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
.
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