# The Calcutta Review/Series 1/Number 3/Article 1

THE CALCUTTA REVIEW.
VOL. II.—No. III.
[Third Edition.]
Art. I.—1. Genealogical account of the Kulins, by Dhrubánanda Misra, Sanscrit, unpublished.
2. Kula-sára-sindhu, by Raghunandan Tarkabágish, Sanscrit, unpublished.
3. Mukhuti-kula-varnaná, Sanscrit, unpublished.
4. A Historical Fragment, Sanscrit verse, unpublished.
5. Sankarmálá, by Bhriguráma, Sanscrit, unpublished.
6. Kankálir Abhishámpa, or the malediction of Kankáli, by Rám Chunder Turkálankár.—Ratnakar Press, Calcutta.
Hereditary distinctions of tribes and classes appear to have prevailed in India from very remote times. The Hindus, with their usual fondness for all Brahminical ordinances, pretend that their four-fold division of castes was coëval with the creation. The pretension, ridiculous and futile as it is, proves, however, the antiquity of the institution; and as the classification corresponds to a considerable extent with the Egyptian mode of distributing offices and occupations, it is probable that an early intercourse existed between these two nations, especially since voyages by sea were not of yore forbidden to the Hindus. There is no extravagance in the supposition, that the route which the Berenice, the Sesostris, the Cleopatra, the Victoria, the Akbar, &c., are now taking every month with the overland mails from and to Bombay, had, centuries past, been marked by Hindu vessels trading on the Red Sea, and that these merchantmen had imported or exported many of the existing laws of castes and tribes.
Among the Hindus, as among the Egyptians, the priests occupied the first rank in society, and naturally commanded the veneration due to the guardians of religion and learning. The warriors and the merchants, who were entrusted with the preservation of the country and the supply of the comforts and necessities of life, enjoyed the second and third places in the commonwealth, while the Sudras, or slaves, destined for the ​service of the others, filled the fourth and last grade. The first three orders were distinguished by the appellation of the twice-born, and were invested with the sacred cord as the badge of their regeneration; the last were doomed to occupy the same position in India that was allotted to the slaves in the Grecian republics.
Disparities of rank and station are inseparable from human society, and the Hindu legislators, in causing this quadruple division, acted upon the principle that was observed by statesmen all over the world. The satraps of the Magian and Sabian countries, the free-born citizens of the Grecian states, the priests and warriors of Egypt, the patricians and plebeians of Rome, and the peers, grandees, segniors, ameers, &c., in other quarters, are evidences of conventional distinctions maintained by all nations. Some have everywhere endeavoured to rise above others. Even the most democratical states have not been free from aristocratic distinctions and influences. The vast majority of the human species has always submitted to the authority of the few that have exalted themselves above the common level; and these have invariably improved every opportunity of self-aggrandisement. It was not Nimrod alone, though he was the first on record, that began to be mighty on the earth. Many have since followed the “mighty hunter’s” example by struggling for superiority over their brethren.
These distinctions have, however, proved in India sad engines of corruption and human degradation. They have been considered, not as mere civil enactments intended for the well-being of society, and so capable of alteration and improvement, according to the mutations of times and circumstances, but as an integral portion of the Brahminical theology itself, alleged to have been ordained by God from the very beginning of the world, and therefore superior to modification and change. The different tribes are religiously enjoined to keep separate from one another, and to abstain on peril of their souls from intruding into each other’s professions. In their anxiety to place their own dignity upon the firmest footing, the Hindu legislators did not stop to consider or deplore the magnitude of the evils they were preparing for their country, or the hardness of the yoke they were imposing on millions of their species. The noblest families might deteriorate, and the meanest tribe might ameliorate itself, in process of time. Hereditary priests, warriors, mechanics and menial labourers might, by the vicissitudes of life, be all incapacitated in the course of a few centuries for their respective occupations, and yet be adapted for other duties; and if the country could not reap ​the benefit of their services in those departments, for which time and circumstances, though not their birth, had prepared them, the nation must be reduced to a stagnant state of semi-barbarism, and of imbecility both at home and abroad. And is not this sufficiently evidenced in the present degradation of this vast and magnificent empire? Has not the sad experience of hundreds of years imprinted, as with an iron pen, on the minds of all who have eyes to see, understandings to judge, yea, or even hearts to feel, the strongest conviction that this religious division into castes has, by detaching tribe from tribe and forcing important professions upon unwilling and perhaps unsuitable individuals, proved the real cause of India’s internal misery and external humiliation? What other nation under the sun has continued under foreign dominion for centuries and centuries without ever exhibiting the least impatience, or making the smallest effort for liberty and independence?
Before we can properly introduce the subject prescribed for this article to the notice of our readers, a few preliminary observations on the ancient annals of Bengal will not be misplaced. Although at present a most important division of Hindustan, containing the metropolis of British India and the seat of her Supreme Council, and peculiarly adapted by position and soil for commerce and trade, Bengal does not seem to have enjoyed much consequence in this vast empire, before foreigners were attracted thither for mercantile purposes. The silence of the old Hindu writers would incline us to the belief that it is for the most part alluvial land, and that originally the lower provinces were, in a great measure, comprehended in the unfathomed recesses of the deep;—that the present metropolitan residence of the British viceroy in the East, was, at one time, the bed of the mighty ocean! Forest and marshes probably occupied the soil as the sea abandoned it, and human habitations were subsequently formed, where tigers had once prowled and fishes disported. Who the original inhabitants were, or when they settled, can at this distant age only be a question of conjecture. That the existing occupiers of the soil are all descended from the Aborigines, we are not willing to believe. That these are all colonists and emigrants we are also loath to admit. That the wild hill tribes on the frontiers are the only relics of the first inhabitants cannot be proved to anybody’s satisfaction. The truth seems to lie between these varying propositions. The savage clans dwelling in the recesses of jungles and hills, are proper representatives of the people in their pristine condition. But of these, large numbers may have been humanized by amalgamation with more civilized emigrants. ​The most timid or untractable had probably preferred a wild independence in the thickets of hills and mountain-fastnesses to the yoke of more powerful intruders, or to incorporation with foreigners whom they could not expel. In the then imperfect state of navigation, the foreign colonists had perhaps poured in by land from the teeming plains of Hindustan Proper. From them Bengal must have derived its Hinduism and the Sanscrit literature. The present language is, in all likelihood, a commixture of the original wild dialect with the polished vocabulary of the Vedas and Purans. Indeed this province appears, on the emigration of new colonists, to have undergone similar mutations in men and language with its insular mistress of the west, where the Saxons and Normans amalgamated with the Aboriginal savages, though they were the means of driving a a wild free-spirited horde into inaccessible mountains and forests.
But whatever be the probable truth of these suppositions, it is almost undoubted that Bengal did not rise into importance so early as the other divisions of Hindustan. Whether the Brahminical theology was in any shape known and acknowledged from the very commencement of its population or not, certain it is that the study of Brahminical learning was not long carried on here with any celebrity or success. The Nuddea school, now so famous for its cultivation of the Nyaya, or Logic, is confessedly of modern institution. What the state of learning, philosophy, and theology, was, in this province, during or previous to its connection with the Magadha empire, does not clearly appear. The contempt with which it is still spoken of in the other divisions of India, and the absence of any traditionary or monumental proofs of its pristine glory, is a presumptive evidence of its primitive insignificance. Under the Buddhist family of the Pals, Brahminism must naturally have been on the wane, and little as the Shasters had before been studied, they must have been less so at this period. This is evident from the miserable condition to which the priests had been reduced under the Hindu kings that succeeded the Buddhists. In the reign of Adisur, the founder of the Sen or the medical dynasty, the ranks of Brahminism had not only been sadly desolated, probably owing to the persecution of his Buddhist predecessors, but the few that had escaped this catastrophe were found deplorably ignorant in their sacerdotal duties. Brahminism, it must be remembered, requires its ​ religious ordinances to be celebrated in Sanscrit, the pretended language of the gods, not unlike Romanism which enjoins its services to be performed in Latin, the ecclesiastical language of the western fathers. In Adisur’s reign, however, scarcely one Brahmin could read or understand the common services of their religion—to say nothing of the more solemn rites and ceremonies of the Vedas. Of Sagnic Brahmins, Bengal was wholly destitute. These priests were held in the highest veneration, because of their preserving, by daily offerings of fuel and clarified butter, the sacrificial fire lighted by their parents on the day of their nativity, and kept unextinguished for use in their funeral solemnities. Adisur was led to entertain a desire of celebrating a sacrificial feast, in order to avert the threatened consequences of a long and oppressive drought. This none but Sagnic Brahmins knew how to perform. The pious king felt not a little humbled to find that such characters were not procurable in his own dominions. In order to supply the deficiency, his eyes were naturally turned towards Upper India, the great theatre sanctified by the legendary acts of Krishna, and Rama,—where Vyas and Valmiki had tuned their poetic lyres—and which bore the same relation in point of learning and theological reputation to Bengal, that the continent did to England at and before the time of the Norman conquest. The king of Kanouj, the celebrated capital of Hindustan of classical fame, was applied to for a supply of Sagnic priests, who might perform the contemplated sacrifice, and by reviving the study of Sanscrit, restore the knowledge of Hinduism among their unlettered brethren of Bengal.
When the ambassadors from the court of Gour presented themselves before the king of Kanouj, five Sagnic Brahmins happened to be in attendance, who were induced, by the hope of improving their fortunes, to emigrate into Bengal. They were priests of a superior order, tracing their parentage to Rishis, of great reputation, and esteemed as members of the Sándilya, Káshyapa, Bharadwáj, Sávarna and Bátsya Gotras or tribes. The utmost respect and attention were paid to them on their arrival at Gour with their families, servants, and followers. According to the king’s wishes, they commenced without delay the solemn ceremony for which they had been invited. Vedgarva, Sriharsa, and Chhander chanted the Rich, Yajus, and Saman Vedas, while Dakska and Narayan officiated at the sacrifice. The innumerable princes and nobles that had been invited to witness the ceremony and partake of the banquet, wondered at the learning and ritual tactics of these Brahmins, whose reputation was hereby still more widely circulated. ​They were regarded both for their ritualistic experience and their reputed sanctity, as the superiors of the priestly classes, and even the servile adventurers who had followed their fortunes were honoured, as the leaders of the Sudra caste. But the new comers did not enjoy these favours with the modesty and magnanimity which became their distinguished rank and dignity. They affected to treat the Aboriginal or old Bengalee Brahmins with scorn and contumely. Instead of labouring to raise the indigenous priests by amalgamating with them, and of thus forming an united and compact body of native hierarchy, they continued as a separate and isolated order, and sowed the seeds of much heart-burning and jealousy.
The descendants of the five priestly emigrants from Kanouj had multiplied rapidly and overrun the whole country, when Bullal Sen, one of the successors of Adisur, ascended the Bengal throne. This prince was held in such high estimation all over Bengal, that the most extravagant fancies have been indulged, and the wildest tales invented, in order to connect his memory with the marvellous and the sublime. Poets have invested him with the dignity of a divine original, and described his infantile precocity in the most glowing colours. He has been represented as the son of the fluvial god Brahmaputra, who had deceived his mother by assuming the form of her own husband. His nativity is said to have taken place in the solitude of a thick forest, where his mother had been banished a few months before her parturition through the jealousy and treachery of his father’s two other wives. In these sylvan shades, and under the especial protection of Heaven, he passed his infantile days, undisturbed by the noise and distractions of towns and cities, and uncontaminated by the pleasures and irregularities of riotous society. His divine parent, “uxorius amnis,” as Horace would perhaps call him, instructed him in the different branches of a Hindu’s education, and in the tactics of war and diplomatic policy. While yet a boy, he is said to have exhibited extraordinary proofs of heroism and strength. He had discomfited, unassisted and alone, a whole host of disciplined troops, commanded by princes and veteran captains, and armed with all the weapons of native warfare.
As a king, Bullal appears to have been the friend and father of his people. The tranquillity which prevailed in his reign, enabled him to cultivate the arts of peace, and to reform the social institutions of his country. His affability and condescension were unexampled. But too much familiarity in such characters, unless balanced by more than ordinary wis​dom, scarcely fails to associate itself with some evil consequences or other. It is truly amiable in a prince to reduce himself in society to the level of his subjects, and engage himself actively in regulating conventional rules and laws. A danger, however, there is, lest by too familiar and close contact with those whom he ought to command and protect, and by too busily officiating in matters on which he had better be indifferent, he may contract invidious prejudices and form partialities, calculated rather to expose the infirmities of the man than exhibit the majesty of the sovereign. Notwithstanding his other virtues, he betrayed himself occasionally into levities and partizanships unworthy of a crowned head. The petty squabbles into which he was involuntarily led with certain of his own subjects,and the unworthy arts he employed to depress the Banker caste, have entailed everlasting infamy upon his name. The tribe of which many of the Seals, Mullicks, Dhurs, Deys, Dutts, Addys, &c., of the present day are members, and which appears to have sprung in a pure or mixed way from the last of the three twice-born orders of ancient institution, owes its existing degradation in Hindu society to the ignoble vengeance oi Bullal. This may probably be one reason for which the Bankers in a body subsequently embraced the doctrines inculcated by Chaitanya, and acknowledged the spiritual pupillage of the Goshayees as the lineal descendants of Nityananda. The system introduced by Chaitanya and the sectaries to which it gave birth, together with the lives and characters of its founders, would present very interesting subjects of speculation to Christian observers in the East.
Bullal Sen was not a little distressed to witness the jealousies and feuds, which distracted and disgraced the sacerdotal orders in his dominions. The descendants of the five colonists from Kanouj, many of whom had sadly degenerated from their fathers, boasted of their superior attraction, and behaved themselves with great haughtiness to the Saptasati, or old Bengalee Brahmins, despising them as a vulgar and degraded race, and insinuating suspicions on the purity of their origin. To restrain the vain arrogance of the one and to raise the deserving members of the other, were necessary to secure peace and encourage virtue. To bring on a general reconciliation between parties so prejudiced against one another, was altogether hopeless. For extraordinary evils, extraordinary and almost ano​malous remedies were necessary. The king accordingly formed the resolution of depressing the idle boasters of their genealogy by exalting the meritorious and the virtuous of their own body. There are always two ways of degrading men. They may either be actually reduced to a lower position and deprived of honours and privileges already in their possession; or others whom they have hitherto considered their peers may be exalted above their ranks, and then the upward motion of those that are promoted, must produce in those that are superseded an acute sense of an apparent motion downwards. The first way of degrading is ever an ungracious punishment, which worthlessness and mere negative vices do not always deserve;—the second is in truth nothing more than the reward of merit, though in its consequences it answers all the ends of moral discipline and government. Vain and unworthy boasters priding themselves on their Gotras must, when invidiously overlooked in a general distribution of favours, feel with all the keenness of a real humiliation, a kind of ignominous descent, on beholding their worthier compeers actually ascending above their level. The politic king of Bengal chose this latter mode of demeaning some by ennobling others. He knew that when the virtuous among the descendants of the Kanouj Brahmins were exalted, the vicious who could boast of nothing but their pedigree, would be necessarily depressed; while as the moral effect of this discrimination all would be stimulated to good and great efforts by the king’s readiness to reward virtue.
Accordingly he selected, from among the descendants of the sacerdotal colonists, those who had distinguished themselves by learning and good manners, and conferred upon them the honourable appellation of Kulins. The rule by which, according to tradition, he made this selection, is like all other oriental maxims more charming to the ear, as recited by Ghataks, than striking to the eye as realized in life. Without derogating from the capacities of human nature, we must frankly declare that we do not believe a single Brahmin, thus exalted by Bullal, lived up to the pretended standard of Kulinism. Good manners, humility, learning, reputation, pilgrimages, devotion, means of subsistence, self-mortification, and charity are the nine-fold qualifications of a Kulin. We should certainly congratulate human nature if the good king could conscientiously predicate as much for any of his favoured Brahmins.
The Kulins thus created were like privileged families elsewhere of diverse orders and transmissible in hereditary succession. The institution was accordingly liable to all the abuses to which hereditary honours are perhaps always subject. That ​these have their uses also, we do not deny. Respectable parentage is calculated to secure good manners, and to operate as an incentive to the practice of virtue. A nobleman naturally feels desirous of maintaining the dignity conventionally attached to his title, and of transmitting his escutcheon unsullied to his posterity. In the distinction to which he is exalted, society possesses a guarantee for his preservation of moral propriety and external decency. The forfeiture of his honour would render his name execrable, not only to the present generation, but to all his posterity for ages to come; and this fear must restrain him from violence and excess. And there is something enrapturing to the imagination in the thought of a noble family that has kept up its brilliancy for ages immemorial, and has passed unscathed the fiery trials of life, and escaped the desolating ravages of time. “It is a reverend thing,” says the master philosopher of modern times, “to see an ancient castle or building not in decay, or to see a fair timber tree sound and perfect; how much more to behold an ancient noble family which hath stood against the waves and weathers of time.” We are no Vandals, and can admire the monuments and relics of antiquity as in inanimate productions of nature, art, and genius, so also in living families of title and distinction. When we meet with the sons of Benjamin and Judah among the Jews, or those of Sandilya and Kashyapa among the Brahmins, we feel transported to the age of prophecy in the one case and of poetry in the other.
Notwithstanding, however, these uses and associations, hereditary honours are subject, as we have already declared, to many serious abuses. Nothing can be a more sorry spectacle than the sight of empty conceits of dignity unadorned with the gifts of nature and fortune, and unaccompanied by the recommendations of talent and virtue. It was a just reproach of idle boasters of family distinction, which John the Baptist, on the banks of the Jordan, levelled against the haughty Pharisees and Sadducees that solicited his baptism, when calling them a generation of vipers, he declared the vanity of their descent from Abraham. The experience of many ages and countries has convinced mankind, that idle boasters of noble genealogies generally depart from the virtuous career of their distinguished ancestors, from whom they derive their names and titles—as far, indeed, and as widely as the Pharisees and Sadducees of St. John the Baptist’s time had degenerated from Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.
The Brahminical Kuls which Bullal instituted contained ​radically still more prolific seeds of evil than similar institutions in other countries. In England, hereditary titles are held by temporal lords, or the laity alone, and are transmissible under the restrictions of the law only to the eldest sons, or next in lineal descent. If some peerages are spiritual, these are attached merely as official adjuncts and honours to the select few whose piety and learning “the king delights to honour.” As the guardians of religion and overseers of God’s household, they are certainly entitled to some distinction. But the English Bishops are not an order of hereditary hierarchy pretending to so much importance on the score of birth-right. Even the feudal prelacies of the dark ages were exempt from this abuse. The bishops of old popish days, though at the same time both pastors and warriors, and perhaps more dexterous as sons of Mars than as sons of the Church, were elected officers and vassals of the crown. They were not a race of hereditary priests uniting the temporal and spiritual swords under the same grasp, or simultaneously admonishing and coercing their flocks and villeins—the one to cultivate the peaceful dispositions of the Christian, the other to arm for battle and slaughter.
The Kuls of which we are speaking, are, however, temporal honours attached to hereditary spiritual families, and although they are not connected with the military vassalage of the feudal bishops, yet since villages and districts were settled upon them, they contained the germs of every description of tyranny, which in a more warlike country and under a longer continuance of its political independence, might have grown into full maturity. Among the Brahmins of Bengal, again, a Kulinhood descends to all male children lawfully begotten, and as these worthies do not scruple to multiply their wives to any extent, the propagation of their ranks surpasses all calculation. The country has accordingly been overrun with these hungry dignitaries, and has groaned under the burden of supporting and maintaining them. Even at the present day some unbroken Kulins will hardly condescend to work for their livelihood. As Brahmins they consider themselves entitled to all the good things which the country can produce, and as dignitaries they fancy they have a right to fleece the priests themselves. The disastrous consequences of such freaks, originally encouraged by a crowned head, and always unopposed by the populace, need no illustration in detail.
Neither are the Kulinhoods subject to forfeiture for personal delinquencies. Even the spiritual baronies of the middle ages have sometimes been subject to deprivations and forfeitures. But no criminality can affect the family honours of the Kulin ​Brahmins of Bengal; and this exemption naturally encourages vice and wickedness. Every new generation appears to depart further and further from the rule, which directed the original foundation of the order. We do indeed occasionally learn from tradition and doggrel ballad-mongers, of Kulin families being degraded for personal delinquencies. Such instances, however, even if these sources of information may be credited, were confined to the age of the Sen dynasty, who were the original founders and especial patrons of Kulinism. No discipline of the kind has ever been since exercised. Raghunandan Tarkálankár, one of the authors we have named above, proves by elaborate argumentation that such discipline is inadmissible in these days! The Brahmins themselves have never stirred a finger to uphold the purity of their order. It is, on the contrary, a favourite maxim with them that moral transgression cannot affect the dignity of one’s birth. The cow, they say, does not forfeit its superiority even if it take the most filthy food, nor can the swine partake of the cow’s sanctity even if it feed on grass, herbs, and water. The only sin which soils one’s Kulinism in their estimation, is an unequal marriage; but of this we shall have to speak in the sequel.
The Kulins formed by Bullal Sen and afterwards enlarged by Lukhmun Sen, were of diverse mels or orders. Of these four were considered primary, and are still held in the highest veneration. They took their designation from the places where at their own request they were allowed to settle, and they are to this day distinguished by the names of Fule, Khardah, Sarvénandi, and Bullavi. In these orders were comprehended the most meritorious of the descendants of the five colonists from Kanouj; that is, the most virtuous of the Banerjeas, the Chatterjeas, the Mookerjeas, the Ghosauls, and the Gangoolies. Of the family of Butt Narayen, that is the Banerjea family, two persons were raised, Maheswer and Makarand; of the sons of Daksha, that is the Chatterjeas, Bahurup, and Arabind were honoured; Utsava was the only member of the Mookerjea family descended from Sriharsa that was distinguished; three of the Ghosauls or sons of Chhander, viz. Ingad, Govardhan, and Kanu, and two of the Gangoolies or descendants of Vedgarva, viz. Shisho and Rodhaker were likewise exalted. These were all the principal Kulins raised to dignity by king ​Bullal, and they were designated either after one or other of the four mels already named, or from the family to which they were respectively attached. The Ghosauls and the Gangoolies comprehended three other distinctive appellations after three of their sons of fame, viz. Putitandi, Kanjilaul and Kunda.
Lukhman Sen, the son and successor of Bullal, followed up and improved the heraldry instituted by his father, and enlarged the names and orders of the Kuls to an enormous length. The primary orders were left untouched. The inferior or secondary mels were spun out into nearly thirty subdivisions. By these intricate multiplications of high-sounding titles, the king may have rendered himself pope among his Brahmins, but he benefited neither his family, his country, nor any body else, except perhaps the Kulins themselves and the Ghataks. His posterity were deserted by these very dignitaries on the approach of Mehomed Bukhtyar at the head of his victorious army flushed with the conquest of Behar. In his old age, the last prince of the Sen dynasty was obliged to surrender his crown into the hands of the Javans, and betake himself to an ignominious flight. His sceptre was wrenched from his hand by the followers of the impostor, and the land of the Kulins and Shrotriyas was deprived of its independence and shorn of its glory. The very reigns which had mustered such a dignified array of newly-created titles numbered the days of freedom and liberty in Bengal, and introduced all the miseries of the iron age, which the old sages are said to have predicted with such piteous forebodings, and under which the country smarted for many a tedious century.
Besides these Kulins, another order of Brahmins was honoured in Bullal’s time, who were called the Shrotriyas. The descendants of the five Kanouj Brahmins, though at first they had avoided all intercourse with the Saptasati or aboriginal Brahmins of Bengal, were subsequently induced to accept their daughters as wives. The offspring of these marriages were considered inferior to their fathers, but superior to their ​mothers and maternal grand-sires. They had half the blood of Kanouj, and were therefore esteemed superior to the aboriginal priests, and they had half the blood of the Saptasatis, and so were held inferior to their fathers. The most meritorious of these persons the king honoured with the title of Shrotriyas. They had this privilege among others, that the Kulins might marry their daughters without prejudice to their ranks, They have accordingly proved a connecting link between the Kulins and the Saptasatis. Their houses are the authorized nurseries for breeding wives for the exalted Brahmins; and they take no small pride in reflecting on the importance which this honour imparts to their class. They are the appointed instruments of propagating the Kulins, of whom they are both fathers-in-law and maternal grand-fathers.
What enhances the value of this privilege is, that the Kulins cannot marry women from any other families, not even from the subordinate Kulins themselves, without degrading their offspring. This brings us to the intricate laws of matrimony as they are binding upon the Kulins. A transgression against these laws is the only delinquency which can disable a titled family. The effects of the disqualification cannot, however, reach the delinquent himself, who continues in the full possession of his honours as long as he lives. It is his offspring who suffer from this discipline of Brahminical heraldry.
The Kulins are strictly forbidden, on pain of forfeiting their title, to receive wives from families that are inferior to themselves, with the exception of the Shrotriyas just mentioned. When this rule is transgressed, although the delinquent himself does not suffer personally, his kul is pronounced to be broken or dissolved. He himself dies, as he was born, in the enjoyment of his honour; but his offspring forfeit the title, and the glory of the family becomes tarnished. It is impossible to conceive the reason for which the Brahmins have rendered their kuls so invulnerable in other respects, and yet so easily dissoluble by a lawful, though unfashionable, union. Whatever be the philosophy of the law, it has produced beneficial effects. So exuberant are the Kuls, in consequence of their descending equally to all legitimate sons, begotten through multitudes of contemporaneous wives by the same fathers, that whatever tends to thin their ranks must be considered a blessing to the country. Such increasing swarms of lordly Brahmins could not fail to be a pest to the people.
This disqualifying law has not stood a dead letter in works on the Kuls. Occasions have often presented themselves for ​its execution. Matrimonial alliance with the Kulins has always been an object of ambition with the Brahmins. Not only the Shrotriyas, who are privileged by their very institution to bid for titled sons-in-law, but the inferior orders too, are to this day continually hunting after kuls to exalt their daughters by an honourable union. The lordly Brahmins are naturally flattered by this quest of their alliance, and do not fail to improve the connubial market to their best advantage. Prices are set upon their compliance in proportion to the demand, and to the risk the bridegroom incurs of forfeiting his title for his posterity. A Shrotriya can, for instance, prevail upon a Kulin to accept of his daughter with a smaller fee than one of inferior connections. In either case fees must be given before a wife will be received. A Kulin would, however, prefer a Shrotriya to any other, because his title would in that case stand unsullied. But avarice frequently overpowers hereditary pride. Larger bribes will often purchase a son-in-law of the highest family for the most despised classes. On such occasions the kul is pronounced to be incapable of further descent; and these cases are so frequent, that unbroken kuls of the primary mels are now rarely to be met with in many places.
Although an unequal marriage dissolves a person’s kul, his immediate descendants are not at once classed with the Vansaj, or common Brahmins. For four or five generations the recollections of their ancestral dignity secure for the sons of a broken Kulin great honour and distinction. They are treated like the younger sons of a privileged family in England, who, though they inherit not the title and the parliamentary seat, are in other respects not only addressed as lords or honourables, but also received in society as members of the nobility. The descendants of a Kulin, even after the disruption of his kul, are, for several generations, considered superiors in rank and dignity. The brightness and lustre of a noble family are supposed to be incapable of being tarnished at once and by a single act, though, the days of its glory are then numbered, and nothing will restore it to its primitive greatness. The immediate offspring of such a family are designated the sons of a Swakrita-bhanga, or self-broken Kulin, and esteemed as a second grade or inferior by one step only to untainted orders. The next generation is esteemed as the third in rank, and inferior by two steps to the highest class. This gradual deterioration continues unto the fourth and fifth generations, after which the glory of the family is obscured, and it sinks to the level of the commonalty. So many families have now been thus shorn of their pretended glory, that it is often difficult to find out unbroken kuls of the ​four primary mels. The present high Brahmins are chiefly those of broken families of the second and third generations. Many have already been induced to sacrifice their honours at the shrine of their avarice. It is strange that of the many broken kuls now in existence, though the cause has in every case been an improper marriage, scarcely one is known to have been compromised from feelings of love. In other countries, when persons of distinction are induced to marry below their level, the motive generally is personal attachment. With the Kulins of Bengal the case is far different. Mammon, “the least erected spirit that fell,” is the god at whose altar they sacrifice their titles.
The laws which regulate the marriage of Kulin females are cruelly stringent. These must not, on any account, be given to any but persons of an equal or superior grade. Neither the Shrotriyas, nor any inferior order, can aspire to the hand of a Kulin’s daughter. An indelible disgrace would be affixed upon such a prostitution of a girl of birth and family. But her hereditary honour becomes her heaviest misfortune. The greatest difficulty is experienced in settling her in life. The only circles from which a husband may be selected are in quest everywhere and by everybody. To outbid the Shrotriyas and others in the purchase of a noble bridegroom would require larger funds than many a Kulin can command. The greatest misery and distress are accordingly occasioned. To suffer a young girl incapable of rational occupations and intellectual amusements to remain in celibacy, would be to expose her virtue to too severe an ordeal. An uncultivated mind, destitute of the restraints by which education balances the animal passions, and unprotected by a husband’s tender care, must be subject to temptations of no ordinary power. Unmarried females in Christian communities, with the godly influences of the Gospel to regulate their lives, and literary pursuits to occupy and ennoble their thoughts, have often proved ornaments to their sex. The case would be different in a heathen country, and with minds untaught, and ignorant and unrestrained by principles. No parent here dares to risk his daughter’s virtue by allowing her to lead a single life. The institutions of Hinduism, too, denounce the fiercest anathemas against such conduct. The severest condemnation is passed upon a Brahmin that neglects to get his daughter married before she completes her tenth year. The most meritorious way of disposing her is to present her at the hymeneal altar when she is eight years old. The second best way is before her ninth year is terminated. ​At all events, her wedding should not be delayed beyond her tenth year. Longer procrastination entails upon the delinquent the guilt and infamy of infanticide. The distress and perplexity of a poor Kulin when his daughter attains the marriageable age are therefore inexpressible. He cannot give her away to a less dignified person than himself for fear of a lasting disgrace. His equals and superiors will not receive her without a large pan or dowry. To postpone the ceremony would be to fall under the lash of the Shasters. In this difficulty, necessity forces him often to procrastinate; and he prefers the silent rebukes of Manu and Narada to the living reproaches of his contemporaries. His only resource at last is to entreat some old Kulin, who has already made several profitable bargains in his life, to commiserate the misfortunes of an indigent fellow dignitary, and by adding to his long list of monied wives another piteous girl, to save a titled family from impending ruin. Compassion to a suffering brother may induce the superannuated polygamist to extricate him from his deplorable plight, especially since, at such an age, there is little prospect of his making a more lucrative husbandry of himself. In this way the Kulin father may free himself from his difficulty by giving away his young daughter as an additional partner of a decrepit brother dignitary. Parents have also been known, in their distress and perplexity, to present their daughters, with all the solemnities of a religious ceremony, to persons on their deathbeds, in order to evade the Shastric condemnation of suffering female offspring to remain asanscrita, or destitute of the matrimonial sacrament, and to avert the odium of offering them to inferior orders.
​That there are happy exceptions, we have the highest pleasure in recording; and this reflection is a great relief to the imagination. When a Kulin is well off in the world, and has with his title inherited an adequate fortune, he abstains for the most part from defiling himself by a disgraceful polygamy. It is impossible not to take delight in contemplating these cases. Such families are justly entitled to veneration for their ancient distinction. They remind us of old times without disgusting our feelings by unseemly and distressing spectacles. A second preservative against Kulin polygamy is witnessed when opulent Shrotriyas and others purchase a noble bridegroom at a good price, and then contrive to secure him from the temptation of multiplying his wives. In extreme cases they proceed to the length of obstructing the perpetration of such debasing acts by intimidation, and even more violent measures. Many families in Calcutta have in some such way procured monogamist husbands for their daughters. Thirdly, the Kuls, like other communities, have also sometimes presented extraordinary examples of virtuous men, who, from elevated principles and tender susceptibilities, have spared themselves the distraction, and their wives and children the misery, inseparable from multitudinous contemporaneous partners in life. Such instances are still more entitled to our respect and admiration. They exhibit the triumph of humanity over venality, and of conjugal affection over a tempting and legalized concubinage. With these exceptions, however, the Kuls are cruel engines of female misery and degradation. Neither age nor debility dissuades a person from contemplating new matrimonial contracts, and thereby sacrificing fresh victims to his avarice or waywardness. Death alone disables him from doing further mischief.
We cannot here help expressing our wonder at the readiness with which the Hindus of Bengal almost universally submit to this vicious institution, when the most orthodox and bigoted cannot plead any higher authority for its perpetuation than that of a mere temporal sovereign,—himself not a Brahmin. Where divine sanctions are pretended we may pity the ignorance, but cannot rudely assail the motive, however mistaken, or vilify the piety, however false. While, for instance, we can weep over the fanaticism and monstrous cruelty which exposed the infant or burnt the widow, we cannot severely vituperate the zeal which promoted it, though against knowledge. But the establishment of kuls is on all hands acknowledged to have been long posterior to the pretended age of Brahminical revelations. Neither Menu nor Vyas, neither the Shruti nor the Smriti have authorized the laws and rules of the Kulins and ​the Shrotriyas. A monarch of the medical tribe—itself a Sanker caste—legalized by his royal patent this degrading institution. And yet with the human knowledge of this human origin, the learned and unlearned, the educated and the uneducated, bend their necks without complaint or murmur to the galling yoke, and are content to undergo the suffering and misery with which it richly abounds. Neither the tender susceptibilities of the husband and the father, nor the ennobling principles of the scholar and the philosopher, are found sufficient for curing the evil. The heart-rending cries of female victims, and the soft suggestions of knowledge and education, yea, and the powerful voice of justice and humanity are silenced with equal ease by the charms of the almost talismanic instrument of Bullal’s invention.
The kuls of which we have hitherto been speaking are of the Rariya Brahmins, so called from the locality where they settled, and distinguished by the favours which Bullal and his son had heaped upon them. But there is another class of Brahmins likewise descended from the five Kanouj emigrants, who have also similar distinctions among themselves. The Sagnic Brahmins, whom Adisur had naturalized in Bengal, were held in the highest estimation all over the country, and the superior sacrificial feast celebrated with so much pomp and grandeur at which this holy fraternity officiated, had attracted the notice, and almost excited the envy, of all surrounding princes. Birmallah, in particular, the king of Barender, felt emulous of the glory which Adisur, his son-in-law, had acquired by his solemn festivities, and desired to impart a similar lustre to his own dominions by celebrating an equally splendid sacrifice himself. He accordingly applied to the king of Gour for five Brahmins of the Kanouj family, who might realize this object, ​and naturalize themselves in his kingdom. Adisur acceded to his father-in-law’s wishes, and presented him with five priestly grafts from his Kanouj stock. These Brahmins, thus separated from their brethren, received the designation of Barenders from the province where they settled, and gradually became entirely a distinct class. The descendants of the first emigrants were thus divided into two branches,—the Rariyas and the Barenders, which eventually considered themselves as separate races, and refused all manner of alliance and intercourse among themselves, either by marriage or the interchange of hospitality.
The royal patron of the Barenders did not fail to imitate the example of his friend of Gour in creating Kulins and Shrotriyas among his Brahmins. Eight families were distinguished by the former honourable title, and eight by the latter. The Moitras, the Bhims, the Rudras, the Sandels, the Lahurys, the Sdahobs, the Bhaders, and the Bhaduris, were made Kulins:—the Karanjans, the Nandabasis, the Nauris, the Atars, the Bhandashalis, the Kamdebs, the Champatis, and the Jhampatis, were reckoned as Shrotriyas. This classification must have been made at a later period, when the five grafts had ramified into many families.
Bullal Sen was not satisfied with honouring the most deserving of his priests. He instituted Kulinships among the Kayasthas also. These were the descendants of the third twice-born order by females of the servile caste, and filled an intermediate grade between the regenerated and the slaves. Intermarriages among the several castes, though not encouraged, were tolerated in the first ages of Hinduism. The superior orders were indeed prohibited from giving their daughters to their inferiors, but they were allowed to accept wives from their ranks. The offspring of these mixed marriages were called Sankers, or half-castes, who were considered a distinct race from their fathers and mothers. The mixed tribes thus produced had attracted notice as early as the days of Menu, who distinctly mentions them as separate orders, and legislates for them in his institutes. The Sankarmálá, a chapter in the Paràshara Paddhati, one of the works at the head of this article, expressly treats on this subject, describing the original, and defining the professions of these people.
The five priestly emigrants from Kanouj were accompanied by five servants or followers. Sriharsa was attended by Makaranda Ghose,—Chhander by Dasharatha Bose,—Daksha by Kalidas Mitter,—Narayen by Purushottam Dutt, and Ved​garva by Dasharatha Guha. These five servants were the progenitors of the most respectable Kayasthas of Bengal, known among Europeans, and described in the Sankarmala as the writer caste, living by their pens. The royal munifience of Bullal was not exhausted by the honours he distributed among the Brahmins. He proceeded to distinguish their followers too. But as the highest privilege of the unregenerated classes was to acknowledge vassalage to the regenerate, the king inquired of the Kayasthas whether they professed servitude to the Brahmins. Ghose, Bose and Mitter, made a plenary confession of their dependence on the twice-born, and declared themselves absolutely and unreservedly their servants and bondsmen. This abject submission was naturally gratifying to a monarch who fawned on the priests, and patents were immediately issued, conferring the title of Kulins on the Ghoses, the Boses, and the Mitters. Dutt was not equally compliant. He evinced an independent or refractory spirit, and refused to enroll himself in the list of vassals to the Brahmins. He professed only to have accompanied the Sagnic emigrants from Kanouj, but repudiated the idea of villeinage to any body. This sensitiveness was considered a sufficient reason for withholding the royal favour from him. His sentiments of personal independence, and his descent from the Kanouj stock, were, however, so far appreciated as to procure for him the privilege of intermarrying with his more fortunate brethren. The poor Guha proved the most unlucky. The very mention of his family appellation reminded the monarch of his name-sake, the king of the Chandals spoken of in the Ramayana; and this unhappy association prejudiced him most sadly in the estimation of the whole royal court. His origin was considered suspicious, and a degree was conferred upon him, rendering him noble only among the Bangaj or aboriginal Kayasthas.
In order to represent at one view the peculiar features of this privileged creature of Bullal’s policy, forming the subject of the present article, we shall here fill up some of the preceding outlines, and make a faint exhibition of the Kulin’s many-coloured life and character. The word Kulin suggests to an oriental mind, the idea of a high-caste and well-bred, though not necessarily a wealthy Brahmin,—born, probably, under the protection of his maternal relatives, and apparent ​heir of moveables and immoveables, rather by right of his mother than of his father. We do not of course mean that he inherits his Kulin escutcheon from his mother, or her progenitors. But we may fairly suppose him to be more tenderly fondled by his maternal than his paternal uncles, and to contract greater intimacy with his cousins by the mother’s than the father’s side. If happily he comes into the world as the first-born of his father’s best-loved wife, he fortunately enjoys a larger share of his affections than his step-brothers. But whether he chances to be his father’s pet or not, he is sure to be his mother’s. Her fondest hopes are concentrated in him. Her imagination kens nothing but scenes of brightness and lustre in his future auspicious career in the world. She will not be able to tell anybody what she expects him to be,—still less can her fancy chalk out the line or the profession she hopes he may successfully follow;—but she often dreams of the golden stars by which he will, perchance, adorn the escutcheon of the family—the splendour of wealth and reputation by which he may ornament the dignity of his birth. She feels herself already transformed from the wife of a heartless, and perhaps vagrant and beggarly polygamist, into the mother of an affectionate and illustrious son.
In common with all Hindu boys, our infant Kulin is religiously introduced at the age of five to a family tutor, and begins to handle the Khari under his direction. He has now to go over his alphabet regularly once every day, and to repeat his arithmetical tables after the dictating guru. This is, however, no heavier burden than all his little friends of the higher orders have to sustain. But the peculiar dignity of his parentage subjects him to the additional labour of mastering a dry catalogue of jaw-crashing epithets, catechetically taught him, respecting the origin and distinction of his family. He is called upon to remember the names of his fathers for several generations: their mel, their gotra, the venerable founders of their family, and various other jargon, which he neither understands nor cares for, and to which his articulating organ can scarcely give utterance. About the age of nine or ten he is ​sacramentally invested with the holy string which marks the Brahmin, and which inducts him to his birthright privilege of receiving the homage and adoration of those around him. The self-complacent pride which this investiture produces is, however, associated with a smart operation which, in his age, he dislikes as much as he likes to be considered a god incarnate. At his consecration his ears must be bored through with sharp needles, and the holes kept open by the insertion of pins or ear-rings. His consecration renders him eligible for the other Sanskar, or sacrament of marriage. And now the eyes of Ghatakas are turned towards him. These are Brahmins who live, as has been described in a previous note, by procuring and promoting matrimonial contracts between different parties. A Kulin’s connection is always in quest, especially while a bachelor; and these negotiators of marriage-treaties find a character of this kind a profitable instrument to work by. Neither do the relations of the bridegroom fail to make the most they can of the opportunity. Before he is perhaps full fourteen—often when still younger—the troth is made in his name, the treaty signed, the ceremony performed, and the boy of fourteen is tied to and made to sleep with a girl of eight! If the bride’s friends be wealthy, and can secure his person in their own house, the boy is preserved from the further intrigues of Ghatakas, and from the toils of polygamy. If he continues to reside under his paternal, or rather maternal roof, he is constantly in danger of being ensnared into a second and third marriage. His own inclination or interest may also lead him, when of age, to add a few more names to his list of wives. The Kulin is seldom satisfied with one wife at a time; he generally owns a number. It is difficult, however, owing to no public registration of Hindoo marriages, to calculate an average of the number. We have authentic information of a person marrying, within the last century, no fewer than 180 wives, and we know persons that have had as many as twenty. We also know, and cheerfully confess, on the other hand, that several have repudiated altogether the privilege of multiplying their wives. We may, however, safely say, that polygamy is the rule among the Kulins, notwithstanding our inability to give an exact average number of their wives.
To feed many wives, or to keep a quiet house with so many jealous and sensitive rivals, is no easy work. The Kulin is therefore obliged to allow them to live in their paternal mansions, and selects the richest or the fairest to keep house with himself. The others he can only visit occasionally; and, when he does so, he finds the visitation not altogether unprofitable. ​He seldom undertakes these journeys without substantial tokens of attachment from his wives’ relations. If his general residence or head-quarters be fixed in or near the metropolis, he pursues some avocation for bettering his circumstances in life. The priestly profession—at least that branch of it which may be likened to the curacies in England, with large flocks but scanty subsistence, he seldom undertakes. The office of such humble parochial ministers is not held in high repute among the proud Brahmins of India. The Sankarmala, which we have placed as one of the titles of this article, allots to it the sixth rank in society, below two of the lower and one sankar orders themselves. The Kulin aspires to the situation of a gentleman at large; and even if the title he inherits by his birth be a mere empty honour, and he be forced to subsist upon the bounty of his wife’s relations, he never foregoes his ambition to retrieve his fortune, nor gives up his fond notions of self-dignity.
Tha Kulin’s visits to most of his wives being few and far between, the moral influence of his absence from them has generally been supposed to be subversive of their conjugal fidelity. The supposition does not, perhaps, proceed from a wilful disregard of charity, but it is a certain sign of great ignorance, with reference to the domestic lives of the Hindus. Sexual impurity is, it is true, scarcely considered a sin in the males; but in females nothing is held more execrable or abominable. The unhappy inhabitants of houses of ill fame are looked upon as the most degraded of the human species. A Hindu, however dissipated himself, would sooner destroy than tolerate a wife of the least moral stain in his house. The women, too, except perhaps in the lowest ranks of society, consider matrimonial faithfulness as their first and paramount duty, notwithstanding the irregularities to which their husbands may be addicted. It is, in fact, the only virtue which they care to preserve, and to the unspotted maintenance of which their whole hearts are devoted. But this reflection, so honourable to the wife, renders the guilt of the wayward husband proportionably aggravated.
​But in our anxiety to preserve uninterrupted the thread of our Kulin narrative, we are committing, perhaps, a more that venial trespass against the learned Bhattacharyas, whose works are superscribed at the head of this essay. The genealogical tables by Dhrubananda Misra are held in the greatest repute in Bengal. They contain the names of the different kuls and their members from the time of their settlement by Bullal, Lakhman and Devibara, and are considered as authorised judges of family pretensions. Those by Vachaspati Misra, though they are not before us at this moment, are also received as decisive authorities. But Dhrubananda and Vachaspati, like many other judges and doctors, are sometimes found to disagree among themselves. On such occasions, if all attempts to reconcile these authors prove ineffectual, private individuals are obliged to decide for themselves. But wherever the masters of heraldry are consentient, the Brahmins exclude private judgment with the same vehemence with which Romanists denounce individual opinions against their pretended catholicity. Those, however, who are singly subject to error and inaccuracy, may, in certain cases, be so collectively too, for a series of fallibles will not amount to a constructive infallibility; and where an exemption from mistakes and misapprehensions cannot be proved from higher evidences, one can scarcely be called self-opinionated in suspecting the correctness, either of the Indian Ghatakas or of the Popish saints, especially since both have been over zealous of exposing their fables and genealogies to the public gaze.
The Kula-Sara-sindhu is an able, though not an authorized work on the Kuls, containing a delineation of their laws, and giving the genealogy of the Banerjeas. The author disclaims all pretensions to the veneration claimed by the Ghatacks, or any desire of superseding the professions and sharing in their fees. He writes at the request of his personal friends, who had looked for a discursive treatise on the subject from his pen. The Mukhuti-Kula-vernana is a simple genealogy of the Mukerjeas, compiled by some private individual, and valuable to these families as a work for reference.
The Historical Fragment we have quoted, is a valuable and interesting composition. We have styled it a Fragment, both because it chronicles events only in a passing way, and as an introduction to a dry genealogy of the Kulins, and because we are at this moment in possession of a fraction alone of the work. It commences anonymously with a high eulogium on the dignity of the Brahminical caste. It is more meritorious, according to this author, to recount the virtues of the twice-born than the exploits of the gods themselves. Sandilya, Kashyapa, Sa​varna, and others appear here in more brilliant colours than Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Rama, Porusharama, Judhisthira, Vikramaditya, and all other crowned heads had delighted to honour and worship the Brahmins, and endowed them with the sovereignty of the world under them. The age of Adisur is next described. The poetic author gives a somewhat different account of the occasion which introduced the priestly emigrants into Bengal, than what we have delivered in the preceding pages, and what is generally received in the present day. The king of Gour is represented as aspiring to the empire of the world, and despatches messengers to his brother of Benares to demand homage and tribute. A wordy demonstration of power, and a pretension of authority founded upon rhetoric, seldom prevail in turning an independent monarch into a tributary vassal;—nor would the sceptred lord of Shiva’s own capital—the mansion of the gods, superior to Heaven itself—readily acknowledge fealty to the chief of a lower province, treated with solemn contempt in the ancient shasters, or recognised only as the unenviable haunt of savages and wild beasts. Even a British Governor-General of India, with all his guns and cannons, found it no smooth work, at a subsequent period, to mulct a Rajah of Benares. The feeling generated in the mind of Beer Sing, on the demand of tribute by Adisur, was accordingly unmingled pity at the infatuated ambition of an ignorant and upstart Bengalee. Even the priests in that eternal city knew the tactics of wars, and were masters of state policy. The Brahmins had been inured to the use of warlike implements as dexterously as their sacrificial grass and incense. The ambassador was put to the blush and returned to Gour. He portrayed in glowing colours the majesty and glory of the celestial city, the Brahmins whereof, unlike the pigmy priests of Bengal, proved impregnable bulwarks by the power of their superior sanctity and military skill. The king of Gour was struck by the report of his emissaries, and resolved to wipe away the disgrace of his country, and increase its strength and magnificence by procuring a supply of Sagnic priests from Benares. Five Brahmins were thus invited down to Bengal, whose names and gotras were the same as we have before related, and the king settled on them and their posterity five of the most pleasant districts in his dominions.
The Kulins of Bullal’s creation are also differently numbered in the Fragment from the Misra’s works. Of the sons of Bhutt Narayen (the Banerjeas) six are said to have been originally made Kulins and ten Shrotriyas; of Daksha’s sons (the Chatterjeeas) four Kulins and eleven Shrotriyas; of Chhander’s ​(the Ghoosalls) six Kulins and four Shrotriyas; of Sriharasa’s (the Mookerjeas) three Kulins and one Shrotriya; of Vedgarva’s (the Gongoolys) three Kulins and eight Shrotriyas. Although contrary to the common belief, the narrations of the Fragment appear more probable than the generally received traditions. It is more consonant to reason that a king should be induced, from political motives, to invite and honour the exotic Brahmins aforesaid, than that he should disoblige his native priests, and set his heart upon the Sagnics for the purpose of a sacrificial banquet. Bullal, too, is herein mentioned only as one of the successors of Adisur, without being definitely represented as his own son or immediate successor. This harmonizes better than the popular legends with the supposition, that the descendants of the emigrant Brahmins had multiplied largely when the kuls were created. The Fragment also asserts, what no one dares contradict, that while the shasters speak of Gotras and other Brahminical distinctions, they do not uphold the system of the Kulins, which is entirely a fabrication of Bullal’s own head. The Sankarmala, to which we have made reference at the head of these remarks, helps to establish this latter point beyond the possibility of a doubt. This is a little work attributed to Bhriguram, one of the incarnations of the Deity, and the peculiar patron of the Brahmins. It treats of the origin of the many castes into which Hindu society is now divided. Four races alone are recognised as coëval with the creation and of divine institution. All others are pronounced to be half-castes, or the offspring of mixed parents. This amounts to the depreciation of all Hindoo orders as Sankars, except the Brahmins and the Kshetriyas; for there is no distinct classes now extant of pure Voishyas and Sudras. We are hereby reminded of a remark which the Bengalee versifier, Ram Chunder, to whose production we shall presently turn, makes in his ballads. He hesitates, from a feeling of delicacy, to treat too minutely of the inferior and degraded Kulins. The Gods, says he, are pleased when their rise is celebrated; men are offended when their originals are described. The Sankarmala justifies this sensitiveness, if it exist anywhere. To depict the vast majority of a people as the illegitimate issue of a quasi spurious union, is an insult to the whole nation, if not to humanity itself. Strange, that the Hindus submit to this daring insolence of their haughty priesthood.
​The metrical composition in Bengalee, the last work which heads this article, treats of the history of Adisur and Bullal, with a full admixture of the marvellous and the romantic, and, what disgraces all Bengalee versifiers, of the indecent and the impure. Adisur is represented as originally a Gandharva, and his wife as a fairy attendant on the Goddess Doorga;—both condemned afterwards for an unlawful intimacy formed in Heaven to bear the burden of human existences as husband and wife under the sun. The banishment of the queen, a few months before her parturition, the nativity of Bullal in a forest, the emigration of the Brahmins, the solemnity of the sacrifice, the formation of the Kulins, are all described substantially, as we have already represented, but with the wild exuberances of an extravagant and unchastened fancy. Note, for instance, the following story:—The animal selected for the burnt offering gets loose and betakes itself to the forest, where the king’s son passed his infancy solitary and unknown. Bullal takes a fancy for the beast and adopts it for domestication. The pursuers of the deer from the royal household are repulsed by the Sylvan infant. Servants after servants repair to the forest, but fail to redeem the beast from Bullal’s custody. The exigences of the sacrifice required that identical animal, and a detachment is ordered under the command of officers and nobles,—but to no purpose. Bullal overthrows them all. The report of this Lilliputian hero fills the whole country with consternation. He is taken for a supernatural asura or giant incarnate, who must be hunted down for the security of the kingdom. The monarch, with all his royal guests, arms for the battle. Bullal overpowers them all and kills the king. The news of Adisur’s death afflicts the banished queen, at whose intercession the king is miraculously restored to life. The father, mother, and son then recognise each other and return to Gour.
The preceding sketch of Kulinism sufficiently depicts its baneful effects on society. Polygamy is almost inseparable from its continuance. By contracting the circle from which to select husbands for the females of distinguished families, and by presenting over-powering temptations to the males to marry ad infinitum and beyond their own spheres, it forces parents to bind several wives under the yoke of a common husband. This necessity becomes the sterner and the more pressing because of the positive prohibition of female celibacy in the Shasters. The rules of Kulinism are accordingly fairly chargeable with all the evils of a gross polygamy which it necessitates and fosters. So long as these rules are not revised or the institution itself disregarded, female degradation must be perpetuated; ​and since the condition of the one sex exercises a sympathetic influence upon the other, no scheme of general social improvement in Bengal can take effect while this system continues. The males too of the Vansaj families are greatly inconvenienced by the institution of the kuls. So eager is every father to procure a noble son-in-law, that persons destitute of titles are held at a discount in the matrimonial market, and experience great difficulty in finding wives for themselves. They cannot of course aspire to the hands of Kulin girls; and those of their own ranks are often turned from them by the excessive demand for Kulin alliances. While therefore the daughters of distinguished families are not available for the common Brahmins, those of the latter are frequently offered to the former. The Vansaj are therefore almost invariably puzzled how to procure partners in life,—and are obliged to present pecuniary inducements, in order to divert their equals from their thoughts of forming Kulin connexions. The disastrous influence of Kulinism thus reaches beyond its own ranks, and turns holy matrimony into a profane question of premiums and discounts, even in the case of the Vansaj Brahmins.
That the system will ever be amended by its own friends it would be preposterous to hope. The leading Brahmins are too closely interested in its perpetuation to be supposed capable of wishing its abolition or even modification. For the removal of the disease, the mind naturally turns to the slow progress of Christianized sentiments now spreading rapidly, at least in the metropolis and large cities, by the dissemination of English education. The Hindus, even in their unconverted state, appear capable of appreciating the superior excellence of the evangelical maxims concerning marriage and divorce; nay, many have already begun to go the length of openly acknowledging the moral impropriety of owning more than one wife at the same time. The progress of such sentiments must gradually throw polygamy into disrepute, and concentrate the sympathies of the people in behalf of its unfortunate victims. This will sooner or later prove a mortal blow to the kuls, which must fall under the weight of their own enormities.
As Christian observers, however, we look forward to still happier days. It is when this magnificent empire shall, from the mountains in the north to the mighty ocean in the south, acknowledge and revere the truth as it is in Jesus, that its long and melancholy night of humiliation and affliction shall vanish before the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing on his wings. The gospel may be justly esteemed the true panacea for the sorest of human distempers. Not only the corrupt fabric of degenerate ​Kulinism, but all systems of iniquity shall crumble to the dust under the divine ascendency of Christianity. From the most galling of all yokes, the truth has already set a vast portion of the human race free. The triumphs it has achieved in Europe it is also capable of achieving in Asia. The female deliverance it has caused elsewhere by driving polygamy from human society, and defining the relative duties of husband and wife, it may and shall bring about in India, in the same manner and by the same means. Yes, the day shall come when the voice of truth shall be carried with power into the hearts and conscience of the natives around us;—when the institutions of error shall fall like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the evangelical trumpet. The mind, now held captive by idolatry and superstition, shall then be reclaimed from its inglorious servitude, and false distinctions of human invention be dissipated by the breath of Catholic feeling and the generous sympathies of an enlarged benevolence. The Brahmin and the Chandala, Kulins, Sudras, and women shall then worship at the same altar, eat of the same bread,—drink of the same cup,—with one mind and soul, and in one holy communion as the members of one household, and the servants and followers of one God and Father.
But this in God’s own time. Meanwhile Christians must labour, both clergy and laity, to hasten this consummation. The Government, too, must redeem their Christian character by adapting their measures to the moral improvement of their subjects. We do not ask them to declare a Crusade, like the Templar and other knights of old, against idolatry and unchristian systems. The Gospel repudiates the use of the temporal sword in coercing a visible reception of its ordinances. The over-heated zeal of an apostle himself was rebuked by its own founder, for wielding such weapons in his cause. No,—let slaughtering instruments be confined to the ecclesiastical armoury of those who pretend to be successors of St. Peter—but represent his infirmities only, and are real imitators of the peculiar mode of his attack on the high priest’s servant. But there are other ways in which the civil power can forward the progress of truth. It can throw its moral influence into the scale. It can manifest a higher respect than it has yet done for intellectual and spiritual qualifications in its selection of educational agents. It can pronounce open infidelity in any shape or form to be a disabling character in aspirants after its tutorships and professorships. It can unlock for the rational contemplation of its students the rich stores of sacred literature and apologetic divinity which adorn the Englishman’s library. It ​can relieve some of the best and holiest productions of European authorship from the odium of its index expurgatorius, and proclaim liberty to such ornaments of the English language as Paley, Butler, Stillingfleet, Bp. Newton, Barrow, Tillotson, Sherlock, Hartwell, Horne, Keith, Campbell, Chalmers, and a host of others, now held tongue-tied in an iniquitous captivity in its colleges and schools. It can thankfully acknowledge and gratefully declare before its ignorant subjects, by means of its public instructors, the wonderful effects of Christianity in the west, to which itself is indebted for the power and supremacy in the east.
We shall in conclusion revert to the subject which constitutes the title of this article, and state what we believe to be the duty of Government with reference to the evils of this system. We do not mean to suggest the propriety of abolishing, by a single act an order which a crowned head had as summarily founded some centuries ago. Bullal’s endowment of the kuls will not justify his English successors in forcibly sequestering their properties. We do not wish the Kulins to be pursued with fire and sword like the knights-templars of old. But the supreme government can surely restrain their polygamy by defining it to be a punishable crime, as well in the native as in the British subject. Lord William Bentinck’s administration was signalized by the deliverance of the Suttee from the flames of a violent self-immolation. Sir Henry Hardinge’s vice-royalty may also have an auspicious commencement by female relief from the unhappiness of sharing a husband with a multitude of co-partners. The institutions of Hinduism do not enjoin polygamy as a positive duty. They merely tolerate it, as they tolerate many other evils. The prohibition of what they do not command cannot amount to an interference with the Brahminical religion. The abolition of Suttee, which the Shasters encouraged and recommended, though not imperatively required, has been judicially defined by the king in council to be no violent contravention of the Hindu religion.. The commission of perjury occasionally allowed by the Hindu sages, is also held justly punishable in the Company’s Courts. Why should Bigamy and Polygamy be entitled to a franchise? Bigamy is criminal in a European;—why should a native be privileged to commit it with impunity? His abstinence from it cannot affect his religion;—why then should he be licensed to sacrifice the happiness and comforts of the female sex? If the system of Kulinism suffer from its prohibition, that will be no more than a restraint upon a degenerate order, which every one acknowledges to be an earthly and human fabrication. ​The tolerant character of the British Government cannot thereby be compromised. The present holders of the Indian sceptre have never pledged themselves to keep up the efficiency of all their Hindu predecessors’ enactments,—they are certainly not bound to respect the institutions of Bullal Sen, represented by the Hindus themselves as a prince of a Sanker caste. The natives themselves will hail in a body an act of legislation, by which their daughters will be saved from the misery and wretchedness of commanding a portion only of their husband’s affections. For humanity’s sake, then, let poligamy be proscribed. The wife has a right to the undivided possession of the husband; and since Hinduism does not oppose, and the people are disposed to be friendly, let her cry for justice be listened to in the Council Chamber and redress afforded by a legislative act of the Supreme Government.
Note by the Editor.
Although, for obvious reasons, it is no part of our design either to name or in any way, directly or indirectly, to indicate the writers of the several articles in our Review, we cannot on the present occasion deny ourselves the pleasure of stating that the foregoing article was written, as it now stands, by a native of India, once a Kulin Brahmin, and now a minister of the Church of England. We mention this, not for the purpose of stamping the article with an undoubted authenticity, though the fact of its being the work of one who was himself a member of the Kulin brotherhood, must greatly enhance its absolute value; but with the object of affording, more especially to the reader in England, a noble illustrative proof—worth a score of elaborate reports—of the effect which may be wrought by Education upon the Hindu mind. Viewed as the unaided work of a native of Bengal, the article, apart from its intrinsic merits as the best and most elaborate essay yet written on a subject of deep interest to the friends of humanity, will be considered not only a literary curiosity (better composition have we rarely seen, out of a writer’s own vernacular), but a cheering evidence of good work actually done and a proof of what may be done—what, we hope, in good time will be done—by well-directed educational efforts, to change the nature of the people among whom we are permitted by Providence to dwell. We do not wish it to be understood that this article is an average sample of the produce of English education in the East—O si sic omnia! We merely state that it is the unaided work of one who was, not many years ago, a Kulin Brahmin; and we desire our readers to accept it as an illustration, not so much of what has been done, but of what under certain favourable circumstances of head and heart may be done, by that great remedial agent to which we must look for the cure of all the evils which have for centuries desolated Hindustan. To the discussion of this vast subject of Education we shall ere long address ourselves, endeavouring to show in the first place what has actually been done, and we think ourselves fortunate in being able, before entering upon the subject, to show, not by any speculations of our own, but by an exhibition of the ripest fruits of Education, what may be done by the labours of the husbandman on this most luxuriant soil.
* ↑ The long list of Bengal kings contained in the Ayeen Acbary cannot be entirely correct. How could so many names be traditionally remembered?—or if the compiler made use of any documentary guides, where are they now?
* ↑ The old Brahmins of Bengal were not acknowledged to be pure descendants of the sacerdotal caste. They were reckoned into seven hundred families, and were therefore called the Saptasati.
* ↑ Bacon
* ↑ The author of the Kula Sara Sindhu says, that the distinction of mels was subsequent to the institution of the Kuls, and was occasioned by the disparity of qualifications exhibited by the various families that had already been exalted. He considers these divisions as marks of disgrace rather than of honour, and represents in detail the delinquency of each family as the cause of its specific surname.
* ↑ There is considerable difference of opinion between authors as to the names and number of the parties first created Kulins.
* ↑ The Ghataks are the keepers of genealogical tables and judges of the relative dignity of families. When proposals of marriage are stipulated, their books and opinions are sought as a security against unequal or illegal contracts. Their verdicts are generally considered as final and decisive.
* ↑ The principal orders of Kulins we have already mentioned. We may as well name some of the inferior mels in this place:—Panditratny, Bangal, Surayee, Acharya Sekhary, Chatta Raghaby, Parihall, Dehata, Dasharath Ghataky, Shabharajkhany, Maladarkhany, Achambeta, Chandrabaty, Baly, Kakutsthy, Raghab Ghosaly, Bijoypandity, Sadanandakhany, Naria, Udharany, Chharyee. Whether these appellations be musical or not, they give in their Roman dress sufficient trial to our own guttural and palatial organs, and we are sure they will afford still better pastime to our readers.
* ↑ We are of course not speaking of the age in which the kuls ware first instituted.
* ↑ The words Kul and Shrotriya occur in the Shasters, but there they mean good family and familiarity with the Vedas, in a general way. The establishment of the orders and the specific determination of the mels are universally acknowledged to be of modern invention.
* ↑ The traditions respecting the five Brahminical emigrants from Kanouj, and the sacrificial feast celebrated by Adisur, as well as Bullal’s reputed parentage from him, involve several improbabilities and contradictions, which it is impossible to clear or explain. If Adisur procured only five priests from Kanouj for solemnizing his contemplated ceremony, how could he immediately upon its completion, that is, within a few months of their arrival, get five more of the same stock tospare for his father-in-law. And how could the descendants of these exotic priests multiply so rapidly in the course of one reign, if he was the reputed father and immediate predecessor of Bullal, in whose time, we are told, these Brahmins had filled the country. All this forces us to conclude that Bullal was one of his remote descendants, as the author of the Raja balee maintains, who calls him the son of Dhisen, and that Birmalla applied for the five sacerdotal grants at a much later period. Nor could this last named prince, if the Brahmins removed to Barender at his instance, have been the father-in-law of Adisur.
* ↑ The relative servitude of these Kayasthas is somewhat differently stated in the Raja bali of Mrityunjaya.—Sriharsa is there represented as the master of Kalidas Mitter, Chhander of Purushottam Dutt, Daksha of Dasharatha Bose, Bhutt Narayen of Makarand Ghose, and Vedgarva of Dasharatha Guha.
* ↑ A species of chalk with which Hindu boys are made to form the letters of their alphabet.
* ↑ The catechism in which the young Kulin is orally instructed is a curious piece of fond tradition. The following are some of its questions and answers:—Q. How long have you and your ancestors been Brahmins? A. As long as the sun and the moon have been in existence. Q.Can you prove this? A. Yes—Yávat merusthite devá, yávat Gangá mahitale, chandrárko gagane yávat, tavat Vipra Kule vayam;——we are as ancient a family of Brahmins as the gods on Mount Meru—as the Ganges on the earth—as the sun and the moon in the sky. Q. What are the qualifications of a Kulin? A. Good manners, &c., as given in a former page.