private schools in 1871, was 15,290, with 18,318 teachers,
and 333,197 pupils.The cheapness of labour, as compared with European countries, enables the Government to perform its other functions at an equally small cost. It has brought courts very near to the door of the peasant, and established a system of registration by which proprietary rights and transfers are cheaply and absolutely ascertained. A great department of public works has spread a network of roads over the country, connecting Bengal by railways with other parts of India, and, in districts which specially require it, is endeavouring to exercise some degree of control over the rivers and the natural water-supply, on which the safety of a tropical people depends. An organised system of emigration watches over the movements of the landless classes, from the overcrowded or unfertile districts of the west to the rich under-populated territories on the east, and to colonies beyond the seas. Charitable dispensaries and a well-equipped medical department struggle to com bat the diseases and epidemics which from time imme morial have devastated the Delta, and place the opera tions of European surgery within the reach of the poorest peasant. The whole cost of civil administration for the 66 J millions of Bengal amounts, as already stated, to 6,338,968, or under Is. lid. per head. An unfet tered vernacular press makes known the views of the people to their rulers, and municipal institutions are developing the ancient Hindu capacity for self-govern ment from the village to the municipal stage of human society.
Local Divisions.—The following table exhibits the four provinces at present under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, along with Assam, which until February 1874 was within it.
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Provinces. Area in square miles. Population. Average popula tion per sq. mile. [Percent age of entire area. Percent age of the whole population. Languages. Bengal, 94,539 36,769,735 389 38-08 55-00 Bengali and Hindustani. Behar, 42,417 19,736,101 465 17 09 29 52 Hindustani End Hindi O.rissa (including the Tributary States), Chota Nagpur, 23,901 43,901 4,317,999 3,825,571 181 87 9-63 17-G9 6-4G 5 72 Uriya, and aboriginal tongues and patois. Bengali and aboriginal tongues Assam (separated in 1874), 43,473 2,207 453 51 17-51 3 30 Total, . 248 231 66,856 859 269 lOO OO 100-00
The word Bengal is derived from Sanskrit geography, and applies strictly to the country stretching south wards from Bhagalpur to the sea. The ancient Banga formed one of the five outlying kingdoms of Aryan India, and was practically conterminous with the Delta of Bengal. It derived its name, according to the etymo logy of the Pandits, from a prince of the Mahabharata, to whose portion it fell on the primitive partition of the country among the Lunar race of Dehli. But a city called Biingdld, near Chittagong, which, although now washed away, is supposed to have existed in the Muharmnadan period, appears to have given the name to the European world. The word Bangala was first used by the Musal- mans ; and under their rule, like the Banga of old Sanskrit times, it applied specifically to the Gangetic delta, although the latter conquests to the east of the Brahmaputra were eventually included within it. In their distribution of the country for fiscal purposes, it formed the central province of a governorship, with Behar on the N.W., and Orissa on the S.W., jointly ruled by one deputy of the Dehli emperor. Under the English the name has at different periods borne very different significations. Francis Fernandez applies it to the country from the extreme east of Chittagong to Point Palmyras in Orissa, with a coast line which Purchas esti mates at 600 miles, running inland for the same distance, and watered by the Ganges. This territory would include the Muhammadan province of Bengal, with parts of Behar and Orissa. The loose idea thus derived from old voyagers became stereotyped in the archives of the East India Com pany. All its north-eastern factories, from Balasor, on the Orissa coast, to Patnd, in the heart of Behar, belonged to the " Bengal Establishment," and as our conquests crept higher up the rivers, the term came to be applied to the whole of Northern India. The Presidency of Bengal, in contradistinction to those of Madras and Bombay, eventu ally included all the British territories north of the Central Provinces, from the mouths of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to the Himalayas and the Panjab. The term Bengal con tinues to be officially employed in this sense by the military department of the Government of India. But during the last forty years the tendency to a more exact order of civil administration has gradually brought about a corresponding precision in the use of Indian geographical names. The North-Western Provinces date their separate existence from 1831. Since that year they stand forward under a name of their own as the North- Western Provinces, in contra distinction to the Lower Provinces of Bengal. Later annexations have added new territorial entities, and the northern Presidency is now mapped out into four separate governments the North-Western Provinces, Oudh, Panjab, and Lower Bengal. Three of the provinces of the present Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal namely, Bengal proper, Behar, and Orissa consist of great river valleys ; the fourth, Chhota or Chutia Nagpur, is a mountainous region which separates them from the Central India plateau. Orissa embraces the rich deltas of the Mahdnadi and the neigh bouring rivers, bounded by the Bay of Bengal on the S.E., and walled in on the N.W. by tributary hill states. Pro ceeding westward, the province of Bengal proper stretches along the coast from Orissa to British Burmah, and inland from the sea-board to the Himalayas. Its southern por tion is formed by the united deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra ; its northern consists of the valleys of these great rivers and their tributaries. Behar lies on the north-west of Bengal proper, and comprises the higher valley of the Ganges, from the spot where it issues from the territories of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces. Between Behar and Orissa, but stretching further westward and deep into the hill country, lies the province of ChhotA or Chutia Nagpur.
Administrative Divisions.—For administrative purposes, the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal, excluding the recently separated province of Assam (see under that heading), is divided into 47 districts. The details of the area and population of these, presented in the following table, are taken, with few exceptions, from the census returns of 1872:—
