Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.33

c20.33

The Indian farmer is again reproached for using his dung for fuel; but an explanation of the fact will in some measure vindicate him from this censure. The dung which is employed in this way (a small quantity after all) is obtained principally from what the animal lets fall on the high road, and which would otherwise be lost. Boys and girls are employed with baskets to gather it up from the roads and streets as in our own country. These children are seldom those of the cultivators, but of any of the inhabitants, most commonly of very poor people, who mix the fresh dung with charcoal or straw, make it into cakes, and dry them in the sun.¹⁴ The boys and girls may be seen in many parts of the North of England employed in the same way; and I have been told that in no very remote time a similar manufactory was carried on all over this country.