Q.Francis Buchanan published reports on several districts of eastern India. Read one report and collate the information available about rural society, focusing on the themes discussed in this chapter. Highlight the ways in which historians can use such texts.
Francis Buchanan’s district reports are a treasure trove of first-hand observations on early 19th-century rural society in eastern India, and historians use them to reconstruct the lives of ordinary people, land relations, and local economies that official records often ignore.
Francis Buchanan (later Buchanan-Hamilton) was a Scottish physician and botanist who, between 1807 and 1814, conducted a detailed survey of several districts in eastern India — particularly in Bengal, Bihar, and parts of present-day Jharkhand. He was commissioned by the East India Company to gather information on the region’s geography, agriculture, economy, and society. His reports, later published as An Account of the Districts of Bihar and Patna (1811–12) and similar volumes, are among the earliest systematic attempts to document rural life in India from a non-official, yet Company-sponsored, perspective.
What makes Buchanan’s work so valuable is its sheer breadth. He did not just record revenue figures or list villages. He walked through fields, talked to peasants, observed local crafts, noted the condition of roads and markets, and described the social hierarchy of each district. His reports read like a field anthropologist’s notebook — full of details about who owned land, who tilled it, what crops were grown, how taxes were collected, and what people ate, wore, and believed.
Rural society through Buchanan’s lens
If you read one of Buchanan’s reports — say, on the district of Purnea or Bhagalpur — you will find a layered picture of rural society. At the top were the zamindars (landlords), many of whom were absentee, living in towns and leaving management to agents. Below them were the ryots (peasants), but not all ryots were equal. Buchanan distinguishes between khudkasht (resident peasants who had hereditary rights to cultivate their own village lands) and pahikasht (non-resident or migrant peasants who cultivated on a temporary basis). This distinction is crucial because it shows that land rights were not uniform — even among the cultivating classes.
Buchanan also describes the under-ryots — tenants who rented land from the main ryots — and the landless labourers, often from Dalit or tribal communities, who worked for wages in kind or cash. He notes the presence of village artisans: the blacksmith, the potter, the weaver, the oil-presser, the barber. Each had a customary role in the village economy, often paid in grain at harvest time rather than in money. This was a world where exchange was still largely non-monetised, and where social status was tied to caste and occupation.
Buchanan’s reports are especially useful for understanding the jajmani system — the traditional exchange of services between castes in a village — because he records actual transactions, not just idealised norms.
What historians can do with such texts
Historians use Buchanan’s reports in several ways. First, as primary evidence for reconstructing the material conditions of rural life before the full impact of British land revenue policies (like the Permanent Settlement of 1793) had settled in. Buchanan was writing barely a decade after the Permanent Settlement, so his observations capture a society in transition — old Mughal-era arrangements were still visible, but new pressures from the Company were already reshaping landholding and taxation.
Second, historians cross-check Buchanan’s data with other sources — revenue records, court cases, travelogues, and later census reports — to build a more reliable picture. For example, if Buchanan says that in a certain district the pahikasht peasants were fleeing because of high rents, a historian might look at Collector’s reports from the same period to see if there was a pattern of depopulation.
Third, Buchanan’s reports allow historians to study regional variation. He covered many districts, and his method was consistent, so comparisons become possible. Why were some areas more prosperous? Why did certain crops dominate? Why were some zamindars more oppressive than others? These questions can be answered by reading Buchanan systematically.
A key limitation: Buchanan was an outsider, a Company employee, and his observations were filtered through his own assumptions about “improvement” and “civilisation.” He often judged Indian practices harshly. Historians must read him critically — not as a neutral camera, but as a source with its own biases.
Themes from the chapter that Buchanan illuminates
If your NCERT chapter discusses themes like land rights, caste hierarchy, the impact of colonial revenue systems, or the decline of traditional crafts, Buchanan’s reports are a direct window into those very themes. For instance, he describes how the weavers of Bhagalpur were being forced to sell their cloth to the Company at low prices — a classic example of the decline of indigenous industry under colonial rule. He also notes the growing burden of debt on peasants, who borrowed from moneylenders at high interest to pay their rents — a pattern that would only worsen in the decades to come.
In short, Buchanan’s reports are not just a list of facts. They are a narrative of change — a snapshot of a rural world that was about to be transformed by colonialism. Historians use them to hear the voices of ordinary people, even if only indirectly, and to understand the structures that shaped their lives.
In short, Francis Buchanan’s reports provide a richly detailed, ground-level view of early 19th-century rural society in eastern India, and historians use them as critical primary sources — alongside other records — to reconstruct land relations, caste and occupation, economic exchanges, and the early impact of colonial rule, always reading them with an awareness of the author’s own biases.
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