Talk:Berar Province
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historical=yes), so it shows no accession or news counters and stores no hierarchy properties. The territory's history after the provincial gazetteer of 1909 is not covered: no source held gives it.Discussion
Sources and how they were read
The article rests on four documents, all read on the page images of the scans linked in its citations. The unsigned "Memorandum on hemp drugs in Berar" is in the commission's third volume, pp. 106–115; pp. 107, 108, 109, 111, 113 and 114 were read for this article. Pp. 106 and 112 were read by the research session that first worked through it. The commission's own paragraphs on Berar in volume I (paras. 69, 207, 445, 630, 672 and 741) were read in a local copy of the same edition. Surgeon-Major R. B. Roe's evidence is in volume VII, p. 335. The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Berar was read at pp. 14, 16, 43 and 54 and on its title page, which is dated 1909; the archive.org record of the scan says 1908. The Government of India's resolution of 21 March 1895 is cited as it was read in full for its own article. The rest of the Berar evidence in volume VII (pp. 313–355) has been read only in OCR; the article quotes none of it.
Area under the crop
The article gives two averages with their bases and reconciles neither. The resolution's table, taken from the commission's report, gives Berar 58 acres of ganja as an average of five years; its row reads "Average, do." under Sind's "Average, five years". The memorandum gives "about 55 acres per year in the whole province" as the average "of the past seven years"; the seven years 1886–87 to 1892–93 in its Statement C average 55.6 acres. The commission's chapter on trade (vol. I ch. VII para. 323, p. 121) gives a third figure, "The average area of cultivation in Berar is 60 acres", with no period stated. It is kept to this page so that it is not read as a correction of either average. For a single year the commission (para. 630) and Statement C agree on 85 acres in 1892–93.
The memorandum's consumption per head (vol. III p. 112) is not used: its fractions are garbled in the OCR and were not re-read on the image.
Where the sources disagree
The article carries these divergences and resolves none of them.
The memorandum and the commission say hemp was grown in three districts. Surgeon-Major Roe, Civil Surgeon at Amraoti, told the commission that "Indian hemp is not cultivated in Berar" (vol. VII p. 335). The article gives both.
The memorandum finds no custom "similar to those in Bengal" and hemp part of no ceremony except Mahashivratri (vol. III p. 109). The commission's summary of the Berar evidence reports ganja and bhang "at the Shivratri and Holi festivals and at social gatherings", with one witness's account of the plant kept near a consumer's corpse at his funeral (vol. I para. 445).
The Deputy Commissioner of Akola calls the male plants bhangia (vol. III p. 107); the commission's summary of the same account calls them bhangra (vol. I para. 207).
Para. 69 speaks of "one witness out of 38" on wild growth; the index to volume VII lists 36 Berar witnesses. The article quotes para. 69 as the commission's words.
Vol. I para. 741(b) proposes the Bengal system for the Central Provinces, Madras, Bombay and Berar, citing paras. 656, 671, 672 and 673. Para. 672 itself prefers "assimilating the system to that which exists in the Central Provinces".
The commission traces Berar's Abkari rules to a Financial Department letter of 10 October 1873 (para. 630); the memorandum dates the rules restricting cultivation to a notification of 5 August 1874, in force from 1 April 1875 (vol. III p. 111). These are different instruments; neither corrects the other.
The three districts
The resolution says the cultivation "is now confined to three districts" and names none. The memorandum (vol. III pp. 107 and 111) and the commission (vol. I para. 630) name Akola, Buldana and Amraoti. The article gives the three from those sources and quotes the resolution separately; it does not say that the resolution meant these three.
After 1895
The resolution of 21 March 1895 (para. 62) ordered Berar's system "assimilated to that in force in other provinces". The provincial gazetteer of 1909 (p. 54) records the cultivation of the hemp plant as "hitherto" prohibited, with the drugs supplied from the Government warehouse at Khandwa. Neither source says when cultivation was prohibited or by what instrument; the article says neither. The document most likely to answer it is the Berar Hemp Drugs Law, 1897 (India, Foreign Department, "and rules issued thereunder"), catalogued at the National Library of Scotland and not digitised. It is on the source-hunt queue and the digitisation-request list. The article does not mention the law until it has been read.
Names and forms
The article does not call Berar a province of British India. The commission says "Berar is not British territory" (vol. I para. 630). The agreement of 1902 "reaffirmed His Highness's rights over Berār" (1909 gazetteer, p. 16).
In the article's own voice the districts are Akola, Buldhana and Amravati; quotations keep the sources' Buldana and Amraoti and the gazetteer's Buldāna and Amraotī. The links go to Akola District, Buldhana District and Amravati District, with Buldana and Amraoti as redirect candidates. Buldhana is the district administration's own spelling; the Census 2011 form was not checked.
The majum-seller's town is printed "Ballapur" (vol. III p. 108). The notification of 1874 is dated in the article but not numbered: the page image reads No. 55 and the OCR No. 63. The memorandum is unsigned and has no author in the article; it quotes the Deputy Commissioners of Akola, Amraoti and Buldana.
Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) mentions a sixteenth-century Berar. The 1909 gazetteer says the assigned districts "coincide in extent neither with the Berār of the Nizāms nor with the imperial Sūbah" (p. 14), so that page should not link here.
Where Berar lies today is not in the article, because no source it uses gives it. Éloise 15:38, 18 September 2026 (+07)