Francis Buchanan’s Selection of Districts along the Ganga for Survey

Francis Buchanan (1762-1829) was a British surveyor who had recorded the flora and fauna, ecological setting, society and economy of four major districts of modern Bihar in great detail in early nineteenth century – Patna-Gaya, Purnea, Shahbad and Bhagalpur. Buchanan was instructed by the East India Company to proceed through Bengal in anti-clockwise direction all over Bihar. But if we look at the districts that he selected to survey in Gangetic Bihar, he selected those districts which to him were of botanical significance, and were closer to the Ganga. That is why after surveying Purnea in 1809-10, he moved to Bhagalpur in 1810-11, and from there to Patna-Gaya in 1811-12, and lastly to Shahabad in 1812-13. He not only gave great detail of the natural history, but also collected local legends, archaeological remains and their description.