Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/497

 ; ;

FYZ

419

In Gonda and Bahraich the s^waks are the bought serfs of he discharges them he loses in many cases the money paid for their maintenance, i. e., from Rs. 40 to Rs. 100. He continues to feed these, his life-servants, whose connection with him is binding, even when his little store has sunk alarmingly. At a similar crisis the Fyzabad farmer will have turned off all his day-labourers, just as the governor of a besieged

themselves. the farmer



if

city sends out all the non-combatants. The result is, that the labourers emigrate from Fyzabad as scarcity approaches long before there is absolute famine, the demand for food is diminished, and the crisis perhaps tided over till next harvest. In Gonda and Bahraich the farmer and sdwaks together

consume what is left and when that relieved by Government.

is

exhausted, starve together or are

Another cause which mitigates the

effects of a bad crop in Fyzabad is the greater variety of the staples sown. It is difficult to say which is the main food staple in this district ^jgg^ jtiar, barley, gram, urd, peas, all contribute in fair proportion. On the other hand, in Gonda and Bahraich, at least in the Tarai parganas, the people eat hardly anything but rice from October to March, and depend on the rice stores to eke out the barley during the remainder of the year. If the rice fails, as it did throughout a belt in the extreme north of Oudh averaging about twenty miles in breadth in 1873, In Fyzabad no day in the year is two there is nothing to fall back upon. months distant from the immediately preceding harvest, except during the

Variety of

crops in Fyzabad averts or mitigates famine.

months from June

Kakun,

to September.

and makhai or Indian-corn come in about the 1st September; they are called bhadoi crops. About 28th ^^' ^^'1^*''°^ ° September the kuari crops, aghani dhan, kodo, til, are vest ready for the sickle by the 10th November the aghani crops, bajra, juar, urd, jarhan rice, lobia, are ripening. In the lowlying lands they are reaped up to 15th December.* Then the sugarcane crop is ripe. This harvest commences from the sugar festival of ekddashi dithauni, four days before the end of Kdrtik (October); but the greater part of the crop is cut from 15th December to loth January. There is then for six weeks no crop to be cut, and if the people are hard pressed they eat the unripe peas as they did in 1874. With the 1st of March peas come in by the 10th, the wheat and barley are ripe in forward fields by the 20th, gram and maslir arhar is cut about the 1st of April, and backward crops are unreaped often by the loth April. Then commences a period of brief abundance. The harvest is divided between the cultivator, It depends, upon the indebtedness of the landlord, and the grain-dealer. the peasant whether he stores up grain in his big earthen jars, or whether his share goes to the landlord to pay past balances, or to the grain-dealer. The peasantry are generally indebted. They will keep little grain if the revenue demand is high the grain goes out of the province to seek money. This may be called the tributary or compulsory export if prices are high at the great trade centres of Bengal or north India, it is taken there by the natural course of trade. Thus the export, even after bad harvests in May and June, is always great. About July grain is less abundant: if the rains sdthi dhan,













Vide Prinsep's Useful Tables, page 150.

DD

2