— BENARES.
258
and fortified, which afforded them protection in the days of Maratha or Afghan incursions; while in the more peaceful lower region the population
equally distributed over the cultivated
is
being gathered together in large
fraction
Benares has a palace opposite
at
southern
or
Ramnagar,
2
only a small
soil,
The Maharaja
Buddhist
of
on the
miles above Benares,
Colossal
side.
cities.
remains
exist
at
Sarnath.
The 1946
villages
and towns are thus returned
in point of
popula-
859 contain less than two hundred inhabitants; 665 from two to five hundred; 324 from five hundred to a thousand; 82 from one tion
two thousand; 10 from two to three thousand; 4 from three to thousand ; i from ten to fifteen thousand ; and i upwards of a hundred thousand inhabitants. As regards occupation, the male population is grouped by the Census Report of 1881 into the following six main to
five
classes:
—
(i) Professional class, including civil
Government
servants,
and the learned
and lodging-house keepers,
servants, inn
and military
etc.,
4174;
including merchants, traders, carriers, etc, 12,220
class,
officer.®,
professions, 12,536; (2) domestic
commercial
(3)
(4) agricultural
and pastoral class, including gardeners, 145,247 (5) industrial class, including manufacturers and artisans, 60,899 (6) indefinite and nonproductive (consisting of 36,390 general labourers and 179,319 male
1
children and unspecified),- 215,709.
Agriculture
.
— Benares
District has the smallest area of
North-Western Provinces proper, except the
Tarffi;
its
any
in the
total extent
1881 at 998 square miles, of which 741 are and only 69^6 returned as still available for cultivation. Most of the soil consists of a rich clay, more or less mixed with sand, and usually very fertile. The course of tillage is that common to the whole upper basin of the Ganges. The kharif or autumn crops are sown after the first rain in June, and harvested in October and November. Rice may even be gathered in August, but cotton does not ripen for picking till February. Bdjrd, joar., and other common
being returned in cultivated,
food-grains form the remaining staples of this harvest.
The
spring crops are sown in October or November, and reaped in or April.
The
They
consist of wheat, barley, oats, peas,
harvests are a
khand winter,
Districts,
little earlier
owing
and the
early
to the
in
and other
rabi
or
March pulses.
Benares than in the Do^b and Rohil-
dampness and comparative warmth of the
commencement
of the rainy season.
The
chief
crops of the District comprise sugar-cane, Indian corn, barley, wheat,
Moth and pdt-san (hemp) are sown with other Manure is employed, where obtainable, for and land lies fallow whenever the cultivator can afford it The
peas, indigo,
and
rice.
crops, but not separately.
both crops,
same
field is
seldom planted
for
two harvests within a single
year, the
chief exception being in the case of rice lands, which often bear a
