SECTION XIX.
The District of Purneah.
Population.—In 1789 Mr. Suetonius Grant Heatly, then Collector of Purneah, computed the number of villages within the limits of the district at 5,800, from which he inferred a population of 1,200,000 persons. In 1801 Mr. W. S. Rees reported the number of villages to be 7,056 and the estimated total population 1,450,000 persons. Dr. Buchanan was of opinion that, during the forty years prior to 1810, the population of Purneah had nearly doubled, and his computation, the result of a much more laborious investigation, exhibits a total population of 2,904,380 persons in the proportion of forty-three Mahomedans to fifty-seven Hindoos.
Of the latter more than half still consider themselves as belonging to foreign nations either from the west or south, although few have any tradition concerning the era of their migration, and others have no knowledge of the country whence they suppose their ancestors to have come. Comprehended in the above population are various classes of slaves. They are allowed to marry and their children become slaves; but the individuals of a family are seldom sold separately. One class of slaves are the most useful description of labouring people. Their owners seldom use the power they possess of selling them. Although the Mahomedans are in proportion fewer than in Dinajpur, they have more influence, much more of the land being in their possession. The manners of the capital town are entirely Mahomedan, and the faith is apparently gaining ground. Except artists, all the Mahomedans call themselves shaik as deriving their origin from Arabia, but a great majority are not to be distinguished from the neighbouring Hindoo peasantry. In 1810 there were twelve families of Native Christians who are called Portuguese and who are chiefly employed as writers. Among the Rajpoots are a few Sauras or worshippers of the sun. Within the whole district there are reckoned to be 482 market-places, and the principal towns are—Purneah containing 6,000 houses, Nautpoor 1,400, Kushba 1,400, Dhamdaha 1,300, and Matanti 1,000.
According to Buchanan the dialects spoken in the district are in a state of great confusion. The emigrations appeared to him to have been so recent that the people had not yet moulded their discourse into a common language. The Bengalee and the Hindee, and different dialects of each, contend for the mastery. The Bengalee character is very little used, and except among the traders of Bengal settled in almost every part, it is chiefly confined to the eastern sub-divisions, and even there the accounts of the zemindars are kept both in Nagree and Bengalee.
In the sub-divisions of Sibgunj, Bholahat, Kaleyachak, Kharwa, Nehnagar, Delalgunj, and Udhrail, the Bengalee language is by far the most prevalent. In Gorgurilah and Kirchugunj both dialects and both characters are very much intermixed, so that it
