The District of Jessore has an area of 2925 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 1,813,155, showing a decrease of 4% in the decade. The district forms the central portion of the delta between the Hugli and the united Ganges and Brahmaputra. It is a vast alluvial plain intersected by rivers and watercourses, which in the southern portion spread out into large marshes. The northern part is verdant, with extensive groves of date-palms; villages are numerous and large; and the people are prosperous. In the central portion the population is sparse, the only part suitable for dwellings being the high land on the banks of rivers. The principal rivers are the Madhumati or Haringhata (which forms the eastern boundary of the district), with its tributaries the Nabaganga, Chitra, and Bhairab; the Kumar, Kabadak, Katki, Harihar, Bhadra and Atharabanka. Within the last century the rivers in the interior of Jessore have ceased to be true deltaic rivers; and, whereas the northern portion of the district formerly lay under water for several months every year, it is now reached only by unusual inundations. The tide reaches as far north as the latitude of Jessore town. Jessore is the centre of sugar manufacture from date palms. The exports are sugar, rice, pulse, timber, honey, shells, &c.; the imports are salt, English goods, and cloth. The district is crossed by the Eastern Bengal railway, but the chief means of communication are waterways.
British administration was completely established in the district in 1781, when the governor-general ordered the opening of a court at Murali near Jessore. Before that, however, the fiscal administration had been in the hands of the English, having been transferred to the East India company with that of the rest of Bengal in 1765. The changes in jurisdiction in Jessore have been very numerous. After many transfers and rectifications, the district was in 1863 finally constituted as it at present stands. The rajas of Jessore or Chanchra trace their origin to Bhabeswar Rai, a soldier in the army of Khan-i-Azam, an imperial general, who deprived Raja Pratapaditya, the popular hero of the Sundarbans, of several fiscal divisions, and conferred them on Bhabeswar. But Manohar Rai (1649–1705) is regarded as the principal founder of the family. The estate when he inherited it was of moderate size, but he acquired one pargana after another, until, at his death, the property was by far the largest in the neighbourhood.
JESTER, a provider of “jests” or amusements, a buffoon,
especially a professional fool at a royal court or in a nobleman’s
household (see Fool). The word “jest,” from which “jester”
is formed, is used from the 16th century for the earlier “gest,”
Lat. gesta, or res gestae, things done, from gerere, to do, hence
deeds, exploits, especially as told in history, and so used of the
metrical and prose romances and chronicles of the middle ages.
The word became applied to satirical writings and to any long-winded empty tale, and thence to a joke or piece of fun, the
current meaning of the word.
JESUATI, a religious order founded by Giovanni Colombini of
Siena in 1360. Colombini had been a prosperous merchant and a
senator in his native city, but, coming under ecstatic religious
influences, abandoned secular affairs and his wife and daughter
(after making provision for them), and with a friend of like
temperament, Francesco Miani, gave himself to a life of apostolic
poverty, penitential discipline, hospital service and public
preaching. The name Jesuati was given to Colombini and his
disciples from the habit of calling loudly on the name of Jesus at
the beginning and end of their ecstatic sermons. The senate
banished Colombini from Siena for imparting foolish ideas to the
young men of the city, and he continued his mission in Arezzo
and other places, only to be honourably recalled home on the
outbreak of a devastating pestilence. He went out to meet
Urban V. on his return from Avignon to Rome in 1367, and craved
his sanction for the new order and a distinctive habit. Before
this was granted Colombini had to clear the movement of a suspicion
that it was connected with the heretical sect of Fraticelli,
and he died on the 31st of July 1367, soon after the papal approval
had been given. The guidance of the new order, whose members
(all lay brothers) gave themselves entirely to works of mercy,
devolved upon Miani. Their rule of life, originally a compound
of Benedictine and Franciscan elements, was later modified
on Augustinian lines, but traces of the early penitential idea
persisted, e.g. the wearing of sandals and a daily flagellation.
Paul V. in 1606 arranged for a small proportion of clerical members,
and later in the 17th century the Jesuati became so secularized
that the members were known as the Aquavitae Fathers, and the
order was dissolved by Clement IX. in 1668. The female branch
of the order, the Jesuati sisters, founded by Caterina Colombini
(d. 1387) in Siena, and thence widely dispersed, more consistently
maintained the primitive strictness of the society and survived
the male branch by 200 years, existing until 1872 in small communities
in Italy.
JESUITS, the name generally given to the members of the
Society of Jesus, a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church,
founded in 1539. This Society may be defined, in its original
conception and well-avowed object, as a body of highly
trained religious men of various degrees, bound by the three
personal vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, together with,
in some cases, a special vow to the pope’s service, with the object
of labouring for the spiritual good of themselves and their
neighbours. They are declared to be mendicants and enjoy
all the privileges of the other mendicant orders. They are
governed and live by constitutions and rules, mostly drawn up
by their founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, and approved by the
popes. Their proper title is “Clerks Regulars of the Society of
Jesus,” the word Societas being taken as synonymous with the
original Spanish term, Compañia; perhaps the military term
Cohors might more fully have expressed the original idea of a
band of spiritual soldiers living under martial law and discipline.
The ordinary term “Jesuit” was given to the Society by its
avowed opponents; it is first found in the writings of Calvin and
in the registers of the Parlement of Paris as early as 1552.
Constitution and Character.—The formation of the Society was a masterpiece of genius on the part of a man (see Loyola) who was quick to realize the necessity of the moment. Just before Ignatius was experiencing the call to conversion, Luther had begun his revolt against the Roman Church by burning the papal bull of excommunication on the 10th of December 1520. But while Luther’s most formidable opponent was thus being prepared in Spain, the actual formation of the Society was not to take place for eighteen years. Its conception seems to have developed very slowly in the mind of Ignatius. It introduced a new idea into the Church. Hitherto all regulars made a point of the choral office in choir. But as Ignatius conceived the Church to be in a state of war, what was desirable in days of peace ceased when the life of the cloister had to be exchanged for the discipline of the camp; so in the sketch of the new society which he laid before Paul III., Ignatius laid down the principle that the obligation of the breviary should be fulfilled privately and separately and not in choir. The other orders, too, were bound by the idea of a constitutional monarchy based on the democratic spirit. Not so with the Society. The founder placed the general for life in an almost uncontrolled position of authority, giving him the faculty of dispensing individuals from the decrees of the highest legislative body, the general congregations. Thus the principle of military obedience was exalted to a degree higher than that existing in the older orders, which preserved to their members certain constitutional rights.
The soldier-mind of Ignatius can be seen throughout the constitutions. Even in the spiritual labours which the Society shares with the other orders, its own ways of dealing with persons and things result from the system of training which succeeds in forming men to a type that is considered desirable. But it must not be thought that in practice the rule of the Society and the high degree of obedience demanded result in mere mechanism. By a system of check and counter check devised in the constitutions the power of local superiors is modified, so that in practice the working is smooth. Ignatius knew that while a high ideal was necessary for every society, his followers were flesh and blood, not machines. He made it clear from the first that the Society was everything and the individual nothing, except so far as he might prove a useful instrument for carrying out the Society’s objects. Ignatius said to his
