MALABAR VOL 1 (in Four Volumes) - (with Annotations by VED from VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS)

Book excerpt: William Logan's 'Malabar' is popularly known as 'Malabar Manual'. It is a huge book of more than 500,000 words.This particular edition of the book comes in Four Volumes of page-size 7" X 10". This book, Malabar, will give very detailed information on how a small group of native-Englishmen built up a great nation, by joining up extremely minute bits of barbarian and semi-barbarian geopolitical areas in the South Asian Subcontinent.This book 'Malabar' was presumably made as part of the Madras Presidency government's endeavour to create a district manual for each of the districts of Madras Presidency. William Logan was a District Collector of the Malabar district of Madras Presidency. The time period of his work in the district is given in this book as: 6th June 1875 to 20th March 1876 (around 9 months) as Ag. Collector. From 9th May 1878 to 21st April 1879 (around 11 months) as Collector. From 23rd November 1880 to 3rd February 1881 (around 2 months) as Collector. Then from 23rd January 1883 to 17th April 1883 (around 3 months) as Collector. After all this, he is again posted as the Collector from 22nd November 1884. From this book not much personal information about William Logan, Esq. can be found out or arrived at. Two Chapters are there in this specific Volume (Volume 1). They are listed below: The District. (a) Its Limits and Physical Features (b) Mountains (c) Rivers, Backwaters and Canals (d) Geological Formation (e) Climate and Natural Phenomena (f) Fauna and Flora (g) Passes, Roads and Railway (h) Ports and Shipping Facilities CHAPTER II.--The People (a) Numbers, Density of Population, Civil Condition, Sex and Age (b) Towns, Villages, Dwellings and Rural Organization (c) The Language, Literature, and State of Education (d) Caste and Occupations (e) Manners, Customs, etc. (f) Religion: Hindus, Muhammadans, Christians (g) Famine, Diseases, Medicine A number of extra images have been added in this new edition of the book. Since the text and images have been taken from the currently (December 2017) available online, low-quality scanned files of the original book, there can be some inadvertent errors in the book, such as typos, missing text etc. However, a lot of care has been taken to make the book error free. However, no guarantee in this regard can be given.