during the last five years of the decennial period. Taking into account the areas beyond the frontier of India, we may safely say that a population of over 300,000,000 has to be supplied with foreign goods. India has few large towns, and only about 5 per cent. of the people live in towns of more than 20,000 inhabitants. In some regions, as in the Lower Ganges Valley, the pressure on the soil is very severe. In other regions, however, there are large tracts of cultivable, but uncultivated, soil. Government irrigation works are opening up new fields to cultivators in the Punjab and elsewhere.

Race, Caste, and Religion.—The people of India belong to different races. They form, not one nation, but a group of nations. On the joint basis of race, religion, and occupation has arisen that striking characteristic of Indian life, the caste system, which, originating among the Hindus, has spread to other religious bodies. The two great religious bodies of India are the Hindus and the Mohammedans, the former of whom constituted in 1891 about 72 per cent., and the latter 20 per cent., of the total population. These differences are not without commercial importance, for in India religion and caste largely govern the food and dress of the people. A small sect, the Parsees, numbering under 100,000, is noteworthy as including the most enterprising commercial people in India. The number of Europeans in India is about 170,000, most of whom are natives of the United Kingdom in the civil and military employment of the Government.

Occupations. At least 61 per cent. of the people depend directly for a living on agriculture. The cultivator is the unit of the social system. The ryots (raiyats) or peasant farmers are hardworking, but the returns to their labour are small. Their subsistence is meagre, and they spend little on their scanty clothing. Complicated and expensive agricultural machinery is not needed for a system of petite culture, and in any case it would be beyond the cultivator's present purchasing power. Besides those directly engaged in agriculture, there are the artisans and menials of the villages who depend at least in part on the produce of the fields-smiths, shoemakers, weavers, potters, and others. Only in a few large towns are considerable numbers engaged in factories and kindred industries. The table on p. 6 shows the occupations of the people according to the census of 1891, when a new classification was adopted.

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION BY PROVINCES AND STATES, AND
INTO URBAN AND RURAL, ACCORDING TO OCCUPATION
OR MEANS OF LIVELIHOOD.*

* In this return no distinction is drawn between those who work and those whom they support by their work. The whole population depending upon the occupation is included, in order to indicate the respective sustaining power of the different orders.

Languages. The number of languages and dialects is extremely great. By far the most important, from the standpoint of numbers, are Hindi and Bengali and their varieties, while Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kanarese, Uriya, and Burmese, come next. Gujarati is the great commercial language of Western India, and is used by Parsees and Mussulman traders. Urdu, or Hindustani, a Hindi language with an admixture of Persian and Arabic, is the most widely-spoken language and the most generally useful. It is spoken through the greater part of India by educated people. Marwari is the tongue of the Marwaris of Rajputana, who trade all over India, and have extensive banking connections and brokerage dealings in both Calcutta and Bombay, but they do business in other languages. English is taught everywhere, and is widely understood in the chief cities.

CHAPTER II.

SOURCES OF WEALTH.

Agriculture-Seasons-Chief agricultural products-Export crops-Mineral resources (coal, salt, gold, etc.)—Industrial resources-Growth of cotton and jute mills.

Agriculture. The chief source of wealth in India is agriculture. The great export staples, on which India's whole trade depends, are mainly agricultural. The area of the British provinces in the last non-famine year, 1898-99, was distributed as follows:

In most provinces more than one crop a year can be obtained from the fields, so that roughly 25 per cent. may be added to the crop area given above. An extraordinary diversity of physical conditions enables India to produce almost any known crop.

Seasons. The hot, rainy, and cold seasons have each characteristic crops, so that the cultivator has usually two, and sometimes three, harvests a year. In the regions having two periods of rainfall (the Punjab, North-Western Provinces, Eastern Rajputana, and Madras) there are two well-marked crops-the spring or rabi crop, and the autumn or kharif crop. In Bengal, oilseeds, pulses, etc., are reaped in the spring, early rice crops in September, and the main rice harvest in November and December.

Chief Agricultural Products.-These may be thus classified

:

(a) Food Crops: Rice, wheat, millets, gram and other pulses, barley, maize, sugar, spices, etc.

(b) Oilseeds: Linseed, rape and mustard, sesamum (til or gingelly), castor, poppy, cotton, groundnut, etc.

(c) Fibres: Cotton, jute, hemp, silk, wool, etc.

(d) Dyes: Indigo, etc.

(e) Drugs and Narcotics: Opium, tea, coffee, tobacco, chinchona, Indian hemp, etc.

(f) Miscellaneous Forest Products: Caoutchouc, lac, teak, cutch, cocoanuts, betel-nuts, myrabolams, etc.

Export Crops.-The exportation of millets, pulses, barley and maize is unimportant, and rice and wheat are the only export food grains demanding special notice. Rice is produced more or less in all provinces, but exported mainly from Burma and Bengal. Burma rice has a thick, coarse grain, and much of it is shipped as cargo rice, having one part in five of paddy or unhusked rice, mainly for starch or distillation. Bengal rice is superior, but the quantity exported is much smaller than that of Burmese. The chief wheat areas are in the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, the Central Provinces, and Bombay. Wheat is reaped in Upper India in April and May. In the rich black cotton soil of the Deccan the cultivator may choose between cotton, wheat, and linseed, according to the varying prospects of foreign markets. Although the area under non-food crops is small relatively to that under food crops, yet normally it yields the greatest portion of the exports. Oilseeds are important crops throughout India. Bengal exports linseed, and Madras exports sesamum in large quantities. Linseed and sesamum are very widely cultivated in the Central Provinces. Sesamum and castor are cultivated mainly in warm moist regions, while rape and mustard are produced in the drier and colder tracts. Bombay and Karachi send large quantities of oilseeds abroad. Of the fibre crops, cotton is the most important. It is grown largely in Gujarat and Kathiawar, which yield some of the best of the longer stapled cottons in India (Dholleras). Bombay, Berar, the Central Provinces, and Madras are the chief cotton-producers among British provinces. The cotton areas of Western, Central, and Northern India each yield a characteristic group of cottons, varying greatly in quantity, quality, strength, and