MAHARAJA DURGA CHARAN LAW
C.I.E.
1822—1902
Among Indian merchant princes in Bengal the name of Maharaja Durga Charan Law takes high rank. The firm started by his father was one of the first Indian firms to conduct business on English lines, and its wonderful success from its first small beginnings is one of the most typical signs of the awakening of Bengal in the nineteenth century.
The ancestors of the Law family lived, at the earliest period of which definite knowledge of them is obtainable, at Barsul, now a small village in the District of Burdwan. In those days it was a place of considerable importance, containing the residences of several wealthy families who only deserted it on account of the inroads of the Mahrattas during the early years of the eighteenth century. Rajib Lachan Law, the grandfather of the Maharaja, left the village for this reason, and came to reside at Chinsura which was then a Dutch settlement. How long the family continued to reside here and when the firm of Prawn Kissen Law was first established in Calcutta cannot now be definitely ascertained. It must, however, have been early in the nineteenth century, since the firm had already obtained pro-
