Madras

The greater part of the soil in Madras is held by the culti vators direct from the Government under the tenure known as ryotwari. Besides these lands, in the hands of the Government, there are also proprietary or samindari estates in all parts of the country. Of the total population 71% are engaged in agriculture.

Manufactures.

Madras possesses few staple manufactures, and industry is not in an advanced condition. owing partly to lack of coal. Projects for the supply of hydro-electric power to various places were under consideration in 1927. The chief industries of the presidency are cotton-ginning, coffee-curing, oil-pressing, rice curing, rope-making, sugar refining, tanning, tile and brick-mak ing, salt and soap manufacture and railway works. Up to the close of the 18th century cotton goods constituted the main article of export. There are now a number of cotton mills, and native looms still hold their own in the local market.

Commerce and Trade.

The continuous seaboard of the Madras presidency, without any natural harbours of the first rank, has tended to create a widely-diffused trade. Madras city conducts nearly one-half of the total sea-borne commerce; next comes Malabar, with Calicut; then Godavari, with its cluster of ports along the fringe of the delta; Tinnevelly, with the harbour at Tuticorin, Tanjore, South Kanara, Ganjam and Vizagapatam. Madras is broadly marked by the larger proportion assigned to coasting trade. The chief staples of the export trade are cotton, and cotton piece goods, ground-nuts, hides and skins, tea and coffee, coir manufactures, rice and oil.

The presidency is well supplied with railways, which naturally have their centre in Madras city, the chief seaport. The broad gauge line of the Madras and Southern Mahratta railway con nects with Bombay and Bangalore, and also crosses the peninsula to Calicut and Mangalore on the western coast. The South Indian (narrow-gauge) serves' the extreme south, and has several branches. The narrow-gauge line of the Madras and Southern Mahratta railway traverses the Deccan districts; and the East Coast line (broad-gauge), through the northern Circars, has brought Madras into direct communication with Calcutta.

Administration.

Since 1923 the Madras presidency has been governed on the same system as the presidencies of Bombay and Bengal. Associated with the governor are four members of the Executive Council for reserved subjects, and three ministers for transferred subjects. The number of districts is 24, each under the charge of a collector, with sub-collectors and assistants.

Local administration includes at the bottom union panchayats or village committees, whose chief duty is to attend to sanitation.

Above them come taluk or subdivisional boards. At the head of all are district boards, a portion of whose members are elected by the taluk boards. There is a High Court of Justice at Madras, with a chief judge and 11 puisne judges, 25 sessions judges for criminal law and 24 district judges for civil justice.

The chief educational institutions are the Madras university, the Presidency college, Madras Christian college and Pachay yappa's college at Madras; the Government arts colleges at Combaconum and Rajahmundry; the medical college and engi neering college at Madras; the college of agriculture at Coimba tore, St. Joseph's college, Trichinopoly; the teachers' college at Saidapet ; the school of arts at Madras; and the military orphan age at Ootacamund. in memory of Sir Henry Lawrence. In 1921 the total number of pupils at all institutions was 1,799,850; 98 per thousand over five years of age could read and write.

Until the British conquest the whole of southern India had never acknowledged a single ruler. The Tamil country in the extreme south is traditionally divided between the three king doms of Pandya, Chola and Chera. The west coast supplied the nucleus of a monarchy which afterwards extended over the high lands of Mysore, and took its name from the Carnatic. On the north-east the kings of Kalinga at one time ruled over the entire line of seaboard from the Kistna to the Ganges (see INDIA). The Mohammedan invader first established himself in the south in the beginning of the 14th century. Ala-ud-din, the second mon arch of the Khilji dynasty at Delhi, and his general Malik Kafur conquered the Deccan, and overthrew the kingdoms of Karna taka and Telingana, which were then the most powerful in southern India. But after the withdrawal of the Mussulman armies the native monarchy of Vijayanagar (q.v.), arose out of the ruins. In 1565, it was overwhelmed by a combination of the four Mohammedan principalities of the Deccan. At the close of the reign of Aurangzeb, although that emperor nominally extended his sovereignty as far as Cape Comorin, in reality South India had again fallen under a number of rulers who owned no regular allegiance. The nizam of the Deccan, himself an independent sovereign, represented the distant court of Delhi. The most powerful of his feudatories was the nawab of the Carnatic, with his capital at Arcot.