1 (5 )
2 co-operation of the Cantonment Magistrates and the Military Authorities
3 was to be invited.
4 4. The Financial Commissioner's Circular Orders reached the various
5 Districts by the early portion of November. The notice given to the
6 local Officers was indeed short, but they zealously applied themselves to |
7 the task. Many thousands of copies of the directions to eiiumerators, and
8 of the formal Statements of people, houses, and. area, were immediately
9 struck off at the many Lithographic Vernacular Presses, which have
10 either been set up in the Jails or have been established under the aus-
11 pices of Government Officers, in many cities of the Punjab. In each
12 District the native heads of the Civil Establishment, Police and Fiscal,
13 wete assembled for instruction’ in the details of the operation. Each
14 local Division was sub-divided into circles of superintendence to be for
15 this occasion under charge of a Government Official. Towns, cities and
16 large villages were parcelled out into wards. Every ordinary village,
17 and every detached hamlet, was formed into a separate beat. To each
18 beat was assigned an enumerator, specially trained and capable of making
19 the numerical entries. For the towns and cities the burghers readily
20 supplied enumerators. In large villages the land-holders, the bankers,
21 and the traders, could also furnish persons for the work. In smaller
22 villages, the village accountants would be ready to act in this capacity.
23 But in the scattered hamlets, in the wilder tracts, and in the hilly local-
24 ities, various persons were enlisted in the service. In many places
25 the Mahomedan moollah, the Sikh girunthee or scripture reader, the
26 village school-master and his pupils, the petty trader, the chief cattle
27 grazer, were selected to aid in the work of enumeration. Many items in
28 the returns, such as houses, villages, enclosures, landed area, in short all
29 entries except those relating to people, could be closely ascertained a
30 leisure, and filled in before the actual night of enumeration, This was
31 carefully done every where. The preliminary entries were often tested
32 by the District Authorities. Occasionally, even an experimental census
33 was partially made to test the strength of the apparatus, and to afford
34 an opportunity for practice. As the appointed day drew near, the peo.
35 ple generally were warned to be in readiness.
36 5. On the night of the 31st December, the enumerators went round
37 to the houses of their respective beats, Each man having asked his
38 questions and made his entries, completed his circuit during the night,