Talk:Eastern Terai
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Why the region is on the map
The sources describe a wild growth of hemp, gathered for bhang, rather than a crop. The Hemp Drugs Commission (1894) found the spontaneous growth "extremely common and plentiful" in the Patna Division north of the Ganges, and a special inquiry found it about the villages of north Bhagalpur and Purnea. Gwilt, for the Darjeeling Terai, said that ganja was not cultivated there. No source read for this page records cultivation in the belt. The region was split from the Terai page, which covered the whole belt until October 2026, and it carries the Bihar and Darjeeling half of that page's colonial evidence.
Growing status
The status is Historical: the evidence is from 1850 to 1894, and no later source read for this page says either way whether cannabis grows or is gathered in the belt now. Recent news items from places in or near the belt (Raxaul, Supaul, Siliguri) report seizures in transit, not cultivation.
Border
The border is the part of the Terai's earlier border that lies in Bihar and West Bengal: ground at or below 330 m within 32 km of the Himalayan foothills. The 330 m ceiling is the Terai of Nepal's (Kandel and colleagues, 2024), and the 32 km strip follows Hamilton's "about twenty miles" for the width of the Nepal Terai (1819). No source gives an extent for the Terai on the Indian side. Because the foothills lie well inside Nepal for most of Bihar's length, the strip reaches into India only in the north of West Champaran and in thin pieces further east. In West Bengal it covers the plains of Darjeeling District (the Siliguri subdivision). The Western Terai begins at the boundary with Uttar Pradesh. No elevation or rainfall figures are given in the infobox, because none was found for the Indian side. The area in the infobox (about 3,300 km²) is the area of that border.
Most places the colonial evidence names lie south of this strip (most of Darbhanga, north Bhagalpur and Purnea). The article reports what the sources say about those districts, and the border does not claim them. In Darjeeling the region overlaps the Eastern Himalayas by about 90 km², where that region's 200 m floor lies below this one's 330 m ceiling.
What the sources cover
The Commission's special inquiry in north Bhagalpur and Purnea was made by B. C. Basu, who, the Commission wrote, "does not seem to have explored the waste lands of the Terai"; his inquiries related "solely to the populous parts of the country" (vol. I, ch. III, para. 27). That is why the Commission states its view of the growth towards the Terai as a probability.
A sentence in the Commission's evidence volume that reads "Spontaneous growth in the Darjeeling Terai" belongs to the evidence of the Mymensingh District Board (witness 249, p. 524), not to a Darjeeling witness, so it is not used for the Darjeeling Terai.
W. R. Bright gave his evidence as Deputy Commissioner of Palamau, but his answers on wild bhang, cattle medicine and Nepal ganja describe the Bettiah sub-division of Champaran.
Herbarium sheets
Banerjee 263 (Motihari, East Champaran, 1964) has a blank notes line, so its label says nothing of cultivation, and it is not placed in the region.
Witnesses' elevations
Chatterjee's lower Rungit and Teesta valleys (500 to 1,200 feet) are valleys of the Darjeeling hills rather than the plain; the article reports them with his evidence on the Tarai. Gwilt's "below 3,000 feet" is his opinion of where the plant might grow, not a measurement.