History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s4.4

v5.c85.s4.4

In the absence of security at home and the impossibility of making purchases at distances, arts and crafts ceased to be practised except in the walled cities. Village industries and industrial classes together died out. The Madras coast, for instance, with its teeming weaving population, was so unsettled by the Mughal-Maratha struggle for the Karnatak (1690—1698) that the English found it difficult to get enough clothes for loading their Europe-going ships. [Ch. 51 § 5.] As early as 1688, Francois Martin had foreseen the war between the Mughals and the Marathas and the consequent ruin of the textile industry of the Karnatak. [Kaep. 259, also 293.] Thus ensued a great economic impoverishment of India,—not only a decrease of the "national stock", but also a rapid lowering of mechanical skill and standard of civilisation, a disappearance of art and culture over wide tracts of the country.