The annual wheat production of India now reaches two hundred and forty million bushels, of which two hundred million may be exported, while the natives make their bread from other kinds of grain. The total area devoted to wheat each year is now a little over twenty million acres, and the best average yield is thirteen and one-half bushels per acre. Wheat growing is now receiving the special attention of the general and local governments, and important works are being made and projected for an extensive system of canal irrigation. One of these, the Sirhind canal in the Punjab, has just been completed; it was built mainly by prison labor, is five hundred and two miles long, and will irrigate seven hundred and eighty thousand acres through two thousand five hundred miles of minor channels.
The wheat is sown in the autumn and harvested in March or April; it is usually sown in drills or rows, weeded like garden stuff, and in quantities not much larger than garden patches in the United States. The agricultural population numbers nearly two hundred millions; it is the aggregate of innumerable little units which, in agriculture, as in everything else in India, brings the country into importance; and this fact is so closely interwoven with the whole social, industrial and legal network of India, that it bears a strong influence even upon the future question of Indian versus American wheat.
PLOWING IN INDIA.
The Indian agriculturist,—“Ryot,”—can in no sense be compared to the American farmer, but rather to the late serf of Russia. He is a tenant on hard conditions, and is by custom and bigotry almost a fixture on the spot of land where he was born; his farming is done on a very small scale and according to old methods, to which he clings with religious veneration; his wants are very few, and he endures poverty and even hunger with patience; he cultivates his patch of five to fifteen acres on shares for the landed proprietor,—“zemindar,”—who holds under rental to the government, and the better half of his gross income generally goes to the zemindar, the priest (Brahmin) and the usurer, in the form of rent, presents, offerings and interest, and if he can net ten cents a day by his hard and hopeless labor, that will suffice for the most pressing wants of his household. His home is a mud, or bamboo-hut, his property a pair of small bullocks, a few cows, calves and goats, a wooden cart, and a few brass and earthen pots, in all worth about fifty dollars, and his implements and tools are of the rudest kind, such as his ancestors used a thousand years ago; and yet he is making some progress under British rule, and finds his wants increasing, and at the same time better outlets for his produce and better recompense for his labor, and on the whole, is so independent on ten cents a day, that he will eat or store his wheat rather than sell it below a certain price. Of course he does not employ machinery in farming, but plows his land with a crooked piece of iron-pointed wood, harrows it with an instrument resembling a common ladder laid flat on the ground and dragged by little bullocks crossways over the field; he sows by hand, reaps with a rude sickle, carries the sheaves home on his back or in the bullock cart, threshes them with a wooden club, or lets the cattle tramp out the grain, and cleans it by hand-winnowing.
LABORERS AT THE INDIGO PRESS.
India of course yields a great number of other kinds of agricultural products, especially the indigo plant, from which the renowned dye-stuff is made; rape, mustard and other species of seeds from which oils are pressed, the opium plant, etc.
In the cities and towns the people devote themselves to trades and handicrafts, in some of which they attain greater perfection than any other people. Their beautiful carvings in wood and ivory, their exquisite embroideries, their textiles and yarns exceed everything in that line. But their ability is not due to any genius or ingenuity, but to close observation and patient application. According to their religious tenets the sons must learn the trade of their father, and they begin to work at his side as soon as they can handle a needle, chisel, or other tool, and continue the practice day after day, year after year, until they also in turn, have taught their children and grandchildren the same trade. Certain places are noted for certain industries, as Dakka for its fine muslin; Benares for its embroideries, etc. The muslin weavers of Dakka can with their hands spin and weave fabrics which are almost as fine as cobweb, and a person who is not accustomed to such work would not be able to feel the thread between his fingers; but the sensitiveness of the Hindoo spinner in Dakka has been developed to such an extraordinary degree during a hundred generations that he is able to perform works which would be perfectly impossible for others. I have seen a garment presented to a Hindoo king which was so fine in texture that, although it was a complete suit, it was folded up and safely packed into a mango shell, which is only a little larger than an almond shell, and thus presented. I have in my possession a little box two inches wide and four inches long, made of sandal-wood and adorned with fine carvings; all the edges are inlaid with pieces of ivory, in which are again inlaid more than two thousand separate pieces of different metals so skilfully put together that the joints can not be detected even by using a magnifying glass.
In architecture the Hindoos also distinguished themselves centuries ago by the erection of buildings which are still objects of the admiration of the world. One of these master works of architecture is regarded as the most beautiful ever erected by the hands of men. It is the Taj-Mahal at Agra, a mausoleum erected by emperor Shah Jehan over the remains of his wife, Bengos Begum, who died in 1630. “During a period of seventeen years after her death Shah Jehan collected building material of marble and precious stones to be used in the construction of the mausoleum. All parts of India contributed to this, as did the different parts of the Holy Land to the temple of Solomon, and its estimated cost is twenty-five million dollars. It is built in Moorish style, with slender pillars, and its majesty and beauty profoundly impress the beholder. Many buildings in the world excel this temple in size, but none can rival it in ideal beauty and finish. It looks more like a temple of thanksgiving and praise than an abode of sorrow, and the spirit of love seems to fill its silent chambers, quickening and warming the cold marble and transforming the whole building into a dream, into a psalm in stone. It is rich in mosaics, and precious stones of different colors assume the shape of fresh vines and living flowers. There it stands in solemn silence on the banks of the Jumna, like an enchanted vision. It seemed to grow in magnificent splendor before my eyes as I approached it. The airy dome and the white marble pillars glittered in fabulous, mystic beauty, and towered far above the gigantic cypress trees, which stood in rows like sentinels around it. One enters the park in front of the main building through a pillared archway of colossal dimensions, built of red sand-stone and surmounted by twenty-six white cupolas. The height of the arches is one hundred and forty feet.