now able, from a census taken by the English Government last year, and also from Missionary Reports and other authorities, to furnish reliable civil and religious statistics of the Indian Empire. A few items are approximations, but they come as near to accuracy as is now necessary. India has an area of 1,577,698 square miles. It is nearly 2,000 miles from North to South, and 1,900 miles from East to West. The country is divided into 221 British Districts, and 153 Feudatory States, with a population of 212,671,621 souls.
The average density of this population to the square mile is 135 persons. But in Oude and Rohilcund (the mission field of the Methodist Episcopal Church) the density is 474 and 361 respectively, and is therefore probably the most compact population in the world. England has 367, and the United States only 26, persons to the square mile. As to race, this vast multitude of men are divided as follows:
| The English army | 58,000 |
| Europeans and Americans (civil, mercantile, and missionary life) | 89,585 |
| Eurasians (the mixed races) | 40,789 |
| Asiatics | 212,483,247 |
In religion the native population are distributed, as nearly as we can approximate them, into
| Parsees (followers of Zoroaster) | 150,000 |
| Jains (Heterodox Buddhists) | 400,000 |
| Syrian and Armenian Christians | 140,000 |
| Protestants (attendants on Worship) | 350,000 |
| Roman Catholics (attendants on Worship) | [1]760,000 |
| Karens (in British Burmah) | 500,000 |
| Seikhs (in the Punjab) | 2,000,000 |
| Buddhists (in British Burmah and Ceylon) | 3,280,000 |
| Aborigines, and undefined | 11,000,000 |
| Mohammedans | 30,000,000 |
| Hindoos | 165,000,000 |
- ↑ The Roman Catholic Bishop of Madras in 1869 estimated the whole number of native Romanists in their communion at 760,623, supervised by the Bishops, and 734 priests, in addition to 124,000 with 128 priests under the jurisdiction of the almost schismatic and Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. But Dr. George Smith, one of the highest authorities on India statistics, regards these figures as unworthy of trust, and sets down the numbers for both as not over 700,000.—Friend of India, May 10, 1871, p. 554.
