INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

HISTORICAL FAMINES. 18
been (always) favourable, there would have
been nothing so wonderful in grain remaining
at one price; but the extraordinary fact of the
matter was that, during the reign of Ala-ud-din,
there were years in which the rains were deficient,
but instead of the usual scarcity ensuing,
there was no want of corn in Delhi, and there
was no rise in the price of either the grain
brought out of the royal granaries or in that
imported by the dealers. This was indeed the
wonder of the age, and no other monarch was
able to effect it. Once or twice when the rains
were deficient, a market overseer reported that
the price had risen half a jital, and he received
twenty blows with the stick. When the rains
failed, a quantity of corn, sufficient for the daily
supply of each quarter of the city, was consigned
to the dealers every day for the market,
and half a man * used to be allowed to the
ordinary purchasers in the markets. Thus the
gentry and traders who had no villages or
lands used to get grain from the markets. If
in such a season any poor reduced person went
to the market and did not get assistance, the
.. 40 lb. ; a mll.n = 80 lb.