CHAPTER III. BENGAL. THOUGH from time immemorial all India has been regarded as the home of marvels, a truly fabulous splendour hovers over her eastern lands, the low countries of the Ganges. The latent longing which drives a man forth and renders his desire for travel the more ardent as his goal is distant or difficult, conjures up for him, with wondrous colour and gigantic form, the magnificence, the beauty, and the riches of those lands; while the stories which occasional travellers have borne westward, strengthen the belief that there, as actualities, have lived the dreams of man's childhood. There dwelt descendants of the ancient Aryans, a gentle and peaceful race assuredly, living lightly in careless enjoyment of the present, under a sun whose rays induce the utmost luxuriance in nature, but compel a vegetative existence to man. Delicate in build, unwarlike and effeminate, Bengalís have developed barely the rudiments of poetic creation or scientific activity; unlike other Hindús, they have never forgotten the practical demands of life, to plunge into the abyss of inner contemplation or into dreams of the last problem of Being. They have been none the less vain and self-conceited that, by reason of their weakness and cowardice, they have been lightly esteemed by their fellow-Hindús of Upper India who as well as the Moslim immigrants, even after cen turies of settlement among them have despised them and have carefully sought to establish their own nonBengalí origin.* The sober-spoken † Ibn Batutah describes Bengal as a hell rich in blessings, in other words, as an infernal paradise. It is a tract of some 204,000 square miles; covered by a close network of rivers, the arteries of widely-ramifying trade: the deposits of these rivers which frequently overflow their banks and indeed change their course, provide the ráiyat with a soil admirably adapted to the growth of rice and numerous other cereals. Here flourishes in luxuriance the splendid and varied vegetation of the tropics and here is a fauna hardly equalled elsewhere in diversity. At the present day, Bengal contains a population of over 60 millions. In the prae-Muhammadan era, it appears to have been divided into five districts: (1) "Radha, the country west of the Húglí and south of the Ganges; (2) Bagdi, the delta of the Ganges; (3) Banga, the country to the east of and beyond the delta; (4) Barendra, the country to the north of the Padma and between the Karatoya and the Mahanandá rivers; (5) Mithila, the country west of the Mahanandá." Reliable information is so singularly meagre that there can be no question of an accurate history of ancient Bengal. At the time when the heroes of the Mahábharata were fighting amongst themselves, Bengal * Description of Hindostan and the adjacent Countries, by W. Hamilton, in two volumes, 4°. Lon. 1820, I. 94 et seq. Highly edifying and readable even at the present time is the short sketch of Bengal in the Pilgrimage of the worthy Rev. Samuel Purchas; see Early Travels in India, Series I. Calcutta, 1864, 8°. † Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah par Defrémery et Sanguinettí, Paris, 1858, 8° IV., 210. Indische Alterthumskunde, Lassen III., 717; Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, II., 187; Gladwin, 1. c. 20. must have belonged to the kingdom of Magadha, on the downfall of which it attained greater independence. Several Hindú families, sprung from the earlier conquerors, were domiciled as independent rulers in Bengal. As elsewhere in Hindústán, here also the priestly caste, the brahmans, acceded to the highest power. Adiçúra, the ruler of Gaura (Bengal), summoned to his kingdom five priests from Qanauj (Kanyákúbja) and endowed them with rich possessions; they soon formed a widespread fraternity, side-by-side with whom subsisted the so-called "seven-hundred" bráhmans, whose descendants are still to be found in almost every hamlet. More profitable information as to past ages is to be extracted from the history of Ballálasena and his successors; he was nominally the offspring of the wife of Adiçúra and the Bráhmapútra incarnate in form of a bráhman. The most noteworthy of his successors was Lakshmanasena, who founded for his capital, Lakshmanavatí (Lak'hnautí, Gáuḍá, Gaur). The last Indian king of Bengal, Lakshmaníya,* transferred the seat of Government to the extreme south of his kingdom, to Navadwípa, (New Island, Nadiya).† As his soothsayers had foretold, he was forced to yield to the bands of Moslim robbers who in 1198-9, under the brave Mu. Bakhtyar Khilji,‡ Qutbuddín of Dihlí's general, planted 595H. * Hamilton, (1. c. I. 114), states that the last ruler was popularly known as Su Sen. † In 23° 25' N. L. and 88° 24' E. L. Sprung from the Afghán Ghorís and a man of such hideous countenance that several leaders rejected his proferred service, but he finally won a prominent position and great reputation by his glorious military undertakings. It is noteworthy and singular that he was remarkable, as were subsequently Timur and Akbar, for the extraordinary length of his arms. the crescent in the south-eastern divisions of Mithila, in Barendra, the northern parts of Radha, and the north-western tracts of Bagḍi.* The power and * As guides for the following introductory sketch, there have been used Ch. Stewart's History of Bengal, Lond. 1813, 4°; Gladwin 1. c. II. 4 et seq.; and the first of Blochmann's three admirable contributions to the J. A. S. (Bengal), entitled "Contributions to the Geography and His tory of Bengal," etc.: (J. A. S. 1873), (p. 209-307) 1874. (p. 280-309) 1875 (p. 275-306) and also in the issue for 1873 p. 220-241. He gives the frontiers of Muhammadan Bengal substantially as follows: (a.) In the N.-W. the frontier extended but little beyond the Kosí river; but under some of the early Mu. governors and the independent kings, the Bengal Empire included all upper Bihár north of the Ganges as far as Sáran. South of the Ganges the furtherest established point was Garhí, the key of Bengal, as Sahwán on the Indus was of Sind. From Garhí the frontier passed along the Ganges to the south of Ag-Mahall (Ráj-Mahall), when it again turned westward to north-western Bírbhúm, passing along the boundary of the modern Santál Parganas to the confluence of the Barákar and the Damúdar, from where it went along the left bank of the Damúdar to the neighbourhood of the town of Bardwán. From here it again took a westerly direction, and passed along the N.-W. and W. boun. daries of the modern Húglí and Howrah (Habṛah) districts down to Mandalghát where the Rúpnáráyan flows into the Húglí river. (b.) The southern frontier was the northern outskirt of the Sundarban from Hatiágarh, south of Diamond Harbour on the Húglí, to Bagherat in southern Jessore, and to the Haring'háțá, i.e., along the s. mahalls of sirkárs Sátgáon, and Khalífátábád. Beyond the Haring'háțá, the frontier comprised sirkárs Baklá and Fathábád with the islands of Dak’hin Shahbázpúr and Sondip at the mouth of the Megna. (c.) The eastern frontier extended from Sunnárgáon and the Megna northward, and then passed to the east, including the district of Sylhet It passed along the southern slopes of the Jaintiah, Khasiah, and Gáro Hills to maháll Sherpúr in northern Mymensingh to the east bank of the Brahmapútra near Chilmári, and from here along the river to maháll Bhitarband, which formed the N.-E. frontier. The frontier sirkárs were Sunnárgáon Bázúha, Sylhet and G’horág’hát. These districts early appeared a desirable aim to the conquest-loving Assamese. (d.) The northern frontier passed from Bhitarband, near the bend of the Bráhmapútra, and in later times from Gauhattí in Kámrúp over K'hontag'hát, along the southern portions of Kuch Bihár to maháll Pátgáon (or Pátgrám) and from there along the foot of the hills and forests of Sikkim and Nepál to the northern portions of the Púrniah district. N. B. Throughout this chapter, in order to avoid confusions, the work just cited will be designated Blochmann J. A. S. B. territory of the Moslims gradually increased and there where the Muhammadan era opens, we touch bottom and the firm ground of reliable history. This divides itself into five periods, three only of which come under our consideration.* The "Initial period" which, with Blochmann, we may designate as that of "the reigns of the governors of Lak'hnautí, (the 599-739H. 1198-9 to 1338. 739-944H. newly-chosen residence) appointed by the Dihlí sovereigns" lasted from The second period, that of the independent kings of Bengal (1338 to 1538), begins with Fakhruddin Abul Muzaffar Mubarak Sháh. He had been siládhár or armour-bearer to Bahrám Khán, the Dihlí governor of Sunnárgáon, and he had made himself independent after his master's death. He was an intellectual and highly gifted man as his kindness to Cúfis and strangers manifests.† From his time forth, one of the marked features of Bengalí history is the unnatural struggle between sovereigns and ambitious heir-apparents, in which fathers and sons were often at bitter feud and wrestled to the death. This period is therefore fertile in bloody revolutions; so early as with its fourth sovereign, Shams uddín Abul Muzaffar Ilyás Shah in 753H. 1352, a new dynasty established itself. This in turn was deposed, after two interregnums, by a Hindú zamindár, of Bhatúriah, Rájah Káns, who usurped the throne of Shamsuddín II. of the Ilyá house, in about the first decade of the 15th century, and * The fourth is the Mughal period (1576–1740) and the fifth the Nawábí period (1740 to the cession to the East India Company, 1765).. † Ibn Batutah, 1. c. IV. 212 et seq., |