Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 2 (2nd edition).pdf/301

 BENGAL.

291

while these sheets were passing through the press (1884), and has left a Some of his more zealous fol-

blank in the Indian religious world.

lowers already disclose an inclination to accord divine honours to their

The number

beloved teacher and friend.

Brahmo opinions

is

considerable.

result of education has

the formation of religious, social, or political associations in

60

the country, about

in

who hold

of educated natives

Another

all

been

parts of

They

number, with 2000 members.

are

directed chiefly to educational matters, and to the abolition of the cruel restrictions

imposed by custom or

superstition.

Great religious

low -castes. Holy men or teachers spring up, sometimes close to Calcutta, sometimes in secluded Districts, and make thousands or hundreds of thousands of converts. The Vaishnava sect is now the prevailing one in Bengal. Among the low -caste Districts of the east, especially in Assam, it absorbs almost the whole of the inferior classes of the Hindus. It starts from

movements

also

take

place

among

the

a revolt against the spiritual bondage imposed by the distinctions of caste.

Aboriginal Creeds

.

—Besides the

45^ millions of Hindus, and the 22

millions of Musalmans, a great residue remains.

It consists,

with the

exception of the two small bodies of Christians and Buddhists, of semi-

and distinctly non-Aryan races, who number 2. millions These peoples dwell, for the most part, among the lofty ranges and primeval forests which wall in Bengal on the north, east, and south-west, or upon the spurs and hilly outworks which these mountain systems have thrown forward upon the lowlands. Some of them represent the simplest types of social organization known to modern research. Their rudimentary communities are separated by religion, custom, and language from each other and from the dwellers on the plains. Many of them, till lately, looked upon war as the normal condition of human society, and on peace as an unwelcome temporary break in their existence. For ages they have regarded the lowland Hindus as their natural enemies, and in return they were dealt with as beasts of chase by the more civilised inhabitants of the valleys. Within the present generation, human sacrifice continued an obligatory rite among some of them a rite so deeply graven upon their village institutions, and so essential to the annually recurring festivals of their religious year, as to seriously occupy the Indian Legislature, and to aboriginal

in Bengal.

—

require a

special

agency to suppress

like foreign rule renders

possible under their

it

it.

Their jealousy of anything

the wisest policy to leave

own hamlet communities and

them

as

much

petty chiefs.

as

Never-

form the most hopeful material yet discovered in Bengal humanizing influences of Christianity, and of that higher level

theless, they

for the

of morality and civilisation which Christian missions represent.

One

of the most noteworthy features of the Indian Census of 1881,

as