42 Annual Addresg. [Feb. 



lines on which it should proceed have already been laid down and have 

 iietii tested by experience in two large Provinces ; and in undertaking- 

 it Hie Goveriniient of India would nieiely be doing what the United 

 States and the Government of Netherlands India have done loug ago, 

 and what I understand is now about to be done by our own Colonial 

 Offioo for the large populations of savage races which the expansion of 

 the Empire has recently brought undei- its control. Of the scientific 

 arguments for undertaking such a survey it is needless to speak ; but 

 looking at the question from the point of view of practical administra- 

 tion I may be permitted to point out that the task of governing a great 

 congeries of races, tribes and castes among whom diversity is the rule and 

 uniformity the exception, and who at present show no sign of evolving 

 a compact social type, demands above all things for its successful 

 accoinplisiiment some systematic acquaintance with tlie vast body of 

 custom with which Government is brought into contact at an infinite 

 number of points. Where kuowledjiie means influence, knowledge is 

 power. A learned Professor who came to India some fourteen years 

 ago to study philosophy and publislied, besides an exhaustive treatise 

 on his own subject, a delightful account of his personal experiences, 

 tells in the latter volume a story vvhicli illustrates this principle. He 

 says that ju.st before the Census of 1881 there arose in certain Indian 

 districts an extraordinary rumour that the people of certain tribes were 

 to be branded and deported, the men to carry hospital litters in 

 Afghanistan and the women to pluck tea in Assam. Not unnaturally 

 the tribes in question, numbering several hundred thousand, stampeded 

 en masse into the jungles and declined to be censused on any terms. Tt 

 happened that two of the local officials, in places many hundred miles 

 apart, weie interested in tribal customs and had influence enough with 

 the tribes to induce their headmen to come in and talk things over. In 

 each case whisky loosened their tongues and in each case they were led 

 to ask why they were being counted. To this question one official, who 

 was of a prosaic turn of mind, replied by asking " If you hide away and 

 won't let nie count you how am 1 to know how many of you will want rice 

 in the next famine " ? The other, a Colonel in (he Central Piovinces, who 

 added to a sense of humour some acquaintance with Indian folk-lore, 

 gravely told them, as one would tell children a fairy-tale, how, so many 

 mouths before. Her Majesty the Maharaui and the Kaiser-i-Rus (the 

 Emperor of Russia) had been dining together. ** Now when they had 

 finished their curry and rice and were smoking their hookahs, they got 

 quarrelling as to who had the most ryots. And he said he h;id, and she 

 said she had, and they could not agree. So at last they made a very 

 big bet {pan lagQySL)^ and ordered all their subjects to be counted. That 



