STATISTICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 317 



Gazetteer throws an interesting light on what was- requisite and 

 what was actually achieved in this direction : — 



" If the history of India is ever to be anything more than a record of conquest and 

 crime, it must be sought for amongst the people themselves. Valuable historical 

 materials had been collected fur the Statistical Survey, and ia 1877 the Secretary of 

 State for India decided that a wider scope should be allowed me for their use in the 

 ' Imperial Gazetteer.' I have done my best to give effect to that view, and it will be 

 seen that for the first time in these volumes that every Indian district has its own 

 history. The true territorial unit of Indian history is, indeed, much smaller than the 

 British district. For example, he who would study the history of Oudh must search 

 for it in the pargana or parish ; in other parts of India the zam.indar or estate is the 

 historical unit ; in others the chiefship, while in a few the rural districts were mere 

 appendages to the great cities. Had it been permitted me to subject the rural annals of 

 India to systematic inquiry, as I wished, a rich harvest would have been gathered in." 



The latitudes and longitudes of the different localities were supplied 

 by the department of the Surveyor- General of India, while areas, 

 distances, and similar data were furnished from the same source. 

 The statistics were not strictly comparable and not thoroughly 

 accurate, but India was then and is even now in its infancy as 

 regards statistical data. When the survey was begun no one knew 

 exactly the population of a single province of India, or of a single 

 district of Bengal. In the latter province the census of 1872 

 suddenly disclosed the presence of 22,000,000 of British subjects, 

 whose existence had never previously been suspected. The popula- 

 tion of Bengal and Assam up to that time reckoned at 40,000,000 

 was ascertained in 1872 to amount to 67,750,000 of souls. 



A uniform system of spelling of Indian proper names had long 

 been discussed, and was one of the essential preliminaries of the 

 " Imperial Gazetteer." In the old gazetteers the same word appeared 

 under many forms, one town being spelt in eleven different ways, not 

 one of which was correct, and in order to be sure of finding a place, 

 a student had to look it up under every possible disguise. A know- 

 ledge of the vernacular languages of India and of Sanskrit is neces- 

 sary to enable one to spell the native names correctly in the native 

 alphabets, and a scientific system of transliteration into the English 

 characters was a further essential.* 



* There is a strong plea for the correct and uniform orthography of proper names in 

 Mi-. S. E. Peal's " Note on the Origin and Orthography of Kiver Names in Further 

 India" (we Proceedings of the Eoyal Geographical Society, p. 90 of 1889). Major 

 Eaverty too is a doughty champion in the same cause, see his : ' Notes on Afghanistan," 

 passim. Dr. Burgess has recently contributed a suggestive article on the same 

 subject to the Eoyal Scottish Geographical Society's Magazine. See also " Eeport on 

 Uniform System for spelling Foreign Geographical Names " (Navy Department), 

 Washington, 1891. 



