Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/28

 ,

XVUl

INTRODUCTION.

attained a value of £2,826,621, and exceeded the latter by nearly £300,000, the single instance in which the balance of trade in commodities has been in favour of the province. The main articles of import are cotton (raw or in thread), salt, and English piece-goods, with average annual values of £340,000, £400,000, and £400,000 respectively and these, the main wants which the province cannot supply from its own resources, are nearly paid for by the export of its agricultural produce, which, in the principal items of edible grains, sugar, and oilseeds, aggregates on an average over a million sterling per annum. But the uncertainty of registration and the difficulty of appraising the commodities at their real value make these returns liable to great suspicion. The foundation and framework of the social system i& here and elsewhere in India, caste; but the divisions vary in number and in relative importance all over the continent, and no sketch of a province would be complete without, at any rate, a short description of the principal groups among which its inhabitants are distributed. Outside the Hindu polity, but assuming in its relations with it the attitude of a distinct caste, are the Muhammadans, who are far less numerous here than in any other part of Upper India, forming only a tenth of the populaThey again are subdivided into a number of subordinate tion. classes, under the four great heads of Sayyads, Shekhs, Pathdns, and Mugals ; but though the grand doctrme of the equality of all men before God taught by their prophet has become vitiated by long contact with and antagonism to a foreign religion, it still retains almost the whole of its real vitality. Their lower castes are generally trade-unions, and though they tend to make trade hereditary, they place no insurmountable obstacle in the way of any one of their members who wishes to leave the occupation of his father for another. Caste prejudices are to be found strongest as the social scale is descended among classes converted from and living in daily conversation with Hindus. The ancient ingrained view of humanity is not wholly eradicated, but freedom from it is a sign of respectability, and the more a Muhammadan prospers, the more enlightened is the contempt which he at least professes for other distinctions than those of merit. The upper orders hardly regard caste in anything, and certainly not in the all-important subjects of marriage and eating in common. It is this which constitutes the real strength of the faith and not only preserves it from absorption, but enables it to win daily converts from Brahminism. Men who are profoundly indifferent to the names and numbers of the deities they are asked to worsM-p are never so wholly dead to the higher instincts of hum'Bnity

as