INDIA 611 



operations, supported by restrictions imposed by the Sultan of Muscat. The Amir of 

 Afghanistan has continued to maintain a not unfriendly attitude. In 1910 he agreed to 

 the appointment of a joint commission for the settlement of boundary disputes, which 

 resulted in an agreement for the removal of outlaws from both countries to at least 

 fifty miles from the border. Tibet has suffered from more than one revolution, and the 

 end is not yet in sight. In 1910, the Dalai Lama, who had fled to China before the 

 British occupation of Lhasa, took refuge in India from the tyranny of the Chinese, and 

 was hospitably entertained, visiting the sacred sites of Buddhism. Afterwards, as a 

 result of the revolution in China, the Tibetans rose against the Chinese with more or 

 less success and invited the Dalai Lama to return. An agreement was concluded at 

 Lhasa in August 1912 between the Tibetans and the Chinese, in the presence of the 

 representative of Nepal, in accordance with which the Chinese garrison was to be 

 repatriated by way of India. But fighting subsequently broke out afresh. In these 

 troubles the Indian Government has taken no part, except by stopping a Mongolian 

 mission that wished to proceed from Calcutta to Tibet. With Bhutan, on the other 

 hand, relations have become more intimate. A formal treaty was executed in March, 

 1910, with the new ruler or Zimpon, whose full style and name is 5 Sris Ugyen Wang- 

 chuk. In July 1911, he was invested with the title of Maharaja and granted a salute of 

 15 guns; and at the Delhi Durbar, where he was a conspicuous figure in his Tibetan dress, 

 he was created K. C.S.I. Further east, at the end of the Assam valley, the wild tribe of 

 Abors murdered Mr. Williamson, a political officer, and most of his party in April 1911. 

 A strong military expedition, under the command of General Bower, moved into the 

 Abor country in October, an^l succeeded in punishing the culprits. Though there was 

 little fighting, the natural difficulties to be overcome were very great, owing to dense 

 jungle, steep hills, unfordable rivers, and perpetual rain or mist. An attempt to survey 

 the gorge by which the Brahmaputra cuts through the Himalayas one of the few un- 

 solved problems of geographers was not successful. At the same time a survey party 

 was sent out from Sadiya east through the Mishmi country toward Rima, where the 

 Chinese were said to be encroaching. 



Obituary. Among the native Indians who have passed away during the period the 

 most notable name is that of BEHRAMJI MERWANJI MALABARI, the Parsi social reformer, 

 who was born at Baroda in 1853, and died at Simla from heart failure on July 18, 1912. 

 His boyhood was straitened by poverty, and he was unable to pass beyond the matricula- 

 tion of the Bombay university. His first literary effort was a collection of Gujarati 

 verse, entitled Nitivinodo (1875). This was followed by a volume of English poetry 

 Indian Muse in English Garb (Bombay, j.Sj6) which was dedicated to Miss Mary 

 Carpenter, and attracted the notice of Florence Nightingale, Max-Miiller, Lord Shaft es- 

 bury and John Bright. Encouraged by letters from these, he now became a journalist 

 and devoted the rest of his life to the cause of social reform. In 1880 he became pro- 

 prietor and editor of the Indian Spectator, which he conducted almost unaided for 20 

 years. Since 1901 he had edited East and West. He will be remembered best for the 

 agitation he conducted for many years on behalf of Indian women, touring throughout 

 the country and thrice visiting England. The result was the passing, after bitter con- 

 troversy, of the Age of Consent Act in 1891, by which the age for consummation of 

 marriage in the case of a girl was raised from 10 to 12 years. Later undertakings of his 

 were to found the Seva Sadan, a society for the improvement of women by women, and 

 to establish with the help of native princes and others a sanatorium for consumptives 

 at Dharampur in Northern India. He also conceived, but did not live to carry out, the 

 foundation of a Morley chair for the philosophy of history at Bombay. Latterly his 

 health broke down and he lived the life of a recluse. He is understood to have refused 

 the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal and also knighthood, i ..;. 



A strong contrast is presented in SYEP ALI BILGRAMI, the most versatile Mahomme- 

 dan of his time, who died at Hardoi in Oudh on May 23, 1911. A half-brother, younger 

 by seven years, of Syed Husain, the first Mahommedan member of the Secretary of 

 State's Council, he was born at Patna in 1851. Educated first at Patna College, he 



