Calcutta University Readership Lectures. Bengal in the Sixteenth Century A. D.

The dream which some of us, during the last few eventful years, have been dreaming is that the East and the West have already met, and that for the welfare of humanity, for the upward march and development of the race, the civilisation of the future should be a composite civilisation in which the ideals of the East and the ideals of the West should stand side byBENGAL IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, A. [...] As to the Mahomedan historians of India, we may note the statement of the author of the Tabakali Akbari, one of the bes. t, known of our records of the Mussulmans in India, that he had from his youth, "according to the advice of his father, devoted himself to the study of works of history, which are the means of strengthening the understanding of men of education, and of affording instruction by ex [...] In the present state of things I am not quite sure if something cannot be said in defence of the attitude of the helpless student who is content with a succession of birds-eye views of the fortunes of the 17 8"BENGAL IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTIIRY, A. D. Maharatta confederacy, the consolidation of the Sikh fraternity, the meteoric career of 1lyder:11i, and the achievements of the Moghuls at Delhi. [...] The Ramehaitu, published as one of its Memoirs by the Asiatic Society, which tends to throw light on the dark pages of the history of Bengal in the first half of the 12th and the second half of the ]lth Century—days which preceded the appearance of the liahomedans in Bengal. [...] The fetters of a thousand years were burst, self-realisation became the goal, and new valuations of the world and of man became current ; some of the conditions which made this possible being the intense life of the city-state, the revival of the art and philosophy of antiquity, the weakening of authority, the disintegration of belief.