THE WILD SAFFLOWER 



Roghan. 



Oil. 



CARTHAMUS 



TINCTORIUS 



Roghan 



new property, and been converted into a substance very serviceable for 

 greasing well-ropes, leather well-buckets, etc., purposes for which the cold- 

 drawn oil is quite unsuited. In other words, the oil has been converted 

 into what is known as roghan a substance employed to prevent leather 

 from hardening on its being exposed to the action of water or of a damp 

 atmosphere. 



Oil of Wild Safflower. In the Northern Panjab, more especially 

 Peshawar, a very different process is adopted from that just detailed for 

 the manufacture of roghan. The polli oil (the oil of C. Oxyacantha) 

 expressed by the cold process is placed in earthen vessels and boiled 

 continuously for twelve hours. The vessels are so placed that it is not 

 possible for a flame to reach the boiling liquid, and the temperature 

 is kept low and uniform. In time it emits volumes of white pungent 

 vapour, so exceedingly disagreeable that the manufacturers are compelled 

 to conduct their industry under special license and in a place assigned 

 to them remote from human dwellings. On the oil being cooked to the 

 required extent, and while still boiling hot, it is thrown into large shallow 

 trays containing cold water. It swells up into a jelly-like substance, the 

 roghan of Northern India. This is stored in tin cans and sold to the 

 manufacturers of the so-called Afridi wax-cloth. 



Wax-cloth. It would occupy too much space to repeat the accounts 

 published in The Agricultural Ledger (1901, No. 12, 393-414) and Indian 

 Art at Delhi, 1903 (229-34), regarding this curious little industry. The 

 facts made known in these publications prove that we have been in- 

 correct in affirming that the Natives of India were unaware of the drying 

 property of certain oils in the manufacture of paint with mineral pigments. 

 But in the Afridi wax-cloth the paint is not applied by a brush but by 

 means of an iron style. The rapidity and accuracy with which the pattern 

 is elaborated by threads of plastic and coloured roghan has to be seen to 

 be appreciated or understood. The skilled artist can work from right 

 to left or left to right with equal ease, and, just as in penmanship, the thick 

 downward strokes and the fine upward hair-lines are each made to occur in 

 their proper places in the elaboration of the pattern with which the fabric 

 is being covered. Where two or more colours have to be given, the operator 

 usually applies all the patches or lines of one colour before he proceeds to 

 use the second or the third shade. The half-finished table-cloth or fire- 

 screen may in consequence often appear a bewildering production, since 

 it may be impossible to discover the actual pattern in the operator's mind. 



In passing it may here be added that in Baroda, castor-oil, and in 

 Kach, linseed-oil, are similarly made into the roghan used in the fabrica- 

 tion of the wax-cloths of these localities. Experiments conducted in the 

 Industrial Museum, Calcutta, have revealed the fact that the oil of the wild 

 safflower possesses no special properties over those of the cultivated plant. 

 It would further seem that in the Afridi wax-cloth India possesses the 

 nucleus of a possible large new craft, that of producing wax-cloth, water- 

 proofing materials and linoleum, from local materials and possibly by 

 means of the expert craftsmen who from time immemorial have turned out 

 the goods here indicated. The jute mills of Calcutta prepare and export 

 the cloth required by the wax-cloth and linoleum manufacturers of Europe 

 and America. India, moreover, will be seen to import a by no means 

 insignificant amount of the specially prepared wax- cloth and linoleum 

 (oil-cloth and floor-cloth) made on the jute textiles exported from India 



282 



Afridi 

 Wax-cloth. 



Oil Paint. 



Application to 

 Cloth. 



Castor-oil 

 Roghan. 



Linoleum. 



Cloth for 

 Linoleum 

 made in India. 





