Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXV. Agriculture, Manufacture and Architecture—Wheat Growing—The Farm Laborer—His Condition, Implements, etc. The Taj-Mahal—Jugglers—Snake Charmers—From My Journal
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Story of an Emigtiant. 259
261
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.
The Indian agriculturist,—"Ryot,"—can in no sense be compared to t^c
American farmer, but rather to the late serf of Russia. He is a tenant un
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, ofterings and iuter-
PLOWIXG IN INDIA.
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