A History of Agriculture in India v2.c83.s3: Bernier’s Observations on the Crops of Kashmir and Bengal
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c83.s3
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Contents
Bernier’s Observations on the Crops of Kashmir and Bengal
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Of the European travellers who came to India during the Mughal rule, the most intelligent and learned was Francois Bernier, a frenchman. He was born at Joue, near Gonnord, in Anjou on 25 September 1620. His parents, cultivators of the soil, were leaseholders, in the Barony of Etiau, of land belonging to the Canonry of St Maurice at Angers. His peasant origin explains his interest in farmers and agriculture. In 1652 he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine at the University of Montpellier. His guide was the philosopher Gassendi, and he owed his great powers of accurate observation to his training under him. Bernier reached Surat early in 1659. At Ahmedabad, he met Prince Dara Shikoh and accompanied him as his physician. After the defeat of Dara Shikoh by Aurangzeb, he proceeded to Delhi, where he attached himself to a Mughal noble, Danishmand Khan, and remained there till July 1663. In a contemporary Mughal portrait he is shown bare-headed, seated under a tree in a contemplative mood (Fig. 61). In 1665 he travelled in Kashmir and Bengal. In 1666 he travelled from Masulipatam to Golkonda and returned to France, and died in Paris on 22 September 1688.
Crops of Kashmir
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Describing the crops of Kashmir, Bernier, states ‘Meadows and vineyards, fields of rice, wheat, hemp, saffron, and many sorts of vegetables, among which are intermingled trenches filled with water, rivulets, canals, and several small lakes, vary the enchanting scene. The whole ground is enamelled with our European flowers and plants, and covered with our apple, pear, plum, apricot, and walnut trees, all bearing fruit in great abundance. The private gardens are full of melons, pateques or water-melons, water-parsnips, red beet, radishes, most of our potherbs, and others with which we are unacquainted.’
Bengal—The Country, People and Crops
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Bernier gives a vivid description of Bengal, its landscape, people, and its plant and animal products. ‘It is important to observe,’ states Bernier, ‘that of this vast tract of country, a large portion is extremely fertile, the large kingdom of Bengal, for instance, surpassing Egypt itself, not only in the production of rice, corn, and other necessaries of life, but of innumerable articles of commerce which are not cultivated in Egypt, such as silks, cotton, and indigo. There are also many parts of the Indies where the population is sufficiently abundant and the land pretty well tilled.
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‘In describing the beauty of Bengal,’ states Bernier, ‘it should be remarked that throughout a country extending nearly an hundred leagues in length, on both banks of the Ganges, from Raje-Mahale to the sea, is an endless number of channels, cut, in bygone ages, from that river with immense labour, for the conveyance of merchandise and of the water itself, which is reputed by the Indians to be superior to any in the world. These channels are lined on both sides with towns and villages, thickly peopled with Gentiles; and with extensive fields of rice, sugar, corn, three or four sorts of vegetables, mustard, sesame for oil, and small mulberry-trees, two or three feet (61 to 91 cm) in height, for the food of silk-worms. But the most striking and peculiar beauty of Bengal is the innumerable islands filling the vast space between the two banks of the Ganges, in some places six or seven days’ journey asunder. These islands vary in size, but are all extremely fertile, surrounded with wood, and abounding in fruit-trees and pine-apples, and covered with verdure.
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‘The three or four sorts of vegetables which, together with rice and butter, form the chief food of the common people, are purchased for the merest trifle, and for a single roupie twenty or more good fowls may be bought. Geese and ducks are cheap. There are also goats and sheep in abundance; and pigs are obtained at so low a price that the Portuguese settled in the country live almost entirely upon pork. This meat is salted at a cheap rate by the Dutch and English, for the supply of their vessels. Fish of every species, whether fresh or salt, is in the same profusion. In a word, Bengal abounds with every necessary of life; and it is this abundance that has induced so many Portuguese, half-castes, and other Christians, driven from their different settlements by the Dutch, to seek an asylum in this fertile kingdom. The rich exuberance of the country, together with the beauty and amiable disposition of the native women, has given rise to a proverb in common use among the Portuguese, English, and Dutch, that the Kingdom of Bengal has a hundred gates open for entrance, but not one for depature.
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‘Besides the sugar I have spoken of, and which may be placed in the list of valuable commodities, there is in Bengal such a quantity of cotton and silks that the kingdom may be called the common storehouse for those two kinds of merchandise, not of Hindustan or the Empire of the Great Mogol only, but of all the neighbouring kingdoms, and even of Europe.
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‘Lastly, it is from this fruitful kingdom that the best lac, opium, max, civet, long pepper, and various drugs are obtained; and butter, which may appear to you an inconsiderable article, is in such plenty that, although it be a bulky article to export, yet it is sent by sea to numberless places.’⁴
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⁴ Francois Bernier. *Travels in the Mughal Empire*, pp. 439-442