bring horses, wool, woollen stuffs, silks, dyes, gold-thread, fruits, precious stones, carpets and poshtins (sheepskin clothing), fighting and buying their way to the British border where, leaving their arms, they are free to wander at will to Delhi, Agra and Calcutta The chief speciality of Peshawar consists of bright-coloured scarves called lungis; wax-cloth and ornamental needle-work are also local products, as well as knives and small arms.
The district of Peshawar has an area of 2611 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 788,707, showing an increase of 10·8% in the decade. Except on the south-east, where the Indus flows, it is encircled by mountains which are inhabited by the Mohmand, Utman Khel and Afridi tribes. The plain consists of alluvial deposits of silt and gravel. The district is naturally fertile and well watered, and is irrigated by the Swat River Canal. The principal crops are wheat, barley, maize, millets and oil-seeds, with a little cotton and sugar-cane. Peshawar also produces a fine variety of rice, known as “Bara rice,” after the river which irrigates it. The North-Western railway crosses the district from Attock, and has been extended from Peshawar city to Jamrud for military purposes. The district is chiefly inhabited by Pathans; there are some Hindus engaged in trade as bankers, merchants and shop-keepers.
In early times the district of Peshawar seems to have had an essentially Indian population, for it was not till the 15th century that its present Pathan inhabitants occupied it. Under the name of Gandhara it was a centre of Buddhism, and especially Graeco-Buddhism. Rock-edicts of Asoka still exist at two places; and a stupa excavated in 1909 was found to contain an inscription of Kanishka, as well as relics believed to be those of Buddha himself. The last of the Indian Buddhist kings was conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1009. The Mogul emperors always found difficulty in maintaining their authority over the Afghan border tribes, who finally established their independence during the reign of Aurangzeb. Peshawar was a favourite residence of the Afghan dynasty founded by Ahmed Shah Durrani, and here Mountstuart Elphinstone came as ambassador to Shah Shujah in 1809. A few years later Ranjit Singh crossed the Indus, and after much hard fighting Sikh authority was firmly established under General Avitabile in 1834. In 1848 the whole of the Punjab passed to the British. During the Mutiny, after the sepoy regiments had been disarmed, Peshawar was a source of strength rather than of danger, though Sir John Lawrence did at one time contemplate the necessity of surrendering it to the Afghans, in order to preserve the rest of Northern India.
PESHIN, or Pishin, a district of Baluchistan. Area 2717 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 50,200. It consists of a large plain surrounded on three sides by hills, which formerly belonged to Afghanistan but was ceded to the British by the treaty of Gandamak in 1879 This plain is of considerable strategic importance, as it forms the focus of a great number of routes leading from Sind and the Punjab frontier districts to Kandahar, and is intersected by the Sind-Peshin railway. The agricultural wealth of Peshin, and consequently its revenues, have increased greatly under British administration.
PESHITTO, or Peshito (i.e. “simple”), the standard version of the Bible in the Syriac language. It was long supposed to be the original Syriac version, but is now generally recognized as representing a revision made by Rabbula, bishop of Edessa, early in the 5th century, an attempt at standardizing the Syriac text such as Jerome had made for the Latin in his Vulgate. (See Bible.)
PESHWA (Persian for “leader,” “guide”), the title of the head of the Mahratta confederacy in India. Originally the peshwa was only prime minister, but afterwards he supplanted his master and became chief of the state, founding an hereditary dynasty, with the capital at Poona. The last peshwa, Baji Rao, came into collision with the British, and was dethroned in 1818. His adopted son, Nana Sahib, took a leading part in the Mutiny of 1857, in revenge for being deprived of what he considered his rights.
PESSIMISM (from Lat. pessimus, worst), a word of modern coinage,[1] denoting an attitude of hopelessness towards life, a vague general opinion that pain and evil predominate in human affairs. It is the antithesis of “optimism,” which denotes the view that on the whole there is a balance of good and pleasure, or at least that in the long run good will triumph. Between optimism and pessimism is the theory of “meliorism,” according to which the world on the whole makes progress in goodness. The average man is pessimist or optimist not on theoretical grounds, but owing to the circumstances of his life, his material prosperity, his bodily health, his general temperament. Perhaps the most characteristic example of unsystematic pessimism is the language of Ecclesiastes, who concludes that “all is vanity.”
Pessimism and optimism have, however, been expressed in systematic philosophical forms, a brief summary only of which need here be given. Such systems have been elaborated chiefly by modern thinkers, but the germs of the ideas are found widely spread in the older Oriental philosophies and in pre-Christian European thought. Generally speaking, pessimism may be found in all pantheistic and materialistic systems. It is important, however, to point out an essential distinction. The thinker who sees man confronted by the infinite non-moral forces presumed by natural pantheism inevitably predominating over the finite powers of men may appear to the modern Christian theologian or to the evolutionist as a hopeless pessimist, and yet may himself have concluded that, though the future holds out no prospect save that of annihilation, man may yet by prudence and care enjoy a considerable measure of happiness. Pessimism, therefore, depends upon the individual point of view, and the term is frequently used merely in a condemnatory sense by hostile critics. The attitude of a man who denies the doctrine of immortality and rejoices in the denial is not strictly pessimistic. A Christian again may be pessimistic about the present; he must logically be optimistic about the future—a teleological view of the universe implies optimism on the whole; the agnostic may be indifferent to, or pessimistic, regarding the future, while exceedingly satisfied with life as he finds it.
This complex view of life is exemplified by Plato, whose general theory of idealism is entirely optimistic. In analysing the world of phenomena he necessarily takes a pessimistic view because phenomena are merely imitations more or less removed from reality, i.e. from the good. Yet the idealistic postulate of a summum bonum is in result optimistic, and this view predominated among the Stoics and the Neoplatonists. The Epicureans, on the other hand, were empirical pessimists. Man is able to derive a measure of enjoyment from life in spite of the nonexistence of the orthodox gods; yet this enjoyment is on the whole negative, the avoidance of pain. A similar view is that of the ancient sceptics.
Oriental pessimism, at least as understood by Europeans, is best exemplified in Buddhism, which finds in human life sorrow and pain. But all pain and sorrow are incidental to the human being in his individual capacity. He who will cast aside the “Bonds,” the “Intoxications,” the “Hindrances,” and tread the Noble Eightfold Path (see Buddhism) which leads to Nirvana, will attain the ideal, the “Fruit of Arahatship,” which is described in terms of glowing praise in the Pali hymns. This, the original doctrine of the Buddha, though not adopted in the full sense by all his followers, is in fact at least as optimistic as any optimism of the West. To call it “pessimism” is merely to apply to it a characteristically Western principle according to which happiness is impossible without personality. The true Buddhist on the contrary looks forward with enthusiasm to this absorption into eternal bliss.
In Europe on the whole the so-called pessimistic attitude was commoner in the Teutonic north than in the Mediterranean basin. But even here the hopefulness as regards a future life, in which the inequalities of the present would be rectified, compensated for the gloomy fatalism with which the present was
- ↑ The earliest example given in the New English Dictionary is in S. T. Coleridge’s Letters (1794).
