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 BENGAL. new

their

Their ancient

faith.

rites

289

and modes of

religious thought

reasserted themselves with an intensity that could not be suppressed,

monotheism almost flickered out Hinduism. A local writer, speaking

until the fierce white light of Semitic

amid the from

fuliginous exhalations of

personal

acquaintance with the

Musalman peasantry in the own day, stated that not

northern Districts of Lower Bengal in our

one

in ten could recite

constant repetition

Muhammadans.

is

He

of the ceremonies of

of

its

whose good which observes none

the brief and simple kalmd or creed,

a matter of unconscious habit with

described them as a

its faith,

which

is

creed, which worships at the

‘

sect

all

ignorant of the simplest formulas shrines

of a rival religion, and

tenaciously adheres to practices which were denounced as the foulest

abominations by its founder.’ Fifty years ago, these sentences would have truly described the Muhammadan peasantry, not only in the all Lower Bengal. In the cities or Musalman nobility and their religious foundations, a few Maulvis of piety and learning calmly carried on the routine of their faith. But the masses of the rural Musalmans had

northern Districts, but throughout

amid the palace

of the

life

relapsed into something low-caste Hindus.

little

better than a

mongrel breed of circumcised

Since then, another of those religious awakenings

so characteristic of India has passed over the

Muhammadans

of Bengal.

wandered from District to District, calling on the people to return to the true faith, and denouncing God’s wrath on the indifferent and unrepentant. A great body of the Bengali Musalmans have purged themselves of the taint of Hinduism, and shaken off the yoke of the ancient social rites. This Muhammadan revival has had a threefold effect in Bengal religious, social, and political. It has stimulated the religious instinct among an impressionable people, and produced an earnest desire to cleanse the worship of God and His Prophet from idolatry. Its stern rejection of ancient superstitions has also widened the social gulf between the Muhammadans and the Hindus. Fifty years ago the Bengali Musalmans were simply a recognised caste, less widely separated from the lower orders of the Hindus than the latter were from the Kulin Brahmans. There were certain essential points of difference, of a doctrinal sort, between the Hindu and Muhammadan villager but they had a great many rural customs and even religious rites in common. The Muhammadan husbandman theoretically recognised the one Semitic God ; but in a country subject to floods, famines, the devastations of banditti, and the ravages of wild beasts, he would have deemed it foolish to neglect the Hindu festivals in honour of Krishna and Durga. Now, however, the peasantry no longer look to their gods, but to the officer in charge of the District, for protection and when he fails them, instead of offering VOL. II. T Itinerant preachers, generally from the north, have

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