sent out agents to settle his lands. John Winthrop’s “Ten Hills Farm,” partly within the present limits of Medford, was settled soon afterwards. One of the earliest industries was ship-building, John Winthrop’s “Blessing of the Bay,” built on the Mystic in 1631–1632, being one of the first keels laid on the continent. In 1802 Thatcher Magoun began building sea-going vessels, and many of the famous privateers of the War of 1812 were constructed here. By 1845 Medford employed fully a quarter of all the shipwrights of the state. The industry gradually lost its importance after the introduction of steamships, and the last keel was laid in 1873. Another early industry was the distilling of rum; this was carried on for two centuries, especially by the Hall family and, after about 1830, by the Lawrence family, but was discontinued in 1905. The manufacture of brick and tile was an important industry in the 17th century. The Cradock bridge, the first toll-bridge in New England, was built across the Mystic in 1638; over it for 150 years ran the principal thoroughfare, from Boston to Maine and New Hampshire. The course of Paul Revere’s ride lay through Medford Square and High Street, and within a half-hour of his passage the Medford minute men were on their way to Lexington and Concord, where they took part in the engagements with the British. After the Battle of Saratoga many of Burgoyne’s officers were quartered here for the winter. The Middlesex Canal was opened through Medford in 1803, and the Boston & Lowell railroad (now the southern division of the Boston & Maine) in 1831. Medford was chartered as a city in 1892.
See Charles Brooks, History of the Town of Medford (Boston, 1855; enlarged by J. M. Usher, Boston, 1886); Historical Register of the Medford Historical Society (1898 et seq.); Proceedings of the 275th Anniversary of the Settlement of Medford (Medford, 1905); S. A. Drake, History of Middlesex County (2 vols., Boston, 1880) and Helen Tilden Wild, Medford in the Revolution (Medford, 1903).
MEDHANKARA, the name of several distinguished members, in medieval times, of the Buddhist order. The oldest flourished about A.D. 1200, and was the author of the Vinaya Artha Samuccaya, a work in the Sinhalese language on Buddhist canon law. Next to him came Araññaka Medhankara, who presided over the Buddhist council held at Polonnaruwa, then the capital of Ceylon, in 1250. The third Vanaratana Medhankara, flourished in 1280, and wrote a poem in Pali, Jina Carita, on the life of the Buddha. He also wrote the Payoga Siddhi. The fourth was the celebrated scholar to whom King Parākrama Bāhu IV. of Ceylon entrusted in 1307 the translation from Pali into Sinhalese of the Jātaka book, the most voluminous extant work in Sinhalese. The fifth, a Burmese, was called the Sangharāja Nava Medhankara, and wrote in Pali a work entitled the Loka Padīpa Sāra, on cosmogony and allied subjects.
See the Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1882, p. 126; 1886, pp. 62, 67, 72; 1890, p. 43; Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xl., verse 85. (T. W. R. D.)
MEDHURST, WALTER HENRY (1796–1857), English Congregationalist missionary to China, was born in London and
educated at St Paul’s school. He learned the business of a
printer, and having become interested in Christian missions
he sailed in 1816 for the London Missionary Society’s station
at Malacca, which was intended to be a great printing-centre.
He became proficient in Malay, in a knowledge of the written
characters of Chinese, and in the colloquial use of more than
one of its dialects. He was ordained at Malacca in 1819, and
engaged in missionary labours, first at Penang, then at Batavia,
and finally, when peace was concluded with China in 1842,
at Shanghai. There he continued till 1856, laying the foundations
of a successful mission. His principal labour for several years,
as one of a committee of delegates, was in the revision of existing
Chinese versions of the Bible. The result was a version (in High
Wen-li) marvellously correct and faithful to the original. With
John Stronach he also translated the New Testament into the
Mandarin dialect of Nanking. His Chinese-English and English-Chinese
dictionaries (each in 2 vols.) are still valuable, and to
him the British public owed its understanding of the teaching
of Hung-Sew-Tseuen, the leader of the Tai-ping rising (1851-64).
The university of New York conferred upon him in 1843 the
degree of D.D. Medhurst left Shanghai in 1856 in failing
health, and died two days after reaching London, on the 24th
of January 1857. His son, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst (1822–1885),
was British consul at Hankow and afterwards at Shanghai.
MEDIA, the ancient name of the north-western part of Iran, the country of the Medes, corresponding to the modern provinces of Azerbaijan, Ardelan, Irak Ajemi, and parts of Kurdistan. It is separated from Armenia and the lowlands on the Tigris (Assyria) by the mighty ranges of the Zagros (mountains of Kurdistan; in its northern parts probably called Choatras, Plin. v. 98), and in the north by the valley of the Araxes (Aras). In the east it extends towards the Caspian Sea; but the high chains of mountains which surround the Caspian Sea (the Parachoathras of the ancients and the Elburz, separate it from the coast, and the narrow plains on the border of the sea (Gilan, the country of the Gelae and Amardi, and Mazandaran, in ancient times inhabited by the Tapuri) cannot be reckoned as part of Media proper. The greater part of Media is a mountainous plateau, about 3000-5000 ft. above the sea; but it contains some fertile plains. The climate is temperate, with cold winters, in strong contrast to the damp and unwholesome air of the shores of the Caspian, where the mountains are covered with a rich vegetation. Media contains only one river, which reaches the sea, the Sefid Rud (Amardus), which flows into the Caspian; but a great many streams are exhausted after a short course, and in the north-west is a large lake, the lake of Urumiah or Urmia.[1] From the mountains in the west spring some great tributaries of the Tigris, viz. the Diyala (Gyndes) and the Kerkheh (Choaspes). Towards the south-east Media passes into the great central desert of Iran, which eastwards of Rhagae (mod. Rai, near Teheran), in the region of the “Caspian gates,” reaches to the foot of the Elburz chain. On a tract of about 150 m. the western part of Iran is connected with the east (Khorasan, Parthyaea) only by a narrow district (Choarene and Comisene), where human dwellings and small villages can exist.
The people of the Mada, Medes (the Greek form Μῆδοι is Ionian for Μᾶδοι) appear in history first in 836 B.C., when the Assyrian conqueror Shalmaneser II. in his wars against the tribes of the Zagros received the tribute of the Amadai (this form, with prosthetic a-, which occurs only here, has many analogies in the names of Iranian tribes). His successors undertook many expeditions against the Medes (Madai). Sargon in 715 and 713 subjected them “to the far mountain Bikni,” i.e. the Elburz (Demavend) and the borders of the desert. They were divided into many districts and towns, under petty local chieftains; from the names which the Assyrian inscriptions mention, we learn that they were an Iranian tribe and that they had already adopted the religion of Zoroaster. In spite of different attempts of some chieftains to shake off the Assyrian yoke (cf. the information obtained from prayers to the Sun-god for oracles against these rebels: Knudtzon, Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott), Media remained tributary to Assyria under Sargon’s successors, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon and Assur-banipal.
Herodotus, i. 101, gives a list of six Median tribes (γένεα), among them the Paraetaceni, the inhabitants of the mountainous highland of Paraetacene, the district of Isfahan, and the Magoi, i.e. the Magians, the hereditary caste of the priests, who in Media took the place of the “fire-kindlers” (athravan) of the Zoroastrian religion, and who spread from Media to Persia and to the west. But the Iranian Medes were not the only inhabitants of the country. The names in the Assyrian inscriptions prove that the tribes in the Zagros and the northern parts of Media were not Iranians nor Indo-Europeans, but an aboriginal population, like the early inhabitants of Armenia, perhaps connected with the numerous tribes of the Caucasus.
- ↑ Anc. Mantiane, Strabo xi. 529; Martiane, Ptol. vi. 2, 5, probably identical with the name Matiane, Matiene, by which Herodotus i. 189, 202, iii. 94, v. 49, 52 (in i. 72 and vii. 72 they seem to be a different people in Asia Minor); Polyb. v. 44, 9; Strabo i. 49, ii. 73, xi. 509, 514, 523, 525; Plin vi. 48, designate the northern part of Media.
