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184-519: Satakarni (also called Sātakarnī I , Brahmi script : 𑀲𑀸𑀢𑀓𑀡𑀺 , Sātakaṇi ) was the third of the Satavahana kings, who ruled the Deccan region of India. His reign is generally dated to 70-60 BCE, although some authors have claimed 187-177 BCE, and most recently dated to 88-42 BCE. It was thought there were "two Satakarnis" (Satakarni I and Satakarni II), however, Andrew Ollett argues that there

368-787: A factory in Masulipatnam on the Eastern coast of India in 1611 and the grant of the rights to establish a factory in Surat in 1612 by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir . In 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler farther south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in

552-625: A pictographic - acrophonic origin for the Brahmi script, on the model of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. These ideas however have lost credence, as they are "purely imaginative and speculative". Similar ideas have tried to connect the Brahmi script with the Indus script , but they remain unproven, and particularly suffer from the fact that the Indus script is as yet undeciphered. The mainstream view

736-457: A "very old culture of writing" along with its oral tradition of composing and transmitting knowledge, because the Vedic literature is too vast, consistent and complex to have been entirely created, memorized, accurately preserved and spread without a written system. Opinions on this point, the possibility that there may not have been any writing scripts including Brahmi during the Vedic age, given

920-764: A Phoenician prototype". Discoveries made since Bühler's proposal, such as of six Mauryan inscriptions in Aramaic, suggest Bühler's proposal about Phoenician as weak. It is more likely that Aramaic, which was virtually certainly the prototype for Kharoṣṭhī, also may have been the basis for Brahmi. However, it is unclear why the ancient Indians would have developed two very different scripts. According to Bühler, Brahmi added symbols for certain sounds not found in Semitic languages, and either deleted or repurposed symbols for Aramaic sounds not found in Prakrit. For example, Aramaic lacks

1104-594: A buyer of manufactured goods . More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports. Also, from the late 18th century British cotton mill industry began to lobby the government to both tax Indian imports and allow them access to markets in India. Starting in

1288-605: A century later, the subject of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee 's novel Anandamath . In 1772, under Warren Hastings, the East India Company took over revenue collection directly in the Bengal Presidency (then Bengal and Bihar), establishing a Board of Revenue with offices in Calcutta and Patna , and moving the pre-existing Mughal revenue records from Murshidabad to Calcutta. In 1773, after Oudh ceded

1472-465: A connection to the Brahmi script. But in the second half of the 1st millennium CE, some inscriptions in India and Southeast Asia written in scripts derived from the Brahmi did include numerals that are decimal place value, and constitute the earliest existing material examples of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system , now in use throughout the world. The underlying system of numeration, however, was older, as

1656-400: A connection without knowing the phonetic values of the Indus script, though he found apparent similarities in patterns of compounding and diacritical modification to be "intriguing". However, he felt that it was premature to explain and evaluate them due to the large chronological gap between the scripts and the thus far indecipherable nature of the Indus script. The main obstacle to this idea

1840-492: A corresponding emphatic stop, p , Brahmi seems to have doubled up for the corresponding aspirate: Brahmi p and ph are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic p . Bühler saw a systematic derivational principle for the other aspirates ch , jh , ph , bh , and dh , which involved adding a curve or upward hook to the right side of the character (which has been speculated to derive from h , [REDACTED] ), while d and ṭ (not to be confused with

2024-477: A large proportion of the work of Indian Civil Service officers working for the government. After the Company lost its trading rights, it became the single most important source of government revenue, roughly half of overall revenue in the middle of the 19th century; even so, between the years 1814 and 1859, the government of India ran debts in 33 years. With expanded dominion, even during non-deficit years, there

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2208-475: A late date for Kharoṣṭhī. The stronger argument for this position is that we have no specimen of the script before the time of Ashoka, nor any direct evidence of intermediate stages in its development; but of course this does not mean that such earlier forms did not exist, only that, if they did exist, they have not survived, presumably because they were not employed for monumental purposes before Ashoka". Unlike Bühler, Falk does not provide details of which and how

2392-400: A major event occurred during their tenure. Government of India Act (1833) Until Clive's victory at Plassey , the East India Company territories in India, which consisted largely of the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, were governed by the mostly autonomous—and sporadically unmanageable— town councils , all composed of merchants. The councils barely had enough powers for

2576-548: A misunderstanding that the Mauryans were illiterate "based upon the fact that Megasthenes rightly observed that the laws were unwritten and that oral tradition played such an important part in India." Some proponents of the indigenous origin theories question the reliability and interpretation of comments made by Megasthenes (as quoted by Strabo in the Geographica XV.i.53). For one, the observation may only apply in

2760-571: A new treaty was negotiated, this force was assigned to Berar and stopped being a part of the Nizam's army. In the Indian rebellion of 1857 almost the entire Bengal army, both regular and irregular, revolted. It has been suggested that after the annexation of Oudh by the East India Company in 1856, many sepoys were disquieted both from losing their perquisites, as landed gentry, in the Oudh courts and from

2944-437: A quarter century before Ashoka , noted "... and this among a people who have no written laws, who are ignorant even of writing, and regulate everything by memory." This has been variously and contentiously interpreted by many authors. Ludo Rocher almost entirely dismisses Megasthenes as unreliable, questioning the wording used by Megasthenes' informant and Megasthenes' interpretation of them. Timmer considers it to reflect

3128-764: A report by a committee, which condemned the Mayor's Courts, the Crown issued a charter for a new judicial system in the Bengal Presidency . The British Parliament consequently enacted the Regulating Act of 1773 under which the King-in-Council created a Supreme Court in the Presidency town , i.e. Fort William . The tribunal consisted of one Chief Justice and three puisne judges ; all four judges were to be chosen from barristers . The Supreme Court supplanted

3312-567: A seal mentioning the Assaka has been found. "And in the second year (he), disregarding Satakamini, dispatches to the western regions an army strong in cavalry, elephants, infantry (nara) and chariots (ratha) and by that army having reached the Kanha-bemna, he throws the city of the Musikas into consternation." The inscription also mentions a river, variously identified with Krishna or with

3496-408: A significant source for Brahmi. On this point particularly, Salomon disagrees with Falk, and after presenting evidence of very different methodology between Greek and Brahmi notation of vowel quantity, he states "it is doubtful whether Brahmi derived even the basic concept from a Greek prototype". Further, adds Salomon, in a "limited sense Brahmi can be said to be derived from Kharosthi, but in terms of

3680-482: Is a later alteration that appeared as it diffused away from the Persian sphere of influence. Persian dipi itself is thought to be an Elamite loanword. Falk's 1993 book Schrift im Alten Indien is a study on writing in ancient India, and has a section on the origins of Brahmi. It features an extensive review of the literature up to that time. Falk sees the basic writing system of Brahmi as being derived from

3864-542: Is also not totally clear in the original Greek as the term " συντάξῃ " (source of the English word " syntax ") can be read as a generic "composition" or "arrangement", rather than a written composition in particular. Nearchus , a contemporary of Megasthenes , noted, a few decades prior, the use of cotton fabric for writing in Northern India. Indologists have variously speculated that this might have been Kharoṣṭhī or

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4048-412: Is held by "nearly all" Western scholars, and Salomon agrees with Goyal that there has been "nationalist bias" and "imperialist bias" on the two respective sides of the debate. In spite of this, the view of indigenous development had been prevalent among British scholars writing prior to Bühler: a passage by Alexander Cunningham , one of the earliest indigenous origin proponents, suggests that, in his time,

4232-461: Is identified with Satakarni. The inscription describes dispatching of an army and Kharavela's threat to a city variously interpreted as "Masika" (Masikanagara), "Musika" (Musikanagara) or "Asika" (Asikanagara). NK Sahu identifies Asika as the capital of Assaka janapada . According to historian Ajay Mitra Shastri , Asika-nagara was located in the present-day Adam village in the Nagpur district , where

4416-628: Is mentioned in the inscription as the founder of the dynasty. According to the Matsya Purana , Satakarni enjoyed a long reign of about 56 years. He seems to have conquered Western Malwa region from the Shungas . The Naneghat inscription is thought to have been made during the reign of Satakarni I. According to the inscription, he married Nayanika (Naganika), daughter of the Maharathi Tranakayiro Kalalaya, scion of

4600-518: Is no evidence to support this conjecture. The chart below shows the close resemblance that Brahmi has with the first four letters of Semitic script, the first column representing the Phoenician alphabet . According to the Semitic hypothesis as laid out by Bühler in 1898, the oldest Brahmi inscriptions were derived from a Phoenician prototype. Salomon states Bühler's arguments are "weak historical, geographical, and chronological justifications for

4784-526: Is only one Satakarni, as the alleged first Satakarni is assigned ten years, and the second, fifty years by other scholars, but the only dated inscription of this king is Candankheda seal from his reign's year 30, around 60 BCE, and he ruled ca. 88-42 BCE. According to the Puranas , the Satavahana king Simuka was succeeded by his brother Krishna (also known as Kanha). According to Matsya Purana , Krishna

4968-491: Is supported by some Western and Indian scholars and writers. The theory that there are similarities to the Indus script was suggested by early European scholars such as the archaeologist John Marshall and the Assyriologist Stephen Langdon . G. R. Hunter in his book The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its Connection with Other Scripts (1934) proposed a derivation of the Brahmi alphabets from

5152-536: Is that Brahmi has an origin in Semitic scripts (usually Aramaic). This is accepted by the vast majority of script scholars since the publications by Albrecht Weber (1856) and Georg Bühler 's On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet (1895). Bühler's ideas have been particularly influential, though even by the 1895 date of his opus on the subject, he could identify no fewer than five competing theories of

5336-479: Is the lack of evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation around 1500 BCE and the first widely accepted appearance of Brahmi in the 3rd or 4th centuries BCE. Iravathan Mahadevan makes the point that even if one takes the latest dates of 1500 BCE for the Indus script and earliest claimed dates of Brahmi around 500 BCE, a thousand years still separates

5520-659: The Samavāyāṅga Sūtra (3rd century BCE). These Jain script lists include Brahmi at number 1 and Kharoṣṭhi at number 4, but also Javanaliya (probably Greek ) and others not found in the Buddhist lists. While the contemporary Kharoṣṭhī script is widely accepted to be a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet , the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. Salomon reviewed existing theories in 1998, while Falk provided an overview in 1993. Early theories proposed

5704-573: The Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849-1856 (Period of tenure of Marquess of Dalhousie Governor General); however, Kashmir was immediately sold under the Treaty of Amritsar (1850) to the Dogra dynasty of Jammu , and thereby became a princely state. In 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later. The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged

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5888-661: The British Crown and Parliament increased as well. By the 1820s British nationals could transact business or engage in missionary work under the protection of the Crown in the three presidencies. Finally, under the terms of The Saint Helena Act 1833 , the British Parliament revoked the company's monopoly in the China trade and made it an agent for the administration of British India. The Governor-General of Bengal

6072-539: The Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1805, the jurisdiction would extend as far west as Delhi. In the other two presidencies, Madras and Bombay , a similar course of legal changes unfolded; there, however, the Mayor's Courts were first strengthened to Recorder's Courts by adding a legal president to the bench. The Supreme Courts in Madras and Bombay were finally established in 1801 and 1823, respectively. Madras Presidency

6256-667: The City of London and the Parliament of Great Britain . The result was a compromise in which the Regulating Act—although implying the ultimate sovereignty of the British Crown over these new territories—asserted that the company could act as a sovereign power on behalf of the Crown. It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament. The Court of Directors of

6440-705: The Diwāni of Bengal, the right not only to collect revenue, but also to administer civil justice in Bengal. The administration of criminal justice, the Nizāmat or Faujdāri , however, remained with the Nawāb , and for criminal cases the prevailing Islamic law remained in place. However, the company's new duties associated with the Diwāni were leased out to the Indian officials who had formerly performed them. This makeshift arrangement continued—with much accompanying disarray—until 1771, when

6624-529: The Fox–North coalition tried to reform colonial policy again with a bill introduced by Edmund Burke which would have transferred political power over India from the East India Company to a parliamentary commission. The bill passed the House of Commons with the enthusiastic support of Foreign Secretary Charles James Fox , but was vetoed by the House of Lords under pressure from King George III , who then dismissed

6808-619: The Home Office , was in charge of the overall India policy. From 1784 onwards, the British government had the final word on all major appointments in India; a candidate's suitability for a senior position was often decided by the strength of his political connections rather than that of his administrative ability. Although this practice resulted in many Governor-General nominees being chosen from Britain's conservative landed gentry , there were some liberals as well, such as Lord William Bentinck and Lord Dalhousie . British political opinion

6992-609: The Lipisala samdarshana parivarta, lists 64 lipi (scripts), with the Brahmi script starting the list. The Lalitavistara Sūtra states that young Siddhartha, the future Gautama Buddha (~500 BCE), mastered philology, Brahmi and other scripts from the Brahmin Lipikāra and Deva Vidyāsiṃha at a school. A list of eighteen ancient scripts is found in the early Jaina texts , such as the Paṇṇavaṇā Sūtra (2nd century BCE) and

7176-536: The Mauryan period (3rd century BCE) down to the early Gupta period (4th century CE), and it is thought that as late as the 4th century CE, a literate person could still read and understand Mauryan inscriptions. Sometime thereafter, the ability to read the original Brahmi script was lost. The earliest (indisputably dated) and best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. The decipherment of Brahmi became

7360-614: The Naib Nāzim , attended to the slightly less important cases. The ordinary lawsuits belonged to the jurisdiction of a hierarchy of court officials consisting of faujdārs , muhtasils , and kotwāls . In the rural areas, or the Mofussil , the zamindars —the rural overlords with the hereditary right to collect rent from peasant farmers—also had the power to administer justice. This they did with little routine oversight, being required to report only their judgments in capital punishment cases to

7544-406: The Nawāb . By the mid-18th century, the British too had completed a century and a half in India, and had a burgeoning presence in the three presidency towns of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. During this time the successive Royal Charters had gradually given the East India Company more power to administer justice in these towns. In the charter granted by Charles II in 1683, the company was given

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7728-567: The Old Persian dipi , in turn derived from Sumerian dup . To describe his own Edicts, Ashoka used the word Lipī , now generally simply translated as "writing" or "inscription". It is thought the word "lipi", which is also orthographed "dipi" in the two Kharosthi -version of the rock edicts, comes from an Old Persian prototype dipî also meaning "inscription", which is used for example by Darius I in his Behistun inscription , suggesting borrowing and diffusion. Scharfe adds that

7912-478: The Permanent Settlement if the zamindars failed to pay the revenue on time, the zamindari right would be taken from them. According to one estimate, this was 20% higher than the revenue demand before 1757. Over the next century, partly as a result of land surveys, court rulings, and property sales, the change was given practical dimension. An influence on the development of this revenue policy were

8096-577: The Sanskrit language, it is a feminine word meaning literally "of Brahma" or "the female energy of the Brahman ". In popular Hindu texts such as the Mahabharata , it appears in the sense of a goddess, particularly for Saraswati as the goddess of speech and elsewhere as "personified Shakti (energy) of Brahma , the god of Hindu scriptures Veda and creation". Later Chinese Buddhist account of

8280-753: The Third Anglo-Mysore War in 1791, and also in Java and Ceylon . In contrast to the soldiers in the armies of Indian rulers, the Bengal sepoys not only received high pay, but also received it reliably, thanks in great measure to the company's access to the vast land-revenue reserves of Bengal. Soon, bolstered both by the new musket technology and naval support, the Bengal army came to be widely well-regarded. The well-disciplined sepoys attired in red-coats and their British officers began to arouse "a kind of awe in their adversaries. In Maharashtra and in Java,

8464-519: The Treaty of Nanjing , gained access to five Chinese ports, Guangzhou , Xiamen , Fuzhou , Shanghai, and Ningbo ; in addition, Hong Kong was ceded to the British Crown. Towards the end of the second quarter of the 19th century, opium export constituted 40% of India's exports. Another major, though erratic, export item was indigo dye , which was extracted from natural indigo , and which came to be grown in Bengal and northern Bihar. In 1788,

8648-724: The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh . In addition, in 1854, a lieutenant-governor was appointed for the region of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, leaving the Governor-General to concentrate on the governance of India as a whole. In the remnant of the Mughal Empire revenue system existing in pre-1765 Bengal, zamindars , or "land holders", collected revenue on behalf of the Mughal emperor, whose representative, or diwan , supervised their activities. In this system,

8832-424: The grammar of the Vedic language probably had a strong influence on this development. Some authors – both Western and Indian – suggest that Brahmi was borrowed or inspired by a Semitic script, invented in a short few years during the reign of Ashoka, and then used widely for Ashokan inscriptions. In contrast, some authors reject the idea of foreign influence. Bruce Trigger states that Brahmi likely emerged from

9016-664: The phonetic retroflex feature that appears among Prakrit dental stops, such as ḍ , and in Brahmi the symbols of the retroflex and non-retroflex consonants are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single prototype. (See Tibetan alphabet for a similar later development.) Aramaic did not have Brahmi's aspirated consonants ( kh , th , etc.), whereas Brahmi did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants ( q, ṭ, ṣ ), and it appears that these unneeded emphatic letters filled in for some of Brahmi's aspirates: Aramaic q for Brahmi kh, Aramaic ṭ (Θ) for Brahmi th ( ʘ ), etc. And just where Aramaic did not have

9200-555: The princely states , of the Hindu maharajas and the Muslim nawabs . Prominent among the princely states were: Cochin (1791), Jaipur (1794), Travancore (1795), Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), Cis-Sutlej Hill States (1815), Central India Agency (1819), Cutch and Gujarat Gaikwad territories (1807–1820), Rajputana (1818), and Bahawalpur (1833). The Governors-General ( locum tenens ) are not included in this table unless

9384-558: The "Nabobs", returned to Britain with large fortunes, which—according to rumours then current—were acquired unscrupulously. By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, and there was fear in London that the company's corrupt practices could soon seep into British business and public life. The rights and duties of the British government with regards the company's new territories also came to be examined. The British parliament then held several inquiries and in 1773, during

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9568-430: The "major breeding ground" of India's infantry in eastern Awadh and the lands around Banaras including Bihar . The high caste rural Hindu Rajputs and Brahmins of this region, known as Purbiyas (Hindi, lit. "easterners"), had been recruited by Mughal Empire armies for two hundred years; the East India Company continued this practice for the next 75 years, with these soldiers comprising up to eighty per cent of

9752-416: The 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896. The American Civil War too would have a major impact on India's cotton economy: with the outbreak of the war, American cotton was no longer available to British manufacturers ; consequently, demand for Indian cotton soared, and

9936-567: The 1850s, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that some Indian revenue agents of the company were using torture to meet the company's revenue demands. Land revenue settlements constituted a major administrative activity of the various governments in India under Company rule. In all areas other than the Bengal Presidency, land settlement work involved a continually repetitive process of surveying and measuring plots, assessing their quality, and recording landed rights, and constituted

10120-527: The 18th century and the first decade of the nineteenth, Company officials pursued a policy of conciliation towards the native culture of its new dominion, especially in relation to education policy. During the 19th century, the Indian literacy rates were rumoured to be less than half of post independence levels which were 18.33% in 1951. The policy was pursued in the aid of three goals: "to sponsor Indians in their own culture, to advance knowledge of India, and to employ that knowledge in government". The first goal

10304-622: The 20th century; a centre of indigo production there, Champaran district, became an early testing ground, in 1917, for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 's strategy of non-violent resistance against the British Raj . Until the British gained control of Bengal in the mid-18th century, the system of justice there was presided over by the Nawab of Bengal himself, who, as the chief law officer, Nawāb Nāzim , attended to cases qualifying for capital punishment in his headquarters, Murshidabad . His deputy,

10488-430: The 22 North Semitic characters, though clearly, as Bühler himself recognized, some are more confident than others. He tended to place much weight on phonetic congruence as a guideline, for example connecting c [REDACTED] to tsade 𐤑 rather than kaph 𐤊, as preferred by many of his predecessors. One of the key problems with a Phoenician derivation is the lack of evidence for historical contact with Phoenicians in

10672-707: The 6th century CE also supports its creation to the god Brahma , though Monier Monier-Williams , Sylvain Lévi and others thought it was more likely to have been given the name because it was moulded by the Brahmins . Company rule in India Company rule in India (also known as the Company Raj , from Hindi rāj , lit.   ' rule ' ) refers to regions of the Indian subcontinent under

10856-430: The Amgiya (Ambhiya) family. She wrote the Naneghat inscription, in which she describes Satakarni as "Lord of Dakshinapatha, wielder of the unchecked wheel of Sovereignty". The Naneghat inscription of Naganika suggests that Satakarni performed two horse sacrifices ( Aswamedha ), to proclaim his sovereignty. The Hathigumpha inscription of the Kalinga king Kharavela mentions a king named "Satakani" or "Satakamini", who

11040-803: The Aramaic alphabet. Salomon regards the evidence from Greek sources to be inconclusive. Strabo himself notes this inconsistency regarding reports on the use of writing in India (XV.i.67). Kenneth Norman (2005) suggests that Brahmi was devised over a longer period of time predating Ashoka's rule: Support for this idea of pre-Ashokan development has been given very recently by the discovery of sherds at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka , inscribed with small numbers of characters which seem to be Brāhmī. These sherds have been dated, by both Carbon 14 and Thermo-luminescence dating , to pre-Ashokan times, perhaps as much as two centuries before Ashoka. However, these finds are controversial, see Tamil Brahmi § Conflicting theories about origin since 1990s . He also notes that

11224-401: The Aramaic script (with extensive local development), but there is no evidence of a direct common source. According to Trigger, Brahmi was in use before the Ashoka pillars, at least by the 4th or 5th century BCE in Sri Lanka and India, while Kharoṣṭhī was used only in northwest South Asia (eastern parts of modern Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan) for a while before it died out in

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11408-498: The Aramaic script being the prototype for Brahmi has been the more preferred hypothesis because of its geographic proximity to the Indian subcontinent, and its influence likely arising because Aramaic was the bureaucratic language of the Achaemenid empire. However, this hypothesis does not explain the mystery of why two very different scripts, Kharoṣṭhī and Brahmi, developed from the same Aramaic. A possible explanation might be that Ashoka created an imperial script for his edicts, but there

11592-461: The Bengal Presidency (and for overseeing the company's operations in India). "The subordinate Presidencies were forbidden to wage war or make treaties without the previous consent of the Governor-General of Bengal in Council, except in case of imminent necessity. The Governors of these Presidencies were directed in general terms to obey the orders of the Governor-General-in-Council, and to transmit to him intelligence of all important matters." However,

11776-540: The Bengal Presidency helped finance the company's wars in other parts of India. Consequently, in the period 1760–1800, Bengal's money supply was greatly diminished; furthermore, the closing of some local mints and close supervision of the rest, the fixing of exchange rates , and the standardisation of coinage , paradoxically, added to the economic downturn. During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion , to being an exporter of raw materials and

11960-461: The Bengal army. British in Malabar also converted Thiyyar army, called as Thiyya pattalam into a special regiment centered at Thalassery called as The Thiyyar Regiment in 1904. However, in order to avoid any friction within the ranks, the company also took pains to adapt its military practices to their religious requirements. Consequently, these soldiers dined in separate facilities; in addition, overseas service, considered polluting to their caste,

12144-467: The British cabinet, as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer . Around this time, there was also extensive debate in the British Parliament on the issue of landed rights in Bengal, with a consensus developing in support of the view advocated by Philip Francis , a member of the Bengal council and political adversary of Warren Hastings, that all lands in Bengal should be considered the "estate and inheritance of native land-holders and families". Mindful of

12328-410: The British rulers in their efforts to spread English education and established many reputed colleges like Scottish Church College (1830), Wilson College (1832), Madras Christian College (1837), and Elphinstone College (1856). However, the Anglicists also included utilitarians , led by James Mill , who had begun to play an important role in fashioning Company policy. The utilitarians believed in

12512-425: The Chairman of the East India Company. Grant supported state-sponsored education in India 20 years before a similar system was set up in Britain. Among Grant's close evangelical friends were William Wilberforce , a prominent abolitionist and member of the British Parliament, and Sir John Shore , the Governor-General of India from 1793 to 1797. During this period, many Scottish Presbyterian missionaries also supported

12696-446: The Charter Act of 1793—the subordinate presidencies continued to exercise some autonomy until both the extension of British possessions into becoming contiguous and the advent of faster communications in the next century. Still, the new Governor-General appointed in 1786, Lord Cornwallis , not only had more power than Hastings, but also had the support of a powerful British cabinet minister, Henry Dundas , who, as Secretary of State for

12880-526: The Court of Directors of the Company decided to obtain for the company the jurisdiction of both criminal and civil cases. Soon afterwards Warren Hastings arrived in Calcutta as the first Governor-General of the company's Indian dominions and resolved to overhaul the company's organisation and in particular its judicial affairs. In the interior, or Mofussil , diwāni adālats , or a civil courts of first instance , were constituted in each district; these courts were presided over by European Zilā judges employed by

13064-447: The East India Company in 1600, intended to facilitate its competition against Dutch and French in a distant region, was no longer needed. In response, in the Charter Act of 1813 , the British Parliament renewed the company's charter but terminated its monopoly except with regard to tea and trade with China, opening India both to private investment and missionaries. With increased British power in India, supervision of Indian affairs by

13248-505: The East India Company offered advances to ten British planters to grow indigo; however, since the new (landed) property rights defined in the Permanent Settlement, did not allow them, as Europeans, to buy agricultural land, they had to in turn offer cash advances to local peasants, and sometimes coerce them, to grow the crop. In early 19th century Europe, blue clothing was favoured as a fashion, and blue uniforms were common in

13432-411: The English language in order to impart to Indians what they considered modern Western knowledge. Prominent among them were evangelicals who, after 1813—when the company's territories were opened to Christian missionaries —were interested in spreading Christian belief; they also believed in using theology to promote liberal social reform, such as the abolition of slavery . Among them was Charles Grant ,

13616-646: The Governor-General's order, "to proceed according to equity, justice, and good conscience, unless Hindu or Muhammadan law was in point, or some Regulation expressly applied". There was a good likelihood, therefore, that the Supreme Court and the Sadr Adālats would act in opposition to each other and, predictably, many disputes resulted. Hastings' premature attempt to appoint the Chief Justice, Sir Elijah Impey , an old schoolmate from Winchester , to

13800-603: The Indian subcontinent after the Anglo-Mysore Wars , Anglo-Maratha Wars , and Anglo-Sikh Wars . Lord William Bentinck became the first Governor General of India in 1834 under the Government of India Act 1833 . The English East India Company ("the Company") was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies . It gained a foothold in India with the establishment of

13984-468: The Indus script, the match being considerably higher than that of Aramaic in his estimation. British archaeologist Raymond Allchin stated that there is a powerful argument against the idea that the Brahmi script has Semitic borrowing because the whole structure and conception is quite different. He at one time suggested that the origin may have been purely indigenous with the Indus script as its predecessor. However, Allchin and Erdosy later in 1995 expressed

14168-552: The Indus valley and adjacent areas in the third millennium B.C. The number of different signs suggest a syllabic script, but all attempts at decipherment have been unsuccessful so far. Attempts by some Indian scholars to connect this undeciphered script with the Indian scripts in vogue from the third century B.C. onward are total failures." Megasthenes , a Greek ambassador to the Mauryan court in Northeastern India only

14352-531: The Kharoṣṭhī script, itself a derivative of Aramaic. At the time of his writing, the Ashoka edicts were the oldest confidently dateable examples of Brahmi, and he perceives in them "a clear development in language from a faulty linguistic style to a well honed one" over time, which he takes to indicate that the script had been recently developed. Falk deviates from the mainstream of opinion in seeing Greek as also being

14536-514: The King to establish Mayor's Courts . The petition was approved and Mayor's courts, each consisting of a Mayor and nine aldermen, and each having the jurisdiction in lawsuits between Europeans, were created in Fort William (Calcutta), Madras, and Bombay. Judgments handed down by a Mayor's Court could be disputed with an appeal to the respective Presidency government and, when the amount disputed

14720-577: The Mayor's Court; however, it left the Court of Requests in place. Under the charter, the Supreme Court, moreover, had the authority to exercise all types of jurisdiction in the region of Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, with the only caveat that in situations where the disputed amount was in excess of Rs. 4,000, their judgment could be appealed to the Privy Council . Both the Act and the charter said nothing about

14904-563: The Mughal system, the land itself belonged to the state and not to the zamindar , who could transfer only his right to collect rent. On being awarded the diwani or overlordship of Bengal following the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the East India Company found itself short of trained administrators, especially those familiar with local custom and law; tax collection was consequently farmed out. This uncertain foray into land taxation by

15088-539: The Prakrit/Sanskrit word for writing itself, lipi is similar to the Old Persian word dipi , suggesting a probable borrowing. A few of the Ashoka edicts from the region nearest the Persian empire use dipi as the Prakrit word for writing, which appears as lipi elsewhere, and this geographic distribution has long been taken, at least back to Bühler's time, as an indication that the standard lipi form

15272-416: The Semitic emphatic ṭ ) were derived by back formation from dh and ṭh . The attached table lists the correspondences between Brahmi and North Semitic scripts. Bühler states that both Phoenician and Brahmi had three voiceless sibilants , but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear. Bühler was able to suggest Brahmi derivatives corresponding to all of

15456-557: The Semitic hypothesis are similar to Gnanadesikan's trans-cultural diffusion view of the development of Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī, in which the idea of alphabetic sound representation was learned from the Aramaic-speaking Persians, but much of the writing system was a novel development tailored to the phonology of Prakrit. Further evidence cited in favor of Persian influence has been the Hultzsch proposal in 1925 that

15640-530: The Sind Camel Corps) in 1853, and one mountain battery in 1856". Similarly, a local force was raised after the annexation of Nagpur in 1854, and the "Oudh Irregular Force" was added after Oudh was annexed in 1856. Earlier, as a result of the treaty of 1800, the Nizam of Hyderabad had begun to maintain a contingent force of 9,000 horse and 6,000-foot which was commanded by Company officers; in 1853, after

15824-462: The Supreme Court any jurisdiction in matters of revenue ( Diwāni ) or Regulations of the Government enacted by the British Parliament. This state of affairs continued until 1797, when a new Act extended the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to the province of Benares (which had since been added to the company's dominions) and "all places for the time being included in Bengal". With the creation of

16008-401: The Vedic hymns may well have been achieved orally, but that the development of Panini's grammar presupposes writing (consistent with a development of Indian writing in c. the 4th century BCE). Several divergent accounts of the origin of the name "Brahmi" (ब्राह्मी) appear in history. The term Brahmi (बाम्भी in original) appears in Indian texts in different contexts. According to the rules of

16192-452: The actual forms of the characters, the differences between the two Indian scripts are much greater than the similarities". Falk also dated the origin of Kharoṣṭhī to no earlier than 325 BCE, based on a proposed connection to the Greek conquest. Salomon questions Falk's arguments as to the date of Kharoṣṭhī and writes that it is "speculative at best and hardly constitutes firm grounds for

16376-565: The anticipation of any increased land-revenue payments that the annexation might augur. With British victories in wars or with annexation, as the extent of British jurisdiction expanded, the soldiers were now not only expected to serve in less familiar regions (such as in Burma in the Anglo-Burmese Wars in 1856), but also make do without the "foreign service", remuneration that had previously been their due, and this caused resentment in

16560-425: The appearance of the Brahmi and scripts up into the third century CE. These graffiti usually appear singly, though on occasion may be found in groups of two or three, and are thought to have been family, clan, or religious symbols. In 1935, C. L. Fábri proposed that symbols found on Mauryan punch-marked coins were remnants of the Indus script that had survived the collapse of the Indus civilization. Another form of

16744-573: The army. In 1846, after the Second Anglo-Sikh War , a frontier brigade was raised in the Cis-Sutlej Hill States mainly for police work; in addition, in 1849, the " Punjab Irregular Force " was added on the frontier. Two years later, this force consisted of "3 light field batteries, 5 regiments of cavalry, and 5 of infantry". The following year, "a garrison company was added, ... a sixth infantry regiment (formed from

16928-410: The assortment of rights associated with land were not possessed by a "land owner", but rather shared by the several parties with stake in the land, including the peasant cultivator, the zamindar , and the state. The zamindar served as an intermediary who procured rent from the cultivator, and after withholding a percentage for his own expenses, made available the rest, as revenue to the state. Under

17112-659: The authority of the Sadr Diwāni Adālat , or the Chief Civil Court of Appeals , consisting of the Governor of the Presidency and his Council, assisted by Indian officers. Similarly for criminal cases, Mofussil nizāmat adālats , or Provincial courts of criminal judicature , were created in the interior; these again consisted of Indian court officers ( pandits and qazis ), who were supervised by officials of

17296-406: The balance of rights and obligations that were traditionally claimed by the farmers who cultivated the land and the various intermediaries who collected tax on the state's behalf and who reserved a cut for themselves; and second, identifying those sectors of the rural economy that would maximise both revenue and security. Although their first revenue settlement turned out to be essentially the same as

17480-579: The bench of the Sadr Diwāni Adālat , only complicated the situation further. The appointment had to be annulled in 1781 by a parliamentary intervention with the enactment of the Declaration Act. The Act exempted the Executive Branch from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It recognised the independent existence of the Sadr Adālats and all subsidiary courts of the company. Furthermore, it headed off future legal turf wars by prohibiting

17664-568: The best evidence is that no script was used or ever known in India, aside from the Persian-dominated Northwest where Aramaic was used, before around 300 BCE because Indian tradition "at every occasion stresses the orality of the cultural and literary heritage", yet Scharfe in the same book admits that "a script has been discovered in the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished in

17848-476: The characters to stick figures . It was known by a variety of other names, including "lath", "Laṭ", "Southern Aśokan", "Indian Pali" or "Mauryan" ( Salomon 1998 , p. 17), until the 1880s when Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie , based on an observation by Gabriel Devéria , associated it with the Brahmi script, the first in a list of scripts mentioned in the Lalitavistara Sūtra . Thence

18032-481: The closing years of the 18th century saw, with Wellesley's campaigns, a new increase in the army strength. Thus in 1806, at the time of the Vellore Mutiny , the combined strength of the three presidencies' armies stood at 154,500, making them one of the largest standing armies in the world. As the East India Company expanded its territories, it added irregular "local corps", which were not as well trained as

18216-553: The combined flow of Kanha - Wainganga . Since the inscription is only partially legible, different scholars interpret the events described in the inscription differently. He was succeeded by his two young sons Vedasri (Khandasiri or Skandasri) and Sakti-Sri (Sati Sirimata) or Haku-Siri, under the regency of their mother Nayanika. Brahmi script Brahmi is an abugida and uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. The writing system only went through relatively minor evolutionary changes from

18400-437: The company were required under the Act to submit all communications regarding civil, military, and revenue matters in India for scrutiny by the British government. For the governance of the Indian territories, the act asserted the supremacy of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal) over those of Fort St. George (Madras) and Bombay . It also nominated a Governor-General (Warren Hastings) and four councillors for administering

18584-437: The company's hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy . Since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule. The most important such support came from the subsidiary alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule. In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-third of India. When an Indian ruler, who

18768-637: The company's government in India should be responsive to Indian expectations. The Orientalist ethos would prevail in education policy well into the 1820s, and was reflected in the founding of the Poona Sanskrit College in Pune in 1821 and the Calcutta Sanskrit College in 1824. The Orientalists were, however, soon opposed by advocates of an approach that has been termed Anglicist . The Anglicists supported instruction in

18952-606: The company's power chiefly took two forms. The first of these was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions, which collectively came to comprise British India . The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand , Gorakhpur , and the Doab ) (1801), Delhi (1803), Assam ( Ahom Kingdom 1828), and Sindh (1843). Punjab , North-West Frontier Province , and Kashmir , were annexed after

19136-407: The company, may have gravely worsened the impact of a famine that struck Bengal in 1769–70 , in which between seven and ten million people—or between a quarter and third of the presidency's population—may have died. However, the company provided little relief either through reduced taxation or by relief efforts, and the economic and cultural impact of the famine was felt decades later, even becoming,

19320-402: The company, who were assisted in the interpretation of customary Indian law by Hindu pandits and Muslim qazis . For small claims, however, Registrars and Indian commissioners, known as Sadr Amīns and Munsifs , were appointed. These in their turn were supervised by provincial civil courts of appeal constituted for such purpose, each consisting of four British judges. All these were under

19504-409: The company. Also constituted were Courts of circuit with appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases, which were usually presided over by the judges of the civil appellate courts. All these too were under a Sadr Nizāmat Adālat or a Chief Court of Criminal Appeal. Around this time the business affairs of the East India Company began to draw increased scrutiny in the House of Commons . After receiving

19688-547: The context of the kingdom of "Sandrakottos" (Chandragupta). Elsewhere in Strabo (Strab. XV.i.39), Megasthenes is said to have noted that it was a regular custom in India for the "philosopher" caste (presumably Brahmins) to submit "anything useful which they have committed to writing" to kings, but this detail does not appear in parallel extracts of Megasthenes found in Arrian and Diodorus Siculus . The implication of writing per se

19872-648: The control of the British East India Company (EIC). The EIC, founded in 1600, established their first trading post in India in 1612, and gradually expanded their presence in the region over the following decades. During the Seven Years' War , the East India Company began a process of rapid expansion in India which resulted in most of the subcontinent falling under their rule by 1857, when the Indian Rebellion of 1857 broke out. After

20056-603: The de facto ruler of large areas of the lower Gangetic plain by 1773. It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay and Madras. The Anglo-Mysore Wars (1766–1799) and the Anglo-Maratha Wars (1772–1818) left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej River . With the defeat of the Marathas , no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer. The expansion of

20240-432: The earliest attested orally transmitted example dates to the middle of the 3rd century CE in a Sanskrit prose adaptation of a lost Greek work on astrology . The Brahmi script is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts of the three major Dharmic religions : Hinduism , Jainism , and Buddhism , as well as their Chinese translations . For example, the 10th chapter of the Lalitavistara Sūtra (c. 200–300 CE), titled

20424-420: The economic theories then current, which regarded agriculture as the engine of economic development, and consequently stressed the fixing of revenue demands in order to encourage growth. The expectation behind the permanent settlement was that knowledge of a fixed government demand would encourage the zamindars to increase both their average outcrop and the land under cultivation, since they would be able to retain

20608-510: The effective management of their local affairs, and the ensuing lack of oversight of the overall Company operations in India led to some grave abuses by Company officers or their allies. Clive's victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain. The company's money management practices came to be questioned, especially as it began to post net losses even as some Company servants,

20792-662: The emergence of a "parasitic landlord class". Mill advocated ryotwari settlements which consisted of government measurement and assessment of each plot (valid for 20 or 30 years) and subsequent taxation which was dependent on the fertility of the soil. The taxed amount was nine-tenths of the "rent" in the early 19th century and gradually fell afterwards. However, in spite of the appeal of the ryotwari system's abstract principles, class hierarchies in southern Indian villages had not entirely disappeared—for example village headmen continued to hold sway—and peasant cultivators sometimes came to experience revenue demands they could not meet. In

20976-716: The focus of European scholarly attention in the early 19th-century during East India Company rule in India , in particular in the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta . Brahmi was deciphered by James Prinsep , the secretary of the Society, in a series of scholarly articles in the Society's journal in the 1830s. His breakthroughs built on the epigraphic work of Christian Lassen , Edwin Norris , H. H. Wilson and Alexander Cunningham , among others. The origin of

21160-476: The governed population, one that was expressed by the conservative Bengali reformer Radhakanta Deb as the "duty of the Rulers of Countries to preserve and Customs and the religions of their subjects". The second goal was motivated by the concerns among some Company officials about being seen as foreign rulers. They argued that the company should try to win over its subjects by outdoing the region's previous rulers in

21344-553: The government and formed a new ministry under Fox's rival William Pitt the Younger . Pitt's India Act left the East India Company in political control of India but established a Board of Control in England both to supervise the East India Company's affairs and to prevent the company's shareholders from interfering in the governance of India. The Board of Control consisted of six members, which included one Secretary of State from

21528-503: The government was the ultimate lord of the soil and should not renounce its right to 'rent', i.e. the profit left over on richer soil when wages and other working expenses had been settled." Another keystone of the new system of temporary settlements was the classification of agricultural fields according to soil type and produce, with average rent rates fixed for the period of the settlement. According to Mill, taxation of land rent would promote efficient agriculture and simultaneously prevent

21712-562: The imprecise wording of the Act left it open to be variously interpreted; consequently, the administration in India continued to be hobbled by disunity between the provincial governors, between members of the council, and between the Governor-General himself and his Council. The Regulating Act also attempted to address the prevalent corruption in India: Company servants were henceforth forbidden to engage in private trade in India or to receive "presents" from Indian nationals. In 1783,

21896-461: The increased demands that the company had placed on them; consequently, many defaulted, and by one estimate, up to one-third of their lands were auctioned during the first two decades following the permanent settlement. The new owners were often Brahmin and Kayastha employees of the Company who had a good grasp of the new system, and, in many cases, some had prospered under it. Since the zamindars were never able to undertake costly improvements to

22080-496: The indigenous origin theory is that Brahmi was invented ex nihilo , entirely independently from either Semitic models or the Indus script, though Salomon found these theories to be wholly speculative in nature. Pāṇini (6th to 4th century BCE) mentions lipi , the Indian word for writing scripts in his definitive work on Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi . According to Scharfe, the words lipi and libi are borrowed from

22264-402: The indigenous origin was a preference of British scholars in opposition to the "unknown Western" origin preferred by continental scholars. Cunningham in the seminal Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum of 1877 speculated that Brahmi characters were derived from, among other things, a pictographic principle based on the human body, but Bühler noted that, by 1891, Cunningham considered the origins of

22448-455: The interaction between the Indic and the Semitic worlds before the rise of the Semitic scripts might imply a reverse process. However, the chronology thus presented and the notion of an unbroken tradition of literacy is opposed by a majority of academics who support an indigenous origin. Evidence for a continuity between Indus and Brahmi has also been seen in graphic similarities between Brahmi and

22632-472: The land envisaged under the Permanent Settlement, some of which required the removal of the existing farmers, they soon became rentiers who lived off the rent from their tenant farmers. In many areas, especially northern Bengal, they had to increasingly share the revenue with intermediate tenure holders, called jotedars , who supervised farming in the villages. Consequently, unlike the contemporaneous Enclosure movement in Britain, agriculture in Bengal remained

22816-417: The late Indus script, where the ten most common ligatures correspond with the form of one of the ten most common glyphs in Brahmi. There is also corresponding evidence of continuity in the use of numerals. Further support for this continuity comes from statistical analysis of the relationship carried out by Das. Salomon considered simple graphic similarities between characters to be insufficient evidence for

23000-621: The marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II , was leased by the Company in 1668. Following the Anglo-Mughal War , the Company was allowed by Emperor Aurangzeb to establish a presence on the eastern coast as well; far up that coast, in the Ganges Delta , a factory was set up in Calcutta. Since, during this time other companies —established by the Portuguese , Dutch , French , and Danish —were similarly expanding in

23184-456: The military; consequently, the demand for the dye was high. The European demand for the dye, however, proved to be unstable, and both creditors and cultivators bore the risk of the market crashes in 1827 and 1847. The peasant discontent in Bengal eventually led to the Indigo rebellion in 1859–60 and to the end of indigo production there. In Bihar, however, indigo production continued well into

23368-617: The money supply in India was restricted and the company was indisposed to shipping bullion from Britain, it decided upon opium , which had a large underground market in Qing China and which was grown in many parts of India, as the most profitable form of payment. However, since the Chinese authorities had banned the importation and consumption of opium, the Company engaged them in the First Opium War , and at its conclusion, under

23552-639: The moral worth of an education that aided the good of society and promoted instruction in useful knowledge . Such useful instruction to Indians had the added consequence of making them more suitable for the company's burgeoning bureaucracy. By the early 1830s, the Anglicists had the upper hand in devising education policy in India. Many utilitarian ideas were employed in Thomas Babbington Macaulay 's Minute on Indian Education of 1835. The Minute , which later aroused great controversy,

23736-428: The more informal pre-existing Mughal one, the company had created a foundation for the growth of both information and bureaucracy. In 1793, the new Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis , promulgated the permanent settlement of land revenues in the presidency, the first socio-economic regulation in colonial India. By the terms of the settlement rajas and taluqdars were recognised as zamindars and they were asked to collect

23920-471: The name was adopted in the influential work of Georg Bühler , albeit in the variant form "Brahma". The Gupta script of the 5th century is sometimes called "Late Brahmi". From the 6th century onward, the Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants, grouped as the Brahmic family of scripts . Dozens of modern scripts used across South and South East Asia have descended from Brahmi, making it one of

24104-417: The opinion that there was as yet insufficient evidence to resolve the question. Today the indigenous origin hypothesis is more commonly promoted by non-specialists, such as the computer scientist Subhash Kak , the spiritual teachers David Frawley and Georg Feuerstein , and the social anthropologist Jack Goody . Subhash Kak disagrees with the proposed Semitic origins of the script, instead stating that

24288-427: The origin, one positing an indigenous origin and the others deriving it from various Semitic models. The most disputed point about the origin of the Brahmi script has long been whether it was a purely indigenous development or was borrowed or derived from scripts that originated outside India. Goyal (1979) noted that most proponents of the indigenous view are fringe Indian scholars, whereas the theory of Semitic origin

24472-472: The particular Semitic script, and the chronology of the derivation have been the subject of much debate. Bühler followed Max Weber in connecting it particularly to Phoenician, and proposed an early 8th century BCE date for the borrowing. A link to the South Semitic scripts , a less prominent branch of the Semitic script family, has occasionally been proposed, but has not gained much acceptance. Finally,

24656-486: The peasants bore the brunt of the increased demand, there being little protection for their traditional rights in the new legislation. Forced labour of the peasants by the zamindars became more prevalent as cash crops were cultivated to meet the Company revenue demands. Although commercialised cultivation was not new to the region, it had now penetrated deeper into village society and made it more vulnerable to market forces. The zamindars themselves were often unable to meet

24840-561: The phonemic analysis of the Sanskrit language achieved by the Vedic scholars is much closer to the Brahmi script than the Greek alphabet". As of 2018, Harry Falk refined his view by affirming that Brahmi was developed from scratch in a rational way at the time of Ashoka , by consciously combining the advantages of the pre-existing Greek script and northern Kharosthi script. Greek-style letter types were selected for their "broad, upright and symmetrical form", and writing from left to right

25024-413: The power to establish "courts of judicature" in locations of its choice, each court consisting of a lawyer and two merchants. This right was renewed in the subsequent charters granted by James II and William III in 1686 and 1698 respectively. In 1726, however, the Court of Directors of the Company felt that more customary justice was necessary for European residents in the presidency towns, and petitioned

25208-630: The premiership of Lord North , enacted the Regulating Act , which established regulations, its long title stated, "for the better Management of the Affairs of the East India Company , as well in India as in Europe ". Although Lord North himself wanted the company's territories to be taken over by the British state, he faced determined political opposition from many quarters, including some in

25392-549: The presumptive prototypes may have been mapped to the individual characters of Brahmi. Further, states Salomon, Falk accepts there are anomalies in phonetic value and diacritics in Brahmi script that are not found in the presumed Kharoṣṭhī script source. Falk attempts to explain these anomalies by reviving the Greek influence hypothesis, a hypothesis that had previously fallen out of favor. Hartmut Scharfe, in his 2002 review of Kharoṣṭī and Brāhmī scripts, concurs with Salomon's questioning of Falk's proposal, and states, "the pattern of

25576-412: The prices soon quadrupled. This led many farmers in India to switch to cultivating cotton as a quick cash crop; however, with the end of the war in 1865, the demand plummeted again, creating another downturn in the agricultural economy. At this time, the East India Company's trade with China began to grow as well. In the early 19th century, demand for Chinese tea had greatly increased in Britain; since

25760-446: The profits from the increased output; in addition, it was envisaged that land itself would become a marketable form of property that could be purchased, sold, or mortgaged. A feature of this economic rationale was the additional expectation that the zamindars, recognising their own best interest, would not make unreasonable demands on the peasantry. However, these expectations were not realised in practice, and in many regions of Bengal,

25944-464: The province of the subsistence farming of innumerable small paddy fields . The zamindari system was one of two principal revenue settlements undertaken by the Company in India. In southern India , Thomas Munro , who would later become Governor of Madras, promoted the ryotwari system or the Munro system, in which the government settled land-revenue directly with the peasant farmers, or ryots . It

26128-400: The quantity and quality of the Vedic literature, are divided. While Falk (1993) disagrees with Goody, while Walter Ong and John Hartley (2012) concur, not so much based on the difficulty of orally preserving the Vedic hymns, but on the basis that it is highly unlikely that Panini's grammar was composed. Johannes Bronkhorst (2002) takes the intermediate position that the oral transmission of

26312-527: The ranks. The Bombay and Madras armies, and the Hyderabad contingent, however, remained loyal. The Punjab Irregular Force not only did not revolt, it played an active role in suppressing the mutiny. The rebellion led to a complete re-organisation of the Indian army in 1858 in the new British Raj . The reforms initiated after 1784 were designed to create an elite civil service where very talented young Britons would spend their entire careers. Advanced training

26496-539: The rebellion was suppressed, the Government of India Act 1858 resulted in the EIC's territories in India being administered by the Crown instead. The India Office managed the EIC's former territories, which became known as the British Raj . The range of dates is taken to have commenced either in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey , when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with Mir Jafar , who had

26680-592: The region, the English Company's unremarkable beginnings on coastal India offered no clues to what would become a lengthy presence on the Indian subcontinent . The company's victory under Robert Clive in the 1757 Battle of Plassey and another victory in the 1764 Battle of Buxar (in Bihar) consolidated the company's power and forced emperor Shah Alam II to appoint it the diwan , or revenue collector, of Bengal , Bihar, and Orissa . The Company thus became

26864-510: The relation between the judiciary (Supreme Court) and the executive branch (Governor-General); equally, they were silent on the Adālats (both Diwāni and Nizāmat ) created by Warren Hastings just the year before. In the new Supreme Court, the civil and criminal cases alike were interpreted and prosecuted accorded to English law ; in the Sadr Adālats , however, the judges and law-officers had no knowledge of English law, and were required only, by

27048-527: The relevant period. Bühler explained this by proposing that the initial borrowing of Brahmi characters dates back considerably earlier than the earliest known evidence, as far back as 800 BCE, contemporary with the Phoenician glyph forms that he mainly compared. Bühler cited a near-modern practice of writing Brahmic scripts informally without vowel diacritics as a possible continuation of this earlier abjad-like stage in development. The weakest forms of

27232-476: The rent from the peasants and pay revenue to the company. It was named permanent because it fixed the land tax in perpetuity in return for landed property rights for zamindars ; it simultaneously defined the nature of land ownership in the presidency, and gave individuals and families separate property rights in occupied land. Since the revenue was fixed in perpetuity, it was fixed at a high level, which in Bengal amounted to £3 million at 1789–90 prices. According to

27416-474: The reports of abuse and corruption in Bengal by Company servants, the India Act itself noted numerous complaints that " 'divers Rajahs, Zamindars, Talukdars, and landholders' had been unjustly deprived of 'their lands, jurisdictions, rights, and privileges ' ". At the same time the company's directors were now leaning towards Francis's view that the land-tax in Bengal should be made fixed and permanent, setting

27600-412: The script is still much debated, with most scholars stating that Brahmi was derived from or at least influenced by one or more contemporary Semitic scripts . Some scholars favour the idea of an indigenous origin or connection to the much older and as yet undeciphered Indus script but the evidence is insufficient at best. Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the "pin-man" script, likening

27784-616: The script uncertain. Most scholars believe that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, with Aramaic being a leading candidate. However, the issue is not settled due to the lack of direct evidence and unexplained differences between Aramaic, Kharoṣṭhī, and Brahmi. Though Brahmi and the Kharoṣṭhī script share some general features, the differences between the Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts are "much greater than their similarities", and "the overall differences between

27968-405: The sepoys were regarded as the embodiment of demonic forces, sometimes of antique warrior heroes. Indian rulers adopted red serge jackets for their own forces and retainers as if to capture their magical qualities." In 1796, under pressure from the company's board of directors in London, the Indian troops were re-organised and reduced during the tenure of John Shore as Governor-General. However,

28152-454: The source alphabet recite the sounds by combining the consonant with an unmarked vowel, e.g. /kə/, /kʰə/, /gə/ , and in the process of borrowing into another language, these syllables are taken to be the sound values of the symbols. They also accepted the idea that Brahmi was based on a North Semitic model. Many scholars link the origin of Brahmi to Semitic script models, particularly Aramaic. The explanation of how this might have happened,

28336-633: The stage for the Permanent Settlement (see section Revenue collection below). The India Act also created in each of the three presidencies a number of administrative and military posts, which included: a Governor and three Councilors, one of which was the Commander in Chief of the Presidency army. Although the supervisory powers of the Governor-General-in-Council in Bengal (over Madras and Bombay) were extended—as they were again in

28520-619: The status of women. Schools would be established in which they would teach the English language . The 1830s and 1840s, however, were not times of prosperity: After its heavy spending on the military, the company had little money to engage in large-scale public works projects or modernisation programs. After gaining the right to collect revenue in Bengal in 1765, the Company largely ceased importing gold and silver , which it had hitherto used to pay for goods shipped back to Britain. In addition, as under Mughal Empire rule, land revenue collected in

28704-627: The support of indigenous learning. Guided by this belief, the Benares Sanskrit College was founded in Varanasi in 1791 during the administration of Lord Cornwallis. The promotion of knowledge of Asia had attracted scholars as well to the company's service. Earlier, in 1784, the Asiatick Society had been founded in Calcutta by William Jones , a puisne judge in the newly established Supreme Court of Bengal. Soon, Jones

28888-511: The support of the East India Company; or in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani , or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar ; or in 1773, when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta , appointed its first Governor-General of Fort William , Warren Hastings , and became directly involved in governance. The East India Company significantly expanded its influence throughout

29072-549: The then Governor-General. The college was later to play an important role both in the development of modern Indian languages and in the Bengal Renaissance . Advocates of these related goals were termed, " Orientalists ". The Orientalist group was led by Horace Hayman Wilson . Many leading Company officials, such as Thomas Munro and Montstuart Elphinstone , were influenced by the Orientalist ethos and felt that

29256-404: The third century. According to Salomon, evidence of the use of Kharoṣṭhī is found primarily in Buddhist records and those of Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Parthian, and Kushana dynasty era. Justeson and Stephens proposed that this inherent vowel system in Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī developed by transmission of a Semitic abjad through the recitation of its letter values. The idea is that learners of

29440-410: The trial drew applause and focused attention on India, Hastings was eventually acquitted, due in part to the revival of nationalism in Britain in the wake of the French Revolution . Nonetheless, Burke's effort had the effect of creating a sense of responsibility in British public life for the company's dominion in India. Soon rumblings appeared amongst merchants in London that the monopoly granted to

29624-529: The tributary state of Benaras , the revenue collection system was extended to the territory with a Company Resident in charge. The following year—with a view to preventing corruption—Company district collectors , who were then responsible for revenue collection for an entire district, were replaced with provincial councils at Patna, Murshidabad, and Calcutta, and with Indian collectors working within each district. The title, "collector", reflected "the centrality of land revenue collection to government in India: it

29808-416: The two render a direct linear development connection unlikely", states Richard Salomon. Virtually all authors accept that regardless of the origins, the differences between the Indian script and those proposed to have influenced it are significant. The degree of Indian development of the Brahmi script in both the graphic form and the structure has been extensive. It is also widely accepted that theories about

29992-405: The two. Furthermore, there is no accepted decipherment of the Indus script, which makes theories based on claimed decipherments tenuous. A promising possible link between the Indus script and later writing traditions may be in the megalithic graffiti symbols of the South Indian megalithic culture, which may have some overlap with the Indus symbol inventory and persisted in use up at least through

30176-420: The variations seen in the Asokan edicts would be unlikely to have emerged so quickly if Brahmi had a single origin in the chancelleries of the Mauryan Empire. He suggests a date of not later than the end of the 4th century for the development of Brahmi script in the form represented in the inscriptions, with earlier possible antecedents. Jack Goody (1987) had similarly suggested that ancient India likely had

30360-432: The world's most influential writing traditions. One survey found 198 scripts that ultimately derive from it. Among the inscriptions of Ashoka ( c.  3rd century BCE ) written in the Brahmi script a few numerals were found, which have come to be called the Brahmi numerals . The numerals are additive and multiplicative and, therefore, not place value ; it is not known if their underlying system of numeration has

30544-434: Was able to secure his territory, wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economical method of indirect rule, which did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects. In return, the Company undertook the "defence of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor." Subsidiary alliances created

30728-406: Was also adopted for its convenience. On the other hand, the Kharosthi treatment of vowels was retained, with its inherent vowel "a", derived from Aramaic , and stroke additions to represent other vowel signs. In addition, a new system of combining consonants vertically to represent complex sounds was also developed. The possibility of an indigenous origin such as a connection to the Indus script

30912-620: Was also shaped by the attempted Impeachment of Warren Hastings ; the trial, whose proceedings began in 1788, ended with Hastings' acquittal, in 1795. Although the effort was chiefly coordinated by Edmund Burke, it also drew support from within the British government. Burke accused Hastings not only of corruption, but—appealing to universal standards of justice—also of acting solely upon his own discretion, without concern for law, and of wilfully causing distress to others in India. Hastings' defenders countered that his actions were consistent with Indian customs and traditions. Although Burke's speeches at

31096-406: Was also unusual in being the first to rely on village headmen and panchāyats for cases involving small claims. This judicial system in the three presidencies was to survive the company's rule, the next major change coming only in 1861. Education of Indians had become a topic of interest among East India Company officials from the outset of the company's rule in Bengal. In the last two decades of

31280-427: Was appointed Governor of the Bombay Presidency , played an influential role in the planning of the first medical college in Bombay, which after his unexpected death was named Grant Medical College when it was established in 1845. During 1852–1853 some citizens of Bombay sent petitions to the British Parliament in support of both establishing and adequately funding university education in India. The petitions resulted in

31464-415: Was closer to traditional practice in the region and ideologically more progressive, allowing the benefits of Company rule to reach the lowest levels of rural society. At the heart of the ryotwari system was a particular theory of economic rent —and based on David Ricardo 's Law of Rent —promoted by utilitarian James Mill who formulated the Indian revenue policy between 1819 and 1830. "He believed that

31648-412: Was first tried in small scale by Captain Alexander Read in the areas that were taken over from the wars with Tipu Sultan. Subsequently, developed by Thomas Munro, this system was gradually extended all over South India. This was, in part, a consequence of the turmoil of the Anglo-Mysore Wars , which had prevented the emergence of a class of large landowners; in addition, Munro and others felt that ryotwari

31832-415: Was greater than Rs. 4,000, with a further appeal to the King-in-Council . In 1753, the Mayor's courts were renewed under a revised letters patent ; in addition, Courts of Requests for lawsuits involving amounts less than Rs. 20 were introduced. Both types of courts were regulated by the Court of Directors of the East India Company. After its victory in the Battle of Buxar , the Company obtained in 1765

32016-466: Was just enough money to pay the salaries of a threadbare administration, a skeleton police force, and the army. In 1772, when Hastings became the first Governor-General one of his first undertakings was the rapid expansion of the Presidency's army. Since the available soldiers, or Sepoys , from Bengal—many of whom had fought against the British in the Battle of Plassey – were now suspect in British eyes, Hastings recruited farther west from

32200-409: Was not required of them, and the army soon came to recognise Hindu festivals officially. "This encouragement of high caste ritual status, however, left the government vulnerable to protest, even mutiny, whenever the sepoys detected infringement of their prerogatives." The Bengal Army was used in military campaigns in other parts of India and abroad: to provide crucial support to a weak Madras army in

32384-524: Was one of " Orientalism ", that is of adjusting to the way of life and customs of the Indian people and not trying to reform them. That changed after 1813, as the forces of reform in the home country, especially evangelical religion, Whiggish political outlook, and Utilitarian philosophy worked together to make the company an agent of Anglicization and modernisation. Christian missionaries became active, but made few converts. The Raj set out to outlaw sati (widow-burning) and thuggee (ritual banditry) and upgrade

32568-504: Was promoted especially at the East India Company College (until 1853). Haileybury emphasised the Anglican religion and morality and trained students in the classical Indian languages. Many students held to Whiggish , evangelical , and Utilitarian convictions of their duty to represent their nation and to modernise India. At most there were about 600 of these men who managed the Raj's customs service, taxes, justice system, and its general administration. The company's original policy

32752-401: Was redesignated as the Governor-General of India . The Governor-General and his executive council were given exclusive legislative powers for the whole of British India. Since the British territories in north India had now extended up to Delhi, the Act also sanctioned the creation of a Presidency of Agra . With the annexation of Oudh in 1856, this territory was extended and eventually became

32936-413: Was succeeded by Mallakarni, but according to other Puranas, he was succeeded by Satakarni. The Nanaghat cave inscription of Satakarni lists his family members: it mentions Simuka's name, but not that of Krishna. Based on this, multiple historians conclude that Satakarni was Simuka's son, and succeeded Krishna. G. V. Rao, however, believes that the inscription is that of a different king Satakarni II; Simuka

33120-400: Was supported by some administrators, such as Warren Hastings, who envisaged the company as the successor of a great Empire, and saw the support of vernacular learning as only befitting that role. In 1781, Hastings founded the Madrasa 'Aliya , an institution in Calcutta for the study of Arabic and Persian languages, and Islamic law . A few decades later a related perspective appeared among

33304-403: Was the government's primary function and it moulded the institutions and patterns of administration". The Company inherited a revenue collection system from the Mughals in which the heaviest proportion of the tax burden fell on the cultivators, with one-third of the production reserved for imperial entitlement; this pre-colonial system became the Company revenue policy's baseline. However, there

33488-400: Was to advance his famous thesis on the common origin of Indo-European languages . The third related goal grew out of the philosophy then current among some Company officials that they would themselves become better administrators if they were better versed in the languages and cultures of India. It led in 1800 to the founding of the College of Fort William , in Calcutta by Lord Wellesley ,

33672-470: Was to influence education policy in India well into the next century. Since English was increasingly being employed as the language of instruction, Persian was abolished as the official language of the company's administration and courts by 1837. However, bilingual educations was proving to be popular as well, and some institutions such as the Poona Sanskrit College commenced teaching both Sanskrit and English. Charles Grant's son, Sir Robert Grant , who in 1834

33856-426: Was vast variation across India in the methods by which the revenues were collected; with this complication in mind, a Committee of Circuit toured the districts of expanded Bengal Presidency in order to make a five-year settlement, consisting of five-yearly inspections and temporary tax farming . In their overall approach to revenue policy, Company officials were guided by two goals: first, preserving as much as possible

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