Multiple studies in the Bengal basin have shown that elevated As in groundwater coincides with reduced, relatively dark sediments of Himalayan provenance. In West Bengal state (India), As concentrations > 10 μg/L tend to occur east of the River Bhagirathi-Hoogly, the main distributary of the Ganges. Associations among sediment chemistry and mineralogy for four cores from either side of the Bhagirathi-Hoogly (cores 1 and 2 to the east, 3 and 4 to the west) in Murshidabad district were investigated. Ten sediment samples were collected from each boring at various depths to a maximum of 38 to 43 m. Sediment chemistry was investigated using sequential extraction, digestion and analysis of As, Al, Ca, Fe, and Mn on an ICP-OES and GFAAS, and by total carbon analysis on a CNS analyzer. Organic carbon content was measured gravimetrically by HCl digestion. Sediment mineralogy was investigated using thin-section petrography and a microprobe EDS. Pyroxenes and phyllosilicates appear to be the primary sources of arsenic in the study area. Additionally, core 4 sediments are mineralogically similar to cores 1 and 2 despite differences in arsenic concentrations in the groundwater. We conclude that a 65-ft (20-m) silt layer overlying the aquifer sands in core 4 acts as a local aquitard and restricts arsenic mobilization locally.

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Kabir, Nujaba Binte. / "November 2009." / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2008-2009, design report"--Leaf preceding t.p. / Thesis (M.Arch.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-76). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ABSTRUCT --- p.i / 摘要 --- p.iii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.iv / TABLE OF CONTENT --- p.V / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.vii / INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter PART I. --- HISTORY OF SULTANATE MOSQUES ARCHITECTURE IN BENGAL & SHAPE GRAMMAR ANALYSIS. / Chapter Chapter 01. --- History and Origins of Sultanate Mosques --- p.9 / Chapter 1.1 --- Historical context --- p.9 / Chapter 1.2 --- The Geographical & climatic context --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3 --- Origins of Bengal mosque architecture --- p.11 / Chapter 1.4 --- Pre-Muslim architectural traditions of Bengal --- p.14 / Chapter 1.5 --- The common characteristics of the Sultanate mosque --- p.15 / Chapter Chapter 02. --- Shape Grammar: Analysis of Style and Grammar Interpreter. --- p.19 / Chapter 2.1 --- Analysis of style --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2 --- Generative application --- p.21 / Chapter PART II. --- DEVELOPMENT OF THE GRAMMAR FOR SULTANATE MOSQUES. / Chapter Chapter 03. --- The Style of the Corpus of Sultanate Mosques and the Features Require Developing the Grammar. --- p.24 / Chapter 3.1 --- The corpus of the Sultanate V Mosques in Bengal --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2 --- Examining the corpus of the Sultanate Mosques in Bengal --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3 --- Features Require Developing the Grammar --- p.30 / Chapter 3.4 --- The Grammar --- p.39 / Chapter Chapter 04. --- The Vocabulary of the Sultanate Mosques. --- p.41 / Chapter 4.1 --- Vocabulary elements --- p.41 / Chapter 4.2 --- The formation of the grammar --- p.43 / Chapter Chapter 05. --- Stage 1: Generation of the Starting Unit --- p.47 / Chapter 5.1 --- Concept --- p.47 / Chapter 5.2 --- The algorithm --- p.48 / Chapter 5.3 --- Result and discussion --- p.51 / Chapter Chapter 06. --- Stage 2: Formatting the Grids and Forming the Columns --- p.53 / Chapter 6.1 --- Concept --- p.53 / Chapter 6.2 --- The algorithm --- p.54 / Chapter 6.3 --- Result and discussion --- p.56 / Chapter Chapter 07. --- Stage 3: Formatting the Walls around the Complete Grid. --- p.58 / Chapter 7.1 --- Concept --- p.58 / Chapter 7.2 --- The algorithm --- p.58 / Chapter 7.3 --- Result and discussion --- p.61 / Chapter Chapter 08. --- Stage 4: Locating the Corner Towers and the Openings on the Walls --- p.62 / Chapter 8.1 --- Concept --- p.62 / Chapter 8.2 --- The algorithm --- p.63 / Chapter 8.3 --- Result and discussion --- p.66 / Chapter Chapter 09. --- The Language of Designs --- p.68 / CONCLUSION --- p.72 / REFERENCES --- p.75 / APPENDIX --- p.78

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Master of Science / Department of Geology / Saugata Datta / More than 75 million people in the Bengal Delta of eastern India and Bangladesh are exposed to drinking water with dangerously high arsenic (As) concentrations; the worst case of environmental poisoning in human history. Despite recognition of dangers posed to chronic exposure to drinking water with elevated As, its biogeochemical cycle is inadequately constrained in groundwater flow systems due to its complex redox chemistry and microbially-mediated transformations. Arsenic concentrations in Bengal Delta sediments are comparable to global averages, but its highly heterogeneous spatial distribution (on scales of meters to kilometers) in sediments and groundwaters is poorly understood. Though many research efforts have targeted understanding this heterogeneity in Bangladesh, less work has been done in eastern India. Murshidabad (23°56.355‘N, 88°16.156‘E), an eastern district in West Bengal, India, where groundwaters are highly As-affected (~4000 μg/l), was chosen as our study area. Research objectives were: (1) characterize sediment cores (mineralogically, geochemically) and groundwaters (hydrochemically, isotopically) in areas with contrasting As concentrations—west (low-As) and east (high-As) of river Bhagirathi, a major distributary of Ganges flowing through the heart of Murshidabad; (2) describe and understand the extent of spatial variability, laterally and vertically, of dissolved As concentrations in shallow (< 60 m) aquifers, comparing sediment core chemistry to water chemistry; (3) identify source(s) of aquifer recharge and (4) role(s) of inorganic carbon within the aquifer to understand the bioavailability and mobilization of As from sediments to groundwaters. Mineralogical differences between high-As (grey) and low-As (orange-brown) sediments, were the presence of greater amounts of micas, Fe- and Mg-rich clays, amphiboles, carbonates, and apatite in high-As sediments; these were virtually absent from low-As sediments. In high-As areas, As was associated with amorphous and poorly-crystalline Fe-oxyhydroxide phases and labile (specifically-sorbed) phases, especially where Fe(II):Fe[subscript]T was high in the sediments. High-As groundwaters had high As(III):As[subscript]T, iron, bicarbonate, phosphate, and ammonium, and low concentrations of chloride and sulfate. Dry season precipitation was probably the main source of aquifer recharge; lighter values of [superscript]13C in dissolved inorganic carbon resulted from oxidation of natural organic matter. This study points to an idea that both microbially-mediated oxidation-reduction and competitive ion-exchange processes occurring in shallow aquifers of Murshidabad drive As mobilization and sequestration by aquifer sediments.

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Journeying to sacred places is an ancient yet contemporarily popular tradition in the Hindu society of India. At the outset of this thesis, the philosophical foundations and general patterns of pilgrimage practice in West Bengal, India, where fieldwork was conducted, are discussed. Case studies of three West Bengali pilgrimage centres — Tarakeswar, Navadvip and Tarapith, which are Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava and Śākta sacred places, respectively — reveal the considerable diversity in the regional pilgrimage tradition. In analysing each of these centres, ethnographic data on the social and economic organisation of specialised religious places, roles of sacred specialists, beliefs regarding the deities, patterns of ritual, and social characteristics and behaviour of pilgrims are presented. The literature on pilgrimage is reviewed in search of theoretical tools for the task of generalising about pilgrimage, inclusive of the evident diversity. Analysis and criticism of existing theories indicates that analysts have focused on limited aspects of pilgrimage practice which conform to disciplinary boundaries rather than seeking the patterned consistencies which define the full institution. Comparison of the three case studies reveals that the variation in religious patterns in the centres relates to wider traditions of religious culture in Bengal: the several strands of pilgrimage tradition generally replicate the sub-traditions of Bengali Hinduism and patterns of belief and practice in any sacred place are closely associated with the religious tradition of the regional cult which dominates that centre. It is possible, however, to identify two levels at which the diversity of the pilgrimage institution is founded in systematic conceptual unity. Both levels concern the meaning of pilgrimage within prevalent patterns of Bengali Hinduism. The explicit meaning of pilgrimage in the conscious thought of participants emphasises the journey to the deity's terrestrial abode in search of interaction with the divine. Implicit within this patterned behaviour are important Hindu metaphysical concepts — the implicit ideology of pilgrimage — which invest pilgrimage with meaning derived from abstract Hindu religious thought.

My dissertation traces the formation and growth of the reader of the Bengali novel in nineteenth century Bengal through a close study of the writings by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay that comment on—and respond to—both the reader and the newly emergent genre of the Bengali novel. In particular, I focus on the following texts: two novels written by Bankim, Durgeśnandinī (The Lady of the Castle) (1865) and Bishabṛksha (The Poison Tree) (1872), literary essays published in nineteenth century Bengali periodicals, personal letters written by Bankim and his contemporaries, and reviews of the novels, often written and published anonymously. I suggest that by examining the reader of the Bengali novel it becomes possible to understand how the individual Bengali negotiates the changes occurring in nineteenth century Bengal—an era in which traditional beliefs collide with the intellectual and technological innovations brought on by colonial modernity. As my dissertation shows colonialism is far from being a disembodied institution operating at the level of governments and ideologies. Instead, it becomes evident that with the novel, colonial modernity enters the Bengali home in the form of changing moral paradigms. What the Bengali reader chooses to read, and how she performs her reading come to have a real import in her quotidian life. The three sites of reading I examine—the reader as a textual event in the novels, the reader as imagined in the literary essays, and the anthropological reader writing and responding to the reviews of the novels—revitalises the overdetermined field of the postcolonial novel by shifting the focus from the novel as a stable literary object being consumed by a relatively passive reader, to an active reader whose reading practice shapes both the genre and the subject reading it.

In this dissertation I analyze the figure of the East-Bengali refugee woman in Indian literature on the Partition of Bengal of 1947. I read the figure as one who makes visible, and thus opens up for critique, the conditions that constitute the category women in the discursive terrain of post-Partition/post-Independence India. The figure of the refugee woman, thereby, allows us to map the relationship between the category women and the collective imaginary, specifically the nation. I argue that the figure of the refugee woman explicates, interrupts, and critiques the relationship of women to the nation in the normative patriarchal nationalist discourse, which constructs women as a sign of the nation. The representational import of the refugee woman pushes the signification of women in relation to the collective from a sign to that of a subject. My analysis of the refugee woman is, thus, a critical engagement with the tension between women as figurative and women as historical-material categories, although both are imagined within the field of discursive signification. I develop my argument by analyzing three major texts from West Bengal, India that respond to the Partition to critically apprehend the radical charge inherent in the figure of the refugee woman. These texts are the film Meghe Dhaka Tara (Cloud-Capped Star; 1960) by Ritwik Ghatak, and the novels Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga (The River Churning; 1967) by Jyotirmoyee Devi and Swaralipi (The Notations; 1952) by Sabitri Roy. The larger argument of the dissertation is that the Partition, as a historical event, lies in contiguity and continuity with the normative regime of the gendered everyday world. Therefore, the Partition allows us to examine the historical configurations of power that make the gendered everyday but that cannot be easily discerned from within the everyday. Within the rubric of this larger argument lies my contention that the figure of the refugee woman has the radical potential to make visible the traumatic relationship between the extraordinary violence of the Partition and the gendered, ordinary, everyday life.