296 PRICES 



lished over the whole area, and that price is com- 

 paratively stable, because the deficiencies of one 

 district are compensated by the abundance of 

 another. The fluctuations in the price of food- 

 grains before 1861 further prove beyond a doubt 

 that large stores of grain were not in those days 

 kept from one harvest to another. Had large stores 

 of grain been in existence, some portion of them 

 would have been attracted to market by high prices, 

 and so the rise would have been checked. This was 

 clearly not the case ; the most striking characteristic 

 of the prices from 1804 to 1861 is their sudden and 

 violent fluctuations. At Farukhabad, for instance, 

 the harvests were good in the years 1814, 1815, and 

 1816, for wheat sold at 45, 48, and 47 seers to the 

 rupee ; in the famine of the succeeding year the price 

 of wheat rose suddenly to 15 seers, a rise of over 

 300 per cent. In modern times that would be equiva- 

 lent to a rate of about 5 seers to the rupee. How 

 slight are the oscillations nowadays in comparison 

 will be seen by a glance at the prices in 1896-97. At 

 Farukhabad the average price of wheat for the ten 

 years previous to 1896-97 was 15*8 seers to the rupee. 

 After the failure of the harvest the price only rose 

 to 97 seers — i.e., a rise of 61 per cent. If, therefore, 

 to return to the early part of the century, prices could 

 rise so high in one year after a series of abundant 

 harvests, it is impossible to believe that grain was 

 habitually stored in any considerable quantity. This 

 conclusion is corroborated by the recorded facts re- 

 garding famine. 



Another very obvious deduction from these figures 

 is that there is no ground whatever for the curious 

 belief which exists in Europe that there was ever a 

 customary price for commodities in India. It is, 

 indeed, incredible that there should ever have been 

 a customary price for agricultural produce. Seeing 

 that the value of agricultural produce necessarily 



