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
