PH YSICAl L ASPTECTS 195
Brahmaputra, and to have been conquered by the Pandava Bhim and
also by Raghu. The inhabitants of this region are described in the
Raghubansa as living in boats, and as growing transplanted rice for
their staple crop. In the time of Ballal Sen the tract immediately to
the east of the Bhagirathi was called BAGRI, and BANGA occupied
the eastern portion of the delta. The tract west of the Bhagirathi was
known as RARH, which in Prakrit was softened to Lala. Possibly
Bengal or Bangala is a combination of Banga Lala, and, in any case,
there can be no doubt that the word is connected with the ancient
Vanga. During the period of Muhammadan rule the term was applied
specifically to the whole delta, but later conquests to the east of the
Brahmaputra and north of the Padma were eventually included in it.
Under the British the name has at different times borne very different
significations. All the north-eastern factories of the East India
Company, from Balasore on the Orissa coast to Patna in the heart of
Bihar, belonged to the 'Bengal Establishment,' and as its conquests
crept higher up the rivers, the term continued to be the designation of
the whole of its possessions in Northern India. From the time of
Warren Hastings to that of Lord William Bentinck, the official style
of the Governor-General was ' Governor-General of Fort William in
Bengal.' In 1836, when the Upper Provinces were formed into a
separate administration, they were designated the North-Western
Provinces, in contradistinction to the Lower Provinces; and although
they, as well as Oudh, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Burma,
were sometimes loosely regarded as forming the Bengal Presidency, the
word was ordinarily used in this sense only for military purposes, to
denote the sphere of the old army of Bengal, as distinguished from
those of Bombay and Madras. In its ordinary acceptation, the term
now covers only the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.
The term 'Bengal proper' has a still more restricted meaning, and
indicates, roughly speaking, the country east of the Bhagirathi and
Mahananda, where the prevalent language is Bengali.
Bengal contains tracts of very different physical features, including
the alluvial plains of the GANGES and the BRAHMAPUTRA, and the
deltas of those rivers, which form the greater part of
Bihar and Bengal proper; the crystalline plateau aspects
of Chota Nagpur, including the Tributary States
of Orissa, and the hills stretching to the Ganges at Rajmahal; the
narrow strip of alluvium comprising Orissa; and lastly, a small portion
of the sub-Himalayas, the Sikkim State, and a tract which once be-
longed to Sikkim but now forms the main part of Darjeeling District.
It is thought that there was formerly a continuous chain connecting
the Rajmahal range with the remains of the 'peninsular system,' still
in existence in Assam, and that their subsidence was due to the
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