59 
1890.] 
at Bhot Bdgan in Howrah. 
statesmen who wero laying the basis of the British Power in India. 
In practice, “ History,” says Arnold, “ has been beguiled, so to speak, 
from its proper business, and has ceased to describe the life of a Common- 
wealth,” much more so in respect of the history of this country under 
its peculiar circumstances. It is, therefore, from the bye-ways of history, 
personal narratives, accounts of travellers, published correspondence, 
and official reports, and authentic traditions, from materials in fact out 
of which history is constructed, that throads have been gathered and 
woven into the following story. The story itself, apart from many 
°f its interesting features and almost romantic character, has important 
bearings upon questions of the greatest moment which occupied the 
attention of the infant British Indian Government, and which still 
perplex its Council in its imperial growth. 
The first part of the retrospective inquiry leads to the time when 
the great Ghhiyattara Manwantara, 1 as the great famine of 1176 B. S. 
is called by the people of Bengal, was raging in its fiercest fury in the 
country, and decimating its people by thousands, when the streets of 
Calcutta were strewn with bodies of the dying and the dead, and when 
Governor Cartier was feeding daily 1 5000 people in the city. A little 
earlior than this catastrophe on the plains, a cruel and destructive war 
had broken out on the mountain heights and valleys on the frontier. 
The aggressive incursions of the ambitious Prithvi N arayan, chief 
of the Gorkhas, into the valley of Nepal, led to that great revolution 
m this State which subverted its tripartite rule, 2 and brought it under 
1 Ohhiydttara Manwantara the famine of 1176 B. 8. or 1770 A. D. Preoeded 
by three years of scarcity, and followod by threo years of plenty, it was strictly 
a one-year’s famine, but it was the most appalling and disastrous calamity that ever 
visited Bengal, or perhaps any other part of the world. It exhibited, in its course 
ft nd its Beqnel, Bnch harrowing and extensive scenes of dreadful suffering, pain, misery, 
disease and death, as to have obtained in our country the singular name of a man- 
wantara, which litorally means a poriod equal to 4,320,000 years, implying thereby 
that it was such a visitation as rocurs only at intervals of ceons, the ordinary names 
of famine durbhikaha (‘when alms are not obtainable’) and akala ‘bad time’ not 
e mg thought of sufficient significance. In fact, no Sanskrit dictionaries that I have 
consulted attach to Manwantara famine as its synonym. Some information on 
18 6 r eat famine will bo found in Sir W. Hunter’s Rural Bengal and in the letters 
0 Mr. Bogle (see Markham, p. cxxxix) who was himself an eye-witness of the cala- 
'O'ty , as well as in sundry notices and poems. 
Tripartite rule of Nepal. Bofore the Gorkha conquest of Nepal proper, 
d Was occupied by an agricultural and commercial race called Nowars, who had 
orrowed their arts and civilization from Tibet, and who encouraged trade between 
met and India by allowing it to be carried on through the Nepal passes. Their 
chiefs had the title of Mall (Sanskrit malla.) Since the death of the sixth king 
0 this dynasty, his dominions according to his directions, wero divided into three 
