In 1580 the great Bengal military revolt commenced., and Monghyr was some time the headquarters of Akbar's officers in their expeditions against the rebels. Akbar, fearing to trust his Mughal officers, entrusted the command to the Hindu Raja Todar Mal, who marched southwards without opposition till he reached Monghyr. Here he learned that the rebel army, consisting of 30,000 cavalry, were encamped at Bhagalpur, waiting to give him battle. The Raja took possession of Monghyr, and employed his troops in constructing additional lines, extending to the hills, which, with the fort, completely covered the front of his army. Both armies then remained inactive for several months, but frequent skirmishes [Page 34] took place between their light troops. At length the Raja, by means of his influence among the Hindu zamindars, prevailed upon them no longer to supply the rebels with provisions, promising to pay them ready money for everything brought to his camp. "The combined effects of similarity of religion and ready money payments worked so effectively on the zamindars, that famine shortly found its way into the rebel camp, and compelled the chiefs to separate, in order to obtain food." One body of the rebels made a dash on Patna closely followed by Todar Mal, and the campaign ended with their defeat near Patna. They then fell back on Bengal, and the Province of Bihar was restored to the Mughal emperor.^*

Chichor, the local name for a marshy sedge (Cyperus palustris), the roots of which are dug up in the dry weather. A man may collect about six pounds a day, with average luck and labour. They are usually ground into a kind of flour, and made into bread or cakes, but are also eaten raw. These sedges have been described as "famine thermometers," for in times of plenty they are abandoned to the pigs, but in times of scarcity the bulbs are grubbed up for food; and, writes Mr. Lockwood-" when I saw 500 persons chichor-hunting on a single marsh, I knew that there was famine in the land."

AGRICULTURAL conditions are very different in the north and south of the district. To the north is a fertile alluvial plain devoid of hills or natural eminences. In the west of this plain, from the boundary of the Darbhanga district to the mouth of the Gandak, the land is almost entirely under cultivation, the chief crops being bhadoi and rabi. The depressed tract to the east grows fine rabi crops in some places and paddy in others, but during the rains it is to a great extent inundated and uninhabited, and there are large tracts of pasture land, where herds graze in the dry and hot weather. South of the Ganges the cultivated area lies chiefly in the basin of the Kiul river and its tributaries, and in pargana Kharagpur, where the largest area is under winter rice. The tract to the north of Sheikhpura and west of Lakhisarai, which is also liable to inundation, is nearly all devoted to bhadoi and rabi. The following is a brief account of the different tracts of fertility.

Some of the most fertile lands in the district consist of the diaras of the Ganges, i.e., lands in the bed of the river which are constantly being added to or diluviated by floods. The creation of these diaras, or chars, as they are also called, is an interesting example of soil formation. Some back-water or curve of the river bed sets up an eddy in the current, which thereupon becomes sufficiently stationary to deposit a portion of the sand which it holds in solution. The level of the diara, which is so far nothing but a heap of sand, then gradually rises as the water lying stagnant spreads a thin layer of clay and silt over the sand; and this deposit of silt deepens at every high flood, until at last the diara rises above flood-level. The soil of such a diara is extremely fertile, and grows magnificent crops; but if its growth is arrested by the river altering its course, so that the flood water does not cover it during the second stage of its formation, it remains sandy and barren.

Some diara lands are the most fertile in the district, producing fine bhadoi crops before the river rises and good rabi crops in [Page 86] the cold weather. Other diaras again may be all sand, and the good field of one year may be ruined by a deposit of sand the next. Cultivation on diaras is thus often a mere speculation. These lands are also the subject of perpetual dispute and frequent litigation, which is of a complex nature owing to the absence of fixed landmarks, and the difficulty of knowing whether the land is an accretion or a reformation in situ.

Artificial irrigation is little practised or needed in North Monghyr, where the country is subject to inundation during the rains. Irrigation is not resorted to at all in low-lying rice tracts; and statistics compiled during the recent settlement operations show that only 2 ^1/2 per cent. of the total cultivated area is irrigated. Wells are used very little for irrigation except in the [Page 89] Teghra thana, where valuable crops, such as chillies and tobacco, are grown on small patches which can easily be watered from adjoining wells. A small amount of irrigation is effected by means of tanks, but more by small channels and by lifting water from rivers, lakes, etc. In Gogri thana the latter furnish the main source of irrigation for the rice crop, which is more largely cultivated than in the two western thanas. Even here, however, irrigation is so little resorted to that barely one acre in every ten under rice is irrigated, and these figures are hardly representative of the whole thana, as it is only in a small area in the north that irrigation is extensively resorted to.

In the west and north-west of South Monghyr irrigation is practised far more freely and is of three main kinds, viz., from artificial water channels called pains, from artificial reservoirs called ahars, and from wells. There is also a system of distributaries leading off from a reservoir at Kharagpur to the northeast, which will be dealt with later. Well irrigation is largely used for poppy, sugarcane, and vegetables, especially potatoes. There are numbers of pakka or masonry wells, and every year an astonishing number of kachcha or earthen wells are dug, which will last for a few seasons.

SINCE the creation of the district, famine has occurred twice, viz., in 1866 and 1874, and there have been two years of scarcity, viz., 1892 and 1897. The experience of these years shows that the south of the district is most liable to famine, because there the people are mainly dependent on the winter rice crop. North Monghyr is almost immune, the only portion affected in 1874 and in 1892 being the north of the Gogri thana, where there is a large area under rice, while in 1897 the whole tract escaped. It would appear that in this area short and even unseasonable rainfall is less disastrous in its effects than in South Monghyr, mainly because the winter rice crop is comparatively unimportant and the tenants are not dependent on a single season's crop but on two.

UNDER the rule of the Mughal emperors the district appears to have been included in Sarkars Hajipur, Tirhut and Monghyr. The greater portion was apparently comprised within Sarkar Monghyr, which was assessed to Rs. 7,41,000 by Todar Mal in 1582. According to Mr. Grant's account (1787), this Sarkar was " altogether or for the most part unsubdued, and probably unexplored, as held by independent or refractory zamindars;'' and was may perhaps accept his view that it was only included in the assessment owing to "the ambitious conquering policy of the Moguls, having always in prospect the entire subversion of the lesser as well as the greater states of Hindostan."^* However this may be, Sarkar Monghyr must have embraced areas not included in the present district, for when the Diwani was taken over by the British in 1765, it extended over 8,270 square miles, assessed to a net revenue of Rs. 8,08,000.