BENGAL. Bengal
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as it is more precisely designated, '•Lower Bengal'), and most populous of the twelve local Governments of British India, comprising the lower valleys and deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra; lies between 19° 18' and 28° 15' n. lat., and between 82° and 97° E. long. Excluding Assam, which was erected into a (or
the largest
separate administration in February 1874, Bengal great Provinces of Bengal Proper, Behar, Orissa,
Nagpur.
It
includes the four
forms a Lieutenant-Governorship, with a population, accord-
ing to the Census of 1881, of 69,536,861 souls;
square
now
and Chhota or Chutia
miles, or
187,222
and an area of 193,198 rivers, lakes, and
square miles, excluding
Although ruled by a Lieutenant-Governor, Bengal forms the largest Administrative Division of India. It contains, exclusive of Assam, one-third of the total population of British India, and yields a gross revenue of 17 to 18 millions sterling, or one-third of certain unsurv’eyed tracts.
It is bounded on the north by Nepal and Bhutan ; on the east by Assam, and by an unexplored mountainous region which separates it from China and Northern Burma ; on the south by the Bay of Bengal, Madras, and the Central Provinces ; and on the west by the plateau of the Central India Agency, and by an imaginary line running between it and the adjoining Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western Provinces. The word Bengal is derived from Sanskrit geography, and applies strictly to the country stretching south-east 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 etymology of the Pandits, from a prince of the Mahabharata, to whose portion it fell on the original partition of the country among the Lunar race of Delhi. But a city called Bangala, of which no trace remains, found its way into the old
the actual revenues of the Indian Empire.
maps, near Chittagong, probably from the statements of Louis Varthema. It is pretty certain, however, that Varthema’s travels never extended beyond the Malabar coast. The Arabs had a custom of applying the name of a country to its chief city, and it was probably in this
way
that
Varthema and other
early writers picked
up the idea
of a great town called Bengal.
The name Bangala first came into use about the 13th century. It is used by Marco Polo (1250-1323) ; and by his contemporary Rashidud-din (1247-1318). Under Musalman rule, it applied specifically to the Gangetic delta, like the later
Muhammadan
Banga of Sanskrit
times, although the
conquests to the east of the Brahmaputra were
eventually included within
it.
In their distribution of the country for
formed the central Province of a Governorship, including Behar on the north-west, and Orissa on the south-west, jointly Under the English, the ruled by one Deputy of the Delhi Emperor. fiscal
purposes,
it
