Honorary Chaplain to the European rgsidents. Some twenty miles north of Burdwan is a ohuroh medioal nyssion with a hospital*
and dispensary with three European ladies in oharge, and an efficient staff of workers under the Ohuroh o f England Zenana Society. This mission is the survival of a flourishing Zenana Mission in Burdwan whioh had to be closed for want of funds in 1900. The ladies of Mankur superintend also an elementary- H indu girls’ school in Burdwan, whioh, with another Church Bohool of a similar nature supported by voluntary local sub
scriptions, is all that is now left of English Church educational work in the distriot.
A t Ranlganj there is a W esleyan Methodist Mission which was established in 1878., In ajjdifcion to a European Superinten
dent and two native ordained ministers iJhere are women workers, who. visit zenanas, and evangelists in village stations. The adult congregation is about 350. A h English churoh and three native chapels are attached to the mission, and it also manages an orphanage with an industrial class attaohed, a refuge for the siok and destitute, day sohools and a shop for the sale of Christian literature. In addition the Superintendent of the mission is entrusted with the management of the Leper Asylum maintained at Ranlganj by the Mission to Lepers of whioh an acoount will be found in the following ohapter.
In Asansol town there is a Roman Catholio Mission. A ohuroh was built in 1872-73, and the following year the building of a convent and sohools was ooramenoed. The building of .the soholastiate for the olerioal students of the Sooiety o f Jesus was finished in 188-3, having been oonstruoted by the late Archbishop Goethnli. In 1889, the students were moved to Khrseong, and the building was made over by the Arohbishop to the mission.
It was enlarged and beoame St. Patriok’s school .whioh numbers at present about 140 boarders and 50 day-scholars.
A mission has also recently been established by the Methodist Episcopal Churoh at Asansol. The mission had its origin in services held by itinerant preachers, but a site was eventually granted by Government in 1883, and a ohuroh was erected in the following year. The mission now consists of a boys’ middle English boarding school with an attendance o f about 50, and a girls’ boarding school with an average attendance of 85. Many of the children are orphans, ard the greater number oome from the poorest classes of the population. Preaohing, the distribu
tion of literature and visiting -are carried on at Asansol and the outlying villages, and the mission also manages a Leper Asylum
^ 'o h is. supported by the Mission to Lepers in India and the
49
Bast. There are out-stations at Bolpur and Sainthia where a girls*, primary school has been established. The U n ited Free Ohuroh of Sootland Medioal Mission maintains a charitable
hospital at Kalna.* * •
Muhammadans are distributed fairly evenly over the eastern Muhnm- portion of the distriot, and are found in greatest strength i n madana the thanas lying along the Bhagirathi. T he Muhammadan in
vaders who followed Bakhtyar K hilji soon spread over Burdwan and possessed themselves of the principal plaoes of importanoe in the district. Pandua in H oog h ly , Mahmadpur near M an- teswar polioe-station, Kalna and Katwa all became Muhammadan settlements. It is probable therefore that a considerable propor
tion of the Muhammadan population are the descendants o f the numerous soldiers of fortune and their followers who form erly found a livelihood in* ^ e n g fl. The numerous aimm& estates whioh are found in the district and the traditional history o f the Muhammadan settlements at Kaksa and at Churulia under Raja Narottam’s fort show that grants of land to suoh followers were very common. A t the same time there can be little doubt that looal converts bulk largely iu the total, and the general opinion seems to be that the lower classes of M uham
madans have been mainly recruited from suoh converts. Aooord- to the census report for 190 i, “ almost the whole o f the functional groups suoh as Jolaha ,and Dhunia throughout the province, and the great majority, probably nine-tenths, of the Sheikhs in Bengal Proper are of Indian origin.”
The conversion of the Hindus to Islam was in most cases voluntary. The Mughals were, as a rule, tolerant in religious
• matters, and the Afghan rulers who preceded them did, not often use foroe to propagate their faith. The only organized persecution of the Hindus of whioh there is any record in history is that of Jala.l-ud-din mentioned by Dr. Wise, who is said to have offered the Koran or death, and who must have effeoted wholesale conversions.
But although there was no general attack on the Hindu religion, there are numerous traditions of conversions on a large scale by enthusiastio freelances, suoh as the renowned Shah Jalal of Sylhet. In Mandaran- thana in the Ar^nbagh subdivision of H ooghly, where the Muhammadan population preponderates over the Hindu, there is a tradition that^Muhammad Ismail Shah ' Ghazi defeated the looal Raja and forcibly converted the people to Islam. These traditions are not confirmed by historyjJbjut fiistory tells us very little of what went f f n ' m t h e
’ For this account of th8 missions at B urdw aty,R^ktagi.
indebted to the Revd. Mr. Clarke, the Beyd, Mr. |i
| DACCA.* . f
5 0 BURDWAN.
reigns o f the independent kings, and, when even the names o f some o f them are known to us only from th6 inscriptions on # their coins, w hile (here is no record whatever of many o f the looal op.traps, it is not to be expeoted that, even if foroiblo conversions were com m on, there would be any written account of them.
There must doubtless, here and there, have been ruthless fanatics like the notorious Tij pu Sahib o f more recent times, who forcibly ciroumoised many of his H indu subjects aud perpetrated many acts of the grossest oppression, and the fact that many of the Muhammadan mosques, especially in this distriot, were often constructed of stones taken from H indu temples, clearly shows that, at some times in some places, the Hindus were subjected to persecution at the bands of their Mu^alman conquerors. In the accounts o f Chaitauya’s liie, fur instance^ we read that' two of his leading disciples were Brahmaas wlio had been compelled to embrace the faith of Islam.
In spite, however, of the fact that oases of forcible conversion were b y no m^ans rare, it seems probable that very many of the ancestors o f the Bengal Muhammadans voluntarily gave in their adhesion to Islam. The advantages whioh that religion offered to uersons held in low esteem by the Hindus are sufficiently obvious, »nd under Muslim rule there was no lack of pious Pirs
a n d Fakirs su-h as Pir Bahram, of BurdwSo, and Majlis and Badr Saheb of Kalna who devoted their lives to gaining oonverts to the faith. There were speoial reasons which, during the eaily years o f the Muhammadan supremacy, Trade conversion compara
tively easy. Although the days when Buddhism was a glowing faith had long since passed, tb$ people of Bengal were still to a great extent Buddhistic, and when Bakhtyar K h iliji oonquered Behar and massaored the Buddhist monks assembled at Odonta- puri, the common people, who were already lukewarm, deprived of their priests and teachers, were easily attracted from their old form of belief, some to Hinduism and others to the creed of Muhammad The higher castes probably found their
•way baok to Hinduism, while the non-Aryan tribes who had, in all probability, never been Hindus, preferred the greater attrac
tions of Islam. •
A t present but few conversions to Islam occur, and as a rule the persons who come over from the one religion to the other do so for material and not fpr religious reasons, as for instance when a Muhammadan takes a Hindu widow as his second wife, or a . H'*ndu falls in love with a Muhammadan girl and must embraoe he c religion before he cau marry her.*
* Census Report, 1901.
B y far the greater majority of the Muhammadans in BurdwSu
’ are Sunnis o f the IJamfa seot, but in some parts o f the distriot, more particularly in Katwa, the Wahabis have gained a large num ber of adherents, and the higher class Muhammadans are oTten*
Shiahs. The unreformed Muhammadans o f the lower and un
educated classes are deeply infected with H indu superstitions, and their knowledge of the faith they profess seldom extends beyond the three cardinal dootrines of the unity of God, the mission o f Muhammad and the truth of the Koran, T he veneration of Plrs and Saints is common among them, and m any pilgrims frequent the more famous shrines and make offerings o f sweetmeats, eto., in order that the Pir may look with favour upon them and grant them the fulfilment of their desires. One of the most famous o f such shrines is that erf P jr Bahram whose tomb is shown in.
Burdwan. H e is mentioned in tfie Memorandum B ook of Khusgo in the follow ing note, “ Hajrat H a ji Bahram Sekka was a native of Turkestan! H e belonged to the Bayet seot o f Musalmans” ; he is also notioed in the Memorandum Book of Nudrat.
Tradition relates that he was at one time a water-carrier in the streets of Mecca and Najaf. The date of his death a3 engraved on the tombstone is 970 Hizri. Two other famous Plrs are Badr Saheb and Majlis Saheb who are regarded by Muhammadans and..
Hindus alike as the patron Saints of Kalna. Their tombs stand onlthe river bank, and are worshipped equally by the followers of both religions, the commonest offerings being small clay horses whioh are supposed to signify the horse sacrifice which is so common in ancient Indian history.
The animists are almost entirely represented by the Santals, Ammisti.
•the side drift of the great immigration northwards, who.are found almost entirely in the Asansol subdivision. The following brief aooount of their religious beliefs is condensed from that given in the Bankura Gazetteer. The religion o f the Santals is of a primitive nature, its main feature being sacrifices made to a number of village and household deities. T he village deities are usually supposed to reside in trees. The household deities reside in a little apartment reserved for them in every house, however small. Grain and other articles are stored fiere, but it is a sacred spot; all the household sacrifices being made at the entrance to it, and no female from any other house may even enter it. The names of the household deities are kept secret and are known only tp the head of the family. Generally among the village deities the spirit of the founder of the village, and, among the family deities, those of departed ancestors, are worshipped. Chickens, go$tB and sometimes even cows are sacrificed: the flesh of
M %
62 BUHDWAN.
the animals is consumed by the saorifloers ap.d the friends, and the feast is almost invariably aooorapanied by drinking and danoing.
A b t r o n g belief in w itohonft is firmly established, and the fa n ,’ or witch doctor, whose aid in oases of misfortune *is always invoked, is a person o f great importance and power. The J&n also has the power of divining from sal leaves, but the seoret of his greatness lies in the fact that he is a spirit medium and that his pronouncements are made, when he is under intense spiritual influence. H e is often resorted to not only by Santals, but also by low-oaste Hindus, maay of whom firmly believe in his power o f casting out the demon of oholera from any village that may be attaoked.
Hinduism, i Burdwan, with its large contingent of high oaste Brahmans, has from pre-historic times been a stroijghortd of Hinduism. But the pure and lofty faith of the Aryan invaders here, as elsewhere in the lower vailey, has been corrupted by the superstitions of the animistio raops whom they conquered, and the popular religion exhibits' in oonsequeuoS a marked mixture of the Animism of the aboriginals and the Monotheism of the higher raoe. Much of the demon worship and of that propitiation of malignant power whioh is now so marked a feature of the worship of Siva and K ali was undoubtedly borrowed from the aboriginals, and, as H unter has pointed out, whatever mythology Siva or Rudra may o r i g i u a l l y hive belonged to, there o*n be no doubt fhat Siva worship as performed by the lower classes in Lower Bengal is the reversB o f the Aryan spirit o f devotion, and represents the super
stition of the blaok races. Y e t this is the only form of religion whioh has now any hold on the lower olassea, and it is Siva and his more t^rible wife K ali who are invoked by the people in all * times of trouble or necessity.
8»ktisn’i Sivn-worship orSaktism (Sanskrit Saktl), the worship of power or energy, is based on the worship of the aotive-produoing prinoiple "(Prakriti) as manifested in one or other o f the goddess wives of Siva (Durga, Kali, Parvati), the female energy or'Saktl o f the primordial male, Purusha or Siva. The objeot of the worship is the acquisition o f magical and supernatural powers through th'‘ help of the goddess, or the destruction of enemies through her oo-operation. In this oult the various forces of nature are deified under separate personalities, which are known as the divine mothers or. M atrigSn., The ritual to be observed, the sacrifices to be offered, and the mantras, or magic texts, to . be uttered, in order to ’secure the effioaoy of the worship and to prooure the fulfilment o f the worshipper’s desire, are laid down in a series of religious writings known as Tantras. The
i53
central idea o f these books is to identify all force with the female principle i§ nature, and to inculcate the exclusive admira
tion of Siva’s wife as the souroe of every kind of supernatural faoulty and mystery. The cult is supposed to have originated in East Bengal or Assam about the fifth oentury. K ali is said to he the same as Durga, -hut she can assume any number o f forms at the same time. The oharacteristio of Durga is benefi
cence, while K ali is terrific and blood-thirsty, as the follow ing translation from one of the sacred books o f this cult will show.
“ A Kaulika (i.e., a Sakta) should worship Kali who lives amongst dead bodies: who is terrible and has fearful jaws : who has unoombed hair and a glowing tongue: who constantly drinks b lood : who stands over hen husband Maha-Kala and wears a garland o f skulls on her blood-besmeared throat: who has prominent breasts : wh® is waited on by all the Siddhas as well as b y the Slddhis.” *
In the Kalika Puran the immolation of human beings is recommended, and numerous animals aro enumerated as suitable for sacrifice. A t the present time pigeons, goats and more rarely, buffaloes, are the usual victims at the shrine of the goddesf. The ceremony commences with the adoration of the sacrificiaNaxe; various mantras are reoited, and the animal is then decapitated at one stroke. A s soon as the head falls to the ground, the votaries rush forward and smear their foreheads with the blood .of the victim. The great oooasion for these saorifioes is during the three days of the Durga Puja. The opposition between Saktiam and Yedio Hinduism is expressly stated in the Mahanirvana Tantra where
■ it is said that the mantras contained in the' Yedas are now devoid o f all energy and resemble snakes deprive*d of their venom. In the Satya and other ages they were efEeotive, but in the Kali Y u ga they are, as it were, dead.f
Modern Yaishnavism, as preaohed by Chaitanya, represents a Vnislina- revulsion against the gross and debasing religion of the Tantras.
Ohaitanya was a Baidik Brahman and was born in Nabadvip (Nadia) in 1484 or 1485, some two years before Luther. H is father was an orthodox Brahman named Jagannath Misra.
Various legends have grown up about his birth and childhood.
H e was thirteen months in the womb. Soon after his birth a number of holy men, including Advaita, bis future disoiple, arrived at the house of his parents * to do homage to the ohild, and to present him with offerings. In his ohildhood,
* M ooier Williams’ Religious L ife and Thought in India, t Bengal Census Report, 1901.
54
BtjRDWAN.like the young Krishna, he took part in j l l boyish sports and yet rapidly acquired a complete knowledge qji Sanskrit pur&nas and literature. H is favourite study was the Bhagavata-pur&na
•and’ the Bhagavad-git&. H e married twioe, his first wife having died from snake-bite, and at the age of twenty-five resolved to abandon all worldly connections and give himself up to a religious life. Accordingly he commenced a series of pilgrim
ages. H is travels occupied six years and he-is known to have visited the most celebrated shrines of India, inoiuding Benares, Gaya, Mathura, Srirangam, and ultimately the temple of Jagan- nath at Puri. Having thus prepared himself for his mission he addressed himself to the work o f preaching and propagating his own idea of the Yaishnava oreed and, after making many converts, appointed his two disoiples A«dvaita and Nityananda to preside over his disciples, livirfg for *the rest of his life at Puri. H e preached mainly in Central Bengal and Orissa, the towns o f Katwa and Kalna in this distriot being particularly favoured by him. H is dootrines found ready acceptance amongst large numbers of the people, especially amongst those who were still, or had only recently been, Buddhists. This was due mainly to the fact that he ignored oaste and drew his followers from all souroes, so much so that even Muhammadans followed him. The first prinoiple he inoulcated was that all the faithful worshippers were to be treated as equals. “ The meroy of God,” said Chaitanya, “ regards neither tribe nor fam ily.”
H e preaohed vehemently against the immolation of animals in saorifioe and the use of animal food and stimulants, and taught that the true road to salvation lay in Bhakti, or fervent devotion to God. “ H e recommended Radha worship and taught that the love • felt b y her for Krishna was the best form of devotion. ‘ Thou art doar to my heart, thou art part of my soul,’ said a young man to his loved one, ‘ I love thee, but w hy I know not.’ So ought the worshipper to love Krishna and worship him for his sake only. Let him offer all to God and expeot no remuneration.
H e acts lijse a trader who asks for a return.” Suoh are the words of a modern exponent o f Chaitanya’s teaohing. The aooeptable offerings are flowers,* money and the like, but the great form o f worship is that of the sankirtan or procession o f worshippers playing and singing. A peculiarity of Chaitanya’s oult is that the post of spiritual guide or Gosain is not oonfined to Brahmans, and several o f the best known belong to the Baidya oaste.
They are all of them descended from the leading men of Chaitanya’ s immediate entourage. The holy places of the oult are Nabadvip, Chaitanya’s birth-plaoe, and, in a still greater