REVENUE SURVEYS. 117 



Hindustanis, and without much ambition to become useful. A 

 school for the training of Burmans as surveyors was established, 

 and S9 youths qualified themselves by field training in the principles 

 of filling in cadastral survey details, the British Burma Government 

 having made the possession of this certificate a sine qua non to civil 

 employment, but Major Hutchinson did not come across a case 

 of a Burnian desiring to make field surveying a means of livelihood. 

 In 1882-83 the survey of the town of Bassein on the 64-inch scale, 

 at the expense of the municipality, was undertaken, and in the 

 following season operations were extended into the Henzada district, 

 the surveys of both districts being brought to a close in 1885. The 

 party was then transferred to Behar to inaugurate an experimental 

 cadastral survey of the Muzaffarpur district under Lieutenant- 

 Colonel Barron, Major Hutchinson being transferred to Akyab. 



The cadastral survey of Muzaffarpur in Bengal, with preparation 

 of a record of rights, was undertaken experimentally under the 

 Bengal Tenancy Act, and as the operations were of considerable 

 importance, involving as they did the great question of a thorough 

 statistical and geographical survey throughout the permanently 

 settled districts of Bengal, a brief account of the circumstances 

 which led to the institution of the survey is here desirable. 



The Indian Famine Commission, who reported in 1880, had laid 

 special stress on the necessity of appointing village accountants in 

 Bengal, and of instituting cadastral or field surveys in the same 

 province.* This weighty matter, closely connected as it was with 

 the question of the relations between landlord and tenant in Bengal, 

 very soon branched off from the more general recommendations 

 of the Commission, regarding the establishment of Agricultural 

 Departments and the organisation of famine relief, and became the 



* " We recommend that the body of village accountants should everywhere be put 

 on a sound and satisfactory footing as responsible public officers, with a clearly defined 

 set of duties, but with due consideration to the importance of their permanent con- 

 nexion with their own villages, and that whereas in parts of Bengal and Sindh the 

 class has ceased to exist through long desuetude it should be resuscitated. ..... 



The field survey, which supplies the basis of all agricultural statistics, should be 

 pushed on in the provinces where it is now in progress, and should be set on foot in 

 Bengal, where hitherto it has not been introduced. In that province the expenditure, or 

 the major part of it, should be borne by the landholders, who alone derive advantage 

 from the increasing value of the land, and who cannot without such a survey properly 

 perform the duties imposed on them by their position." (Command Paper C— 2591, 

 1880, p. 40.) 



