Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 2 (2nd edition).pdf/292

 BENGAL.

282

The

four

Bengal

Provinces

British

portioned off

are

Lieutenant

the

of

nine

into

large

-

Governorship

of

tracts

varying

of

area,

called Divisions, each of which is superintended by a Commissioner. Of these nine Divisions, five namely, the Presidency, Bardwan, Rajshahi, Dacca, and Chittagong are within the limits of Bengal proper ; two namely, Patna and Bhagalpur make up the

officially

— —

—

Province of Behar;

The Chutia Nagpur

Commissionership or Division.

single

—

while Orissa and Chutia Nagpur each form a Division,

although the largest in point of size (26,966 square miles), includes a much larger proportion of uncultivated land, and a smaller population

has

w'hich Orissa,

any

than less

w'hich

is

little

The average

miles).

other,

than half

with

its

area

exception

the

of

Chittagong,

(12,118 square miles),

more than one-third

its

size

(9053

area of a Commissioner’s Division

is

and of square 16,732

square miles.

These nine Divisions are again divided

into 45 Districts (exclusive of

the town and suburbs of Calcutta, and the two Government estates of

Angul and Banki), which exhibit a still greater variation in area than the Divisions. For whereas the largest District, Lohardagd, has an area of 12,045 square miles, the smallest, Howrah, is only 476 square miles in extent, and derives its importance from the existence within its limits of the metropolitan suburb of Howrah. The average size of a District in Bengal is 3323 square miles. Below the Districts are Sub-divisions, of which nearly every District has two or more, each administered by a resident Assistant or Deputy-Magistrate subordinate to the Magistrate of the District.

7804

The number

of these Sub-divisions in

135, with an average area of 1107 square miles, varying from square miles in the case of Lohardaga, to 33 square miles in the

Bengal

is

The last and smallest unit of adminisCensus is the ihdnd or police circle, which has come to be the acknowledged unit of territorial partition, and is every day being used more and more in all administrative matters. The number of ihdnds in Bengal is 622, with an average area of 236 On an average, each District is broken up into 13 of square miles. these police circles, the actual number ranging from 39 in the Twentycase of

Chuadanga

in Nadiya.

tration recognised in the

four Parganas to 4 in Darjiling and Jalpaiguri. For the purposes of revenue administration, the country was divided

by the Mughal Government into pargatids, or

fiscal

divisions,

each

This arrangement formed but from its want of compact-

comprising certain villages with their lands. the basis of our

own revenue system

ness, as well as for other reasons,

Bengal has

fallen into

it

such decay that

boundaries can hardly be ascertained.

have died out, except



has been found inconvenient, and in

for

in

some

Districts the

pargand

Practically, the pargatid divisions

purposes of land revenue payments, in favour