138 NADIYA. portion of the year. The Eastern Bengal Railway runs north through the District for a distance of nearly 100 miles; and the fair-weather roads are also usually good. According to the registration returns for 1876–77, the aggregate value of the trade of Nadiyá amounts to more than £4,000,000; but a large proportion of this represents traffic in transit, included twice over as imports and exports. About half the total is set down to the single mart of Kushtia, where the railway first touches the main stream of the Ganges. In 1876–77, Kushtiá received from the surrounding country silk valued at £388,000, indigo £71,000, timber £60,000, rice £60,000, oil-seeds £38,000, sugar £33,000, turmeric £30,000, jute £29,000; while it took from Calcutta, for distribution, piece-goods valued at £344,000, and salt £12,000. No trade statistics are available for any later year than 1876–77. Other important marts are Hánskhálí, Sántipur, Chágdah (which has given its name to a special kind of jute in the Calcutta market), Kumárkháli, Chuádángá, Krishnaganj, Bagulá, and Alamdángá. The chief exports of local produce are jute, linseed, wheat, pulses and gram, rice, longpepper or chillies, sugar and tobacco. The only institutions in the District worthy of note are the tols, or indigenous Sanskrit schools. In these tols, smriti (Hindu social and religious law) and nyáya (logic) are taught by learned pandits to eager pupils, attracted, often from considerable distances, by the ancient fame of these institutions. A valuable report on the Nadiya tols by Professor E. B. Cowell (Calcutta, 1867) contains a full account of the schools, the manner of life of the pupils, and the works studied. Professor Cowell describes the tol as consisting generally of a mere collection of mud hovels round a quadrangle, in which the students live in the most primitive manner possible. . . . Each student has his own hut with his brass water-pot and mat, and few have any other furniture.' A student generally remains at the tol for eight or ten years. No fees are charged, and the pandits depend for their livelihood on the presents which their fame as teachers ensures them at religious ceremonies. Most of the tols are in Nadiya town, but there are also a few in the surrounding villages. No registers of attendance are kept, but it is said that the number of tols as well as of pupils is gradually decreasing; in 1873, the number of these schools in Nadiya and the neighbourhood was seventeen ; in 1882 they had decreased to ten. Administration.—In consequence of the important changes of jurisdiction which have taken place in Nadiya, it is impossible to present a trustworthy comparison of the revenue and expenditure at different periods. The area of the District is at present smaller by a third than it was in 1790. The land-tax in the latter year was £135,993 ; in 1850, it was £117,449 ; in 1870, it had fallen to £101,755; and in 1883–84, to £91,105. The total net revenue in 1809-10, the first year
