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' are of opinion' wrote the Court of Directors in 1807 to their servants in Bengal, 'that a statistical Survey of the country would be attended with much utility; we therefore recommend proper steps to be taken for the execution of the same.' The despatch from which these words are quoted forms one of a long series of instructions in which the East India Company urged a systematic inquiry into its territories. The first formulated effort in Bengal dates from 1769, four years after that Province came into its hands; the latest orders of the Court of Directors on the subject were issued in 1855, three years before the administration of India passed from the Company to the Crown. During the interval many able and earnest men had laboured at the work, manuscript materials of great value had been amassed, and several important volumes had been published. But such attempts were isolated, directed by no central organization, and unsustained by any continuous plan of execution.

The ten years which followed the transfer of the government of India to the Crown in t858, produced a new set of efforts towards the elucidation of the country. Conspicuous among them was the work begun in 1866 under the direction of Sir Richard Temple, when Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces.1 The controlling power in England had now passed from a body of experts, the Court of Directors, to Parliament