4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST from being adequate or satisfactory.8 This also, incidentally, revealed that the degree of control exercised by Delhi over its empire and the success it achieved in having proper records varied inversely with the distance from Delhi. The two main accounts of the pre-British period are obtained from folklore and the descriptions of the foreign travellers as also from the reports on, the early part of the British period by way of inference. The second difficulty is related to the geographical definition of Bengal. The Bengal Subah on the eve of 1757 included areas presently covered by Bangladesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, but even taking only the West Bengal part of it into account, a good portion of it was outside the effective control of the Nawab of Bengal. It was not until 1835 that Darjeeling was annexed defeating the King of Sikkim,9 and not until 1865 that Jalpaiguri was similarly annexed from Bhutan.10 Gooch Bihar too was ruled independently of the Nawab, and even during the British period it was treated as a protectorate and kept outside the jurisdiction of Bengal.11 On the South, sunderban forests covered parts of a number of districts including 24 Parganas, Khulna, Jessore and Bakharganj, and there were several other 'jungal mahal* forest areas where mainly the tribals lived, in the western districts such as Midnapore, Bankura, Birbhum and Burdwan. To complicate things further, most of Midnapore and a large area of Howrah of today were considered as parts of Orissa'while until 1956 Purulia was a part of Bihar. All these together probably constituted about one-third or more of the present-day West Bengal. Thirdly, the political situation on the eve of the British take-over was far from stable, which further weakened the control of the Nawab over the territory presently known as West Bengal. There were several rebellions against the Nawab, the most important being the one led by Subha Singh, a local ruler of North Indian extraction, in 1696. He at one point captured about half of Bengal on the southern and western side, and could only be dislodged after a considerable military effort by the army of the Emperor.12 In more recent periods, the main source of disturbance in the western districts such as Midnapore, Bankura and Burdwan were the bargis, the remnants of a Mahratta army.13 From the forties for about ten years such attacks were a regular feature of life and on serveral occasions they even managed to capture the entire southern part of the province.14 In the areas brought under their control they would seize crops, impose taxes and force the people to work for them. As a consequence, large scale desertion from those lands took place during this period, which seriously disrupted cultivation and the village life. The impact of these raids lasted at least until 1764 when the resident British official at Midnapore was busy persuading two Zamindars of the district to encourge the deserting peasant to return to the land and cultivate.15 The picture of the economic and social life in the villages of Bengal, as depicted below, would have to