INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

10 TIUDITIONAL AND
it. His father was also a historian, and we may
therefore place comparative reliance on the description
here quoted. * "There was a great
deficiency of rain, and the drought was so intense
that not a drop of dew could be found.
The scarcity became so great that nothing but
the herb bugloss was to be found in the shops of
the bakers and druggists. The numbers of the
the dead exceeded all computation or estimate.
Coffins and burial were not thought on in the
Deccan. The distress compelled emigration to
the north and east; but the poor wretches were
reduced to such a state of weakness, that they
did not accomplish the first stage. The towns
and their environs, and the country, were
. strewed with human skulls and bones instead
of seed Men ate each other, parents devoured
their children. Bakers ground up old bones, or
whatever else they could get, and mixing the
dust with a little wheat-flour, sold the cakes as
valuable rarities to the wealthy. Human bodies
dried in the sun were steeped in water and de-
• I am indebted to Prof. Dowson for having kind1y
translated this passage and another for me, in anticipation
of his own work of editing the 'History of India as told
by its own Historians.'