about
200 pieces, among which five or six and up to ten pieces may be
inserted of less fine quality, thinner, shorter, or narrower than the
sample of the bale ; this cannot be ascertained without examination
piece by piece. The fineness is judged by the eye, the length and
breadth by measurement. But a still greater refinement is practised in
India, which is to count the number of the threads which ought to be in
the breadth according to the fineness of the sample. When the number is
lacking it is thinner or narrower or coarser. The difference is
sometimes so imperceptible to the eye that it is difficult to discern
it without counting the threads,1 nevertheless this
difference amounts to a considerable sum in the price of a large
quantity, for it requires but little to abate an ecu or even two ecus
on a piece when the price is from 15 to 20 ecus the piece. Those who
bleach these cloths, in order to save something for their own profit
out of the quantity of lemons which are required, beat the cloths on
stones, and when fine the beating does them much injury and diminishes
their price.2 It should be remarked that the Indians, when
making their cloths, if the piece is worth more than 2 ecus, insert at
either end threads of gold and silver, and the finer the cloth, the
more of these threads do they insert, the price of which amounts to
nearly as high a figure as that of the cloth itself. It is for this
reason that it is necessary to forbid the workers to insert these
threads of gold in cloths ordered to be made for export to France—the
gold and silver, which the Indians insert as an ornament in their own
cloths and garments, being of no use to the French. But for the cloths
ordered for Poland and Muscovy, it is necessary to have the gold and
silver in the Indian style, because the Poles and Russians will have
nothing to do with the cloths if they have not got the threads of gold and silver. It is necessary also to take care that they do not
every
one who deals with them is perfectly aware of the circumstance, and
although in the course of his life any weaver may not ever have an
opportunity of gaining by this means.' (F. Buchanan, in Martin, Eastern India, i. 355.)
1
The Manchester goods of the present day are subjected to the same
examination in India. It is a matter of some notoriety that fraud in
Connexion with them is not unknown.
* The destructive methods of the modern Dhobi or washerman are familiar to all Anglo-Indians.
