ABSTRACT
The degree of stratification of the peasantry forms one of the major criteria for demarcating agrarian regions of an economy. A classic attempt was made for agrarian Bengal by A. Ghosh in 1950. 2 More recently, Partha Chatteijee and Sugata Bose paid special attention to this problem when they tried to formulate typologies of Bengal agrarian society. 3 Being a zamindari area, however, this province poses a particular technical difficulty for economic historians. Barring the last years of the colonial rule, no reliable all-Bengal data are available on the size-distribution of peasant holdings at any point of time, to say nothing of the time series. This means that it is impossible in the case of Bengal to trace the historical course of peasant stratification on the basis of such relevant statistical figures. If one wants to look at the problem of stratification in a historical perspective, one has to have recourse to some substitute. The present paper is an attempt to make a rough estimate of the historical change in the velocity and regional variations of peasant stratification in Bengal by processing the registration statistics. These statistics, compiled by the Registration Department of the Bengal Government since the 1870s, recorded among other things the annual number of voluntary sales of occupancy holdings by registered deeds. It is provisionally assumed here that the sales of raiyati holdings were one of the major factors causing stratification among the peasantry. To be sure, however, land transfer does not necessarily bring about stratification. 4 In the course of discussion an attempt will be made to compare the results obtained from the study of land transfer with the figures on the size-distribution of raiyati holdings.
