A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v1.c18.s9.1

v1.c18.s9.1

The importance of the subject that has been described and discussed in the major portion of the preceding pages is far greater than it appears to be at the outset. Month after month, in Calcutta and in the larger towns of Bengal, considerable quantities of gold undergo transformation under the goldsmith's hammer; and as every article so manufactured is coloured before being used, the amount of *jamak* that is produced must be large indeed. By a rough calculation we have estimated that about 3500 persons earn their bread in calcutta by following the occupation of a manufacturing Jeweller; and allowing for holidays, illness and want of work it may be safely held that about 2,000 hammers ply on an average every day on gold and silver within the boundaries of Calcutta and its suburbs. Out of these 2,000 hands 1,500 may be supposed to work on the more precious metal of gold alone. On the modest calculation that a man works one-half of a tola of gold in the course of a day, 750 tolas of golden articles are turned out every day in the metropolis. Supposing as we have pointed out before that in colouring only one-half of an anna of weight of gold is dissolved out into the *jamak* per tola, as much as 375 annas or more than 23 tolas of gold are every day dissolved in Calcutta alone. As has been shown before, we have ample reasons to believe that the *jamakwala* can seldom get out as much as one-half the amount of gold that exists in the *jamak* by his crude and imperfect methods. Granting, however, that he can reclaim so much as two-thirds of the gold lost in colouring, we are still forced to the astonishing conclusion that seven tolas of gold are absolutely lost in the town of Calcutta alone with the lapse of each day.