Abdu-l-Qadir, the chief author of the sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Dehli, Sayyid Ahmad set out in 1820 for Calcutta, attended by numerous adherents. Thence in 1822 he started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he went to Constanti nople, and was there received with distinction and gained many disciples. He travelled for nearly six years in Turkey and Arabia, and then returned to Dehli. The religious degradation and cold ness which he found in his native country strongly impressed him after his sojourn in lands where the life of Islam is stronger, and he and his disciples established a propaganda throughout IS orthern India, reprobating the superstitions which had crept into the faith from contact with Hindus, and preaching a jihad or holy war against the Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshawar, attended by, it is said, upwards of 100,000 Indians, and accompanied by his chief followers, Hajl Ismail and Abdu-1-Hayy. He was furnished with means by a general subscription in Northern India, and by several Muhammadan princes who had embraced his doctrines. At the beginning of 1829 he declared war against the Sikhs, and in the course of time made himself master of Peshawar. The Afghans, however, with whom he had allied himself in the contest, were soon disgusted by the rigour of his creed, and deserted him and his cause. He ned across the Indus and took refuge in the mountains of Pakhll and Dhamtor, where in 1831 he encountered a detachment of Sikhs under the command of Sher Singh, and in the combat he and Hajl Isnicail were slain. His sect is, however, by no means extinct ; the Wahhabi doctrines have continued to gain ground in India, and to give rise to much controversial writing, down to our own day.
The translation of the Qur an by Abdu-l-Qadir was finished in 1803, and first published by Sayyid Abdullah, a fervent disciple of Sayyid Ahmad, at Hughli in 1829. The Tamblhu-l-ghafitin, or "Awakener of the Heedless," a work in Persian by Sayyid Ahmad, was rendered into Urdu by Abdullah, and published at the same press in 1830. Hajl Ismail was the author of a treatise in Urdu entitled Taqwiyatii-l-Imdn ("Confirmation of the Faith"), which had great vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works by the disciples of the Tarlqah-e Muhammadiyyah (as the new preaching was called) are the Targhib-i Jihad (" Incitation to Holy War"), Hiddyatu-l-Muminln ("Guide of the Believers"), Muzihu- l-Kabdir wa-l-SUfah (" Exposition of Mortal Sins and Heresy"), Naslhatu-l-Muslimln ("Admonition to Muslims"), and the Mi at Masa.il, or "Hundred Questions."
Printing was first used for vernacular works by the College Press at Fort William, and all the compositions prepared for Dr Gilchrist and his successors which have been already mentioned were thus made public ; but the expense of this method of reproduction long precluded its extensive use in India, and the ungraceful characters used as types were not appreciated by the natives. In 1837 the first lithographic press was set up at Dehli, and from that date on wards the publications, original or editions of older works, issued in this shape annually may be counted by hundreds. The news paper press soon followed the introduction of lithography, and there are at present about two hundred journals in Urdu and Hindi printed in India, the majority in the North-Western Provinces, the Panjab, and Oudh, but a few at Madras, Haidariibad, Bangalore, Bombay, and Calcutta. The extension taken by vernacular litera ture during the last thirty years is enormous, and to describe it adequately would require a volume. The reader is referred for the best account of it to M. Garcin de Tassy s Annual Summaries from 1850 to 1877, where he will also find much interesting information regarding the nature and value of the newspapers now so numerous. Here a few names only can be mentioned which seem the most prominent among the crowd of writers who daily, by the cheap and simple agency of a lithographic stone and bazar paper, make their ideas public in Northern India.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan Bahadur, C.S.I, (not to be confounded with the Wahhabi reformer), is perhaps the most eminent and eloquent among contemporary writers of Urdu. He is the author of numerous works, among others of the Asaru-s-Sanadld (" Vestiges of Princes"), an excellent account of Dehli and its monuments, which has passed through three editions (1847, 1854, 1876). His fame, however, chiefly rests upon his persevering efforts to raise the standard of civilization and culture among his co-religionists, for which purpose he has since 1870 issued a most valuable journal en titled the Tahzibu-l-Akhldq, or " Muhammadan Social Reformer (which, unlike almost all its competitors, is printed with movable types). The articles in this publication, chiefly of a religious or educational character, are of a high order of excellence, and display most effectively the resources of the Urdu language as a means of expressing modern ideas. Maulavi Nazir Ahmad of Dehli is the author of two excellent stories named Mir dtu-l- arus (" the Bride s Mirror") and Taubatu-n-Nasuh (" the Repentance of Nasuh"); and Pandit Kashinath of Agra has written a good treatise on ethics, founded on Persian compilations on the subject, called Akhldq-i Kdshl. These three works have received rewards from the Govern ment of the North- Western Provinces, and enjoy much popularity. The officers of the educational department have been prolific in schoolbooks of various degrees of excellence. Mr H. S. Reid and his assistants, Qamaruddin Gulab Khan, Chiranji Lai, Pandit Bansulhar, Sri Lai, and Mohan Lai, were at work from 1851 to 1860 in this direction, and several good translations and compila tions are due to them. In the Panjab Zukaullah Khun of Dehli, and Karimuddm and Pandit Ajodhya Parshad of Lahore, have been no less active ; and Northern India is now well supplied with the means of elementary education in the vernacular in literature, history, geography, and mathematics. Science, owing to the diffi culties of technical nomenclature, is less efficiently represented, and the controversy regarding the best method of clothing its voca bulary in a vernacular dress is hardly yet solved. Owing to the fortunate circumstance that Urdu is able to draw for its vocabulary upon Persian and Arabic as well as upon its native Indian resources, the attempts which have been made in Egypt, Turkey, and other countries where these languages are in use to provide vernacular equivalents for scientific terminology will, it may be hoped, work not only for the benefit of those countries, but also for that of India, and thus in time provide a satisfactory means of raising vernacular education in science to the level of other branches of culture.
In Hindi also there is much activity, though not so much as in Urdu. The pure or " High " Hindi, which rejects all foreign words, and supplies its vocabulary exclusively from Sanskrit, is a recent creation, and cannot even yet be said to represent the language of any large class of the population. A good specimen of this dialect is Nilkanth Shiistii Gore s Shad-Darshan Darpan, or "Mirror of the Six (orthodox) Schools (of Hindu philosophy)," a controversial work by a converted Brahman. The genuine Hindi of the old literature, used now exclusively for poetry, is represented by an excellent publication issued weekly at Benares by Biibil Harish- Chandra, entitled Kabi-bachan-Sudhd, or " Ambrosia of the Words of Poets." In tliis will be found much good original work, and u vast quantity of old Hindi poetry now for the first time published. The translations of the Mahdbhdrata and Hariransa, made by Pandit Gokulnath of Benares, and printed at Calcutta in 1829, deserve mention ; and one of the most important collections of Hindi poetry, the llag-Kalpadrum of Krishnanand Vyilsadev Rag- Sagar, was printed at the same place in 1842-45 in an immense volume of 1800 pages.
English education has naturally had a vast influence on modern vernacular literature, though not wholly a beneficial one. More than a half of the new works issued within the last thirty years are translations or adaptations from English ; the journals, the great popularizers of new ideas, take their matter chiefly from English newspapers ; the courts, where Urdu has since 1832 become the official language, contribute to the spread of the stiff and difficult phraseology of the Acts of the legislature, as different from the natural idiom of the people as can well be imagined. Literature in India has always owed much to the fostering influence of Government. It has been seen how the schools of Dehli and Lakhnau rose and declined with the fortunes of the Mughal empire and the kingdom of Oudh, and how that of Calcutta similarly owed its existence to British initiative. At the present day the patronage of the rulers of India is no less influential in determining the course of literary activity. Poetical composition is little practised, both because of the exhaustion of its themes and the little appreciation which it meets with from Europeans. More solid studies, politics, science, philosophy, morals, history, and especially controversial theology, are the topics now in favour; and, though much that is published is of the slightest possible intrinsic value, the resources of the lan guage are being gradually cultivated and enlarged to meot the needs of the day. There is thus no reason to doubt that Hindostan will in time possess a body of literature worthy of the flexible and expressive speech of its people, and reflecting faithfully the standard of culture which it owes to its Western rulers.
Provinces, India, 21 miles S.W. of Vardha, in 20 33 30" N. lat., and 78 52 30" E. long., with a population in 1877 of 9415. It is a main seat of the cotton trade, the Hin- ganghat cotton produced in the rich Wardha valley being esteemed one of the best indigenous staples of India. The principal native traders are Marwarfs, many of whom have
large transactions and export on their own account; but the