Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

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We know that the title of duke of Burgundy was revived in 1682 for a short
time by Louis XIV. in favour of his grandson Louis, the pupil of Fenelon.
But from the 16th to the 18th century Burgundy constituted a military
government bounded on the north by Champagne, on the south by Lyonnais, on
the east by Franche-Comte, on the west by Bourbonnais and Nivernais. It
comprised Dijonnais, Autunois, Auxois, and the _pays de la montagne_ or
Country of the Mountain (Chatillon-sur-Seine), with the "counties" of
Chalonnais, Maconnais, Auxerrois and Bar-sur-Seine, and, so far as
administration went, the annexes of Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the country
of Gex. Burgundy was a _pays d'etats_. The estates, whose privileges the
dukes at first, and later Louis XI., had to swear to maintain, had their
assembly at Dijon, usually under the presidency of the governor of the
province, the bishop of Autun as representing the clergy, and the mayor of
Dijon representing the third estate. In the judiciary point of view the
greater part of Burgundy depended on the parlement of Dijon; but Auxerrois
and Maconnais were amenable to the parlement of Paris.

See also U. Plancher, _Histoire generale et particuliere de Bourgogne_
(Dijon, 1739--1781, 4 vols. 8vo); Courtepee, _Description generale et
particuliere du duche de Bourgogne_ (Dijon, 1774-1785, 7 vols. 8vo); O.
Jahn. _Geschichte der Burgundionen_ (Halle, 1874, 2 vols. 8vo); E. Petit de
Vausse, _Histoire des dues de Bourgogne de la race capetienne_ (Paris,
1885-1905, 9 vols. 8vo); B. de Barante, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de
la maison de Valois_ (Paris, 1833--1836, 13 vols. 8vo); the marquis Leon
E.S.J. de Laborde, _Les Ducs de Bourgogne: Etudes sur les lettres, les arts
et l'industrie pendant le XV siecle_ (Paris, 1849-1851, 3 vols. 8vo).

(R. PO.)

BURHANPUR, a town of British India in the Nimar district of the Central
Provinces, situated on the north bank of the river Tapti, 310 m. N.E. of
Bombay, and 2 m. from the Great Indian Peninsula railway station of
Lalbagh. It was founded in A.D. 1400 by a Mahommedan prince of the Farukhi
dynasty of Khandesh, whose successors held it for 200 years, when the
Farukhi kingdom was annexed to the empire of Akbar. It formed the chief
seat of the government of the Deccan provinces of the Mogul empire till
Shah Jahan removed the capital to Aurangabad in 1635. Burhanpur was
plundered in 1685 by the Mahrattas, and repeated battles were fought in its
neighbourhood in the struggle between that race and the Mussulmans for the
supremacy of India. In 1739 the Mahommedans finally yielded to the demand
of the Mahrattas for a fourth of the revenue, and in 1760 the Nizam of the
Deccan ceded Burhanpur to the peshwa, who in 1778 transferred it to
Sindhia. In the Mahratta War the army under General Wellesley, afterwards
the duke of Wellington, took Burhanpur (1803), but the treaty of the same
year restored it to Sindhia. It remained a portion of Sindhia's dominions
till 1860-1861, when, in consequence of certain territorial arrangements,
the town and surrounding estates were ceded to the British government.
Under the Moguls the city covered an area of about 5 sq. m., and was about
101/2 m. in circumference. In the _Ain-i-Akbari_ it is described as a "large
city, with many gardens, inhabited by all nations, and abounding with
handicraftsmen." Sir Thomas Roe, who visited it in 1614, found that the
houses in the town were "only mud cottages, except the prince's house, the
chan's and some few others." In 1865-1866 the city contained 8000 houses,
with a population of 34,137, which had decreased to 33,343 in 1901.
Burhanpur is celebrated for its muslins, flowered silks, and brocades,
which, according to Tavernier, who visited it in 1668, were exported in
great quantities to Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and Poland. The gold and
silver wires used in the manufacture of these fabrics are drawn with
considerable care and skill; and in order to secure the purity of the
metals employed for their composition, the wire-drawing under the native
rule was done under government inspection. The town of Burhanpur and its
manufactures were long on the decline, but during recent times have made a
slight recovery. The buildings of interest [v.04 p.0823] in the town are a
palace, built by Akbar, called the Lal Kila or the Red Fort, and the Jama
Masjid or Great Mosque, built by Ali Khan, one of the Farukhi dynasty, in
1588. A considerable number of Boras, a class of commercial Mahommedans,
reside here.

BURI, or BURE, in Norse mythology, the grandfather of Odin. In the creation
of the world he was born from the rocks, licked by the cow Andhumla
(darkness). He was the father of Bor, and the latter, wedded to Bestla, the
daughter of the giant Bolthorn (evil), became the father of Odin, the
Scandinavian Jove.

BURIAL and BURIAL ACTS (in O. Eng. _byrgels_, whence _byriels_, wrongly
taken as a plural, and so Mid. Eng. _buryel_, from O. Eng. _byrgan_,
properly to protect, cover, to bury). The main lines of the law of burial
in England may be stated very shortly. Every person has the right to be
buried in the churchyard or burial ground of the parish where he dies, with
the exception of executed felons, who are buried in the precincts of the
prison or in a place appointed by the home office. At common law the person
under whose roof a death takes place has a duty to provide for the body
being carried to the grave decently covered; and the executors or legal
representatives of the deceased are bound to bury or dispose of the body in
a manner becoming the estate of the deceased, according to their
discretion, and they are not bound to fulfil the wishes he may have
expressed in this respect. The disposal must be such as will not expose the
body to violation, or offend the feelings or endanger the health of the
living; and cremation under proper restrictions is allowable. In the case
of paupers dying in a parish house, or shipwrecked persons whose bodies are
cast ashore, the overseers or guardians are responsible for their burial;
and in the case of suicides the coroner has a similar duty. The expenses of
burial are payable out of the deceased's estate in priority to all other
debts. A husband liable for the maintenance of his wife is liable for her
funeral expenses; the parents for those of their children, if they have the
means of paying. Legislation has principally affected (1) places of burial,
(2) mode of burial, (3) fees for burial, and (4) disinterment.

1. The overcrowded state of churchyards and burial grounds gradually led to
the passing of a group of statutes known as the Burial Acts, extending from
1852 up to 1900. By these acts a general system was set up, the aim of
which was to remedy the existing deficiencies of accommodation by providing
new burial grounds and closing old ones which should be dangerous to
health, and to establish a central authority, the home office (now for most
purposes the Local Government Board) to superintend all burial grounds with
a view to the protection of the public health and the maintenance of public
decency in burials. The Local Government Board thus has the power to obtain
by order in council the closing of any burial ground it thinks fit, while
its consent is necessary to the opening of any new burial ground; and it
also has power to direct inspection of any burial ground or cemetery, and
to regulate burials in common graves in statutory cemeteries and to compel
persons in charge of vaults or places of burial to take steps necessary for
preventing their becoming dangerous or injurious to health. The vestry of
any parish, whether a common-law or ecclesiastical one, was thus authorized
to provide itself with a new burial ground, if its existing one was no
longer available; such ground might be wholly or partly consecrated, and
chapels might be provided for the performance of burial service. The ground
was put under the management of a burial board, consisting of ratepayers
elected by the vestry, and the consecrated portion of it took the place of
the churchyard in all respects. Disused churchyards and burial grounds in
the metropolis may be used as open spaces for recreation, and only
buildings for religious purposes can be built on them (1881, 1884, 1887).
The Local Government Act 1894 introduced a change into the government of
burial grounds (consequent on the general change made in parochial
government) by transferring, or allowing to be transferred, the powers,
duties, property and liabilities of the burial boards in urban districts to
the district councils, and in rural parishes to the parish councils and
parish meetings; and by allowing rural parishes to adopt the Burials Acts,
and provide and manage new burial grounds by the parish council, or a
burial board elected by the parish meeting.

2. The mode of burial is a matter of ecclesiastical cognizance; in the case
of churchyards and elsewhere it is in the discretion of the owners of the
burial ground. The Local Government Board now makes regulations for burials
in burial grounds provided under the Burial Acts; for cemeteries provided
under the Public Health Act 1879. Private cemeteries and burial grounds
make their own regulations. Burial may now take place either with or
without a religious service in consecrated ground. Before 1880 no body
could be buried in consecrated ground except with the service of the
Church, which the incumbent of the parish or a person authorized by him was
bound to perform; but the canons and prayer-book refused the use of the
office for excommunicated persons, _majori excommunicatione_, for some
grievous and notorious crime, and no person able to testify of his
repentance, unbaptized persons, and persons against whom a verdict of _felo
de se_ had been found. But by the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880, the
bodies of persons entitled to be buried in parochial burial grounds,
whether churchyards or graveyards, may be buried there, on proper notice
being given to the minister, without the performance of the service of the
Church of England, and either without any religious service or with a
Christian and orderly religious service at the grave, which may be
conducted by any person invited to do so by the person in charge of the
funeral. Clergymen of the Church of England are also by the act allowed,
but are not obliged, to use the burial service in any unconsecrated burial
ground or cemetery, or building therein, in any case in which it could be
used in consecrated ground. In cases where it may not be so used, and where
such is the wish of those in charge of the service, the clergy may use a
form of service approved by the bishop without being liable to any
ecclesiastical or temporal penalty. Except as altered by this act, it is
still the law that "the Church knows no such indecency as putting a body
into consecrated ground without the service being at the same time
performed"; and nothing in the act authorizes the use of the service on the
burial of a _felo de se_, which, however, may take place in any way allowed
by the act of 1880. The proper performance of the burial office is provided
for by the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874. Statutory provision is made
by the criminal law in this act for the preservation of order in burial
grounds and protection of funeral services.

3. Fees are now payable by custom or under statutory powers on all burials.
In a churchyard the parson must perform the office of burial for
parishioners, even if the customary fee is denied, and it is doubtful who
is liable to pay it. The custom must be immemorial and invariable. If not
disputed, its payment can be enforced in the ecclesiastical court; if
disputed, its validity must be tried by a temporal court. A special
contract for the payment of an annual fee in the case of a non-parishioner
can be enforced in the latter court. In the case of paupers and shipwrecked
persons the fees are payable by the parish. In other parochial burial
grounds and cemeteries the duties and rights to fees of the incumbents,
clerks and sextons of the parishes for which the ground has been provided
are the same as in burials in the churchyard. Burial authorities may fix
the fees payable in such grounds, subject to the approval of the home
secretary; but the fees for services rendered by ministers of religion and
sextons must be the same in the consecrated as in the unconsecrated part of
the burial ground, and no incumbent of a parish or a clerk may receive any
fee upon burials except for services rendered by them (act of 1900). On
burials under the act of 1880 the same fees are payable as if the burial
had taken place with the service of the Church.

4. A corpse is not the subject of property, nor capable of holding
property. If interred in consecrated ground, it is under the protection of
the ecclesiastical court; if in unconsecrated, it is under that of the
temporal court. In the former case it is an ecclesiastical offence, and in
either case it is a misdemeanour, to disinter or remove it without proper
authority, [v.04 p.0824] whatever the motive for such an act may be. Such
proper authority is (1) a faculty from the ordinary, where it is to be
removed from one consecrated place of burial to another, and this is often
done on sanitary grounds or to meet the wishes of relatives, and has been
done for secular purposes, _e.g._ widening a thoroughfare, by allowing part
of the burial ground (disused) to be thrown into it; but it has been
refused where the object was to cremate the remains, or to transfer them
from a churchyard to a Roman Catholic burial ground; (2) a licence from the
home secretary, where it is desired to transfer remains from one
unconsecrated place of burial to another; (3) by order of the coroner, in
cases of suspected crime. There has been considerable discussion as to the
boundary line of jurisdiction between (1) and (2), and whether the
disinterment of a body from consecrated ground for purposes of
identification falls within, (1) only or within both (1) and (2); and an
attempt by the ecclesiastical court to enforce a penalty for that purpose
without a licence has been prohibited by the temporal court.

See also CHURCHYARD; and, for methods of disposal of the dead, CEMETERY;
CREMATION, and FUNERAL RITES.

AUTHORITIES.--Baker, _Law of Burials_ (6th ed. by Thomas, London, 1898);
Phillimore, _Ecclestastical Law_ (2nd ed., London, 1895); Cripps, _Law of
Church and Clergy_ (6th ed., London, 1886).

(G. G. P.*)

BURIAL SOCIETIES, a form of friendly societies, existing mainly in England,
and constituted for the purpose of providing by voluntary subscriptions,
for insuring money to be paid on the death of a member, or for the funeral
expenses of the husband, wife or child of a member, or of the widow of a
deceased member. (See FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.)

BURIATS, a Mongolian race, who dwell in the vicinity of the Baikal Lake,
for the most part in the government of Irkutsk and the Trans-Baikal
Territory. They are divided into various tribes or clans, which generally
take their names from the locality they frequent. These tribes are
subdivided according to kinship. The Buriats are a broad-shouldered race
inclined to stoutness, with small slanting eyes, thick lips, high
cheekbones, broad and flat noses and scanty beards. The men shave their
heads and wear a pigtail like the Chinese. In summer they dress in silk and
cotton gowns, in winter in furs and sheepskins. Their principal occupation
is the rearing of cattle and horses. The Buriat horse is famous for its
power of endurance, and the attachment between master and animal is very
great. At death the horse should, according to their religion, be
sacrificed at its owner's grave; but the frugal Buriat heir usually
substitutes an old hack, or if he has to tie up the valuable steed to the
grave to starve he does so only with the thinnest of cords so that the
animal soon breaks his tether and gallops off to join the other horses. In
some districts the Buriats have learned agriculture from the Russians, and
in Irkutsk are really better farmers than the latter. They are
extraordinarily industrious at manuring and irrigation. They are also
clever at trapping and fishing. In religion the Buriats are mainly
Buddhists; and their head lama (Khambo Lama) lives at the Goose Lake
(Guisinoe Ozero). Others are Shamanists, and their most sacred spot is the
Shamanic stone at the mouth of the river Angar. Some thousands of them
around Lake Baikal are Christians. A knowledge of reading and writing is
common, especially among the Trans-Baikal Buriats, who possess books of
their own, chiefly translated from the Tibetan. Their own language is
Mongolian, and of three distinct dialects. It was in the 16th century that
the Russians first came in touch with the Buriats, who were long known by
the name of Bratskiye, "Brotherly," given them by the Siberian colonists.
In the town of Bratskiyostrog, which grew up around the block-house built
in 1631 at the confluence of the Angara and Oka to bring them into
subjection, this title is perpetuated. The Buriats made a vigorous
resistance to Russian aggression, but were finally subdued towards the end
of the 17th century, and are now among the most peaceful of Russian
peoples.

See J.G. Gruelin, _Siberia_; Pierre Simon Pallas, _Sammlungen historischer
Nachrichten ueber die mongolischen Volkerschaften_ (St Petersburg,
1776-1802); M.A. Castren, _Versuch einer buriatischen Sprachlehre_ (1857);
Sir H.H. Howorth, _History of the Mongols_ (1876-1888).

BURIDAN, JEAN [JOANNES BURIDANUS] (c. 1297-c. 1358), French philosopher,
was born at Bethune in Artois. He studied in Paris under William of Occam.
He was professor of philosophy in the university of Paris, was rector in
1327, and in 1345 was deputed to defend its interests before Philip of
Valois and at Rome. He was more than sixty years old in 1358, but the year
of his death is not recorded. The tradition that he was forced to flee from
France along with other nominalists, and founded the university of Vienna
in 1356, is unsupported and in contradiction to the fact that the
university was founded by Frederick II. in 1237. An ordinance of Louis XI.,
in 1473, directed against the nominalists, prohibited the reading of his
works. In philosophy Buridan was a rationalist, and followed Occam in
denying all objective reality to universals, which he regarded as mere
words. The aim of his logic is represented as having been the devising of
rules for the discovery of syllogistic middle terms; this system for aiding
slow-witted persons became known as the _pons asinorum_. The parts of logic
which he treated with most minuteness are modal propositions and modal
syllogisms. In commenting on Aristotle's _Ethics_ he dealt in a very
independent manner with the question of free will, his conclusions being
remarkably similar to those of John Locke. The only liberty which he admits
is a certain power of suspending the deliberative process and determining
the direction of the intellect. Otherwise the will is entirely dependent on
the view of the mind, the last result of examination. The comparison of the
will unable to act between two equally balanced motives to an ass dying of
hunger between two equal and equidistant bundles of hay is not found in his
works, and may have been invented by his opponents to ridicule his
determinism. That he was not the originator of the theory known as "liberty
of indifference" (_liberum arbitrium indifferentiae_) is shown in G.
Fonsegrive's _Essai sur le libre arbitre_, pp. 119, 199 (1887).

His works are:--_Summula de dialectica_ (Paris, 1487); _Compendium logicae_
(Venice, 1489); _Quaestiones in viii. libros physicorum_ (Paris, 1516); _In
Aristotelis Metaphysica_ (1518); _Quaestiones in x. libros ethicorum
Aristotelis_ (Paris, 1489; Oxford, 1637); _Quaestiones in viii. libros
politicorum Aristotelis_ (1500). See K. Prantl's _Geschichte der Logik_,
bk. iv. 14-38; Stoeckl's _Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters_, ii.
1023-1028; Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_, s.v. (1897).

BURKE, EDMUND (1729-1797), British statesman and political writer. His is
one of the greatest names in the history of political literature. There
have been many more important statesmen, for he was never tried in a
position of supreme responsibility. There have been many more effective
orators, for lack of imaginative suppleness prevented him from penetrating
to the inner mind of his hearers; defects in delivery weakened the
intrinsic persuasiveness of his reasoning; and he had not that commanding
authority of character and personality which has so often been the secret
of triumphant eloquence. There have been many subtler, more original and
more systematic thinkers about the conditions of the social union. But no
one that ever lived used the general ideas of the thinker more successfully
to judge the particular problems of the statesman. No one has ever come so
close to the details of practical politics, and at the same time remembered
that these can only be understood and only dealt with by the aid of the
broad conceptions of political philosophy. And what is more than all for
perpetuity of fame, he was one of the great masters of the high and
difficult art of elaborate composition.

A certain doubtfulness hangs over the circumstances of Burke's life
previous to the opening of his public career. The very date of his birth is
variously stated. The most probable opinion is that he was born at Dublin
on the 12th of January 1729, new style. Of his family we know little more
than his father was a Protestant attorney, practising in Dublin, and that
his mother was a Catholic, a member of the family of Nagle. He had at least
one sister, from whom descended the only existing representatives of
Burke's family; and he had at least two brothers, Garret Burke and Richard
Burke, the one older and the other younger than Edmund. The sister,
afterwards Mrs French, was brought up and remained throughout life in the
religious faith of her [v.04 p.0825] mother; Edmund and his brothers
followed that of their father. In 1741 the three brothers were sent to
school at Ballitore in the county of Kildare, kept by Abraham Shackleton,
an Englishman, and a member of the Society of Friends. He appears to have
been an excellent teacher and a good and pious man. Burke always looked
back on his own connexion with the school at Ballitore as among the most
fortunate circumstances of his life. Between himself and a son of his
instructor there sprang up a close and affectionate friendship, and, unlike
so many of the exquisite attachments of youth, this was not choked by the
dust of life, nor parted by divergence of pursuit. Richard Shackleton was
endowed with a grave, pure and tranquil nature, constant and austere, yet
not without those gentle elements that often redeem the drier qualities of
his religious persuasion. When Burke had become one of the most famous men
in Europe, no visitor to his house was more welcome than the friend with
whom long years before he had tried poetic flights, and exchanged all the
sanguine confidences of boyhood. And we are touched to think of the
simple-minded guest secretly praying, in the solitude of his room in the
fine house at Beaconsfield, that the way of his anxious and overburdened
host might be guided by a divine hand.

In 1743 Burke became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, where Oliver
Goldsmith was also a student at the same time. But the serious pupil of
Abraham Shackleton would not be likely to see much of the wild and squalid
sizar. Henry Flood, who was two years younger than Burke, had gone to
complete his education at Oxford. Burke, like Goldsmith, achieved no
academic distinction. His character was never at any time of the academic
cast. The minor accuracies, the limitation of range, the treading and
re-treading of the same small patch of ground, the concentration of
interest in success before a board of examiners, were all uncongenial to a
nature of exuberant intellectual curiosity and of strenuous and
self-reliant originality. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was never
thorough, nor had he any turn for critical niceties. He could quote Homer
and Pindar, and he had read Aristotle. Like others who have gone through
the conventional course of instruction, he kept a place in his memory for
the various charms of Virgil and Horace, of Tacitus and Ovid; but the
master whose page by night and by day he turned with devout hand, was the
copious, energetic, flexible, diversified and brilliant genius of the
declamations for Archias the poet and for Milo, against Catiline and
against Antony, the author of the disputations at Tusculum and the orations
against Verres. Cicero was ever to him the mightiest of the ancient names.
In English literature Milton seems to have been more familiar to him than
Shakespeare, and Spenser was perhaps more of a favourite with him than
either.

It is too often the case to be a mere accident that men who become eminent
for wide compass of understanding and penetrating comprehension, are in
their adolescence unsettled and desultory. Of this Burke is a signal
illustration. He left Trinity in 1748, with no great stock of well-ordered
knowledge. He neither derived the benefits nor suffered the drawbacks of
systematic intellectual discipline.

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