OF THE CITY OF BENARES. 475 



rented. Wherever space will allow it, Indian houses are built with an 

 open court in the centre, towards which the apartments front on all sides. 

 A house of any magnitude comprehends several such compartments, and 

 is assessed according to the number of these, as separate houses, in the 

 levy of the JBeh?i, the Phdtekbandi, or any similar tax: the average 

 inmates of a large house therefore, will be, properly speaking, some 

 multiple of seven, the mean rate per chouk. Again, the lower stories of 

 such houses are divided off into small shops, facing the street, which are 

 tenanted, during the day only, by artisans and tradesmen : and further, the 

 domestic servants of the upper classes, with very few exceptions, sleep at 

 their own houses in the suburbs, and are included in the Register of those 

 quarters, so that it often happens that the largest mansions are the most 

 thinly peopled. This explanation is deemed necessary on account of the 

 great discrepancy between the Kotwal's estimate of the number of inmates 

 in the larger class of houses and my own results. 



4. If the seventeen mehalas of the second examination may be 

 taken as a fair average for the whole town, the number of lodgers rather 

 exceeds that of householders ; among the latter are included also those 

 who hold parjoti tenures, paying ground rent to the Zemindar without 

 any specific term of lease ; a system which is generally prevalent in the 

 suburbs or kacha mehalas, such as Piri, Alipura, Assi, &c. 



5. The proportion of males and females appears to be very nearly 

 on an equality both in the City and in Secrole: there is, however, a defi- 

 ciency in the amount of female children, which is also observable in the 

 Burdwan Tables. This may be partly owing to the system of early 

 marriage, which causes the removal of girls from their parents' houses at 

 a tender age, and partly to the frequent inclusion of girls with boys 

 in the general term " larke" when they are spoken of by their rela- 

 tions. 



