Orissa

Front matter

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Contents

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VOLUME I.

CHAP. ° PAGE I. Introduction, .- F ‘ ‘ fox : j 3-16 II. The Chilk4 Lake, : . ‘ : 17-80 Ill. Jagannath, . F : » 5 81-136 1V. The Pilgrims of Jaganndth, . ‘ + 137-167 V. Orissa under Native Rule (3101 B.C. to 15 32 A.D. _ - 168-330 VOLUME II.

Introduction

HIS book endeavours to delineate the inner life of an Indian Province. It tries to bring home to the imagination and the understanding of Englishmen, ‘a state of society and forms of human existence far removed from their own. The narrative is embellished by no splendid historical characters, nor does it possess the interest which belongs to striking crimes. To the world’s call-roll of heroes it will add not one name. The people of whom it treats have fought no great battle for human liberty, nor have they succeeded even in the more primary task of subduing the forces of nature to the control of man. To them the world stands indebted for not a single discovery which augments the comforts or mitigates the calamities of life. . Even in literature— the peculiar glory of the Indian race—they have won no conspicuous triumph. They have written no famous epic ; they have struck out no separate school of philosophy ; they have elaborated no new system of law. Yet if I have in any degree done justice to my materials, these pages can well dispense with the plots -and scenic effects of history. Nature, long grown cold and inert in Europe, here toils as wildly at her primeval labour, as if the jwork of Creation still lay before her.

4 THE SUBJECTS OF THIS BOOK.

She discloses her ancient secrets of Jand- making, and admits us as spectators to the miracle of the Third Day. 7

|We see the dry earth in the act of standing forth from the water, peering above the surface of once deep lakes, and pushing itself out as blunt headlands into the sea. ‘Nor does ‘she hide her more terrible aspect, destroying and reproducing with an equal balance; wrenching great rivers from their courses; and, by the same series of acts, providing fresh land for a thousand new homesteads, and perpetrating tragedies as appalling as the desolation of the Palatinate. Within the single province of Orissa, she has brought together, as in a great museum, specimens of all her handicrafts, from the half-formed amphi- - bious region around the river-mouths, to the chaos of primitive rock which walls out the seaboard from the inner table-land.

Nor is the province less rich in organic remains. Upon the delta, and among the mountains which rise behind it, we come upon endless strata of races, dynasties, and creeds, from the- latest alluvial deposit of Bengalis, with their soft Hinduism, to the aboriginal peoples and their hard. angular faith. In Europe, the primeval tribes have disappeared from the range of ‘observation into the twilight of hypothesis. Scholars stand like Hamlet in the Elsinore Grave-yard, and see the bones of forgotten nations thrown up at their feet. “They muse over the hollow skull, measure -the’ facial angles, and labour to reconstruct the lost speech. But the tongueless jaw and empty’socket yield to them much the same conclusion as they did to the moralizing Prince : that here has been a fine revolution, if we had but the trick to know it. Orissa exhibits a profusion of such primitive races, not in a fossil state, but warm and breathigg, living apart in

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HISTORICAL ASPECT OF INDIAN CREEDS. 5 their own communities, amid a world of suggestive types and links that have elsewhere disappeared. The aboriginal peoples of India have, as it were, been hidden away in hill-caves, until the great ethnical movements subsided, -beneath which ‘they would otherwise have been . submerged. sr

I have dwelt at unusual length on the historical aspects of the principal’ Indian creeds. For the history of religion is, in India, the history of the people. The ethnical revolutions which brought in new ruling races, ceased in very ancient times; and, during the last 1500 years, the rise and fall of the Orissa dynasties have bee connected not with tribal movements, but with religiou reformations. Each new line of kings represents a new era of worship and of spiritual belief. Its elevation to power takes place amid the birth-throes of'a fresh popular creed; its decay is contemporaneous with the decline of the national religion; and its fall is consummated amid the extinction of the old rites and the coming in of new. The reader may perhaps think that I have given too ‘frequent prominence to the religious side of Orissa history. But. I have done so, from a firm belief that it: - forms the key to the right understanding of the people. Throughout all Northern India, not less than on the remote Orissa shore, dynastic revolutions and religious reformations have for centuries gone hand in hand. Buddhism and Hinduism, the Muhammadans and the Sikhs, represent a conflict of creeds not less than a struggle of races; and these same religious upheavals, in the more temperate form which the British power imposes alike on, Kuka and Wahdbi, remain one of the great problems ef Indian government at the present day.

6 ESSENTIALS OF ANGLO-INDIAN HISTORY.

For it is with the present rather than with the past that this book has to do. The English found India strewn with the wrecks of Asiatic despotisms ; and out of the drift-wood which the tempest threw up, they had to build the fabric. of a civilised government. How these political Crusoes hewed their log into a seaworthy ship, is a story which touches the honour of England to have one day truly written. Every year of the past century has rendered the rulers more alive to the inadequacies of their administration. Scarcely had they put down armed violence and rapine,—a task which no Native Power had permanently succeeded in,—than they found themselves confronted with a necessity for a great apparatus of civil government, such as no Native Power thad ever attempted to supply. As property accumulated, new and: costly machinery had to be organized for protecting it; and as personal rights developed, Courts had to be multiplied for ascertaining and enforcing them. Government ceased to be what, during at least two centuries, it had been in India—a mere engine for raising revenue. And now that justice has been brought very near to the people, new functions of government, formerly unrealized, are pressing upon the conscience of the rulers. Philosophers believed that they had found the stationary type of human society in-the arrested mental activity and low physical tone of the Indian races. But within the past twenty years, a vast system of State Education has quickened the intellectual torpor into new forms of life ; and a costly sanitary organization is battling in every Province with the éendemics which for ages preyed upon the public health. What were once deemed ‘direct visitations of God are now brought _ under the control of man. Famines, floods, droughts,

INCREASED COST OF GO VERNMENT. i]

and pestilence are no longer permitted to perform their ancient function of checking the pressure of the population on the soil; and Government has taken upon itself to step in between its subjects and the ordinary dealings of Providence. The isolation of each District, which formerly intensified every local scarcity into a famine, has been broken through. Railways, roads, and canals have welded the severed Provinces of India into a homogeneous whole, mobilized the resources of each, and increased the efficiency of the national harvest in a greater degree than if we had suddenly doubled the productiveness of the soil. During the past few years, the scope and responsibilities of Government have still further extended. It was reserved for the ‘wise and brave man whose loss England is at this moment deploring, to grapple with the most terrible enemy of a tropical empire ; and, by a comprehensive scheme for the control and the husbanding of the water supply, to remove death by starvation from among the ordinary risks ‘of Indian peasant life. :

As Government became ‘more effective, it grew miere costly. Each new function which it found itself compelled to undertake has involved an additional outlay of money. Yet any attempt at unwonted taxation © among Asiatic races is beset with extreme peril; and the Company early realized that one of the first fiscal duties of its servants was the study of the people. No sooner had it, in 1769, appointed English officers for the rural administration of Bengal, than it issued an elaborate circular to them, ‘calling for a historical and statistical account of the country. ‘The form of the ancient constitution of the Province compared with the present ;’ ‘an account of its possessors or rulers, the order of their

8 ATTEMPTS AT STATISTICAL SURVEYS; 1769.

succession, and the peculiar customs or privileges which they or their people have established or enjoyed;’ a description of the land tenures, with a report on the commercial capabilities of the country, and the best means of ‘developing its resources :* these were the points to be taken up. But the daily pressure of administrative work leaves the Indian officer small leisure or inclination for such researches ; and repeated injunctions from head-. quarters, while producing several isolated memoirs of great value, failed to elicit any comprehensive result. During the next forty years, the want of a statistical survey made itself very keenly felt, and in 1807 the Company had no alternative but to organize special machinery for the work.? The Governor-General himself laid out the plan. He appointed an eminent scholar,’ with an ‘efficient staff, to draw up ‘a topographical account of each District, its history,. antiquities, and climate. An investigation of the inhabitants, their numbers, religious sects, and material condition was to follow. The natural productions of the country then pass under review ; its fisheries, forests, and mines; with its crops, land-tenures, modes of tillage, facilities for irrigation, and safeguards against floods. The list of subjects ends with an elaborate enumeration of salient points connected with the arts, manufactures, and commerce of Bengal.‘ The instructions were well conceived; no short-sighted haste was allowed to cramp the operations; and the best man was selected ‘for the work. Yet the net result was, that,

1 Proceedings of the President and Select Committee, dated 16th Aug. 1769: : ‘ ;

2 Court of Directors to Government at Fort-William, dated 7th Jan. 1807, with subsequent Proceedings of the Governor-General in Council.

3 Dr. Buchanan.

* Instructions of the Governor-General in Council, dated 11th Sept. 1807. :

THE STATISTICAL SURVEY OF 1807-13. 9 after seven years, £30,000 were said to have been spent, and not one page had been rendered available to the Government or the public. A quarter of a century later, nine District Accounts were disinterred from the mass

-of papers left behind. There were, in fact, three defects in the scheme, any one of which would amount to ship-. wreck in such an undertaking. In the first place, it was not done upon a scale. No attempt seems to have been made to estimate how much space could be profitably allotted to each subject and District, or to calculate how many volumes it is possible for a man to write, or for the public to read, within the ordinary span of life. In the ° second place, the materials already existing in a scattered form were left unutilized, and the whole work was begun over again for each District. The third defect arose from the absence of any system for rendering the results of the survey available, District by District, as they were obtained. :

_ This costly failure discouraged further attempts ona large scale. A period of isolated efforts followed,’ and it was not till 1855 that the Court of Directors again issued instructions for.anything like a Statistical Survey of India.

5 These may be classed under two heads: (1) Works by private individuals more or less assisted by the Court of Directors ; (2) Official or Departmental Papers. Among the former, the most valuable are Hamilton’s East India Gazetteer (1817? and, 1828); Mr. Masson’s Investigations (1834-37) ; H. H. Wilson’s copious and scholarly works ; Bengal Guide and Agra Gazetteer (1841-42); Thornton’s Gazetteer (1854-57 and 1862) ; Pharaoh’s Gazetteer of Southern India (1855); Surgeon-Major Balfour’s Cyclopedia of India (1856), with its elaborate supplements; Mr. M. Martin’s Eastern India, based upon the Buchanan MSS. (1838); and a long list of excellent memoirs scattered through the Journals of the Asiatic Societies. Among Official Papers, those by the District Medical Officers (1837-50), especially Dr. Taylor’s Dacca and Dr. M‘Cosh’s Assam, deserve special notice ; also General Cunningham’s Archeological Works, with many excellent reports by the Revenue Survey Department, and, in Northern India, by the District Settlement Cffficers.

VOL, IL : A

10 A CENTURY OF ATTEMPTS (1769-1869).

Meanwhile, the necessity for such a survey had constantly increased, and, about 1850, the Company endeavoured to have a comprehensive work drawn up, not in India, but at home. The result was Mr. Thornton’s Gazetteer in four volumes, a marvel.of patient.research, but unfortunately based upon materials, many of which had. become obsolete, and. others absolutely misleading. Accordingly, in 1855,,the Court addressed the Government of India, with a,view to supplementing the work by local inquiries, such as might render it ‘a faithful register of the. state of the country as at present existing.” The *\ task proved, however, to. be. a much more difficult one than had been anticipated. The next ten years yielded no practical result; and the subordinate governments .in India, gradually diverging from:the Court of Directors’ scheme, struck out new plans for themselves.’ In 1862 the Madras Government resolved upon a series of independent works, which shouldiexhibit that Presidency, District by District, in minute detail.® -Sin .Richard Temple inaugurated similar operations in the Central Provinces, and more recently the local officers drew. up a set of statistical reports for a part of Eastern Bengal. The divergence which had thus taken place from the Court’s plan of 1855 was accepted by the Secretary of State in 1867, and the Governor-General once more addressed the ten Local Administrations, requesting that an account of their territories might be drawn up,.‘ in

. Despatch of Court of Directors to the Governor-General in Council, No. 1 of 1855, Stat. Dept.

7 In May 1861, the Government of India officially inquired what had been done, and circulated fresh interleaved copies of Mr. Thornton’s work for correction by the local officers ; but, excepting in the North-Western Provinces, without results.

§ No. 591, dated 17th Mar. 1862, quoted aoe of Madras Government, 12th Aug. 1869. H. D.

FINAL ORDERS FOR THE WORK (1869). © 11 accordance with the wishes of Her Majesty's Government.’® Various measures were set on foot, and, as on previous occasions, several works of great individual value were obtained: But again the want of organization threatened to deprive the undertaking of adequate results ; and the Asiatic Society, with other public bodies, forcibly addressed Government on the subject. They pointed out that the absence of.a.uniform plan would not only depreciate the value of each local volume, but that, when the time came for working the whole into a com-' ptehensive account of India; it would necessitate a large amount of the labour being: ‘gone-over again de novo.’ Shortly afterwards, in 1869-70, the Governor-General in Council-directed me to visit the ten Local Governments of India, with a view to my submitting a plan for utilizing the materials.already collected, for prescribing the principles upon which the provincial compilations ‘should in future be prepared, ‘and for. their ultimate consolidation into one comprehensive work.”

Exactly one century’of inconclusive efforts had thus — elapsed since the Bengal: Government first endeavoured, in 1769,.to obtain! a Statistical Account of its territories. The truth is, that the Company never realized the magnitude of what they were asking for. The Indian Empire consists of ten separate Governments, ‘who, with ‘their Feudatory States, administer a territory of 1,556,836 square miles, and include about fifty different races,

® No. 1758, dated roth Oct. 1867, Foreign Department.

1¢ Council of Asiatic Society of Bengal to Government of India, dated 17th Feb. 1869. ‘Government had also been addressed on the subject by the Statistical Committee in 1868, and- by certain leading members of the Indian Mercantile Community, who strongly insisted on the practical necessity for such a work. H. D.

nu Government of India to Government of Bengal, No. 3056, dated 3d July 1869. B. G. =

12 MAGNITUDE OF THE, UNDERTAKING.

speaking a great diversity of languages, and numbering 200,424,072 souls. The Account of India, therefore, which from time to time has been so airily asked for, means a vast series of statistical operations and local inquiries spread over an area but slightly smaller than that of all Europe, excepting Russia; and among a population which falls short of the Berlin estimate in 1861 for all Europe, less Russia, by only 44 millions. The single Government of Lower Bengal has a people more numerous, by about ten millions, than the whole population of Great Britain and Ireland, and an area twice as great. Its territories extend over a quarter of a million of square miles, and present every diversity of men and manners, from the wild forest tribes of Orissa, whose women wear only a string of beads and two bunches of leaves, to the shrewd, wealthy, and highly cultivated in- _ habitants of its river districts and great cities. In Bengal, moreover, we find ourselves in the presence of a-great conflict of parties, and are eye-witnesses of the throes and upheavals by which an ancient worn-out society emerges into a new order of things. To draw up a ‘faithful’” account of such a country denitnds a union of philosophical: reflection with minute local research, and the Provincial Government might well shrink from lightly entering into the work. ‘Ina Province so extensive as Bengal,’ wrote the Lieutenant-Governor in 1869, ‘with a newly added frontier, and a population of at least forty millions of many races and_ creeds, and representing interests so important, such temerity would only be risking the public money, and exposing Government to the chances of a conspicuous failure.’

12 Annals of Indian Administration for 1869, vo]. xiii. Pp. 5s. 18 Court of Directors’ Despatch, No. 1 of 1855, Statistical Department.

OBJECTS OF THIS BOOK. 3

This work forms the’ first-fruits of the new enterprise. It takes a single Province of Lower Bengal, with a population slightly greater than that of Scotland in 1861, and an area rather less, and tries to render an account of it, sufficiently exact for administrative purposes, and yet sufficiently comprehensive to satisfy the general reader. The main body of the book deals with matters of the deepest interest to all thinking Englishmen. It honestly endeavours to show what the real effects of English rule have been, and what are the difficulties and sources of anxiety which now beset it. For such views as it may express, I alone am responsible. It. forms part of my private work, the ‘ Annals of Rural Bengal ;’ and while I have to thank the Indian Government for many facilities in continuing this rural history, I should add that it pretends to only such authority as it may be found intrinsically to merit. The second portion consists of systematic Statistical Accounts-drawn up in my official capacity ; and, for the convenience of the Indian public, printed at the end of the book in the form of Appendices. Taken together, the two parts exhibit my ‘conception of a statistical and general account of an Indian Province.

For, during the century which elapsed, from 1769 to 1869, the scope and requirements of such an Account have: greatly enlarged. The Company originally- contemplated the undertaking from a purely official point of view. They felt it to be a matter of the first importance that their servants in India, and their controlling body at home, should possess a common source of really trustworthy information. Since the government passed to the Crown, this necessity has increased both in England and

_in India. In England, the controlling power has passed from the Court of *Directors, a small body with a special

14 NECESSITY FOR SUCH A WORK.

knowledge of India, to Parliament,—an assembly whose members have for the most part had no opportunity of studying Indian subjects. In India,-the Company’s servants'accepted that country .as their home, and usually remained a.long time in the same District. !'Under the Crown, the new system of furlough tends to break up an Indian career into fragments. of four years’ service, disjoined by one yeas in England, and involves a number of short ‘acting’ appointments, whose. incumbents are moved from place to place, without having time:to learn the localities for themselves. To these officers, a statis: tical account of their District would be’of great value}. and, indeed, such .a guide forms an indispensable com= plement to the changes in Indian ‘service, which thé modern facilities. for :frequent visits to Europe ‘have brought about. -Moreover, under’ the Crown, a new class of public servants has sprung up, whose existence the Company never contemplated. .A very numerous body of professional men, engineers for railways, canals; and other public. works, now come out 'to ‘India, without any previous knowledge of the country, ‘and, as labouremployers: on a large scale,'‘are brought into'close and often difficult ‘relations with the people. At present, they must find out everything for themselves ; whereas; if they could only start with a knowledge of the District in which they have to work, a vast saving in temper, in time, and in public money would be annually effected. The Company had to consider only its own servants ; _ but the Queen’s Government has to provide for a new and more important class.in India, the English Public: The Indian revenues depend to some extent, and the safe increase of the Indian population depends to a very large extent, upon the application of*English capital to

ENGLISH CAPITAL; INDIAN LABOUR. 15

Indian enterprise. The people are not allowed to die at the old rate, Marhatta raids have ceased, epidemic diseases are trampled out by science, and famine has been deprived of its ancient edge. The population, no:longer held back by the customary checks in an Asiatic country, presses more and more heavily on the land. English capital forms one of the most important agents by which this pressure may be diverted; and at this moment it. is.employing the surplus population of Western Berigal to reclaim the jungles of the North-east Frontier. No country ever stood in greater need of imported capital than India, in its’ present transition-stage ; yet there is scarcely any country or. colony about which so little information ‘exists, with a view to attracting foreign capital, and directing its employment. The history of tea-planting in Bengal.from 1863 to. 1866 is.a narrative of capital hastily thrust into a country, without sufficient knowledge being accessible to ensure its safe’ and intelligent application. The English: public“have a right to demand accurate information regarding India. But, putting aside their claims, and looking at the question solely from the Indian. point of view, it is of the utmost importance that English capital should be enlisted in-easing the growing pressure of the Indian population on the land, and in rendering as painless as possible the transition from the purely agricultural state to those more complex forms of society on which India has now entered. An account of the country,.done with adequate appreciation of its commercial ‘capabilities, and in a spirit of accord with the mercantile public, will form an epoch in the removal of the obstacles which still exist, between English capital and Indian’ enterprise.

Such an accofint will demand the patient. industry

16 THE LATE LORD MAYO.

of many years.“ A man would be deemed foolhardy. who should attempt to give a historical and statistical account of Scotland in two volumés, such as I now-devote to a province of about the same extent and population. Yet even this meagre scale is much more liberal than that on which the rest of Bengal must be done. It has been possible in the case of Orissa, only owing to the fact that, in such researches, a considerable interval must elapse between the issue of the circulars to the District Officers, calling for information, and the receipt of their replies. I can but express my unavailing regret that the Indian statesman, to whom I owe it that I have been enabled to. undertake the work, should not have - been spared to see the initial result. A long list of great measures during the past three years bears witness to the silent, strong sense of Lord Mayo, to his stedfast courage and immense powers of work. His character and policy will stand out Jin colossal lines upon the Indian history-of our time; and, meanwhile, there is not one who worked under him, from the least to the greatest, who does not mourn.as for a friend.

1¢ Besides the gentlemen whose assistance I acknowledge in the course of the work, I would express my special obligations to His Highness the Mahérdja of Denkhdnal; to Mr. T. Ravenshaw, Commissioner, and,to Mr. Molony, formerly Acting Commissioner, of Orissa; to Colonel Thuillier, C.S.I., Surveyor-General of India, and Captain Murray, Assistant Surveyor-General; to Mr. W. Macpherson, Magistrate and Collector of Cattack ; to Mr. J. Beames, Magistrate and Collector of Balasor; and to Mr. Walton, Magistrate and Collector of Puri. A large portion of my Statistical Account of Balasor is taken from Mr. Beames’ official reports, For the botanical identifications of the fora which I collected in the Orissa Sundarbans, I have to thank the Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens, Calcutta.

Chapter II. The Chilka Lake

yee sunrise on the 1st February 1870, my boat was punted across the line on the Chilké Lake, which forms the southern boundary of Orissa. A few days before I had landed at Gopdlpur, an open, surf-beaten port in the northernmost district of Madras, consisting of half-a-dozen mercantile houses built upon: the sandy ridges of the beach, with a distant background of peaked mountains, and clustering little colonies of hills projected ' out upon the plain. Proceeding north-west by palan: quin, I had passed through Ganjam, once a great river harbour, and the official and mercantile capital of the province, but desolated in 1815 by fever, and deserted alike by the governing body and by its native population and trade. Of its former magnificence scarcely a ‘sign remains, except a few half-fallen mansions, with hovels swarming around their lower storeys and seeming to grow out of their ruins. Lofty pillared gateways stand about. the rice-fields, leading nowhere, or, a more pregnant lesson to human vanity, are utilized as entrances to the peasant’s thatched cottage.

At Ganjdm I joined the Great North Road, and a few miles farther on began to ascend the watershed

1 Among them Mahendfagiri, 4923 feet high. Trigonometrical Survey. VOL. IL. B

18 THE CHILKA LAKE.

which separates the river system of the Ganjdm district

from the Chilk&4 Lake. It rises from a solitary rice

country, where the children came trooping out of the

hamlets to stare at my white face ; while the cattle in the

bullock carts took fright, and rushed down the embank-

ments of the road, as my palanquin approached. The

pass grew narrower as it rose beyond the range of cul-

tivation, and the banyan trees had a ragged and battered look from half a century’s exposure to the southern mon-

soon. Bamboo jungle laden with creepers next commenced to line the road, and before long its green masses

had filled up the whole space between the converging

hills. A wild peacock strutted along the wayside, daintily

picking up his food, and spreading his tail in unconcerned

pomp. At the top, the pass appeared to be little more

than half a mile wide; but by the time I had reached it

the sun had set. The northern descent was down a dark

covered way of noble banyan trees, secured by the in-

tervening hills from the dilapidations of the monsoon.

From underneath their spreading branches came glimpses

of mountains on either side, exaggerated by the twilight ;

and as night closed in, I began to catch the reflection of the canoe lights flashing on the Chilka Lake below.

, The Chilkd Lake is a shallow inland sea, situated. in the extreme south-east corner of Orissa. A long strip of land, which for miles consists of nothing but a sandy ‘ridge little more than two hundred yards wide, separates it from the ocean; and the roaring of the exterior unseen surf can be heard far across the lake. On the west it is walled in by lofty mountains, in some places descending perpendicularly upon its margin, and in others thrusting out gigantic arms and promontories of rock into the water. On the south it is bounded by the hilly water-

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¥ te

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THE CHILKA LAKE. 19 shed, which forms the natural frontier between Orissa and Madras. To the northward it loses itself in endless shallows, sedgy banks, and islands just peeping above the surface, formed year by year from the silt which the great rivers bring down. A single narrow mouth, cut through the sandy ridge, connects it with the sea. _ Through this the tide comes rushing and storming against the outward currents ; at certain seasons throwing itself up in pyramidal billows topped with spray, and looking like a boiling river in which no boat could live.

Thus hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, the Chilka spreads itself out into a pear-shaped expanse of water forty-four miles long, of which the northern half has a mean breadth of twenty miles, while the southern half tapers into an irregular curved point, and barely averages five miles wide.? . Its smallest area is as nearly as possible the size of Huntingdonshire, being 344 square miles in the dry weather, and extending to about 450 in the rainy season.’ Its average depth is from three to five feet, and scarcely anywhere exceeds six. The bed