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 ;

BENGAL.

300 from 1 1

fifteen to

upwards of

22 from twenty thousand inhabitants.

twenty thousand fifty

to fifty

thousand; and

The

total rural population in villages and places containing less than thousand inhabitants was 65,558,430, the average population of a village or rural commune being 247 '8. The boat population, under which term are included only those persons who were actually sleeping in boats on the night of the Census, and not those who obtain their livelihood from the sea or rivers, was 309,336, or ’44 per cent, of the whole population. The numbers and proportion are greatest in the Eastern Districts, where, for many months in the year, communication five

’

‘

is almost entirely maintained by water, and where the inhabitants lead an almost amphibious existence. The proportion reaches its maximum in the City of Calcutta, where special pains were taken to enumerate the vast numbers of boats which lie along the banks of the Hugh'.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts come second. Khulna District 370 per cent, of its whole population enumerated in

third, with

stands

boats

and the Twenty-four Parganas, the suburbs of Calcutta, Murshiddbad, Dacca, Bakarganj, and Maldah each have a boat population of more than

I

per cent.

The number

of houses in Bengal was returned at 11,645,383, of This which 11,036,774 were occupied, and 608,609 unoccupied. number gives an average of 670 to each occupied house. The average varies very slightly throughout the four Provinces outside the limits of

In Calcutta there are 12 '5 4 inhabitants to each occupied

Calcutta.

house.

The

villages in

Bengal are isolated clusters of homesteads, built withlive very much among The old own homes.

out any arrangement or order, whose inhabitants themselves,

and

cling

tenaciously to

communal

institutions by which the away under the influence of British

their

was governed are fading and the zafninddri system.

village

rule

The

ancient indigenous village system of India still exists in the hilly country adjacent to Bengal, but in the plains it has almost disappeared. The traces that remain are scanty ; in some places village panchdyats or

conferences

exist,

but

they are being supplanted by municipal

law courts, and the influence of the landlord. The village head-man has still, however, a recognised position in the rural comHis functions munity, although denuded of his authoritative powers. are those of an arbitrator and general adviser; and the office is to a institutions,

remarkable extent in the Bengal delta hereditary in low-caste families. In the Metropolitan District surrounding Calcutta, only 15 village 1872 belonged to high castes, 1300 to intermediate castes, low castes. The Census of 1881 returned the number of Condition of the People the population engaged in each of the great branches of occupation as

head-men and 3600

in

to

.

—