W. by the Waziri hills. Total area, 3148 square miles. Population, 287,547: consisting of Hindus, 20,222, or 9 12 per cent.; Mahometans, 260,550, or 90 61 per cent.; Sikhs, 493; others, 282; density of population per square mile, 91. The principal tribes inhabiting the district are (1.) Waziri Pathans, recent immigrants from the hills, for the most part peaceable, and good cultivators; (2.) Banuchfs, inhabitants of Banu proper; (3.) Pathdns, criminal and depraved, with all the vices and few of the virtues of their race, but fair cultivators; and (4.) Muratf Pathans, inhabi tants of the Erakhel valley, a fine manly race, truthful and
industrious.
The Indus flows through the district from north to south, dividing it into tvo portions. The other streams are the Kurani (which falls into the Indus) and its tributary the Gambila. The course of the Indus is very capricious, and has a tendency to encroach eastwards During inundations its vast body of waters stretches for many milee across the country. Principal crops of Banu district: wheat, barley, gram, and pulses for the spring harvest ; millet, Indian corn, sugar-cane, cotton, and oil seeds, for the autumn harvest. Average produce of land per acre in Ib : Rice, 369 Ib. ; cotton, 100 ; sugar, 1394 ; tobacco, 512 ; wheat, 480 ; other inferior grains, 640 ; oil-seeds, 240 ; fibres, 87. Cultivated area of the district in 1871-72, 450,519 acres; uncultivated and pasture grounds, 414,607; cultivable, 58,562; uiicultivable, 1,092,493 ; total, 1,565,6G2 acres, or 2446 square miles reported on. Revenue from all sources in 1871-72, 50,218, of which 42,741 was derived from the land. The first regular settlement of the land revenue commenced in 1871-72, and is still (1874) in progress. A police force of 464 men of all grades is main tained, of whom 395 belong to the imperial, 57 to the municipal, and 12 to the primitive police. The district contained 33 schools in 1871-72, attended by 1152 pupils. The principal tow-is are Trakhel, population, 7446; Kalabdgh, 6119 ; Edwardesabud (Banu), 3185 ; Bhangi-khel, 5339 ; Nimal, 5010 ; and Van Bachran, 6178.
BANYAN TREE (Ficus indica, Linn., Urostigma benghalensf, Caspar.) is a native of several parts of the East Indies and Ceylon. It has a woody stem, branching to a great height and vast extent, with heart-shaped entire leaves terminating in acute points. Every branch from the main body throws out its own roots, at first in small Lender fibres, several yards from the ground ; but these con tinually grow thicker until they reach the surface, when they strike in, increase to large trunks, and become parent trees, shooting out new branches from the top, which again in time suspend their roots, and these, swelling into trunks, produce other branches, the growth continuing as long as the earth contributes her sustenance. On the banks of the Nerbudda, according to Forbes s Oriental Memories, stands a celebrated tree of this kind, which is supposed to be that described by Nearchus the admiral of Alexander the Great. This tree once covered an area so immense, that it has been known to shelter no fewer than 7000 men. Though now much reduced in size by the destructive power of the floods, the remainder is still nearly 2000 feet in circumference, and the trunks large and small exceed 3000 in number.
BAPHOMET, the imaginary symbol or idol which the Knights Templars were accused of worshipping in their secret rites. The term is supposed to be a corruption of Mahomet, who in several mediaeval Latin poems seems to be called by this name. Von Hammer wrote a dissertation in the Mines de V Orient, 1818, in which he revived the old charge against the Templars. The word, according to his interpretation, signifies the baptism of Metis, or of fire, and is, therefore, connected with the impure rites of the lowest Gnostic sects, the Ophites. Additional evidence of this, according to Von Hammer, is to be found in the architectural decorations of the Templars churches. An elaborate and, so far as has yet appeared, successful criticism of Von Hammer s arguments was made in the Journal des Savans, March and April 1819, by M. Raynouard, well known as the defender of the Templars. See also Hallam, Middle Ages, c. i. note 15.
BAPTISM. Christian baptism is the sacrament by which a person is initiated into the Christian Church. The word is derived from the Greek /?a7rriw, the frequentative form of /?a7TTw, to dip or wash, which is the term used in the New Testament when the sacrament is described. In discussing what is meant by baptism, three things have to be inquired into (1) the origin of the rite, (2) its meaning, or the doctrine of baptism, and (3) the form of the rite itself.
I. The Origin of Baptism.—Christian theologians do not require to go further back than to the New Testament, for there, in the record of our Lord s life, and in the writings of His apostles, they find all that is required to form a basis for their doctrines. The principal passages in the New Testament in which baptism is described are as follows : Matt, xxviii. 18-20; Mark xvi. 1C ; John iii. 2G ; Acts ii. 38, x. 44,/. ,viii. 1G, xix. 1 , /., xxii. 16 ; Rom. vi. 4 ; 1 Cor. i. 14-16, vi. 11 ; Eph. v. 26 ; Col. ii. 12 ; Heb. x. 22, 23, &c. From these texts we learn that baptism is specially connected with the gift of the Holy Spirit, with the forgiveness of sins, with our being buried with Christ ; and we are also taught by whom baptism is to be adminis tered, and who are the proper partakers in the ordinance. It is from a due arrangement and comparison of the con ceptions in these texts that a doctrine of baptism has been formed. But while theologians do not require to go beyond the New Testment for the origin and meaning of baptism, historical investigation cannot help trying to trace analogies to the rite in Old Testament and even in Pagan history. In the New Testament itself there are two distinct kinds of baptism spoken of the baptism of John and Christian baptism. Treatises on Jewish antiquities speak of the baptism of proselytes ; and St Paul applies the term baptism to describe certain Old Testament events, and we find in use among certain Pagan tribes rites strongly resembling Christian baptism, so far as external ceremonies go. Hence the question arises, What is the relation of Christian baptism to these?
Writers on the antiquities of the Christian church were accustomed to find the source of Christian baptism in the baptism of John, and to assert that John s baptism was simply a universal and symbolical use of the well known ceremony of the baptism of proselytes, and they connected this Jewish rite with Old Testament and even with Pagan lustrations. But this mode of explanation must now be abandoned. It is very difficult to show any real connection between the baptism of John and Christian baptism further than the general relation which all the actions of the forerunner must have had to those of the Messiah. We know very little about the baptism of John, and all attempts to describe it minutely are founded either upon conjecture or upon its identity with the baptism of prose lytes. Was John s baptism an initiation, and if so, initiation into what] Did Christ baptize in His lifetime, or did Christian baptism properly begin after Christ s death, and after the mission of the Holy Ghost] What was the formula of John s baptism, and was there any change or growth in the formula of Christian baptism? (The Tubingen School, for example, think that the formula in Acts ii. is much earlier than the complete and more developed one in Matt, xxviii. 19.) All these questions require to be answered with much more precision than the present state of our information admits of, before we can define the precise relation subsisting between the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ.
Jewish baptism of proselytes, of which a great deal has been made, is also founded on assumptions which cannot be proved. This very plausible theory first assumes that proselytes were baptized from an early time in the Jewish
Church, although the Old Testament tells us nothing about
