Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/131

Rh Mahometans, 203 Christians, and 316 “others.” Amongst the higher castes there is an unusually large proportion of Brahmans, a circumstance due to the number of sacred places which the district contains. The Gayawals, or priests in charge of the holy places, are held in high esteem by the pilgrims ; but they are not pure Brahmans, and are looked down upon by those who are. They live an idle and dis- solute life, but are very wealthy, from contributions extorted from the pilgrims. The ruiiied city of Buddh Gaya, about 6 miles south of Gaya town, marks the residence of Sakya Sinha, the founder of the Buddhist religion, who ﬂourished in the, and an ancient tree is pointed out as the identical ﬁg tree under which the sage sat in abstraction for ﬁve years, until be attained to the state of Buddha. Another place of religious interest is a temple of great antiquity, which crowns the highest peak of the Baraber hills, and at which a religious fair is held each September, attended by from 10,000 to 20,000 pilgrims. At the foot of the hill are numerous rock caves excavated about

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, the chief town and administrative headquarters of the above district, situated on the bank of the Phalgi’i river, lat. 24° 47’ 15” N., long. 85° 3' 10" E. The population in 1872 numbered 66,843 z—Hindus, 52,265; Mahometans, 14,444; Christians, 134. The municipal income in 1871 was £2716, and the expenditure £2351. The town con- sists of_two distinct parts, adjoining each other; the part containing the residences, of the priests is Gaya proper; and. the other, which is the business quarter, is called Bahibgmii]. The civil ofﬁces and residences of the European inhabitants are situated here. Gaya derives its sanctity from incidents in the life of Buddha connected with the adjoining district. But a local legend also exists concerning a pagan monster of great sanctity, named Gaya, who wickedly tried to save sinners from deserved perdition. Brahma in order to get rid of Gaya induced him to lie down in order that a feast might be held on his body ; and once down, he placed a large stone on him to keep him there. The tricked demon struggled violently, and, in order to pacify him, Brahma promised that the gods should take up their permanent residence in him, and that any one who made a pilgrimage to the spot were he lay should be delivered from. the terrors of the Hindu place of torment. This may possibly be a Brahmanic rendering of Buddha’s life and work. “There are forty-ﬁve sacred spots in and around town, which are Visited by from 100,000 to 200,000 pilgrims annually.  GAY-LUSSAC, (1778–1850), one of the most distinguished of modern physicists and chemists, was born at St Léonard, in the department of Haute Vienne, on the 6th of December 1778. His father, Antoine Gay, who was procureur du roi and judge at Pont-de-Noblac, had added to the common family name the distinctive title Lussac, from a small property he had in the neighbourhood of St Leonard. The family consisted of two sons, of whom Joseph Louis was the elder, and three daughters. Intended for the bar, young Gay-Lussac prosecuted his early studies in Latin. and other elementary subjects at home, under the superintendeiice of the Abbé Bourdeix and other masters, until 1794, when he was sent to Paris, where he worked very hard for three years preparing for admission to the Ecole Polytechnique. After a brilliant examination he was received into this institution on December 27, 1797, whence on the 22d of November 1800 he was transferred to the school Des Ponts et Chaussées. Shortly afterwards he was assigned to Berthollet, who had returned from Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, and who was desirous of having an able student from the Ecole Polytechnique to aid him in his researches. The results expected by the author of the Statz'que C'kimz'que were not veriﬁed by his assistant’s experiments, which seem to have been recorded without any consideration of the theorizer’s feelings. It was on this occasion, according to Arago, that Berthollet, at ﬁrst nettled to ﬁnd that his ideas were not conﬁrmed, delivered himself as follows: “Young man, it is your destiny to make dis- coveries. You shall be henceforth my companion. I wish—it is a title of which I am sure I shall have cause some day to be proud—I wish to be your father in science.” Gay-Lussac accordingly entered on a long series of researches upon certain physical phenomena, which though of constant recurrence in experimental inquiries, had up to this time been very imperfectly examined. In his ﬁrst memoir (Ann. (1e (Mimic, t. xliii., 1802) he shows that different gases are dilated in the same proportion when heated from 0° to 80° (Réaumur). He does not seem to have been aware of Dalton’s experiments on this subject, which were indeed very far from being accurate; but he states in a footnote that “ le cit. Charles avait remarqué depuis 15 ans la meme propriété clans ces gaz ; mais, n’ayant jamais publié ses résultats, c’est par le plus grand hasard que je les ai connus.” In return for his having thus rescued from oblivion the remark which his fellow- citizen, probably wisely, did not think worth recording, some recent authors have changed the title of the law from that of Gay-Lussac to that of Charles. The investigations re- corded in this memoir were followed by experiments on the improvementsof thermometers and barometers, on the tension of vapours, their mixture with gases, and the determination of their density, evaporation, hygrometry, and capillarity. In course of these researches, which engaged him for a couple of years, he acquired not only dexterity in manipulation and the contrivance of experiments, but a great deal of valuable knowledge of physics. During the interval, in the year 1802, he had been nominated F ourcroy’s demonstrator at the Ecole Polytechnique, and as he had in this capacity to .lecture frequently for the professor, lie was beginning to acquire reputation as a teacher and expounder of chemistry and physics, by the clearness, precision, and care which his lectures evinced. In 1803–4 certain results respecting terrestrial magnetism had been obtained during two balloon ascents, which appeared of so much interest that the French Academy was desirous of having them repeated. Through Berthollet and Chaptal the balloon which had been used in Egypt was obtained, and ﬁtted up with various instruments; the observations were entrusted to Gay-Lussac and Biot,