Manufacturing Industries

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES Cotton and Jute.—On the basis of the number of people who are employed hand-loom weaving is still by far the greatest of Indian non-agricultural industries. The census of 1921 found very nearly 2,000,000 hand-looms at work, and the actual number was probably considerably greater. The Indian Industrial Commission (1916-18) discovered that the consumption of mill-spun yarn by hand-loom weavers increased by about 30% in the two decades be fore the war, which would more than compensate for the diminu tion in the output of hand-spun yarn. But from 1922 onwards, in the fierce and very equal competition which so ensues between Indian and Japanese mills, it is the hand-loom weavers who have suffered most. In some districts after a struggle to live on less than subsistence earnings, they have been compelled to abandon their hereditary calling; in others, where the level of skill and enterprise is higher, they have given up cotton weaving for silk, or textures with gold or silver thread interwoven. The industry as a whole shows a surprising degree of vitality, fly-shuttles, which increase a weaver's output from 20 to i oo %, have been adopted widely, and so also have simple machines for winding and warping, owned and used co-operatively.

Out of some 1,500,00o workers in factories of all sorts, about 330,000 are employed in cotton-mills, and some 140,000 in cotton gins and presses. This industry has had very considerable vicis situdes, but taking bad years with good, it has been prosperous and progressive. Before the War Indian mills supplied just under 30% of the total Indian consumption of mill-woven cloth : their share has now risen to 52%; while the share of the United King dom has fallen from 68.5% to 42.5. On the other hand, Indian mills have lost in China their chief foreign market. The first cotton mill in India was opened in 1851, and the industry received a powerful stimulus during the Americal Civil War. The staple, however, is short ; and until the cultivation of better varieties is more general, no competition will be possible with cottons of the American type, and trade must be confined to the home and far eastern markets.

The manufacture of jute employs about 350,000 hands, and in this field the supremacy of Bengal is more firmly established than ever. Nearly two-thirds of the jute crop is worked up in the Bengal mills; so that Bengal now produces about twice as great a bulk of jute manufactured goods (gunny bays, hessian cloth, cordings, etc.) as all the rest of the world.

Silk.—The silk industry in India has experienced many vicis situdes. Under the East India Company large quantities of mulberry silk were produced chiefly in Bengal, and exported to Europe ; and Malda, Murshidabad, and other places in that province have long been famous for their silk manufactures. Other kinds of silk are native to certain parts of India, but the chief of the wild silks is the tussore silk, which is found in the jungles nearly throughout India. Large quantities of compara tively coarse silk are made from silk so produced. The most hope ful ground, however, for the industry is Kashmir, where Sir Thomas Wardle reported that the silk was of as high a quality as from any part of the world. The most important seat of the silk-weaving industry is Bengal, but there are few parts of India where some silk fabrics are not woven.

Other Manufactures.—The demand of the Indian population for woollen fabrics is very small in comparison with that for cotton, and although the manufacture of blankets is carried on in many parts of India, the chief part of the indigenous woollen industry was originally concerned with shawls. Kashmir shawls were at one time famous, but the industry is practically extinct. The chief seat of the woollen industry now is the Punjab, where a considerable number of weavers, thrown out of work by the decline of the shawl industry, have taken to carpet-making. The chief centre of this industry is Amritsar. The output of the woollen mills at Cawnpur and elsewhere is chiefly used for the army and the police. In addition to these and the cotton and jute mills there are rice mills, timber mills, leather works, oil mills, iron and brass foundries, tile factories, printing presses, lac fac tories, silk mills, and paper mills. There is a large trade in wood carving, the material being generally Indian ebony in northern India, sandal-wood in southern India, and teak in Burma and elsewhere.

The village brazier, like the village smith, manufactures the necessary vessels for domestic use. Chief among these vessels is the iota, or globular bowl, universally used in ceremonial ablu tions. Benares enjoys the first reputation for work in brass and copper. In the south, Madura and Tanjore have a similar fame, and in the west, Ahmedabad, Poona and Nasik. Silver is some times mixed with the brass, and in rarer cases gold. The brass or rather bell-metal ware of Murshibad, known as khagrai, has more than a local reputation, owing to the large admixture of silver in it.

Pottery.—Pottery is made in almost every village, from the small vessels required in cooking to the large jars used for storing grain and occasionally as floats to ferry persons across a swollen stream. Sind is the only province of India where the potter's craft is pursued with any regard to artistic considerations; its pottery is of two kinds, encaustic tiles and vessels for domestic use. In both cases, the colours are the same,—turquoise blue, copper green, dark purple or golden brown, under an exquisitely transparent glaze. The tiles, which are evidently of the same origin as those of Persia and Turkey, are chiefly to be found in the ruined mosques and tombs of the old Mussulman dynasties. Artistic pottery is made at Hyderabad, Karachi, Tatta and Hala, and also at Multan and Lahore in the Punjab. The Madura pot tery deserves mention from the elegance of its form and the richness of its colour. The United Provinces have, among other specialties, an elegant black ware with designs in white metal worked into its surface.

Banking.—In another field an important step forward was taken in the amalgamation of the Presidency Banks of Bengal, Bombay and Madras into the Imperial Bank of India. This in stitution has taken over, at its London branch, the work which the Bank of England used to do for the government of India ; it has also opened ioo new branches up-country to supplement the comparatively few branches of its constituents. Thus is estab lished the coping-stone of the gravely inadequate banking system of the country. Next to the Imperial Bank come the exchange banks, whose main interests are in Europe or the Far East and who finance the Indian export trade as a supplement to their main operations. After them rank the Indian joint-stock banks, and lastly the scattered Indian bankers, brokers, marwaris, etc., whose operations are confined almost entirely to the interior of India. It is they who finance the movement of the crops to the ports, where the exchange banks take over the business. Despite these ramifications, it is estimated that there are Soo towns in India with populations of io,000 and upwards which have no modern banking facilities at all.

Railways.—Indian railways serve at least three different pur poses,—the ordinary business of carrying passengers and com merce; safeguarding the internal and external peace of the coun try; and protection against famine by facilitating the movement of grain. For this reason the interest on capital cannot, in the case of all the lines, be judged by a purely commercial standard: but for India as a whole the return on the capital expended is normally between 5.1 and 6 per cent. In the early days of rail way enterprise the agency of private companies guaranteed by the state was exclusively employed, and nearly all the great trunk lines were built under this system. In 187o a new policy of rail way development by the direct agency of the state was inaugur ated; and the government of India has often been criticized for lack of enterprise, undue complexity, and vacillation in its railway policy. But the tide is now running strongly in the direc tion of taking over under state control the main lines as the leases of their working companies fall in, or as the purchase powers under their original concessions mature. And, despite changes in policy, the broad fact remains that 39,00o m. of railroad have been constructed, for a capital outlay of f 565 million, which convey passengers (nearly 600 millions in a year) at under one-third of a penny (3•47 pies) per mile as the average third class fare, and goods at a little over a halfpenny (6.21 pies) per ton per mile.

There are roughly 19,00o m. of broad gauge (51 feet) lines, i 6,000 m. of metre-gauge, and 4,00o m. of narrow gauge. Of the total mileage 72 per cent are owned by the State and 4o per cent directly managed by it. The more extensive employment of Indians in the superior grades of the railway service is being rapidly pushed on, and a Railway Staff College is being established at Dehra Dun. The railway administration is under a Railway Board, with wide discretionary powers, and the finance of rail ways has now, to the marked advantage of the department, been separated from the general budget of the country.

Posts and Telegraphs.—In addition to its primary duties, this department has served miscellaneous functions. It acts as the people's savings-bank: and it allows the people to do their shop ping at all distances through the system known as the V (alue ) P(ayable) P(ost). It collects customs charges on dutiable arti cles coming to India by post. It has a life insurance department; it pays the pensions of retired officials of the Indian Army; and it sells quinine. In 1926 there were 20,000 post offices, and the num ber of postal-articles handled was 1,273 millions. There were 90,00o m. of telegraph line, and i 6,000 state telephones were at work, besides 28,00o maintained by licensed companies in the larger cities. Telegraphic communication with Europe is main tained by the cable of the Eastern Telegraph Company via Aden, and by the Indo-European Department, working via Persia to Karachi. Wireless communication is being rapidly developed, and an extension of the Cairo-Basrah Air Mail service to Karachi will materially shorten intercourse between London and all parts of India.

For the early history of India the material is difficult but is steadily accumulating. Once we reach the Mohammedan period, information abounds ; for Muslim literature is rich in annals and memoirs. But before A.D. i o0o the art of contemporary narrative hardly existed in India. The historical sense is not a feature of Hinduism ; and while the orthodox Hindu takes no account of millennia, he accepts the Mahabharata as authentic history.

Sources of History.

The first exact date in the story is 326 B.C., the year when Alexander the Great invaded India; but even after that, there are long periods when the written record ceases and we have to revert to much the same sources as those on which we draw for the earlier eras. Those sources are fourfold. By far the most important hitherto has been the inscriptions on stone (caves, rocks and pillars) and on metal (mostly grants of land), of which the volume is great, chiefly in southern India, though the dates are rarely more distant than Asoka. Coins form the next prolific source of information, though it is mostly dynas tic in character and never of course of remote antiquity. Rapidly growing in importance is the study of buildings and monuments, more particularly on prehistoric sites which are now being ex plored. The excavations at Taxila, and those now being conducted at Mohenjo-Daro and 'Harappa, promise a flood of new light on the earlier Indian civilizations; and all over India there is an enormous mass of material waiting for the excavator of the future. The fourth source of history is the ancient literature and traditions of the country, if treated mainly as legends and wisely interpreted in the light of the surer facts deducible from the other sources. Besides these reservoirs of historical material, we get occasional help from the narratives of foreign travellers, such as the reports of Alexander's officers; the diaries of Megas thenes, of which long fragments have been preserved, when he resided at the Maurya court ; the Greek pamphlet (c. A.D. 8o) styled "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea"; and the writings of the Buddhist pilgrims from China who visited India in the Gupta period and again in Harsha's reign. But, at the best, much of the older history is based on skilled inference, and the margin for controversy among scholars remains considerable.

Earliest Civilizations.

Particularly is this true of estimates of the various layers of civilization which underlie the life of India today. There seems good reason to assume that, in the dim past, the country was widely occupied by an ancient pre Dravidian race, of unknown origin but with Austric affinities; and that they were driven into the scattered hilly tracts where their purest survivals are still identifiable, and south of the Nerbudda, by another ancient race of a higher type which came in from outer Asia, probably through Baluchistan. The latter, popularly called the Dravidians, would seem to have developed a civilization of their own over a lengthened period, and in vary ing measure to have blended with, especially in south India, and to have absorbed or been absorbed by, the older inhabitants. Dis coveries in the Indus valley indicate the existence of great cities, with traces of luxury and refinement which suggest affinities with the Sumerian, or even an earlier, culture, Sir John Marshall going so far as to put their standard of life higher than anything con temporary in Mesopotamia or Egypt. Some revision therefore is needed of the old conception of the Indo-Aryans finding them selves in a land of primitive savagery when they first descended through the passes of the north-west frontier, and started those long waves of immigration that flowed between 2400 and i 50o B.C. With the arrogance of a young and virile people, they may, as passages in the Vedas suggest, have scorned the older and com plex civilization of a darker race; but that they were slowly drawn into it is clear, and the Dravidian reaction on the faith and life of the Indo-Aryans still awaits adequate judgment. It was apparently only in the Middle Land that they settled in force, roughly between the Indus and the Jumna; when they ventured further east, it was mainly in colonies surrounded by the older inhabitants, where, despite the inhibitions of earlier days, the purity of their blood slowly disappeared. That there was any penetration by the Indo-Aryans as such into peninsular India seems open to doubt. What did ultimately permeate into the south was the Hindu scheme of life which emerged from the racial blends that had matured in the north.

Vedic Times.

The Rigveda towers up as the great literary monument of the early Aryan settlements in the Punjab. Com piled possibly about A.D. I20o or a little later from much older material, it is a collection of hymns, divided into ten books of unequal age, and approximating in length the Iliad and Odyssey combined. The more ancient hymns depict the invaders group ing on the Indus before they began to force their way into Hin dustan. They were divided into various tribes, sometimes quarrelling among themselves, sometimes uniting against the indigenes. Society with them still bears the imprint of the free life of their original homes. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the people. The chief himself seems to have been elected. Women enjoyed a high position, and some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens. Marriage was held sacred. Hus band and wife were both "rulers of the house" (dampati), and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on their husbands' funeral-pile was unknown, and the verses in the Veda which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a sanc tion for the practice have the very opposite meaning.

The Aryan tribes in the Veda are acquainted with most of the metals. They have blacksmiths, coppersmiths and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers and other artisans. They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war. They have settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns. But others cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and "cattle-pens." Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth, the coin in which payments of fines are made; and one of their words for war literally means "a desire for cows." They have learned to build "ships," perhaps large river-boats, and seem to have heard something of the sea. Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef, used a fermented liquor or beer made from the some plant, and offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout Aryans spread eastwards through northern India, pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing to bond age, or settling in amity beside, the earlier "black-skinned" races. They marched in whole communities from one river-valley to another, each house-father a warrior, husbandman and priest, with his wife and his little ones, and cattle.

Early States.

Of the political development of the country after the Indo-Aryans settled into their new homes, we know little: but before Buddhist times, the country between the Himalaya mountains and the Nerbudda river was divided into sixteen independent states, some monarchies and some tribal republics, the most important of which were the four monarchies of Kosala, Magadha, the Vamsas and Avanti. Kosala, the mod ern kingdom of Oudh, appears to have been the premier state of India in 600 B.C. Later the supremacy was ref t from it by the kingdom of Magadha, the modern Behar (q.v.). South of Kosala lay the kingdom of the Vamsas, and south of that again the king dom of Avanti. In the north-west was Gandhara, on the banks of the Indus, in the neighbourhood of Peshawar. The history of these early states is only a confused record of war and intermar riages, and is still semi-mythical. The list of the sixteen states ignores everything north of the Himalayas, south of the Vind hyas, and east of the Ganges where it turns south.

Capital Cities.

The principal cities of India at this date were Ayodhya, the capital of Kosala at the time of the Ramayana, though it afterwards gave place to which was one of the six great cities of India in the time of Buddha. Baranasi, the modern Benares, had in the time of Megasthenes a circuit of 25 m. Kosambi, the capital of the Vamsas, lay on the Jumna, 23o m. up-stream from Benares. Rajagriha (Rajgir), the capital of Magadha, was built by Bimbisara, the contemporary of Buddha. Roruka, the capital of Sovira (? the Ophir of the Bible) was an important centre of the coasting trade. Saketa was some time the capital of Kosala. Ujjayini, the modern Ujjain, was the capital of Avanti.

The early Hindu writings classify mankind into four social grades on a basis of occupation: the Kshatriyas or nobles, who claimed descent from the early leaders; the Brahmans or learned and priestly order; the Vaisyas, the traders and peasantry; and last of all the Sudras, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, of non Aryan descent. Below these there were low tribes and trades, abo riginal tribes and slaves. In later documents mention is made of eighteen gilds of work-people, whose names are nowhere given, but the complex institution of caste was of later date.

It is supposed that sea-going merchants, mostly Dravidians, and not Aryans, availing themselves of the monsoons, traded in the 7th century B.C. from the south-west ports of India to Baby Ion, and that there they became acquainted with a Semitic alpha bet, which they brought back with them, and from which all the alphabets now used in India, Burma, Siam and Ceylon have gradually evolved.