The Gangetic plain is the most densely populated part of India, and probably contains about 40 per cent. of its inhabitants. The majority of the people are engaged in agricultural pursuits or in domestic industries, and only a small proportion live in towns. Of these the most important are on the old alluvial soil, where the diversity of products and favourable climate made the country particularly attractive to the invaders from the north-west, and where the confluences of great rivers afforded suitable sites for the growth of urban communities. On the recent alluvium, flooded every year, and occupied by a people of a lower type of civilisation, the conditions were less favourable. Hence it is that while in the United Provinces, which may be considered typical of the first region, 11 per cent. of the population live in towns, in Bengal, which is typical of the second, only 5 per cent. are town dwellers. In the Brahmaputra valley the proportion is lower still and only amounts to 3 per cent.
The more important towns include Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, Benares, Patna, and Calcutta. Delhi is on the Jumna at the very apex of the triangular plateau which forms the northern part of peninsular India, and hence is a meeting place of lines of communication from the south-east, the south-west, and the north-west. Agra, in a fertile part of the Jumna valley, was formerly
the centre of the empire of Akbar, and is still engaged in such in dustries as marble-inlay work, gem-setting, and the preparation of mosaics, accomplishments learned by its earlier artisans during the building of the Tajmahal by the Emperor Shah Jehan. Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna, is now the meeting place of railways from Calcutta, Peshawar, and Bombay. Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus, is dependent on the pilgrims who flock thither ; Patna, a few miles below the junction of the Son with the Ganges, is the centre of the opium manufacture ; and Calcutta, on the Hooghly, a distributary of the Ganges, was, until lately, the capital of British India. Calcutta, although situated at the foot of the Gangetic plain, is in some respects not well placed, as the navigation of the river is difficult, and it owes its supreme importance to its selection as the centre of British influence. Within the last few years it has become the centre of an important jute manufacturing industry.