THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME IV SLICE IV
Bradford, William to Brequigny, Louis

Articles in This Slice

BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1590-1657), American colonial governor and historian, was born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, probably in March 1590. He became somewhat estranged from his family, which was one of considerable importance in the locality, when in early youth he joined the Puritan sect known as Separatists, and united in membership with the congregation at Scrooby. He prepared in 1607, with other members of the church, to migrate to Holland, but the plan was discovered and several of the leaders, among them Bradford, were imprisoned. In the year following, however, he joined the English colony at Amsterdam, where he learned the trade of silk weaving. He subsequently sold his Yorkshire property and embarked in business on his own account at Leiden, where the English refugees had removed. He became an active advocate of the proposed emigration to America, was one of the party that sailed in the “Mayflower” in September 1620, and was one of the signers of the compact on shipboard in Cape Cod Bay. After the death of Governor John Carver in April 1621, Bradford was elected governor of Plymouth Colony, and served as such, with the exception of five years (1633, 1634, 1636, 1638 and 1644) until shortly before his death. After 1624, at Bradford’s suggestion, a board of five and later seven assistants was chosen annually to share the executive responsibility. Bradford’s rule was firm and judicious, and to his guidance more than to that of any other man the prosperity of the Plymouth Colony was due. His tact and kindness in dealing with the Indians helped to relieve the colony from the conflicts with which almost every other settlement was afflicted. In 1630 the council for New England granted to “William Bradford, his heires, associatts, and assignes,” a new patent enlarging the original grant of territory made to the Plymouth settlers. This patent Bradford in the name of the trustees made over to the body corporate of the colony in 1641. Bradford died in Plymouth on the 9th of May 1657. He was the author of a very important historical work, the History of Plimouth Plantation (until 1646), first published in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1856, and later by the state of Massachusetts (Boston, 1898), and in facsimile, with an introduction by John A. Doyle, in 1896. The manuscript disappeared from Boston during the War of Independence, was discovered in the Fulham library, London, in 1855, and was returned by the bishop of London to the state of Massachusetts in 1897. This work has been of inestimable value to writers on the history of the Pilgrims, and was freely used, in manuscript, by Morton, Hubbard, Mather, Prince and Hutchinson. Bradford was also undoubtedly part author, with Edward Winslow, of the “Diary of Occurrences” published in Mourts’ Relation, edited by Dr H.M. Dexter (Boston, 1865). He also wrote a series of Dialogues, on church government, published in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Publications (1870.)

For Bradford’s ancestry and early life see Joseph Hunter, Collections concerning the Founders of New Plymouth, in Massachusetts Historical Society’s Collections (Boston, 1852); also the quaint sketch in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia (London, 1702), and a chapter in Williston Walker’s Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901).

BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1663-1752), American colonial printer, was born in Leicestershire, England, on the 20th of May 1663. He learned the printer’s trade in London with Andrew Sowle, and in 1682 emigrated with William Penn to Pennsylvania, where in 1685 he introduced the “art and mystery” of printing into the Middle Colonies. His first imprint was an almanac, Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense or America’s Messenger (1685). At the outset he was ordered “not to print anything but what shall have lycence from ye council,” and in 1692, the colony then being torn by schism, he issued a tract for the minority sect of Friends, whereupon his press was seized and he was arrested. He was released, however, and his press was restored on his appeal to Governor Benjamin Fletcher. In 1690, with William Rittenhouse (1644-1708) and others, he established in Roxboro, Pennsylvania, now a part of Philadelphia, the first paper mill in America. In the spring of 1693 he removed to New York, where he was appointed royal printer for the colony, a position which he held for more than fifty years; and on the 8th of November 1725 he issued the first number of the New York Gazette, the first paper established in New York and from 1725 to 1733 the only paper in the colony. Bradford died in New York on the 23rd of May 1752.

His son, Andrew Sowle Bradford (1686-1742), removed from New York to Philadelphia in 1712, and there on the 22nd of December 1719 issued the first number of the American Weekly Mercury, the first newspaper in the Middle Colonies. Benjamin Franklin, for a time a compositor in the office, characterized the paper as “a paltry thing, in no way interesting”; but it was continued for many years and was edited by Bradford until his death.

The latter’s nephew, William Bradford (1722-1791), established in December 1742 the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, which was for sixty years under his control or that of his son, and which in 1774-1775 bore the oft-reproduced device of a divided serpent with the motto “Unite or Die.” He served in the War of American Independence, rising to the rank of colonel. His son, William Bradford (1755-1795), also served in the War of Independence, and afterwards was attorney-general of Pennsylvania (1791), a judge of the supreme court of the state, and in 1794-1795 attorney-general of the United States.

BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1827-1892), American marine painter, was born at New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was a Quaker, and was self-taught, painting the ships and the marine views he saw along the coast of Massachusetts, Labrador and Nova Scotia; he went on several Arctic expeditions with Dr Hayes, and was the first American painter to portray the frozen regions of the north. His pictures attracted much attention by reason of their novelty and gorgeous colour effects. His “Steamer ’Panther’ in Melville Bay, under the Light of the Midnight Sun” was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1875. Bradford was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, and died in that city on the 25th of April 1892. His style was somewhat influenced by Albert van Beest, who worked with Bradford at Fairhaven for a time; but Bradford is minute and observant of detail where van Beest’s aim is general effect.

BRADFORD, a city, and municipal, county and parliamentary borough, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 192 m. N.N.W. of London and 8 m. W. of Leeds. Pop. (1891) 265,728; (1901) 279,767. It is served by the Midland and the North Eastern railways (Midland station), and by the Great Northern and the Lancashire & Yorkshire railways (Exchange station). It lies in a small valley opening southward from that of the Aire, and extends up the hills on either side. Most of the principal streets radiate from a centre between the Midland and Exchange stations and the town hall. This last is a handsome building, opened in 1873, surmounted by a bell tower. The exterior is ornamented with statues of English monarchs. The council-chamber contains excellent wood-carving. The extension of the building was undertaken in 1905. The parish church of St Peter is Perpendicular, dating from 1485, and occupies the site of a Norman church. Its most noteworthy feature is the fine original roof of oak. There was no other church in the town until 1815, but modern churches and chapels are numerous. Among educational institutions, the grammar school existed in the 16th century, and in 1663 received a charter of incorporation from Charles II. It occupies a building erected in 1873, and is largely endowed, possessing several scholarships founded by prominent citizens. The technical college, under the corporation since 1899, was opened in 1882. A mechanics’ institute was founded in 1832, and in 1871 the handsome mechanics’ hall, close to the town hall, was opened. Other establishments are the Airedale College of students for the Independent ministry, and the United Independent College (1888). The general infirmary is the principal of numerous charitable institutions. The most noteworthy public buildings beside the town hall are St George’s hall (1853), used for concerts and public meetings, the exchange (1867), extensive market buildings, and two court-houses. The Cartwright memorial hall, principally the gift of Lord Masham, opened in 1904 and containing an art gallery and museum, commemorates Dr Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823) as the inventor of the power-loom and the combing-machine. The hall stands in Lister Park, and was opened immediately before, and used in connexion with, the industrial exhibition held here in 1904. The Temperance hall is of interest inasmuch as the first hall of this character in England was erected at Bradford in 1837. Some of the great warehouses are of considerable architectural merit. Statues commemorate several of those who have been foremost in the development of the city, such as Sir Titus Salt, Mr S.C. Lister (Lord Masham), and W.E. Forster. Of several parks the largest are Lister, Peel, and Bowling parks, each exceeding fifty acres. In the last is an ancient and picturesque mansion, which formerly belonged to the Bowling or Bolling family. A large acreage of high-lying moorland near the city is maintained by the corporation as a public recreation ground.

As a commercial centre Bradford is advantageously placed with regard to both railway communication and connexion with the Humber and with Liverpool by canal, and through the presence in its immediate vicinity of valuable deposits of coal and iron. The principal textile manufactures in order of importance are worsted, employing some 36,000 hands, females considerably outnumbering males; woollens, employing some 8000, silk and cotton. The corporation maintains a conditioning-hall for testing textile materials. A new hall was opened in 1902. Engineering and iron works (as at Bowling and Low Moor) are extensive; and the freestone of the neighbourhood is largely quarried, and in Bradford itself its use is general for building. It blackens easily under the influence of smoke, and the town has consequently a somewhat gloomy appearance. The trade of Bradford, according to an official estimate, advanced between 1836 and 1884 from a total of five to at least thirty-five millions sterling, and from not more than six to at least fifty staple articles. The annual turn-over in the staple trade is estimated at about one hundred millions sterling.

Bradford was created a city in 1897. The parliamentary borough returned two members from 1832 until 1885, when it was divided into three divisions, each returning one member. The county borough was created in 1888. Its boundaries include the suburbs, formerly separate urban districts, of Eccleshill, Idle and others. The corporation consists of a lord mayor (this dignity was conferred in 1907), 21 aldermen, and 63 councillors. One feature of municipal activity in Bradford deserves special notice—there is a municipal railway, opened in 1907, extending from Pateley Bridge to Lofthouse (6 m.) and serving the Nidd valley, the district from which the main water-supply of the city is obtained. Area of the city, 22,879 acres.

Bradford, which is mentioned as having belonged before 1066, with several other manors in Yorkshire, to one Gamel, appears to have been almost destroyed during the conquest of the north of England and was still waste in 1086. By that time it had been granted to Ilbert de Lacy, in whose family it continued until 1311. The inquisition taken after the death of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, in that year gives several interesting facts about the manor; the earl had there a hall or manor-house, a fulling mill, a market every Sunday, and a fair on the feast of St Andrew. There were also certain burgesses holding twenty-eight burgages. Alice, only daughter and heiress of Henry de Lacy, married Thomas Plantagenet, earl of Lancaster, and on the attainder of her husband she and Joan, widow of Henry, were obliged to release their rights in the manor to the king. The earl of Lancaster’s attainder being reversed in 1327, Bradford, with his other property, was restored to his brother and heir, Henry Plantagenet, but again passed to the crown on the accession of Henry IV., through the marriage of John of Gaunt with Blanche, one of the daughters and heirs of Henry Plantagenet. Bradford was evidently a borough by prescription and was not incorporated until 1847. Previous to that date the chief officer in the town had been the chief constable, who was appointed annually at the court leet of the manor. Before the 19th century Bradford was never represented in parliament, but in 1832 it was created a parliamentary borough returning two members. A weekly market on Thursdays was granted to Edward de Lacy in 1251 and confirmed in 1294 to Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, with the additional grant of a fair on the eve and day of St Peter ad Vincula and three days following. In 1481 Edward IV. granted to certain feoffees in whom he had vested his manor of Bradford a market on Thursday every week and two yearly fairs, one on the feast of the Deposition of St William of York and two days preceding, the other on the feast of St Peter in Cathedra and two days preceding.

From the mention of a fulling mill in 1311 it is possible that woollen manufacture had been begun at that time. By the reign of Henry VIII. it had become an important industry and added much to the status of the town. Towards the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century the woollen trade decreased and worsted manufacture began to take its place. Leland in his Itinerary says that Bradford is “a praty quik Market Toune. It standith much by clothing.” In 1773 a piece hall was erected and for many years served as a market-place for the manufacturers and merchants of the district. On the introduction of steam-power and machinery the worsted trade advanced with great rapidity. The first mill in Bradford was built in 1798; there were 20 mills in the town in 1820, 34 in 1833, and 70 in 1841; and at the present time there are over 300, of much greater magnitude than the earlier factories. In 1836 Mr (afterwards Sir) Titus Salt developed the alpaca manufacture in the town; mohair was shortly afterwards introduced; and the great works at Saltaire were opened (see [Shipley]). Later, Mr S.C. Lister (Lord Masham) introduced the silk and velvet manufacture, having invented a process of manipulating silk waste, whereby what was previously treated as refuse is made into goods that will compete with those manufactured from the perfect cocoon.

See John James, History of Bradford (1844, new and enlarged ed., 1866); A. Holroyd, Collectanea Bradfordiana (1873); Victoria County History—Yorkshire.

BRADFORD, a city of McKean county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., near the N. border of the state, about 80 m. E. by S. of Erie. Pop. (1890) 10,514; (1900) 15,029, of whom 2211 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 14,544. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Erie, and the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg railways, and is connected with Olean, New York, by an electric line. Bradford is situated 1427 ft. above sea-level in the valley of the Tuna, and is shut in by hills on either side. Since 1876 it has been one of the most important oil centres of the state, and it has been connected by pipe lines with cities along the Atlantic coast; petroleum refining is an important industry. Among the city’s manufactures are boilers, machines, glass, chemicals, terra cotta, brick, iron pipes and couplings, gas engines, cutlery and silk. The place was first settled about 1827; in 1838 it was laid out as a town and named Littleton; in 1858 the present name, in honour of William Bradford (1755-1795), was substituted; and Bradford was incorporated as a borough in 1873, and was chartered as a city in 1879. Kendall borough was annexed to Bradford in 1893.

BRADFORD CLAY, in geology, a thin, rather inconstant bed of clay or marl situated in England at the base of the Forest Marble, the two together constituting the Bradfordian group in the Bathonian series of Jurassic rocks. The term “Bradford Clay” appears to have been first used by J. de. C. Sowerby in 1823 (Mineral Conchology, vol. v.) as an alternative for W. Smith’s “Clay on Upper Oolite.” The clay came into notice late in the 18th century on account of the local abundance of the crinoid Apiocrinus Parkinsoni. It takes its name from Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, whence it is traceable southward to the Dorset coast and northward towards Cirencester. It may be regarded as a local phase of the basement beds of the Forest Marble, from which it cannot be separated upon either stratigraphical or palaeontological grounds. It is seldom more than 10 ft. thick, and it contains as a rule a few irregular layers of limestone and calcareous sandstone. The lowest layer is often highly fossiliferous; some of the common forms being Arca minuta, Ostrea gregaria, Waldheimia digona, Terebratula coarctata, Cidaris bradfordensis, &c.

See H.B. Woodward, “Jurassic Rocks of Britain,” Mem. Geol. Survey, vol. iv. (1904).

BRADFORD-ON-AVON, a market town in the Westbury parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, on the rivers Avon and Kennet, and the Kennet & Avon Canal, 98 m. W. by S. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4514. Its houses, all built of grey stone, rise in picturesque disorder up the steep sides of the Avon valley, here crossed by an ancient bridge of nine arches, with a chapel in the centre. Among many places of worship may be mentioned the restored parish church of Holy Trinity, which dates from the 12th century and contains some interesting monuments and brasses; and the Perpendicular Hermitage or Tory chapel, with a 15th or 16th century chantry-house. But most notable is the Saxon church of St Lawrence, the foundation of which is generally attributed, according to William of Malmesbury (1125), to St Aldhelm, early in the 8th century. It consists of a chancel, nave and porch, in such unchanged condition that E.A. Freeman considered it “the most perfect surviving church of its kind in England, if not in Europe.” It has more lately, however, been held that the present building is not Aldhelm’s, but a restoration, dating from about 975, and attributable to the influence of Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury. Kingston House, long the seat of the dukes of Kingston, is a beautiful example of early 17th-century domestic architecture. The local industries include the manufacture of rubber goods, brewing, quarrying and iron-founding.

Bradford (Bradauford, Bradeford) was the site of a battle in 652 between Kenwal and his kinsman Cuthred. A monastery existed here in the 8th century, of which St Aldhelm was abbot at the time of his being made bishop of Sherborne in A.D. 705. In 1001 Æthelred gave this monastery and the town of Bradford to the nunnery of Shaftesbury, in order that the nuns might have a safe refuge against the insults of the Danes. No mention of the monastery occurs after the Conquest, but the nunnery of Shaftesbury retained the lordship of the manor until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII. In a synod held here in 954, Dunstan was elected bishop of Winchester. Bradford appears as a borough in the Domesday survey, and is there assessed at 42 hides. No charter of incorporation is recorded, however, and after returning two members to the parliament of 1295 the town does not appear to have enjoyed any of the privileges of a borough. The market is of ancient origin, and was formerly held on Monday; in the survey the tolls are assessed at 45 shillings. Bradford was at one time the centre of the clothing industry in the west of England, and was especially famous for its broadcloths and mixtures, the waters of the Avon being especially favourable to the production of good colours and superior dyes. The industry declined in the 18th century, and in 1740 we find the woollen merchants of Bradford petitioning for an act of parliament to improve their trade and so re-establish their credit in foreign markets.

BRADLAUGH, CHARLES (1833-1891), English free-thinker and politician, was born at Hoxton, London, on the 26th of September 1833. His father was a poor solicitor’s clerk, who also had a small business as a law stationer, and his mother had been a nursemaid. At twelve years old he became office-boy to his father’s employer, and at fourteen wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal merchant in the City Road. He had been baptized and brought up in the Church of England, but he now came into contact with a group of free-thinkers who were disciples of Richard Carlile. He was hastily labelled an “atheist,” and was turned out of his situation. Thus driven into the arms of the secularists, he managed to earn a living by odd jobs, and became further immersed in the study of free-thought. At the end of 1850 he enlisted as a soldier, but in 1853 was bought out with money provided by his mother. He then found employment as a lawyer’s clerk, and gradually became known as a free-thought lecturer, under the name of “Iconoclast.” From 1860 he conducted the National Reformer for several years, and displayed much resource in legal defence when the paper was prosecuted by the government on account of its alleged blasphemy and sedition in 1868-1869. Bradlaugh became notorious as a leading “infidel,” and was supported by the sympathy of those who were enthusiasts at that time for liberty of speech and thought. He was a constant figure in the law courts; and his competence to take the oath was continually being called in question, while his atheism and republican opinions were adduced as reasons why no jury should give damages for attacks on his character. In 1874 he became acquainted with Mrs Annie Besant (b. 1847), who afterwards became famous for her gifts as a lecturer on socialism and theosophy. She began by writing for the National Reformer and soon became co-editor. In 1876 the Bristol publisher of an American pamphlet on the population question, called Fruits of Philosophy, was indicted for selling a work full of indecent physiological details, and, pleading guilty, was lightly sentenced; but Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant took the matter up, in order to vindicate their ideas of liberty, and aggressively republished and circulated the pamphlet. The prosecution which resulted created considerable scandal. They were convicted and sentenced to a heavy fine and imprisonment, but the sentence was stayed and the indictment ultimately quashed on a technical point. The affair, however, had several side issues in the courts and led to much prejudice against the defendants, the distinction being ignored between a protest against the suppression of opinion and the championship of the particular opinions in question. Mrs Besant’s close alliance with Bradlaugh eventually terminated in 1886, when she drifted from secularism, first into socialistic and labour agitation and then into theosophy as a pupil of Mme Blavatsky. Bradlaugh himself took up politics with increasing fervour. He had been unsuccessful in standing for Northampton in 1868, but in 1880 he was returned by that constituency to parliament as an advanced Radical. A long and sensational parliamentary struggle now began. He claimed to be allowed to affirm under the Parliamentary Oaths Act, and the rejection of this pretension, and the refusal to allow him to take the oath on his professing his willingness to do so, terminated in Bradlaugh’s victory in 1886. But this result was not obtained without protracted scenes in the House, in which Lord Randolph Churchill took a leading part. When the long struggle was over, the public had gradually got used to Bradlaugh, and his transparent honesty and courageous contempt for mere popularity gained him increasing respect. Experience of public life in the House of Commons appeared to give him a more balanced view of things; and before he died, on the 30th of January 1891, the progress of events was such that it was beginning to be said of him that he was in a fair way to end as a Conservative. Hard, arrogant and dogmatic, with a powerful physique and a real gift for popular oratory, he was a natural leader in causes which had society against them, but his sincerity was as unquestionable as his combativeness.

His Life was written, from a sympathetic point of view, with much interesting detail as to the history of secularism, by his daughter, Mrs Bradlaugh Bonner, and J.M. Robertson (1894).

BRADLEY, GEORGE GRANVILLE (1821-1903), English divine and scholar, was born on the 11th of December 1821, his father, Charles Bradley, being at that time vicar of Glasbury, Brecon. He was educated at Rugby under Thomas Arnold, and at University College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1844. He was an assistant master at Rugby from 1846 to 1858, when he succeeded G.E.L. Cotton as headmaster at Marlborough. In 1870 he was elected master of his old college at Oxford, and in August 1881 he was made dean of Westminster in succession to A.P. Stanley, whose pupil and intimate friend he had been, and whose biographer he became. Besides his Recollections of A.P. Stanley (1883) and Life of Dean Stanley (1892), he published Aids to writing Latin Prose Composition and Lectures on Job (1884) and Ecclesiastes (1885). He took part in the coronation of Edward VII., resigned the deanery in 1902, and died on the 13th of March 1903.

Dean Bradley’s family produced various other members distinguished in literature. His half-brother, Andrew Cecil Bradley (b. 1851), fellow of Balliol, Oxford, became professor of modern literature and history (1881) at University College, Liverpool, and in 1889 regius professor of English language and literature at Glasgow University; and he was professor of poetry at Oxford (1901-1906). Of Dean Bradley’s own children the most distinguished in literature were his son, Arthur Granville Bradley (b. 1850), author of various historical and topographical works; and especially his daughter, Mrs Margaret Louisa Woods (b. 1856), wife of the Rev. Henry George Woods, president of Trinity, Oxford (1887-1897), and master of the Temple (1904), London. Mrs Woods became well known for her accomplished verse (Lyrics and Ballads, 1889), largely influenced by Robert Bridges, and for her novels, of which her Village Tragedy (1887) was the earliest and strongest.

BRADLEY, JAMES (1693-1762), English astronomer, was born at Sherborne in Gloucestershire in March 1693. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, on the 15th of March 1711, and took degrees of B.A. and M.A. in 1714 and 1717 respectively. His early observations were made at the rectory of Wanstead in Essex, under the tutelage of his uncle, the Rev. James Pound (1669-1724), himself a skilled astronomer, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on the 6th of November 1718. He took orders on his presentation to the vicarage of Bridstow in the following year, and a small sinecure living in Wales was besides procured for him by his friend Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728). He, however, resigned his ecclesiastical preferments in 1721, on his appointment to the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford, while as reader on experimental philosophy (1729-1760) he delivered 79 courses of lectures in the Ashmolean museum. His memorable discovery of the aberration of light (see [Aberration]) was communicated to the Royal Society in January 1729 (Phil. Trans. xxxv. 637). The observations upon which it was founded were made at Molyneux’s house on Kew Green. He refrained from announcing the supplementary detection of nutation (q.v.) until the 14th of February 1748 (Phil. Trans. xlv. 1), when he had tested its reality by minute observations during an entire revolution (18.6 years) of the moon’s nodes. He had meantime (in 1742) been appointed to succeed Edmund Halley as astronomer royal; his enhanced reputation enabled him to apply successfully for an instrumental outfit at a cost of £1000; and with an 8-foot quadrant completed for him in 1750 by John Bird (1700-1776), he accumulated at Greenwich in ten years materials of inestimable value for the reform of astronomy. A crown pension of £250 a year was conferred upon him in 1752. He retired in broken health, nine years later, to Chalford in Gloucestershire, and there died on the 13th of July 1762. The printing of his observations was delayed by disputes about their ownership; but they were finally issued from the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in two folio volumes (1798, 1805). The insight and industry of F.W. Bessel were, however, needed for the development of their fundamental importance.

Rigaud’s Memoir prefixed to Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence of James Bradley, D.D. (Oxford, 1832), is practically exhaustive. Other sources of information are: New and General Biographical Dictionary, xii. 54 (1767); Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Fouchy’s “Éloge,” Paris Memoirs (1762), p. 231 (Histoire); Delambre’s Hist. de l’astronomie au 18me siècle, p. 413.

BRADSHAW, GEORGE (1801-1853), English printer and publisher, was born at Windsor Bridge, Pendleton, Lancashire, on the 29th of July 1801. On leaving school he was apprenticed to an engraver at Manchester, eventually setting up on his own account in that city as an engraver and printer—principally of maps. His name was already known as the publisher of Bradshaw’s Maps of Inland Navigation, when in 1839, soon after the introduction of railways, he published, at sixpence, Bradshaw’s Railway Time Tables, the title being changed in 1840 to Bradshaw’s Railway Companion, and the price raised to one shilling. A new volume was issued at occasional intervals, a supplementary monthly time-sheet serving to keep the book up to date. In December 1841, acting on a suggestion made by his London agent, Mr W.J. Adams, Bradshaw reduced the price of his time-tables to the original sixpence, and began to issue them monthly under the title Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide. In June 1847 was issued the first number of Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide, giving the time-tables of the Continental railways just as Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide gave the time-tables of the railways of the United Kingdom. Bradshaw, who was a well-known member of the Society of Friends, and gave considerable time to philanthropic work, died in 1853.

BRADSHAW, HENRY (c. 1450-1513), English poet, was born at Chester. In his boyhood he was received into the Benedictine monastery of St Werburgh, and after studying with other novices of his order at Gloucester (afterwards Worcester) College, Oxford, he returned to his monastery at Chester. He wrote a Latin treatise De antiquitate et magnificentia Urbis Cestriae, which is lost, and a life of the patron saint of his monastery in English seven-lined stanza. This work was completed in the year of its author’s death, 1513, mentioned in “A balade to the auctour” printed at the close of the work. A second ballad describes him as “Harry Braddeshaa, of Chestre abbey monke.” Bradshaw disclaims the merit of originality and quotes the authorities from which he translates—Bede, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Alfred of Beverley, Henry of Huntingdon, Ranulph Higden, and especially the “Passionary” or life of the saint preserved in the monastery. The poem, therefore, which is defined by its editor, Dr Carl Horstmann, as a “legendary epic,” is rather a compilation than a translation. It contains a good deal of history beside the actual life of the saint. St Werburgh was the daughter of Wulfere, king of Mercia, and Bradshaw gives a description of the kingdom of Mercia, with a full account of its royal house. He relates the history of St Ermenilde and St Sexburge, mother and grandmother of Werburgh, who were successively abbesses of Ely. He does not neglect the miraculous elements of the story, but he is more attracted by historical fact than legend, and the second book narrates the Danish invasion of 875, and describes the history and antiquities of Chester, from its foundation by the legendary giant Leon Gaur, from which he derives the British name of Caerleon, down to the great fire which devastated the city in 1180, but was suddenly extinguished when the shrine of St Werburgh was carried in procession through the streets. The Holy Lyfe and History of saynt Werburge very frutefull for all Christen people to rede (printed by Richard Pynson, 1521) has been very variously estimated. Thomas Warton, who deals with Bradshaw at some length,[1] quotes as the most splendid passage of the poem the description of the feast preceding Werburgh’s entry into the religious life. He considered Bradshaw’s versification “infinitely inferior to Lydgate’s worst manner.” Dr Horstmann, on the other hand, finds in the poem “original genius, of a truly epic tone, with a native simplicity of feeling which sometimes reminds the reader of Homer.” Most readers will probably adopt a view between these extremes. Bradshaw expresses the humblest opinion of his own abilities, and he certainly had no delicate ear for rhythm. His sincerity is abundantly evident, and his piety is admitted even by John Bale[2], hostile as he was to monkish writers. W. Herbert[3] thought that a Lyfe of Saynt Radegunde, also printed by Pynson, was certainly by Bradshaw. The only extant copy is in the Britwell library.

Pynson’s edition of the Holy Lyfe is very rare, only five copies being known. A reprint copying the original type was edited by Mr. Edward Hawkins for the Chetham Society in 1848, and by Dr Carl Hortsmann for the Early English Text Society in 1887.

[1] History of English Poetry (ed. W.C. Hazlitt, 1871; iii. pp. 140-149).

[2] Scriptorum Illustrium, cant. ix. No. 17.

[3] Ames, Typographical Antiquities (ed. W. Herbert, 1785; i. p. 294).

BRADSHAW, HENRY (1831-1886), British scholar and librarian, was born in London on the 2nd of February 1831, and educated at Eton. He became a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and after a short scholastic career in Ireland he accepted an appointment in the Cambridge university library as an extra assistant. When he found that his official duties absorbed all his leisure he resigned his post, but continued to give his time to the examination of the MSS. and early printed books in the library. There was then no complete catalogue of these sections, and Bradshaw soon showed a rare faculty for investigations respecting old books and curious MSS. In addition to his achievements in black-letter bibliography he threw great light on ancient Celtic language and literature by the discovery, in 1857, of the Book of Deer, a manuscript copy of the Gospel in the Vulgate version, in which were inscribed old Gaelic charters. This was published by the Spalding Club in 1869. Bradshaw also discovered some Celtic glosses on the MS. of a metrical paraphrase of the Gospels by Juvencus. He made another find in the Cambridge library of considerable philological and historical importance. Cromwell’s envoy, Sir Samuel Morland (1625-1695), had brought back from Piedmont MSS. containing the earliest known Waldensian records, consisting of translations from the Bible, religious treatises and poems. One of the poems referred the work to the beginning of the 11th century, though the MSS. did not appear to be of earlier date than the 15th century. On this Morland had based his theory of the antiquity of the Waldensian doctrine, and, in the absence of the MSS., which were supposed to be irretrievably lost, the conclusion was accepted. Bradshaw discovered the MSS. in the university library, and found in the passage indicated traces of erasure. The original date proved to be 1400. Incidentally the correct date was of great value in the study of the history of the language. He had a share in exposing the frauds of Constantine Simonides, who had asserted that the Codex Sinaiticus brought by Tischendorf from the Greek monastery of Mount Sinai was a modern forgery of which he was himself the author. Bradshaw exposed the absurdity of these claims in a letter to the Guardian (January 26, 1863). In 1866 he made a valuable contribution to the history of Scottish literature by the discovery of 2200 lines on the siege of Troy incorporated in a MS. of Lydgate’s Troye Booke, and of the Legends of the Saints, an important work of some 40,000 lines. These poems he attributed, erroneously, as has since been proved, to Barbour (q.v.). Unfortunately Bradshaw allowed his attention to be distracted by a multiplicity of subjects, so that he has not left any literary work commensurate with his powers. The strain upon him was increased when he was elected (1867) university librarian, and as dean of his college (1857-1865) and praelector (1863-1868) he was involved in further routine duties. Besides his brilliant isolated discoveries in bibliography, he did much by his untiring zeal to improve the standard of library administration. He died very suddenly on the 10th of February 1886. His fugitive papers on antiquarian subjects were collected and edited by Mr F. Jenkinson in 1889.

An excellent Memoir of Henry Bradshaw, by Mr G.W. Prothero, appeared in 1888. See also C.F. Newcombe, Some Aspects of the Work of Henry Bradshaw (1905).

BRADSHAW, JOHN (1602-1659), president of the “High Court of Justice” which tried Charles I., was the second son of Henry Bradshaw, of Marple and Wibersley in Cheshire. He was baptized on the 10th of December 1602, was educated at Banbury in Cheshire and at Middleton in Lancashire, studied subsequently with an attorney at Congleton, was admitted into Gray’s Inn in 1620, and was called to the bar in 1627, becoming a bencher in 1647. He was mayor of Congleton in 1637, and later high steward or recorder of the borough. According to Milton he was assiduous in his legal studies and acquired considerable reputation and practice at the bar. On the 21st of September 1643 he was appointed judge of the sheriff’s court in London. In October 1644 he was counsel with Prynne in the prosecution of Lord Maguire and Hugh Macmahon, implicated in the Irish rebellion, in 1645 for John Lilburne in his appeal to the Lords against the sentence of the Star Chamber, and in 1647 in the prosecution of Judge Jenkins. On the 8th of October 1646 he had been nominated by the Commons a commissioner of the great seal, but his appointment was not confirmed by the Lords. In 1647 he was made chief justice of Chester and a judge in Wales, and on the 12th of October 1648 he was presented to the degree of serjeant-at-law. On the 2nd of January 1649 the Lords threw out the ordinance for bringing the king to trial, and the small remnant of the House of Commons which survived Pride’s Purge, consisting of 53 independents, determined to carry out the ordinance on their own authority. The leading members of the bar, on the parliamentary as well as on the royalist side, having refused to participate in proceedings not only illegal and unconstitutional, but opposed to the plainest principles of equity, Bradshaw was selected to preside, and, after some protestations of humility and unfitness, accepted the office. The king refused to plead before the tribunal, but Bradshaw silenced every legal objection and denied to Charles an opportunity to speak in his defence. He continued after the king’s death to conduct, as lord president, the trials of the royalists, including the duke of Hamilton, Lord Capel, and Henry Rich, earl of Holland, all of whom he condemned to death, his behaviour being especially censured in the case of Eusebius Andrews, a royalist who had joined a conspiracy against the government. He received large rewards for his services. He was appointed in 1649 attorney-general of Cheshire and North Wales, and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and was given a sum of £1000, together with confiscated estates worth £2000 a year. He had been nominated a member of the council of state on the 14th of February 1649, and on the 10th of March became president. He disapproved strongly of the expulsion of the Long Parliament, and on Cromwell’s coming subsequently to dismiss the council Bradshaw is said, on the authority of Ludlow, to have confronted him boldly, and denied his power to dissolve the parliament. An ardent republican, he showed himself ever afterwards an uncompromising adversary of Cromwell. He was returned for Stafford in the parliament of 1654, and spoke strongly against vesting power in a single person. He refused to sign the “engagement” drawn up by Cromwell, and in consequence withdrew from parliament and was subsequently suspected of complicity in plots against the government. He failed to obtain a seat in the parliament of 1656, and in August of the same year Cromwell attempted to remove him from the chief-justiceship of Cheshire. After the abdication of Richard Cromwell, Bradshaw again entered parliament, became a member of the council of state, and on the 3rd of June 1659 was appointed a commissioner of the great seal. His health, however, was bad, and his last public effort was a vehement speech, in the council, when he declared his abhorrence of the arrest of Speaker Lenthall. He died on the 31st of October 1659, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His body was disinterred at the Restoration, and exposed on a gibbet along with those of Cromwell and Ireton. Bradshaw married Mary, daughter of Thomas Marbury of Marbury, Cheshire, but left no children.

BRADWARDINE, THOMAS (c. 1290-1349), English archbishop, called “the Profound Doctor,” was born either at Hartfield in Sussex or at Chichester. He was educated at Merton College, Oxford, where he took the degree of doctor of divinity, and acquired the reputation of a profound scholar, a skilful mathematician and an able divine. He was afterwards raised to the high offices of chancellor of the university and professor of divinity. From being chancellor of the diocese of London, he became chaplain and confessor to Edward III., whom he attended during his wars in France. On his return to England, he was successively appointed prebendary of Lincoln, archdeacon of Lincoln (1347), and in 1349 archbishop of Canterbury. He died of the plague at Lambeth on the 26th of August 1349, forty days after his consecration. Chaucer in his Nun’s Priest’s Tale ranks Bradwardine with St Augustine. His great work is a treatise against the Pelagians, entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum, edited by Sir Henry Savile (London, 1618). He wrote also De Geometria speculativa (Paris, 1530); De Arithmetica practica (Paris, 1502); De Proportionibus (Paris, 1495; Venice, 1505); De Quadratura Circuli (Paris, 1495); and an Ars Memorativa, Sloane MSS. No. 3974 in the British Museum.

See Quétif-Échard, Script. Praedic. (1719), i. 744; W.F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. iv.

BRADY, NICHOLAS (1659-1726), Anglican divine and poet, was born at Bandon, Co. Cork, on the 28th of October 1659. He received his education at Westminster school, and at Christ Church, Oxford; but he graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. He took orders, and in 1688 was made a prebendary of Cork. He was a zealous promoter of the Revolution and suffered in consequence. When the troubles broke out in Ireland in 1690, Brady, by his influence, thrice prevented the burning of the town of Bandon, after James II. had given orders for its destruction; and the same year he was employed by the people of Bandon to lay their grievances before the English parliament. He soon afterwards settled in London, where he obtained various preferments. At the time of his death, on the 20th of May 1726, he held the livings of Clapham and Richmond. Brady’s best-known work is his metrical version of the Psalms, in which Nahum Tate collaborated with him. It was licensed in 1696, and largely ousted the old version of T. Sternhold and J. Hopkins. He also translated Virgil’s Aeneid, and wrote several smaller poems and dramas, as well as sermons.

BRAEKELEER, HENRI JEAN AUGUSTIN DE (1840-1888), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp. He was trained by his father, a genre painter, and his uncle, Baron Henri Leys, and devoted himself to scenes of everyday Antwerp life. The first pictures he exhibited, “The Laundry” (Van Cutsem collection, Brussels), and “The Coppersmith’s Workshop” (Vleeshovwer collection, Antwerp), were shown at the Antwerp exhibition in 1861. He received the gold medal at Brussels in 1872 for “The Geographer” and “The Lesson” (both in the Brussels gallery); the gold medal at Vienna in 1873 for “The Painter’s Studio” and “Grandmother’s Birthday”; and the medal of honour at the Exposition Universelle at Amsterdam for “The Pilot House.” Among his more notable works are “A Shoemaker” (1862), “A Tailor’s Workroom” (1863), “A Gardener” (1864, Antwerp gallery), “Interior of a Church” (1866), “Interior, Flanders” (1867), “Woman spinning” (1869), “Man reading” (1871), “The rue du Serment, Antwerp” (1875), “A Copperplate Printer,” “The Sailor’s Return,” “The Man at the Window” (Couteaux collection, Brussels), “The Horn-blower” (Couteaux collection), “Man retouching a Picture” (Couteaux collection), “The Potters” (Marlier collection, Brussels), “Staircase in the Hydraulic House at Antwerp” (Marlier collection), and “The Brewer’s House at Antwerp” (Marlier collection). The last, better known as “A Man sitting,” is generally regarded as his masterpiece. As a lithographer and etcher, his work resembles that of Henri Leys. Towards the end of his life de Braekeleer did some dot painting (pointillisme), in which he achieved admirable effects of light.

BRAEMAR, a district in S.W. Aberdeenshire, Scotland, extending from Ballater in the E. to Glen Dee in the W., a distance of 24 m. with a breadth varying from 3 to 6 m. It is drained throughout by the river Dee, both banks of which are bounded by hills varying from 1000 to nearly 3000 ft. in height. The whole area is distinguished by typical Highland scenery, and is a resort alike for sportsmen and tourists. The villages and clachans (Gaelic for hamlet) being situated at an altitude of from 600 to more than 1000 ft. above the sea, the air is everywhere pure and bracing. The deer forests comprise the royal forests of Balmoral and Ballochbuie, Glen Ey Forest, Mar Forest and Invercauld Forest. At various points on either side of the Dee, granite castles, mansions and lodges have been built, mostly in the Scottish baronial style, and all effectively situated with reference to the wooded hills or the river. The chief of these are Balmoral and Abergeldie Castles belonging to the crown, Invercauld House, Braemar Castle, Mar Lodge and Old Mar Lodge. Castleton of Braemar is the foremost of the villages, being sometimes styled the capital of the Deeside Highlands. Its public buildings include halls erected by the duke of Fife and Colonel Farquharson of Invercauld to commemorate the Victorian jubilee of 1887. Not far from the spot where the brawling Clunie joins the Dee the earl of Mar raised the standard of revolt in 1715. His seat, Braemar Castle, reputed to be a hunting-lodge of Malcolm Canmore, was forfeit along with the estates. The new castle built by the purchasers in 1720 was acquired at a later date by Farquharson of Invercauld, who gave government the use of it during the pacification of the Highlands after the battle of Culloden in 1746. Population of Crathie and Braemar (1901) 1452.

BRAG, a very old game of cards, probably evolved from the ancient Spanish primero, played by five or six, or more players. It is the ancestor of poker. A full pack is used, the cards ranking as at whist, with certain exceptions. There are no trumps. Each player receives three cards and puts up three stakes. The last round is dealt face upwards: the holder of the highest card irrespective of suits wins the first stake from all the players. In the case of equality the elder hand wins, but the ace of diamonds is always a winning card. For the second stake the players brag or bet against each other, if they hold either a pair, or a pair-royal (three cards of the same rank). Pairs and pairs-royal take precedence according to the value of the cards composing them, but any pair-royal beats any pair. The knave of clubs may be counted as any card, e.g. two twos and the knave of clubs rank as a pair-royal in twos; two aces and the knave as a pair-royal in aces. Sometimes the knave of diamonds is allowed the same privilege, but is inferior to the club knave; e.g. two threes and the club would beat the other two threes and the diamond. Players who accept another’s brag must cover his. bet and offer another. The third stake is won by the player whose cards make 31 or are nearest to 31 by their pips, aces and court counting ten; but the ace may by arrangement count as 1 or 11. Players may draw from the stock, losing if they over-draw. If one player wins all three stakes, he may receive the value of another stake, or of two or three stakes, all round, as arranged. The deal passes as at whist. Each player should have the same number of deals before the game is abandoned.

BRAGA, a city of northern Portugal, formerly included in the province of Entre Minho e Douro, situated on the right-bank of the small river Deste near its source, and at the head of a railway from Oporto. Pop. (1900) 24,202. Braga, which ranks after Lisbon and Oporto as the third city of the kingdom, is the capital of an administrative district, and an archiepiscopal see. Its cathedral, founded in the 12th century, was rebuilt during the 16th century in the blend of Moorish and florid Gothic styles known as Manoellian. It contains several tombs of considerable historical interest, some fine woodwork carved in the 15th century, and a collection of ancient vestments, plate and other objects of art. Among the other churches Santa Cruz is noteworthy for its handsome façade, which dates from 1642. There are several convents, an archiepiscopal palace, a library, containing many rare books and manuscripts, an orphan asylum, and a large hospital; also the ruins of a theatre, a temple and an aqueduct of Roman workmanship, and a great variety of minor antiquities of different ages. The principal manufactures are firearms, jewelry, cutlery, cloth and felt hats. Large cattle fairs are held in June and September, for cattle-breeding and dairy-farming are among the foremost local industries. On a hill about 3 m. E. by S. stands the celebrated sanctuary of Bom Jesus, or Bom Jesus do Monte, visited at Whitsuntide by many thousands of pilgrims, who do public penance as they ascend to the shrine; and about 1 m. beyond it is Mount Sameiro (2535 ft.), crowned by a colossal statue of the Virgin Mary, and commanding a magnificent view of the mountainous country which culminates in the Serra do Gerez, on the north-east.

Braga is the Roman Bracara Augusta, capital of the Callaici Bracarii, or Bracarenses, a tribe who occupied what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. Early in the 5th century it was taken by the Suevi; but about 485 it passed into the hands of the Visigothic conquerors of Spain, whose renunciation of the Arian and Priscillianist heresies, at two synods held here in the 6th century, marks the origin of its ecclesiastical greatness. The archbishops of Braga retain the title of primate of Portugal, and long claimed supremacy over the Spanish church also; but their authority was never accepted throughout Spain. From the Moors, who captured Braga early in the 8th century, the city was retaken in 1040 by Ferdinand I., king of Castile and Leon; and from 1093 to 1147 it was the residence of the Portuguese court.

The administrative district of Braga coincides with the central part of the province of Entre Minho e Douro (q.v.). Pop. (1900) 357,159. Area, 1040 sq. m.

BRAGANZA (Bragança), the capital of an administrative district formerly included in the province of Traz-os-Montes, Portugal; situated in the north-eastern extremity of the kingdom, on a branch of the river Sabor, 8 m. S. of the Spanish frontier. Pop. (1900) 5535. Braganza is an episcopal city. It consists of a walled upper town, containing the cathedral college and hospital, and of a lower or modern town. Large tracts of the surrounding country are uncultivated, partly because railway communication is lacking and the roads are bad. Except farming, the chief local industry is silkworm-rearing and the manufacture of silk. The administrative district of Braganza coincides with the eastern part of Traz-os-Montes (q.v.). Pop. (1900) 185,162; area, 2513 sq. m.

The city gave its name to the family of Braganza, members of which were rulers of Portugal from 1640 to 1853, and emperors of Brazil from 1822 to 1889. This family is descended from Alphonso (d. 1461), a natural son of John I., king of Portugal (d. 1433), who was a natural son of King Peter I., and consequently belonged to the Portuguese branch of the Capetian family. Alphonso was made duke of Braganza in 1442, and in 1483 his grandson, Duke Ferdinand II., lost his life through heading an insurrection against King John II. In spite of this Ferdinand’s descendants acquired great wealth, and several of them held high office under the kings of Portugal. Duke John I. (d. 1583) married into the royal family, and when King Henry II. died without direct heirs in 1580, he claimed the crown of Portugal in opposition to Philip II. of Spain. John, however, was unsuccessful, but, when the Portuguese threw off the Spanish dominion in 1640, his grandson, John II., duke of Braganza, became king as John IV. In 1807, when Napoleon declared the throne of Portugal vacant, King John VI. fled to Brazil; but he regained his inheritance after the fall of Napoleon in 1814, although he did not return to Europe until 1821, when he left his elder son Peter to govern Brazil. In 1822 a revolution established the independence of Brazil with Peter as emperor. In 1826 Peter became king of Portugal on the death of his father; but he at once resigned the crown to his young daughter Maria, and appointed his brother Miguel to act as regent. Miguel soon declared himself king, but after a stubborn struggle was driven from the country in 1833, after which Maria became queen. Maria married for her second husband Ferdinand (d. 1851), son of Francis, duke of Saxe-Coburg; and when she died in 1853 the main Portuguese branch of the family became extinct. Maria was succeeded by her son Louis I., father of Charles I., who ascended the throne of Portugal in 1889. The empire of Brazil descended on the death of Peter I. to his son Peter II., who was expelled from the country in 1889. When Peter died in 1891 this branch of the family also became extinct in the male line. His only child, Isabella, married Louis Gaston of Orleans, count of Eu. The exiled king, Miguel, founded a branch of the family of Braganza which settled in Bavaria, and various noble families in Portugal are descended from cadets of this house. The title of duke of Braganza is now borne by the eldest son of the king of Portugal.

BRAGG, BRAXTON (1817-1876), American soldier, was born in Warren county, North Carolina, on the 22nd of March 1817. He graduated at the United States military academy in 1837, and as an artillery officer served in the Seminole wars of 1837 and 1841, and under General Taylor in Mexico. For gallant conduct at Fort Brown, Monterey and Buena Vista, he received the brevets of captain, major and lieutenant-colonel. He resigned from the regular army on the 3rd of January 1856, and retired to his plantation in Louisiana. From 1859 to 1861 he was commissioner of the board of public works of the state. When in 1861 the Civil War began, Bragg was made a brigadier-general in the Confederate service, and assigned to command at Pensacola. In February 1862, having meanwhile become major-general, he took up a command in the Army of the Mississippi, and he was present at the battle of Shiloh (April). The vacancy created by the death of Sidney Johnston at that battle was filled by the promotion of Bragg to full general’s rank, and he succeeded General Beauregard when that officer retired from the Western command. In the autumn of 1862 he led a bold advance from Eastern Tennessee across Kentucky to Louisville, but after temporary successes he was forced to retire before Buell, and after the battle of Perryville (8th October) retired into Tennessee. Though the material results of his campaign were considerable, he was bitterly censured, and his removal from his command was urged. But the personal favour of Jefferson Davis kept him, as it had placed him, at the head of the central army, and on the 31st of December 1862 and 2nd of January 1863 he fought the indecisive battle of Murfreesboro (or Stone river) against Rosecrans, Buell’s successor. In the campaign of 1863 Rosecrans constantly outmanoeuvred the Confederates, and forced them back to the border of Georgia. Bragg, however, inflicted a crushing defeat on his opponent at Chickamauga (September 19-20) and for a time besieged the Union forces in Chattanooga. But enormous forces under Grant were concentrated upon the threatened spot, and the great battle of Chattanooga (November 23-25) ended in the rout of the Confederates. Bragg was now deprived of his command, but President Davis made him his military adviser, and in that capacity he served during 1864. In the autumn of that year he led an inferior force from North Carolina to Georgia to oppose Sherman’s march. In February 1865 he joined Johnston, and he was thus included in the surrender of that officer to Sherman. After the war he became chief engineer to the state of Alabama, and supervised improvements in Mobile harbour. He died suddenly at Galveston, Texas, on the 27th of September 1876. General Bragg, in spite of his want of success, was unquestionably a brave and skilful officer. But he was a severe martinet, and rarely in full accord with the senior officers under his orders, the consequent friction often acting unfavourably on the conduct of the operations.

His brother, Thomas Bragg (1810-1872), was governor of North Carolina 1855-1859, U.S. senator 1859-1861, and attorney-general in the Confederate cabinet from Nov. 1861 to March 1862.

BRAGI, in Scandinavian mythology, the son of Odin, and god of wisdom, poetry and eloquence. At the Scandinavian sacrificial feasts a horn consecrated to Bragi was used as a drinking-cup by the guests, who then vowed to do some great deed which would be worthy of being immortalized in verse.

BRAHAM, JOHN (c. 1774-1856), English vocalist, was born in London about 1774, of Jewish parentage, his real name being Abraham. His father and mother died when he was quite young. Having received lessons in singing from an Italian artist named Leoni, he made his first appearance in public at Covent Garden theatre on the 21st of April 1787, when he sang “The soldier tired of war’s alarms” and “Ma chère arrive.” On the breaking of his voice, he had to support himself by teaching the pianoforte. In a few years, however, he recovered his voice, which proved to be a tenor of exceptionally pure and rich quality. His second début was made in 1794 at the Bath concerts, to the conductor of which, Rauzzini, he was indebted for careful training extending over a period of more than two years. In 1796 he reappeared in London at Drury Lane in Storace’s opera of Mahmoud. Such was his success that he obtained an engagement the next year to appear in the Italian opera house in Grétry’s Azor et Zémire. He also sang in oratorios and was engaged for the Three Choir festival at Gloucester. With the view of perfecting himself in his art he set out for Italy in the autumn of 1797. On the way he gave some concerts at Paris, which proved so successful that he was induced to remain there for eight months. His career in Italy was one of continuous triumph; he appeared in all the principal opera-houses, singing in Milan, Genoa, Leghorn and Venice. His compass embraced about nineteen notes, his management of the falsetto being perfect. In 1801 he returned to his native country, and appeared once more at Covent Garden in the opera Chains of the Heart, by Mazzinghi and Reeve. So great was his popularity that an engagement he had made when abroad to return after a year to Vienna was renounced, and he remained henceforward in England. In 1824 he sang the part of Max in the English version of Weber’s Der Freischütz, and he was the original Sir Huon in that composer’s Oberon in 1826. Braham made two unfortunate speculations on a large scale, one being the purchase of the Colosseum in the Regent’s Park in 1831 for £40,000, and the other the erection of the St James’s theatre at a cost of £26,000 in 1836. In 1838 he sang the part of William Tell at Drury Lane, and in 1839 the part of Don Giovanni. His last public appearance was at a concert in March 1852. He died on the 17th of February 1856. There is, perhaps, no other case upon record in which a singer of the first rank enjoyed the use of his voice so long; between Braham’s first and last public appearances considerably more than sixty years intervened, during forty of which he held the undisputed supremacy alike in opera, oratorio and the concert-room. Braham was the composer of a number of vocal pieces, which being sung by himself had great temporary popularity, though they had little intrinsic merit, and are now deservedly forgotten. A partial exception must be made in favour of “The Death of Nelson,” originally written in 1811 as a portion of the opera The American; this still keeps its place as a standard popular English song.

BRAHE, PER, Count (1602-1680), Swedish soldier and statesman, was born on the island of Rydboholm, near Stockholm, on the 18th of February 1602. He was the grandson of Per Brahe (1520-1590), one of Gustavus I.’s senators, created count of Visingsborg by Eric XIV., known also as the continuator of Peder Svart’s chronicle of Gustavus I., and author of Oeconomia (1585), a manual for young noblemen. Per Brahe the younger, after completing his education by several years’ travel abroad, became in 1626 chamberlain to Gustavus Adolphus, whose lasting friendship he gained. He fought with distinction in Prussia during the last three years of the Polish War (1626-1629) and also, as colonel of a regiment of horse, in 1630 in Germany. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 his military yielded to his political activity. He had been elected president (Landsmarskalk) of the diet of 1629, and in the following year was created a senator (Riksråd). In 1635 he conducted the negotiations for an armistice with Poland. In 1637-1640 and again in 1648-1654 he was governor-general in Finland, to which country he rendered inestimable services by his wise and provident rule. He reformed the whole administration, introduced a postal system, built ten new towns, improved and developed commerce and agriculture, and very greatly promoted education. In 1640 he opened the university of Åbo, of which he was the founder, and first chancellor. After the death of Charles X. in 1660, Brahe, as rikskansler or chancellor of Sweden, became one of the regents of Sweden for the second time (he had held a similar office during the minority of Christina, 1632-1644), and during the difficult year 1660 he had entire control of both foreign and domestic affairs. He died on the 2nd of September 1680, at his castle at Visingsborg, where during his lifetime he had held more than regal pomp.

His brother, Nils Brahe (1604-1632), also served with distinction under Gustavus Adolphus. He took part in the siege and capture of Riga in 1621, served with distinction in Poland (1626-1627) and assisted in the defence of Stralsund in 1628. In 1630 he accompanied Gustavus into Germany, and in 1631 was appointed colonel of “the yellow regiment,” the king’s world-renowned life-guards, at the head of which he captured the castle of Würzburg on the 8th of October 1631. He took part in the long duel between Gustavus and Wallenstein round Nuremberg as general of infantry, and commanded the left wing at Lützen (November 6, 1632), where he was the only Swedish general officer present. At the very beginning of the fight he was mortally wounded. The king regarded Brahe as the best general in the Swedish army after Lennart Torstensen.

A direct descendant of Nils, Magnus Brahe (1790-1844), fought in the campaign of 1813-14, under the crown prince Bernadotte, with whom, after his accession to the throne as Charles XIV., he was in high favour. He became marshal of the kingdom, and, especially from 1828 onwards, exercised a preponderant influence in public affairs.

See Martin Veibull, Sveriges Storhetstid, vol. iv. (Stockholm, 1881); Letters to Axel Oxenstjerna (Swed.) 1832-1851 (Stockholm, 1890); Petrus Nordmann, Per Brahe (Helsingfors, 1904).

(R. N. B.)

BRAHE, TYCHO (1546-1601), Danish astronomer, was born on the 14th of December 1546 at the family seat of Knudstrup in Scania, then a Danish province. Of noble family, he was early adopted by his uncle, Jörgen Brahe, who sent him, in April 1559, to study philosophy and rhetoric at Copenhagen. The punctual occurrence at the predicted time, August 21st, 1560, of a total solar eclipse led him to regard astronomy as “something divine”; he purchased the Ephemerides of Johann Stadius (3rd ed., 1570), and the works of Ptolemy in Latin, and gained some insight into the theory of the planets. Entered as a law-student at the university of Leipzig in 1562, he nevertheless secretly prosecuted celestial studies, and began continuous observations with a globe, a pair of compasses and a “cross-staff.” He quitted Leipzig on the 17th of May 1565, but his uncle dying a month later, he repaired to Wittenberg, and thence to Rostock, where, in 1566, he lost his nose in a duel, and substituted an artificial one made of a copper alloy. In 1569 he matriculated at Augsburg, and devoted himself to chemistry for two years (1570-1572). On his return to Denmark, in 1571, he was permitted by his maternal uncle, Steno Belle, to instal a laboratory at his castle of Herritzvad, near Knudstrup; and there, on the 11th of November 1572, he caught sight of the famous “new star” in Cassiopeia. He diligently measured its position, and printed an account of his observations in a tract entitled De Novâ Stellâ (Copenhagen, 1573), a facsimile of which was produced in 1901, as a tercentenary tribute to the author’s memory.

Tycho’s marriage with a peasant-girl in 1573 somewhat strained his family relations. He delivered lectures in Copenhagen by royal command in 1574; and in 1575 travelled through Germany to Venice. The execution of his design to settle at Basel was, however, anticipated by the munificence of Frederick II., king of Denmark, who bestowed upon him for life the island of Hveen in the Sound, together with a pension of 500 thalers, a canonry in the cathedral of Roskilde, and the income of an estate in Norway. The first stone of the magnificent observatory of Uraniborg was laid on the 8th of August 1576; it received the finest procurable instrumental outfit; and was the scene, during twenty-one years, of Tycho’s labours in systematically collecting materials—the first made available since the Alexandrian epoch—for the correction of astronomical theories. James VI. of Scotland, afterwards James I. of England, visited him at Uraniborg on the 20th of March 1590. But by that time his fortunes were on the wane; for Frederick II. died in 1588, and his successor, Christian IV., was less tolerant of Tycho’s arrogant and insubordinate behaviour. His pension and fief having been withdrawn, he sailed for Rostock in June 1597, and re-commenced observing before the close of the year, in the castle of Wandsbeck near Hamburg. He spent the following winter at Wittenberg, and reached Prague in June 1599, well assured of favour and protection from the emperor Rudolph II. That monarch, accordingly, assigned him the castle of Benatky for his residence, with a pension of 3000 florins; his great instruments were moved thither from Hveen, and Johannes Kepler joined him there in January 1600. But this phase of renewed prosperity was brief. After eleven days’ illness, Tycho Brahe died on the 24th of October 1601, at Benatky, and was buried in the Teynkirche, Prague.

Tycho’s principal work, entitled Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata (2 vols., Prague, 1602-1603) was edited by Kepler. The first volume treated of the motions of the sun and moon, and gave the places of 777 fixed stars (this number was increased to 1005 by Kepler in 1627 in the “Rudolphine Tables”). The second, which had been privately printed at Uraniborg in 1588 with the heading De Mundi Aetherei recentioribus Phaenomenis, was mainly concerned with the comet of 1577, demonstrated by Tycho from its insensible parallax to be no terrestrial exhalation, as commonly supposed, but a body traversing planetary space. It included, besides, an account of the Tychonic plan of the cosmos, in which a via media was sought between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. The earth retained its immobility; but the five planets were made to revolve round the sun, which, with its entire cortège, annually circuited the earth, the sphere of the fixed stars performing meanwhile, as of old, its all-inclusive diurnal rotation (see ASTRONOMY: History). Under the heading Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica, Tycho published at Wandsbeck, in 1598, a description of his instruments, together with an autobiographical account of his career and discoveries, including the memorable one of the moon’s “variation” (see [Moon]). The book was reprinted at Nuremberg in 1602 (cf. Hasselberg, Vierteljahrsschrift Astr. Ges. xxxix. iii. 180). His Epistolae Astronomicae, printed at Uraniborg in 1596 with a portrait engraved by Geyn of Amsterdam in 1586, were embodied in a complete edition of his works issued at Frankfort in 1648. Tycho vastly improved the art of astronomical observation. He constructed a table of refractions, allowed for instrumental inaccuracies, and eliminated by averaging accidental errors. He, moreover, corrected the received value of nearly every astronomical quantity; but the theoretical purpose towards which his practical reform was directed, was foiled by his premature death.

See J.L.E. Dreyer’s Tycho Brahe (Edinburgh, 1890), which gives full and authentic information regarding his life and work. Also Gassendi’s Vita (Paris, 1654); Lebensbeschreibung, collected from various Danish sources, and translated into German by Philander von der Weistritz (Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1756); Tyge Brahe, by F.R. Friis (Copenhagen, 1871); Prager Tychoniana, collected by Dr F.I. Studnicka (Prague, 1901), a description of the scanty Tychonian relics which survived the Thirty Years’ War and are still preserved at Prague.

(A. M. C.)

BRAHMAN, a Sanskrit noun-stem which, differently accented, yields in the two nominatives Brahmă (neut.) and Brahmā (masc.), the names of two deities which occupy prominent places in the orthodox system of Hindu belief. Brahmă (n.) is the designation generally applied to the Supreme Soul (paramātman), or impersonal, all-embracing divine essence, the original source and ultimate goal of all that exists; Brahmā (m.), on the other hand, is only one of the three hypostases of that divinity whose creative activity he represents, as distinguished from its preservative and destructive aspects, ever apparent in life and nature, and represented by the gods Vishṇu and Śiva respectively. The history of the two cognate names reflects in some measure the development of Indian religious speculation generally.

The neuter term brahmă is used in the Rigveda both in the abstract sense of “devotion, worship,” and in the concrete sense of “devotional rite, prayer, hymn.” The spirit of Vedic worship is pervaded by a devout belief in the efficacy of invocation and sacrificial offering. The earnest and well-expressed prayer or hymn of praise cannot fail to draw the divine power to the worshipper and make it yield to his supplication; whilst offerings, so far from being mere acts of devotion calculated to give pleasure to the god, constitute the very food and drink which render him vigorous and capable of battling with the enemies of his mortal friend. It is this intrinsic power of fervent invocation and worship which found an early expression in the term brahmă; and its independent existence as an active moral principle in shaping the destinies of man became recognized in the Vedic pantheon in the conception of a god Bṛihaspati or Brahmaṇaspati, “lord of prayer or devotion,” the divine priest and the guardian of the pious worshipper. By a natural extension of the original meaning, the term brahmă, in the sense of sacred utterance, was subsequently likewise applied to the whole body of sacred writ, the tri-vidyā or “triple lore” of the Veda; whilst it also came to be commonly used as the abstract designation of the priestly function and the Brāhmanical order generally, in the same way as the term kshatra, “sway, rule,” came to denote the aggregate of functions and individuals of the Kshatriyas or Rājanyas, the nobility or military class.

The universal belief in the efficacy of invocation as an indispensable adjunct to sacrifices and religious rites generally, could not fail to engender and maintain in the minds of the people feelings of profound esteem and reverence towards those who possessed the divine gift of inspired utterance, as well as for those who had acquired an intimate knowledge of the approved forms of ritual worship. A common designation of the priest is brahman (nom. brahma), originally denoting, it would seem, “one who prays, a worshipper,” perhaps also “the composer of a hymn” (brahman, n.); and the same term came subsequently to be used not only for one of the sacerdotal order generally, but also, and more commonly, as the designation of a special class of priests who officiated as superintendents during sacrificial performances, the complicated nature of which required the co-operation of a whole staff of priests, and who accordingly were expected to possess a competent knowledge of the entire course of ritual procedure, including the correct form and mystic import of the sacred texts to be repeated or chanted by the several priests. The Brahman priest (brahmā) being thus the recognized head of the sacerdotal order (brahmă), which itself is the visible embodiment of sacred writ and the devotional spirit pervading it (brahmă), the complete realization of theocratic aspirations required but a single step, which was indeed taken in the theosophic speculations of the later Vedic poets and the authors of the Brāhmanas (q.v.), viz. the recognition of this abstract notion of the Brahma as the highest cosmic principle and its identification with the pantheistic conception of an all-pervading, self-existent spiritual substance, the primary source of the universe; and subsequently coupled therewith the personification of its creative energy in the form of Brahmā, the divine representative of the earthly priest, who was made to take the place of the earlier conception of Prajāpati, “the lord of creatures” (see [Brahmanism]). By this means the very name of this god expressed the essential oneness of his nature with that of the divine spirit as whose manifestation he was to be considered. In the later Vedic writings, especially the Brāhmanas, however, Prajāpati still maintains throughout his position as the paramount personal deity; and Brahma, in his divine capacity, is rather identified with Bṛihaspati, the priest of the gods. Moreover, the exact relationship between Prajāpati and the Brahmă (n.) is hardly as yet defined with sufficient precision; it is rather one of simple identification: in the beginning the Brahma was the All, and Prajapati is the Brahma. It is only in the institutes of Manu, where we find the system of castes propounded in its complete development, that Brahmā has his definite place assigned to him in the cosmogony. According to this work, the universe, before undiscerned, was made discernible in the beginning by the sole, self-existent lord Brahmă (n.). He, desirous of producing different beings from his own self, created the waters by his own thought, and placed in them a seed which developed into a golden egg; therein was born Brahmā (m.), the parent of all the worlds; and thus “that which is the undiscrete Cause, eternal, which is and is not, from it issued that male who is called in the world Brahmā.” Having dwelt in that egg for a year, that lord spontaneously by his own thought split that egg in two; and from the two halves he fashioned the heaven and the earth, and in the middle, the sky, and the eight regions (the points of the compass), and the perpetual place of the waters. This theory of Brahmā being born from a golden egg is, however, a mere adaptation of the Vedic conception of Hiranya-garbha (“golden embryo”), who is represented as the supreme god in a hymn of the tenth (and last) book of the Rigveda. Another still later myth, which occurs in the epic poems, makes Brahma be born from a lotus which grew out of the navel of the god Vishṇu whilst floating on the primordial waters. In artistic representations, Brahmā usually appears as a bearded man of red colour with four heads crowned with a pointed, tiara-like head-dress, and four hands holding his sceptre, or a sacrificial spoon, a bundle of leaves representing the Veda, a bottle of water of the Ganges, and a string of beads or his bow Parivīta. His vehicle (vāhana) is a goose or swan (hamsa), whence he is also called Haṃsāvhana; and his consort is Sarasvatī, the goddess of learning.

One could hardly expect that a colourless deity of this description, so completely the product of priestly speculation, could ever have found a place in the hearts of the people generally, And indeed, whilst in theoretic theology Brahma has retained his traditional place and function down to our own days, his practical cult has at all times remained extremely limited, the only temple dedicated to the worship of this god being found at Pushkar (Pokhar) near Ajmir in Rājputāna. On the other hand, his divine substratum, the impersonal Brahma, the world-spirit, the one and only reality, remains to this day the ultimate element of the religious belief of intelligent India of whatever sect. Being devoid of all attributes, it can be the object only of meditation, not of practical devotional rites; and philosophy can only attempt to characterize it in general and vague terms, as in the favourite formula which makes it to be sachchidānanda, i.e. being (sat), thinking (chit), and bliss (ānanda).

(J. E.)

BRĀHMAṆA, the Sanskrit term applied to a body of prose writings appended to the collections (samhitā) of Vedic texts, the meaning and ritual application of which they are intended to elucidate, and like them regarded as divinely revealed. From a linguistic point of view, these treatises with their appendages, the more mystic and recondite Āraṇyakas and the speculative Upanishads, have to be considered as forming the connecting link between the Vedic and the classical Sanskrit. The exact derivation and meaning of the name is somewhat uncertain. Whilst the masculine term brāhmaṇa (nom. brāhmaṇas), the ordinary Sanskrit designation of a man of the Brahmanical caste, is clearly a derivative of brahman (nom. brahmā), a common Vedic term for a priest (see [Brahman]), thus meaning the son or descendant of a Brahman, the neuter word brāhmaṇa (nom. brāhmaṇam) on the other hand, with which we are here concerned, admits of two derivations: either it is derived from the same word brahman, and would then seem to mean a dictum or observation ascribed to, or intended for the use of, a Brahman, or superintendent priest; or it has rather to be referred to the neuter noun brahmān (nom. brahmă), in the sense of “sacred utterance or rite,” in which case it might mean a comment on a sacred text, or explanation of a devotional rite, calculated to bring out its spiritual or mystic significance and its bearing on the Brahma, the world-spirit embodied in the sacred writ and ritual. This latter definition seems on the whole the more probable one, and it certainly would fit exactly the character of the writings to which the term relates. It will thus be seen that the term brāhmaṇam applies not only to complete treatises of an exegetic nature, but also to single comments on particular texts or rites of which such a work would be made up.

The gradual elaboration of the sacrificial ceremonial, as the all-sufficient expression of religious devotion, and a constantly growing tendency towards theosophic and mystic speculation on the significance of every detail of the ritual, could not fail to create a demand for explanatory treatises of this kind, which, to enhance their practical utility, would naturally deal with the special texts and rites assigned in the ceremonial to the several classes of officiating priests. At a subsequent period the demand for instruction in the sacrificial science called into existence a still more practical set of manuals, the so-called Kalpa-sūtras, or ceremonial rules, detailing, in succinct aphorisms, the approved course of sacrificial procedure, without reference to the supposed origin or import of the several rites. These manuals are also called Śrauta-sūtras, treating as they do, like the Brāhmaṇas, of the Śrauta rites—i.e. the rites based on the śruti or revelation—requiring at least three sacrificial fires and a number of priests, as distinguished from the gṛihya (domestic) or smārta (traditional) rites, supposed to be based on the smriti or tradition, which are performed on the house-fire and dealt with in the Gṛihya-sūtras.

The ritual recognizes four principal priests (ṛitvij), each of whom is assisted by three subordinates: viz. the Brahman or superintending priest; the Hotṛi or reciter of hymns and verses; the Udgātri or chanter; and the Adhvaryu or offerer, who looks after the details of the ceremonial, including the preparation of the offering-ground, the construction of fire-places and altars, the making of oblations and muttering of the prescribed formulae. Whilst the two last priests have assigned to them special liturgical collections of the texts to be used by them, the Sāmaveda-saṃhitā and Yajurveda-saṃhitā respectively, the Hotṛi has to deal entirely with hymns and verses taken from the Ṛigveda-saṃhitā, of which they would, however, form only a comparatively small portion. As regards the Brahman, he would doubtless be chosen from one of those other three classes, but would be expected to have made himself thoroughly conversant with the texts and ritual details appertaining to all the officiating priests. It is, then, to one or other of those three collections of sacred texts and the respective class of priests, that the existing Brāhmaṇas attach themselves. At a later period, when the Atharvan gained admission to the Vedic canon, a special connexion with the Brahman priest was sometimes claimed, though with scant success, for this fourth collection of hymns and spells, and the comparatively late and unimportant Gopatha-brāhmaṇa attached to it.

The Udgātṛi’s duties being mainly confined to the chanting of hymns made up of detached groups of verses of the Ṛigveda, as collected in the Sāmaveda-saṃhitā, the more important Brāhmaṇas of this sacerdotal class deal chiefly with the various modes of chanting, and the modifications which the verses have to undergo in their musical setting. Moreover, the performance of chants being almost entirely confined to the Soma-sacrifice, it is only a portion, though no doubt the most important portion, of the sacrificial ceremonial that enters into the subject matter of the Sāmaveda Brāhmaṃas.

As regards the Brāhmaṇas of the Ṛigveda, two of such works have been handed down, the Aitareya and the Kaushītaki (or Śānkhāyana)-Brāhmaṇas, which have a large amount of their material in common. But while the former work (transl. into English by M. Haug) is mainly taken up with the Soma-sacrifice, the latter has in addition thereto chapters on the other forms of sacrifice. Being intended for the Hotṛi’s use, both these works treat exclusively of the hymns and verses recited by that priest and his assistants, either in the form of connected litanies or in detached verses invoking the deities to whom oblations are made, or uttered in response to the solemn hymns chanted by the Udgātṛis.

It is, however, to the Brāhmaṇas and Sūtras of the Yajurveda, dealing with the ritual of the real offering-priest, the Adhvaryu, that we have to turn for a connected view of the sacrificial procedure in all its material details. Now, in considering the body of writings connected with this Veda, we are at once confronted by the fact that there are two different schools, an older and a younger one, in which the traditional body of ritualistic matter has been treated in a very different way. For while the younger school, the Vājasaneyins, have made a clear severance between the sacred texts or mantras and the exegetic discussions thereon—as collected in the Vājasaneyi-saṃhitā and the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa (trans. by J. Eggeling, in Sacred Books of the East) respectively—arranged systematically in accordance with the ritual divisions, the older school on the other hand present their materials in a hopelessly jumbled form; for not only is each type of sacrifice not dealt with continuously and in orderly fashion, but short textual sections of mantras are constantly followed immediately by their dogmatic exegesis; the term brāhmaṇa thus applying in their case only to these detached comments and not to the connected series of them. Thus the most prominent subdivision of the older school, the Taittirīyas, in their Saṃhitā, have treated the main portion of the ceremonial in this promiscuous fashion, and to add to the confusion they have, by way of supplement, put forth a so-called Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa, which, so far from being a real Brāhmaṇa, merely deals with some additional rites in the same confused mixture of sacrificial formulae and dogmatic explanations. It is not without reason, therefore, that those two schools, the older and the younger, are commonly called the Black (kṛishṇa) and the White (sukla) Yajus respectively.

Although the ritualistic discussions of the Brāhmaṇas are for the most part of a dry and uninteresting nature to an even greater degree than is often the case with exegetic theological treatises, these works are nevertheless of considerable importance both as regards the history of Indian institutions and as “the oldest body of Indo-European prose, of a generally free, vigorous, simple form, affording valuable glimpses backwards at the primitive condition of unfettered Indo-European talk” (Whitney). Of especial interest in this respect are the numerous myths and legends scattered through these works. From the archaic style in which these mythological tales are usually composed, as well as from the fact that not a few of them are found in Brāhmaṇas of different schools and Vedas, though often with considerable variations, it seems pretty evident that the groundwork of them must go back to times preceding the composition or final redaction of the existing Brāhmaṇas. In the case of some of these legends—as those of Śunaḥ-Śepha, and the fetching of Soma from heaven—we can even see how they have grown out of germs contained in some of the Vedic hymns. If the literary style in which the exegetic discussion of the texts and rites is carried on in the Brāhmaṇas is, as a rule, of a very bald and uninviting nature, it must be borne in mind that these treatises are of a strictly professional and esoteric character, and in no way lay claim to being considered as literary compositions in any sense of the word. And yet, notwithstanding the general emptiness of their ritualistic discussions and mystic speculations, “there are passages in the Brāhmaṇas full of genuine thought and feeling, and most valuable as pictures of life, and as records of early struggles, which have left no trace in the literature of other nations” (M. Müller).

The chief interest, however, attaching to the Brāhmaṇas is doubtless their detailed description of the sacrificial system as practised in the later Vedic ages; and the information afforded by them in this respect should be all the more welcome to us, as the history of religious institutions knows of no other sacrificial ceremonial with the details of which we are acquainted to anything like the same extent. An even more complete and minutely detailed view of the sacrificial system is no doubt obtained from the ceremonial manuals, the Kalpa-sūtras; but it is just by the speculative discussions of the Brāhmaṇas—the mystic significance and symbolical colouring with which they invest single rites—that we gain a real insight into the nature and gradual development of this truly stupendous system of ritual worship.

The sacrificial ritual recognizes two kinds of śrauta sacrifices, viz. haviryajnas (meat-offerings), consisting of oblations (ishti) of milk, butter, cereals or flesh, and somayāgas or oblations of the juice of the soma plant. The setting up, by a householder, of a set of three sacrificial fires of his own constitutes the first ceremony of the former class, the Agny-ādhāna (or (?) Agny-ādheya). The first of the three fires laid down is the gārhapatya, or householder’s fire, so called because, though not taken from his ordinary house-fire, but as a rule specially produced by friction, it serves for cooking the sacrificial food, and thus, as it were, represents the domestic fire. From it the other two fires, the ānavanīya, or offering fire, and the dakshiṇāgni, or southern fire, used for certain special purposes, are taken. The principal other ceremonies of this class are the new and full moon offerings, the oblations made at the commencement of the three seasons, the offering of first-fruits, the animal sacrifice, and the Agnihotra, or daily morning and evening oblation of milk, which, however, is also included amongst the gṛihya, or domestic rites, as having to be performed daily on the domestic fire by the householder who keeps no regular set of sacrificial fires.

Of a far more complicated nature than these offerings are the Soma-sacrifices, which, besides the simpler ceremonies of this class, such as the Agnishtoma or “Praise of Agni,” also include great state functions, such as the Räjasūya or consecration of a king, and the Aśvamedha or horse-sacrifice, which, in addition to the sacrificial rites, have a considerable amount of extraneous, often highly interesting, ceremonial connected with them, which makes them seem to partake largely of the nature of public festivals. Whilst the oblations of Soma-juice, made thrice on each offering-day, amidst chants and recitations, constitute the central rites of those services, their ritual also requires numerous single oblations of the ishti kind, including at least three animal offerings, and in some cases the immolation of many hecatombs of victims. Moreover, a necessary preliminary to every Soma-sacrifice is the construction, in five layers, of a special fire-altar of large dimensions, consisting of thousands of bricks, formed and baked on the spot, to each, or each group, of which a special symbolic meaning is attached. The building of this altar is spread over a whole year, during which period the sacrificer has to carry about the sacrificial fire in an earthen pan for at least some time each day, until it is finally deposited on the completed altar to serve as the offering-fire for the Soma oblations. The altar itself is constructed in the form of a bird, because Soma was supposed to have been brought down from heaven by the metre Gāyatrī which had assumed the form of an eagle. Whilst the Soma-sacrifice has been thus developed by the Brāhmaṇas in an extraordinary degree, its essential identity with the Avestan Haoma-cult shows that its origin goes back at all events to the Indo-Iranian period.

Among the symbolic conceits in which the authors of the Brāhmaṇas so freely indulge, there is one overshadowing all others—if indeed they do not all more or less enter into it—which may be considered as the sum and substance of these speculations, and the esoteric doctrine of the sacrifice, involved by the Brāhmanical ritualists. This is what may conveniently be called the Prajāpati theory, by which the “Lord of Creatures,” the efficient cause of the universe, is identified with both the sacrifice (yajna) and the sacrificer (yajamāna). The origin of this theory goes back to the later Vedic hymns. In the so-called Purusha-sūkta (Ṛigv. x. 90) in which the supreme spirit is conceived of as the person or man (purusha), born in the beginning, and consisting of “whatever hath been and whatever shall be,” the creation of the visible and invisible universe is represented as originating from an “all-offered” (holocaust) sacrifice in which the Purusha himself forms the offering-material (havis), or, as we might say, the victim. In this primeval, or rather timeless because ever-proceeding, sacrifice, time itself, in the shape of its unit the year, is made to take its part, inasmuch as the three seasons—spring, summer and autumn—of which it consists, constitute the ghee (clarified butter), the offering-fuel and the oblation respectively. These speculations may be said to have formed the foundation on which the theory of the sacrifice, as propounded in the Brāhmaṇas, has been reared. Prajāpati—who (probably for practical considerations, as better representing the sacrificer, the earthly ruler, or “lord of the creatures”) here takes the place of the Purusha, the world-man or all-embracing personality—is offered up anew in every sacrifice; and inasmuch as the very dismemberment of the lord of creatures, which took place at that archtypal sacrifice, was in itself the creation of the universe, so every sacrifice is also a repetition of that first creative act. Thus the periodical sacrifice is nothing else than a microcosmic representation of the ever-proceeding destruction and renewal of all cosmic life and matter. The ritualistic theologians, however, go an important step further by identifying Prajāpati with the performer, or patron, of the sacrifice, the sacrificer; every sacrifice thus becoming invested—in addition to its cosmic significance—with the mystic power of regenerating the sacrificer by cleansing him of all guilt and securing for him a seat in the eternal abodes.

Whilst forming the central feature of the ritualistic symbolism, this triad—Prajāpati, sacrifice (oblation, victim), sacrificer—is extended in various ways. An important collateral identification is that of Prajāpati (and the sacrificer) with Agni, the god of fire, embodied not only in the offering-fire, but also in the sacred Soma-altar, the technical name of which is agni. For this reason the altar, as representative of the universe, is built in five layers, representing earth, air and heaven, and the intermediate regions; and in the centre of the altar-site, below the first layer, on a circular gold plate (the sun), a small golden man (purusha) is laid down with his face looking upwards. This is Prajāpati, and the sacrificer, who when regenerated will pass upwards through the three worlds to the realms of light, naturally perforated bricks being for this purpose placed in the middle of the three principal altar-layers. One of the fourteen sections of the Śatapatha-brāhmana, the tenth, called Agni-rahasya or “the mystery of Agni (the god and altar),” is entirely devoted to this feature of the sacrificial symbolism. Similarly the sacrificer, as the human representatiye of the Lord of Creatures, is identified with Soma (as the supreme oblation), with Time, and finally with Death: by the sacrificer thus becoming Death himself, the fell god ceases to have power over him and he is assured of everlasting life. And now we get the Supreme Lord in his last aspect; nay, his one true and real aspect, in which the sacrificer, on shuffling off this mortal coil, will himself come to share—that of pure intellectuality, pure spirituality—he is Mind: such is the ultimate source of being, the one Self, the Purusha, the Brahman. As the sum total of the wisdom propounded in the mystery of Agni, the searcher after truth is exhorted to meditate on that Self, made up of intelligence, endowed with a body of spirit, a form of light, and of an ethereal nature; holding sway over all the regions and pervading this All, being itself speechless and devoid of mental states; and by so doing he shall gain the assurance that “even as a grain of rice, or the smallest granule of millet, so is the golden Purusha in my heart; even as a smokeless light, it is greater than the sky, greater than the ether, greater than the earth, greater than all existing things;—that Self of the Spirit is my Self; on passing away from hence, I shall obtain that Self. And, verily, whosoever has this trust, for him there is no uncertainty.”

(J. E.)

BRAHMANISM, a term commonly used to denote a system of religious institutions originated and elaborated by the Brāhmans, the sacerdotal and, from an early period, the dominant caste of the Hindu community (see [Brahman]). In like manner, as the language of the Āryan Hindūs has undergone continual processes of modification and dialectic division, so their religious belief has passed through various stages of development broadly distinguished from one another by certain prominent features. The earliest phases of religious thought in India of which a clear idea can now be formed are exhibited in a body of writings, looked upon by later generations in the light of sacred writ, under the collective name of Veda (“knowledge”) or Śruti (“revelation”). The Hindū scriptures consist of four separate collections, or Samhitās, of sacred texts, or mantras, including hymns, incantations and sacrificial forms of prayer, viz. the Ṛich (nom. sing. ṛik) or Ṛigveda, the Sāman or Sāmaveda, the Yajus or Yajurveda, and the Atharvan or Atharvaveda. Each of these four text-books has attached to it a body of prose writings, called Brāhmaṇas (see [Brāhmaṇa]), intended to explain the ceremonial application of the texts and the origin and import of the sacrificial rites for which these were supposed to have been composed. Usually attached to these works, and in some cases to the Saṃhitās, are two kinds of appendages, the Āraṇyakas and Upanishads, the former of which deal generally with the more recondite rites, while the latter are taken up chiefly with speculations on the problems of the universe and the religious aims of man—subjects often touched upon in the earlier writings, but here dealt with in a more mature and systematic way. Two of the Saṃhitās, the Sāman and the Yajus, owing their existence to purely ritual purposes, and being, besides, the one almost entirely, the other partly, composed of verses taken from the Ṛigveda, are only of secondary importance for our present inquiry. The hymns of the Ṛigveda constitute the earliest lyrical effusions of the Āryan settlers in India which have been handed down to posterity. They are certainly not all equally old; on the contrary they evidently represent the literary activity of many generations of bards, though their relative age cannot as yet be determined with anything like certainty. The tenth (and last) book of the collection, however, at any rate has all the characteristics of a later appendage, and in language and spirit many of its hymns approach very nearly to the level of the contents of the Atharvan. Of the latter collection about one-sixth is found also in the Ṛigveda, and especially in the tenth book; the larger portion peculiar to it, though including no doubt some older pieces, appears to owe its origin to an age not long anterior to the composition of the Brāhmaṇas.

The state of religious thought among the ancient bards, as reflected in the hymns of the Ṛigveda, is that of a worship of the grand and striking phenomena of nature regarded in the light of personal conscious beings, endowed with a power beyond the control of man, though not insensible to his praises and actions. It is a nature worship purer than that met with in any other polytheistic form of belief we are acquainted with—a mythology still comparatively little affected by those systematizing tendencies which, in a less simple and primitive state of thought, lead to the construction of a well-ordered pantheon and a regular organization of divine government. To the mind of the early Vedic worshipper the various departments of the surrounding nature are not as yet clearly defined, and the functions which he assigns to their divine representatives continually flow into one another. Nor has he yet learned to care to determine the relative worth and position of the objects of his adoration; but the temporary influence of the phenomenon to which he addresses his praises bears too strongly upon his mind to allow him for the time to consider the claims of rival powers to which at other times he is wont to look up with equal feelings of awe and reverence. It is this immediateness of impulse under which the human mind in its infancy strives to give utterance to its emotions that imparts to many of its outpourings the ring of monotheistic fervour.

The generic name given to these impersonations, viz. deva (“the shining ones”), points to the conclusion, sufficiently justified by the nature of the more prominent objects of Vedic adoration as well as by common natural occurrences, that it was the striking phenomena of light which first and most powerfully swayed the Āryan mind. In the primitive worship of the manifold phenomena of nature it is not, of course, so much their physical aspect that impresses the human heart as the moral and intellectual forces which are supposed to move and animate them. The attributes and relations of some of the Vedic deities, in accordance with the nature of the objects they represent, partake in a high degree of this spiritual element; but it is not improbable that in an earlier phase of Āryan worship the religious conceptions were pervaded by it to a still greater and more general extent, and that the Vedic belief, though retaining many of the primitive features, has on the whole assumed a more sensuous and anthropomorphic character. This latter element is especially predominant in the attributes and imagery applied by the Vedic poets to Indra, the god of the atmospheric region, the favourite figure in their pantheon.

While the representatives of the prominent departments of nature appear to the Vedic bard as co-existing in a state of independence of one another, their relation to the mortal worshipper being the chief subject of his anxiety, a simple method of classification was already resorted to at an early time, consisting in a triple division of the deities into gods residing in the sky, in the air, and on earth. It is not, however, until a later stage,—the first clear indication being conveyed in a passage of the tenth book of the Ṛigveda—that this attempt at a polytheistic system is followed up by the promotion of one particular god to the dignity of chief guardian for each of these three regions. On the other hand, a tendency is clearly traceable in some of the hymns towards identifying gods whose functions present a certain degree of similarity of nature; attempts which would seem to show a certain advance of religious reflection, the first steps from polytheism towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence. Another feature of the old Vedic worship tended to a similar result. The great problems of the origin and existence of man and the universe had early begun to engage the Hindū mind; and in celebrating the praises of the gods the poet was frequently led by his religious, and not wholly disinterested, zeal to attribute to them cosmical functions of the very highest order. At a later stage of thought, chiefly exhibited in the tenth book of the Ṛigveda and in the Atharvaveda, inquiring sages could not but perceive the inconsistency of such concessions of a supremacy among the divine rulers, and tried to solve the problem by conceptions of an independent power, endowed with all the attributes of a supreme deity, the creator of the universe, including the gods of the pantheon. The names under which this monotheistic idea is put forth are mostly of an attributive character, and indeed some of them, such as Prajāpati (“lord of creatures”), Viśvakarman (“all-worker”), occur in the earlier hymns as mere epithets of particular gods. But to other minds this theory of a personal creator left many difficulties unsolved. They saw, as the poets of old had seen, that everything around them, that man himself, was directed by some inward agent; and it needed but one step to perceive the essential sameness of these spiritual units, and to recognize their being but so many individual manifestations of one universal principle or spiritual essence. Thus a pantheistic conception was arrived at, put forth under various names, such as Purusha (“soul”), Kāma (“desire”), Brahman (neutr.; nom. sing. bráhma) (“devotion, prayer”). Metaphysical and theosophic speculations were thus fast undermining the simple belief in the old gods, until, at the time of the composition of the Brāhmanas and Upanishads, we find them in complete possession of the minds of the theologians. Whilst the theories crudely suggested in the later hymns are now further matured and elaborated, the tendency towards catholicity of formula favours the combination of the conflicting monotheistic and pantheistic conceptions; this compromise, which makes Prajāpati, the personal creator of the world, the manifestation of the impersonal Brahma, the universal self-existent soul, leads to the composite pantheistic system which forms the characteristic dogma of the Brāhmanical period (see [Brahman]).

In the Vedic hymns two classes of society, the royal (or military) and the priestly classes, were evidently recognized as being raised above the level of the Viś, or bulk of the Āryan community. These social grades seem to have been in existence even before the separation of the two Asiatic branches of the Indo-Germanic race, the Āryans of Iran and India. It is true that, although the Athrava, Rathaēstāo, and Vāśtrya of the Zend Avesta correspond in position and occupation to the Brāhman, Rājan and Viś of the Veda, there is no similarity of names between them; but this fact only shows that the common vocabulary had not yet definitely fixed on any specific names for these classes. Even in the Veda their nomenclature is by no means limited to a single designation for each of them. Moreover, Atharvan occurs not infrequently in the hymns as the personification of the priestly profession, as the proto-priest who is supposed to have obtained fire from heaven and to have instituted the rite of sacrifice; and although ratheshtha (“standing on a car”) is not actually found in connexion with the Rājan or Kshatriya, its synonym rathin is in later literature a not unusual epithet of men of the military caste. At the time of the hymns, and even during the common Indo-Persian period, the sacrificial ceremonial had already become sufficiently complicated to call for the creation of a certain number of distinct priestly offices with special duties attached to them. While this shows clearly that the position and occupation of the priest were those of a profession, the fact that the terms brāhmaṇa and brahmaputra, both denoting “the son of a brahman,” are used in certain hymns as synonyms of brahman, seems to justify the assumption that the profession had already, to a certain degree, become hereditary at the time when these hymns were composed. There is, however, with the exception of a solitary passage in a hymn of the last book, no trace to be found in the Ṛigveda of that rigid division into four castes separated from one another by insurmountable barriers, which in later times constitutes the distinctive feature of Hindū society. The idea of caste is expressed by the Sanskrit term varna, originally denoting “colour,” thereby implying differences of complexion between the several classes. The word occurs in the Veda in the latter sense, but it is used there to mark the distinction, not between the three classes of the Āryan community, but between them on the one hand and a dark-coloured hostile people on the other. The latter, called Dāsas or Dasyus, consisted, no doubt, of the indigenous tribes, with whom the Āryans had to carry on a continual struggle for the possession of the land. The partial subjection of these comparatively uncivilized tribes as the rule of the superior race was gradually spreading eastward, and their submission to a state of serfdom under the name of Śūdras, added to the Āryan community an element, totally separated from it by colour, by habits, by language, and by occupation. Moreover, the religious belief of these tribes being entirely different from that of the conquering people, the pious Āryas, and especially the class habitually engaged in acts of worship, could hardly fail to apprehend considerable danger to the purity of their own faith from too close and intimate a contact between the two races. What more natural, therefore, than that measures should have been early devised to limit the intercourse between them within as narrow bounds as possible? In course of time the difference of vocation, and the greater or less exposure to the scorching influence of the tropical sky, added, no doubt, to a certain admixture of Śūdra blood, especially in the case of the common people, seem to have produced also in the Āryan population different shades of complexion, which greatly favoured a tendency to rigid class-restrictions originally awakened and continually fed by the lot of the servile race. Meanwhile the power of the sacerdotal order having been gradually enlarged in proportion to the development of the minutiae of sacrificial ceremonial and the increase of sacred lore, they began to lay claim to supreme authority in regulating and controlling the religious and social life of the people. The author of the so-called Purusha-sūkta, or hymn of Purusha, above referred to, represents the four castes—the Brāhmaṇa, Kshatriya, Vaiśya and Śūdra—as having severally sprung respectively from the mouth, the arms, the thighs and the feet of Purusha, a primary being, here assumed to be the source of the universe. It is very doubtful, however, whether at the time when this hymn was composed the relative position of the two upper castes could already have been settled in so decided a way as this theory might lead one to suppose. There is, on the contrary, reason to believe that some time had yet to elapse, marked by fierce and bloody struggles for supremacy, of which only imperfect ideas can be formed from the legendary and frequently biased accounts of later generations, before the Kshatriyas finally submitted to the full measure of priestly authority.

The definitive establishment of the Brāhmanical hierarchy marks the beginning of the Brāhmanical period properly so called. Though the origin and gradual rise of some of the leading institutions of this era can, as has been shown, be traced in the earlier writings, the chain of their development presents a break at this juncture which no satisfactory materials as yet enable us to fill up. A considerable portion of the literature of this time has apparently been lost; and several important works, the original composition of which has probably to be assigned to the early days of Brāhmanism, such as the institutes of Manu and the two great epics, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana, in the form in which they have been handed down to us, show manifest traces of a more modern redaction. Yet it is sufficiently clear from internal evidence that Manu’s Code of Laws, though merely a metrical recast of older materials, reproduces on the whole pretty faithfully the state of Hindū society depicted in the sources from which it was compiled. The final overthrow of the Kshatriya power was followed by a period of jealous legislation on the part of the Brāhmans. For a time their chief aim would doubtless be to improve their newly gained vantage-ground by surrounding everything relating to their order with a halo of sanctity calculated to impress the lay community with feelings of awe. In the Brāhmaṇas and even in the Purusha Hymn, and the Atharvan, divine origin had already been ascribed to the Vedic Saṃhitās, especially to the three older collections. The same privilege was now successfully claimed for the later Vedic literature, so imbued with Brāhmanic aspirations and pretensions; and the authority implied in the designation of Śruti or revelation removed henceforth the whole body of sacred writings from the sphere of doubt and criticism. This concession necessarily involved an acknowledgment of the new social order as a divine institution. Its stability was, however, rendered still more secure by the elaboration of a system of conventional precepts, partly forming the basis of Manu’s Code, which clearly defined the relative position and the duties of the several castes, and determined the penalties to be inflicted on any transgressions of the limits assigned to each of them. These laws are conceived with no sentimental scruples on the part of their authors. On the contrary, the offences committed by Brāhmans against other castes are treated with remarkable clemency, whilst the punishments inflicted for trespasses on the rights of higher classes are the more severe and inhuman the lower the offender stands in the social scale.

The three first castes, however unequal to each other in privilege and social standing, are yet united by a common bond of sacramental rites (saṃskāras), traditionally connected from ancient times with certain incidents and stages in the life of the Āryan Hindū, as conception, birth, name-giving, the first taking out of the child to see the sun, the first feeding with boiled rice, the rites of tonsure and hair-cutting, the youth’s investiture with the sacrificial thread, and his return home on completing his studies, marriage, funeral, &c. The modes of observing these family rites are laid down in a class of writings called Gṛihya-sūtras, or domestic rules. The most important of these observances is the upanayana, or rite of conducting the boy to a spiritual teacher. Connected with this act is the investiture with the sacred cord, ordinarily worn over the left shoulder and under the right arm, and varying in material according to the class of the wearer. This ceremony being the preliminary act to the youth’s initiation into the study of the Veda, the management of the consecrated fire and the knowledge of the rites of purification, including the sāvitrī, a solemn invocation to Savitṛi, the sun (probl. Saturnus),—as a rule the verse Ṛigv. iii. 62. 10, also called gāyatrī from the metre in which it is composed—which has to be repeated every morning and evening before the rise and after the setting of that luminary, is supposed to constitute the second or spiritual birth of the Ārya. It is from their participation in this rite that the three upper classes are called the twice-born. The ceremony is enjoined to take place some time between the eighth and sixteenth year of age in the case of a Brāhman, between the eleventh and twenty-second year of a Kshatriya, and between the twelfth and twenty-fourth year of a Vaiśya. He who has not been invested with the mark of his class within this time is for ever excluded from uttering the sacred sāvitrī and becomes an outcast, unless he is absolved from his sin by a council of Brāhmans, and after due performance of a purificatory rite resumes the badge of his caste. With one not duly initiated no righteous man is allowed to associate or to enter into connexions of affinity. The duty of the Śudra is to serve the twice-born classes, and above all the Brāhmans. He is excluded from all sacred knowledge, and if he performs sacrificial ceremonies he must do so without using holy mantras. No Brāhman must recite a Vedic text where a man of the servile caste might overhear him, nor must he even teach him the laws of expiating sin. The occupations of the Vaiśya are those connected with trade, the cultivation of the land and the breeding of cattle; while those of a Kshatriya consist in ruling and defending the people, administering justice, and the duties of the military profession generally. Both share with the Brāhman the privilege of reading the Veda, but only so far as it is taught and explained to them by their spiritual preceptor. To the Brāhman belongs the right of teaching and expounding the sacred texts, and also that of interpreting and determining the law and the rules of caste. Only in exceptional cases, when no teacher of the sacerdotal class is within reach, the twice-born youth, rather than forego spiritual instruction altogether, may reside in the house of a non-Brāhmanical preceptor; but it is specially enjoined that a pupil, who seeks the path to heaven, should not fail, as soon as circumstances permit, to resort to a Brāhman well versed in the Vedas and their appendages.

Notwithstanding the barriers placed between the four castes, the practice of intermarrying appears to have been too prevalent in early times to have admitted of measures of so stringent a nature as wholly to repress it. To marry a woman of a higher caste, and especially of a caste not immediately above one’s own, is, however, decidedly prohibited, the offspring resulting from such a union being excluded from the performance of the śrāddha or obsequies to the ancestors, and thereby rendered incapable of inheriting any portion of the parents’ property. On the other hand, a man is at liberty, according to the rules of Manu, to marry a girl of any or each of the castes below his own, provided he has besides a wife belonging to his own class, for only such a one should perform the duties of personal attendance and religious observance devolving upon a married woman. As regards the children born from unequal marriages of this description, they have the rights and duties of the twice-born, if their mother belong to a twice-born caste, otherwise they, like the offspring of the former class of intermarriages, share the lot of the Śūdra, and are excluded from the investiture and the sāvitrī. For this last reason the marriage of a twice-born man with a Śūdra woman is altogether discountenanced by some of the later law books. At the time of the code of Manu the intermixture of the classes had already produced a considerable number of intermediate or mixed castes, which were carefully defined, and each of which had a specific occupation assigned to it as its hereditary profession.

The self-exaltation of the first class was not, it would seem, altogether due to priestly arrogance and ambition; but, like a prominent feature of the post-Vedic belief, the transmigration of souls, it was, if not the necessary, yet at least a natural consequence of the pantheistic doctrine. To the Brāhmanical speculator who saw in the numberless individual existences of animate nature but so many manifestations of the one eternal spirit, to union with which they were all bound to tend as their final goal of supreme bliss, the greater or less imperfection of the material forms in which they were embodied naturally presented a continuous scale of spiritual units from the lowest degradation up to the absolute purity and perfection of the supreme spirit. To prevent one’s sinking yet lower, and by degrees to raise one’s self in this universal gradation, or, if possible, to attain the ultimate goal immediately from any state of corporeal existence, there was but one way—subjection of the senses, purity of life and knowledge of the deity. “He” (thus ends the code of Manu) “who in his own soul perceives the supreme soul in all beings and acquires equanimity toward them all, attains the highest state of bliss.” Was it not natural then that the men who, if true to their sacred duties, were habitually engaged in what was most conducive to these spiritual attainments, that the Brāhmanical class early learnt to look upon themselves, even as a matter of faith, as being foremost among the human species in this universal race for final beatitude? The life marked out for them by that stern theory of class duties which they themselves had worked out, and which, no doubt, must have been practised in early times at least in some degree, was by no means one of ease and amenity. It was, on the contrary, singularly calculated to promote that complete mortification of the instincts of animal nature which they considered as indispensable to the final deliverance from saṃsāra, the revolution of bodily and personal existence.

The pious Brāhman, longing to attain the summum bonum on the dissolution of his frail body, was enjoined to pass through a succession of four orders or stages of life, viz. those of brahmachārin, or religious student; gṛihastha (or gṛihamedhin), or householder; vanavāsin (or vānaprastha), or anchorite; and sannyāsin (or bhikshu), or religious mendicant. Theoretically this course of life was open and even recommended to every twice-born man, his distinctive class-occupations being in that case restricted to the second station, or that of married life. Practically, however, those belonging to the Kshatriya and Vaiśya castes were, no doubt, contented, with few exceptions, to go through a term of studentship in order to obtain a certain amount of religious instruction before entering into the married state, and plying their professional duties. In the case of the sacerdotal class, the practice probably was all but universal in early times; but gradually a more and more limited proportion even of this caste seem to have carried their religious zeal to the length of self-mortification involved in the two final stages. On the youth having been invested with the badge of his caste, he was to reside for some time in the house of some religious teacher, well read in the Veda, to be instructed in the knowledge of the scriptures and the scientific or theoretic treatises attached to them, in the social duties of his caste, and in the complicated system of purificatory and sacrificial rites. According to the number of Vedas he intended to study, the duration of this period of instruction was to be, probably in the case of Brāhmanical students chiefly, of from twelve to forty-eight years; during which time the virtues of modesty, duty, temperance and self-control were to be firmly implanted in the youth’s mind by his unremitting observance of the most minute rules of conduct. During all this time the student had to subsist entirely on food obtained by begging from house to house; and his behaviour towards the preceptor and his family was to be that prompted by respectful attachment and implicit obedience. In the case of girls no investiture takes place, but for them the nuptial ceremony is considered as an equivalent to that rite. On quitting the teacher’s abode, the young man returns to his family and takes a wife. To die without leaving legitimate offspring, and especially a son, capable of performing the periodical rite of obsequies (śrāddha), consisting of offerings of water and balls of rice, to himself and his two immediate ancestors, is considered a great misfortune by the orthodox Hindū. There are three sacred “debts” which a man has to discharge in life, viz. that which is due to the gods, and of which he acquits himself by daily worship and sacrificial rites; that due to the ṛishis, or ancient sages and inspired seers of the Vedic texts, discharged by the daily study of the scripture; and the “final debt” which he owes to his manes, and of which he relieves himself by leaving a son. To these three some authorities add a fourth, viz. the debt owing to humankind, which demands his continually practising kindness and hospitality. Hence the necessity of a man’s entering into the married state. When the bridegroom leads the bride from her father’s house to his own home, and becomes a gṛiha-paṭi, or householder, the fire which has been used for the marriage ceremony accompanies the couple to serve them as their gārhapatya, or domestic fire. It has to be kept up perpetually, day and night, either by themselves or their children, or, if the man be a teacher, by his pupils. If it should at any time become extinguished by neglect or otherwise, the guilt incurred thereby must be atoned for by an act of expiation. The domestic fire serves the family for preparing their food, for making the five necessary daily and other occasional offerings, and for performing the sacramental rites above alluded to. No food should ever be eaten that has not been duly consecrated by a portion of it being offered to the gods, the beings and the manes. These three daily offerings are also called by the collective name of vaiśvadeva, or sacrifice “to all the deities.” The remaining two are the offering to Brahmă, i.e. the daily lecture of the scriptures, accompanied by certain rites, and that to men, consisting in the entertainment of guests. The domestic observances—many of them probably ancient Āryan family customs, surrounded by the Hindūs with a certain amount of adventitious ceremonial—were generally performed by the householder himself, with the assistance of his wife. There is, however, another class of sacrificial ceremonies of a more pretentious and expensive kind, called śrauta rites, or rites based on śritu, or revelation, the performance of which, though not indispensable, were yet considered obligatory under certain circumstances (see [Brāhmaṇa]). They formed a very powerful weapon in the hands of the priesthood, and were one of the chief sources of their subsistence. However great the religious merit accruing from these sacrificial rites, they were obviously a kind of luxury which only rich people could afford to indulge in. They constituted, as it were, a tax, voluntary perhaps, yet none the less compulsory, levied by the priesthood on the wealthy laity.

When the householder is advanced in years, “when he perceives his skin become wrinkled and his hair grey, when he sees the son of his son,” the time is said to have come for him to enter the third stage of life. He should now disengage himself from all family ties—except that his wife may accompany him, if she chooses—and repair to a lonely wood, taking with him his sacred fires and the implements required for the daily and periodical offerings. Clad in a deer’s skin, in a single piece of cloth, or in a bark garment, with his hair and nails uncut, the hermit is to subsist exclusively on food growing wild in the forest, such as roots, green herbs, and wild rice and grain. He must not accept gifts from any one, except of what may be absolutely necessary to maintain him; but with his own little hoard he should, on the contrary, honour, to the best of his ability, those who visit his hermitage. His time must be spent in reading the metaphysical treatises of the Veda, in making oblations, and in undergoing various kinds of privation and austerities, with a view to mortifying his passions and producing in his mind an entire indifference to worldly objects. Having by these means succeeded in overcoming all sensual affections and desires, and in acquiring perfect equanimity towards everything around him, the hermit has fitted himself for the final and most exalted order, that of devotee or religious mendicant. As such he has no further need of either mortifications or religious observances; but “with the sacrificial fires reposited in his mind,” he may devote the remainder of his days to meditating on the divinity. Taking up his abode at the foot of a tree in total solitude, “with no companion but his own soul,” clad in a coarse garment, he should carefully avoid injuring any creature or giving offence to any human being that may happen to come near him. Once a day, in the evening, “when the charcoal fire is extinguished and the smoke no longer issues from the fire-places, when the pestle is at rest, when the people have taken their meals and the dishes are removed,” he should go near the habitations of men, in order to beg what little food may suffice to sustain his feeble frame. Ever pure of mind he should thus bide his time, “as a servant expects his wages,” wishing neither for death nor for life, until at last his soul is freed from its fetters and absorbed in the eternal spirit, the impersonal self-existent Brahmă.

The tendency towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence had resulted in some minds, as has been remarked before, in a kind of monotheistic notion of the origin of the universe. In the literature of the Brāhmaṇa period we meet with this conception as a common element of speculation; and so far from its being considered incompatible with the existence of a universal spirit, Prajāpati, the personal creator of the world, is generally allowed a prominent place in the pantheistic theories. Yet the state of theological speculation, reflected in these writings, is one of transition. The general drift of thought is essentially pantheistic, but it is far from being reduced to a regular system, and the ancient form of belief still enters largely into it. The attributes of Prajāpati, in the same way, have in them elements of a purely polytheistic nature, and some of the attempts at reconciling this new-fangled deity with the traditional belief are somewhat awkward. An ancient classification of the gods represented them as being thirty-three in number, eleven in each of the three worlds or regions of nature. These regions being associated each with the name of one principal deity, this division gave rise at a later time to the notion of a kind of triple divine government, consisting of Agni (fire), Indra sky) or Vāyu (wind), and Sūrya (sun), as presiding respectively over the gods on earth, in the atmosphere, and in the sky. Of this Vedic triad mention is frequently made in the Brāhmaṇa writings. On the other hand the term prajāpati (lord of creatures), which in the Ṛigveda occurs as an epithet of the sun, is also once in the Atharvaveda applied jointly to Indra and Agni. In the Brāhmaṇas Prajāpati is several times mentioned as the thirty-fourth god; whilst in one passage he is called the fourth god, and made to rule over the three worlds. More frequently, however, the writings of this period represent him as the maker of the world and the father or creator of the gods. It is clear from this discordance of opinion on so important a point of doctrine, that at this time no authoritative system of belief had been agreed upon by the theologians. Yet there are unmistakable signs of a strong tendency towards constructing one, and it is possible that in yielding to it the Brāhmans may have been partly prompted by political considerations. The definite settlement of the caste system and the Brāhmanical supremacy must probably be assigned to somewhere about the close of the Brāhmaṇa period. Division in their own ranks was hardly favourable to the aspirations of the priests at such a time; and the want of a distinct formula of belief adapted to the general drift of theological speculation, to which they could all rally, was probably felt the more acutely, the more determined a resistance the military class was likely to oppose to their claims. Side by side with the conception of the Brahmă, the universal spiritual principle, with which speculative thought had already become deeply imbued, the notion of a supreme personal being, the author of the material creation, had come to be considered by many as a necessary complement of the pantheistic doctrine. But, owing perhaps to his polytheistic associations and the attributive nature of his name, the person of Prajāpati seems to have been thought but insufficiently adapted to represent this abstract idea. The expedient resorted to for solving the difficulty was as ingenious as it was characteristic of the Brāhmanical aspirations. In the same way as the abstract denomination of sacerdotalism, the neuter brahmă, had come to express the divine essence, so the old designation of the individual priest, the masculine term brahmā, was raised to denote the supreme personal deity which was to take the place and attributes of the Prajāpati of the Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads (see [Brahman]).

However the new dogma may have answered the purposes of speculative minds, it was not one in which the people generally were likely to have been much concerned; an abstract, colourless deity like Brahmā could awake no sympathies in the hearts of those accustomed to worship gods of flesh and blood. Indeed, ever since the primitive symbolical worship of nature had undergone a process of disintegration under the influence of metaphysical speculation, the real belief of the great body of the people had probably become more and more distinct from that of the priesthood. In different localities the principal share of their affection may have been bestowed on one or another of the old gods who was thereby raised to the dignity of chief deity; or new forms and objects of belief may have sprung up with the intellectual growth of the people. In some cases even the worship of the indigenous population could hardly have remained without exercising some influence in modifying the belief of the Āryan race. In this way a number of local deities would grow up, more or less distinct in name and characteristics from the gods of the Vedic pantheon. There is, indeed, sufficient evidence to show that, at a time when, after centuries of theological speculations, some little insight into the life and thought of the people is afforded by the literature handed down to us, such a diversity of worship did exist. Under these circumstances the policy which seems to have suggested itself to the priesthood, anxious to retain a firm hold on the minds of the people, was to recognize and incorporate into their system some of the most prominent objects of popular devotion, and thereby to establish a kind of catholic creed for the whole community subject to the Brāhmanical law. At the time of the original composition of the great epics two such deities, Śiva or Mahādeva (“the great god”) and Vishṇu, seem to have been already admitted into the Brāhmanical system, where they have ever since retained their place; and from the manner in which they are represented in those works, it would, indeed, appear that both, and especially the former, enjoyed an extensive worship. As several synonyms are attributed to each of them, it is not improbable that in some of these we have to recognize special names under which the people in different localities worshipped these gods, or deities of a similar nature which, by the agency of popular poetry, or in some other way, came to be combined with them. The places assigned to them in the pantheistic system were coordinate with that of Brahmā; the three deities, Brahmā, Vishnu and Śiva, were to represent a triple impersonation of the divinity, as manifesting itself respectively in the creation, preservation and destruction of the universe. Śiva does not occur in the Vedic hymns as the name of a god, but only as an adjective in the sense of “kind, auspicious.” One of his synonyms, however, is the name of a Vedic deity, the attributes and nature of which show a good deal of similarity to the post-Vedic god. This is Rudra, the god of the roaring storm, usually portrayed, in accordance with the element he represents, as a fierce, destructive deity, “terrible as a wild beast,” whose fearful arrows cause death and disease to men and cattle. He is also called kapardin (“wearing his hair spirally braided like a shell”), a word which in later times became one of the synonyms of Śiva. The Atharvaveda mentions several other names of the same god, some of which appear even placed together, as in one passage Bhava, Sarva, Rudra and Paśupati. Possibly some of them were the names under which one and the same deity was already worshipped in different parts of northern India. This was certainly the case in later times, since it is expressly stated in one of the later works of the Brahmaṇa period, that Sarva was used by the Eastern people and Bhava by a Western tribe. It is also worthy of note that in the same work (the Śatapatha-brāhmaṇa), composed at a time when the Vedic triad of Agni, Indra-Vāyu and Sūrya was still recognized, attempts are made to identify this god of many names with Agni; and that in one passage in the Mahābhārata it is stated that the Brāhmans said that Agni was Śiva. Although such attempts at an identification of the two gods remained isolated, they would at least seem to point to the fact that, in adapting their speculations to the actual state of popular worship, the Brāhmans kept the older triad distinctly in view, and by means of it endeavoured to bring their new structure into harmony with the ancient Vedic belief. It is in his character as destroyer that Śiva holds his place in the triad, and that he must, no doubt, be identified with the Vedic Rudra. Another very important function appears, however, to have been early assigned to him, on which much more stress is laid in his modern worship—that of destroyer being more especially exhibited in his consort—viz. the character of a generative power, symbolized in the phallic emblem (linga) and in the sacred bull (Nandi), the favourite attendant of the god. This feature being entirely alien from the nature of the Vedic god, it has been conjectured with some plausibility, that the linga-worship was originally prevalent among the non-Āryan population, and was thence introduced into the worship of Śiva. On the other hand, there can, we think, be little doubt that Śiva, in his generative faculty, is the representative of another Vedic god whose nature and attributes go far to account for this particular feature of the modern deity, viz. Pūshan. This god, originally, no doubt, a solar deity, is frequently invoked, as the lord of nourishment, to bestow food, wealth and other blessings. He is once, jointly with Soma, called the progenitor of heaven and earth, and is connected with the marriage ceremony, where he is asked to lead the bride to the bridegroom and make her prosperous (Śivatamā). Moreover, he has the epithet kapardin (spirally braided), as have Rudra and the later Śiva, and is called Paśupa, or guardian of cattle, whence the latter derives his name Paśupati. But he is also a strong, powerful, and even fierce and destructive god, who, with his goad or golden spear, smites the foes of his worshipper, and thus in this respect offers at least some points of similarity to Rudra, which may have favoured the fusion of the two gods. As regards Vishṇu, this god occupies already a place in the Vedic mythology, though by no means one of such prominence as would entitle him to that degree of exaltation implied in his character as one of the three hypostases of the divinity. Moreover, although in his general nature, as a benevolent, genial being, the Vedic god corresponds on the whole to the later Vishṇu, the preserver of the world, the latter exhibits many important features for which we look in vain in his prototype, and which most likely resulted from sectarian worship or from an amalgamation with local deities. In one or two of them, such as his names Vāsudeva and Vaikuntha, an attempt may again be traced to identify Vishṇu with Indra, who, as we have seen, was one of the Vedic triad of gods. The characteristic feature of the elder Vishṇu is his measuring the world with his three strides, which are explained as denoting either the three stations of the sun at the time of rising, culminating and setting, or the triple manifestation of the luminous element, as the fire on earth, the lightning in the atmosphere and the sun in the heavens.

The male nature of the triad was supposed to require to be supplemented by each of the three gods being associated with a female energy (Śakti). Thus Vāch or Sarasvatī, the goddess of speech and learning, came to be regarded as the śakti, or consort of Brahmā; Śrī or Lakshmī, “beauty, fortune,” as that of Vishṇu; and Umā or Pārvatī, the daughter of Himavat, the god of the Himālaya mountain, as that of Śiva. On the other hand, it is not improbable that Pārvatī—who has a variety of other names, such as Kālī (“the black one”), Durgā (“the inaccessible, terrible one”), Māha-devī (“the great goddess”)—enjoyed already a somewhat extensive worship of her own, and that there may thus have been good reason for assigning to her a prominent place in the Brāhmanical system.

A compromise was thus effected between the esoteric doctrine of the metaphysician and some of the most prevalent forms of popular worship, resulting in what was henceforth to constitute the orthodox system of belief of the Brāhmanical community. Yet the Vedic pantheon could not be altogether discarded, forming part and parcel, as it did, of that sacred revelation (śruti), which was looked upon as the divine source of all religious and social law (smṛiti, “tradition”), and being, moreover, the foundation of the sacrificial ceremonial on which the priestly authority so largely depended. The existence of the old gods is, therefore, likewise recognized, but recognized in a very different way from that of the triple divinity. For while the triad represents the immediate manifestation of the eternal, infinite soul—while it constitutes, in fact, the Brahmă itself in its active relation to mundane and seemingly material occurrences, the old traditional gods are of this world, are individual spirits or portions of the Brahma like men and other creatures, only higher in degree. To them an intermediate sphere, the heaven of Indra (the svarloka or svarga), is assigned to which man may raise himself by fulfilling the holy ordinances; but they are subject to the same laws of being; they, like men, are liable to be born again in some lower state, and, therefore, like them, yearn for emancipation from the necessity of future individual existence. It is a sacred duty of man to worship these superior beings by invocations and sacrificial observances, as it is to honour the pitṛis (“the fathers”), the spirits of the departed ancestors. The spirits of the dead, on being judged by Yama, the Pluto of Hindū mythology, are supposed to be either passing through a term of enjoyment in a region midway between the earth and the heaven of the gods, or undergoing their measure of punishment in the nether world, situated somewhere in the southern region, before they return to the earth to animate new bodies. In Vedic mythology Yama was considered to have been the first mortal who died, and “espied the way to” the celestial abodes, and in virtue of precedence to have become the ruler of the departed; in some passages, however, he is already regarded as the god of death. Although the pantheistic system allowed only a subordinate rank to the old gods, and the actual religious belief of the people was probably but little affected by their existence, they continued to occupy an important place in the affections of the poet, and were still represented as exercising considerable influence on the destinies of man. The most prominent of them were regarded as the appointed Lokapālas, or guardians of the world; and as such they were made to preside over the four cardinal and (according to some authorities) the intermediate points of the compass. Thus Indra, the chief of the gods, was regarded as the regent of the east; Agni, the fire (ignis), was in the same way associated with the south-east; Yama with the south; Śurya, the sun (Ἢλιος), with the south-west; Varūṇa, originally the representative of the all-embracing heaven (Οὐρανός) or atmosphere, now the god of the ocean, with the west; Vāyu (or Pavana), the wind, with the north-west; Kubera, the god of wealth, with the north; and Soma (or Chaṇdra) with the north-east. In the institutes of Manu the Lokapālas are represented as standing in close relation to the ruling king, who is said to be composed of particles of these his tutelary deities. The retinue of Indra consists chiefly of the Gandharvas (probably etym. connected with κένταυρος), a class of genii, considered in the epics as the celestial musicians; and their wives, the Apsaras, lovely nymphs, who are frequently employed by the gods to make the pious devotee desist from carrying his austere practices to an extent that might render him dangerous to their power. Nārada, an ancient sage (probably a personification of the cloud, the “water-giver”), is considered as the messenger between the gods and men, and as having sprung from the forehead of Brahmā. The interesting office of the god of love is held by Kāmadeva, also called Ananga, the bodyless, because, as the myth relates, having once tried by the power of his mischievous arrow to make Śiva fall in love with Pārvatī, whilst he was engaged in devotional practices, the urchin was reduced to ashes by a glance of the angry god. Two other mythological figures of some importance are considered as sons of Śiva and Pārvatī, viz. Kārttikeya or Skanda, the leader of the heavenly armies, who was supposed to have been fostered by the six Kṛittikās or Pleiades; and Gaṇeśa (“lord of troops”), the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and at the same time the leader of the dii minorum gentium.

Orthodox Brāhmanical scholasticism makes the attainment of final emancipation (mukti, moksha) dependent on perfect knowledge of the divine essence. This knowledge can only be obtained by complete abstraction of the mind from external objects and intense meditation on the divinity, which again presupposes the total extinction of all sensual instincts by means of austere practices (tapas). The chosen few who succeed in gaining complete mastery over their senses and a full knowledge of the divine nature become absorbed into the universal soul immediately on the dissolution of the body. Those devotees, on the other hand, who have still a residuum, however slight, of ignorance and worldliness left in them at the time of their death, pass to the world of Brahmā, where their souls, invested with subtile corporeal frames, await their reunion with the Eternal Being.

The pantheistic doctrine which thus forms the foundation of the Brahmanical system of belief found its most complete exposition in one of the six orthodox darśanas, or philosophical systems, the Vedānta philosophy. These systems are considered as orthodox inasmuch as they recognize the Veda as the revealed source of religious belief, and never fail to claim the authority of the ancient seers for their own teachings, even though—as in the case of Kapila, the founder of the materialistic Sānkhya system—they involve the denial of so essential a dogmatic point as the existence of a personal creator of the world. So much, indeed, had freedom of speculative thought become a matter of established habit and intellectual necessity, that no attempt seems ever to have been made by the leading theological party to put down such heretical doctrines, so long as the sacred character of the privileges of their caste was not openly called in question. Yet internal dissensions on such cardinal points of belief could not but weaken the authority of the hierarchical body; and as they spread beyond the narrow bounds of the Brāhmanical schools, it wanted but a man of moral and intellectual powers, and untrammelled by class prejudices, to render them fatal to priestly pretensions. Such a man arose in the person of a Śākya prince of Kapilavastu, Gotama, the founder of Buddhism (about the 6th century B.C.). Had it only been for the philosophical tenets of Buddha, they need scarcely have caused, and probably did not cause, any great uneasiness to the orthodox theologians. He did, indeed, go one step beyond Kapila, by altogether denying the existence of the soul as a substance, and admitting only certain intellectual faculties as attributes of the body, perishable with it. Yet the conception which Buddha substituted for the transmigratory soul, viz. that of karma (“work”), as the sum total of the individual’s good and bad actions, being the determinative element of the form of his future existence, might have been treated like any other speculative theory, but for the practical conclusions he drew from it. Buddha recognized the institution of caste, and accounted for the social inequalities attendant thereon as being the effects of karma in former existences. But, on the other hand, he altogether denied the revealed character of the Veda and the efficacy of the Brāhmanical ceremonies deduced from it, and rejected the claims of the sacerdotal class to be the repositaries and divinely appointed teachers of sacred knowledge. That Buddha never questioned the truth of the Brāhmanical theory of transmigration shows that this early product of speculative thought had become firmly rooted in the Hindū mind as a tenet of belief amounting to moral conviction. To the Hindū philosopher this doctrine seemed alone to account satisfactorily for the apparent essential similarity of the vital element in all animate beings, no less than for what elsewhere has led honest and logical thinkers to the stern dogma of predestination. The belief in eternal bliss or punishment, as the just recompense of man’s actions during this brief term of human life, which their less reflective forefathers had at one time held, appeared to them to involve a moral impossibility. The equality of all men, which Buddha preached with regard to the final goal, the nirvāna, or extinction of karma and thereby of all future existence and pain, and that goal to be reached, not by the performance of penance and sacrificial worship, but by practising virtue, could not fail to be acceptable to many people. It would be out of place here to dwell on the rapid progress and internal development of the new doctrine. Suffice it to say that, owing no doubt greatly to the sympathizing patronage of ruling princes, Buddhism appears to have been the state religion in most parts of India during the early centuries of our era. To what extent it became the actual creed of the body of the people it will probably be impossible ever to ascertain. One of the chief effects it produced on the worship of the old gods was the rapid decline of the authority of the orthodox Brāhmanical dogma, and a considerable development of sectarianism. (See [Hinduism].)

See H.H. Wilson, Essays on the Religion of the Hindus; J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts; M. Müller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; C. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde; Elphinstone, History of India, ed. by E.B. Cowell.

(J. E.)

BRAHMAPUTRA, a great river of India, with a total length of 1800 m. Its main source is in a great glacier-mass of the northernmost chain of the Himalayas, called Kubigangri, about 82° N., and receives various tributaries including one formerly regarded as the true source from the pass of Mariam La (15,500 ft.), which separates its basin from the eastern affluents of the Mansarowar lakes, at least 100 m. south-east of those of the Indus. It flows in a south-easterly direction for 170 m., and then adheres closely to a nearly easterly course for 500 m. more, being at the end of that distance in 29° 10′ N. lat. It then bends north-east for 150 m. before finally shaping itself southwards towards the plains of Assam. Roughly speaking, the river may be said so far to run parallel to the main chain of the Himalaya at a distance of 100 m. therefrom. Its early beginnings take their rise amidst a mighty mass of glaciers which cover the northern slopes of the watershed, separating them from the sources of the Gogra on the south; and there is evidence that two of its great southern tributaries, the Shorta Tsanpo (which joins about 150 m. from its source), and the Nyang Chu (the river of Shigatse and Gyantse), are both also of glacial origin. From the north it receives five great tributaries, namely, the Chu Nago, the Chachu Tsanpo and the Charta Tsanpo (all within the first 200 m. of its course), and the Raka Tsanpo and Kyi-chu (or river of Lhasa) below. The Chachu and the Charta are large clear streams, evidently draining from the great central lake district. Both of them measure more than 100 yds. in width at the point of junction, and they are clearly non-glacial. The Raka Tsanpo is a lateral affluent, flowing for 200 m. parallel to the main river course and some 20 to 30 m. north of it, draining the southern slopes of a high snowy range. It is an important feature as affording foothold for the Janglam (the great high road of southern Tibet connecting Ladakh with China), which is denied by the actual valley of the Brahmaputra. The great river itself is known in Tibet by many names, being generally called the Nari Chu, Maghang Tsanpo or Yaro Tsanpo, above Lhasa; the word “tsanpo” (tsang-po) meaning (according to Waddell) the “pure one,” and applying to all great rivers. Fifty miles from its source the river and the Janglam route touch each other, and from that point past Tadum (the first important place on its banks) for another 130 m., the road follows more or less closely the left bank of the river. Then it diverges northwards into the lateral valley of the Raka, until the Raka joins the Brahmaputra below Janglache. The upper reaches are nowhere fordable between Tadum and Lhasa, but there is a ferry at Likche (opposite Tadum on the southern bank), where wooden boats covered with hide effect the necessary connexion between the two banks and ensure the passage of the Nepal trade. From Janglache (13,800 ft.) to Shigatse the river is navigable, the channel being open and wide and the course straight. This is probably the most elevated system of navigation in the world. From Shigatse, which stands near the mouth of the Nyang Chu, to the Kyi-chu, or Lhasa river, there is no direct route, the river being unnavigable below Shigatse. The Janglam takes a circuitous course southwards to Gyantse and the Yamdok Cho before dropping again over the Khambala pass to the ferry at Khamba barje near Chushul. Thence the valley of the Kyi-chu (itself navigable for small boats for about 30 m.) leads to Lhasa northwards. At Chushul there is an iron chain-and-rope suspension bridge over the deepest part of the river, but it does not completely span the river, and it is too insecure for use. The remains of a similar bridge exist at Janglache; but there are no wooden or twig suspension bridges over the Tsanpo. At Tadum the river is about one half as wide again as the Ganges at Hardwar in December, i.e. about 250 to 300 yds. At Shigatse it flows in a wide extended bed with many channels, but contracts again at Chushul, where it is no wider than it is at Janglache, i.e. from 600 to 700 yds. At Chushul (below the Kyi-chu) the discharge of the river is computed to be about 35,000 cub. ft. per second, or seven times that of the Ganges at Hardwar.

For about 250 m. below Kyi-chu to a point about 20 m. below the great southerly bend (in 94° E. long.) the course of the Brahmaputra has been traced by native surveyors. Then it is lost amidst the jungle-covered hills of the wild Mishmi and Abor tribes to the east of Bhutan for another 100 m., until it is again found as the Dihong emerging into the plains of Assam. About the intervening reaches of the river very little is known except that it drops through 7000 ft. of altitude, and that in one place, at least, there exist some very remarkable falls. These are placed in 29° 40′ N. lat., between Kongbu and Pema-Koi. Here the river runs in a narrow precipitous defile along which no path is practicable. The falls can only be approached from below, where a monastery has been erected, the resort of countless pilgrims. Their height is estimated at 70 ft., and by Tibetan report the hills around are enveloped in perpetual mist, and the Sangdong (the “lion’s face”), over which the waters rush, is demon-haunted and full of mystic import. Up to comparatively recent years it was matter for controversy whether the Tsanpo formed the upper reaches of the Dihong or of the Irrawaddy. From the north-eastern extremity of Assam where, near Sadya, the Lohit, the Dibong and the Dihong unite to form the wide placid Brahmaputra of the plains—one of the grandest rivers of the world—its south-westerly course to the Bay of Bengal is sufficiently well known. It still retains the proud distinction of being unbridged, and still the River Flotilla Company appoints its steamers at regular intervals to visit all the chief ports on its banks as far as Dibrugarh. Here, however, a new feature has been introduced in the local railway, which extends for some 80 m. to Sadya, with a branch to the Buri Dihing river at the foot of the Patkoi range. The Patkoi border the plains of Upper Assam to the south-east, and across these hills lies the most reasonable probability of railway extension to Burma.

The following are the “lowest level” discharges of the principal affluents of the Brahmaputra in Upper Assam, estimated in cubic feet per second:—

The basins of the Dibong and Subansiri are as yet very imperfectly known. That of the Lohit has been fairly well explored. Near Goalpara the discharge of the river in January 1828 was computed to be 140,000 cub. ft., or nearly double that of the Ganges. The length of the river is 700 m. to the Dihong junction, and about 1000 in Tibet and eastern Bhutan, above the Dihong. The Brahmaputra, therefore, exceeds the Ganges in length by about 400 m. The bed of the great river maintains a fairly constant position between its extreme banks, but the channels within that bed are so constantly shifting as to require close supervision on the part of the navigation authorities; so much detritus is carried down as to form a perpetually changing series of obstructions to steamer traffic.

An enormous development of agricultural resources has taken place within the Brahmaputra basin of late years, chiefly in the direction of tea cultivation, as well as in the production of jute and silk. Gold is found in the sands of all its upper tributaries, and coal and petroleum are amongst the chief mineral products which have been brought into economic prominence. During the rains the Brahmaputra floods hundreds of square miles of country, reaching a height of 30 to 40 ft. above its usual level. This supersedes artificial irrigation, and the plains so watered yield abundantly in rice, jute and mustard.

See Reports of the native explorers of the Indian Survey, edited by Montgomery and Harman; Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908); Sir T.H. Holdich, India (“Regions of the World” series, 1903); Ryder, Geographical Journal, 1905; Rawlings, The Great Plateau (1906).

(T. H. H.*)

BRAHMA SAMAJ, a religious association in India which owes its origin to (Raja) Ram Mohan Roy, who began teaching and writing in Calcutta soon after 1800. The name means literally the “Church of the One God,” and the word Samaj, like the word Church, bears both a local and a universal, or an individual and a collective meaning. Impressed with the perversions and corruptions of popular Hinduism, Ram Mohan Roy investigated the Hindu Shastras, the Koran and the Bible, repudiated the polytheistic worship of the Shastras as false, and inculcated the reformed principles of monotheism as found in the ancient Upanishads of the Vedas. In 1816 he established a society, consisting only of Hindus, in which texts from the Vedas were recited and theistic hymns chanted. This, however, soon died out through the opposition it received from the Hindu community. In 1830 he organized the society known as the Brahma Samaj.

The following extract from the trust-deed of the building dedicated to it will show the religious belief and the purposes of its founder. The building was intended to be “a place of public meeting for all sorts and descriptions of people, without distinction, who shall behave and conduct themselves in an orderly, sober, religious and devout manner, for the worship and adoration of the eternal, unsearchable and immutable Being, who is the author and preserver of the universe, but not under and by any other name, designation or title, peculiarly used for and applied to any particular being or beings by any man or set of men whatsoever; and that no graven image, statue or sculpture, carving, painting, picture, portrait or the likeness of anything shall be admitted within the said messuage, building, land, tenements, hereditament and premises; and that no sacrifice, offering or oblation of any kind or thing shall ever be permitted therein; and that no animal or living creature shall within or on the said messuage, &c., be deprived of life either for religious purposes or food, and that no eating or drinking (except such as shall be necessary by any accident for the preservation of life), feasting or rioting be permitted therein or thereon; and that in conducting the said worship or adoration, no object, animate or inanimate, that has been or is or shall hereafter become or be recognized as an object of worship by any man or set of men, shall be reviled or slightingly or contemptuously spoken of or alluded to, either in preaching or in the hymns or other mode of worship that may be delivered or used in the said messuage or building; and that no sermon, preaching, discourse, prayer or hymns be delivered, made or used in such worship, but such as have a tendency to the contemplation of the Author and Preserver of the universe or to the promotion of charity, morality, piety, benevolence, virtue and the strengthening of the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds.”

The new faith at this period held to the Vedas as its basis. Ram Mohan Roy soon after left India for England, and took up his residence in Bristol, where he died in 1835. The Brahma Samaj maintained a bare existence till 1841, when Babu Debendra Nath Tagore, a member of a famous and wealthy Calcutta family, devoted himself to it. He gave a printing-press to the Samaj, and established a monthly journal called the Tattwabodhinī Patrikā, to which the Bengali language now owes much for its strength and elegance. About 1850 some of the followers of the new religion discovered that the greater part of the Vedas is polytheistic, and a schism took place,—the advanced party holding that nature and intuition form the basis of faith. Between 1847 and 1858 branch societies were formed in different parts of India, especially in Bengal, and the new society made rapid progress, for which it was largely indebted to the spread of English education and the work of Christian missionaries. In fact the whole Samaj movement is as distinct a product of the contest of Hinduism with Christianity in the 19th century, as the Panth movement was of its contest with Islam 300 years earlier.

The Brahma creed was definitively formulated as follows:—(1) The book of nature and intuition supplies the basis of religious faith. (2) Although the Brahmas do not consider any book written by man the basis of their religion, yet they do accept with respect and pleasure any religious truth contained in any book. (3) The Brahmas believe that the religious condition of man is progressive, like the other departments of his condition in this world. (4) They believe that the fundamental doctrines of their religion are also the basis of every true religion. (5) They believe in the existence of one Supreme God—a God endowed with a distinct personality, moral attributes worthy of His nature and an intelligence befitting the Governor of the universe, and they worship Him alone. They do not believe in any of His incarnations. (6) They believe in the immortality and progressive state of the soul, and declare that there is a state of conscious existence succeeding life in this world and supplementary to it as respects the action of the universal moral government. (7) They believe that repentance is the only way to salvation. They do not recognize any other mode of reconcilement to the offended but loving Father. (8) They pray for spiritual welfare and believe in the efficacy of such prayers. (9) They believe in the providential care of the divine Father. (10) They avow that love towards Him and the performances of the works which He loves, constitute His worship. (11) They recognize the necessity of public worship, but do not believe that communion with the Father depends upon meeting in any fixed place at any fixed time. They maintain that they can adore Him at any time and at any place, provided that the time and the place are calculated to compose and direct the mind towards Him. (12) They do not believe in pilgrimages and declare that holiness can only be attained by elevating and purifying the mind. (13) They put no faith in rites or ceremonies, nor do they believe in penances as instrumental in obtaining the grace of God. They declare that moral righteousness, the gaining of wisdom, divine contemplation, charity and the cultivation of devotional feelings are their rites and ceremonies. They further say, govern and regulate your feelings, discharge your duties to God and to man, and you will gain everlasting blessedness; purify your heart, cultivate devotional feelings and you will see Him who is unseen. (14) Theoretically there is no distinction of caste among the Brahmas. They declare that we are all the children of God, and therefore must consider ourselves as brothers and sisters.

For long the Brahmas did not attempt any social reforms. But about 1865 the younger section, headed by Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, who joined the Samaj in 1857, tried to carry their religious theories into practice by demanding the abandonment of the external signs of caste distinction. This, however, the older members opposed, declaring such innovations to be premature. A schism resulted, Keshub Chunder Sen and his followers founding the Progressive Samaj, while the conservative stock remained as the Adi (i.e. original) Samaj, their aim being to “fulfil” rather than to abrogate the old religion. The vitality of the movement, however, had left it, and its inconsistencies, combined with the lack of strong leadership, landed it in a position scarcely distinguishable from orthodox Hinduism. Debendra Nath Tagore sought refuge from the difficulty by becoming an ascetic. The “Brahma Samaj of India,” as Chunder Sen’s party styled itself, made considerable progress extensively and intensively until 1878, when a number of the most prominent adherents, led by Anand Mohan Bose, took umbrage at Chunder Sen’s despotic rule and at his disregard of the society’s regulations concerning child marriage. This led to the formation of the Sadharana (Universal) Brahma Samaj, now the most popular and progressive of the three sections of the movement and conspicuous for its work in the cause of literary culture, social reform and female education in India. But even when we add all sections of the Brahma Samaj together, the total number of adherents is only about 4000, mostly found in Calcutta and its neighbourhood. A small community (about 130) in Bombay, known as the Prarthna (Prayer) Samaj, was founded in 1867 through Keshub Chunder’s influence; they have a similar creed to that of the Brahma Samaj, but have broken less decisively with orthodox and ceremonial Hinduism.

See the articles on [Arya], [Samaj], [Keshub Chunder Sen], [Ram Mohan Roy]. Also John Robson, Hinduism and Christianity; and the Theistic Quarterly Review (the organ of the Society since 1880).

BRAHMS, JOHANNES (1833-1897), German composer, was born in Hamburg on the 7th of May 1833. He was the son of a double-bass player in the Hamburg city theatre and received his first musical instruction from his father. After some lessons from O. Cossel, he went to Cossel’s master, Eduard Marxsen of Altona, whose experience and artistic taste directed the young man’s genius into the highest paths. A couple of public appearances as a pianist were hardly an interruption to the course of his musical studies, and these were continued nearly up to the time when Brahms accepted an engagement as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist, Remenyi, for a concert tour in 1853. At Göttingen there occurred a famous contretemps which had a most important though indirect influence on the whole after-life of the young player. A piano on which he was to play the “Kreutzer” sonata of Beethoven with Remenyi turned out to be a semitone below the required pitch; and Brahms played the part by heart, transposing it from A to B flat, in such a way that the great violinist, Joachim, who was present and discerned what the feat implied, introduced himself to Brahms, and laid the foundation of a life-long friendship. Joachim gave him introductions to Liszt at Weimar and to Schumann at Düsseldorf; the former hailed him for a time as a member of the advanced party in music, on the strength of his E flat minor scherzo, but the misapprehension was not of long continuance. The introduction to Schumann impelled that master, now drawing near the tragic close of his career, to write the famous article “Neue Bahnen,” in which the young Brahms was proclaimed to be the great composer of the future, “he who was to come.” The critical insight in Schumann’s article is all the more surprising when it is remembered how small was the list of Brahms’s works at the time. A string quartet, the first pianoforte sonata, the scherzo already mentioned, and the earliest group of songs, containing the dramatic “Liebestreu,” are the works which drew forth the warm commendations of Schumann. In December 1853 Brahms gave a concert at Leipzig, as a result of which the firms of Breitkopf & Haertel and of Senff undertook to publish his compositions. In 1854 he was given the post of choir-director and music-master to the prince of Lippe-Detmold, but he resigned it after a few years, going first to Hamburg, and then to Zürich, where he enjoyed the friendship and artistic counsel of Theodor Kirchner. The unfavourable verdict of the Leipzig Gewandhaus audience upon his pianoforte concerto in D minor op. 15, and several remarkably successful appearances in Vienna, where he was appointed director of Ihe Singakademie in 1863, were the most important external events of Brahms’s life, but again he gave up the conductorship after a few months of valuable work, and for about three years had no fixed place of abode. Concert tours with Joachim or Stockhausen were undertaken, and it was not until 1867 that he returned to Vienna, or till 1872 that he chose it definitely as his home, his longest absence from the Austrian capital being between 1874 and 1878, when he lived near Heidelberg. From 1871 to 1874 he conducted the concerts of the “Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,” but after the later date he occupied no official position of any kind. With the exception of journeys to Italy in the spring, or to Switzerland in the summer, he rarely left Vienna. He refused to come to England to take the honorary degree of Mus.D. offered by the university of Cambridge; the university of Breslau made him Ph.D. in 1881; in 1886 he was created a knight of the Prussian order Pour le mérite, and in 1889 was presented with the freedom of his native city. He died in Vienna on the 3rd of April 1897.

The works of Brahms may be summarized as follows:—Various sacred compositions for chorus, op. 12, 13, 22, 27, 29, 30, 37, leading up to op. 45, the “German Requiem” first performed at Bremen in 1868, and subsequently completed by a soprano solo with chorus; the “Triumphlied” in commemoration of the German victories of 1870-71; and some choral songs and motets, op. 74, 109 and 110. Secular choral works, op. 17, 41, 42, 44, 50 (“Rinaldo” for tenor solo and male choir), 53 (“Rhapsodie,” alto solo and male choir), 54 (“Schicksalslied”), 62, 82 (Schiller’s Nänie), 89 (“Gesang der Parzen”), 93, 104, 113. Concerted vocal-works, op. 20, 28, 31, 52 (“Liebeslieder-Walzer”), 61, 64, 65 (“Neue Liebeslieder”), 75, 92, 103, 112. Solo songs, nearly 300. Orchestral works: four symphonies, op. 68, 73, 90 and 98; two serenades, op. 11 and 16; two pianoforte concertos, op. 15 and 83, one violin concerto, op. 77; concerto for violin and violoncello, op. 102; variations on a theme by Haydn, op. 56; two overtures, “Academische Festouvertüre,” op. 80, and “Tragic Overture,” op. 81. Chamber music: two sextets, op. 18 and 36; quintet, piano and strings, op. 34, strings, op. 88 and 111, clarinet and strings, op. 115; three string quartets, op. 51 and 67, three quartets for piano and strings, op. 25, 26 and 60. Three trios for piano and strings, op. 8, 87 and 101; trio for piano, violin and horn, op. 40; piano, clarinet and violoncello, op. 114. Duet sonatas, three for piano and violin, op. 78, 100 and 108; two for piano and violoncello, op. 38 and 99; two for piano and clarinet, op. 120. Pianoforte solos: three sonatas, op. 1, 2 and 5; scherzo, op. 4; variations, op. 9, 21, 23, 24, 35; 4 ballads, op. 10; waltzes, op. 39; two rhapsodies, op. 79; caprices and intermezzi, op. 76, 116, 117, 118 and 119. 5 studies and 51 Uebungen without opus-number, and a chorale-prelude and fugue for organ, besides four books of Hungarian Dances arranged for pianoforte duet.

Brahms has often been called the last of the great classical masters, in a sense wider than that of his place in the long line of the great composers of Germany. Though only the most superficial observers could deny him the possession of qualities which distinguish the masters of the romantic school, it is as a classicist that he must be ranked among modern musicians. From the beginning of his career until its close, his ideas were clothed by preference in the forms which had sufficed for Beethoven, and the instances in which he departed from structural precedent are so rare that they might be disregarded, were they not of such high value that they must be considered as the signs of a logical development of musical form, and not as indicating a spirit of rebellion against existing modes of structure. His practice, more frequent in later than in earlier life, of welding together the “working-out” and the “recapitulation” sections of his movements in a closer union than any of his predecessors had attempted, is an innovation which cannot fail to have important results in the future; and if the skill of younger writers is not adequate to such a display of ingenuity as occurs in the finale of the fourth symphony, where the “passacaglia” form has been used with an effect that is almost bewildering to the ordinary listener, that at least stands as a monument of inventiveness finely subordinated to the emotional and intellectual purport of the thoughts expressed. His themes are always noble, and even from the point of view of emotional appeal their deep intensity of expression is of a kind which grows upon all who have once been awakened to their beauty, or have been at the pains to grasp the composer’s characteristics of utterance. His vocal music, whether for one voice or many, is remarkable for its fidelity to natural inflection and accentuation of the words, and for its perfect reflection of the poet’s mood. His songs, vocal quartets and choral works abound in passages that prove him a master of effects of sound; and throughout his chamber music, in his treatment of the piano, of the strings, or of the solo wind instruments he employs, there are numberless examples which sufficiently show the irrelevance of a charge sometimes brought against his music, that it is deficient in a sense of what is called “tone-colour.” It is perfectly true that the mere acoustic effect of a passage was of far less importance to him than its inherent beauty, poetic import, or logical fitness in a definite scheme of development; and that often in his orchestral music the casual hearer receives an impression of complexity rather than of clearness, and is apt to imagine that the “thickness” of instrumentation is the result of clumsiness or carelessness. Such instances as the introduction to the finale of the first symphony, the close of the first movement of the second, what may be called the epilogue of the third, or the whole of the variations on a theme of Haydn, are not only marvels of delicate workmanship in regard to structure, but are instinct with the sense of the peculiar beauty and characteristics of each instrument. The “Academic Festival” overture proves Brahms a master of musical humour, in his treatment of the student songs which serve as its themes; and the companion piece, the “Tragic” overture, reaches a height of sublimity which is in no way lessened because no particular tragedy has ever been named in conjunction with the work.

As with all creative artists of supreme rank, the work of Brahms took a considerable time before it was very generally appreciated. The change in public opinion is strikingly illustrated in regard to the songs, which, once voted ineffective and unvocal, have now taken a place in every eminent singer’s repertory. The outline in his greater works must be grasped with some definiteness before the separate ideas can be properly understood in their true relation to each other; and while it is his wonderful power of handling the recognized classical forms, so as to make them seem absolutely new, which stamps him as the greatest musical architect since Beethoven, the necessity for realizing in some degree what musical form signifies has undoubtedly been a bar to the rapid acceptance of his greater works by the uneducated lovers of music. These are of course far more easily moved by effects of colour than by the subtler beauties of organic structure, and Brahms’s attitude towards tone-colour was scarcely such as would endear him to the large number of musicians in whose view tone-colour is pre-eminent. His mastery of form, again, has been attacked as formalism by superficial critics, blind to the real inspiration and distinction of his ideas, and to their perfection in regard to style and the appropriateness of every theme to the exact emotional state to be expressed. In his larger vocal works there are some which treat of emotional conditions far removed from the usual stock of subjects taken by the average composer; to compare the ideas in the “German Requiem” with those of the “Schicksalslied” or “Nänie” is to learn a lesson in artistic style which can never be forgotten. In the songs, too, it is scarcely too much to say that the whole range of human emotion finds expression in noble lyrics that yield to none in actual musical beauty. The four “Ernste Gesänge,” Brahms’s last composition, must be considered as his supreme achievement in dignified utterance of noble thoughts in a style that perfectly fits them. The choice of words for these as well as for the “Requiem” and others of his serious works reveals a strong sense of the vanity and emptiness of human life, but at least as strong a confidence in the divine consolations.

It has been the misfortune of the musical world in Germany that every prominent musician is ranged by critics and amateurs in one of two hostile camps, and it was probably due in the main to the misrepresentations of the followers of Wagner that the idea was so generally held that Brahms was a man of narrow sympathies and hard, not to say brutal manners. The latter impression was fostered, no doubt, by the master’s natural detestation of the methods by which the average lionizer seeks to gain his object, and both alike are disproved in the Recollections of J.V. Widmann, an intimate friend for many years, which throw a new light on the master, revealing him as a man of the widest artistic sympathies, neither intolerant of excellence in a line opposed to his own, nor weakly enthusiastic over mediocre productions by composers whose views were in complete sympathy with him. His admiration for Verdi and Wagner is enough to show that the absence of any operatic work from his list of compositions was simply due to the difficulty of finding a libretto which appealed to him, not to any antagonism to the lyric stage in its modern developments. How far he stood from the prejudices of the typical pedant may be seen in the passionate love he showed throughout his life for national music, especially that of Hungary. Not only were his arrangements of Hungarian dances the first work by which his name was known outside his native land, but his first pianoforte quartet, op. 25 in G minor, incurred the wrath of the critics of the time by its introduction of some characteristics of Hungarian music into the finale. His arrangement of a number of children’s traditional songs was published without his name, and dedicated to the children of Robert and Clara Schumann in the earliest years of his creative life; and among the last of his publications was a collection of forty-nine German Volkslieder, arranged with the utmost skill, taste and simplicity. He had a great admiration for the waltzes of Strauss, and in many passages of his own works the entrain that is characteristic of the Viennese dance-writers is present in a striking degree.

See also W.H. Hadow, Studies in Modern Music (2nd series, 1908); and the articles [Music], [Song].

(J. A. F. M.)

BRAHUI, a people of Baluchistan, inhabiting the Brahui mountains, which extend continuously from near the Bolan Pass to Cape Monze on the Arabian Sea. The khan of Kalat, the native ruler of Baluchistan, is himself a Brahui, and a lineal descendant of Kumbar, former chief of the Kumbarini, a Brahui tribe. The origin of the Brahuis is an ethnological mystery. Bishop Robert Caldwell and other authorities declare them Dravidians, and regard them as the western borderers of Dravidian India. Others believe them to be Scythians,[1] and others again connect them with Tatar mountaineers who early settled in southern parts of Asia. The origin of the word itself is in doubt. It is variously derived as a corruption of the Persian Ba Rohi (literally “of the hills”); as an eponym from Braho, otherwise Brahin or Ibrahim, a legendary hero of alleged Arab descent who led his people “out of the west,” while Dr Gustav Oppert believes that the name is in some way related to, if not identical with, that of the Baluchis. He recognizes in the name of the Paratas and Paradas, who dwelt in north-eastern Baluchistan, the origin of the modern Brahui. He gives reasons for regarding the Bra as a contraction of Bara and obtains “thus in Barahui a name whose resemblance to that of the ancient Barrhai (the modern Bhars), as well as to that of the Paratas and Paravar and their kindred the Maratha Paravari and Dravidian Parheyas of Palaman, is striking.” The Brahuis declare themselves to be the aborigines of the country they now occupy, their ancestors coming from Aleppo. For this there seems little foundation, and their language, which has no affinities with Persian, Pushtu or Baluchi, must be, according to the most eminent scholars, classed among the Dravidian tongues of southern India. Probably the Brahuis are of Dravidian stock, a branch long isolated from their kindred and much Arabized, and thus exhibiting a marked hybridism.

Whatever their origin, the Brahuis are found in a position of considerable power in Baluchistan from earliest times. Their authentic history begins with Mir Ahmad, who was their chief in the 17th century. The title of “khan” was assumed by Nasir the Great in the middle of the 18th century. The Brahuis are a confederacy of tribes possessing common lands and uniting from time to time for purposes of offence or defence. At their head is the khan, who formerly seems to have been regarded as semi-divine, it being customary for the tribesmen on visiting Kalat to make offerings at the Ahmadzai gate before entering. The Brahuis are a nomadic race, who dwell in tents made of goats’ hair, black or striped, and live chiefly on the products of their herds. They are Sunnite Mahommedans, but are not fanatical. In physique they are very easily distinguished from their neighbours, the Baluchis and Pathans, being a smaller, sturdier people with rounder faces characterized by the flat, blunt and coarse features of the Dravidian races. They are of a dark brown colour, their hair and beards being often brown not black. They are an active, hardy race, and though as avaricious as the Pathans, are more trustworthy and less turbulent. Their ordinary dress is a tunic or shirt, trousers gathered in at the ankles and a cloak usually of brown felt. A few wear turbans, but generally their headgear is a round skullcap with tassel or button. Their women are not strictly veiled. Sandals of deer or goat skin are worn by all classes. Their weapons are rifles, swords and shields. They do not use the Afghan knife or any spears. Some few Brahuis are enlisted in the Bombay Native Infantry.

See Dr Bellew, Indus to Euphrates (London, 1874); Gustav Oppert, The Original Inhabitants of India (1893); Dr Theodore Duka, Essay on the Brahui Grammar (after the German of Dr Trumpp of Munich University).

[1] Compare Mountstuart Elphinstone’s (History of India, 9th ed., 1905, p. 249) description of Scythians with physique of Brahuis. A relationship between the Jats (q.v.) and the Brahuis has been suggested, and it is generally held that the former were of Scythic stock. The Mengals, Bizanjos and Zehris, the three largest Brahui tribes, are called Jadgal or Jagdal, i.e. Jats, by some of their neighbours. The Zaghar Mengal, a superior division of the Mengal tribe, believe they themselves came from a district called Zughd, somewhere near Samarkand in central Asia. Gal appears to be a collective suffix in Baluchi, and Men or Min occurs on the lists of the Behistun inscriptions as the name of one of the Scythian tribes deported by Darius, the Achaemenian, for their turbulence (see Kalat, A Memoir on the County and Family of the Ahmadzai Khans of Kalat, by G.P. Tate). Sajdi, another Brahui tribal name, is Scythian, the principal clan of which tribe is the Saga, both names being identifiable with the Sagetae and Saki of ancient writers. Thus there seems some reason for believing that the former occupants of at least some portions of the Brahui domain were of Scythian blood.

BRAID (from the O. Eng. bregdan, to move quickly to and fro, hence to weave), a plait, especially a plait of hair, also a plaited tape woven of wool, silk, gold thread, &c., used for trimming or binding. A particular use is for the narrow bands, bordered with open work, used in making point lace.

BRAIDWOOD, THOMAS (1715-1806), British teacher of the deaf and dumb, was born in Scotland in 1715, and educated at Edinburgh University. He became a school teacher, and in 1760 opened in Edinburgh, with one pupil, the first school in Great Britain for the deaf and dumb, following the system of Dr John Wallis, described in Philosophical Transactions nearly a hundred years before. This school was the model for all of the early English institutions of the kind. Dr Johnson visited it in 1773, and describes it as “a subject of philosophical curiosity ... which no other city has to show,” and Braidwood’s dozen pupils as able “to hear with the eye.” In 1783 Braidwood moved to Hackney, where he died on the 24th of October 1806.

BRAILA (in Rumanian Braĭla, formerly Ibraila), the capital of the department of Braila, Rumania; situated amid flat and dreary country on the left bank of the river Danube, about 100 m. from its mouth at Sulina. Pop. (1900) 58,392, including 10,811 Jews. Southward, the Danube encircles a vast fen, tenanted only by waterfowl and herds of half-wild swine, while the plain which extends to the north-east and east only grows fertile at some distance inland. Braila itself is plainly built on a bank rising about 50 ft. above sea-level; but partly on a narrow strip of ground which separates this bank from the water’s edge. Along the crest of the bank a public park is laid out, commanding a view of the desolate Dobrudja hills, across the river.

On the landward side, Braila has the shape of a crescent, the curve of its outer streets following the line of the old fortifications, dismantled in 1829. Few houses, among the older quarters, exceed two storeys in height, but the main streets are paved, and there is a regular supply of filtered water. A wide avenue, the Strada Bulivardului, divides the town proper from the suburbs. The principal church, among many, is the cathedral of St Michael, a large, ungainly building of grey sandstone. Electric tramways intersect the town, and are continued for 3 m. to Lacul Sărat (Salt Lake), where there are mineral springs and mud-baths, owned by the state. The waters, which contain over 45% of salt, iodine and sulphur, are among the strongest of their kind in Europe; and are of high repute, being annually visited by more than a thousand patients. Braila is the seat of a chamber of commerce. It is the chief port of entry for Walachia, and the headquarters of the grain trade; for, besides its advantageous position on the river, it is connected with the central Walachian railways by a line to Buzeu, and with the Russian and Moldavian systems by a line to Galatz. Quays, where ships drawing 15 ft. of water can discharge, line the river front; and there are large docks, grain elevators and warehouses, besides paper mills, roperies, and soap and candle works. Over 20 steamers, maintained by the state, ply between Braila and Rotterdam. Among the vessels of all nations, the British are first in numbers and tonnage, the Greek second. Grain and timber form the chief articles of export; textiles, machinery, iron goods and coal being most largely imported.

Many events connected with the history of Walachia took place in the neighbourhood of Braila. In 1475 Stephen the Great, having dethroned the voivode Radu, burned the town. In 1573 another Moldavian prince took the city by storm, and massacred the Turkish garrison. In 1659 it was again burned by the Walachian prince Mircea, and for the time the Turks were expelled, but afterwards returned. In the latter part of the 18th century Braila was several times captured by the Russians, and in 1770 it was burned. By the peace of Bucharest (1812) the Turks retained the right of garrisoning Braila. In 1828 it was gallantly defended by Soliman Pasha, who, after holding out from the middle of May until the end of June, was allowed to march out with the honours of war. At the peace of Adrianople (1829) the place was definitely assigned to Walachia; but before giving it up, the grand-duke Michael of Russia razed the citadel, and in this ruinous condition it was handed over to the Walachians. Braila was the spot chosen by the Russian general Gorchakov for crossing the Danube with his division in 1854. On the banks of the Danube, a little above the city, are some remains of the piles of a bridge said by a very doubtful tradition to have been built by Darius (c. 500 B.C.).

BRAIN (A.S. braegen), that part of the central nervous system which in vertebrate animals is contained within the cranium or skull; it is divided into the great brain or cerebrum, the hind brain or cerebellum, and the medulla oblongata, which is the transitional part between the spinal cord and the other two parts already named. Except where stated, we deal here primarily with the brain in man.

1. Anatomy

Membranes of the Human Brain.

Fig. 1.—Dura Mater and Cranial Sinuses.
1. Falx cerebri. 2. Tentorium. 3,3. Superior longitudinal sinus. 4. Lateral sinus. 5. Internal jugular vein. 6. Occipital sinus. 6′. Torcular Herophili. 7. Inferior longitudinal sinus.	8. Veins of Galen. 9 and 10. Superior and inferior petrosal sinus. 11. Cavernous sinus. 12. Circular sinus which connects the two cavernous sinuses together. 13. Ophthalmic vein, from 15, the eyeball. 14. Crista galli of ethmoid bone.

Three membranes named the dura mater, arachnoid and pia mater cover the brain and lie between it and the cranial cavity. The most external of the three is the dura mater, which consists of a cranial and a spinal portion. The cranial part is in contact with the inner table of the skull, and is adherent along the lines of the sutures and to the margins of the foramina, which transmit the nerves, more especially to the foramen magnum. It forms, therefore, for these bones an internal periosteum, and the meningeal arteries which ramify in it are the nutrient arteries of the inner table. As the growth of bone is more active in infancy and youth than in the adult, the adhesion between the dura mater and the cranial bones is greater in early life than at maturity. From the inner surface of the dura mater strong bands pass into the cranial cavity, and form partitions between certain of the subdivisions of the brain. A vertical longitudinal mesial band, named, from its sickle shape, falx cerebri, dips between the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. A smaller sickle-shaped vertical mesial band, the falx cerebelli, attached to the internal occipital crest, passes between the two hemispheres of the cerebellum. A large band arches forward in the horizontal plane of the cavity, from the transverse groove in the occipital bone to the clinoid processes of the sphenoid, and is attached laterally to the upper border of the petrous part of each temporal bone. It separates the cerebrum from the cerebellum, and, as it forms a tent-like covering for the latter, is named tentorium cerebelli. Along certain lines the cranial dura mater splits into two layers to form tubular passages for the transmission of venous blood. These passages are named the venous blood sinuses of the dura mater, and they are lodged in the grooves on the inner surface of the skull referred to in the description of the cranial bones. Opening into these sinuses are numerous veins which convey from the brain the blood that has been circulating through it; and two of these sinuses, called cavernous, which lie at the sides of the body of the sphenoid bone, receive the ophthalmic veins from the eyeballs situated in the orbital cavities. These blood sinuses pass usually from before backwards: a superior longitudinal along the upper border of the falx cerebri as far as the internal occipital protuberance; an inferior longitudinal along its lower border as far as the tentorium, where it joins the straight sinus, which passes back as far as the same protuberance. One or two small occipital sinuses, which lie in the falx cerebelli, also pass to join the straight and longitudinal sinuses opposite this protuberance; several currents of blood meet, therefore, at this spot, and as Herophilus supposed that a sort of whirlpool was formed in the blood, the name torcular Herophili has been used to express the meeting of these sinuses. From the torcular the blood is drained away by two large sinuses, named lateral, which curve forward and downward to the jugular foramina to terminate in the internal jugular veins. In its course each lateral sinus receives two petrosal sinuses, which pass from the cavernous sinus backwards along the upper and lower borders of the petrous part of the temporal bone. The dura mater consists of a tough, fibrous membrane, somewhat flocculent externally, but smooth, glistening, and free on its inner surface. The inner surface has the appearance of a serous membrane, and when examined microscopically is seen to consist of a layer of squamous endothelial cells. Hence the dura mater is sometimes called a fibro-serous membrane. The dura mater is well provided with lymph vessels, which in all probability open by stomata on the free inner surface. Between the dura mater and the subjacent arachnoid membrane is a fine space containing a minute quantity of limpid serum, which moistens the smooth inner surface of the dura and the corresponding smooth outer surface of the arachnoid. It is regarded as equivalent to the cavity of a serous membrane, and is named the sub-dural space.

Arachnoid Mater.—The arachnoid is a membrane of great delicacy and transparency, which loosely envelops both the brain and spinal cord. It is separated from these organs by the pia mater; but between it and the latter membrane is a distinct space, called sub-arachnoid. The sub-arachnoid space is more distinctly marked beneath the spinal than beneath the cerebral parts of the membrane, which forms a looser investment for the cord than for the brain. At the base of the brain, and opposite the fissures between the convolutions of the cerebrum, the interval between the arachnoid and the pia mater can, however, always be seen, for the arachnoid does not, like the pia mater, clothe the sides of the fissures, but passes directly across between the summits of adjacent convolutions. The sub-arachnoid space is subdivided into numerous freely-communicating loculi by bundles of delicate areolar tissue, which bundles are invested, as Key and Retzius have shown, by a layer of squamous endothelium. The space contains a limpid cerebro-spinal fluid, which varies in quantity from 2 drachms to 2 oz., and is most plentiful in the dilatations at the base of the brain known as cisternae. It should be clearly understood that there is no communication between the subdural and sub-arachnoid spaces, but that the latter communicates with the ventricles through openings in the roof of the fourth, and in the descending cornua of the lateral ventricles.

When the skull cap is removed, clusters of granular bodies are usually to be seen imbedded in the dura mater on each side of the superior longitudinal sinus; these are named the Pacchionian bodies. When traced through the dura mater they are found to spring from the arachnoid. The observations of Luschka and Cleland have proved that villous processes invariably grow from the free surface of that membrane, and that when these villi greatly increase in size they form the bodies in question. Sometimes the Pacchionian bodies greatly hypertrophy, occasioning absorption of the bones of the cranial vault and depressions on the upper surface of the brain.

Pia Mater.—This membrane closely invests the whole outer surface of the brain. It dips into the fissures between the convolutions, and a wide prolongation, named velum interpositum, lies in the interior of the cerebrum. With a little care it can be stripped off the brain without causing injury to its substance. At the base of the brain the pia mater is prolonged on to the roots of the cranial nerves. This membrane consists of a delicate connective tissue, in which the arteries of the brain and spinal cord ramify and subdivide into small branches before they penetrate the nervous substance, and in which the veins conveying the blood from the nerve centres lie before they open into the blood sinuses of the cranial dura mater and the extradural venus plexus of the spinal canal.

Medulla Oblongata.

The Medulla Oblongata rests upon the basi-occipital. It is somewhat pyramidal in form, about 1¼ in. long, and 1 in. broad in its widest part. It is a bilateral organ, and is divided into a right and a left half by shallow anterior and posterior median fissures, continuous with the corresponding fissures in the spinal cord; the posterior fissure ends above in the fourth ventricle. Each half is subdivided into elongated tracts of nervous matter. Next to, and parallel with the anterior fissure is the anterior pyramid (see fig. 2). This pyramid is continuous below with the cord, and the place of continuity is marked by the passage across the fissure of three or four bundles of nerve fibres, from each half of the cord to the opposite anterior pyramid; this crossing is called the decussation of the pyramids. To the side of the pyramid, and separated from it by a faint fissure, is the olivary fasciculus, which at its upper end is elevated into the projecting oval-shaped olivary body. Behind the olivary body in the lower half of the medulla are three tracts named from before backward the funiculus of Rolando, the funiculus cuneatus and the funiculus gracilis (see fig. 3). The two funiculi graciles of opposite sides are in contact in the mid dorsal line and have between them the postero median fissure. When the fourth ventricle is reached they diverge to form the lower limit of that diamond-shaped space and are slightly swollen to form the clavae. All these three bundles appear to be continued up into the cerebellum as the restiform bodies or inferior cerebellar peduncles, but really the continuity is very slight, as the restiform bodies are formed from the direct cerebellar tracts of the spinal cord joining with the superficial arcuate fibres which curve back just below the olivary bodies. The upper part of the fourth ventricle is bounded by the superior cerebellar peduncles which meet just before the inferior quadrigeminal bodies are reached. Stretching across between them is the superior medullary velum or valve of Vieussens, forming the upper part of the roof, while the inferior velum forms the lower part, and has an opening called the foramen of Majendie, through which the sub-arachnoid space communicates with the ventricle. The floor (see fig. 3) has two triangular depressions on each side of a median furrow; these are the superior and inferior fovea, the significance of which will be noticed in the development of the rhombencephalon. Running horizontally across the middle of the floor are the striae acusticae which are continued into the auditory nerve. The floor of the fourth ventricle is of special interest because a little way from the surface are the deep origins of all the cranial nerves from the fifth to the twelfth. (See [Nerve], cranial). If a section is made transversely through the medulla about the apex of the fourth ventricle three important bundles of fibres are cut close to the mid line on each side (see fig. 4). The most anterior is the pyramid or motor tract, the decussation of which has been seen. Behind this is the mesial fillet or sensory tract, which has also decussated a little below the point of section, while farther back still is the posterior longitudinal bundle which is coming up from the anterior basis bundle of the cord. External to and behind the pyramid is the crenated section of the olivary nucleus, the surface bulging of which forms the olivary body.

The grey matter of the medulla oblongata, which contains numerous multipolar nerve cells, is in part continuous with the grey matter of the spinal cord, and in part consists of independent masses. As the grey matter of the cord enters the medulla it loses its crescentic arrangement. The posterior cornua are thrown outwards towards the surface, lose their pointed form, and dilate into rounded masses named the grey tubercles of Rolando. The grey matter of the anterior cornua is cut off from the rest by the decussating pyramids and finally disappears. The formatio reticularis which is feebly developed in the cord becomes well developed in the medulla. In the lower part of the medulla a central canal continuous with that of the cord exists, but when the clavae on the opposite sides of the medulla diverge from each other, the central canal loses its posterior boundary, and dilates into the cavity of the fourth ventricle. The grey matter in the interior of the medulla appears, therefore, on the floor of the ventricle and is continuous with the grey matter near the central canal of the cord. This grey matter forms collections of nerve cells, which are the centres of origin of several cranial nerves. Crossing the anterior surface of the medulla oblongata, immediately below the pons, in the majority of mammals is a transverse arrangement of fibres forming the trapezium, which contains a grey nucleus, named by van der Kolk the superior olive. In the human brain the trapezium is concealed by the lower transverse fibres of the pons, but when sections are made through it, as L. Clarke pointed out, the grey matter of the superior olive can be seen. These fibres of the trapezium come from the cochlear nucleus of the auditory nerve, and run up as the lateral fillet.

The Pons Varolii or Bridge is cuboidal in form (see fig. 2): its anterior surface rests upon the dorsum sellae of the sphenoid, and is marked by a median longitudinal groove; its inferior surface receives the pyramidal and olivary tracts of the medulla oblongata; at its superior surface are the two crura cerebri; each lateral surface is in relation to a hemisphere of the cerebellum, and a peduncle passes from the pons into the interior of each hemisphere; the posterior surface forms in part the upper portion of the floor of the fourth ventricle, and in part is in contact with the corpora quadrigemina.

The pons consists of white and grey matter: the nerve fibres of the white matter pass through the substance of the pons, in either a transverse or a longitudinal direction. The transverse fibres go from one hemisphere of the cerebellum to that of the opposite side; some are situated on the anterior surface of the pons, and form its superficial transverse fibres, whilst others pass through its substance and form the deep transverse fibres. The longitudinal fibres ascend from the medulla oblongata and leave the pons by emerging from its upper surface as fibres of the two crura cerebri. The pons possesses a median raphe continuous with that of the medulla oblongata, and formed like it by a decussation of fibres in the mesial plane. In a horizontal section through the pons and upper part of the fourth ventricle the superficial transverse fibres are seen most anteriorly; then come the anterior pyramidal fibres, then the deep transverse pontine fibres, then the fillet, while most posteriorly and close to the floor of the fourth ventricle the posterior longitudinal bundle is seen (see fig. 5).

The grey matter of the pons is scattered irregularly through its substance, and appears on its posterior surface; but not on the anterior surface, composed exclusively of the superficial transverse fibres.

The Cerebellum.

The Cerebellum, Little Brain, or After Brain occupies the inferior pair of occipital fossae, and lies below the plane of the tentorium cerebelli. It consists of two hemispheres or lateral lobes, and of a median or central lobe, which in human anatomy is called the vermis. It is connected below with the medulla oblongata by the two restiform bodies which form its inferior peduncles, and above with the corpora quadrigemina of the cerebrum by two bands, which form its superior peduncles; whilst the two hemispheres are connected together by the transverse fibres of the pons, which form the middle peduncles of the cerebellum. On the superior or tentorial surface of the cerebellum the median or vermiform lobe is a mere elevation, but on its inferior or occipital surface this lobe forms a well-defined process, which lies at the bottom of a deep fossa or vallecula; this fossa is prolonged to the posterior border of the cerebellum, and forms there a deep notch which separates the two hemispheres from each other; in this notch the falx cerebelli is lodged. Extending horizontally backwards from the middle cerebellar peduncle, along the outer border of each hemisphere is the great horizontal fissure, which divides the hemisphere into its tentorial and occipital surfaces. Each of these surfaces is again subdivided by fissures into smaller lobes, of which the most important are the amygdala or tonsil, which forms the lateral boundary of the anterior part of the vallecula, and the flocculus, which is situated immediately behind the middle peduncle of the cerebellum. The inferior vermiform process is subdivided into a posterior part or pyramid; an elevation or uvula, situated between the two tonsils; and an anterior pointed process or nodule. Stretching between the two flocculi, and attached midway to the sides of the nodule, is a thin, white, semilunar-shaped plate of nervous matter, called the inferior medullary velum.

The whole outer surface of the cerebellum possesses a characteristic foliated or laminated appearance, due to its subdivision into multitudes of thin plates or lamellae by numerous fissures. The cerebellum consists of both grey and white matter. The grey matter forms the exterior or cortex of the lamellae, and passes from one to the other across the bottoms of the several fissures. The white matter lies in the interior of the organ, and extends into the core of each lamella. When a vertical section is made through the organ, the prolongations of white matter branching off into the interior of the several lamellae give to the section an arborescent appearance, known by the fanciful name of arbor vitae (see fig. 6). Independent masses of grey matter are, however, found in the interior of the cerebellum. If the hemisphere be cut through a little to the outer side of the median lobe, a zigzag arrangement of grey matter, similar in appearance and structure to the nucleus of the olivary body in the medulla oblongata, and known as the corpus dentatum of the cerebellum, is seen; it lies in the midst of the white core of the hemisphere, and encloses white fibres, which leave the interior of the corpus at its inner and lower side. On the mesial side of this corpus dentatum lie three smaller nuclei. The white matter is more abundant in the hemispheres than in the median lobe, and is for the most part directly continuous with the fibres of the peduncles of the cerebellum. Thus the restiform or inferior peduncles pass from below upward through the white core, to end in the grey matter of the tentorial surface of the cerebellum, more especially in that of the central lobe; on their way they are connected with the grey matter of the corpus dentatum. The superior peduncles, which descend from the corpora quadrigemina of the cerebrum, form connexions mainly with the corpus dentatum. The middle peduncles form a large proportion of the white core, and their fibres terminate in the grey matter of the foliated cortex of the hemispheres. It has been noticed that those fibres which are lowest in the pons go to the upper surface of the cerebellum and vice versa.

Histology of the Cerebellum.—The white centre of the cerebellum is composed of numbers of medullated nerve fibres coursing to and from the grey matter of the cortex. These fibres are supported in a groundwork of neuroglial tissue, their nutrition being supplied by a small number of blood vessels.

From Cunningham, Text-book of Anatomy. Fig. 7.—Transverse Section through a Cerebellar Folium (afterKölliker). Treated by the Golgi method.
P. Axon of cell of Purkinje. F. Moss fibres. K and K1. Fibres from white core of folium ending in molecular layer in connexion with the dendrites of the cells of Purkinje. M. Small cell of the molecular layer GR. Granule cell.	GR1. Axons of granule cells in molecular layer cut transversely. M1. Basket-cells. ZK. Basket-work around the cells of Purkinje. GL. Neuroglial cell. N. Axon of an association cell.

The cortex (see fig. 7) consists of a thin layer of grey material forming an outer coat of somewhat varying thickness over the whole external surface of the laminae of the organ. When examined microscopically it is found to be made up of two layers, an outer “molecular” and an inner “granular” layer. Forming a layer lying at the junction of these two are a number of cells, the cells of Purkinje, which constitute the most characteristic feature of the cerebellum. The bodies of these cells are pear-shaped. Their inner ends taper and finally end in a nerve fibre which may be traced into the white centre. In their course through the granule layer they give off a number of branching collaterals, some turning back and passing between the cells of Purkinje into the molecular layer. Their inner ends terminate in one or sometimes two stout processes which repeatedly branch dichotomously, thus forming a very elaborate dendron in the molecular layer. The branchings of this dendron are also highly characteristic in that they are approximately restricted to a single plane like an espalier fruit tree, and those for neighbouring cells are all parallel to one another and at right angles to the general direction of the folium to which they belong. In the molecular layer are found two types of cells. The most abundant are the so-called basket cells which are distributed through the whole thickness of the layer. They have a rounded body giving off many branching dendrons to their immediate neighbourhood and one long neuraxon which runs parallel to the surface and to the long axis of the lamina. In its course, this gives off numerous collaterals which run downward to the bodies of Purkinje’s cells. Their terminal branchings together with similar terminals of other collaterals form the basket-work around the bodies of these cells.

The granular layer is sometimes termed the rust-coloured layer from its appearance to the naked eye. It contains two types of nerve cells, the small granule cells and the large granule cells. The former are the more numerous. They give off a number of short dendrites with claw-like endings, and a fine non-medullated neuraxon process. This runs upward to the cortex, where it divides into two branches in the form of a T. The branches run for some distance parallel to the axis of the folium and terminate in unbranched ends. The large granule cells are multipolar cells, many of the branchings penetrating well into the molecular layer. The neuraxon process turns into the opposite direction and forms a richly branching system through the entire thickness of the granular layer. There is also an abundant plexus of fine medullated fibres within the granule layer.

The fibres of the white central matter are partly centrifugal, the neuraxons of the cells of Purkinje, and partly centripetal. The position of the cells of these latter fibres is not known. The fibres give rise to an abundant plexus of fibrils in the granular layer, and many reaching into the molecular layer ramify there, especially in the immediate neighbourhood of the dendrites of Purkinje’s cells. From the appearance of their plexus of fibrils these are sometimes called moss fibres.

The Fourth Ventricle is the dilated upper end of the central canal of the medulla oblongata. Its shape is like an heraldic lozenge. Its floor is formed by the grey matter of the posterior surfaces of the medulla oblongata and pons, already described (see figs. 3 and 6); its roof partly by the inferior vermis of the cerebellum, the nodule of which projects into its cavity, and partly by a thin layer, called valve of Vieussens, or superior medullary velum; its lower lateral boundaries by the divergent clavae and restiform bodies; its upper lateral boundaries by the superior peduncles of the cerebellum. The inferior medullary velum, a reflection of the pia mater and epithelium from the back of the medulla to the inferior vermis, closes it in below. Above, it communicates with the aqueduct of Sylvius, which is tunnelled below the substance of the corpora quadrigemina. Along the centre of the floor is the median furrow, which terminates below in a pen-shaped form, the so-called calamus scriptorius. Situated on its floor are the fasciculi teretes, striae acusticae, and deposits of grey matter described in connexion with the medulla oblongata. Its epithelial lining is continuous with that of the central canal.

The Cerebrum.

The Cerebrum or Great Brain lies above the plane of the tentorium, and forms much the largest division of the encephalon. It is customary in human anatomy to include under the name of cerebrum, not only the convolutions, the corpora striata, and the optic thalami, developed in the anterior cerebral vesicle, but also the corpora quadrigemina and crura cerebri developed in the mesencephalon or middle cerebral vesicle. The cerebrum is ovoid in shape, and presents superiorly, anteriorly and posteriorly a deep median longitudinal fissure, which subdivides it into two hemispheres. Inferiorly there is a continuity of structure between the two hemispheres across the mesial plane, and if the two hemispheres be drawn asunder by opening out the longitudinal fissure, a broad white band, the corpus callosum, may be seen at the bottom of the fissure passing across the mesial plane from one hemisphere to the other. The outer surface of each hemisphere is convex, and adapted in shape to the concavity of the inner table of the cranial bones; its inner surface, which bounds the longitudinal fissure, is flat and is separated from the opposite hemisphere by the falx cerebri; its under surface, where it rests on the tentorium, is concave, and is separated by that membrane from the cerebellum and pons. From the front of the pons two strong white bands, the crura cerebri or cerebral peduncles, pass forward and upward (see fig. 2). Winding round the outer side of each crus is a flat white band, the optic tract. These tracts converge in front, and join to form the optic commissure, from which the two optic nerves arise. The crura cerebri, optic tracts, and optic commissure enclose a lozenge-shaped space, which includes—(a) a grey layer, which, from being perforated by several small arteries, is called locus perforatus posticus; (b) two white mammillae, the corpora albicantia; (c) a grey nodule, the tuber cinereum, from which (d) the infundibulum projects to join the pituitary body. Immediately in front of the optic commissure is a grey layer, the lamina cinerea of the third ventricle; and between the optic commissure and the inner end of each Sylvian fissure is a grey spot perforated by small arteries, the locus perforatus anticus.

If a transverse section is made at right angles to the surface of the crura cerebri it will pass right through the mesencephalon and come out on the dorsal side through the corpora quadrigemina (see fig. 8). The ventral part of each crus forms the crusta, which is the continuation forward of the anterior pyramidal fibres of the medulla and pons, and is the great motor path from the brain to the cord. Dorsal to this is a layer of pigmented grey matter, called the substantia nigra, and dorsal to this again is the tegmentum, which is a continuation upward of the formatio reticularis of the medulla, and passing through it are seen three important nerve bundles. The superior cerebellar peduncle is the most internal of these and decussates with its fellow of the opposite side so that the two tegmenta are continuous across the middle line. More externally the mesial fillet is seen, while dorsal to the cerebellar peduncle is the posterior longitudinal bundle. If the section happens to pass through the superior corpus quadrigeminum a characteristic circular area appears between the cerebellar peduncle and the fillet, which, from its tint, is called the red nucleus. More dorsally still the section will pass through the Sylvian aqueduct or passage from the third to the fourth ventricle, and this is surrounded by a mass of grey matter in the ventral part of which are the nuclei of the third and fourth nerves. The third nerve is seen at the level of the superior corpus quadrigeminum running from its nucleus of origin, through the red nucleus, to a groove on the inner side of the crus called the oculo-motor groove, which marks the separation between the crusta and tegmentum. Dorsal to the Sylvian aqueduct is a layer called the lamina quadrigemina and on this the corpora quadrigemina rest. The superior pair of these bodies is overlapped by the pineal body and forms part of the lower visual centres. Connexions can be traced to the optic tract, the higher visual centre on the mesial surface of the occipital lobe, the deep origin of the third or oculo-motor nerve as well as to the mesial and lateral fillet. The inferior pair of quadrigeminal bodies are more closely in touch with the organs of hearing, and are connected by the lateral fillet with the cochlear nucleus of the auditory nerve.

Surface of the Brain.

The peripheral part of each hemisphere, which consists of grey matter, exhibits a characteristic folded appearance, known as gyri (or convolutions) of the cerebrum. These gyri are separated from each other by fissures and sulci, some of which are considered to subdivide the hemisphere into lobes, whilst others separate the gyri in each lobe from each other. In each hemisphere of the human brain five lobes are recognized: the temporo-sphenoidal, frontal, parietal, occipital, and the central lobe or Island of Reil; it should, however, be realized that these lobes do not exactly correspond to the outlines of the bones after which they are named. Passing obliquely on the outer face of the hemisphere from before, upward and backward, is the well marked Sylvian fissure (fig. 9, s), which is the first to appear in the development of the hemisphere. Below it lies the temporo-sphenoidal lobe, and above and in front of it, the parietal and frontal lobes. As soon as it appears on the external surface of the brain the fissure divides into three limbs, anterior horizontal (s1), ascending (s2), and posterior horizontal (s3), the latter being by far the longest. The place whence these diverge is the Sylvian point and corresponds to the pterion on the surface of the skull (see [Anatomy]: Superficial and Artistic). Between these three limbs and the vallecula or main stem of the fissure are four triangular tongues or opercula; these are named, according to their position, orbital (fig. 9, C), frontal (pars triangularis) (B), fronto-parietal (pars basilaris) (A) and temporal. The frontal lobe is separated from the parietal by the fissure of Rolando (fig. 9, r) which extends on the outer face of the hemisphere from the longitudinal fissure obliquely downward and forward towards the Sylvian fissure. About 2 in. from the hinder end of the hemisphere is the parieto-occipital fissure, which, commencing at the longitudinal fissure, passes down the inner surface of the hemisphere, and transversely outwards for a short distance on the outer surface of the hemisphere; it separates the parietal and occipital lobes from each other.

From Cunningham, Text-book of Anatomy. Fig. 9.—Gyri and Sulci, on the outer surface of the Cerebral Hemisphere.
f1, Sulcus frontalis superior. f2, Sulcus frontalis inferior. f.m, Sulcus frontalis medius. p.m, Sulcus paramedialis. A, Pars basilaris. B, Pars triangularis. C, Pars orbitalis. S, Sylvian fissure. s1, Anterior horizontal limb (Sylvian fissure). s2, Ascending limb (Sylvian fissure). s3. Posterior horizontal limb (Sylvian fissure). s.asc, Ascending terminal part of the posterior horizontal limb of the Sylvianfissure. p.c.i, Inferior praecentral sulcus. p.c.s, Superior praecentral sulcus.	r, Fissure of Rolando. g.s, Superior genu. g.i, Inferior genu. d, Sulcus diagonalis. t1, Superior temporal sulcus (parallel sulcus). t2, Inferior temporal sulcus. p1, Inferior postcentral sulcus. p2, Superior postcentral sulcus. p3, Ramus horizontalis. p4, Ramus occipitalis. s.o.t, Sulcus occipitalis transversus. occ. lat, Sulcus occipitalis lateralis (the sulcus lunatus of Elliot Smith). c.m, Calloso-marginal sulcus. c.t.r, Inferior transverse furrow.

The Temporo-Sphenoidal Lobe presents on the outer surface of the hemisphere three convolutions, arranged in parallel tiers from above downward, and named superior, middle and inferior temporal gyri. The fissure which separates the superior and middle of these convolutions is called the parallel fissure (fig. 9, t1). The Occipital Lobe also consists from above downwards of three parallel gyri, named superior, middle and inferior occipital. The Frontal Lobe is more complex; immediately in front of the fissure of Rolando, and forming indeed its anterior boundary, is a convolution named ascending frontal or pre-central, which ascends obliquely backward and upward from the Sylvian to the longitudinal fissure. Springing from the front of this gyrus, and passing forward to the anterior end of the cerebrum, are three gyri, arranged in parallel tiers from above downwards, and named superior, middle and inferior frontal gyri, which are also prolonged on to the orbital face of the frontal lobe. The Parietal Lobe is also complex; its most anterior gyrus, named ascending parietal or post-central, ascends parallel to and immediately behind the fissure of Rolando. Springing from the upper end of the back of this gyrus is the supra-parietal lobule, which, forming the boundary of the longitudinal fissure, extends as far back as the parieto-occipital fissure; springing from the lower end of the back of this gyrus is the supra-marginal, which forms the upper boundary of the hinder part of the Sylvian fissure; as this gyrus occupies the hollow in the parietal bone, which corresponds to the eminence, it may appropriately be named the gyrus of the parietal eminence. Above and behind the gyrus of the parietal eminence is the angular gyrus, which bends round the posterior extremity of the parallel fissure, while arching over the hinder end of the inferior temporo-sphenoidal sulcus is the post-parietal gyrus. Lying in the parietal lobe is the intra-parietal fissure (fig. 9, p3 and p4), which separates the gyrus of the parietal eminence from the supra-parietal lobule.

The Central Lobe of the hemisphere, more usually called the insula or island of Reil, does not come to the surface of the hemisphere, but lies deeply within the Sylvian fissure, the opercula forming the margin of which, conceal it. It consists of four or five short gyri, which radiate from the locus perforatus anticus, situated at the inner end of the fissure. This lobe is almost entirely surrounded by a deep sulcus called the limiting sulcus of Reil, which insulates it from the adjacent gyri. It lies opposite the upper part of the ali-sphenoid, where it articulates with the parietal and squamous-temporal.

In front of the central lobe, on the base of the brain, are the orbital gyri, which are separated from one another by the orbital sulcus. This is usually H-shaped, and the gyri are therefore anterior, posterior, external and internal. Bisecting the internal orbital gyrus is an antero-posteripr sulcus (s. rectus), beneath which lies the olfactory lobe, bulbous in front, for the olfactory nerves to arise from.

On the mesial surface of the hemisphere, as seen when the brain is longitudinally bisected and the cerebellum and medulla removed by cutting through the crus cerebri (see fig. 11), the divided corpus callosum is the most central object, while below it are seen the fornix, septum lucidum and third ventricle, the description of which will follow. The cerebral surface, above and in front of the corpus callosum, is divided into two by a sulcus, the contour of which closely resembles that of the upper margin of the corpus callosum. This is the calloso-marginal sulcus, so called because it separates the callosal gyrus, which lies between it and the corpus callosum, from the marginal gyri nearer the margin of the brain. When the sulcus reaches a point vertically above the hind end of the corpus callosum it turns sharply upward and so forms the hinder limit of the marginal gyri, the posterior inch or two of which is more or less distinctly marked off to form the paracentral lobule, where the upper part of the central fissure of Rolando turns over the margin of the brain. The callosal gyrus, which is also called the gyrus fornicatus from its arched appearance, is continued backward round the posterior end of the corpus callosum, and so to the mesial surface of the temporal lobe. Behind the upturned end of the calloso-marginal sulcus there is a square area which is called the precuneus or quadrate lobe; it is bounded behind by the deeply cut internal parieto-occipital fissure and this runs from the margin of the brain downward and forward to join another fissure, the calcarine, at an acute angle, thus enclosing a wedge-shaped piece of brain called the cuneus between them. The calcarine fissure is fairly horizontal, and is joined about its middle by the internal parieto-occipital, so that the part in front of the junction is called the pre-calcarine, and that behind the post-calcarine fissure. The internal parieto-occipital and calcarine are real fissures, because they cause an elevation in the interior of the brain, known as the hippocampus minor. Just in front of the anterior end of the calcarine fissure the callosal gyrus is constricted to form the isthmus which connects it with the hippocampal or uncinate gyrus. Below the calcarine fissure is a gyrus called the gyrus lingualis, and this is bounded below by another true fissure, the collateral, which runs parallel to the calcarine, but is continued much farther forward into the temporal lobe and so forms the lower boundary of the hippocampal gyrus. It will thus be seen that the hippocampal gyrus is continuous posteriorly with the callosal gyrus above by means of the isthmus, and with the gyrus lingualis below. The hippocampal gyrus is bounded above by the dentate or hippocampal fissure which causes the hippocampus major in the descending cornu and so is a complete fissure. If its lips are separated the fascia dentata or gyrus dentatus and the fimbria continued from the posterior pillar of the fornix are seen. Anteriorly the fissure is arrested by the recurved process of the upper part of the hippocampal gyrus, called the uncus, and in front of this a slight sulcus, the incisura temporalis, marks off the temporal pole or tip of the temporal lobe from the region of the uncus. It will be seen that the callosal gyrus, isthmus, and hippocampal gyrus form nearly a complete ring, and to this the name of limbic lobe is given.

Interior of the Cerebrum.

If a horizontal slice be removed from the upper part of each hemisphere (see fig. 12), the peripheral grey matter of the gyri will be seen to follow their various windings, whilst the core of each gyrus consists of white matter continuous with a mass of white matter in the interior of the hemisphere. If a deeper slice be now made down to the plane of the corpus callosum, the white matter of that structure will be seen to be continuous with the white centre of each hemisphere known as the centrum ovale. The corpus callosum does not equal the hemispheres in length, but approaches nearer to their anterior than their posterior ends. It terminates behind in a free rounded end, named the splenium (see fig. 11), whilst in front it forms a knee-shaped bend, and passes downwards and backwards as far as the lamina cinerea. If the dissection be performed on a brain which has been hardened in spirit, the corpus callosum is seen to consist almost entirely of bundles of nerve fibres, passing transversely across the mesial plane between the two hemispheres; these fibres may be traced into the white cores and grey matter of the gyri, and connect the gyri, though by no means always corresponding ones, in the opposite hemispheres. Hence the corpus callosum is a connecting or commissural structure, which brings the gyri of the two hemispheres into anatomical and physiological relation with each other. On the surface of the corpus callosum a few fibres, the striae longitudinales, run in the antero-posterior or longitudinal direction (see fig. 12, b). Their morphological interest is referred to in the section below on Comparative Anatomy. In the sulcus between the corpus callosum and the limbic lobe a narrow band of fibres called the cingulum is seen, most of its fibres only run a short distance in it and link together adjacent parts of the brain. If the corpus callosum be now cut through on each side of its mesial line, the large cavity or lateral ventricle in each hemisphere will be opened into.

The lateral ventricle is subdivided into a central space or body, and three bent prolongations or cornua; the anterior cornu extends forward, outward and downward into the frontal lobe; the posterior cornu curves backward, outward and inward into the occipital lobe; the descending cornu curves backward, outward, downward, forward and inward, behind and below the optic thalamus into the temporo-sphenoidal lobe. On the floor of the central space may be seen from before backward the grey upper surface of the pear-shaped caudate nucleus of the corpus striatum (figs. 12 and 13, f), and to its inner and posterior part a small portion of the optic thalamus, whilst between the two is the curved flat band, the taenia semicircularis (figs. 12 and 13, g). Resting on the upper surface of the thalamus is the vascular fringe of the velum interpositum, named choroid plexus, and immediately internal to this fringe is the free edge of the white posterior pillar of the fornix. The anterior cornu has the anterior end of the corpus striatum projecting into it. The posterior cornu has an elevation on its floor, the hippocampus minor (fig. 12, n), and between this cornu and the descending cornu is the elevation called eminentia collateralis, formed by the collateral fissure (fig. 12, o).

Fig. 12.—To show the Right Ventricle and the left half of theCorpus Callosum.
a, Transverse fibres, and b, Longitudinal fibres of corpus callosum. c, Anterior, and d, Posterior cornua of lateral ventricle. e, Septum lucidum. f, Corpus striatum.	g, Taenia semicircularis. h, Optic thalamus. k, Choroid plexus. l, Taenia hippocampi. m, Hippocampus major. n, Hippocampus minor. o, Eminentia collateralis.

Extending down the descending cornu and following its curvature is the hippocampus major, which terminates below in a nodular end, the pes hippocampi; on its inner border is the white taenia hippocampi, continuous above with the posterior pillar of the fornix. If the taenia be drawn to one side the hippocampal fissure is exposed, at the bottom of which the grey matter of the gyrus hippocampi may be seen to form a well-defined dentated border (the so-called fascia dentala). The choroid plexus of the pia mater turns round the gyrus hippocampi, and enters the descending cornu through the lateral part of the great transverse fissure between the taenia hippocampi and optic thalamus. The lateral ventricle is lined by a ciliated epithelium called the ependyma. This lining is continuous through the foramen of Monro with that of the third ventricle, which again is continuous with the lining of the fourth ventricle through the aqueduct of Sylvius. A little fluid is contained in the cerebral ventricles, which, under some pathological conditions, may increase greatly in quantity, so as to occasion considerable dilatation of the ventricular cavities.

If the corpus callosum be now divided about its middle by a transverse incision, and the posterior half of this structure be turned back (see fig. 13), the body of the fornix on which the corpus callosum rests is exposed. If the anterior half of the corpus callosum be now turned forward, the grey partition, or septum lucidum, between the two lateral ventricles is exposed. This septum fits into the interval between the under surface of the corpus callosum and the upper surface of the anterior part of the fornix. It consists of two layers of grey matter, between which is a narrow vertical mesial space, the fifth ventricle (fig. 13, e), and this space does not communicate with the other ventricles nor is it lined with ependyma. If the septum be now removed, the anterior part of the fornix is brought into view.

The fornix is an arch-shaped band of nerve fibres extending in the antero-posterior direction. Its anterior end forms the anterior pillars of the arch, its posterior end the posterior pillars, whilst the intermediate body of the fornix forms the crown of the arch. It consists of two lateral halves, one belonging to each hemisphere. At the summit of the arch the two lateral halves are joined to form the body; but in front the two halves separate from each other, and form two anterior pillars, which descend in front of the third ventricle to the base of the cerebrum, where they form the corpora albicantia, and from these some white fibres called the bundle of Vicq d’Azyr ascend to the optic thalamus (see fig. 11). Behind the body the two halves diverge much more from each other, and form the posterior pillars, in the triangular interval between which is a thin lamina of commissural fibres called the lyra (fig. 13, a). Each posterior pillar curves downward and outward into the descending cornu of the ventricle, and, under the name of taenia hippocampi, forms the mesial free border of the hippocampus major (fig. 13, l). Eventually it ends in the substance of the hippocampus and in the uncus of the temporal lobe. If the body of the fornix be now divided by a transverse incision, its anterior part thrown forward, and its posterior part backward, the great transverse fissure of the cerebrum is opened into, and the velum interpositum lying in that fissure is exposed.

The velum interpositum is an expanded fold of pia mater, which passes into the anterior of the hemispheres through the great transverse fissure. It is triangular in shape; its base is a line with the posterior end of the corpus callosum, where it is continuous with the external pia mater; its lateral margins are fringed by the choroid plexuses, which are seen in the bodies and descending cornua of the lateral ventricles, where they are invested by the endothelial lining of those cavities. Its apex, where the two choroid plexuses blend with each other, lies just behind the anterior pillars of the fornix. The interval between the apex and these pillars is the aperture of communication between the two lateral ventricles and the third, already referred to as the foramen of Monro. The choroid plexuses contain the small choroidal arteries; and the blood from these is returned by small veins, which join to form the veins of Galen. These veins pass along the centre of the velum, and, as is shown in fig. 1, open into the straight sinus. If the velum interpositum be now carefully raised from before backward, the optic thalami, third ventricle, pineal body and corpora quadrigemina are exposed.

Fig. 13.—A deeper dissection of the Lateral Ventricle, and of theVelum Interpositum.
a, Lyra, turned back. b, b, Posterior pillars of the fornix, turned back. c, c, Anterior pillars of the fornix. d, Velum interpositum and veins of Galen. e, Fifth ventricle. f, f, Corpus striatum.	g, g, Taenia semicircularis. h, h, Optic thalamus. k, Choroid plexus. l, Taenia hippocampi. m, Hippocampus major in descending cornu. n, Hippocampus minor. o, Eminentia collateralis.

The optic thalamus is a large, somewhat ovoid body situated behind the corpus striatum, and above the crus cerebri. Its upper surface is partly seen in the floor of the body of the lateral ventricle, but is for the most part covered by the fornix and velum interpositum. Its postero-inferior surface forms the roof of the descending cornu of the ventricle, whilst its inner surface forms the side wall of the third ventricle. At its outer and posterior part are two slight elevations, in close relation to the optic tract, and named respectively corpus geniculatum internum and externum.

The posterior knob-like extremity of the thalamus is called the pulvinar; this, as well as the two corpora geniculata and the superior corpus quadrigeminum, is connected with the optic tract.

The third ventricle (see fig. 6) is a cavity situated in the mesial plane between the two optic thalami. Its roof is formed by the velum interpositum and body of the fornix; its floor by the posterior perforated space, corpora albicantia, tuber cinereum, infundibulum, and optic commissure; its anterior boundary by the anterior pillars of the fornix, anterior commissure and lamina cinerea; its posterior boundary by the corpora quadrigemina and posterior commissure. The cavity of this ventricle is of small size in the living head, for the inner surfaces of the two thalami are connected together by intermediate grey matter, named the middle or soft commissure. Immediately in front of the corpora quadrigemina, the white fibres of the posterior commissure pass across between the two optic thalami. If the anterior pillars of the fornix be separated from each other, the white fibres of the anterior commissure may be seen lying in front of them.

The pineal body is a reddish cone-shaped body situated upon the anterior pair of the corpora quadrigemina (see figs. 3 and 6). From its broad anterior end two white bands, the peduncles of the pineal body, pass forward, one on the inner side of each optic thalamus. Each peduncle joins, along with the taenia semicircularis, the anterior pillar of the fornix of its own side. In its structure this body consists of tubular gland tissue containing gritty calcareous particles, constituting the brain sand. Its morphology will be referred to later.

A general idea of the internal structure of the brain is best obtained by studying a horizontal section made just below the level of the Sylvian point and just above the great transverse fissure (see fig. 14). Such a section will cut the corpus callosum anteriorly at the genu and posteriorly at the splenium, but the body is above the plane of section. Behind the genu the fifth ventricle is cut, and behind that the two pillars of the fornix which here form the anterior boundary of the third ventricle. At the posterior end of this is the pineal body, which the section has just escaped. To the outer side of the fornix is seen the foramen of Munro, leading into the front of the body and anterior horn of the lateral ventricle. It will be seen that the lateral boundary of this horn is the cut caudate nucleus of the corpus striatum, while the lateral boundary of the third ventricle is the cut optic thalamus, both of which bodies have been already described, but external to these is a third triangular grey mass, with its apex directed inward, which cannot be seen except in a section. This is the lenticular nucleus of the corpus striatum, the inner or apical half of which is of a light colour and is called the globus pallidus, while the basal half is reader and is known as the putamen. External to the putamen is a long narrow strip of grey matter called the claustrum, which is sometimes regarded as a third nucleus of the corpus striatum. These masses of grey matter, taken together, are the basal nuclei of the brain. Internal to the lenticular nucleus, and between it and the caudate nucleus in front and the thalamus behind, is the internal capsule, through which run most of the fibres connecting the cerebral cortex with the crus cerebri. The capsule adapts itself to the contour of the lenticular nucleus and has an anterior limb, a bend or genu, and a posterior limb. Just behind the genu of the internal capsule is a very important region, for here the great motor tract from the Rolandic region of the cortex passes on its way to the crusta and spinal cord. Besides this there are fibres passing from the cortex to the deep origins of the facial and hypo-glossal nerves. Behind the motor tracts are the sensory, including the fillet, the superior cerebellar peduncle and the inferior quadrigeminal tract, while quite at the back of the capsule are found the auditory and optic radiations linking up the higher (cortical) and lower auditory and visual centres. Between the putamen and the claustrum is the external capsule, which is smaller and of less importance than the internal, while on the lateral side of the claustrum is the white and then the grey matter of the central lobe. As the fibres of the internal capsule run up toward the cortex they decussate with the transverse fibres of the corpus callosum and spread out to form the corona radiata. It has only been possible to deal with a few of the more important bundles of fibres here, but it should be mentioned that much of the white matter of the brain is formed of association fibres which link up different cortical areas, and which become medullated and functional after birth.

Weight of the Brain.

This has been the subject of a great deal of research, but the results are not altogether conclusive; it seems, however, that, although the male brain is 4 to 5 oz. heavier than that of the female, its relative weight to that of the body is about the same in the two sexes. An average male brain weighs about 48 oz. and a female 43½ oz. The greatest absolute weight is found between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age in the male and a little later in the female. At birth the brain weighs comparatively much more than it does later on, its proportion to the body weight being about 1 to 6. At the tenth year it is about 1 to 14, at the twentieth 1 to 30, and after that about 1 to 36.5. In old age there is a further slight decrease in proportion. In many men of great intellectual eminence the brain weight has been large—Cuvier’s brain weighed 64½ oz., Goodsir’s 57½, for instance—but the exceptions are numerous. Brains over 60 oz. in weight are frequently found in quite undistinguished people, and even in idiots 60 oz. has been recorded. On the other hand, microcephalic idiots may have a brain as low as 10 or even 8½ oz., but it is doubtful whether normal intelligence is possible with a brain weighing less than 32 oz. The taller the individual the greater is his brain weight, but short people have proportionally heavier brains than tall. The weight of the cerebellum is usually one-eighth of that of the entire brain. Attempts have been made to estimate the surface area of the grey matter by dissecting it off and measuring it, and also by covering it with gold leaf and measuring that. The results, however, have not been conclusive.

Further details of the brain, abundantly illustrated, will be found in the later editions of any of the standard text-books on anatomy, references to which will be found in the article on [Anatomy]: Modern Human. Das Menschenhirn, by G. Retzius (Stockholm, 1896), and numerous recent memoirs by G. Elliot Smith and D.J. Cunningham in the Journ. Anat. and Phys. and Anatomisch Anzeig., may be consulted.

Histology of Cerebral Cortex.

The cerebral cortex (see fig. 15) consists of a continuous sheet of grey matter completely enveloping the white matter of the hemispheres. It varies in thickness in different parts, and becomes thinner in old age, but all parts show a somewhat similar microscopic structure. Thus, in vertical section, the following layers may be made out:—

1. The Molecular Layer (Stratum zonale).—This is made up of a large number of fine nerve branchings both medullated and non-medullated. The whole forms a close network, the fibres of which run chiefly a tangential course. The cells of this layer are the so-called cells of Cajal. They possess an irregular body, giving off 4 or 5 dendrites, which terminate within the molecular layer and a long nerve fibre process or neuraxon which runs parallel to the surface of the convolution.

2. The Layer of small Pyramidal Cells.—The typical cells of this layer are pyramid-shaped, the apices of the pyramids being directed towards the surface. The apex terminates in a dendron which reaches into the molecular layer, giving off several collateral horizontal branches in its course. The final branches in the molecular layer take a direction parallel to the surface. Smaller dendrites arise from the lateral and basal surfaces of these cells, but do not extend far from the body of the cell. The neuraxon always arises from the base of the cell and passes towards the central white matter, thus forming one of the nerve-fibres of that substance. In its path it gives off a number of collaterals at right angles, which are distributed to the adjacent grey matter.

From Cunningham, Text-book of Anatomy. Fig. 15.—Diagram to illustrate Minute Structure of the Cerebral Cortex.
A. Neuroglia cells. B.    ”    ” C. Cell with short axon (N) which breaks up in a free arborization. D. Spindle-shaped cell in stratum zonale.	E. Small pyramidal cell. F. Large pyramidal cell. G. Cell of Martinotti. H. Polymorphic cell. K. Corticipetal fibres.

3. The Layer of large Pyramidal Cells.—This is characterized by the presence of numbers of cells of the same type as those of the preceding layer, but of larger size. The nerve-fibre process becomes a medullated fibre of the white matter.

4. The Layer of Polymorphous Cells.—The cells of this layer are irregular in outline, and give off several dendrites branching into the surrounding grey matter. The neuraxon gives off a number of collaterals, and then becomes a nerve-fibre of the central white matter.

Scattered through these three layers there are also a number of cells (cells of Golgi) whose neuraxon divides at once, the divisions terminating within the immediate vicinity of the cell-body. Some cells are also found in which the neuraxon, instead of running into the white matter of the brain, passes toward the surface; these are called cells of Martinotti.

The medullated nerve-fibres of the white matter when traced into the cortex are seen to enter in bundles set vertically to the surface. These bundles taper and are resolved into isolated fibres in the upper parts of the pyramidal layers. The fibres constituting the bundles form two sets. (a) The centrifugal fibres consist as above described of the fibre processes of the pyramidal and polymorphous cells. (b) The centripetal fibres ascend through the cortex to terminate within the molecular layer by horizontally running branches. As they pass through they give off a number of collaterals. The position of the cells from which these fibres arise is not known. In addition to the radially arranged bundles of fibres, networks are formed by the interlacement with them of large numbers of fine medullated fibres running tangentially to the surface. These are derived chiefly from the collaterals of the pyramidal cells and of the centripetal fibres. They form two specially marked bundles, one within the layer of the polymorphous cells known as the inner band of Baillarger, and another in the layer of large pyramidal cells called the outer band of Baillarger. This latter is very thick in the calcarine region, and forms the white stria of Gennin, while the inner band is best seen in the precentral gyrus. As both these strands cross the already mentioned radial bundles at right angles, they are regarded as specialized parts of an interradial reticulum of fibres, but, nearer the surface than the radial bundles penetrate, tangential fibres are found, and here they are called the supraradial reticulum. In certain parts of the brain the fibres of this reticulum are more closely set, and form the band of Bechterew in the superficial part of the small pyramidal cell zone.

For further information on the structure of the cerebral cortex, see A.W. Campbell, Proc. R. Soc. vols. lxxii. and lxxiv.

Comparative Anatomy.

A useful introduction to the study of the vertebrate brain is that of the Amphioxus, one of the lowest of the Chordata or animals having a notochord. Here the brain is a very slightly modified part of the dorsal tubular nerve-cord, and, on the surface, shows no distinction from the rest of that cord. When a section is made the central canal is seen to be enlarged into a cavity, the neurocoele, which, in the young animal, communicates by an opening, the neuropore, with the bottom of the olfactory pit, and so with the exterior. More ventrally another slight diverticulum probably represents the infundibulum. The only trace of an eye is a patch of pigment at the anterior end of the brain, and there are no signs of any auditory apparatus. There are only two pairs of cerebral nerves, both of which are sensory (Willey, Amphioxus, 1894). In the Cyclostomata, of which the lamprey (Petromyzon) is an example, the minute brain is much more complex, though it is still only a very slight enlargement of the anterior end of the cord. The single cavity seen in Amphioxus is here subdivided into three: an anterior or prosencephalon, a middle or mesencephalon, and a hinder or rhombencephalon. The rhombencephalon has a very slight transverse thickening in the fore-part of its roof, this is the rudimentary cerebellum (Cer.); the rest of this part of the brain is taken up by the large medulla, the cavity of which is the fossa rhomboidalis or fourth ventricle. This fossa is roofed over by the epithelium lining the cavity of the ventricle, by pia mater and blood-vessels constituting a choroid plexus (fig. 16, B). The fourth ventricle communicates with the parts in front by means of a passage known as the aqueduct of Sylvius.

The mesencephalon or mid-brain, when looked at from the dorsal surface, shows a pair of large hollow swellings, the optic lobes or corpora bigemina. Their cavities open out from the aqueduct of Sylvius, and from the nervous tissue in their walls the optic nerves derive their fibres. From the front of the prosencephalon or anterior vesicle the olfactory nerves come off, and at the base of each of these are two hollow swellings; the larger and more anterior is the olfactory bulb, the smaller and more posterior the cerebral hemisphere. Both these swellings must be regarded as lateral outgrowths from the blind front end of the original single vesicle of the brain as seen in Amphioxus, and from the anterior subdivision or prosencephalon in the lamprey. The anterior vesicle, however, is now again subdivided, and that part from which the cerebral hemispheres bud out, and the hemispheres themselves, is called the telencephalon, while the posterior part of the original prosencephalon is known as the thalamencephalon, or more rarely the diencephalon. On the dorsal surface of the thalamencephalon are two nervous masses called the ganglia habenulae; the right is much larger than the left, and from it a stalk runs forward and upward to end in the vestigial pineal body (or epiphysis), which contains rudiments of a pigmented retina and of a lens, and which is usually regarded as the remains of one of a pair of median eyes, though it has been suggested that it may be an organ for the appreciation of temperature. From the small left ganglion habenulae a still more rudimentary pineal stalk projects, and there are signs of a third outgrowth (paraphysis) in front of these. On the floor of the thalamencephalon the blind pouch-like infundibulum is in contact with the pituitary body, an outgrowth from the combined pituitary and olfactory pouch, which in the adult opens on to the top of the head just in front of the pineal area. The anterior closed end of the nerve-tube, in front of the foramina of Munro or openings from which the hemispheres have grown out, is known as the lamina terminalis, and in this is seen a little white commissure, connecting the hemispheres of opposite sides and belonging entirely to the telencephalon, known as the anterior commissure. The roof of the telencephalon is mainly epithelial, and contains no traces of cortical structure. In the posterior part of the roof of the thalamencephalon is the small posterior commissure (Ahlborn, Zeits. wiss. Zool. Bd. xxxix., 1883, p. 191). In the Elasmobranch Fish, such as the sharks and rays, the cerebellum (Cer. fig. 17) is very large and contains the layers found in all the higher vertebrates. In the mesencephalon fibres corresponding with those of the fillet of higher vertebrates can be seen, and there is a nucleus in the hinder part of the corpora bigemina foreshadowing the separation into corpora quadrigemina. There is only one pineal stalk in the roof of the thalamencephalon, and the ganglia habenulae—very constant structures in the vertebrate brain—are not so marked as in Petromyzon, but are, as usual, connected with the olfactory parts of the cerebrum, with the surface of the optic lobes (tectum opticum), and with the corpus interpedunculare (Meynert’s bundle). They are united across the middle line by a small superior or habenular commissure. In the floor of the thalamencephalon are two masses of ganglionic tissue, the optic thalami. The infundibulum dilates into two rounded bodies, the lobi inferiores, while the pituitary body or hypophysis cerebri has two lateral diverticula known as sacci vasculosi. Ganglia geniculata are found for the first time in connexion with the optic tracts in the lower part of the thalamus. The olfactory lobes (fig. 17, Olf. Bulb) are very large and often separated by long stalks from the cerebral hemispheres, which are comparatively much larger than those of the Cyclostomata; their roof or pallium is nervous, but devoid of cortical structure, while in the floor in some species large anterior basal ganglia or corpora striata are found (Miklucho-Maclay, Beiträge z. vergl. Neurol., 1870; Edinger, Arch. mikr. Anat. Bd. lviii., 1901, p. 661, “Cerebellum”). The Teleostean Fish are chiefly remarkable for the great development of the optic lobes and suppression of the olfactory apparatus. The pallium is non-nervous, and the optic tracts merely cross one another instead of forming a commissure. A process of the cerebellum called valvula cerebelli projects into the cavity of each optic lobe (Rabl. Ruckhard, Arch. Anat. u. Phys., 1898, p. 345 [Pallium]; Haller, Morph. Jahrb. Bd. xxvi., 1898, p. 632 [Histology and Bibliography]). The brain of the Dipnoi, or mud fish, shows no very important developments, except that the anterior pineal organ or paraphysis is large (Saunders, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 6, vol. iii., 1889, p. 157; Burkhardt, Centralnervensystem v. Protopterus, Berlin, 1892).

In the Amphibia the brain is of a low type, the most marked advances on that of the fish being that the anterior commissure is divided into a dorsal and ventral part, of which the ventral is the true anterior commissure of higher vertebrates, while the dorsal is a hippocampal commissure and coincides in its appearance with the presence of a small mass of cells in the outer layer of the median wall of the pallium, which is probably the first indication of a hippocampal cortex or cortex of any kind (Osborn, Journ. Morph. vol. ii., 1889, p. 51).

In the Reptilia the medulla has a marked flexure with a ventral convexity, and an undoubted cerebral cortex for the first time makes its appearance. The mesial wall of the cerebral hemisphere is divided into a large dorsal hippocampal area (fig. 18, Hip.) and a smaller ventral olfactory tubercle. Between these two a narrow area of ganglionic matter runs forward from the side of the lamina terminalis and is known as the paraterminal or precommissural area (Elliot Smith, Journ. Anat. and Phys. vol. xxxii. p. 411). To the upper lateral part of the hemisphere Elliot Smith has given the name of neopallium, while the lower lateral part, imperfectly separated from it, is called the pyriform lobe. In the Lacertilia the pineal eye, if it be an eye, is better developed than in any existing vertebrate, though even in them there is no evidence of its being used for sight. Behind the so-called pineal eye and its stalk is the epiphysis or pineal body, and sometimes there is a dorsal sac between them (see fig. 18).[1] The middle or soft commissure appears in certain reptiles (Crocodilia and Chelonia), as does also the corpus mammillare (Edinger, Senckenberg, Naturf. Gesell. Bd. xix., 1896, and Bd. xxii., 1899; Haller, Morph. Jahrb. Bd. xxviii., 1900, p. 252). Among the birds there is great unity of type, the cerebellum is large and, by its forward projection, presses the optic lobes down toward the ventro-lateral part of the brain. The cerebral hemispheres are also large, owing chiefly to the great size of the corpora striata, which already show a differentiation into caudate nucleus, putamen and globus pallidus. The pallium is reptilian in character, though its cortical area is more extensive. The geniculate bodies are very large (Bumm, Zeits. wiss. Zool. Bd. xxxviii., 1883, p. 430; Brandis, Arch. mikr. Anat. Bd. xli., 1893, p. 623, and xliii., 1894, p. 96, and xliv., 1895, p. 534; Boyce and Warrington, Phil. Trans. vol. cxci., 1899, p. 293).

Among the Mammalia the Monotremata have a cerebellum which shows, in addition to the central lobe of the lower vertebrates, a flocculus on each side, and the two halves of the cerebellum are united by a ventral commissure, the pons varolii. The pallium is reptilian in its arrangement, but that part of it which Elliot Smith has named the neopallium is very large, both in the Ornithorynchus and Echidna, a fact very difficult to account for. In the latter animal the cortical area is so extensive as to be thrown into many and deep sulci, and yet the Echidna is one of the lowliest of mammals in other respects. A well-marked rhinal fissure separates the pyriform lobe from the neopallium, while, on the mesial surface, the hippocampal fissure separates the neopallium from the hippocampal area. Just below the hippocampal fissure a specially coloured tract indicates the first appearance of the fascia dentata (see fig. 20). The anterior commissure is divided, as in reptiles, into dorsal and ventral parts, of which the latter is the larger (fig. 20, Comm. V. and D.), while just behind the dorsal part is the first appearance of the fimbria or fornix. In addition to the two fissures already named, there is, in the Echidna, one which in position and mode of formation corresponds with the Sylvian fissure of higher mammals. Elliot Smith, however, wisely refuses to homologize it absolutely with that fissure, and proposes the name of pseudosylvian for it. The pineal body is rudimentary, and the optic lobes are now, and throughout the Mammalia, subdivided into four corpora quadrigemina.

Among the Marsupialia the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus) gives a very good idea of a generalized mammalian brain, and shows a large development of the parts concerned in the sense of smell. The most important advance on the monotreme brain is that the calcarine fissure has now appeared on the posterior part of the mesial surface and causes a bulging into the ventricle, called the calcar avis or hippocampus minor, just as the hippocampal fissure causes the hippocampus major (Gervais, Nuov. Arch. Mus. tom. v., 1869; Ziehen, Jenaische Denkschr. Bd. vi., 1897).

In the Eutheria or mammals above the marsupials, the cerebellum gradually becomes more complex, owing to the appearance of lateral lobes between the flocculus and the vermis, as well as the paraflocculus on the outer side of the flocculus. The corpus callosum now first appears as a bridge between the neopallia, and its development leads to the stretching of the hippocampal formation, so that in the higher mammals the hippocampus is only found in the lower and back part of the ventricle, while the rudiments of the dorsal part remain as the striae longitudinals on the corpus callosum. The dorsal part of the original anterior commissure becomes the fornix, and the paraterminal area is modified to form the septum lucidum. The first appearance of the fissure of Rolando is probably in some of the Carnivora, in which, as the sulcus crucialis, it forms the posterior boundary of the “ursine lozenge” described by Mivart (Journ. Linn. Soc. vol. xix., 1886) (see fig. 22, Sulc. Cru.). In the higher apes or Anthropoidea the human fissures and sulci are largely recognizable, so that a gibbon’s brain, apart from all question of comparative anatomy, forms a useful means of demonstrating to a junior class the main gyri and sulci of Man in a simple and diagrammatic way. The main points of difference, apart from greater simplicity, are that the central lobe or island of Reil is exposed on the surface of the brain, as it is in the human foetus, and that the anterior part of the occipital lobe has a well-marked vertical sulcus, called the simian sulcus or Affenspalte; this often has a semilunar shape with its convexity forward, and is then called the sulcus lunatus. It is usually concealed in European brains by the overgrowth of the surrounding gyri, but it occasionally remains, though less frequently than in the brains of Egyptian fellaheen. Its relation to the white stria of Gennari is especially interesting, and is recorded by Elliot Smith in the Anatomischer Anzeiger, Bd. xxiv., 1904, p. 436. The rhinal fissure, which is so characteristic a feature of the lower mammals, almost disappears in Man, and is only represented by the incisura temporalis (see fig. 11, i.t). The hippocampal fissure persists with little modification all through the mammalian class. The calcarine fissure remains with many modifications from the marsupials to man, and in view of the famous controversy of 1864, in which Owen, Huxley and the then bishop of Oxford took part, it is interesting to note that its hippocampus minor can now be clearly demonstrated, even in the Marsupialia. Another very ancient and stable sulcus is the orbital, which is a simple antero-posterior line until Man is reached (see fig. 23, Sulc. Orb.). The great point of importance, however, in the evolution of the mammalian brain is the gradual suppression of the olfactory region, and the development of the neopallium, a development which takes a sudden stride between the Anthropoid apes and Man. (For further particulars of this and other points in the comparative anatomy of the brain, see Catalogue of the Physiological Series of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, vol. ii. 2nd ed., by R.H. Burne and G. Elliot Smith, London, 1902.)

Embryology.

The brain, like the rest of the nervous system, is developed from the ectoderm or outer layer of the embryo by the formation of a groove in the mid-dorsal line. The lips of this medullary groove unite to form a canal beginning at the place where the neck of the embryo is to be. The part of the neural canal in front of the earliest union forms the brain and very early becomes constricted into three vesicles, to which the names of prosencephalon, mesencephalon and rhombencephalon are now usually given. The simple tubular brain we have seen as a permanent arrangement in Amphioxus, but the stage of the three vesicles is a transitory one, and is not found in the adult of any existing animal. From the sides of the prosencephalon, the optic vesicles grow out before the neural tube is completely closed, and eventually form the optic nerves and retinae, while, soon after this, the cerebral hemispheres bulge from the antero-dorsal part of the first primary vesicle, their points of evagination being the foramina of Munro. From the ventral parts of these cerebral hemispheres the olfactory lobes are constricted off, while just behind the openings of the foramina of Munro a constriction occurs which divides the prosencephalon into two secondary vesicles, the anterior of which, containing the foramina of Munro, is called the telencephalon, while the posterior is the thalamencephalon or diencephalon. A constriction also occurs in the hind vesicle or rhombencephalon, dividing it into an anterior part, the metencephalon, from which the cerebellum is developed, and a posterior or myelencephalon, the primitive medulla oblongata. At this stage the general resemblance of the brain to that of the lamprey is striking.

Before the secondary constrictions occur three vertical flexures begin to form. The first is known as the cephalic, and is caused by the prosencephalon bending sharply downward, below and in front of the mesencephalon. The second is the cervical, and marks the place where the brain ends and the spinal cord begins; the concavity of this flexure is ventral. The third to appear has a ventral convexity and is known as the pontine, since it marks the site of the future pons Varolii; it resembles the permanent flexure in the reptilian brain.

It will now be seen that the original neural canal, which is lined by ciliated epithelium, forms the ventricles of the brain, while superficial to this epithelium (ependyma) the grey and white matter is subsequently formed. It has been shown by His that the whole neural tube may be divided into dorsal or alar, and ventral or basal laminae, and, as the cerebral hemispheres bud out from the dorsal part of the anterior primary vesicle, they consist entirely of alar laminae. The most characteristic feature of the human and anthropoid brain is the rapid and great expansion of these hemispheres, especially in a backward direction, so that the mesencephalon and metencephalon are hidden by them from above at the seventh month of intra-uterine life. At first the foramina of Munro form a communication not only between the third and lateral ventricles, but between the two lateral ventricles, so that the cavity of each hemisphere is continuous with that of the other; soon, however, a median longitudinal fissure forms, into which the mesoderm grows to form the falx, and so the foramina of Munro are constricted into a V-shaped canal. In the floor of the hemispheres the corpora striata are developed at an early date by a multiplication of nerve cells, and on the external surface a depression, called the Sylvian fossa, marks the position of the future central lobe, which is afterwards hidden as the lips of the fossa (opercula) gradually close in on it to form the Sylvian fissure. The real fissures are complete infoldings of the whole thickness of the vesicular wall and produce swellings in the cavity. Some of them, like the choroidal on the mesial surface, are developed very early, while the vesicle is little more than epithelial, and contain between their walls an inpushing of mesoderm to form the choroid plexus. Others, like the hippocampal and calcarine, appear in the second and third months and correspond to invaginations of the nervous tissue, the hippocampus major and minor. The sulci appear later than the fissures and do not affect the internal cavity; they are due to the rapid growth of the cortex in certain areas. The corpus callosum and fornix appear about the third month and their development is somewhat doubtful; they are probably modifications of the lamina terminalis, but they may be secondary adhesions between the adjacent surfaces of the cerebral hemispheres where the cortical grey matter has not covered the white. They begin at their antero-ventral part near the genu of the corpus callosum and the anterior pillars of the fornix, and these are the parts which first appear in the lower mammals. The original anterior vesicle from which the hemispheres evaginate is composed, as already shown, of an anterior part or telencephalon and a posterior or thalamencephalon; the whole forming the third ventricle in the adult. Here the alar and basal laminae are both found, but the former is the more important; from it the optic thalami are derived, and more posteriorly the geniculate bodies. The anterior wall, of course, is the lamina terminalis, and from it are formed the lamina cinerea, the corpus callosum, fornix and septum lucidum. The roof largely remains epithelial and is invaginated into the ventricle by the mesoderm to form the choroid plexuses of the third ventricle, but at the posterior part it develops the ganglia habenulae and the pineal body, from a structure just in front of which both a lens and retinal elements are derived in the lower forms. This is one great difference between the development of this organ and that of the true eyes; indeed it has been suggested that the pineal is an organ of thermal sense and not the remains of a median eye at all. The floor of the third ventricle is developed from the basal laminae, which here are not very important and from which the tuber cinereum and, until the fourth month, single corpus mammillare are developed. The infundibulum or stalk of the posterior part of the pituitary body at first grows down in front of the tuber cinereum and, according to Gaskel’s theory, represents an ancestral mouth to which the ventricles of the brain and the central canal of the cord acted as the stomach and intestine (Quart. Journ. of Mic. Sci. 31, p. 379; and Journ. of Phys. v. 10, p. 153). The reason why the basal lamina is here small is because it contains the nuclei of no cranial nerves. The anterior and posterior commissures appear before the middle and the middle before the corpus callosum, as they do in phylogeny. In connexion with the thalamencephalon, though not really belonging to it, may be mentioned the anterior lobes of the pituitary body; these begin as an upward diverticulum from the posterior wall of the primitive pharynx or stomatodaeum about the fourth week. This pouch of Rathke, as it is called, becomes nipped off by the developing base of the skull, and its bifid blind end meets and becomes applied to the posterior part of the body, which comes down from the brain. In the mesencephalon the alar laminae form the corpora quadrigemina; these at first are bigeminal and hollow as they are in the lower vertebrates. The basal laminae thicken to form the crura cerebri. In the rhombencephalon the division into basal and alar laminae is better marked than in any other part; there is a definite groove inside the fourth ventricle, which remains in the adult as the superior and inferior fovea and which marks the separation between the two laminae. In the basal laminae are found the deep origins of most of the motor cranial nerves, while those of the sensory are situated in the alar laminae. The roof of the fourth ventricle widens out very much and remains largely epithelial as the superior and inferior medullary vela. The cerebellum develops in the anterior part of the roof of the rhombencephalon as two lateral rudiments which unite in the mid line and so form a transverse bar similar to that seen in the adult lamprey; at the end of the second month the flocculus and paraflocculus become marked, and later on a series of transverse fissures occur dividing the various lobes. Of the cerebellar peduncles the inferior develops first (third month), then the middle forming the pons (fourth month), and lastly the superior (fifth month) (Elliot Smith, Review of Neurology and Psychiatry, October 1903; W. Kuithan, “Die Entwicklung des Kleinhirns bei Säugetieren,” Munchener Med. Abhandl., 1895; B. Stroud, “Mammalian cerebellum,” Journ. of Comp. Neurology, 1895). Much of our knowledge of the tracts of fibres in the brain is due to the fact that they acquire their white sheaths at different stages of development, some long after birth.

For further details and references see Quain’s Anat. vol. i. (1908); Minot’s Human Embryology (New York); W. His, Anat. menschlicher Embryonen (Leipzig, 1881); Marshall’s Vertebrate Embryology; Kölliker, Grundriss der Entwickelungsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1880); A. Keith, Human Embryology and Morphology (London, 1904); O. Hertwig, Handbuch der vergleichenden und experimentellen Entwickelungslehre der Wirbeltiere, Bd. 2, part 3 (Jena, 1902-1906); Development of the Human Body, J.P. McMurrich (1906).

(F. G. P.)

2. Physiology

The nervous system has as its function the co-ordinating of the activities of the organs one with another. It puts the organs into such mutual relation that the animal reacts as a whole with speed, accuracy and self-advantage, in response to the environmental agencies which stimulate it. For this office of the nervous system there are two fundamental conditions. The system must be thrown into action by agencies at work in the environment. Light, gravity, mechanical impacts, and so on, which are conditions significant for animal existence, must find the system responsive and through it evoke appropriate activity in the animal organs. And in fact there have been evolved in the animal a number of structures called receptive organs which are selectively excitable by different environmental agencies. Connected with these receptive organs lies that division of the nervous system which is termed afferent because it conducts impulses inwards towards the nervous centres. This division consists of elongated nerve-cells, in man some two million in number for each half of the body. These are living threads of microscopic tenuity, each extending from a receptive organ to a central nervous mass. These central nervous masses are in vertebrates all fused into one, of which the part which lies in the head is especially large and complex, because directly connected with particularly important and delicate receptive organs. The part of the central nervous organ which lies in the head has, in consequence of its connexion with the most important receptive organs, evolved a dominant importance in the nervous system, and this is especially true of the higher animal forms. This head part of the central nervous organ is sufficiently different from the rest, even to anatomical examination, to have received a separate name, the brain. But the fact of its having received a separate name ought not to obscure the singleness and solidarity of the whole central nervous organ as one entity. The functions of the whole central nervous organ from region to region are essentially similar throughout. One of its essential functions is reception, via afferent nerves, of nervous impulses generated in the receptive organs by environmental agents as stimuli. In other words, whatever the nature of the agent, its result on the receptive organs enters the central nervous organ as a nervous impulse, and all segments of the central nervous organ receive impulses so generated. Further, it is not known that nervous impulses present qualitative differences among themselves. It is with these impulses that the central nervous organ whether spinal cord or brain has to deal.

Material and Psychical Signs of Cerebral Activity.—In the central nervous organ the action resulting from entrant impulses has issue in three kinds of ways. The reaction may die out, be suppressed, and so far as discoverable lead to nothing; or the impulses may evoke effect in either or both of two forms. Just as from the receptive organs, nerves lead into the central nervous organ, so conversely from the central organ other nerves, termed efferent, lead to various organs of the body, especially glands and muscles. The reaction of the central nervous organ to impulses poured into it commonly leads to a discharge of impulses from it into glands and muscles. These centrifugal impulses are, so far as is known, qualitatively like the centripetal impulses. On reaching the glands and muscles they influence the activity of those organs. Since those organs are therefore the mechanisms in which the ultimate effect of the nervous reaction takes place, they are often termed from this point of view effector organs. A change ensuing in effector organs is often the only sign an observer has that a nervous reaction has occurred, unless the nervous system under observation be the observer’s own.

If the observer turns to his own nervous system for evidence of reaction, he meets at once in numberless instances with sensation as an outcome or sign of its reaction. This effect he cannot show to any being beside himself. He can only describe it, and in describing it he cannot strictly translate it into any term of material existence. The unbridged gulf between sensation and the changes produced in effector organs necessitates a separate handling of the functions of the nervous system according as their office under consideration is sensation or material effect. This holds especially in the case of the brain, and for the following reasons.

Psychosis and the Fore-Brain.—Hippocrates wrote, “It is through the brain that we become mad, that delirium seizes us, that fears and terrors assail us.” “We know that pleasure and joy on the one hand and pain and grief on the other are referable to the brain. It is in virtue of it that we think, understand, see, hear, know ugliness and beauty, evil and good, the agreeable and the disagreeable.” Similarly and more precisely Descartes indicated the brain, and the brain alone, as the seat of consciousness. Finally, it was Flourens who perhaps first definitely insisted on the restriction of the seat of consciousness in higher animals to that part of the brain which is the fore-brain. A functional distinction between the fore-brain and the remainder of the nervous system seems, in fact, that consciousness and physical reactions are adjunct to the fore-brain in a way in which they are not to the rest of the system. After transection of the spinal cord, or of the brain behind the fore-brain, psychical phenomena do not belong to the reactions of the nervous arcs posterior to the transection, whereas they do still accompany reactions of the nervous arcs in front and still connected with the fore-brain. A man after severance of the spinal cord does not possess in the strict sense consciousness of the limbs whose afferent nerves lie behind the place of spinal severance. He can see them with his eyes, and if the severance lie between the arms and the legs, can feel the latter with his hands. He knows them to be a part of his body. But they are detached from his consciousness. Sensations derived from them through all other channels of sense than their own do not suffice to restore them in any adequate measure to his consciousness. He must have the sensations so called “resident” in them, that is, referred to them, without need of any logical inference. These can be yielded only by the receptive organs resident in the part itself, its skin, its joints, its muscles, &c., and can only be yielded by those receptive organs so long as the nerve impulses from them have access to the fore-brain. Consciousness, therefore, does not seem to attach to any portion of the nervous system of higher animals from which the fore-brain has been cut off. In the dog it has been found that no sign of memory, let alone intelligence, has been forthcoming after removal of the greater part of the fore-brain.

In lower vertebrates it is not clear that consciousness in primitive form requires always the co-operation of the fore-brain. In them the fore-brain does not seem a conditio sine qua non for psychosis—so far as we may trust the rather hazardous inferences which study of the behaviour of fish, &c., allows. And the difference between higher and lowlier animal forms in respect of the fore-brain as a condition for psychosis becomes more marked when the Arthropoda are examined. The behaviour of some Insecta points strongly to their possessing memory, rudimentary in kind though it may be. But in them no homologue of the fore-brain of vertebrates can be indisputably made out. The head ganglia in these Invertebrates may, it is true, be analogous in function in certain ways to the brain of vertebrates. Some experiments, not plentiful, indicate that destruction of these head ganglia induces deterioration of behaviour such as follows loss of psychical functions in cases of destruction of the fore-brain in vertebrates. Though, therefore, we cannot be clear that the head ganglia of these Invertebrates are the same structure morphologically as the brain of vertebrates, they seem to hold a similar office, exercising analogous functions, including psychosis of a rudimentary kind. We can, therefore, speak of the head ganglia of Arthropods as a brain, and in doing so must remember that we define by physiological evidence rather than by morphological.

Cerebral Control over Lower Nervous Centres.—There accrues to the brain, especially to the fore-brain of higher Vertebrates, another function besides that of grafting psychical qualities upon the reactions of the nervous system. This function is exhibited as power to control in greater or less measure the pure reflexes enacted by the system. These pure reflexes have the character of fatality, in the sense that, given a particular stimulus, a particular reaction unvaryingly follows; the same group of muscles or the same gland is invariably thrown into action in the same way. Removal of the fore-brain, i.e. of that portion of the central nervous organ to which psychosis is adjunct, renders the nervous reactions of the animal more predictable and less variable. The animal, for instance, a dog, is given over more completely to simple reflexes. Its skin is touched and it scratches the spot, its jaw is stroked and it yawns, its rump is rubbed and it shakes itself, like a dog coming out of water; and these reactions occur fatally and inopportunely, for instance, when food is being offered to it, when the dog normally would allow no such insignificant skin stimuli as the above to defer his appropriate reaction. Goltz relates the behaviour of a dog from which almost the whole fore-brain had been removed. The animal lived healthily under the careful treatment accorded it. At feeding time a little quinine (bitter) added to its sop of meat and milk led to the morsels, after being taken into the mouth, being at once and regularly rejected. None was ever swallowed, nor was the slightest hesitation in their rejection ever obtained by any coaxing or command, or encouragement of the animal by the attendant who constantly had charge of it. On the other hand, directly an undoctored piece had entered the mouth it was swallowed at once. Goltz threw to his own house-dog a piece of the same doctored meat. The creature wagged its tail and took it eagerly, then after receiving it into its mouth pulled a wry face and hesitated, astonished. But on encouragement to go on eating it the dog did so. Perhaps it deemed it unseemly to appear ungrateful to the giver and reject the gift. It overcame its reflex of rejection, and by its self-control gave proof of the intact cerebrum it possessed.

There seems a connexion between consciousness and the power to modify reflex action to meet the exigencies of the occasion. Pure reflexes are admirably adapted to certain ends. They are reactions which have long proved advantageous to the phylum of which the existent animal is the representative embodiment. But the reflexes have a machine-like fatality, and conscious aim does not forerun their execution. The subject as active agent does not direct them. Yet they lie under the control of higher centres. The cough, the eye-closure, the impulse to smile, all these can be suppressed. The innate respiratory rhythm can be modified to meet the requirements of vocal utterance. In other words, the reaction of reflex arcs is controllable by the mechanism to whose activity consciousness is adjunct. The reflexes controlled are often reactions but slightly affecting consciousness, but consciousness is very distinctly operative with the centres which exert the control. It may be that the primary aim, object and purpose of consciousness is control. “Consciousness in a mere automaton,” writes Professor Lloyd Morgan, “is a useless and unnecessary epiphenomenon.” As to how this conscious control is operative on reflexes, how it intrudes its influence on the running of the reflex machinery, little is known.

The Cerebrum an Organ giving Adaptation and Readjustment of Motor Acts.—The exercise of this control and the acquirement of skilled actions have obviously elements in common. By skilled actions, we understand actions not innately given, actions acquired by training in individual experience. The controlling centres pick out from an ancestral motor action some part, and isolate and enhance that until it becomes a skilled act. The motor co-ordination ancestrally provided for the ring finger gives an extending of it only in company with extension of the fingers on either side of it. The isolated lifting of the ring finger can, however, soon be acquired by training. In such cases the higher centre with conscious effort is able to dissociate a part from an ancestral co-ordination, and in that way to add a skilled adapted act to the powers of the individual.

The nervous organs of control form, therefore, a special instrument of adaptation and of readjustment of reaction, for better accommodation to requirements which may be new. The attainment of more precision and speed in the use of a tool, or the handling of a weapon, means a process in which nervous organs of control modify activities of reflex centres themselves already perfected ancestrally for other though kindred actions. This process of learning is accompanied by conscious effort. The effort consists not so much in any course of reasoning but rather in the acquiring of new sensorimotor experience. To learn swimming or skating by simple cogitation or mere visual observation is of course impossible. The new ideas requisite cannot be constructed without motor experience, and the training must include that motor experience. Hence the training for a new skilled motor manoeuvre must be simply ad hoc, and is of itself no training for another motor co-ordination.

The more complex an organism the more points of contact does it have with its environment, and the more does it need readjustment amid an environment of shifting relationships. Hence the organs of consciousness and control, being organs of adaptation and readjustment of reaction, will be more pronounced the farther the animal scale is followed upward to its crowning species, man. The cerebrum and especially the cerebral cortex may be regarded as the highest expression of the nervous organ of individual adaptation of reactions. Its high development in man makes him the most successful animal on earth’s surface at the present epoch. The most important part of all this adjustment in his case, as he stands now, consists doubtless in that nervous activity which is intellectual. The mentality attached to his cerebrum includes reason in higher measure than is possessed by the mentality of other animals. He, therefore, more than they, can profitably forecast the future and act suitably to meet it from memory of the past. The cerebrum has proved itself by his case the most potent weapon existent for extending animal dominance over the environment.

Means and Present Aims of Physiological Study of the Brain.—The aspects of cerebral activity are therefore twofold. There is the contribution which it makes to the behaviour of the animal as seen in the creature’s doings. On the other hand there is its product in the psychical life of the animal. The former of these is subject matter for physiology; the latter is especially the province of psychology. Physiology does, however, concern itself with the psychical aspect of cerebral functions. Its scope, embracing the study of the bodily organs in regard to function, includes the psychic as well as the material, because as just shown the former inextricably interlace with the latter. But the relation between the psychic phenomena and the working of the brain in regard to any data of fundamental or intimate character connecting the two remains practically as unknown to us as to the Greek philosophers. What physiology has at present to be content with in this respect is the mere assigning of certain kinds of psychic events to certain local regions of the cerebrum. This primitive quest constitutes the greater part of the “neurology” of our day, and some advance has been made along its lines. Yet how meagre are really significant facts will be clear from the brief survey that follows. Before passing finally from these general considerations, we may note that it becomes more and more clear that the brain, although an organ than can be treated as a whole, is complex in the sense that separable functions belong in some measure to its several parts.

The means principally adopted in studying the functions of the brain—and it must be remembered that this study in its present phase is almost exclusively a mere search for localization—are four. These are the physiological, the clinico-pathological, the histological and the zoological. The first named proceeds by observing the effects of artificial excitation, chiefly electric, of various parts of the brain, and the defects produced by destruction or removal of circumscribed portions. The clinico-pathological proceeds by observing the disturbances of body and mind occurring in disease or injury, and ascertaining the extent of the disease or injury, for the most part post mortem. The histological method examines the microscopic structure of the various regions of the brain and the characters and arrangement of the nerve-cells composing it. The zoological follows and compares the general features of the brain, as represented in the various types of animal creation.

It is on the functions of the fore-brain that interest now mainly focuses, for the reasons mentioned above. And the interest in the fore-brain itself chiefly attaches to the functions of its cortex. This is due to several causes. In man and the animals nearest him the cortex forms by far the larger part of the whole cerebral hemisphere. More than any other part it constitutes the distinctively human feature. It lies accessible to various experimental observations, as also to traumatic lesions and to the surgeon’s art. It is composed of a great unbroken sheet of grey matter; for that reason it is a structure wherein processes of peculiar interest for the investigation in view are likely to occur. To make this last inference more clear a reference to the histology of nervous tissue must be made. The whole physiological function of the nervous system may be summed up in the one word “conduction.” This “conduction” may be defined as the transmission of states of excitement (nerve-impulses) along the neural arcs composing the system. The whole nervous system is built up of chains of nerve-cells (neurones) which are nervous conductors, the chains often being termed arcs. Each neurone is an elongated cell which transmits nerve-impulses from its one end to its other, without so far as is known modifying the impulses in transit, unless in that part of the nerve-cell where the nucleus lies. That part of the neurone or nerve-cell is called the perikaryon or cell-body, and from that part usually many branches of the cell (each branch being a nerve-fibre) ramify. There is no evidence that impulses are modified in transit along a branch of a nerve-cell, but there is clear evidence of manifold modification of nerve-impulses in transit along the nerve-arcs of the nervous system. These nerve-arcs are neurone-chains. In them one neurone continues the line of conduction where the immediately foregoing neurone left it. That is, the neurones are laid in conductive series, the far end of one apposed to the near end of its precursor. The place of juxtaposition of the end of one neurone against the beginning of another is called the synapse. At it the conduction which has so far been wholly intra-neuronic is replaced by an inter-neuronic process, in which the nerve impulse passes from one neurone to the next. The process there, it is natural to think, must be physiologically different from that conductive process that serves for transmission merely within the neurone itself. It may be that to this inter-neuronic conduction are due the differences between conduction in nerve-arcs and nerve-trunks (nerve-fibres) respectively. Significant of the former are changes in rhythm, intensity, excitability and modifications by summation and inhibition; in fact a number of the main features of nervous reaction. These characters impressed upon conduction in nerve arcs (neurone-chains) would therefore be traceable to the intercalation of perikarya and synapses, for both these structures are absent from nerve-trunks. It is therefore probably to perikarya and synapses that the greater part of the co-ordination, elaboration and differentiation of nervous reactions is due. Now, perikarya and synapses are not present in the white matter of the central nervous organ, any more than they are in nerve-trunks. They are confined exclusively to those portions of the central organ which consist of grey matter (so called from its naked-eye appearance). Hence it is to the great sheet of grey matter which enfolds the cerebrum that the physiologist turns, as to a field where he would expect to find evidences of the processes of cerebral co-ordination at work. It is therefore to items regarding the functions of the great sheet of cerebral cortex that we may now pass.

The Cerebral Cortex and its Functions.—The main question which vexed the study of the physiology of the cerebral hemispheres in the 19th century was whether differences of function are detectible in the different regions of the hemisphere and especially in those of its cortex. One camp of experimenters and observers held that the cortex was identical in function throughout its extent. These authorities taught that the various faculties and senses suffer damage in proportion to the amount of cortex removed or injured, and that it is a matter of indifference what may be the particular region wherein the destruction takes place. Against this an opposed set of observers held that different regions perform different functions, and this latter “differential” view was raised in two wholly dissimilar forms in the first and last quarters of the 19th century respectively. In the first quarter of the century, a school, with which the name of Gall is prominently associated, held that each faculty of a set of particular so-called “faculties,” which it assumed constituted intelligence, has in the brain a spatially separate organ proper to itself. Gall’s doctrine had two fundamental propositions. The first was that intelligence resides exclusively in the brain: the second, that intelligence consists of twenty-seven “faculties,” each with a separate local seat in the brain. The first proposition was not new. It is met with in Hippocrates, and it had been elaborated by Descartes and others. But Bichat in his Anatomie generale had partly wandered from the gradually established truth and referred the emotions to the visceral organs, returning to a naive view popularly prevalent. Gall’s first proposition was probably raised especially in reaction against Bichat. But Gall’s proposition was retrograde from the true position of the science of his time. Flourens and others of his contemporaries had already shown not only that intelligence was resident exclusively in the brain, but that it was resident exclusively in that part of the brain which is the fore-brain. Now Gall placed certain of his twenty-seven intellectual faculties in the cerebellum, which is part of the hind-brain.

Phrenology.—As to Gall’s second proposition, the set of faculties into which he analysed intelligence shows his power of psychological analysis to have been so weak that it is matter of surprise his doctrine could obtain even the ephemeral vogue it actually did. Among his twenty-seven faculties are, for instance, “l’amour de la progéniture, l’instinct carnassier, l’amitié, la ruse, la sagacité comparative, l’esprit métaphysique, le talent poétique, la mimique,” &c. Such crudity of speculation is remarkable in one who had undoubtedly considerable insight into human character. Each of the twenty-seven faculties had its seat in a part of the brain, and that part of the brain was called its “organ.” The mere spatial juxtaposition or remoteness of these organs one from another in the brain had, according to Gall, an influence on the constitution of the mind. “Comme l’organe des arts est placé loin de l’organe du sens des couleurs, cette circonstance explique pourquoi les peintres d’histoire ont été rarement coloristes.” All these “faculty-organs” were placed by Gall at the surface of the brain. “This explains the correspondence which exists between craniology and the doctrine of the functions of the brain (cerebral physiology), the single aim of my researches.” Gall wrote that he found the bump of pride (la bosse de l’orgueil) as far down in the animal series as the goat. Broussais traced the “organ” of veneration as far down as the sheep. Gall found the bump of murder (bosse du meurtre) in the carnivora. Later it was traced also in herbivora. Broussais added apologetically that “the herbivora cause a real destruction of plants.”

Gall’s doctrine enjoyed enormous vogue. He himself had the gifts and the demerits of quackery. His doctrine possessed, apart from its falsity, certain other mischievous qualities. “Que ces hommes si glorieux, qui font égorger les nations par millions, sachent qu’ils n’agissent point de leur propre chef, que c’est la nature qui a placé dans leur coeur la rage de la destruction.” One of his scientific opponents rejoined, “Nay, it is not that which they should know. What they should know is that if providence has allowed to man the possibility of doing evil, it has also endowed him with the power to do good.” The main cause of the success of phrenology (q.v.) has been no doubt the common desire of men to read the characters and hidden thoughts of others by external signs. Each bump or “bosse” on the cranium was supposed to indicate the existence and degree of development of one or other of the twenty-seven “faculties.” One such “bosse” showed the development of the organ of “goodness,” and another the development of the organ of “murder.” Such an easy means to arrive at information so curious delighted many persons, and they were not willingly undeceived.

Modern Localization Doctrines.—The crude localization of the phrenologists is therefore too clumsy to possess an interest it might otherwise have had as an early expression of belief in cerebral localization, a belief which other labours have subsequently justified, although on facts and lines quite different from these imagined by Gall and his followers. Patient scientific toil by the hands of E. Hitzig and D. Ferrier and their followers has slowly succeeded in obtaining certain facts about the cortex cerebri which not only show that different regions of it are concerned with different functions, but, for some regions at least, outline to some extent the kind of function exercised. It is true that the greater part of the cortex remains still terra incognita unless we are content with mere descriptive features concerning its coarse anatomy. For several scattered regions some knowledge of their function has been gained by physiological investigation. These scattered regions are the visual, the auditory, the olfactory and the precentral.

The grey matter of the cerebral cortex is broadly characterized histologically by the perikarya (nerve-cells bodies) which lie in it possessing a special shape; they are pyramidal. The dendrite fibres of these cells—that is, their fibres which conduct towards the perikarya—are branches from the apex and corners of the pyramid. From the base often near its middle arises one large fibre—the axone fibre, which conducts impulses away from the perikaryon. The general appearance and arrangement of the neurones in a particle of cortical grey matter are shown in fig. 15, above. The apices of the pyramidal perikarya are turned towards the free surface of the cortex. The figure as interpreted in terms of functional conduction means that the cortex is beset with conductors, each of which collects nerve-impulses, from a minute but relatively wide field by its branched dendrites, and that these nerve-impulses converge through its perikaryon, issue by its axone, and are carried whithersoever the axone runs. In some few cells the axone breaks up into branches in the immediate neighbourhood of its own perikaryon in the cortex. In most cases, however, the axone runs off into the subjacent white matter, leaving the cortex altogether. On reaching the subjacent white matter it mingles with other fibres and takes one of the following courses:—(1) to the grey matter of the cortex of the same hemisphere, (2) to the grey matter of the cortex of the opposite hemisphere, (3) to the grey matter of the pons, (4) to the grey matter of the bulb or spinal cord. It is noteworthy that the dendrite fibres of these cortical neurones do not transgress the limits of the grey cortex and the immediate neighbourhood of the perikaryon to which they belong; whereas the discharging or axone fibre does in the vast majority of cases transgress the limits of the grey matter wherein its perikaryon lies. The cortical neurone therefore collects impulses in the region of cortex just about its perikaryon and discharges them to other regions, some not cortical or even cerebral, but spinal, &c. One question which naturally arises is, do these cells spontaneously generate their impulses or are they stirred to activity by impulses which reach them from without? The tendency of physiology is to regard the actions of the cortex as reactions to impulses communicated to the cortical cells by nerve-channels reaching them from the sense organs. The neurone conductors in the cortex are in so far considered to resemble those of reflex centres, though their reactions are more variable and complex than in the use of the spinal. The chains of neurones passing through the cortex are more complex and connected with greater numbers of associate complex chains than are those of the spinal centres. But just as the reflex centres of the cord are each attached to afferent channels arriving from this or that receptive-organ, for instance, tactile-organs of the skin, or spindles of muscle-sense, &c., so the regions of cortex whose function is to-day with some certainty localized seem to be severally related each to some particular sense-organ. The localization, so far as ascertained, is a localization which attaches separate areas of cortex to the several species of sense, namely the visual, the auditory, the olfactory, and so on. This being so, we should expect to find the sensual representation in the cortex especially marked for the organs of the great distance-receptors, the organs which—considered as sense organs—initiate sensations having the quality of projicience into the sensible environment. The organs of distance-receptors are the olfactory, the visual and the auditory. The environmental agent which acts as stimulus in the case of the first named is chemical, in the second is radiant, and in the last is mechanical.

Olfactory Region of Cortex.—There is phylogenetic evidence that the development of the cortex cerebri first occurred in connexion with the distance-receptors for chemical stimuli—that is, expressed with reference to psychosis, in connexion with olfaction. The olfactory apparatus even in mammals still exhibits a neural architecture of primitive pattern. The cell which conducts impulses to the brain from the olfactory membrane in the nose resembles cells in the skin of the earthworm, in that its cell-body lies actually amid the epithelium of the skin-surface and is not deeply buried near or in the central nervous organ. Further, it has at its external end tiny hairlets such as occur in specially receptive-cells but not usually in purely nervous cells. Hence we must think that one and the same cell by its external end receives the environmental stimulus and by its deep end excites the central nervous organ. The cell under the stimulation of the environmental agent will therefore generate in itself a nervous impulse. This is the clearest instance we have of a neurone being actually excited under natural circumstances by an agent of the environment directly, not indirectly. The deep ends of these olfactory neurones having entered the central nervous organ come into contact with the dendrites of large neurones, called, from their shape, mitral. In the dog, an animal with high olfactory sense, the axone of each olfactory neurone is connected with five or six mitral cells. In man each olfactory neurone is connected with a single mitral cell only. We may suppose that the former arrangement conduces to intensification of the central reaction by summation. At the same time it is an arrangement which could tend to smother sharp differentiation of the central reaction in respect to locality of stimulus at the receptive surface. Considering the diffuse way in which olfactory stimuli are applied in comparison, for instance, with visual, the exact localization of the former can obviously yield little information of use for locating the exact position of their source. On the other hand, in the case of visual stimuli the locus of incidence, owing to the rectilinear propagation of light, can serve with extraordinary exactitude for inferences as to the position of their source. The adaptation of the neural connexions of the two organs in this respect is therefore in accord with expectation.

The earliest cerebral cortex is formed in connexion with the neurone-chains coming into the central nervous organ from the patch of olfactory cells on the surface of the head. The region of cerebrum thus developed is the so-called olfactory lobe and hippocampal formation. The greater part of the cerebral hemisphere is often termed the pallium, because as its development extends it folds cloak-wise over the older structures at the base of the brain. The olfactory lobe, from its position, is sometimes called the pallium basale, and the hippocampal formation the pallium marginale; and these two parts of the pallium form what, on account of their phylogenetic history, Elliott Smith well terms the archipallium. A fissure, the limbic fissure, marks off more or less distinctly this archipallium from the rest of the pallium, a remainder which is of later development and therefore designated by Elliott Smith the neopallium. Of the archipallium, the portion which constitutes the olfactory lobe is well formed in the selachian fish. In the reptilian cerebrum the hippocampal region, the pallium marginale, coexists in addition. These are both of them olfactory in function. Even so high up in the animal scale as the lowest mammals they still form one half of the entire pallium. But in the higher apes and in man the olfactory portion of the pallium is but a small fraction of the pallium as a whole. It is indeed so relatively dwarfed and obscured as to be invisible when the brain is regarded from the side or above. The olfactory part of the pallium exhibits little variation in form as traced up through the higher animals. It is of course small in such animals as Cetaceans, which are anosmatic. In highly osmatic such as the dog it is large. The uncus, and subiculum cornu ammonis of the human brain, belong to it. Disease of these parts has been accompanied by disturbance of the sense of smell. When stimulated electrically (in the rabbit) the olfactory pallium occasions peculiar torsion of the nose and lips (Ferrier), and change, often slowing or arrested, of the respiratory rhythm. P.E. Flechsig has shown that the nerve-fibres of this part of the pallium attain the final stage of their growth, that is to say, acquire their sheaths of myelin, early in the ontogenetic development of the brain. In the human brain they are myelinate before birth. This is significant from the point of view of function, for reasons which have been made clear especially by the researches of Flechsig himself.

The completion of the growth of the nerve-fibres entering and leaving the cortex occurs at very various periods in the growth of the brain. Study of the development of the fibres entering and leaving the various regions of the pallium in the human brain, discovers that the regions may be conveniently grouped into those whose fibres are perfected before birth and those whose fibres are perfected during the first post-natal month, and those whose fibres are perfected after the first but before the end of the fourth post-natal month. The regions thus marked out by completion before birth are five in number, and are each connected, as also shown by collateral evidence, with one or other particular species of sense-organ. And these regions have another character in common recognizable in the nerve-fibres entering and leaving them, namely, they possess fibres projected to or from parts of the nervous system altogether outside the cortex itself. These fibres are termed “projection” fibres. Other regions of the cortex possess fibres coming from or going to various regions of the cortex itself, but do not possess in addition, as do the five primitive cortical fields, the fibres of projection. So that the facts established by Flechsig for the regions of pallium, which other evidence already indicated as connected with the sense-organ of smell, support that evidence and bring the olfactory region of cortex into line with certain other regions of cortex similarly primarily connected with organs of sense.

It will be noted that what has been achieved by these various means of study in regard to the region of the cortex to which olfactory functions are attributed amounts at present to little more than the bare ascertainment of the existence there of nervous mechanisms connected with olfaction, and to the delimiting roughly of their extent and of their ability to influence certain movements, and in man sensations, habitually associated with exercise of the olfactory organ. As to what part the cortical mechanism has in the elaboration or association of mental processes to which olfaction contributes, no evidence worth the name seems as yet forthcoming. In this respect our knowledge, or rather our want of knowledge, of the functions of the olfactory region of the cortex, is fairly typical of that to which we have to confess in regard to the other regions of the cortex, even the best known.

Visual Region of the Cortex.—There is a region of the cortex especially connected with vision. The optic nerve and tract constitute the second link in the chain of neurones joining the retina to the brain. They may therefore be regarded as the equivalent of an intraspinal tract connecting the deep ends of the afferent neurones from the skin with higher nervous centres. In the bony fishes the optic tract reaches the grey matter of the optic lobe, a part of the mid-brain, to which the so-called anterior colliculus is equivalent in the mammalian brain. In the optic lobe the axones of the neurones of the optic tract meet neurones whose axones pass in turn to the motor neurones of the muscles moving the eyeballs, and also to other motor neurones. But in these fish the optic tract has no obvious connexion with the fore-brain or with any cerebral pallium. Ascending, however, to the reptilian brain is found an additional arrangement: a small portion of the optic tract passes to grey matter in front of the optic lobe. This grey matter is the lateral geniculate body. From this geniculate body a number of neurones extend to the pallial portion of the cerebrum, for in the reptilian brain the pallium is present. The portion of pallium connected with the lateral geniculate body lies above and behind the olfactory or archipallium. It is a part of what was mentioned above as neopallium.

In the mammalian brain the portion of the optic tract which goes to the optic lobe (ant. colliculus of the mammal) is dwarfed by great development of the part which goes to the geniculate body and an adjoining grey mass, the pulvinar (part of the optic thalamus). From these latter pass large bands of fibres to the occipital region of the neopallium. In mammals this visual region of the cortex is distinguished in its microscopic features from the cortex elsewhere by a layer of myelinate nerve-fibres, many of which are the axones of neurones of the geniculate body and pulvinar. Thus, whereas in the bony fishes all the third links of the conductive chain from the retina lead exclusively to the final neurones of motor centres for muscles, in the mammal the majority of the third links conduct to grey matter of the cortex cerebri.

The application of electric stimuli to the surface of the cortex does not for the greater part of the extent of the cortex evoke in higher mammalian brains any obvious effect; no muscular act is provoked. But from certain limited regions of the cortex such stimulation does evoke muscular acts, and one of these regions is that to which the neurones forming the third link of the conductive chain from the retina pass. The muscular acts thus provoked from that region are movements of the eyeballs and of the neck turning the head. In the monkey the movement is the turning of both eyeballs and the head away from the side stimulated. In short, the gaze is directed as to an object on the opposite side. The newer conductive chain traceable through the cortex does therefore, after all, like the older one through the optic lobe, lead ultimately to the motor neurones of the eye muscles and the neck, only it takes a longer course thither and is undoubtedly much more complex. What gain is effected by this new and as it were alternative and longer route, which takes a path up to the cerebral cortex and down again, we can only conjecture, but of one point we may rest well assured, namely, that a much richer inter-connexion with other arcs of the nervous system is obtained by the path that passes via the cortex. The functional difference between the old conductive circuit and the new can at present hardly indeed be stated even in outline. A natural inference might be that the phylogenetically older and less complex path is concerned with functions purely reflex-motor, not possessing sensation as an attribute. But fish, which possess only the older path, can be trained to seize bait of one colour and not of another colour, even against what appeared to be an original colour-preference in them. Such discrimination individually acquired seems to involve memory, though it may be rudimentary in kind. Where motor reaction to visual stimuli appears to involve memory—and without memory the training could hardly be effective—some germ of consciousness can hardly be denied to the visual reactions, although the reactions occurred in complete absence of a cortical path and indeed of a visual cortex altogether.

Removal of the visual pallium in the tortoise produces little or no obvious defect in vision; but in the bird such a lesion greatly impairs the vision of the eye of the side opposite to the lesion. The impairment does not, however, amount to absolute blindness. Schrader’s hawk, after removal of the pallium, reacted to movements of the mice with which it was caged. But the reactions were impaired: they lacked the sustained purpose of the normal reactions. The bird saw the mice; that was certain, for their movements across its field of vision made it turn its gaze towards them. But on their ceasing to move, the reaction on the part of the bird lapsed. Neither did their continuing to move excite the attack upon them which would have been the natural reaction on the part of the bird of prey towards its food. The bird apparently did not recognize them as prey, but saw them merely as moving objects. It saw them perhaps as things to which mental association gave no significance. Similarly, a dog after ablation of the occipital lobes of the cortex is able to see, for it avoids obstacles in its path; but if food is offered to it or the whip held up to it, it does not turn towards the food or away from the whip. It sees these things as if it saw them for the first time, but without curiosity, and as if it had no experience of their meaning. It gives no hint that it any longer understands the meaning of even familiar objects so long as these are presented to it through the sense of vision. Destruction of the visual cortex of one hemisphere alone produces in the dog impairment of vision, not as in the bird practically exclusively in the opposite eye, but in one lateral half of each eye, and that half the half opposite the hemisphere injured. Thus when the cortex destroyed is of the right cerebral hemisphere, the resultant visual defect is in the left half of the field of vision of both eyes. And this is so in man also.

In man disturbances of sensation can be better studied because it is possible to obtain from him his description of his condition. The relation of the cortex cerebri to human vision can be summarized briefly as follows. The visual cortex is distinguishable in higher mammals by a thin white stripe, the stripe of Gennari, seen in its grey matter when that is sectioned. This stripe results from a layer of nerve-fibres, many of which are axones from the neurones of the lateral geniculate body and the pulvinar, the grey masses directly connected with the optic nerve-fibres. In the dog, and in such monkeys as the Macaque, the region of cortex containing this stripe traceable to optic fibres forms practically the whole occipital lobe. But in the man-like apes and in man this kind of cortex is confined to one region of the occipital lobe, namely, that of the calcarine fissure and the cuneus behind that. This region of cortex thus delimited in man is one of Flechsig’s areas of earlier myelinization. It is also one of his areas possessing projection fibres; and this last fact agrees with the yielding by this area, when under electrical stimulation, of movements indicating that impulses have been discharged from it into the motor neurones of the muscles of the eyes and neck. Evidence from cases of disease show that destruction of the cortex of the upper lip of the calcarine fissure, say in the right half of the brain, causes in man impairment in the upper right-hand quadrant of both retinae: destruction of the lower lip of the fissure causes impairment in the lower right-hand quadrants. Destruction of the calcarine region of one hemisphere produces therefore “crossed hemianopia,” that is, loss of the opposite half of the field of vision. But in this hemianopia the region of central vision is always spared. That is, the piece of visual field which corresponds with the yellow spot of the retina is not affected in either eye, unless the calcarine regions of both hemispheres are destroyed. This central point of vision is connected therefore not with one side of the brain only but with both.

The impairment of sight is more severe in men than in lower animals. Where the destruction of the visuo-sensory cortex in one calcarine region is complete, a candle-flame offered in the hemianopic field cannot even be perceived. It may hardly excite a reflex contraction of the pupil. In such cases the visual defect amounts to blindness. But this is a greater defect than is found in the dog even after entire removal of both occipital lobes. The dog still avoids obstacles as it walks. Its defect is rather, as said above, a complete loss of interest in the visual images of things. But a dog or monkey after loss of the visual cortex hesitates more and avoids obstacles less well in a familiar place than it does when entirely blind from loss of the peripheral organ of vision. In man extensive destruction of the visual cortex has as one of its symptoms loss of memory of localities, thus, of the paths of a garden, of the position of furniture, and of accustomed objects in the patient’s own room. This loss of memory of position does not extend to spatial relations ordinarily appreciated by touch, such as parts of the patient’s own person or clothing. There is nothing like this in the symptoms following blindness by loss of the eye itself. Those who lose their sight by disease of the retina retain good memorial pictures of positions and directions appreciated primarily by vision.

Cases of disease are on record in which loss of visual memory has occurred without hemianopia. Visual hallucinations referred to the hemianopic side have been observed. This suggests that the function of visual memory in regard to certain kinds of percepts must belong to localities of cortex different from those pertaining to other visual percepts. The area of cortex characterized by the stripe of Gennari occupies in man, as mentioned, the calcarine and cuneate region. It is surrounded by a cortical field which, though intimately connected with it by manifold conducting fibres, &c., is yet on various grounds distinct from it. This field of cortex surrounding the visuo-sensory of the calcarine-cuneate region is a far newer part of the neopallium than the region it surrounds. Both in the individual (Flechsig) and in the phylum (Bolton, Campbell, Mott) its development occurs far later than that of the visuo-sensory which it surrounds. Flechsig finds that it has no “projection” fibres, that is, that it receives none of the optic radiations from the lower visual centres and gives no centrifugal fibres in the reverse direction. This field encompassing the visuo-sensory region differs from the latter in its microscopic structure by absence of the lower layer of stellate cells and by the presence in it of a third or deep layer of pyramidal cells (Mott). Its fibres are on the average smaller than are those of the visuo-sensory (W.A. Campbell). This zonal field is small in the lower apes, and hardly discoverable in the dog. In the anthropoid apes it is much larger. In man it is relatively much larger still. The impairment of visual memory and visual understanding in regard to direction and locality is said to be observed in man only when the injury of the cortex includes not only the calcarine-cuneate region but a wide area of the occipital lobe. From this it is argued that the zonal field is concerned with memories and recognitions of a kind based on visual perceptions. It has therefore been termed the visuo-psychic area. It is one of Flechsig’s “association-areas” of the cortex.

Adjoining the antero-lateral border of the just-described visuo-psychic area lies another region separate from it and yet related to it. This area is even later in its course of development than is the visuo-psychic. It is one of Flechsig’s “terminal fields,” and its fibres are among the last to ripen in the whole cortex. This terminal field is large in man. It runs forward in the parietal lobe above and in the temporal lobe below. Its wide extent explains, in the opinion of Mott, the displacement of the visuo-sensory field from the outer aspect of the hemisphere in the lower monkeys to the median aspect in man. To this terminal field all the more interest attaches because it includes the angular gyrus, which authorities hold to be concerned with the visual memory of words. Study of diseased conditions of speech has shown that the power to understand written words may be lost or severely impaired although the words may be perfectly distinct to the sight and although the power to understand heard words remains good. This condition is asserted by many physicians to be referable to destruction of part of the angular gyrus. Close beneath the cortex of the angular gyrus runs a large tract of long fibres which pass from the visual cortex (see above) to the auditory cortex (see below) in the superior temporal gyrus and to the lower part of the frontal lobe. This lower part of the frontal lobe is believed—and has long been believed—to be concerned intimately with the production of the movements of speech. A difficulty besetting the investigation of the function of the angular gyrus is the fact that lesion of the cortex there is likely to implicate the underlying tract of fibres in its damage. It cannot be considered to have been as yet clearly ascertained whether the condition of want of recognition of seen words—”word-blindness”—is due to cortical injury apart from subcortical, to the angular gyrus itself apart from the underlying tract. Word-blindness seems, in the right-handed, to resemble the aphasia believed to be connected with the lower part of the frontal lobe, in that it ensues upon lesions of the left hemisphere, not of the right. In left-handed persons, on the contrary, it seems to attach to the right hemisphere.

Auditory Region of the Cortex.—Besides the two great organs of distance-receptors, namely, the nose and eye, whose cerebral apparatus for sensation has just been mentioned, those of a third great distance-receptor have to be considered. The agents of stimulation of the two former are respectively chemical (olfactory) and radiant (visual); the mode of stimulation of the third is mechanical, and the sensations obtained by it are termed auditory. Their cerebral localization is very imperfectly ascertained. Electric stimuli applied to a part of the uppermost temporal gyrus excites movements of the ears and eyes in the dog. Destruction of the same region when executed on both hemispheres is argued by several observers to impair the sense of hearing. To this region of cortex fibres have been traced from the lower centres connected with the nerve-fibres coming from the cochlea of the ear. From each cochlear nerve a path has been traced which passes to the insulae and the above-mentioned temporal region of cortex of both the cerebral hemispheres. The insula is a deeper-seated area of cortex adjoining the uppermost temporal convolution. To it Flechsig’s chronological studies also impute a connexion with the nerves of the ear. Early myelinization of fibres, presence of ascending and descending “projection” tracts to and from lower centres outside the cortex, calibre of fibres, microscopic characters of its cortical cells, all those kinds of indirect items of evidence that obtain for the visual cortex likewise mark out this insular-temporal area as connected fairly directly with a special sense-organ, as in fact a sensory field of the cortex; and the suspicion is that it is auditory. Clinical observation supports the view in a striking way, but one requiring, in the opinion of some, further confirmation. It is widely believed that destruction of the upper and middle part of the uppermost temporal convolution produces “word-deafness,” that is, an inability to recognize familiar words when heard, although the words are recognized when seen.

More precise information regarding this auditory region of the cortex has recently been obtained by the experiments of Kalischer. These show that after removal of this region from both sides of the brain in the dog the animal shows great defect in answering to the call of its master. Whereas prior to the operation the animal will prick its ears and attend at once to the lightest call, it requires after the removal of the auditory regions great loudness and insistence of calling to make it attend and react as it did. This is the more striking in view of other experimental results obtained. Kalischer trained a number of his dogs not to take meat offered them except at the sound of a particular note given by an organ pipe or a harmonium. The dogs rapidly learned not to take the food on the sounding of notes of other pitch than the one taught them as the permissive signal. This reaction on the part of the animal was not impaired by the removal of the so-called auditory regions of the cortex. Kalischer suggests that this reaction taught by training is not destroyed by the operation which so greatly impairs the common reaction to the master’s call, because the former is a simpler process more allied to reflex action. In it the attention of the dog is already fastened upon the object, namely the food, and the stimulus given by the note excites a reaction which simply allows the act of seizing the food to take place, or on the other hand stops it. In the case of answering the call of the master the stimulus has to excite attention, to produce perception of the locality whence it comes, and to invoke a complicated series of movements of response. He finds that destruction of the posterior colliculi of the mid-brain, which have long been known to be in some way connected with hearing, likewise destroys the response to the call of the master, but did not destroy the trick taught to his dogs of taking meat offered at the sound of a note of one particular pitch but not at notes of other pitch given by the same instrument.

Other Senses and Localization in the Cortex Cerebri.—Turning now to the connexion between the function of the cortex and the senses other than those of the great distance-receptors just dealt with, even less is known. Disturbance and impairment of skin sensations are observable both in experiments on the cerebrum of animals and in cases of cerebral disease in man. But the localization in the cortex of regions specially or mainly concerned with cutaneous sensation has not been made sufficiently clear to warrant statement here. Still less is there satisfactory knowledge regarding the existence of cortical areas concerned with sensations originated in the alimentary canal. The least equivocal of such evidence regards the sense of taste. There is some slight evidence of a connexion between this sense and a region of the hippocampal gyrus near to but behind that related to smell.