INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



are sometimes used instead of cattle, when six to eight men are employed on the rope and are con- 

 siderably more efficient than an average pair of bullocks. 



The Persian wheel or Noria (rahat), which is commonly used in the Punjab, is only found in 

 these Provinces in two small and very dissimilar tracts, one comprising part of the Jhansi, and the 

 other a part of the Saharanpur District. It consists of a large vertical wheel fixed over the well mouth, 

 carrying an endless rope bearing a series of earthen jars. The wheel is turned by an arrangement 

 similar to the modern " gin, " a pair of bullocks turning a horizontal wheel geared by large wooden 

 teeth into the end of the shaft of the vertical wheel. The lower portion of the rope dips into the 

 water, and as the wheel turns each jar is submerged in turn, and is brought up filled with water, which 

 it empties into a wooden trough so soon as it turns the summit. The machine is only used for short 

 depths, and will, with water 20 feet from the surface, irrigate about yth acre in a day when worked by 

 two bullocks and one man. It costs from Rs. 25 to Rs. 50, but its workmanship is usually of the 

 roughest possible description, and it is very far from yielding the maximum possible amount of 

 work. 



The dhenkU, or lever lift, consists of a long pole hinged near one end to a pivot between two earthen 

 or wooden pillars, and carrying a rope with an earthen pot at the end of the long arm, and a counter- 

 ^ poise of dry clay at the end of the short arm. The pillars are fixed at a short distance back from tho 

 mouth of the well, so that the end of the long arm comes directly over the well when the pot is 

 lowered into the water. Owing to the counterpoise very little exertion is needed in lifting the pot. 

 The lift can only be employed for depths less than 12 or 14 feet, and is chiefly used in the Sub-Hima- 

 layan tract and in fluviatile plains where water is near the surface, and wells are mere holes in the 

 sand fed by percolation, which would be completely emptied by a more rapid method of raising water. 

 Its cost is from Re. 1 to Rs. 3, and worked by two men off' and on during a day it will irrigate ^th 

 acre from a depth of 10 feet. The feebleness of the lift and of the well which it works is^ however, 

 compensated for by number, there being one to every two or three fields, and the long straight poles 

 standing erect, like the masts of shipping, are a very prominent feature in the scenery of a Dhenkli 

 tract. Another lift used under similar circumstances is the charkhi, which consists of a wheel bear- 

 ing a rope with an earthen j^ot at each end, the rope being worked alternately in each direction, one 

 pot coming up full while the other descends empty. 

 Tanks and Streams. Tanks are most extensively used for irrigation in the Benares Division, where the rainfall is 



heavier and the soil more tenacious than in the Central and Western Districts. Along the southern 

 edge of the Province, and on the border of the Central Indian hill range, there are numbers of magni- 

 ficent tanks which were constructed by native princes of the Chandel dynasty, but merely as append- 

 ages to temples, and not as irrigation works as has been often popularly supposed. Attempts have 

 been made to utilize them as reservoirs for small irrigation canals, but with not very conspicuous 

 success. In the Sub-Himalayan tract irrigation from streams is extensively practised, a dam being- 

 thrown across the bed at the end of the rains, and water-courses led off from above it. The rights 

 which different villages situated on the stream have in these temporary irrigation works are settled 

 by custom, the power of damming the stream being often shared by different villages, and exercised 

 by them in rotation one year after another. 



The ordinary means of raising water from tanks and rivers, and of lifting canal water when 

 delivered beloAV the surface level, is the swing basket, which consists of a shovel-shaped basket of 

 either bamboo or leather (called heri in the former and bauka in the latter case), with strings attached 

 to its corners, by means of which the basket is swung backwards and forwards by two men standing- 

 one on each side of the hole from which water is to be raised, and almost on a level with the place on 

 which it is to be delivered. At the commencement of each forward swing the basket dips into the 



