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Earliest record of Vaishnavism in Bengal occurs in the Susunia rock insqription of Chandravarman.... more Earliest record of Vaishnavism in Bengal occurs in the Susunia rock insqription of Chandravarman. It is engraved along with the representation of a wheel (a cakra) on the back wall of a cave at a place called Susunia in the Bankura district of West Bengal, already mentioned earlier. The inscription mentions of a king of Pushkarana, Chandravarman by name, who was a devotee of Chakrasvamin, which happens to be a name of Vishnu. Gupta Period: The cult of Bhagavatism appears to have been well estab lished In Bengal during the Gupta and post-Gupta periods. Vaishnavism was a predominant aspect of Brahmanical religion 2 during this Gupta age. With the rise of the power of the Guptas Bhagavatism came to the foreground and had spread to remotest corners of India including Bengal. Some of the Gupta monarchs were great champions of the Vaishnava cult. Not only the royal Guptas onwards from the time of Chandragupta had assumed the title Parama Bhagavata indicating that they were Vaishnavas in their personal religious pursuit.
Formation of the Chasi Kaibartta caste in pre-colonial Bengal.
Study of the Buddhist Viharas During Pala Dynasty in Bengal, 2018
Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh for giving me the opportunity to participate... more Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh for giving me the opportunity to participate in the master degree program and to carry out this thesis. I offer my sincerest gratitude to my research supervisor Dr. Md. Shahidul Ameen, who has supported me throughout my study with his patience and knowledge, and allowing me access to his resources in my own way. His clear vision on the subject, which he heartily bestowed upon me, helped the formation of the research. This thesis would not have been completed without his selfless effort and encouragement.
Boat Technology and Culture in Chittagong, by Samuel Berthet
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
On Yuang Chang's Travels in India (629-645 AD), by Thomas Watters M.R.A.S., 1905
Economic History of Bengal (400 - 1200 AD), Kamrunnesa Islam, 1966
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The Harijans of Bangladesh
Published and all rights reserved by: Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP), Bangl... more Published and all rights reserved by: Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP), Bangladesh
to him, that we should collaborate for the production of a book on the ethnography of the territo... more to him, that we should collaborate for the production of a book on the ethnography of the territories under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Some months later the whole of his papers were made over to me by Mrs. Wise on the understanding that after testing the data contained in them as far as possible in the manner contemplated by Dr. Wise himself, I should incorporate the results in the ethno graphic volumes of the present work, and, by dedicating those volumes to Dr. Wise, should endeavour to preserve some record, however imperfect, of the admirable work done by him during his service in India. Mrs. Wise also sent me the negatives taken under her husband's supervision in or about 1874 in the belief that these could be used for the purpose of illustration. For several reasons this has been found impos sible. Not only would the expense of reproducing them by ' Asiatic Studies, p. 102. XXV Dr. Paul Topinard, Professor of the School of Anthropol ogy and Secretary to the Anthropological Society of Paris. Having satisfied myself that Professor Topinard's instruc tions for dealing with living subjects, and the instruments prescribed by him, were applicable to Indian conditions, I proceeded, after making some experimental measurements in Rangpur, to frame a complete scheme for giving effect to his system in Bengal. This scheme was submitted to Professors Flower and Topinard for criticism, and, after having received their approval, was sanctioned by the Government of Bengal, the services of Civil Hospital Assistant Babu Kumud Behari Sémanta, then attached to the Tibet Mission, being placed at my disposal for the purpose of taking measurements. After some experience had been gained in the working of the system in Bengal, proposals were drawn up for extending it to other parts of India. In the North-\Vest Provinces Sir Alfred Lyall sanctioned a special grant of Rs. 1,000 for instruments, measuring agency, etc., and a fine series of measurements were taken by Chandi Singh, an ex-pupil of the Balrampur Medical School, under the supervision of Mr. J. C. Nesfield, Inspector of Schools for Oudh, himself a high authority upon the castes of that part of India. A small but interesting set of measurements was also taken in the Panjab by Civil Hospital Assistant Ala-ud-din under the V supervision of Deputy Surgeon-General Stephen. In every case the measurers were taught the use of the instruments by me, and were supplied with printed instructions, defining the xliv the Santals. The other Ho septs appear to be mostly of the local or communal type, such as are in use among the Kandhs, but this is not quite certain, and the point needs looking into by some one well acquainted with the Ho dialects, who would probably find little diificulty in identifying the names, as the tribe is well known to be in the habit of giving to places descriptive names having reference to their natural characteristics. Nearly all the Munda sept names are of the totem type, and the characteristic taboos appear to be recognized. The Tarwar or Talwar sept, for example, may not touch a sword, the Udbaru may not use the oil of a particular tree, the Sindur may not use vermilion, the Baghala may not kill or eat a quail, and, strangest of all, rice is taboo to the Dhan sept, the members of which must supply its place with gondli or millet. * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv, p. 372. -"w'*-' -"tw?-#1144 xlix borrowed that appellation from the Brahmans, are probably offshoots from some non-Aryan tribe. Among all the castes noticed above, the exogamous rule is one-sided in its operation. In no case may a man mar. y into his own section, but the name of the section goes by the male side, and consequently, so far as the rule of exogamy is concerned, there is nothing to prevent him from marrying his sister's daughter, his maternal aunt, or even his maternal grandmother. To bar alliances of this kind, a separate set of rules is required, which usually overlap the exogamous rule to some extent. Marriage with any person descended in a direct line from the same parents is universally forbidden. To simplify the calculation of collateral relationship--a complicated business which severely taxes the rural intellect the following formula is in use throughout mgglguggjgegf we Behar:-" 0/zacherd, mnmerei, phupherd, maserd ye ckzir mild baclui/re shddilzotd hai" ("The line of paternal uncle, maternal uncle, paternal aunt, maternal aunt-these four relationships are to be avoided in marriage" The first point to notice in this is, that in the first generation the whole of the paternal uncle's descen dants, both male and female, would be excluded by the rule prohibiting marriage within the section. In the second and subsequent generations, agnates would be barred, but descendants through females would not. For the paternal Hindu law. It deserves notice that in the eponymous as "I_-&-li in the totemistic type of section the exogamous rule is often, though not invariably, one-sided, and that intermarriage with the m0ther's relations is guarded against by what Sir Henry Maine calls "a most extensive table of prohibited degrees." Strictly speaking, as the eponyms of the Brahmanical gotras were necessarily Brahmans themselves, the Kshatryas and Vaisyas could have no gotras of their own. By a sort of authorised fiction, however, these castes were permitted to adopt the gotras of the family priests of their ancestors, and this practice has now spread by imitation to other castes in Bengal. Thus the physician and writer-castes (Baidyas and Kayasths), the Naba-Sakha or nine castes (actually now thirteen) from whose hands a Brahman may take water, and many castes ranking even lower than these in the social scale, have exogamous sections bearing the same name as the Brahmanical gotras, and based upon similar traditions. The wide diffusion of these names is doubtless due in great mea sure to the influence of the Patit (fallen) or Varna Brahmans, who act as family priests to the lower castes, and gradually raise their standard of ceremonial purity. How clumsily these reforms are introduced, and how little their theoretical object is understood by the reformers or their clients, may be gathered from the fact that the Rajbansi, a very nume rons Dravidian caste of Rungpore and Kuch or Kochh Behar, the Kamars of Bengal, and several other castes, have only one eponymous section which includes the entire caste; and thus while professing to practise exogamy of the Brahmanical type, necessarily and habitually transgress the exogamous rule which forms the essence of the gotra system. Difiusion of Brah manical section-names. Among several other castes, the exogamous sections belong to a. different type. Their names denote neither mythical eponyms, nor historic founders of clans, but appear to refer to the original habitation of the members e 2 lii or of some leader under whom they branched off from their parent tribe. Instances of this, which may perhaps be called the territorial class of names, are the Sesodia and Bhadauria septs of the Rajputs of Upper India, the Banodhia and Ujjaini sections of the Rajputs of Behar, and perhaps the Agarwéla and Agrahri Baniyas. It is rarely, however, that the members of a section can give an intelligible account of the meaning of its name, or can quote any tradition distinct enough to enable a particular place to be identified. All one can say is that a particular name is certainly not the name of a man, and is therefore probably the name of a place. Moreover, the names preserved in these section-titles are as often as not compressed and mangled renderings of the names of obscure or abandoned villages, or of those colloquial rustic names of particular tracts of country which are shown on no map, and can only be picked up, mostly by accident, from the people themselves. Until some scholar who knows both books and people as Mr. Beames knows them finds time to reconstruct the tribal geography of India on the basis of an etymological and antiquarian analysis of these territorial names, we can hardly expect to get much beyond conjecture as to the manner in which the castes arose among whom such names are found. Among the higher castes territorial names for exogamous sections or septs are curiously mixed up with names preserving the memory of a chief who founded or led the sept within historic times, and with the mythical eponyms of the Brahmans. This is the case with the Rajputs and Babhans of Behar, both of whom pro hibit marriage within the section of either father or mother, and thus practise what might be called bi-lateral exogamy. In connexion with this rule, a curious case has recently come to my notice illustrating the way in which a tribal series of sections-territorial or eponymous-comes to be overlaid by the Brahmanical system of gotras. Babu Ajodhié Singh, of Hajipur in Tirhut, being himself a Sulank Territorial sections.
PADMALOCHAN, THE WEAVER 9 house-breakers that one of the perpetrators of the crime should make th... more PADMALOCHAN, THE WEAVER 9 house-breakers that one of the perpetrators of the crime should make the first entrance, and if the coast is clear, inform his fellows of it, either by some signs from inside, or by coming out, at the same time carrying away anything within his reach.
Bengal in the Sixteenth Century by Das Gupta Jagundra Nath, 1914
Annals of Rural Bengal, by W W Hunter, B.A., 1868
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