Asiatic Society of Bengal

“ The Bengalis are not inferior to any other race in India in brain-power, and Bengal has enjoyed the immense advantage of British peace, British administration, and European learning for a much longer period than any other province of India. ”

“ No special theory is required to account for the physical and mental qualities of the Mongolo-Dravidians of Bengal. No doubt the original population was Dravidian with a strong intermixture of Tibeto-Burmese blood, especially in the east and north-east. But the Hindu religion, developed in the sacred Midlands round Benares, spread to Bengal, bringing with it the Indo-European speech which in medieval times became the copious and supple Bengali tongue. From the west too came what we in Europe would call the gentry, the priestly and professional castes. ”

“ Amber, ivory, precious stones, betel-nut, and the edible birds’ nests from the Eastern Archipelago, were also articles of commerce. In return, the Burmans procured raw and wrought silks, velvets, gold-leaf, preserves, paper, and utensils of hardware.” Both the researches of Wilcox and the journal of Crawford’s embassy to Ava in 1826 referred to the trade and routes by Bhamô, and the Bengal government in 1827 published a map containing the best procurable information about the Burmo-Chinese frontier. ”

“ Our people at home can not understand the great areas, as well as the many millions of people in Southern Asiatic mission lands. It is all so much bigger than the notion given by a map. At the time of which I write we had three Conferences and the far-away mission of Malaysia. The most extensive area was included in the Bengal Conference. One end of this Conference included the province of Burma, and the other end reached up to and included almost all the Northwest Indian part of our mission. ”

“ Coal, petroleum, and limestone are found in abundance; iron is smelted to a small extent; gold-dust is met with; lime is exported to Bengal. There is no single Assamese nationality, and the Assamese language is merely a modern dialect of Bengali. Pop. 6,713,635, 3,637,828 of whom are Hindus, 1,886,528 Mahommedans, 66,430 Christians, 10,506 Buddhists, the rest being chiefly hill tribes of aboriginal faiths. The labourers in the tea-gardens are mostly drawn from Bengal. ”

“ Properly Manipūr; a quasi-independent State lying between the British district of Cachar on the extreme east of Bengal, and the upper part of the late kingdom of Burma, and in fact including a part of the watershed between the tributaries of the Brahmaputra and those of the Irawadi. The people are of genuinely Indo-Chinese and Mongoloid aspect, and the State, small and secluded as it is, has had its turn in temporary conquest and domination, like almost all the States of Indo-China from the borders of Assam to the mouth of the Mekong. ”

“ The trade of the country was almost entirely in the hands of the Deb Raja, his ministers and governors, who held the monopoly of it both with Bengal and Tibet. The exports to Bengal were chiefly ponies, musk, cow-tails, coarse red blankets, and striped woollen cloths half a yard wide. The imports were chiefly broadcloth, spices, dyes, Malda cloth, coarse linen, hogs, and salt fish. The great trade with Bengal was carried on by means of the annual caravans to Rangpur, from which the Government of Bengal received about Rs. ”

“ I do not mean that each one of us should cling to the soil of his native village and that there is no need to stir outside it to gain knowledge or recognition. The Bengali cannot but be grateful to the forces of attraction which have drawn him out, roused his faculties, and broadened his mind by widening his sphere of activity. But the time has come to remind the sons of Bengal that they must not turn topsy-turvy the natural relations of within and without. Men go abroad to earn, and come home to spend. ”

“ It is not only to the voyager fresh from home that the ascent of the Ganges is novel and interesting. These things are as new to the resident of Madras as are the scenes of Italy to the Englishman. The people of Bengal differ from those of Southern India in language, dress, and looks, as well as in other respects. In frame, they are more slightly built, and less manly; indeed, they have the reputation of being the most effeminate of the Hindu races. ”

“ Hindu society, that is the village community, has long decayed in Bengal owing to Muhammadan dominance, the concentration of estates in the hands of large proprietors and the weakening or lapse of the customary rights of tenants. Coupled with this has been the growth of an important urban population, in which the castes mentioned have raised themselves from their menial position in the villages and attained wealth and influence, just as the Gujarāti Telis are now doing in Burhānpur, while the agricultural castes of Bengal have been comparatively depressed. ”

“ With no oxygen to speak of for generations, they can hardly be cheerful or energetic. Athletic sports are not in the line of the young Bengalis of the Brahman castes who crowd the schools, take all the prizes, and fill the government offices,—Young Bengal being usually a superficially educated poll-parrot quite as offensive and hopeless as Young China. ”

“ It is not justified by history, which teaches us that civilisation is the result of the mutual action of Europe and Asia; and that the advanced races of India are our own kinsfolk.
The scene of Mr. Banerjea's tales has been won from the sea by alluvial action. Its soil, enriched by yearly deposits of silt, yields abundantly without the aid of manure. A hothouse climate and regular rainfall made Bengal the predestined breeding-ground of mankind; the seat of an ancient and complex civilisation. But subsistence is too easily secured in those fertile plains. ”

“ Bengal, including the delta of the Ganges, was one of the most fertile regions in the world, whilst the inhabitants were most submissive and easily governed. For centuries the Bengalis had been oppressed by foreigners—Turk, Afghan, Abyssinian and Mogul. The revenues, however, had been collected by Hindu officials, as being at once more exacting in their demands, and more easily stripped of their ill-gotten gains. ”

“ The inhabitants are Indo-Chinese, not Indo-Aryans as in Bengal proper, and are Mahommedan by religion instead of Hindu. Eastern Bengal consists of the Dacca and Chittagong divisions which are mainly Bengali in race and Hindu in religion. For the Assamese districts see Assam. The province as a whole contains 18,036,688 Mahommedans and 12,036,538 Hindus. In language 27,272,895 of the inhabitants speak Bengali, 1,349,784 speak Assamese, and the remainder Hindi and various hill dialects, Manipuri, Bodo, Khasi and Garo. ”

“ Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim are Himalayan highlands inhabited chiefly by Mongolian Buddhists, who have far more affinity with Tibetans and Chinese than with their Indian neighbours to the south. Assam is little more than an administrative dependency of Eastern Bengal, whilst Burma has been even more accurately described as a mere appendage of India, attached for purposes of administrative convenience to our Indian Empire, but otherwise as effectively divided from it by race, religion, customs, and tradition as by the waters of the Bay of Bengal and the dense jungles of the Patkai Mountains. ”

“ The men procurable from that country, are not equal in physical strength to the China-men, nor are they to be had for lower pay. I had six Bengal Coolies in my employ in the Bush, and have no hesitation in saying, that three China-men would have done their work. The proper immigrant to obtain from Bengal, if the Colonists choose to apply to that part of the world, is the Pariah, the man of no caste, who will eat any thing, apply himself to any kind of work, even to the killing, curing, or eating a pig, and give far less trouble than any of the high-caste men. ”

“ But Hinduism, understood even in this wide sense, represents only one of many creeds and races found within Bengal. The other great historical cultus, which during the last twelve centuries did for the Semitic peoples what Christianity accomplished among the European Aryans, has won to itself one-fifth of the population of Bengal. The Mahommedans number some 9,000,000 in Bengal, but the great bulk of their numbers was transferred to Eastern Bengal and Assam. ”

“ But on the north-east, as on the north-west, India has again a land frontier. The Himalayan ranges at the north-eastern angle (in about 28° N., 97° E.) throw off spurs and chains to the south-east, which separate Eastern Bengal from Assam and Burma. Stretching south-eastwards from the delta of the Irrawaddy, a confused succession of little explored ranges separates the Burmese division of Tenasserim from the native kingdom of Siam. ”

“ They have been the recipients of the highest honors from the Government. Bengal is virtually the only province permanently settled where the Government cannot add to the Land tax fixed in 1793. The Bengalis are the people who spread over India, with every territorial extension of the British Raj. They have been the pampered and favored children of the Government and for very good reasons, too. They are the best educated and the most intelligent of all the Indian peoples. They know how to adapt themselves to all conditions and circumstances, they know how to enjoy and also how to suffer. ”

“ On the west, its seaboard washed by the Bay of Bengal, Burma marches with Bengal, Assam, and Manipur; on the east, with China, French Indo-China, and Siam. To the north, it stretches, through tracts unadministered and unexplored, to the confines of Tibet. The mass of the people are Burmans, a Mongol race akin to Chinese and Siamese. Other races in Burma are Talaings, scattered over the Irrawaddy Delta and the Tenasserim division ”

“ It is a matter of vital importance to the nation that the cultivators of Bengal should prosper and live better lives (hear, hear) . It is a matter of supreme importance to those who want self-government or swaraj in this country (hear, hear) . We must look forward to the whole Bengalee nation. We must work persistently, we must look forward to the day when the Bengalees as a nation, Hindus and Mahomedans, all together, will stand before the world in all the glory of nationality (cheers) . I say therefore the question is of vital importance from the point of view of the nation. ”

“ It is only to be noted that, Suhma which lost its name long ago, became then a province of Vaṅga, and the tract covered by the Kantāi subdivision, got the name Daṇḍabhukti and became a Bhukti or subdivision of Vaṅga.
Some facts which reveal the plasticity of the society of Bengal, during the time of the Pālas and Senas, may be noted, to examine the old formative elements of our population. ”

“ But these advantages,through a long course of generations, have concurred with the languor peculiar to the unelastic atmosphere of the climate, to debase all the essential qualities of the human race, and notwithstanding the general effeminacy of character which is visible in all the Indians throughout the empire, the natives of Bengal are still of weaker frame and more enervated disposition than those of any other province: bodily strength, courage, and fortitude are unknown: even the labour of the common people is totally void of energy ”

“ She adds that in consequence of war with the Bengal government, foreigners are not in as much esteem at court as formerly—even Americans shared the same disfavor as Englishmen, for being similar in features, dress, language and religion, it is not surprising that the Burmans should have confounded them as subjects of one government. From the circumstance of money being remitted to them through English residents in Ava, they were even suspected of being paid spies of the East India Company—but this was at a somewhat later period. ”

“ The race by which this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe. Whatever the Bengalee does, he does languidly. ”

“ But were it otherwise, the sum yearly expended in excess of the net revenue for the management of Assam, it must be borne in mind, is not thrown away, for Assam forms the best frontier protection for Bengal that could be desired; and if troops were not located in that province, a force would be required on the north eastern frontier, involving much heavier expense than the Local Corps of Assam. Every endeavour, therefore, to promote the advancement and civilization of the people of Assam must be hailed as a favourable omen of future prosperity. ”

“ To the task of restoring and reforming it and of constructing the fabric of Society anew, of bringing together all that was best and noblest, and of making for the first time in their history the Bengali race into a people with great thoughts, high hopes and aspirations, Ram Mohan Roy set the whole force of his brilliant intellect and personality. It was but a reformer's accepted fate that he should meet with opposition and distrust from those whom he most strenuously strove to serve. ”

“ History.—Assam was the province of Bengal which remained most stubbornly outside the limits of the Mogul empire and of the Mahommedan polity in India. Indeed, although frequently overrun by Mussulman armies, and its western districts annexed to the Mahommedan vice-royalty of Bengal, the province maintained an uncertain independence till its invasion by the Burmese towards the end of the 18th century, and its final cession to the British in 1826. It seems to have been originally included, along with the greater part of north-eastern Bengal, in the old Hindu territory of Kamrup. ”

“ Today, as never before, we need a new orientation toward Asian; we must intensity the cultural identity with our ancient kin, and make common cause with them in our drive toward prosperity and peace. For this we shall require the understanding of ourselves and of Asia that exceeds acquaintance; we require the kind of knowledge that can only be gained through unabating scholarship on our histories, cultures, social forces and aspirations, and through more active interaction with our friends and neighbors.
What threatens humanity in another area threatens our society as well. ”