Art. VII.—Account of the Province of Rámnád, Southern Peninsula of India. Compiled from the “Mackenzie Collection,” and edited by the Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society

1836 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 165-188

This province, the government of which is now administered by the British, formed in ancient times the greater part of the principality, or fiefship, of the Sétu-pattis, the chiefs or guardians of the passage leading from the continent of India to the island of Ráméswara, and thence to the opposite coast of Ceylon, called Ráma's Bridge, or Adam's Bridge. These chieftains, dating their authority from the period of the establishment of a place of pilgrimage on the island of Ráméswara, by the Great Ráma, claim an antiquity even higher than that of the Pándyans, or kings of Madura, but to whom, it would appear, that they were, in general, tributary, though now and then asserting and maintaining their independence. Of their history, however, we are not now to speak, but of the province as it was in the year 1814, when the data were taken from which chiefly the following account is compiled. It lies between the ninth and tenth degrees of north latitude, and the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth of east longitude; is bounded on the north by the provinces of Tanjore and Pudukotta, on the south and east by the sea, and on the west by the districts of Tinnevelly, Madura, and Sivaganga; and comprehends an area of nearly two thousand five hundred square miles. Its general aspect is that of high and low lands, the latter having numerous artificial lakes, constructed for the purpose of promoting cultivation; the former exhibiting a variety of dry grain-fields, while the northern districts abound with extensive groves of Palmyra trees, with scarcely a vestige of jungle. The whole is divided into seventeen districts, comprising one thousand six hundred and sixtyeight towns and principal and subordinate villages, with a population, at the period to which we allude, of about one hundred and fifty-seven thousand.

Antiquity ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 21 (82) ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
R. E. M. Wheeler

The Government of Afghanistan recently sent two missions to India, where they were warmly welcomed and made many friends. In September 1946, the Government of India sent in return a small mission to Afghanistan to establish contact between the respective archaeological and historical activities of the two countries, with a view if possible to securing closer cultural collaboration. The Indian mission consisted of the Director General of Archaeology in India and his wife ; the Honourable Mr Justice N. G. A. Edgely, President of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal—the oldest learned society in Asia; and Mr M. A. Shakur, Curator of the Pesh#x0101;war Museum, sent by the Government of the North-West Frontier Province as the immediate neighbour of Afghanistan. The mission travelled in two ex-U.S.A. Army vehicles, a six-wheeled personnel-carrier and a jeep, with two Indian drivers and two Indian attendants.


1912 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-701
Author(s):  
J. F. Fleet

Harappa is a village, having a station on the North-Western Railway, in the Montgomery District, Panjāb: it is situated in lat. 30° 38′, long. 72° 52′, on the south bank of the Ravi, some fifteen miles towards the west-by-south from Montgomery. The place is now of no importance: but extensive ruins and mounds, one of which rises to the height of sixty feet, indicate that the case was otherwise in ancient times; and it has yielded thousands of coins of the “Indo-Scythians” and their successors. Amongst other objects of interest from this place, there are the three seals, full-size facsimiles of which are given in the accompanying Plate. The original seals are now in the British Museum, in the Department of British and Mediæval Antiquities in charge of Mr. Read. In all three cases, the substance of these seals seems to be a claystone, hardened by heat or some other means. In the originals, the devices and characters are sunk: the illustrations represent impressions from the originals, with the devices and characters reversed, as compared with the way in which they lie in the originals, and standing out in relief. The animal on A has been held to be a bull, but not an Indian bull, because it has no hump: another opinion, however, is that it may be a male deer of some kind. The animal on C has a tail of such a nature as to suggest that this creature cannot be a deer. On A the hind legs were not fully formed; and it is possible that a similar tail has been omitted there.


Author(s):  
George Rodney Blane

Sirmór is bounded, on the north by Bisér, from which it is divided by the river Páber; on the west by Hindūr and the Barah Tukrái, or twelve districts; on the south by the Sikh possessions; and on the east by Gerhwál, and the river Jumna. It is divided into Pergunahs, and each Pergunah into Pattis. The head of a Patti is styled a Siana, and is responsible to the Government for its revenues. Some villages are possessed by the tenure of military service. Náhen is the capital, once a flourishing town.


1921 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Driver

The territory occupied by the Kurdish race in historic times seems to have been the district called by the Greeks Kardûchia, and by both Greeks and Romans Corduene or Gordiaea, and by the Syriac writers Qardū, whence the earliest Arabic authorities derived the name Qardā, the country bounded roughly on the north by Armenia, on the west by the river Euphrates, on the south by the Arabian desert, and on the east by the ancient kingdom of Media. Strabo, the Greek geographer, states that Armenia and Atropatene consisted of prosperous districts, but that the northern part was a mountainous country occupied by wild tribes, such as the Kyrtii, nomads and brigands dispersed over the whole of Armenia and extending eastwards over the Zagros mountains. More closely he defines the land of the Gordiaei, whom the earlier writers called Kardūchi, by locating it on the banks of the Tigris and by adding that one of its chief cities was Pinaka, the modern Finik, “a very strong fortress, having three hill-tops, each fortified with its own wall, so as to form as it were a threefold city; yet Armenians subjugated it and Romans took it by storm, although the Gordiaei were apparently good builders and skilled in siege-works, for which reason Tigranes so employed them.”


Author(s):  
James Franklin
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  

Bundélkhund, as its name implies, is the tract or country of the Bundélas; and comprises all the territory, which the Rájás of that dynasty occupied, in the zenith of their power. Thus, the aggregate of the present states of Téhrí, Jhánsí, Dattiya and Simpt'hír and as far as the Désán river, might be termed Bundelkhund Proper: but, the tract lying eastward of that river being also under the dominion of Rájás of Bundela extraction, who are the descendants of Rájá CHHATRASÁL, custom appears to have reconciled the term as applicable to the whole extent of territory occupied by the united dynasties. Following this rule, therefore, the boundaries of Bundelkhund may be stated as follows:—on the north, the river Jumna (Yamuná); on the south, parts of Berár and Málwá (Málava); on the east, Baghé1khund; and on the west, Sindia's possessions. It extends from 77° 48′ to 81° 33′ east longitude; and from 24° 3′ to 26° 26′ north latitude, being 165 British miles in length by 232 in breadth, and containing 23,817 square miles, with a population of 2,400,000 persons.


Author(s):  
Esraa Aladdin Noori ◽  
Nasser Zain AlAbidine Ahmed

The Russian-American relations have undergone many stages of conflict and competition over cooperation that have left their mark on the international balance of power in the Middle East. The Iraqi and Syrian crises are a detailed development in the Middle East region. The Middle East region has allowed some regional and international conflicts to intensify, with the expansion of the geopolitical circle, which, if applied strategically to the Middle East region, covers the area between Afghanistan and East Asia, From the north to the Maghreb to the west and to the Sudan and the Greater Sahara to the south, its strategic importance will seem clear. It is the main lifeline of the Western world.


2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-321
Author(s):  
Lode Wils

In het tweede deel van zijn bijdrage 1830: van de Belgische protonatie naar de natiestaat, over de gebeurtenissen van 1830-1831 als slotfase van een passage van de Belgische protonatie doorheen de grote politiek-maatschappelijke en culturele mutaties na de Franse Revolutie, ontwikkelt Lode Wils de stelling dat de periode 1829-1830 de "terminale crisis" vormde van het Koninkrijk der Verenigde Nederlanden. Terwijl koning Willem I definitief had laten verstaan dat hij de ministeriële verantwoordelijkheid definitief afwees en elke kritiek op het regime beschouwde als kritiek op de dynastie, groeide in het Zuiden de synergie in het verzet tussen klerikalen, liberalen en radicale anti-autoritaire groepen. In de vervreemding tussen het Noorden en het Zuiden en de uiteindelijke revolutionaire nationaal-liberale oppositie vanuit het Zuiden, speelde de taalproblematiek een minder belangrijke rol dan het klerikale element en de liberale aversie tegen het vorstelijk absolutisme van Willem I en de aangevoelde uitsluiting van de Belgen uit het openbaar ambt en vooral uit de leiding van de staat.________1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation stateIn the second part of his contribution 1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation state, dealing with the events from 1830-1831 as the concluding phase of a transition of the Belgian pre-nation through the major socio-political and cultural mutations after the French Revolution, Lode Wils develops the thesis that the period of 1829-1830 constituted the "terminal crisis" of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. Whilst King William I had clearly given to understand that he definitively rejected ministerial responsibility and that he considered any criticism of the regime as a criticism of the dynasty, the synergy of resistance increased between the clericalists, liberals and radical anti-authoritarian groups in the South. In the alienation between the North and the South and the ultimate revolutionary national-liberal opposition from the South the language issue played a less important role than the clericalist element and the liberal aversion against the royal absolutism of William I and the sense of exclusion of the Belgians from public office and particularly from the government of the state.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Brown ◽  
Henry Davis ◽  
Michael Schwan ◽  
Barbara Sennott

Gitksan (git) is an Interior Tsimshianic language spoken in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is closely related to Nisga'a, and more distantly related to Coast Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian. The specific dialect of Gitksan presented here is what can be called Eastern Gitksan, spoken in the villages of Kispiox (Ansbayaxw), Glen Vowell (Sigit'ox), and Hazelton (Git-an'maaxs), which contrasts with the Western dialects, spoken in the villages of Kitwanga (Gitwingax), Gitanyow (Git-anyaaw), and Kitseguecla (Gijigyukwhla). The primary phonological differences between the dialects are a lexical shift in vowels and the presence of stop lenition in the Eastern dialects. While there exists a dialect continuum, the primary cultural and political distinction drawn is between Eastern and Western Gitksan. For reference, Gitksan is bordered on the west by Nisga'a, in the south by Coast Tsimshian and Witsuwit'en, in the east by Dakelh and Sekani, and in the north by Tahltan (the latter four of these being Athabaskan languages).


Antiquity ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 23 (91) ◽  
pp. 129-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. G. Childe

Till 1948 the coherent record of farming in Northern Europe began with the neolithic culture represented in the Danish dysser (‘dolmens’) and most readily defined by the funnel-necked beakers, collared flasks and ‘amphorae’ found therein. As early as 1910 Gustav Kossinna had remarked that these distinctive ceramic types, and accordingly the culture they defined, were not confined to the West Baltic coastlands, but recurred in the valleys of the Upper Vistula and Oder to the east, to the south as far as the Upper Elbe and in northwest Germany and Holland too. He saw in this distribution evidence for the first expansion of Urindogermanen from their cradle in the Cimbrian peninsula. In the sequel Åberg filled in the documentation of this expansion with fresh spots on the distribution map and Kossinna himself distinguished typologically four main provinces or geographical groups—the Northern, Eastern, Southern and Western. Finally Jazdrzewski gave a standard account of the whole content of what had come to be called Kultura puharów lejkowatych, Trichterbecherkultur, or Tragtbaegerkulturen. As ‘Funnel-necked-beaker culture’ is a clumsy expression and English terminology is already overloaded with ‘beakers’, I shall use the term ‘First Northern’.The orgin of this vigorous and expansive group of cultivators and herdsmen has always been an enigma. Not even Kossinna imagined that the savages of the Ertebølle shell-mounds spontaneously began cultivating cereals and breeding sheep in Denmark. As dysser were regarded as megalithic tombs and as megaliths are Atlantic phenomena, he supposed that the bases of the neolithic economy were introduced from the West together with the ‘megalithic idea’. But the First Northern Farmers of the South and East groups did not build megalithic tombs. Moreover, in the last ten years an extension of the North group across southern Sweden as far as Södermannland has come to light, and these farmers too, though they used collared flasks and funnel-necked beakers, built no dolmens either. In any case there was nothing Western about the pottery from the Danish dysser, and Western types of arrow-head are conspicuously rare in Denmark.


1963 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 99-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. J. Wainwright

The distribution of Mesolithic sites in Wales is controlled to a great extent by the terrain, for physiographically, Wales is a highland block defined on three sides by the sea and for the greater part of the fourth side by a sharp break of slope. Geologically the Principality is composed almost entirely of Palaeozoic rocks, of which the 600-foot contour encloses more than three quarters of the total area. There are extensive regions above 1,500 feet and 2,000 feet and in the north the peaks of Snowdonia and Cader Idris rise to 3,560 feet and 2,929 feet respectively. Indeed North Wales consists of an inhospitable highland massif, skirted by a lowland plateau and cut deeply by river valleys, providing only limited areas for settlement. The hills and mountains of Snowdonia with their extension at lower altitudes into the Lleyn Peninsula, and the ranges of Moelwyn, Manod Mawr, Arenig Fach and Cader Idris, are discouraging obstacles to penetration, save for a short distance along the river valleys. To the east of these peaks are extensive tracts of upland plateau dissected by rivers, bounded on the west by the vale of the river Conway and cleft by the Vale of Clwyd. To the east of this valley lies the Clwydian Range and further again to the east these uplands descend with milder contours to the Cheshire and Shropshire plains.To the south the district merges into the uplands of Central Wales, which are continuous until they are replaced by the lowland belt of South Wales.


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