Growth of

a mart, Dongargion.

A yearly fair,

items on one side or the other may be mentionedEuropean piece-goods, £1,217,000; indigo, £789,000; oilseeds, £557,000; salt, £389,000; sugar, £274,000; food grains, £258,000; hides, £185,000; saltpetre, £156,000. In 1882-83, the East Indian Railway returns alone show a total import and export trade for Patná (excluding opium) amounting to over 5 millions sterling, nearly 2 millions being imports and over 23 millions exports. As regards the river and road trade of Patná city, no recent statistics are available, as registration has there been abandoned for some years past.

Another example of the growth of local trade is exhibited at Dongargaon, as described in the Report on the Trade and Resources of the Central Provinces,—a model of what such a report should be. Dongargaon now forms the principal market for grain on the fertile plateau of Chhatisgarh, which is perhaps destined to become a regular source of wheat supply to England. Thirty years ago, it was a petty hamlet of about 20 houses, buried in wild jungle, and only distinguished from the neighbouring villages by a weekly bázár held on Sunday. In 1862, the enterprising agent of a Nágpur firm of native merchants settled here, and began to make purchases of grain. The number of houses has now risen to about 2000, of which the majority are tiled. Dongargáon had a resident population in 1881 of 5543. In the busy season, the concourse daily present in the bázár is estimated at 100,000, with 13,000 carts and 40,000 bullocks and buffaloes. Buyers come from as far west as Bombay, while the grain of all the adjoining Districts is brought here for sale.

A third example of the varying methods of Indian trade Kárágolá. may be found in the annual fair held at Kárágolá in Purniah. This fair dates from the beginning of the present century, although its site has changed from time to time. It lasts for about ten days in the month of February. During that season a little town of shops, constructed of bamboos and matting, rises on the sandy plain that stretches between the village and the bank of the Ganges. The business is entirely of a retail character, the local staples of grain, jute, and tobacco being conspicuously absent. But every article of necessity or luxury for a native household is to be bought. Cloth of all kinds, from thick English woollens to fine Dacca muslins; ironmongery and furniture from Monghyr; boots, shawls, silks, and brocades from the cities of the North-West; hand-mills,

curry-stones, and lac ornaments from the hills of Chutiá Nágpur; knives, yaks' tails, ponies, musk, and other drugs, brought down by the Nepálís; miscellaneous ware from England, such as umbrellas, matches, soap, paper, candles, buttons, etc.,-all find a ready sale. In 1876, the attendance was estimated at 40,000, and in 1881 at 30,000 persons; and the fees upon shops levied by the landowner realized £150. Such fairs are always protected by a special body of police, and the European official in charge of the District or Sub-division is usually present.

CHAPTER XX.

ARTS AND MANUFACTURES.

Manufactures

of India.

INDIA may be truly described as an agricultural rather than a manufacturing country, yet it must not be inferred that she is destitute of the arts of civilised life. She has no swarming hives of industry to compare with the factory centres of Lancashire; nor any large mining population. But in all manufactures requiring manual dexterity and artistic taste, India may challenge comparison with Europe in the last century; in many of them, with England at the present day. The rival kingdoms into which the country

was formerly divided, gave birth to numerous arts of luxury. Art work. When the first European traders reached the coast of India

English competition.

The tide

now

turned.

in the 16th century, they found a civilisation both among 'Moors' and 'Gentoos' at least as highly advanced as their own. In architecture, in fabrics of cotton and silk, in goldsmith's work and jewellery, the people of India were then unsurpassed.

But while the East has stood still, as regards manufactures on a great scale, the West has advanced by gigantic strides without a parallel in the history of human progress. On the one hand, the downfall of the native courts deprived the skilled workman of his chief market; while on the other, the English capitalist has enlisted in his service forces of nature against which the village artisans in vain try to compete. The tide of circumstance has compelled the Indian weaver to exchange his loom for the plough, and has crushed many of the minor handicrafts.

Some consolation can be found in the establishment, within the past few years, of mills fitted out by English capital with English machinery. A living portion of our own industrial activity has been transplanted to Indian soil. Manchester is growing up in miniature at Bombay, and Dundee at Calcutta. The time may yet come when India shall again clothe her people with her own cotton; she already supplies sacks from her jute for the commerce of the world.

industries.

Historically the most interesting, and still the most im- Native portant in the aggregate, of all Indian industries are the simple crafts in every rural hamlet. The weaver, the potter, The' the blacksmith, the brazier, the oil-presser, are members of a village community, as well as inheritors of a family occupation. On craftsmen. the one hand, they have a secure market for their wares; and on the other, their employers have a guarantee that their trades shall be well learned. The stage of civilisation below these village industries is represented by the hill tribes, where the weaving of clothes is done by the women of the family. An advanced stage may be found in those villages or towns which possess a little colony of weavers or braziers noted for some speciality. Yet one degree higher is the case of local arts of luxury, such as ivory-carving or the making of gold lace.

settle

Another form of native industry owes its origin to European interference. Many a village in Bengal and on the Coromandel Fortified coast still shows traces of the time when the East Indian Com- weaving pany and its European rivals gathered large settlements of ments. weavers round their little forts, and thus formed the only industrial towns that ever existed in India. But when the Company gave up its private trade in 1813 and 1834, such centres of industry rapidly declined; and the once celebrated muslins of India have been driven out of the market by Manchester goods.

Cotton-weaving is a very ancient industry of India. In Cottonweaving England it dates back only a couple of centuries. Wool and in India, linen were England's historical staples; but in India cottonweaving was practised before the time of the Mahábhárata. The Greek name for cotton fabrics, sindon, is etymologically the same as that of India, or Sind; while in later days, Calicut on the Malabar coast has given us 'calico.' Cotton cloth has always been the single material of Indian clothing for both men and women, except in Assam and Burma, where silk is preferred, perhaps as a survival of an extinct trade with China. The author of the Periplus, our earliest authority on the trade an indiof India, enumerates a great variety of cotton fabrics among industry. her exports. Marco Polo, the first Christian traveller, dilates on the cotton and buckram' of Cambay. When European adventurers found out the way to India, cotton and silk always formed part of the rich cargoes they brought home.

The English appear to have been specially careful to fix their earliest settlements amid weaving populations-at Surat, at Calicut, at Masulipatam, at Húglí. In delicacy of texture, in purity and fastness of colour, in grace of design, Indian

genous

Causes of cottons may still hold their own against the world. But in its decline. the matter of cheapness, they have been unable to face the

Still a domestic industry.

competition of Manchester. Many circumstances conspired to injure the Indian industry. In the last century, England excluded Indian cotton fabrics, not by fiscal duties, but by absolute prohibition. A change of fashion in the West Indies, on the abolition of slavery, took away the best customer left to India. Then came cheapness of production in Lancashire, due to improvements in machinery. Lastly, the high price of raw cotton during the American War, however beneficial to the cultivators, fairly broke down the local weaving trade in the cotton-growing tracts. Above all, the necessity under which England lies to export something to India to pay for her multifarious imports, has permanently given an artificial character of inflation to this branch of business.

Despite all these considerations, hand - loom weaving still holds its own with varying success in different parts of the country. Regarded as a trade, it has become unremunerative. Little is made for export, and the finer fabrics generally are dying out. The far-famed muslins of Dacca and of Arní are now wellnigh lost specialities. But as a village industry, weaving is still carried on everywhere, though it cannot be said to flourish. If Manchester piece-goods are cheaper, native piece-goods are Supplies universally recognised as more durable. Comparative statistics are not available; but it may be roughly estimated that consumpt. about three-fifths of the cotton cloth used is woven in the country from native thread or from imported twist.

three-fifths of Indian

Cottonweaving

in Madras,

1870;

In 1870, the Madras Board of Revenue published a valuable report on hand-loom weaving, from which the following figures are taken. The total number of looms at work in that Presidency, with its then population of 31 millions, was returned at 279,220, of which 220,015 were in villages and 59,205 in towns, showing a considerable increase upon the corresponding number in 1861, when the mohartarfa, or assessed tax upon looms, was abolished. The total estimated consumption of twist in 1870 was 31,422,712 lbs., being at the rate of 112 lbs. per loom. Of this amount, about one-third was imported twist, and the remainder country-made. The total value of the cotton goods woven was returned in 1870 at 3 millions sterling, or 12, 10s. per loom; but this was believed to be much under the truth.

The export of country-made cotton cloth from Madras in the same year, 1870, was about £220,000. By 1882-83, the export of country-made cloth from Madras had dwindled to £45,196.