Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/284

Rh 266 R A M R A M Tiimilat ? The latter is far the more likely case, when we consider that the old form of the story of the Hebrews in Egypt is throughout deficient in precise geographical data, as might be expected in a history not committed to writing till the Israelites had resided for centuries in another and distant land. The post-exile or priestly author indeed gives a detailed route for the exodus (which is lacking in the older story), but he, we know, was a student of geo- graphy and might supplement tradition by what he could gather from traders as to the caravan routes. 1 And at all events to argue that, because the Hebrews worked at a city named after Rameses, they did so in the reign of the founder, is false reasoning, for the Hebrew expression might equally be used of repairs or new works of any kind. It appears, however, from remains ami inscriptions that Kaineses II. did build in Wady Tumilat, especially at Tell Maskhuta, which Lepsius therefore identified with the Raamses of Exodus. This identification is commemorated in the name of the adjacent rail- way station. But recent excavations on the spot have brought to light further inscriptions, on the ground of which Naville makes the ruins those of Pithom and further identifies Pithom with the later Heroopolis. The identity of Pithom and Heroopolis is also favoured by comparison of the LXX. and the Coptic of Gen. xlvi. 28. See E. Xaville, The Store-city of Pithom and the Eoute of the Exodus, London, 1885. RAMESWARAM, a small island situated between Ceylon and India, at the entrance of Palk Strait in the Gulf of Manaar, in 9 18' N. lat. and 79 22' E. long. It is about 1 4 miles long by 5 wide, is low and sandy, and for the most part uncultivated. The estimated population of the island is about 14,000. It contains one of the most venerated Hindu shrines, founded, according to tradition, by Rama himself, which for centuries has been the resort of thousands of pilgrims from all parts of India. To the south of this great temple there is a freshwater lake about 3 miles in circumference. At the western extremity of the island is the small but busy port of Pambam, which gives its name to the channel between India and Ceylon. Rameswaram island is the first link in the chain of islets and rocks forming Adam's Bridge. Geological evidence shows that this gap was once bridged by a continuous isthmus, which, accord- ing to the temple records, was breached by a violent storm in 1480. Operations for removing the obstacles in the channel, and for deepening and widening it, were begun in 1838. The main channel has a minimum depth of 14 feet ; its length is 4232 feet and its breadth 80 feet. A second channel to the south, called the Kilkarai Passage, is 2100 feet long, 150 feet wide, and is dredged to a depth of 12 feet. RAMMOHUN ROY. See ROY. RAMPUR, a native state of India, in the Rohilkhand division of the North- Western Provinces, lying between 28 26' and 29 10' N. lat. and between 78 54' and 7933' E. long. It is bounded on the N. and W. by the British district of Muradabad, and on the N.E. and S.E. by the district of Bareli. The country is level and generally fertile ; it is well watered in the north by the rivers Kosila and Xahul and in the south by the Ramgangd. It adjoins the Tarai on the north, at the foot of the Hima- layas, and is exceedingly unhealthy. The total area of the state is 945 square miles, with a population (1881) of 541,914 (males 282,359, females 259,555), of whom 302,989 were Hindus and 238,925 Mohammedans. The revenue of Rampur in 1883-84 was 167,031 and the ordinary annual expenditure 160,134. Rice, sugar, hides, and a kind of damask are the principal exports, and the imports comprise elephants, English cloth, and groceries and salt. During the mutiny of 1857 the nawab of Rampur rendered important services to the British, for which he received a grant of land assessed at 12,852 in perpetuity, besides other honours. RAMPUR, capital of the above state, stands on the left bank of the Kosila in 28 48' N. lat. and 79 4' E. long.; it is surrounded by a belt of bamboo trees and 1 From the position of the words it is even not unlikely that " Pithom and Raamses" may be the addition of a redactor, and that the first author of Exod. Ill only spoke generally of store-cities. brushwood, with a low ruined parapet, and is the resi- dence of the nawab, who represents the Rohilla chieftair of Rohilkhand. A lofty mosque stands in the market place ; the streets are densely crowded together and princi- pally built of mud. The population of the town in 1881 numbered 74,250 (males 36,355, females 37,895); it is famous for fine shawls and damask, which are exported to all parts of India. RAMPUR BEULEAH. See RAJSHAH*, supra, p. 261. RAMSAY, ALLAN (1686-1758), author of the Guttls Shepherd, a pastoral drama in the Lowland Scotch dialect, was born in Lanarkshire in 1686. An Edinburgh barber set agoing the literary movement in Scotland that cul- minated in the poetry of Burns. This peasant-poetry is often spoken of as if it were a spontaneous indigenous product, but the harvest that ripened towards the close of the 18th century had its seed-time earlier, and the seeds were imported from England. Allan Ramsay was a peasant by birth (although he claimed kinship with the noble family of Dalhousie) the son of a manager of lead- mines in Lanarkshire ; but the country-bred lad was trans- planted to a town, being apprenticed at the age of fifteen to a barber in Edinburgh. In this calling he somehow made the acquaintance of a band of Jacobite young gentle- men of literary tastes, was admitted to the convivialities of their "Easy Club," and formally adjudged "a gentle- man." The basis of the club seems to have been literary, the members taking fancy names of celebrities, Buchanan, Boece, Bickerstaff, and so forth. Ramsay's name was Bickerstaff, and the fact is of some importance as showing how he was brought into contact with the discussion of the theory of pastoral poetry among the London wits of the time. Ramsay's connexion with the Easy Club lay between 1712 and 1715, and in the course of that period occurred the dispute about pastoral poetry occasioned by the great publication of Pope's Windsor Forest (see POPE). The Guardian for 7th April 1713 (Xo. 23) contained a descrip- tion of a true pastoral poem, which was afterwards realized by Ramsay in the Gentle Shepherd with such scrupulous fidelity in every detail that the criticism might fairly be described as the recipe from which the poem was made. There is not a clearer case in literary history of the influ- ence of criticism on creation ; Ramsay's great pastoral and it well deserves the epithet was the main outcome of the prolonged discussion of that kind of poetry by the Queen Anne wits. "Paint the manners of actual rustic life," said the Guardian critic to the poet, " not the manners of artificial shepherds and shepherdesses in a fictitious golden age ; use actual rustic dialect ; instead of satyrs and fauns and nymphs introduce the supernatural creatures of modern superstition." These precepts Ramsay diligently observed, and the result was that his Gentle Shepherd not only attracted attention among the learned students of poetry as a literary curiosity, the first genuine pastoral after Theo- critus, but at once became a favourite and a living force among the peasantry in whose dialect it was written and for whose characters it furnished ideal models. There was hardly a farmhouse in Scotland in which a copy of the poem was not to be found, and the moral force of the ideal exhibited in the hero Patie may be traced in the character of Burns and many another Scottish peasant-bard in whom ostentatious libertinism is not redeemed by the same genius. From a moral point of view a better exemplar than Ram- say's ideal hero might well have been desired. The poet- laureate of the Easy Club 'took his moral tone from the poets of the Restoration, with whom his Jacobite boon com- panions were in full sympathy ; and thus through the genial, convivial, quick-witted, and slily humorous barber the spirit of the Restoration passed into the homes of the Scotch peasantry to do battle with the austere spirit of the kirk.