392 Report on Productions and Manufactures, Sfc. [No. 113. 



try. There is no superfluity, and no waste f and on the whole it is a most 

 favorable specimen of native ingenuity and skill. 



Indigo from Masulipatam, the produce of Bengal, finds its way to this 

 place, and is sold for the same price as the Indigo manufactured here. 



The carpet manufacture for which Warungal or rather the villages, 

 Muswarrah, &c, in its close vicinity are celebrated, does not appear to 

 be an indigenous art. 



A distinct tradition exists of its introduction, and also the method of 

 preparing and drying the materials that compose it, being due to the 

 Mahometans, facts countenanced, if not substantiated, by the present 

 weavers and dyers being uniformly of that religious persuasion. 



The carpet loom is nothing more than the common native loom placed 

 vertically instead of horizontally. The waft is of thick strong cotton 

 twist, being arranged by no wafting mill, but by one of the workmen 

 going round and round two stakes fixed in the ground and dropping the 

 thread at each, as he passes ; in the loom it is kept on the stretch by 

 two strong billets of wood, the threads being approached by separate 

 loops of cotton fixed to a bamboo, which is elevated or depressed at the 

 will of the weaver. The worsted is held in the left hand, and a crescent 

 shaped knife in the right, the fingers of both being left free ; the inner 

 thread of the waft is then seized, the worsted wound round the outer, 

 crossed on itself, and the extremity drawn out, by which it is made to 

 descend in the form of an open figure of eight to be snipped by 

 the curved knife. It is superfluous to say that this is the work of an 

 instant ; when the pattern is new or difficult, the order and position 

 of the worsted threads is changed by a coryphoeus in a kind of rhyme. 

 On a row being completed, the warp, in the shape of a cotton thread dyed 

 dark brown by the bark of the Swietenia Febrifuga, is forced down by 

 means of an iron toothed comb, in form something like an adze ; the 

 whole is completed by cutting the worsted to its proper length by a large 

 scissors held steadily against the waft. It would rejoice a Manchester 

 or Glasgow manufacturer to learn that infant labour is employed and pre- 

 ferred in Warungal carpet weaving, it being averred that their more limber 

 finger joints are best fitted for the finer parts of the work, but cupidity all 

 over the world is ingenious in finding excuses, and is ever ready to con- 

 found the expedient with the right. Dried springs of Toolsee (ocymum 

 sanctum) and bunches of Lepidigathis Indica are attached to the loom 

 frames ; the workmen say that they make their labour go on more clever- 

 ly. Twelve different worsteds are employed. 



