Bengal District Gazetteers: Pabna (1923)
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| Author | L. S. S. O'Malley(1874–1941) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Composed | c. 1922–1923 |
| Published | 1923 |
| Publisher | The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot |
| Place | Calcutta |
| Volumes | 1 (a volume of the Bengal District Gazetteers series) |
| Pages | 95–96 |
|---|---|
| Chapter | General Administration (Excise) |
| Preparations | Ganja |
| Uses documented | Consumption; excise |
| Digital facsimile | View on BHL |
|---|---|
| Original held at | National Library of India, Kolkata |
The Bengal District Gazetteers: Pabna is a district gazetteer compiled by the Indian Civil Service officer L. S. S. O'Malley and published at Calcutta in 1923. It is one of the volumes of the Bengal District Gazetteers, the standardised provincial reference series issued under the authority of the Government of Bengal. The volume describes the district of Pabna, which the gazetteer dates as a separate charge from 1828; the district lay in the Rajshahi Division of Bengal Presidency at the time of writing and today forms part of Bangladesh.[1][2]
The gazetteer records cannabis on the revenue and consumption side. Its chapter on General Administration carries an excise subsection setting out the district's ganja revenue for 1919–20, in which the duty and licence fees on hemp drugs out-earned those on country spirits (pp. 95–96), and its agricultural statistics return sunn hemp, the fibre legume, among the district's crops.[1]
Composition and publication
O'Malley (1874–1941) wrote thirty of the thirty-eight volumes in the revised Bengal District Gazetteers series he superintended, most of them published between 1906 and 1911; the Pabna volume is one of the later issues, published in 1923.[2][1] It was prepared from the existing administrative record, the census of 1921 and the contemporaneous settlement material.[1]
The district the volume describes lies in the active floodplain of the Padma and the Jamuna, an area of silted river beds, shifting chars and the great Chalan Bil wetland.[1] The gazetteer gives the district an area of 1,678 square miles and, on the census of 1921, a population of 1,389,494; the administrative headquarters was the town of Pabna on the Ichhamati, while the chief commercial town was Sirajganj, described as an important jute emporium on the Jamuna.[1]
Structure and content
The volume follows the standardised chapter scheme shared by the majority of the Bengal District Gazetteers: Physical Aspects, History, The People, Public Health, Natural Calamities, Agriculture, Industries Labour and Trade, Means of Communication, Land Revenue Administration and the General Administration of the district, followed by a place-by-place gazetteer and an index.[1] The History chapter dates the district's creation as a separate charge to 1828 and treats the agrarian disturbances of 1873; the People chapter draws on the census of 1921.[1]
The chapter on General Administration carries the volume's cannabis material, in an excise subsection that tabulates the district's intoxicant revenue (pp. 95–96).[1] The Agriculture chapter separately returns the district's fibre acreage, sunn hemp among it.[1]
Cannabis in the text
Excise and consumption
The excise subsection of the General Administration chapter tabulates the district's excise revenue for the year 1919–20. The aggregate was Rs. 2,22,000, representing an incidence of 2 annas 5 pies per head of the population; of this, the larger share came from hemp drugs:
Of this sum Rs. 83,000 were derived from country spirits and Rs. 1,12,000 from hemp drugs, mainly gánja.
Hemp drugs thus out-earned country spirits in the district.[1] The gazetteer records average consumption of half a gallon of country spirit and one-sixth of a seer of hemp drugs for every hundred persons, and gives the density of licensed shops as one hemp-drug shop to every 8 square miles in the urban areas of the district and one to every 54 square miles in the rural areas, against 20 country-spirit shops in all.[1] The figures describe the retail end of the trade in a consumption district immediately south of the licensed cultivation tract; the wholesale and warehouse arrangements that supplied it belong to the Rajshahi and Naogaon record.[3]
A fibre crop returned as "hemp"
The agricultural statistics return the district's fibre acreage as jute, some 126,000 acres, and sunn hemp, some 29,000 acres.[1] The gazetteer identifies this crop as sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea), a fibre legume raised in the winter season and ploughed into the ground as a green manure for the following jute crop.[1] The 29,000-acre return is therefore a fibre-crop figure. By naming sunn hemp explicitly the gazetteer settles an entry that colonial Bengal crop statistics often leave ambiguous between the fibre legume and drug cannabis.
Significance for landrace documentation
The gazetteer supplies a quantified consumption-side data point for a district immediately south of the licensed cultivation tract: the excise figures for 1919–20, in which the duty and licence fees on hemp drugs out-earned those on country spirits.[1] The cultivation tract that supplied districts such as Pabna, and the structure of the Presidency trade as a whole, are treated in Bengal Presidency cannabis trade and Ganja Mahal.
Editions and availability
The work was published in 1923 by the Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, Calcutta, as a volume of the Bengal District Gazetteers.[1] A full-text scan of the 1923 first edition is held by the Internet Archive through the Digital Library of India under the identifier in.ernet.dli.2015.39437; it is the copy whose pagination is followed in this article.[1]
See also
- Bengal Presidency cannabis trade – the Presidency-wide licit trade whose retail end the excise figures illustrate
- Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi (1916) – the gazetteer of the Ganja Mahal cultivation tract
- Report on the Cultivation of, and Trade in, Ganjá in Bengal (1877) – the foundational survey of Bengal ganja cultivation
- Indian Hemp Drugs Commission – the 1893–94 colonial inquiry into hemp drugs
- Ganja Mahal – the licensed ganja cultivation tract of the Bengal lowlands
- Cannabis in West Bengal – the regional cannabis overview
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 O'Malley, L.S.S., Bengal District Gazetteers: Pabna, The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, Calcutta, 1923. Page references in this article follow the 1923 first edition (Internet Archive in.ernet.dli.2015.39437).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Fuller, C.J., "An Anthropologist and Historian Ahead of His Time: L. S. S. O'Malley in British India", BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris, 2023.
- ↑ O'Malley, L.S.S., Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, Calcutta, 1916, ch. XII, "The Ganja Mahal," pp. 134–144.
Further reading
- O'Malley, L.S.S., Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, Calcutta, 1916.
- O'Malley, L.S.S., Bengal District Gazetteers: Santal Parganas, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, Calcutta, 1910.
External links
- Bengal District Gazetteers: Pabna – 1923 first edition, Internet Archive (Digital Library of India)