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A STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF BENGAL.

By W. W. HUNTER, B.A., LL.D.,

DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF STATISTICS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA;

ONE OF THE COUNCIL of thE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY; HONORARY OR FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF NETHERLANDS INDIA AT THE HAGUE, of the INSTITUTO VASCO

DA GAMA OF PORTUGUESE INDIA, OF THE DUTCH SOCIETY IN JAVA, AND OF

THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, LONDON; HONORARY FELLOW of

THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY; ORDINARY FELLOW OF

THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, ETC.

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Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

München

PREFACE TO VOLUME XX.

OF THE

STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF BENGAL.

THIS Volume concludes the Statistical Account of Bengal. In sending forth a work which has occupied the last seven years of my life, I have a painful consciousness of its shortcomings. The conditions under which it was executed render it silent on several points on which information might have fairly been expected, and leave much to be desired with regard to others. These conditions have been alluded to in the Preface to Volume I. The failures throughout a century of previous efforts, a single one of which cost the East India Company £30,000, and left not a page of printed matter behind, had been accepted by the Government as a warning against elaboration of any sort. The state of public feeling induced by the Income Tax of 1869-70, precluded all inquiries which might re-awaken the suspicions of the natives with reference to fresh imposts, or prolong the popular sensitiveness and unrest. Historical disquisitions, or opinions on the social and economic conditions of the people, were deemed unsuitable in a work which was to be revised by the Government, and to receive its official imprimatur. A general introductory

volume was, after being set up in type, withdrawn for this reason; and the unused materials extracted from the local records with a view to the District-history of Bengal, have been embodied in four printed volumes, which will appear hereafter as a separate work. The task assigned to me was to execute, under these conditions and in seven years, a Statistical Survey of Provinces containing a population more numerous than the inhabitants of England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy put together. During the first three years, I collected, by means of letters and personal visits to the Districts, the local materials for my work. Except on special points, therefore, my statistics do not come further down than 1873: the year 1871 was the point of time at first prescribed. The fourth and fifth years were occupied in testing the information thus gathered, and in arranging it on a uniform system. The two remaining years have been devoted to reducing the materials to the shape in which they are now presented to the public. During fifteen months of this last period I have had the assistance of five junior members of the Civil Service in Bengal, and of two able coadjutors in England. To all these gentlemen, and to many others who have aided me as a labour of love during the long progress of the operations, I tender my sincere thanks. But for their kind help, the task could never have been completed within the period prescribed.

Again, therefore, as in the Preface to my first Volume, I beg that those who come after me will, in improving on my work, remember the conditions under which it has been done. It represents the first organised advance towards a better knowledge of the country. When I commenced the survey, no regular Census had been taken of India; and the enumeration of 1872 disclosed that the official estimates had been

wrong as regards Lower Bengal alone, by more than twentyfive millions of souls. No book existed to which either the public or the administrative body could refer for the most essential facts concerning the rural population. Districts lying within half-a-day's journey of the capital, and treated of at great amplitude in these Volumes, were spoken of in the Calcutta Review, with more truth than we can now believe possible, as "unexplored." Famines, agrarian agitations, tribal or sectarian movements, in short all the less common but inevitable incidents of Indian rule, were wont to take the Government by surprise. Even the past revenues of each District, and the gradual building up of its administrative jurisdiction, were secrets which required much labour and patience to penetrate. The foregoing Volumes endeavour to reduce this element of the unknown, and to render the slowly acquired knowledge of the experienced few, the common property of the administrative body and the public.

1877.

W. W. H.

FINAL ORDERS of the GOVERNMENT on the Statistical Account of Bengal, published by order of the Lieutenant-Governor ; Calcutta Gazette, Dec. 20, 1876.

EXTRACT.

Para. 3. "Sir Richard Temple cannot but regard these results with high satisfaction. Every volume of the statistical accounts has passed under his own personal supervision, and he is able therefore to testify to the quality of the work. The thanks of the Government of Bengal are emphatically due to you for the vigour and energy with which you have accom

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