INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

22 TRADITIONAL A.YD
the effect on the N orth-West we know no more
than is contained in the remark quoted by the
Orissa Commissioners, that money could not
purchase bread, and a prodigious mortalityensued.
Disease followed famine, and death
ravaged every corner of India." The Orissa
Commissioners do not quote their authority, so
the matter of its geographical extent here rests
for the present.
This great famine was closely followed by
another of a severe character, in 1661, during
the third year of the reign of Aurungzebe. We
are still. dependent on narrative reports, which
deal in generalities, and describe only leading
features ;-matters that were either notorious
at the time, or the more striking cases of distress
witnessed by the narrator himself. *
Mill writes of this famine: "The prudence
of Aurungzebe, if his preceding actions will not
permit us to call it his humanity, suggested to
him the utmost activity of beneficence all this
calamitous occasion. The rents of the husband-
.. I was under the impression that I had read an account
of this famine in Bernier's Travels; but on a subsequent
glance through the book, I was unable to retrace it.