Bengal

Bengal (old Bangālā; the Banga of Sanskrit topography), a name given to part of British India, but variously signifying—(1) the old historical presidency which, in pre-mutiny times, comprised the greater portion of Northern India; (2) the modern military division, corresponding in extent to the old presidency; and (3) the modern province, sometimes also called Lower Bengal, comprising Bengal Proper, Behar, Orissa, and Chhota Nagpur. The word 'presidency' (a relic of the East India Company's time, when the three settlements were each administered by a president and council) is still loosely applied to the province as well as to Calcutta itself; but it is actually retained in the Army List, the Bengal Presidency command being held by the 'Commander-in-chief in India,' to whom the Commanders-in-chief of Bombay and Madras are subordinate. Lower Bengal is so called in contradistinction to the 'Upper Provinces' of the obsolete presidency, which are now placed under separate administrations.

The modern province, ruled by a lieutenant-governor, is the largest and most populous of the twelve divisions of British India. It is nearly as large as Spain, and half as large again as Great Britain and Ireland; while it has a population nearly double that of the United Kingdom. The census of 1881 gave a population of 66,750,520 in British territory (corresponding to a density of 436 per square mile) and 2,845,405 in the feudal states. The following are the census figures for 1891:

Roughly speaking, Bengal comprises the low-lying deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and the alluvial plains stretching along their lower courses. In the N. it is hemmed in by the Himalayan ramparts; in the SW. angle the hilly region of Chhota Nagpur forms a continuation of the Central Indian plateau; while on the SE. a coast-line of 550 miles extends round the top of the Bay of Bengal, from Puri, in the south of Orissa, to the point at which Chittagong is terminated by the Lower Burmah frontier. Although for the most part level, Bengal is diversified in various parts by peaks and spurs thrown out from the great mountain-systems. Lying between 19° 18' and 28° 15' N. lat., and 82° and 97° E. long., it is bounded downwards by the native states of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan, on the N.; by Assam and Upper Burmah on the E.; by the North-west Provinces and the Central Indian Agency on the W.; and on the S. by Madras. The province is portioned out into nine large administrative tracts called divisions, each under a commissioner, and of these, five—Calcutta (or Presidency), Burdwan, Rajshahi, Dacca, and Chittagong—form what is known as Bengal Proper, a name which is now purely geographical. The other divisions are Patna and Bhagalpur (forming the old province of Behar), Orissa, and Chhota Nagpur. These commissions are again divided into 45 districts, each with a magistrate, and among these may be named the densely-peopled metropolitan districts of Hugli (Hooghly), Howrah, and the 24 Parganas; and the rich trading districts of Dacca, Faridpur, and Patna. The average district in Bengal has an area of 3325 sq. m., more than half the size of Yorkshire. The distinctive features of Bengal are its immense network of rivers, the magnificent range of the Himalayas, the luxuriant but fever-haunted Terai at the base of the great mountain-chain, and the trackless forests and jungles of the Sundarbans (Sunderbunds), on the sea-face of the delta—the almost undisputed home of the tiger and rhinoceros. Besides the main streams of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, the chief rivers are the Gogra, Sôn, Gandak, Kusi, Tista, Hugli (formed by the Bhagirathi and Jalangi), the Damodar, and Rupnarayan; and, in the extreme south, the Mahanadi, or 'Great River' of Orissa. All the rivers are subject to floods, bring down an immense quantity of soil, and thousands of square miles in the delta thus receive a splendid top-dressing every year. The country is so enriched by this system of recuperation as 'to defy the utmost power of overcropping to exhaust its fertility.' As compared with Northern India, Bengal is remarkable for the absence of large cities. Calcutta, the capital, is one of the largest cities in the world, having a population of 800,000. But the other towns are small, the next largest being Patna, with 180,000 inhabitants. Altogether there are 33 towns with upwards of 20,000 inhabitants, including Dacca, Gaya, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga, Monghyr, Arrah, Cuttack, Murshidabad, Dinapur, Burdwan, Krishnagar, Naihati, and Chittagong. On the Hugli, within 20 miles of Calcutta, stand the small French settlement of Chandernagore, the Portuguese Hugli, the Dutch Chinsura, and the Danish Serampur. All these are now places of diminished importance, but they give to the river Hugli a peculiar historical significance; all but Chandernagore have been ceded to England, the Danish town as late as 1845.

The climate of the plains is similar to that of the Indian seaboard everywhere—hot and humid. But inland in Behar it is much drier, with hot winds in summer; while in ascending the hills, every variety of climate is met with, till the perpetual snow-line is reached. The ordinary range of temperature in the plains is from about 52° F. in the cold season, to 103° in the shade in summer. In good European houses the temperature in the hottest months can be kept down to 95°. The hill-station of Darjiling, at an elevation of 6685 feet, has a mean temperature of 54°. In the eastern districts the average yearly rainfall is over 100 inches, while on the hillsides this is greatly exceeded. Calcutta has only 66, Darjiling 126, and Chera Punji (in Assam) has 527, the largest fall recorded in the world. Bengal is exposed to the heavy sweep of the Monsoon (q.v.), while cyclonic waves and river inundations are frequent, carrying at times terrible havoc far into the low-lying country. In a cyclonic wave on the Orissa coast in September 1885 there perished 5000 souls. At the same time, earthquakes are not infrequent, a severe shock which traversed the province in July 1885 having caused wide- spread destruction of property. The people are mostly employed in agriculture, and among the chief products are indigo, jute, the opium poppy, oil-seeds, many varieties of rice, cinchona, tea, turmeric, pepper, the silk mulberry, cotton, sugar, and innumerable grains, spices, and drugs. Opium is a government monopoly; and cinchona is chiefly grown at the government plantation at Darjiling, although there are also some private plantations yielding perhaps 30,000 lb. of dry bark. The enormous wealth of Bengal lies in its vast production of articles of commerce. From its position in relation to the interior, a vast traffic passes through Bengal, much of the wheat of the Northwest, and the jute and tea of Assam, finding an outlet at Calcutta. Thus, exclusive of opium and railway material, Calcutta receives yearly from the interior commercial products to the value of 40 millions sterling, which are mostly re-exported. With a large foreign trade of between £60,000,000 and £80,000,000 a year, about 95 per cent. of which belongs to Calcutta, the value of the direct trade with Great Britain during the last decade averaged, to Great Britain £16,000,000, and from Great Britain £15,000,000, a year. The principal exports are opium, rice, jute, oil-seeds, indigo, cotton, wheat, and hides and skins. A large trade is done in gunny-bags, Calcutta in one year exporting 65,000,000 of them. In addition to 5876 square miles of reserved forests, there are in cultivation over 36 million acres under rice, 12 million acres under wheat and other food-grains, and 3½ million acres under oil-seeds; the other principal crops are sugar, indigo, tobacco, cotton, and tea. Great interest attaches to the cultivation of tea, which rapidly came to hold a front rank among Indian industries. There are about 400 tea-gardens in Darjiling district and the Terai, including Jalpaiguri; the Assam produce also passes through the province. Systematic forest conservancy has done much to check indiscriminate destruction of timber, and to increase the government revenue (from the 'reserved forests').

Bengal has considerable mineral wealth. In Burdwan, coal, iron, and copper are worked, but the iron-smelting has hardly been a commercial success. There are about 100 collieries (in four or five different coalfields, of which the most important is at Raniganj), many of them worked by steam-power, and the total output is over 1,500,000 tons. The 50 jute and cotton mills around Calcutta are even a more striking indication of industry, employing 50,000 hands. This new cotton manufacture in some measure takes the place of the old native industry in fine cottons and muslins, almost annihilated by the competition of Lancashire. Large quantities of salt are obtained by evaporating sea-water (but the bulk of the salt used in Bengal is imported from Cheshire); and the production of saltpetre is very considerable. Lacquer, sugar, ropes and cables, leather, porcelain and stoneware are also amongst the manufactures. There are over 2000 miles of railway (including the Darjiling-Himalayan, one of the most wonderful mountain-railways in the world). There are 6000 miles of telegraph. Several distinct systems of canals provide for conveyance of goods, and irrigate a vast area of land.

Standing far in advance of the rest of India in education, the enlightened classes in Bengal are largely employed in government service. The province has five colleges affiliated to the university of Calcutta; but there are 50 'institutions' catalogued as giving university education; 2500 secondary schools and over 50,000 primary schools. With engineering, normal, industrial, and other schools, there were in all in 1891 nearly 54,000 public educational institutions, with 1,400,000 pupils, besides 13,000 private institutions, with 140,000 pupils. Bengal has also over 4000 private native schools, with 45,000 pupils. See the articles INDIA and books there cited, CALCUTTA, BRAHMO SOMAJ, &c.

The army in the military province of Bengal amounts in all to 130,000, of whom over 45,000 are British troops. Including Eurasians, there are upwards of 40,000 Europeans in the province, of whom nearly 30,000 are in Calcutta and its neighbourhood. Of the Europeans, 11,000 are British-born. In Bengal there are also 800 Armenians, 300 Chinese (shoemakers and carpenters in Calcutta), 150 Parsis, and 1000 Jews.

Within the province there is a great variety of race, language, religion, and degrees of civilisation. A large proportion of the people are descended from the Aryan stock; but no sharp line can be drawn between those called Hindus and those reckoned aborigines or non-Aryan, as many low-caste Hindus are wholly aboriginal in blood. There is within the lieutenant-governorship every degree of civilisation from that of the English educated, sceptical Hindu gentleman, to the primitive hillmen. Although essentially a Hindu province, Bengal has 23 million Moslem inhabitants, mainly belonging to the upper classes, while 2½ millions are semi-savage tribesmen, and 138,000 are returned as Christian converts. Bengalis speaking Bengali (q.v.) number 36½ millions; Hindustani speakers, 25 millions. In Bengal Proper the Santals are the most notable aboriginal stock; in the feudatory states are the Kolarian or Dravidian Gonds, Kols, and Bhuiyas, as well as Indo-Chinese tribes. Of the whole population, the census returns 46,250,000 as 'unemployed,' but this number includes 30,466,000 women, besides male children. Two millions of women work as agricultural labourers, and nearly as many in manufactures. Of men 15,332,500 are landowners or agriculturists; over a million are commercial; 2½ millions industrial; 624,500 are professional; and 15,830,000 unemployed (mainly old men and children).

The history of Bengal is merged in that of India. The Mohammedan conquest dates from 1200. The East India Company made its earliest settlements, purely commercial in character, in the first half of the 17th century. The old settlement was the key-stone of the British empire in India; and in the opinion of General Chesney (Indian Polity) it is even yet the one part of India which would be worth retaining were the rest to go. Main facts in the strictly provincial history are the Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue enacted by Lord Cornwallis in 1793, by which the rights of proprietors were defined and secured in perpetuity; and the Tenancy Act of 1883, a supplement to the older measure, intended to protect the rights of the cultivators. See INDIA.