Karnataka

“ That year U.G. stayed for a month in the guest house of a coffee estate in a place called Tirthagundi. There is an interesting story behind his coming to this coffee estate:
In the state of Karnataka, Chikkamagaluru district is famous for its coffee estates. It is five thousand feet high from the sea level. Many places in that district compete with each other for their natural beauty. That day, U.G., Valentine and David Barry were staying in a Travellers' Bungalow in a place called Jayapura. Suddenly, U.G. announced, "Valentine, we are not going to stay here any longer. Let's leave." ”

“ In the single province of Bengal are districts containing seven million five hundred thousand inhabitants, without a missionary; and in other parts of India you may journey through district after district, and province after province, with millions and millions of inhabitants, and find but two or four men, toiling amid the masses of heathenism around them, as if attempting to empty the ocean by buckets-full, or to tunnel the mountains with bodkins. In other places you will find no man at all to shed one ray of light upon the unbroken darkness of false religion. ”

“ The church will greatly mistake her duty if, in her missionary labours in Hindustan, she neglects to raise up Hindus to go forth and conquer the land in the name of the Lord of Hosts.
The town of Bangalore is distinct from the fort, and contains 100,000 inhabitants. Of these, 60,000 inhabit the pettah, and 40,000, chiefly Tamil people, live in a separate quarter, and are mainly supported by trafficking with the troops. The inhabitants of the pettah, or walled town, are purely Canarese, with a language distinct from the Tamil, though allied to it, the language of the ancient realm of Canara. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Around the English cantonment, more especially on the north side of it, is the modern town of Bangalore, containing about sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly Tamulians, the descendants of those native camp-followers and adherents who accompanied the British forces from Madras and the plains of the Carnatic when they conquered and took possession of the land. There are likewise at Bangalore a goodly number of English and Irish pensioners, who have chosen rather to abide in India than come back to this country ”

“ Janghera, thus happily placed between the rugged scenery of the upper provinces, and the smiling landscapes of Bengal, partakes of the nature of both: the Ganges spreads itself like a sea at the foot of the rock, which on the land-side overlooks a wide expanse of fertile country, having for a back-ground the low ranges of hills which separate Behar from Bengal. ”

“ Protected on both sides by ranges of hills, the district was, until late years, the least known portion of the most obscure division of India, but recently it has been opened up by the Bengal-Nagpur railway, and has developed into a great grain-producing country. Its population is almost pure Hindu, except in the two great tracts of hill and forest, where the aboriginal tribes retired before the Aryan invasion. ”

“ I suppose the sea, and the surf in the air, are disinfectants. The people in the street are not a patch on Bangalore people in looks or dress. I had to drive from our hotel soon after our arrival some three miles to the docks, and of the thousands of people I passed, there was not one woman with draperies arranged in the classic folds we saw in Bangalore; their worn bundles of dirty white drapery seemed just to be thrown on anyhow, and their type of face was much more elementary than that of the natives, even so little to the north as Mysore—Apologies for such rude sketches. ”

“ That province of the Mogul Empire which lay on the Ganges immediately above Bengal, was so called, and still retains the name and character of a province, under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and embracing the ten modern districts of Patna, Sāran, Gāya, Shāhābād, Tirhut, Champāran, the Santāl Parganas, Bhāgalpūr, Monghyr, and Purnīah. The name was taken from the old city of Bihār, and that derived its title from being the site of a famous Vihāra in Buddhist times. In the later days of Mahommedan rule the three provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa were under one Subadar, viz. ”

“ The Rajas of Krishnagar, or of Nadia, are of long-standing celebrity. The whole of the district is indebted to them in many ways for its prosperity. The author remembers, in his boyhood, to have seen on the title-page of the old Bengali almanac, the name of Raja Satis Chandra, under whose auspices it had been got up, and, on inquiring who he was, to have been told that he was the then Raja of Krishnagar, descended from ancestry noted as the leaders of Hindu society, the guardians of Kulinism, and the encouragers of merit. ”

“ Of all the stations occupied by the English in Southern India, Bangalore is certainly the most charming. Having an elevation of three thousand feet above the level of the sea, it enjoys a climate which, though still tropical, is most refreshing, especially in the winter months, to the invalid from the low-lands. Hence, it is much used as a health-station for those needing a change from the oppressive heat of the stations below the Ghauts, and also as the headquarters of a large body of troops. ”

“ In Bengal the Hindu village communities had nearly faded away under the domination of zemindars. In the North-West Provinces the village communities had survived every revolution, and have been compared to little commonwealths, each having an individual and domestic life of its own, unchanged by the storms and troubles of the outer world. The village community paid a yearly revenue,—a share of the crops or a commutation in money,—to whatever power might be uppermost, Mogul or Mahratta, Mohammedan or Hindu. ”

“ Not only the Directors, but every man of consequence from Bengal, have been examined upon oath before the House of Lords; so that thousands of people are now well acquainted with the revenues, forces, and politics of India, and of Bengal in particular. Permit me here again, my friend, to remind you of the conspicuous situation you are placed in. Consider well the great expectations which this nation entertains of extricating itself out of its present difficulties, by the skill and conduct of the Governor of Bengal. You must therefore exert yourself to the utmost to fulfil its hopes ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first formulated effort in Bengal dates from 1769, four years after the civil administration of the Province came into its hands; the latest orders of the Court of Directors on the subject were issued in 1855, three years before the government of India passed from the Company to the Crown. During the long interval, many able and earnest men had laboured at the work, manuscript materials of great value had been amassed, and several important volumes had been published. But such efforts were isolated, directed by no central organization, and unsustained by any continuous plan of execution. ”

“ New actors were appearing in the political arena. The invasion of the Great Coḷa Conqueror left a deep impression on north eastern India. It gave Bengal a new dynasty of kings and indirectly hastened the ruin of the Pãla Empire. After the Badal pillar inscription of Narāyaṇapāla, there is no other inscription which can throw Hght on the history of Northern Bengal for three generations, i.e. till the time of Mahīpāla I. About this time some Mongolian tribes occupied the whole of the Northern Bengal and either massacred the old inhabitants or gradually forced them back southwards. ”

“ As we meet with the Kalitās in Northern Bengal, and also get a very large number of Kultās in the Sambalpur tract, and as the widely apart Kultās and Kalitās agree in many social customs, I throw out this suggestion, that a clan of the Puṇḍras bore the caste name in question, and those of them who did not proceed to North Bengal, got into the Sambalpur tract, in the time of the Kośalendras, as Śūdra cultivators. That a large number of Aryanised people was necessary for the new Rājās in a backward country, full of aboriginal tribes, cannot be much doubted. ”

“ The presidency of Bengal, in contradistinction to those of Madras and Bombay, eventually included all the British territories north of the Central Provinces, from the mouths of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to the Himalayas and the Punjab. In 1831 the North-Western Provinces were created, which are now included with Oudh in the United Provinces; and the whole of northern India is now divided into the four lieutenant-governorships of the Punjab, the United Provinces, Bengal, and Eastern Bengal and Assam, and the North-West Frontier Province under a commissioner. ”

“ The early Pāla rulers were principally lords of Gauḍa and Magadha, and ruled Bengal from their headquarters in Bihar. As a dependency or as an annexed province of Magadha cum Gauḍa, Northern Bengal which lies between Mithilā and Assam, could at this time be called Gauḍa or a part of Gauḍa, but it must not be forgotten, that in the Geography of the Purāṇas, Northern Bengal has always been mentioned as a tract lying outside the limits of Gauḍa and Mithilā. ”

“ Several districts belonging to Bengal lie interspersed within these mountains, but none beyond them; for to the westward they extend several degrees, and are in some parts impassable, as far as the province of Berar in the Decan; to the north they divide. Bengal from the southern division of BEHAR, and to the south, seem the natural separation of Bengal from ORIXA, which nevertheless has a tract of country within them extending 20 miles along the sea-coasts from Ballasore to the river of Pipley, which disembogues opposite to the Island of Sagore. ”

“ No sane man would turn from Orissa to conquer Southern Gujarat or Berar and then return to the East to conquer East Bengal, after which he turns back to the West to defeat Mahīpāla in North Bengal and again rushes to North Gujarat or Berar to conquer it. The more natural explanation is that Rājendra Coḷa defeated Raṇaśūra, the ruler of Southern Rāḍhā, and then passed on through that country to invade Vaṅga. From very early times a part of Bengal has been called Rāḍhā. It occurs in a dated inscription of the Indo-Scythian period as Rārā. ”

“ We live here under a native name, for part of the year, and in the hot weather we go into camp out in Mysore, or to Bangalore, where I have a large house, near the Fort. Time, and money, have blunted the raw edge of my misery; I have my luxuries, shooting, horses, motors, yes! the rupees are a wonderful balm. I take a keen interest in native and European life, and am acquainted with many matters that are hidden from my countrymen, and I pull various strings for my country's good. I have had my eye on you, Geoffrey, my namesake. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the first time I am here, and never before knew Bengal was so beautiful. You ought to have seen the rivers here — regular rolling oceans of fresh water, and everything so green — continual production. The villages are the cleanest and prettiest in all India. ”

“ But since the advent of British administration the history of Bengal has substantially been a record of prosperity; the teeming population of its river valleys is one of the densest in the world, and the purely agricultural districts of Saran and Muzaffarpur in the Patna division support over 900 persons to the square mile, a number hardly surpassed elsewhere except in urban areas. ”

“ 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. ”