244 THE INTERRUPTION OF INDUSTRY 



the past was diligently collected. It is to these officers 

 that we owe our information concerning the famines 

 which occurred in India immediately before the estab- 

 lishment of British rule — e.g.^ the Chalisa (1783-84) in 

 Upper India, and the Doji Bara (1790-92) in the 

 Dekkhan. The British officials recorded the oral 

 traditions which were current in rural society and 

 the evidence of the old men who could remember 

 these calamities, and from them they pieced together 

 a history of those famines more circumstantial and 

 more instructive than anything in the regular 

 histories. 



I have given some reasons for the meagreness of 

 our information regarding the famines of the past, but 

 such evidence as we have is sufficient to show that, in 

 the matter of harvest failures, the eighteenth century 

 (to go no further back) was not very dissimilar to the 

 nineteenth century. The following famines have been 

 recorded in different parts of India, but precise details 

 and statistical information are entirely wanting : 



1718. — This prevailed in Ahmadabad and Surat ; 

 known as the Chowtro. The price of bajri and mutt 

 was 4 annas per seer. Numbers of people died of 

 hunger and sickness, and children were sold for 

 I or 2 rupees each. According to other reports the 

 price of bajri rose to 2 seers per rupee. 



1729-33. — Severe scarcity began in 1729, and cul- 

 minated in 1733 in the Madras Presidency. 



1739. — The invasion of Nadir Shah brought famine 

 to Delhi and its environs, but there is no mention of 

 any natural drought. 



1747. — A very severe famine reported from Kutch, 

 Ahmadabad, and Surat, as well as from Aurangabad 

 and other parts of the Dekkhan. According to the 

 * Padshahee Diwan,' it was known as the Tulotero. 

 Few such famines, according to the author, ' can have 

 ever occurred, in which not a drop of rain fell nor did 

 a blade of grass grow. A rupee would purchase only 



