January 24, 1907 | 
NATURE 297 
A -PICTURESQUE HISTORY OF DACCA.* 
HIS very interesting and picturesque historical 
story portrays the dwellers in the land where 
the two great waterways of eastern India, the 
Brahmaputra and Ganges, unite before they fall into | 
the Bay of Bengal. It tells how they and their fore- 
fathers have by their persevering industry, ingenuity, 
and commercial ability made Dacca and its adjoin- 
ing predecessors, Rampal and Sonargaon, capitals of 
a kingdom which, though often disorganised by mis- 
government and robbe d by its neighbours, the Mughs 
and Assamese, yet always when allowed to manage 
its own affairs in peace rose again to be a busy and 
prosperous manufacturing city. 
The early history of these successive towns is trace- 
able in the annual popular religious festivals of the 
country. The two chief of these are, first, the 
Jamastami, held on the 23rd of the lunar month | 
Srabon (July-August), as the birthday of Krishna, 
tutelary god of the weavers of the incomparably fine 
muslins which had enriched the merchants of Dacca 
and its predecessors when weaving was the chief in- 
dustry, and, secondly, the Nangul- 
bundhi plough (nangul) making 
festival of Cheit 8 (March—April), 
of which an illustration is here 
reproduced. Both are admirably 
described in this book, but it is 
the last which creates the greatest 
and most universal popular 
enthusiasm, as being the birthday 
of the land and of the plough 
which tilled the fields of cotton 
whence the Dacca muslin was 
woven. 
The plough-god of the feast is 
Parasu-Rama of the two-bladed 
axe (parasu), whose first birth story 
was framed in western India by 
the fire-worshippers who made the 
household and altar fire their 
national god. In the Mahabharata 
he is the great-grandson of 
Bhrigu, the father of fire, whose 
son Richika, the fire-spark (richi), 
begot from the two sacred mother 
fig-trees the Banyan and Pipal, 
whence the altar fire was engen- 
dered, Jama-d-agni, the twin 
(jama) fires (agni). His wife was 
Renuka, the flower-pollen (renu), and their fifth 
son was Parasu-Rama. He slew his mother with 
his two-bladed axe, the two lunar crescents of 
the waxing and waning moon; and this story tells 
us in symbolical language that he was born as 
the generating seed to be ploughed into the earth 
when his flower-mother died. In his history, as 
told in this book (pp. 295-8), he fled to the source 
of the Brahmaputra to obtain pardon of the sin 
of matricide, and there God changed his axe to a 
ploughshare, which cleft the mountain and made 
a way to the sea for the holy river. In his western 
Indian legend he is said to have made the sons of 
the fig-tree rulers of India by conquering and slaying 
its Haiheya masters, who survive in eastern India as 
the Mughs, who gave their name to Maghada, now 
Behar. They were the first settlers in the Gangetic 
valley, and in the history of Dacca always attacked 
and robbed its people when they were unable to pro- 
tect themselves; and their successors, Parasu-Rama’s 
1 “The Romance of an Eastern Capital." By F. B. Bradley-Birt. 
Pp. x+349. (London: Smith, Eider and Co., 1906.) Price 12s. 6. net. 
NO. 1943, VOL. 75 | 
Pilgrims bathing in the Sacred River Gone the Nangul- -bundhi Festival. 
sons, ploughed the cotton fields which fed the looms 
of the Dacca weavers. Like the Kurmis who first 
grew cotton in the black soil of western India, they 
covered the country with water-tanks like those made 
by the road- and lake-making Sen king Ballal Sen, 
whose capital, Rampal, took its name from the 
plough-father Rama, whose sons peopled the Indian 
river valleys before the later traders, whose god was 
Krishna. 
The early history of the union of the farming, 
pastoral, and artisan founders of the Indian nation 
is told in the Gond poem the Song of Lingal, the 
Linga god. It says that Lingal united them as 
subjects “of the Tortoise (Kush), which in the primitive 
| national geography supports the earth floating on the 
ocean. The races thus united were the Naga- 
Kushikas, who with their successors, the Ikshvaku, 
sons of the sugar cane (iksha), laid the foundations 
of Indian society. The Nagas were the Haiheyas, 
whose empire, when they were conquered by the 
Mahrahtas in 1740 a.p., had shrunk to the Naga 
and Chutia Nagpur in Central 
were the sons of the Kusha 
countries of Nagpur 
India. The WKushika 
From ‘‘ The Romance 
of an Eastern Capital.” 
grass sacred to Krishna, the black antelope god, and 
it was with it that in their ritual his national earth 
altars on which milk libations were poured were 
thatched, and their Prastara, the magic rain-com- 
pelling wand borne by the high priest, was made of 
Kusha grass. These altars were by the Ikshvakus, 
who offered animal sacrifices, thatched with the boughs 
of a new sacred fig-tree, the Plaksha or Pakur (Ficus 
infectoria), and their Prastara was made of Ashva- 
vala (Saccharum spontaneum), wild sugar-cane grass. 
The Kushika marriage rite, which united each wedded 
pair by binding their hands together with Kusha 
grass, still survives among the Chasas and Koch 
Rajbunses, the chief cultivators of Oussa and eastern 
Bengal, and many other trading castes. 
The artisan and trading offspring of these pioneer 
races ruled Rampal when its kings were, at the close 
of the age when Buddhism was the prevailing re- 
ligion of India, the Pals. They belonged to the 
Subarna Bhanik clan, of which many of the richest 
merchants and bankers of Dacca are members, and 
which claims descent from the Naga Rishi and 
