118 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [March, 1910. 



aside so much of each harvest as would just tide him over to 

 the next. This is too theoretic a method. We must make use 

 of our experience of him to take into account his very human 

 failings. In the first place he has been habituated to regard a 

 good season as affording a golden opportunity for physical 

 recuperation after the inroads caused by years of want and 

 scarcity. It will next, perhaps, occur to him that he has had 

 perforce to defer the marriage of Chandrabatti, his ten-year 

 old daughter, no less than three years on account of bad 

 seasons, and that, to avoid cause of scandal, she must be 

 married at once. Accordingly great preparations are made. 

 Relations to the most distant are fed and housed for many 

 days. The nights are rendered hideous by all kinds of drum- 

 ming and piping, and the net result is that much food and 

 drink is consumed. There is, indeed, much redundancy, but 

 not of the currency. 



But all is over, and Chandrabatti happily disposed of. He 

 may, if he be a very prosperous raiyat. and independent for the 

 nonce of the local money-lender, have a little to spare on the 

 purchase of commodities other than food and drink. 



His tastes are, however, of the simplest — a new thatch 

 for his house, a new padlock for the chest containing the family 

 ornaments, a new ploughshare, a new sari and a new silver 

 anklet for his wife, a new turban or loin cloth for himself , a 

 new vessel for cooking, — these are only realisable by the thrice- 

 favoured of Fortune. All the more complicated wants are 

 beyond his ken, — as unthinkable as Christmas crackers to the 

 child of the Whitechapel slums. 



If w-e except the first, these simple wants go to make up 

 an integral Indian demand for iron, cotton stuffs, raw silk, silver 

 for ornaments; copper, and spelter. 1 After food-grains it is, 

 then, to this class of commodities that we should first look for an 

 indication of depreciation, if such existed. Now in estimating 

 the effect of this kind of demand, we should remember that 

 the commodities are imports, and that the Indian demand is 

 but part of a much larger demand. On the other hand we 

 must bear in mind the population of India. If only one man 

 in a hundred requires a new turban, ten yards in length, or a 

 new copper vessel for eating, there will arise a demand for 

 thirty millions of yards of cotton fabric, or three millions of 

 copper vessels. The Indian demand may, then, assume very 

 considerable proportions. 



We shall presently see, when we come to the consideration 

 of the index figure for these imported commodities, that there 

 never has occurred, except possibly between the years 1862 and 

 1867, such a rise in their price as might betoken depreciation 

 of the currency. In fact from 1867 onwards the prices of these 



1 A commercial name for raw zinc, 



