THE LOST CITY OF BENGAL.
AMONG the marked peculiarities of Anglo-Indians is one which we have never heard fully explained. As a rule, they know nothing about India. They know their work, often admirably, and sometimes know the section of the people with whom they have come in contact ; but as a rule, with of course some brilliant exceptions, they know as little of India as an average Frenchman knows of foreign countries. They are not interested in it, and do not study it, do not take even the trouble to see the wonderful things of which the continent is full. You find, of course, here and there a man like the Home Secretary, Mr. Lyall, who can tell you as much about the development of modern Hindooism as Professor Max Muller could tell you about the development of grammar ; but not one European in a thousand has any complete knowledge of the Caste system, which meets him every moment of his life, or has any idea about it, except that a ridiculous prejudice interferes sometimes with his orders. Every now and then a Missionary turns up, like Mr. Robson, or a student, like Dr. Sprenger, who knows ; but not one European in fifty, Missionaries included, is aware that behind the Hindoo cult, which looks so absurd, rests a complete and subtle philo- sophy, which satisfies the spiritual longings of millions who agree upon no other subject of religious thought ; or can tell you how far Indian Mahommedanism differs from the Mahom- medanism of Mecca and Konieh. There is positive evid- ence that up to 1857 not a dozen Europeans in Bengal were aware of the greatest movement around them,—the tremendous strides made by the Mahommedans towards the conversion of entire districts, and to this hour no account has ever appeared— we doubt if any Report has ever been prepared for Government— on the Mussulman Missionary system, one of the greatest facts underlying our regime. It is the same with the natural features of the country and its rich store of antiquities. An Engineer officer describes the most marvellous scene probably on earth, the abrupt rise from a long valley of Mount Everest, the highest point in the world, higher even than the elevation which the old Hindoos, with their instinctive poetry, named Dewalagiri, "the Mountain Hall of the Gods," but nobody goes to see it, and the majority have just heard that there is a Mount Everest. So they have heard of the Gairsoppa Falls, to which Niagara is a Vauxhall cascade, and the White Gorge with its marble rocks-1,600 feet high, we believe, but we have mislaid the description we received from Dr. Duff—where the Sun God clove a passage for the Nerbudda, and left the impress of his glory, a strange, white sheen, as if light proceeded from the stone, in- stead of being reflected by it, in the glistening marble. Dr. Duff's description of the Temple of Sheringham—a wonderful pictorial effort, even for that most eloquent of Highlanders—was as new to Anglo-Indians as to the women who listened, knitting, in Exeter Hall. And they have never taken the trouble even to examine the drowned city of Bali, on the coast of Orissa, or the submerged province which we call the Runn of Cutch, where you may row above temple-pinnacles visible below the water. Not one European in two hundred has ever seen the Temple of Kali, in Calcutta, though it gives the town its name, is the cent re of a faith, and ought, to a people bred up on the Old Testament and aware of Moloch, to be the most suggestive of shrines ; and when a German Prince inquired reverentially for Mr. Blyth, the first naturalist in Asia, and a permanent resident of Calcutta, the officials first questioned his existence, and then inquired where he lived of the General Post Office.
We should like to know how many Anglo-Bengalees know any- thing of the marvellous city of which the name stands at the head of this article, Gour, the ruined capital of Bengal, the Ganga Regia of Ptolemy, where Hindoo Kings are believed to have reigned 2,000 years ago, where semi- dependent Mussulman rulers undoubtedly governed Bengal before Richard Coeur de Lion died, and where Kai Kans Shah, in 1291, founded a sovereignty which, under different dynasties, one of them Abyssinian, endured to 1537. These Kings made Gour, by degrees, one of the greatest cities in the world,— greater, as far as mere size is concerned, than Babylon or London. Mr. Ravenshaw, a Civilian, who took photographs of every building he could reach, photographs published since his death, believes the ruins to cover a space of from fifteen to twenty miles along the old bed of the river, by three miles in depth, a space which, after allowing for the rich native method of life, with its endless gardens and necessity for trees, must have sheltered a population of at least two millions. These Kings must have been among the richest monarchs of their time, for they ruled the rice-garden of the world, Eastern Bengal, where rice yields to the cultivator 160 per cent. ; they controlled the navigation of the Ganges, and their dominion stretched down to Orissa, where the Native Princes—how strange it sounds now, when Orissa is a province forgotten, except for an awful famine !—were always defeating their troops. They spent their wealth neces-
sarily mainly on a mercenary army, often in revolt, for their Bengalees could not fight the stalwart peasants who entered the army of the Kings of Behar, and their fleet could not always protect the weak side of the capital ; but they covered the city with great structures, opened " broad, straight streets, lined with trees," and built inner and outer embankments of this kind :—
" The boundary embankments still exist; they were works of vast labour, and were, on the average, about 40 ft. in height, being from 180 ft. to 200 ft. thick at the base. The facing throughout was of masonry, and numerous buildings and edifices appear to have crowned their summits; but the whole of the masonry has now disappeared, and the embankments are overgrown with a dense jungle, impenetrable to man, and affording a safe retreat for various beasts of prey. The eastern embankment was double, a deep moat, about 150 yards wide, separating the two lines. A main road ran north and south through the city, its course being still traceable by the remains of bridges and viaducts. The western face of the city is now open, and probably always was so, having been well protected by the Ganges, which, as already observed, ran under its walls. In the centre of the north and south embankments are openings, showing that these fortifications had been perforated, to afford ingress to and egress from the city. At the northern entrance there are no remains, but at the southern still stands the Kutwalf Gate, a beautiful ruin, measuring 51 ft. in height, under the archway. Within the space enclosed by these embankments and the river, stood the city of Gour proper, and in the south-west corner was situated the Fort, containing the palace, of which it is deeply to he regretted that so little is left. Early in the present century, there was much to be found here worthy of notice, including many elegantly carved marbles; but these are said to have become the prey of the Calcutta undertakers and others for monumental purposes. On the roadside, between the palace and the DInigirathi river, there now lies, split in twain, a vast block of hornblende, which, having been carried thus far, has been dropped and left as broken on the highway, to bear its testimony against the spoilers. Surrounding the palace is an inner embankment of similar construction to that which surrounds the city, and even more overgrown with jungle. A deep moat protects it on the outside. Radiating north, south, and east from the city, other embank- ments are to be traced running through the suburbs, and extending in certain directions for thirty or forty miles. These include the great causeways, or main roads leading to the city, which wore constructed by Sultan GbiyasuddIn. The greater part of them were metalled, and hero and there they are still used as roads, but most of them are, like those within the city, overgrown with thick jungle."
Within the embankment, ten miles by three, the Kings con- structed splendid mosques by the dozen, palaces, public build- ings, deep and huge reservoirs, and so many houses, that after three centuries of spoliation " there is not a village, scarce a house, in the district of Maldah (which is as big as an English county), or in the surrounding county, that does not bear evidence of having been partially constructed from its ruins. The cities of Murshiclabaci, Mtildah, Rajmalil, and Rangptir have almost entirely been built with materials from Gour, and even its few remaining edifices are being daily despoiled." The Kings built in brick and stone, and used for many mosques a material which Mr. Ravenshaw calls marble, but is more like what a hard free-stone would be if it could be a deep coal-black. The quarries from which this material was obtained are still, as far as we know, uncertain ; but it must have existed in enormous quantities ; it took the chisel perfectly, and it appears inaccessible, even in that destructive climate, to the effect of time. We have seen a mantelpiece of it, engraved with the Mahommedan profession of faith, known to be eight hundred years old, and the letters, cut to the depth of a line, are as clear as if the work had been done yesterday. The Gour architects built splendid Saracenic arches, gate-ways, and domes, and spared no expense or time on elaborate decora- tion, in a style which deserves separate study, for it marks the deep influence of Hindoo antiquities on men who were certainly Mussulmans, and probably Moors from Spain. There is evidence that the grandeur and luxury of the city made a deep impression in Asia, for in one or two of the later Arabian stories it is treated as country-folk treat London ; while its civilisation and polish so impressed the people, that to this hour a Bengalee Pundit desirous of describing and honouring his native tongue, calls it not Bengalee, but Goureyo bhasha, " The tongue of Gour," just as a Frenchman says, "That is Parisian."
And then, as it were in a day, the city died. The native tra- dition is that it was struck by the wrath of the Gods, in the form of an epidemic which slew the whole population ; but it is more reasonable to believe, with Mr. Ravenshaw, that an epidemic, probably akin to cholera, finished a ruin partly accomplished by war, and by the recession of the Ganges, which, after cutting its way into a channel four miles off, is now slowly cutting its way back again. Mr. Ravenshaw, who was for many years Magistrate in Maldah, and bad, unlike most Anglo-Indians, a keen interest in all around him, says :—
" In A.D. 1575, Munfm Khan, Akbar's governor, then established at Tondah, charmed with the situation of Gour, moved thither his troops
and all the public offices. The season being unhealthy at the time, this vast influx of inhabitants caused a pestilence in the city ; the mortality was so peat, that the people were no longer able to bury or burn their dead. The corpses thus left were thrown into the moat, the river, or the numerous reservoirs, and the stench arising from them necessarily aggravated the plague. The few that survived left the city, which was never again populated to any extent. Proof of the abrupt abandonment of the place, consequent on this disaster, is to be found in the many relics and the large sums of money that have been dug up from the ruins in later years."
It is the suddenness and completeness of the exodus, indicating mad panic, which induces us to suspect that the epidemic was new and that it killed quickly, and was akin either to cholera, which first broke out in Lord Hastings's camp in the same way, or to the Black Death, which has occasionally at intervals desolated districts in Bengal. The people contracted a horror of their city, they left it to be buried in jungle, and though the few poverty- stricken people living near plunder it incessantly to sell the fragments to builders, much of it is still untouched and un- explored, protected by its repute for snakes, wild beasts, and a deadly form of malaria.
This city is only fifty miles from Moorshedabad, the centre of a British district, and the seat of the deposed Nuwabs, yet it is more unknown to most Anglo-Indians than Babylon or Perse- polis. There is, as far as we know, no account of it more modern than Chreigh ton's, though a paper about it may be buried in the " Transactions " of the Asiatic Society ; and the Government of Bengal, whose pride it ought to be, neither protects, nor explores, nor describes it. It has no entry in the last complete edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and a bare mention in Chambers's more popular collection. More unlucky than Cambodia, it will pass away piecemeal, stolen in morsels, to be sold for the lintels and doorsteps and doorways and pavements of the inferior houses of the neigh- bouring districts, and as Mr. Ravenshaw says, for the grave- stones of Calcutta, where, in a city of brick, on a delta without a stone, undertakers are at their wit's-end for anything that will bear a chisel and endure a month. We are a great people, and we make piece-goods, and we conquer Asia ; but were it not for Government we should make a canteen of the Taj, a barrack of the Pearl Mosque, and a quarry for officers' houses of the Cave Temples of Ellora.
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