Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.25.1

c48.s2.25.1

§ 40. **Weavers** (9,541,000). The people of India were wearing cotton garments in the days of Megasthenes, and do so still. No wonder, therefore, that the occupation of hand-loom weaving is one of the most widely distributed in the country, and forms the traditional calling of castes containing nearly ten millions of people. In its palmy days the craft reached a wonderful pitch of skill and refinement, especially under the patronage of the Delhi Court, which monopolised the whole of the Dacca output of "flowing-water", "gossamer" and other choice muslins, the art of weaving which has long been lost. Even the staple everyday fabrics made far beyond the imperial ken, at the seaports of the gulf of Cambay, the Malabar and the Coromandel coasts, always found a ready market in Europe and the Levant. The weaving community seems, nevertheless, to have been anything but prosperous. Before the end of the 18th century they were reported by British officials to be "a timid and helpless" folk, and even then, were, as recent experience has proved them to be still, among the first to feel the pinch of famine, when a wide-spread failure of crops reduced or stopped the purchasing power of the peasantry. Since then their market has been seriously curtailed by the competition of European machine-made goods, and it is only in the coarser lines of material that they hold their own. The weaver is not one of the menials who is, so to speak, on the village staff;