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BHAGAVAD-GITA-BHAWLPOOR.

November to April, the temple and its deity are abandoned even by the attendant Brahmins, on account of the cold.

BHAMO', a town of Burmah, on the Upper Irrawaddy, 40 miles to the west of the Chinese frontier, and 180 to the north-north-east of Ava. It contains 2000 houses, and has round it many It is the chief mart of the trade populous villages.

with China, the imports being woollens, cottons, and silks, which are brought principally by winter

caravans. B. has also a considerable trade with the

tribes of the neighbourhood, who resort to the town, exchanging their native produce for salt, rice, and a sauce made of dried fish.

BHANG, the eastern name for Hemp (q. v.).

BHAGAVAD-GÎTA (i. e., Revelations from the Deity) is the title of a religious metaphysical poem, interwoven as an episode in the great Indian epic poem of the Mahâbhârata (q. v.). Two hostile armies, the nearly related Kurus and Pândus, are drawn up in opposition, ready for battle; the trumpets sound the opening of the combat; and the Pându Ardshuna mounts his chariot, which is guided by the Deity himself, as charioteer, in the human form of Krishna. But when Ardshuna BHARTRIHARI is the name of a celebrated perceives in the hostile army his relatives, the Indian writer of apothegms. Little is known regardfiends of his youth, and his teachers, he hesitates ing the circumstances of his life. A legendary story to commence the struggle, held back by the doubt makes him the brother of King Vikramâditya, who whether it were lawful for him, for the sake of lived in the 1st c. B. C., and relates of him, that the earthly gain of reconquering his father's king- after a wild licentious youth, he betook himself in dom, to transgress the divinely approved ordi- later years to the ascetic life of a hermit. His nances for the government of the state. Upon this, name has been given to a collection of 300 apothegms Krishna sets forth, in a series of eighteen poetic-whether it be that he actually wrote them, or, lectures, the necessity of proceeding, unconcerned as is more probable, that the apothegms were as to the consequences. In the progress of his long popular works, written by many various authors, but discourse, a complete system of Indian religious ascribed, according to the Indian custom, to some philosophy is developed, in which the highest personage well known among the people in legends problems of the human mind are treated with as and tales. Cheerful descriptions from nature, and much clearness of thought as elegance of language. charming pictures of love, alternate in these It is impossible to determine exactly when and apothegms, with wise remarks upon the relations of by whom the work was composed. It is not, life, and profound thoughts upon the Deity and however, one of the first attempts of Indian philo- the immortality of the soul. Bohlen has published sophy, for it is rather of an eclectic nature; and an excellent critical edition (Berlin, 1833), with a before it could have been composed, there must supplement Varia Lectiones (Berlin, 1850), as well have been a period of long-continued intellectual as a successful metrical translation into German cultivation in many philosophic schools. It is not (Hamburg, 1835). B. has a certain special interest unlikely that it was written in the first century as having been the first Indian author known in after Christ. The work is looked upon with great Europe, 200 of his apothegms having been translated reverence in India, and it has accordingly been in 1653, by the missionary, Abraham Roger, in a made the subject of numerous commentaries (the learned work published at Nuremberg, under the best is that of Sridhara-Svâmin, published in Cal- quaint title, Open Gates to Hidden Heathenism. cutta in 1832), and it has likewise been translated into various Indian dialects. Five different metrical versions in Hindi appeared in Bombay in 1842; a translation into the Telugu dialect in Madras, 1840; into the Canarese, Bangalore, 1846, &c. The best critical edition of the Sanscrit text is that of A. W. von Schlegel (2d ed., Bonn, 1846), to which is added a Latin translation. Among the other translations may be mentioned that into English of the same name in India, is situated on a tributary BHAWLPOO'R, the capital of the protected state by Wilkins (Lond. 1785), who had the credit of of the Ghara, which, formed by the junction of the first making the work first known in Europe; that Sutlej and the Beas, falls into the Chenab about into German, by Peiper (Leip. 1884); and the fifty miles further down, in lat. 29° 24′ N., and Greek translation by Galanos (Athens, 1848). W. fifty miles further down, in lat. 29° 24' N., von Humboldt's treatise, Upon the Episodes of the long. 71° 47' E. Mahabharata, known under the name of the BhagavadGita (Berlin, 1827), contains an admirable exposition of the philosophy of the poem.

BHAGULPO'RE, the capital of the district of the same name in the sub-presidency of Bengal, in lat. 25° 11′ N., and long. 87° E. It stands on the right bank of the Ganges, which is even here 7 miles wide in the rainy season. A seminary for English instruction has been here established by the British government, which, in 1852, numbered 115 pupils-15 Mohammedans, 70 Hindus, and 30 of other denominations. In the vicinity of the town are two antiquarian curiosities, being round towers of about 70 feet in height, of the origin or object of which nothing is known.-2. B., as a district, contains 5806 square miles, and 2,000,000 inhabitants. It lies south of Nepaul, in lat. 24° 17'-26° 20' N., and in long. 86° 15'-88° 3′ E. About a fifth of the whole is covered by hills, which, stretching away towards the south-west, connect themselves with the Vindhya Mountains, the grand dividing-ridge between the Nerbudda and the Ganges.

BHAVANI-KUDA'R, or BHOVANI-KUDAR, a town in the presidency of Madras, in the district of Coimbatoor, 58 miles to the north-east of the city of that name. It takes its name from its position at the confluence of the Bhavani or Bhovani, and the Cauvery. It is worthy of notice chiefly for its temples of Vishnu and Siva.

It has a circuit of four miles

part, however, of the enclosed space being occupied by groves of trees; and its population is estimated at 20,000. B. has manufactures of scarfs and turbans, chintzes and other cottons, and the immediate neighbourhood is remarkably fertile in grain, sugar, indigo, tobacco, and butter, with an abundance of mangoes, oranges, apples, and other fruits, in perfection. For external commerce, too, B. is favourably placed, standing at the junction of three routes respectively from the east, south-east, and south; while, towards the north, the Hindu merchants, who are very enterprising, have dealings with Bokhara, and even with Astrakhan.—2. The state of B. lies in lat. 27° 41′-30° 25′; and long. 69° 30′-73° 58' E. The area is about 22,000 square miles-the population being perhaps overrated at 600,000, or somewhat more than twentyseven inhabitants to a square mile. The country is remarkably level: only about one-sixth is capable of cultivation. The fertile portion, skirting the Ghara and the Indus, has a purely alluvial soil; but the remainder, though presenting many traces of former cultivation and population, is now, from want of

BHEL-BIALYSTOK.

water, an irreclaimable desert either of hard dry
clay, or of loose shifting sands. Besides beasts
of chase, such as tigers, boars, &c., B. abounds in
domestic animals, such as camels, kine, buffaloes,
goats, and broad-tailed sheep. In few parts of
the world are provisions finer or cheaper. The
principal exports are cotton, sugar, indigo, hides,
drugs, dye-stuffs, wool, ghee or butter, and provi-
sions in general. The principal imports are the
wares of Britain and India. The khan and a great
majority of his subjects are Mohammedans.
Hindus are treated with much toleration.
annual revenue is about 1,500,000 rupees, or about
£150,000.

BHEL, or BAEL. See AEGLE.

But

The

BHOOJ, the capital of Cutch, in India, situated at the foot of a fortified hill of the same name, where a temple has been erected to the cobra da capella, in lat. 23° 15' N., and long. 69° 44' E., about 35 miles from the sea. It contains about 20,000 inhabitants. Its mosques and pagodas, interspersed with plantations of dates, give to the town an imposing appearance from a distance. In 1819 it suffered severely from an earthquake. It is celebrated over India for its manufactures in gold

and silver.

BHOPAL, the capital of the territory of the same name, in India, lies in lat. 23° 14′ N., and long. 77° 33′ E. It is surrounded by a dilapidated stone-wall of about two miles in circuit. The fort, which is the residence of the nawab, stands on a huge rock outside the town. B. is worthy of notice mainly in connection with two immense tanks in the immediate neighbourhood-one of them being 2 miles in length, and the other measuring 4 miles by 14. As each sends forth a river, they have most probably been formed by the embanking and damming up of their respective streams. The territory of B. is a protected state, under the immediate superintendence of the governor-general. It is situated within the basins of the Ganges and Nerbudda, in lat. 22° 32'-23° 46' N., and long. 76° 25'-78° 50' E.; its area being estimated at 6764 square miles, and its population, on an assumed average for Central India, at 662,872. Though the vast mass of the people are Hindus, yet the government is Mohammedan, and is understood to be more popular in its character than any other in India.

oligarchy. The Dherma Rajah, the nominal head,
is treated rather as a god than as a sovereign; while
the Deb Rajah, the actual head, is controlled in
almost everything by a council of eight. Polyandry
and polygamy equally conspire to keep down the
numbers of the population.

state of the same name in India, is a large town,
BHURTPO'RE, the capital of the protected
measuring about eight miles in circuit, and con-
taining, it is said, about 100,000 inhabitants, in
lat. 27° 12′ N., and long. 77° 33′ E. It is worthy of
notice chiefly on
1805 and 1825. The strength of the place lay in a
account of its two sieges in
mud-wall, which was practically shot-proof, and
a surrounding ditch, which might at any time be
filled with water from a neighbouring lake. On
the first occasion, Lord Lake's assaults were all
baffled by this trench thus flooded. On the second
occasion, however, Lord Combermere, having arrived
in time to cut off the communications of the garri-
son with the lake above mentioned, overcame his
principal difficulty; but even then the mud-wall
would yield only to mining.-2. The protected state
of B. is situated in lat. 26° 48'-27° 50′ N., and in
long. 76° 54'-77° 49′ E.-its area being estimated at
1978 square miles. The population has been assumed
to average 300 to a square mile, giving a total of about
600,000. The country suffers from want of water,
having only three perennial streams, of which two,
however, are mere rills in the dry season; and yet,
in many parts, the soil is rendered highly produc-
tive by means of irrigation. The principal crops
are grain, cotton, and sugar. In the height of sum-
mer, the climate has been compared to the extreme
glow of an iron-foundry, the thermometer having
been known to stand at 130° F. in the shade. The
rajah's revenue is stated at £170,000 a year; and his
military force is said to amount to 5400 men of all

arms.

BIA'FRA, BIGHT OF, a large bay of the Atlantic Ocean, on the west coast of Africa, at the head of the Gulf of Guinea, between Cape Formosa (which divides it from the Bight of Benin) on the north, and Cape Lopez on the south. Its extreme width between these two points is nearly 600 miles, its depth, to the mouth of the Old Calabar River, about 250 miles. The northern shores of the Bight, comprehended under the general name of the Calabar coast, and the eastern coast, south of Cape St. John, are low and flat. Near Old Calabar, the country becomes hilly, and opposite Fernando Po, it rises into the lofty range of the Cameroons. The principal rivers flowing into the Bight are the Niger, or Quorra, the New and Old Calabar Rivers, the Rio del Rey, the Cameroon, and the Gaboon. creeks and estuaries of the rivers are generally lined with dense thickets of mangrove, which sometimes grow in the water, their lower branches covered with oysters. In the Bight of B. are the three islands of Fernando Po, St. Thomas, and Prince's Island. The chief European stations on the coast are Duke Town, in Old Calabar, where there is a flourishing missionary station, and Naango, or George's Town, a small commercial town on the estuary of the Gaboon.

The

BHOTA'N, or BOO'TAN, a territory in the north-east of India, said to be partly dependent on Tibet, in lat. 26° 18′-28° 2′ N., and long. 88° 32′ -92° 30′ E., being bounded on the N. by the main ridge of the Himalaya, on the E. by Assam, on the S. by Bengal, and on the W. by Sikkim. With an area of 64,500 square miles-more than equal to that of England and Wales-it is said to contain only 1,500,000 inhabitants. The whole surface may be described as mountainous, with a gradual slope from north to south. Generally speaking, the middle ranges are the most productive. While the south presents but a scanty vegetation, and the north rises far above the limit of perpetual snow, the central regions, at an elevation of 8000 or 10,000 feet above the sea, are covered with the finest forests of oak and pine. Nearly all sorts of BIAʼLYSTOK, a fortified town of Western Rusgrain-wheat, barley, rice, maize, and buckwheat- sia, in the government of Grodno. It is situated on are here and there cultivated on favourable spots; the Bialy, an affluent of the Narew, 45 miles southbut much grain is still imported from Bengal, west of Grodno, in lat. 53° 8' N., long. 23° 18′ E. B. being obtained, as well as sugar and tobacco, in is well built; lime-trees border several of the streets, return for native cloths, rock-salt, rhubarb, Tibet and give it a very pleasant aspect. It has a palace goods, mules, and ponies. The religion is Buddhism, and park, now belonging to the municipality, but the monastic endowments of its priests absorbing a formerly belonging to the Counts of Braniski, and large part of the national property. The government, called the Versailles of Poland,' a commodious almost purely ecclesiastical, is in the hands of an market, and several churches. It has manufactures |

BIANCAVILLA-BIBLE.

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BIANCAVI'LLA, a town of Sicily, in the province of, and about 14 miles north-west of the city of Catania. It is about 10 miles distant from Mount Etna, on the south-west declivity of which mountain it is situated. It has a trade in grain, cotton, and silk. Pop. about 6000.

At the overthrow of Croesus, when the Ionians
dreaded an invasion by Cyrus, they were advised
by B. to take their personal property and colonise
Sardinia; but this advice was rejected, and the
Ionians, after a vain defence, were subjugated by
the generals of Cyrus. When the people of Priene
the birthplace of B.-were making preparations
to escape from their besieged city, B., in reply to
one who asked why he was not occupied like
other citizens, employed the words which have
become a Latin proverb, Omnia mea mecum porto,
Græcorum Veterum, &c., 1819.
'I carry all my goods with me.'-Orelli, Opuscula

BIANCHI'NI, FRANCESCO, celebrated for his antiquarian and astronomical investigations, was born December 13, 1662, at Verona, where he received his early education in the Jesuits' College. At Padua he studied theology, mathematics, and above all, botany; and then proceeded to Rome, BIB, POUT, or WHITING POUT (Gadus luscus where he became intimate with the most distin- or Morrhua lusca), a fish of the same genus with guished savans of the day, and devoted himself to the Cod (q. v.) and Haddock (q. v.), pretty common the study of jurisprudence and foreign languages. on many parts of the British coasts, found also on Alexander VIII. bestowed upon him a rich bene- those of Norway, Sweden, Greenland, &c. It is fice, and Clement XI. appointed him secretary to seldom more than a foot long, but remarkably the commission for reforming the calendar. B. differs from all other British fishes of the same was employed to draw a meridian line in the family (Gadida, q. v.) in the great depth of its body, church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in Rome, which equals at least one-fourth of the entire which he successfully accomplished. After travel- length. The back is arched, and the nape exhibits ling through France, Holland, and England, he a rather sharp ridge. The eyes and other parts returned to Italy, with the design of drawing a of the head are invested with a singular loose meridian line from the Adriatic to the Mediter- membrane, which the fish can inflate at pleasure. ranean like that drawn by Cassini across France. There is a dark spot at the origin of each of the The operations connected with this project occupied pectoral fins, as in the Whiting (q. v.). The names him eight years; but a variety of other labours, as Bib and Pout, both originally local English names, well as want of means, prevented its completion. were at one time supposed to belong to distinct Besides several memoirs and dissertations on anti-species (called G. lusca and G. barbata), but it appears quarian and astrónomical subjects, we may mention his Istoria Universale Provata coi Monumenti

e

Figurata coi Simboli degli Antichi (Rome, 1694), and his fine edition of the work of Anastasius, De Vitis Romanorum Pontificum, which was completed by his nephew Giuseppe B. (4 vols., Rome, 1718-1734). B. died in March 1729, and a monument was erected to his memory in the cathedral of Verona.

now to be pretty certain that these are really one. In Scotland, this fish is generally called Brassy. It is well known in the London market, is in best condition in November and December, and is much esteemed for the table.

Here

also, in 1800, Moreau again defeated the Austrian general Kray. B. fell into the possession of Baden in 1802, but four years afterwards, was ceded to Würtemberg. Wieland the poet was born in the immediate vicinity.

BI BERACH, a town of Würtemberg, in the circle of the Danube. It is situated on the Reiss, in the charming valley of the same name, about 23 BIARD, AUGUSTE FRANÇOIS, a French painter, miles south-south-west of Ulm; and is surrounded known in almost every department of his art, but by a ditch and by walls flanked with towers. chiefly distinguished for his animated and often It has manufactures of paper, linen, and fustians, comical representations of ordinary life and manners leather, children's toys, &c. Pop. about 5000. In (peinture de genre). B.'s merits, and the school | October 1796, Moreau won a great victory over to which he belongs, will be sufficiently under- the Austrian general Latour at B., the latter losing stood when we mention that his countrymen 4000 prisoners and 18 pieces of cannon. have styled him the Paul de Kock of painting! He was born at Lyon in 1800, and was at first destined for the church; but subsequently educated at the School of Art of his native city. He travelled in early life in Malta, Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt, where he made sketches, and stored his memory with images which he used in after-years. In 1839, he visited Greenland and Spitzbergen, and of this journey one of the fruits was his famous picture of a battle with polar bears. The first picture which gained him distinction was his 'Babes in the Wood' (1828); and one of his best is the 'Beggar's Family,' exhibited in 1836; both of which pictures were purchased by the town of Lyon. Many other continental galleries possess examples of B.'s pictures, and in England they have always been much sought after.

BIARRITZ, a maritime village of France, in the department of the Basses-Pyrénées, about 5 miles south-west of Bayonne. The French emperor and empress, attracted by its pleasant situation and salubrity, have, within recent years, made it a summer residence; and the presence of the court has of course tended to increase greatly the fame of its baths and singular grottoes. Pop. 1928.

BI'AS, one of the seven sages of Greece, lived in the time of the Lydian king, Alyattes, and his son, Croesus, about 570 B.C. He was generally employed as a political and legal adviser in difficult questions.

BI'BERICH, a village in the duchy of Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine, and about 4 miles south from Wiesbaden, is noted for its splendid palace. The views of the river-scenery from B. arè unrivalled. Pop., including Mosbach, about 3000.

BI'BIRI, BI'BIRI BARK, AND BI BIRINE. See GREENHEART.

is the name given by Chrysostom in the 4th c. to BIBLE (Gr. Ta Biblia, The Books'-see Book) that collection of sacred writings recognised by Christians as the documents of their divinely revealed religion. Both as regards language and contents, they are divided into two parts-the Old and New Testament, or rather, the Old and New Covenant; for the word testamentum is only a translation into the later Latinity of the 2d c. of the Greek diatheke, 'covenant.' The history of the Old Testament is connected with that of the New by a series of writings not received by Protestants as canonical, and collectively styled the Apocrypha (q. v.).

The OLD TESTAMENT is a collection of 39 books, written partly in the Hebrew, and partly in the Chaldaic language, and containing all the remains

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