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By His Honour Sir Edward Gait, K.C.S.I., C.I.E. GENTLEMEN,

It will be convenient if I take the opportunity of our first annual general meeting to give you a brief account of the progress which has been made by the Bihar and Orissa Research Society since it came into existence a year ago. The proceedings of the inaugural meeting, presided over by Sir Charles Bayley, which was held on the 20th January 1915, have been printed in the first number of our Journal, together with the rules of the Society as finally passed by the Council.

Up to date 199 persons have been approved by the Council. as members of our Society in addition to the gentlemen who joined it at the start. There are also seventeen candidates for election at the present moment, and if these are all elected, our total membership will amount to 254. This, I think, is a fairly satisfactory result for our first year.

At our inaugural meeting Mr. Sachhidananda Sinha announced his intention of presenting his valuable library to the Society, and we hoped that this generous gift would be emulated by others. This I regret to say, has not yet been the case,

and the only response we have yet had to an appeal which was made for donations for the purchase of books for our library is a donation of Rs. 100 from the Proprietor of the Aul State in Orissa, to whom our best thanks are due. We still hope that before long his example will be followed by other gentlemen of means. Books of the kind we need are expensive and we cannot expect to have a really good library unless we receive liberal contributions to supplement the income from annual subscriptions.

I am glad to be able to tell you that the result of the request which was made to Government for assistance, in accordance with the Resolution proposed at the inaugural meeting by Professor Jadu Nath Sarkar, has resulted in an undertaking by Government to subscribe for a hundred copies of our Journal. This will go a good way towards meeting the expenditure on paper and printing. Owing to the difficulty experienced in finding a suitable private firm to undertake the work, the first two numbers of the Journal have been printed at the Gulzarbagh Government Press, but we hope shortly to arrange for a printer of our own. The Local Government have also made a contribution of Rs. 3,000 per annum, on the analogy of a similar grant made by the Bengal Government to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, to enable the Research Society to give Rs. 250 a month to our General Secretary, Babu Sarat Chandra Roy, who would not otherwise be able to devote the requisite amount of time to his research work and other duties, especially those in connection with ethnography. There are many of our members who are in a position to add to our knowledge of this important subject. It will be the Secretary's business to get into touch with such persons, to stimulate them to action and to help them with his advice, without which they would often not know how to set to work or what information is needed.

In accordance with the decision arrived at at the Council meeting held on the 6th April 1915, the Local Government were addressed with a view to the establishment of a Provincial

Museum and Public Library. This request also was favourably received, and a small committee was appointed to visit a number of existing museums and public libraries in other provinces. The Committee's report has recently been published for criticism, and will shortly be taken into consideration. I cannot yet say exactly what the result will be, but you may take it for granted that a Museum will be established, and that, pending the construction of a suitable building, several rooms in the new Secretariat, which will not be needed by Government for some time to come, will be finished off and made available as a temporary home for the Museum and for the Research Society's library. A Provincial Coin Cabinet has already been formed, and the Government of India have agreed to place it on the list of institutions which are supplied with Treasure Trove coins. It will have precedence over all other institutions in respect of specimens from any part of Bihar and Orissa. Coins of the latter category are of special interest, as they show that, at the periods to which they belong, the people inhabiting the places where they were found had direct or indirect communication with the countries in which they were minted. Thus a gold coin of Huvishka, which was dug up recently in the Khunti subdivision and purchased for the Cabinet by our energetic General Secretary, shows that that tract, which in Muhammadan times was regarded as remote and inaccessible, probably had relations with North-West India about the second century of the Christian era. The Hon'ble Mr. Oldham has most generously presented no less than 129 coins to the Cabinet including five ancient silver punch-marked coins and one punch-marked copper coin found at Rajgir in this district. He has brought these coins with him to-day and members will no doubt be glad to take this opportunity to examine them.

We have already begun in a small way the collection of materials for the Museum. Apart from the various finds mentioned further on in this paper, Babu Saurindra Mohan Sinha of Bhagalpur has promised through the Hon'ble Mr. Walsh to

present two inscribed cannon in his possession. One of these has an inscription in Sanskrit to the effect that it was taken by the Ahom King Javadavaja Singh, from the Muhammadans in battle in the year 1657 A. D.; it has also two Persian inscriptions one of which, however, is said to be wholly undecipherable while the other is decipherable only in part. Nothing has as yet been made of the inscription on the 'other gun. Mr. Cobden-Ramsay, Political Agent of the Orissa Feudatory States, is engaged in making a collection for the Museum of weapons, musical instruments and other articles of ethnographic interest in use amongst the primitive tribes still found in some of those States, and our Secretary is making a similar collection of articles used by the Mundās and other tribes in Chotā Nāgpur.

I hope it will soon be possible to take steps to remove to the Museum some of the ancient carvings which lie scattered throughout the province, but this is a matter in which we must proceed warily, and only in accordance with the advice of experts. Very great harm was done many years ago by an amateur enthusiast who made a large collection of these remains without keeping any record of the places from which they were taken.

Many of our most interesting remains have already left the province. Enquiries will be made to ascertain whether it will be not possible at a reasonable cost to obtain for our Museum plaster casts of some of these, such as have already been made for other Museums.

approve of the Council at its

I now turn to the Journal. I hope you will type and general get-up as settled by the meetings held on the 6th April and 18th August last, including the illustration on the cover, which is reproduced from a terracotta plaque found in the Kumrahar excavations. Dr. Spooner tells us that this is unquestionably the oldest drawing of the famous temple at Bodh Gaya now in existence. Dr. Spooner's account of this plaque fitly forms the first article in the first number of our Journal. The said number is, I venture to

think, an excellent one. On the Anthropological side there are six papers of which four are by our Secretary Babu Sarat Chandra Roy, whose reputation as a writer on ethnographic subjects is now well established. I trust that his contributions will stir up others to make similar studies in different parts of the province and the reby not only furnish us with interesting and useful information regarding our primitive tribes, but also provide material for the wider generalizations of professional anthropologists. Amongst the other papers I may mention an interesting contribution to early Indian chronology by Mr. Jayaswal and a suggestive essay on the search for Sanskrit manuscripts by Mahamahopadhyaya Pandit Hara Prasad Shastri. This article is of special importance, as one of the great aims of a Society like ours should be the systematic and sustained collection of information and materials on a large scale, utilizing for the purpose the services of as many of its members as possible. The latter are for the most part amateurs and it is therefore necessary that their efforts should be guided by experts. This is, I hope, only the first of a series of papers in which hints will be given to the rank and file which will enable them to take their part in the researches which we hope to prosecute. Several well-known experts have been asked to help us in this way, and I hope that they will respond to our appeal. One thing which we very much need, as the Hon'ble Mr. Walsh has pointed out to me, is a map showing the places mentioned in the List of Ancient Monuments, the different classes of monuments, e.g., Prehistoric, Buddhist, Jain, Ancient Hindu, Medieval Hindu and Muhammadan, being distinguished by conventional marks. The map should be supplemented by a classified index which would refer briefly to the corresponding entry in the List of Ancient Monuments or other work in which information about the monument is available. It would be of great assistance if our members who have cameras would take photographs of all such monuments and send them, mounted on cards, to the Secretary. These would be very useful for the comparison of styles of architecture and similar purposes.

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