Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/830

806 806 INDIA [HISTOEY. presidency, and the nucleus of the present Central Pro- viuces was formed out of the territory saved from the Pindharis. The peshwa himself surrendered, and was per- mitted to reside at Bithur, near Cawnpur, on a pension of .80,000 a year. His adopted son was the infamous Nana Sahib. To nil the peshwa s place to some extent at the head of the Marhatta confederacy, the lineal descendant of Sivaji was brought forth from obscurity, and placed upon the throne of Satara. An infant was recognized as the heir of Holkar, and a second infant was proclaimed raja of Nagpur under British guardianship. At the same time the several states of Rajputana accepted the position of feudatories of the paramount power. The map of India, as thus drawn by Lord Hastings, remained substantially unchanged until the time of Lord Dalhousie. But the proudest boast of Lord Hastings and Sir John Malcolm was, not that they had advanced the pomoerium, but that they had conferred the &quot;blessings of peace and good government upon millions who had suffered unutterable things from Marhatta and Pindhari tyranny. The marquis of Hastings was succeeded by Lord Amherst, after the interval of a few months, during which Mr Adam, a civil servant, acted as governor-general. Lord Amherst s administration lasted for five years, from 1823 to 1828. It is known in history by two prominent events, the first Burmese war and the capture of Bhartpur. For some years past the north-east frontier had been disturbed by the restlessness of the Burmese. The country that fringes the western shore of the Bay of Bengal and runs up the valley of the Irawadi, with a people of Tibeto-Chinese origin, has a history of its own. parallel to, but not altogether independent of, that of India. Tradition asserts that its early civilization was introduced from the oppo site coast of Coromandel, by a people who still preserve a trace of their origin in their name of Talaing (cf. Telinga and Telugu). Bowever this may be, the Buddhist religion, professed by the Burmese at the present day, certainly came direct from India at a very early date. Many waves of invasion from Siam in the south and from the wild mountains in the north have passed over the land. These conquests were marked by that wanton and wholesale barbarity which seems to characterize the Tibeto-Chinese race, but the civilization of Buddhism survived every shock, and flourished around the ancient pagodas. European travellers in the 15th century visited Pegu and Tenasserim, which they describe as flourishing marts of maritime trade. During the period of Portuguese predominance in the East, Arakan became the resort of loose European adventurers. &quot;With their help the Arakanese extended their power inland, occupied Chittagong, and (under the name of the Maghs) became the terror of the entire delta of the Ganges. About 1750 a new dynasty arose, founded by Alaungphaya or Alompra, with its capital at Ava, which still rules over Inde pendent Burmah. The successors of Alompra, after having subjugated all Burmah, and overrun Assam, which was then an independent kingdom, began a series of encroachments upon British territory in India. As all peaceful proposals were contumeliously rejected, Lord Amherst was compelled to declare war in 1824. Little military glory could be gained by beating the Burmese, who were formidable only from the pestilential character of their country. One expe dition with gunboats proceeded up the Brahmaputra into Assam ; another marched by land through Chittagong into Arakan, for the Bengal sepoys refused to go by sea ; a third, and the strongest, sailed from Madras direct to the mouth of the Irawadi. The war was protracted over two years. At last, after the loss of about 20,000 lives and an expenditure of 14,000,000, the king of Ava consented to sign the treaty of Yandabu, by which he abandoned all claim to Assam, and ceded the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which were already in the military occupation of the British. He retained all the valley of the Irawadi, down to the sea at Rangoon. The capture of Bhartpur in Central India Cap by Lord Combermere in 1827 wiped out the repulse which of B Lake had received before that city in January 1805. A P llr - disputed succession necessitated British intervention. Ar tillery could make little impression upon the massive walls of mud, but at last a breach was effected by mining, and the city was taken by storm, thus losing its general repu tation throughout India for impregnability, which had threatened to become a political danger. The next governor-general was Lord William Bentinck, Ecu who had been governor of Madras twenty years earlier at the time of the mutiny of Vellore. His seven years rule (from 1828 to 1835) is not signalized by any of those victories or extensions of territory by which chroniclers delight to measure the growth of empire. But it forms an epoch in administrative reform, and in the slow process by which the hearts of a subject population are won over to venerate as well as dread their alien rulers. The modern history of the British in India, as benevolent administrators ruling the country with a single eye to the good of the natives, may be said to begin with Lord William Bentinck. According to the inscription upon his statue at Calcutta, from the pen of Macaulay, &quot; He abolished cruel rites ; he effaced humiliating distinctions ; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion ; his constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge.&quot; His first care on arrival in India was to restore equilibrium to the finances, which were tottering under the burden imposed upon them by the Burmese war. This he effected by reductions in per manent expenditure, amounting in the aggregate to 1J millions sterling, as well as by augmenting the revenue from land that had escaped assessment and from the opium of Malwa. He also widened the gates by which educated natives could enter the service of the Company. Some of these reforms were distasteful to the covenanted service and to the officers of the army, but Lord William was always staunchly supported by the court of directors and by the Whig ministry at home. His two most memorable acts are the abolition of sati Sati (suttee) and the suppression of the Thags (Thugs). At this ( sutt distance of time it is difficult to realize the degree to which these two barbarous practices had corrupted the social system of the Hindus. European research has clearly proved that the text in the Vedas adduced to authorize the immolation of widows was a wilful mistranslation. But the practice had been engrained in Hindu opinion by the authority of centuries, and had acquired the sanctity of a religious rite. The emperor Akbar is said to have prohibited it by law, but the early English rulers did not dare so far to violate the traditions of religious toleration. In the year 1817 no less than seven hundred widows are said to have been burned alive in the Bengal presidency alone. To this day the most holy spots of Hindu pilgrimage are thickly dotted with little white pillars, each commemorating a sati. In the teeth of strenuous opposition, both from Europeans and natives, Lord William carried the regulation in council on December 4, 1829, by which all who abetted sati were declared guilty of &quot;culpable homicide.&quot; The honour of suppressing Thagi must be shared between Lord William and Captain Sleeman. Thagi was an abnormal excrescence Thai. upon Hinduism, in so far as the bands of secret assassins y &quot;; were sworn together by an oath based on the rites of the 1S bloody goddess Kali. Between 1826 and 1835 as many as 15G2 Thags were apprehended in different parts of British India, and by the evidence of approvers the moral plague spot was gradually stamped out. Two other historical events are connected with the