1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pabna

PABNA, or Pubna, a town and district of British India, in the Rajshahi division of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The town is situated on the river Ichhamati, near the old bed of the Ganges. Pop. (1901), 18,424. The district of Pabna has an area of 1839 sq. m. Pop. (1901), 1,420,461, showing an increase of 4·8% in the decade. It is bordered along its entire east face by the main stream of the Brahmaputra or Jamuna, and along its south-west face by the Ganges or Padma. It is entirely of alluvial origin, the silt of the annual inundations overlying strata of clay on sand. Apart from the two great bordering rivers, it is intersected by countless water-channels of varying magnitude, so that during the rainy season every village is accessible by boat and by boat only. Almost the whole area is one green rice-field, the uniform level being broken only by clumps of bamboos and fruit-trees, which conceal the village sites. The district is a modern creation of British rule, being first formed out of Rajshahi district in 1832, and possesses no history of its own. The two staple crops are rice and jute. Sirajganj, on the Brahmaputra, is the largest mart for jute in Bengal. The Eastern Bengal railway cuts across the south-west corner of the district to Sara, where a bridge crosses the Ganges. The district was affected by the earthquake of the 12th of June 1897, which was most severely felt at Sirajganj.