructed for a lan- 
 guage belonging to another. Nor does the San- 
 skrit alphabet accurately represent the utterances of 
 the Indian aborigines in general; indeed, the most 
 carefully studied, and perhaps the most widely 
 spoken of these aboriginal tongues — the one which 
 has been taken as the type of all the rest — contains 
 articulations that cannot be conveyed by any alpha- 
 bet in which Sanskrit is written. The southern 
 aborigines have not only sounds unknown to Aryan 
 speech, but they also want other sounds which the 
 Aryan alphabets very minutely express." 
 
 Now we know that the primitive Sanskrit alpha- 
 bet was deficient in consonants, and required several 
 new letters to represent the articulations of the races 
 whom the Aryans found settled in the land. From 
 the circumstance that the Sanskrit consonants, as 
 finally developed, precisely fit Santal speech, with- 
 out either deficiency or redundancy, excepting v, it 
 appears likely that the aboriginal race whom the 
 Aryan immigrants chiefly dealt with, and from 
 
 11 Note by Mr. F. W. Ellis to the preface to Campbell's Telugu 
 Grammar. 
 
FORMATION OF SPEECH. 159 
 
 whom they supplemented their consonantal sounds/^ 
 spoke a tongue phonetically cognate to Santali. The 
 fact that several Santal words are to be found 
 in very old Prakrit gives additional likelihood to 
 this conjecture. 
 
 Language is resolvable into two elements — 
 pronouns and roots. The latter represent the 
 material framework, the former the organic and 
 formative principle, which is to man's speech what 
 the vital spark is to his body. From the roots or 
 material element are derived verbs and nouns, but 
 verbs and nouns in a motionless state, devoid of 
 relation, and divested of the idea of position in 
 space or time. Yet, in order that man may speak 
 of a thing, he must first have a conception of it as 
 occupying some position, either in space or in time, 
 either near to himself or distant from him, as being 
 of the present or of the past, or, in the formula of 
 the philologers, as belonging to the here or to the 
 there. It is the function of the pronoun, understand- 
 ing that term in its scientific sense, to bridge over 
 this gulf between mind and matter, and to form out 
 of inert nouns and verbs the locomotive and half- 
 vital organism of human speech. 
 
 The STRUCTURE of language means the method 
 according to which these two elements, the pronoun 
 and the root, combine, the changes which they 
 undergo in the process, and the relation which they 
 bear to each other when united. In former times 
 grammarians pronounced languages distinct if they 
 
 '^ August Schleicher, Compendium, sec. 122. Weimar, 1866. 
 
i6o THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 employed different sets of pronouns and roots. 
 Modern philology has shown that such differences 
 are often apparent rather than real, and that, even 
 when real, the languages may nevertheless be con- 
 nected. Similarity or dissimilarity in words affords 
 a much less conclusive proof, one way or the other, 
 than resemblance or want of resemblance in structure. 
 Structure, indeed, is admitted to furnish the only 
 perfectly reliable test by which to compare one 
 tongue with another, and to settle its proper place 
 in the great commonwealth of languages. But 
 although this is admitted, structure has not yet 
 been heartily accepted as the basis of classification. 
 At present languages are arranged in four divisions : 
 \st. The monosyllabic uninflected type, or Chinese ; 
 2d, The monosyllabic (biliteral) inflected type, or 
 Indo-European ; 3(/, The triliteral inflected type, or 
 Semitic ; \th, The residue, such as the Turanian and 
 African, with the dialects of America and Australia. 
 In this arrangement no single principle of classifica- 
 tion is adhered to. It separates the first two classes 
 on account of difference in structure, — the one being 
 inflected, the other uninflected. It separates the 
 second from the third on account of difference in 
 their roots, — the second being based on biliteral, 
 the third on triliteral radices. According to the 
 first principle, that of structure, the fourth class 
 might be included as imperfect forms of the second 
 or third ; for languages of the fourth class exhibit 
 a kind of inflection. According to the second 
 principle, that which refers to the roots, the fourth 
 
THE NE W LIGHTS. 1 6 1 
 
 class might be placed under the first or second ; for 
 it consists of dialects based on biliteral roots. 
 
 The new lights have come from Germany. 
 Adopting structure as the basis of classification, 
 and adhering to it throughout, August Schleicher 
 has sketched a systematic arrangement of languages 
 which must sooner or later supplant the unscientific 
 one described above.^^ According to his plan, 
 speech belongs to one or other of the three following 
 types : \st. The isolating languages, consisting of 
 mere roots, incapable of forming compounds, and 
 not susceptible of inflectional change. The Chinese, 
 Anamitic, Siamese, and Burmese exemplify this 
 ciass. id. Compounding languages, consisting, like 
 the first, of roots which undergo no change, but 
 which, unlike the first, are capable of forming com- 
 pounds, and susceptible of inflection by means of 
 the addition, insertion, or prefixing of ' sounds that 
 imply relation.' To this family belong the Finnic, 
 Tataric, Dekhanic, and Bask, the speech of the 
 aborigines of America, the South African or Bantu 
 dialects, and, in general, the greater number of 
 languages. 3^, Inflecting languages, consisting of 
 roots that undergo change in inflection, and which 
 are also susceptible of inflection by means of prefixes 
 or suffixes. The Semitic and the Indo-European 
 form two widely separated families of this class." 
 
 1' Compendium der Vergleichenden Gramniatik der Indoger- 
 manischen Sprachen, von August Schleicher. 8vo. Weimar, 1866. 
 
 ^^ Id. p. 3. Schleicher represents the first, or simple-root class, 
 by R; the second, or root and suffix class, by ^j*, the union of the 
 Rs indicating that the root and suffix form one word, and the ^ that 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
1 62 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 I purpose to examine, as briefly as possible, 
 according to this new method, the structure of 
 Santali, and to ascertain its place in the great 
 community of languages. Such an inquiry, how- 
 ever essential to a thorough understanding of the 
 rural population of Bengal, will involve technicali- 
 ties that may prove distasteful to some readers. 
 Those, therefore, for whom a philological excursus 
 possesses little interest, can pass on to page 179, 
 where they will find its main results concisely set 
 forth. 
 
 , That Santali does not belong to Schleicher's 
 Urst class — the Isolating languages — a single ex- 
 ample is sufficient to prove. The word for tiger is 
 hul ; and if a Santal wishes to denote the dual of 
 this noun, he does not say 'two -tiger' or 'tiger- 
 two,' using distinct words as a Chinaman would, but 
 compounds the root kul with a dual suffix kin, and 
 makes one word of it; thus, kulkin. In the same 
 way he expresses the plural, not by two words, 
 ' tiger-many,' as the Isolating languages do, but 
 by compounding the root with the plural suffix ko; 
 thus, kulko. The kin and the ko are not mere 
 additions. They are to a certain extent incorpo- 
 rated with the root, and the compounds thus 
 formed become bases for the declension of the 
 dual and plural : thus, genitive dual, kulkin-rini, 
 
 the sufBx is susceptible of change in the process of combination ; the 
 third is represented by R'^ s", the x above the R and the s expressing 
 that both root and suffix are susceptible of change during the pro- 
 cess of inflection. There is some little confusion on this point in 
 Schleicher's text (p. 3), but it is cleared up in the Addenda. 
 
THE SANTALI INFLECTIONS. 163 
 
 of two tigers ; dative plural, kulko-then, to or near 
 to several tigers. 
 
 Santali, therefore, must belong either to the 
 second or third of Schleicher's classes ; and to find 
 which of the two it falls under, it is necessary to 
 ascertain whether, in compounding its cases and 
 tenses, the root undergoes any change. To ensure 
 perfect accuracy at this stage, every part of speech 
 ought to be examined, and the Santal roots should 
 be traced through the various cognate languages. 
 Such a review would occupy many pages ; but a few 
 examples will suffice to illustrate how it ought to 
 be gone about, and to indicate the process by which 
 I have arrived at my conclusion on the subject. 
 First, of the Santal nouns : the root never under- 
 goes change in its internal structure, nor does it 
 even admit of elisions or phonetic changes of its 
 terminal letter. Thus, not only do nouns ending in 
 a consonant — like herel, ' man ' — continue the same 
 in all the oblique cases of the singular, dual, and 
 plural ; but Santali is so jealous of any change in the 
 root, that it does not permit the conjunction of ter- 
 minal vowels in declension with suffixes beginning 
 with a vowel. Thus, bade, ' the banyan tree,' com- 
 pounded with iate, the suffix of the instrumental 
 case, does not undergo any alteration, such as 
 baday-iate, but remains bade-iate ; nor does kada, 
 a ' buffalo,' with the same suffix, exhibit the Guna 
 change, kade-ate or kadayate, but continues kada- 
 iate. In the same way with the verbs : the root 
 taken, ' remain,' forms its numbers, persons, and 
 
1 64 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 tenses not by alteration in its own structure, but 
 by the addition of suffixes. Thus, future, tahen- 
 at, 'he will remain;' taken-akin, 'they two will 
 remain ;' tahen-ako, ' they will remain ' (plural). 
 Imperfect tense, tahen-en-at, 'he remained;' tahen- 
 en-akin, ' they two remained ;' tahen-en-ako, ' they 
 remained.' Pluperfect tense, tahen-len-wC, ' he had 
 remained;' dual, tahen-len-akin ; plural, tahen-len- 
 ako. Subjunctive mood, tahen-cho-e, ' he may re- 
 main;' potential, tahen-koh-ai, 'he might remain;' 
 imperative, tahen-mai; infinitive, taken- te, or among 
 the northern Santals taken. Participles : taken-kate, 
 'remaining;' taken - en - kkan, 'having remained.' 
 Gerunds : taken-ente^ taken-lente, and tahen-akante, 
 ' by remaining.' 
 
 Occasionally, but rarely, the verbs exhibit pho- 
 netic changes of terminal vowels, and in a single 
 instance of a terminal nasal. 
 
 The pronouns are more complicated, but the 
 changes they exhibit in the roots arise from em- 
 ploying different bases in the dual and plural. 
 These changes are principally confined to the first 
 person. Thus: ing, 'I'; alim or alam, 'we two;' 
 ale or aban}^ ' we ' (plural). Am, ' thou ;' dual, 
 aben ; plural, ape. Ona, ' it ; ' dual, onakin ; 
 plural, onako or onko. 
 
 Santali, therefore, does not belong to the truly 
 Inflecting Languages, which change their roots to 
 form some of their oblique cases and moods, but to 
 
 " The Rev. J. Phillips ; but cf. the dual and plural of the Sanskrit 
 asmad. 
 
ITS PLACE AMONG LANGUAGES. 165 
 
 Schleicher's second class — the Compounding Lan- 
 guages. This family occupies, so far as its structure 
 is concerned, an intermediate position between the 
 other two. The simplest form of speech is the 
 Isolating, which modifies its roots not by forming 
 compound cases or inflections, but simply by add- 
 ing other roots. It is represented by R-Vr-\-r, etc. 
 The next class has a certain agglutinative power, 
 by which it combines the simple roots with other 
 roots signifying relation, and which are generally 
 termed pronouns or pronominal particles. If we 
 consider these pronominals as debased or disinte- 
 grated roots, and represent them by the initial letter 
 of that word, the formula of the second class would 
 be R r, the union of the large and small r indicat- 
 ing that the two roots, the base and the inflection, 
 become a compound word. Sometimes the inflec- 
 tional root undergoes change ; and this fact may be 
 represented by placing x above the second r, so 
 that Schleicher's second class may be represented 
 either as Rr or Rr''. In his third class, the roots 
 — i.e. the base and the pronominal — are still more 
 closely united, and both may undergo change ; the 
 formula therefore is R" r"'. 
 
 So far, therefore, as structure is concerned, no 
 break or chasm can be found between the multiform 
 varieties of human speech. They rise one above 
 the other by easy gradations, each class exhibiting 
 a higher degree of activity than the one below it. 
 The Isolating class cannot form compounds, and 
 express themselves by an endless string of inco- 
 
1 66 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 hesive roots ; thus, R-\-r ad infinitum. The Com- 
 pounding class haive a certain agglutinative power by 
 which the pronominals, or roots expressing relation, 
 stick to the main root of the word, but the main 
 root undergoes no change; thus, Rr or Rr'. In 
 the Inflecting class, the cohesive powers are still 
 stronger, the roots expressing relation are firmly 
 cemented with the main root of the word, and the 
 main root has a self-inflecting power of expressing 
 moods and cases by changes within itself; thus, 
 R'r"'. The three classes represent different stages 
 of formative activity; and, without laying undue 
 stress on the comparison, it is curious to notice the 
 fact that each of the great families of the human 
 race has exhibited more or less political and social 
 activity in proportion to the formative powers of the 
 language which it speaks. The Burmese, Chinese, 
 and Anamitic nations disclose a tendency to political 
 isolation, and an absence of ethnic vitality singularly 
 analogous to their monosyllabic isolating speech. 
 The class above them, the Tataric tribes, who from 
 time to time have rolled down in masses upon 
 Europe and Southern Asia, developed a more active 
 genius, with a larger capacity for organized enter- 
 prise, just as their language developed the formative 
 principle in a greater degree than the Chinese. 
 The third class, the Aryan and Semitic stocks, 
 exhibit the highest form both of social and linguistic 
 activity, rearing for themselves orderly empires alike 
 in the physical and the metaphysical worlds, and 
 displaying the same strong vitality in their political 
 
THE PHILOLOGICAL STRATA. id? 
 
 history and practical life as in their speech. It 
 would be easy to push the comparison further, and 
 to show, for example among the Compounding class 
 of languages, that the nations which have played 
 the most active part in the world have also evolved 
 the richest grammatical forms. The Tungusic 
 family have never exhibited vitality either in their 
 political movements or in their speech; the Mon- 
 golic are a stage higher in both ; while the Turkic 
 and Finnic branches stand at the head of Turanian 
 mankind, whether we judge of them by their lan- 
 guages, or by the creative energy to which Europe 
 owes the Ottoman empire and the Kudic Kale- 
 wala. 
 
 In India, all the three classes of languages meet 
 as upon a common camping-ground. Bengal, with 
 its dependencies, forms a vast basin into which every 
 variety of speech has been flowing since prehistoric 
 times. There the whole philological series will be 
 found, each stratum lying above its predecessor . 
 from the Isolating languages, that hard primary 
 formation, through the secondary layers of the 
 Compounding class, up to the most recent deposits 
 of Inflecting speech, the alluvial Bengali and Hindi. 
 Thus : 
 
 / Burmese : ^' Chinese, spoken by settlers in the 
 First Class : / large towns ; the dialects of some of the 
 
 i2+;- Languages. \ tribes on the eastern and south-eastern 
 
 \ frontier of Bengal. 
 
 '* August Schleicher, Compendium, p. 3, 2d ed. 
 
1 68 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 The Himalayan dialects : ^^ Santali, Kol, and 
 
 / The Himalayan dialects : " Santali, Kol, and 
 Second Class : j ^^ ^^^ ^^ j^^^ y^^^^ ascertained, the lan- 
 
 Rr and Rr^ Lan- ^ g^^^g^^ ^^ jj^^ hill-tribes in gener 
 
 guages. I Q^j Bengal and Southern India. 
 
 Third Class : 
 Rxrx Languages. 
 
 ' Aryan Branch : Sanskrit ; Hindusthani ; Ben- 
 gal; Hindi, etc. Semitic Branch: the 
 Arabic of the Mussulman ministers of re- 
 ligion, etc. Semi-Aryan: the half-Arabic 
 Persian which until recently was the official 
 language, and still forms the vernacular of 
 the upper classes of the Mussulman popu- 
 
 \ lation. 
 
 The study of Sanskrit speech in Northern India 
 has brought to light the affinities of the long separated 
 Aryan members of the Inflecting class of languages, 
 and proved the common parentage of two-thirds of 
 civilised mankind. But this forms only a single 
 family of the world's inhabitants. The study of the 
 aboriginal dialects of Bengal is destined, I believe, 
 to do a similar work for the vast ethnical residue ; 
 to construct a well-connected series out of scattered 
 fragments, and possibly at some distant date to 
 furnish the connecting links between the three great 
 orders of human speech. The materials which 
 Turanian scholars in Europe, such as Klaproth, 
 A. Remusat, and Castren, had to collect by 
 laborious research or perilous travel, lie at the very 
 door of the Indian missionary or magistrate, and 
 official machinery might be easily and inexpensively 
 set in motion for making a clean sweep of the 
 whole non-Aryan languages of Bengal. 
 
 '' The ranges to the east of the higher valley of the Brahmaputra 
 appear to form a linguistic watershed. Assam, a district of Lower 
 Bengal, is an ethnical as well as a political frontier. 
 
THEIR CONFLUENCE IN BENGAL. 169 
 
 Two things have to be done — to collect the voca- 
 bulary, and to compile the grammar of each group 
 of dialects. Until a comprehensive comparative 
 dictionary be drawn up, it is impossible to pronounce 
 on the phonetic changes the letters are subject to 
 in the Compounding class of languages, and hence 
 also impossible to recognise with certainty the same 
 root under the diverse costumes in which it may 
 appear in different parts of the country. This work 
 has been already accomplished for the Aryan lan- 
 guages, and scholars can now pronounce with toler- 
 able certainty what alterations each letter undergoes 
 in any specified variety of inflecting speech,'' 
 
 For the compilation of aboriginal grammars and 
 their classification, Schleicher's method affords valu- 
 able hints. His business is exclusively with the 
 Inflecting class ; but he states that the second class, 
 the Compounding languages, to which the aboriginal 
 dialects of India belong, are formed by the union 
 of the root with prefixes, insertions, aud suffixes. 
 Leaving out the middle variety for the sake of 
 clearer illustration, we obtain four simple and four 
 complex orders from the other two. Thus, (i) the 
 root with a suffixed pronominal root unchanged, 
 R r, (2) or with the pronominal changed, R r' ; (3) 
 the root with a prefixed pronominal root unchanged, 
 r R, (4) or with the pronominal changed, r*i?. 
 The possible Compound varieties are formed by 
 
 *' Grundzuge der Griechischen Etymologie, von Georg Curtius, 
 pp. 120, 121, 2d ed., Leipzig 1866; or Schleicher's better arranged 
 table of consonant-changes, Compendium, p. 340, 2d ed., Weimar 
 \866. 
 
170 ^ THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 attaching"- both a prefix and a suffix to the root ; 
 thus, (5) rRr^ (6) r^'Rr, (7) rRr'', (8) r^'Rr'. 
 Here, therefore, we have a scientific method of 
 arrangement, beginning with a class almost as de- 
 void of life as the Isolating languages, and ending 
 with one which would exhibit a formative activity 
 hardly exceeded by the Inflecting. If the scattered 
 investigators of the aboriginal races of India would 
 agree to accept this or any other uniform method, 
 and thus bring their results to a common focus, the 
 chief obstacle in the way of non-Aryan philology 
 would be got rid of The combination of the sym- 
 bolic letters may be made to indicate the whole 
 number of possible species. All that the Indian 
 students have to do is to arrange each language in 
 its proper class, leaving the hypothetical existence 
 of the other species, and all doubtful topics of 
 speculation, to European scholars. 
 
 Although Santali is proved from its structure to 
 belong to the Compounding class of languages, and 
 to the second or R r' species of that class, it never- 
 theless exhibits curious analogies to languages of 
 the Inflecting order, and in particular to Sanskrit. 
 Many of these analogies may be explained away by 
 the contact of the Sanskrit-speaking population, but 
 all cannot. Three of the Santali pronouns and three 
 sets of nouns will suffice to illustrate this : — 
 
 There is a curious particle, chit, in Sanskrit, which 
 never stands by itself as a personal pronoun, but is 
 used to impart indefiniteness to the relative. Thus, 
 kas, who, with the particle chit added to it, becomes 
 
AR VAN ROOTS IN SANIALI. 1 7 1 
 
 kas-ckit, some one. The same particle supplies the 
 indefinite conjunction chet, if. But this particle, which 
 in the Sanskrit tongue has almost dropped out of 
 the rank of independent pronominals, and clings as 
 an affix to a stronger root, stands forth in Santali as 
 the pronoun of indefiniteness, resting on its own 
 strength, and the parent of a numerous family of 
 words. Thus Santali, chet, what ; chet-hong, any- 
 thing ; chet-cho, perhaps, who knows ; chet-leko, like 
 what, etc. 
 
 The Santali adjective jo-to, all, is certainly as 
 unlike the corresponding Sanskrit word sarva as 
 can be. But jo-to is contracted, according to the 
 ordinary rule, ironx j'a-uta ; and the naked root thus 
 obtained, /a forms the basis of a number of Santali 
 compounds signifying number, quantity, or continued 
 duration. Thus ja-age and ja-jug, a great number 
 of times, for ever ; ja-uhilo, always ; ja-arate, to 
 bring together a large quantity, to collect; the 
 adjective jak, numerous, populous, which has been 
 adopted without change into low Bengali. It 
 happens that a single adverb survives in Sanskrit 
 which suffices to preserve this root in a form not 
 liable to be mistaken. The Sanskrit ja-tu, ever, 
 sometimes, with its negative na ja-tu, never, at no 
 time, forms almost the sole undisguised representa- 
 tive among the Indo-Aryan pronominals of a strong 
 and fecund root in that primitive language from 
 which the whole Indo-Germanic family in common 
 with the Santali appears to have sprung. 
 
 One of the Santali demonstrative pronouns is 
 
172 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 na-i^^ this, which appears in a variety of compounds, 
 such as na-hari, to this, until, now ; na-te, this way, 
 hither ; na-nte, here, etc. One of its derivatives is 
 na-se, which never stands alone, but always as a re- 
 duplicative plural, na-se na-se, some. Compare this 
 with the Sanskrit indeclinable particle, na-na, various. 
 The Santali third person pronouns furnish what 
 some may be inclined to consider a verification of 
 one of Dr. Donaldson's conjectures. Thirty years 
 ago this most ingenious of philologers enumerated 
 four separate particles for the third person pronoun, 
 ta, na, nu, and ni, only two of which could be dis- 
 tinctly identified in the languages he had examined. 
 In Santali the whole four are found side by side, 
 bare of accidental wrappings, and in the very forms 
 that Donaldson described. Thus, ia-i, his ; na-i,^^ 
 this person ; nu-a and ni-a, this thing. This may 
 be only a coincidence, but it is, at any rate, a very 
 curious one. 
 
 Passing to the nouns, the Santali glossary differs 
 from the Sanskrit in a far greater degree than the 
 Greek and English do, and perhaps in the same 
 degree that the Arabic does. In a number of roots 
 expressing very simple ideas, however, a striking 
 resemblance appears. Thus, to take the divisions 
 of time, the most obvious of which is the separation, 
 of day from night. Day is the one universal pheno- 
 menon in all ages and in all countries ; and the same 
 root has served the Sanskrit conquerors of India, 
 
 ^' Properly pronounced with an aspirate after the n; thus, na- 
 hai. Na-hari = na-aharu 
 
AR YAN ROOTS IN SANTAIJ. 173 
 
 the Roman conquerors of Europe, and the Saxon 
 reclaimers of the New World, to express it. This 
 root, div, means primarily 'light' or 'brightness;' 
 but the Sanskrit likewise exhibits the remains of what 
 must have been either an older form of this root, or 
 more likely a distinct root, din, ' day.' Of the first 
 root, div, which has been so universally adopted, by 
 Indo-Germanic speech, not a vestige can be found 
 in Santali ; but the second, din, which has, compara- 
 tively speaking, fallen out of use among the great 
 brotherhood of languages, is distinctly preserved 
 in Sanskrit and Santali. In both these tongues, 
 however, it shows signs of old age and weakness, 
 and leans on stronger words for support. Its true 
 sphere is in composition, where it rivals the other 
 root in Sanskrit, and overpowers all competitors in 
 Santali. Thus Sanskrit root, din, a day ; Santali, 
 din-kalom, last year; din-talaute, to apend time, to 
 provide for the future ; din-hiloh, daily, continually. 
 It is questionable whether din, a day, ever stands 
 by itself in pure Santali ; but the above compounds 
 are inherent and genuine parts of the aboriginal 
 vernacular. There are several words for ' day ' in 
 Santali, a common one being maha. 
 
 Santali, being barren of abstract terms, has no 
 word for ' time ;' but it forms a number of com- 
 pounds, expressing periods of time, from a root 
 kal: thus, kal-om, next year ; din-kal-om, last year ; 
 hal-kalom, two years ago ; mahang-kdlom, three 
 years ago. Now, curiously enough, kal-a is the 
 Sanskrit word for ' time,' from the root kal. 
 
174 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 To take another instance : the members of 
 the body are common to all men, and the dif- 
 ferent branches of a race generally express them 
 by names formed from the same roots. The 
 word for head comes in every language to have 
 a secondary sense, expressing pre-eminence, or the 
 top of anything. Thus, Sanskrit root, sir, head, 
 the summit of a tree, the van of an army, etc. 
 The root sir in Santali never stands alone, but 
 it appears as the basis of a numerous group of 
 words : thus, sir-om, the neck, i.e. under the 
 head, om or um being the Santali pronominal of 
 position ; sir-sir-aute, to quiver, to shake the head 
 with rage ; sir-arite, to persist, like our English 
 idiom to be headstrong; sirak-barah, excellent, 
 prime, especially applied to meat ; sir-kite, to thatch 
 the top of a house. The Sanskrit root for the 
 throat is gal, whence words for melting, eating, and 
 speaking are derived. Santali forms its words for 
 the throat and for eating from a different source, but 
 it employs this same root gal in composition to ex- 
 press speaking and melting : thus, gal-maraute, to 
 converse, to gossip; galam-galam, indistinct, gut- 
 tural ; gal-aute, to slacken, as lime under the action 
 of water. 
 
 Next to the neck is the arm ; and the Indo- 
 Germanic word for this limb, kasta, or its contracted 
 form hat, although unknown in Santali as an in- 
 dependent vocable, is found in composition. Thus, 
 hdt-lah, the arm-pit; hdt-aute, to snatch away; 
 hdt-oate, to feel about with the hands in the dark, 
 
ARYAN ROOTS IN SANTALI. 175 
 
 to grope; hdt-araute, to grope with the hand in 
 water, to catch fish with the hand. The Indo 
 Germanic root whence the Sanskrit garb -ha, belly, 
 is formed, appears in the Santali verb gabraute, to 
 miscarry, to have an abortion. 
 
 To conclude the comparison with a more doubt- 
 ful set of resemblances. Most of the Indo-Ger- 
 manic languages form their term for the human 
 species from the root which appears so strongly in 
 our English word man. ' Man ' primarily signifies 
 the thinking animal, from the radix man, ' to think ;' 
 and the same root appears in Santali as the base of 
 a widely ramified system of words referring to the 
 human race, and to the operations of the human 
 intellect. Thus : 
 
 Root, man, to think. 
 
 English, Greek. 
 
 Man, etc. 
 
 fiivos, spirit. ^^ 
 fiifcovXf be 
 eager. 
 
 Sanskrit. 
 3fan, to understand. 
 Majiu, the first man. 
 Mdnava, man in general. 
 
 Santali. 
 Man-ete, to think. 
 Man-e, the soul. 
 Mdniko, the first man. 
 Mdn-o-i, man in general. 
 Mdn-janam or Manoi- 
 janam, bom of man, 
 etc. 
 
 The missionary who has most thoroughly inves- 
 tigated the speech of the isolated sections of the 
 Santals, does not mark these words as being bor- 
 rowed from the Sanskrit ; but their resemblance to 
 the corresponding words in Sanskrit is suspiciously 
 close. Even were they truly aboriginal, it would 
 be unsafe to build up any theory upon them. 
 
 '" Grundziige der Griechischen Etymologic, von Georg Curtius, 
 p. 279, 2d ed. 
 
176 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 The foregoing examples have pointed to the exist- 
 ence of common roots for very primitive ideas in 
 Santali and Sanskrit ; but the structural differences 
 between the Inflecting and Compounding languages 
 are too great and too completely unexplained, to 
 permit of any attempt to follow up these indications 
 to a common or even a cognate origin. 
 
 While treating of the alphabet, we JFound reason- 
 able ground to conjecture that the Aryan invaders 
 of India had come in contact with a language 
 allied to Santali in primitive times, and mentioned 
 that the Prakrit, a very early form of vernacular 
 Sanskrit, had adopted pure Santali terms. Thus, 
 instead of employing the Aryan stambha, ' a post,' 
 ' a pillar,' ' a peg,' the Sanskrit population used 
 an aboriginal word, khunt-a?^ This khunt-a is an 
 undisguised Santali word, the only change being in 
 the terminal vowel : thus, ancient Prakrit, khunt-a; 
 modern Santali, khunt-i, ' a post.' The identity is 
 complete, even to the circumstance that in both 
 words the cerebral /and n are used. Bheda, 'a 
 sheep,' appears to furnish another example. It is a 
 Santal word in use at the present day ; in Sanskrit 
 it stands alone, and without any clear origin. The 
 cerebral d, with which it is spelt, renders the proba- 
 bility still greater that it is a true aboriginal word 
 which the Aryan settlers borrowed from the races 
 they found living in the land. Again, Sanskrit 
 grammarians state that the word poia,^'^ ' belly,' was 
 
 *' Mrichhakati, 40. Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii. p. 36. 
 ^^ Mrichhakati, 72 and 112. Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii. p. 36. 
 
SANTALI WORDS IN PRAKRIT. 177 
 
 an aboriginal word that had crept into the Prakrit 
 Now,po^a; spelt with a cerebral / as in Prakrit, sur- 
 vives among the Santals at the present day, and in 
 almost every village some corpulent man goes by 
 the nickname oi potea, ' fat-belly.' 
 
 In some cases, a word thus introduced from 
 the aboriginal dialect into the spoken language of 
 the victorious Aryans has a very sad story to tell. 
 Take for example the Santali numeral pon-ea, or in 
 composition /(?;«, ' four.' No vocable could be more 
 distinct from the Sanskrit chatur, or the modern 
 Bengali, chari, ' four.' The lower classes in Bengal, 
 however, employ a curious word signifying ' one- 
 fourth less.' Thus, instead of saying two and three- 
 quarters, they say a quarter less than three, and 
 frequently express seventy-five as one-fourth less 
 than one hundred, and seven hundred and fifty as 
 one -fourth less than a thousand. The word never 
 appears in Bengali as a numeral, but always in this 
 odd sense of one-fourth less. It is identical, how- 
 ever, with the Santali numeral ' four.' Thus : 
 Bengali, poun-e, 'one-fourth less;' Santali, pon-ea, 
 ' four.' In very old Bengali, moreover, there was a 
 word, po-ya, ' a quarter,' which still half survives in 
 the vulgate of the market-place, and which gram- 
 marians pretend to derive from a Sanskrit radical, 
 pad, 'to go,' through pad ox pada, 'a foot;' hence 
 a metrical foot, the fourth part of a verse, also used 
 as a technical term in Algebra to express the least 
 root in an affected square. In connecting poya 
 with pad, the grammarians may possibly be right ; 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
178 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 but in deriving poya directly from pad they are 
 certainly wrong. The Bengali poune and poya 
 are unquestionably adopted from pon-ea, the ver- 
 nacular of the aborigines. At first the conquered 
 .tribes succeeded in introducing their more general 
 term poya, a quarter, into the composite language 
 which they and their Aryan masters spoke ; but 
 four Sanskrit rivals were in the field,^^ all signify- 
 ing a quarter, and the Sanskrit, being the stronger 
 language, drove the poor aboriginal word out of 
 Bengali speech, as the Aryans had driven the 
 aborigines out of Bengal. Moreover, as the abo- 
 riginal remnant which stayed in the open country 
 were reduced to slavery, so their word for ' a fourth,' 
 while degraded from the polite language, was allowed 
 to survive in the mouths of hucksters, who buy and 
 sell at this day by the aboriginal poya, 'quarter.' 
 On the other hand, the aboriginal term for ' one- 
 fourth less' found no Sanskrit synonym to oppose 
 it, and so was able to hold its ground in the com- 
 posite speech of the Bengali people. 
 
 The Santals, on their side, have borrowed very 
 liberally from Aryan speech. Their vocabulary is 
 filled with words of unmistakeably Sanskrit origin, 
 and which appear to have come, not from Bengali 
 or Hindi, but through some more ancient dialect. 
 We have seen that Prakrit came in contact with 
 Santali and borrowed from it at a very distant date ; 
 
 ^* (i) Chaturtha; (2) Chaturthansha ; (3) Pada, only as a term 
 in mathematics or prosody ; (4) Ek-ha, contracted from Eka pada 
 (Haughton). 
 
PRAKRIT WORDS IN SANTA LI. 179 
 
 and it would be easy to show that Santali is under 
 similar obligations to Prakrit. Its meagre list of 
 abstract terms is transferred almost without change 
 from the Apabransa of the ancient Aryan settlers. 
 
 The political unit of the Aryan race, from its 
 first historical appearance in India, is the village, and 
 upon village institutions the whole social economy of 
 the Hindus is based. Of the village as a political 
 unit, \kv& gram of the Indo-Aryan tongues, no trace 
 exists in genuine Santali, The aboriginal race 
 goes a step further back, and rests its system on 
 the simpler political unit of a nomadic society, the 
 family. The Indo-Aryan word for a household, 
 kula, is not found by itself in Santali, but it subsists 
 as the groundwork of every Santal community. A 
 Santal village consists essentially of a single street, 
 with houses on each side ; and the pathway run- 
 ning between is called throughout the whole Santal 
 country the kula-hi, the divider of the families. 
 
 Those who wish to pursue the subject of Santal 
 speech further, may turn to the Grammar given in 
 the Appendix (H). Enough has been said in the 
 foregoing pages to establish five points with regard 
 to this important section of the aboriginal hill-men 
 of western Bengal. 
 
 1st. That their vernacular is in structure distinct 
 from Sanskrit and the Inflecting order of speech, and 
 belongs to Schleicher's second class, the Compound- 
 ing languages. 
 
 2d. Nevertheless, that it appears to contain cer- 
 tain roots expressive of very simple ideas, in com- 
 
i8o THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 mon with Sanskrit, but not derived from Sanskrit, 
 in the same way as the Semitic and Aryan lan- 
 guages exhibit a few identical roots, not directly 
 derived from each other, but probably from a com- 
 
 94. 
 
 mon source. 
 
 3^. That, at a very remote period, Sanskrit came 
 in contact with Santali, or the ancient representative 
 of Santali ; that Sanskrit adopted from Santali, pro- 
 bably, a number of aboriginal sounds with which to 
 supplement its primitive meagre alphabet,^' cer- 
 tainly several words which appear unchanged in the 
 Prakrit of ancient times and in the Santali of the 
 present day ; that Bengali, which, roughly speak- 
 ing, is to Prakrit what Prakrit was to Sanskrit, has 
 gone on borrowing from Santali, while Santali has 
 ' borrowed very largely from Aryan dialects of more 
 ancient date. 
 
 A^th. That the study of Santali, along with the 
 other aboriginal dialects of India, is possibly destined 
 to do for the Compounding languages what the 
 study of Sanskrit has done for the Inflecting lan- 
 guages ; that a scientific method exists, according 
 to which this study might be conducted ; that in 
 Bengal and its dependencies the whole varieties of 
 human speech meet, presenting peculiar facilities 
 for research, and affording a basis from which a 
 properly equipped philologer might sail forth and 
 discover a new linguistic world. 
 
 ^^ M liner's Survey of the Three Families of Languages, p. 27, 2d 
 ed. Donaldson's Maskil le-Sopher, p. 12-41. Gesenius ; Ewald. 
 
 2» According to Schleicher, the Sanskrit alphabet originally con- 
 tained only fifteen consonants, and adopted nineteen fromtheaborigines. 
 
RELIGION OP THE SANTA LS. i8i 
 
 ^tk. That, as Sanskrit points to the north-west 
 of the Himalayas as the starting-point of the 
 I ndo- Aryans, so SantaH points to the countries 
 on the north-east — the cunabula of Compounding 
 speech — as the primitive home of the Indian abori- 
 gines ; while Santal legends furnish hints as to 
 their march through Eastern Bengal, spreading 
 westwards until beaten back, before Aryan migra- 
 tions, to the highlands of the lower valley. 
 
 Of a supreme and beneficent God the Santal has 
 no conception. His religion is a religion of terror 
 and deprecation. Hunted and driven from country 
 to country by a superior race, he cannot understand 
 how a Being can be more powerful than himself, 
 without wishing to harm him. Discourses upon 
 the attributes of the Deity excite no emotion among 
 the more isolated sections of the race, except a dis- 
 position to run away and hide themselves in the 
 jungle, and the only reply made to a missionary 
 at the end of an eloquent description of the omni- 
 potence of God, was, ' And what if that Strong One 
 should eat me ?' 
 
 But although the Santal has no God from whose 
 benignity he may expect favour, there exist a mul- 
 titude of demons and evil spirits, whose spite he 
 endeavours by supplications to avert. So far from 
 being without a religion, his rites are infinitely 
 more numerous than those of the Hindu : the 
 superstitious element in his nature is more on the 
 alert, and his belief in the near presence of an 
 unseen world more productive of practical results 
 
1 82 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 in his conduct. He knows no God who will reward 
 the good ; but a host of demons are ever at hand 
 to punish the wicked, to scatter diseases, to spread 
 murrain among the cattle, to blight the crops, and 
 only to be bribed by animal-suffering and a frequent 
 outpouring of blood. 
 
 The worship of the Santals is based upon the 
 family. Each household has its own deity (pra- 
 bongd), which it adores with unknown rites, and 
 scrupulously conceals from strangers. So strict is 
 the secrecy that one brother does not know what 
 another brother worships, and the least allusion 
 to the subject brings a suspicious cloud upon the 
 mountaineer's brow, or sends him off abruptly 
 at the top of his speed to the forest. So far as 
 I have been able to learn, the prayers addressed 
 to these family gods are to avert evil rather 
 than to obtain benefits. Thus : ' May the storm 
 spare my thatch ;' ' may the black rot pass by my 
 rice-fields;' 'let my wife not bear a daughter;' 
 'may the usurer be eaten by wild beasts.' The 
 head of the family on his death-bed whispers the 
 name of the family god to his eldest son, and thus 
 the same object of domestic worship is handed 
 down from generation to generation. Unlike the 
 Latin Penates — ^the beneficent protectors of the 
 Roman household — the family god of the Santals 
 represents the secret principle of evil, which no bolts 
 can shut out, and which dwells an unseen but eter- 
 nally malignant presence beside every hearth. In 
 addition to the family god, each household worships 
 
FAMILY AND VILLAGE GODS. 183 
 
 the ghosts of its ancestors. The Santal, without 
 any distinct conception of his own immortality or of a 
 future Hfe, cannot believe that the link between man 
 and this earth is wholly dissolved by death, and ima- 
 gines himself constantly surrounded by a shadowy 
 world. Disembodied spirits flit disconsolately among 
 the fields they once tilled, stand upon the banks of 
 the mountain streams in which they fished, and 
 glide in and out of the dwellings where they were 
 born, grew up, and died. These ghostly crowds re- 
 quire to be pacified in many ways, and the Santal 
 dreads his Lares as much as he does his Penates. 
 
 Adjoining the Santal village is a grove of their 
 national tree,^* which they believe to be the favourite 
 resort of all the family gods of the little community. 
 From its silent gloom the bygone generations watch 
 their children and children's children playing their 
 several parts in life, not altogether with an unfriendly 
 eye. Nevertheless the ghostly inhabitants of the 
 grove are sharp critics, and deal out crooked limbs, 
 cramps and leprosy, unless duly appeased. Several 
 times a year the whole hamlet, dressed out in its 
 showiest, repairs to the grove to do honour to the 
 Lares Rurales with music and sacrifice. Men and 
 women join hands, and, dancing in a large circle, 
 chant songs in remembrance of the original founder 
 of the community, who is venerated as the head of 
 the village Pantheon. Goats, red cocks, and chickens 
 are sacrificed ; and while some of the worshippers are 
 told off to cook the flesh for the common festival at 
 «« The Sal {Shorea Robusta, Hort. Beng. p. 42) 
 
i84 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 great fires, the rest separate into families, and dance 
 round the particular trees which they fancy their 
 domestic Lares chiefly haunt. Among the more 
 superstitious tribes, it is customary for each family 
 to dance round every single tree, in order that they 
 may not by any chance omit the one in which their 
 gods may be residing ! 
 
 Besides the village deities of the Sal grove, the 
 Santal finds gods, ghosts, or demons, requiring to 
 be appeased, wherever he goes. Thus, the Abgi, 
 or ghouls who eat men ; the Pargana Bonga, parish 
 deities whose name is legion : both of which classes 
 seem to be the tutelary divinities of ancient villages 
 which have been deserted. They now wander dis- 
 consolate through the Santal territory until they 
 find some tree or cave to dwell in. Traces of that 
 superstition, to which the Greeks have given so 
 beautiful a form, survive in the Da-bonga (river 
 demons), Daddi-bonga (well demons), Pakri-bonga 
 (tank demons), Buru-bonga (mountain demons), 
 Bir-bonga (forest gods). Distinct traces of Sabean 
 rites also exist among the Santals. Chando, the 
 sun-god, although he seldom receives sacrifice, is 
 theoretically acknowledged as supreme. Sometimes 
 they adore him as the Sim-bonga, the god who eats 
 chickens, and once in four or five years a feast in 
 his honour is held. The Santal religion, in fact, 
 seems to consist of a mythology constructed upon 
 the family basis, but rooted in a still more primitive 
 system of nature-worship. 
 
 The next step to the village, in a society orga- 
 
TRIBE-GODS. 185 
 
 nized upon the family basis, is the tribe. Of these 
 there are seven among the Santals/' each of which 
 claims descent from a common parent, and preserves 
 its own rites. Once a year the tribe-god Abe- 
 bonga is adored with great solemnity ; but as the 
 children follow the tribe of their father, only male 
 animals are sacrificed, and women are excluded from 
 the feast which ends the ceremony. One festival 
 is so like another, that a single description by an 
 eye-witness will suffice : ' Old and young, male and 
 female, assembled in thousands, and entered with 
 great spirit and gusto into the hilarity of the occa- 
 sion. The women, in their best, set off with massive 
 brass ornaments, joined hands with the men, and 
 danced in the open air with their heads uncovered. 
 The men aimed at something more gay and gro- 
 tesque in their costume ; and if all the colours of 
 the rainbow were not displayed by them, certainly 
 the hedgehog, the peacock, and a variety of the 
 feathered tribe, had been laid under contribution 
 in order to supply the young Santal beaux with 
 plumes. These varied both as to length and 
 beauty. While some were no more than a single 
 foot in height, others were full five feet, and shot 
 up like stocks of lettuce gone to seed. Nor was 
 the perpendicular regarded as the only or most 
 graceful position for wearing these borrowed 
 feathers. They were set and hung in all direc- 
 tions and inclinations, from the upright to the 
 
 '' The number varies in different parts of the country — twelve in 
 the north, seven in the southern and central settlements. 
 
1 86 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 horizontal. Strips of red, blue, and yellow cloth, 
 bound about their heads and loins, added to the 
 effect. The drum and fife were accompanied by 
 the human voice, and parties of twenty or thirty 
 joining hands danced in circles, or more correctly, 
 in semicircles. There may have been twenty-five 
 or thirty of these parties in the field, and each 
 with its own music in its centre, who laboured 
 and danced the livelong day as well as one whole 
 night. The continued heavy roar of so many 
 drums, and the clamour of a multitude of human 
 voices, the wild gaiety and grotesque costumes of 
 the dancers, and their half-naked bodies, all com- 
 bined to produce a spectacle of savage life at once 
 imposing and impressive.'** 
 
 What the tribe is to the family, that the race is 
 to the tribe. The national god of the Santals is 
 Marang Buru, the Great Mountain, who appears in 
 their legends as the guardian and sponsor of their 
 race ; the divinity who watched over their birth, 
 provided for their earliest wants, and brought their 
 first parents together in marriage. In private and 
 in public, in time of tribulation and in time of 
 wealth, in health and in sickness, on the natal bed 
 and by the death-bed, the Great Mountain is in- 
 voked with bloody offerings. He is the one reli- 
 gious link that binds together the nation ; and the 
 sacrifices, instead of being limited to a few animals, 
 as is the case with the family gods, may be any- 
 thing that grows from or moves upon the earth. 
 
 *« Mr. Phillips. 
 
THE RACE-GOD. 187 
 
 Goats, sheep, bullocks, fowls, rice, fruit, flowers, 
 beer, the berries from the jungle, a head of Indian 
 com from the field, or even a handful of earth ; all 
 are acceptable to the Great Mountain, who is, in a 
 sense lower than a Christian understands by the 
 epithet, but still in a high sense, the Common Father 
 of the people. It was he who divinely instituted 
 worship, who has journeyed with the race from its 
 primitive home, shared its defeats and flights, and 
 still remains with it, the symbol of the Everlasting 
 and Unchangeable One. 
 
 The Great Mountain forms the most perfect 
 type of the household god. He was the object 
 adored by the first family, then by the first com- 
 munity of families or village, then by the first tribe, 
 and so by degrees by the whole race. He exhibits 
 the ultimate result of a religion constructed on the 
 family basis — the father of gods and men in a Pan- 
 theon of Lares. 
 
 As in religions of the Aryan type, the Santa! 
 system has a tendency to divide the Supreme God 
 into a triad, one of whom is an abstract conception, 
 while the other two represent the male and female 
 principles. The Great Mountain represents neither 
 man nor woman, but the life-sustaining providence 
 necessary for the existence of either. He has a 
 brother and a sister, who are worshipped by the 
 priests with libations — also with white goats and 
 fowls of a particular colour upon the banks of the 
 Damooda — but who occupy an inferior position to 
 the Great Mountain, and are almost unknown in 
 
1 88 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the forest. The brother's name is Maniko, who is 
 to the Santal race what Manu in the abstract is to 
 the Sanskrit — to wit, the First Male. He is the 
 husband as well as brother of the female deity in 
 the triad, Jaher-era, the first female, and the Santals 
 derive their word for irregular connections between 
 the sexes from the unconsecrated espousal of their 
 first parents : thus jaher-ete, to take or live with a 
 woman as a concubine, that is, without the sanction 
 of marriage, even as Maniko took Jaher-era. 
 
 The worship of the Great Mountain is essen- 
 tially a worship of blood. If the sacrificer cannot 
 afford an animal, it is with a red flower or a red fruit 
 that he approaches the divinity. When the English 
 first obtained possession of the Beerbhoom moun- 
 tains, human sacrifices were common, and a regular 
 trade was carried on to supply the victims. If they 
 are practised now, it is in the depths of the jungle, 
 and with that impenetrable secrecy which enabled 
 the Santals to sacrifice bullocks to the same god in 
 the days of the Hindu rajahs. The Santal baffles 
 the curious with indirect answers ; and the most that 
 can be got out of him is, ' How can we sacrifice men ? 
 In these days men are dear; who could pay their 
 price ?' 
 
 There can be little doubt that this sanguinary 
 aboriginal deity is the Rudra of ancient Sanskrit 
 literature, and the Siva of the mixed Hindu popu- 
 lation which now occupies the plains.^' The wor- 
 ship of both is in so many respects alike, that the 
 
 " Original Sanskrit Texts, ii. 437, 
 
THE RACE-GOD AND SIVA. 189 
 
 less observant sort of travellers generally identify 
 them ; and one of the missionaries who has laboured 
 for some time among the hill-men, and whose reports 
 form part of the materials on which this chapter is 
 based, habitually denotes the blood-loving god of the 
 Santals, Siva or Mahadeva. There are indications 
 in the Veda, held to be more or less distinct by 
 different scholars, of the struggle of the aboriginal 
 deity for admission into the Aryan Olympus, and 
 indeed a faint tradition survives of his first entrance 
 into that august convention. ' The gods went to 
 heaven,' says an ancient text ; ' they asked Rudra 
 (Siva), " Who art thou ?" '^^ The stranger declares 
 that he is the one supreme god, which indeed he 
 was among the aborigines ; and as the Romans 
 identified their Etruscan deities with those of 
 Greece, so Rudra (Siva) took his seat in the 
 assembly of Aryan gods, not as a new-comer, but 
 as another form of Agni, one of the most ancient 
 of the Indo-Germanic divinities. This identifica- 
 tion, however, was not accomplished all at once ; so 
 that while the Aryan priests of one part of the 
 conquered country chanted, ' Reverence to the 
 Rudra, who is in Agni, who is in the waters, who 
 has entered the plants and bushes, who has formed 
 these worlds ;'^^ the Aryan priests of another part, 
 where the identification had not completely taken 
 place, adored Rudra and Agni as distinct gods.*' 
 
 *" Original Sanskrit Texts, iv. 298. 
 "1 Atharva Veda, vii. 87, I. 
 ** Id. viii. S-io> Texts, iv. 
 
iQo THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 The early Sanskrit theologians distinctly compre- 
 hended this, and stated very truly, that among dif- 
 ferent nations in India the Supreme God passed 
 by different names, but that this god was to be 
 understood to be the same as the original Sanskrit 
 deity Agni. ' Agni is a god,' says an ancient text. 
 ' These are his names : Sarva, as the Eastern people 
 call him; Bhava, as the Bahikas (call him) ; Pasu- 
 nampati (Lord of Beasts), Rudra, and Agni. All 
 these names except Agni are ungentle,' probably 
 meaning that they represented the god in his san- 
 guinary form, as worshipped by the aborigines. 
 ' Agni is his gentlest appellation ;' probably mean- 
 ing that it represents the god in the beneficent 
 character in which he was known to the Aryan 
 conquerors.'^ 
 
 Without accepting Signor Gorresio's views of 
 the Hametic origin of the aborigines, I think he 
 has very well expressed the process by which the 
 aboriginal deity entered the Sanskrit Pantheon. 
 ' It appears to me that in this fact,' that is the 
 interruption of Daxa's sacrifice, ' the struggle of 
 the ancient religions of India is represented under 
 a mythical veil. Siva — a deity, as I believe, of 
 the Cush or Hametic tribes, which preceded on 
 the soil of India the Aryan or Indo-Sanskrit race 
 — wished to have part in the worship of the con- 
 querors, and in their sacrifices, from which he was 
 excluded; and by disturbing their rites, and by a 
 display of violence at their sacrifices, he succeeded 
 •* Satapatha Brahmanam, i. 7, 3, 8. Texts, iv. 
 
AN ABORIGINAL SIVA-TEMPLE. 191 
 
 in being admitted to partake in them.'^* In another 
 place Signor Gorresio speaks of Siva as the deity 
 ' who entered into the Indo-Sanskrit Olympus by 
 one of those religious syncretisms of which traces 
 are so frequently to be found in the ancient systems 
 of worship.' 
 
 The Siva of the present day has his most 
 favoured abodes among those solemn phenomena 
 of nature, of which the god of the Santals, the 
 Great Mountain, is the type. As before mentioned, 
 thousands of Hindus annually resort to his temple 
 among the Western Highlands of Beerbhoom ; and 
 a curious proof of the identity of Siva with the 
 aboriginal deity is, that the shrine traces its origin 
 to a Santal, and is called by the name of a Santal 
 to this day. The hills among which it is built were 
 regarded during ages with peculiar veneration by 
 the aboriginal tribes ; and notwithstanding that the 
 Brahmans have now completely ousted them from 
 the temple, and called the genius loci by a Hindu 
 name, the feeling is still so strong as to make a 
 learned missionary question whether these moun- 
 tains are not the cunabula of the Santal race. The 
 Brahmans who minister at the holy place indignantly 
 deny the connection of the Siva whom they worship 
 with the national god of the aborigines by whom 
 they are surrounded, and try to rebut the lasting 
 testimony which the very name of their temple 
 gives against them by an improbable fable. 
 
 In the old time, they say, a band of Brahmans 
 " Remarks on Ramayana, ix. 291, note 35. Texts, iv. 349. 
 
ig2 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 settled on the banks of the beautiful highland lake 
 beside which the Holy City stands. Around them 
 there was nothing but the forest and mountains, 
 in which dwelt the black races. The Brahmans 
 placed the symbol of their god Siva near the lake, 
 and did sacrifice to it ; but the black tribes would 
 not sacrifice to it, but came, as before, to the three 
 great stones^' which their fathers had worshipped, 
 and which are to be seen at the western entrance 
 of the Holy City to this day. The Brahmans, 
 moreover, ploughed the land, and brought water 
 from the lake to nourish the soil ; but the hill-men 
 hunted and fished as of old, or tended their herds, 
 while their women tilled little patches of Indian 
 corn. But in process of time the Brahmans, finding 
 the land good, became slothful, giving themselves 
 up to lust, and seldom calling on their god Siva. 
 This the black tribes, who came to worship the 
 great stones, saw and wondered at more and more, 
 till at last one of them, by name Byju, a man of a 
 mighty arm, and rich in all sorts of cattle, became 
 wroth at the lies and wantonness of the Brahmans, 
 and vowed he would beat the symbol of their god 
 Siva with his club every day before touching food. 
 
 ^' ' Three huge monoliths of contorted gneiss rock, of great beauty. 
 Two are vertical, and the third is laid upon the heads of the two 
 uprights as a horizontal beam. These massive stones are twelve 
 feet in length, each weighing upwards of seven tons. They are 
 quadrilateral, each face being two feet six inches, or ten feet round 
 each stone. The horizontal beam is retained in its place by mortise 
 and tenon. By whom or when these ponderous stones were erected, 
 no one knows.' — Revenue Survey Report by Captain W. S. Sherwilli 
 p. 6. 4to, Calcutta. 
 
JIS LEGEND, 193 
 
 This he did ; but one morning his cows strayed 
 into the forest, and after seeking them all day, he 
 came home hungry and weary, and having hastily 
 bathed in the lake, sat down to his supper. Just as 
 he stretched out his hand to take the food, he called 
 to mind his vow ; and, worn out as he was, he got 
 up, limped painfully to the Brahman's idol on the 
 margin of the lake, and beat it with his club. Then 
 suddenly a splendid form, sparkling with jewels, 
 rose from the waters, and said : ' Behold the man 
 who forgets his hunger and his weariness to beat 
 me, while my priests sleep with their concubines 
 at home, and neither give me to eat nor to drink. 
 Let him ask of me what he will, and it shall be 
 given.' Byju answered, ' I am strong of arm and 
 rich in cattle. I am a leader of my people ; what 
 want I more ? Thou art called Nath (Lord) ; let 
 me too be called Lord, and let thy temple go by 
 my name.' ' Amen,' replied the deity ; ' henceforth 
 thou art not Byju, but Byjnath, and my temple 
 shall be called by thy name.' 
 
 So close is the resemblance between the Great 
 Mountain of the Santals and the Siva of the mixed 
 Hindu population, that several natives, without any 
 previous study of the question, and judging only 
 from the attributes and visible worship, translated 
 the Santal name for their god as ' the Mahadeva 
 (i.e. Siva) of the Hindus.' 
 
 In a preceding chapter I have stated that the 
 
 religion of the present mixed Hindu population 
 
 bears witness to the influence of the aboriginal 
 VOL. I. N 
 
194 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 element. I have now reviewed the reHgion of the 
 aborigines as practised among the mountaineers 
 of Beerbhoom, and I think it may safely be con- 
 cluded that the Hindus have borrowed their house- 
 hold god^* and its secret rites from the primitive 
 races whom they enslaved ; that they have borrowed 
 their village gods," with the ghosts and demons that 
 haunt so many trees ; and finally, that they have 
 borrowed the sanguinary deity (Siva) who is now 
 universally adored by the lower orders throughout 
 Bengal. Among the Hindus these various super- 
 stitions are isolated, scattered, unconnected with 
 each other ; among the Santals they stand forth as 
 the natural, inevitable gradations in the mythology 
 of a race which bases its worship, as it bases its 
 whole social organization, on the family, the political 
 unit of patriarchal times. 
 
 Mysteriously connected with the worship of Siva 
 is Buddhism. How the monotheistic element in 
 Sanskrit faith revolted against the material and poly- 
 theistic tendency. Professor Miiller's charming works 
 have made familiar to the general reader. But the 
 subsequent fate of the reformation, how it was ex- 
 tinguished after no long interval in the centres of 
 Brahmanism, and fled to the north, the east, and 
 the south, shedding new light among the lapsed 
 races of India, and ultimately reaching the confines 
 of the Asiatic world, are to this day matters of 
 recondite scholarship. Driven forth from the San- 
 skrit kingdom of Oudh, Buddhism conquered for 
 " The Shal-gram, 8' The Gram-devatas. 
 
BUDDHISM AND ABORIGINAL RITES. 195 
 
 itself the mountains and valleys of the Lower Pro- 
 vinces ; won the hearts of their semi -aboriginal 
 population ; and founded shrines or holy cities in 
 every district, from Sarnath,^* beyond the northern 
 boundary of Bengal Proper, to Jaggarnath, which 
 is washed by the ocean on the extreme south. It 
 consolidated scattered tribes into a powerful con- 
 federacy, under a religious dynasty'^ which waged 
 not unsuccessful war upon the kingdom whence the 
 reformation had been expelled, and which, in the 
 ruins of Gour, has left monuments of its greatness 
 that neither time nor the change in the course of 
 the Ganges can efface. 
 
 Buddhist relics abound in every one of the 
 western districts of Lower Bengal ; and wherever 
 they are most numerous, there the worship of Siva 
 has at present the strongest hold on the people. 
 It is curious to note, moreover, that many of the 
 Buddhist figures in Lower Bengal have flat or 
 irregular noses and thick lips, such as are never 
 seen among the Sanskrit-speaking races, but which 
 precisely correspond with the Sanskrit accounts of 
 the aborigines, and which at this day are the most 
 marked features in the physiognomy of the Santals 
 of Beerbhoom as contrasted with the Brahman of 
 the plains. The artists who cut these statues, now 
 half-buried in the ground, were aborigines ; the 
 men and women from whom they took their idea 
 of the human face were aborigines : they could only 
 
 ^"^ Near the modern Benares. 
 
 ^^ The Pal Rajahs, who succeeded Gajanta, 
 
196 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 have been objects of veneration in communities in 
 which the aboriginal element predominated ; and 
 when the next wave of Aryans flooded Lower 
 Bengal, these flat-nosed, thick-lipped statues were 
 treated with the same contempt as the aboriginal 
 races whose effigies they were. 
 
 The legends of the ancient Sarnath distinctly 
 preserve the struggle between the two religions. 
 First the seat of aboriginal or Siva worship, then 
 converted to Buddhism by the king of Lower 
 Bengal, finally reconquered to Hinduism by the 
 Canouj Brahmans, and reduced to ashes, its history 
 and even its name have become matters of specula- 
 tion among native scholars, who find, with surprise, 
 a plain allusion to Siva-worship in the very name 
 of the northern Buddhist metropolis.*" Close by 
 the Holy City, among the mountains of Beerbhoom, 
 the only spot in those secluded highlands where 
 Siva-worship exists, we find unmistakeable Buddhist 
 remains. The same close connection between Bud- 
 dhism and Siva-worship appears in Southern India.*^ 
 Everywhere the Buddhist religion was overpowered, 
 and immediately succeeded by the worship of the 
 sanguinary aboriginal deity who in ancient times 
 fought his way into the Aryan Olympus. 
 
 The philosophical relation of Siva-worship to 
 Buddhism is beyond the humble scope of a rural 
 annalist ; but no one can study the minute local 
 
 *" A recent account of Sarnath, by a Hindu antiquary, appeared 
 in the Engliskfiiaiis Weekly Journal, vol. iv. No. 29. 4to, Calcutta. 
 *' Major Syke's Report on the Land Tenures of the Dekkan. 
 
B UDDHISM AND SIVA- WORSHIP. 1 97 
 
 history of Bengal Proper without finding memorials 
 of the process by which the actual change was 
 effected. The Buddhist fugitives from persecution 
 in the north appear as kings in the Lower Valley, 
 in part converting, in part conquering, the aboriginal 
 tribes. Indeed, there are indications that the 
 Buddhists owed their easy victories, in no small 
 degree, to the circumstance that they presented 
 themselves in Lower Bengal as the deliverers of 
 the classes of aboriginal descent from the tyranny 
 and prsedial slavery which the preceding waves of 
 Aryans had imposed. The religion of the earlier 
 Aryan invaders was a positive one, favouring social 
 inequalities, and interfering with the practical life 
 of the people : the Buddhist religion was a negative 
 one, declaring equality between man and man, and 
 secluding itself as much as possible from practical 
 life. Buddhism, therefore, was a great gain to the 
 semi-aboriginal masses of Lower Bengal, and quickly 
 obtained their allegiance. But a negative religion, 
 though it may be the creed of a dynasty, is never 
 the religion of a people. Buddhism quickly lost its 
 active principle in Lower Bengal, and retreated to 
 monasteries or to secluded religious villages among 
 the mountains, such as the Holy City in Beer- 
 bhoom ; content with having placed a Buddhist 
 dynasty on the throne, and with having spread a 
 thin crust of monotheism over the surface of society. 
 The common people were also satisfied ; they were 
 let alone. They naturally returned to the bloody 
 worship of their fathers, which the preceding Aryans 
 
19S THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 had tried to trample out, and Lower Bengal soon 
 exhibited the inevitable consequence of forcing a 
 higher degree of spiritualism upon a nation than 
 it is able to bear ; to wit, an untold depth of super- 
 stition varnished over with a fair, deceitful gloss. 
 Such a state of affairs could not be permanent : as 
 Buddhism retired from public life to its monastic soli- 
 tudes, Brahmanism crept back into its place, and at 
 last drove it forth altogether. But of Brahmanism 
 there are always two sides, the spiritual and the 
 idolatrous ; the former represented by the merciful 
 worship of Vishnu, the latter by the bloody rites 
 of Siva, the aboriginal Rudra. Brahmanism had 
 learned wisdom in disgrace ; it had learned that 
 nowhere, not even in Bengal, can a dynasty be 
 lasting which sets its face against the people. In- 
 stead, therefore, of again introducing their old 
 esoteric religion, with its sublime dogmas and un- 
 bloody sacrifices of fruits, milk, and oil, the Brahmans 
 threw themselves upon the people, and preached 
 the popular side of their creed ; with the popular 
 deity Siva or Rudra at its head, to be worshipped 
 according to the popular bloody rites. This was 
 precisely the religion for the semi-aboriginal popu- 
 lation of Lower Bengal. The mass of superstition 
 that had always existed, and still everywhere exists, 
 in Buddhist countries, upheaved, splintering into a 
 thousand fragments the thin crust of monotheism 
 that had concealed it. From that period modern 
 Hinduism dates, with its top reaching even to the 
 heavens, and its feet descending into the lowest 
 
SIVA-WORSMIP AND HINDUISM. 199 
 
 depths of man's depraved heart. Only in Lower 
 Bengal is its baser form a homogeneous and strictly 
 national religion ; for only in Lower Bengal did the 
 Brahmans, deliberately rejecting the spiritual side 
 of the Sanskrit faith, identify themselves with the 
 semi-aboriginal superstitions of the masses. Go 
 where he chooses, the Hindu of the Lower Valley 
 is known by his gross materialism and bloody rites. 
 Native scholars, who look only to the facts without 
 troubling themselves with the reasons, are astonished 
 that the Lower Provinces, the refuge of monotheism 
 a thousand years ago, should now be the focus of 
 idolatry. ' Bengal,' says an eminent antiquarian, 
 himself a native of the Southern Valley, ' long in- 
 fluenced by Buddhism, has lapsed into Brahmanism 
 with a vengeance. The Bengali carries idolatry 
 wherever he goes. Alexander left cities to mark 
 the track of his conquests ; the Bengali leaves idols 
 to mark the tide of his peregrinations. It is English 
 enterprise to set up schools and found hospitals ; it is 
 Bengali enterprise to erect temples and put up idols. 
 The Englishman teaches the Bengali to bridge rivers 
 and open railroads; the Bengali teaches hook-swing- 
 ing to the Santal,*^ and idol-making to the north- 
 country Hindu. The Bengali who set up the image 
 of Durga' (the wife of the aboriginal deity Siva) ' at 
 Cawnpore, is said to have brought artisans from Cal- 
 cutta, because in the north country they knew not how 
 to make an idol riding upon a lion with ten arms.'^^ 
 
 *- The Charrak-puja, now made a criminal offence. 
 
 *3 Englishman's Weekly Journal, vol. iv. No. 32. 410, Calcutta, 
 
200 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Caste is unknown among, the Santals. Each of 
 the seven children of our first parents founded a 
 tribe ; and, generally speaking, where the Santals 
 are free from Hinduizing influences, the number of 
 tribes remains unaltered to this day. The de- 
 scendants of the first-born son are the Nij-kasda- 
 had ; of the second-born, Nij-murmu-had ; of the 
 third-born, Nij-saran-had ; of the fourth-born, Nij- 
 hasdi-had ; of the fifth-born, Nij-marudi-had, whom 
 the first parents appointed to offer sacrifice to the 
 Great Mountain ; of the sixth-born, Nij-kesku-had ; 
 of the seventh-born, Nij-tadu-had. The prefix Nij 
 appears to signify ' the son of,' like ' Mac ' or ' Fitz,' 
 and is dropped in ordinary conversation. Each of 
 these tribes is complete in itself, furnished with its 
 own leaders, and producing classes ; but two of the 
 tribes have more especially devoted themselves to 
 religion, and furnish a larg.e. majority of the priests. 
 One of these represents the state religion, founded 
 on the family basis, and administered by the de- 
 scendants of the fifth son, the original family priest. 
 Many of this tribe enjoy little grants of rent-free 
 land in return for religious services at public festivals 
 in the grove, where the gods of the hamlet dwell 
 together. In some places, particularly in the north, 
 the descendants of the second son (Nij-murmu-had) 
 are held to make better priests than those of the 
 fifth ; but it is noticeable that they rarely receive 
 grants of land and have to support themselves by 
 their own labour or the liberality of their devotees. 
 They are for the most part prophets, diviners, and 
 
SANTA L PRIESTS AND LEVITES. 201 
 
 ofiiciating Levites of forest or other shrines, repre- 
 senting demon-worship ; and in only a few places 
 do they take the place of the fifth tribe, as the 
 hierarchy of the national system of religion founded 
 on the family. [In the north, where Hinduism has 
 made the greatest inroads, five tribes have been 
 added, — ^arising, I believe, from the illegitimate de- 
 scendants of Santal-womenJb y Aryan fathers. _ They 
 are to the pure Santals what the mixed castes are 
 to the pure Aryans ; but the superior intelligence, 
 derived from their fathers, has enabled them to 
 obtain a much better position among their abori- 
 ginal kinsmen than the mixed castes have ever 
 acquired among the Aryan conquerors of the plains. 
 The subject of these additional five tribes, however, 
 is involved in much obscurity, and this view of their 
 origin is rather a conjecture than a deduction from 
 known facts. In the north, the Santals have gone 
 so near to Hinduism as to assign particular occupa- 
 tions to four of the tribes. Thus the Kesku-had 
 are the kings ; the Murmu-had are the priests ; the 
 Saran-had are the soldiers ; the Marudi-had are the 
 farmers : evidently a clumsy imitation of the fourfold 
 Hindu division into soldiers, priests, traders, and 
 artisans. Besides these four tribes, the northern 
 Santals have eight others, to whom no particular 
 occupation is assigned. 
 
 Notwithstanding such local affectations of caste, 
 the cruel inequalities which divide man from man 
 among the Hindus of the plain have never pene- 
 trated the hamlets of the mountaineers. The whole 
 
202 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 village has its joys and sorrows in common. It 
 works together, hunts together, worships together, 
 and on festivals eats together. Instead of each tribe 
 having to marry within itself, as in the case of the 
 Hindu castes, no man is allowed to take a wife of 
 his own clan. The first three castes of the Hindus 
 are in reality based upon difference of occupation or 
 social rank ; and the marriage of a knight's daughter 
 with the son of a tradesman, used to be as abhorrent 
 to the Aryan race in feudal Europe, as it ever was 
 to the same race in agricultural India. The fourth 
 caste of the Hindus were the conquered black races, 
 and we know how New Orleans society would have 
 regarded the nuptials of a planter's daughter with a 
 negro slave. The classification of the Santals de- 
 pended not upon social rank or occupation, but upon 
 the family basis. Every Santal feels he is the kins- 
 man of the whole race ; and the only difference he 
 makes between his own clan and the others is, that 
 he thinks the relationship between himself and his 
 clanswomen too close to permit of intermarriage. 
 The children belong to the father's clan, and the 
 daughters, upon marriage, give up their ancient 
 clan and its gods for those of their husbands. 
 
 So strong is the family feeling, that expulsion 
 from the clan is the only form of banishment known. 
 Like the Roman aquce et ignis interdidio, to which it 
 bears a strange resemblance, it amounts to loss of 
 civil rites, for other clans will not receive the out- 
 cast ; and the idea of the ties of kindred being 
 destroyed between the individual and the race, is 
 
EXPULSIOjSI from the race. 203 
 
 insupportable to the Santal. The terrors of the 
 punishment, however, are decreased by its fre- 
 quency, and a door is always left open for the 
 return of the offender to the common family. He 
 must first be publicly reconciled with the people ; 
 and the difficulty of effecting the reconcilation de- 
 pends upon the view which public opinion takes of 
 his crime. For minor offences, twenty gallons of 
 beer,** and about ten shillings to buy the materials 
 of a feast for his clansmen, suffice ; in more heinous 
 cases, the difficulty of reconciliation is so great, that 
 the unfortunate man yields to his destiny, and, tak- 
 ing with him his bow and arrows, departs into the 
 jungle, whence he never returns. A woman, once 
 fallen, cannot regain her position. 
 
 The six great ceremonies in a Santal's history 
 are : admission into the family ; admission into the 
 tribe ; admission into the race ; union of his own 
 tribe with another by marriage ; formal dismission 
 from the living race by incremation ; lastly, re-union 
 with the departed fathers. The admission into the 
 family, like the worship of the household god, is a 
 secret rite, and differs in different localities. One 
 form of it consists in the father repeating to himself 
 the name of the ancestral deity, and putting his 
 hand on the child's head as an acknowledgment 
 that it is his own. The admission into the tribe is 
 a more public ceremony, called nartha, and takes 
 place three days after the birth, if a girl ; five days 
 after the birth, if a boy. By this time the Santal 
 
 ** Rice beer, worth from id. to 3d. a gallon, according to its strength. 
 
204 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 mother is able to go about her work again. Great 
 pots of beer are brewed, the clansmen on both sides 
 of the house are invited ; but as the Santals hold a 
 family in which a birth has taken place unclean, 
 none will eat or drink with it until the ceremonies 
 of purification have been performed. The child's 
 head is shaved. The clansmen stand round and 
 sip water mingled with a bitter vegetable juice,^^ in 
 token of their commiseration for their temporarily 
 outcast relatives. The father then solemnly names 
 the child, if a boy, after his own father; if a girl, 
 after his wife's mother ; and the midwife, immedi- 
 ately on hearing the word, takes rice and water, 
 and, going round the circle of relatives, fillips a 
 few drops on the breast of each visitor, calling out 
 the child's name. The family, including the new- 
 born babe, is then held to be re-admitted into the 
 clan ; and the ceremony ends with the kinsmen of 
 both father and mother sitting down to huge earthen 
 pitchers of beer, to which a feast in rich households 
 is added. 
 
 The admission into the race takes place about 
 the fifth year. Beer is brewed ; the friends of the 
 family, whatever may be their clan, are invited ; and 
 the child is marked on his right arm with the San- 
 tal spots. The number of these spots varies, but 
 it is always an uneven one ; and any man dying 
 without them becomes an object for the wrath of 
 the Santal gods. He lies age after age, with snakes 
 burrowing in his breast, an outcast from the ghostly 
 
 ** Nim. 
 
SANTAL WEDDINGS. 205 
 
 world, amid which the Santal lives, and moves, and 
 has his being. 
 
 The' union of his own tribe with another by- 
 marriage*^ is the most important ceremony in a 
 Santal's life. It takes place later than among the 
 Hindus, and the Santal speaks with abhorrence of 
 the practice of bringing together mere children, 
 years before the espousals can be consummated. 
 As a rule, a Santal lad marries about his sixteenth 
 or seventeenth year ; girls are generally provided 
 for at fifteen. These ages may appear premature 
 to nations with whom the luxuries of civilisation 
 have become necessaries of life ; but in the tropical 
 forest, a youth of sixteen or seventeen is as able 
 to provide for a family as ever he will be ; and a 
 leaf hut, with a few earthen or brazen pots, is all 
 the establishment a Santal young lady expects. 
 One generation after another settles down early to 
 wedded life ; nor is a custom to be blamed which 
 renders unchastity almost unknown, and provides a 
 numerous progeny of grandchildren to care for the 
 aged. I have never, except in the famine of 1866, 
 met a beggar in a Santal village. 
 
 As the Santals have attained an age of discre- 
 tion before they marry, a freedom of selection is 
 allowed to them, wholly unknown among the Hin- 
 dus. The formal proceedings begin by the lad's 
 father sending a wedding messenger (rai dari) to 
 the girl's father, who receives the proffer in silence, 
 and, after advising with his wife, replies ; ' Let the 
 
 *" Chhatiar. 
 
2o6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 youth and the maiden meet, then these things may 
 be talked over.' An interview is arranged at a 
 neighbouring fair ; and at the close of the day, if the 
 young people are pleased with each other, the lad's 
 father buys a trifling present for the girl, who pro- 
 strates herself before him as a public acknowledg- 
 ment that she is willing to be his daughter-in-law. 
 The girl's clansmen then visit the lad's village, 
 where the future husband salutes them with a kiss, 
 taking each of them on his knees for a minute,*' and 
 giving the brethren a small present of money, but 
 to the girl's father a turban and the customary cot- 
 ton dress. The lad's clansmen afterwards visit the 
 house of the girl's father. The bride-elect salutes 
 them, takes each on her knee,** and makes a small 
 present precisely as the lad had done to her people. 
 The clans by these ceremonies having formally 
 declared their amity and goodwill, the lad's father 
 sends a present of an uneven number of rupees 
 by the wedding messenger to the girl's parents, the 
 acceptance of which legally transfers the girl to the 
 new clan. Preparations for the actual wedding 
 then begin. The bride's clansmen erect a tem- 
 porary shed in their village, and soon afterwards the 
 bridegroom, attended by his kindred, comes into 
 the little town, and all are solemnly received in the 
 single street {kul-ahi, literally the Divider of the 
 Families) by the two village beadles, whose duty 
 
 *" The Rev. E. L. Puscley, of the Rajmahal country, is my autho- 
 rity for this curious part of the ceremony 
 «» Id, 
 
SANTAL WEDDINGS. 201 
 
 it is to see after the youth of the hamlet. The 
 groomsmen then proceed to the shed, in which 
 they erect a bough of the wine-giving tree,*' and 
 place under it a pot of rice, husked by the girl's 
 family in a particular manner, steeped in water and 
 coloured with a red dye. The purification of the 
 bridegroom follows. He is bathed, his hair dressed, 
 the old clothes are taken from him, and new ones 
 stained with vermilion put on by the girl's clans- 
 women. On the fifth day, the bridegroom, arrayed 
 In his new clothes, is carried on men's shoulders to 
 the bride's house. Five of his groomsmen place 
 the bride in a large basket, and bring forth her 
 younger brother, who receives the bridegroom as 
 her proxy. Salutations having been interchanged, 
 the bride is carried out in her basket : the young- 
 couple sprinkle one another with water from the 
 opposite sides of a cloth that has been put between 
 them ; the bridegroom calls out the name of a god, 
 and the people tell him to lift the girl out of the 
 basket, for she is his wife. The clansmen then 
 unite the clothes of the bride and bridegroom, after 
 which the girl's clanswomen bring burning charcoal, 
 pound it with the household pestle''" in token of the 
 dissolution of old family ties, and extinguish it with 
 water to signify the final separation of the bride 
 from her clan. 
 
 Nothing can be more picturesque than the torch- 
 light procession home. The party first assemble at 
 the leafy shed before mentioned, to inspect the pot 
 *' The Muhua, '" The tok, a stick of the okli tree. 
 
2o8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 of rice and vermilion-coloured water. If the grain 
 has germinated abundantly, there will be many 
 children ; if sparingly, there will be few ; and if 
 the seeds, instead of germinating, have rotted, the 
 marriage is an ill-omened one. The procession 
 then moves forward with drums and fifes, the 
 torches blazing luridly under the forest trees, and 
 startling many a bird, which whirs screaming into 
 the darkness. As it draws near to the bridegroom's 
 village, the virgins ^^ come forth about two miles 
 to welcome the bride, and conduct her with song 
 and music to the door of her new home. 
 
 The Santals remain faithful to one wife. Second 
 marriages are not unknown, but they seldom take 
 place, except for the purpose of obtaining an heir, 
 and a Santal always honours the wife of his youth 
 as the head of his house. Divorce is rare, and can 
 only be effected with the consent of the husband's 
 clansmen. Five of the nearest relatives are called 
 together, beer is brewed, and the party who desires 
 the separation explains his or her wrongs. The 
 relatives, after hearing the rejoinder, decide. In 
 the event of the divorce being granted, the party 
 seeking it solemnly tears up a leaf before the litde 
 court. 
 
 The fifth great ceremony in a Santal's history is 
 his formal dismission from the race. When a San- 
 tal lies a-dying, the ojha, half necromancer and half 
 doctor, rubs oil on a leaf to discover what witch or 
 denion has ' eaten ' the sick man. As soon as the 
 *^ The iiiri kuri. 
 
SANTAL FUNERAL RITES. aocj 
 
 vital spark quits the body, the corpse is anointed 
 with oil tinged with red herbs, and laid decently 
 out in new white clothes upon the bed. The clans- 
 men join together to buy two little brazen vessels — 
 one for rice, the other for water — which they place 
 upon the couch along with a few rupees, to enable 
 their friend to appease the demons on the threshold 
 of the shadowy world. When the funeral pile is 
 ready, these presents are removed. Five clans- 
 men bear out the corpse, carrying it three times 
 round the pile, and then lay it gently down upon 
 the top. A cock"^ is nailed through the neck by a 
 wooden pin, to a corner of the pile or to a neigh- 
 bouring tree. The next of kin prepares a torch of 
 grass bound with thread from his own clothes, and 
 after walking three times round the pile in silence, 
 touches the mouth of the deceased with the brand. 
 This he does with averted face. The friends and 
 kindred then close in, and, all facing the south, set 
 fire to the pile. When the body is nearly con- 
 sumed, the clansmen extinguish the fire, and the 
 nearest relative breaks off three fragments from 
 the half-calcined skull, washes them in new milk 
 coloured with red herbs, and places them in a small 
 earthen vessel. 
 
 Of a future life of blessedness the Santal has no 
 idea. His strong natural sense of justice teaches 
 him that the unrighteous and prosperous man upon 
 
 ^^ The Cock is the animal generally sacrificed by the aboriginal 
 races of Ceylon in cases of mortal sickness. — Sir E. Tennent's Ceylon, 
 i. 541, etc., 3ded. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
i!io THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 earth will meet with retribution after death ; but his 
 future life is a life of punishment for the wicked, 
 without any compensating rewards for the good. 
 The absence of abstract nouns renders it difficult 
 to get at his real views on these subjects ; but the 
 most intelligent I have met, seemed to think that 
 uncharitable men and childless women were eaten 
 eternally by worms and snakes, while good men 
 entered into fruit-bearing trees. The common San- 
 tal's ideas are much looser. He believes that ghosts 
 and demons surround him, who will punish him in 
 the body unless he appease them ; but who these 
 ghosts may be he knows not, and after death all is 
 a blank. 
 
 One ceremony, a very beautiful one, remains — 
 the re-union of the dead with the fathers. The 
 next of kin, taking a bag of rice and the little 
 earthen pot with the three fragments of the skull, 
 starts off alone to the sacred river. Arrived at its 
 bank, he places the three fragments of skull on his 
 own head, and entering the stream, dips completely 
 under the water, at the same time inclining forwards, 
 so that the three fragments fall into the current, and 
 are carried down, thus ' uniting the dead with the 
 fathers.' 
 
 The Santals afford a striking proof of how a 
 race takes its character from the country in which 
 it lives. Those who have studied them only in 
 the undulating southern country near the sea, call 
 them a purely agricultural nation ; the missionaries 
 who have preached to them in the mountainous 
 
THE WEALTH-GIVING JUNGLE. 211 
 
 jungles look upon them as a tribe of fishers and 
 hunters ; in the highlands of Beerbhoom, they 
 appear as a people with no particular occupation, 
 living as best they can in a sterile country by 
 breeding buffaloes, cultivating patches of Indian 
 corn, and eking out a precarious semi-agricultural 
 semi - pastoral existence by the products of the 
 forest. The jungle, indeed, is their unfailing friend. 
 It supplies them with everything that the lowland 
 Hindus have not. Noble timber, brilliant dyes, 
 gums, bees' wax, vegetable drugs, charms, charcoal, 
 and the skins of wild animals — a little world of 
 barbaric wealth, to be had for the taking. Through- 
 out the cold weather, long lines of their buffalo carts 
 — the wheels made from a single slice of Sal trunk 
 — are to be seen toiling and creaking towards the 
 fairs of lowland Beerbhoom. At night the Santal 
 is at no loss for a tent ; he looses his buffaloes on 
 the margin of some wayside tank, creeps under his 
 cart, lights a fire at one end, draws up a second 
 cart with its solid wheel against the other, and after 
 a heavy supper, sings himself to sleep. 
 
 As a huntsman, he is alike skilful and intrepid. 
 He never stirs without his bow and arrows. The 
 bow consists of a strong mountain bamboo which 
 no Hindu lowlander can bend. His arrows are of 
 two kinds : heavy, sharp ones for the larger kind 
 of game ; and light ones, with a broad knob at the 
 point, for small birds. The difficulty of shooting 
 true with the latter can only be appreciated by 
 those who have tried it ; but few English sports- 
 
212 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 men, provided with the latest improvement in fire- 
 arms, can show a better bag of small game from 
 the jungle than the Santal, equipped solely with his 
 rude weapon. Fowling, however, he only resorts 
 to in order to meet his immediate necessities. I 
 have seen a wayside encampment of Santals, after 
 toiling along the road the whole day, supply them- 
 selves with water-birds from the tank at which they 
 drew up for the night, in less time than a Hindu 
 would take to purify himself, or a Mussulman 
 traveller to say his prayers. 
 
 The tiger or leopard hunt is at once his pastime 
 and his profit. If he looks to the gain, he keeps 
 the existence of the animal a secret from every one, 
 except the fortunate kinsman who possesses a gun, 
 and stealthily watches what drinking-place the wild 
 beast frequents. This ascertained, the two relatives 
 take up their position in an adjoining tree, and 
 patiently wait, sometimes for days, the coming of 
 their prey. The long-barrelled matchlock, loaded 
 with a charge of coarse, slow -burning powder, 
 enough to serve for a small piece of ordnance, and 
 rammed down with pebbles and scraps of iron, is 
 placed in position ; the smouldering rope, which 
 serves as tinder, is blown into a glow ; and if the 
 unconscious animal takes a long enough draught 
 for all these performances to be gone through, that 
 drink is his last one. The Santal never fires on 
 mere chance. The prestige of his matchlock, pos- 
 sibly the only one within thirty miles, must not be 
 lightly risked ; and his powder, coarse as it is, has 
 
SANTA L SPORT. zrj 
 
 to be brought from the Hindu village on the plains, 
 which he dreads to approach. If the hunt be for 
 pastime, the Santal prefers driving a tiger to shooting 
 it. An Englishman has only to give out that he 
 will beat a certain jungle, and hundreds of Santals, 
 headed by their drummers and fife-players, seem to 
 rise out of the ground. I have seen five hundred 
 collected on two days' notice. The jungle was 
 divided into circles, in the centre of each of which 
 the Santals set up high wooden erections,^^ some- 
 thing like pulpits, but covered with foliage, to look 
 like trees, for the English hunters. The high- 
 landers, armed with bows and arrows, surrounded 
 the circumference in silence ; and after ascertaining 
 by preconcerted cries, not to be distinguished from 
 the call of wild birds, that this manoeuvre was 
 accomplished, they raised a universal yell, accom- 
 panied by countless drums, fifes, and cymbals. As 
 they draw closer to the centre the sport becomes 
 exciting, the beaters displaying the most admirable 
 courage and reliance on one another whenever the 
 game attempts to break, and striking down all the 
 small fry they fall in with. The Englishmen on 
 the erections in the middle refrain from firing at 
 inferior animals, lest the report should terrify the 
 greater ones, that may be behind, into breaking 
 through the gradually contracting circle. As tigers 
 and leopards are now scarce, it sometimes happens 
 that the gentlemen in the pulpits, with their well- 
 
 ■'^ Maichans, from the same root as the Greek MAKHINE, or our 
 own machine. 
 
2 14 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 appointed batteries, do not get a single shot, while 
 the beaters are laden with booty, and form them- 
 selves into a triumphant procession, each having a 
 hare or a bird, or at least a good-sized snake, to 
 show for his day's work. 
 
 That the Santal was at no distant period an 
 agriculturist, his language and festivals clearly prove. 
 When driven from the open lowlands, he wrings an 
 existence from the forest ; but he carries with him 
 a taste for agriculture, and no mean skill in its 
 details. The agriculture of the Hindu lowlanders 
 has a stately language derived from the Sanskrit, 
 not a word of which is to be found in Santali ; but it 
 has also a humble, unwritten speech current among 
 the poorer cultivators, who have adopted many of 
 their terms from the aborigines. The Santal owes 
 nothing of his skill in husbandry to the Aryan. 
 He has crops of his own,^* implements of his own, 
 his own system of cultivation, and an abundant 
 vocabulary of rural life, not one word of which he 
 has borrowed from the superior race who ousted 
 him from his heritage in the valley. Upon low- 
 lying ground near the sea he cultivates rice as 
 successfully as his Hindu neighbours, and if not 
 oppressed by them, becomes a substantial man. 
 
 ^* The staple food of the Beerbhoom highlanders is Indian corn 
 (Santali, janora), and three small inferior grains called janhe, gundoli, 
 and iri, which I have not seen cultivated by the lowland Hindus. 
 The Beerbhoom Santal looks upon rice, the universal food of the 
 lowlanders, as a rare luxury ; but he successfully rears the small hardy 
 barley (bajra) which is common throughout Bengal. In the southern 
 country, the -viord janhe is used to designate a wild grass. 
 
SANTAL AGRICULTURE. 21; 
 
 As the lowland population advances, however, he 
 recedes, so that few large villages and no Santal 
 cities grow up. The missionaries everywhere re- 
 mark the Santal's ' decided preference for the new 
 and jungly parts of the country.' Rice, the most 
 bountiful gift of nature to man, is the national crop 
 of the Santal : his earliest traditions refer to it ; 
 his language' overflows with terms to express its 
 different stages ;^^ and even in the forest he never 
 wholly loses his hereditary skill in raising it. Each 
 period in its cultivation is marked by a festival. 
 The Santal rejoices and sacrifices to his gods when 
 he commits the seed to the ground (the Ero-Sim 
 festival) ; when the green blade has sprouted (the 
 Harian Sim) ; when the ear has formed (the Horo) ; 
 and the gathering of the rice crop forms the occasion 
 of the crowning festival of the year (Johorai)."* 
 
 The Santal possesses a happy disposition, is 
 hospitable to strangers, and sociable to a fault 
 among his own people. Every occasion is seized 
 upon for a feast, at which the absence of luxuries 
 is compensated for by abundance of game, and 
 
 ^° The Santal has names of his own for every stage in rice cul- 
 tivation, (i.) The generic name for rice : Bengali, dhan; Santali, 
 horo. (2.) The seed : Bengali, bij or bich; Santali, ita, (3.) Cut 
 rice : Bengali, kata ; Santali, irj hence irate, to reap. (4.) Rice- 
 straw ; Bengali, iJzV/^a/zy Santali, ^ajj?/^. (5.) Threshed rice: Ben- 
 gali, mara; Santali, en-men or ma-enmen. (6.) Husked rice : 
 Bengali, chal, from the same root as the Santali chaoli, from chalate, 
 to sift. (7.) Boiled rice : Bengali, bhat; Santali, dakkti. (8.) Fer- 
 mented rice liquor : Bengali, inad or pachwaij Santali, handia. 
 I have taken down these words as pronounced by Dhula Maji and 
 Chandra Maji, two Santal constables in the Beerbhoom police, 
 
 ** For a list of Santal festivals, see Appendix I. 
 
2i6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 liquor made from fermented rice. In the southern 
 country each house has its * stranger's seat ' outside 
 the door, to which the traveller, whatever be his 
 creed or colour, is courteously invited as soon as 
 he enters the village. The Santal has a form of 
 salutation of his own. He does not abase himself 
 to the ground like the rural Hindu, but gravely 
 raises his hands to his forehead, and then stretches 
 them out towards the stranger, till the palms touch 
 each other." He keeps his respect chiefly for the 
 aged among his own people ; and in dealings with 
 outsiders, while courteous and hospitable, he is at 
 the same time firm and free from cringing. Un- 
 like the Hindu, he never thinks of making money 
 by a stranger, scrupulously avoids all topics of 
 business, and feels pained if payment is pressed 
 upon him for the milk and fruits which his wife 
 brings out. When he is at last prevailed upon to 
 enter upon business matters, his dealings are off- 
 hand ; he names the true price at first, which a 
 lowlander never does, and politely waives all dis- 
 cussion or beating down. He would much rather 
 that strangers did not come to his village ; but 
 when they do come, he treats them as honoured 
 guests. He would in a still greater degree prefer 
 to have no dealings with his guests ; but when his 
 guests introduce the subject, he deals with them 
 as honestly as he would with his own people. 
 
 The village government is purely patriarchal. 
 Each hamlet has an original founder (the Manjhi- 
 " Johar-ete. 
 
THEIR VILLAGE GOVERNMENT. 217 
 
 Hanan), who is regarded as the father of the com- 
 munity. He receives divine honours in the sacred 
 grove, and transmits his authority to his descendants. 
 The head-man for the time being (Manjhi) bears 
 the undisputed sway which belongs to a hereditary 
 governor ; but he interferes only on great occasions, 
 and leaves the details to his deputy (Paramanik). 
 A missionary who has lived for some years among 
 the Santals assures me that he has never seen an 
 abuse of power by these authorities ; and the chance 
 traveller cannot help remarking the facility with 
 which he can get food, guides, means of transport, 
 in short, everything, by a word from the head-man. 
 As the adults of the village have their head-man 
 and his deputy, so also have the children. The 
 juvenile community are strictly controlled by their 
 own officers (the Jog-manjhi and Jog-paramanik), 
 whose superintendence continues till the youth or 
 maiden enters on the responsibilities of married life. 
 A watchman completes the list of village officers, 
 but among the pure Santals crime and criminal 
 officers are almost unknown."" 
 
 The Santal treats the female members of his 
 family with respect, allows them to join in festivals, 
 and only marks his superiority by finishing his 
 meal before his wife begins. The Santal woman 
 
 '"''' For some years the Santal district adjoining Beerbhoom was 
 administered on what was termed the ' No-Police System.' The 
 Commissioner (Mr. G. W. Yule) speaks highly of it in his Civil and 
 Criminal Report to Government for 1858 (pp. 4, 5, and 6), and the 
 assistant Commissioners who had to carry out its practical details 
 were of one opinion with regard to its success. 
 
2i8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 is modest, but frank. Ignorant of the shrinking 
 squeamishness of the Hindu female, she converses 
 intelligently with strangers, and performs the rites of 
 hospitality to her husband's guests. Her dance is 
 slow and decorous. All the women join hands, form 
 themselves into an arc of a circle, and advance and 
 retire towards the centre, where the musicians are 
 placed, at the same time moving slightly towards 
 the right, so as to complete the circle in about an 
 hour. 
 
 The Santals live as much apart as possible from 
 the Hindus. In some sequestered spot among the 
 hills a field of paddy makes its appearance, and 
 before the sportsman is aware, he comes upon a 
 Santal village. The only Hindu they tolerate 
 among them is a blacksmith, one of whom is at- 
 tached to each village, and whose posterity in process 
 of time become naturalized Santals. These men do 
 all the working in iron for the hamlet, and fashion 
 the armlets and other rude jewellery in which the 
 Santal matron delights. In some places a small 
 community of basket-weavers, a caste which forms 
 the lowest extremity of Hindu society, or rather 
 occupies a neutral ground of its own between the 
 acknowledged Hindus and the aborigines, is per- 
 mitted to settle on the outskirts of the Santal village; 
 but these also soon become naturalized, and lose the 
 diluted strain of Aryan blood they originally pos- 
 sessed. The hill-men are so simple-minded, that 
 dealing with them is very profitable to the acute 
 lowlander, who will pay large bribes to any person 
 
THE Y APPEAR IN A NEW LIGHT. 2 1 9 
 
 whose influence can secure for him a footing among 
 them. Under the protection of the village head, a 
 Hindu shopkeeper or usurer sometimes finds his 
 way into the Santals' retreats ; and from that day, 
 honesty, peace, and prosperity depart from the 
 hamlet. 
 
 Until 1790, the Santals were the pests of the 
 adjacent lowlands, and their unchecked inroads 
 formed Lord Cornwallis' chief reason for assuming 
 the direct administration of Beerbhoom. Every 
 winter, as soon as they had gathered in the rice 
 crop and celebrated their harvest-home, the whole 
 nation moved down upon the plains, hunting in the 
 forests and plundering the open country on the line 
 of march. After three months' excellent sport they 
 returned laden with booty to celebrate the Febru- 
 ary festival in their own villages. The operations 
 which ultimately penned in the Santals within their 
 own territory have already been detailed.^* Gradually 
 they learned to be content with the chase in their own 
 forests as a winter pastime instead of the maraud- 
 ing expeditions upon the lowlands, and at the end 
 of the century they appear in a new light — namely, 
 as valuable neighbours to the lowland proprietors. 
 The permanent settlement for the land-tax in 1 790 
 resulted in a general extension of tillage, and the 
 Santals were hired to rid the lowlands of the wild 
 beasts which, since the great famine of 1709, had 
 everywhere encroached upon the margin of cultiva- 
 tion. By this arrangement they combined sport 
 ** Ante, Chap, li, 
 
2 20 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 with profit in a far greater degree than during 
 their freebooting days, and gradually were induced 
 to accept regular employment during the cold 
 season on the plains. This circumstance was so 
 noticeable as to find , its way into the London 
 papers, and from 1792 a new era in the history of 
 the Santal dates."" 
 
 From that year he appears as the day-labourer 
 of lowland Bengal. We have seen how the famines 
 which attended the dissolution of the Mahommedan 
 power destroyed the equilibrium between the popula- 
 tion and the cultivable land. Whole districts had 
 fallen out of tillage, and our first system, that of 
 annual settlements for the land-tax which squeezed 
 the industrious and improving proprietor to make 
 good the default of the prodigal and idle one, 
 rendered operations for reclaiming waste land on a 
 large scale out of the question. But when, in 1 790, 
 the British Government pledged itself not to lay any 
 further tax on reclaimed lands, capital quickly found 
 its way to its natural destination in an agricultural 
 country — to wit, the improvement of the soil. Every 
 able-bodied husbandman was welcome to as many 
 acres as he could cultivate. A large surplus of 
 excellent land still remained, and the Santals, 
 tempted down to the plains by unprecedented wages 
 or easy rents, reclaimed hundreds of rural communes 
 and gave a new land tenure to Beerbhoom. In 
 the northern district of Rajmahal, Santals came 
 
 S9 I Every proprietor is collecting husbandmen from the hills to im- 
 prove his lowlands.' — Morning Chronicle, London, 23d Oct. 1792- O'C- 
 
AS RECLAIMERS OF WASTE LAND. 221 
 
 gradually further and further down the slopes ; and 
 Government wisely won them into peaceful habits, 
 by grants of land, along with 'exemption from 
 the ordinary course of law, and from all taxes.' 
 'Causes not affecting the public peace,' says an 
 eye-witness in 1 809, ' they settle among themselves 
 by their own customs ; but they are bribed by an 
 annual pension to give up such as commit violent 
 outrages, such as robbery and murder ; and these are 
 punished by the judge, provided an assembly of 
 their countrymen finds them guilty.'^" 
 
 By these measures did the British Government 
 change invasion into immigration, and utilize a race 
 that had been from time immemorial the terror of 
 the western border of Bengal. The same tribes 
 that had turned cultivated fields into a waste during 
 Mussulmans' times, were destined to bring back the 
 waste into cultivated fields under English rule. 
 
 The Santals, no longer thinned by the losses 
 of the winter incursions, soon outgrew their sterile 
 highlands, and about the year 1830 began to 
 migrate northwards in large bodies. They found 
 the northern hills inhabited by another aboriginal 
 race, shorter, darker, fiercer, and more hostile to 
 strangers than themselves ; speaking a language 
 they did not understand, and ignorant of the arts 
 of peace. It was the race which, after defying the 
 Mahommedan arms for centuries, was won over in 
 1 780 by the truthful and gentle policy of Augustus 
 
 '" Hist. Antiq., etc. of Eastern India, from the Buchanan MSS. 
 ii. 82. Letters of Gurreeb Doss, with rephes, 8vo, 1794. O. C. 
 
222 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Cleveland, on whose tomb the following words are 
 engraved : ' Without bloodshed or the terrors of 
 authority, employing only the means of concilia- 
 tion, confidence, and benevolence, he attempted and 
 accomplished the entire subjection of the lawless 
 and savage inhabitants of the Jungle-Terry (forest 
 frontier) of Rajmahal, who had long infested the 
 neighbouring lands by their predatory incursions, 
 inspired them with a taste of the arts of civilised 
 life, and attached them to the British Government 
 by a conquest over their minds — the most permanent 
 as the most rational mode of dominion.' ^^ 
 
 The more civilised Santal immigrants, finding 
 no rest among these wild tribes, split up into wan- 
 dering bands, and would probably have relapsed 
 into savage life, but for a happy stroke of policy 
 in 1832. The Hindus had never ceased to regard 
 the old war-like hill-men as dangerous neighbours, 
 and the fertile slopes remained an uninhabited neutral 
 ground. In 1832 Government determined to mark 
 off once and for all the territory of the highlanders 
 by a ring fence, of pillars built of solid masonry. 
 The Hindus immediately pushed forwards the 
 margin of cultivation towards the boundary ; but 
 the intervening valleys between the hills and the 
 pillars remained unoccupied, the wild highlanders not 
 caring, and the lowlanders not daring to till them. 
 For this fertile country a population was wanted, 
 and the Santals were discovered to be the very 
 
 ^^ ' By order of the Governor- General and Council of Bengal, in 
 honour of his character, and for an example to others,' 1784. 
 
THE SANTALS AS COLONISTS. 223 
 
 people required. Less timid than the Hindu, they 
 were perfectly able to hold their own against their 
 hill neighbours ; fond of a semi-agricultural life in 
 a thickly-wooded country and accustomed from 
 childhood to clear jungle lands, the rich slopes 
 were exactly the territory they had been long 
 seeking in vain."^" The few hundreds who first 
 settled on the land at a nominal rent found them- 
 selves so well off, that they sent for their kinsmen 
 from among the southern hills, and before 1838 
 they had established forty villages, containing 3000 
 souls. What attracted the Santal even more than 
 the virgin soil and well-stocked hunting-ground, 
 was the circumstance that he could there preserve 
 his nationality intact. Those who settled on the 
 waste lands of Beerbhoom soon came to be re- 
 garded, both by the surrounding lowlanders and 
 by their former highland kinsmen, as a low caste 
 of Hindus. They lost their old customs, their 
 religion and social institutions grounded on the 
 family basis, with the equality between man and 
 man which those institutions imply, and subsided 
 into an insignificant caste of the great Hindu 
 community. Indeed in the lowland village the 
 Santal was regarded as a flesh-eating barbarian, 
 and had to take his place in the lowest rank. 
 But Hindus rarely penetrated the northern hill 
 country inside the ring of pillars, and the Santal 
 
 ^^' Mr. John Petty Ward, of the Civil Service, may be considered 
 the founder of this colony. The ring fence is 295 miles in circum- 
 terence, containing 866 square miles of highland and 500 of lowland 
 territory. Of the latter, 254 square miles had been reclaimed in 1851. 
 
224 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 has there preserved his nationality to this day. 
 The enclosure, therefore, became the favourite 
 colony for the constantly overflowing Santals, and in 
 1847 — less than twenty -five years from the time Mr. 
 Ward erected the pillars — fifteen hundred Santal 
 villages and townships, containing a population of 
 about a hundred thousand souls, had sprung up 
 within the ring. According to recent statistics, 
 they now considerably exceed 200,000. 
 
 The Santal was destined not only to restore 
 the equilibrium between the population and the 
 cultivable land in the western lowlands, but also 
 to become the means of rendering British enter- 
 prise possible throughout the whole of Bengal. 
 During the past two generations, every Hindu, 
 being able to obtain a little farm with a homestead 
 of his own, naturally declined becoming the hired 
 workman of foreign employers. The division of 
 the population into capitalists and day-labourers 
 did not take place ; and when English capital 
 sought investments in Bengal, it found the second 
 element of production wanting. It had therefore, 
 adapting itself to the condition of the country, to 
 bribe the agriculturists to labour by means of ad- 
 vances, — a system unprofitable in itself, and apt to 
 lead to great abuses. In process of time, moreover, 
 the chief product of English enterprise — indigo — 
 became an unpopular crop with the husbandman; 
 and in some places the planter found that, in order 
 to cultivate it, he must first get the whole surround- 
 ing population into his power by, loans, or by pur- 
 
THE SANTALS AS DAY-LABOURERS. 225 
 
 chasing the land they tilled. During a quarter of 
 a century, a large proportion of the indigo crop of 
 Bengal was produced under pressure, not the less 
 irksome because the husbandman had voluntarily 
 subjected himself to it. From this unsatisfactory 
 state of things the hill-men of the west afforded 
 the means of escape. About 1835 Santals and 
 kindred aboriginal tribes moved down in little 
 bands towards the east, willing to work at anything 
 that would yield them a living, but preferring agri- 
 cultural employment where they could get it. In 
 Western Bengal the hills and arid laterite clearly 
 fix the limits of cultivation, and these limits had 
 been reached. In the eastern districts the exube- 
 rant alluvial soil yet awaited the husbandman, and 
 presently Santal villages sprang up on the margin 
 of each secluded marsh and jungle. The system 
 of exacting labour under pressure from the Hindu 
 cultivators had always been disagreeable to most 
 English gentlemen. It now became unnecessary, 
 for the Santal immigrants afforded a population of 
 day-labourers. Indigo-growing exactly suited the 
 hill-man. It mainly consisted of agricultural opera- 
 tions ; and it allowed him to work, according to his 
 wont, by fits and starts, demanding that every 
 sinew should be strained at certain seasons, and 
 permitting of almost total idleness during others. 
 
 From personal observation both in the eastern 
 and western districts of Lower Bengal, I am con- 
 vinced that a deep, unceasing current of population 
 still flows from the western highlands. Land is not 
 
 VOL. I. I" 
 
226 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 only more fertile, but also cheaper, in the east than 
 the west. Meagre soil, requiring to be manured 
 and artificially watered, and yielding only one crop 
 in return, cannot be obtained in Beerbhoom at a less 
 rent than nine shillings an acre. Excellent land in 
 the eastern districts, yielding two crops a-year for 
 the trouble of turning up the soil, could, until very 
 recently, be had at seven or eight. In the latter 
 districts, indeed, manuring and artificial irrigation 
 are almost unknown. ' It does not appear to be 
 generally known,' says a Calcutta newspaper, 'but 
 it is indisputably the fact, that Eastern Bengal is at 
 this moment being peopled by the spare population 
 of the west.' In every part of Nuddea little com- 
 munities of Santals, Dangars, or other hill-men, may 
 be found living apart from the Hindus, and pre- 
 serving their national customs in the middle of the 
 lowland population. Many indigo factories in the 
 eastern districts*^ have villages of these western 
 highlanders. A family of them makes its appear- 
 ance wherever manual labour is wanted, builds its 
 leaf huts in a few days, and before the end of the 
 month feels as much at home as if it were still 
 among the mountains. Patient of labour, at home 
 with nature, able to live on a penny a day, contented 
 with roots when better food is not to be had, dark- 
 skinned, a hearty but not habitually excessive toper, 
 given to pig-hunting on holidays, despised by the 
 Hindus, and heartily repaying their contempt, the 
 hill-men of the west furnish the sinews by which 
 
 *2 The Boona-parah, 
 
THEIR MIGRATIONS. 237 
 
 English enterprise is carried on in Eastern Bengal. 
 Many of them come from the central highlands, 
 where the population is permanently just one degree 
 above absolute starvation, where the extension of 
 tillage is only possible after a considerable outlay 
 of capital in digging tanks, where the winters are 
 severe, where cutaneous diseases and every infir- 
 mity common to half-starved hunting communities 
 are rampant, and where the political disaffection 
 which springs from a chronically hungry stomach 
 is never unknown. They settle in a land where 
 Nature has done her utmost to render unnecessary 
 the toil of man, where good wages are always to be 
 had in ready money, and where the very jungle pro- 
 duces as ample a subsistence as their little cultivated 
 patches at home. Every winter, after the indigo is 
 packed, numbers of the labourers visit their native 
 villages, and seldom return unaccompanied with a 
 train of poor relations, who look forward to the 
 wages of the spring sowing season as the soldiers of 
 Alaric contemplated the spoils of Lombardy. 
 
 The law of supply and demand operates in the 
 long-run as effectively, although more tardily, in the 
 valley of the Ganges as on the banks of the Mersey 
 or the Clyde. In the western districts of Bengal 
 the population have outgrown the land, and in the 
 eastern they have not yet become equal to it.^^ 
 
 *^ The old rates for rice land in Nuddea were one shilling and 
 sixpence per acre. In a large majority of rent suits that came before 
 me in 1865, when in charge of the subdivision of Kooshtea, the rent 
 of fair land was under six shillings per acre ; and the highest rent 
 claimed was, if I remember rightly, twelve shillings an acre for land 
 
228 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Labour, therefore, can make a better bargain with 
 land and capital in the east than in the west ; and 
 the hill-races, uncivilised though they be, are saga- 
 cious enough to find out and frequent the districts 
 where they can get the highest price for the one 
 marketable article that Providence has given them— - 
 the work of their hands. 
 
 The Santal colony within the ring of masonry 
 pillars in the north became, under the lenient treat- 
 ment of the British Government, as safe and peace 
 ful as any district of Lower Bengal. Hindu mer- 
 chants flocked thither every winter after harvest to 
 buy up the crop, and by degrees each market-town 
 throughout the settlement had its resident Hindu 
 grain-dealer. The Santal was ignorant and honest ; 
 the trading Hindu is keen and unscrupulous. Not 
 a year passed without some successful shopkeeper 
 returning from the hill-slopes to astonish his native 
 town by a display of quickly-gotten wealth, and to 
 buy land upon the plains. The Santal country came 
 to be regarded by the less honourable orders of 
 
 naturally irrigated, and bearing two crops a year. Such land can 
 hardly be obtained in Beerbhoom. The little there is of it is used for 
 mulberry cultivation, and pays from twenty-four to forty-two shillings 
 an acre. That a large surplus of land exists in the eastern districts, 
 is proven by the prevalence of the Utbandi system, according to 
 which the husbandman enters, without any previous arrangement 
 with the proprietor, on the uncultivated land, takes as many crops off 
 it as he can get, and deserts it for fresh fields at the end of the year. 
 The proprietor measures the land thus cultivated when the crop is 
 ripe, and charges the small rent of seven shillings and sixpence per 
 acre. This represents the rent not only of the year during which the 
 land is cruelly overcropped, but also of the succeeding one, during 
 which it will in all probability lie fallow. Since 1865 I understand 
 that rents have risen in Nuddea. 
 
THE HINDU TRADERS CHEAT THEM. 229 
 
 Hindus as a country where a fortune was to be 
 made, no matter by what means, so that it was made 
 rapidly. That the Hindus appear throughout their 
 whole connection with the Santals as cheats, extor- 
 tioners, and oppressors, tells neither more nor less 
 disgracefully against the Hindu population in gene- 
 ral, than the unscrupulous conduct of a few English 
 adventurers would tell against the honour of the 
 English nation. Along the skirt of the Santal 
 country, from the ring-fenced colony on the north 
 to the highland valleys of Beerbhoom, Hindu 
 hucksters settled upon various pretences, and in a 
 few years grew into men of fortune. They cheated 
 the poor Santal in every transaction. The forester 
 brought his jars of clarified butter for sale ; the 
 Hindu measured it in vessels with false bottoms : 
 the husbandman came to exchange his rice for salt, 
 oil, cloth, and gunpowder ; the Hindu used heavy 
 weights in ascertaining the quantity of grain, light 
 ones in weighing out the articles given in return. 
 If the Santal remonstrated, he was told that salt, 
 being an excisable commodity, had a set of weights 
 and measures peculiar to itself The fortunes made 
 by traffic in produce were augmented by usury. A 
 family of new settlers required a small advance of 
 grain to eke out the produce of the chase while they 
 were clearing the jungle. The Hindu dealer gave 
 them a few shillings' worth of rice, and seized the 
 land as soon as they had cleared it and sown the 
 crop. Another family, in a fit of hospitality, feasted 
 away their whole harvest, and then opened an 
 
i^o The aMnals of rural bengal 
 
 account at the grain-dealer's, who advanced enough 
 to keep them above starvation during the rest of 
 the year. From the moment the peasant touched 
 the borrowed rice, he and his children were the serfs 
 of the corn merchant. No matter what economy 
 the family practised, no matter what, effort they 
 made to extricate themselves ; stint as they might, 
 toil as they might, the Hindu claimed the whole 
 crop, and carried on a balance to be paid out of the 
 next harvest. Year after year the Santal sweated 
 for his oppressor. If the victim threatened to run 
 off into the jungle, the usurer instituted a suit in the 
 courts, taking care that the Santal should know 
 nothing of it till the decree had been obtained and 
 execution taken out. Without the slightest warning, 
 the poor husbandman's buffaloes, cows, and little 
 homestead were sold, not omitting the brazen house- 
 hold vessels which formed the sole heirloom of the 
 family. Even the cheap iron ornaments, the out- 
 ward tokens of female respectability among the 
 Santals, were torn from the wife's wrists. Redress 
 was out of the question : the court sat in the 
 civil station perhaps a hundred miles off. The 
 English judge, engrossed with the collection of the 
 revenue, had no time for the petty grievances of his 
 people. The native underlings, one and all, had 
 taken the pay of the oppressor : the police shared 
 in the spoil. ' God is great, but He is too far off,' 
 said the Santal ; and the poor cried, and there was 
 none to help them. 
 
 Of all this, Government knew nothing. A 
 
THE COURTS GIVE NO REDRESS. 231 
 
 single English officer had been deputed to look after 
 the Santals, and what one man could do he appears 
 to have done. As cultivation extended he enhanced 
 the land-tax, and without oppression, or raising a 
 single murmur, the revenue rose under his manage- 
 ment from ;£^668 in 1838 to ;£'68o3 in 1854. The 
 administration of justice had to be deputed to in- 
 ferior officers of the courts, Hindus who naturally 
 sided with plaintiffs of their own race against the 
 despised Santal. If the English superintendent 
 could, with the utmost industry, get through the 
 daily routine of his revenue work, he deemed him- 
 self fortunate. For inquiries into the history, the 
 habits, or the necessities of the people, he had 
 not a moment to spare. A well-armed and only 
 half-reclaimed population of sturdy aborigines was 
 allowed to shoot up with an uncared-for growth ; 
 and Government, so far from feeling any anxiety, 
 congratulated itself upon having converted a hun- 
 dred thousand wandering savages into settled agri- 
 culturists. It dwelt with delight upon the annual 
 returns, showing how swiftly the jungle had given 
 place to ploughed land, and cited the Santal settle- 
 ment as a proof of what it was the fashion of the 
 day to call a cheap and practical administration. 
 But the Santal colony was destined to furnish a 
 terrible argument against such an administration. 
 The servants of an association like the East India 
 Company, which had to make its dividends out of 
 the revenues, were constantly liable to the temp- 
 tation of looking at government in the light of a 
 
234 THE. ANNALS OP RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 mercantile undertaking, and of estimating its suc- 
 cess by its profits. This temptation the Court of 
 Directors resisted with a consistency most credit- 
 able to our nation, but ambitious subordinates in 
 India sometimes took a narrower view, for the 
 benign maxim that Indian governors are the trus- 
 tees of the Indian people, not merely of a few 
 hundred English shareholders, obtained a full and 
 definite recognition only when India passed under 
 the British Crown. In the administration of the San- 
 tal settlement, everything that cost money without 
 bringing in a tangible return was avoided. Nothing 
 was spent in obtaining a knowledge of the people. 
 The superintendent was pre-eminently a practical 
 man ; and so it fell out that, early in 1855, the most 
 peaceful province in the empire became the scene 
 of a protracted rebellion, without any one being 
 able to give either warning or explanation. Up to 
 1854 the Santal colonists within the ring-fence had 
 only the choice of continuing the serf of the Hindu 
 usurer, or returning to the sterile, over-populated 
 country whence he had come. In 1848 three 
 whole townships accepted the latter alternative, 
 and, throwing up their clearings, fled in despair to 
 the jungle. But the majority preferred the life 
 even of a serf on the fertile lowlands, to exposing 
 their women and children to the permanently half- 
 starved existence of the forest, and accepted that 
 mild form of praedial slavery which has been an 
 immemorial institution in Bengal. Until i860 no 
 penal provisions existed against it, and indeed the 
 
USVR y DE VELOPES SLA VER Y. 233 
 
 last preceding law, by regulating its incidents and 
 refusing it the support of the courts, had acknow- 
 ledged its existence/* Many of the Santals had 
 no land or crop to pledge for their little debts. If 
 a man of this class required a few shillings to bury 
 his father, he went to the Hindu usurer for it ; and 
 having no security to offer except his manual labour 
 and that of his children, he bound over himself and 
 family as slaves till the loan should be repaid. 
 The few pieces of silver were speedily spent on his 
 father's pyre, the funeral feast was eaten, and next 
 morning the unhappy household started for the 
 usurer's residence, and delivered themselves into 
 slavery. The master neither expected nor wished 
 for the repayment of the debt, and took care, by 
 working his slave every hour of the day, to leave 
 him no leisure for earning a peculium with which 
 to buy his liberty. The only inheritance he had 
 to leave to his children was the debt, at first a few 
 shillings, but now grown by compound interest at 
 33 per cent, into many pounds. If the slave re- 
 fused to give up his whole time, the master stopped 
 his food ; if he worked for other people, the master 
 took out legal execution against his person, and 
 soon brought the ignorant creature to his knees, by 
 artfully exaggerating the terrors of the jail. 
 
 It does not appear that the masters acted with 
 unnecessary cruelty. I have never heard a single 
 tale of atrocities such as the American slaveholders 
 are said to have practised. The Hindu is too 
 
 ^^ Act V. of 1843 (Indian Council). 
 
234 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 dignified to strike his dependants, and the jungle 
 always remained when existence under a harsh 
 master became intolerable. A mitigated serfdom 
 like this is indigenous in every country where the 
 people increase and the means of subsistence stand 
 still. It represents the last resource of labour when 
 placed by over-population completely at the mercy 
 of capital. The labouring man, toil as he may, can 
 earn at most a bare subsistence ; a bare subsistence 
 is the least that the master can give to his slave. 
 Between 1838 and 1851 the population within 
 the pillars increased from 3000 to 82,795, besides 
 10,000 on the outskirts ; and the landless Santal, 
 finding himself seldom worse off as a serf than as 
 a free labourer, acquiesced in his fate. But in 
 1854 events occurred that completely altered the 
 relation of capital to labour in Bengal. Govern- 
 ment had determined to give railways to India, 
 and the line skirted the Santal country for two hun- 
 dred miles. High embankments, heavy cuttings, 
 many-arched bridges, created a demand for work- 
 men such as had never been known in the history 
 of India. Some years later, twenty thousand were 
 required in Beerbhoom alone ; and the number 
 along the sections running through or bordering on 
 the Santal territories amounted to one hundred 
 thousand men,** or more than the whole overflow- 
 ings of the Santal race during a quarter of a century. 
 Instead of labour going about the northern colony 
 
 '" Return of daily average of workpeople employed on the East 
 Indian Railway, by Mr. George Turnbull, chief engineer. 
 
THE RAIL WA Y ABOLISHES SLA VER Y. 235 
 
 in fruitless search of capital, capital in unprece- 
 dented quantities roamed through the Santal 
 country in quest of labour. The contractors sent 
 their recruiters to every fair, and in a few months 
 the Santals who had taken service came back with 
 their girdles full of coin, and their women covered 
 with silver jewellery, 'just like the Hindus,' as 
 their astonished^lans-people remarked. Every man, 
 woman, and child could get work, and boys of ten 
 earned higher wages on the line than grown men 
 had ever earned in the village. It was then that 
 the distinction between the slave and the freeman 
 began to make itself felt. The entire free popula- 
 tion who had not land of their own went forth with 
 their women and children, their bows and arrows in 
 their hands, and the national drum tatooing in front, 
 to work for a few months on the railway, and then 
 to return and buy land, and give feasts to their clans- 
 men. The slaves, who were compelled to remain 
 working for their masters at home, contrasted their 
 own lot with that of the prosperous adventurers. 
 Running away became common ; and the Hindu 
 masters had recourse, in self-defence, to a much 
 stricter and more vigilant system than they had ever 
 before practised. The same causes that had made 
 the slave eager for freedom had rendered him more 
 valuable to his master, and it became clear that the 
 great issue would soon have to be tried, whether 
 it was possible, in the second half of the present 
 century, under British laws, to keep men slaves 
 when it was worth their while to be free. 
 
236 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 During the cold weather of 1854 and 1855 the 
 Santals appeared to be in a strange, restless state. 
 They had gathered in an excellent crop, and the 
 influx of capital had enhanced the local price of 
 agricultural produce. Nevertheless the highlanders 
 continued excited and discontented. It was in vain 
 that the magistrate of Beerbhoom, in reviewing the 
 progress of his district during the year, reported 
 everything prosperous. ' The very extensive works 
 now being carried on by the railway authorities 
 throughout the district,' he wrote, ' and the employ- 
 ment given by them to vast numbers of the poorer 
 classes, has greatly ameliorated the condition of the 
 inhabitants ; and the universally abundant harvest 
 has also contributed to their welfare.'*^ But in spite 
 of high prices for their grain and high wages for their 
 labour, the race swayed restlessly about. The truth 
 was, that the rich Santals had determined to be no 
 longer the dupes of the Hindus, who intercepted these 
 high prices ; the poorer agriculturists had determined 
 to be no longer their serfs, and the day-labourers had 
 determined no longer to be their slaves. 
 
 To a people in this frame of mind, leaders are 
 seldom wanting. Two brothers,*^ inhabitants of a 
 village that had been oppressed beyond bearing 
 by Hindu usury, stood forth as the deliverers of 
 their countrymen, claimed a divine mission, and 
 produced heaven-sent tokens as their credentials. 
 
 ** From the officiating Magistrate of Beerbhoom to the Commis- 
 sioner of the Burdwan Division, dated l8th February 1855. B. J. R. 
 
 *' Sidu and Khanu, natives of Bagnadihi, afterwards joined by 
 their other two brothers, Chand and Bairab. 
 
THE SANTALS GROW RESTLESS. 237 
 
 The god of the Santals, they said, had appeared 
 to them on seven successive days : at first in the 
 form of a white man in a native costume ; next as 
 a flame of fire, with a knife glowing in the midst ; 
 then as the perforated slice of a Sal trunk which 
 forms the wheel of the Santal's bullock cart. The 
 divinity delivered to the two brothers a sacred 
 book, and the sky showered down slips of paper, 
 which were secretly spread throughout the whole 
 Santal country. Each village received a scrap 
 without a word of explanation, but with an im- 
 precation, as it would avoid the wrath of the 
 national god, to forward it without a moment's 
 pause to the nearest hamlet. Having in this way 
 raised a general expectation of some great event 
 among their countrymen, the leaders hoped that 
 their English governors would inquire into the 
 matter, and redress their wrongs ; but their Eng- 
 lish governors had no time for such inquiries. 
 They next petitioned the chief authority to do 
 them justice, adding obscurely, that their god had 
 commanded them to wait no longer. This officer 
 knew nothing of the people or their wrongs. A 
 cheap and practical administration has only time 
 to look after its revenues ; the Santal administra- 
 tion did this effectively ; and for the terrible retri- 
 bution which our ignorance of the people brought 
 upon us, the system, not any individual officer, 
 must be blamed. The English superintendent col- 
 lected the revenue as usual, and put aside the com- 
 plaints : the Santal leaders in despair had recourse 
 
238 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 to the Commissioner — a high English official in 
 charge of a divison of the province — and, it is 
 said, plainly told him that if he would not redress 
 their wrongs, they would redress them themselves.'* 
 The Commissioner could not understand what they 
 wanted : the taxes came in as usual ; the admini- 
 stration continued cheap and practical as before. 
 ' God is great, but He is too far off,' said the San- 
 tal leaders. A last resource remained. Emissaries, 
 bearing the national Sal branch, were despatched to 
 every mountain valley ; and the people, obedient to 
 the signal, gathered together in vast masses, not 
 knowing for what object, but with their expectation 
 excited by the slips of paper, and carrying the in- 
 variable bow and arrows in their hands. 
 
 The brothers found that they had raised a 
 storm which they could not control. A general 
 order went through the encampment to move down 
 upon the plains towards Calcutta, and on the 30th 
 June 1855 the vast expedition set out.*' The body- 
 guard of the leaders alone amounted to 30,000 men. 
 
 *' I should add that I have never been able to verify this state- 
 ment from official documents. 
 
 ^' It was asserted that on this day the Santal leaders addressed 
 an ultimatum to the Government, to the Commissioner of the Bhagul- 
 pore Division, to the Magistrates and Collectors of Bhagulpore Dis- 
 trict and Beerbhoom, and to the various police inspectors through 
 whose jurisdictions their route lay. I have never discovered one of 
 these curious missives ; few, if any, of them reached their destination, 
 but an accurate contemporary writer, with the whole facts before him, 
 gives his authority to the statement. The ultiinatum is said to have 
 insisted chiefly on the regulation of usury, on a new arrangement of 
 the revenues, and on the expulsion, or, as some say, the massacre, 
 jf all Hindu extortioners in the Santal country. 
 
THE V COLLECT IN ARMED MASSES. 239 
 
 As long as the food which they had brought from 
 their villages lasted, the march was orderly ; but 
 unofficered bodies of armed men roaming about, not 
 very well knowing where they are going, soon be- 
 came dangerous ; and with the end of their own 
 stock of provisions, the necessity for plundering or 
 levying benevolences commenced. The leaders 
 preferred the latter, the rabble the former. On 
 the 7th of July a native inspector of police heard 
 of the entrance of a vast body of hill-men, with the 
 two brothers at their head, into his jurisdiction ; and 
 the Hindu usurers, becoming uneasy, bribed him to 
 get up a false charge of burglary against the band, 
 and apprehend their leaders. He went out with 
 his guards, but was met half-way by an embassy 
 from the Santals, with instructions to escort him 
 into their camp. The two brothers ordered him to 
 levy a tax of ten shillings on every Hindu family in 
 his jurisdiction, for the subsistence of their followers, 
 and were about to dismiss him in peace, when some 
 one discovered that he had come out with the inten- 
 tion of getting up a false complaint. At first he 
 denied the charge, saying he was on his way to 
 investigate an accidental death from snake-bite, 
 but afterwards confessed the usurers had bribed 
 him to get up a false case of burglary, and bring 
 in their leaders bound. The two brothers said. If 
 you have any proof against us, take us and bind us. 
 The foolhardy inspector, presuming on the usually 
 peaceable nature of the Santals, ordered his guards 
 to pinion them ; but no sooner were the words out 
 
240 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 of his mouth, than the whole mass rushed upon him, 
 and bound him and his minions. After a hurried 
 trial, the chief leader Sidu slew the corrupt in- 
 spector with his own hands, and the police left nine 
 of their party dead in the Santal camp. 
 
 From this day — the 7th of July — the rebellion 
 dates. At the time of their setting out, they do not 
 seem to have contemplated armed opposition to the 
 Government. When all was over, their leaders, 
 who in other respects at any rate disdained equi- 
 vocation or falsehood, solemnly declared that their 
 purpose was to march down to Calcutta, in order 
 to lay the petition which the local authorities had 
 rejected at the feet of the Governor-General ; and 
 the truth of this statement is rendered probable by 
 the fact that their wives and children accompanied 
 them. Indeed, the movement could not be dis- 
 tinguished at first from one of their great national 
 processions, headed by the customary drums and 
 fifes. Want drove them to plunder, and the preci- 
 pitate outrage upon the inspector of police changed 
 the whole character of the expedition. The inoffen- 
 sive but only half-tamed highlander had tasted 
 blood, and in a moment his old savage nature 
 returned. Nevertheless their proceedings retained 
 a certain air of rude justice. The leaders had a 
 revelation enjoining the immediate slaughter of the 
 Hindu usurers, but protection to all other classes; 
 and assured the ignorant multitude that the great 
 English lord in the south would sanction these pro- 
 ceedings and share the plunder. 
 
ANGL 0-IAWIAN PANICS. 2 4 1 
 
 The Anglo-Indian community is naturally liable 
 to the apprehensions and hasty conclusions incident 
 to a small body of settlers surrounded by an alien 
 and a greatly more numerous race. To what 
 such apprehensions and hasty conclusions may 
 lead, when shared by the local administration, the 
 recent Jamaica tragedy gave melancholy proof. 
 Disaffection that would be sufficiently met by a few 
 dozen policemen in England, becomes a very serious 
 matter where millions of pounds' worth of property 
 and many thousand lives depend upon absolutely 
 unbroken order. It is not a question whether -the 
 disaffection has any chance of ultimate success. 
 The Anglo-Indian community is perfectly aware 
 that England can avenge, but it also knows that 
 England may be too late to save. People who live 
 in this situation are prone to exaggerate danger, as 
 the Jamaica white population exaggerated it, and to 
 be carried into excesses such as the Jamaica troops 
 committed. With the Government rests the heavy 
 responsibility of counteracting the natural tendency 
 to panic on the part of the public ; and thjs is one, but 
 only one, of many permanent causes tending to pre- 
 vent the Indian Government and the Anglo- Indian 
 press from being in perfect accord. The English 
 Government of India from an early period fully recog- 
 nised their dutyin this respect ; indeed, on some occa- 
 sions it would appear that the rebound has led them 
 into the opposite extreme ; the authorities having 
 underrated the danger in a greater and more fatal de- 
 gree than the outside community had exaggerated it. 
 VOL. 1, Q 
 
242 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 The Santal insurrection found the Government 
 strongly imbued with this spirit. A contempo- 
 rary writer stated that when the blow was at last 
 struck, twelve hundred troops could not be found 
 within eighty miles of the rebels.™ For a whole 
 fortnight the Santals spread fire and sword through- 
 out the western districts. The armed masses ceased 
 to be controlled by the leaders who had set them on ; 
 and before the end of July, scores of villages had been 
 burned, thousands of cattle driven away, our troops 
 beaten back, and several Englishmen along with two 
 English ladies slain. Many a little English station 
 and factory lay at the mercy of the marauders ; and 
 that the atrocities of the mutiny of 1857 were not anti- 
 cipated in 1855, is due not to the want of opportunity, 
 but to the natural mildness of the Santal, only one 
 of their leaders attacking English residents unless in 
 self-defence. Government at once despatched troops, 
 but the rains had set in, and the rivers became im- 
 passable for days together. ' One evening,' says an 
 officer who played an important part in putting down 
 the rebellioji, 'when my regiment was at Barrack- 
 pore, the colonel sent for me and ordered me to 
 march next morning with a detachment to Ranee- 
 gunge, in Beerbhoom, as the hill-tribes had broken 
 out. I had heard nothing of the affair before, nor 
 was it, so far as I remember, talked of in military 
 circles. Next morning I started at 4 A.M., and 
 
 '" This part of my narrative is chiefly derived from the contem- 
 porary press — the Friend of India, the Englishman, the Harkaru 
 and the Calcutta Review. 
 
EXCESS OF OFFICIAL CALMNESS. 243 
 
 reached Burdwan by train about breakfast time. 
 The Commissioner (the chief civil officer of that divi- 
 sion of the province) came to me and ordered me to 
 push on direct for Soorie, the capital of Beerbhoom, 
 as it was in instant danger of attack. We marched 
 for two days and a night, the rain pouring the whole 
 way, and my men without any regular food. As we 
 came near to Soorie, we found panic in every village. 
 The Hindus fairly lined the road, welcoming us with 
 tears in their eyes, and pressing sweetmeats and 
 parched rice upon my exhausted Sepoys. At Soorie 
 we found things, if possible, worse. One officer 
 kept his horse saddled day and night, the jail seemed 
 to have been hastily fortified, and the bulk of the 
 coin from the treasury was said, I know not with 
 what truth, to be hid in a well.'^^ 
 
 In this panic the Central Government declined 
 to share. It could only act on the evidence be- 
 fore it, and the local authorities wrote much more 
 calmly than they felt. The provincial records give 
 a very inadequate idea of the state of affairs. The 
 character which an Indian officer dreads most is 
 that of an alarmist, and as the officials on the 
 spot had failed to foresee the storm, there was a 
 natural tendency to underrate it when at length it 
 burst. This, too, without any intention to conceal, 
 or even consciousness that their reports were apt to 
 mislead. In every matter of fact their accuracy is 
 
 " Personal Narrative of Major Vincent Jervis ; one of the MS. 
 contributions on which this chapter is based. I have not been able 
 officially to verify the legend of the treasure chests in the weU. 
 
244 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 beyond question ; but in the inferences drawn from 
 the facts the tendency appears. Some of them, 
 only a few months before, had reported that crime 
 in their jurisdiction had greatly decreased, that a new 
 and more effective police had been introduced, and 
 that the people had never been more contented, or 
 the district as a whole so prosperous. It took 
 time for men who had written in this strain in 
 r ebruary, to realize that their district was the seat 
 of a rebellion in July. Night attacks on houses by 
 bands of from five to fifty men had always been 
 common in Bengal, and it was a difficult matter to 
 pronounce the exact line at which such enterprises 
 cease to be civil offences and become overt insur- 
 rection. A single example will suffice. ' The 
 whole inquiry only tends to prove,' wrote the 
 magistrate of Beerbhoom, with regard to the sack- 
 ing of a Bengali hamlet, 'that it was one of 
 those occurrences common in Bengal, when the 
 Dacoits were bold, adventurous, and determined, 
 the Bengali a coward and helpless, and the village 
 watchmen all absent from their posts.'" It is pos- 
 sible that in this individual case the magistrate may 
 have been right in his conjecture, but in many 
 similar cases there can be no doubt that he mis- 
 took rebellion for robbery. Each magistrate put off 
 as long as possible the admission that his district 
 was in arms against Government, and arraigned 
 men, who should have been hanged as rebels, on 
 
 '''^ From the officiating magistrate of .Beerbhoom to the Commis- 
 sioner of the Burdwan division, dated 8th Nov. 1855. B. J. R. 
 
MARTIAL LA W DELA YEB. 245 
 
 charges of burglary, or ' for assembling illegally and 
 riotously with offensive weapons for the purpose of 
 plunder, and to commit a serious breach of the 
 peace.' This farce continued for weeks in the 
 courts while a tragedy was being enacted outside. 
 Such pangs does it cost a civil officer to acknow- 
 ledge that his people are in revolt, and that the 
 authority has passed out of his hands. 
 
 The Government therefore, judging from the 
 reports before it, refused to be alarmed. It sent 
 troops ; but anxious to avoid the severities of martial 
 law, and following precedents afforded by disturbed 
 frontier districts in the last century, placed the troops 
 under the orders of the civil authorities. But in so 
 doing, it overlooked the difference between a col- 
 lector of Mr. Keating's school in 1788, and a col- 
 lector of 1855. Mr. Keating knew nothing of 
 jurisprudence ; but he selected the passes to be 
 held, distributed' his troops, and regulated their 
 movements with consummate ability. The collector 
 of 1855 was a more able lawyer, and administered 
 his district with much cleaner hands, but he knew 
 nothing of military tacties ; and for the duties now 
 devolved upon him he had not, and never pretended 
 to have, any capacity. His military dispositions 
 made him ridiculous in the eyes of the soldiers sent 
 to act under him, dissension reigned within the 
 English camp, and the rebels plundered and mas- 
 sacred at pleasure outside. 
 
 About the 25th of July, Government finding 
 that it must take severer measures, placed the re- 
 
246 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 duction of the rebels in the hands of an experienced 
 commander," with instructions that amounted to 
 delivering over the disturbed districts to the mili- 
 tary power. Then it relented, explained away or 
 retracted its orders, and removed the independent 
 authority from the general. ' It was not intended,' 
 ran the despatch, ' that the military should act in- 
 dependently of the civil power against our own 
 subjects ; but that the nature of the military opera- 
 tions necessary for dispersing and capturing the 
 insurgents, and for putting down the rebellion, 
 should be entirely in the hands of the military 
 commanders.''* 
 
 Even this half-measure gave a new vigour to 
 the action of the military, and for a time seemed 
 likely to answer the ends proposed. Detachment 
 after detachment hurried to the west, patriotic native 
 landholders armed and drilled their retainers;" 
 English planters supplied the troops with funds on 
 the march ;^° his Highness of Moorshedabad sent a 
 splendid train of elephants, and insisted on bearing 
 all their expenses ;'' and a Special Commissioner, 
 
 '^ General Lloyd. 
 
 '* From the Secretary of the Government of Bengal to the Com- 
 missioner of the Burdwan division, dated Fort-William, the 30th Jul) 
 1865. Bn. R. 
 
 ^^ Vide despatch conveying the thanks of the Government to 
 Babu Bipacharan Chakarbati, a Beerbhoom landholder, dated 2d 
 October 1855. B. R. R. 
 
 '^ Letter from- the Commissioner of Burdwan to the officiating 
 collector of Beerbhoom, dated 27th September 1855, para. 2. B. R. R. 
 
 '^ From the Special Commissioner suppressing the Santal insur- 
 rection, dated Berhampore, 22d August 1855. 
 
THE MILITARY ENGAGED. 247 
 
 vested with extraordinary powers, was appointed 
 for the suppression of the rebellion.'* 
 
 The details of border warfare, in which disci- 
 plined troops mow down half-armed peasants, are 
 unpleasant in themselves, and afford neither glory 
 to the conquerors nor lessons in the military art. 
 After a lapse of thirteen years, the officers who 
 reduced the Santals can hardly be brought to dwell 
 minutely on the operation, ' It was not war,' one 
 of them has said to me, ' it was execution ; we had 
 orders to go out whenever we saw the smoke of a 
 village rising above the jungle. The magistrate 
 used to go with us. I surrounded the village with 
 my Sepoys, and the magistrate called upon the rebels 
 to surrender. On one occasion the Santals, forty- 
 five in number, took refuge in a mud house. The 
 magistrate called on them to surrender, but the only 
 reply was a shower of arrows from the half-opened 
 door. I said, " Mr. Magistrate, this is no place for 
 you," and went up with my Sepoys, who cut a large 
 hole through the wall. I told the rebels to sur- 
 render, or I should fire in. The door again half 
 opened, and a volley of arrows was the answer. A 
 company of Sepoys advanced, and fired through the 
 hole. I once more called on the inmates to sur- 
 render, while my men reloaded. Again the door 
 opened, and a volley of arrows replied. Some of 
 the Sepoys were wounded, the village was burning 
 all round us, and I had to give the men orders to 
 
 '' Another from the same to Captain R. D. Macdonald, dated the 
 2ist August, etc. etc. 
 
248 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 do their work. At every volley we offered quarter ; 
 ind at last, as the discharge of arrows from the door 
 slackened, I resolved to rush in and save some of 
 them alive, if possible. When we got inside, we 
 found only one old man, dabbled with blood, stand- 
 ing erect among the corpses. One of my men went 
 up to him, calling him to throw away his arm's. 
 The old man rushed upon the Sepoy, and hewed 
 him down with his battle-axe.'^* 
 
 ' It was not war,' the commanding officer went 
 on to say ; ' they did not understand yielding. As 
 long as their national drums beat, the whole party 
 would stand, and allow themselves to be shot down. 
 Their arrows often killed our men, and so we had 
 to fire on them as long as they stood. When their 
 drums ceased, they would move off for about a 
 quarter of a mile ; then their drums began again, 
 and they calmly stood till we came up and poured 
 a few volleys into them. There was not a Sepoy in 
 the war who did not feel ashamed of himself The 
 prisoners were for the most part wounded men. 
 They upbraided us with fighting against them. 
 They always said it was with the Bengalis they were 
 at war, not with the English. If a single Englishman 
 had been sent to them who understood their wrongs, 
 and would have redressed them, they declared there 
 would have been no war. It is not true that they 
 used poisoned arrows. They were the most truth- 
 ful set of men I ever met ; brave to infatuation. A 
 lieutenant of mine had once to shoot down seventy- 
 
 '■'' Personal Narrative of Major Jervis. 
 
A TEMPORARY LULL. 249 
 
 five men before their drums ceased, and the party 
 fell back.' 
 
 By the middle of August these energetic mea- 
 sures had driven the insurgents from the plains. 
 A proclamation was therefore issued, offering par- 
 don to all except the leaders ; and the civil officers, 
 jealous of even the partial authority given to the 
 military, represented that the necessity for continuing 
 that authority had ceased. ' All has been quiet,' 
 wrote the Beerbhoom magistrate, ' for seven weeks 
 past. The villagers have returned to their homes, 
 and the husbandmen are engaged in the cultivation 
 of their land as usual. The Santals are nowhere 
 to be found, .... having retreated to a place some 
 thirty miles off, in another district.'** But the lull 
 was only temporary, and precisely one month later 
 we find the same officer reporting that ' during the 
 past fortnight upwards of eighty villages have been 
 plundered and burnt by the insurgents,'*^ the mails 
 stopped, and the whole of the north-west part of 
 the district in their hands. In one direction an 
 army of Santals roved through the district three 
 thousand strong; in another their numbers amounted 
 to seven thousand ; the civil authorities were driven 
 
 '" Letter to the Commissioner, dated the 24th of August 1855, 
 para. 2. Similar reports had been previously sent by the officers 
 of the other disturbed districts ; for on the 6th of August the Govern- 
 ment decided, from the evidence before it, that the rebels had ' in a 
 great measure abandoned opposition,' and that little remained to be 
 done except to receive their submission. Despatch No. 1808 to the 
 Special Commissioner. B. R. R. and C. O. R. 
 
 *^ From the magistrate of Beerbhoom to the Commissioner of 
 Burdwan, dated 24th September 1855. 
 
2 50 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 in from the outlying stations, the husbandmen de- 
 serted their lands, and the proclamation of pardon 
 was received with loud defiance and contempt. 
 The intermediate semi-aboriginal classes between 
 the Santal and the Hindu, and indeed several of the 
 very low castes of the Hindus themselves, appear 
 at this time to have joined the rebellion, and carried 
 off Brahman priests to perform the great October 
 festival.*^ Even in their moment of success, however, 
 the Santals were not wanting in a sort of barbaric 
 chivalry, and usually gave fair warning of their 
 purpose to plunder a town before they actually 
 came. In the latter half of September (about the 
 2 2d or the 23d) the capital of Beerbhoom was 
 thrown into a panic by the receipt of such a mes- 
 sage. A post-runner returned one day, saying the 
 rebels had seized him while on his journey, taken 
 away his mail bags, and spared his life only on the 
 condition that he would carry a twig of their national 
 Sal tree to the magistrate. The latter official re- 
 ported to Government that the twig had 'three 
 leaves on it, each leaf signifying a day that is to 
 elapse before their arrival.' 
 
 In spite of the common danger, discord still 
 reigned between the civil and military authorities. 
 The actual operations of the troops had been freed 
 from the. control of the magistrate ; but as martial 
 law had not been declared, the military remained 
 individually amenable to the civil officers for their 
 acts. No distinct line had been fixed where the 
 
 "2 The Durga Puja. 
 
MAR TIAL LA W DECLARED. 2 5 1 
 
 authority of the latter ended ; constant misunder- 
 standings resulted, and every post carried an angry 
 reference on the point. 
 
 In the early part of November, after the western 
 districts had suffered four months' devastation, Go- 
 vernment reluctantly proclaimed martial law. It 
 had tried in vain to avert the rigours of military 
 occupation ; but its leniency had only resulted in 
 an occupation by the rebels, instead of by our own 
 troops. The local officers, by understating the 
 disturbances, had first allowed them to spread, and 
 then grudged any transfer of their authority to the 
 military till they found that the rebels had entirely 
 usurped it. As soon as the order for martial law 
 went forth, things assumed a very different appear- 
 ance. Official bickerings ceased, and requisitions for 
 supplies formed the only communications between the 
 brigadier and the collector. A cordon of outposts, 
 in some instances numbering twelve to fourteen 
 thousand men,^ quickly pushed back the Santals from 
 the open county, and in six weeks nothing remained 
 but to sweep the jungle clear of stragglers. Before 
 the end of the cold weather (1855-56) the rebels had 
 formally tendered their submission, and thousands 
 of them were peacefully at work upon a new road. 
 
 But while the Government, misled by the reports 
 of local officers, and actuated by its traditional 
 leniency towards the people, had failed in promptly 
 
 " Letter from Brigadier L. S. Bird, commanding the Beerbhoom 
 and Bancorah frontier force, to the Collector of Beerbhoom, dated 
 lodi December 1855. B. R. R. 
 
252 THE Annals OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 dealing with the rebels, it had lost not a moment in 
 searching for and trying to remove the causes of 
 discontent. It directed a minute inquiry into that 
 cheap and practical administration which had for- 
 merly been so much applauded. The Santals had 
 complained of the distance of the courts : the 
 Government's own servants now reported, that 
 along the Santal frontier the English officers ' are 
 too few, and stationed too far apart, to exercise an 
 effectual supervision over the great extent of country 
 placed under their control.'** It speedily became 
 apparent that the economy of the former admini- 
 stration consisted in taking the taxes without giving 
 anything in return for them, — an economy that had 
 resulted in an insurrection for which the State had 
 paid more in six months than the cost of ten years' 
 good government. No sooner had order been re- 
 stored than the Governor of that day retracted the 
 errors of his predecessors. He erected the Santal 
 territory into a separate district. Instead of a 
 single officer, taken from the subordinate depart- 
 ment, the covenanted civil service was indented 
 upon for its highest talent to administer the abori- 
 ginal frontier. The old police, who had tyrannized 
 over the simple peasantry, were rooted out, and 
 English officers dispensed justice at all the chief 
 centres of the Santal population, besides going regu- 
 larly on circuit through the villages. Justice was 
 
 '* Joint Report of the Magistrate and Collector of Beerbhoom 
 to the Commissioner of the Burdwan division, No. 145, dated 28th 
 August 1855. B. R. R. 
 
THE INSURRECTION PUT DOWN. 253 
 
 made cheap, and brought close to every man's door ; 
 and contemporary writers complained that Govern- 
 ment had almost sanctioned the rebellion by grant- 
 ing all that the rebels had fought for. 
 
 The traditional coldness of the Beng-al Govern- 
 ment to opinions outside, if it had led to unwise 
 leniency at the commencement of the insurrection, 
 averted the most serious crimes at its close. To 
 the public no punishment seemed too cruel for men 
 who had remained in open rebellion during six 
 months, burned towns, and forcibly occupied dis- 
 tricts within a hundred miles of Calcutta. It is per- 
 haps unfair to quote from the daily press articles 
 written in the excitement of the moment ; but how 
 fierce and deeply rooted was the resentment of the 
 Anglo-Indian community, may be gathered from an 
 essay, written at leisure after all was over, for the 
 Review which worthily occupies the first place 
 among Indian periodicals : ' A wild barbarian sud- 
 denly admitted into the social intercourse of his 
 superior in the grades of the human family, nearly 
 resembles the adult tiger withdrawn from his lair 
 and his haunts in the jungle.' In short, no one 
 knew anything about the wrongs or the peaceful 
 industry of the Santals. They were simply " adult 
 tigers' or * bloodthirsty savages ;' and the reviewer, 
 dismissing the ordinary plan of punishing only the 
 actual rebels as insufficient, adopts a proposal to 
 deport across the seas, not one or two ringleaders, 
 but the entire population of the infected districts.*® 
 
 3' Calcutta Review, March 1856. 
 
254 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Such clamours are naturally to be expected from 
 a community in the position which a handful of 
 our countrymen occupy in India. They in no way 
 disturbed the action of the Government. The San- 
 tals had the chance of a regular trial, and only those 
 suffered who had taken actual part in the rebellion. 
 Most of them displayed great fortitude, owning with 
 pride their share in the proceedings, and blaming 
 the ignorance of Government as the cause of the 
 war. ' You forced us to fight against you,' said one 
 of their leaders in the Beerbhoom jail. ' We asked 
 only what was fair, and you gave us no answer. 
 When we tried to get redress by arms, you shot us 
 like leopards in the jungle.''* 
 
 The wrongs of the Santals proceeded chiefly from 
 the inefficiency of the administration, and they 
 speedily disappeared under the more exact system 
 that was introduced after the revolt. Without re- 
 course to pernicious and ineffectual usury laws, the 
 abuses of the usurers were checked at the point 
 where high interest passes into extortion. The 
 Hindu money-lender might charge as high rates as 
 he could get, but the law took care that the same 
 debts should not be paid twice or thrice over as 
 before, and the courts were close at hand to force 
 the fraudulent creditor to give receipts for the sums 
 repaid him. False weights and measures were 
 heavily visited ; and for the first time in his history 
 the Santal sold his harvest in the open market-place 
 
 '** A few official papers on the Santal insurrection will be found 
 in Appendix K. 
 
SLA VER Y ABOLISHED. 255 
 
 without the certainty of being cheated. Slavery 
 also ceased. The courts construed very strictly the 
 Act of 1843 on the subject ; and before 1858 it had 
 become apparent that if a slave fled, or refused to 
 work, his master had no effectual recourse at law 
 against him. The demand for workmen on the 
 railways completely changed the relation of labour 
 to capital. Not many years before, it had been a 
 good thing for a Santal to be the serf of a powerful 
 master ; but now he could earn a competence as a 
 freeman. The natural reason for slavery — to wit, 
 the absence of a wage-fund for free workmen — 
 was no longer felt, and slavery itself disappeared. 
 The Indian railways are frequently cited as proofs 
 of how Englishmen can carry out great and untried 
 enterprises in the furthest parts of the world. Such 
 proofs they undoubtedly are ; but to a person on 
 the spot, it seems that the railway's chief mission 
 in India has been, not so much to aggrandize our 
 own race, as to restore the balance between labour 
 and capital among the native population, and to 
 root out slavery from the land. 
 
 A discovery had meanwhile been made in the 
 remote north-east frontier of Bengal, which was 
 destined still further to improve the position of the 
 Santals and similar tribes in the west. The tea 
 plant had been found growing wild throughout 
 Assam and the neighbouring provinces. The first 
 attempts at cultivating it were yielding enormous 
 profits, but the absence of labourers forbade the 
 hopes of raising it on a large scale. The most 
 
2s6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 fertile provinces in the world lay waste, waiting 
 for inhabitants, when capitalists bethought them- 
 selves of the crowded highlands on the west, and 
 began to recruit armies of labourers among them. 
 The transport of large bodies of men everywhere 
 requires supervision ; but in India, unless the 
 supervision be of the most careful character, the 
 loss of life is appalling. The hill-men knew nothing 
 of the dangers which beset them on their journey 
 through the valley and up the eastern rivers, and 
 the recruiters who superintended their transmission 
 knew very little more. As the labour transport 
 trade increased, the accommodation for conveying 
 the coolies became alarmingly inadequate. They 
 made the passage in crowded open boats, or in 
 still more fatally crowded steamers, without the 
 least attention to cleanliness or proper diet, and 
 sometimes without medical assistance of any sort. 
 On several trips the mortality attracted the notice 
 of Government, and it became necessary to place 
 the whole system under the superintendence of 
 public officers. Care was taken that no labourer 
 should be removed from his village under false 
 pretences or by compulsion. On leaving his native 
 district he had to appear before a magistrate, who 
 asked him whether he was willing to go, and 
 explained the nature of the service on which he 
 was about to enter. If the recruiter had deceived 
 the labourer, the latter could at this stage obtain 
 his discharge, and an allowance for the expenses 
 of his journey home. The term of service was 
 
THEY PEOPLE THE TEA-DISTRICTS. 257 
 
 eventually fixed at three years, during which the 
 planter guaranteed the labourer constant employ- 
 ment at wages about twice as high as those which 
 prevail in his own country. The planter had also 
 to pay the cost of his journey, provide a house for 
 him, with medical attendance, and all other ap- 
 pliances which tend to keep the human frame in 
 health. His whole family gets employment, and 
 every additional child, instead of being the means 
 of increasing his poverty, becomes a source of 
 wealth. The labour is the lightest known to agri- 
 culture, and as soon as a boy can walk he can 
 earn his living. 
 
 Migration has therefore become justly popular 
 among the highlanders of the west, and thousands 
 of them are conveyed every month to the distant 
 provinces in the east.*^ The planters complained 
 at first that the Government supervision was op- 
 pressively minute ; but after several changes, a 
 system of labour transport has been developed, 
 without a parallel for humanity and efficiency 
 in any other country in the world. The Santal 
 has not benefited by it so much as some of the 
 kindred races, for he is less sturdy than the true 
 highlander of the upper table-land, and bears with 
 difficulty a sudden change of climate. The lower 
 sort of recruiters, however, collect large bands in the 
 Santal country, and pass them off upon the planters 
 
 8' I have no complete returns, but in 1865, when ex officio super- 
 intendent of labour transport at Kooshtea, I estimated the number at 
 3000 a month. In July it amounted to 3827, in May to 3236 adult 
 labourers, or, including children, to about 4000 souls. 
 
 VOL. I, R 
 
2s8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 as belonging to some other of the hardier hill- 
 tribes. 
 
 In a few years the emigrants return rich men, 
 and meanwhile their going away renders the struggle 
 for life easier among their countrymen who remain 
 at home. While one stream flows steadily to the 
 north-east frontier, another diverges at Calcutta, 
 and crosses over the sea to the Mauritius or the 
 West Indies, whence they return at the expiry of 
 their contracts with savings averaging £20 sterling, 
 a sum sufficient to set up a Santal as a considerable 
 proprietor in his own village. The more industrious 
 of the emigrants amass very considerable properties, 
 a single family sometimes bringing back ^200, 
 which is as great a fortune to the hill-men of 
 Western Bengal as ;^5000 would be to an English 
 peasant. 
 
 The civilisation of the Santal has by no means 
 kept pace with his material prosperity. The only 
 vigorous attempt on the part of the State to give 
 him education, has been in the half-Hinduized 
 colony within the ring of pillars in the north ; and 
 the vehicle of instruction is Bengali, a language 
 which the pure Santal abhors. What zeal and 
 patience could do, the missionaries, aided by the 
 Government grants, have done for the mixed Santals 
 of that part ; but if the race is ever to be won back 
 to civilisation, it must be by strictly vernacular 
 schools. A learned missionary in the south has 
 reduced their language to writing, published its 
 grammar, with a vocabulary appended, and every 
 
DANGERS OF IGNORANCE. 259 
 
 month issues little Santal tracts from his private 
 press. Schools have sprung up in his immediate 
 vicinity, to which the Santals flock to learn their 
 mother tongue ; but he is hampered for want of 
 funds, and unless the State assist the operations 
 by a grant, their extension on an adequate scale 
 can hardly be hoped for* 
 
 I have dwelt at considerable length on the 
 Beerbhoom highlanders, partly on account of the 
 valuable light which their language and customs 
 shed upon the non-Aryan element in the rural 
 population of Bengal, partly for the instruction 
 which their recent history furnishes as to the pro- 
 per method of dealing with the aboriginal races. 
 The Indian Government cannot afford any longer 
 to be unacquainted with the character, condition, 
 and necessities of these primitive forest-tribes who 
 everywhere surround our frontier, and whose ethni- 
 cal kindred form so important an element of the 
 population on the plains. In the old times, when 
 war and pestilence constantly thinned them, the 
 system of non-inquiry acted tolerably well ; but now 
 that peace is sternly imposed, when vaccination is 
 introduced, and everything is done that modern 
 science can suggest to reduce the ravages of 
 pestilence to a minimum, the people increase at 
 a rate that threatens to render the struggle for 
 life harder under British rule than under Mussul- 
 man tyranny. At the same time, we have taken 
 away slavery, the last resource of the cultivator 
 when he cannot earn a livelihood for his family. 
 
26o THE ANNALS OF R URAL BENGAL. 
 
 In short, we are attempting to govern according to 
 the principles of Christian humanity and modern 
 civilisation, forgetful that under such a system the 
 numbers of a people increase, while in India the 
 means of subsistence stand still. Progress implies 
 dangers unknown in stationary societies, and an 
 imported civilisation is a. safe experiment only 
 when the changes which it works are ascertained 
 and provided for. In the absence of machinery 
 for discovering the pressure of the population, we 
 are liable at any moment to be rudely awakened 
 to the fact that the blessings of British rule have 
 been turned into curses ; and, as in the case of the 
 Santals before their rising, that protection from the 
 sword and pestilence has only intensified the diffi- 
 culty of subsistence. Statistics form an indispens- 
 able complement of civilisation ; but at present we 
 have no reliable means of ascertaining the popula- 
 tion of a single district of rural Bengal, the quantity 
 of food it produces, or any one of those items which 
 as a whole render a people prosperous and loyal, 
 or hungry and seditious. These are the problems 
 which Indian statesmen during the next fifty years 
 will be called upon to solve. Their predecessors 
 have given civilisation to India; it will be their duty 
 to render that civilisation at once beneficial to the 
 natives and safe for ourselves. 
 
CLIVES 'MASKED' ADMINISTRA2I0N. 261 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE company's FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RURAL 
 ADMINISTRATION, 1765-I79O. 
 
 T N 1 784,^ Parliament, dissatisfied with the constant 
 changes in the government of the East India 
 Company's territories, and moved by the griev- 
 ances of 'divers rajahs, zemindars, polygars, and 
 other native landholders,' directed the establish- 
 ment of ' permanent rules for the administration of 
 justice founded on the ancient laws and usages of 
 the country.' During thirty years the Court of 
 Directors had vacillated between the employment 
 of English or of native officers in the internal 
 management of Bengal. ' To appoint the Com- 
 pany's servants to the office of collectors,' wrote 
 Clive to the Select Committee in 1767, 'or to do 
 any act by any exertion of the English power, 
 which can be equally done by the nabob, would be 
 throwing off the mask, and declaring the Company 
 soubah (governor) of the province.' Accordingly, 
 for the first four years after the emperor at Delhi 
 had invested the Company with the management 
 1 24 Geo. III. c. 25, s. 39. 
 
262 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 of Bengal, this system of a double administration 
 was upheld, and the actual work of government 
 remained in the hands of natives. But a conviction 
 had gradually made its way among the most expe- 
 rienced servants of the Company, that this shirking 
 of our responsibilities was both unmanly and im- 
 politic. Mr. Holwell, the principal survivor of the 
 Black Hole, and its chronicler, declared himself 
 strongly on the subject : ' We have nibbled at these 
 provinces for eight years, and notwithstanding an 
 immense acquisition of territory and revenue, what 
 benefit has resulted from our successes to the Com- 
 pany ? Shall we go on nibbling and nibbling at 
 the bait, until the trap falls and crushes us ? . . . 
 Let us boldly dare to be soubahs ourselves.' ^ 
 
 It was not till 1769, however, that English 
 supervisors were appointed to each of the great 
 divisions of the province. From these gentlemen 
 — too few in number to exercise an accurate over- 
 sight upon any single department — the Council 
 expected an exhaustive control over the whole 
 internal administration. Their principal function 
 was to act as ' some check to the gross mismanage- 
 ment and extortion practised by those who levied, 
 and to the fraudulent evasion of those who paid, the 
 assessment.'^ But fiscal duties formed only a small 
 part of their office. They were to be not so much 
 revenue officers as antiquarians, historians, and rural 
 
 " Quoted from Mr. Kaye's Administration of the East India Com- 
 pany, p. 79. 8vo, 1853. 
 
 * Life of Lord Teignmouth, by his Son, p. 22, vol. L 8vo, 1843. 
 
THE SUPERVISORS, 1769-1772. 263 
 
 statisticians. The Government furnished them with 
 the heads of a few essays which they might begin 
 upon at once. ' The form of the ancient constitu- 
 tion of the province, compared with the present;' 
 ' an account of its possessors or rulers, the order of 
 their succession, the revolutions in their families, 
 and their connections ; the peculiar customs and pri- 
 vileges which they or their people have established 
 and enjoyed ; and, in short, every transaction which 
 can serve to trace their origin and progress, or has 
 produced any material change in the affairs of the 
 province.'* Having brought these simple historical 
 researches to a satisfactory conclusion, they were to 
 proceed to the investigation of the land tenures and 
 of the revenues, to distinguish rapidly and infallibly 
 between customary cesses and illegal extortions, to 
 submit a scheme for the administration of justice, to 
 draw up a list of the products of the province, to 
 report on its commercial capabilities, not forgetting 
 an exhaustive account of the means of developing 
 its internal resources, with suggestions for removing 
 those multitudinous obstructions between the pro- 
 ducer and the consumer, which had so fatally damped 
 the spirit of industry under Mussulman misrule. 
 Their leisure hours, which the Council seems to 
 have expected would hang heavily, the supervisors 
 might beguile by acting as fathers to the people, 
 protecting the weak against the strong, helping the 
 cultivators to improve their land, the merchants to 
 
 * Proceedings of the President and Select Committee, dated l6tlj 
 August 1769. 
 
264 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 extend their trade, the manufacturers to increase 
 their products, and all classes to be wiser and 
 better than before. They were also to impress 
 upon the agriculturist, 'in the most forcible and 
 convincing manner,' that the Company's measures 
 were devised for his relief, and that opposition to 
 them would only be ' riveting his own chains, and 
 confirming his servitude and dependence on his 
 oppressors.'^ 
 
 In short, the supervisors were expected to do 
 more than they could possibly accomplish, and the 
 result was that they did less than they might have 
 done. During their first year of office, the great 
 famine described in Chapter I. befell Bengal ; and 
 no one can read that tragical narrative without feel- 
 ing that British humanity and administrative skill 
 had not yet been brought to bear upon the rural 
 masses. While ten millions of men were being 
 swept from the face of the earth, the supervisors 
 devoted themselves with assiduity to antiquarian or 
 statistical essays ; and, with a few noble exceptions, 
 the frequent allusions they make to the sad scenes 
 amid which their literary labours were conducted, 
 are introduced not as the one urgent business of 
 the day, but as connected with the revenues, or the 
 state of cultivation, or whatever else formed the 
 main subject of the report. For two years longer 
 the internal government remained as completely in 
 the hands of the natives as under Clive's ' double ' 
 
 • Proceedings of the President and Select Committee, dated i6th 
 August 1769. Quoted from Mr. Kaye's Administration, p. 164. 
 
HASTINGS PLAN, 1772. 265 
 
 system. ' Black collectors ' ground down the 
 peasantry, and the revenue-farmers divided their 
 energies between concocting frauds upon the Go- 
 i^ernment and devising illegal cesses to be wrung 
 out of the artisans and cultivators. But on the 
 13th of April 1772, John Cartier made over charge 
 of the province to Warren Hastings,^ and before the 
 end of the month a momentous change had taken 
 place. The new President boldly accepted the re- 
 sponsibilities of empire, and on the 4th of May the 
 East India Company, by a solemn act, stood forth 
 as the visible governors of Bengal. Committees of 
 circuit, composed of the ablest men in the Council, 
 journeyed from district to district, careless of the 
 deadly heat of summer and the more deadly 
 malaria of the rains, investigated the capabilities 
 and necessities of each division on the spot, ad- 
 justed the revenues, and righted ancient wrongs 
 with a strong hand. When the Commissioners re- 
 turned to the capital and compared the results of 
 their labours, it was found that the supervisors had 
 failed to do the work for which they had been 
 appointed. About the same time, the Court of 
 Directors wrote an indignant letter, complaining 
 that the supervisors had brought the province to a 
 more miserable state than even that in which they 
 had found it. Before this letter had reached India, 
 however, their fate had been sealed. 
 
 In 1772 the intermediate machinery of 'black 
 
 ° Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 13th April 1772, para. 9. I. O. R. 
 
266 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 collectors ' between the taxpayer and the super- 
 visors was abolished, and these latter became the 
 collectors of the land revenue, vested with the 
 powers of civil judges within their respective dis- 
 tricts, and with a limited control over the native 
 officials, who still retained their magisterial and 
 police functions.'' Two years, however, had scarcely 
 elapsed before the old system was reverted to ; the 
 English collectors were recalled, their duties trans- 
 ferred to native agents, and the police made en- 
 tirely over to the hereditary Foujdars.* In 1781, 
 the Foujdars, who had thus been reinstated in 
 1775, were in their turn abolished, and their duties 
 vested in the civil judge, or in the chief landholder 
 in the neighbourhood, according to the caprice of 
 the secretary who happened to be in office. Mean- 
 while Hastings had directed his energies in another 
 direction than internal reforms ; system existed 
 nowhere, and the following year brought, as usual, 
 a change.* At last the murmurs of the people 
 reached the ears of Parliament, and drew forth 
 the Act of 1784.1" 
 
 The construction of a permanent system for the 
 internal administration of Bengal had become so 
 important, and the opposition promised to be so 
 
 ' Warren Hastings' Plan of 1772 (formally adopted on the 21st 
 August), sees. I and 2. 
 
 « Fifth Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 
 p. 6. 1812. 
 
 3 The Administration of Justice in British India, by W. H. Morley, 
 Barrister-at-Law, p. 52. 8vo, 1858. 
 
 '" In treating of this period of harassing change, Auber is, accord- 
 ing to his wont, com.placent, Mill querulous, and Morley exacl 
 
THE TENTATIVE SYSTEM, 1786-90. 267 
 
 great, that the task was committed to a peer of 
 the realm. ' On Monday last,' says the Calcutta 
 Gazette of the 14th September 1786, ' arrived in the 
 river the Right Honourable the Earl of Cornwallis, 
 and on Tuesday he came on shore.' The new 
 Governor-General carried with him instructions to 
 frame a system of government in accordance with 
 the usages of the country. But he speedily dis- 
 covered that, in order to do this, he had first to 
 ascertain what those usages really were, and that 
 the ruinous changes of the past twenty years had 
 chiefly proceeded from the hasty adoption of suc- 
 cessive systems on insufificient data. But with 
 regard to the agency by which the country was 
 to be administered. Lord Cornwallis wavered not 
 a moment. He decided that English ofiicers must 
 be at the head of every department, both in 
 the capital and in the provinces, and that natives 
 were trustworthy only so far as they could be 
 strictly watched.^^ During the first three years of 
 his government, he confined his attention to collect- 
 ing evidence on which at a future date to base a 
 permanent system-, and to this end remodelled the 
 divisions of Bengal, placing each district under an 
 experienced English officer, in whom he concen- 
 trated the whole functions of government — fiscal, 
 civil, criminal, and police.^^ 
 
 It was to this measure that Beerbhoom owed its 
 
 ** It should be remembered that if Bengali officials under Mussul- 
 man rule were corrupt, they were also for the most part unpaid, and 
 had grown accustomed to making their livelihood by oppression. 
 
 ** MS. Records of the Board of Revenue, Calcutta. Selections 
 
268 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 existence as a separate district. Mr. Christopher 
 Keating, as collector, magistrate, and civil judge, 
 ruled with an absolute sway over seven thousand 
 five hundred square miles,^^ and made his policy 
 felt by the hill-tribes many a day's march beyond 
 his frontier. The district naturally divided itself 
 into two parts : the Rajah of Beerbhoom's terri- 
 tory on the north of the Adji, and the Rajah of 
 Bishenpore's on the south." Mr. Keating directed 
 the movements of the troops, received the rent of 
 the cultivators, decided civil suits, purveyed for 
 military detachments passing through his district, 
 inflicted punishment on petty offenders, sent heinous 
 ones in chains to the Muhammadan law officer, and 
 acted as cashier to a great commercial company. 
 It would be unreasonable to look for perfect finish 
 in walls whose builders held the plummet in one 
 hand and the sword in the other ; and if the admini- 
 stration of such men as Mr. Keating was effective 
 on the whole, it is as much as an after generation 
 which works at greater leisure and with more com- 
 plete machinery has a right to expect. 
 
 The realization of the revenue formed the col- 
 
 from Calcutta Gazette (1786), vol. i. pp. 185, 186. Morley, pp. 53, 54- 
 The only limitations on the collector's powers were in regard to his 
 magisterial and police functions. These will be subsequently ex- 
 plained. 
 
 1' This calculation is based on the maps published by the Survey 
 Department. 
 
 ^* Beerbhoom and the hill-country subject thereto, but now com- 
 prised within the Santal purgunnahs, 130 miles by 40, or 5200 square 
 miles. Bishenpore, now part of Bancorah and Midnapore, 2300 
 square miles. Total area of the united district, 7500 square miles. 
 
ITS CHEAPNESS. 269 
 
 lector's paramount duty, and on his success in this 
 respect, rather than on the prosperity of the people, 
 his reputation as an officer depended. The Council 
 still acted to a certain extent as if Bengal were an 
 estate which yielded a large rental, but involved 
 none of the responsibilities of government, and 
 regarded its rural administrators rather as the land- 
 stewards of a private property, than as the channels 
 for receiving and redistributing a public revenue. 
 It was a matter of the first importance, therefore, 
 to get as much out of the district, and to spend as 
 little upon it, as possible. In 1788 the total cost of 
 governing Beerbhoom and Bishenpore amounted to 
 ^5400 sterling,^^ or fourteen shillings and sixpence 
 the square mile. At present the area of the district 
 has been reduced to less than one-third,^^ and the 
 cost of administration has increased to ^24,869 
 sterling," or .^10, 13s, 6d. per square mile. The 
 difference between the old and the new view of our 
 duties as rural administrators is placed in a still 
 stronger light by analyzing the items of expendi- 
 ture. In 1788 the charge for the collection of the 
 land-tax was ;^4500,''^ in 1864 it was only ^3550. 
 
 '" The estimated monthly expenditure was sicca rupees 4394, 
 or as near as may be C. R. 54,00 per annum. For the items, see 
 Appendix L., ' Cost of Internal Administration before the Permanent 
 Settlement.' 
 
 1^ Bishenpore and the hill - purgunnahs having been separated 
 from Beerbhoom, the area of the present jurisdiction is now 2330 
 square miles. Report on the Police of the Burdwan Division for 
 the Year 1863, by C. F. Montr^sor, Esq., Commissioner, p. 17. 
 Folio. Bn. R. 
 
 " Budget estimate for 1864-65. B. R. R. 
 
 " S. R. 3585 per mensem. Collector's Bills, 1788-89. E, R. R. 
 
270 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 In 1788 the charge for civil justice was £"]oZ ;" it 
 is now ^7160. In 1788 the cost of the criminal 
 administration was ;^3i8'^'' only; in 1864 it was 
 ;i^9920." In everything which pertains to the 
 mere gathering of the taxes, the expense has dimi- 
 nished; for the public burdens bear less heavily 
 on the people, and are consequently more easily 
 collected. In everything which pertains to the 
 protection of the subject, the charge has increased 
 from ten to thirty fold. The English have ceased 
 to be the publicani, and have become the governors 
 of Bengal. 
 
 The Rajah of Beerbhoom held the territory on 
 the north of the Adji at an annual land-tax of 
 ;^65,ooo,^^ or twelve pounds a square mile, including 
 the forest and hill tracts. As a full half of the land 
 fell under these categories, the Government rent 
 amounted to ninepence on each cultivable acre. 
 The Rajah of Bishenpore's estates on the south of 
 the Adji were assessed at ^40,000,^' being equal to 
 ^17, 8s. per square mile, or allowing the same 
 deduction for waste land, to one shilling per acre. 
 The rajahs were left to bargain with the cultivators 
 about the rents of their multitudinous little holdings, 
 
 '9 S. R. 556 per mensem. Monthly Bills, 1788-89. B. R. R. 
 
 ^^ S. R. 250 per mensem. As the value of the sicca rupee was 
 constantly changing, I have not attempted to give the exact value in 
 English money. The above sums are within a pound or so. 
 
 *i For the expenditure of 1864-65, see Appendix M., ' Present 
 Cost of the Administration of Beerbhoom.' B. R. R. 
 
 22 S. R. 611,321, Jamah-wasil-baki of 1788-89, forwarded to Board 
 of Revenue, ist May 1789. B. R. R. 
 
 2' S. R. 386,707, Jamah-wasil-baki of 1788-89. 
 
THE LAND-TAX BEFORE 11^1. 271 
 
 without any interference on the part of Government, 
 so long as they punctually discharged the public 
 demands. In most years, however, so far from 
 paying the land-tax punctually, they failed to pay 
 a considerable portion of it at all, and the col- 
 lector had constantly to assist them with troops to 
 enforce their claims on the under-tenants, and to put 
 down armed opposition on the part of the culti- 
 vators/* The land-tax was subject to variation 
 every year,^° and the proprietors availed themselves 
 of each slight increase as a pretext for enhancing 
 the rents of their tenants. The latter complained 
 that they never knew at sowing - time what rent 
 would be exacted at harvest, as the middlemen 
 concealed the fact of an increase until the peasantry 
 were fairly embarked in the cultivation of their 
 fields. A glaring instance of this occurred in 
 1788-89. The land-tax had been slightly aug- 
 mented, and the rents raised all round in conse- 
 quence. The peasantry resisted, on the plea that 
 they had not been informed of the rise before 
 the seed was in the ground, and the collector had 
 to report the whole district in arms against the 
 new assessment.^^ Mr. Keating's Sepoys speedily 
 
 °* From Collector to John Shore, Esq., President and members of 
 the Board of Revenue, dated 13th February 1789. Collector to Board 
 of Revenue, dated 14th April 1790. Same to same, 25th October 
 1790 ; and in many other letters. B. R. R. 
 
 ^^ Annual Bandobusts and Hastaboods, Board of Revenue. 
 C. O. R. 
 
 ^° Letter from the Collector to John Shore, Esq., President and 
 memoers of the Board of Revenue, dated J 3th February 1789 
 B. R.R, 
 
272 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 brought those who resided within the district to 
 reason," and judicial process was issued through 
 the neighbouring collectors against the numerous 
 cultivators who, according to the custom of the 
 times, protected their goods from seizure by living 
 just beyond the boundary of the district. The 
 neighbouring collectors, however, were anxious to 
 tempt cultivators to settle on the estates which the 
 famine of 1769 had left depopulated in their own 
 districts. Protection against judicial proceedings 
 formed the most alluring bait they could offer. They 
 therefore declined or delayed to serve Mr. Keating's 
 summonses. An angry correspondence followed, the 
 matter was handed up to Government, and the head 
 assistants of the militant collectors were sent out 
 to settle the question on the boundaries of their 
 respective districts.^ After hunting together for a 
 few weeks, they came to the conclusion that as the 
 cultivators had not been acquainted with the rise in 
 the land-tax, and consequently could not have fore- 
 seen an increase of rent when tillage commenced, 
 they could not be made liable for any subsequent 
 enhancement during the year. Mr. Arbuthnot, the 
 Beerbhoom assistant, foreseeing that a meeting with 
 the collector after this decision would not be plea- 
 sant, remained out in camp, shooting tigers until 
 he got appointed to another district, and then 
 hurried down to Calcutta to take the oaths, with- 
 
 2' Letter from the Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 25th 
 October 1790. B. R. R. 
 
 '* From Board of Revenue to Collector, dated loth May 1790, 
 The spot selected was Dacca-Barry. B. R. R. 
 
THE EXCISE BEFORE 1793. 273 
 
 out coming into headquarters to bid Mr. Keating 
 good-bye."' 
 
 The distribution and collection of the land-tax 
 will fall more appropriately to be considered in the 
 volume on the land tenure. The authorities had 
 nothing to do with the details as long as the public 
 demand was satisfied. In event of a hopeless deficit, 
 the collector imprisoned the landholder, and took 
 charge of his estates. For a long time hopeless 
 deficit had been the normal condition of things in 
 Bengal, and no country gentlemen was sure of 
 keeping out of jail unless he were an idiot or a 
 minor. I have already mentioned that the earliest 
 official records of Beerblioom disclose the Rajah of 
 Bishenpore in confinement,'" and the young Rajah 
 of Beerbhoom shared the same fate within a few 
 months after he came of age.*' 
 
 Besides the land-tax, only two other sources of 
 revenue passed through the collector's hands — 
 namely, the excise and the temple-tax.'^ In 1790 
 collectors were ordered to take charge of the spirit 
 duty, and to report on the consumption of liquor in 
 their respective districts.'' Until this year the tax 
 
 ^' Letter from Mr. George Arbuthnot to the Collector, dated 
 Dacca-Barry, 30th June 1790. Same to same, dated 12th July 1790, 
 and other correspondence. B. R. R. 
 
 2« From Collector to John Shore, Esq., P. and M.B.R., dated loth 
 February 1789. B. R. R. 
 
 '^ From Collector to Board of Revenue, 12th January 1791. 
 From same to same, dated ist November 1791. B. R. R. 
 
 '^ The temporary order to collect the dues and exactions known 
 as ' Sayer' was not carried out in Beerbhoom. 
 
 '* Circular order from the Board of Revenue, dated 19th April 
 VOL. I. S 
 
274 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 had been levied sometimes by the landholder on his 
 own account, sometimes by the collector, and some- 
 times by both/* It was a very difificult impost to 
 levy at all. The native stills consisted of earthen 
 pots with a bamboo tube, worth altogether about a 
 farthing, which were fixed up in the jungle after 
 dark, worked during the night, and broken before 
 sunrise. In 1787 Mr. Sherbourne had imposed a 
 tax on behalf of Government, of one pound on each 
 spirit shop in the district capital, and eight shillings 
 on every shop in the country, leaving the vendors 
 free to make and sell as much as they could. The 
 Rajah of Bishenpore levied from two to four 
 shillings on each shop within his domains, and the 
 Rajah of Beerbhoom extorted a considerable 
 revenue as the price of permits to vend spirits 
 clandestinely during the sacred month of Ramzan.^' 
 The spirit-dealer who resisted this exaction, and 
 ventured to sell his liquor without such a licence, 
 was dragged before the Muhammadan law officer, 
 bastinadoed, or heavily fined. 
 
 The small amount of revenue produced by the 
 Excise, notwithstanding the number of the imposts, 
 
 [790. The original has dropped out of the records ; but the 19th o{ 
 April is given as its date in the collector's reply. Like many other 
 of the most valuable circulars, it is not to be found in the Peters 
 edition of the Board's Circular Orders, printed by authority in 1838, 
 4to, Calcutta. 
 
 ^■' Collector to Board, dated 22d May 1790. B. R. R. 
 
 '' The name of this singular impost was ' Soorie-Moosey-Koosey- 
 Ramzan-Salami.' It is described in a report on Sayer, dated June 
 1790, from which document, along with the letter of the 22d May 
 above cited, this account of the Excise is chiefly derived. B. R. R- 
 
THE EXCISE, 1789 AND 1865. 275 
 
 speaks very plainly as to the looseness and inaccu- 
 racy of the administration. In 1789, when the dis- 
 trict was three times its present size, the spirit duty 
 yielded ;£^330 only ;'^ in 1864-65 it amounted to 
 ;^5294, or nearly twenty times the previous sum." 
 This rise is due not so much to increased consump- 
 tion as to a more exact vigilance in levying the 
 duty. When we assumed the direct administration 
 of the district, drunkenness was universal among 
 the lower orders. The excessive cheapness of 
 liquor pandered to the craving for stimulants, — 
 a craving always sufficiently strong among a semi- 
 aboriginal population like that of Beerbhoom. In- 
 deed, drunkenness formed so marked a feature in 
 the Bengali character, as to be specified in ancient 
 treaties, and is noticed in the letters and diaries 
 of cursory travellers of those days.'* One of the 
 earliest magistrates of Beerbhoom has left it on 
 record, that almost the whole serious crime of the 
 district proceeded from this vice. Only the coarsest 
 and most injurious preparations were used. A half- 
 penny purchased six quart bottles of liquor that 
 would madden the half-starved hill-men or foresters, 
 
 ^^ Sicca Rupees 3154. 
 
 3' Budget estimate for 1864-65 : 
 
 Abkari, . . . . C. R. 45,929 
 Opium, .... 7,018 
 
 C. R. 52,947. B. R. R. 
 ^' For example, Mrs. Fay, after a few days' residence in Calcutta 
 (1780), remarks on the immoderate fondness of the natives for liquor. 
 Original Letters from India, p. 230. 8vo, Calcutta 18 17. Meer 
 Jaffier's Perwanah for the Granted Lands, 1757. Sanad for the 
 Company's Zamindari, etc. 
 
276 
 
 THE ANNALS OF R URAL BENGAL. 
 
 and prepare them for the most desperate enterprises. 
 The effect of a strict enforcement of the excise in 
 Beerbhoom has been to increase the price of the 
 commoner Hquors sixfold, and to introduce into 
 general use milder sorts unknown in the district 
 when it passed under British rule. Temperance 
 has become a necessity to the people ; and excepting 
 among the semi-aboriginal castes, drunkenness is 
 unknown. The following table shows the retail 
 prices of intoxicating drinks in Beerbhoom in 1 790 
 and 1866 : — 
 
 Native Name. 
 
 Description. 
 
 Price in 1790. 
 
 Price in 1866. 
 
 Muliua ka sharab. 
 
 A sort of raisin wine. 
 
 Not used. 
 
 6d. per quart. 
 
 Tari. 
 
 Mild fermented liquor, 
 extracted from the 
 date tree. 
 
 Do. 
 
 |d. per quart. 
 
 Pakki, 1st quality, 
 
 Distilled rice liquor. 
 
 i.^d. per quart. 
 
 5d. per quart. 
 
 Pakki, 2d quality. 
 
 Do. 
 
 ijd. per quart. 
 
 4d. per quart. 
 
 Pachwai. 
 
 Fermented rice liquor. 
 
 Ad. per gallon. 
 
 3d. per gallon. 
 
 Mr. Keating reported ^^ that the last was by 
 far the most pernicious. ' To its cheapness,' he 
 writes, ' I ascribe the numerous robberies and other 
 depredations almost daily experienced, it being a 
 notorious fact on the records of the criminal court, 
 that the perpetrators of these crimes first work 
 themselves up to the perpetrating of them by this 
 kind of liquor, and by smoking the herb called 
 Bang.' The more cowardly sort of housebreakers 
 in India, as elsewhere, still resort to drugs for arti- 
 ficial courage ; but drunkenness, as a prolific source 
 
 "' Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 22d May 1790. B. R. R. 
 
DR UNKENNESS NO W VNKNO WN. 2 7 7 
 
 of crime, is now unknown in Bengal. During nearly 
 three years' residence in Beerbhoom (1863-66), only 
 a single case came judicially before me which I 
 could trace directly or indirectly to intemperance ; 
 and I believe that the magisterial officers through- 
 out rural Bengal will bear similar testimony to the 
 sobriety of the people. The hard-working labourers, 
 like the corresponding classes in all countries, enjoy 
 themselves in the liquor shop after their day's toil ; 
 but the most violent form their excitement takes 
 consists of making profound obeisances to every 
 one they meet on their way home. A few indi- 
 viduals of the upper classes, who have thrown off 
 the restraints of Hinduism, are accused of secretly 
 indulging in English spirits. Such cases, however, 
 do not come before a court ; and I repeat with con- 
 fidence, what can be said of no European country, 
 that drunkenness, as a regular element of crime, 
 does not exist in Bengal. Disputes about fisheries, 
 boundaries, water-courses, and precedence in reli- 
 gious processions, yield an unfailing crop of mis- 
 demeanours ; but although nine-tenths of the crime 
 of the district consists of assaults and similar petty 
 acts of violence, it never appears that intemperance 
 has led to a breach of the peace. Much of this is 
 due to a well-administered Excise. Instead of the 
 timid, laxly-enforced impost of eight shillings on 
 each shop, with liberty to make as much liquor as 
 the proprietor could sell. Government now exacts 
 a heavy duty on each still ; and at every point 
 in the manufacture or vend of intoxicating liquors, 
 
278 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 a licence is required, and a tax has to be paid. 
 Occasionally over-zealous officers of the lower class 
 lay themselves open to the charge of increasing the 
 revenue at the expense of the sobriety of the people ; 
 but, as a whole, the efforts to maintain the price of 
 liquor at the maximum rate consistent with the pre- 
 vention of smuggling, have obtained an unusual 
 measure of success. In Beerbhoom, at any rate, 
 the legitimate object of a system of excise seems to 
 have been attained, namely — to quote the opening 
 words of the instructions issued by the Bengal 
 Government to its revenue officers — ' to raise as 
 large an amount of revenue from intoxicating liquors 
 and drugs as is compatible with the greatest possible 
 discouragement of their use.'*" 
 
 The only other source of revenue that the first 
 English administrators discovered and appropriated 
 in Beerbhoom, was one which, although insignificant 
 compared with the land-tax, occupies many pages of 
 the records, and is peculiarly characteristic of the 
 time. Among the solitudes of the western moun- 
 tains, on the extreme frontier of the district, is a 
 Holy City,*^ with its ancient temple to Mahadeva, 
 whither a vast concourse of pilgrims annually resort. 
 The Mussulman dynasty had made the most of such 
 opportunities of raising revenue at the expense of 
 
 *° ' Rules for the Regulation of the Excise,' prescribed by the 
 Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces. Rule I. The present prices 
 of spirituous liquors exhibited in the foregoing table were furnished 
 to me by Babu Kinaram Ghose, zamindar of Nagri, and checked by 
 personal inquiries from wine-sellers and palki-bearers. 
 
 ■•* Deoghur — literally, the divine citv or house. 
 
THE TEMPLE-TAX. 279 
 
 the unbeliever ; and their historians commend the 
 pious Moorshud for his attentions to the great idol 
 of Orissa, by which he restored a hundred thousand 
 sterling to the annual revenue of that province.*^ 
 The Rajahs of Beerbhoom had let the Holy City 
 to the chief priest, who paid a fixed rent, and made 
 what he could out of the devotees. The early 
 English collectors thought they could increase the 
 impost by managing the temple business themselves. 
 In 1788 Mr. Hesilrigge, the head assistant, having 
 been deputed to the Holy City, with a view to 
 carrying out the change, organized a numerous 
 establishment of priests, money-takers, and watch- 
 men, at the expense of the State/^ It was found, 
 however, as soon as the temple became a Go- 
 vernment speculation, either that the liberality of 
 the devotees had strangely cooled, or that the 
 priests must be embezzling the oblations. The 
 revenue fell off; additional officers were entertained 
 to watch over those already appointed ; but the 
 collector still complained that the chief priest frus- 
 trated his vigilance by ' besetting every avenue to 
 the temple with emissaries, who induced the pilgrims 
 to make their offerings before approaching the 
 shrine.' This became at length a source of so much 
 disquietude to Mr. Keating's strongly fiscal mind, 
 that he determined to visit the temple, in order to 
 exert his personal influence in stimulating the libe- 
 
 -^ Nine lacs of sicca rupees. Stewart's History of Bengal, p. 267. 
 
 <' Report of the Collector to the Honourable Charles Stuart, 
 President, and members of the Board of Revenue, dated 30th May 
 1790. B. R. R- 
 
28o THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL, 
 
 rality of the devotees, and in checking the pecula- 
 tions of the priests.** 
 
 Accordingly, escorted by a g^ard of thirty-five 
 soldiers, the collector started on the morning of the 
 2 1st February 1791, and, allowing for the stately 
 pace at which he was wont to travel, reached the 
 Holy City about a week later.*' ' I pitched my 
 tent,' he writes, 'in the midst of the pilgrims, and 
 as near the temple as possible, where I attended 
 daily, and was an eye-witness so far as the con- 
 fusion would permit me.'** ' At the stated period 
 the doors*' of the temple are thrown open, and the 
 crowd rush in tumultuously, singing, dancing, pro- 
 strating themselves with all the vociferations and 
 madness of enthusiastic fervour. Everything is 
 uproar and confusion. The offerings of bullion 
 and jewels, constituting the most valuable [part of 
 the presents], are now made, [being cast before the 
 face] of the deity Brijjanauth, and the collecting 
 Brahmans have an opportunity of secreting what 
 they please without fear of detection.' The cere- 
 mony consisted in pouring sacred water brought 
 from the Ganges on the head of the god. Zeal 
 
 ••* From Collector to Board of Revenue, dated i ith January 1791. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 *5 MS. folio, labelled 'Military Correspondence,' pp. 103, 104. 
 B. R. R. The guard consisted of thirty Sepoys, one jemadar, two 
 havildars, and two naiks. The distance from Soorie to Deoghur— 
 — the Holy City — was about eighty miles. 
 
 ** From Collector to the Honourable Charles Stuart, President, 
 and members of the Board of Revenue, dated 28th March 1791. 
 
 *'■ This is an inaccuracy, probably an error in transcription ; the 
 temple had then only one small door for the entrance of pilgrims. 
 
THE TEMPLE-TAX, HOW LEVIED. 28 1 
 
 the pilgrims were abundantly gifted with, ' but of 
 wealth among any of them there was no appear- 
 ance. Not more than five families had any con- 
 veyance or hired house to reside in. About a 
 hundred had simply a blanket drawn over a bamboo 
 as a protection from the weather ; and the rest,' 
 varying from fifteen to fifty thousand, according to 
 the season, ' took up their abode under the adja- 
 cent trees, with no kind of conveniency whatever. 
 There was too general an appearance of poverty 
 to suppose, that the temple could profit much from 
 the oblations of its devotees, and little could be 
 expected from wretches who seemed in want of 
 every necessary of life.'^* It was from this desti- 
 tute throng, however, that an increased tax had to 
 be extorted. Accordingly, Mr. Keating appointed 
 an establishment of one hundred and twenty armed 
 policemen with fifteen officers.*' It must not be 
 supposed that any protection was afforded to the 
 pilgrims in return. The road winded round the 
 solitary hills, buried for miles in forest, and inter- 
 sected at short intervals by deep ravines which 
 formed innumerable caves, swarming with robbers 
 and wild beasts. The plunderers carried on their 
 depredations undisturbed by the magistrate as long 
 as they did not entirely close the path. The suffer- 
 ings of the pilgrims, however, at length became so 
 intense as to affect the popularity of the shrine, and 
 
 *' From Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 28th March 1791. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 ^' From Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 30th May 1790, etc 
 B. R. R. 
 
282 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 leave them nothing to offer to the idol when they 
 reached the Holy City. It then became a question 
 of revenue, and Mr. K eating's action was prompt. 
 He ordered out a detachment of native infantry to 
 act against the banditti — 'reported to consist of 
 about three hundred men' — who had plundered a 
 caravan of pilgrims, killing five of them, 'and en- 
 tirely stopped up the road.'*" The nature of the 
 country made the operation a difficult one, and 
 the commanding officer was directed to furnish 
 ' as great a force from the detachment of native 
 infantry ' as he could spare, ' for the clearing of 
 the jungle.' The unhappy devotee who escaped 
 the bandits and wild beasts upon the road fell a 
 victim to the collector's harpies at the shrine, and 
 after being mulcted of the last farthing, and spend- 
 ing many nights of anxious waiting in the cold, often 
 failed to gain the reward of his pilgrimage. A 
 single narrow door, four feet by five, formed the sole 
 entrance, and the great object of the pilgrims was to 
 catch a sight of the god on the holy night," ' which 
 if they miss, their labour is lost. Thousands depart 
 disappointed,' continues the collector ; but effectual 
 measures were taken that they should be compelled 
 to make their oblation before they went. ' Two days 
 after [the holy night] not a pilgrim is to be seen.''''^ 
 
 "" MS. folio, labelled ' Military Correspondence,' p. 144. B. R. R 
 °i Shiva-ratri, spelt by Mr. Keating Shean-raut ; a moveable fes- 
 tival depending on the full moon of Phalgun. It fell on the 22d of 
 Phalgun in the year Mr. Keating visited the shrine (1791). 
 
 '2 From Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 31st July 1790. 
 From same to same, dated 28th March 1791, etc. B. R. R. 
 
THE TEMPLE-TAX, ITS AMOUNT. 283 
 
 Under the system of non-interference pursued 
 by the Mussulman Rajahs of Beerbhoom, from forty 
 to one hundred thousand pilgrims visited the Holy 
 City each year. They fixed the temple-tax at a 
 moderate sum, and exercised none of that indecent 
 intermeddling with the mysteries of the shrine 
 which Mr. Keating introduced. In 1789, his first 
 year of ofiice, .fifty thousand pilgrims yielded only 
 ;^430.*^ In 1790 Mr. Keating's improved system 
 produced .^900,^ besides the price of three ponies 
 which he persuaded the devotees to buy at fancy 
 prices. The latter transaction discloses our early 
 system of administration in an amusing if not a 
 very creditable light. Mr. Keating in one letter 
 describes the ponies as undersized, worn-out, old 
 animals, not worth the cost of marching into the 
 district headquarters, and the best of which might 
 fetch from a pound to thirty shillings. In another 
 he triumphantly relates to the Government in Cal- 
 cutta how he has disposed of them for fourteen 
 pounds.'* This fiscal enthusiasm soon disappointed 
 itself, however. In 1791 the collector determined 
 still further to increase the temple-tax, and per- 
 sonally superintended the oblations. That year 
 only fifteen thousand pilgrims came. But Mr. 
 
 '^ Sicca rupees 4084 : 7 : o. 
 
 '■* Sicca rupees 8463 : 6 : 2. From Collector to Board of Re- 
 venue, dated 30th May 1790; cf. also the letter of the 31st July 1790. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 '" These ponies appear in half-a-dozen letters. E. D. From 
 CoUectoi- to Honourable Charles Stuart, President, and members of 
 the Board of Revenue, dated 25th June 1790. From same to same, 
 dated i8th July 1790, etc. B. R. R. 
 
284 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Keating was not the man to report, that the very year 
 he had visited the shrine the temple-tax decreased. 
 Accordingly, ;^86o^* was extorted in gold and silver, 
 besides offerings of cloth, turbans, and rice." The 
 whole would probably amount to ;^I200, and the 
 collector stated that not one half of what was levied 
 from the pilgrims reached his hands. Assuming 
 the total sum actually paid to have been ;^1500, 
 the tax amounted to a rupee a head, or more than 
 one man's subsistence for a month, from a crowd of 
 fifteen thousand poverty-stricken wretches, of whom 
 only a hundred and five had a shelter for their 
 heads.** 
 
 John Shore, although his views as head of the 
 Board of Revenue in 1 789 were not precisely those 
 which he expressed as President of the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society in 1804, loathed this con- 
 stant ignoble squabbling between the collector and 
 the priests. He desired that some arrangement 
 might be made whereby the Government's share in 
 the proceedings might appear as little as possible 
 to sanction the rites. Mr. Keating, finding that his 
 zeal in the matter struck no responsive chord among 
 the higher authorities, but wholly incapable of com- 
 prehending a scruple in collecting revenue, from 
 whatever source derived, suggested that the temple- 
 tax might be farmed to the chief priest, naively 
 adding, ' May not the number of pilgrims be en- 
 
 '" Sicca rupees 8000. 
 
 " From Collector to Board, dated 28th March 1791. B. R. R. 
 
 '8 Id. 
 
THE TEMPLE-TAX COMMUTED. 285 
 
 couraged when there is no interference of Govern- 
 ment V"^ He further recommended this plan, on 
 the ground ' that religious artifices will be practised 
 and the reputation of the temple increased."^" Lord 
 Cornwallis shared Shore's sentiments, and laboured 
 the more strenuously to carry out his views, on ac- 
 count of the difference of opinion which had preceded 
 their separation. Mr. Keating therefore speedily 
 received the Governor- General's sanction*^ to farm 
 the temple to the chief priest, and before the begin- 
 ning of 1772 our traffic on the superstitions of the 
 people ceased to wear the form of a direct plunder 
 of their offerings to their god. The priests pos- 
 sessed thirty-two rural communes, with abundance 
 of pasture, and the tax was commuted to a rent 
 nominally for the temple lands attached to the 
 shrine — in reality, for the shrine itself.*^ 
 
 These worm-eaten manuscripts bring back to 
 life a forgotten world. The religious ardour which 
 braved the banditti of the road, the long exposure 
 to the winter nights of a mountainous region, the 
 oppression and profane interference of Government, 
 is unknown to the Beerbhoom Hindus of the pre- 
 sent day. Places of pilgrimage still exist, but the 
 
 " From Collector to Board of Revenue, 30th May 1790, etc. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 *" Letter from Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 28th March 
 
 1791- 
 
 ^' Conveyed in the Board of Revenue's letter to the Collector, 
 dated i8th July 179 1. 
 
 '" From Collector to William Cowper, Esq., President, and mem- 
 bers of the Board of Revenue, dated 27th October 1791. The second 
 of two letters bearing this date. B. R. R. 
 
2S6 TBE ANNALS OF R URAL BENGAL. 
 
 people resort to them rather as marts or fairs than 
 as the favoured abodes of the deity. Education 
 has made havoc of ancient faith, and the most 
 orthodox of the rising generation only abstain from 
 open scepticism. It may be that the Hindus are 
 entering that dark valley of unbelief which stretches 
 between every old religion of a noble type and 
 Christianity. The lamps by which their fathers 
 walked during so many ages have burned out, and 
 the more perfect light of the coming day has not 
 yet dawned. 
 
 Besides these sources of Government revenue, 
 twenty-six imposts, to which custom had given a 
 sort of sanction, were levied by the landholders on 
 their own account. ^^ The salt-duty was managed 
 by a separate department in the seaboard districts, 
 and levied before the article passed into consump- 
 tion. Indeed, the only mention of it in the local 
 records, previous to the permanent settlement, refers 
 to a native officer of the department, who, while 
 passing through the district, extorted benevolences 
 right and left from salt-vendors by the way. 
 
 Next in importance to the punctual realization 
 of the land-tax, were the collector's duties as head 
 of the Finance Department of the Company's mer- 
 cantile affairs within the district. Mr. Keating was 
 cashier, and his treasury a provincial bank, at which 
 the commercial resident kept his account. The net 
 
 *' A list of twenty-five is given in a Report on Sayer, dated June 
 1790 ; another is mentioned in a letter from the Collector to William 
 Cowper, Esq., President, and members of the Board of Revenue, dated 
 7th August 1791. B. R. R. 
 
THE DISTRICT GO VERNMENT BANK. 287 
 
 revenue of the district exceeded ^100,000 sterling,"^ 
 and the expenses of government seldom amounted 
 to ;^5000. Of the remaining ;^95,ooo, part was 
 remitted to Calcutta or to other treasuries, and 
 part was retained to carry on the Company's manu- 
 factures in the district. The object of Government 
 then, as now, was to have as little money as possible 
 lying unused in the provincial treasuries, — an object 
 which the more perfect machinery of the present day 
 accomplishes by a mere process of routine, but which 
 at the period under review was complicated by the 
 collector's liability to be drawn on at any time by 
 the commercial agents. The Calcutta authorities 
 gave timely notice of drafts when practicable ; still 
 the collector required considerable experience and 
 foresight, in order to send the largest possible remit- 
 tances out of the district, and yet to keep enough 
 to avoid all risk of having to dishonour the Com- 
 pany's cheques within it. The specie retained in 
 the treasury averaged ;^7ooo sterling ; as soon as 
 it amounted to ;;^ 10,000, a remittance to Calcutta 
 was effected. Mr. Keating seems to have been 
 less successful as mercantile cashier than as a 
 revenue administrator. Reprimands from the 
 Accountant-General came as regularly as the end 
 
 *■' Land-tax of Beerbhoom, . . S. R. 611,321 : 7 : 16 
 Land-tax of Bishenpore, . . S. R. 386,707 : 1 1 : 7 
 
 Total, . . . S. R. 998,029 ; 3 : 3 
 Of this about S. R. 950,000, or, in round numbers, ^100,000, were 
 usually realized. Jamah-wasil-baki for 1788-89, etc. B. R. R. and 
 C. 0. R. 
 
288 IHE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 of the month ; and not without reason, for while 
 the Calcutta exchequer had been emptied to carry 
 on the Mahratta war, and the Company was bor- 
 rowing thankfully at exorbitant rates, Mr. Keating 
 calmly retained a cash balance of ^19,000 lying 
 unused in his treasury.^' The district Government 
 bank was managed thus : The Board of Trade 
 forwarded an estimate of the drafts to be drawn 
 upon the district bank during the ensuing six 
 months, and the Board of Revenue named the 
 treasury to which the surplus should be remitted. 
 The collector sent a statement on the last day of 
 each month, exhibiting the cash balances, and men- 
 tioning by what remittances he purposed to dispose 
 of them. The amount and date of the remittances 
 were therefore left to the collector's discretion, in- 
 stead of being fixed, as at present, by the central 
 Government. 
 
 Of this discretion Mr. Keating did not always 
 make a sound use. On one occasion he found 
 himself unable to meet a commercial draft for ;^8ooo, 
 for the simple reason that he had not kept enough 
 money in his treasury."* On another, the district 
 was thrown into consternation by the treasury 
 stopping payment altogether. In the end of 1790, 
 the war with Tippoo had drained the Company's 
 treasure-chests, and the failure of the crops in 
 
 ^' Mr. Caldecott, Accountant to the Board of Revenue, called for 
 an explanation on September 15, 1790. 
 
 "^ From Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 19th April 1789; 
 also, correspondence with Mr. John Cheap, Commercial Resident at 
 Soorool. B. R. R. 
 
THE GOVERNMENT BANK STOPS. 289 
 
 Southern India left the whole deficit to be borne 
 by the Bengal districts." The collectors were or- 
 dered to send down every available rupee to Cal- 
 cutta ; a loan, somewhat on the principle of a Tudor 
 benevolence, was obtained from the Nawab i"^ and 
 on the 15th of November the Accountant-General 
 directed all disbursements to be suspended. Ten 
 days later came another letter still more urgent for 
 remittances ; during the winter the demand was 
 frequently repeated, and the provincial Government 
 banks throughout Bengal remained closed."" It 
 requires a minute acquaintance with the economy 
 of rural Bengal to understand the distress which 
 followed. The Company was a great manufacturer, 
 and the immediate result of these measures was to 
 throw many thousands of families out of work in 
 mid-winter. The sudden drain upon the specie of 
 the province, moreover, carried off the only cur- 
 rency in which the cultivators could pay their rent 
 or the artisans receive payment for the goods they 
 had delivered to the commercial resident. Starv- 
 ing crowds besieged the Treasury, and this single 
 order of Government inflicted more suffering than 
 a succession of bad crops, and contributed no trifling 
 quota to that vast total of unrecorded misery 
 
 *' Calaitta Gazette oi i8th November 1790. Selections, vol. ii. p. 
 280. The famine is referred to in many other places. A few months 
 previously Madras had been forced to draw on the central treasury in 
 Calcutta for ^21,000. C. O. R. and I. O. L. 
 
 *^ Calcutta Gazette, i8th November 1790. Sel. ii. p. 278. 
 
 ^' From A. Caldecott, Esq., officiating Accountant-General, to 
 Collector, dated 15th November 1790. From same to same, dated 
 25th November 1790, 7th Januaiy 1791, etc. B. R. R. 
 
 VOL. I. -, T 
 
290 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 on which our Indian trophies are erected. The 
 starvation of the weavers during those winter 
 months, and the general belief that the Company's 
 sway had come to an end, were long remembered 
 in Beerbhoom.™ 
 
 The guarding of treasure parties demanded close 
 attention. So unsafe was the country, that .people 
 never travelled except in large parties, or under the 
 protection of armed men. Persons of rank were 
 accompanied by their own retainers, and more than 
 once the collector called on the commanding officer 
 for a detachment of infantry, to escort wealthy 
 natives, who were attempting to pass through the 
 district with an insufficient force.''^ Indeed, an 
 armed retinue had become a necessity for every 
 one who wished to make a figure on his travels. 
 The life of a civilian was as sacred in those wild 
 times as it is now. The assistant magistrates and 
 commercial agents camped in the haunts of the ban- 
 ditti without any personal risk ; but the collector, 
 deeming his position as head of the district demanded 
 some little pomp, never stirred out of Soorie without 
 a detachment of Sepoys. A few weeks before Mr. 
 K eating's arrival at Beerbhoom, a treasure party 
 had been overpowered and ;^30oo plundered ; and 
 the new collector determined that under his rule 
 
 '"' The only disbursement excepted from the general interdict in 
 Beerbhoom was the reward for killing tigers, to which was subse- 
 quently added the diet of prisoners. In salt and opium districts the 
 advances for these articles of revenue were also excepted. B. R. R. 
 
 '1 MS. ' Military Correspondence,' folio. On one occasion the 
 Rajah of Chittra's agent required a guard ; on another, a rich native 
 gentleman belonging to Burdwan, etc, 
 
THE GUARDING OF TREASURE. 291 
 
 no consideration for the military should lead to a 
 similar misfortune. Some of his demands sound 
 unreasonable enough to officers of our days. On 
 one occasion, in the middle of the rains, he called 
 for an escort to convey the paltry sum of ^200 to 
 Moorshedabad.^^ The guard consisted of at least 
 one officer and five men, for a smaller number never 
 ventured into the jungle ; and the journey, including 
 the return, at that season of the year occupied 
 fifteen days. The pay of a Sepoy was ten shillings 
 a month, that of the officer may be set down at a 
 pound ; so that the cost of escort upon a journey 
 that now occupies a few hours, amounted to nearly 
 5 per cent, of the whole remittance. On another 
 occasion, when the commanding officer could ill 
 spare his men, the collector called for two heavy 
 detachments to guard remittances to the same 
 destination within a few days of each other, and 
 the treasury guards had often to be reduced in 
 order to meet these vexatious demands. The 
 average number of military employed on escort 
 duty amounted to sixty soldiers and nine officers at 
 a cost of £<)2 per mensem,^^ or £(ii\ per annum, 
 
 '•'^ MS. 'Military Correspondence,' p. 128. 
 
 '^ The charge per mensem for a detachment of twenty Sepoys, 
 with its complement of officers, was as follows : 
 
 I Jemadar, at S. R. 13, . . . S. R. 13 
 
 I Havildar, at „ 9, . . . » 9 
 
 I Naik, at ,. 7, . . . „ 7 
 
 20 Sepoys, at „ 5, . . . „ 100 
 
 Good service allowances, . . 6 
 
 S. R. 135 per mensem, 
 ?qual to /^I4 sterling. Letter to the Collector from George Cheap, 
 
292 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 foi remittances rarely exceeding ;^40,ooo a year. 
 The remittances in 1864 amounted to ;^59,6oo, at 
 a cost of only ;^20 for guards."* Indeed, the whole 
 charge for transmitting ;£'59,ooo in 1864 hardly 
 exceeds one-tenth of what was paid for the mere 
 escort of ;£'40,ooo in 1789.'* 
 
 As head of the provincial Government bank, 
 the collector had to give some attention to the 
 currency of the district. The Company paid a high 
 premium on its loans, and therefore deemed it 
 important to have as many as possible of its notes 
 in circulation. Complicated and vexatious rules 
 were enacted to attain this object. It paid all 
 salaries or fixed disbursements over £ 1 200 a year, 
 half in notes, half in cash,'* thus saddling indi- 
 viduals in remote places with Company's paper, 
 which they had to get rid of at a loss." Fre- 
 
 Esq., paymaster to the up-country garrisons, dated Calcutta, nth 
 April 1789. 
 
 '* This return has been furnished from the office of the District 
 Superintendent of Police. The average of two half-years, viz. that 
 ending 31st December 1864 and 30th June 1865, was Rs. 100 per 
 six months, or £10 per annum. 
 
 '* The remittances during the financial year 1864-65 were 
 £t,o,ooo in specie and £g6oo in notes. The entire charge of 
 transit and escort was Rs. 760 : 13 : i, or £76, is. 8d. sterling, or a 
 fraction over one-tenth per cent, on the sum remitted. The distance 
 of the treasuries to which remittances were sent averaged 1 50 miles, 
 or three times farther than the average distance in 1789. 
 
 '* Resolution of the Governor- General in Council, dated 27th May 
 1789, etc. It is not clear whether the notes referred to in this resolu- 
 tion bore interest ; but it is evident from the treasury records that 
 there were a certain class of unpopular notes forced into circulation. 
 C. O. R. Cf Sir James Steuart's Proposals for the Extension of 
 Paper Credit in Bengal, 1772. I. O. L. 
 
 ^^ The discount in September 1787 was 7 per cent, on Govern- 
 
STATE OF THE CURRENCY. 293 
 
 queiitly, indeed, there was nothing in the treasury 
 except paper, with which to pay the officials ; and 
 an old newspaper announces as a great matter that 
 the Calcutta employes would receive a month's pay 
 in silver. Although paper was made a legal tender 
 from the Government to the public, it seems that 
 the public could not as a matter of right offer it in 
 discharge of the Government demands. There is 
 a letter from Mr. Keating to the Board of Revenue, 
 saying that a payment of the revenue had been 
 tendered in notes, and asking whether he should 
 receive them.'* 
 
 Every page of the records bears witness to the 
 miseries incident to a vitiated currency. The 
 coinage, the refuse of twenty different dynasties 
 and petty potentates, had been clipped, drilled, 
 filed, scooped out, sweated, counterfeited, and 
 changed from its original value by every process of 
 debasement devised by Hindu ingenuity during a 
 space of four hundred years. The smallest coin 
 could not change hands, without an elaborate cal- 
 culation as to the amount to be deducted from its 
 nominal value. This calculation, it need hardly 
 be said, was always in favour of the stronger party. 
 The treasury officers exacted an ample discount 
 from the landholders, — a discount which, when 
 Bengal passed under British rule, amounted to 3 
 
 ment certificates. In 1785 it was double these amounts. — Calcutta 
 Gazette, 6th September 1787. I. O. L. 
 
 '* To John Shore, Esq., President, and members of the Board of 
 Revenue, from Collector, dated nth April 1789, etc. B. R. R. 
 
2 94 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 per cent, after a coin had been in circulation a single 
 year, and to 5 per cent, after the second year, 
 although no actual depreciation had taken place." 
 The landholder demanded a double allowance 
 from the middleman, and the middleman extorted 
 a quadruple allowance from the unhappy tiller of 
 the soil. In a long indignant letter on the illegal 
 cesses under which the cultivator groaned, Mr. 
 Keating singles out the ' batta ' or exchange on old 
 rupees as the most cruel, because the least defined.^" 
 No recognised standard existed by which to limit 
 the rapacity of the treasury officers. The Govern- 
 ment held them responsible for remitting the net 
 revenue in full, and left them to deduct such a pro- 
 portion from each coin, as they deemed sufficient to 
 cover all risk of short weight. Moreover, so great 
 was the variety of coin in use, that they claimed a 
 further discretion as to what they would receive at 
 all. Cowries (shells), copper coins of every denomi- 
 nation, lumps of copper without any denomination 
 whatever, pieces of iron beaten up with brass, 
 thirty-two different kinds of rupees, from the full 
 sicca to the Viziery, hardly more than half its 
 
 '" The Principles of Money applied to the Present State of Coin 
 in Bengal, composed for the use of the Honourable the East India 
 Company, by Sir James Steuart, Baronet, p. i6, small 4to. Privately 
 printed for the Company in 1772. Grant's Expediency Maintained, 
 p. 23, 8vo, 181 3. Cf. Essais sur I'Histoire Economique de la 
 Turquie, p. 109, Paris 1865. 
 
 8" From Collector to the Honourable Charles Stuart, President, 
 and members of the Board of Revenue, in reply to the Board's 
 order to introduce the decennial settlement, dated April 1790. 
 B. R. R. 
 
VARIETY OF COINS. 295 
 
 value, *^ pagodas of various weights/- dollars ^^ of 
 different standards of purity, gold mohurs worth 
 from twenty-five to thirty-two shillings each,** and 
 a diversity of Asiatic and European coins whose 
 very names are now forgotten.*^ At some treasuries 
 cowries were taken, at others they were not.^" Some 
 collectors accepted payment in gold ; others refused 
 it ; others, again, could not make up their minds 
 either way;*^ and the miserable peasant never knew 
 whether the coin for which he sold his crop would 
 be of any use to him when he came to pay his 
 rent. 
 
 Notwithstanding the oppressive precautions ob- 
 served in receiving coins at the treasury, the number 
 
 ^^ Calcutta Gazette of ist November 1792. The value of the 
 viziery rupee was 37 per cent, less than the siccas of Moorshedabad, 
 Patna, and Dacca. For list of rupees in use, and their value, see 
 Appendix N. 
 
 ^^ Worth from six shillings and eightpence to eight shillings and 
 sixpence, according to the weight and the current rates of exchange. 
 
 *^ Calcutta Gazette of 14th January 1790. 
 
 ** Sir James Steuart's Principles of Money applied to Bengal, p. 
 26, 4to, 1772. 
 
 ^° For a list of coins current in six Indian ports in 1763, see 
 Appendix O. 
 
 *^ In Sylhet they were taken, and proved very difficult to be got 
 rid of. Calcutta Gazette of 6th October 1791. Lives of the Lindsays, 
 by Lord Lindsay, iii. 170. In Beerbhoom they were not received. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 " Mr. Keating, shortly after his arrival, was offered gold in 
 payment of the land-tax, and on referring the matter to the Board, 
 obtained its sanction to receive gold coins. Letter from Collector to 
 John Shore, President, and members of the Board of Revenue, dated 
 nth April 1789, with reply thereto. On the other hand, there is a 
 petition 'by several respectable mercantile gentlemen requesting 
 orders for the free currency of gold in payment of the revenues,' 
 referred to in the Calcutta Gazette of Thursday, 17th April 1788. 
 B. R. R. and I. O. L. 
 
2g6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL 
 
 of bad rupees which found their way into the remit- 
 tances sounds incredible at the present day. In 
 one small remittance of 40,738 rupees (;^4 1,000), no 
 fewer than 738 were reported to have ' turned out 
 bad.'^* At present the bad rupees do not average 
 five in a remittance of one hundred thousand. The 
 coin in circulation, moreover, was insufficient for the 
 commerce of the country, and Government compli- 
 cated the evil by injudicious interference. It attri- 
 buted the scarcity of coin, according to the fashion 
 of the day, to ' tricks in raising the batta {i. e. ex- 
 change),' ' to the extortion of usurers,' ' to a combina- 
 tion of moneyed harpies •,'^^ in short, to every reason 
 but the true one — namely, the inadequacy of the 
 coinage to carry on the trade of the province. A 
 fourfold currency — gold, silver, copper, and notes — 
 had gradually been introduced, without a single pro- 
 vision to guard against the difficulties to which such 
 a state of things gives rise. Of arbitrary regulation, 
 however, there was no lack. The Government from 
 time to time blindly fixed the price of bullion, and 
 the incipient Anglo-Indian press not less blindly 
 supported the measure. A committee of inquiry 
 sat ; it need scarcly be added, without in any way 
 mending matters. ' The discount on gold mohurs,' 
 wrote the editor of the Calcutta Gazette in 1788, 
 ' still continues enormously high, to the ruinous dis- 
 tress of the poor, and to the great inconvenience of 
 
 *' Letter from J. E. Harrington, Esq., Collector of Moorshedabad, 
 to C. Keating, Esq., Collector of Beerbhoom, dated 27th September 
 1790. B. R. R. 
 
 *" Ca/«c/ifa Gfl^^/fej of 28th February, loth April 1788, etc. I. O. L 
 
INADEQUACY OF THE CURRENCY. 297 
 
 the economical householder. The continuance of 
 this evil, much more the increase of it, after the 
 large imports of silver into Calcutta from Burdwan 
 and other districts, evidently proves it is owing to a 
 combination of moneyed harpies. Should they per- 
 severe till the commencement of the next sessions, 
 it is anxiously to be hoped they will be called to 
 account for their illegal practices before a jury of 
 their fellow-citizens, and will experience the utmost 
 severity of the law, which prohibits and punishes 
 the engrossment of any article for the advance- 
 ment of its price. Coined silver is an article that 
 admits of precise determination of its proper value, 
 and the engrossment and enhancement of it may 
 easily be brought to specific proof.' ' It is seriously 
 to be hoped,' he continued, a fortnight later, ' that 
 some effectual measures will be taken to put a stop 
 to the progress of this evil, so severely felt by the 
 community at large ; otherwise trade must sink 
 under usury.' But at the very time at which the 
 aid of the courts was most loudly invoked, the 
 Legislature had omitted to make any provision for 
 preserving the purity of the coin. The Anglo- 
 Indian community clamoured for penal restrictions 
 and interference to a degree far beyond that which 
 the law can successfully exercise, while the Anglo- 
 Indian Government had not enabled the courts to 
 perform a duty which they could easily have 
 accomplished. Sir William Dunkins, in charging 
 the grand jury of Calcutta,'" regrets that clipping, 
 
 '0 Calcutta Gazette of i8th June 1795. I. O. 1- 
 
298 THE ANNALS OF RVMAL BENGAL. 
 
 counterfeiting, and similar offences against the coin 
 could not be dealt with more seriously than as cases 
 of simple cheating. 
 
 The debasement and inadequacy of the rural 
 coinage proceeded from two sets of causes ; one of 
 which had been at work before the English had 
 anything to do with Bengal, the other resulting 
 from their injudicious but well-meant efforts at cur- 
 rency reform. The Mussulmans recognised only 
 one circulating medium — to wit, silver. Gold coins 
 were struck, but they ' were left to seek their own 
 value.'" In short, gold was treated as bullion, 
 and the stamped pieces called mohurs circulated 
 at various prices, according to the current price of 
 the metal. The weight and fineness of the Delhi 
 mohurs was uniform, being of the same weight and 
 fineness as the silver rupee ; but a Delhi mohur 
 sometimes sold for twelve, sometimes for thirteen, 
 fourteen, or fifteen sicca rupees.'^ In the same way, 
 copper coins, when transferred in large quantities, 
 were and are to the present day sold ; that is to 
 say, they do not pass at their full denominational 
 value, but at a lower rate, the proportion deducted 
 depending on the locality, and the comparative 
 demand for silver or copper coins. Indeed, the 
 tendency of copper coins to accumulate in the dis- 
 trict treasuries still forms a subject of frequent 
 official correspondence, and a percentage is in some 
 
 °' Sir James Steuart's Principles of Money applied to Bengal, 
 p. 25, 4to, 1772. 
 '2 Id. p. 2<:. 
 
THE SILVER CURRENCY. 299 
 
 places allowed to the collectors of the assessed 
 taxes — such as the municipal police — for convert- 
 ing the petty copper payments into rupees. 
 
 The silver currency, therefore, was the only cir- 
 culating medium which native governments steadily 
 endeavoured to regulate, and even in these efforts 
 they did not succeed.'^ In the first place, there was 
 a number of mints, none of which honestly adhered 
 to the same standard, and many of which did not 
 even pretend to do so. One of the most cherished 
 insignia of sovereignty was the striking of coin ; 
 and little potentates who in every other respect 
 acknowledged allegiance to Delhi, maintained their 
 independent right of coining. As it was the last 
 privilege to which fallen dynasties clung, so it was 
 the first to which adventurers rising into power 
 aspired. While the Mahrattas were still mountain 
 robbers they set up a mint; and in 1685 the East 
 India Company, at a period when it had only a 
 few houses and gardens in Bengal, intrigued for 
 the dignity of striking its own coin. The silver 
 pieces thus produced passed from province to pro- 
 vince in the hands of wandering merchants, or in 
 payment of tribute, and it became necessary to fix 
 some ideal standard by which to calculate their 
 value.'* No two mints uniformly struck rupees of 
 
 *' The standard weight of a rupee was theoretically one sicca, 
 equal to I79'55ii grains troy; the standard fineness was y^^ pure 
 silver. 
 
 '■• The Mussulmans in Turkey resorted to practically the same 
 expedient, and for the same reasons. See an excellent series of Essais 
 sur I'Histoire Economique de la Turquie, par M. Belin, Secretaire- 
 Interprfete de I'Empereur i Constantinople. Imperial Press, 1865, 
 
300 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL, 
 
 the same weight and fineness ; indeed, very few 
 mints invariably adhered even to their own nomi- 
 nal standard, and after the coin reached the public 
 it was subjected to every species of debasement. 
 The actual coin at any single mint, therefore, could 
 not be selected as the standard, for no mint could 
 be trusted, and whatever could be handled was sure 
 to be falsified. An ideal coin was accordingly in- 
 vented, by which all rupees might be valued, and 
 one of the Company's earliest and soundest financial 
 advisers has left on record the process. ' When a 
 sum of rupees is brought to a shroff (banker or 
 money-changer), he examines them piece by piece, 
 ranges them according to their fineness, then by 
 their weight. Then he allows for the different 
 legal battas (deductions) upon siccas and sunats ; 
 and this done, he values in gross by the current 
 rupee what the whole quantity is worth. The 
 rupee current, therefore, is the only coin fixed by 
 which coin is at present valued ; and the reason is, 
 because it is not a coin itself, and therefore can 
 never be falsified or worn.''^ 
 
 This process, though simple and no doubt pro- 
 fitable to a banker or treasury officer, was impossible 
 to the poor peasant. The whole rural population, 
 had to receive payment for their crops in coins 
 whose value they did not understand, and then to 
 pay away these coins for rent and taxes according 
 to a calculation which they could not comprehend. 
 
 '" Sir James Steuart's Principles of Money applied to Bengal, 
 p. 17, 4to, 1772. 
 
FIRST CURRENCY REFORM, 1766. 301 
 
 We can now appreciate the feelings of almost per- 
 sonal gratitude with which the husbandmen of India 
 long remembered Todar Mai, a financier who, while 
 he raised the revenues, authoritatively re-enacted 
 the option of paying them in kind. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when the East 
 India Company received charge of Lower Bengal. 
 The number of coins in its treasure-chests afforded 
 no index of its financial position ; and although it 
 got over this difficulty to a certain extent by keeping 
 its accounts in current rupees, the work of convert- 
 ing the actual coinage into the ideal standard, proved 
 too laborious to be very accurately performed. Set- 
 ting aside the multitudinous differences of weight, 
 hardly two remittances a year were made in coin of 
 the same fineness. Of twenty-eight large payments, 
 of which we have an accurate record,'^ between 1 764 
 and 1769 inclusive, only three were in rupees of 
 standard purity ; and before the value of the other 
 twenty-five could be ascertained, it was necessary to 
 melt them down, weigh, and assay them. The 
 obvious remedy was to call in the old currency, 
 issuing in place of it a new coinage of fixed weight 
 and purity; and on this important duty the first 
 English governors of Bengal went heartily to work. 
 
 But presently they discovered that the remedy 
 was by no means so obvious or easy as they had 
 supposed. Recoinage cost a heavy percentage ; and 
 people would not bring their debased coin to the 
 
 " Sir James Steuart's Principles of Money applied to Bengal, pp. 
 
 l8-2J, 
 
302 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 mint when they found that they got back barely 
 three-fifths of what they gave in. Partly from this 
 reason, and partly from delay in re-issuing the 
 rupees, the province found itself drained of its cur- 
 rency. Business came to a stand : the richest mer- 
 chants could obtain no circulating medium with which 
 to purchase goods for their trafific, and no one would 
 sell on credit, well knowing that, when the time of 
 payment came, no coin would be forthcoming. To 
 meet this emergency, the Council in Calcutta deter- 
 mined to issue a gold currency, which should pass 
 not merely for its equivalent in silver at the market 
 rates, but as a distinct medium of circulation, each 
 piece having a fixed denomination of value. The 
 Council, however, not having the requisite bullion 
 to start with, tried to induce the people to bring 
 their gold for coinage, by attaching an arbitrary 
 value to the new gold mohurs. According to law, 
 each piece was to pass at a rate which exceeded by 
 \']\ per cent, its market value in silver. Crowds 
 besieged the mint with ingots to be manufactured 
 into these profitable coins ; but the more gold 
 mohurs the Council issued, the greater the scarcity 
 in the currency, for some unaccountable reason, be- 
 came. Not till six years afterwards was the mys- 
 tery explained. The ' encouragement ' given to 
 gold simply meant discouragement to silver. The 
 Council, by fixing the value of the new coins at 
 arbitrary rates, had rendered it 1 7^ per cent, more 
 profitable to make payments in gold ; but it had 
 only done so by rendering it i yi per cent, less pro- 
 
THE GOLD COINAGE OF 1766. 303 
 
 iitable to pay in silver. The gains of the fortunate 
 few who held gold had to be paid a thousand-fold 
 by the unfortunate many who held silver. The 
 latter refused to make payments in a currency that 
 had thus been depreciated 171 per cent., and sent 
 it abroad either in exchange for gold, or for pur- 
 poses of trade. The East India Compa.ny itself, in 
 its mercantile capacity, carried a quarter of a million 
 sterling per annum out of Bengal to China ;"' 
 Madras constantly required specie from Bengal to 
 purchase its investment ; and Bombay, which did 
 not pay the expense of government, had to be sup- 
 plied from the same source.'* In the years following 
 this memorable experiment, the Council constantly 
 complain that while no currency existed with which 
 to carry on internal commerce, the exportation of 
 silver went on upon an unprecedented scale. 
 
 Another influence presently began to intensify 
 the evil. India had always depended on its foreign 
 trade for a supply of the precious metals. It ab- 
 sorbed vast quantities of silver for jewellery and 
 domestic ornaments ; and Romans, Venetians, Por- 
 
 ^' Sir James Steuart, pp. 26, 32, 57, etc. I. O. L. 
 
 '* Bengal from the very first seems to have been the milch cow 
 from which the other Presidencies drew their support. A hundred 
 references to the Indian records and papers of the last century might 
 be given. For example, letters from the President and Council of 
 Bengal to the Court of Directors, dated the 25th August 1770, paras. 
 26 and 30 ; the 9th March 1772, para. 22, in which the Council com- 
 plain that the Bengal treasuries are completely emptied by sending 
 coin to the other Presidencies ; Hicky's Bengal Gazette, 29th April 
 1780, with innumerable notices in the Calcittta Gazette, 1784-1804. 
 I. O. R., C. O. R., and I. O. L. Cf. also Mr. Marshman's History of 
 India, i. p. 283 (in 1758), and p. 328 (in 1767). Longmans, 1867. 
 
304 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 tuguese, Dutch, and English, had each in turn 
 lamented the exportation of their national currency 
 in exchange for oriental luxuries. During the 
 seventeenth century a single harbour of Western 
 India — Surat — received, by the way of the Persian 
 Gulf alone, half a million sterling per annum in 
 specie. The quantity of bullion which the trade 
 carried out of England long formed a most tren- 
 chant weapon in the hands of the opponents of the 
 East India Company. Its amount was regulated by 
 Parliament, and loudly deplored by patriotic pam- 
 phleteers. Until the middle of the last century, the 
 Company's business consisted in sending silver from 
 England, and bringing back Indian produce in ex- 
 change ; but in 1765, when the revenues of Lower 
 Bengal passed into its hands, it found itself pos- 
 sessed of an annual surplus large enough to do 
 away with the necessity of importing specie for the 
 purchase of its investment."' If a district yielded, 
 as in the case of Beerbhoom, ;^90,ooo of revenue, 
 the Council took care that not more than ;^5ooo or 
 ;^6ooo were spent in governing it. From the re- 
 mainder, ten thousand pounds or so were deducted 
 for general civil expenses, ten thousand more for the 
 maintenance of the army, and the surplus of say 
 ;£'6o,ooo was invested in silks, muslins, cotton cloths, 
 and other articles, to be sold by the authorities in 
 Leadenhall Street. In short, the revenues of 
 Bengal supplied the means of providing the invest- 
 ment in Bengal, and so the annual influx of specie 
 
 " Sir James Steuart, p. 56. 
 
DRAIN UPON THE CURRENCY. 305 
 
 ceased, while the consumption of the precious metals 
 went on as before. It was this annual influx alone 
 that had enabled the province to bear up against 
 the heavy annual drain on its currency ; and we arc 
 assured that without it even the tribute to Delhi, 
 not to speak of the yearly supply of bullion to the 
 Company's factors in China, Madras, and Bombay, 
 could not have been sustained. Mandeville, writing 
 in 1750, states that the payment of the Emperor's 
 revenue ' sweeps away almost all the silver, coined 
 or uncoined, which comes into Bengal. It goes to 
 Delhi, from whence it never returns to (Lower) 
 Bengal ; so that after such treasure is gone from 
 Muxadavad (Moorshedabad), there is hardly cur- 
 rency enough left in Bengal to carry on any trade, 
 or even to go to market for provisions and neces- 
 saries of life, till the next shipping arrives to bring a 
 fresh supply of silver.'"" 
 
 In 1765, therefore, these fresh supplies came to 
 an end. The gold coinage, devised to supply the 
 deficiency in 1766, only made matters worse. Dur- 
 ing the two following years internal traffic ceased, 
 and the whole population, English and native, at 
 length implored the Government to move one way 
 or another in the matter. ' At present the distress 
 is so great,' wrote the English inhabitants in 1769, 
 ' that every merchant in Calcutta is in danger of 
 becoming bankrupt, or running a risk of ruin by 
 attachments on his goods.' ' There remains not suffi- 
 
 ""• Letter dated 27th November 1750, printed by the Company in 
 1771. Financial Resolution of the 20th March 1769, etc. 
 VOL. L U 
 
3o6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 cient (currency) for the occasions and intercourse of 
 commerce. . . . The fair and honest dealer is every 
 day prosecuted to judgment in the court without 
 remedy, from the impossibility of obtaining pay- 
 ment from his debtors. . . . He is thus urged by 
 his necessity to involve himself in expensive suits ; 
 he is forced to defend, in order to gain time, though 
 sensible of the justice, and desirous to pay the de- 
 mand ; and he is driven to a hasty prosecution, in 
 hopes to recover before judgment passeth against 
 himself, though fully convinced of his debtor's wil- 
 lingness to pay as soon as he is able. His substance 
 in this manner is wasted, and the distress which 
 follows is too obvious and moving to need descrip- 
 tion.'^" The ' Humble Petition of the Armenian 
 Merchants settled in Calcutta ' puts the case even 
 more forcibly : ' The necessity of coin now felt in 
 this capital, amongst the many intolerable evils 
 arising from it, affects every individual to that de- 
 gree, that the best houses, with magazines full of 
 goods, are distressed for daily provisions ; and that 
 not only a general bankruptcy is to be feared, but a 
 real famine, in the midst of wealth and plenty.' 
 
 The English merchants proposed, bj? way of 
 remedy, to prosecute all who held silver, and would 
 not give it in exchange for the gold coins at rates 
 fixed by law. The Armenians took a deeper view. 
 They perceived the existence of a real deficiency 
 
 i»i Petition of the Mayor's Court of Calcutta to the Honourable 
 Harry Verelst, dated Town Hall, 14th March 1769, signed 'John 
 Holmes, Registrar.' Quoted from the Calcutta Review, xxxv. 29. 
 
SECOND GOLD COINAGE, 1769. 307 
 
 which legislation could not reach, and recommended 
 that the bullion in the country should be utilized by 
 being coined. Silver was not to be had, but many 
 capitalists held gold ; and they proposed a general 
 coinage of the latte/ metal into pieces varying from 
 eight shillings to £\, 12s. sterling, not on the ground 
 that such a currency would be in itself a convenient 
 one, but because ' any coin whatever is better than 
 no coin at all.'"' 
 
 The Honourable Harry Verelst took the advice 
 of these very sensible Armenian gentlemen. ' Upon 
 a strict and impartial inquiry,' he wrote, ' we find 
 that this scarcity of specie, so severely felt by the 
 merchants here, is not an accidental or fictitious one, 
 nor confined to Calcutta alone, but that the same 
 indigence is spread over the whole country.' He 
 goes on to express an apprehension, ' that either the 
 revenue must fall short, or be collected in kind, from 
 a want of sufficient currency ;' and concludes by 
 ordering a second gold coinage. But the English 
 governors of Bengal did not at that period possess 
 the data on which to base a successful currency re- 
 form ; and although Mr. Verelst avoided the mis- 
 take of fixing the legal denomination of the new 
 coins so egregiously above their market value as in 
 1766, he still overrated them by ^\ per cent. The 
 events of 1766, therefore, repeated themselves in a 
 mitigated shape. At first the people very gladly 
 brought their bullion to undergo the profitable pro- 
 
 1"^ The Armenian Petition of 1769, quoted from the Calcutta 
 Review, xxxv. 28, 
 
3o8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 cess of coinage ; and the Council congratulated 
 themselves on the success of their experiment. But 
 presently the public began to find out that, while the 
 value of gold mohurs had been artificially enhanced 
 5i per cent., the value of rupees had been depre- 
 ciated to an equal degree. They therefore with- 
 drew the last remnant of their silver from circula- 
 tion ; and the driblet of gold coins that issued from 
 the mint proved wholly inadequate to take the place 
 of the national currency. Indeed, the native bankers, 
 having learned wisdom from the losses of 1 766, de- 
 termined to be beforehand with the Government 
 this time, and refused to advance sums in silver 
 which might be repaid a few months later in gold 
 coins bearing a fictitious value. Before the end of 
 the year the Council found their treasury empty, 
 and complained that the merchants had deserted 
 their trade, and were ' locking up their fortunes in 
 their treasure-chests.''"^ 
 
 Even those who held gold soon began to dis- 
 trust the Company's efforts at a gold coinage. 
 According to the regulations of 1766, a mohur 
 containing 14972 grains of pure gold passed for 
 fourteen rupees, or at the rate of io"694 grains to 
 the rupee ; according to the regulations of 1 769, 
 the mohur contained i90'o86 grains of pure gold, 
 and passed for sixteen rupees, or at the rate of 
 1 1 '88 grams to the rupee. Native money-changers 
 speedily detected this, and became afraid to have 
 
 108 Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors, 
 dated 25th September 1769, para. 39. I. O. R. 
 
THE CURRENCY, 1769-1789. 309 
 
 anything to do with the Company's mint. They 
 knew that they could always get the market value 
 of their gold as bullion, but it was impossible to say 
 what liberty the English gentlemen might next be 
 pleased to take with the coin. 
 
 It requires a strong effort of the imagination to 
 realize the miseries of the next twenty years. The 
 great famine of 1 769, as the Directors have pathe- 
 tically recorded, seemed to put a finishing stroke 
 to the sufferings of the people, and the history of 
 rural Bengal becomes a narrative of severities for 
 wringing a constantly increasing revenue out of a 
 starved and depopulated province. Warren Hast- 
 ings created a security for person and property, 
 such as had never been enjoyed since the Mussul- 
 man despoilers rolled down on Hindusthan. He 
 framed equal laws, and he did his best to bring 
 them within the reach of the people. He under- 
 stood the Bengalis thoroughly, aided every effort 
 to investigate their wants or to interpret their 
 character, was munificent exactly at the time and 
 in the manner to win their admiration, and dis- 
 played in all his public appearances that prompt, 
 unerring audacity, so well calculated to overawe a 
 race whom long oppression had stripped of self- 
 respect. More than this, Warren Hastings really 
 loved the natives, and the natives in return loved 
 and respected him as they have loved and respected 
 no Englishman before or after. He was a true 
 Asiatic prince of the best type ; a man who a cen- 
 tury earlier might have built up an independent 
 
310 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 empire that would have held together under twenty 
 feeble successors. But in matters touching the 
 revenues he had a heart of stone. Menaced by 
 the potentates of Hindusthan, all but overwhelmed 
 by the Mahrattas, plotted against by powerful 
 Hindu subjects, harassed by mutinous troops, 
 bearded by his own coadjutors in council, he felt 
 that his one source of strength was the command 
 of money. Money alone would keep up his in- 
 terest with the Court of Directors at home ; money 
 alone would maintain their sovereignty in Bengal ; 
 and any degree of fiscal severity seemed to hini a 
 cheap price to pay for the peace and security of all 
 India. It could not be expected that a governor in 
 his position would complicate matters still further 
 by currency measures which, however salutary in 
 the end, might occasion panic and confusion during 
 their progress. From time to time, when accident 
 brought home to him the misery caused by the 
 debased and insufficient coinage, he devised some 
 temporary palliative ; but the only substantial re- 
 form which he carried through was the work of his 
 first year of office. 
 
 Under native governments the mint formed a 
 source of revenue ;"* a heavy royalty was habitually 
 levied, and, when occasion demanded, the bullion 
 brought to the officers for coinage was debased. In 
 order to give the mint work, an iniquitous system 
 had been devised to force the people to have the 
 
 '"* Sir James Steuart's Principles of Money applied to the Present 
 State of the Coin in Bengal, p. 3, 410, 1773. 
 
THE MINT REFORM OR it 73. 311 
 
 whole currency recoined every year. For each year 
 that had elapsed since the date stamped upon the 
 coin, a heavy percentage was deducted, irrespective 
 of actual deterioration. For example : a rupee that 
 had been in use a year lost three per cent, of its 
 value ; after it had circulated two years it lost five 
 per cent., 3nd this, too, although it had suffered 
 no change in weight or purity. To escape these 
 deductions, capitalists presented their coined silver 
 before' the end of each year or second year, and 
 so the mints drove a flourishing business at the 
 expense of the people. As early as 1771 the 
 Bengal Council had pointed out the remedy for 
 this,^"' but under Mr. Cartier's feeble reign nothing 
 ever received practical effect. In 1773 Warren 
 Hastings, with his wonted contempt for half mea- 
 sures, struck at the root of the evil. He enacted 
 that no deduction should be made from a coin, how- 
 ever long it might have been in circulation, unless 
 really deteriorated ; and in order to ensure obedi- 
 ence, he commanded that all future issues should 
 bear one date, that of 1773, or as the legend runs 
 on the rupees, ' the 1 9th year of the auspicious 
 reign ' of Shah Alam. This was the first step the 
 Company had taken in the right direction, and it 
 gave rise to so many disputes that Warren Hast- 
 ings did not venture on another. The sufferings 
 of the people are graven deep on every record of 
 those days ; and it is impossible to turn over a few 
 pages of any public print, without coming upon 
 
 i"' Letter to tlK Court of Directors, dated the 30th August 1771, 
 
312 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 irrepressible evidence of the ruin and distrust be- 
 tween man and man occasioned by the debased 
 currency. To cite only two instances from the first 
 Calcutta paper. In May 1780 we are told that all 
 the shops in the principal city of South-western 
 Bengal remained shut for several days, on account 
 of a dispute about the value of the sicca rupee/"* 
 and only reopened when the authorities yielded to 
 the popular view. Not long afterwards ' Honestus ' 
 complains that the trade of Patna, the mercantile 
 capital of Central Bengal, had entirely decayed, 
 owing to the ruinous and constantly fluctuating 
 exchange between the local and the statutory coin- 
 age."' 
 
 To such straits had a debased currency brought 
 commerce, when in 1786 Lord Cornwallis received 
 charge of the province. During his first three 
 years of office, judicial and fiscal reforms de- 
 manded his whole energies ; and in spite of the 
 clamours of the Calcutta newspaper, and of more 
 touching appeals from the rural population, he did 
 not dare to meddle with the coinage. But he had 
 in John Shore an adviser who thoroughly under- 
 stood the magnitude of the evil, and before the end 
 of 1789 the two friends had devised a plan for 
 eradicating it once and for all. Suddenly an order 
 issued depriving the treasury officers of any discre- 
 tion in taking or rejecting coins on the ground of 
 short weight. If a rupee was the genuine product 
 
 "" Ricky's Bengal Gazette of the 20th May 1780. 
 '•' Id. of the i6th September 1780. 
 
C URRENC Y REFORMS OF x^^o. 313 
 
 of a recognised mint, no matter to what extent it 
 had been dipped or drilled, the treasury officers 
 were to receive it by weight according to fixed Tates 
 hung up in the collector's office. This single stroke 
 put an end to the indefinite and arbitrary discount 
 which the provincial treasurers had from time 
 immemorial exacted on all coin except siccas of 
 the current year. Before they had recovered their 
 consternation another order arrived, rendering them 
 responsible not merely for the net sums received, 
 but for the actual coin in which it was paid. This 
 completed their ruin. Many of them had invested 
 a fortune in bribing their way up to the post of 
 treasurer, — a post which in those days yielded a 
 salary of ^40 per annum, and an opportunity of 
 making ^4000 more. Besides 'playing with the 
 deposits,' varying from _;^5000 to _;^30,ooo, the 
 treasurers had always enjoyed the privilege of 
 deducting what allowance they pleased from each 
 coin when they received it, and then of returning it 
 to circulation, as payment for the mercantile invest- 
 ment, at rates fixed by themselves. But now these 
 profitable operations came abruptly to an end. Lord 
 Cornwallis divided the currency into two classes : 
 the first consisting of the statutory coinage, to be 
 taken at its full legal denomination ; the second or 
 deteriorated sort, to be received at the published 
 rates, and sent off at the end of each month to 
 Calcutta. The mere fact of some deduction re- 
 quiring to be made from the nominal value of a 
 rupee, he accepted as conclusive proof of its unfit- 
 
314 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 ness to be returned to circulation, and commanded 
 in every such case that the treasury officers should 
 specify the rates at which they received the coin in 
 an invoice to be forwarded along with the coin 
 itself, to the Presidency mint."* 
 
 The treasury officers grumbled, shirked, dis- 
 obeyed. In his first ardour for reform, Warren 
 Hastings had issued a similar order, and they had 
 managed to evade it. But they were now to 
 learn the difference between a spasmodic although 
 talented autocracy, and the persistent watchfulness 
 of a well-organized central Government. During 
 four years Lord Cornwallis had been painfully con- 
 structing that series of checks and counter-checks 
 on the local officials which still forms a distin- 
 guishing feature of the Indian administration. 
 Before the end of 1 789 he held lists of the names 
 of all natives in the Government employ,"' and the 
 rebellious treasurers found themselves suddenly 
 entangled in a net of artfully-contrived statements, 
 vouchers, and monthly returns. The slightest 
 touch of his Lordship's finger crushed where it fell, 
 and John Shore had taught him a sure method of 
 reaching the delinquents. He seldom condescended 
 to make any reference to the treasurers themselves ; 
 but he visited the English collector of the district 
 with unsparing fines for the offences of his subor- 
 
 '°* Order of the 23d June 1790, forwarded with a letter from the 
 Board of Revenue to the Collector of Beerbhoom, dated the 30th id., 
 etc. B. R. R. 
 
 '"' From the same to the same, dated 7th April 1789. Regula- 
 tions of the 8th Tune 1787, Art, 18. B. R. R. and C O. R, 
 
DEBASED COINAGE CALLED IN. 315 
 
 dinates — offences which that officer had hitherto 
 either winked at or regarded with indifference. 
 Even Mr. K eating's fiscal ardour failed to avert 
 these penalties ; and when Lord Cornwallis found 
 the treasurers trifling with his currency reform, he 
 extended the system of fines, which had formerly 
 applied only to unpunctuality in transmitting trea- 
 sure, to every irregularity in despatching accounts 
 or returns, and to every defect in their form."" For 
 these mulcts and indignities the collectors took 
 ample vengeance on the native subordinate whose 
 delinquency had caused them, and the monthly 
 transmission of depreciated coins soon became a 
 matter of undisputed routine. 
 
 But though all resistance on the part of the 
 treasurers was over, another and far more serious 
 struggle had commenced. The debased coinage 
 formed two-thirds of the provincial currency, and the 
 very success of the measure for calling it in denuded 
 the rural population of the means of purchasing the 
 necessaries of life. The prices of local produce 
 sank to nominal rates, not because grain was really 
 cheap, but because money was dear ; and the village 
 usurers, demanding a settlement of accounts as 
 usual at harvest-time, received the husbandman's 
 whole crops in return for a pound or thirty shillings 
 advanced to him in spring. In the large towns, where 
 the statutory coinage more abounded, the calling in 
 of the debased rupees occasioned hardly any drain, 
 
 "" Circular of the Board of Revenue, dated 30th September 1790 
 B. 11. R. 
 
316 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 and did not affect prices. The corn-dealers there- 
 fore bought up the whole grain of the country at 
 the nominal rates prevailing in the rural parts, in 
 order to sell it or export it at the prices prevailing 
 in the cities ; and the miserable peasantry, after 
 reaping a good harvest, found themselves in the 
 midst of a famine. 
 
 The urgent necessity for funds to prosecute the 
 war against Tippoo intensified the distress. All 
 the bad coin was swept off to Calcutta to be melted, 
 while all the good coin was swept off to Calcutta for 
 exportation to Madras. The triumph of the trea- 
 sury officers seemed at hand ; for no Government 
 would dare, they argued, to strip the country entirely 
 of its coin, and the currency reform of 1790 would 
 end as the currency reform of 1772 had ended — by 
 first causing a great deal of misery, and then being 
 abandoned. For a moment the fate of the measure 
 did indeed tremble in the balance. The crisis found 
 Lord Cornwallis involved in changes that had un- 
 settled the whole judicial and fiscal administration ; 
 a war which threatened the very existence of the 
 English in India raged in Madras ; a real famine 
 was depopulating the Deccan ; and would he now 
 persist in creating an artificial famine in the one 
 province which remained unscathed ? But Lord 
 Cornwallis considered that, after all, it was but a 
 choice between two great evils. The suffering 
 caused by the measure had far exceeded his worst 
 apprehensions ; but that suffering was now half 
 over, and to yield would be to return for an inde- 
 
CURRENCY CRISIS OF 1790-91. 317 
 
 finite period to the miseries of a debased currency. 
 Besides, the suffering incident to the reform would 
 all have to be endured over again. Fortified by 
 these considerations, Lord Cornwallis turned a 
 mercifully deaf ear to the cries of the people. 
 
 The winter of 1790-91 passed, but brought no 
 relief to Bengal. Before calling in the debased 
 currency, the Government had made provision for 
 returning the specie when recoined, but somehow 
 the new rupees did not reach the hands of the 
 people. The old Calcutta mint was set vigorously 
 to work, new mints were established at the three 
 great provincial centres,"^ and the head of each dis- 
 trict received orders to take all coins that might be 
 offered to them at the local market rates, giving 
 back statutory rupees in payment.™ At first the 
 people readily brought their debased currency to be 
 exchanged for the new coinage ; but the collectors 
 presently found their supply of legal rupees ex- 
 hausted, and had either to refuse to receive the 
 local currency, or else to take it on credit. Then 
 came the pressing expenses of war, and the orders, 
 peremptorily repeated, to suspend all payments from 
 the district treasuries, except the diet allowance for 
 the prisoners, and the rewards for killing tigers.^^^ 
 The poor people had given in their little hoards of 
 
 I'l Dacca, Moorshedabad, Patna. 
 
 1'^ Circular Order of the Board of Revenue, dated 2d August 1790. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 1'' Letters from the Accountant-General to the Collector, dated 
 15th November, 29th December 1790, and 28th January 1791. In 
 salt or opium districts these articles were also excepted. B. R. R. 
 
3i8 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 old rupees ; when they asked for new ones in re- 
 turn, the collectors with much shamefacedness had 
 to tell them that all disbursements were stopped. 
 
 On the 1st of January 1791 a hopeful but mo- 
 mentary gleam flashed across the political sky. The 
 cumbrous, slow-working process of melting, assay- 
 ing, and recoining had at last some visible results 
 to show, and on the first day of the year an issue 
 of ' new-milled rupees ' took place simultaneously at 
 the four mints. But the good news had scarcely 
 reached the rural parts before another order came, 
 more rigidly enforcing the suspension of disburse- 
 ments from the district treasuries, and the people 
 had the satisfaction of learning that their old rupees 
 had been recoined only to be exported for war 
 exigencies to Madras. 
 
 But early in spring the pressure, in an unac- 
 countable manner, became lighter. The truth is, 
 that the crops which the village bankers and corn- 
 dealers had sent to the cities in December, or ex- 
 ported to Madras, were now paid for, and the price 
 was flowing back to the districts in the shape of 
 ' new-milled rupees.' The winter grain trade had 
 realized unusual profits, and the rural capitalists had 
 therefore an unusual quantity of money to lend. 
 The borrowing classes profited accordingly, and 
 every one who wanted an advance on his spring 
 crops could get it. The crisis was in truth at an 
 end ; the calm resolution of the great English chief 
 had conquered both in the Council and the field: a 
 temporary loan at 1 2 per cent, rapidly filled up, the 
 
RELIEF COMES AT LAST. 319 
 
 local treasuries resumed payment, and the village 
 elders, as they calmly sucked their hookas, began 
 to question whether, after all, the Company's sway 
 had really come to an end. 
 
 By this time Lord Cornwallis was at the head 
 of the British army ; but from under his tent in the 
 southernmost corner of India, daily proofs of his 
 persistent watchfulness shot forth to every extremity 
 of Bengal. He had indeed obtained the highest 
 administrative triumph. He had first constructed 
 his executive machinery, and then breathed so much 
 of his own vitality into it as to render it independent 
 of himself The able and conscientious men to 
 whom he had entrusted the Currency Reform, no 
 sooner felt the country a little eased, than they pro- 
 ceeded to measures to which the whole traditions 
 of the Company's government in India were op- 
 posed. Its first financial experiment had been to 
 affix a legal value to gold, with what results we 
 already know ; and Lord Cornwallis, clearly perceiv- 
 ing that the unregulated double currency lay at the 
 root of half the commercial distress, had put a stop 
 to the coinage of gold pieces in 1 788 as an indispens- 
 able preliminary to his reforms."* During the terrible 
 pressure of 1 790 he had yielded so far, however, as 
 to endeavour to relieve the drain on the silver cur- 
 rency by resuming for a time the coinage of gold 
 mohurs;"* but before the close of 1791 this pres- 
 
 "* Order of the 3d December 1788. 
 
 ^^^ Order dated 21st July 1790, communicated in Board of Re- 
 venue's letter to the Collector, dated 23d id. B. R. R. 
 
320 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 sure had exhausted itself, and Lord Cornwallis de- 
 termined by one bold stroke to get rid, once and 
 for all, of the perils of a twofold medium of circu- 
 lation. One governor after another had failed in 
 his attempts to make a double currency work 
 harmoniously. The public was again pressing for 
 further regulations and penal enactments on the 
 subject, when a proclamation issued doing away 
 with every check on the traffic of the precious 
 metals, and declaring them ordinary articles of com- 
 merce. ' Whereas,' ran the document, ' various ap- 
 plications have of late been made to the Superin- 
 tendent of Police by individuals, in consequence of 
 the difficulty which they have experienced in pro- 
 curing silyer coin, to compel the shroffs (money- 
 changers) to furnish silver in. exchange for gold 
 coin, and to punish them if they attempt in this 
 exchange to value the gold mohur at less than what 
 appears to have been its former market value : The 
 Governor-General in Council has therefore deter- 
 mined, that in future the sale of gold and silver coin 
 shall be as free and unrestrained in every respect 
 as the sale of gold and silver bullion, and the ex- 
 changeable value or price of each determined by 
 the course of trade, in the same manner as the price 
 of every other commodity that comes into the 
 market.'"' 
 
 After a year's trial of the new system, Lord 
 
 1'^ Dated Fort- William, Public Department, i8th November 1791, 
 signed E. Hay, Secretary to the Government, and published in ex- 
 tenso in the Calcutta Gazette of ist December I/gi. 
 
SUCCESS OF THE CURRENCY REFORM. 321 
 
 Cornwallis decided that the time had come to get 
 rid of the old defaced coinage by compulsory mea- 
 sures.^" The public had been allowed ample op- 
 portunity to change its old coin for new ' without 
 any charge whatever ; ' and he now ordered that after 
 the first day of the Bengali year 1200 (loth April 
 1 794 A.D.) the full coinage should be the only legal 
 tender, and that ' no person should be permitted to 
 recover ' in the courts ' any sum of money under a 
 bond or other writing, by which any species of 
 rupees, excepting the sicca rupees of the 1 9th sun,"^ 
 is stipulated to be paid.' In 1794 another twelve- 
 month's grace was given,^^' but the year 1 795 saw the 
 long-deferred triumph of the one strong will. The 
 new and uniform currency had at last completely 
 ousted the multitudinous, battered, and debased 
 rupees which had so long afflicted the people. 
 
 In adopting the principle of non-interference. 
 Lord Cornwallis displayed a self-taught knowledge 
 of the science of finance, which England did not 
 attain till a quarter of a century later, and which 
 several European countries have yet to learn. Not 
 till 18 19 did Parliament do away with the restric- 
 tions on the foreign trade in bullion i^^" and up to 
 a few years of the time when the isolated Indian 
 
 ^'^ Declaration dated Fort-William, Public Department, 24th 
 October 1792, signed J. L. Chauvet, Sub-Secretary, published in ex- 
 tenso in the Calcutta Gazette of ist November 1792. 
 
 ^^* I.e. Rupees struck by the Company, whose dies uniformly bore 
 the 19th year, ' sun,' of the Emperor Shah Alam's reign, equivalent 
 to A.D. 1773, ^""^ reasons previously stated. 
 
 11* Proclamation dated 28th June 1794, 
 
 ^^^ 59 Geo. III. c. 49. 
 
 VOL, I, X 
 
32 2 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Statesman carried out his reforms, the Louis d'or 
 continued to be rated at a nominal value by the 
 French mint, to the stoppage of trade, and even- 
 tually to the complete banishment of gold from the 
 currency.^^^ 
 
 From these measures — which, so far as I am 
 aware, have hitherto found no historian — the com- 
 mercial development of rural Bengal dates. The 
 Indian coinage remains substantially as Lord Corn- 
 wallis left it ; silver being the standard medium of 
 circulation, and gold, whether in the shape of mohurs 
 or of the recently introduced sovereigns, passing as 
 bullion at variable rates. But with the coinage un- 
 altered, the currency has undergone a great change. 
 Mr. James Wilson did for India under the Crown 
 what Lord Cornwallis in his financial capacity did 
 for India under the Company : he rendered the 
 circulating medium equal to the demands upon it. 
 To Mr. Wilson's paper currency rural Bengal owes 
 the means by which she has been enabled, without 
 panic or even inconvenience; to hurry along that 
 career of productive energy which has been opened 
 up to her during the last ten years. 
 
 Next to Mr. K eating's duties as collector of the 
 revenues and Government banker, were his func- 
 tions as judicial and magisterial head of the district. 
 These last, however, seem to have given him 
 but little trouble. So long as the banditti did not 
 actually depopulate the country, and thereby dis- 
 turb the collection of the land-tax, he had no busi- 
 
 ^21 Traits de rEconomie Politique, par M. Say, tome i. p. 393- 
 
THE POLICE. 323 
 
 ness to interfere ; when their depredations reached 
 this point, he sent out troops against them. We 
 have seen how energetic and successful he proved 
 himself in the latter operation ; but it is impossible 
 not to perceive that the Company's servants, or at 
 least the undistinguished mass of them — and to this 
 class Mr. Keating belongs — interpreted their duties 
 entirely from a fiscal point of view. Mr. Keating's 
 ablest reports on the police are written not in his 
 magisterial capacity, but as collector. His fears are 
 not for the security of the subject, but for the reali- 
 zation of the land-tax. It was not a part of his duty 
 to protect private property, nor did he attempt to 
 do it. His criminal jurisdiction was limited to the 
 punishment of petty offenders,^^^ — a very simple pro- 
 cess, not even involving a written sentence ; and in 
 the only case he deemed worthy of record — to wit, 
 a jail outbreak — the papers disclose him rather as a 
 vindictive officer than as a dispassionate judge. 
 
 The police still remained in the hands of the old 
 native functionaries ; and, contrasted with its abuses, 
 the little imperfections of the fiscal and judicial 
 systems vanish. It was divided into two orders ; 
 one charged with warding the frontier, the other 
 with the internal peace of the district. Relics of 
 both survive at the present day, but the first class 
 has ceased to do any harm by being stripped of 
 its official functions, while the second still remains 
 as a plague-spot in the rural administration. The 
 frontier police, ghat-wals, differed very much as to 
 
 1'^ Judicial Regulation, No. xxii. 1-5. 1787. 
 
324 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 social status, but agreed so far as the possession of 
 ' grants of land situated on the edge of the hilly 
 country, and held on condition of guarding the ghats 
 or passes.' ^^^ They consisted for the most part of 
 adventurers from Upper India, Afghans and Raj- 
 puts, who were wont to hire out their northern 
 vigour and trenchant swords to the aristocracy of 
 Lower Bengal. Sometimes they pretended to a 
 sacred character, and a curious although not very 
 perfect analogy might be drawn between some of 
 them and the religious knights of medieeval Europe. 
 Nothing, indeed, overawed the wild frontier tribes so 
 effectually as a union of the saint with the warrior, 
 and the Persian records of Beerbhoom bear witness 
 to the high value which the rajahs set upon a hermit 
 ghat-wal. On one occasion the prince, hearing that 
 a holy man had come from the north, offered him a 
 sum of money along with a tract of forest lands in 
 western Beerbhoom, on condition of his guarding 
 the passes. The saint replied that he was willing 
 to live on the frontier, but that he wanted only as 
 much forest as would furnish sticks for his fire, and 
 only land enough for a tank in which to perform his 
 ablutions.^^* 
 
 In the old records the frontier police appear as 
 hired soldiers rather than as landholders. Their 
 tenure did not amount to a proprietary right in 
 the border lands, but only to a right to receive a 
 
 ^^' Decision of the High Court (Calcutta) in re Man Ranjan 
 Singh V. Raja Lilanand Singh. 
 
 121 Referred to in a Persian Ruidad of Ujja Alia Khan, dated I3lh 
 June 1848. B. R. R, 
 
THE FRONTIER POLICE. 325 
 
 certain allowance, to be collected by themselves out 
 of the rent of those lands ; and vernacular docu- 
 ments speak of them as the deputies'^^^ of the rajah, 
 not as his fief-holders. Their appointment, how- 
 ever, had a strong tendency to become hereditary ; 
 and Mr. Keating, reporting on them in 1790, states 
 that ' all the existing gkat-wals have succeeded by 
 lineal descent.' ^^* On being called upon, however, 
 to state their rights, only two came forward ; and 
 these claimed upon a tenure"' which the courts, 
 following the Mohammedan law, had expressly de- 
 clared not to be hereditary, and one in which long 
 possession cannot make good the original defect in 
 title. The British Government, however, always 
 willing to construe favourably prescriptive rights, 
 while divesting the frontier police of their duties, 
 practically allowed them to remain in possession of 
 their privileges, though it was not till 18 14 that the 
 Legislature defined their rights.^-* 
 
 How this border force discharged its duties 
 under native rule. Chapter ii, has disclosed. When 
 the English assumed charge of the district, they 
 found the hill-men free to roam in and out of it at 
 pleasure, and during the Company's first attempts 
 at internal administration the frontier police appear 
 upon the scene only twice ; in the one instance as 
 
 '" E. D. Darkhwast of Lochand Narayan Deo. B. R. R. 
 
 "'^ Report, dated i8th November 1790. B. R. R. 
 
 ^^' The tenure of Jaghir. 
 
 '2' Regulation xxix. of 18 14. 'A Regulation for the Settlement of 
 certain Mahals in the district of Beerbhoom, usually denominated 
 the Ghaut-wauUee Mehals.' High Court Rulings, etc. 
 
326 THE ANNALS UF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 fugitives from the banditti, in the other as their 
 leaders. 
 
 The internal police was administered upon a 
 similar plan, and with similar results. The rajah 
 divided his territory into sections of very irregular 
 size, and placed each under the care of a native 
 officer, whose chief business, judging from the re- 
 cords, was to assist the land-stewards in collecting 
 the rents. To this end he had a certain number of 
 troopers and foot soldiers under him, the main body 
 of whom lived in quarters around his house; and 
 the little cantonment thus formed passed under the 
 name of a thana, and was sometimes dignified with 
 a fort. The chief officer, or thanadar, was sup- 
 ported either by an assignment on the rents or by 
 an allotment of land ; in the former case he paid his 
 subordinates in wages, in the latter by small rent- 
 free farms. The thanadar's office, like that of the 
 ghat-wals, had a tendency to become hereditary, 
 but not to the same extent, as the rajah had him 
 more under his eye ; and however long the post 
 might have been in a family, a succession only took 
 place by a new and formal appointment. Besides 
 the establishment at the sectional headquarters — 
 the thana — one or more subordinates were stationed 
 in each important village to assist in collecting the 
 rents, to distrain the goods of defaulters, and to see 
 that the ryots did not desert their lands. In unim- 
 portant hamlets these officials collected the rents 
 themselves, and everywhere they seemed to have. 
 been specially charged with the excise and other 
 
THE FISCAL POLICE. 327 
 
 miscellaneous imposts which the rajah levied. In 
 some districts they were paid direct from the thana ; 
 in others, as in Beerbhoom and Bishenpore, where 
 the rajahs had maintained a quasi independence, 
 and where Hindu customs had successfully with- 
 stood Moslem centralization, these village officials 
 enjoyed small grants of rent-free land. They in 
 fact stepped into the places of the hereditary vil- 
 lage watch of ancient Hindu times, and in a 
 purely Hindu principality like Bishenpore some- 
 times lineally represented the original families. 
 But not even in Bishenpore was their office 
 acknowledged to be hereditary, and on each suc- 
 cession a new appointment issued from the thana- 
 dar, as on each succession of a thanadar a new 
 appointment issued from the rajah. 
 
 It will be objected that I am describing revenue 
 officers, not policemen. The objection is perfectly 
 sound ; nevertheless my description is a faithful one 
 of the only police then known. Under a vigorous 
 landholder the thanadar 's duties were chiefly fiscal ; 
 under an inert or a corrupt one he became a mere 
 plunderer. The landholder, however, was respon- 
 sible for the security of Government property pass- 
 ing through his district, and the thanadars were 
 responsible to the landholder, so that they did in 
 some respect perform the duties of a police. This 
 liability gave rise to a popular notion that they were 
 practically responsible for all property within their 
 jurisdiction ; but however the fact may originally 
 have stood, the responsibility had been practically 
 
328 TUB ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 confined to Government property under recent Mus- 
 sulman rule. Lord Cornwallis endeavoured, indeed, 
 to extend this liability to depredations on private 
 property, but he failed.^^' Public opinion declared 
 against the proceeding; the Calcutta Gazette dis- 
 tinctly states that practically the responsibility was 
 a dead letter ; and while Mr. Keating assured the 
 Government that robberies took place every day, 
 he attempted on only three occasions to enforce the 
 responsibility. On two of these occasions the land- 
 holder was compelled to make good the plunder of 
 Government treasure-parties, on the third to find 
 and restore certain articles belonging to the Com- 
 pany's investment which had been stolen ; but on 
 not a single occasion was the responsibility enforced 
 on behalf of private sufferers. 
 
 Nevertheless the province had paid annually the 
 enormous sum of ;^ 360,000 for a police. It can 
 never be too distinctly remembered that the treaty 
 of 1765 only entrusted the fiscal administration to 
 the Company, leaving criminal justice and the police 
 to the Nawab, who received from our treasury 
 ;^r8o,ooo for personal expenses, and ;^36o,ooo for 
 the maintenance of the courts and a sufficient 
 establishment of police."" Until 1790 the Nawab 
 retained the style and the responsibilities of chief 
 magistrate. He left the duties wholly unperformed. 
 Between 1 765 and 1 769 he did not even pretend to 
 
 '^' Even this attempt only applied to ghat-wals, not to thanadars. 
 Letter from Board of Revenue to the Collector, May 1789. 
 
 180 'Agreement between the Nabob Nudjum al Dowla and the 
 Company,' dated Fort- William. 30th September 1765. 
 
THE CRIMINAL ADMINISTRATION. 329 
 
 do what he had promised : the regular course of 
 justice was at a stand ; ' but every man exercised it 
 who had the power of compelHng others to submit 
 to his decision.'"^ Warren Hastings insisted that 
 the Nawab should at least make some show of 
 doing what he was paid for. In 1772, a Supreme 
 Criminal Court was accordingly established in Cal- 
 cutta, with a subordinate tribunal in each district ; 
 but in 1775 the Supreme Criminal Court returned 
 to Moorshedabad, the residence of the Nawab, and 
 continued there till 1790. The tainted air of the 
 Nawab's ante-chambers stifled justice of any sort ; 
 eunuchs and concubines devoured the funds that 
 should have provided security of person and pro- 
 perty for the poor; and from 1775 to 1790 the 
 whole criminal administration consisted in the sale 
 of judicial places to uneducated and depraved 
 Mussulmans, who looked upon a court as a secure 
 den for extortion. 
 
 The Company had no legal right to interfere. 
 Its duty, as fixed by treaty, was to collect the 
 revenue ; and the same authority that invested it 
 with fiscal functions, had also appointed the Nawab 
 to the criminal administration. Warren Hastings, 
 with his usual determination to see justice done, 
 temporarily usurped the right of supervising the 
 Nawab's courts, but he speedily drew back ; nor did 
 Lord Cornwallis venture to touch this most clamant 
 evil during the first four years of his rule. The 
 Company not having the power to compel the 
 
 "I Letter from the President and Council to the Court of Directors. 
 
330 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Nawab to keep up the regular police (Foujdari 
 establishment), did the best it could with the fiscal 
 police (Thanadari establishment), and soon the 
 very existence of the regular Foujdari police was 
 forgotten. 
 
 But in 1790 Lord Cornwallis attacked this last 
 stronghold of Mussulman misrule/'^ He stripped 
 the Nawab of his grossly abused judicial authority, 
 contemptuously leaving his allowances as they then 
 stood, and established a Supreme Criminal Court 
 in Calcutta, presided over by the Governor-General 
 and Council, and four Courts of Circuit, with two 
 experienced English officers at the head of each. 
 Offences too petty for these courts came under the 
 cognizance of the English magistrate of the district. 
 A Supreme Court in Calcutta supervised the whole. 
 The Muhammadan criminal code, with certain mer- 
 ciful modifications, continued to be the law of the 
 land, and learned Mussulmans sat as assessors to 
 explain its provisions to the presiding magistrate 
 or judge. 
 
 The new courts at first tried to conduct the 
 criminal administration through the agency of the 
 fiscal (?'. e. Thanadari) police. It formed, as we have 
 seen, the only police then existing, and it proved 
 wholly incompetent for the duties now laid upon it. 
 Indeed, it was doubtful whether the Government 
 had any right to saddle the fiscal police with these 
 new functions, and it soon became evident that the 
 collectors had no power to exact their performance. 
 
 1S3 Judicial Regulation xxvi. of 179a 
 
A REGULAR POLICE FORMED. 331 
 
 The Thanadars appear as frequently on the side of 
 the banditti as on that of the authorities. Even 
 the strong - minded Mr. Keating could not work 
 with them. They were not, in fact, his servants. 
 He did not appoint them ; he could not dismiss 
 them ; he could not even punish them without ' a 
 regular process before the magistrate,' and he 
 bitterly complains that there are ' no written regu- 
 lations for their general conduct, or to limit the 
 boundaries of their authority. '^^* After two years 
 of vexation, Lord Cornwallis saw that it was 
 useless to give courts without providing them 
 with executive machinery, and determined to con- 
 struct a regular force out of the fiscal police. He 
 divided the Thanadari establishment into two 
 classes, — those who were attached to the Thana 
 and received wages, and those who were stationed 
 in the villages and paid by grants of rent-free land. 
 The first class he took entirely out of the land- 
 holders' hands, paid it from the treasury, and sub- 
 jected it directly to the magistrate's control. But 
 two excellent reasons existed for leaving the second 
 class alone. In the first place, the fiscal village 
 police in districts such as Beerbhoom and Bishen- 
 pore, had its roots deep in the national institutions 
 of the Hindus, and Lord Cornwallis strove in every 
 matter to adapt national institutions to modern 
 necessities. They formed a genuine although 
 somewhat transformed relic of the ancient village 
 
 '" To John White and Thomas Brooke, Esqs., Judges of the 
 Court of Circuit, dated 7th August 1791. B. J. R. 
 
332 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 watch, and as such he was anxious that they should 
 stand. In the second place, they would cost 
 Government less than an equally numerous body 
 of men. Their pay consisted of rent, that is, in 
 holding a little farm without paying any rent. This 
 rent was politically made up of two parts, one of 
 which, the land-tax, belonged to Government ; and 
 the other, the surplus between the land-tax and the 
 actual rent, to the landholder. In districts which 
 had been brought directly under Mussulman control, 
 where the so-called landholder^'* was merely the 
 tax-gatherer, the legal surplus amounted to only 
 ten per cent. ; but in districts that had maintained 
 or acquired a semi-independence, where the land- 
 holder was a real seigneur paying only a tribute 
 like the Rajahs of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore, the 
 surplus greatly exceeded the nominal land-tax. It 
 was in this latter class of districts that the village 
 watch chiefly flourished ; and Lord Cornwallis very 
 wisely, as it seemed then, continued a force to 
 whose support Government contributed in so small 
 degree. ^'^ The landholders retained the right of 
 appointing them, but they were subjected to a 
 certain slight supervision by the regular police, and 
 hence indirectly by the English head of the district. 
 From the year 1792 these two classes of police 
 
 1'* Zamindar. 
 
 135 Moreover, the order of the 13th October 1790 rendered the 
 legality of increasing the permanently fixed land-tax by annexing the 
 village-police-lands doubtful ; the inexpediency of so doing it ren- 
 dered certain. As to the law, cf. Decision of the Privy Council in 
 re Joykissen Mookerjee v. the Collector of East Burdwan. 
 
THE VILLAGE WATCH. 333 
 
 have existed side by side in Bengal : a regular force 
 founded on the old Thana establishments, and paid 
 in money, and an irregular force, the representatives 
 of the old village watch, supported by small grants 
 of rent-free land. Each has its defects, but the 
 imperfections of the first class are accidental, and 
 easily susceptible of remedy. The defects of the 
 second are inherent in the system, and can be got 
 rid of only by changing the system itself. In the 
 first place, the village watch is now most unequally 
 distributed. Railways and roads have diverted 
 industry and population from their ancient centres 
 into new channels, while the police have remained 
 immoveable ; so that an old deserted village is some- 
 times pestered with three or four watchmen, while 
 a new and crowded mart has not a single one. In 
 the second place, the village watchman is the ser- 
 vant of two masters : practically, the landholder has 
 the use of him during the day, while all that the 
 magistrate can get out of him are a few sleepy 
 rounds at night. Third, as he owes his appoint- 
 ment to the landholder, and is subject to his direct 
 control, he gives just such information to the magis- 
 trate as he thinks will please his principal master. 
 Fourth, the magistrate has no power to fine him 
 departmentally. If he sleeps at his post he must 
 be cited before a court, witnesses must be sum- 
 moned from great distances, a public prosecutor 
 must attend, and the travesty of justice ends in a 
 shilling fine. Fifth, nor has the magistrate any 
 power to promote or reward, no superior grades 
 
334 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 existing, and the whole force being in fact on one 
 dead level of inefficiency. Some of these defects in 
 the constitution of the rural police result from im- 
 provements in other branches of the administration, 
 and the national prosperity to which those improve- 
 ments have given rise. Others are as old as the 
 system itself We find the magistrates complain- 
 ing in 1 79 1 that they could not punish the police 
 departmentally, and that every village watchman 
 could enjoy the dignity without running any of the 
 risks of a State trial. ^^^ 
 
 The sufferings which this defective system of 
 rural police has inflicted on Bengal, would long ago 
 have been put an end to had the rural records been 
 studied. The Indian historian finds that in the 
 ancient Hindu period each village had an heredi- 
 tary watchman to protect its property and to main- 
 tain the peace. The Indian official finds a police- 
 man attached to a village, and immediately sets him 
 down as the old Hindu watchman, and as such 
 hesitates to interfere with his office. But the re- 
 cords prove that the village watchman whom the 
 Mussulmans bequeathed to us, had at best but a 
 faint connection with the primitive ante-type, and 
 in some districts no connection at all. He was not 
 hereditary ; he held his office from, and was amen- 
 able to, the landholder, not to the village community. 
 His duties were to a large extent fiscal, and as an 
 officer of criminal justice he acted under the direct 
 
 136 Written in 1855, since which year a reform has been proposed, 
 but whether carried put I am at present unable to ascertain. 
 
ITS DEFECTS. 335 
 
 control of a regular establishment — the Foujdari — 
 with the Mussulman magistrate at its head. Be- 
 tween 1765 and 1790 the Nawab, who still retained 
 the criminal administration of the province, per- 
 mitted the regular Foujdari establishment to 
 dwindle away; and the Company, having in its 
 fiscal capacity the control of the village watchmen, 
 attempted to saddle them with the duties of a 
 criminal police. These attempts signally failed ; 
 but the village watch survives, in spite of three- 
 quarters of a century of bribery, extortion, and 
 abetment of crime. In this way a creature of Mus- 
 sulman misgovernment comes down to us protected 
 by the sanctions which are very properly accorded 
 to the ancient Hindu institutions of the land. 
 
 The rural police, thus bequeathed to us, form an 
 enormous ragged army who eat up the industry of 
 the province. In Beerbhoom alone there are 8976 
 of them,'*' besides the regular constabulary amount- 
 ing to 370, making a total of 9346 to guard a popu- 
 lation not much, if at all, exceeding one-third of a 
 million."* London, with between three and four 
 millions, has, according to the newspapers, only 
 6500 police. In Beerbhoom, therefore, there is 
 one policeman to every thirty-seven inhabitants ; in 
 London, one policeman to between five and six 
 hundred inhabitants. In London, however, the 
 police constitutes a Force, properly so called ; in 
 
 '^^ Memorandum furnished by the District Superintendent of 
 Police, dated 26th January 1866. 
 
 12^ This number refers only to the Police Jurisdiction ; the popula- 
 tion of the Civil Jurisdiction is estimated at half a million. 
 
336 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Bengal the village watch are a mere mob, wholly 
 ignorant of the esprit de corps, strangers to pro- 
 fessional pride and the official sense of honour 
 which that pride develops, not to be relied upon 
 in any emergency, unwilling to exercise such detec- 
 tive ability as they possess, the plunderers rather 
 than the protectors of the people, and oftener the 
 abettors than the suppressors of crime. 
 
 But even this miserable police proved incon- 
 veniently efficient in those days. The Nawab had 
 allowed the administration of criminal justice to fall 
 into utter disrepair, and the watchman sent in more 
 prisoners than the Courts could dispose of. More 
 than one half the inmates of the jail were suspected 
 persons waiting ' to be sent in chains to the Muham- 
 madan law officer.' In some districts no tribunal 
 existed to try them. They lay in stifling dungeons 
 until a sufficient number accumulated to make it 
 worth while forwarding them under a military 
 escort to Moorshedabad. The infrequency of 
 arrests indefinitely lengthened this period of sus- 
 pense ; and when at last the miserable gang set forth, 
 it was with scarce a rag to cover them from the 
 torrents of the rainy season or the chill damps of 
 the winter night. Staggering under their chains, 
 dropping down on the road from want of food, their 
 flesh torn by jungle briers, and streaming from 
 sword-pricks inflicted by their guards, they reached 
 the seat of justice only to be remanded to prison 
 until the Mussulman judge found leisure and inclina- 
 tion to take up their case," Even the day of trial 
 
MUSSULMAN JAIL DISCIPLINE. 337 
 
 brought no decision : if they were innocent, the 
 presiding officer had to be bribed, or he sent them 
 back to jail to take the chance of fresh evidence 
 turning up ; if they were guilty, he ordered them 
 to prison, but often without mentioning any definite 
 period. Incredible to relate, a large proportion of 
 the felons in the Beerbhoom jail were thus under 
 sentence ' to remain during pleasure,' — a legal for- 
 mula which, translated into honest English, simply 
 meant until the creatures of the court had squeezed 
 the unhappy prisoners' friends to the uttermost 
 farthing. 
 
 The English head of the district was charged 
 with the diet and safe keeping of the prisoners, but 
 here his responsibility ended. What little he could 
 do to mitigate their sufferings he seems to have 
 done, and the records display a very humane super- 
 vision on the part of the Central Government on 
 this point.^'^ The ruinous state of the jail, how- 
 ever, led to cruel precautions against escape; and 
 Lord Cornwallis, when he took up the question of 
 prison reform, found the practice had been ' to keep 
 prisoners in stocks or fetters, or to fasten them 
 down with bamboos, or to shut them up in cells 
 or close apartments at night,' — a proceeding which 
 in a tropical climate amounts in a very short 
 time to sentence of death. 'Not on account of 
 the suit or charge on which they are confined, 
 
 1^' E. D. with regard to jail returns. Letter from the Civil 
 Auditor to the Collector, dated 25th January 1791 ; with regard to 
 diet, Letter from the Accountant-General, 29th December 1790, etc, 
 B. J. R and B. R. R. 
 
 VOL, I, V 
 
338 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 but merely because, from the insecurity of the 
 jails, the jailor had no other means of preventing 
 their escape.'"" 
 
 It was not till 1792 that the Company really 
 took the prison discipline of Bengal into its own 
 hands, and the measure belongs to a series of great 
 reforms on which this volume cannot enter. Nor 
 does it fall within my present scope to describe the 
 tedious and uncertain steps by which an effective 
 system of civil justice was in the following year 
 given to India. It is enough to lay before the 
 reader the actual state of the judicial administration 
 during the first few years after Beerbhoom passed 
 under British rule. Those who have formed their 
 idea of our early administration from the enlightened 
 efforts of Warren Hastings and Sir William Jones 
 towards the formation of Hindu and Mussulman 
 codes, will be somewhat startled when placed face 
 to face with its practical working. 
 
 For the records place beyond doubt that until 
 1793, civil justice was unknown in Bengal. The 
 office of judge formed part of the collector's duties, 
 and the least part. The realization of the revenue 
 and the quelling of the banditti left him neither 
 leisure nor inclination for hearing disputes ; and, as 
 Hastings well expressed it, every one set up as a 
 judge who had the power to enforce his own decrees. 
 A very few statistics with regard to a single district- 
 Beerbhoom — will suffice. At that period the united 
 
 '■"• Letter from G. A. Barlow, Esq., Sub-Secretary to the Govern- 
 ment, dated Council Chamber, the 3d February 1792. B. R. R. 
 
CIVIL JUSTICE, 1790 AND 1864. 339 
 
 district was three times its present size, and con- 
 tained not under a million of inhabitants."^ There 
 was then a single judge who divided his attention 
 among six offices, each of which he deemed more 
 important than his judicial work."^ The united 
 district has since then been partitioned into three, 
 in a single one of which nine courts are con- 
 stantly open for the disposal of civil suits, besides 
 four others which have jurisdiction in causes con- 
 nected with rent or the possession of land."^ 
 Until 1793 the Government allowed no separate 
 expenditure for civil justice within the district ; 
 it now allows more than seven thousand pounds 
 a year."* The total number of suits instituted 
 between 1787, when Beerbhoom passed directly 
 under British rule, and 1793, when the Corn 
 wallis Code introduced a new order of things 
 appears to have been one hundred and twelve, or, 
 on an average, eighteen per annum."' Last year 
 (1864) upwards of four thousand civil causes were 
 instituted, besides miscellaneous orders and peti- 
 
 '*' Mr. Keating estimated the population of Beerbhoom at 
 800,000, and of Bishenpore at 570,000 ; but he admits these were 
 mere guesses. Letter to Board of Revenue, dated nth August 1789. 
 In 1801 it was conjectured to be 1,500,000. — Geography of Hindoostan, 
 p. 29, Calcutta 1838. B. R. R. etc. 
 
 ^^° No cases decided by the Assistant-*Magistrate as Registrar 
 appear in the Records till after 1793. B. J. R. Regulation xiii. of 1793. 
 
 ^*' One District Judge, one Principal Sadar Amin, one Sadar 
 Arain, six Moonsifs ; besides one Collector, one Assistant, and two 
 Deputy- Collectors for the disposal of rent suits. 
 
 -*" Budget Estimate for the District of Beerbhoom, 1864-65. 
 B. R. R. 
 
 ^*^>^eturn furnished to me by the Civil Judge, dated 5th Decem- 
 ber 1865. B. J. R. 
 
340 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 tions. If we consider the innumerable sources of 
 dispute which petite culture, with its minute sub- 
 division of property and multiplicity of tenures, 
 gives rise to, each peasant having his own litde 
 set of rights to maintain, the latter number is by 
 no means excessive, and the former number tells a 
 sorrowful story of complaints unheard and wrongs 
 unredressed. It tells us that, under our first at- 
 tempts to do justice to the people of India, only 
 one man in sixty thousand annually ventured to 
 make use of our courts. Nor was this distrust 
 unfounded ; for of the hundred and twelve hardy 
 suitors who invoked the aid of the courts between 
 1787 and 1792, only sixty-nine had been able to 
 obtain a decree at the end of the last-named year. 
 On the other hand, while 4489 suits were instituted 
 in 1864, 4482 were disposed of ;^" and, practically, 
 judicial arrears are now unknown in Bengal. 
 
 I am tempted to advert for a moment to a 
 charge brought against the native character by 
 two learned historians who have written eloquendy 
 about the Bengali without any personal acquaint- 
 ance with rural Bengal. Mr. Mill and Lord 
 Macaulay have painted the Indian husbandman 
 as a very litigious, slippery fellow ; the former 
 gentleman never having set foot on Indian soil, 
 the latter with such materials before him as come 
 
 '*' Another return, dated 12th December 1865. These numbers 
 represent the whole htigation of the district, respecting both real and 
 personal property, exclusive of suits under Act x. of 1859, which, for 
 the most part, arise from causes peculiar to Bengal, and are tried by 
 special courts. 
 
INDIAN LITIGA TION. 347 
 
 in the way of a Calcutta official.^*' The statistics 
 of rural litigation in England afford no ground of 
 comparison ; for in England only a small section 
 of the community has any rights connected with 
 the soil, and the litigation to which such rights 
 give rise are proportionately few. In Bengal, on 
 the other hand, at least five-sixths of the popula- 
 tion have some connection with land, and are liable 
 to the disputes which naturally spring from it. At 
 the beginning of the century, Buchanan found that 
 in the district of Patna, including the great city of 
 that name, more than a third of the inhabitants 
 were ' gentry,' i.e. landed proprietors, and that 
 95,510 out of a total population of 123,094 made 
 their living entirely by the land. Throughout the 
 whole province of Bahar the proportion was 730,157 
 out of 829,103, inclusive of the great towns, and ex- 
 clusive of the numbers who joined husbandry with 
 trade or handicrafts. The degree of interest which 
 the various classes connected with the land have in 
 the soil varies ; but, generally speaking, three-fourths 
 of the population have sufficient interest in it as 
 to form a legitimate source of differences requiring 
 judicial adjustment. In addition to this fecund 
 source of not unhealthy litigation, it must be re- 
 membered that during the past seventy-five years 
 
 "' The laboured accuracy of Mr. Mill as to facts can only be 
 appreciated by one who has followed his footsteps among the India 
 Office records ; and Lord Macaula/s Indian Essays — for example, 
 that on Warren Hastings — contain hints that he must have derived 
 from the Company's most secret archives. But neither of these 
 great men had an opportunity of studying the rural population of 
 India. 
 
342 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 the pent-up litigation of several centuries has found 
 vent, each class of the people having to discover 
 by actual experiment what are its rights under our 
 Anglo-Indian system of law. 
 
 Let us now examine the result of these various 
 stimulants to litigation. The number of regular 
 suits in Beerbhoom during 1864 amounted, as we 
 have seen, to 4489. The population of the civil 
 jurisdiction exceeded half a million,"* so that in 
 round numbers there is one suit in the year for 
 120 inhabitants. The average duration of life is 
 much shorter in Bengal than in England ; probably 
 nearer to thirty than to forty years. Speaking very 
 generally, therefore, and without laying undue stress 
 on calculations based upon imperfectly ascertained 
 data, it would appear that, of every four of the 
 rural population, three pass through life without a 
 civil suit. 
 
 If we turn from the rural to the general popu- 
 lation of the province, the proportion of litigants 
 is still less. The population is about thirty-five 
 millions ; the total number of civil suits instituted 
 during the year (1864) was 134,393,"' giving a suit 
 to every 260 inhabitants ; so that, assuming the 
 average duration of existence to be thirty-five years, 
 six out of every seven of the Bengali people pass 
 through life without having anything to do with 
 the civil courts. 
 
 "' 514,597 in 1852. Survey Report, p. 43. 
 
 "^ Annual Report of the Administration of the Bengal Presidency' 
 for 1865-66. High Court (Orig. Juris.), 1385; Small Cause Courts, 
 80,906 ; other Civil Courts, 52,103. 
 
A HEALTHY FEATURE. 343 
 
 But, in truth, this litigation is only a healthy 
 and most encouraging result of three-quarters of a 
 century of conscientious government. While those 
 who know very little about the natives of India 
 pronounce them litigious, the magistrates who 
 spend their lives among them have constantly 
 complained that they cannot be induced to seek 
 the assistance of the authorities. For the first time 
 in their history, the people of India are learning to 
 enforce their rights, and to do so not by the bands 
 of clubmen, which are matters of memory with 
 many rural officers, but by the regular process of 
 the courts. That the litigation is beneficial, is 
 proved by the fact that, out of 108,559 original 
 suits, 77,979 were decided in favour of the plain- 
 tiff,^^" besides the vast number which were not 
 prosecuted to judgment in consequence of the de- 
 fendant privately yielding the claim to save further 
 expenses. The habitual enforcement of civil rights 
 is the best possible training for the temperate use 
 of political privileges; and the trust which the 
 natives of India have learned to repose in our 
 judicial system, contrasts strongly with the period 
 — scarcely seventy-five years ago — during which 
 only one in every sixty thousand inhabitants 
 annually ventured to ask the aid of the courts, 
 and only one in a hundred thousand annually 
 obtained it. 
 
 Turning from the quantity to the quality of the 
 
 '*" Annual Report of the Administration of the Bengal Presidency, 
 for 1865-66, p. 8. (Statistics for 1864.) 
 
344 1HE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 justice then administered, a still more painful scene 
 is disclosed. The judges called for or dispensed 
 with evidence according to the leisure they had for 
 the business, postponed proceedings to suit their 
 own convenience, and frequently forgot to take 
 them up again. Many of the exhibits bear no 
 official signature or seal, so that they might be 
 abstracted or inserted by the creatures of the court 
 at pleasure. When a case was put off, a date was sel- 
 dom fixed for calling it again. It therefore resolved 
 itself into a bribing match between the litigants, 
 whether the record-keepers should remind the judge 
 of its existence, and bring it on for further hearing. 
 In this contest the defendant — who, as Sir Henry 
 Strachey showed, was the wrong-doer in ninety- 
 five out of every hundred suits — generally got the 
 better ; for, disgraceful to relate, the order of post- 
 ponement sine die forms the final order in a large 
 proportion of cases. Even when the evidence had 
 been heard, the judge had often no law to guide 
 his decision. The Regulations were irregularly 
 passed, irregularly transmitted to the courts ; and 
 many an old letter from the Central Government 
 alludes to laws which the provincial authorities, in 
 reply, blandly regretted they could not find in their 
 records. If the sole memorial of Lord Cornwallis' 
 reign had been his order for the printing and effectual 
 publication of the Regulations, he would have ranked 
 high as an Indian reformer ; and it is not too much 
 to say that, before his time, a body of substantive 
 law did not exist in a single district court through- 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SUIT, 1772-91. 345 
 
 out Bengal. This, however, did not do so much 
 harm as might be supposed ; for matters were as 
 bad as they could be, independently of the absence 
 of law. The decision practically rested, not with 
 the judge, but with a venal underling, — the decree 
 being written in Persian, a language which not one 
 of the district judges could read. Indeed, until the 
 year 1789, I have been unable to find a single 
 decision of the Beerbhoom court signed or sealed, 
 or even initialled, by the English judge or his 
 registrar. 
 
 But the obtaining of the decree was only the 
 beginning of sorrows. During a quarter of a cen- 
 tury every five years had seen new tribunals erected, 
 and the successful suitor was dragged from one 
 court of appeal to another, till either he or his 
 adversary was ruined. It became, in fact, only 
 a question as to which of the two could hold out 
 longest, as the history of a single case will prove. 
 During the anarchy which preceded the appoint- 
 ment of the Company to the fiscal administration 
 of Bengal, the Rajah of Bishenpore died, leaving 
 two sons. The elder seized an unfair share of the 
 inheritance ; and as no justice, either good or bad, 
 was to be had in those days, the younger submitted. 
 But on the establishment of the Company's courts, 
 the younger son applied to them for redress ; and 
 after weary years of litigation and unstinted bribery, 
 obtained a decree. The elder at once appealed to 
 the council at Moorshedabad. The case turned on 
 the Hindu doctrines of inheritance — doctrines still 
 
346 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 intricate, and at that time kept secret by the priests ; 
 and the judge was an ingenuous stripling of nine- 
 teen,^" with whom ' equity and good conscience ' 
 were supposed to make up for the want of a legal 
 training and a total ignorance of the law. ' Will 
 you believe it,' wrote Hastings, ' that the boys of 
 the service are the sovereigns of the country, under 
 the unmeaning title of supervisors, collectors of the 
 revenue, administrators of justice, and rulers, heavy 
 rulers, of the people ?' From the council at Moor- 
 shedabad the case was transferred to the Board of 
 Revenue in Calcutta, where a new set of parties 
 had to be bribed, but where no final decision could 
 be obtained. A trifling difference about sharing the 
 inheritance had thus been fanned by long litigation 
 into a deadly feud ; and the Rajah of Bishenpore, 
 in a formal petition to Government, designates his 
 only brother as ' the enemy of my life.'^*^ From 
 the Board of Revenue the case went before the 
 Governor-General in Council, who decided that all 
 the previous courts had been in the wrong, and that 
 the brothers were joint sharers of the inheritance. 
 But before this decree was obtained, one brother 
 was a white-haired imbecile prisoner in the debtors' 
 jail ; the other lay impervious to joy or sorrow on 
 his deathbed.^^^ 
 
 Even when the Government prosecuted, the 
 delays were interminable. On the ist December 
 
 '*' Life of Lord Teignmouth, p. 28. 
 
 i°2 CoUectortoBoardof Revenue, dated 1 5th October 1790. B.R.R. 
 153 Acting Collector to Board of Revenue, dated 25th December 
 1791. B. R. R. 
 
THE COMPANY'S FUNCTIONS, 1765-93, 347 
 
 1 79 1, the assistant-collector instituted twelve suits 
 on behalf of the Company; on the 24th July 1792, 
 we find him respectfully representing that in not 
 one of them had a day been yet fixed for the 
 preliminary hearing. ^^* 
 
 Such were our first attempts at the rural govern- 
 ment of Bengal. They do not make a pleasing 
 picture ; but this book, if it is to have any value 
 at all, must speak the truth. Before passing any 
 censure on those early English administrators, how- 
 ever, it is right to understand accurately what the 
 Company undertook to perform. The treaties of 
 1765 vested it with the collection of the revenues, 
 and this function it very efficiently and conscien- 
 tiously discharged. Attached to the collection of 
 the revenue, according to native ideas, was the 
 administration of civil justice. This fact the Com- 
 pany did not realize till 1772 ; and notwithstanding 
 the legislative efforts of Warren Hastings, no reliable 
 system of justice reached the people till 1793. It 
 must be confessed, therefore, that we failed to do 
 our duty in this respect ; but it should not be 
 forgotten that we found no civil tribunals in the 
 country, the ancient judicial machinery having dis- 
 appeared during the anarchy which preceded 1765 ; 
 and that, bad as our first courts were, they were 
 better than none. With the third function of in- 
 ternal government — the administration of criminal 
 
 '•'< C. Oldfield, Esq., to Collector, dated 24th July 1791. Indian 
 officials will think this delay still more extraordinary when they are 
 informed that the cases were resumption suits. B. R. R. 
 
348 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 justice, and the police — the Company had legally 
 nothing to do. This department remained in the 
 hands of the Nawab until 1 790, and practically the 
 English collectors interfered only when crimes of 
 violence reached the point at which they endangered 
 the revenue. 
 
 But the administration of the country was, 
 after all, only a secondary and subsidiary business 
 with the East India Company during the greater 
 part of the period of which I treat ; a function that 
 had been forced upon it, or rather which it had 
 been forced for the sake of self-preservation to 
 undertake, and one which its ablest counsellors 
 long regarded as a source of weakness rather than 
 of strength. Until Lord Cornwallis gave a nobler 
 interpretation to its duties, commerce and money- 
 making continued to be recognised as its chief end, 
 conquest and government only as two important 
 means. Without some examination, therefore, of 
 its dealings and influence as the one great mercan- 
 tile power in the land, our survey of rural Bengal 
 during the second half of the last century would be 
 incomplete. 
 
RURAL MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. 349 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE COMPANY AS A RURAL MANUFACTURER. 
 
 ' I "HE Records disclose the mercantile operations 
 of the Company in full play. It managed 
 its business according to two distinct systems : by 
 covenanted servants who received regular pay, and 
 • invested the money entrusted to them without mak- 
 ing any private profit; and by unsalaried agents, 
 who contracted to supply goods at a certain rate, 
 and might make what they could by the bargain. 
 The first class bore the titles of residents, senior 
 merchants, junior merchants, factors, and sub-factors. 
 Their posts formed the most lucrative in the Com- 
 pany's gift, and attracted its best men, while its 
 political functions were made over, as we have 
 seen, to ' the boys of the service.' Warren Hast- 
 ings himself — the first Anglo-Indian statesman who 
 appreciated the responsibilities of sovereign power 
 — did not venture to render the mercantile subser- 
 vient to the administrative character of his hig'h 
 office. As a legislator his success was partial, but 
 as the chief of a great trading corporation which 
 had to pay an annual dividend, it was complete ; and 
 
350 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 when he left India, the conspicuous monuments of 
 his rule appeared to be, not the administrative 
 reforms which have given him a permanent place 
 in history, but the weaving villages, filatures, and 
 factories which he left in every district of Bengal. 
 The influence exercised upon the people by these 
 centres of rural industry has escaped the historian ; 
 and I believe the present chapter will exhibit the 
 Company's trade in a new and not unsuggestive 
 light. 
 
 Long before the Company deemed it necessary 
 to assume the direct administration of the western 
 principalities, it had covered them with trading con- 
 cerns ; and indeed the peril into which the rajahs' 
 misrule brought the factories, formed one of the • 
 main reasons that induced Lord Cornwallis to take 
 Beerbhoom under his own care. A commercial 
 resident supervised the whole, and three head fac- 
 tories, in conveniently central positions, regulated 
 the operations of twelve other subordinate ones. 
 Silk, cotton cloths, fibres, gums, and lac dye, fur- 
 nished the staple articles of the Beerbhoom invest- 
 ment. Mulberry -growing communes fringed the 
 margin of the great western jungle, and every bend 
 of the Adji on the south, and of the More on the 
 north, disclosed a weaving village. These little 
 industrial colonies dwelt secure amid the disorders 
 of the times, protected not by walls or trained 
 bands, but by the terror of the Company's name. 
 They afforded an asylum for the peaceable crafts- 
 man when the open country was overrun ; and after 
 
INDUSTRIAL SETTLEMENTS FORMED. 351 
 
 the harvest of the year had been gathered in, the 
 husbandman transported thither the crop, with his 
 wife, and oxen, and brazen vessels, careless of what 
 the banditti might do to the empty shell of his mud 
 hovel. Some of these unfortified strongholds grew 
 into important towns ; and as one set of names tell 
 of a time when the country seems to have been 
 divided between robbers and wild beasts, so another, 
 such as Tatti-parah (weaving village), disclose how 
 the artisans and small merchants found protection 
 by clustering together under the Commercial Resi- 
 dent's wing. 
 
 On only two occasions did the banditti venture 
 to attack either the Company's workmen or their 
 work. The first happened by accident ; the second 
 was the act of despair. A train of Government pack- 
 bullocks fell into the hands of robbers while passing 
 through the jungle ; but as the drivers fled, there 
 was no one to say to whom the goods belonged, and 
 they were plundered accordingly. The Commer- 
 cial Resident, indignant above measure, wrote to 
 the collector. The latter replied in an apologetic 
 strain, and the landholder on whose estate the mis- 
 fortune happened thought himself happy in being 
 allowed to purchase pardon by making good the 
 loss. Probably the robbers themselves, on learning 
 their mistake, had surrendered the property, for the 
 identical missing articles were recovered. 
 
 The other occasion proved a more serious one. 
 Mr. Keating had hemmed in the banditti on the 
 south of the Adji ; but thinking the Company's 
 
352 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 name a sufficient protection, had taken no steps to 
 guard the weaving villages on the northern bank. 
 Under ordinary circumstances, his calculation would 
 no doubt have proved correct. But starving men 
 are not to be relied upon ; so one morning the 
 marauders crossed the river and sacked the Com- 
 pany's principal weaving village. An outrage so 
 unprecedented as this was not to be atoned for by 
 apologies on the part of the collector, or by com- 
 pensation from the landholder. About the same 
 time the ancient capital of the district had been 
 stormed, its palaces despoiled, and property a hun- 
 dred times more valuable than a dozen weaving 
 villages destroyed or plundered, without drawing 
 forth any comment from the Government. But 
 now the collector humbled himself before the Com- 
 mercial Resident in vain. The latter laid the 
 matter before Lord Cornwallis, and presently a 
 severe censure from Government taught Mr. Keat- 
 ing that, though the banditti might plunder the dis- 
 trict at pleasure, the Company's work-people must 
 be protected at any cost. 
 
 The sum spent upon the mercantile investment 
 in Beerbhoom varied from ;^45,ooo to ;^65,ooo a 
 year/ The weavers worked upon advances. Every 
 head of a family in a Company's village had an ac- 
 count at the factory, where he attended once a year 
 for the purpose of seeing his account made up, and 
 the value of the goods which he had from time to 
 
 '• These sums have been arrived at by adding up the commercial 
 drafts on the Treasury. B. R. R. 
 
THE COMMERCIAL RESIDENT. 353 
 
 time delivered set ofif against the sums he had re- 
 ceived. The balance was then struck, a new ad- 
 vance generally given, and the account reopened 
 for the ensuing year. 
 
 Mr. Cheap, the Commercial Resident, appears 
 throughout in the light of a very important per- 
 sonage, and one with whom Mr. Keating, although 
 not naturally of a conciliatory turn of mind, did his 
 best to keep on good terms. Of longer standing in 
 the service than the Collector, and less liable to be 
 transferred, the Commercial Resident formed the 
 real head of the district. His gains were unlimited ; 
 for besides his official pay, he carried on an enor- 
 mous business on his own account. We find Mr. 
 Keating complaining that he can barely subsist on 
 his salary ; that the mud tenement in which the col- 
 lectors lived was letting in water, and tumbling down 
 upon his head ; and petitioning in vain for a single 
 rood of land on which to build a house. Mr. Cheap, 
 on the other hand, not only made a fortune, and 
 bequeathed the largest indigo plantations in that part 
 of Bengal, but meanwhile lived sumptuously in a 
 pile of buildings surrounded by artificial lakes and 
 spacious gardens, and defended by a strong wall 
 which gave the Commercial Residency a look less 
 of a private dwelling than of a fortified city. The 
 ruins crown the top of a hill visible for many miles, 
 and cover as large a space as the palaces, pavilions, 
 and mausoleums which the princes of Beerbhoom 
 had erected during two hundred years. 
 
 The Commercial Resident, rather than the Col- 
 VOL. I. z 
 
354 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 lector, wielded the power of the public purse. Mr. 
 Keating possessed patronage only to the amount of 
 ;^3000 per annum, and all valuable appointments in 
 his gift required the confirmation of the Calcutta 
 authorities. But Mr. Cheap, as commercial chief, 
 had from ;£'45,ooo to ;^65,ooo to spend each year on 
 behalf of the Company. The whole industrial classes 
 were in his pay, and in his person Government ap- 
 peared in its most benign aspect. On the Collector 
 devolved the harsh task of levying the taxes ; the 
 Commercial Resident had the pleasant duty of re- 
 distributing them. To the then superstitious Hindu, 
 Mr. Keating was the Company in the form of Siva, 
 a divinity powerful for evil and to be propitiated 
 accordingly ; while Mr. Cheap was the Company in 
 the form of Vishnu, powerful for good, less vene- 
 rated because less feared, but adored, befoved, 
 wheedled, and cheated on every hand. A long un- 
 paid retinue followed him from one factory to 
 another, and as the procession defiled through the 
 hamlets mothers held aloft their children to catch a 
 sight of his palanquin, while the elders bowed low 
 before the Providence from whom they derived their 
 daily bread. Happy was the infant on whom his 
 shadow fell ! For nearly a quarter of a century he 
 remained in his palace at Soorool, a visible type of 
 the wealth, magnificence, and permanence of the 
 great Company ; and an aged man, who still haunts 
 the neighbourhood, tells of feasts which lasted forty 
 days in those now silent and crumbling halls, where 
 his father served, and where he grew up. 
 
AS MA GJSTRA TE AND JUDGE. 355 
 
 Mr. Cheap exercised magisterial powers, and 
 the villagers, to whom an appearance before the 
 Collector, whether as plaintiff or defendant, was 
 equally an object of terror, referred their disputes 
 to the arbitration of the Commercial Resident. 
 Little parties arrived every morning, one bearing 
 a wild beast and expecting the reward, another 
 guarding a captured freebooter,^ a third to request 
 protection against a threatened attack on their vil- 
 lage, a fourth to procure the adjustment of some 
 dispute about their water-courses or landmarks. In 
 such matters the law gave Mr. Cheap no power; 
 but in the absence of efficient courts, public opinion 
 had accorded jurisdiction to any influential person 
 who chose to assume it, and the Commercial Resi- 
 dent's decision was speedy, inexpensive, and usually 
 just. The Residency formed a bright spot in dark 
 places, and the gratitude of the district continued 
 judicial authority to Mr. Cheap and his successors 
 long after the original need for it had ceased. 
 Every landholder in Bengal held his cutcherry, and 
 occasionally did justice between his tenants ; but 
 Mr. Cheap was the justice-general of the district, 
 and Government, wisely recognising the value 
 of such popular tribunals, but at the same time 
 perceiving the necessity for supervising them, 
 has conferred regular magisterial powers on the 
 present resident partner of the firm which Mr. 
 
 ^ On one occasion the Collector had to indent for a military de- 
 tachment, to bring in to headquarters a bandit whom the Commer- 
 cial Resident had arrested by his unarmed influence. 
 
3S6 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Cheap founded nearly three-quarters of a century 
 ago. 
 
 Besides being the channel for investing the 
 Company's money, Mr. Cheap was a great mer- 
 chant and manufacturer on his own account. The 
 privilege of private trade had at one time been 
 cruelly abused. In 1762 it drew forth a bitter 
 letter from Hastings. Lord Clive denounced it in 
 more than one philippic,^ and by his reforms won 
 for himself among the junior writers the title of 
 ' Clive of infamous memory.'* Under Vanslttart's 
 feeble rule it all but suspended the government of 
 the country. The Board of Directors wrote severely 
 to the Governor-General about it in 1773; it was 
 animadverted upon in Parliament In April 1782; 
 and as late as 1 789, notwithstanding repeated pro- 
 hibitions, Lord Cornwallis found it necessary to 
 interdict judges and collectors from being concerned 
 in mercantile houses.* One branch of the service, 
 and only one, had been excepted. The Commercial 
 Residents, having nothing to do with the administra- 
 tion of justice or the collection of the revenue, had 
 less opportunity of turning their official position 
 into a source of extortion or corrupt profits, and it 
 was held that public servants would make better 
 men of business if they had a little of their own to 
 
 ^ Speech in defence of himself in Parliament. Letter to the Court 
 of Directors, dated 30th February 1765. Mill, ii. 235, 236, 4to ed. 
 
 * Letter from John Shore, dated 3d December 1769 ; Life, i. 26. 
 
 ' Letter from the Governor- General in Council to the District 
 Judges, dated 4th March 1789. Circular Order from Board of Re- 
 venue, dated 6th March 1789. B. R. R, 
 
AS A PRIVATE SPECULATOR. 357 
 
 look after. ' You will see,' writes John Shore, ' that 
 we have continued the liberty of private trade to 
 your Commercial Residents and agents. Depend 
 upon it, that the true way to improve your affairs 
 is to make the interests of individuals and of the 
 Company go hand in hand.'^ 
 
 With regard to Mr. Cheap's private enterprises 
 the records are silent. He introduced the cultiva- 
 tion of indigo into the district, improved the manu- 
 facture of sugar by means of apparatus brought 
 from Europe, and established a house which still 
 flourishes, and whose brand bears his initials at the 
 present hour. Something of the old authority of 
 the Commercial Resident yet clings to the firm. 
 The ill-feeling between landlord and tenant that 
 has ruined Eastern Bengal is unknown on their 
 estates, and an order from the resident partner has 
 all the force of a legislative enactment throughout 
 the valley of the Adji. 
 
 The Company, as we have seen, managed its 
 rural manufactures according to two systems : by 
 salaried officers like the Commercial Resident, and 
 by unpaid agents who agreed to supply the invest- 
 ment at given rates. Of the latter class only one 
 specimen existed in Beerbhoom. Mr. Frushard, 
 a Calcutta merchant, had contracted for the supply 
 of silk in Beerbhoom, and built a factory, protected 
 by a moat and ramparts, on the banks of the More. 
 The river then flowed through pathless jungles, 
 
 ' Letter from John Shore to H. Inghs, Esq., dated 9th November 
 1788. 
 
358 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 with here and there a Httle cleared spot, in which 
 the mulberry-growing communes could barely hold 
 their own against -the wild beasts. But the high 
 prices which the Beerbhoom silk fetched tempted 
 them to brave every peril ; and as soon as one 
 hamlet was harried by the banditti or trampled 
 down by wild elephants, another sprang up. The 
 Empress Nur Jehan, during her residence with her 
 first husband in the adjoining district, having taken 
 a fancy for the Beerbhoom fabrics, afterwards set 
 the fashion for them at the imperial court, and in 
 India a fashion lasts for a few centuries. About 
 the year 1786, therefore, Mr. Frushard determined 
 to become a producer of Beerbhoom silk on a large 
 scale ; and by engaging to supply the Company, 
 obtained, through its influence, from the rajah a 
 lease of the jungle lands on the north bank of the 
 More. 
 
 His story makes us feel that we are indeed 
 living in a new age. The trials and difficulties 
 which constantly beset him, with the political neces- 
 sities which regulated his position, are. scarcely 
 intelligible to Anglo-Indians of the present day ; 
 and even the class to which he belongs has been 
 for more than a generation extinct. From the 
 day that ' the adventurer' set foot in the district, 
 he found the whole officials arrayed against him. 
 The natives charged him the highest prices for 
 everything, and the Company allowed him the 
 smallest. A sanguine, irascible man, ignorant of 
 soils, a novice in dealing with the agricultural 
 
'THE adventurer; MR. FRUSHARD. 359 
 
 classes, but full of energy, and firmly believing that 
 a fortune was to be made in a few years, he entered 
 into engagements without calculating the cost, and 
 lived a laborious life with small profit. In the first 
 place, he paid a great deal too much for his land. 
 Jungle tracts, such as Mr. Frushard's, then let for 
 IS. 6d. an acre ; but the rajah halving a monopoly of 
 almost the whole land in the district, managed to 
 obtain 6s. 6d. from the eager Englishman, or at the 
 rate of i6s. for the land really capable of tillage. 
 The ordinary rent of excellent rice land then varied 
 from 7s. to 12s.' Mr. Frushard therefore speedily 
 fell into arrears, and the rajah complained to the 
 collector, employing Mr, Frushard's non-payment 
 as a pretext for being hirhself behind with the land- 
 tax. The collectoi' found himself powerless to touch 
 the defaulter. He could not distrain the factory 
 lands, or take out execution against its stock-in- 
 trade, for such a step would interfere with the 
 regular supply of the silk investment ; and the 
 presumption of doing a native justice at the ex- 
 pense of disarranging the mercantile operations of 
 the Company, was a thing unheard of in those 
 days. Mr. Keating, furious at ' the adventurer,' but 
 afraid to take any step that would bring down upon 
 his own head the wrath of the Board of Trade, 
 poured forth his complaints to the Board of Revenue. 
 He stated that, while the factory property was thus 
 
 ^ Old Purgunnah Nerriks and papers furnished by the Court of 
 Wards' Manager of the Hetumpore estates. Also Collectorate Ner- 
 riks. B. R, R. 
 
36o THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 protected from attachment, ' the adventurer' secured 
 his person from arrest by living beyond his juris- 
 diction, and that, in short, he had no means of 
 reaching ' that pai-khast ryot, Mr. Frushard.' Nor 
 was the latter gentleman less clamant. His case 
 even reached the Court of Directors, and we find 
 Lord Cornwallis writing of him as one that deserves 
 special indulgence in 1787.^ The burden of all his 
 petitions was, that the Government should use its 
 influence with the rajah to procure a remission of 
 his rent ; a delicate task even for a despotic govern- 
 ment to undertake. At length, in 1 790, he declares 
 himself wearied out, and makes one final appeal for 
 relief He had taken the land, he says, at an ex- 
 orbitant rent ; to this rent he had added the interest 
 on the capital by which he had brought in the land 
 from jungle ; he had suffered heavy losses from 
 floods ; his filature had been at work during four 
 years, but it had not begun to pay ; in the past 
 year (1789) he had indeed cleared the paltry sum 
 of ^200 as a return for all his capital, but during 
 the current year (1790) he would not be able to 
 make both ends meet. ' In a word, although for 
 these five years forbearing from any place of public 
 resort, and living almost in retirement, here I am, 
 after a ten years' absence from home, with no hope 
 to return, and with barely the means to live.'* 
 
 It was only those who drew the prizes in the 
 
 ' Letter from the Bengal Council to the Court of Directors, dated 
 27th July 1787, para. 34. I. O. R. 
 
 » Letter, the Honourable Charles Stuart, P. and M. B. R., dated 
 4th June 1790. B. R. R. 
 
HTS DIFFICVLTTES AND TRIALS. 361 
 
 lottery of our early Indian commerce who appeared 
 before the English public. But no idea can be 
 further from the truth than the belief that to go 
 out to India in the old time as a merchant was 
 synonymous with making a fortune. Those who 
 drew the blanks never came home to tell the tale. 
 The records disclose unsuccessful speculators like 
 Mr. Frushard in every district of Bengal, struggling 
 on against usury, sickness, heat, and malaria, rigidly 
 excluded from the society of their official country- 
 men, and unable to afford those necessary luxuries 
 which alone render existence in India tolerable to 
 a native of the temperate zone. 
 
 It is fair to state, that while the district officers, 
 and especially Mr. Keating, thwarted the unhappy 
 Superintendent of Filatures at every turn, the higher 
 authorities looked upon him as an unavoidable evil, 
 and rather favoured him than otherwise. At length, 
 in 1 79 1, Lord Cornwallis, fearing to lose his services 
 altogether, commanded that all his past arrears 
 should be forgiven ; that for the future his rent 
 should be reduced by nearly a half ; and that the 
 collector should deduct whatever these sums came 
 to from the land-tax payable by the rajah.^" For 
 the agency system had been found to yield larger 
 profits to the Company than the more imposing 
 operations of the Commercial Resident. It was 
 conducted partly with the speculator's private capital, 
 partly with money advanced by the Board of Trade. 
 
 '" Forwarded with the Board of Revenue's letter, dated i8th July 
 1791, and previous correspondence. B. R. R. 
 
362 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL.. 
 
 The Company ran no risk. If the season proved 
 a bad one the agent suffered, and the factory, built 
 at his expense, afforded a material guarantee if he 
 failed to perform his contract. 
 
 Mr. Frushard, being thus relieved from the 
 exorbitant rent he had hastily agreed to, became 
 a permanent resident in Beerbhoom, and soon a 
 very important one. A pushing Englishman, with 
 ^15,000" a year to spend on behalf of the Com- 
 pany, and as much more as his credit could supply 
 on his own account, and connected with the Govern- 
 ment in a degree that his servants were likely to 
 exaggerate, he had already acquired great influence 
 among the rude jungle-communes. The collector's 
 jurisdiction practically ended on the south side of 
 the More. All beyond was forest and waste, and 
 its scattered inhabitants had to protect themselves 
 as best they could. In this uncared-for territory 
 the presence of an energetic mercantile Englishman 
 soon made itself felt in spite of official discourage- 
 ment. He became their magistrate and judge, 
 arrested robbers, freed many a village from tigers, 
 and drove the margin of cultivation deep into the 
 forest. 
 
 All this was as wormwood to Mr. Keating, It 
 seemed to him that a non-official Englishman was 
 a dangerous animal in a district : he had conscien- 
 tiously tried to prevent Mr. Frushard rising when 
 he was down ; and now that prosperity had dawned 
 
 ^1 This sum has been arrived at by adding up the treasury drafts 
 B. R. R. 
 
HIS ULTIMATE TRIUMPH. 363 
 
 on him, he tried to render him as uncomfortable 
 as possible. The records prove that no protection 
 was afforded to him from the district headquarters. 
 The Commercial Resident could order out at plea- 
 sure a detachment of soldiers to guard his weaving 
 villages, but the most that Mr. Frushard ventured 
 to ask for was a few sepoys to convey to Soorie 
 the bandits whom he had captured and imprisoned 
 in his factory. ^^ Moreover, Mr. Cheap's office com- 
 pelled the cultivators to sow what crops he wanted, 
 and he thus obtained his raw materials without having 
 to buy land and farm it himself. Mr. Frushard, on 
 the other hand, had to grow his mulberry bushes 
 on his own fields, and by means of hired labourers 
 (nij-abad), then a costly and troublesome method. 
 
 Mr. Frushard's assumption of judicial powers 
 formed an agreeably permanent source of recrimina- 
 tion, maintained with equal spirit by the collector 
 and himself. The Board of Revenue failed to still 
 the clamour ; the Court of Circuit found itself 
 equally powerless ; and the feud, which a little 
 mutual courtesy might have turned into a warm 
 friendship, at length went up for decision by the 
 Governor- General himself. Mr. Frushard com- 
 plained that the collector, by vexatious arrests, 
 dragged off his head-men ' at the most critical junc- 
 ture of the year,' and rendered it impossible for him 
 to fulfil the Company's contracts. ^^ The collector 
 
 '^ Military Correspondence, p. 24, etc. B. R. li. 
 ^' Letter to the Judges of the Circuit Court, dated 17th May 1795, 
 etc. B. R. R. 
 
364 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 retaliated by charging Mr. Frushard with ' opposi- 
 tion to the authority of his court,' and with turning 
 his factory into an asylum for criminals fleeing from 
 justice. Thus the two pass away from the records 
 of the period of which I treat, fighting to the last ; 
 no unfit types of the English adventurer and the 
 average official of those days. 
 
 I am tempted to diverge for a moment into a 
 description of the character and legal status of the 
 early English settlers in Bengal. The materials 
 which have accumulated for such an account during 
 four years' researches in the records, are necessarily 
 very great. But I have steadily endeavoured to 
 keep in mind that this book is not about the English 
 in India, whether official or non-official, but about 
 the natives. It must suffice, therefore, to state 
 that the pioneers of independent British enterprise 
 in Bengal were of two kinds : ' interlopers,' who 
 came out in spite of the Company's prohibition, 
 and trusted to their connections, or to bribery, or 
 to appeals ad misericordiam, for a sort of con- 
 temptuous leave to remain ; and ' adventurers,' 
 men of education, energy, and often of considerable 
 capital, who had obtained the sanction of the Court 
 of Directors before starting from England. Both 
 classes were unwelcome to the local officers, and 
 for two good reasons. The rural courts had no 
 jurisdiction over the British-born subject ; and even 
 when the latter bound himself to be subject to 
 them, as all ' adventurers' had to do before leaving 
 Calcutta, it was found that practically the country 
 
LEGAL STATUS OF ' TUB ADVENTURER: 365 
 
 tribunals were powerless. The ' adventurer' might 
 secure his factory from attachment by taking a 
 contract for the Company's investment, and his 
 person from arrest by living out of the district, or 
 in Calcutta. This was precisely what Mr. Frushard 
 did, and it does not appear that the rajah once 
 thought of reaching him by means of the costly, 
 and to a native mysterious, machinery afforded by 
 the Presidency Courts. The second ground of 
 objection to British settlers at that period was that 
 somehow Englishmen require and exact a much 
 higher class of administration than satisfies the 
 natives of India, or than the Company was then 
 willing to give. Even at the present day, the 
 localities in which the English element chiefly 
 abounds, obtain a disproportionately large share of 
 the talent of the service ; and many a collector 
 who has administered a snug old-fashioned Bengali 
 district for years, without attracting either praise or 
 blame, publicly breaks down if called upon to deal 
 with the questions to which English energy and 
 English capital in India give rise. 
 
 This, however, furnishes a very strong reason 
 why English settlers should now be welcome in 
 Bengal. They force the Government to do its 
 work well, and there cannot be a doubt that from 
 the beginning the effect of English commerce has 
 been beneficial to the people. The presence of 
 a man like Mr. Cheap in a district made up in no 
 small degree for the defects of the regular admini- 
 stration, and the necessity of protecting his com- 
 
366 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 merce put some limit to the general insecurity of 
 property that then prevailed. Another practical 
 benefit of the Company's trade was, that very little 
 of the revenue went out of the district. Under 
 Mussulman rule the whole had been swept off to 
 Moorshedabad ; under the Company, nearly two- 
 thirds were returned directly to the local circulation, 
 in purchase of the staples of the district. In due 
 time private English enterprise stepped into the 
 place of the Company's trade ; and though the 
 surplus revenue now goes to Calcutta for the im- 
 perial expenses, planters and produce -merchants 
 pour an unfailing stream of capital into rural 
 Bengal. 
 
 The benefits which Mr. Cheap conferred upon a 
 large scale, Mr. Frushard repeated on a smaller one. 
 He spread a ring of cultivation and prosperity round 
 his factory, and soon founded little tributary filatures 
 throughout the whole north-eastern jungle of Beer- 
 bhoom. He seems to have been a very typical 
 Englishman — too sanguine to be prudent at first, 
 and too insular to sympathize with native ways, but 
 eventually settling down into an experienced English 
 planter, with that rough, paternal liking which almost 
 every Englishman in a Bengal district sooner or 
 later gets for the simple people among whom he 
 lives. His factory, rebuilt several times, now forms 
 the most imposing mercantile edifice in Beerbhoom. 
 It is charmingly situated on a rising ground on the 
 bank of the More, defended from the river by colossal 
 buttresses, and surrounded by a high and many-angled 
 
ENGLISH ENTERPRISE, 1789 AND 1866. 367 
 
 wall, enclosing a space large enough for a little 
 town. The remnant of its ancient library still bears 
 witness to a fair degree of mental culture on the 
 part of its ancient possessors, particularly an editio 
 princeps of Gibbon, six noble quartos, over whose 
 pages, let us hope, the isolated ' adventurer' often 
 forgot his squabbles with the collector and the 
 floods that threatened his mulberry fields. His 
 successors now employ two thousand four hundred 
 artisans for the single process of winding off the 
 cocoons ; and if to these be added the unnumbered 
 multitudes of mulberry - growers and silkworm- 
 breeders, with their families, it may be calculated 
 that the factory gives bread to fifteen thousand 
 persons. Its annual outlay averages ;^7 2,000, or 
 nearly half as much again as the whole investment 
 of the Commercial Resident in bygone days, and 
 the yearly lvalue of the general silk manufactures of 
 the district exceeds _,/■ 160,000 Sterling.'* It must be 
 remembered that this is only one of many staples. 
 Besides Mr. Frushard's successors on the More, 
 there are Mr. Cheap's successors on the Adji, with 
 smaller factories scattered up and down ; and be- 
 sides silk, the district produces indigo, lac-dye, iron, 
 fibres, and oil-seeds to an enormous value, not to 
 speak of the large annual exportation of grain, — a 
 branch of its commerce which still remains in native 
 hands. It is this influx of English capital that has 
 chiefly given employment to the increased inhabit- 
 
 " Answers to questions furnished to me by the resident partner 
 of the firm. A cultivator lives well on ^8 a year. 
 
368 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 ants, whom long-continued security to person and 
 property has developed. Rural Bengal has ceased to 
 depend for its subsistence entirely on the land ; and 
 so, although the quantity of land stands still, the 
 population may with safety multiply. Nor is it too 
 much to say, that independent British enterprise, 
 once so hated and suspected by the Company's ser- 
 vants, has now rendered it possible to give good 
 government to India, without intensifying the 
 struggle for life. 
 
 In forming an estimate of the manner in which 
 the Company discharged its functions, therefore, it 
 is necessary to keep in mind what it understood 
 these functions to be. Until 1790, its avowed prin- 
 cipal business was commerce, and this it accom- 
 plished excellently well. Its secondary business was 
 the collection of the revenue, in order to yield a 
 fund with which to trade ; and in this, too, it dis- 
 played great energy and skill. Its third duty 
 was the administration of justice ; but seven years 
 (1765-72) elapsed before it realized that this per- 
 tained to it at all, and during twenty-one years more 
 (1772-93) its rural courts failed to bring justice 
 home to the people. For the state of the criminal 
 administration and the police it was not responsible, 
 either according to treaty or in fact, until 1 790; 
 
THE GROWTH OF G0VERNMEN2\ 369 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 T HAVE now examined the surface of rural society 
 in Bengal during the second half of the last 
 century, and here the present volume must end. 
 The picture will probably be displeasing to that 
 large hero-worshipping section of my countrymen 
 who have learned to believe that two great men — 
 Clive and Hastings — suddenly transformed the 
 Company from a trading association into a sove- 
 reign power. Clive did indeed win for the Com- 
 pany that power ; but neither he nor his masters 
 knew what he had won. Warren Hastings disclosed 
 a deeper sense of the responsibilities of empire. 
 He perceived that in government two elements 
 have to be considered : the governed as well as 
 the governors ; and the first years of his rule are, 
 from a legislative point of view, the most brilliant 
 episode in the history of the English in India. But 
 Hastings had not the power to carry out what 
 he devised, and the India Office records of that 
 period are a narrative of good intentions rather than 
 of actual reforms — an Utopia which, while full of 
 ideas that their author never was able to give 
 
 effect to, fails to show what he really accomplished. 
 VOL. I. 2 A 
 
370 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Yet these records form the sole materials from 
 which Indian history has hitherto been written. 
 Clive and Warren Hastings both accomplished 
 great things with small means. But the dispropor- 
 tion between the means and the end was infinitely 
 greater in the case of Hastings than in that of Clive ; 
 for many generals have vanquished great armies 
 with little ones, but Warren Hastings alone, in the 
 history of conquerors, set about honestly governing 
 thirty millions of people by means of a few mer- 
 cantile clerks. 
 
 In Lord Cornwallis centred that happy union 
 of great qualities with the good gifts of fortune 
 necessary for an English statesman of the highest 
 class. His rank enabled him to demand his own 
 terms from the Company ; and he turned a deaf ear 
 to all overtures, until it consented to entrust him 
 with local sovereign powers according to law, as 
 well as in fact. Had Warren Hastings possessed 
 these powers, the reforms of 1790-93 would have 
 been ante-dated twenty years. But in addition to 
 his greater freedom from control, Lord Cornwallis 
 found an able school of Indian statesmen whom 
 Hastings had laboriously trained up, only to be 
 parted from when they reached their prime, — a 
 school represented by Rous in England and by 
 Shore in Bengal. Into the brilliant future which then 
 dawned for India I am not permitted to enter ; nor 
 am I careful to answer those who think it unfair to 
 delineate the old dark days, without giving so much 
 as a glimpse at the bright period which succeeded. 
 
RIGHTS STILL UNASCERTAINED. 371 
 
 I have depicted the state of rural Bengal when it 
 passed into our hands ; and most educated English- 
 men know sufficient of its present condition to have 
 some perception of the difference. At a future 
 period it may be my delightful duty to fill in the 
 details of the contrast ; but meanwhile, to any one 
 who questions the benefits of British rule, espe- 
 cially if he be a native of India, I can only say. Si 
 monumentum quceris, circumspice. 
 
 For, meanwhile, the Indian annalist has a much 
 more urgent work in hand than to sound the praises 
 of the English governors. The rights of the 
 governed are still unascertained. We are con- 
 scientiously striving to rule according to native 
 usages and tenures ; but no one can pronounce with 
 certainty as to what these usages and tenures are. 
 As late as 1859 the whole land-law of Bengal under- 
 went revision, important changes being given effect 
 to, that plunged the province into a paroxysm of 
 litigation. In 1865, after the new system had been 
 at work for five years, the fifteen judges of the 
 Supreme Court met together definitively to interpret 
 its provisions ; and in order to do so, they found 
 themselves compelled to enter into questions of 
 the most recondite history. Several of their judg- 
 ments were antiquarian discussions rather than 
 declarations of the written law ; and however sound 
 and beneficial their decision has proved, antiquarian 
 researches, when they travel out of the statute book 
 into the domain of unascertained history, form a 
 very dangerous ground for judges to enter upon. 
 
372 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 It is a work which ought to be done to their 
 hands. 
 
 Several able men have already endeavoured to 
 perform this task. One class has hoped to discover 
 the rights of the people in the ancient Hindu code. 
 But the doctrines of Manu or Yajnavalkya bear 
 about the same relation to the present land-law of 
 Bengal, that the Codex Theodosianus does to the 
 present land-law of Turkey. Another class arguing 
 from the fact that Bengal, although Hindu at bottom, 
 had long been subjected to Mussulman rule, has 
 sought for an elucidation of its tenures in the 
 writings of Arabian jurists. But these excellent 
 scholars forget that the Muhammadan conquest of 
 Lower Bengal was never perfectly accomplished; 
 that many of its princes were tributaries rather 
 than subjects ; and that the Kuran, the Hidaya, or 
 even such works as the Fatwa Alamgiri, had small 
 effect except within the radius of Mussulman supre- 
 macy. The real land-law of the country is to be found 
 in those researches which were conducted by the 
 rural officers during the first half-century of our rule. 
 
 In the next volume, therefore, I propose to 
 inquire into the rights and legal status, as disclosed 
 in the rural records, of the various classes who 
 owned or cultivated the soil. An important source 
 of evidence is the history of the great houses whom 
 we found in possession of the land. The investiga- 
 tion involves a survey, not of the archives of a few 
 families or districts, but of all the districts, and of 
 as many as possible of the great families in the 
 
MULTIPLICITY OF RIGHTS. 373 
 
 province. Curiously enough, the latter formidable 
 task has recently been undertaken by several of the 
 leading native gentlemen in Bengal, independently 
 of my researches, and it will shortly become pos 
 sible to arrive at a definite solution of Indian tenures 
 and usages. My own investigations point to an 
 infinite gradation in the rights of the various classes 
 interested in the land. In some districts the land- 
 holder was almost independent of the Mussulman 
 Viceroy, and seldom or never subjected to his inter- 
 ference; in others he was only a bailiff appointed 
 to receive the rents. In some districts, again, 
 peasant rights were acknowledged, and the old 
 communal system survived as a distinct influence ; 
 in others the cultivators were mere serfs, and one 
 of the principal duties of the rural police was to 
 prevent them absconding from their villages. This 
 is the secret of the contradictory objections which 
 were urged against Lord Cornwallis' interpretation 
 of the land-law. At that time, as one of the 
 Company's servants declared in the Calcutta Gazette, 
 the people's rights were so little established, 'that 
 the inquiries of the ablest men have not ascer- 
 tained them ;'^ and another authority states that no 
 two men in the service took the same view of them. 
 It fell out, therefore, that those collectors who had 
 to deal with districts in which the landholders were 
 the real owners of the soil, complained that the 
 Permanent Settlement had stripped them of their 
 rights and ruined them; while those who had derived 
 
 * Calcutta Gazette, dated 3d June 1790, 
 
374 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 their experience from parts of the country in which 
 the Mussulman system had uprooted the ancient 
 houses, objected that Lord Cornwallis had sacrificed 
 the claims of the Government and the rights of the 
 people to elevate a parcel of tax-gatherers and land- 
 stewards into a sham gentry. 
 
 With a view to ascertaining what analogy may 
 be derived from the Muhammadan land tenures in 
 Europe, I availed myself of one of those periods 
 of ill-health incident to an Indian career to visit 
 Turkey and the Danubian provinces. I found the 
 same uncertainty with regard to the land tenures 
 prevailing throughout the Ottoman dependencies 
 as in Bengal. In neither Europe nor India have 
 the Mussulmans succeeded in introducing a uniform 
 system, or in evolving a homogeneous nation. The 
 only explanation, with any pretensions to compre- 
 hensiveness, that I obtained was from Photyaris 
 Bey, the Ottoman Minister in Greece, one of that 
 little knot of enlightened statesmen in whom the 
 future of Turkey is bound up. But even the acute 
 Phanariot's account did not tally with the actual 
 state of things in the remote provinces. According 
 to a Wallachian nobleman, the plenum dominium 
 centred in the great landholders ; according to . a 
 Bulgarian peasant, the cultivator was the pivot on 
 which the rural system turns ; according to the 
 officials in the large towns and the Constantinople 
 press, the Government is all in all. 
 
 In this volume I have endeavoured to exhibit 
 the ethnical elements of the Bengali people, and 
 
CONCLUSION. 375 
 
 their condition when they passed under British rule. 
 The praise or blame of the English Government 
 forms no part of my scheme, and indeed I am 
 thankful that the administrator who figures most 
 in my narrative, Mr. Keating, was one of those 
 ordinary men who excite neither indignation nor 
 admiration. He did his appointed work, and 
 received for it his appointed pay, but he was 
 altogether incapable of giving that interpretation 
 to his duties, which can invest with dignity and 
 pathos the long hot years of Indian official life. I 
 am afraid, however, that I may have dealt hardly 
 with our predecessors the Mussulmans ; but it must 
 be remembered that I am speaking of them in their 
 last days of decrepitude and enervation. Of the 
 ancient native houses, the true leaders of the people, 
 I have yet to speak ; and any one who judges of 
 them from that dark period to which this volume 
 has been confined, will do them the same injustice 
 that is done to the population at large by those who 
 mistake Lord Macaulay's graphic description of 
 the Bengali, as he emerged abject from Mussulman 
 oppression, for a delineation of the normal and per- 
 manent character of the Hindus. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 BENGAL IN 1772, PORTRAYED BY WARREN 
 HASTINGS. 
 
 To the Hon'ble the Court of Directors for Affairs of the 
 Hon'ble the United Company of Merchants of 
 England trading to the East Indies. Dated Fort- 
 William, the 3d November 1772. 
 
 Revenue Department. 
 
 Hon'ble Sirs, — In our address by the Colebrooke, dated 
 the 13th April last, we acquainted you with the state of your 
 revenues in Bengal to that period, since which we "have closed 
 the account of the neat settlements and collections for the last 
 Bengal year, a copy of which we now transmit a number {sic) in 
 this packet From it you will please to observe that the total 
 receipts, including some deductions written off to profit and loss 
 in the Moorshedabad treasury, amounted for last year to sicca 
 rupees 1,57,26,576: to: 2: i; so that the Ballances^ for that 
 year are now reduced to Rs. 12,40,812 : 7 : 15, a great part of 
 which we shall hope to realise ; and we flatter ourselves that this 
 reduction of the Ballances, and the comparative view we hope 
 you will take of the Bengal collections for these several years 
 past, with those of the last year, will fully satisfy you as to the 
 favourable Success we have met with in collection of the revenues. 
 The Moorshedabad books, that will be transmitted to you by the 
 next ship compleatly ballanced, will further elucidate the state- 
 ment of the last year's revenue, which we have now the honouj 
 of enclosing. 
 
 At a meeting of your Council of the 30th August, it was 
 unanimously resolved to adopt the plan proposed by our Presi- 
 dent and members of the Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazaar, 
 
 I This letter is printed exactly as it is spelt in the original. 
 
38o BENGAL IN I'j-^i, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 for removing the Seat of the Revenue Business to the Presidency, 
 and for putting this important Branch of your affairs under the 
 immediate management of your Governor and Council; in con- 
 sequence of which we formed ourselves into a Board of Revenue 
 the 13th ultimo. Since that time all affairs respecting the Col- 
 lections or internal Government of the Provinces have been con- 
 fined solely to this department, and we shall henceforth address 
 you separately upon all matters which come under these Heads. 
 
 In order to give you a distinct Idea of this subject, and to 
 make it the more complete, we shall begin by recapitulating the 
 most important measures that have been lately taken, and in 
 which you have been in part advised in our former Letters. 
 
 In one letter by the Nottingham, you were informed of our 
 intention of letting the lands throughout the provinces in farm, 
 upon long and well-regulated Leases ; and we are happy to reflect 
 that such a material and principal mode of conducting the Collec- 
 tions, should coincide so entirely with your sentiments and orders 
 on the subject. After the most serious and mature deliberation 
 on this point, we determined, in our proceedings of the Com- 
 mittee of the Revenue of the 14th May, to establish a plan for 
 settling the several districts upon this footing, and for the future 
 government of your Collections. This being the Constitutional 
 Ground- Work of all our subsequent measures, and of the system 
 which we have since attempted to build upon it, we have thought 
 it necessary, for your immediate attention, to transmit a copy 
 of it as a Number in the Packet, with our reasons at large for 
 adopting the Regulations therein laid down. 
 
 Before we proceed further upon this subject, it may not be 
 improper to premise some general Remarks on the State of the 
 Province at this Juncture. 
 
 The effects of the dreadful Famine which visited these Pro- 
 vinces in the Year 1770, and raged during the whole course of 
 that Year, have been regularly made kno^vn to you by our former 
 advices, and to the public by laboured descriptions, in which 
 every Circumstance of Fact, and every Art of Languages, have 
 been accumulated to raise Compassion, and to excite Indignation 
 against your Servants, whose unhappy lot it was to be the wit- 
 nesses and spectators of the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. 
 But its influence on the Revenue has been yet unnoticed, and 
 even unfelt, but by those from whom it is collected ; for, not- 
 
Appx. A.] BY WARREN HASTINGS. 381 
 
 withstanding the loss of at least one-third of the Inhabitants of 
 the Province, and the consequent decrease of the Cultivation, the 
 nett collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of 1768, as 
 will appear from the following Abstract of Accounts of the Board 
 of Revenue at Moorshedabad for the four last years : — 
 
 Bengal Year, 
 
 1175 [1768-69].— Net Collections, • • . l.S2,S4>8s6 : 9 :4 : 3 
 
 1 176 [1769-70]. — The year of dearth, which was pro- 1 
 
 ductive of the Famine in the [ 1,31,49, 148 : 6 : 3 : 2 
 following year, . . . ) 
 
 1177 [1770-711- — The year of the Famine and Mor- ) , 
 
 tality, .... 5 1.40.06,030:7:3:2 
 
 1178 [1771-72], . . . 1,57,26,576:10: 2:1 
 
 Deduct the amount of de- 
 ficiencies occasioned in the 
 Revenue by unavoidable 
 losses to Government, . 3,92,915 : 11 : 12 : 3 
 
 1.53.33.660:14:9:2 
 
 It was naturally to be expected that the diininution of the 
 Revenue shou'd have kept an equal pace with the other Conse- 
 quences of so great a Calamity. That it did not, was owing to 
 its being violently kept up to its former Standard. To ascertain 
 all the means by which this was effected will not be easy. It is 
 difficult to trace the Progress of the Collections through all its 
 Intricate Channels, or even to comprehend all the Articles 
 which compose the Revenue in its first operations. One Tax, 
 however, we will endeavour to describe, as it may serve to 
 account for the Equality which has been preserved in the past 
 Collections, and to which it has principally contributed. It is 
 called Najay, and it is an Assessment upon the actual inhabit- 
 ants of every Inferior Description of the Lands, to make up for 
 the Loss sustained in the Rents of their neighbours who are 
 either dead or have fled the Country. This Tax, though equally 
 impolitic in its Institution and oppressive in the mode of exact- 
 ing it, was authorised by the antient and general usage of the 
 Country. It had not the sanction of Government, but took 
 place as a matter of course. In ordinary cases, and while the 
 Lands were in a state of cultivation, it was scarcely felt, and 
 never or rarely complained of. However irreconciliable to strict 
 Justice, it afiforded a preparation to the State for occasional De- 
 ficiencies ; it was a kind of Security against Desertion, by making 
 
382 BENGAL IN iT^z, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 the Inhabitants thus mutually responsible for each other; and 
 precluded the inferior Collector from availing himself of the 
 Pretext of waste or Deserted Lands to withhold any part of his 
 Collections. But the same Practice which at another Time and 
 under different Circumstances would have been beneficial, be- 
 came at this period an insupportable Burthen upon the Inhabit- 
 ants. The Tax not being levied by any Fixed Rate or Standard, 
 fell heaviest upon the wretched Survivors of those Villages which 
 had suffered the greatest Depopulation, and were of course the 
 most entitled to the Lenity of Government. It had also the addi- 
 tional Evil attending it, in common with every other Variation 
 from the regular Practice, that it afforded an opportunity to the 
 Farmers and Shicdars to levy other Contributions on the People 
 under color of it, and even to encrease this to whatever magni- 
 tude they pleased, since they were in course the Judges of the 
 Loss sustained, and of the Proportion which the Inhabitants were 
 to pay to replace it 
 
 Complaints against this Grievance were universal throughout 
 the Province, and it was to be feared that the continuance of it 
 would be so great a check to the Industry of the People, as to 
 impoverish the Revenue in the last Degree, when their former 
 savings by which it was supported were gone. 
 
 Though 7 Years had elapsed since the Company became 
 possessed of the Dewanny, yet no regular Process had ever been 
 formed for conducting the Business ot the Revenue. Every 
 Zemin daree and every Taluk was left to its own peculiar Cus- 
 toms. These indeed were not inviolably adhered to. The 
 Novelty of the Business to those who were appointed to super- 
 intend it, the chicanery of the people whom they were obliged 
 to employ as their agents, the accidental Exigencies of each 
 District, and, not unfrequently, the just Discernment of the 
 Collector, occasioned many changes. Every change added to 
 the confusion which involved the whole, and few were either 
 authorised or known by the presiding Members of the Govern- 
 ment. The Articles which composed the Revenue — the Form 
 of keeping Accounts, the Computation of time, even the Techni- 
 cal Terms, which ever form the greatest part of the obscurity of 
 every science — differed as much as the soil and productions of 
 the Province. This Confusion had its origin in the Nature of 
 the Former Government. The Nazims exacted what they could 
 
Appx. A.J BY WARREN HASTINGS. 383 
 
 from the Zemindars ; and great Farmers of the Revenue, whom 
 they left at Liberty to plunder all below them, reserving to them- 
 selves the prerogative of plundering them in their Turn, when 
 they were supposed to have enriched themselves with the spoils 
 of the Country. The Muttisiddees who stood between the 
 Nazim and the Zemindars, or between them and the People, 
 had each their respective shares of the Public Wealth. These 
 Profits were considered as illegal Embezzlements, and therefore 
 were taken vnth every Precaution that cou'd ensure secrecy; 
 and being, consequently, fixed by no Rate, depended on the 
 Temper, Abilities, or Power of each Individual for the Amount. 
 It therefore became a duty in every man to take the most 
 effectual measures to conceal the Value of his Property, and 
 elude every Inquiry into his Conduct, while the Zemindars and 
 other Landholders who had the Advantage of long Possession, 
 availed themselves of it by complex Divisions of the Lands and 
 intricate modes of Collection to perplex the Officers of the 
 Government, and confine the knowledge of the Rents to them- 
 selves. It will easily be imagined that much of the Current 
 Wealth stopped in its way to the public Treasury. It is rather 
 Foreign from the purpose of this Exposition, but too apposite 
 not to be remarked that it was fortunate such a system did pre- 
 vail, since the Embezzlements which it covered preserved the 
 Current Specie of the Country, and returned it into Circulation, 
 while a great part of the Wealth received by the Government 
 was expended in the Country, and but a small superfluity re- 
 mained for remittances to the Court of Delhee, where it was lost 
 for ever to this province. 
 
 To the original Defects inherent in the Constitution of these 
 Provinces, were added the unequal and unsettled Government of 
 them, since they became our property. A part of the Lands 
 which were before in our possession, such as Burdwan, Midna- 
 pore, and Chittagong, continued subject to the authority of the 
 Chiefs, who were immediately accountable to the Presidency. 
 The 24 . Pergunnahs, granted by the Treaty of Plassey to the 
 Company, were theirs on a different Tenure, being their im- 
 mediate property by the Exclusion of the Zemindars, or hereditary 
 Proprietors : their rents were received by Agents appointed to 
 each Pergunnah, and remitted to the Collector, who resided in 
 Calcutta. 
 
384 BENGAL IN 111^, PORTRAYED [Appx. A 
 
 The Rest of the Province was for some time entrusted to the 
 joint-charge of the Naib Dwan and Resident of the Durbar, and 
 afterwards to the Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad, and to 
 the Supervisors who were accountable to that Council. The 
 administration itself was totally excluded from a concern in this 
 Branch of the Revenue. 
 
 The internal arrangement of each District varied no less than 
 that of the whole Province. The Lands subject to the same 
 Collector, and intermixed with each other, were some held by 
 Farm, some superintended by Shicdars, or Agents on the part of 
 the Collector, and some left to the Zemindars and Talucdars 
 themselves, under various degrees of Controul. The First were 
 racked without mercy, because the Leases were but of a Year's 
 standing, and the Farmer had no Interest or Check to restrain 
 him from exacting more than the Land could bear. The Second 
 were equally drained, and the Rents embezzled, as it was not 
 possible for the Collector, with the greatest degree of attention 
 on his part, to detect or prevent it. The latter, it may be sup- 
 posed, were not exempted from the general corruption. If they 
 were, the other Lands which lay near them would suffer by the 
 migration of their inhabitants, who wou'd naturally seek Refuge 
 from oppression in a milder and more equitable Government. 
 
 The Administration of Justice has so intimate a connection 
 with the Revenue, that we cannot omit the mention of it, while 
 we are treating of this subject in a general view, although we 
 have already given our sentiments upon it at large in another 
 place, to which we shall crave Leave to refer. The Security of 
 private properity is the greatest Encouragement to Industry, on 
 which the wealth of every State depends. The Limitation of the 
 Powers annexed to the Magistracy, the Suppression of every 
 Usurpation of them by private authority, and the Facilitating of 
 the access to Justice, were the only means by which such a 
 Security cou'd be obtained. But this was impossible under the 
 circumstances which had hitherto prevailed. While the Nizamut 
 and the Dewannee were in different Hands, and all the Rights 
 of the Former were admitted, the Courts of Justice which were 
 the sole Province of the Nazim, though constituted for the 
 general Relief of the Subjects, cou'd receive the Reformation. 
 The Court and Officers of the Nizamut were continued, but their 
 Efficacy was destroyed by the Ruling Influence of the Dewannee. 
 
Appx. A.] BY WARREN HASTINGS. 385 
 
 The regular Course of Justice was everywhere suspended ; but 
 every man exercised it who had the Power of compelling others 
 to submit to his Dicisions. The People were oppressed ; they 
 were discouraged, and disabled from improving the Culture of 
 their Lands j and in proportion as they had the demands of 
 Individuals to gratify, they were prevented from discharging 
 what was legally due to Government. 
 
 Such was the State of the Revenue, when your Commands 
 were received by the Lapwing, and happily removed the difficulties 
 which had hitherto opposed the Introduction of a more perfect 
 System, by abolishing the Office of Naib Dwan, and authorising 
 your administration to assume openly the Management of the 
 Dewannee in your Name, without any Foreign Intervention. 
 
 In the Execution of these your Intentions, the points which 
 claimed our principal attention, as will appear from the above 
 Description, were to render the Accounts of the Revenue simple 
 and intelligible, to establish Fixed Rates for the Collections, to 
 make the Mode of them uniform in all parts of the Province, 
 and to provide for an equal administration of Justice. In the 
 steps which we have already taken, we have laboured to obtain 
 these ends ; tvith what Success will be seen hereafter. 
 
 The Regulations which we have before mentioned being com- 
 pleated, and the Committee of Circuit appointed, consisting (as 
 we mentioned in our last) of the Governor, Messrs. Middleton, 
 Dacres, Lawrell, and Graham. We published our Intention of 
 Farming all the Lands of the Province of Bengal, on Leases of 
 Five Years, and invited all Persons to make Proposals. 
 
 The Committee first proceeded to Kishennaggur, and there 
 entered on the Settlement of the District of Nuddea.' The Pro- 
 posals which were delivered to them were expressed in so vague 
 and uncertain a manner, and differed so widely from each other 
 in Form, that it was impossible to make a comparison, or to 
 ascertain the Proportional Amount of each ; and the few only 
 that were intelligible, contained very low and disadvantageous 
 Terms. The Committee were therefore of opinion that these 
 Offers shou'd be rejected, and that the Lands shou'd be put up 
 at Public Auction, tho' contrary to the original Intention. 
 
 To remove all obstacles that might present themselves, from 
 an uncertainty in the Bidders with respect to the more Minute 
 ' Proceedings of the i6th and 28th June 1772. 
 
 VOL. I, 2 B 
 
386 BENGAL IN 1772, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 Articles of the Collections, and the Grounds on which the 
 Settlement was to be established between the Farmer and 
 Cultivator, the Committee found it indispensably necessary 
 before the Sale began, to form an entire new Hustabood, or 
 Explanation of the diverse and complex articles which were to 
 compose the Collections. These consisted of the Assail or 
 Original Ground Rent, and a variety of Taxes called Aboabs, 
 which had been indiscriminately levied at different periods by the 
 Government, the Zemindars, Farmers, and even by the inferior 
 Collectors. One of these Aboabs we have explained above; 
 many of them are incapable of any Explanation. 
 
 After the Committee had made a through Investigation of 
 the above articles of the Revenue, they proposed to deduct such 
 as appeared most oppressive to the Inhabitants, or of a late 
 Establishment, at the same time reserving those which were of 
 long standing, and had been chearfuUy {sic) submitted to by the 
 Ryotts, these being in fact a considerable part of the Neat Rents. 
 Among the former were the Duties arbitrarily levied by the 
 Zemindars and Farmers upon all Goods and Necessaries of Life 
 passing by water thro' the interior part of the country. The 
 Bazee Jumma, or Fines for petty crimes and misdemeanours, 
 were also, agreably to the humane and equitable spirit of your 
 Orders, totally abolished, as well as the Haldarry, or Tax upon 
 Marriage, which yielded a trifling Revenue to the Government, 
 was very injurious to the State, and could tend only to the dis- 
 couragement and decrease of Population, — an object at all times 
 of general Importance, but more especially at this Period, from 
 the great Loss of Inhabitants which the country has sustained by 
 the late Famine, and the mortality which attended it. These 
 several Deductions in favour of the Natives, altho' the imme- 
 diate cause of decreasing the Rent Roll, will doubtless in time be 
 productive of the most salutary effects, as they tend to encourage 
 the Manufactures and Trade of the country, to retrieve the loss 
 of Inhabitants, to free the People from vexatious prosecutions, 
 and by promoting the general Ease of the country, virtually to 
 support and improve its Revenue. 
 
 In order to secure the Inhabitants in the quiet Possession of 
 the lands whilst they held them on terms of cultivation, and to 
 prevent such Exactions as aforementioned in future, the Com- 
 mittee formed new Amulnamas or Leases, in which the claims 
 
Appx. A.] BY WARREN HASTINGS. 387 
 
 upon the Ryotts were precisely and distinctly ascertained, and 
 the Farmers restricted from making any further Demands, under 
 the severest Penalties. To this end, and to prevent the Farmers 
 from eluding this restriction, they were ordered to grant new 
 Pottahs, or Deeds, to the Ryotts, the Form of which was drawn 
 out by the Committee and made public, specifying the conditions 
 on which they were to hold their Land, the separate Heads or 
 Articles of the Rents ; and every encouragement was contained in 
 them to cultivate the waste ground on a moderate and increasing 
 Rent. 
 
 Another principal Object with the Committee was to reduce 
 the Charges of Collection as low as possible, from a conviction 
 that the retrenchment of improper and unnecessary Expences 
 opens a source of Increase of Revenue the most eligible, because 
 the most consistent with the ease of the Inhabitants. For this 
 purpose We have formed an uniform and regular Establishment, 
 for all the necessary Charges to be incurred in the Cutcherries of 
 the several Districts, under positive Restrictions that they shall 
 not be exceeded without our being previously advised. This, 
 We doubt not, will prove a great saving to the Hon'ble Com- 
 pany, as it will be the effectual means of preventing in future all 
 superfluous and unnecessary Disbursements. And We think We 
 may venture to promise that this Article will be duly attended 
 to, as it will be almost the only Care of the Auditor to. prevent 
 every Deviation from it, in the Accounts which are to pass his 
 Inspection. 
 
 After these previous steps were resolved on, the Lands of 
 Kishenagur were put up to Public Auction, and a Final Settle- 
 ment was made for Five Years, on an accumulating Increase, for 
 the Particulars of which we must beg leave to refer you to the 
 proceedings of the Committee, which are now transmitted. 
 
 During the course of the sale at Kishennagur, the Rajah of 
 that place gave in proposals for farming the whole District, 
 which leads us to the following general observations on the 
 Subject of Zemindars and Talookdars in the Province of Bengal. 
 
 Where it can be done with propriety, the entrusting the Col- 
 lections of the Districts to the Hereditary Zemindars wou'd be a 
 measure we shou'd be very willing to adopt, as we believe that 
 the People would be treated with more tenderness, the Rents 
 more improved, and the Cultivation more likely to be encouraged, 
 
388 BENGAL IN 1772, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 the Zemindar less liable to failure or deficiencies than the 
 Farmer, from the perpetual Interest which the former hath in 
 the Country, and because his Inheritance cannot be removed, 
 and it would be improbable he would risk the loss of it by eloping 
 from his District, which is too frequently practised by a Farmer 
 when he is hard pressed for the Payment of his Ballances, and is 
 frequently predetermined when he receives his Farm. 
 
 With respect to the Talookdarrys and inconsiderable Zemin- 
 darrys, which formed a part of the Huzzoor Zilahs or Districts 
 which paid their rents immediately to the General Cutcherry 
 at Moorshedabad, as well as many others of the same kind in 
 different parts of Bengal ; all Arguments have been weighed, 
 whether in favour of the just Claim Government has upon their 
 Lands for a Revenue adequate to their real Value, or of the 
 Zemindars and Talookdars in support of their Rights and Prive- 
 ledges, grounded upon the Possession of Regular Grants, a long 
 series of family Succession, and fair purchase. These being duly 
 considered, there occurred to us only the two following Modes 
 which could be pursued in making their settlement The First 
 was to lett {sic) the Lands to Farm ; to put the Renters in entire 
 Possession and Authority over them, obliging them to pay each 
 Zemindar or Talookdar a certain allowance or percentage for the 
 subsistence of himself and family. The Second was to settle 
 with the Zemindars themselves on the footing of Farmers, obliging 
 them first to enter into all the Conditions of a farmer's Lease ; 
 Secondly, to pay the same Revenue that could be expected from 
 Farmers ; Thirdly, to give responsible securities ; and Fourthly, 
 to admit a reserve in favour of Government for making, during 
 the course of their actual Lease, an exact Hustabood (Valuation 
 from Accounts), or a Measurement of their Possessions, in order 
 to ascertain their true Value at a future settlement, shou'd the 
 present Accounts be found to be fallacious, or concealments 
 suspected. We have allowed a degree of weight to the argu- 
 ments of the Zemindars and Talookdars in favour of their plea 
 of Right, which, by adopting the first mode of settlement, wou'd 
 doubtless be exposed to Risk ; for as the Authority given to the 
 Farmers wou'd reduce the present Incumbents to the level of 
 mere Pensioners, and greatly weaken their claims as Proprietors, 
 so in the course of a few long Leases, their Rights and Titles 
 might, from the designs of the Farmers to establish themselves 
 
Appx. A.] BY WARREN HASTINGS. 389 
 
 in their Estates, the death of the old Inheritors, and the succes- 
 sion of Minors, be involved in such obscurity, doubt, and con- 
 troversy, as to deprive them totally of their Inheritance. To 
 expose the Zemindars and Talookdars to this risk, is neither 
 consistent with our Notions of Equity, nor vi^ith your orders, 
 which direct, ' that we do not by any sudden change alter the 
 constitution, nor deprive the Zemindars, etc., of their antient 
 priviledges and Immunities.' 
 
 Another argument, drawn from the conduct naturally to be 
 expected from the Zemindars and Talookdars, weighed strongly 
 with us, and proves an objection to adopting the first Mode. 
 From a long continuance of the Lands in their Famihes, it is to 
 be concluded they have rivetted an authority in the District, 
 acquired an Ascendency over the Minds of the Ryotts, and 
 ingratiated their affections. From Causes like these, if entire 
 Deprivation were to take place, there could not be expected less 
 Material Effects than all the Evils of a divided Authority, preju- 
 dicial to the Revenue, and Desertion and Desolation of the 
 Lands. Whereas from continuing the Lands under the Manage- 
 ment of those who have a natural and perpetual Interest in their 
 Prosperity, provided their Value is not of too great an amount, 
 solid Advantages may be expected to accrue. Every considera- 
 tion then sways us, where it can be done with the prospect of 
 the advantage before mentioned, to adopt the second mode in 
 settUng with the Inferior Zemindars and Talookdars. First, an 
 equivalent Revenue may be thereby obtained, with security for 
 its punctual Payment. Secondly, the converting them into 
 Farmers establishes the Government's right of putting their 
 Lands on that Footing, whenever they shall think proper ; the 
 Awe of which must constantly operate to secure their good 
 behaviour and good Management. Thirdly, the Clause of 
 Scrutiny, to which they are subjected, will also have the same 
 Tendency, at the same time that it may be strictly put in force 
 where there is cause to suspect Concealments, or a prospect 
 presents of Increase to the Revenue. 
 
 Agreeably to these Ideas, the Committee at Kishennagur 
 exempted the several Talooks in that District from the Public 
 Sale, as the Possessors engaged to abide by such a Settlement as 
 should be deemed equivalent and just ; and an exact valuation 
 vas accordingly made • of their Lands. It was, however, found 
 
390 BENGAL IN 1772, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 that the Terms offered by the Zemindar of Kishennagur, as 
 before mentioned, were not equivalent to the expectations the 
 Committee had reason to Entertain from the Public Auction of 
 the separate Farms, and the Faith of Government having already 
 been engaged to such Farmers whose offers had been formally 
 accepted. For these Reasons, joined with the well-known subtle 
 and faithless character of the Zemindar, it was determined to 
 reject his proposals, and to give the Preference to the offer of 
 the Farmers, which were more advantageous to Government. 
 
 The Settlement of Kishennagur being concluded, a fixed 
 Dewan was chosen by the Committee to be joined with the 
 Collector in the Superintendancy of the Revenues, conformably 
 to our Established Regulations before referred to ; and instruc- 
 tions were accordingly given him for his guidance. 
 
 We have been thus explicit in relating the Transactions at 
 Kishenagur, both as these will serve to point out the various 
 effects of our previous Determinations, as well as the Motives 
 which gave Occasion to those which were superadded by the 
 Committee, from local or general Observation, and to convey an 
 Idea of the Plan on which the settlement of the whole Province 
 will be formed, of which that of Kishenagur may be regarded as 
 the Model. 
 
 From Kishenagur the Committee proceeded to Cossimbazaar, 
 and arrived there the beginning of July. One of their first objects 
 was the regulating the Nabob's Household and Stipend, and the 
 appointing of the necessary Officers for the Management of his 
 Affairs. But as these Matters will be fully discussed in our 
 Letter from the General Department, We shall confine this 
 Address solely to the current Business of the Revenue. 
 
 The Province of Radshahy and the Huzzoor Zilahs were 
 taken next into Consideration, and the same Regulations estab- 
 lished previous to their Settlement, as at Kisenagur. Public 
 Advertisements being made for receiving Proposals for farming 
 the different Purgunnahs in Radshahy, and a proper time limited 
 for their delivery, the terms given in for the whole of the Western 
 Division were examined, and the Offers of the Fanners and 
 Zemindar accurately compared. Those of the latter were found 
 more advantageous to Government A settlement for five years 
 was accordingly concluded with the Ranny Bowanny, the Zemin- 
 dar of that District, whose Substance, Credit, and Character 
 
Appx. A.J BY WARREN HASTINGS. 391 
 
 rendered the Conditions of her Offer the more desireable, 
 especially as she consented to the Committee's Plan of sub- 
 dividing the Lands into fourteen Lots or Farms, and engaged to 
 deposit the Farmer's Cabooleats or Agreements as a Collateral 
 Security with her own, for the punctual Payment of her Rents. 
 No other Proposals being given in for the Eastern Division of 
 Radshahy, it was in like manner farmed to the zemindar, whose 
 Ejiowledge of, and long-established Reputation in, the Country 
 enabled her to make more advantageous Offers for this also than 
 any other person ; and We doubt not that We shall realize the 
 whole of the Revenue from these important and extensive Dis- 
 tricts, which will receive an additional Advantage, besides a 
 Reduction of the Expence o£ the Collections, in being thus united 
 under the hereditary and ancient Proprietor. 
 
 For the particular Reasons and Arguments urged in our 
 several Proceedings, referred to in the margin, and which will 
 be farther treated on in our Letter from the other Department, 
 you will observe that We have found it expedient to annex to 
 Mr. Middleton's Appointment of Resident of the Durbar and 
 Chief of Cossimbazar, the Superintendency of the Collections of 
 Radshahy, in the conducting of which, the whole being put under 
 the immediate Management of the Zemindar, his only care as 
 Collector will be to receive the monthly Kists as they may 
 become due, to attend to the Complaints and Representations 
 of the Ryotts, and to see that the Regulations which have been 
 made are duly adhered to. 
 
 The Huzzoor Zillahs, and the inferior Zemindaries and 
 Talookdaries bordering on Moorshedabad and Rajshahy, were 
 also settled on the same Plan, a Preference being always given 
 to the Offers of the Hereditary Possessors as before observed. 
 But as it would take up too much of your Time to descend to a 
 minute Detail of these numerous Settlements, we must take the 
 Liberty of referring you to the Proceedings of the late Committee 
 of Circuit. You will therein notice that we have appointed five 
 additional Collectors to superintend the Revenue of those Dis- 
 tricts. It was with some reluctance we found ourselves under 
 the necessity of increasing the Number of these Appointments. 
 They were rendered unavoidable by the Intricacy of those parts 
 of the Huzzoor Zilahs, which have been thus distributed amongst 
 them ; but We hope that the Liberty which We have given to the 
 
392 BENGAL IN Y'lii, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 Farmers, who may be so disposed, to pay their Rents immediately 
 to the Sudder or Head Cutcherry, will in time enable us to reduce 
 these Establishments. 
 
 In the Intervals of Public Business, the Committee were 
 employed in deliberating on the steps referred to them, which 
 were proper to be taken for carrying into Execution your late 
 Orders by the Lapwing, where you declare your Intention of 
 Standing forth as Dewan by the Agency of the Company's 
 Servants, to assume the ' entire Management of the Revenues,' 
 leaving it to us to plan and execute this important Work, ' by 
 adopting such Regulations, and pursuing such Measures, as 
 should at once insure to the Company every possible Advantage.' 
 
 The first Consideration was wh^her the Board of Revenue 
 at Moorshedabad should be abolished, and the Business of the 
 Collections in all its Branches, put under the management of the 
 Members of your Administration at the Presidency; and after 
 allowing due Weight to every Argument that occurred, We agreed 
 unimously with the Committee in the Necessity of this last 
 Measure, which has accordingly been since carried into Execu- 
 tion. We take the Liberty of lajdng before you the Grounds 
 upon which we have ventured to make this Alteration, in the 
 flattering hopes that it will meet with your approval. 
 
 As the Administration of Justice, and the Collection of the 
 Revenue, are by far the most important object of Government, 
 they certainly claim the first Attention of your President and 
 CouncU, especially at a time when so many weighty matters, 
 intimately connected with them, are entrusted by you to our 
 Investigation and Judgment, and when the State of the Country 
 requires timely, well-digested, and spirited Measures. While the 
 Controuling and Executive Part of the Revenue, and the corre- 
 spondence with the Collectors, was carried by a Council at Moor- 
 shedabad, the Members of your Administration had not an 
 opportunity of acquiring that thorough and comprehensive know- 
 ledge of the Revenue, which can only result from practical 
 Experience. But as your late orders tend to establish a new 
 System, enjoin many new Regulations and Enquiries which could 
 not properly be delegated to a Subordinate Council, it became 
 absolutely necessary that the Business of the Revenue should be 
 conducted under our immediate Observation and Direction. 
 
 This change. We trust, will afford great Relief to the Inhabit 
 
Appx. A.] BY WAJiJiEN HASTINGS. 393 
 
 ants of the Provinces, in opening to them a more ready Access 
 to Justice, insomuch that Appeals from the Decisions of the 
 Inferior Courts may now be made directly to the Presidency, 
 whereas formerly they were first transmitted to the Council at 
 Moorshedabad, and from thence an Appeal lay to Us. 
 
 Another good Consequence will be the great Increase of 
 Inhabitants, and of Wealth in Calcutta, which will not only add 
 to the Consumption of our most valuable Manufactures imported 
 from home, but will be the means of conveying to the Natives a 
 more intimate Knowledge of our Customs and Manners, and of 
 conciliating them to our Policy and Government. 
 
 Besides the Reasons above urged for the Dissolution of the 
 Council at Moorshedabad, We must beg leave to add this farther 
 Argument, in reply to the objection which may possibly be made 
 to it as repugnant to your Commands of the 30th June 1769. 
 We now conceive them, however, to be superseded by your later 
 Orders and the Discretionary Power you have given us in your 
 letter by the Lapwing. Nevertheless, we should have thought 
 ourselves indispensably bound to have adhered to the Spirit of 
 them, so far as they could be made to coincide with the new 
 System of the Dewanny, but we found them totally subverted 
 by it. 
 
 While Moorshedabad remained the Seat of your Collections, 
 every consideration required the EstabHshment of a Council to 
 Superintend them, as it was a trust every way too great for an 
 individual. On these grounds alone we presumed your Orders 
 for forming such Councils at Moorshedabad and Patna were 
 framed. But when the office of Naib Dwan was abolished, and 
 you had declared your Resolution to place the Collections under 
 the immediate charge of your own Servants, there remained no 
 Reason for continuing that Department of the Revenue at such 
 a distance from the Observation of your Governor and Council ; 
 and the Removal of the Collection to the Presidency, as it left 
 no Business for an inferior Council, of course rendered their con- 
 tinuance, and the charges attending such an establishment, need- 
 less. We will indulge ourselves, therefore, with another Hope, 
 that an annual saving of some Lacks of Rupees will be derived 
 from this alteration, altho' We are well aware of the Expence and 
 Inconvenience which ever attends Innovations of all kinds on 
 their first Institution, 
 
394 BENGAL IN i.T]2, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 As the Reasons for the Removal of the Khalsa are treated on 
 very largely in the Proceedings of the Committee of Circuit of 
 28th July, and contain many Observations on the Nature of the 
 Revenue in general, which are too voluminous to be inserted in 
 the Body of this Letter, we wish to recommend these to your 
 particular attention. 
 
 The Plan which we have formed for conducting the Business 
 of the Khalsa, or Superior Office of the Collections, will go a 
 Number in the Packet. 
 
 The more regular Administration of Justice was also delibe- 
 rated on by the Committee of Circuit, and a Plan was formed by 
 them which afterwards met with our Approbation. We cannot 
 give you a better Idea of the Grounds on which this was framed, 
 than by referring you to a Copy of it, together with a Letter from 
 the Committee to the Board on the Occasion, both of which 
 make Numbers in this Packet ; and we earnestly recommend them 
 to your Perusal, requesting to be assisted with such further 
 Orders and Instructions thereon as they may require for com- 
 pleating the system, which we have thus endeavoured to establish 
 on the most equitable, solid, and permanent footing. We hope 
 they will be read with that Indulgence which We are humbly oi 
 Opinion is due to a Work of this kind, undertaken on the plain 
 Principles of Experience and common Observation, without the 
 advantages which an intimate Knowledge of the Theory of Law 
 might have afforded us. We have endeavoured to adapt our 
 Regulations to the Manners and Understanding of the People, 
 and Exegencies of the Country, adhering, as closely as We were 
 able, to their Antient Usages and Institutions. It will be 
 still a Work of some Months, We fear, before they can be 
 thoroughly established throughout the Provinces ; but We shall 
 think our Labors amply recompensed if they meet with your 
 Approbation, and are productive of the good Effects we had in 
 view. 
 
 Our President returned to Calcutta about the middle of Sep- 
 tember. Mr. Middleton remained at Moorshedabad to talce 
 charge of his Appointments, and the other three Members of the 
 Committee of Circuit proceeded to Dacca, where they are now 
 employed in making the Settlement of that Province and the 
 adjacent Districts, after which they will continue their Tour to 
 the remaining Divisions on the Eastern Side of Bengal ; and We 
 
Appx. A.] BY WARREN HASTINGS. 395 
 
 hope to transmit the further Particulars of their Proceedings by 
 one of the Ships of this Season, together with a Compleat State- 
 ment of your Revenue for the following five Years. 
 
 Besides the General Plan before mentioned for regulating the 
 New System of conducting the Revenues, and the several other 
 Points therein referred to, the Committee of Revenue at the 
 Presidency, composed of the remaining Members of your Council, 
 were employed in preparing the Settlements of the Districts of 
 Hougly, Midnapore, Beerbhoom, Jessore, and the Calcutta 
 Lands. These, together with the Districts allotted to the Com- 
 mittee of Circuit, compleat the whole of Bengal, excepting 
 Buirdwan, where the Lands are already lett in Farm, on Leases 
 of five years, which do not expire till the end of the Bengal year 
 1182 (a.d. 1775). 
 
 In consequence of the Public Advertisement for making the 
 Settlement of Hougly, a number of Proposals for farming the 
 Lands were delivered in ; and after an exact scrutiny was made 
 into them, those which appeared to be the most advantageous to 
 Government were accepted. It was originally intended to have 
 lett them in small Farms ; but the Offers for large Lots being 
 much higher than the others, We were tempted to prefer them. 
 There were likewise many Talookdarries and petty Zemindanies 
 in this District, the Possessors of which represented to us the 
 Length of Time they had held their Lands, and the wretched 
 condition they would be reduced to were they now to be de- 
 prived of them. As they engaged to pay to Government an 
 increased Rent in proportion to their value. We were induced by 
 the same Motives as actuated the Committee of Circuit in similar 
 Instances to continue to them their hereditary Possessions. In 
 one or two of the Purgunnas some Deductions were found neces- 
 sary to be made, on account of the particular degree in which 
 they had suffered by the late Famine ; but a favourable increase 
 being added to the other Purgannas, We have reason to be satis- 
 fied with the good success which has attended the Settlement of 
 Houghly and its Dependancies. 
 
 The Settlement of Beerbhoom, Bissenpoor, and Pacheat has 
 also been effected upon an increasing Revenue, on a Plan similar 
 to the other Farmed Lands. 
 
 The Districts of Jessore and Mahomed Shahy are Settled on 
 Terms advantageous to Government, as appears by the Accounts 
 
396 BENGAL IN 1772, PORTRAYED [Appx. A. 
 
 delivered in by Mr. Lane, a Member of our Board, who wa3 
 deputed to accomplish that Business ; and a full Representation 
 of his Proceedings is recorded on (sic) our Consultation of the 
 loth of August. 
 
 By the Proceedings it appears that the Calcutta Lands have 
 been compleatly farmed ; but as some of the Farmers have flown 
 off from their Engagements and absconded, and the Execution of 
 the Title Deeds with the rest is delayed, We have hitherto been 
 prevented from finally adjusting this Business. We shall there- 
 fore defer transmitting a further Statement of these Lands till the 
 next Ship, as well as that of Midnapoor, the settlement of which 
 is now in great forwardness. 
 
 In pursuance of your positive Injunctions, We have been 
 endeavouring for some time past to collect the fullest Information 
 concerning the Salt Business in Bengal, that we may be enabled 
 to form such Regulations as shall appear the best calculated for 
 securing the Duties of Government upon that article, and for the 
 general Benefit of the Trade. For our Proceedings in these 
 Matters, so far as we have hitherto been able to effect, we refer 
 you to the Consultations now transmitted, and particularly to 
 that of the 7th October. And as this subject is one of the first 
 that will fall under our Consideration, We expect in our next 
 Advices to furnish you with a Compleat State of it. 
 
 The Hougly disputed Ballancies of Salt, which have been 
 a Matter of Contention and Difficulty for these two years past, 
 We have at length happily adjusted, as recorded in our Pro- 
 ceedings of the ist of October. 
 
 The Bukshbunder or Customs at Hougly, as well as those of 
 the Pachetra at Moorshedabad, have not been lett to farm, but 
 continue to be collected by the Officers of Government, in order 
 that no Obstacles may occur in New-modelling this Source of 
 your Revenue agreeably to your Instructions. At present 
 we wait for Advices and further Lights from the Committee 
 of Circuit at Dacca concerning the Shawbunder, or Head 
 Custom House, in that District. Being furnished with these. 
 We shall proceed to form one general and uniform Plan for 
 the Collection of Duties, which will be duly transmitted for your 
 Information. 
 
 The humane Attention shown in your Commands of the 30th 
 June 1769, and recommended in many of your Letters since that 
 
Appx. A.J BY WARREN HASTINGS. 397 
 
 Date, to the Rights of the Zemindars who have inherited Lands 
 from their Ancestors, encourages us to soHcit your Compassion 
 for the antient Proprietors of the Twenty-four Pergunnas, or Cal- 
 cutta Lands, which became the Company's Zemindarry by the 
 Treaty of Plassey, and from which they were consequently dis- 
 possessed. A small Part of their Lands were before that Time 
 united with the Zemindarries of Burdwan and Nuddea, whose 
 Zemindars are amply provided for. The other Zemindars and 
 Taalindars {sic) have continued since that Time in a State of 
 extreme Indigence. Some of them have large families to main 
 tain. It has been the usual Rule of the Mogul Government, 
 when any Zemindar was divested of authority, to allow him a 
 Substance out of the Rents of his Zemindarrie proportioned to 
 the annual Income of it. This Proportion commonly ammounted 
 to One Tenth. We would not recommend so large an Allow- 
 ance for these people. We are persuaded that they will be con- 
 tented with a much more moderate income, and receive it with 
 Gratitude. As this Indulgence has been extended to all the 
 other Zemindars in both the Provinces since they were placed 
 under your Government, We have judged that this Representa- 
 tion of the Case of those who alone have been excluded from 
 it would not be unacceptable to you. 
 
 As the Settlement of the Province of Bahar had been made 
 for a Term of Years, and therefore did not require any immediate 
 Alteration, We shall wait to finish the whole of our Regulations 
 in Bengal before we attempt any Innovation in that Province. 
 The only point on which We think We can give you any previous 
 Intimation of our future Proceedings in those Parts is, that we 
 deem it proper to unite the Collections with those of Bengal, and 
 establish the same Regulations in both Provinces, as soon as We 
 can do it with conveniency, and without adding to our present 
 Embarrassments. 
 
 In the Proceedings of our Committee of Revenue of the loth 
 May is recorded the Particulars of a Dispute which subsisted 
 between the late Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad and the 
 Supervisor of Dinagepore, Mr. Henry Cottrell, the Consequence 
 of which was the recalling the latter from his Appointment. The 
 several Arguments urged against his Conduct by the Council of 
 Revenue at Moorshedabad, as well as his Letter in Vin 3ication 
 of himself, appear fully in the abov? Proceedings ; and .ve must 
 
398 
 
 BENGAL IN iT^z. 
 
 [Appx. a. 
 
 beg leave to refer you to them, that you may form such a Judge- 
 metit of this Affair as your Candor and Justice may point out. 
 We are, with great Respect, Hon'ble Sirs, Your most faithful 
 humble Servants, . 
 
 (Signed) Warren Hastings.' 
 
 R. Barker. 
 
 W. Aldersey. 
 
 Thomas Lane. 
 
 RicHD. Barwelu 
 
 James Harris. 
 
 H. Goodwin. 
 Fort-William, the yl November \Tiz. 
 
 ' The chief portions of this letter are from Warren Hastings' own 
 
 pen. 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1770, DESCRIBED BY 
 EYE-WITNESSES. 
 
 Section I. — Selections from General Letters from Bengal {the 
 more important in full). 
 
 2^fh September 1769. — Paras. 20 to 27. Devastations of the 
 enemy and want of rain for many months had rendered grain so 
 exceedingly scarce at Madras, that that Government had become 
 apprehensive of the most distressing consequences. Measures 
 were taken to supply their wants from Bengal, but scarcity had 
 prevailed also in Bengal. The Lord Holland was lost on her 
 way down to Madras with a cargo of rice, and a second supply 
 would be forwarded. 
 
 30^/2 September 1769. — Para. 53. Revenues of the provinces 
 of Bengal and Behar were expected to fall short, owing to the 
 very unusual scarcity of grain. 
 
 23/J? November 1769. — Paras. 8 to 10. — 8. 'It is with great 
 concern, Gentlemen, that we are to inform you that we have a 
 most melancholy prospect before our eyes of universal distress for 
 want of grain.^ Owing to an uncommon drought that has pre- 
 vailed over every part of the country, insomuch that the oldest 
 inhabitants never remembered to have known anything like it, 
 and as to threaten a famine. 
 
 9. ' As there is the greatest probabiHty that this distress will 
 encrease, and a certainty that it cannot be alleviated for six 
 months to come, we have ordered a stock of grain sufficient to 
 serve our army for that period, to be laid up in proper store- 
 houses ; and we have taken and shall pursue every means in our 
 power to relieve the miserable situation the poor inhabitants 
 must be involved in from this dreadful calamity ; but we cannot 
 ' This letter is not signed by the Governor, Mr. Verelst,. 
 
400 GREAT FAMINE OF xTio, [Appx. B. 
 
 flatter ourselves that all our endeavours will prevent very fatal 
 effects being felt, or that human means can check its baneful 
 influence.' 
 
 Para. lo anticipates a falling off' of the revenue, and a pro- 
 bable necessity for an abatement ; but excepting this (which was 
 most imperfectly carried out), no specific relief measures are 
 specified, nor were any undertaken till long after. 
 
 2^th January 1770. — Paras. 48 to 50. — 48. 'We are sorry to 
 acquaint you that the apprehensions which we expressed to you 
 in our letter of the 23d November last regarding the consequence 
 of the uncommon drought that hath prevailed are confirmed, and 
 this general calamity is severely felt in all the provinces. The 
 Collector-General hath laid before us a representation on this 
 occasion from the Raja and Resident of Burdwaun, proposing a 
 remission to be made in the rents this year ; and so sensible are 
 we of the melancholy truth of what they set forth, that we have 
 been induced to grant a remission to the farmers of the Burd- 
 waun province of about 2^ or 3 laacks of rupees, taking care 
 that they also extend it to the ryuts ; and at the time of granting 
 it, bring both the farmers and ryuts under engagements that the 
 same shall be replaced, at certain periods, along with their rents of 
 next year' — [In reality, less than a single lac, or only ;^82i8, was 
 remitted, and even this had to be paid up at the commencement 
 of the next year {pide post. pp. 403 and 406)] ; ' and we have 
 desired the Collector-General to adopt this system in the Cal- 
 cutta lands, which equally require the same indulgence. 
 
 49. ' By this method we hope to relieve the farmers and the 
 r5mts, who in this time of dearth and distress claim all the 
 indulgence and assistance that we can afford j and we also hope 
 that, by this method, you will only suffer a temporary inconveni- 
 ence, not a total loss, and that if the next should be a plentiful 
 year these remissions will be recovered.' 
 
 4//^ February 1770. — Para. 5. 'In Bengal we have not yet 
 found any failure in the revenue or stated payments ; but we 
 must not flatter ourselves, in a country where the labourer 
 depends merely on the coming in of the harvest, not on any 
 established or accumulate property, that he can always pay the 
 full demands of Government ; neither can we, with any regard 
 to justice or consequences, insist on it.' 
 
 ^th May 1770 — Secret, — Para. 3. 'If the internal prosperity 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 401 
 
 of these provinces corresponded with our external security, we 
 should be happy ; but it is far otherwise. Not a drop of rain 
 has fallen in most of the districts for six months. The famine 
 which has ensued, the mortality, the beggary, exceed all descrip- 
 tion. Above one-third of the inhabitants have perished in the 
 once plentiful province of Purneah, and in other parts the misery 
 is equal. The Supravisor of Behar has represented to our 
 Resident, that the harvest, which in that province is gathered 
 during the months of March and April, has yielded but a scanty 
 return ; that the price of grain has risen even since the harvest ; 
 and that it is absolutely necessary to remove the brigade from 
 Bankypore beyond the Curamnapa, to save the lives of many 
 poor people who might be subsisted from what the brigade con- 
 sumed. Though it was the last necessity that induced the Supra- 
 visor of Behar to make this proposal, yet your orders against it 
 are so strong, the season so fatal to Europeans on a march, the 
 policy of keeping our troops as near as possible to the Presidency 
 so obvious, and the consequences of being involved in the same 
 difficulties with the king from which we have been but lately 
 freed so much to be dreaded, that however advisable it appears 
 in other respects, we could not with propriety adopt that method 
 of relief. We have, however, consented to remove two battalions 
 and the cavalry from the cantonments to the Fort of Buxar, there 
 to encamp, which will be attended with some alleviation to the 
 distresses of Patna,' and with no disagreable consequences to 
 your political interest. On the contrary, since the king and 
 vizier have resumed an intimate correspondence and intercourse 
 with us, we have thought it no unfavourable occasion to bind 
 them faster to us, by interpreting this motion of your troops into 
 a zeal for their honour and support against all aggressors.' 
 
 2%th June 1770. — Para. 2. ' Few alterations have happened 
 during this short interval. The famine of which we have already 
 given you an unexaggerated description has continued to rage 
 with all its fatal consequences ; and notwithstanding all our efforts 
 to administer relief by public contribution to the poor, remis- 
 sion of the collections, and importations from the neighbouring 
 provinces, we have beheld the calamity daily increasing. Your 
 revenues must suffer from it both now and in future; but no 
 
 1 But in the same degree an aggravation of the distress at Buxar, in the 
 very centre of the most cruelly stricken districts. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 C 
 
402 GREAT FAMINE OF xiio, [Appx. B. 
 
 endeavours shall be omitted on our parts to render this evil as 
 light and as temporary as possible.' 
 
 31J/ August 1770. — Para. 14. 'If the accounts transmitted in 
 our letter of the 9th May last of the general calamity which 
 famine had extended to almost every part of these provinces were 
 truly alarming, how much more so must they now be, when we 
 inform you that our miseries have been daily increasing to the 
 present period ; nor do we view relief but as a distant prospect. 
 It naturally follows that, from so calamitous an event, great 
 failures in the collection of the revenue must be the inevitable 
 consequence ; but still we are willing to hope they will not be so 
 great as our apprehensions have conceived.' 
 
 \\th September 1770. — Para. 4. 'In the several letters from 
 this committee, we have endeavoured to give a very faithful, 
 candid, and impartial account of the distress this country has 
 suffered from the severity of a famine ; indeed, it is scarcely 
 possible that any description could be an exaggeration of the 
 misery the inhabitants of it have encountered with. It is not 
 then to be wondered that this calamity has had its influence on 
 the collections ; but we are happy to remark they have fell less 
 short than we supposed they would when a famine was only 
 apprehended, and when we could form no idea to what a pitch of 
 misery the country would be reduced. 
 
 5. ' From the annual accounts received within these few days 
 from our Resident at the Durbar, we find that the neat sum col- 
 lected is sicca rupees one crore thirty-eight laack (w) two thousand 
 six hundred and ninety-three nine annoes and ten pie (Sa. Rs. 
 1,38,02,693:9: 10) ;' (but an additional sum of Rs. 2,03,337 was 
 also wrung out of the people, making a total of Rs. 1,40,06,030 ;) 
 'that sicca rupees eight laack three thousand three hundred and 
 twenty-one, fifteen annoes (Sa. Rs. 8,03,32 1:15) have been obliged 
 to be totally remitted in the different provinces, to alleviate the 
 distress of the wretched inhabitants' (i.e. a paltry deduction of 
 S per cent, from the revenue in a province that had lost 35 per 
 cent, of its population) ; ' and that a balance of sicca rupees six 
 laak fourteen thousand two hundred and nineteen, eight annas 
 (Sa. Rs. 6,14,219:8), remains to be collected of last year's agree- 
 ment; that at the new Pumeah, which commenced on the loth 
 April 1770, a new statement was made of one crore, fifty-two 
 laak, forty-five thousand nine hundred seventy-nine rupees, fifteen 
 
AppX. B.] DESCRIBET) BY EYE-WITNESSMS. 403 
 
 annoes twelve pies (1,52,45,979:15:2) for Bengal' (being an 
 increase of 10 per cent, during the year of famine !), ' which our 
 Resident, from the authority of Mahomed Reza Cawn, gives us 
 some faint hopes of realising, should the season prove favour- 
 able, notwithstanding the loss the country has sustained in the 
 number of inhabitants.' 
 
 24/^ December 1770. — Para. 22. ' The famine having entirely 
 ceased, and there being such an earnest of a plentiful crop that 
 there is already great quantity of grain in this place, and a pro- 
 spect of much abundance in a short time, we have recommended 
 it to the Board to lay in a quantity of provisions in the new Fort, 
 to answer any emergencies, and this we hope will be done at a 
 very cheap rate.' 
 
 ■L2th February iTJ'i.. — Paras. 43 and 44. — 43. ' In our letter of 
 the 2Sth January 1770, by the Grafton, we informed you that, on 
 account of the famine which prevailed throughout the country, 
 we had made a remission to the farmers in the Burdwaun pro- 
 vince of about 2-| or 3 lacks of rupees, on condition that they 
 should discharge it at certain periods, with the rents of the next 
 year. 
 
 44. 'But the Collector-General has represented to us that 
 the great increase of the famine since that period has been the 
 cause of such a mortality and desertion amongst the ryotts, 
 as to deprive the farmers of a possibility of receiving the rents 
 that had been allowed to run in arrear ; and that therefore, 
 if some reduction of the sum remitted was not made, many 
 of the farmers would be ruined. On a scrutiny made by Mr. 
 Stuart, it appeared that the farmers had lost by the death or 
 desertions of the ryots, 82,180 rupees of the above 3 lacks. 
 As it was not expected, when this temporary remission was 
 allowed, that the famine would have been so fatal, and as it 
 appeared but equitable that the farmers should be relieved of 
 the payment of sums which they could not collect from the 
 lyotts, we authorised the Collector-General to allow the far- 
 mers the sum above specified, should it be found on a further 
 scrutiny that it could not with justice be reduced.' (In reality, 
 the remission was reduced to nothing, for the whole was paid 
 up. Vide post. p. 406.) 
 
 \2th February 1771. — Para. 2. 'Notwithstanding the great 
 severity of the late famine, and the great reduction of people 
 
404 GREAT FAMINE OF \-]io, [Appx. B, 
 
 thereby, some increase has been made in the settlements both of 
 the Bengal and Bahar provinces for the present year ; and we 
 hope, as the country recovers itself in succeeding years, a much 
 larger increase may be made without oppressing the ryotts. 
 From the progress already made in the collections, and from 
 the attention and vigilance of the Councils of Revenue, and 
 the supravisors in the different districts, we hope the amount 
 of revenue fixed for the present year will be in great measure 
 realised ; though in some particular parts, where the loss of 
 inhabitants has been greatest, and in others where the suc- 
 ceeding crop has been destroyed by the overflowing of the river, 
 we are apprehensive deficiencies will be unavoidable.' 
 
 12th April 1 77 1. — P.S. to 2d April. 'We must likewise 
 inform you that great progress has been made on the fortifi- 
 cations since our engineer's last report, considering the immense 
 difficulty we have found in procuring a sufficient number of 
 coolies, owing to the mortality which has in general fallen on 
 the lower ranks of people in Bengal.' 
 
 xoth January 1772. — Paras. 15-19. — 15. 'We are sorry to 
 find ourselves under the necessity of apologizing for a very 
 considerable mistake committed in the information we gave 
 you as to the state of balances of last year, under direction of 
 the Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad. It proceeded from 
 inserting the amount of balances at the end of March for the 
 balance of the year. We now beg leave to correct so con- 
 siderable an error, and it is with pleasure we inform you that 
 the neat balance of last year's settlement of that department 
 amounts only to rupees eighteen lacks, thirty-eight thousand 
 six hundred and sixty-one, four annas, two gundas, and three 
 cowries.' (The balance was subsequently reduced to twelve 
 lacs, or less than the increase which had been made to the revemie 
 during the famine year!) 
 
 16. 'We have likewise the pleasure to observe that the col- 
 lections in each department of revenue are as successfully 
 carried on for the present year as we could have wished ; and 
 from the favourableness of the season, we have no doubt that 
 they will be nearer completed to the amount of their different 
 settlements than in any of the preceding years. 
 
 17. 'The statement of the Bahar collections for the Bengal 
 year 11 78, or 1770-71, we have received since our last advices,* 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 405 
 
 and we find, to our great satisfaction, that they have amounted 
 to Rs. 43,61,651:0:6, exclusive of extra collections arising 
 from the balances of former years' Tegarry, profit on interest and 
 batta, etc., wliich amount to Rs. 2,65,044 : 10 : o ; the total of 
 the collections making the sum of Rs. 46,26,695 : 10 : o.' 
 
 18. From which it appears that the amount (collected during 
 the year of famine) has exceeded the receipts in the preceding 
 year by Rs. 4,25,747 : 9 : 3, not including the above sum received 
 on account of extra collections. 
 
 Section II. — Representations from Native Correspondence 
 regarding the Famine of i^io. 
 
 Maharajah Shitab Roy. — Received ji^fh January 1770. — 'Such 
 is the scarcity of grain in this province, that fifty poor wretches 
 in a day perish with famine in the streets of Patna.' The 
 calamity is more severely felt in the districts. The 40,000 
 maunds of rice ordered from Dacca has not arrived for the 
 troops at Bankipore. Urges that expedition be used in for- 
 warding supplies for the troops, that they may not consume 
 the produce of the province, which is not enough for the in- 
 habitants. 
 
 From Rujuf Khan, Foujdar. — Received April 13, 1770. — Has 
 ' collected what the country produced,' though the Khureef 
 harvest was almost ruined by the drought; but 'the Rubbee 
 {}.e. spring harvest) proving more favourable,' he ' completed 
 the assignments.' 
 
 From Mahomed Reza Cawn. — Received x%th May 1770. — 'To 
 this hour I have laboured, as well in the collections as in every 
 other branch, vsdth the diligence and attention of the most faith- 
 ful well-wisher ; and as far as the fallible nature of mankind 
 would admit, I have been guilty of no omission. But as there 
 is no remedy against the decrees of Providence, how shall I 
 describe the misery of the country from the excessive droughts, 
 the deamess and scarcity of grain hitherto, but now a total 
 failure ? The tanks and springs are dried up, and water grows 
 daily more difficult to be procured. Added to these calami- 
 lies, frequent and dreadful fires have happened throughout the 
 country, impoverished whole families, and destroyed thousands 
 of lives. The small stores of grain which yet remained at Raje 
 Gunge, Dewan Gunge, and other places within the districts of 
 
4o6 GREAT FAMINE OF -L-no, [Appx. B. 
 
 Dinagepore and Poorneah, have been consumed by fire. Be- 
 fore, each day furnished accounts of the fate of thousands ; but 
 notwithstanding, some hopes were still left that during the months 
 of April and May we should be blessed with rain, and the poor 
 ryotts able to till their ground ; but to this hour not a drop has 
 fallen. The coarse crop which is gathered at this season is 
 entirely spoilt, and the seed for the August crop is sown during 
 the months of April and May. It is now the middle of the 
 latter month, and they have not begun for want of rain. Even 
 now, by the help of a few showers, something might be done. 
 If the scarcity of grain and want of rain had been confined to 
 one spot of the province, management and attention might find 
 a remedy ; but when the evil is total, there can be no remedy 
 but in the mercy of God. I know not what the divine will has 
 ordained shall befal this country. The calamity is past the 
 ingenuity of man. The Almighty alone can deliver us from such 
 distress.' 
 
 From Mahomed Reza Cawn. — Received 2d June 1770. — Not- 
 withstanding the droughts which have prevailed, he has, by 
 exerting his utmost abilities, collected the revenue of 1770, 'as 
 closely as so dreadful a season would admit.' ' The remainder,' 
 he adds, ' cannot be collected without evident ruin to the ryotts, 
 desolation to the country, and a heavy loss in the ensuing year.' 
 (Nevertheless, we have seen that almost the whole was eventually 
 collected.) 
 
 Rajah Tejchund of Burdwaun, in a letter dated 14th May 
 1771, states that, notwithstanding 'the hardships and distresses 
 that have befallen the ryots, the poor, and the inhabitants of this 
 country from the famine,' ' the revenues have been collected with- 
 out balance.' 
 
 Section III. — Abstracts of the Consultations of the 
 Government of Bengal. 
 
 Consultation of the 23^ OJober 1769. — Owing to the scarcity, a 
 stock of grain is to be laid in for the army. The amount required 
 will be 120,000 maunds in six months. This must be provided 
 from countries where there were the most plentiful crops, and, 
 which have suffered least from the drought. 
 
 The Chief and Consul of Patna to provide 80,000 maunds, of 
 which mds. 60,000 to be sent to the city for Burrampore and 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 407 
 
 Patna, and mds. 20,000 for the troops at the Presidency. (N.B. 
 Patna, from which this supply was drawn, was one of the most 
 cruelly stricken districts.) 
 
 Resident at the Durbar to procure mds. 40,000 from Dinage- 
 pore and Poorneah, carefully attending to the wants of the dis- 
 tricts whence they draw the supplies. (N.B. Poorneah, whence 
 this supply was drawn, lost ' above one-third ' of its inhabitants 
 during the next six months.) 
 
 Storehouses to be built at the city and Patna. Cautions as to 
 fire and other accidents. 
 
 Residents at the Durbar, and supravisors of the Behar collec 
 tions, to prevent monopolies of grain. Cultivation of pulse, grain, 
 barley, and grains of the dry season to be encouraged, and every 
 means to be taken which can be thought of to supply the want 
 of rice. 
 
 A committee of the Collector- General, the Buxey, and Ze- 
 mindar, to lay down regulations for the prevention of monopoly 
 and the relief of the inhabitants. 
 
 Consultation of the \^h Novemher 1769. — The Dacca chief 
 and council request Rs. 60,000. Sanctioned, and the deputation 
 of Mr. Sumner into Barkergunj to buy grain approved. 
 
 Consultation of the li^h November 1769. — Arrangements were 
 made to obtain labour in the fort in construction at Calcutta, by 
 supplying the workmen with gfain at cheap rates. Difficulties 
 were said to be thrown in the way by the dealers. 
 
 19,000 maunds were in store (or less than a single brigade's 
 consumption during three months). Further supplies were expected 
 from different parts of the country. It was proposed to supply a 
 seer of rice a-day a-head to persons labouring on the fortifications, 
 at cost price and charges, the difference in their favour to be paid 
 them in cowries : thus they would get it 40 per cent, cheaper than 
 in the Bazaar. The scarcity is likely to continue for eight months, 
 increasing in intensity. Mds. 49,000 might be required for 8000 
 coolies : so much besides that in store had been ordered, and 
 more supplies can be drawn from Chittagong. 
 
 The Buxey to have always mds. 20,000 in store for the use of 
 the garrison. Fort St. George may be in condition now to supply 
 rice. Fort Marlborough cannot be supplied from Bengal. Chit- 
 tagong must be pressed for further supplies. Fort St. George 
 was written to (but in fact it was Bengal that had sent supplies 
 
4o8 GREAT FAMINE OF IT] o, [Appx. B- 
 
 to Madras, not Madras to Bengal, until the close of tlie 
 famine). 
 
 Consultation of the 20th November 1769. — Representation of 
 the Raja of Burdwaun. Drought and dearness of grain. Crop 
 parched, and cut up for fodder for the cattle. Tanks dry. 
 Water insufficient for the inhabitants. Rubbee harvest backward, 
 and without rain will be destroyed. Ryuts deserting in large 
 bodies. 
 
 Resident at the Durbar states that relief has been obtained 
 from the prohibition of monopoly ; but there is an alarming 
 prospect of the province becoming desolate in the ensuing season, 
 from flight of the ryuts and want of cultivation. This communi- 
 cation has been deferred for fear of causing alarm ; but duty and 
 humanity require that the distresses of the country be brought to 
 notice. South, they were blessed with rain ; but northward the 
 rice crop has been in some places totally lost, and the greatest 
 part of it in others. Rivers dry, and tanks drained. The ryuts 
 cannot cultivate cotton, mulberry, grain, pease, barley, tobacco, 
 or beht root. Hence the flight of ryuts to become day-labourers 
 where they can earn a subsistence. Unless a remedy can be 
 found, this must result in. loss of revenue. 
 
 Consultation of the 6th December 1769. — The collections are 
 equal to those of former years, notwithstanding the drought ; but 
 this cannot be expected to continue. The Resident expects to 
 send down zooo coolies. 500 have been engaged for six months, 
 but at high rates of wages. 
 
 Consultation of the 12th December 1769. — Chief and codncil of 
 Chittagong promise every effort to relieve the scarcity. 
 
 Consultation of the \'&th January 1770. — Fort St. George pro- 
 mises to supply Fort Marlboro with grain, if not obtained direct 
 from the Malabar coast. They have promise of a plentiful crop 
 from the late rains. 
 
 Consultation of the 13//% February 1770. — Resident at the 
 Durbar proposes to distribute rice at six places at the rate of half 
 a seer a-day for each person. Europeans and their gomashtas 
 are forestalling. They should be prohibited purchasing till after 
 next August in the provinces which supply the city. The eastern 
 districts will supply Calcutta. Orders are issued for 40,000 
 maunds of rice for the troops at Berhampore. 
 
 Consultation of the 26th February 1770. — Matters are left to 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 409 
 
 the Resident's 'prudence and impartiality,' sanctioning remissions 
 repayable in preference to abatement of revenue and tuccavee. 
 
 Consultation of the 2']th March 1770. — The proposed supplies 
 of rice not arrived from Backergunge. 
 
 Consultation of the -^d April 1770. — The Buxey reports mds. 
 33,913 have arrived from Backergunge. Mds. 25,657 of the 
 August crop (indifferent in quality) have been ordered to be sold, 
 but in small parcels. 
 
 Consultation of the ^d April 1770. — At the instance of Messrs. 
 Russell, Floyer, and Hare (3d April 1770), fifty maunds of rice 
 per day, in addition to the merchants' assistance, have been 
 ordered to be distributed in charity in Calcutta, and twenty to 
 twenty-five maunds a-day in Burdwaun. 
 
 Consultation of the 14th August 1770. — The Council refuse any 
 assistance to the French colony at Chandernagore, on the ground 
 that they have not sufficient for a day's consumption in stock. 
 
 Consultation of the i^th September 1770. — Deficiency of the 
 Maldah investment, in consequence of the severe drought which 
 has prevailed there, which has swept away many of the inhabit- 
 ants, and so enfeebled those that remain, that there is not half 
 the quantity of cloths prepared this year as the last. 
 
 Consultation of the 22^ October 1770. — Difficulty with the 
 French at Lushypore, in consequence of an endeavour to smuggle 
 out a small quantity of rice. 
 
 Consultation of the \d,th November 1770. — ' The famine having 
 now entirely ceased, and there being not only a great abundance, 
 but also a prospect of a most plentiful harvest, — 
 
 ' Agreed — That the embargo on rice be taken off, and that a 
 publication be issued to that purpose.' 
 
 Section IV. — Abstracts of Extracts from the Proceedings of the 
 Provincial Council of Moorshedabad. 
 
 Consultation of the 2'jth September 1770. — The Nawab should 
 be supported vigorously in his collections from the Bhadoon 
 (September) harvest, that there may be no loss, as might be ap- 
 prehended in the present impoverished state of the country. 
 
 Consultation of the ifh October 1770. — Letter from Mr. Grose, 
 Supravisor of Behar, dated Govindgunge, 26th September 1770 : 
 — Notwithstanding rain had fallen, the greatest part of the land is 
 uncultivated, in consequence of ryuts absconding and leaving only 
 
410 GREAT FAMINE OF \^1o, [Appx. B. 
 
 a dissatisfied portion of the population. Paddy flourishes, and 
 the harvest would have been plentiful if cultivation had pro- 
 ceeded. 
 
 Letter from the Supravisor of Rungpore, dated 26th September: 
 — The distresses of the poor continue very great. A number of 
 miserable objects daily apply for reUef Five rupees' worth of 
 rice are daily distributed amongst the most needy. Ten rupees' 
 worth had been previously distributed. The Provincial Council 
 sanctions this expenditure. [Ten shillings a-day among 400,000 
 starving beings !] 
 
 Consultation of the i']tk October 1770. — Mr. Ducarel, Supravisor 
 of Poorneah, in a letter dated loth October 177 1, complains of 
 Sepoys being sent by Colonel Champion to purchase grain for 
 the troops at Monghyr, although exportation from his district is 
 prohibited. At the present time of distress and failure of the 
 August crops, he hopes that the supplies for Monghyr may be 
 obtained in " the ordinary way through the ordinary native mer- 
 chants, not by armed troops. 
 
 Consultation of the 23;/ October 1770. — Mr. Higginson, Supra- 
 visor of Beerbhoom, in a letter dated i8th October 1770, reports 
 that the lands managed by Shickdars are heavily in balance. 
 They are represented to be ' in such a barren and depopulated 
 state, from the bad effects of the famine,' as to preclude the hope 
 of finding farmers ; nevertheless, he expects an increase in the 
 collections, and to make a considerable one next year. 
 
 Consultation of the bth November 1770. — In the late famine, 
 Calcutta was well supplied with grain at a time when the places 
 where it was brought from were almost destitute. The rate of 
 wages — six or eight annas a-month for a labourer {i.e. besides 
 a certain allowance of food) — ' is calculated for a time when rice 
 is at two or three maunds for a rupee.' ' If they cannot procure 
 their subsistence at an adequate price, they and their families 
 either go off to other countries, where they have higher wages or 
 provisions cheaper;' and 'if the exportation of grain is now 
 made general,' gomashtas and merchants will ' buy it up at a 
 price at which the working people cannot purchase it even for 
 their subsistence.' — Letter from the Supravisor of Poorneah. 
 
 Consultation of the 26th November 1770. — The Naib Diwan 
 complains of difficulties in providing the silk investment. From 
 the calamities of the season and extraordinary famine, many of 
 
Appx. B.] described BY EYE- WITNESSES. 4 1 1 
 
 the ryuts are dead for want of subsistence, many houses are 
 depopulated, and the remaining inhabitants are utterly incapable 
 of industry or exerting themselves to Cultivate. Mr. Harwood, 
 Supravisor of Raj Mahal, when sending the abstract Bundobust 
 for the current year, alludes to the ' impoverished, ruined, and 
 miserable state ' of the districts under his management. 
 
 Consultation of the 2?>th November 1770. — Rajah Kusum 
 Chund of Nuddeah reports the ' death and desertion of many of 
 the ryots' owing to the famine. 
 
 Consultation of the i7,th December 1770. — Mr. Ducarel, Supra- 
 visor of Poomeah, reporting on the present settlement for three 
 years at an increase, says : ' Had I known of the famine, and 
 mortality of the inhabitants which followed, I never would have 
 made a Bundobust {i.e. arrangement) for three years, or with an 
 increase.' Of four of the Purgunnahs, after personal visitation, he 
 says, that ' there having been little or no harvest, the people either 
 perished or went elsewhere for subsistence ; and they (i.e. the 
 lands) were really sunk in one year almost half their value ; on 
 which point I should not have been satisfied if I had not received 
 every proof that the closest examination could give me. They 
 are now really lying waste for want of inhabitants, particularly 
 Huveiee Poomeah, which contained more than 1000 villages ; 
 and it is the deficiency which takes place here that renders the 
 Poorneah revenue less this year than heretofore.' 
 
 Further on, Mr. Ducarel adds as follows : — 
 
 * The Gunge, called Alumgunge, the principal receipts of which 
 depended on the consumption of grain in the town, has declined 
 greatly by reason of the considerable decrease of inhabitants 
 during the last famine, a great part of the town having become 
 a jungle, and literally a refuge for wild beasts. 
 
 ' In respect to the improvement of the country, I must, in 
 answer, premise that, according to the attested accounts I have 
 received from the Pergunnahs, there have perished near two 
 lacks {j.e. 200,000) of people in this district. Except the effects 
 of this loss (be it more or less), I can safely give it as my opinion 
 that the country is improving.' 
 
 Consultation of the 20th December 1770.— Letter from Mr. 
 Reed of Moorshedabad states that in Dacca, Poorneah, and 
 Hooghly, collections are regularly kept up, and some of them 
 paid iu advance ! The rtst of the supravisors give reason to 
 
413 GREAT FAMINE OF X110, [Appx. B. 
 
 expect that the revenue of the province in general will be duly 
 collected, ' excepting in some few places.' 
 
 Consultation of the xi,th December 1770. — The rice from 
 Barkergunge, Mr. Becher observed, arrived at a most critical 
 time j and ' the Company has reaped a considerable benefit by a 
 measure which -pcoytdi a. general relief to the immediate dependants 
 on the English here, and tended to preserve order and regularity ;' 
 otherwise, ' the greatest confusion must have ensued.' 
 
 Distribution of rice amongst the miserable objects in and 
 near the city was sanctioned by the committee to the amount of 
 Rs. 87,000 ; Rs. 40,000 paid by the Company, and Rs. 47,000 
 by the Nawab. The charge was exceeded. ' The famine and 
 its dreadful consequences increased considerably as the season 
 advanced ; rice rose from ten to three seers per rupee ; and 
 neither humanity nor policy would admit of a stop being put to 
 the distribution earlier than it was done. It is for consideration 
 whether the Nawab and ministers shall be called on for their 
 proportion of the excess.' ' These gentlemen, independent of 
 this distribution, helped to preserve the lives of many by their 
 charitable donations, as I believe did every man of property in 
 these parts ; indeed, a man must have had a heart of stone that 
 had the ability and would have refused his mite for the relief of 
 such miserable objects as constantly presented themselves to our 
 view.' ' The charge was indispensable, and the Company will 
 benefit by the preservation of the numbers who have survived 
 owing to the distribution of the rice.' 
 
 Consultation of the ^f st December 1770. — Mr. Rous, Supravisor 
 of Rajshie, reports : ' I cannot give,' he adds, ' a more striking 
 proof of the deficiency of the August harvest, than by mentioning 
 a circumstance probably never before known, that the consump- 
 tion of grain in these parts is now supplied by importation from 
 the northern districts and the precincts of Moorshedabad ; and 
 that at Nahore, situate in the heart of a rice country, grain sells 
 at 18 seers per rupee, whilst at Moorshedabad it is above 30 
 seers of the same species of weight.' 
 
 Consultation of the i^h February 1771. — The Rajah Byjnath 
 of Dinagepore implores some remission on account of the de- 
 population and ruined state of his district which has ensued from 
 famine ; represents that many villages are wholly deserted, and 
 a great part of the land fallen waste for want of seed and imple- 
 
A.PPX. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 413 
 
 ments of cultivation. Out of a total demand of Rs. 13,70,932, 
 as much as Rs. 12,00,000 had been collected ; and the Board 
 now orders that if the rajah does not ' heartily co-operate in 
 answering ' their expectations of the revenue in full, he will be de- 
 prived of his territory, and summoned before them as a defaulter. 
 
 Consultation of the iZth February 177 1. — The Supravisor of 
 Beerbhoom, Mr. Higginson, reports : ' I have now to represent 
 to you, gentlemen, the bad consequences that will attend my 
 enforcing the collections of last year's balances from the remaining 
 poor ryotts of these districts who have so considerably suffered 
 from the late famine, that by far the greatest part of them are 
 rendered utterly incapable of paying them. By obliging them to 
 sell their cattle and utensils for agriculture, a small proportion 
 might be recovered ; but this would certainly be the means of 
 their deserting the province, and preventing the cultivation for 
 next year, which would be much more fatal to the revenue of the 
 country than the whole loss of the balances. In Bissenpore, the 
 sum of Rs. T067 was collected on this account before I received 
 charge of the province, and those ryuts from whom it was received 
 have fled the country. The cause of many of these balances for 
 last year have arisen in a great measure from the corrupt manage 
 ment of aumils and black collectors (through whom we then 
 administered the country), and in Bissenpore it was particularly 
 as follows : — It was the custom for the ryuts to give paddy for 
 the rents of the ground they cultivated ; but last year, their crop 
 being entirely spoilt for want of the usual rains, they had no 
 paddy to pay. The collector, taking advantage of this, forced 
 them to settle their accounts with him at the rate of three rupees 
 each measure, whereas the price of any former years was only 
 one rupee each measure. This the ryuts not being able to comply 
 with, many of them deserted the province, and those that re- 
 mained were entirely ruined. And I now refer it to you, gentle- 
 men, to know in what manner I am to recover these balances, 
 though in the meantime I shall endeavour to collect all I can 
 from those who are able to pay, but I fear they will be very few.' 
 
 Mr. Higginson had visited the eastern Pergunnahs, those 
 chiefly afflicted. 
 
 ' These,' he says, * are all situated on the easternmost side of 
 this province, which suffer much more considerably than any 
 other part, on account of there being so little rain there last year 
 
414 GHEAT FAMINE OF iT]o^ [Appx. B 
 
 in comparison with the rest of the Pergunnahs. Truly concerned 
 am I to acquaint you that the bad effects of the last famine appear 
 in these places beyond description dreadful. Many hundreds of 
 villages are entirely depopulated ; and even in the large towns 
 there are not a fourth part of the houses inhabited. For want of 
 ryuts to cultivate the ground, there are immense tracts of a fine 
 open country which remain wholly waste and unimproved. The 
 ryuts in general of these Pergunnahs have entreated me to relieve 
 them from the oppression of sigdars, and to let out their lands to 
 farmers in the same manner as in the other parts of the province, 
 when they promise to set heartily to work on the cultivation, 
 and to remain in their present habitations. The advantage of 
 beginning this as early in the season as possible, must appear 
 obvious to you, as by far the greatest number of the ryuts are not 
 able to cultivate their lands without the assistance of Tuccavee, 
 which can only be given to farmers who, for their own interests, 
 will advance the money to encourage their ryuts.' 
 
 The Council replied : 
 
 ' Though we can by no means recede from the demands for 
 Moofiissil balances due from your districts, yet we cannot but 
 agree with you in the propriety of suspending them for the 
 present, as continuing to harass the ryuts for them at the present 
 season would be attended with prejudice to the ensuing year's 
 cultivation and collections. Should the approaching year, how- 
 ever, prove a prosperous one, we flatter ourselves an adjustment 
 might be made for the recovery of these balances ; and it is 
 an object that we must recommend to your attention in that 
 event.' 
 
 Consultation of the xst April 1771. — The Supravisor of 
 Nuddea begs an advance of ,^^4000 to enable the cultivators 
 to recommence tillage. The council sanction only ;^25oo, and 
 make the revenue-farmers responsible for its repayment. 
 
 Consultation of the is,th April i']']!.. — Mr. Rous, Supravisor 
 of Rajshie, reports : * I receive advices from the Pergunnahs of 
 the frequent firing of villages by people whose distress drives 
 them to such acts of despair and villany. Numbers of ryuts, 
 who have hitherto borne the first of characters amongst their 
 neighbours, pursue this last desperate resource to procure them 
 selves a subsistence. 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 415 
 
 Section V. — Selections from the Select Committee, the Secret 
 Consultations, and Committee of Revenue. 
 
 Consultation of the gth February 1769. — Mr. Becher, resident 
 of the Durbar, reports that the ' revenues were never so closely 
 collected before.' 
 
 Consultation of the 16th August 1769. — Mr. Rumbold, chief of 
 Bahar, after several letters announcing drought and foreboding 
 scarcity, now reports that plentiful showers have fallen, and is 
 hopeful that want and hunger may yet be relieved. 
 
 Consultations from this date to end of year refer to many 
 letters from the local officers complaining of want of rain, appre- 
 hending great distress and a falling off of the revenues, and 
 suggesting remissions of the land-tax, and permission to pay the 
 Government demands wholly or partly in grain. 
 
 Consultation of the 2?>th January 1770. — Mr. Alexander, Supra- 
 visor of Bahar, has reported that it is not to ' distant evil,' but to 
 'the extremity of immediate distress,' that a remedy must be 
 appHed ; that ' each day lost in deliberation adds to the calamity ;' 
 that he has issued an order to take twenty-five seers of rice out 
 of every forty for the Government, leaving fifteen for the ryut, — 
 sugar-cane, cotton, and opium to pay, according to custom. 
 
 Mr. Alexander further proposed to make a circuit of the 
 province with Raja Shitab Roy. He says: 'To judge from 
 the city of Patna, the interior of the country must be in a 
 deplorable condition. From fifty to sixty people have died of 
 absolute hunger on the streets every day for these ten days past.' 
 Above 8000 beggars were still in the place; and if the rajah 
 were to attempt to relieve them in a public manner, the number 
 would still increase from every village about Patna. For those 
 near his own habitation he serves out fifty rupees' worth of rice 
 every day at the Company's expense, and will continue to do so 
 till they are relieved, or he receives orders to the contrary. The 
 rajah proposed to allot about two lakhs of rupees for the relief 
 and assistance of the poor, but Mr. Alexander could not sanction 
 this without permission. 
 
 The council recommend caution in the receipt of the revenue 
 in kind, and Mr. Alexander was instructed to adopt the plan 
 only to a limited extent. 
 
 Consultation of the iZth April 1770. — The depopulation in the 
 
4i6 GREAT FAMINE OF i-jTo, [Appx. B, 
 
 interior part of the country is more rapid than will be imagined 
 by any person who has not been witness to it ; and such is the 
 disposition of the people, that they seem rather inclined to sub- 
 mit to death than extricate themselves from misery and hunger 
 by industry and labour. I wished to give every possible en- 
 couragement to cultivation, and with this view Perwannahs were 
 issued out, and public notice everywhere given that no rent 
 should be collected on the lands producing a particular kind of 
 grain called Arzun for the space of six months. This I under- 
 stand to be a very coarse seed, and never yields any considerable 
 revenue ; in plentiful seasons it is usually at the price of five 
 maunds for a rupee. 
 
 The miseries of the poor at this place increase in such a 
 manner, that no less than 150 have died in a day in Patna. In 
 consequence of this, and the latitude you have given me, I 
 disburse on the Company's account daily 380 sonat rupees, — 
 100 of which is disbursed by the rajah, 80 by Messrs. Stephenson, 
 Droz, and Law, and 150 by myself. I am confident the whole 
 is laid out with the utmost economy. The officers at Dinapore, 
 bya private subscription, feed a large number, and the French 
 and Dutch give as largely as can be expected from their small 
 factories. 
 
 Consultation of the 2Zth April I'l'^o. — 'The districts that have 
 more particularly suffered from the unfavourableness of the 
 season are Poomeah, Rajmahl, Beerbhoom, and a part of Raje- 
 shahye ; indeed, the only districts under this department from 
 which complaints have not come of the want of rain are Dacca, 
 and those low countries that are situate to the eastward, where 
 the rivers have overflown and fertilized the lands even this 
 remarkable dry season.' 
 
 Bhangulpore had particularly suffered from drought, which, 
 added to other causes, has reduced this fine country to a miserable 
 state. Lenient revenue arrangements are suggested. 
 
 The condition of Beerbhoom and its inhabitants is alluded to 
 as ' miserable, almost exceeding description.' The continuance 
 of the drought is deplored ; and the condition of the country is 
 thus summed up by Mr. Becher : — ■ 
 
 ' If it should please God to continue the present drought much 
 longer, all endeavour on your part (the Select Committee), on 
 that of the Ministers, and on mine, must be vain. Rain which 
 
Appx. B.] described BY EYE- WITNESSES. 41 7 
 
 fell in February enabled the ryots to plough the ground, and 
 they now require a further quantity in order to turn the earth 
 and sow their crops. If they obtain this blessing soon, there 
 will be a fair prospect for their next crops ; if not, this will be a 
 most miserable country. Indeed, the Company can expect but 
 small revenues next year. The distress of the inhabitants at 
 present does not only proceed from scarcity of provisions and 
 want of rain to cultivate their lands, but in many parts they are 
 without water to drink.' 
 
 Consultation of the 2W1 April ii.'j^o. — Foujdar of Poorneah, 
 Mahomed Ala Khan. 
 
 ' Hardly a day passes without thirty or forty people dying.' 
 ' Multitudes already have, and continue to perish of hunger.' 
 Seed grain has been sold for food, and cattle and agricultural 
 utensils. Children offered for sale, and no buyers. Mahomed 
 Ali expresses an official, but not very creditable, ' blindness 
 to distress ' and ' deafness to lamentation,' in the interests of 
 the Sircar, i.e. the Government. The Aumil of Bishenpore, 
 Nobkishwar, testifies that — 
 
 ' From excessive drought, and failure of the supply from lakes 
 and tanks, the fields of rice, parched by the heat of the sun, 
 are become hke fields of dried straw.' 
 
 The Aumil of Jessore, Ujagger Mull, reports no rain up to 
 nor through Bhadoor. The people are bringing in the leaves of 
 trees from the jungles for food ; and they offer to sell their sons 
 and daughters. Many of the ryots are running away. 
 
 The Foujdar of Rajmahal, Pertab Roy, makes a similar state- 
 ment. Ploughs and oxen are offered for revenue, and clamours 
 interrupt the business of the Cutcherry. 
 
 Mr. Ducarel reports that the miseries of the town of Poorneah 
 are not less shocking than those of the rural parts. Pestilence 
 must be guarded against by the removal of the dead bodies. 
 Upwards of 1000 were buried in three days after his arrival. 
 One half the cultivators and payers of revenue will perish with 
 hunger, whilst those able to purchase a subsistence will pay at 
 least 500 per cent, advance in the price of food. He considers 
 that, on the high and sandy soils, more than half the ryots are dead. 
 
 Mr. Harwood, Rajmahal, reports that the zameendars are 
 ruined, the lands not having yielded half produce for the last 
 twelve months. 
 
 VOL. I. 2D 
 
41 8 GREAT FAMINE OF Y'j^o, [Appx. R 
 
 In a subsequent letter, Mr. Harwood (28th March 1770), 
 alluding to the humanity of sanctioning abatements, which had 
 been recently allowed, says : 
 
 'Had the misery of the inhabitants been reported to you 
 sooner, and had the ryots received this ease at the proper time, 
 your beneficent intentions would have been fully answered, and 
 many thousands who are now reduced to poverty might have 
 enjoyed ease, if not affluence. But, from motives of false policy 
 and self-interest, the (native) collectors in the different parts, during 
 this calamitous season, have pressed so very hard upon the ryots 
 to oblige them to make good their engagements to Government, 
 that their total ruin has invariably followed.' Mr. Harwood was 
 hopeful, as grain grows ' neither more scarce nor dear,' that 'the 
 calamity was almost at an end.' 
 
 Consultation of the 2,d May 1 770. — Mr. Alexander reports from 
 Patna that the famine increases, and leads to apprehensions of 
 most fatal consequences. The consumption of the army presses on 
 the inhabitants. 
 
 ' Your neighbours,' the committee conclude in reply, ' enjoy- 
 ing the blessing of almost a plentiful season, whilst you are 
 suffering the evils of death and famine, exhibits but an unpleasant 
 contrast, and rather wounds the credit of English policy. We 
 have no doubt of your vigilance and capacity ; but the Govern- 
 ment of this country has provided so very imperfectly for the 
 security of the poor, that, unless very extraordinary efforts are 
 made to prevent it, these calamities never fail to occasion the 
 grossest abuses.' 
 
 Consultation of the ^th June 1770. — The Resident at the 
 Durbar reports : ' The scene of misery that intervened, and still 
 continues, shocks humanity too much to bear description. Cer- 
 tain it is, that in several parts the living have fed on the dead, 
 and the number that has perished in those provinces that have 
 most suffered is calculated to have been, within these few months, 
 as six is to sixteen of the whole inhabitants.' 
 
 Consultation of the 21st June 1770. — The Resident at the 
 Durbar reports that the misery and distress increase daily. Rice 
 sells at 6 and 7 seers per rupee ; and there have been several 
 days lately when not a grain was to be purchased. Many even 
 of the Company's immediate dependents must have been starved 
 but for the supplies from Bakergunge. Plenty of rain now, but 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EYE-WITNESSES. 419 
 
 it is feared too much. This apprehension and reduced cultiva- 
 tion, owing to the want of people, cattle, and even seed, does nol 
 afford a very fair prospect for the ensuing collections. 
 
 Consultation of the igth July 1770. — The Resident at the 
 Durbar reports : ' Previous representations ' are ' faint in com 
 parison to the miseries now endured. Within 30 miles round the 
 city, rice sells at only 3 seers for a rupee ; other grain in propor- 
 tion ; and even at those exorbitant prices there is not nearly 
 sufficient for the daily supply of half the inhabitants, so that in 
 the city of Moorshedabad alone it is calculated that more than 
 five hundred are starved daily, and in the villages and country 
 adjacent the numbers said to perish exceed belief ' Every 
 endeavour of the (native) Ministers and myself has been exerted 
 to lessen this dreadful calamity. The prospect of the approach- 
 ing crop is favourable, and we have the comfort to know that 
 the distress of the inhabitants to the northward and eastward of 
 us is greatly relieved from what they have before suffered. In 
 one month we may expect relief from our present distresses from 
 the new harvest, if people survive to gather it in ; but the numbers 
 that I am sensible must perish in that interval, and those that 1 
 see dying around me, greatly affect my feelings and humanity as 
 a man, and make me, as a servant of the Company, apprehensive 
 of the consequences that may ensue to the revenues.' 
 
 Secret Consultations of the 1st February 177 1 — Note by the 
 Committee. — ' The sale of Bakergunge rice produced a profit of 
 Rs. 67,593, which, deducted from Rs. 124,806, the advances 
 from the Moorshedabad Treasury, leaves Rs. 59,611 expended by 
 the Company, or Rs. 16,911 only beyond the original subscrip- 
 tion. The Nawab's first subscription exceeded that of the Com- 
 pany. He and his Ministers have acted liberally. They should 
 not be called on for more.' 
 
 Mr. Becher, resident at the Durbar, reports (24th Dec. 1770): 
 — ' This rice came at a most critical time, and I have the satisfac- 
 tion to find that the Company has reaped considerable benefit (i.e. 
 a profit of nearly ;^7ooo) by a measure which provided general 
 relief to the immediate dependents on the English here, and tended 
 to preserve order and regularity in the military corps at a time 
 of such scarcity and distress, that I am convinced, had it not been 
 for the supplies of rice I was enabled to issue from the store, the 
 greatest cprjfusion must h9,ve ensued, I must now, gentlemen, 
 
420 GREAT FAMINE OF 1110, |_Appx. B. 
 
 mention the circumstance of the distribution of rice among the 
 many miserable objects that presented themselves during the late 
 dreadful calamity in and near the city of Moorshedabad. On a 
 representation made by me, the committee gave their consent 
 that a distribution should take place to the amount of 87,000 
 rupees, and that the company should be at the charge of 
 Rs. 40,000 ; the rest was to be defrayed by the Nabob and 
 Ministers, to which they assented.' 
 
 He goes on to bear witness to the charitable efforts of the 
 native aristocracy, and states that the price of rice rose to 4d. per 
 pound during the later months of the famine. 
 
 Section VI. — Opinions of the Court of Directors on the action of 
 the Bengal Council during the Famine. 
 
 Letter, dated the zZth August \ili. — ^After commending in 
 general terms those individuals who have done anything to 
 relieve the distress, the Court expresses its indignation against 
 those ('but especially natives of England ') who have turned the 
 public distress into a source of private profit. 
 
 Para. 10. 'We are led to these reflections by perusing the 
 letters from Mr. Becher and Mahomed Reza Khan, which accuse 
 the gomashtas of English gentlemen ' (i.e. English servants of the 
 Company), ' not barely for monopolizing grain, but for com- 
 pelling the poor ryots to sell even the seed requisite for the next 
 harvest. It was natural for us to expect, upon reading the above 
 advices, that the strictest inquiry into the names and stations of 
 all persons capable of such transactions would have been the 
 immediate consequence, and that the most exemplary punish- 
 ment had been inflicted upon all offenders who could dare to 
 counteract the benevolence of the Company, and entertain a 
 thought of profiting by the universal distress of the miserable 
 natives, whose dying cries, it is said, were too affecting to admit 
 of an adequate description. 
 
 II. 'You will judge from hence how great must have been 
 our surprise on observing that, upon a general charge of this 
 nature having been made, and not one name specified either by 
 Mr. Becher or Mahomed Reza Khan, you never entered into any 
 inquiry at all about the matter ! And what seems equally strange 
 and absurd, you in general terms tell the Resident at the Durbar 
 he may depend on your concurrence in every measure that may 
 
Appx. B.] DESCRIBED BY EVE-WITNESSES. 421 
 
 tend to relieve the distress of the poor in this time of dearth, and yet 
 isject the only particular remedy pointed out and recommended 
 by him for that purpose ! ... As part of the charge sets forth 
 that the ryots were compelled to sell their rice to these monopoliz- 
 ing Europeans, we have reason to suspect that they could be no 
 other than persons of some rank in our service ; otherwise, we 
 apprehend they would not have presumed on having influence 
 sufficient to prevent an inquiry into their proceedings." 
 
 1 1 am indebted to the kindness of the Secretary of State for India for the 
 extracts whence the foregoing selections are derived, my own abstracts being 
 too condensed for publication. I have not attempted to diange the ofhcial 
 spelling. 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 THE COOK'S CHRONICLE OF BEERBHOOM, 
 
 CiRC. 1785-1820. 
 
 Being the Story of Ram Ghidam Bawarchi, aged 80." 
 
 [The term ' Saheb,' which occurs so frequently, is a title of 
 respect appended by the natives to the names of English gentle- 
 men.] 
 
 ' The first English lord of Beerbhoom was Keating Saheb ; my 
 father was cook to him, and I have seen him. My mother held 
 me up in her arms to look at him when he passed with his Sepoys 
 and elephants. This was in the time of the Rajahs of Beer- 
 bhoom. Their name was great ; they had horses, elephants, and 
 armies, with whom they used to hunt and to war. They had a 
 palace in Rajnagar, and a garden where were their tombs, now 
 gone to jungle. Also many forts among the western hills, and a 
 summer-house at Hoseinabad ; but the walls of all these have 
 sunk into the earth, and now their summer palace can be known 
 only by the little green mounds of earth behind the collector's 
 house. I have heard my father say that Lord Keating Saheb was 
 a very great Saheb ; but I was a child, and know not. My father 
 was a very old man, and used to tell me that when he was newly 
 married the Sahebs came into the country, and soon the price 
 of rice rose to three seers for the rupee {i.e. during the famine 
 of 1770) ; so that all the people died, and the country became 
 jungle. He also used to tell me that the Mahrattas (Bargi log) 
 came from the west, burning many towns, and killing the people. 
 They seized my father, and tied his hands, and fastened him on 
 a horse, and took him away to their camp as a slave. But my 
 father's sister prayed the chiefs, and they let my father go. 
 Hesilrige Saheb and Pye Saheb were before Keating Saheb ; but 
 
Appx. C] COOK'S CHRONICLE OF BEERBHOOM. 423 
 
 Pye Sahel) lived far off, and Hesilrige Saheb came and cut the 
 jungle, and the ryots sowed rice again. 
 
 ' The first Saheb, I remember distinctly, was Judge Brook Saheb. 
 His house was near where the judge's house now stands. My 
 uncle was cook in Brook Saheb's house ; and my earliest remem- 
 brance is Mem Saheb Brook walking up and down the verandah 
 weeping because her little daughter was dead. I do not reraem- 
 ber what she died of ; but I remember my uncle carried me in 
 his arms to see the Saheb and the Mem Saheb put the little girl in 
 the ground. There were other Sahebs there too ; but the Doctor 
 Saheb had gone to Soorool to attend Cheap Saheb's children. The 
 little girl v is carried to a tamarind tree at the foot of the garden, 
 and put ii to the earth there ; then they put a white stone over 
 her, and the stone is there to this day. 
 
 ' I also knew Cheap Saheb. My father went to be his cook 
 when Keating Saheb left. Cheap Saheb was the Company's mer- 
 chant (Commercial Resident). He had a great house on the top 
 of a hill, with a wall all round, higher than the ramparts round 
 the fort in Calcutta. Within the wall were gardens and orchards 
 bearing many fruits ; also many houses and stores. The Com- 
 pany's cloth was kept there ; and the Gomashtahs and Keranies 
 lived in a village within the wall. There were also Sepoys to 
 guard the Company's storehouses ; and the inferior servants of the 
 Company lived in a town at the bottom of the hill. Cheap Saheb 
 was a rich and powerful Saheb ; he had many children, mostly 
 daughters, each of whom had servants of their own. There were 
 six table-servants to wait on Cheap Saheb and the Mem Saheb. 
 He had about sixty house-servants in all, with many horses, and 
 an aviary full of strange birds. Deer used to run about in the 
 pleasure-grounds. The Mem Saheb used to be very fond of 
 flowers. He was a great Saheb ; and I learned my trade in his 
 kitchen. 
 
 ' Afterwards there was a gentleman at Elambazaar, on the river, 
 Erskine Saheb, who died not many years ago. He also was a 
 great Saheb, and was in partnership with Cheap Saheb. They 
 traded in many things — in cloths, sugar, silk, lac — and made 
 much money. When I had learned my work in Cheap Saheb's 
 kitchen, I was sent to Elambazaar to act for Erskine Saheb's 
 cook, who was ill ; but the kitchen at Elambazaar was not so 
 big as the kitchen at Cheap Saheb's. 
 
424 THE COOK'S CHRONICLE [Appx. C, 
 
 ' When I was away at Soorool and Elambazaar, there were 
 many Sahebs came and went in Soorie. I was not in their 
 kitchen, and did not know them. I remember the names of 
 Kemble Saheb, Tikri Saheb, Chalblan Saheb, Reily Saheb, Mor- 
 rison Saheb, who was here twelve years, Biscoe Saheb. I did 
 not know these gentlemen. (Some of these names are so per- 
 verted, that I can make nothing of them.) 
 
 ' The price of all things was cheap. For a pice and a half (a 
 halfpenny), a great feast (barakhana) was given. (This is figu- 
 rative, but what follows is the truth.) Fat fowls were thirty-two 
 to the rupee {i.e. for two shillings), young chickens at forty or 
 fifty, ducks from sixteen to twenty-five, lambs three annas (4-5'd.) 
 a piece, a fat sheep six annas (gd.), rice from sixty to one hundred 
 pounds for a rupee. All things cost little. Servants' wages 
 were higher. My father got Rs. 20 as head cook ; khidmatgars 
 (table-servants) got Rs. 8 ; coolies (labourers) got four to seven 
 pice a-day (i|d. to 2|d.), but they could buy more food with 
 their money, and lived better. The Santal people did not then 
 come down to the plains in search of work, and the Bowries and 
 Haris (labouring classes) got plenty of work. The Santal people 
 were then cutting the jungle at the foot of the hills on the west 
 of the district ; now they work all over the district. ' Poor men 
 had no rupees : they always bought and sold with cowries. 
 A coolie got four to six pan (320 to 480) cowries for his day's 
 work (worth from i-^d. to 3d.). There were very few inhabitants. 
 Most of the cultivators had farms of their own, but there were also 
 a few krishans who worked for them. The farmer gave the land, 
 the seed, the plough, and the oxen, and got two-thirds of the 
 crops ; the krishan only gave his labour, and got one-third of the 
 crop. This was the way they tilled the jungle lands. When the 
 Santal and hill-men came down from the hills for work, then the 
 krishans increased. Now they are all over the district, and the 
 krishans have to give the plough and the oxen in many parts, 
 and get but barely one-third of the crop. Their lot is becoming 
 hard. All the cultivating classes used to be able to get land ; 
 now they cannot get land even as krishans, and have to work as 
 hired labourers. 
 
 ' The courts and public offices, when I was a boy, were in the 
 Red House village, near where the Padri Saheb (the mission- 
 ary) now lives. There were then only a very few Sahebs in 
 
Appx. C] of BEERBHOOM, 1785-1820. 425 
 
 the station. They were the collector, the judge, the assistant, 
 and the doctor. I do not remember any more. I. was married 
 when seven years of age, but my wife was taken by her parents 
 to Gwari (Krishnagar), and I did not see her again till I was 
 twenty years old. I was about twenty when I got my first regular 
 place. It was with Clark Saheb, the assistant collector. He lived 
 in the Anindapur House, in the Lines (cantonments) ; it has now 
 fallen to ruins. There was then only a little road in the station 
 joining one house to another. I went with Clark Saheb to Gwari 
 when he was transferred there. Clark Saheb went before in a 
 palki ; I and the other servants came with the luggage behind. 
 We had a guard. The baggage was carried partly on bullock 
 carts, but mostly on men's backs, as the roads were hardly to be 
 passed. We went by Lampur and Kirinahar to Cutwa, then we 
 put the baggage into boats, and so reached Krishnagar. It took 
 us sixteen days, I remember. There was no government road in 
 that direction then, but the Zemindars cleared a pathway, each 
 through his own estates.' The chowkidars (village watchmen) 
 all along the road were turned out to protect the assistant col- 
 lector's baggage as we went along.' 
 
 (I took down the foregoing in Hindusthani from the old man's 
 lips at several sittings, but at this point he had a severe illness, 
 and I had left the district before he was strong enough to come 
 to me again. It is useless to look for perfect accuracy in such 
 narratives, but it forms a fair specimen of the chronicles I have 
 obtained firom other aged inhabitants.) 
 
 W. W. H. 
 
APPENDIX D. 
 
 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE OF BEERBHOOM, 
 
 Drawn up for me in Bengali, from local traditions, Sanscrit works, 
 and the archives of native families, by Nabin Chandra Bando- 
 padya. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 I give this and the corresponding Chronicle of Bishenpore 
 without attempting historical corrections. They are fair speci- 
 mens of a learned native's idea of local history, and, like all 
 similar works, contain here and there valuable hints as to the 
 condition of the people, and the rights of the various orders of 
 society, before the country passed under our care. 
 
 To the student of ethnology, the class of manuscripts of which 
 Appendix D. and F. are specimens, establish four important 
 points : First, that before the Aryans reached Bengal, communities 
 of herdsmen and agriculturists were living in the land under 
 their own princes ; second, that the Aryans obtained a footing 
 in Bengal, not always as conquerors, but in various capacities ; 
 third, that after Aryan kingdoms had been founded throughout 
 Bengal, many aboriginal princes retained their territories side 
 by side with the new comers, and sometimes supplied them 
 with aboriginal troops ; fourth, that the Aryan colonization of 
 Bengal was a gradual natural process, accomplished by successive 
 waves of emigrants from the north, and that a long enough time 
 elapsed for the aborigines to influence Aryan dialects and Aryan 
 religion, before they were finally enslaved or driven back from 
 the lowlands. 
 
 The Pandit's Chronicle. 
 
 According to the geographical accounts of the Purana, the 
 limit of the Pundra country coincided with that of the south of 
 
Appx. D.] the pandits CHRONICLE. 427 
 
 Bengal, and comprised modem Bengal, Beerbhoom, Jungle- 
 Mahal, Burdwan, Raj-Mahal, some parts of Moorshedabad, 
 Dinajpur, Midnapur, Nuddea, and Nabadwipa. From the name 
 of the country, the ancients called its inhabitants Pundaris. 
 
 Ballal Sen, king of Gour, divided the descendants of the 
 five Brahman s, brought into the country by Adishwara, into two 
 sects — the Varindra and the Rari — both of which held the title 
 of Kulin. The Rari inhabited Burdwan, Beerbhoom, Bancorah, 
 and a few other towns, in which Bhuba Nand Sen established a 
 separate monarchy. It was during the reign of the Sen family, 
 or that of the Pals, that the original princes of Bishenpore 
 founded an empire in the mountainous regions. Much is told of 
 the separate kingdoms set up by the successors of Adishwara. 
 Each prince ruled his district with vigour ; and although he did 
 not oppress his vassal nobility, he maintained complete sway 
 over them. 
 
 A tradition relates the origin of the name Beerbhoom. It is 
 stated that once upon a time the Raja of Bishenpore went out to 
 exercise his trained hawks in the mountainous districts of his 
 empire. He threw off one of his birds to the pursuit of a heron, 
 then usually hunted with hawks. The heron turned upon its 
 pursuer with great fury, and came off victorious. This unusual 
 occurrence excited the surprise of the king. He imagined that 
 it must have been owing to some mysterious quality in the soil ; 
 that the soil was in fact Vir-mati (i.e. vigorous soil), and that 
 whatever might be brought forth by that soil would be endowed 
 with heroic energy and power. Thereupon he named it Vir- 
 bhumi, a name by which that mountainous region was ever 
 afterwards known. Others, however, derive the name from the 
 inhabitants themselves ; for in old times this country produced 
 many heroes, and so it acquired the name of Vir-bhumi (Beer- 
 bhoom), or Land of Heroes.^ The present capital of the district 
 is Suri, a corruption of Surjya, a Bengali term for ' glory.' 
 
 Beerbhoom is bounded on the north by Monghir and Raj- 
 Mahal, on the south by Burdwan and Pachete (Bancorah), on the 
 east by Raj-Shye, and on the west by Monghyr and Pachete. 
 At the time of the Muhammadan rule, the country was named 
 by Abul Fazl ' Madaran.^ In old times the country was ill 
 
 ' It is right to state that Vir or Bir, in Santali, the aboriginal language of 
 Beerbhoom, means 'jungle.' — W. W. H. 
 
428 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. D. 
 
 supplied with water, and this, together with the fact that a large 
 part of it was occupied by jungles, rendered it in great measure 
 unfit for agriculture. 
 
 When Beerbhoom was in the possession of the Mussulmans, it 
 was frequently invaded by the hilly tribe 'Jhar Bhundi.' To 
 put an end to these plundering excursions, Shere Shah made 
 over Soory to Adoola the son of Boduroolah. In 1540, Shere 
 Shah, with 500,000 Afghans, defeated Hoomaon at Canouj, and 
 mounted the throne of Delhi. In the following year he came to 
 Gour, and divided it into several districts, over each of which he 
 placed a distinct ruler. These governors had a superior who 
 adjusted disputes, and acted as the viceroy of Shere Shah. 
 
 To the east of Soory is a village, Akchokra, where the Pandus 
 are said to have taken refuge after their escape from Jatigriha. 
 In this place one of the five brothers, by name Bim, killed a 
 monster named Hirombok (probably a legend of the Aryan con- 
 quest of Bengal), and married his sister Hiromba, by whom he 
 had a son called Ghuttutcuch, who played a conspicuous part in 
 the battle of Kurukshetra, as mentioned in the Mahahharat. By 
 some accounts it is said that Akchocra includes Nimai, Ghore- 
 daha, Gonootia, and Cottershore, and that Bhim resided there 
 with his wife and mother. There is a place in Beerbhoom called 
 Deoghur, where Ram, on his way to Ceylon, left the god Siva. 
 Another Siva named Bakeshwar was placed in a village which 
 afterwards received the name of that god, and to which many 
 worshippers still resort in the month of April of each year to do 
 honour to the deity. During the reign of the Baidya family, 
 the kings of Bishenpore and Burdwan alone had a place in 
 history. Of the kings of Beerbhoom — Lowshan, Ichay Gose, 
 Shungai, Gidhore (some of these seem to have been aboriginal 
 princes), MoUar Singh, and Beersingh — we know little more than 
 the names. 
 
 The hills of Beerbhoom were inhabited by savage tribes, and 
 only in the outskirts of the country did the minor kings make 
 their residence. Two brothers, Bir-Singh and Chaitanya Singh, 
 came to Beerbhoom from the north-west provinces, subdued the 
 mountaineers, and selected places as their capitals, which still 
 bear their names — Birsinghpur and Chaitangapur and Chaitanga. 
 Fattih Singh, who is said to have been the brother of Bir-Sing, 
 subdued many places in Moorshedahad, which now bear the 
 
Appx. D.] of BEERBHOOM. 429 
 
 name of Fattipore Purgunah, and are included in die district of 
 Beerbhoom. 
 
 Bir-Singh was the first (Hindu) king of Beerbhoom. He pos- 
 sessed a strong and athletic frame, and by his might subdued the 
 inhabitants of the jungles, and thus extended the boundary of 
 his kingdom. He deprived his brother of his territories, and 
 built the capital of Birsinghpore. Many kings and zemindars 
 owned his power, and acknowledged him as their lord paramount. 
 The ruins of palaces, forts, and tanks are still to be seen in 
 Birsinghpore, six miles west of Soory. The king lost his life in 
 battle with the Mussulmans ; and his queen, from fear of being 
 maltreated by the enemy, drowned herself in a pond, which is 
 still named the Ranidoha (Queen's Tank). Bir-Singh dedicated 
 a temple to the honour of the goddess Kali, and set up a stone 
 idol. The rajah also placed an idol named Gopal in the 
 neighbourhood of Birsinghpore ; and the place, being surrounded 
 by a jungle, received the name of Brindaban. 
 
 The Bhills, Cols, Gondas, and other hill-tribes (aborigines), 
 lived in the Maghadha kingdom (Bahar and Bengal), and Beer- 
 bhoom was also included in it This kingdom embraced a large 
 extent of country, but does not appear to have been well 
 governed, as even among the zemindars, who lived within a 
 short distance of the capital, there were some who did not pay 
 tribute (in other words, the Aryan conquest was partial). One 
 rajah was exempt from tribute, owing to the fact that he was a 
 good sportsman. After the fall of the Maghadha dynasty, the 
 Pals assumed the supreme power ; their original seat was Bahar. 
 The Baidya house succeeded the Pals. 
 
 The Santals of Beerbhoom inhabit the hills of Dumka, Jal- 
 Jhari, and Kumarabad. Their god was Boram (Marang-Buru), 
 to whom they offered human sacrifices. When a pestilence 
 ravaged their country, however, they abandoned the practice, 
 and, instead, offered goats, hogs, or other animals. The Boalia, 
 another hill-tribe, worshipped the same deity. Some of them 
 lived in Burdwan during the time of Rajah Kritti Chander, and 
 were employed by him as porters. They still follow that occu- 
 pation in Burdwan and Calcutta. The jungles to the north-west 
 of Beerbhoom are inhabited by a savage tribe called Birpore, 
 who earn a livelihood by the sale of ropes made from the bark 
 of the chinody tree. They feed upon the flesh of monkeys, 
 
430 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. D. 
 
 dogs, and hogs, and consider elephants worthy of their homage 
 and worship. These savage hordes, together with the wild 
 beasts of the jungle, were a continual source of alarm to the 
 lowlanders. But as the countiy furnished those heroes whom 
 the (Hindu) kings were accustomed to employ in their service, 
 its inhabitants (the wild tribes) were not exterminated. 
 
 It is affirmed by some that the predecessors of AH Naki 
 Khan gained possession of Raj-Nagar by murdering Bir Rajah ; 
 but before recounting the events of his reign, it will be necessary 
 to inquire as to the time when Raj-Nagar was established. It 
 appears that the kingdom of Nagar was founded during the 
 reign of the Baidya family, and not that of the Mussulmans ; for 
 it is to be observed, that when the Mussulmans obtained the 
 throne of Bengal, the Subadar (viceroy) constructed a road from 
 Debkoti, east of Gour, to Nagar, the chief town of Beerbhoom, 
 for the purposes of traffic. This was in the year 1205. 
 
 Bir Rajah was descended from a noble Brahman family. 
 He made Nagar his capital, and enjoyed an unrivalled reputa- 
 tion for his valour and skill in arms. All the kings of the sur- 
 rounding districts owned him as their paramount When the 
 Patans were in the height of their power, and were laying waste 
 many fair provinces in Bengal, Bir Rajah stood forth to oppose, 
 and, by his military tact and distinguished courage, succeeded 
 in freeing the country from the oppressor. 
 
 Two Patans named Assad-Ulla-Khan and Joned Khan, of 
 the Patan race, from the north-west, one day presented them- 
 selves before the Rajah of Nagar. Their stature and manly 
 bearing attracted his attention, and impressed him with such an 
 idea of their prowess, that he resolved to take them into his 
 service ; and after their valour had been sufficiently put to the 
 test, he raised them to the rank of commanders and confidential 
 ministers. Under their administration the country made great and 
 rapid advances, and the people enjoyed the blessings of peace. 
 In course of time, however, the Patans became jealous of the 
 power of their master, and watched every opportunity to work 
 his destruction. One of them, Assad-Ulla, became enamoured 
 of the beauty of the queen, and instigated her to favour their 
 base designs. It is said that the king was fond of wrestling, 
 and that he had a special building set apart for that purpose, 
 where he engaged daily in the sport. On one occasion, when 
 
Appx. D.] of BEERBHOOM. 431 
 
 Assad-Ulla presented himself there, the rajah ordered his servants 
 to refuse him admittance. This roused the anger of Assad-Ulla. 
 He returned with his brother Joned, forced an entrance into the 
 hall, and fell upon the king. A serious conflict now ensued ; 
 and it is difficult to say how it would have ended, had not Joned 
 Khan, at the instigation of the queen, with whom he also was in 
 'ove, attacked them both, and threw them struggling into a well. 
 Although the sei-vants and retainers of the king stood by, they 
 were prevented from interfering by the presence of the queen ; 
 so that both the rajah and Assad-Ulla were drowned. The 
 people mourned the death of their king, under whom they had 
 so long enjoyed happiness and prosperity.^ 
 
 Joned Khan. — The queen now assumed the royal power, and 
 raised Joned Khan to the rank of Diwan. The administration 
 of affairs was placed entirely in the hands of the Patan. Ere long 
 the queen died, leaving a son as legal heir to the throne. After 
 her death the soldiers rose in mutiny, but were speedily brought 
 back to duty by the Patan. Joned died soon after, leaving the 
 government in the hands of Bahadur Khan. 
 
 Before proceeding with his reign, a few facts may be stated 
 regarding the earlier history of these Patans. Their father died 
 while the children were still young, leaving his widow totally 
 unprovided with the means of existence. One day, while she 
 had gone to beg some rice of her neighbours, a fakir made his 
 appearance at her dwelling, and, apparently without any cause, 
 beat one of the boys severely with his shoes. The screams of 
 the child soon brought the mother to his aid ; and on her de- 
 manding an explanation from the fakir, he consoled her by saying 
 that he had not been beating, but blessing her son, and that the 
 time was not far distant when both brothers should sway the 
 sceptre of Bengal. The youths, when arrived at manhood, set 
 out on a journey to distant lands, and used every opportunity of 
 making themselves expert in the use of arms. In the course of 
 their travels they came to Beerbhoom ; and we have already 
 recounted their deeds in that country, and how they became 
 kings. 
 
 Bahadur Khan, or Ran-Mast Khan (a.d. 1600-1659).^ — This 
 prince commenced his reign in the month of Joit 1007, Bengali 
 
 ' The learned pandit has here spoiled a very striking legend. Elsewhere 
 I hope to tell it in its proper form, ^ B. D. A, 
 
432 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. D. 
 
 era. Under his rule the country had rest and peace, the popu- 
 lation was considerably increased, and agriculture met with a 
 full share of attention. He died in the Bengali year 1066 (a.d. 
 1689), leaving the throne to his only son, Khwaja Kamal Khan. 
 Nothing is recorded of the latter except that he beautified the 
 capital, and effected several other improvements throughout his 
 kingdom. He died in the Bengali year 1104 (a.d. 1697), and 
 was succeeded by his son Asd UUa, one of the wisest and most 
 pious kings of his time. Asd UUa added to the number of the 
 troops, and caused numerous tanks to be dug in the capital, by 
 which means the miseries resulting from the scarcity of water 
 were in great measure avoided. He contrived to free his king- 
 dom from the necessity of paying tribute to the Nawab, to whom 
 he rendered valuable assistance in time of war. Many mosques 
 were dedicated to the honour of God, and much of his time was 
 passed in religious services. He left two sons, Badya Jama and 
 Azmat Khan. 
 
 Badya Jama.* — ^This prince ascended the throne in the year 
 1125 (a.d. 1718),* and obtained a sannad from Murshad Kuli, 
 the Nawab of Moorshedabad. It was about this time that a new 
 arrangement was made regarding the tribute paid to the Nawab, 
 346,000 rupees being the amount agreed upon. During this 
 reign, the Marhattahs, under Bhaskar Pandit, plundered the 
 western countries, and eventually encamped in a place called 
 Kendua Danga, or Ganj Murshad. But when the rainy season 
 set in they retired to Catwah, accompanied by Mir Habib, a 
 Patan. Badya Jama, with his brother Ali Naki, and the Rajah 
 of Burdwan, assisted the Nawab in dispersing the Marhattahs, 
 and driving them to Midnapore. Badya had two wives. By the 
 first he had two sons, Ahmad Jama Khan and Mahammad Ali 
 Khan ; and by the second, one named Asd Jama Khan. Besides 
 these three, he had an illegitimate son named Bahadur Jama 
 Khan. Ahmad was of a religious turn of mind, and interfered 
 in no way with the administration of the country. The second 
 and third sons were powerful princes, and gained a high reputation 
 for their courage and skill in arms. On a certain occasion, a 
 fakir named Sai Ful Hak, from the north, made his appearance 
 at the Beerbhoom court, and in course of time was admitted into 
 the confidence of the king. The fakir possessed a good know- 
 l The Pandit uses J for Z, there being no Z in Bengali, ^'S>.'£). K, 
 
Appx. D.] of BEERBHOOM. 433 
 
 ledge of the Kuran, and the king spent much of his time in 
 hearing him read from the book. In process of time he became 
 to much engrossed with his rehgious instructor, that the affairs of 
 his kingdom were totally neglected ; and his sons, Ali and Ahmad, 
 set themselves to get rid of the favourite. With this view they 
 made their way to Moorshedabad. While they remained here, 
 an occurrence took place which brought them under the notice 
 of the Nawab. One day an elephant of the emperor was led to 
 a pond to drink, near to which Ahmad happened to be standing. 
 As the animal drew up, the driver called to the prince to move 
 out of its way ; but Ahmad, instead of heeding the order, caught 
 hold of the elephant by the tusks, and threw it to a considerable 
 distance. This feat amazed those that stood by, and ere long 
 reached the ears of the Nawab, who immediately summoned the 
 brothers into his presence. On being asked the reason of their 
 sudden appearance in Moorshedabad, the Patans informed him 
 of the story of the fakir, and the disorder likely to occur in their 
 father's kingdom. The Nawab gave them permission to murder 
 the fakir ; and accordingly the brothers, hastening back to Raj- 
 Nagar, put the fakir to death. Their father mourned his loss, 
 and slowly pining, died of a broken heart. His sons, too, felt 
 ashamed of their crime, and promised to their father neither to 
 interfere in any political matter, nor to entertain any hopes of ever 
 succeeding to the throne. They accordingly resolved to support 
 their step-brother Asd as the rightful heir. With this intent they 
 departed for Moorshedabad, and informed the Nawab of the 
 affair. The Nawab at first expressed reluctance, saying that it 
 was illegal to raise the youngest to the throne while his brothers 
 lived ; but, on their earnest entreaties, he gave his consent, and 
 the coronation of Asd Jama was performed with great pomp on 
 their return home. The two brothers afterwards set out for 
 Moorshedabad, and remained in the service of the Nawab. They 
 distinguished themselves in a war with the Marhattahs ; and on 
 one occasion, when Mir Jafir Ali Khan's son-in-law had been 
 carried off a prisoner, and confined in an iron cage, they entered 
 the camp of the Marhattahs in disguise, and having overheard 
 their plans, attacked them unawares, and returned in triumph 
 with the captive. 
 
 Suraja Doula ascended the throne of his grandfather as Vice- 
 roy of Bengal, and ere long found himself called upon to take 
 
 VOL. I. 2 E 
 
434 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. D. 
 
 up arms against the English. Two reasons are alleged : i. That 
 the English had given refuge to Kishna Doss, the enemy of the 
 Nawab ; and 2. That, without any permission from the Nawab, 
 they had established forts in the countries under his control. 
 Accordingly the Nawab collected a powerful host, the command 
 of which he gave to Ali Naki KLhan and Ahmad Jama Khan of 
 Beerbhoom, along with Diwan Manik Chand, Bahur Mohan 
 Lall, and Jafer Ali Khan. These marched against the English 
 towards Calcutta, and encamped at Bagh-bazar. The English 
 fled to Howi-a, Bally, and the fort. The Nawab attacked the 
 fort, and carried it by storm. He placed the English prisoners 
 under the charge of Diwan Manik Chand, and was going to re- 
 turn in triumph to Moorshedabad. Diwan treated the captives 
 with cruelty, and shut them up, one hundred and forty-six in all, 
 in the Black Hole, whence only thirteen came out alive. This 
 was in the year 1756. 
 
 After this victory Ali Naki Khan of Beerbhoom took pos- 
 session of part of the enemy's country, and laid the foundation 
 of Alipore, which is now the seat of government (the residence 
 of the Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal). Of all the petty princes 
 under the Nawab, this man, together with his brother, were the 
 most powerful, and rendered the most effectual assistance to 
 their lord. On one occasion Suraja Doula wished Ali to inform 
 him which lady in Beerbhoom he considered to be the most 
 beautiful.' The Patan, enraged, replied that he accounted those 
 beautiful who bore any resemblance to his mother and her 
 daughters. So saying, he raised his sword and struck at the 
 Nawab; but the blow missed the mark, and coming down upon 
 a stone pillar, split it in two. The attendants were so much 
 taken by surprise, that they made no effort to protect their royal 
 master. Probably, also, the known daring of the Patan was suf- 
 ficient to restrain any interference on their part. The brothers 
 were, however, obliged to withdraw themselves from court for 
 some time ; but afterwards, having made their peace with the 
 Nawab, they were permitted to return, and were again received 
 into the favour and confidence of their prince. 
 
 After the defeat of Badya Jama Khan of Beerbhoom by the 
 Rajah Gidhor, Ali Naki Khan led his army against his father's 
 
 ' An insult, implying that Ali would name some one of his own family, 
 whom the Nawab would then seize as a concubine. 
 
Appx. D.] of BEERBHOOM. 435 
 
 enemy, and after a severe struggle, which lasted for six days, 
 succeeded in driving his opponents from the field. The town 
 of Deoghar came into the possession of the Patan after the 
 subjection of the hill-tribes. It was, and still is, the seat 
 of the Hindu god Baidya-Nath (Bij-Nath). The devotees 
 brought to its shrine many valuable presents of the value of 
 about 50,000 rupees every month. Ali Naki Khan left the 
 god in the hands of the men of the place, called Pandahs, from 
 whom he exacted tribute. The Patan married a sister of his 
 father, by whom he had a son who died while still a youth (?). His 
 death preyed upon the minds both of his father and his uncle, 
 Ahmad Jama Khan, the latter of whom at length put an end to 
 his life on the 15th Magh 1169 (1762 A.D.). The father gradu- 
 ally sank under these heavy losses, and passed the last two years 
 of his life in extreme misery. He died on 21st Falgoon 1171, 
 and was buried in front of his brother's tomb. The two brothers 
 were possessed of noble qualities. They were gentle, brave, 
 generous, and averse to sensual gratifications. Badya Jama 
 Khan spent the greater part of his life in the performance of 
 religious duties, and at length died in 1178 (a.d. 1771), having 
 suffered much in his declining years from the death of his son. 
 He was buried in a garden to the west of Nagar. His surviving 
 son Asd Jama Khan was already on the throne. Immediately 
 upon his accession, with the consent of his father and brothers, 
 he adorned the capital, and placed in it many rich merchants 
 who added greatly to its commercial importance. Mir Jafir Ali 
 Khan placed the reins of government in the hands of his son, 
 who, soon after his accession, began to tyrannize over his subjects. 
 He killed two daughters of the Nawab; but while engaged in 
 plundering their treasures, he was struck by lightning, and car- 
 ried ofif along with his accompUces. Asd Jama, the Rajah of 
 Beerbhoom, thinking this a good opportunity for taking up 
 arms against the Nawab, marched with a powerful army to 
 Chuna Khalli. The Zamindars, vassals of the Nawab, failed 
 to make any resistance, and their lord was so much affected 
 by the death of his son, that he could not put himself at their 
 head. Accordingly, to prevent the advance of the Rajah of 
 Beerbhoom, he sued for peace, and requested Asd Jama to be 
 content with the districts he had already taken possession of. 
 This, however, did not satisfy the Rajah, who proceeded across 
 
436 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. U. 
 
 the Ganges. Upon this the wife of the Nawab, Mari Bigam, 
 sought the aid of the Enghsh, promising them a large tract of 
 her husband's dominions in return. They consented, and im- 
 mediately gave battle to the Rajah, defeated his immense host, 
 and pursued him to the fort of Nagar. The siege of this fortress 
 lasted several days, but at length the Rajah lost his bravest 
 general, Afzal Khan. A treaty was afterwards concluded between 
 the parties, the conditions of which were : i. That the English 
 should have one-third share of the Rajah's rental. 2. That 
 they should not interfere in the affairs of Beerbhoom. 3. That 
 on all occasions of importance, the Rajah should consult with 
 the EngHsh. After this, Asd Jama regularly paid tribute to the 
 Nawab. He also gave 1000 biggahs (360 acres) of land rent free 
 to Moonshee Anup Mithra, in return for sums of money lent to 
 the Rajah. He bestowed 6500 biggahs (2200 acres) of land 
 as Jagir for educating his son. 
 
 Fourteen miles from Soory there is a village called Mallar- 
 pore. Mallar Sing was its proprietor, a religious and popular 
 man. He was imposed upon by a person who told him that 
 the Rajah of Nagar intended to make him adopt the rehgion 
 of Muhammad. He took this so much to heart, that without 
 inquiry as to the truth he put himself to death. The Rajah was 
 grieved on hearing of his death, and endeavoured to discover 
 the perpetrator of the trick, but without success. 
 
 Twenty miles from Soory, and north of Nagar, there is a vast 
 forest called Sinpahari. The governor of the district was Ichai 
 Ghose, who built there a large temple named Ichai Mandir, and 
 a fort called Sham Rup Ghar. He was attacked and overpowered 
 by another man in the district called Lai Sen ; and his temple, 
 with its goddess and fort, fell into the hands of his enemy. 
 
 Kindu Billogram, a village eighteen miles distant from Soory, 
 was the residence of a famous poet named Jaya deva Muni, and 
 of a god, Radha Damuda. The poet is said to have walked forty 
 miles every day to bathe in the Ganges. The village is con- 
 sidered to be a sacred place by the Hindus, who assemble 
 annually, to the number of 50,000 or 60,000, to offer worship at 
 the shrine. A fair called Magher Sankranti takes place on the 
 last day of Magh every year. 
 
 Asd Jama Khan of Beerbhoom . died of paralysis at Calcutta 
 in 1184 (a.d. 1777). He was a liberal and powerful prince, and 
 
Appx. D.] of BEERBHOOM. 437 
 
 was held in high esteem by his subjects. He had a great desire 
 to reign over the whole of Bengal, and for this purpose made 
 many attempts at the supreme power, but in vain. His reign 
 extended over a period of twenty-six years. After his death his 
 brother Bahadur Jama Khan besought the assistance of the Eng- 
 Hsh Government to raise him to the throne. At the same time 
 the widow of Asd Jama Khan, called Lall Bihi, together with her 
 brother Mahammed Taki Khan, set up a rival claim, and con- 
 tended that, as Bahadur was the illegitimate son of Badya Jama 
 Khan, the father of her husband, he could have no legal right to 
 be prince. The English decided in her favour, and accordingly 
 Lall Bihi was raised to the throne. Soon after this, however, 
 Bhoton Saha, an intimate friend of Bahadur, devised a plan which 
 deprived the widow of her power. He instructed the porter of 
 Mahammed Taki to kill Bahadur's doorkeeper, and to report 
 that he had been commissioned by his master to cause the death 
 of Bahadur himself. By bribing the servant, Bhoton managed to 
 get his evil design carried into effect ; and the Enghsh, believing 
 the report, took the power from the hands of Mahammed and 
 conferred it upon Bahadur. The widow was kindly treated by 
 the new king, and received a certain amount for her support. 
 Bahadur died in 1196 (a.d. 1789), and was buried in the garden 
 at Nagar. He left his son Mahammed Jama Khan as heir to the 
 throne. 
 
 Radha Krishna Rai was one of the Dewans of the kings of 
 Nagar. He resided in Purandarpur — so named from the god 
 Purandar, found under the earth — and obtained 1400 bgs. (500 
 acres) of land from the rajahs as Jagir. 
 
 Mahammed Jama Khan succeeded to the throne, with the 
 consent of the English, in 1197 (a.d. 1790). During his minority 
 the affairs of state were entrusted to Dewan Lalla Ram Nath and 
 Mr. Keating. When arrived at manhood, he assumed the reins 
 of government, and ruled with wisdom and firmness. In person 
 he was tall and powerful ; and after his death, his painting was 
 sent to Calcutta. The population of Beerbhoom during his reign 
 was 700,000, of which one-third were Hindus (in reality two- 
 thirds). It was Lalla Ram Nath who effected the permanent 
 arrangement for the revenues of Beerbhoom. He built the 
 temple of Bhandissar Siva in a place called Bhandiban, six miles 
 from Soory. A large tract of land was allowed him as Jagir, 
 
438 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE. [Appx. D. 
 
 Mahammed Diwan Jama Khan, the son of Mahammed Jama 
 Khan, ascended the throne in 1209 (a.d. 1802), and received 
 the sanad from the hands of the English in 12 19 (a.d. 181 2). 
 He died in 1262 (a.d. 1855), leaving his son Johur Jama Khan, 
 who still lives. When Beerbhoom came entirely into the posses- 
 sion of the English, the jail was of mud, thatched with straw ; 
 but on May istli, 1800, a brick one was erected, by order of the 
 Government, under the superintendence of Mr. Campbell. Great 
 encouragement was likewise given to agriculture, and the people 
 made rapid advances in the arts of civilisation. 
 
 The Rajahs of Beerbhoom built many mosques and forts, and 
 dug tanks. The most of these are now in ruin. 
 
 In the year 1261 (a.d. 1854-55) the Santals of Beerbhoom 
 rose in insurrection against the English ; but with the assistance 
 of the Rajah of Burdwan and the Commissioner of the Biirdwan 
 Division, Mr. Elliot, they were speedily quelled. By order of the 
 Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Mahammed Hamid, a Darogar, 
 Golum Alii Khan, Mir Khan, Sahib Khan, Sookh Lall, and 
 Himat Alii Jamadar were rewarded on the 20th January 1856. 
 
 Beerbhoom is a fertile country. Raj-Nagar was and still is 
 famous for its mangoes and preserved fruits. The country is 
 watered by the rivers Aji, the More, and Bakeshwar. The ave- 
 rage amount of land-tax now realized is about 6^ laks of rupees 
 (i^6s,ooo). 
 
 (I have preserved the Bengali spelling, which is as uncertain 
 and in the case of proper names, particularly Muhammadan ones, 
 as far from the true etymology as our own popular rendering of 
 Indian words. Corrections, whether historical or geographical, 
 have been left for another volume. The true dates will be found 
 in The Family Book of the Princes in Beerbhoom, Appendix F.) 
 
APPENDIX E. 
 
 THE PANDIT'S CHRONICLE OF BISHENPORE, 
 
 The following is an abbreviation of a Bengali work composed 
 by my Pandit, Nobin Chandra Bandopadya, collated with a 
 Persian MS. drawn up by the Rajah's order (for which I am 
 indebted to Mr. George Loch of the Bengal Civil Service, onfe of 
 the Judges of Her Majesty's Supreme Court in Bengal), and with 
 other papers furnished from the Rajah's record-room. 
 
 The Chronicle. 
 
 Raghu Nath Singh, the founder of the dynasty of Bishenpore, 
 derived his origin from the kings of Jai Nagar near Brindaban. 
 The story of his parentage is as follows. The king of Jai Nagar 
 being seized with a desire to visit distant countries, set out for 
 Purusatam, and on his way thither passed through Bishenpore. 
 While resting at one of the halting-places in the great forest of 
 that country, his wife gave birth to a son ; and the king foreseeing 
 the difficulties of carrying a child with him, left the mother and 
 her baby behind in the woods, and went forward on his journey. 
 Such barbarous desertions are still heard of : even women, when 
 they have once set their hearts upon pilgrimage, become merciless 
 to their offspring, and abandon any child they may happen to 
 give birth to by the way. 
 
 Soon after the father had departed, a man named Sri Kasmetia 
 Bagdi (an aboriginal inhabitant), when gathering firewood, passed 
 by the halting-place, and saw the newly born child lying helpless 
 and alone. The mother never was heard of; and whether she 
 was devoured by wild beasts, or found shelter with the natives, 
 remains a mystery to this day. The woodman took the infant 
 home, and reared him till he reached the age of seven, when a 
 certain Brahman of the place, struck with his beauty and the 
 marks of royal descent that were visible on his person, took him 
 
440 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. E. 
 
 to his own house. (Observe this is the first appearance of a 
 resident Aryan in the legend ; and he is not a conqueror, but 
 a poor colonist.) The Brahman, however, being an indigent 
 person, was compelled to send the boy out to tend his cows and 
 work for his living ; and the lad so grew upon the affections of 
 the Bagdis (aborigines), that they called him Raghu Nath, Lord 
 Raghu, and supplied him with food. 
 
 One day in particular the boy attracted the notice of every- 
 body by his beauty, as he played with the other young cowherds, 
 while the elder shepherds looked on. The fathers, seeing that 
 the day was wearing on, set their faces homewards, driving their 
 numerous cattle before them. On the way, a cow belonging to 
 Raghu's herd strayed from the rest, and the boy going in search 
 of her into the thick forest, wandered up and down, looking in all 
 directions, but in vain, till at last, overcome with fatigue, he lay 
 down at the foot of a tree. No sooner had he fallen asleep than 
 a huge cobra glided out of a tuft of high grass ; but instead of 
 biting the lad, gazed stedfastly on him, and erecting his many- 
 coloured hood above the sleeper's face, shaded him from the 
 rays of the sun (a legend told of many successful adventurers). 
 His adopted parent meanwhile was in great distress about his 
 disappearance, and unable to bear the suspense any longer, 
 started in search of him. At length he came to the spot ; but 
 what was his terror when he beheld the deadly snake, with hood 
 erect, as if in the act to strike ! 'Alas, my loved one,' he cried, 
 ' what madness tempted me to send thee forth to thy destruction ?' 
 Meanwhile the snake, scared by his approach, and quickly contract- 
 ing his hood, glided off, and the boy, awakened by the withdrawal 
 of the shade, started up. The old man poured forth tears of 
 gratitude, vowing never to let his precious child go forth into the 
 forest again. 'Ah, what would I have done had I lost you?' he 
 exclaimed ; ' you whom I cannot bear to be out of my sight for 
 a moment. From the day I brought you to my house with only 
 a few worn rags, and tended by the Bagdis, deep and unspeakable 
 tenderness sprung up in my heart towards you. Your beautiful 
 face, and the tears rolling down your Uttle cheeks, will never be 
 forgotten.' As upon the immeasurable surface of the ocean, no 
 fish by its most rapid career raises a single ripple, so not all the 
 swift events and constant changes of life can disturb the calnj of 
 true affection. 
 
Appx. E.] of BISHENPORE. 441 
 
 One day the boy found a golden ball in a water-course, and 
 brought it to his master, who treasured it up with delight as a 
 sign of the future greatness of his child. Soon afterwards, the 
 king (an aboriginal prince) having died, his obsequies were cele- 
 brated witli great pomp, and people from all parts went to the 
 funeral feast. The Brahman, being very poor, went among the 
 rest, taking Raghu with him. When the Brahman was in the 
 middle of his repast, the late king's elephant seized Raghu with 
 his trunk, and approached the empty throne. Great was the 
 consternation and terror lest the elephant should dash the boy 
 to pieces ; but when the royal animal carefully placed the lad on 
 the throne, the whole multitude, thunderstruck at seeing a deed 
 so manifestly done by the will of God, filled the place with their 
 acclamations, and the ministers agreed to crown the boy on the 
 spot. So they made him king of the country ; and the singers 
 came and poured forth their melodies, the musicians played on 
 their instruments, and the minstrels tuned their harps, and recited 
 the wonderful deed that had been done. 
 
 For this was the custom in the old countries, that when the 
 king died, the ministers did not crown the legal heir, but they 
 made the king's white elephant, attended by all the officers of 
 state, and covered with jewelled trappings, go through the capital 
 in solemn procession ; and whomsoever among the multitude the 
 elephant lifted on to its back, him they crowned, saying that it 
 was the act of God. 
 
 The ancients give other examples of a lad rising to the throne 
 in consequence of having been auspiciously shaded by the hood 
 of a cobra. For instance, a certain Brahman had in his house a 
 poor boy, who tended his cattle. One day, as the boy lay asleep 
 in the field, a hermit passing that way noticed that a black snake 
 had raised its hood over the child's face to shelter him from the 
 sun. As the hermit drew near, the snake fled, and the boy, 
 awakening, shared the scanty supply of rice he had brought out 
 with him for his mid-day meal with the holy man. On leaving, 
 the hermit told the boy he would one day be a king, cautioning 
 him, at the same time, not to sleep with his legs crossed, or his 
 face looking right up to the sun, and ordering him to learn the 
 art of war, and to accustom himself to arms. When next the 
 hermit met the boy, he discovered certain marks, which foretell 
 royalty, on the lad's feet ; and asked him what' he would give to 
 
442 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. E. 
 
 a hermit by whose advice he should reach the throne. The boy 
 gladly answered that he would give anything the hermit asked. 
 So the hermit told him how to begin with petty depredations on 
 the adjoining chiefs, and by degrees, as he grew stronger, to carry 
 on a more open warfare, until he had reduced all that part of 
 the country. The hermit never took his eye ofif the youth ; and 
 whenever he disobeyed any precept, the holy man punished him 
 with stripes. In process of time the boy came to be king of all 
 the country, and gave the hermit a lac of rupees, with the town- 
 ship and lands of Chandpara at a fixed quit rent, whence that 
 township is styled Chandpara of the Fixed Rent to this day. 
 (Several other instances are here given, which, for the sake of 
 brevity, may be omitted.) 
 
 Raghu Nath Singh, therefore, was the first king of Bishenpore 
 («>. the first king of Aryan birth, the aboriginal princes going for 
 nothing with my worthy Pandit). He is celebrated in history as 
 the king of the Bagdis (aborigines), and was the first of a race 
 that has reigned nearly iioo years. He founded the city of 
 Bishenpore, guided thither by auspicious signs. For long his 
 kingdom passed under the name of Malabhumi (the land of the 
 wrestlers), then as the jungle mahals (forest country) ; it is now 
 included in the districts of Burdwan, Bancorah, and Beerbhoom. 
 
 Beerbhoom is known as a place for heroes and Bagdis (abori- 
 ginal castes). They wore long black hair, and generally decorated 
 themselves with iron ornaments, the most costly being of silver, 
 and called Balla. For arms they had spears and javelins. The 
 kings often employed them as guards of their palaces, owing to 
 their skill in wrestling. They also joined with the wild tribes 
 ij-.e. aboriginal races of the highlands) in committing acts of 
 plunder, and thus became a terror to the more peaceable in- 
 habitants. The Nawab of Moorshedabad occasionally solicited 
 their assistance in time of war. At the time when the Nawab 
 was engaged in conflict with the Marhattahs, he requested his 
 dependent kings to give him every support in their power. 
 Accordingly the Rajah of Bishenpore despatched a band of his 
 bravest heroes to the assistance of the Nawab. By their valour 
 the Marhattahs were subdued, and from that time the Rajah of 
 Bishenpore was the most renowned of the tributary kings of the 
 Nawab. 
 
 The history of the kings of Bishenpore, written by Raja Gopal 
 
Appx. E.] of BISHENPORE. 443 
 
 Sing, was found in the Bancoorah CoUectorate. Guided by the 
 facts contained therein, and collecting others from various sources, 
 I proceed to give a chronicle of the kings of Bishenpore. One 
 or two facts connected with the kings and their country may be 
 given in passing. 
 
 The kings belonged to the Kutumi branch of the Maharishi 
 family. Their god was Acolong, and their goddess Pura, of the 
 Ketti caste. The kings were followers of Shambad ; the high 
 priest or Rishi was Bissa Mitra ; Brahmans who worshipped 
 Vishnu were their religious guides. The sacred verse called 
 Gatha, which the kings received at the time of the sacred thread 
 Paitta, is still in use. Bishenpore acquired a place in history 
 from the time of Raja Raghu Nath Sing, whom the Bagdis 
 (aborigines) called Raghu Nath. At the time of his coronation 
 he was termed ' Original Wrestler,' or Adi Malla. 
 
 1. Original Wrestler, Adi Malla. — The Raja was bom in 122 
 Bengali era (a.d. 715).-' He received a mark in his forehead 
 from other kings, that is, was crowned in the year of Bishen- 
 pore I. He reigned 34 years. His queen Chandra Rumari was 
 the daughter of Indra Sing, a western prince of Solar. He built 
 a temple in honour of the goddess Punta Surri. The capital was 
 Laogram. 
 
 2. Raja Jai Malla. — This prince was born in r56 Bengali 
 era (a.d. 749), and was crowned in the year of Bishenpore 34. 
 He reigned 30 years, and died in 64 Bishenpore era. His queen 
 was the daughter of Dinu Sing, a prince of the western Solar race. 
 Raja Jai built a temple in honour of Sat Chako Behari. His 
 Kamdar (steward and chancellor) was Bhagi Ratti Gope, who 
 received the rents of the country of the Wrestlers. The king left 
 two sons : the elder succeeded him, while the younger was pen- 
 sioned. The race of the latter is now extinct. The Raja was a 
 powerful monarch, and fond of pompous display. He increased 
 the number of troops. 
 
 3. Raja Ambhuchalla {otherwise Beni Malla). — ^The Raja was 
 born in Sangbat, 186 BengaH era (a.d. 779), and his coronation 
 took place in the year of Bishenpore 64. He reigned 1 2 years, 
 and died in 76. His capital was Laogram. He married Kan- 
 
 ' In matters of chronology I adopt not my Pandit's figures, which are often 
 contradictory, but the family book of the kings of Bishenpore, and other Persian 
 archives of ascertained accuracy, so far as dales are concerned. — Be. D. A. 
 
444 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE [Appx. E. 
 
 chan Muni, the daughter of Mattiar Sing, a western king of Solai 
 race. His Kamdar, Bhagi Ratti Sing, held the same office as 
 under the former king. He had five sons, of whom the eldest 
 succeeded him, while the others received pensions. No descend- 
 ants of theirs now remain. 
 
 [Thus the Pandit goes on through a weary list of kings, all of 
 whom married ladies of Aryan birth, Kshatryan princesses from 
 the north, and most of whom employed Aryan settlers as their 
 stewards and ministers. They warred with the adjoining princes 
 — for the most part aborigines, but some of them rival Aryan 
 immigrants — built temples, principally to Aryan divinities, but 
 occasionally to the ghosts of celebrated men, according to the 
 aboriginal ideas of worship ; but throughout this and all similar 
 documents that I have examined, the importance of the aboriginal 
 element and the frequency of its mention steadily decline. 1 
 give an example here and there, adopting the chronology of the 
 family book, etc., instead of my Pandit's.] 
 
 i8. Raja Jaggat Malla. — The Raja was born in 275 Bishen- 
 pore era (a.d, 990), crowned in 318 (a.d. 1033), and died in 336 
 (a.d. 105 i). Bishenpore was his capital. He married Chandra- 
 batti, daughter of Golunda Sing. In the earlier part of his reign 
 he erected a building in honour of Radha Binod Thakur, and 
 another for Rush Mandip. His Kamdar (steward) was Gopal 
 Sing. He left three sons. Bishenpore was the most renowned 
 city in the world, and it became more beautiful than the beautified 
 house of Indra in heaven. The buildings were of pure white 
 stone. Within the walls of the palace were theatres, embellished 
 rooms, dwelling-houses, and dressing-rooms. There were also 
 houses for elephants, barracks for soldiers, stables, storehouses, 
 armouries, a treasury, and a temple. The king secured fame by 
 adding to the magnificence of the city. It was during his reign 
 that a number of merchants established themselves in the city. 
 
 33. Raja Ram Malla {Khetra Nath Malla ?). — ^The Raja was 
 crowned in 564 (a.d. 1277), and died in 587 (a.d. 1300), after a 
 reign of 23 years. His consort was Sukumari Bai, daughter 
 of Nand Lall Sing. In his reign a temple was built to the god 
 Radha Kanta Jin (apparently to the ghost of some hero), and cost 
 an enormous sum. The Kamdar (steward) was Jagu Mandhar 
 Goho. The king left four sons. At this time the fort was im- 
 proved, and various sorts of fire-engines were brought into it. A 
 
Appx. E.] of BISHENPORE. 445 
 
 governor was appointed, with orders to prepare uniform for the 
 army. The soldiers learned the use of arms more perfectly, and 
 the high renown they bore was sufficient to strike terror even into 
 the hearts of the giant race. In this reign no foreign prince 
 ventured to attack Bishenpore.^ 
 
 48. Raja Birhatnbar. — He was born in 868, and succeeded 
 to the throne in 881 Bishenpore era (a.d. 1596). He reigned 26 
 years. This king had four wives and twenty-two sons. Three 
 temples were erected in his reign. The fort received its last em- 
 bellishment, and guns were mounted on the walls. He led his 
 forces against the Nawab of Moorshedabad ; but, understanding 
 that he was the Lord Superior of the country, he paid 167,000 
 rupees (;^i 7,000) as tribute, and returned to his capital. His 
 Kamdar was Durga Prasand Ghor. 
 
 54. Raja Gopal Singh. — This prince was born in 975 Bishen- 
 pore era, and died in 1055 (a.d. 1708), after a reign of 38 year;;. 
 He was married to the daughter of Raghunath Tungu, whose 
 capital was Tungubhumi. Five temples were erected in his 
 reign. At this time the Marhattahs, under the command of 
 Bhaskar Pandit, appeared before the southern gate of the fort of 
 Bishenpore. The Raja met them with his troops, but victory 
 leaned to the side of his enemies. By the favour of the god 
 Modan Mohan, it is said, the guns were fired without any human 
 assistance. Among the slain was the Marhattah general. The 
 Bishenpore troops plundered the enemy, and retired within the 
 fort. Others relate that the king, by his own prowess, slew many 
 of the opponents ; but, failing to take the life of the general, he 
 declined a second battle, and fled into the fort. Upon this the 
 Marhattas renewed the attack, but were effectually repelled by 
 the guns. Maharajah Kritti Chund Bahadur of Burdwan also 
 attacked Bishenpore, and defeated its king, but soon after joined 
 in league with him against the Marhattahs. The king left two 
 sons, of whom the elder succeeded him. Upon the younger 
 was bestowed the Jagir of Jamkundi, which possession his de- 
 scendants still retain. 
 
 [Thus the chronicle goes on. One prince digs tanks and sets 
 
 ' I am unable to identify Ram Malla with the name of any king in the 
 chronological MSS., so I give him the date and reign of the thirty-third king 
 in the family lists, as he has that position in my Pandit's chronicle. — Be. D. A. 
 
446 THE PANDITS CHRONICLE. [Appx. E 
 
 up idols, often representing aboriginal worship ; another en- 
 courages trade ; a fourth goes to war. The eldest son, if living, 
 succeeded to the throne, but the others had a right to a suitable 
 provision. The Bishenpore family appears sometimes as the 
 enemy, sometimes as the ally, and sometimes as the tributary, 
 of the Mussulman Nawab, but it was formally exempted from 
 personal attendance at the court of Moorshedabad, and appeared, 
 like the English in later days, by a representative or resident at 
 the Durbar. Of several princes it is recorded that they en- 
 couraged trade, and that strangers settled in their capital ; one 
 appointed two judges, another improved the fortifications ; and 
 the family drop the patronymic of Wrestler (one of the last rehcs 
 of ancient aboriginal iniluences), and take that of Sing after the 
 50th lineal prince (922 Bishenpore era, a.d. 1637). In the 18th 
 century the family rapidly declined ; the Marhattas impoverished 
 them; the famine of 1770 left their kingdom empty of inhabit- 
 ants ; and the English, treating these tributary princes as mere 
 land-stewards, added to their public burdens at pleasure, and 
 completed their ruin. • After the idol Modan Mohan,' a rem- 
 nant of aboriginal worship, ' was removed from Bishenpore, the 
 city began to fall into decay. Owing to his great indigence, the 
 Raja pawned the idol to Gokal Chandra Mittra of Calcutta. 
 Some time after, the unfortunate prince with great difficulty 
 managed to collect the amount required to redeem it, and sent 
 his minister to Calcutta to bring home the pledge. Gokal 
 received the money, but refused to restore the idol. The case 
 was brought before the Supreme Court at Calcutta, and was 
 decided in favour of the Rajah ; and Gokal caused a second 
 idol to be made, exactly resembling the original, g,nd presented 
 it to the Rajah.' Thus ends the Pandit's chronicle.] 
 
APPENDIX F. 
 
 THE FAMILY BOOK OF THE PRINCES OP 
 BEERBHOOM. 
 
 The following is given not for its intrinsic interest, but as a 
 specimen of the chronological archives of native houses. The 
 original is a Persian MS. obtained from the Rajah's dilapidated 
 palace. 
 
 The Family Book. 
 
 This is the family book of the Rajahs of Beerbhoom — setting 
 forth the year in which each Rajah ascended the throne, how 
 long he reigned, in what place he dwelt, and of what disease he 
 died. 
 
 isi. Diwan Ranmast Khan Bahadur reigned from the begin- 
 ning of Jeyt 1007 Bengal era (1600 a.d.) to ist Kartik 1066 
 Bengal era (a.d. 1659), when he died of fever. 
 
 2d. Diwan Kwajah Kamal Khan Bahadur, son of the de- 
 ceased, reigned from 1066 Bengal era (a.d. 1659) to 1104 b.e. 
 (a.d. 1697), and died of fever. His body was buried in the Great 
 Flower Garden. He reigned thirty-eight years, four months, and 
 thirteen days. 
 
 3^. Diwan Asd Ulla Khan, son of Diwan Kwajah, reigned 
 from 1104 Bengal era (a.d. 1697) to 1125 b.e. (a.d. 1718). His 
 reign was twenty-one years, one month, and twenty days. He 
 named his sons Azim Khan and Badyal Zaman Khan his heirs, 
 and died. 
 
 ^th. Diwan Badya Al Zaman Khan reigned from 1125 Bengal 
 era (a.d. 17 18) to 1158 b.e. (a.d. 1751). The days of his reign 
 were thirty-three years. He named his four sons, Ahmad al 
 Zaman Khan, Mahamad Ali Naki Khan, Asd al Zaman Khan, 
 and Bahadur Al Zaman Khan, his heirs ; and with the consent 
 of the other three, raised his third son, Asd Al Zaman Khan, to 
 
448 THE FAMIL Y BOOK OF [Appx. F. 
 
 the throne, on the ist Bysach 1159 b.e. He died in 1178 b.e. 
 His body was buried in the Flower Garden. 
 
 Ahmad Al Zuman Khan, eldest son, died before his father's 
 eyes in Rajnagaron the 15th Magh 1169 Bengal era (a.d. 1762). 
 His body was buried in the Great Imam Barah. 
 
 Mahamad Ali Naki Khan Bahadur died 21st Phalgan 1171 
 (.4.1). 1764) Bengal era, at Rajnagar. His body was buried side 
 by side with his elder brother in the Great Imam Barah. 
 
 ^th. Rajah Mahamad Asd al Zaman Khan Bahadur reigned 
 from the ist Bysach 1159 Bengal era (a.d. 1752) to 1184 b.e. 
 (a.d. 1777). In 1 184, having gone to the city of Calcutta, in- 
 habited by many noble men, he fell sick of callej, and died. His 
 body was carried home and buried in the Flower Garden. The 
 days of his reign were twenty-six years. [Callej is a sort of 
 paralysis, caused, according to native ideas, by a bird casting his 
 shadow on a person.] 
 
 dth. Mahamad Bahadur al Zaman Khan reigned, after the 
 death of his brother, from the beginning of 1185 Bengal era 
 (a.d. 1778) to 1 196 B.E. (a.d. 1789). The days of his reign 
 were twelve years. During his lifetime, in the year 11 93 b.e., 
 he made his little son sign and seal all papers of state, and 
 taught his son all the duties and customs of a prince. In 1196, 
 being sick of dropsy in the testicles, in his country-house at 
 Haseinabad, he died. His body was borne to the royal city, and 
 laid in the Flower Garden. 
 
 ith. Rajah Mahamad al Zaman Khan Bahadur, on the death 
 of his father, being a minor, succeeded. He performed the 
 offices of royalty, and sealed and signed the state papers. By 
 reason of his being a minor, Mr. Keating was Sarbarakar, and 
 Lai Ram Nath was Diwan. In 1197 Bengal era (a.d. 1790) 
 he came of age, and obtained a sanad from the Government for 
 the kingdom of Beerbhoom. The days of his reign were twelve 
 years. Being sick (of Sanjar-Pota), he died on 5th Phalgun 1208 
 B.E. (a.d. 1801), in the Palace with the Twelve Gates. His 
 body was buried in the Great Flower Garden. 
 
 %th. Rajah Mahamad Daura al Zaman Khan reigned in the 
 room of his father from 1209 Bengal era (a.d. 1802). He obtained 
 a sanad of the kingdom from Government in 1219 b.e. (a.d. 1812). 
 Being afflicted with Sanjar, he died in the royal city on 17th 
 Phalgun 1262 (1855). He named his son Mahamad Johar al 
 
Ai'i'x. !••.] 2UE FIUiWCES OF BEERBHOOM. 449 
 
 Zaraan Khan and Ram Bakshan his wife and heirs. His body 
 is buried in front of the mosque in the Market Place of the 
 royal city. 
 
 This family book of the house of Nagar was copied on the 
 28th Magh 1271 Bengal era (a.d. 1864), on Thursday (Panch 
 Shambah), and finished at 9 a.m. in Soory, according to order, 
 by Sheikh Rahm Baksh, Mooktear (my Munshi). 
 
 [I have found it impossible to adhere to a uniform system of 
 spelling, as many places have now acquired an official ortho- 
 graphy which it would be mere pedantry not to recognise ; thus, 
 Bishenpore for Vishnupur, etc.] 
 
 VOL. I. 2 F 
 
APPENDIX G. 
 
 SANTAL TRADITIONS, LITERALLY TRANSLATED. 
 I. — Formation of the Earth. 
 
 Of old, all this was a sea ; there were two birds — a drake and 
 a duck. They were brooding above (the water). Then Marang 
 Buru (supposed to be the same as Siva of the Hindus) said, 
 'Where shall I place these birds?' He said, 'In the midst of 
 the sea there is a lotus.' Then he said, 'Who will raise up 
 this earth ? There is a crab ; go ye and call him.' They having 
 called the crab, he came, and standing by Marang Buru, inquired, 
 ' Why have you called me?' 'For this only: could you raise 
 up this earth?' 'O yes j if you command me, I could raise it.' 
 Then the crab, taking earth in his claws, and raising it up, the 
 earth all washed away. Then Marang Buru said, ' This fellow can 
 never raise this earth. Who (else) is there out there ?' ' There 
 is no one but an earth-worm-king.' ' Go ye, then, and call 
 him.' They having called the earth-worm-king, he said, ' Where- 
 fore, O Great Lord, (and) Marang Bum, have ye called me?' 
 ' Oh, nothing ; only, could you raise up this earth here ?' ' Yes, 
 though I could not raise it alone.' Then the Great Lord inquired 
 of him, 'Who is there out there?' 'No one; only a tortoise. 
 If he would take me on his head, I could raise up the earth.' 
 ' Then call the tortoise.' 
 
 The tortoise coming, said, ' O Great Lord, and Marang Buru, 
 wherefore have ye called me?' ' Nothing ; only, could you take 
 this earth on your head here ?' ' Yes, receiving your commands, 
 I could raise it ; but you must chain my four feet to the four 
 comers (of the earth) : then I shall be able to raise it.' Then 
 they having chained him (the tortoise), the earth-worm-king raised 
 up the earth on the leaf of the lotus. 
 
 Then said the Great Lord to Marang Buru, ' Go ye, see, and 
 bring us word.' Then Marang Buru, descending, came and saw, 
 
Appx. G.] SANTAL traditions. 451 
 
 and tried it with the pressure of his foot, but found it unsteady 
 (floating). Then Marang Buru, returning to the Great Lord, 
 said, ' The thing is this : it is unsteady (floating).' Then the 
 Great Lord said to him, ' Then go thou and sow the seeds of 
 grass, and let the roots take fast hold.' 
 
 II. — The First Human Pair. 
 
 Then was produced the bena (a kind of coarse grass). On 
 that bena the drake and duck, descending, laid their eggs. 
 Having incubated, they hatched out two persons (a brother and 
 sister). 
 
 After this the Great Lord inquired of Marang Buru, ' How is 
 it ?' Then he replied to him, ' Only two persons are born.' 
 ' Well, if they have been born, let them remain there.' (Again) 
 the Great Lord said to Marang Buru, ' Go, look at them, and 
 bring me word.' Then Marang Buru, going, saw them, and 
 brought word: 'O Great Lord, I went and saw them. They 
 have grown up, but are destitute of clothing.' 
 
 HI. — Garments Supplied. 
 
 Then the Great Lord said, ' O Marang Buru, take them two 
 cloths — one of ten cubits, and one of twelve cubits.' Having 
 taken them the cloths, they inquired, ' O grandfather, whither 
 have you come ?' ' Hither, O grandson, have I come to visit 
 you.' ' We are well.' ' Then, O grandson, put on this cloth.' 
 Then he gave the boy the ten-cubit cloth, and the girl the twelve- 
 cubit cloth. Then the boy's cloth served only for a ropani (the 
 cloth that is attached before and behind to a string passing 
 around the loins). The twelve-cubit cloth barely covered the 
 girl's loins. 
 
 IV. — The Preparation of Intoxicating Liquor. 
 
 Moreover, the Great Lord said to him, ' O Marang Buru, go 
 and see those two persons.' Then Marang Buru, having been 
 and seen them, said to them, ' O grandchildren, I have a 
 matter to tell you two. Will ye hear me ? ' ' Yes, O grand- 
 father ; speak, we will listen.' ' It is this : I give to you two 
 yeast. Take it, and put it into a handa ' (earthen pot). ' Yes, we 
 
452 SANTA L TRADITIONS, [Appx. G. 
 
 will do that.' Then they prepared the handa; and after four 
 days he came (again) to see them. ' O grandchildren, have you 
 prepared the hdnda, as I told you at that time ?' ' Yes, O grand- 
 father, we have put the hdnda in order.' ' Then show me what 
 you have done.' Then, having seen, he said to them, ' O grand- 
 children, fill ye up with water' (the handa). They having filled 
 up the hdnda with water, Marang Buru inquired of them, ' 
 grandchildren, have you supplied the water ? Then make cups 
 of leaves, O grandchildren : have you made the cups ? ' ' Yes, 
 O grandfather, we have made the cups.' * Then bring them.' 
 They (brought them, and) said, ' Take, O grandfather, and drink.' 
 ' No, O grandson, there is one thing to be done.' They then 
 inquired, 'What is it?' 'First, you must worship (with a liba- 
 tion) this Marang Buru' {i.e. me, the Marang Buru). 
 
 V. — The Propagation of Children. 
 
 Then they two, having worshipped Marang Bum, he said, 
 ' Now, drink ye.' They said, ' O grandfather, take thou and 
 drink.' ' No, grandchildren, take ye and drink.' Again said 
 Marang Buru, ' Drink ye ; I will return home.' Then they two 
 drank, and became drunk. After that, Marang Buru returning, 
 saw them that they were greatly intoxicated. This one was 
 lying in one place, and that one in another place. Marang Buru 
 seeing them thus lying drunk, drew them together. Then they 
 two lay together as man and wife. 
 
 The next day Marang Buru, visiting them early in the 
 morning, saw them lying together, and said, ' Ho, then, O grand- 
 children, are you not up yet ? ' * Ah, grandfather, this is very 
 bad. You made us very drunk yesterday. Oh, shame, grand- 
 father; but so it is. Now, what can be done ?' 
 
 Then, remaining there, seven sons and seven daughters were 
 bom to them two. After a time they were driven away by the 
 Marja TudukkOc 
 
 VI. — The Dispersion. 
 
 ' Under the thorn bush they hid me, 
 Under the tall grass they concealed me.' 
 
 Then, being unable to remain longer there, they took them 
 (their children) to the foot of Chae Champa, and there they 
 
Appx. G.] LITERALLY TRANSLATED. 453 
 
 remained. Dwelling there, they greatly multiplied. There were 
 (two gates), the Aliin gate and the Bahini gate, to the fort of 
 Chae Champa. 
 
 Then Pilchu-hanam and Pilchu-brudhi (the original pair) 
 divided them (their posterity) into different castes. The first-born 
 became Nijhasda-had ; after him was Nij Murmu-had ; after him 
 was Nij Saren-had ; after him was Nijtati-jhari-has-da-had ; after 
 him was Nijmarndi-had ; after him was Nijkesku-had ; and after 
 him was Nijtudu-had. 
 
 Then they went out from the foot of Chae Champa, and, 
 departing, they were spread abroad and scattered in Dugdarahed. 
 From these, some went to the country of Sing ; others went to 
 Sikar ; others to Tundi ; and others went to Katara. Then 
 others went and departed thence, and were scattered every- 
 where. From that time to the present, men have gone on mul- 
 tiplying in the world. 
 
 [These legends were collected among the southern Santals, 
 and forwarded to me . by the Baptist missionary, Mr. Phillips. 
 They are substantially the same as the traditions of the central 
 Santals, but the spelling of proper names is slightly different] 
 
APPENDIX H. 
 
 A SKELETON SANTALI GRAMMAR, 
 
 Based on the Rev. J. Phillips ' Introduction to the Santal Lan- 
 guage^ with additions from other Missionaries^ and from my 
 own researches, 
 
 I. Pronunciation. 
 
 Santali exhibits a peculiar sharp stop occurring sometimes in 
 the middle, but more frequently at the end, of certain words, and 
 caused by the dropping of a letter. Thus da, ' water,' with an 
 abrupt jerk between it and the next word, from the original root 
 dag, ' water,' as shown in dag-ai, ' it will rain.' It is impossible 
 to describe this sound accurately, but its effect is generally to 
 produce an aspirate breathing, and it is represented by Santal 
 students sometimes by !, and sometimes by the Sanskrit visarga 
 (:), to which it bears a phonetic resemblance. 
 
 II. Alphabet. 
 
 The Bengali alphabet precisely fits Santali, except that the 
 compound vowel ri in Santali has only the simple ri sound, 
 as indeed it has practically in low Bengali. The same may be 
 said of li. 
 
 The vowel a is inherent to the Santali consonants, except in 
 the case of final consonants, and in a few words even to the latter 
 class : thus hard, not Adr, ' a tortoise ; ' MM, not bak, ' the heart.' 
 
 III. Pronominals. 
 
 (a.) Inflectional pronominals. These are added on to the 
 root, and are of two kinds : (i) Those that form true compounds 
 with roots, as the inflections of duahty and plurality : thus hut, 
 'a tiger;' dual, kulkin; plural, kulko. Kulkin and kulko become 
 in turn the base to which the case-endings are stuck on. (2) The 
 
Appx. H.] a skeleton SANTALI grammar. 455 
 
 case-endings, which, as will be seen from the paradigm of the noun, 
 are very numerous, and which are in fact merely postpositions, not 
 incorporated with the root, and but slightly cohering to it. 
 
 (^.) The Personal Pronouns : 
 
 Singular. Dual. 
 
 1st. Ing, / (contracted fAlang, we two, i.e. you and / 
 
 for aing). 
 2d. Am, thou. 
 3d. Huni, he, she. 
 Ova., it. 
 
 (Aling, we two, i.e. he and /. 
 Aben, you two. 
 Hunkin, , 
 
 Onakin, 
 
 they two. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 Abe, 
 Aban, 
 Ape, ye. 
 Hunko, , , 
 Onko, ( '"^y- 
 
 The possessives are formed either by prefixing i to the simple 
 pronouns, or by adding the regular genitive case-endings to a 
 compound form of the personal pronouns ; thus : 
 
 Singular. 
 
 1st. Ting, or ai-rini, my. 
 2d. Tarn, akin-rini, thy. 
 3d. Tai, ake-rini, his. 
 
 Dual. 
 
 Taling, or ai-ren-kin, oj us two. 
 Taben, akin-ren-kin, of you two. 
 Takin, ake-ren-kin, of them two. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 1st. Tale, taben, or aii-ren-ko, our. 
 2d. Tape, akin-renko, your. 
 3d. Tako, ako-ren-ko, their. 
 
 {c.) Demonstratives : 
 
 Huni, uni, hani, hana, bona, una, that. 
 Nui, nua, nia, this, etc. 
 
 (d^ Pronorainals of quantity : 
 
 
 Mih, one. 
 
 
 
 Tina, some. 
 
 
 Mi-mi, each. 
 
 
 
 Nuna, so much. 
 
 
 Eta, other. 
 
 
 
 Nase-nase, some, a litfi.'. 
 
 
 At, ar-ho, more. 
 
 moreover. 
 
 Adhan, half, a few. 
 
 
 Chet, what? 
 
 
 
 Amana, wide, many, 7iiuch. 
 
 
 Chet-hong, anything. 
 
 
 Joto, all. 
 
 
 Chet-Ieko, how? 
 
 
 
 Tin-tina, hffw much ? 
 
 Th. 
 
 e Numerals : 
 
 
 
 
 I, 
 
 Mih. 
 
 20, 
 
 Mih-fei. 
 
 100, Mih-sae. 
 
 2, 
 
 Barea. 
 
 40, 
 
 Bar-isi. 
 
 200, Bar-sae. 
 
 3. 
 
 Pea. 
 
 60, 
 
 Pe-isi. 
 
 yx>, Pe-sae. 
 
 4. 
 
 Ponea. 
 
 80, 
 
 Pon-isi. 
 
 400, Pon-sae. 
 
 s, 
 
 Mane. 
 
 100, 
 
 Mane-is: 
 
 1. 500, Mane-sae. 
 
 6, 
 
 Tiiriii. 
 
 120, 
 
 Turui-is: 
 
 i. 600, Turui-sae. 
 
 7, 
 
 Eae. 
 
 140, 
 
 Eae-isi. 
 
 700, Eae-sae. 
 
 8, 
 
 Iral. 
 
 160, 
 
 Iral-isi. 
 
 800, Iral-sae. 
 
 9. 
 
 Are. 
 
 180, 
 
 Are-isi. 
 
 900, Are-sae. 
 
 10, 
 
 Gel. 
 
 200, 
 
 Gel-isi. 
 
 looo, Gel-sae. 
 
4S6 A SKELETON- SANTALI GRAMMAR. [Appx. H, 
 
 It will be noticed that up to 200 the notation is by scores ; 
 the numbers between 10 and 20 are formed by affixing the simple 
 number to 10; thus: gel-mih, 11 ; gel-pea, 13, etc. 
 
 («.) Pronominals of Time : 
 
 Nit, now. 
 
 Teheng, to-day, 
 
 Hala, yesterday. 
 
 Maliander, day before yesterday. 
 
 Onmahander, three days ago. 
 
 Gapa, to-morrow. 
 
 Meang, day after to-morrow. 
 
 Enderai, three days hence. 
 
 Anga, dawn. Setah, morning. 
 
 Baskereda, <j a.m. 
 
 Tikin, noon. 
 
 Tarasing, 'ip.m. 
 
 Ayup, evening. 
 
 (f. ) Pronominals of Place : 
 
 Nante, ha-e (proximate). 
 Ante, there (intermediate). 
 Hante, hanare, there (remote). 
 Jahangre, where. 
 Samang, in front of. 
 
 Mih-ronga, one month, 
 Mih-serma, one year. 
 Nes, this year. 
 Kalom, next year, 
 Satom, two years hence. 
 Pher-Satom, three years hence. 
 Din-Kalom, last year. 
 Hal-Kalom, last year but one. 
 Maliang-Kalom, three years ago. 
 Tis, when? 
 Enang, then (past). 
 Dhinang, then (future). 
 Manang, before. 
 
 etc. 
 
 Bedhai, all round. 
 No-parom, this side. 
 An-parom, that side, 
 Okakhon, whence. 
 Udiingre, outside. 
 
 For fuller lists, see the Rev. Mr. Phillips' Introduction, p. 54 
 et seq. (Calcutta, 1854.) 
 
 IV. Roots. 
 (a.) Nouns have one declension, three numbers — singular, 
 dual, and plural — with eight cases in each. Thus : 
 
 Kul, a tiger. 
 
 Singular : 
 
 Nom. Kul. 
 
 Gen. Kul-rinih, renko, rea, renkin. 
 
 Inst. Kul-Ste, hatete. 
 
 Dat. Kul-then, theh, surate, phed. 
 
 Ace. Kul, same as nominative. 
 Abl. Kul-khon, khonah, thenkhon. 
 Loc. Kul-re, ta&e. 
 Voc. Eho-kul. 
 
 Dual, Kulkin ; Plural, Kulko — 
 forming inflections by means of the same postpositions as the 
 singular. Besides the postpositions given above, there are many 
 others. Santali makes hardly any use of prepositions, but tacks 
 the particles on to the end of the word which they govern. 
 Santali is devoid of abstract nouns, but supplies the want by a 
 free use of the neuter form of the verb ; thus, instead of saying, 
 ' The English statutes are just,' a Santal would say, ' The English 
 have-ordained (neuter form) is just.' 
 
Appx. H.] A SKELETON SANTALI GRAMMAR. 457 
 
 ip) Verbs. 
 
 Mr. Phillips states that the Santal verb has four voices (active, 
 middle, passive, and neuter) ; five moods (indicative, subjunctive, 
 potential, imperative, and infinitive) ; nine tenses (the fiiture, pre- 
 sent, present definite, imperfect, imperfect definite, perfect, perfect 
 definite, pluperfect, pluperfect definite ; of which the following 
 paradigms illustrate five). 
 
 The Santal verb has three numbers — singular, dual, and plural. 
 
 It has also two genders — common if.e. mascuKne or feminine) 
 and neuter. It has the peculiarity of agreeing in number, gender, 
 and person, not only with the noun that governs it, but with the 
 noun it governs ; part of the verb agreeing with the former, part 
 with the latter, in the nominative^ genitive, dative, and accusative 
 cases. [Mr. Puxley's unpublished researches are my principal 
 authority for this part of the grammar.] 
 
 The verb 'to be' is irregular in Santali, as in most other 
 languages ; that is to say, several verbs are employed, none of 
 which has survived in a perfect and complete form. Mend is 
 used in the present tense, thus': 
 
 Indicative. 
 
 Singular. Ihial. Plural. 
 
 1st. Men-aing-jna, I am. Men-aling-ya. Men-ale-a. 
 
 2d. Men-ama, thou art. Men-aben-a. Men-ape-a. 
 
 , I Men-aJa, he or she is. „ , . ( Men-ako-a. 
 
 3^- \ Men-ah-a, it is. Men-akm-a. | Men-ah-a. 
 
 Subjunctive. 
 
 1st. Men-aing-khati, If I am. Men-aling-khan. Men-ale-khan. 
 
 2d. Men-am-khan, If thou art. Men-aben-khan. Men-ape-khan. 
 
 3d. Men-ai-khan, If he is. Meu-akin-khan. Men-ako-khan. 
 
 Possessive Form. 
 Agreeing in number and person with the nominative and genitive, 
 
 1st. Men-ah-ting-jna, It is mine. \ 
 
 2d. Men-aing-tama, /awj/aarj. \ Singular. 
 
 3d. Men-akin-taya, Those two are his. ) 
 
 1st. Men-ai-taling-ya, It belongs to us two. ) 
 
 2d. Men'sh-tahen-a, It belongs to you two. > Dual, 
 
 3d. Men-ale-takin-a, It belongs to them two. ) 
 
 1st. Men-ako-tale-a, Those are ours. ) 
 
 2d. Men-aling-tape-ya, We two are yours. > Plural, 
 
 3d. Men-aben-tako-a, You two are theirs. ) 
 
4S8 A SKELETON SANTALI GRAMMAR. [Appx. H. 
 
 The other tenses of the substantive verb are suppHed by 
 taken, remain ; thus : 
 
 Intransitive verb, Tahen, remain. 
 
 Indicative Mood. 
 Future Tense, I shall remain. 
 
 Singular. 
 
 Dual. 
 
 Plural 
 
 1st. 
 2d. 
 3d- 
 
 Tahen-aJng. 
 
 Tahen-am. 
 
 Tahen-ai. 
 
 Tahen-almg. 
 Tahen-aben. 
 
 Tahen-akin. 
 
 Present, I remain. 
 
 Tahen-ale. 
 Tahen-ape. 
 Tahen-ako. 
 
 1st. 
 2d. 
 
 3d. 
 
 Tahen-kan-ai. 
 
 Tahen-kan-am. 
 
 Tahen-kan-ai. 
 
 Tahen-kan-aling. 
 Tahen-kan-aben. 
 Tahen-kan-akin. 
 
 Imperfect, I remained. 
 
 Tahen-kan-ale. 
 Tahen-kan-ape. 
 Tahen-kan-ako. 
 
 1st. 
 2d. 
 3d. 
 
 Tahen-en-aing. 
 
 Tahen-en-am. 
 
 Tahen-en-ai. 
 
 Tahen-en-aling. 
 Tahen-en-aben. 
 Tahen-en-akin. 
 
 Tahen-en-ale. 
 Tahen-en-ape. 
 Tahen-en-ako. 
 
 1st. 
 
 1st. 
 
 The numbers and persons of the other tenses are formed 
 with equal regularity, so that it is only necessary to give the first 
 person singular, dual, and plural of each ; thus : 
 Perfect, I have remained. 
 Singular. Dual. 
 
 Tahen-akan-aing. Tahen-akan-aling. 
 
 Pluperfect, I had remained. 
 Tahen-len-aing. Tahen-len-aling. 
 
 Subjunctive Mood. 
 
 Future Tense, I may remain. 
 1st. Tahen-cho-ing. Taheu-cho-ling. 
 
 2d. Tahen-chom. Tahen-cho-ben. 
 
 3d. Tahen-cho-e. Tahen-cho-kin. 
 
 Present, If I remain. 
 1st Tahen-khan-eng. Tahen-khan-aling. 
 
 Imperfect, Should I remain. 
 
 1st. Tahen-en-khan-eng. Tahen-en-khan-aling. 
 
 Perfect, / may have remained. 
 
 1st. Tahen-akan-khan-eng. Tahen-akan-khan-aling. Tahen-akan-khan-ale, 
 
 Pluperfect, I might have remained. 
 
 1st. Tahen-len-khan-eng. Tahen-len-khan-aling. Tahen-len-khan-ale. 
 
 Potential Mood. 
 
 / could have remained. 
 Singular. Dual. 
 
 Ist. Tahen-koh-aing. Tahen-koh-aling. 
 
 Plural. 
 Tahen-akan-ale. 
 
 Tahen-len-ale. 
 
 Tahen-cho-le. 
 Tahen-cho-pe. 
 Tahen-cho-ko. 
 
 Tahen-khan-ale. 
 
 Tahen-en-khan-ale. 
 
 2d. Tahen-koh-am. 
 3d. Tahen-koh-ai. 
 
 Tahen-koh-aben. 
 Tahen-koh-akin. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 Tahen-koh-ale. 
 
 Tahen-koh-ape. 
 
 Tahen-koh-ako. 
 
Appx. H.] a skeleton SANTALI grammar. 4S9 
 
 Imperative Mood. 
 
 Singular. Dual. Plural. 
 
 1st. Tahen-ma-ing. Tahen-ma-ling. Tahen-ma-le. 
 
 2d. Tahen-me, or me-a. Tahen-ben, or bena. Tahen-pe, or pea. 
 
 3d. Tahen-ma-i. Tahen-ma-kin. Tahen-ma-ko. 
 
 Infinitive Mood. 
 
 Tahen-ate, to remain. 
 
 Participles 
 
 Present, Tahen-ka-te, remaining. 
 Past, Tahen-en-khan, having remained. 
 
 Gerunds. 
 
 Tahen-en-te, 1 
 
 Tahen-akan-te, > By remaining, or having remained. 
 
 Tahen-len-te, ) 
 
 One other paradigm must suffice. In the intransitive verb 
 taken, we have exhibited the agreement of the Santal verb with 
 its nominative in number and person; the transitive verb dal, 
 strike, presents the agreement in number and person with the 
 accusative it governs. It will be observed that the root of the 
 verb comes first, then the accusative, then the nominative. As 
 the nominative is regular throughout, and undergoes no phonetic 
 change, it will save space to give it separately, and afterwards 
 only with the first tense of the indicative and subjunctive moods, 
 the latter of which uses a contracted form. 
 
 Nominative case, for verbs, in the Indicative Mood : 
 
 Singular. Dual. Plural. 
 
 1st. Aing, /. Aling, -we two. A^e, or Aban, wt. 
 
 2d. Am, thou. Aben, you two. Ape, you. 
 
 3d. Ai, he. Akin, they two. Ako, they. 
 
 Nominative Case, Subjunctive Mood : 
 
 I ft. Eng. Leng. Le or Baa. 
 
 2d. Em. Ben. Pe. 
 
 3d. E. Kin. Ko. 
 
 Transitive Verb, Dal, strike. — Indicative Mood. 
 
 Future Tense. 
 
 Singular. 
 
 1st. Dal-eng-jna-ai, He will strike me.'^ 
 
 2d. Dal-me-aing, I will strike thee. 
 
 3d. Dal-e-am, Tlioit wilt strike him. 
 
 1 Observe that the person and number of the verb ai-e regulated not by the 
 nominative governing it, but by the accusative governed by it 
 
46o A SKELETON SANTALl GRAMMAR. [Appx. H. 
 
 Dual. 
 
 1st. Dal-alinga-alcm, They two will strike us two. 
 2d. Dal-abena-almg, We two will strike you two. 
 3d. Dal-fjcina-aben, You two will strike them two. 
 
 fli.r^l. 
 
 1st. Dal-alea-ako, They will strike us. 
 2d. Dal-apea-ale, We will strike you. 
 3d. Dal-akoa-ape, You will strike them. 
 
 In the subsequent tenses of the indicative, I omit the nomina- 
 tive pronoun. 
 
 Present Definite. 
 
 Singular. 
 
 1st. Dal-eng-kana, is striking me. 
 2d. Dal-eh-me-kana, is striking thee. 
 3d. Dal-e-lcana, ts striking him. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 Dual. 
 
 Dal-eh-ling-kana, us two. 
 Dal-eh-ben-kana, you two. 
 Dal-eh-kln-kana, they two. 
 
 1st. Dal-eh-le-kana, is striking tis. 
 2d. Dal-eh-pe-kana, is striking you. 
 3d. Dal-eh-ko-kana, is striking them, 
 3d person, neuter, Da-dal-kana, is striking it or them. 
 
 1st. 
 2d. 
 3d. 
 
 Singular. 
 
 Dal-ed-ing-jna, strikes me. 
 Dal-eh-mea, strikes thee. 
 Dal-ed-ea, strikes it. 
 
 Present Indefinite. 
 
 Dual. Plural. 
 
 Dal-eh-lingya. Dal-eh-lea, tts. 
 
 Dal-eh-bena. Dal-eh-pea, you. 
 
 Dal-eh-kma. Dal-eh-koa, theni. 
 
 3d person, neuter, Dal-e-da, strikes it or them. 
 
 In the same way are formed the numbers and persons of the 
 remaining tenses of the indicative. I therefore give only the first 
 person of each : 
 
 Imperfect. 
 
 Singular. 
 1st. Dal-ked-ing-jna. 
 Struck Tne. 
 
 1st. Dal-akad-ing-jna. 
 Has struck me. 
 
 1st. Dal-led-ing-jna. 
 Hcui struck me. 
 
 Dual. 
 Dal-ket-lingya. 
 Struck us two. 
 
 Perfect. 
 
 Dal-akat-lingya. 
 Has struck us two. 
 
 Pluperfect. 
 
 Dal-let-lingya. 
 Had struck us two. 
 
 Plural. 
 Dal-ket-lea. 
 Struck us. 
 
 Dal-akat-lea. 
 Has struck us. 
 
 Dal-Iet-1^ 
 Had struck us. 
 
 The three compound past tenses are regularly formed from 
 the simple tense, with the auxiliary taken, to be. Thus : 
 
 Imperfect definite. — Dal-eh-me-taheng-kan-ai, He was striking thee. 
 
 Perfect definite. — Dal-akat-me-taheng-kan-ako, They have been striking thee. 
 
 Pluperfect definite. — Dal-let-me-taheng-kan-aing, I hdd been striking thee. 
 
Appx. H.] a skeleton SANTALI grammar. 461 
 
 1st. 
 2d. 
 3d. 
 
 Subjunctive Mood. 
 Future Tense, with the nominatives affixed. 
 
 Singular. 
 
 1st. Dal-eng-cho-e, He may strike me. 
 2d. Dal-me-cho-eng, / may strike thee. 
 3d. Dal-e-cho-em, You may strike him. 
 
 Dual. 
 
 rst. Dal-aling-cho-km, They two may strike us two. 
 2d. Dal-aben-cho-leng, We two may strike you two. 
 3d. Dal-akin-cho-ben, You two may strike them two. 
 
 Plural. 
 
 1st. Dal-ale-cho-ko, They may strike its, 
 2d. Dal-ape-cho-le, We may strike you. 
 3d. Dal-ako-cho-pe, You may strike them. 
 
 3d person neuter — Dal-cho-e, He may strike it, or them. 
 Present, if {he, etc.) struck, without the nominative expressed, 
 
 Dual. Plural. 
 
 Dal-aling-khan. 
 Dal-aben-khan. 
 Dal-akin-khan. 
 
 Dal-eng-khan. 
 Dal-me-klian, 
 Dal-e-khan. 
 
 Dal-ape-khan. 
 Dal-ale-khan. 
 Dal-ako-khan. 
 
 Imperfect, if {he, etc.) struck, nominative not expressed. 
 1st. Dal-ked-ing-khan. Dal-ket-ling-khan. Dal-ket-le-khan. 
 
 Perfect, nominative not expressed. 
 1st. Dal-akad-ing-khan. Dal-akat-ling-khan. Dal-akat-le-khan. 
 
 Pluperfect, nominative not expressed. 
 1st. Dal-ling-khan. Dal-le-ling-khan. Dal-le-le-khaii. 
 
 Singular. 
 Ist. Dal-king-jna. 
 2d. Dal-ke-ma. 
 3d. Dal-ke-a. 
 
 Singular. 
 Dal-eng-me. 
 Strike me. 
 
 Potential Mood. 
 
 Nominative not expressed. 
 
 Dual. 
 Dal-ke-lingya. 
 Dal-ke-bena. 
 Dal-ke-kma. 
 
 Imperative Mood. 
 
 Dual. 
 Dal-ko-ben. 
 You two strike them. 
 
 Plural. 
 Dal-ke-Iea. 
 Dal-ke-pea. 
 Dal-ke-koa. 
 
 Plural. 
 Dal-pe. 
 Do ye strike it. 
 
 Infinitive Mood. 
 
 Da-dal-ate, to strike it. Dal-ko-te, to strike them. 
 
 Participles. 
 
 Dal-ka-te, striking. 
 Dal-ket-khan, having struck. 
 
462 A SKELETON SANTALI GRAMMAR. [Appx. H. 
 
 Gerunds. 
 
 Dal-ket-te, 1 
 
 Dal-akat-te, > By striking, etc. 
 
 Dal-let-te, ) 
 
 The reflective verb (or middle voice) is formed by conjugating 
 the active verb with the inflections of the intransitive verb, as 
 exhibited in taken, p. 458. In the future and present tenses, 
 oh is inserted between the root and the inflection ; thus : 
 
 Future, Dal-oh-aing, I shall strike myself . 
 Pres. def., Dal-oh-kan-aing, I am striking myself. 
 Imperfect, Dal-en-aing, I struck myself. 
 Perfect, Dal-akan-aing, / have struck myself. 
 
 The rest of the middle voice is formed, like the imperfect and 
 perfect tenses, by the addition of the inflections of the intran- 
 sitive verb. 
 
 The causal verb is obtained by inserting ocho or ho-cho im- 
 mediately after the root, and using the inflections of the transitive 
 verb, as shown in dal (p. 460) ; thus : 
 
 Future, Dal-ocho-me-aing, I shall cause thee to be beaten. 
 Present, Dal-ocho-eh-me-kan-aing, I cause thee to he beaten. 
 Imperfect, Dal-ocho-ket-me-aing, I caused thee to be beaten. 
 Perfect, Dal-ocho-akat-me-aing, I have caused you to be beaten. 
 
 And so on throughout the other moods and tenses. 
 
 The foregoing will suflSce to show the general character of 
 Santali, and to fix its place among languages. Mr. Phillips' 
 Introduction exhibits, in Bengali characters, its forms at greater 
 length ; and I hope that the Rev. Mr. Puxley may be induced 
 at no distant date to publish the more complete and scientific 
 grammar for which he has been collecting materials during many 
 years. To both of those gentlemen I beg once more to ac- 
 knowledge my obligations. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 TEN SANTAL FESTIVALS. 
 
 1. Johorai — after gathering in the December rice-harvest; 
 lasts five days in each village, but is generally protracted to a 
 month, by fixing different days for it in neighbouring villages. 
 The ceremony is simple. An egg is placed on the ground ; all 
 the cows of the village are driven near to it, and the animal that 
 first smells at the egg is honoured by having its horns rubbed 
 with oil. 
 
 2. Sakrai — a few days after the Johorai ; lasts two days. It 
 consists of practising with bows and arrows, performing the sword 
 dance, and similar sports. 
 
 3. Jdtrd — about February; lasts two days. Eight men sit 
 on chairs ; are swung round the two posts placed outside of every 
 Santa! village. The same sort of revolving swing as is set up for 
 the children in Enghsh fairs. 
 
 4. Bdhd ('flower') — about March; lasts two days. Every house 
 washes the Naikki's (priest's) feet, and he distributes flowers in 
 return. Ceremonies take place in the grove of trees outside each 
 village. Four chickens are offered to Marang Buru (the great 
 god of the Santals) ; one coloured chicken to Jahir-erd (the 
 primeval mother of the race) ; one black chicken to Gosain-era 
 (a female divinity residing, like Jahir-erd, in the Sal grove) ; and 
 a goat or chicken to the Manjhi Haram (the late head of the 
 village). 
 
 5. Pbid (hook-swinging) ; now stopped by Government, but 
 still practised (1865) among the northern Santals in April or May. 
 Lasted about one month. Young men used to swing with hooks 
 through their back, as in the Charak Pujd. of the Hindus. The 
 swingers used to fast the day preceding and the day following the 
 operation, and to sleep the intermediate night on thorns. 
 
 6. Ero-sim (sowing chicken) ; offered in each house at seed- 
 sowing time. 
 
464 TEN SANTAL FESTIVALS. [Appx. I. 
 
 7. Hariar-sim (green chicken) ; offered by the Naikki (priest) 
 when the dhan has somewhat grown. 
 
 8. Chhdtd (' umbrella ') — about August ; lasts five days. The 
 Ndikki (priest) offers a goat, and the people all dance round a 
 bamboo umbrella erected on a high pole. 
 
 9. Iri-gundli (two kinds of grain). The Naikki (priest) offers 
 these with milk in the Jahir-than (Sal grove), and calls upon the 
 poor to come and eat. 
 
 10. Horo (rice) — when the rice is ripening. The first-fruits of 
 the rice are offered to the Pargana Bongi (the district deities), 
 along with a pig, which the men of the village afterwards eat in 
 the Sal grove. 
 
 In all these festivals there is a great quantity of rice-beer 
 drunk. 
 
APPENDIX K. 
 
 A FEW OFFICIAL PAPERS ON THE SANTAL 
 INSURRECTION. 
 
 No. I. — General Instructions to the Civil Officers. Despatch No. 
 i'l'&(>,from tfie Government of Bengal, dated ■1,0th July 1855. 
 
 Sir, — You will have been made aware, before this communica- 
 tion reaches you, that Major-General Lloyd has been appointed 
 to take command of the whole of the troops operating against the 
 Santals. 
 
 2.d. General Lloyd has been directed by the Supreme Govern- 
 ment to proceed in the first instance to Rajmehal. He has been 
 informed that the President in Council, considering it very desir- 
 able that prompt and speedy measures should be taken to put 
 down the insurrection, has resolved upon placing the conduct of 
 the operations entirely in his hand; and he has been requested to 
 take immediate steps for dispersing and capturing the insurgents, 
 and for putting down the rebellion. 
 
 2,d. In communicating these orders to this Government, the 
 President in Council has requested that the Lieutenant-Governor 
 would instruct the civil officers of the several divisions to com- 
 municate with the Major-General, and to afford him every in- 
 formation and assistance in carrying into effect the line of 
 operations he may decide upon. 
 
 /^h. In a subsequent communication, the President in Council 
 has explained that it was not intended by the above-quoted in- 
 structions to General Lloyd, that the military should act indepen- 
 dently of the civil power against our own subjects, but simply 
 that the nature of the military operations necessary for dispersing 
 and capturing the insurgents, and for putting down the rebellion, 
 should be entirely in the hands of the military commanders. It 
 is stated also that the civil authorities have still power to act with 
 the civil means at their disposal, and that the only change in- 
 tended to be made is in transferring the power each civil officer 
 VOL. I. 2 G 
 
466 A FEW OFFICIAL PAPERS [Appx. K. 
 
 had over the movements of the troops to a military officer of 
 experience, who, as far as the military are concerned, is charged 
 with the operations necessary for quelling the insurrection. The 
 President in Council considers, it is added, that the civil autho- 
 rities should abstain from ordering out troops except in cases of 
 sudden emergency, but that they should keep the military officers, 
 particularly the officer in command in the district, fully informed 
 on all points connected with the state of the country and the 
 movements of the rebels, and offer such suggestions as may occur 
 to them connected with the general objects in view. 
 
 5^5. Since General Lloyd's appointment it has also seemed 
 desirable to the President in Council to appoint Colonel Bird, 
 with the position of a brigadier, to the special command of the 
 troops employed in Beerbhoom and Bancoorah districts. This 
 officer is instructed to take immediate measures, in concert with 
 the civil officers, for dispersing and capturing the insurgents wher- 
 ever they may be, and for putting down the rebellion. He is in- 
 formed tliat Mr. Loch at Munglepore, and yourself at Sooree, will 
 afford him every information and assistance ; and he is requested 
 to act in concert with Mr. Loch and yourself in carrying out the 
 line of operations necessary to suppress the insurrection. 
 
 6lh. The Lieutenant-Governor has only to add to the above 
 instructions the expression of earnest hope that you yourself, and 
 all the civil officers subordinate to you, will in every possible way 
 aid and promote the operations of the troops. Your attention 
 should more particularly be directed to procuring efficient and 
 trustworthy guides for the troops, and to providing them with 
 carriage and supplies. Orders have some days since been issued 
 to the magistrates of all the surrounding districts, urging them 
 to procure as many elephants as possible, and forward them into 
 Beerbhoom and Bhaugulpore; and (a number) have already 
 been sent up direct from Calcutta. Also, as soon as it shall be 
 directed at what places detachments of troops are to be posted, 
 you should see that every exertion is made to afford good shelter 
 both for officers and men ; and special care should be taken to 
 provide, as early as possible, charpoys, or some elevated plat- 
 forms for the Sepoys to lie upon. (This paragraph is carelessly 
 copied. W. W. H.) 
 
 •jth. You should likewise — if, as may be possible, the medical 
 arrangements are not yet efficiently organized — take it upon your- 
 
Appx. K.J ON THE SANTAL INSURRECTION. 467 
 
 self to see that the officer in command of every detached body 
 of troops is furnished with a few simple medicines, particularly 
 quinine, with brief instructions as to the quantities to be given. 
 
 %th. The Lieutenant-Governor is desirous to receive reports 
 from you of the progress of affairs as frequently as possible. 
 
 <)th. You will communicate the above orders to the several 
 officers subordinate to you who are employed in the disturbed 
 disti-icts. 
 
 No. II. — Instructions from the Commissioner to Magistrates to 
 oj^er Pardon, dated i^th August 1855. 
 
 Sir,— ...... 
 
 2d. You will be good enough to promulgate amongst the 
 Santal population, by every means in your power, copies of the 
 enclosed proclamation ; and the name of every one appearing 
 before you to make submission should be entered in a book 
 exhibiting the following particulars. (A schedule enclosed.) 
 
 7,d. To all who tender their submission a certificate in the 
 accompanying form should be given, and the accompanying 
 Moochoolika {i.e. bond) should be signed by them. 
 
 No. III. — The Proclamation of Pardon. 
 
 Inasmuch as it appears that amongst the Santals, who have 
 risen in rebellion against the Government, plundering and de- 
 vastating the country and opposing the troops, there are many 
 who see the folly and iniquity of their proceedings, and are 
 desirous of being pardoned and resuming their former quiet life, 
 notice is hereby given, that the Government, ever anxious for 
 the welfare of its subjects though led away by counsels of bad 
 men, will freely pardon all Santals who may within ten days 
 appear before any constituted authority and tender their submis- 
 sion, always excepting those who shall be proved to have been 
 principal instigators and leaders of the insurrection, and those 
 who shall be proved to have been principally concerned in the 
 perpetration of any murder. As soon as complete submission is 
 shown, all well-grounded complaints preferred by the Santals will 
 be fully inquired into. But, on the other hand, all insurgents 
 remaining in opposition to Government after the issue of this 
 proclamation, will be visited with the promptest and severest 
 punishment. 
 
468 A FEW OFFICIAL PAPERS [Appx. K. 
 
 No. IV. — Letter frofn the Magistrate of Beerihoom to the Comniis- 
 sioiur of Biirdwan Division, dated 2/^h September 1855. 
 
 During the past fortnight, upwards of thirty villages have 
 been plundered and burned by the insurgents in Thannas Oper- 
 bundah and Nangoolea. The whole of the country, from Lorojore, 
 four miles west of Nuggur, to within a short distance of Deoghur, 
 is in their hands. The Dawks (mails) are stopped, and the inha- 
 bitants have deserted their villages, and fled. They are divided 
 into two large bodies : one encamped at Raksadangal, ten miles 
 north of the Operbandah Thannah in Zillah Bhaugalpore ; and 
 the other at Teelaboonie, six miles west of Soory, and also in 
 Bhaugalpore, but on the confines of Tannah Nangoolea ; and 
 their numbers average, as nearly as we can ascertain, from 12,000 
 to 14,000, and are receiving augmentations from all quarters. 
 
 ■zd. A party of about 3000 of the Raksadangal Santals, led 
 by Mocheea Kosnjola, Rama and Soondra Manjhees, encamped 
 near Operbandah on the afternoon of the i6th inst., and on the 
 following day plundered and burnt the Thannah and village. 
 The Darogah and Burkundazes remained at their post till the 
 last moment ; but seeing the overwhelming numbers of their 
 assailants, and that resistance on their part must be useless, they 
 retreated, and the Darogah contrived to escape with great diffi- 
 culty via Shahna and Afzulpore, and arrived here on the 2 2d 
 Avith only the clothes on his back. He had heard some days 
 before that the Santals intended attacking the Thannah, and had 
 sent all the records, etc., to Deoghur for security, and also ap- 
 plied to the officer commanding the detachment there for assist- 
 ance ; but the latter, owing to the distance and dense jungle en 
 route, declined to send troops to his aid. On informing Mr. 
 Ward of the circumstances, he told me that detachments of troops 
 were to be sent forthwith from Raneegunge to Jumterra in 
 Thannah Shahna, to Operbandah, and to Afzulpore, to be sta- 
 tioned there until the military force can take the field against the 
 Santals after the rains are over ; and I have just heard that the 
 detachment has arrived at the former place, which will suffice for 
 the protection of Thannah Shahna, in the jurisdiction of which 
 no plunder has yet been committed ; but the Santals are now 
 assembling with the intention of joining the rebels. Until troops 
 are stationed at Operbandha, everything must remain in the pre- 
 
Appx. K.] on the SANTAL insurrection. 469 
 
 sent state of anarchy and confusion ; but directly they arrive, I 
 shall send the police back to the Thannah, and set the Dawk 
 (mail) going again. At present it is impossible, as Rama Manjhee, 
 with 200 men, has taken up his position in the jungle near Haldi- 
 gurh Hill, and waylays and plunders everything that attempts to 
 pass that way. The absence of a civil officer at Deoghur is 
 greatly to be regretted at the present juncture, when his services 
 would be of so much value ; but I have already brought this to 
 your notice in a former letter. 
 
 2,d. The gang of from 5000 to 7000 Santals, under Seeroo 
 Manjhee, who had taken Sooleah Takoor at Teelabooney, have 
 strengthened their position by earthworks, and dug tanks there. 
 They have also made preparations for celebrating the Doorgah 
 Pooja, for which purpose they have carried off and detained two 
 Brahmins from one of the villages plundered by them in Thannah 
 Nangoolea ; and spies who came in yesterday say that they are 
 only waiting for the Raksadangal gang to join them, before 
 advancing to attack Soory ; but I think it improbable that they 
 will venture to attack the station under present circumstances. 
 They sent us in what is called in their language a ' dahra,' or 
 'missive' — viz. a twig of the Sal tree with three leaves on it, each 
 leaf signifying a day that is to elapse before their arrival — a few 
 days ago, which was brought by one of the Deoghur Dak runners, 
 whom they seized and sent back for the purpose. The colonel 
 commanding has taken the precaution of stationing piquets at 
 different points on the north and west side of the station, which 
 would be most exposed in the event of an attack ; and I under- 
 stand that Seyt Gillan and his Burkundazes, whom I placed at 
 the disposal of the special Commissioner when here, at the 
 latter's request, is to be sent to Nuggur, where the residents are 
 in a state of great alarni, and many have deserted their houses. 
 
 No. V. — From the Civil Officer to the Collector of Beerbhoom, 
 Ratuegunge, the i2,th November 1855. 
 
 Sir, — Martial law having been proclaimed in the disturbed 
 districts, my functions have ceased. Should you wish to com- 
 municate with me on any subject connected with this insurrection, 
 which might require to be settled as having originated in this 
 office, I shall feel obliged by your doing so as soon as possible, 
 directing to me at Hooghly. 
 
APPENDIX L. 
 
 REVENUE OF THE UNITED DISTRICT, AND COST 
 OF INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION, BEFORE THE 
 PERMANENT SETTLEMENT. 
 
 Revenue, 1789. 
 
 Current Rupees. 
 
 Land Revenue, of Beerbhoom, .... 611,321 
 Land Revenue of Bishenpore, .... 386,707 
 Miscellaneous Revenue, ..... 15,000 
 
 Total Current Rs., 1,013,028 
 Or, £101,2/02, i6s. 
 
 Expenditure, 1789. 
 
 Sicca Rupees. 
 
 General Charges for collecting and remitting the Revenue, ■) 33,020 
 
 Collector's Private Commission, . . . . > 10,900 
 
 Civil Justice, ...... 6,772 
 
 Criminal Justice, including Rs. 400 for killing tigers ; 
 
 Rs. 400 for prisoners' diet ; and Rs. 36 for charity, . 3,000 
 
 Total Sicca Rs., 52,692 
 About ;^54oo stg. 
 
 1789. 
 
 Receipts, ...... ;£ioi,302 16 o 
 
 Cost of Administration, .... S,4oo o o 
 
 Net profit to Government, . .£95,902 16 o 
 
APPENDIX M. 
 
 THE PRESENT REVENUE OF THE DISTRICT, AND 
 COST OF ITS ADMINISTRATION.' 
 
 Receipts. 
 
 
 Charges. 
 
 
 1864-65. 
 
 
 1864-65. 
 
 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 IJand revenue, . 
 
 7,44.965 
 
 Value of stamps refunded, . 
 
 2,000 
 
 Fines, .... 
 
 4,500 
 
 Income tax refunded. 
 
 500 
 
 Fees, .... 
 
 600 
 
 Charges for remitting trea- 
 
 
 Excise 
 
 45.929 
 
 sure, including boxes 
 
 
 Sale proceeds of opium, 
 
 7,018 
 
 covered vcitli canvas, 
 
 
 Income tax, ... 
 
 32.412 
 
 packing, etc., 
 
 1,500 
 
 Sale of stamps, . 
 
 71,685 
 
 Charges for destruction of 
 
 
 Receipt stamps. 
 
 406 
 
 wild animals, . 
 
 100 
 
 Penalties for infringement 
 
 
 Travelling allowance of 
 
 
 of stamp laws. 
 
 3.3°o 
 
 officers, etc., . 
 
 500 
 
 Collections of resumed 
 
 
 CoUectorate charges, . 
 
 35,508 
 
 police lands, . 
 
 2,500 
 
 Excise do., 
 Income tax do.. 
 
 2,776 
 2,706 
 
 
 
 Total, 
 
 9,13.31s 
 
 Charges for Stamp depart- 
 
 
 
 
 ment, .... 
 
 2,600 
 
 Education department. 
 
 3,100 
 
 Charges of Judges' Court, . 
 
 71,000 
 
 Post-office department, 
 
 7,200 
 
 Charges of Magistrates' 
 
 
 Grand total, 
 
 9.23,615 
 
 Court, .... 
 
 30,200 
 
 0^ £92,361 10 
 
 
 
 Jail charges. 
 
 7,000 
 
 Deduct expenditure, 
 
 or;^24,869 2 
 
 2,48,691 
 
 
 Salary of the civil surgeon, 
 Dispensary allowance of 
 
 4,200 
 
 
 
 do., .... 
 
 Pensions, .... 
 
 120 
 
 Net profit, 
 
 6,74,924 
 
 5,634 
 
 or ;f 67,492 8 
 
 
 
 Political pensions, 
 
 347 
 
 
 
 Police department. 
 
 62,000 
 
 
 
 Education department. 
 
 10,000 
 
 
 
 Post-office department, 
 Total 
 
 10,000 
 
 
 2,48,691 
 
 
 
 or /24,869 2 
 
 
 ' This exhibits the estimated revenue and government expenditure in Beei- 
 bAoom alone, Bishenpore being now included in another district. 
 
APPENDIX N. 
 
 A TABLE SHovsiNG the intrinsic Value of the following 
 Species of Rupees current in Bengal, Bahar, and 
 Orissa, compared with the Sicca Rupee, from Assayes 
 BY the Calcutta Mint in October 1792. 
 
 Species of Rupee. 
 
 1. Siccas of Moorshedabad, per Sicca weight, . i<x) 
 
 2. Siccas of Patna, 
 
 3. Siccas of Dacca, ....... 
 
 4. Pholy Sonats, ........ 
 
 5. Delhi Mahomet Shai, 
 
 6. Money Surat, large, ...... 
 
 7. Benares Sicca, ....... 
 
 8. Bissun Arcot, ........ 
 
 9. Sonats Sabic, ........ 
 
 10. Sonats Duckie, 
 
 11. Forshee Arcots 
 
 12. French Arcots, 
 
 13. Patanea Arcots, ....... 
 
 14. Aurungzebe Arcots, 
 
 15. Gursaul, 
 
 16. Madras Arcots, new 
 
 17. Muslipatam Arcots, ...... 
 
 18. Shardar Arcots, ....... 
 
 19. Patna Sonatts, old, 
 
 20. Benares Rupees, old, 
 
 21. Madras Arcots, old, ...... 
 
 22. Furruckabad Rupees, 
 
 23. Jehanjee Arcots, 
 
 24. Chunta Arcots, 
 
 25. Calcutta Arcots, 
 
 26. Moorshedabad Arcots, 
 
 27. Old Arcots 
 
 28. Dutch Arcots, 
 
 29. Sural Arcots, 
 
 30. Benares Frisolie, 
 
 31. Viziery Rupees, .■••... 
 
 32. Narrany half rupee, 
 
 Intrinsic Value. 
 
 compared 
 
 with 
 
 the Sicca Rupees 
 
 RS. 
 
 A. 
 
 p. 
 
 ICO 
 
 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 8 
 
 o 
 
 99 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 14 
 
 6 
 
 97 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 97 
 
 » 
 
 
 
 96 
 
 9 
 
 6 
 
 96 
 
 9 
 
 6 
 
 96 
 
 9 
 
 6 
 
 96 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 96 
 
 
 
 
 
 96 
 
 
 
 
 
 96 
 
 
 
 
 
 95 
 
 14 
 
 6 
 
 95 
 
 14 
 
 6 
 
 95 
 
 12 
 
 9 
 
 95 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 95 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 95 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 95 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 95 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 95 
 
 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 
 
 
 
 92 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 
 
APPENDIX O. 
 
 LIST OF COINS AND WEIGHTS CURRENT IN SIX 
 INDIAN PORTS IN 1763. 
 
 [For Bengal Coins, see Appendix N.] 
 
 MADRAS. 
 
 Gold and Silver Weights. 
 
 I Pagoda is 
 
 9^ do. is . 
 
 8 do., I dollar weight, 
 
 100 dollars, . 
 
 100 Venetian ducats, 
 
 100 gubbers, at a medium, . 
 
 I rupee, 
 
 100 do., 
 
 I Madras pagoda weighs 2 dw. 4| gr. ; or, English standard, 20 
 
 car. '5* gr. ; country touch, 8f ; China, 86^. 
 1 AUumgeet pagoda, i dw. 22 gr. ; or, English standard, 23 car. 
 
 2y gr. ; country touch, 9J ; China, 98J. 
 80 cash make i fanam. 
 
 36 fanams, i pagoda-poise. 2 dw. 4 gr. is 8625 matts fine. 
 100 Madras rupees weight, 37 oz. 5 dw. 20 gr., and are better than 
 
 standard, 14^ dw. 
 100 Bombay do. are better than standard, 10^- dw. 
 
 oz. 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 dw. 
 2 
 
 
 gr. Troy 
 
 
 
 
 88 
 
 17 
 
 I 
 
 14 
 17 
 
 II 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 17 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 II 
 
 37 
 
 5 
 
 20 
 
 I Chowle is I rutta. 
 3 rutta make i voU, 
 32 voU make i tola. 
 
 SURAT. 
 
 Gold and Silver Weights. 
 
 825- do. make 2 tolas and i8j volls, or 
 
 dw. gr. Troy. 
 
 7 18A 
 
474 
 
 LIST OF COINS AND WEIGHTS. [Appx. O. 
 
 9j vol! = I Venetian weight, . . . 
 
 loo do. = 28 tola 29 voll, .... 
 73 voll = I dollar weight, .... 
 100 do. weight, 228 tola 4 voll, 
 31 tola = very near .... 
 
 The seer for coral =18 great pice, or 27 common 
 
 pice weight, 
 Do. for musk, ..... 
 
 The Surat seer ^= 30 pice, and weighs at a medium. 
 
 I Spanish dollar full weight, 73 voUs, 
 
 100 do. do., 
 
 100 ounces Mexico dollars are 
 
 4 pice make . 
 
 16 annas, or 64 pice, make . 
 
 135 silver rupees are equal to 
 
 j>2. 
 
 dw, gr. Troy 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 5A 
 
 II 
 
 14 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 iS 
 
 88 
 
 IS 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 12 
 
 s 
 
 20 
 
 II 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 Rupees. Annas. Pice. 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 219 
 
 12 
 
 9 
 
 247 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 anna. 
 
 
 I 
 
 rupee 
 
 silver. 
 
 I 
 
 rupee 
 
 gold. 
 
 I Venetian = 
 
 I gubber = . 
 
 I gold moor or rupee, 
 
 100 rees make 
 
 400 do. make 
 
 BOMBAY. 
 Coins. 
 
 Rupees. Annas, 
 
 Pice. 
 
 3 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 13 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 quarter. 
 
 
 I 
 
 rupee. 
 
 
 80 Leader rees are 
 S tangos. 
 
 GO A. 
 
 Coins. 
 
 I silver tango. 
 
 I pardao or xeraphin. 
 
 MALACCA. 
 Gold Weights. 
 
 16 Miams make i boucall, equal to troy weight, 
 20 boucalls make i catty, 
 
 oz. dw. 
 
 I 9 
 29 16 
 
 gr. 
 
 o 
 
 Coins. 
 
 4 Doits = 
 6 stivers, 
 
 I stiver. 
 I skilling. 
 
Appx. O.] list of coins AND WEIGHTS. 
 
 475 
 
 8 skillings, ..... 
 
 I duccatoon is current for 
 
 I English crown piece, 
 
 I Bombay or Surat rupee, 
 
 I Madras rupee (though of the value with ) 
 
 Bombay), . . . . ) 
 
 1 Arcot rupee (though but i per cent. Worse ) 
 
 than Surat), . . . . S 
 
 I rix dollar. 
 13 skillings. 
 10 do. 
 
 5 do. 
 
 4 
 
 =•/■ 
 
 J- /Because they 
 
 ' are not so 
 
 broad as the 
 
 Bombay or 
 
 Surat rupee. 
 
 do. 
 
 CALLICUTT AND TELLICHERRY. 
 Coins. 
 
 I fanam, called gallee. 
 I rupee. 
 
 16 Tarr or vlss make 
 5 fanams make ... 
 I Spanish dollar full weight is accounted 2J rupees, but pass in the 
 bazaar only from 10 fanams, 4 tarr to loi- fanams. 
 
 PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH 
 
WORKS BY SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER, K.C.S.L, CLE. 
 
 M.A. (Oxford), LL.D. (Cambridge). 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 A HISTORY OF BRITISH INDIA. 
 
 In Five Volumes. 
 
 Based on the Manuscript Records 
 and the District Inquiries conducted for the Statistical Survey of India. 
 
 Vol. J. in 1898. 
 
 From the discovery of the Cape Route in 1498 to the final 
 Founding of Calcutta in 1690. 
 
 THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. 
 
 Sixth Edition. 16s. 
 From the Manuscript Records. 
 
 ' It is hard to overestimate the importance of a work whose author succeeds in fascin- 
 ating us with- a subject so generally regarded as unattractive, and who, on questions of 
 grave importance to the future destiny of India, gives the results of wide research and 
 exceptional opportunities of personal study, in a bright, lucid, forcible narrative, rising on 
 occasion to eloquence.' — Times. 
 
 ' Mr. Hunter, in a word, has applied the philosophic method of writing history to a new 
 field. . . . The grace, atid ease, and steady flow of the writing almost makes us forget, 
 when reading, the surpassing severity and value of the author's labours.' — Fortnightly 
 Review. 
 
 ORISSA: 
 
 THE VICISSITUDES OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE 
 UNDER NATIVE AND BRITISH RULE. 
 
 Two Vols., Ma^ and Steel Engravings. S2s. 
 From the Manuscript Records. 
 
 ' The mature and laborious work of a man who has devoted the whole power of his mind, 
 first to the practical duties of his profession as an Indian civilian, and next to the study of 
 all that relates to or can illustrate it. As long as Indian civilians write books like this — as 
 long as they interest themselves so passionately in their work, and feel so keenly its con- 
 nection with nearly every subject which can occupy serious thought — the English rule will 
 not only last, but will prosper, and make its subjects prosper too.'— /^«//iI/a//(?ar^i'if^(i872). 
 
 ' A great subject worthily handled. He writes with great knowledge, great sympathy 
 with the Indian people, a keen and q^uick appreciation of all that is striking and romantic 
 in their history and character, and with a flowing and picturesque style, which carries the 
 reader lightly over ground which, in less skilful hands, might seem tedious beyond 
 endurance.' — Saturday Review. 
 
motks bB IStr TlCliUiam Milson Ibunter— eonf/nueflf. 
 BENGAL MS. RECORDS. 
 
 Four Vols. 30s. 
 
 A Selected List of 14,136 Letters in the Board of Revenue, 
 
 Calcutta, 1782-1807. 
 
 WITH A 
 
 HISTORICAL DISSERTATION ON LAND RIGHTS IN BENGAL. 
 
 ' This is one of the small class of original works that compel a reconsideration of views 
 which have been long accepted and which have passed into the current history of the 
 period to which they refer. . . . If these four volumes stood alone they would place their 
 author in the first rank of scientific historians ; that is, of the extremely limited class of 
 historians who write from original MSS. and records. But they do not stand alone. 
 They are the natural continuation of the author's researches, nearly a generation ago, 
 among the District Archives of Bengal, which produced his " Annals of Rural Bengal " in 
 1868 and his "Orissa" in 1872. They are also the firstfruits of that comprehensive history 
 of India on which he has been engaged for the last twenty years, for which he has collected 
 in each province of India an accumulation of tested local materials such as has never 
 before been brought together in the hands, and by the labours, of any worker in the same 
 stupendous field, and which, when completed, will be the fitting crown of his lifelong 
 services to India. These volumes are indeed an important instalment towards the pro- 
 jected viagnujit opus, and in this connection it is of good augury to observe that they 
 maintain their author's reputation for that fulness and minuteness of knowledge, that 
 grasp of principles and philosophic insight, and that fertility and charm of literary 
 expression, which give Sir William Hunter his unique place among the writers of his day 
 on Indxa..'— Tunes. 
 
 THE INDIAN EMPIRE: 
 
 ITS HISTORT, PKOPLE, AND PRODUCTS. 
 
 Third Edition. 800 pp., with Map. Seventh Thousand. 18s. 
 
 'Never before has the whole subject of Indian history been so adequately and so 
 intelligibly treated.' — Paii Mall Gazette. 
 
 'A compact body of information, arranged and classified on correct principles.'— 
 Acadetny. 
 
 ' A model of combined lucidity, conciseness, and comprehensiveness.' — Economist. 
 
 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INDIAN PEOPLES. 
 
 Twenty-first Edition. Eighty-second Thousand. 3s. 6d, 
 
 ' Within the compass of some 250 pages we know of no history of the people of India so 
 concise, so interesting, and so useful for educational purposes as this.' — London School 
 Board Chronicle. 
 
 ' By far the best manual of Indian history that has hitherto been published.'— T'zVkw 
 0/ India. 
 
 'The publication of the Hon. Sir W. W. Hunter's school history of India is an event 
 in literary history.' — Reis 6^ Rayyet. 
 
 THE INDIAN MUSSULMANS. 
 
 Ihiri, Edition. 10s. Bd. 
 
 ' A masterly essay.' — Daily News. 
 
Morhe bg Sic IKIlfUlam limUBon Thuntev— continued. 
 
 A STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF BENGAL 
 AND ASSAM. 
 
 With Maps. In Twenty-two Vols., half moroeeo, 5s, each. 
 
 ' Un ensemble d' efforts digne d'une grande nation, et comme aucune autre n'en a fait 
 jusqu'ici de semblable pour son empire colonial.' — Revue Critique. 
 
 'Twentyvolumesof material, collected under the most favourable auspices, are built 
 up under his hands into a vast but accessible storehouse of invaluable facts. Invaluable 
 to the statesman, the administrator, and the hist'orian, they are no less interesting to the 
 general reader. Sir W. W. Hunter undoubtedly has the faculty of making the dry bones of 
 statistics live._ Butthey also contain matter which may be regarded as the fountain of 
 the yet unwritten history of Bengal. They are a guide for administrative action now. 
 They also seem to be the point of a new departure for the future. ' — Nineteenth Century. 
 
 THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA. 
 
 Second Edition. Fourteen Vols., half moroeeo, £3, 5s. 
 
 ' The publication of ' ' The Imperial Gazetteer of India " marks the completion of the largest 
 national enterprise in statistics which has ever been undertaken. . . . The volumes before 
 us form a complete account of the country, its geography, topography, ethnology, com- 
 merce, and products. ... It is one of the grandest works of administrative statistics 
 which have ever been issued by any nation.' — Tivtes. {Tudo notices.') 
 
 ' Sir W. W. Hunter has rendered to the Indian Government and to English people 
 generally the highest service a public servant could achieve." — Aihenceum. 
 
 A LIFE OF THE MARQUESS OF DALHOUSIE. 
 
 Seventh Thousand. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ' It can be read at a sitting, yet its references — expressed or implied — suggest the study 
 and observation of half a lifetime.' — Daily News. 
 
 ' A brilliantly- written account of the life and work of that able ruler of men, the Marquis 
 of Dalhousie. ' — Asiatic Quarterly Review. 
 
 ' Never have we been so much impressed by the great literary abilities of Sir William 
 Hunter as we have been by the perusal of *'The Marquess of Dalhousie.'" — Evening 
 News. 
 
 A LIFE OF THE EARL OF MAYO. 
 
 FOURTH VICEROY OF INDIA. 
 
 Second Edition. Two Vols., 24s. 
 
 ' The picture presented to us of the late Lord Mayo is a fair and noble one, and worthy 
 of the much lamented original.' — Edinburgh Revietu. 
 
 ' This masterly work has two great recommendations : it is the vividly and faithfully 
 told narrative of the life of a man ; and it contains a lucid and comprehensive history of 
 recent administration in India.' — World. 
 
 A SHORTER LIFE OF LORD MAYO. 
 
 Fourth Thousand. One Vol., 2s. 6d. 
 
 'A brief but admirable biography.' — Times. 
 
 ' The world is indebted to the author for a fit and attractive record of what was 
 eminently a noble life.' — Academy. 
 
■waorks bB Sir Ulltlliam llOltleon ■^nntct— continued. 
 A LIFE OF BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON, 
 
 BRITISH RESIDENT AT THE COURT OF NEPAL. 
 
 14s. 
 
 ' In this life of a great Indian civilian and scholar, Sir William Wilson Hunter has pro- 
 duced a work which might serve as a model for biographies of the kind.' — Times. 
 
 * A revelation of a remarkable and most interesting personality. A charming book.'— 
 Scotsman. 
 
 ' Gracefully and tenderly^ written. . . . The story of Brian Hodgson is not only of 
 interest to the man of affairs, the scholar, and the student of science, but it is a tale 
 which appeals to all who can notice and appreciate genuine human qualities.' — 
 A ikemmiin. 
 
 BOMBAY, 1885 TO 1890. 
 
 A STUDY IN INDIAN ADMINISTRATION. 
 One Volume. Clarendon Press. 15s. 
 
 ' Few living writers have dQne so much as Sir William Hunter to make British India 
 and its government intelligible to English readers.' — Times. 
 
 FAMINE ASPECTS OF BENGAL DISTRICTS. 
 
 Second Edition. 7s. 6d. 
 
 ' One of the boldest efforts yet made by statistical science. ... In this work he has 
 laid down the basis of a system, by which he may fairly claim that scarcity in Bengal has 
 been reduced to an affair of calm administrative calculation.* — Daily News. 
 
 THE OLD MISSIONARY. 
 
 Twenty-first Thousand. EDITION DE LUXE, Illustrated. 2s. 6d. 
 
 ' A tale of tender pathos which it is difficult to read without tears.' — Spectator. 
 
 ' A descriptive study analogous to some of M. Paul Bourget's " Pastels." Perhaps the 
 best of these, " Un Saint," will be recalled to the memory of its readers by Sir WilUam 
 Hunter's "Old Missionary".* — Tivies. 
 
 ' It brings back the flavour of old days, old scenes, old memories, the full pulsing life 
 of the District . . . He has the rare faculty of seeing things in place of shadows — his 
 characters are living men.' — Academy. 
 
 ' Nothing of the kind was ever written more telling.' — Illustrated London News. 
 
 JUST OUT. 
 
 THE THACKERAYS IN INDIA. 
 
 Sixth Thousand. 2s, 6d. 
 
 'Sir William Hunter's new book is a remarkable example of how dry official manu- 
 script records can be made to yield up the romance of history, or, more strictly speaking, 
 to furnish a series of brilliant narratives from contemporary documents. The result is a 
 book that reads like a novel. The ease and simple polish of Sir William Hunter's style 
 conceals all traces of the severe labour bestowed.* — Times. 
 
 ' A book so crowded with the action and enterprise, and the sentiment and romance ; of a 
 century of lives and deaths, that one rises from the reading of it almost crushed by the 
 mass of its emotion. ' — Spectator.