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 In 1565 a confederation of the Mahommedan kingdoms defeated the Vijayanagar sovereign at the battle of Talikota; and his descendants ultimately became extinct as a ruling house. During the feeble reign of the last king, the petty local chiefs (palegars) asserted their independence. The most important of these was the wodeyar of Mysore, who in 1610 seized the fort of Seringapatam, and so laid the foundation of the present state. His fourth successor, Chikka Deva Raja, during a reign of 34 years, made his kingdom one of the most powerful in southern India. In the middle of the 18th century the famous Mahommedan adventurer Hyder Ali usurped the throne, and by his military prowess made himself one of the most powerful princes of India. His dynasty, however, was as brief as it was brilliant, and ended with the defeat and death of his son Tippoo at Seringapatam in 1799. A representative of the ancient Hindu line was then replaced on the throne. This prince, Krishnaraja Wodeyar, was only five years old, and until he came of age in 1811 the state was under the administration of Purnaiya, the Brahman minister of Hyder and Tippoo. When Krishnaraja took over the management of his state he received an orderly and contented principality with a surplus of two crores of rupees. Within twenty years he had driven his subjects into rebellion and involved himself and his state in heavy debt. The British government therefore assumed the administration in 1831, and placed it in the hands of commissioners. In 1862 no less than 88 lakhs of state debts and of the maharajah’s own liabilities had been liquidated; the entire administration had been reformed, a revised system of land revenue introduced, and many public works executed. The maharaja therefore pressed his claims to a restoration of his powers, but the British government refused the application as incompatible with the true interests of the people of Mysore, and as, not justified by any treaty obligation. In the same year Chamarajendra Wodeyar, afterwards maharaja, was born of the Bettada Kote branch of the ruling house; and in June 1865 Maharaja Krishnaraja adopted him as his son and successor, although he had been informed that no adoption could be recognized except to his own private property, already once more heavily weighted with private debts. In 1867 the policy of government underwent a change; it was determined to secure the continuance of native rule in Mysore, by acknowledging the adoption upon certain conditions which would secure to the people the continued benefits of good administration enjoyed by them under British control. The old maharaja died on the 27th of March 1868, and Chamarajendra Wodeyar was publicly installed as the future ruler of Mysore on the 23rd of September 1868. His education was taken in hand, abuses which had grown up in the palace establishment were reformed, the late maharaja's debts were again paid off, and the whole internal administration perfected in every branch during the minority. On the 25th of March 1881 Maharaja Chamarajendra, having attained the age of 18 years, was publicly entrusted with the administration of the state. He made over to the British government, with full jurisdiction, a small tract of land at Bangalore, forming the “civil and military station,” and received in return the island of Seringapatam. But the most important incident of the change was the signing of the “instrument of transfer,” by which the young maharaja, for himself and his successors, undertook to perform the conditions imposed upon him. To that agreement the maharaja steadfastly adhered during his reign, and the instrument is a landmark in the history of British relations with the protected states of India. The maharaja's first minister was Ranga Charlu, who had been trained in the British administration of Mysore. He signalized the restoration of native rule by creating the representative assembly. In 1883 Sheshadri Aiyar succeeded Ranga Charlu, and to him Mysore is indebted for the extension of railways and schemes of irrigation, the development of the Kolar goldfields, and the maintenance of the high standard of its administration. The maharaja died at Calcutta on the 28th of December 1894. His eldest son, Krishnaraja Wodeyar, born in 1884, succeeded him, and his widow, Maharani Vanivilas, was appointed regent, until in 1902 the maharaja was formally invested with full powers by the viceroy in person.

MYSORE, capital of the state of Mysore, India, 10 m. S.W. of Seringapatam on the Mysore State railway. Pop. (1901), 68,111. The city, which is spread over an area of about 7 sq. m., has its nucleus at the foot of the Chamundi hill, in a valley formed by two parallel ridges running north and south. The fort stands in the south of the town, forming a quarter by itself; the ground-plan is quadrangular, each of the sides being about 450 yds. long. The old palace of the maharaja within the fort, built in an extravagant style of Hindu architecture, was partly destroyed by fire in 1897, whereupon a new palace was built on the same site. The principal object of interest in the old palace was the throne, which is said to have been presented to Chikka Deva Raj by the emperor Aurangzeb. The houses of the European residents are for the most part to the east of the town. The residency or government house was built in 1805. The building afterwards used for the district offices was originally built by Colonel Wellesley (duke of Wellington) for his own occupation. The domed building for the public offices in Gordon Park, the Maharaja's College, the Victoria Jubilee Institute, and the law courts are conspicuous. Mysore, though the dynastic capital of the state, was superseded by Seringapatam as the seat of the court from 1610 to 1799, and in 1831, on the British occupation, the seat of administration was removed to Bangalore.

MYSTERY (Gr. , from  , an initiate,  , to shut the mouth), a general English term for what is secret and excites wonder, derived from the religious sense (see below). It is not to be confounded with the other old word “mystery,” or more properly “mistery,” meaning a trade or handicraft (Lat. ministerium, Fr. métier). For the medieval plays, called mysteries, see ; they were so called (Skeat) because acted by craftsmen.

Greek Mysteries.—It is important to obtain a clear conception of the exact significance of the Greek term , which is often associated and at times appears synonymous with the words . We may interpret “mystery” in its original Greek meaning as a “secret” worship, to which only certain specially prepared people— —were admitted after a special period of purification or other preliminary probation, and of which the ritual was so important and perilous that the “catechumen” needed a hierophant or expounder to guide him aright. In the ordinary public worship of the state or the private worship of the household the sacrifice with the prayer was the chief act of the ceremony; in the “mysterion” something other than a sacrifice was of the essence of the rite; something was shown to the eyes of the initiated, the mystery was a  , and  and  are verbal terms expressive of the mystic act. We have an interesting account given us by Theo Smyrnaeus of the various elements and moments of the normal mystic ceremony: first is the  or preliminary purification; secondly, the , the mystic communication which probably included some kind of , a sacred exegesis or exhortation; thirdly, the  or the revelation to sight of certain holy things, which is the central point of the whole; fourthly, the crowning with the garland, which is henceforth the badge of the privileged; and finally, that which is the end and object of all this, the happiness that arises from the friendship or communion with the deity. This exposition is probably applicable to the Greek mysteries in general, though it may well have been derived from his knowledge of the Eleusinian. We may supplement it by a statement of Lucian's that “no mystery was ever celebrated without dancing” (De saltat. 15), which means that it was in some sense a religious drama, ancient Greek dancing being generally mimetic, and represented some  or sacred story as the theme of a mystery-play.

Before we approach the problem as to the content of the mysteries, we may naturally raise the question why certain