Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/181

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made to foreign powers. At that time the Tatta chintzes were considered to be far superior both in texture and pattern to those made in most other parts of India, and almost rivalled those of Surat. Cotton lungis , susis, and saris [robes] are also made in largo numbers at Karachi,

Rajputana . — In Raj pu tana cotton is woven everywhere, and the printed muslins and cotton cloths [chintzes] of Jaipur and Jodpur are prized all over Hindustan for the purity and brilliance of their dyes. The large cotton darts of Rajputana, striped in red, green, yellow, blue, and black are marvellous examples of the skill of Indian weavers in harmonising the most prismatic colours.

North - Western Provinces * — In the North-Western Provinces a coarse cotton cloth, kkarua , is generally made, and of especial ex- cellence at Jhansi, In the Jalaun district a sort of muslin malmal called jagi is made. The old town of Chandari in the Lalatpur district was famous for its fine muslins, but the trade has greatly declined. Captain Tyler tried to revive it, but in an outbreak of cholera in 1865 the weavers all died, or ran away, and his plans failed. In Saharanpur, a coarse cloth called gara is made, Turbands are a speciality of Sikandrabad. Dyeing and printing of country cloths is carried on in many .places. The muslins of Benares are figured with gold on a ground of white, black, brown, or purple. The city of Bijimr has a special reputation for the manufacture of the sacred cord or sacrificial thread [zenaar, janeo of the Brahmans,

Oudh. — In Gudh, before its annexation, a large number of the lower classes were employed in weaving cotton, and their looms paid a fixed annual duty to the King, but the industry received a deadly blow directly it was exposed to the unrestricted competition of Manchester, Yet every village has still its little colony of caste weavers. Take for example the Nawabganj tahsil, in the district of Bara-Banki, of which the statistics of the local manufacture are given in the official Gazetteer [Lucknow, 1S77], It supports 1,910 weavers, who weave ten denominations of cotton fabrics, namely, gazh, dhotis , mamudis, and kasas of country