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Updated: May 24, 2025
Soon after leaving the roadstead of Madras there was pointed out to us on the port bow the low lying coast of Orissa, India, where the famine of 1866 carried off one million of souls.
Thus the Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar and character, is so much like the Bengali in the very expression that a Bengali pundit is almost equal to the correction of an Orissa proof sheet; and the first time that I read a page of Goojarati the meaning appeared so obvious as to render it unnecessary to ask the pundit questions."
The translations are all written out first by pundits in the different languages, except the Sanskrit which is dictated by me to an amanuensis. The Sikh, Mahratta, Hindostani, Orissa, Telinga, Assam, and Kurnata are re-translating in rough by pundits who have been long accustomed to their work, and have gone over the ground before.
About the year 1475 there was a terrible famine in the Dakhan and the country of the Telugus, which lasted for two years. At its close the Hindu population of Kondapalle revolted, murdered the Muhammadan governor, and invited aid from the king of Orissa.
He next proceeded against Kondavid, another very strong hill-fortress also in possession of the king of Orissa, where he met and defeated the king in person in a pitched battle, and captured the citadel after a two months' siege. He left Saluva Timma here as a governor of the conquered provinces, and went in pursuit of his enemy northwards.
Whether the principle be a true one, and whether its unqualified application by any party in the state be possible, are questions yet unsettled. It is not probable, for example, that the worship of Juggernaut, which Lord Dalhousie permits in Orissa, would be permitted even by Lord John Russell at Westminster. Even a papist procession is forbidden, and wisely.
But the being called Buddha is a form of Vishṇu and the work is as strange a jumble of religion as it is of languages, being written in "a curious medley of bad Sanskrit, bad Hindi and bad Bihari." It is chiefly in Orissa that traces of Buddhism can still be found within the limits of India proper. The Saraks of Baramba, Tigaria and the adjoining parts of Cuttack describe themselves as Buddhists.
Meanwhile an immense Hindu host from all the countries about, under command of the king of Orissa, prepared to do battle for their country, and a decisive action took place near the river at Palinchinur, in which the Hindus were completely defeated.
And that the said Warren Hastings, having substituted his own instruments to be the managers and collectors of the public revenue, in the manner hereinbefore mentioned, did act in manifest breach and defiance of an act of the 13th of his present Majesty, by which the ordering and management and government of all the territorial revenues in the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa were vested in the Governor-General and Council, without any power of delegating the said trust and duty to any other persons; and that, by such unlawful delegation of the powers of the Council to a subordinate board appointed by himself, he, the said Warren Hastings, did in effect unite and vest in his own person the ordering, government, and management of all the said territorial revenues; and that for the said illegal act he, the said Warren Hastings, is solely answerable, the same having been proposed and resolved in Council when the Governor-General and Council consisted but of two persons present, namely, the said Warren Hastings, and the late Edward Wheler, Esquire, and when consequently the Governor-General, by virtue of the casting voice, possessed the whole power of the government.
These two lectures are fragmentary and ill-arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much compressible. After these paragraphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery light of recent events, the fable at p. 170 , and then paragraphs 129-131 ; and observe, my statement respecting the famine at Orissa is not rhetorical, but certified by official documents as within the truth.
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