Page:Second Report on the State of Education in Bengal (1836).djvu/19

Rh about equal to that of Nattore. To guard against the operation of unperceived causes of error, let the number be reduced to eight, merging in them the population of the remaining five and the excess of the population of Bhawanigunge above that of Nattore, the entire population of the district will thus be eight times that of Nattore; that is, it will amount to 1,562,368, or rather more than a million and a half. If, as is probable, this estimate is nearly correct, it follows either that former estimates were very erroneous, or that the population has greatly increased since they were made. It has been already mentioned that, in 1801, the population of the district was estimated at 1,500,000, and that, within the last twenty-five years, not fewer than eleven thanas, containing, it is probable, about half its territory and population, have been at different periods detached from the jurisdiction of the collector and magistrate of Rajshahi; and yet it is after all these reductions that the district as now constituted is estimated to contain a population fully equal to that which it was supposed to contain before the reductions were made.

Connected with the question of the population of the district is the distribution of it into the two great divisions of Hindus and Musalmans; the relative proportion of these two classes being not an unimportant subject of inquiry, with a view to forming a correct judgment of the nature and amount of the prejudices to be met in the execution of any measure affecting the body of the people, such as the adoption of means for the promotion of general education. Before visiting Rajshahi, I had been led to suppose that it was a peculiarly Hindu district. Hamilton on official authority states the proportion to be that of two Hindus to one Musalman; and in a work published by the Calcutta School Book Society for the use of schools (1827), the proportion is said to be that of ten Hindus to six Musalmans. Table I. shows that, in the Nattore thana, there are 10,095 Hindu families, while the number of Musalman families is not less than 19,933, just reversing the proportion and making one Hindu for about two Musalman families. I omitted to ascertain by actual enumeration the number of Hindu and Mahomedan persons separately contained in the above-mentioned number of Hindu and Mahomedan families,