Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/300

 292 SAN Total, The population is divided as follows - Hindus. Muhammadana Brahnans 126 Chhattria 191 Káveths 26 Pásis 65 Ahírs 97 Othera 421 . 194 ... P. 926 196 1,121 There are 217 mud-built houses and three temples, two shiwalas, and one temple to Dcbi. SANDI Pargana* -Tahsil BILGRAM --District HARDOI.— The chief sub- division of talisil Bilgram in the Hardoi district. It consists of 141 villages; on the north and west it is bounded by parganas Báwan, Barwan, and Katiári; on the south-west and south by the Ganges and by pargana Bilgrám; on the east by pargana Bangar. The Garra flows right through it from north to south and the Rámganga flows irregularly along or near its western and south-western border. Its extreme length and breadth are 134 and 172 miles. Its area is 168 square miles, of which 107 or three fiftlis (61.62 per cent.) are cultivated, a fifth (19-91 per cent.) is culturable, and less than a fifth (17-52) barren. The proportion of the cultivated area rcturned as third class, that is, light and sandy is 1565 per cent. only a sixth of it (16-37 per cent.) is irrigated, the area watered from tanks and ponds (11-40 per cent.) being more than twice as large as that watered from wells (4-97 per cent.). The number of wells and ponds are returned at 1757 and 1157 respectively. The percentage under groves is unusually low, only .95. The average area of cultivation per plough is 616 acres. The pargana is divided into two distinct portions by the irregular sandy ridge, which running down through it from north to south imme. diately to the east of Sándi marks the edge of an ancient channel of, as I believe, the Ganges, long since abandoned in its gradual westward recession. All the villages on and to the east of this ridge are poor, uneven, and sandy. Irrigation is scanty and difficult. In some villages wells cannot be made, at all, in others only the small pot and lover (dhenkli) wells can be made and these have constantly to be renewed. On the other hand, all of the country to the west of this ridge, that is to say, four-fifths or more of the pargana is a distinctly alluvial tract, levelled and cnriched by the floods of three Himalayan rivers, the Garra, Ramganga, and Ganges, and by minor streams such as the Sendba. All this tract is tarái, that is to say, it has been scooped by fluvial action out of the adjacent bangar or original plateau, and in it the water level is always so near the surface that in the dry months percolation largely supplios the want of irrigation, while in the rainy scason it is more or less completely flooded. It constitutes in fact the food basin of the three rivers named above. In heavy floods such as those of 1871, a sea of waters spreads from Sándi, 20 miles west to Fatehgarh. The rivers bring down a rich alluvial deposit locally called seo, which greatly fertilizes the submerged fields and makes manure
 * By Mr. A. H Harington, C. S., Assistant Commissioner.