National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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province. In its shops are found all the domestic requirements of the peasantry, whilst the journeymen cobblers, saddlers, farriers, &c., who attend on market-day, perform all the. necessary little jobs necessitated by wear and tear. On these busy days little coin is current ; all exchanges are by barter. Farm produce, such as grain, fruits, cotton, fodder, poultry, &c., with home-spun yarn, and home-woven cloth, and a coarse cotton fabric called khdm or karbâs, and live-stock, such as horses, plough-oxen, cows, sheep, &c., are brought in and exchanged with the city traders or bazar shopkeepers for ready made clothing, as fur trimmed hats, printed scarves, embroidered bôots, silk frocks or glazed cloaks, latticed veils, &c., for the fair sex, and fur coats and top boots, fur caps, coats of quilted cotton, &c., for the men; or they are exchanged amongst each other, as a horse for so many sheep, &c. The khâm is the material most in demand by the city traders, and is generally purchased for cash after brisk competition.

The produce of the farms may be classed under the three heads of field, garden, and orchard. The operations in each are all begun and completed during six months of the year—from April to October—and for the remainder, the ground, as its tiller, lies idle. All cultivated land is irrigated; without water no crop matures. The distribution of water is superintended by a Government officer called mirdb, and there are several of them in each township, according to size and extent. The mirdb in turn makes over the stream under his charge, or a portion of it, to the âcsacâl of the several mahalla, and he allots the water proportionally to each homestead. At each harvest the mirdb receives as fee from each âcsacal one part in fifty of the total outturn of corn in his mahalla. Of the whole which the mirdb thus collects, he keeps one-half for himself, and the other half he makes over to the beg for Government ; or if the land be held in fief by a pdnsad, or other feudatory of the king, he delivers it to such feoffee. For the rest, agricultural operations are much the same as elsewhere. Horses and oxen are used indifferently in the plough, and manure of' the dung-heaps is freely mixed with the soil, which is everywhere very poor and requires much attention. As the crops sprout, it is customary to give them two or three successive top-dressings of clean, dry sand, to counteract the injurious effects of the white saline encrustations which continually form on the surface.

The principal field crops are the following :-

Wheat (Bughdây).—It is sown in two seasons, viz., in August and September, for the winter crop, called Kûzh k bughddy, and in March and April for the summer crop, called Ydzluk bughdây. The autumn sowing lies in the ground through the winter, and sprouts in March, about the time of the spring sowing. Both crops ripen together and are cut in July ; but the winter seed returns fourteen-fold, or fourteen chrzrak for every ehdrak sown, whereas the spring seed returns only seven-fold. This crop is consequently mostly sown in autumn. In spring, during April, they receive two or three top-dressings of manure and sand, and are not irrigated till in ear.

Barley (Arpa).—Is not grown in Kishghar and Yangi Hissar, and but sparingly in Yarkand. It returns ten-fold, and is sown in spring at the same time as wheat. Its ten-fold return is said to be actually less than the seven-fold of wheat, owing to the lighter weight of its seed.

Maize (Conde).—Generally grown everywhere. Sown in April and harvested in September. Returns sixty-fold. The corn and stalks are used as winter food for horses and cattle instead of barley, and the meal very generally as a bread stuff.

Rice (Shâl), the plant, and gurunj, the grain.—Principally grown in Yarkand division. Sown in April and cut in September and October. Returns six to eight-fold. The seed is husked on the banks of the canals by a pounder-mill worked by water. It is called sûcana, and consists of a horizontal axle-beam, in the middle of the shaft of which are four immovable flanges or paddle-boards against which the water plays. The shaft is supported at each end by an upright socket post on each side of the mill-stream, and at one end of it are two long clappers which project six or eight inches on opposite sides. As the shaft revolves, by the water playing against the paddles, these clappers alternately, in turn, catch and release the handle of the pounder, which works on a fulcrum block, and is so adjusted that the clapper in revolving with the shaft shall catch and depress the short band of the lever, and thus raise the pounder, which projects down at right angles from its other end, and let it fall again as in course of revolution it releases the depressed lever head. The pounder is a round-ended bar of wood