INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

16 TlUDITIO~VAL AN])
under the rule of his servants; but, in so doing,
he promoted the dismemberment of his empire,
and materially helped to atTest the progress of
cultivation." This disastrous policy continued
for some years. Meanwhile prices rose, and a
failure of the rains occurring, severe famine intervened.
The date of this famine I have been
unable to fix, but Girdlestone puts it "in or
about 1345." Of this famine we have, strange
to say, the evidence of a foreigner, who was an
eyewitness of the distress. This person was
Ibn Batuta, a native of Tangiers, Africa. He
travelled all over Asia, and landed in the Punjab
some time in 1333. Of him Elphinstone, in his
, History of India,' says: "He could have had
no interest in misrepresentation, as he wrote
after his return to Africa." We may therefore
put more faith in his description than in the
native chroniclers. Ibn Batiita writes: "Distress
was general, and the position of affairs
very grave. One day I went out of the city to
meet the wazIr, and I saw three women who
were cutting in pieces and eating the skin of a
horse which had been dead for some months.
Skins were cooked and sold in the markets.