III. Distribution of Country Carts and the Revolution in Road Construction in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century
p. 49-57
Texte intégral
1Iconographic evidence, however, is insufficient for drawing a comprehensive picture of the means of transport used during this long period. Nevertheless, with the help of the various documents collected in travel accounts143 and early surveys made by Europeans, it is possible to roughly know the distribution of the types of vehicles in the different parts of the country prior to the revolution in road construction and transport in the middle of the 19th century.
2This analysis would provide the geographic range wherein the various carriages were found in the different parts of the Indian subcontinent and explain the anomalies of the present distribution map of vehicles, thus making a contribution to the economic history of pre-British India.
3We know that cartage was not practised in a good number of regions where the terrain was unfavourable to the wheel, and even in regions offering natural facilities for traffic, the employment of carts was limited.144
4Regarding the vehicles of the northern plains built with wheel-suspension units with radially spoked wheels or cross-bar wheels, no significant change took place in their distribution.
5Carts with solid wheels, on the other hand, disappeared progressively from most of the regions of peninsular India, except for a few archaic zones scattered inside the subcontinent.
6The distribution of vehicles with radially spoked wheels considerably increased in places where solid wheels were predominant and also in regions where wheeled traffic was unknown.
1. The Long Survival of Carts with Solid Wheels
7At the beginning of the 19th century, the spread of the solid wheel was much wider than it is today, particularly on a larger part of the peninsular plateau.
8In Kashmir, in Srinagar valley, near Wular lake, trollies resting on wheels roughly fashioned from the round trunks of trees were used for carrying crops.145
9In Western India, carts with solid wheels were generally used for carrying heavy loads, as Thévenot said in the 17th century: ‘the wheels of wagons or carts, for carrying goods, have no spokes; they are made of one whole piece of solid timber, in the form of a mill-stone and the bottom of the cart is always a thick frame of wood’.146
10Heber, at the beginning of the 19th century, mentions this type of vehicle in the region of Nimach (Mandasaur district): ‘carts very strong and low; the wheels have no spokes but are made of the solid circles of the stems of a large tree. They have no axle tree of the kind used in Europe, but the wheels are placed below the carriage and secured like those of wheelbarrows’.147
11Today, we still find surviving solid wheels in Sindh,148 and in less accessible regions, such as Bamsvara, to the south of Udaypur, or in the Barmer district, to the north-east of the Ran of Kachch; in the surroundings of Pali, to the south-east of Jodhpur, farmers still used trollies, similar to those seen in Kashmir near Wular lake, for carrying heavy loads on short distances (fig. II, e).149
12To the south of the hills of Central India, heavy carts with solid wheels appear to have been predominant everywhere. At the beginning of the 19th century, in Maharashtra, the gāḍā, consisting of a simple triangular piece of wood on a wooden axle (dhāman or Grewia tiliaefolia), with solid wheels having a diameter of 90 cm, made of butt-jointed beams (usually three in number) reinforced by a circular iron band, was used for transporting the harvest. There was also, for carrying manure, a vehicle called jaṅg or juṅgiya, on which a basket of nirguṇḍi (Vitex trifolia) and tur (Cajanus indicus) was fixed.150
13The same vehicle was found in Daulatabad region151 and, according to the Gazetteers, it was widespread in Barar, where it was called baṇḍi in Akola district,152 gāḍā and vadār gāḍī in Buldana district;153 even in 1870, in Pusad taluk (Yavatmal district), several carts had stone wheels.154
14In the eastern part of Madhya Pradesh, where the solid wheel is still predominant today, this vehicle must have occupied a vast area since it is mentioned in the surveys carried out at the end of the 19th century in Malava and in the districts of Damoh and Balaghat.155
15It’s the same for Bihar, to the south of the Ganges, in Chota Nagpur or on the wooded border of Orissa where the bamboo saggaṛ with solid wheels was intensively used.156
16To the north of Andhra Pradesh, teak wood was transported from Mahadevapura to Haidarabad on such vehicles.157
17We could gather more information on the Mysore plateau. According to Buchanan, ‘the dung in every part of Mysore is most commonly carried out on carts which are applied to scarcely any other purpose’ (fig. XI, i).158
18In Bellary district, in the first half of the 19th century, there were only carts whose axles turned with stone wheels, and it is only around 1855 that spoked wheels were adopted.159
19Elsewhere, in the regions of Narasipura, Chamarajanagara and Gundlupete, smaller wheels were found, but in wood. In the surroundings of Chitradurga and Sivamogga, there were carts called sappe gāḍi, which were exclusively used for harvesting jola (sorgho); they consisted of a simple platform placed on an axle made of butt-jointed beams with two solid wheels, fixed by an iron band. Around Madhugiri and Sira, there were small sleighs made from the pole of a harrow (doḍḍa kuṇṭe) tied to old ploughshares on which a basket of manure, fodder or thorns could be placed, and used as wheelbarrows.160
20Surviving primitive draught vehicles are reported from the east coast of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh where, to carry manure, people used a single beam travois drawn by oxen, made of two shafts harnessed to an ox, with their ends dragging along the ground and the shafts forming the floor of the basket; this vehicle was called khaorā in the Katak district, saruguḍu in Visakhapattanam district and erukkuṭai in Tiruchchirappalli district.161
21Thus, until the middle of the 19th century, the heavy bullock cart with solid wheels was used in many parts of India, particularly on the peninsular plateau (roughly the modern states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka).
2. Road Construction and Expansion of Carts with Radially Spoked Wheels
22Though we have little information on the carts with radially spoked wheels used in South India at the beginning of the 19th century, we know that light vehicles of this type were used in the plains of the Tamil or Telugu countries and in the towns of the peninsula. Sonnerat,162 in a chapter devoted to the Coromandel Coast, gives a drawing of a light cart with radially spoked wheels which he calls gāṛī; Buchanan163 says that in the surroundings of Madras, wealthy merchants were travelling in light vehicles drawn by bullocks.
23The revolution in road construction in the middle of the 19th century completely changed the conditions of transport and the expansion of carts with spoked wheels.
24In the first half of the 19th century very little was done by the British government regarding the implementation of public roads. It was not until the years 1840 to 1845 that any large and systematic general construction of permanent commercial and military roads throughout the country was undertaken. By the year 1870, thousands of miles of metalled and bridged roads had been constructed, opening up numerous lines of communication for cart traffic.
25The results of this improvement are known. Principally in peninsular India the number of carts increased considerably and lighter types of vehicles were constructed.
Peninsular India
26In the immense Madras Presidency in 1852, there were only 3,000 miles of kaccā road; in 1887, 25,000 miles were maintained by the Local Fund Boards; similarly, there were only 90,000 carts in 1850; in 1877, 284,000 were recorded and in 1887, 436,000, or nearly five times as many as in 1850.164 In Central India we find the same growth in the means of conveyance. For example, in the Buldana district, between 1870 and 1900, the number of carts increased five times.165 Also in Maharashtra, we note that, in Pune district, between 1835 and 1870, the opening of roads increased the number of carts in Purandhar, Bhimthadi and Indapur by 202%, 270% and 300% respectively.166
27The great development of road communications was accompanied by an improvement in the design of carts. Progressively the heavy, clumsy carts with solid wheels (either formed of pieces of timber or cut from a block of stone), drawn by several pairs of bullocks and never used for distant journeys, common throughout the peninsula, disappeared.
28In Maharashtra the cumbersome gāḍā, which carried great weights for short distances were replaced by lighter vehicles, as the new road from Pune to Bombay down the Borghat, built in 1830, made it possible to send produce to the Konkan and Bombay in carts.167
29The indigenous Deccan bullock cart, heavy and ill-constructed, was gradually improved by enterprising British civil servants. Cart-making establishments were created and, for example, in Satara, an Englishman in his despatch of 1821 stated that he employed many people making up carts; also, that he had hoped to build Madras carts as used in Dharavar, but that the rayots disliked them and that he therefore had to make a good and strong cart like the Panavel cart for Rs. 38, and could not supply the demand.168
30In 1836, Lieutenant Gaisford designed a new cart with high, light wheels and a light body. He opened workshops at Tembhurni in Solapur where, in the four years preceding 1840, 3,722 carts had been made and were in use. To introduce cart making in the main towns, Mr. Stewart, the collector, in 1840 proposed that, at each māmlatdār’s station, two workshops should be formed for the children of the village carpenters and blacksmiths of the pargana to learn cart making. This initiative was a success and, in 1850, in the region of Solapur, Barsi and Marmala, private factories were making a number of vehicles built according to the design given by the government, but of rougher and cheaper materials.169
31In 1848, in the district of Satara, excluding Tasgaon, the number of carts was 8,119, of which 2,397 had wooden wheels with tyres, 5,603 had stone wheels, 119 had wheels of solid wood and only 2,397 had spoked wheels with tyres. Only the latter were used for traffic because the stone wheeled carts drawn by 12 bullocks travelled at only two-thirds of the pace of the carts with wooden-spoked wheels drawn by three bullocks. In 1883, stone wheeled carts had almost disappeared.170
32In Panavel at the end of the 19th century, the chief industry was the making of cart wheels, and every cart that came from the Deccan carried away a pair.171
33In Khandesh, in 1837, there was little cart traffic; 13 years later, light carts drawn by two bullocks were to be found in great numbers in almost every village. Moreover, nearly all the carts used to bring cotton from Barar belonged to Khandesh cultivators.172
34Around 1880, cart making had become an important industry; the iron parts were the work of local blacksmiths, the material being supplied from Bombay; the carts were so marked an improvement on the old gāḍā that they had become extremely popular.173
Contrast with the Northern Plains
35In the northern plains where the spoked-wheeled light carts were common during the Mughal period, and more efficiently suited to goods traffic,174 such a spectacular increase is not found. For example in Gujarat, in the district of Surat, there were 27,147 carts in 1851 and 31,148 in 1874, or roughly a mere 14% increase.175
36Their design had not undergone any significant modification. If we compare the rural vehicles of Bengal and Bihar drawn by Solvyns at the end of the 18th century (saggaṛ, rahṛū, ghoṛ bahal, ekkā and ratha) or the carts described by Buchanan (chakṛā, lahṛī, rathā, mañjholī and rahṛū), fitted with wheels with paired spokes, to the Bihar carriages photographed and studied by Grierson in 1885, we do not discern any difference in their construction or in the wheel structure.176 The bahlī of Gujarat, drawn by Forbes in Oriental Memoirs, is constructed in the same manner as the traditional bullock cart depicted by Fischer and Shah.177 The conveyances represented in Jain paintings and sculptures, as well as in Rajput or Mughal miniatures, are still seen in many parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Upper India. These carriages were very well adapted to farm activities.178
37However, certain innovations took place at the end of the 19th century in North-West India. In Panjab, for example, the vehicles were widened in order to carry greater loads. In Ludhiyana district especially, Gordon Walker noted in 1883 that the carts which, 30 years earlier, could only carry 15 man of grain, were, after affixing a wider frame, capable of carrying 40 to 50 man.179 There remains the question of the adaptation and diffusion of technical innovations.
Regional Diffusion of Technology
38It is significant to note that in the regions where wheeled vehicles were either unknown or little known, such as Kashmir, Assam, certain parts of Bengal, Central India or the west coast,180 as there was no expertise in cart building, rayots borrowed construction methods from adjoining localities where the wheelwright’s art was common practice.
39That would explain why Kerala bullock carts do not differ from the māṭṭu vaṇṭi of Tamilnadu, and carriages of the Konkan coast look like the gāḍī of the Maharashtra plateau. Khandesh appears to have been a centre of diffusion, since at the beginning of the 20th century, in Dhar district to the north and Buldana district to the south, the newly built vehicles of a somewhat more advanced pattern were an importation from this region.181
40A significant fact in all these zones: carts fitted with wheels with radial spokes were adopted, even in Kashmir and Assam, separated from the rest of India by the northern plains, domain of the paired spokes.
41It should also be mentioned that, in cart building, apparently Indian artisans did not adopt foreign models, except when they were commissioned to do so by their European patrons or clients.
European Influences
42The significance of the horse-drawn coach brought by Thomas Roe to Jahangir, ‘the gallant Caroch of 150 pounds price’, has been exaggerated.182 This rath-i-Angrezī was copied by the emperor’s craftsmen who made similar coaches for the nobles, but this interest was short-lived.
43Suspension was ignored until somebody had the idea of mounting a wheel palanquin called pālkī-gāṛī183 on springs. This system was adopted for several light twowheeled carriages, the origin of which is unknown, like the taṅgā, a pole vehicle drawn by ponies or oxen in the Deccan and a shaft cart in the North-West; the reklā of Bombay, developed from Portuguese models; the shigram, a Bombay and Madras name for a kind of hack-palanquin carriage; the jhaṭkā of Madras, the cab of mofussil towns in that Presidency drawn by a pony; and the karañcī of Bengal, resembling an old English hackney-coach drawn by two ponies harnessed with ropes.184
44At the end of the 18th century a number of shaft carriages, based on British models were built in the big cities, brum gāṛī (broughams), fitton gāṛī (phaetons), vāgnīt (wagonettes), etc.; evidence that Indian artisans possessed an outstanding ability to imitate.185
45In Bombay, the bullock reklā with an entrance at the front existed in 1800,186 but horse conveyances had already appeared. In the middle of the 19th century, the most popular public conveyance was the buggy,187 progressively supplanted by the shigram, brought into use in 1863, and the victoria introduced by a resident called Weber in 1882.188
46None of these vehicles, however, were ever used in rural India for the conveyance of goods.
Notes de bas de page
143 See Thévenot 1949, p. 75; Tavernier 1925, vol. I, pp. 35–37; Della Valle 1892, vol. I, p. 21; Ovington 1929, p. 152; Fryer 1909–15, vol. III, p. 157; Grose 1758, pp. 254–255; Degrandpré 1801, vol. I, pp. 228–229; Broughton 1892, p. 156; Hodges 1793, p. 5; Forbes 1813, vol. I, p. 150, vol. II, p. 253, vol. III, p. 376; Buchanan, in Martin 1838, vol. I, p. 124, vol. II, p. 581, vol. III, p. 118.
European documents unfortunately use very imprecise terminology. In the 18th-century texts, the word hackery is frequently mentioned. Its origin is obscure; it is supposed that it is a derivative of carreta (Port), but it seems that it is derived from chakṛā (H.) (Hobson-Jobson, pp. 407–408) and that it corresponds to a simple bullock cart of the saggaṛ type in Bengal (Solvyns 1811, vol. III, s.v. hakery), to a light vehicle (bahal), used for the conveyance of travellers in Western India (Forbes 1813, vol. I, f.p. 84), or elsewhere, to an ekkā (Broughton 1892, p. 156). All in all, it was a generic term used by Europeans for native vehicles. Likewise, in the 19th-century documents, the word bylee/baili is considered to be derived from bail (H.) ox, but in fact it is a distortion of bahal (H.) (Hobson-Jobson, p. 137).
144 The expansion of wheeled transport prior to steam locomotion has been explained in detail in a special study (see Deloche 1993, vol. I, pp. 255–273).
145 Lawrence 1895, pp. 23, 328.
146 Thévenot 1684, p. 157 and 1949, p. 75.
147 Heber 1828, vol. II, p. 517. The author probably refers to the system, mentioned supra, in which each wheel has an axle of its own, which as it projects through the hub, is supported entirely by struts.
148 Gazetteer of the Province of Sind (1907), p. 248.
149 Glimpses of Rural Rajasthan, pp. 62, 64.
150 See M.J.L.S. 1839, Special Report on the Statistics of the Four Collectorates of Dukhun under the British Government, pp. 394, 398; Bombay Gazetteer, Poona, vol. XVIII, Part II, pp. 9–10; Kolhapur, vol. XXIV, p. 159; Khandesh, vol. XII, p. 145.
151 M.J.L.S. 1839, Circar of Dowlutabad, p. 503.
152 Gazetteer of the Haidarabad assigned District, commonly called Berar, 1870, p. 244.
153 C.P.D.G., Buldana, pp. 285–287.
154 C.P.D.G., Yeotmal, p. 141.
155 A good description of the gāḍā in the region of Dhar is given in C.I.S.G., vol. V, A, Malwa, p. 44; of the rahṛū of Damoh, in C.P.D.G., Damoh, pp. 139–40; of the laṛhiyā of Balaghat in C.P.D.G., Balaghat, p. 209.
156 B.O.D.G., Ranchi, p. 176; B.D.G., Monghyr, p. 156, Santal Parganas, p. 210. Kittoe (in Account of a Journey from Calcutta via Cuttack and Pooree to Sumbalpur and from thence to Mednipur through the forests of Orissa, J.A.S.B., vol. VIII, 1839, f.p. 612) has published the drawing of a low cart with solid wheels made at the foot of Malayagiri Hill, near Pal Lahara.
157 Walker 1841, pp. 509–517. From 800 to 1,000 carts carrying teak were sent every year from Mahadevapura. The distance to Haidarabad was covered in 50 days.
158 Buchanan 1870, vol. I, p. 184.
159 M.D.G., Bellary, p. 117.
160 Mysore Gazetteer, vol. III, pp. 36–37.
161 B.O.D.G., Cuttack, p. 172; M.D.G., Vizagapatam, p. 143; Boswell, Stat. Mem. of Narsipatam in the Vizagapatam District, p. 33; Census of India, vol. IX, Madras, Village Survey Monographs, p. 2, Thenbaranadu, p. 6.
162 Sonnerat 1782, vol. I, f.p. 32.
163 Buchanan 1870, vol. I, p. 12.
164 In South Canara there was not a single cart in 1838, but there were 3,000 in 1887; in Salem, in 1836 there were 1,189 carts; the number had increased to 3,296 in 1847 and 12,400 in 1887 (Srinivasa 1892, pp. 61–62).
165 C.P.D.G., Buldana (1910), p. 285.
166 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. XVIII, Part II, Poona (1885), p. 10.
167 Ibid., p. 424.
168 Bombay Government Records XLI, New Series, Miscellaneous Information connected with the lapsed Satara Territory and the Districts belonging to the Satara Jaghirdars (Bombay 1857), quoted in I.E.S.H.R., vol. IX, 1, 1972, p. 21.
169 Bombay Government Selections, CVII, pp. 39–41, 54–56; CLI, pp. 33–34; Bombay Gazetteer, vol. XVIII, Part II, Poona (1885), pp. 9–10, 424; vol. XX, Sholapur (1884), p. 254.
170 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. XIX, Satara (1885), p. 196 n. 1.
171 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. XIV, Part II, Thana (1882), p. 294.
172 Report by Captain Wingate, in Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government No. 1 (1852), quoted in I.E.S.H.R., X, 1 (1973), pp. 88–89.
173 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. XII, Khandesh (1880), pp. 145, 237.
174 In the 17th century, according to the East India Company’s records, along with animal porterage, carts were commonly used to carry goods from Agra to Patna (English Factories 1618–1621, pp. 199, 256, 191), from Agra to Lahaur (id, 1635–1636, p. 192), from Agra to Burhanpur (id., 1622–1623, p. 90), and from Agra to Surat (id., 1646–1650, p. 193); on the latter route, it was even thought more convenient to send goods by carts rather than by camels (Letters Received, vol. IV, p. 252).
175 Bombay Gazetteer, vol. II, Surat and Broach (1877), p. 163.
176 Solvyns 1811, vol. III; Buchanan in Martin 1838, vols. I, p. 124, II, p. 581, III, p. 118; Grierson 1926, pp. 27–46.
177 Forbes 1813, vol. I, f.p. 84; Fischer & Shah 1970, pp. 14–17.
178 ‘A country cart, though very clumsy, is very well adapted to the style of travelling; great speed is not required and the roads traversed being kaccā are soon worn into deep and irregular ruts, which would tell sorely on a cart of neater manufacture and with much stiffiron work and joinings. The native cart from its style of build and the few joints it has (and those always of wood) gives and yields, creaks and groans along, but never breaks down; even a wheel giving way is a rare occurrence’(Baden Powell 1872, p. 246).
179 P.D.G., Ludhiana (1907), p. 165.
180 See Deloche 1993, vol. I, pp. 255–273.
181 In E.B.A.D.G., Noakhali (1911), p. 66, it is mentioned that: ‘carts are now in general use and as soon as a new road is opened to traffic the people living near it will buy wheels and themselves put together rude carts in which they drive their bullocks’.
182 Roe 1899, vol. I, p. 118, vol. II, pp. 320, 322, 347; Jahangir 1909, vol. I, pp. 338, 340.
183 Hobson-Jobson, p. 664.
184 Ibid., pp. 272, 474, 827, 930; Kipling 1891, pp. 132, 213. See the sketch given by Tayler 1881, p. 66. In an article by Bushby 1931, f.p. 138 & 140, the plans are found of the pālkī gāṛī, brownberry, office gāṛī and greenfield, constructed by the famous ‘Coach Building Firm’, Steuart and Co. of Calcutta.
185 ‘It is of no use to protest against these barbarous words like bôtel for bottle and kitli for kettle, with other travesties of our tongue, they are fixed in popular speech […]; the Oriental, like the ant, goes forth in bands, and is capable of piling more people in, on or about a carriage than would be believed in Europe’ (Kipling 1891, p. 211).
186 Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, vol. I (1909), pp. 368–369.
187 There is a drawing of this vehicle in Tayler 1881, vol. II, p. 316.
188 Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, vol. I (1909), pp. 368–369. Also see in Baden Powell 1872, pp. 249–25, the description of the stanhope phaetons or wagonettes, droshky with four wheels and mail drag, constructed in Panjab and presented at the 1864 exhibition.
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