A Manual of the Salem District in the Presidency of Madras: The district

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E. Keys, at the Government Press, 1883 - Salem (India : District)
 

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Page 23 - The antiquity of the Indian process is no less astonishing than its ingenuity. We can hardly doubt that the tools with which the Egyptians covered their obelisks and temples of porphyry and syenite with hieroglyphics were made of Indian steel.
Page 49 - India than of any other region of the earth. At periods long antecedent to the Mohammedan invasion, wars, revolutions, and conquests seem to have followed each other, in a succession more strangely complex, rapid, and destructive, as the events more deeply recede into the gloom of antiquity. The rude valour which had achieved a conquest, was seldom combined with the sagacity requisite for interior rule ; and the fabric of the conquered state, shaken by the rupture of its ancient bonds, and the substitution...
Page 23 - ... steel. There is no evidence to show that any of the nations of antiquity besides the Hindus were acquainted with the art of making steel. The references which occur in Greek and Latin writers on this subject, served only to better their ignorance of it ; they were acquainted with the qualities and...
Page 7 - Tan j ore formed the design of subduing them ; and, invading them, a fierce battle was fought in front of the Pural fort, in which the Curumba king's troops fought and fell with great bravery, and two-thirds of ADONDAI'S army was cut up. He retreated to a distance, overwhelmed with grief, and the place where he halted is still called Cholanpedu. While thinking of returning to Tanjore, SIVA that night appeared to him in a dream, and promised him victory over the Curumbas, guaranteed by a sign. The...
Page 136 - The wife of the husbandman, who had just arrived at the field with food for her husband, hearing this dreadful sentence, threw herself at the feet of Mahadeo. She represented the certain ruin of her family, if her husband should be disabled for some months from performing the labors of the farm; and besought the deity to accept two of her fingers, instead of one from her husband. Mahadeo, pleased with so sincere a proof of...
Page 232 - But if you carry on such works at your own expense, plant topes, &c., you may depend on receiving the advantages accruing from these and from every other improvement of your lands while you continue to pay the established rates, those constituting, except in the case above mentioned, the annual demand upon them on the part of the Sircar for ever.
Page 137 - Further, it is stated in the Manual of the Salem district (1883) that "the practice now observed in this district is that, when a grandchild is born in a family, the eldest son of the grandfather, with his wife, appears at the temple for the ceremony of boring the child's ear, and there the woman has the last two joints of the third and fourth fingers chopped off. It does not signify whether the father of the first grandchild born be the eldest son or not, as in any case it is the wife of the eldest...
Page 207 - ... the pursuit of national objects, which seizes other men by fits and starts, is in him constant and uniform. These qualities, joined to an intimate knowledge of the language and manners of the people, and a happy talent for the investigation of everything connected with revenue, eminently qualify him for the station which he now fills -with so much credit to himself and benefit to the public.
Page 137 - ... of the grandfather, with his wife, appears at the temple for the ceremony of boring the child's ear, and there the woman has the last two joints of the third and fourth fingers chopped off. It does not signify whether the father of the first grandchild born be the eldest son or not, as in any case it is the wife of the eldest son who has to undergo the mutilation. After this, when children are born to other sons, their wives in succession undergo the operation. When a child is adopted, the same...
Page 312 - In all Indian villages there was a regularly constituted municipality, by which its affairs, both of revenue and police, were administered, and which exercised, to a very great extent, magisterial and judicial authority.

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