Oude, Or Ondh (Sanskrit, Ayodhya, invincible).

I. A Province Of British India

A Province Of British India, formerly a native kingdom of Hindostan, lying between lat. 25° 34' and 29° 6' N., and lon. 79° 30' and 83° 11' E., bounded by the Northwest Provinces on all sides but the north and northeast, where it adjoins Nepaul; area, 23,973 sq. m.; pop. in 1872, 11,220,747. It is divided into four commissionerships, as follows: Lucknow, pop. 2,5S3,iil9; Seetapore, 2,603,426; Fvzabad, 3,384,130; Rai Bareilly, 2,650,172. The density of population is 468 to the square mile. - Oude is situated mostly within the great plain of Hindostan, which slopes S. W. from the Bub-Himalaya range, and along the Nepaulese border is fringed by the malarious forest tract known as the Terai. Except in this frontier region, the scenery of the whole country is exceedingly flat and monotonous. The principal rivers are the Ganges, which forms the 8. W. boundary; the Goomtee, on which is situated Lucknow, the capital of the province; the Gogra, the Raptee, and the Ramganga. All of them flow southeasterly, and are tortuous streams of considerable magnitude, varying greatly in volume and navigability at different seasons of the year.

Small nodules, called kankar, formed of the elements of chalk and oolite, are found in great quantities, and serve a useful purpose in giving sufficient consistency to some of the river banks to keep them in permanent channels. Ridges of them two or three yards wide intersect the bed of the Goomtee every five or six miles; and they have formed in different parts of the country hillocks from 70 to 80 ft. high. There are no permanent lakes, but large ponds called jhils are formed by the rains in the wet season, and generally dry up or are drained off by the rivers in hot weather. The largest of these, 8 m. N. W. of Manikpoor, in a deserted channel of the Ganges, is 16 m. long and 8 m. broad, and in the dry season is converted into a pestilential marsh in which rice is sown. The climate is generally dry and subject to great extremes of heat and cold, the thermometer sometimes rising to 112° and falling to 28°. November, December, January, and February are the coldest months, and the next four the hottest, a sultry west wind, loaded with fine gray dust, blowing at noon, and ceasing toward evening, or a damp malarious east wind from the swamps of Bengal and Assam occasionally prevailing all day. The powder of the hot winds annually increases with the diminution of rain.

Violent hurricanes and thunder storms are sometimes experienced. The rainy season begins about the middle of June'and lasts from two to four months. - The forests are mainly confined to the high region adjoining Nepaul, and are important sources of fuel. The saul tree affords the most valuable timber. The forest conservancy has effected a demarcation of the tracts reserved to the state, which have been thoroughly cleared of injurious creepers. Among the wild animals are the elephant, tiger, rhinoceros, wolf, hyaena, jackal, fox, hare, deer, nilgau, wild hog, porcupine, otter, mongoose, squirrel, rat, muskrat, wild cat, bat, and flying fox. The tigers and wolves cause great destruction of life. Of the numerous varieties of birds, the parrots, which do great damage to the crops, and the kingfishers, which exist in many splendid species, are the most deserving of mention. Reptiles and insects abound. Crocodiles haunt the larger rivers. The soil is probably not surpassed in fertility by that of any other province of India; but it is of various qualities, and in some places must be abundantly irrigated. An irrigation canal connects the Ganges with the Goomtee at Lucknow. In 1872 there were 12,673 sq. m. of cultivated lands in Oude, and 5,588 sq. m. additional capable of cultivation.

The crops consist principally of rice of remarkable delicacy and whiteness, various kinds of native grain, oil seeds, pulses, barley, maize, millet, wheat, opium, cotton, indigo, hemp, and tobacco. Excellent fruit trees are found in different parts of the country, among which are the mango, the tamarind, and a species of bas-sia, from the seeds of which is obtained the oil known as vegetable butter, used for food, for illuminating purposes, and in the manufacture of soap. The date palm has been introduced recently, and successfully cultivated. The domestic animals of Oude include sheep, goats, cows, bullocks, and buffaloes. Since March, 1865, there has been an agri-horticultural society at Lucknow, in connection with which there is an experimental stock farm. The principal native industry is the manufacture of coarse cotton cloth, in which a vigorous trade is carried on. Other manufactured goods have to be imported. The exports consist chiefly of agricultural products. In 1872 there were in Oude 1,678 m. of water communication, 4,225 m. of roads, and 72 m. of railway, consisting of the Oude and Rohilound line, which connects Lucknow and Cawnpore. The administration of the government is in the hands of a chief commissioner.

There is also a judicial commissioner, to whose review the decisions of the courts are subject, and the revenue is under the control of a financial commissioner. - The great bulk of the people are Hindoos, though the dominant race was Mohammedan for many ages before the British annexation. In 1869 Oude contained 7,767 Christians, 9,713,930 Hindoos, 1,011,110 Mohammedans, 56 Buddhists, and 487,884 persons of all other creeds. Hindostanee is the language most in use, with a greater admixture of Persian and Arabic and less of Hin-dee than in the more easterly provinces. The houses of the people are generally mud or un-burnt brick, and the walls are carried up 6 or 7 ft. above the roof to form a sort of enclosed court for the use of the women, which is covered during the rains by a light temporary roofing of bamboo and grass. The rooms have no ceilings, and the floors are of earth well [tacked and smoothed. The most characteristic feature in the social economy of Oude is that of the village communities, each of which constitutes a little republic in itself. The payment of a land tax is one of the oldest institutions of the country.

At the time of the British annexation it was supposed that the chiefs known as talookdars, who received this tax from the immediate cultivators of the soil and paid a fixed sum on account thereof to the native government, were merely middlemen, who exacted from the villagers as much as possible, but themselves possessed no proprietary rights whatever. Acting on the assumption that they were only collectors of revenue, the first land settlement made under British rule, in 1856-'7, dispossessed the talookdars of nearly all their villages, and provided for the payment of the land tax by the actual occupants of the soil directly to the government. The injustice of this settlement led to great dissatisfaction, and was ultimately admitted by the British authorities. The talookdars were in fact an ancient landed nobility, with well established rights of property in the soil, which were entitled to recognition, notwithstanding the frequent extortion which had been practised upon the subordinate proprietors.

The present land settlement, completed in 1859, recognizes the rights of both classes, confirming to each their possessions as they existed at the time of the annexation in 1856. According to the parliamentary accounts for 1871-2, it is so framed as to secure village occupants from extortion and to exact certain duties and responsibilities from the talookdars. Half the gross rental is paid to the government. The net land revenue in 1871-2 amounted to £1,207,902. In the same year the licenses for the sale of spirits and drugs and the excise on opium yielded £78,106. The total revenue in 1872-'3 amounted to £1,656,602; expenditures, £626,519. The total number of educational institutions in 1871-2 was 1,548, with an average daily attendance of 37,720 pupils. They comprise the Canning college at Lucknow, with 720 students, of whom 56 were in the college department; 11 high schools and 747 village schools; and 81 schools for girls, with 1,908 pupils. The expenditure for the support of schools amounted to £47,420. In each school district a library is maintained for the use of the schoolmaster; and there is said to be a school within 4½ m. of every child in Oude. There is a museum at Lucknow. The government has established 26 dispensaries in the province, and there is one sustained by private means.

The number of jails is 13. The provincial police force, exclusive of municipal and railway police, is about 6,000 strong, and its services are especially directed toward the repression of the organized bands of thieves and robbers which infest some portions of the country. In January, 1873, the Oude military division consisted of 7,096 troops, of whom 2,663 were natives. Seven newspapers, four English and three native, are published in the province. There are 17 municipalities in Oude. The principal cities and towns are Lucknow, Oude or Ayodhya, the ancient capital, Fyza-bad, Rai Bareilly, and Sultanpore. - Oude, under the name of Kosala, is supposed by many writers to have been one of the earliest seats of Indian civilization, and its first settlement is assigned to the year 1366 B. C. The Vedic legends make the ancient Ayodhya the seat of the great dynasty of solar kings. Our accurate knowledge of the country, however, dates from about A. D. 1195, when it was conquered and united to the empire of Delhi by Mohammed Bakhtiyar Ghilji, a lieutenant of Cuttub ud-Deen, the founder of the Patan or Afghan dynasty.

It submitted to Baber (1528) after an obstinate struggle, but frequently revolted against the Mogul sovereigns; and about 1753 Suffdur Jung, nawaub vizier of the province, wrested from the emperor Ahmed Shah a grant in perpetuity of Oude and Allahabad, and thus founded an independent dynasty which lasted until the British annexation. His son and successor Sujah ud-Dowlah became one of the most powerful princes of India, but, having formed an alliance with Meer Cossim against the English, was defeated by the latter at Patna, May 3, 1764, and at Buxar, Oct. 23. In 1765 the British occupied Luck now and forced Su-jah as a condition of peace to transfer the provinces of Corah and Allahabad to the emperor Shah Alum. The latter having in 1773 transferred his claim upon these territories to the Mahrattas, he was considered to have forfeited them, and the nawaub was permitted to resume them on payment of 5,000,000 rupees to the English. With the assistance of English troops, whose services he purchased for £400,000, Su-jah next undertook a campaign against the Rohillas, and, having routed them in a decisive battle, April 23, 1774, annexed the greater part of Rohilcund to his dominions.

His son and successor Azof ud-Dowlah, a weak and dissolute prince, ceded Benares, Joonpoor, and some contiguous districts to the British, in return for which the East India company agreed to defend him against all his enemies, and to keep a large body of troops in his territory, for whose services however he was to pay heavily. This military force was several times augmented, on the ground that the tranquillity of the country and the safety of the surrounding British possessions required it. Immense sums were also demanded from the nawaub for the support of an English resident and other English officials, so that the province was drained of its resources and parcelled out among rapacious farmers of the revenue, many of whom in time set themselves up as independent princes. The nawaub begged to have the troops withdrawn, but the British refused. At length, in September, 1781, he signed a treaty at Chunar with the governor general Warren Hastings, by which he obtained a release from some of his most burdensome engagements on condition of applying the wealth of the two begums or princesses, his mother and grandmother, to the liquidation of his debt to the East India company, which then amounted to £1,400,000. He was to retain the lands taken from the begums, and their money, of which they were said to have immense sums concealed, was to be paid over to the English. The most violent and unjustifiable means were used to get possession of the treasure, and the spoliation of the begums of Oude afterward acquired a worldwide celebrity through the denunciations of Burke and Sheridan. From 1777 to 1786 the nawaub paid the company £800,000 per annum, besides the expenses of various English officers, one of whom, an agent of the governor general, received an annual salary of £22,800. In 1787 the subsidy was reduced to £500,000 per annum, but it was increased in 1797 to £550,-000, and in 1708 to £760,000, besides which the nawaub ceded the fortress of Allahabad and gave £80,000 for its repair and £30,000 for the repair of Futtehghur. In 1801 the pecuniary subsidy was commuted for a cession of various territories, equal to one half of the whole province and yielding an annual revenue of £1,352,000. A loan of £1,000,000 was obtained from the nawaub Ghazee ud-Deen Hyder in 1814, and another of the same amount in 1815. One of these loans was liquidated in 1816 by the transfer to Oude of the Terai or marshy tract, formerly belonging to Nepaul. In 1819 the nawaub with the consent of the East India company formally renounced the nominal allegiance which he had hitherto retained to the Great Mogul, and assumed the title of king.

In 1825 he made a loan in perpetuity to the British of £1,000,000, at the unvarying interest of 5 per cent. He was succeeded in 1827 by his son Nusseer ud-Deen Hyder, who in 1829 made a loan of £624,000, the interest of which was to be appropriated to the support of certain members of the royal family; and in 1833 a loan of £30,000, the interest of which was to be given to the poor of Lucknow. Nusseer ud-Deen, who reigned from 1827 to 1837, made an effort at first to reform the administration, but soon gave himself up to sensual pleasures. His uncle Mohammed Ali Shah was the next monarch, who was succeeded in 1842 by his son Umjud Ali Shah, under whom the state of the kingdom grew worse and worse; but he succeeded in replenishing the treasury, and on his death in 1847 left about £1,500,000 to his son Wajid Ali, the last king of Oude. This prince was more profligate and imbecile than almost any of his predecessors. In a communication to the Indian government dated March 15, 1855, by Gen. Outram, British resident at Lucknow, the condition of the country was described as truly deplorable. The people were heavily taxed, though but little of the revenue reached the public treasury. There were no courts of law except at the capital, and the judges and other officers were venal.

The police was corrupt and inefficient, and the army rapacious, licentious, undisciplined, and cowardly. Crime, oppression, and cruelty of every description prevailed. The royal government was virtually at an end, when the East India company, in January, 1856, caused a treaty to be drawn up, which would have transferred to them the entire administration of the kingdom, while it made provision for the dignity and affluence of the king and his family. This treaty the king refused to sign, whereupon a proclamation was issued by the governor general in council, Feb. 7, declaring the deposition of the king of Oude and the absolute annexation of the country to the possessions of the East India company. This measure was disapproved at the time by many English people and some East Indian officials. The deposition of the king was regarded as a violation of treaty engagements, and as both unjust and impolitic. He was allowed to retain his titles and granted a liberal pension. He removed to Calcutta, and fixed his residence at Garden Reach on the outskirts of the city.

In 1856 the queen mother, accompanied by the king's son and brother, visited England, and was received with great kindness by Queen Victoria. She remained in the country for some time urging her claims for redress, but without avail, and finally died in Paris in 1858. The talookdars of Oude felt much aggrieved by the regulations of the East India company respecting the tenure of property, and the population in fact never voluntarily submitted to the change of rulers. Hence, when the sepoy mutiny broke out in 1857, the rising in Oude was not confined to the soldiers, but became a popular war for independence. The rebel sepoys concentrated about Lucknow, while the talookdars held themselves in a state of insurrection throughout the province, armed their retainers, and threw themselves into their forts, whence the British frequently could not dislodge them without heavy loss. The complicity of the ex-king was strongly suspected, and he was kept prisoner in Castle William. One of his wives, known as the begum, who resided at Lucknow, put herself at the head of a body of insurgents, cooperated vigorously with Nana Sahib, and is supposed to have escaped to Thibet. The province was substantially subdued by the end of 1858, and in the spring and summer of 1859 the whole population was disarmed, and the difficulties of the land titles were settled by the arrangement with the talookdars before mentioned.

Since that time the province has steadily prospered. (See India.)

II. A Town And Anciently The Capital Of The Province

A Town And Anciently The Capital Of The Province, on the right bank of the Go-gra, 75 m. E. of Lucknow; pop. about 8,000. It adjoins the modern town of Fyzabad, and is now almost deserted, its principal buildings are the "fort of Hanuman," built in honor of the fabulous monkey god, the auxiliary of Rama, and having an annual revenue of 50,000 rupees settled on it by Sujah ud-Dowlah; and the ruined "fort of Kama," the mythical hero of the Ramayana. Oude is thought to be the most ancient city of India, and is believed to have been founded in 1366 B. C.