Chapter 5—
Traders, Merchants, and Markets:
1765-1947

Notwithstanding the "ruin" and "discontent" that the historian Ghulam Husain and his contemporaries perceived at the outset of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century and notwithstanding their observations regarding the absence of "commercial capital" and "sellers" and "buyers," trade and banking flourished not only in the city of Patna but also in the region of Bihar. Indeed, bankers continued to thrive in the initial phase of colonial rule; they were central to the political intrigues of the age of revolution that the Patna historian chronicled during the waning days of the Mughal Empire and its successor states. Although their political salience declined with the establishment of Pax Britannica, bankers or "trader-bankers," to use C. A. Bayly's phrase, played a critical role because the emerging colonial state relied on them "not merely to underpin its residual trading operations but to finance its administration and, in a sense, to guarantee the whole land-revenue system."^[l]

Half a century after the heyday of revolution, Enugula Veeraswamy set out on the road from Madras to Kashi under the sign of colonialism and encountered Marwari traders in many of the bazaars where he stopped to provision his entourage. This is firsthand evidence of the po-

[1] IndianSocietyandBritishEmpire , chap. 2.

sition that Marwaris had already attained and were consolidating, as new waves of their brethren swelled their ranks following their now well-documented migration into north India in the early nineteenth century. Veeraswamy's journey also led him to Gaya, where he encountered Raja Mitarjit of Tikari, whose wealth and status confirmed the trend that the Patna historian had anticipated in the age of revolution, when he wrote of the "overgrowing power of the Zemindars, and . . . their being trusted too much" by the then-emerging colonial government.^[2]

By 1921–22, when Mahatma Gandhi launched his Noncooperation Movement, including the boycott of foreign cloth, bania groups such as the Marwaris and Aggarwals were very much in the limelight because they monopolized its trade in the higher-order markets of Bihar. Among the so-called ringleaders was a Ramnath Marwari of Sursand, who was charged with rioting in Muzaffarpur in 1921. There was also Bilas Ram Marwari of Sitamarhi, who was singled out by the local authorities for being "a very loyal citizen and an Honorary Magistrate" and therefore deserving of exemption from the punitive assessments levied on areas active in the Noncooperation Movement.^[3]

We have then three snapshots of the major actors involved in bazaars in north India at different moments in the colonial era. By treading the historical path fashioned by the late-eighteenth-century Patna historian Ghulam Husain, by the early-nineteenth-century pilgrim Enugula Veeraswamy, and by the crowds of 1921–22 who converged on the bazaars of north Bihar in the name of Gandhi, this chapter enters the world of traders and merchants in the colonial period. How they fared in the region between the late-eighteenth-century age of revolution and the early twentieth century is a focus of this chapter. By concentrating on the principal agents of exchange-traders, merchants, and peasants—I intend to trace their changing fortunes over the course of the longuedurée of colonial rule. I will focus in particular on the trade in agricultural commodities to delineate the increasing salience of two groups in the local and regional marketing system: the better-off peasants (or "rich peasants" or "amateurs," as they are also called) and trading castes (or "professionals," as one source referred to them to dis-

[2] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 144–45.

[3] Wilson to Commr., Nov. 28, 1921, and T. W. Bridge, Magte. to Commr., Tirhut, Mar. 20, 1922, B & O Pol. Procs., 1922, May, no. 1A, enclosure and K Enclosure to no. 18.

tinguish them from the "amateurs" active at the grassroots levels). This chapter also highlights the structure and workings of the larger society and economy as it involved peasants, traders, and merchants.^[4]

At the higher reaches of the marketing and trade system (in the city of Patna), as well as at the grassroots level of exchange (in the haats) , marketing and trade in agricultural and nonagricultural commodities attracted diverse participants. Peasants, traders, and merchants participated in the exchanges that transferred goods from the fields to the marketing centers of the region. By its very nature, in other words, the local marketing system had many points of entry for men of enterprise and means to stake out roles as agents of exchange.

The number of sites at which exchanges were transacted increased dramatically over the course of colonial rule. Almost all of the change occurred at the lowest rung of the marketing system: the haats or periodic markets. According to the documentation for Patna district, the number of periodic markets between 1811 and 1911 tripled, jumping from 66 to 209. That was followed by another increase in the twentieth century, when the total rose to 393 by 1951. Detailed evidence for Saran reveals a similar surge: from 138 in 1793 to 323 in 1921. Toward the close of the colonial period, the entire province of Bihar accounted for ,53 5 periodic markets—more than 11 percent of the total (19,739) counted for all of British India, excluding the princely states.^[5]

The colonial period was also an era of increasing trade. There is a considerable body of local and regional evidence that indicates a general expansion in trade in the late nineteenth century. Microlevel data, such as those compiled by the great estate of Bettiah, suggest that the volume of trade in the 1860s and early 1870s more than doubled. These figures are supported by estimates of the rising proportion of grain marketed over the course of the colonial period. According to a recent study, only 20 percent of the grain produced in the late eighteenth century constituted a "marketable surplus," that is, the produce "available, under

[4] Although ostensibly distinct categories, peasants and traders are not mutually exclusive categories. For example, some peasants were also traders and dealers.

[5] GOI, AgriculturalMarketinginIndia: ReportonFairs , Marketsand ProduceExchangesinIndia (Delhi: GOI Press, 1943), pp. 28, 121. Bengal and U.P. ranked first and second in total number of haats . Within Bihar, Muzaffarpur accounted for 415 markets, Champaran 305, Saran 244, Darbhanga 52 , Shahabad 116, Gaya 115, and Patna 57. These tallies, however, seem incomplete. They do not match up with figures used in this study that are based on village-by-village data. See also above, chaps. 2 and 4, on markets in Patna and Saran.

normal circumstances, to the merchant for onward distribution."^[6] By the early twentieth century that number had risen to 30 percent. A sizable proportion, 70 percent, continued to remain in the locality of production, however, which enabled producers to meet their own consumption needs (accounting for as much as 48 percent), fulfill seed requirements, feed livestock, pay hired labor in kind, and use as barter for other goods.^[7] Another estimate calculated that 60 percent of the rice produced was consumed at the point of origination, 29 percent was redistributed in the locality principally through the periodic marketplaces, and 11 percent was sent on to the higher-order markets.^[8]

Typically, the outward flow of grain in the first century of colonial rule—in Ghulam Husain's as well as Veeraswamy's time period—began with transactions conducted within the village. The delimited boundaries of this first round of exchange were defined by the nature of the smallholder agricultural system characteristic of much of the subcontinent, a system whereby peasants occupying small plots of land grew multiple crops to minimize the risk of failure. Furthermore, because most peasants worked on an individual (or an individual household) basis, whether involved in the "purchase of seeds, implements, and manure, the borrowing of capital, the processes of cultivation, the harvesting operations," their meager yields of a variety of crops were best disposed of "independently by each cultivator."^[9]

Nor was the small volume likely to attract many dealers from without. The first round of exchanges therefore involved primarily peasants and grihasthabeoparis (literally, householder-traders), petty traders who were generally residents in the villages of the locality. This limited

[6] Rajat Datta, "Merchants and Peasants: A Study of the Structure of Local Trade in Grain in Late Eighteenth Century Bengal," IESHR2 3 (1986): 388; T. M. Gibbon, Manager, Bettiah, to R. P. Jenkins, Commr., Patna, Nov. 8, 1871, Bengal Gen. Procs., 1872, Jan. no. 29. Bettiah figures are based on rents collected at granaries and customs levied at river wharves (ghats). Also Derbyshire, "Economic Change and Railways," p. 533, on "the tremendous expansion in the volume of higher level and long-distance commerce during the period after 1860."

[7] GOI, Office of the Agricultural Marketing Adviser, Agricultural MarketinginIndia , Reporton theMarketingofRicein IndiaandBurma , Marketing Series no. 27 (Delhi: GOI Press, 1941), pp. 24–27, 492. These figures, however, conceal the fact that a cultivator "almost invariably retains the coarse inferior varieties for his own use and sells the finer rices which give a better cash return" (p. 27).

[8] ReportoftheBiharBanking Committee , p. 59. North Bihar was more involved in the rice trade than south Bihar. See AGRPD 1875–76.

[9] S. A. Husain, AgriculturalMarketingin NorthernIndia (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), p. 81. See also H. L. Puxley, AgriculturalMarketing inAgraDistrict (Calcutta: Longmans, 1936).

circle was also defined by the social and political constraints imposed by the structure of agrarian relations within local society. What set them apart from their fellow villagers was their capacity to gain access to the agricultural surplus of their neighbors through moneylending and purchases. Their dual roles as traders and moneylenders (mahajans) were closely intertwined, for moneylending reaped returns in grain.

The moneylending and grain nexus was synchronized to an agricultural calendar that favored the mahajans . Moneylenders in Shahabad made advances of money or of grain to cultivators and at harvest time received grain in return. They sold some of this grain wholesale and retained some as capital to be used in future loans in kind. They also purchased the surplus of their locality, generally at harvest time, when prices were at their lowest, and sold it five or six months later, when prices had increased or were at their peak.^[10]

The optimum time to buy was in the wake of the autumn and winter harvests (November to January—also a time of melas) when grain was plentiful and therefore cheap. Rice occupied the largest acreage among food crops grown in the region (from 30 to 50 percent of the net cropped area) and was the principal food crop of these two harvests. Other crops reaped during these harvests were maize and millets of one kind or another (janera , bajra , marua) , which formed the staple food of most ordinary people, and sugarcane and indigo. The last was largely grown by Europeans, and it faded away in the twentieth century. The spring harvest, reaped in March and April, was another good time to buy. Wheat, tobacco, and a variety of oilseeds, all important export items for the region, were harvested at this time. Barley, which, after rice, occupied the second-largest net cropped area (10 to 20 percent), was also reaped in spring. The best time to sell was in the summer months of June to August, when prices were at their highest and when the autumn and winter crops were just being sown. Price differentials between city and countryside could yield additional profits, since prices were invariably higher in the cities and towns.^[11]

[10] Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 431; Kumkum Banerjee, "Grain Traders and the East India Company: Patna and Its Hinterland in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries," IESHR 23 (1986): 403–29.

[11] J. Routledge, Colltr., to Sir John Shore, Oct. 23, 1794, Bengal Rev. Consltns., Grain, Oct. 31 to Dec. 19, 1794, Oct. 31, no. 22; Colltr., Tirhut, to G. H. Barlow, Subsecy., Oct. 25, 1794, M.C. Records, vol. 193, Sept. 30, 1794 to Dec. 14, 1795. See also MSR , pp. 131–33, 251 –75, regarding harvests and percentage of area cultivated at each of the three harvests.

Grihasthabeoparis have appropriately been termed "trading farmers," a designation at once highlighting their role as agents of exchange and emphasizing their roots in village society and economy as "farmers" or peasants. Their position as petty traders was a function of their privileged positions in village society. As the substantial cultivators and tenants of their communities, they were able to carve out roles as mahajans; some were small landholders or petty maliks (proprietors). Their dominant status was also reinforced by their "official" roles as village headmen, an office held by many of them; it entitled them to act and speak on behalf of their fellow, and usually less well-off, villagers in transactions involving their superordinates, typically the local landholders. In the characterization of one contemporary source, village headmen, or jethraiyats or muqaddams , were "wealthy men of some education" or "principal tenant[s]" or "every rich and intelligent farmer."^[12]

That the petty trader based in the village was essentially the better-off peasant highlights the restricted scope of transactions at this fundamental level of the peasant marketing system, for much of his dealings entailed purchases and sales made in small lots intended principally to supply the needs of poor peasants or artisans. In the words of one contemporary observer, many of the exchanges in agricultural commodities at this grassroots level of society involved the "mere necessaries of life, consumed at no remote distance from the place of their growth."^[13] The profits of such buying and selling enabled traders to clear at least 20 percent on each crop. Nevertheless, they were essentially petty traders, operating in an arena largely confined to their villages of residence or the neighboring localities; and the scale of their business was clearly demarcated by the modest amounts they handled. Their capital was limited, estimated to range from one hundred to two thousand rupees, as were the opportunities for turnover of their stocks, estimated by one source to be no more than twice a year. And expansion, particularly by extending the geographical limits of their trading areas, was hampered by their not having ready access to, or control over, the modes of transportation.^[14]

[12] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p . 568; Buchanan, Shahabad , p . 350; G. Arbuthnot, Colltr., Tirhut, to J. Neave, Magte., Tirhut, May 31, 1793, M.C. Records, vol. 190, 1793.

[13] H.T. Colebrooke, RemarksonthePresent StateoftheHusbandryand CommerceofBengal (Calcutta: n.p., 1795), p. 104. Colebrooke was an assistant collector in Tirhut and Purnia in the 1780s and early 1790s.

[14] Buchanan, Shahabad , p . 430.

The highly localized nature of these exchanges also explains the conspicuous presence of "trading farmers," for these rich peasants or petty maliks were best positioned to parlay their political, social, and economic standing in local society into opportunities for petty trade. And given the restricted geographical and social scope of the transactions, their small-scale trading did not require any degree of specialization. Thus, the nature of the marketing system at the village level both defined and was defined by the "trading farmer."^[15]

In the next round of exchanges in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "trading carriers"-to use Buchanan's term-figured prominently. Although some "trading farmers" dealt directly with wholesale traders in the higher-order markets by hiring transportation to move their goods, most sold their stock to these "carriers," who were known in the vernacular by various names: ladubeoparis , ladubanias , ladubaldiya , baldiyabeoparis , or Teli beoparis . They were, in other words, traders, engaged in relaying grain and other items collected in the villages by the "trading farmers" to primary markets, the haats , or to higher-level markets. They made their purchases at one market and sold at another. They were able to become the primary "carriers" of overland trade because they owned cattle for use as transportation, either as pack animals or hitched to carts. Before the advent of the railways and an extensive network of good roads, their command of the primary means for transporting goods between the hinterland and the major entrepôts along the water highways secured them a vital intermediary role. Some also hired out their cattle, although only infrequently because grihasthabeoparis tended not to involve themselves directly in the transportation of their goods to higher-order markets. "In the land carriage," as one local administrator noted perceptively, "the carriers are also the principal traders, oftener purchasing at one market to sell at another than hiring carriage to settled merchants."^[16]

Ladubeoparis , in short, relied on animal power to reach beyond the confines of the village. As petty dealers, they mostly stationed themselves in the lower-order marketing settlements so as to have easy access to the produce of the countryside, which they then carried to their

[15] For a similar point, see S. Bhattacharya, "Eastern India," in CambridgeEconomicHistoryofIndia , vol. 2, p. 273.

[16] Colebrooke, CommerceofBengal , p. 125; Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 431; Buchanan, Bihar andPatna , pp. 696-97. The etymology of ladu and baldiya is less clear, although bal presumably refers to ox or bullock.

home markets or to higher-order markets. A few used higher-order markets as their collection points: in Shahabad such dealers set up residence in the towns of Arrah and Chainpur and from there they negotiated sales to the cities of Patna and Banaras. Ladubeoparis also supplied retailers, typically banias in primary markets involved in supplying the general provisions (khichrifarosh) of a locality, that is, banias who sold such everyday items as grain, salt, oil, and an assortment of other goods, including sweets, tobacco, cotton, and drugs.^[17]

Like grihasthabeoparis , ladu beoparis were traders of modest means. A 1773 petition submitted by a number of such beoparis against the Patna Custom House for extracting illegal levies from them shows how limited their transactions were: Biju and other beoparis complained about a duty of one and one-half pice per bullock load on their consignment of mustard seed; Panu objected to a duty imposed on his four bullocks laden with lac; Tej Chund took issue with the levies put on his five bales of cotton; and Dullah Khan complained about an even smaller amount charged on a parcel of cloth. Their capitals in Shahabad were "trifling . . . except their cattle."^[18]

"Besides their oxen," in the estimation of one contemporary observer, ladubeoparis had "very little capital, 5 rs. in money being reckoned sufficient to enable a man to trade with one ox. With such a stock it is supposed that he can gain 32 rs. a year, selling 50 rs. worth a month, with a profit of from 1 to 2 annas on the rupee."^[19] Although a profit of 6 to 12 percent (that is, one to two annas on a rupee worth sixteen annas) suggests a smaller return than the 20 percent made by "trading farmers" on each crop, and although their activities were seasonal—restricted to a period of the roughly eight months when roads were passable—the opportunities "trading carriers" had for turnover were as much as three to ten times a month, or twenty-four to eighty times during the course of their business year. Furthermore, they incurred few risks, because their transactions required little outlay of capital. Instead their trade was conducted "entirely without advances," their

[17] Buchanan, Shahabad , pp. 430–31; Buchanan, Bihar andPatna , p. 696. The trade in grain and other items carried on by ladubeoparis was also known as kirana .

[18] Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 431; H. Revel, Colltr., Customs, Patna, to President, Council, Bengal Rev. Board of Commrs., Customs, Apr. 14 to Dec. 15, 1773, Oct. 20. A pair of bullocks "considered fit for labour" typically cost twenty-five to thirty rupees. See Colltr. to T. Graham, President, Board of Superintendence for the Improvement of Cattle, Apr. 21, 1795, M.C. Records, vol. 193.

[19] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p. 696.

primary responsibility being either to serve as "mere carriers" or to take on the intermediary role themselves by selling the produce of the countryside to merchants and returning from the higher-order markets with other kinds of goods bought from the merchants to be redistributed in the lower-order markets of the hinterland. "Trading carriers" were therefore in a position to earn higher incomes, their capital estimated to range between five hundred and five thousand rupees as contrasted with the one hundred to two thousand rupees documented for "trading farmers." A few, however, far exceeded this range. Some of the most prosperous ladubeoparis in Shahabad, based in such key collection points in the hinterland as Sheikhpura, Nawada, and Daudnagar, were estimated to have had fortunes valued as high as twenty thousand rupees.^[20]

"Trading farmers" and "trading carriers" stood on roughly comparable ground, however, in their transactions with one another. Although the former depended largely on the latter for the transportation of their goods, ladubeoparis were not in a position to use this to build up their profits. On the contrary, because they offered "a very cheap carrying service . . . grihastha-beparis and ordinary ryots did not always find it advantageous to carry grain to market."^[21]

"Trading carriers," for their part, were at a disadvantage because of the control that grihasthabeoparis exerted over the agricultural surplus of the countryside. Although cultivators were ostensibly free to grow whatever they wanted and to sell to whomever they chose to sell to, "trading farmers" defined the local marketing system because peasants were typically in debt to them. In other words, as moneylenders (mahajans) , grihasthabeoparis generally had prior claims on the crops of their fellow villagers. Most cultivators in the initial century of colonial rule did not venture out on their own to sell their surplus. Instead, throughout the region, petty traders—grihastha and ladubeoparis —generally advance[d] for and purchase[d] the produce of the soil for the great marts."^[22] Thus the transactions between ordinary cultivators and village-level notables generally comprising the better-off peasantry were conducted under a certain degree of duress and coercion.

The process of indebtedness was typically generated by "trading farmers" advancing money or grain to their fellow villagers, usually the

[20] Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 431.

[21] Banerjee, "Grain Traders and the Company," p. 408.

[22] S. Swinton, Customs, Murshidabad, to J. P. Ward, Acting Secy., BOR, Oct. 28, 1816, Bengal Board of Commrs., Behar and Benares, Jan. 1 to Dec. 28, 1817, Jan. 20.

poorer cultivators, and seeking repayment in grain at harvesttime when most peasants needed to sell their crops immediately to survive and cover debts. This timing favored the "trading farmers," as well as the wholesale traders, because they acquired the produce at harvest prices, which tended to be low, and then sold their stock several months later when prices had risen. "Trading farmers" preferred to buy at harvesttime or even earlier "and sell five or six months afterwards when the price has risen. It is usually supposed that they make zo per cent. on each crop; but their gains are probably greater, as the farmers who deal with them are considered as more necessitous than those who borrow money at the rate of 25 per cent. for 26 months."^[23]

Although of diverse social backgrounds, "trading farmers" were typically of the dominant castes of their villages, whereas the "trading carriers," as their appellation Teli beoparis suggests, were Telis, a lower caste of the Shudra category traditionally associated with oil pressing. Because their occupation entailed working cattle in sacrilegious ways—as beasts of burden and as mill animals for oil pressing, for which purpose the animals were often blinded—Telis were considered "impure." Some who had branched out into the business of "carriers" therefore sought to pass themselves off as banias "in order to conceal the impurity of their origin."^[24]

Although occupying a significant intermediary role in the processes of exchange by virtue of their control over the means of overland transportation, ladubeoparis (also termed paikars) were not able to capitalize on that to dominate, let alone bypass, the grihasthabeoparis . Not only did they lack the economic resources to push aside the village-based traders but they also did not have the social standing to oust the latter from their positions of dominance in village society and economy. Nor did grihastha beoparis have much to gain from becoming transporters; on the contrary, they perhaps had much to lose because

[23] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p. 697. The "subordination" and "pre-emption" of the peasantry in the grain trade is also discussed in Datta, "Merchants and Peasants," pp. 398–401. A different set of constraints existed in the case of cash crops.

[24] Francis Buchanan, AnAccountofthe DistrictofPurneain1809–10 (Patna: Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 1928), pp. 236, 582. In Purnia "trading carriers" of other castes insisted on being called paikars , an appellation intended to distinguish them from their Teli counterparts. Not all Telis worked as traders. See Buchanan, Shahabad , p . 207, for an estimate that two hundred out of three thousand "houses" (families), or less than 7 percent, in that district were involved in trade. Maithil texts from the pre-Mughal period suggest that Telis were considered low caste. See B. P. Mazumdar, "Non-Muslim Society in Medieval Bihar," in ComprehensiveHistoryofBihar , vol. 2, part 1, p. 330.

performing such services meant they might be considered "impure" "carriers."

Because the agricultural trade at the grassroots level was embedded in relations of power and dominance defined by the configuration of village society, the incipient colonial state was unable to extend its control over it. Even when local authorities sought to intervene, as they did briefly in the 1790s, when government proposed organizing a system of public granaries, they had neither the knowledge nor the resources to secure a foothold in the countryside. The difficulties of procuring grain, as one district official recognized, was that most of it was already "advanced for, and previously engaged by all descriptions of merchants."^[25]

Late-eighteenth-century attempts by government to intervene in the grain trade at the grassroots level therefore inevitably ended up disastrously. Its efforts in Purnia to gain access to supplies or to dispose of its own supplies were met by a boycott conducted by "native grain dealers" and "rice merchants." Members of the first category of traders, along with other beoparis who collected grain from the countryside, were able to control stocks because they had much of the surplus beholden to them; the latter group, apparently through "some combination," made sure that not a "single bidder" stepped forward to bid for government grain. The efforts of local administrators in Tirhut to purchase grain for storage in government granaries were also thwarted by merchants and traders who, in preemptive buying campaigns, bought "up all the grain in the country in the expectation of making their own terms." Prices skyrocketed as a consequence, and by the time local officials sought supplies their costs were prohibitively high.^[26]

The absence of an administrative infrastructure capable of penetrating this fundamental level of indigenous society and the greater emphasis placed on forging administrative connections with rural magnates also militated against government success in collecting a police tax from merchants, traders, and shopkeepers. The 1790s assessment campaign ran aground because its targets were not only the merchants and traders in towns whose ties to the emerging colonial state were slight but also the traders—the grihastha and ladubeopari —who were "so

[25] Y. Burgess, Colltr., Purnia, to W. Berrie, Clerk and Inspector of Public Granaries, Bengal Rev. Procs., Grain, Nov. 10, 1795–Dec. 30, 1796, June 14.

[26] G. Arbuthnot, Colltr., Tirhut, to Subsecy., Feb. 6, 1795, M.C. Records, vol. 193; Burgess to Public Granaries, Bengal Rev. Procs., Grain, June 14, 1795.

much scattered in the petty Bazaars and villages,"^[27] and therefore even farther beyond the reach of the local authorities. Such beoparis remained elusive figures well into the nineteenth century, indeed until the latter part of the century, when the institution of income tax targeted some of them. The small scale of their operations, their numbers, and their base in the countryside kept them from the reach of the local authorities. Thus, the lament of the Patna authorities that their custom house, set up in the early nineteenth century to tax "imports," had difficulty keeping track of such "men [not] of large capital" but constituting "a great number of petty merchants, pykars and brokers who carry on a small traffic."^[28]

Throughout the region merchants, traders, and shopkeepers resisted the police tax, either by refusing to cooperate with officials in identifying taxable individuals and providing the information necessary to establish rates of assessment or by shutting down their businesses. So complete was the hartal (closure of market) in Sasaram—a tactic later employed in the Noncooperation Movement—in which "merchants and traders shut up their shops for several days to the very great distress of the inhabitants and travellers, refusing to sell the most common necessaries," that the magistrate expressed doubts about being able to collect the tax. He was also concerned that his insistence on imposing the tax would result in merchants fleeing to neighboring Banaras.^[29]

In Chapra, shopkeepers closed their shops for two days; some even sought to pin the accidental death of an elderly man in the bazaar on persons charged with collecting the police tax. In the face of such opposition in Bihar and in Bengal, the tax was withdrawn. As Basudeb Chattopadhyay's account of the police tax protest shows, traders and merchants succeeded in stymieing government efforts because they acted in concert and because their actions threatened to disrupt the rural economy.^[30] Not explicitly noted in the official deliberations but

[27] J. Lumsden, Late Acting Colltr., Saran, to G. H. Barlow, Subsecy., Aug. 30, 1793, Bengal Rev. Jdcl. Consltns., Sept. 6 to 27, 1793, Sept. 13, no. 15.

[28] Board of Commrs., Behar and Benares, to Marquis of Hastings, May 26, 1820, Bengal Rev. Procs., June 16 to July 7, 1820, July 7.

[29] T. Brooke, Magte., Shahabad, to Earl Cornwallis, G.G., Mar. 2, 1793, Bengal Rev. Jdcl. Consltns., Mar. zz to Apr. 12, 1793, Apr. 5, no. 3.

[30] "Police Tax and Traders' Protest in Bengal," in DissentandConsensus:SocialProtestin Pre-IndustrialSocieties , ed. Basudeb Chattopadhyay, Hari S. Vasudevan and Rajat Kanta Ray (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi and Co., 1989), pp. 6–35; Lumsden, Colltr., to Barlow, Subsecy., May 4, 1793, Bengal Rev. Jdcl. Consltns., May 3 to 31, 1793, May 31, no. 19.

also clearly important is the fact that the protest succeeded because it involved a colonial state, as yet without the apparatus of power and knowledge to extend its reach into the countryside—into the arena of the bazaar—also the site where merchants, traders, and shopkeepers were in their element.

Primarily through the mediation of ladubeoparis and paikars , grain flowed out of the villages and primary markets into the hands of "considerable merchants," known variously as goldars or mahajans or beopari mahajans . Goldar was a designation applied in particular to merchants involved in the wholesale trade of grain (gullah) and a variety of articles generally denominated kirana . Exceptions to this rule were the Gosain goldars who retained their religious titles. However, some merchants—generally those involved in big transactions—relied on their own networks to gain access to the stocks held by grihasthabeoparis or the cultivators themselves. One example of how this chain worked is the case of a "principal banker and rice merchant" in Purnia who filled the British order for fifty thousand maunds of rice by dispatching his agents (gomasthas) into the countryside to procure that amount.^[31]

Goods collected by petty traders and agents as well as by merchants were relayed to the higher levels of the marketing system through arathiyas , "merchants. . . who receive goods. . . and dispose of them by commission, taking upon themselves the responsibility for the purchaser, on which account they are men of property or credit. They also purchase on commission, and transact business at the custom house for merchants at a distance." Some arathiyas were primarily agents and only secondarily merchants; their business centered on their "commission warehouses," which were used to store "various kinds of goods .. . [to be] dispose[d of] . . . on commission.. . . On iron they get one-half per cent., on other goods 1 per cent. from each party. Some of them are agents, who purchase cloth for merchants residing at a distance."^[32]

Brokers, known locally as goldars , filled this intermediary role in the town of Bihar. The commission of these owners of warehouses and weights depended on their service as agents in buying and selling of goods. Another type of arhatiya and goldar was Moolchund, the bro-

[31] R. W. Pattle, Colltr., Purnea, to Wm. Cowper, Pres. and members, BOR, Aug. 31, 1800, Bengal, BOR Consltns., Grain, 1800, Oct. 3, no. 12; Buchanan, BiharandPatna , pp. 683–84; Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 430. Gullah generally referred to grain, kirana to mustard and linseed in Patna and Gaya.

[32] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , pp. 683, 698.

ker (dalal) of Goldinganj, who took a cut from buyers and sellers because he offered "moodies and other sellers of goods" a site equipped with godowns and weighmen and because he encouraged merchants and traders to frequent his ganj . According to his own testimony, he was entitled to a commission because he preserved peace in the market by employing a staff of people including a policeman (darogha) to provide protection for "beoparries and mahajans."^[33]

The so-called Sannyasi merchants, an itinerant group actively involved in the cloth and silk trade between Bengal and Bihar, were another group prominently involved in the wholesale trade in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Two other categories of merchants conducted wholesale trade as well. Merchants who were itinerant dealers, mostly of limited means, visited many localities seeking their supplies directly from the fields where the crops were grown. In Dariapur, for instance, in addition to 5 wholesale dealers in grain, salt, and other items (goldars) , 50 petty grain dealers (gullahpaikars) , 125 baldiyabeoparis , and 100 grihasthabeoparis , there were also 20 "strangers" termed gullahmahajans , who were in the locality for a few months a year to purchase grain. Such itinerant dealers and merchants, termed "strangers" because they were not local residents, were also actively engaged in snapping up the specialty products of some localities. In the Ekwari area of Shahabad five "strange merchants" concentrated on buying its paper; in thana Bihar as many as fifty "strangers" were interested in the local cloth.^[34]

Also itinerant were the so-called "floating merchants who bring investments in boats, dispose of these, and purchase others."^[35] Although not as prevalent as in Bengal, they were a familiar sight in the riverfront areas of Gangetic Bihar. In Patna they offered salt, betel nut, coconut, and iron and sought wheat, basmati rice, and the pulse known as chana; in Shahabad their interests varied only slightly. Their primarily long-distance trade in luxury items yielded high returns, a profit of 50 percent, for instance, in the case of coconuts.^[36]

[33] "Deposition of Moolchund. . ." and Lumsden, Colltr., Saran, to Wm. Cowper &c., BOR, Mar. 23, 1793, Bengal BOR Consltns., Sayer, 1793, Apr. 19; Buchanan, BiharandPatna , pp. 697-98.

[34] Hamilton Ms., Behar and Patna; Hamilton Ms., Shahabad; Petition from the "Sunasee merchants at Patna," Bengal Rev. Board of Commrs., Customs, Jan. 5 to Dec. 24, 1774, May 30

[35] Buchanan, Purnea , p. 578.

[36] J. Purves, TheEastIndiaMerchant;or AGuidetotheCommerceandManufacturesofBengalandtheUpperProvinces (Calcutta: Times Press, 18 9), p. 18; Buchanan,BiharandPatna , p. 685; Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 432. For specific numbers at each marketing center, see Hamilton Ms., Behar and Patna, and Hamilton Ms., Shahabad.

Merchants and traders were typically based in higher-order markets, the largest number, as noted previously, naturally congregating in the city of Patna. No other market in the region assembled such a number and diversity of merchants and traders. The pilgrimage center of Gaya, the second-most prominent town in Bihar after Patna, only counted four bankers, fifty-seven money changers, sixteen money changers who also dealt in cloth and brass vessels, and an assortment of retailers specializing in goods ranging from grain to betel leaf to vegetables. At Shahabad's major market of Bindhuliya thirteen merchants combined a business in grain with that of cotton and other items; Dumraon and Sasaram each supported twenty traders in all in the entire thana , and these were mostly men of small capital; Karanja had two merchants only, although with greater capital than their counterparts in Dumraon and Sasaram. As for markets within Patna district: Danapur counted two wholesale dealers specializing in grain (goldars) , Barh nine wholesale dealers who dealt in both grain and iron, and Nawada twelve dealers who carried on a wholesale trade in grain and salt.^[37]

Not all merchants and wholesale traders had substantial resources. Many at the lower end of the scale were comparable to petty traders in terms of capital. Shahabad's beopari mahajans , for instance, were men of limited means: one thousand to two thousand rupees in Bindhuliya, and five hundred to five thousand rupees in Sasaram and Dumraon. The other end of the scale, however, was occupied by such merchants as the two in Karanja whose business involved capital of fifty thousand to one hundred thousand rupees. A similar range is suggested by the evidence for the city of Patna. Its one hundred grain dealers were reckoned to be worth between one thousand and ten thousand rupees, the fifty–five grain (gullah) and grocery (kirana)mahajans between one thousand and fifty thousand rupees, and the twenty-four arathiyas between one thousand and twenty-five thousand rupees. As for the "most considerable merchant" in all of Patna and Gaya districts in the early nineteenth century, Chunilal of Bakhtiarpur, his factories and grain

[37] See pp. 85–89. Also Hamilton Ms., Behar and Patna, Shahabad; Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 430. Petty dealers, although relatively few in the city, abounded in great numbers in the lower order marketing settlements. Compare Patna's 225 ladu beoparis with the 400 enumerated for thana Fatwa, 1,000 and 1,100 for thanas Nawada and Gaya, respectively, and an even higher total, z,ooo, estimated for thana Hilsa.

business in Calcutta alone were valued at more than one hundred thousand rupees.

Merchants and traders such as Chunilal made their fortunes by combining trade in agricultural commodities with a lucrative business in nonagricultural commodities, especially luxury items. Not surprising therefore are the figures for Patna that reveal that grain dealers made far less than those dealers who diversified into salt, iron, and metals (one thousand to ten thousand rupees versus one thousand to fifty thousand rupees). Also profitable was the trade in salt, where capital ranged between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand rupees, and the trade in cloth, where capital ran as high as fifty thousand rupees.^[38]

The long-distance trade, particularly in luxury items, was monopolized by men of substantial resources because large amounts of capital were needed for advances, purchases, and the higher prices of luxury items. Bankers (kothiwals) and professional moneylenders (shroffs) were therefore most likely to branch out into this kind of trade. Their financial resources coupled with extensive credit networks positioned them well to tap the profits of long-distance trade. And they utilized their superior resources and know-how to stake out a trade in luxury items. Shroffs in Patna and Gaya bought and sold precious metals and cotton cloth and kothiwals bought and sold European woolens and shawls; some kothiwals also dealt in drugs, foreign spices, sandalwood, and metals, and one, "a very rich man," in manihari (glass bangles). Drawing on their extensive capital and credit networks (Patna's twenty-four kothiwals , for example, had branch offices in Calcutta, Banaras, and Murshidabad), kothiwals and shroffs dominated the "trade in European woolen cloths, jewels, foreign spiceries, metals imported by sea, and the finer kinds of cloth of cotton, silk, and lace."^[39]

The diversified operations of substantial merchants is best exemplified by the family firm of Kallu Babu Lallu Babu, also known as the Dhawalpura kothi (literally, a large house but also a banking house or

[38] Hamilton Ms., Behar and Patna, Shahabad; Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p. 683; Shahabad , p. 430; Purnea , p. 577.

[39] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p. 698; also pp. 684–85. For a comparable picture, see Khan Mohammad Mohsin, ABengalDistrictinTransition:Murshidabad , 1765–1793 (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1973), PP. 139–40. Europeans generally also engaged in trade of this sort, either because of government monopolies, such as in salt, opium, and saltpeter, or because they had the resources to deal in luxury items. See Colebrooke, CommerceofBengal , pp. 103–4; Purves, EastIndiaMerchant , pp. 13–18.

firm), one of the dominant trading firms in the region in the nineteenth century. The ancestors of this Rohatgi family first set up shop in Patna in the early eighteenth century. By the turn of the nineteenth century Kallu Babu and his son, Lallu Babu, had already staked out a commanding role in the trade of several commodities, from their base in Dhawalpura in Begumpur, near the city of Patna. From beginnings in the grain (gullah) and grocery (kirana) business, they ventured into the printing of chintz for export. They also expanded into banking, primarily the hundi business, and real estate, their landholdings extending across Patna, Muzaffarpur, and Darbhanga. Based originally in the Patna area, they eventually branched out into other areas, particularly Calcutta.^[40]

Whether arathiyas , goldars , or mahajans of one sort or another, wholesale merchants and traders stood at the apex of exchange relations by virtue of their superior resources. Access to money (and credit) obviously gave them an incomparable edge, an advantage that larger moneylenders and bankers used to branch out into the business of wholesale trade. Profits from trade in turn multiplied the resources available for moneylending. Their ability to engage in the wholesale trade by virtue of their superior resources also shows up in their direct control of, or at least access to, golas (stores or granaries; thus the designation goldars) . Without such storage facilities traders could not stockpile goods, especially agricultural commodities, and manipulate market prices.^[41]

To minimize losses from spoilage, dealers preferred rapid turnover of their stocks, a pace also dictated by their optimizing strategy of securing supplies at harvesttime when prices were low and selling at other times of the agricultural season, when prices were high. This imperative was also conditioned by the credit system of hundis , which required repayment within a few days or the subsequent imposition of high rates of monthly and especially yearly interest. Grain was therefore not stored in vast quantities: many dealers considered golas of one thousand maunds an appropriate size, although some granaries

[40] Interview with Rohatgi family, June 16, 1984. See also C. R. Bhandari, B. L. Soni, and K. L. Gupta, eds., BharatiyaVyapriyon Parichaya (Bhanpura, Indore: Commercial Book Publishing House, 19?), p. 8. In the twentieth century, this family branched out into various industrial enterprises.

[41] Granaries, generally built of bamboo and straw, were plastered with mud and often set about two feet off the ground to guard against moisture and rodents. Because rice spoiled more easily and required periodic airing and drying, paddy was the preferred item of storage.

were known to have a capacity of fifteen hundred to five thousand maunds.^[42]

Whether specifically identified as bankers or not, people with substantial capital were deeply involved in the moneylending and grain nexus, although more so at the supravillage level than at the village level. They provided the resources that enabled mahajans to make purchases from the cultivators. Their funds were advanced in the form of hundis (notes of credit), which typically carried interest rates of 24 percent per annum, or z percent per month, and were redeemable within a prescribed period of time.^[43]

Buying involved a host of participants; so did selling. In part the overlap of the two structures derived from the fact that they were defined by the same factors: the geographical and social parameters of the marketing system and the size of the quantities involved. In part, the two systems resembled one another because buyers were often sellers and vice versa, particularly at the highest levels of exchange.

The apex in both hierarchies was occupied by wholesale merchants and traders. At the next rung brokers (dalals ) dominated in some areas by interposing themselves between the petty and wholesale traders and merchants. "In Patna they have the shopkeepers under a good deal of subjection, and scarcely any purchase, even to the value of one rupee, can be made without their interference, and of course they enhance the price by the amount of their commission."^[44]

Wholesale traders, merchants, and brokers supplied the petty retailers who maintained shops in the area's markets, both the primary and higher order ones. Although the designation employed for such shopkeepers varied from district to district in accordance with their different rolesfarosh , phariya , dokandar , and paikars were the four most common titles—they had similar retail functions, typically involving grain and other items such as salt, sugar, tobacco, seasonings, cotton, and firewood. A few sold oil, ghee, and cotton cloth as well. Which of these terms was applied to particular storekeepers apparently depended on the size of their retail

[42] Burgess, Colltr., Purnia, to Barlow, Subsecy., Rev., Jan. 5, 1795, Bengal Rev. Consltns. (Grain), Jan. 2 to Apr. 24, 1795, Feb. 13, no. 16; Routledge to Shore, Oct. 23, 1794, and Arbuthnot, Colltr., Tirhut, to Barlow, Nov. 10, 1794, Bengal Rev. Consltns., Grain, Oct. 31, no. 22 and Dec. 19, 1794, no. 1.

[43] G.J.B.T. Dalton, Deputy Colltr., Bhagalpur, to Colltr., Jan. 16, 1872, Bengal Jdcl. Procs., Nov.-Dec. 1872, Dec., nos. 258–59.

[44] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p. 697. Goldars served in this capacity in the town of Bihar (pp. 697–98).

business. Those called farosh were generally sellers of "very small quantities"; those labeled phariya dealt in larger amounts. Some petty shopkeepers were also known by the term parchuniya .^[45]

Distinctions based on the volume of transactions determined another category designated gullahpaikars . These individuals secured their supplies either directly from the peasants or from petty dealers; they then sold their stock in quantities (five seers or more) larger than those sold by the typical shopkeeper. Buyers seeking less had to turn to gullahphariyas , who had relatively little capital and dealt in smaller quantities. Parchuniyas also dealt in small amounts, although with capital ranging from fifty to four hundred rupees, it would seem that they engaged in transactions involving larger quantities than those handled by gullah phariyas . They were said to specialize in grain, but not rice.

A similar range of retailers bought and sold other goods. Salt was sold in small quantities by nimakpaikars and in even smaller amounts by nimakphariyas . The former had capital ranging from one hundred to five hundred rupees; in some areas they also dealt in tobacco and in such condiments as ginger, turmeric, and black pepper. The latter, although involved in the retail sale of "trifling quantities," were relatively prosperous in Patna and Daudnagar, where some were estimated to be "rich, and have capitals of from 100 to 4,000 rs." Both kind of retailers were also involved in the sale of ghee, sweets, and oil. Vendors of spices, tobacco, betel leaf, and other goods were similarly classified as paikars and phariyas , according to the size of their business and capital.^[46]

On the surface at least, the structure of exchange relations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries persisted into the second century of colonial rule. Consider the following identification of people involved in transporting agricultural produce from the fields to the

[45] Distinctions were made in Purnia among five different kinds of retailers on the basis of a host of variables: "1st., [were] Mahajans who have considerable capitals, and import by wholesale but sell by retail; 2nd., Paikars, who take, at once, from the merchant a considerable quantity of goods and retail them; 3rd., Those called Chandina Dokandars, who have what we would call a shop, that is, a house in which their goods are exposed for sale, but deal to a small extent; ₄ th., Aftabi Dokandars, who. . . have no stall, but sit on the ground in some corner of a street and retail their wares; ₅ th., Tahbazaris, who sit in the same manner, but they have no regular place, and attend on market-days only, going one day to one Hat and next day to another, whereas the Aftabi sits regularly from morning until evening every day, and his place is considered as his property." Buchanan, Purnea , p. 579; Bihar andPatna , pp. 685–87.

[46] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , pp. 687–88.

marketplace. It describes the structure obtaining during the early twentieth century:

The producers store their crop in their houses, after paying out on the threshing floor a good proportion of the dues of labourers and of the village artisans, as well as the rent of the landlord where that is paid in kind, as it still is in a substantial portion of the province. They draw on these stores throughout the year for their own consumption, but sell some soon after harvest to meet the demands of their creditors, or hand over the grain itself where the loan was taken and has to be paid in kind. Small parcels are sold from time to time to get money for purchases of necessities. Much of this surplus is brought to the primary markets [i.e., haats] by the producers themselves in small lots, but probably the greater part is collected by petty traders (beparis) , who purchases in the villages.. . . The rice . . . is sold again in the primary markets to the larger dealers.^[47]

Familiar also—although with minor differences—is the following description provided by a subdivisional officer in the 1870s: "The Beoparis, who bring grain on pack bullocks from the country to the markets, form the link between the producer and the wholesale seller. They trade on their own accounts, and limit their sales to the wholesale dealers who supply the retail vendors. Thus between the producer and the consumer there are three pairs of hands, each grasping its profit. In some instances the wholesale dealers keep one or more pack bullocks. But this is by no means a universal practice, and is a sign of small capital or of unusual energy."^[48]

In other words, cultivators who were not directly involved in marketing their own produce turned over their goods to the beoparis , thus initiating a relay that carried products to the different rungs of the local and regional marketing system. In the Patna subdivision of Barh, an area enjoying a "large trade in grain," "petty merchants" directed the movement of grain "from the producing villages to the chief markets on the Ganges."^[49] In the estimation of the Bihar Banking Enquiry Committee of 1929–30, the bulk of the surplus that entered the market made its way through petty traders (beoparis) who had made the rounds of the villages, buying directly from the cultivators.^[50]

[47] ReportoftheBiharBanking Committee , p. 61.

[48] "Annual Report 1872–73," Sasaram,J. A. E. Eyre, AGRPD, 1872–73, Appendix (hereafter Eyre report).

[49] AGRPD 1881–82. For similar accounts of beoparis working in other areas, see Eyre report.

[50] ReportoftheBiharBanking Committee , p. 61.

At the next level, as goods passed beyond the arena of the village and that of the periodic market, one finds the familiar figures of "commission agents called arhatdars " or the "goladar or dealer in grain" or merchants and wholesale traders of one sort or another. As much as nine-tenths of Patna's substantial trade in oilseeds and grain was said to pass through the hands of its arhatdars , who numbered fewer than twenty. In all, there were said to be only forty-five large firms controlling the bulk of that city's trade.^[51]

Although this structure of the local marketing system hierarchy in the early twentieth century bears a striking resemblance to its earlier counterpart, there were more substantial changes in the system than, say, a traveler, even of Veeraswamy's or Bholanauth's acuity of vision, could have observed from a brief encounter with local conditions. Indeed, a superficial comparison of structures cannot adequately gauge alterations in the two hierarchies resulting from both a sizable increase in numbers and a change in the social composition of participants involved in local marketing, particularly at the grassroots level. Nor can it discern alterations in roles and functions in the marketing system, especially of the petty traders.

Several factors account for these developments. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, as the volume of trade and the number of markets increased and as communications improved, many more people from the ranks of the dominant groups in village society turned to trade as a source of income. Rising prices of food grains also "meant that more people could afford to market their own grain."^[52] So did developments in railways and road building, because as transportation increasingly posed less of an obstacle, many more villagers possessed the ability to sell their own goods, either by relying on their own carts and cattle or by hiring those of others. The more even distribution of markets also encouraged this trend, as did the decline of the city of Patna, which led to the "the petty marts of the neighbouring districts" receiving "sup-

[51] Rattray report; S.C. Bayley, Commr., Patna, to GOB, no. 44R, June 17, 1875, P.C. Rev. Basta no. 326, 1877; Evidence of Rai Bahadur Durga Prasad, Registrar of Cooperative Societies, B & O and of Shambhu Dayal, Income-Tax Officer, Darbhanga, Bihar andOrissaProvincialBanking EnquiryCommittee , 1929–30, vol. 2, Evidence (Patna: Govt. Printing, 1930), pp. 7, 298.

[52] Colin M. Fisher, "Planters and Peasants: The Ecological Context of Agrarian Unrest on the Indigo Plantations of North Bihar, 1820–1920," in TheImperialImpact:Studies intheEconomicHistoryof AfricaandIndia , ed. Clive Dewey and A. G. Hopkins (London: Athlone Press, 1978), p. 123.

plies direct[ly] instead of having recourse to the intermediary storehouses of this city."^[53]

Such changes—particularly developments in communications facilitating easier and faster access to markets—led to the decline of the ladubeoparis as a specialized group of transporters in local-level trade. Not that they completely disappeared from sight in the course of the late nineteenth century. On the contrary, as in Shahabad of the 1870s, Telis were referred to as "oil-men" and "well-to-do," pursuing their "own special calling" and also owning "pack bullocks on which they convey oil and grain to market." But increasingly, the earlier distinction between grihasthabeoparis and ladubeoparis tended to disappear, as these different kinds of petty traders merged into one category, widely known simply as beoparis .^[54]

Perhaps most important, these trends were shaped by the growing prosperity of the better-off peasants, a condition that has been widely interpreted as indicating the emergence of a rich peasantry in many regions of the subcontinent.^[55] And it is this development that ultimately generated the dynamic for establishing the commanding roles that petty traders and moneylenders carved out in the village society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A close examination of the identities of petty traders in this period further highlights these developments. At the lowest rung, as in the first century of colonial rule, the marketing system was activated by peasants transacting business largely with "creditors" and "petty traders" not infrequently roles played by the same persons—who were drawn from the ranks of moneylenders, substantial cultivators, petty landholders, or some combination of these roles. Petty traders, in other words, continued to play the instrumental role in initiating the movement of grain from the fields to the marketing centers. Indeed, throughout India "village merchants constitute[d] one of the most important assembling agencies," especially for food grains such as rice.^[56]

[53] Commr., Patna, to BOR, no. 731R, Aug. 25, 1882, P.C. Rev. Basta no. 337, 1882–83.

[54] Eyre report. See also Hunter, AccountofGaya , p. 83, regarding "bardiyabeparis . "

[55] E.g., see Shri Prakash, "Models of Peasant Differentiation and Aspects of Agrarian Economy in Colonial India," MAS1 9 (1985): esp. 554-56.

[56] MarketingofRiceinIndia , p. 250. B. B. Mukherjee, Co-operationandRuralWelfareinIndia (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1929), pp. 88, 91, emphasizes that the moneylender and dealer were often the same person.

As in the earlier period, petty traders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the economically and socially better-off inhabitants of a locality because of their control over economic resources and because of their higher social and political status. Many were moneylenders, although not all mahajans dabbled in trade. But the inducements for moneylenders to enter trade were manifold because of the superior resources they enjoyed in village society. In many respects, they were the village-level controllers, their authority and influence in the locality confirmed by their recruitment as the rent collectors (thikadars ) for the local zamindars. This was often the case in the great estate of Hathwa: its thikadars were frequently drawn from the ranks of village mahajans . According to the manager of the great estate of Darbhanga, "[I]n nearly all cases the jeyt ryots are the village mahajuns, and have. . . much power over the ryots."^[57] Village headmen and mahajans were also invariably the "well-to-do persons, cultivating the largest holdings in their villages."^[58] So great was the moneylender's "personal influence in the village" that an economics professor residing in the region declared that he was "looked upon as a semi-landlord."^[59]

Superior resources enabled mahajans to become the underwriters of the trade in agricultural goods, if not the actual traders. "The village mahajan," testified the secretary of the Bihar and Orissa Provincial Cooperative Bank in 1929, "continues to this day to be the chief agricultural financier due to various reasons, the chief amongst which are his local influence and his easy accessibility. He finances the agriculturist for all purposes." In many areas, "in ordinary years, the ryot makes over to the mahajun his whole crop; the mahajun pays his rent for him, and keeps him in grain for the rest of the year."^[60] As the "person of greatest consequence next to the landlord," the mahajan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries banked on the advantages of

[57] Cited in R. P. Jenkins, Commr., Patna, to BOR, no. 119, Dec. 18, 1871, P.C., Land Rev. A Bundles, Jan.-July 1872, Feb.; G.J.S. Hodgkinson, Manager, to Colltr., Saran, no. 436, Sept. 25 , 1872, Bengal Rev. Procs., Oct.-Dec. 1872, Nov., no. 121. See also my LimitedRaj , pp. 126–32, 169.

[58] W. W. Hunter, AStatisticalAccountof Bengal , vol. 13, Tirhut (London: Trubner and Co., 1877), p. 75. For a similar observation, see PSR , p. 40.

[59] Evidence of B. B. Mukharji, Professor of Economics, G. B. B. College, Muzaffarpur, BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 2, pp. 272–73. See also his RuralWelfare inIndia , pp. 88–91.

[60] R. Mangles, to Commr., June 28, 1866, Bengal Rev. Procs., Aug.-Oct. 1866, Aug., no. 127; Evidence of Rai Sahib Mihir Nath Ray and V. M. Thakore, BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 2, p. 76.

his "semi-landlord status" to stake out a role for himself in trade that was not unlike that of his counterpart—both the grihastha and ladubeopari—in the first century of colonial rule. According to one local source, the mahajan in Bihar

lends in grain as well as money. The terms are high: grain lent in kind has to be repaid in harvest time in kind worth twenty-five to fifty per cent. more. Money is frequently lent on short loans at 1 anna per rupee a month, that is to say at the yearly rate of seventy-five per cent. When lent in large amounts on a stamped bond[,] the rate varies from twelve to thirty per cent.

.. The majority of the villagers will owe him something and make use of his services as a banker. Their grain is kept by him, and he will frequently finance them through bad seasons.. . . When once, however, they are in his power, it is difficult for them to extricate themselves, and they are compelled to sell their grain to him at rates considerably lower than those obtaining in the nearest bazar [sic ].^[61]

Especially in south Bihar, where rent continued to be largely paid in kind (bhaoli system) rather than cash, village notables were well equipped to take on the roles of village mahajans and petty traders because a substantial portion of the village surplus ended up in their stores.^[62]

Whereas poor cultivators and landless laborers typically had little or nothing stored, well-to-do cultivators were estimated to have sufficient stocks to last at least three to four months. In comparison, goladars and mahajans had the equivalent of six months' supply of food for their localities. An investigation of grain holdings in the 1870s revealed that surplus grain was invariably in the hands of village headmen or petty zamindars, who used it for their own family consumption, for seed, and as a commodity for sale in the neighboring markets. The "mass of the people," on the other hand, had "no stores of grain, but purchase their supplies in the nearest markets."^[63]

But petty traders and mahajans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also differed from their earlier counterparts in at

[61] F. C. Harrison, "The Behar Ryot at Home," CalcuttaReview 91, no. 172 (1890): 283. Harrison was a magistrate in Darbhanga in the early 1870s.

[62] E.J. Barton, Colltr., Gaya, to Commr., Patna, Nov. 14, 1878, no. 432, P.C. Rev. Basta no. 329, 1878–79. See also Derbyshire, "Economic Change and Railways," pp. 532–33, regarding the trend to reduce "grain store" levels in the late nineteenth century because of the growing reliability of securing supplies from elsewhere.

[63] "Narrative of Scarcity and Relief in Sarun . . . for Week Ending. . . 29th Nov. 1873" and "Narrative of. .. 24th Jan. 1874," GOB, "Famine Narratives," Nov. 14 to Dec. 31, 1873 and Jan. 2 to Feb. 5, 1874, nos. 8, 9, and 10.

least one important respect: they increasingly came from the higher range of social and economic backgrounds. To employ the language of the Bihar and Orissa Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee of 1929–30, "amateurs" were on the rise "in the sphere of rural credit." What the committee meant by the rise of "amateurs"—a development it considered to be one of its most striking findings—was "not only the landlord, who has always played some part in the business, especially by making grain advances to his tenants, but the substantial cultivator as well, who has made a comparatively recent entry into the field."^[64]

The rise of the "amateur" moneylender, a development that obviously suggests a growing "amateur" presence in trade as well, further highlights the changing composition of the groups involved in local-level trade. To hear peasants residing in the vicinity of the Muzaffarpur village of Baghi tell it in the late 1920s, "Nearly all the borrowing is from the richer men in the villages, who are now of a number of castes. Forty or fifty years ago[,] two or three professional mahajans used to finance 15 to 20 villages, but now many more people lend money."^[65]

A 1920s study of more than 160 villages in Muzaffarpur found an average of three moneylenders per village, with some villages supporting as many as ten. More than 50 percent of these moneylenders were agriculturists, 20 percent were landholders and banias , and the remaining io percent were "outsiders," such as Kabulis and Punjabis.^[66] This mix of castes, particularly castes generally identified as "agriculturists" and "landholders and banias ," also shows up in the identifications of the petty traders in Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur involved in the Nepal trade. Mostly "men of small means," they specialized in importing the grain and oilseeds of Nepal into north Bihar, where they turned their supplies over to wholesale traders and merchants. They included not only the assortment of castes identified as Banias, such as Khatris and Aggarwals, but also several Sudra castes, who were closely identified

[64] J. A. Hubback, IndianBankingwithSpecialReferencetoBiharandOrissa , PatnaUniversity , BanailiReadershipLecture , 1930–31 (Patna: Patna University, 1931), pp. 14–15.

[65] "Note of Village Enquiry at Baghi on 8th Nov. 1929," BiharandOrissaProvincialBankingEnquiry Committee1929–30 , vol. 3, Interviews andEnquiries (Patna: Govt. Printing, 1930), p. 201.

[66] Evidence of Secy. of B & O Provincial Cooperative Bank, Bihar BankingCommittee , vol. 2, p. 76; Sadashiva Prasad, BiharCo-operation , HajipurSubdivision (Patna: B. & O. Co-operative Press, 1930), pp. 53–54.

with the bania category, especially Telis; Brahmins and Rajputs, too, were featured among these petty traders.^[67]

The detailed village-by-village data on moneylenders and petty traders in Saran point to an equally diverse caste composition: Rasauli's nine moneylenders included two Brahmins, two Rajputs, and two Muslims; Matihania Bind's moneylenders were five Brahmins and one Sonar; and in other villages, credit was advanced by Kalwars. Throughout the thanas of Mirganj and Mashrak, moneylenders were drawn from a variety of castes, although the largest number in each case reflected the "dominant caste" pattern of the locality: in the former Brahmins, in the latter Rajputs.^[68] In the district as a whole, Rajputs and Bhumihar Brahmins predominated as moneylenders; they accounted for approximately 15 percent of the population but 57 percent of its landholding rights and 27 percent of its tenant holdings. Credit, in other words, was generally extended by substantial raiyats and petty maliks— almost anyone who had surplus cash or grain. "There are in fact," to use the words of one report, "no money-lenders and pawnbrokers, pure and simple."^[69]

The sizable increase in carts (and cattle)—the predominant means of overland transportation—and their ownership by a wider circle of people similarly points to the enlarged pool of recruitment for traders and moneylenders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This change resulted from improvements in roads, which launched a "revolution in the art of cart-building" that made carts more affordable. Whereas the standard cart of the past had been constructed "with a view to strength," the new cart was made largely with bamboos, being "well adapted for going over fair-weather roads, . .light, and, above all, cheap. The gari [the old cart] costs Rs. 25 to Rs. 30, a sagar [the new cart] can be made for less than a third of that sum." Consequently, as George Grierson, the subdivisional officer of Madhubani, noted in the 1870s, the "cheapness of the cart. . . has greatly widened the classes of men who go to Nepal to buy grains."^[70]

[67] C. E. R. Girdlestone, Resident, Nepal, to Offg. Secy., GOI, Foreign Dept., Sept. 19, 1876, Bengal Statistical Procs., Trade and Traffic, 1876–77, Jan. 1877, nos. 5–6. See also DistrictCensus1891 , Muzaffapur , p. 131; DistrictCensusReports , 1891 , Darbhanga , pp. 151–52, 157.

[68] Compiled from Mirganj thana nos. 1–1064, 11 vols., Mashrak thana nos. 1–285, 3 vols. See also Rasauli village, Mashrak thana no. 71; Matihania Bind, Mirganj thana no. 3, SVN; Yang, LimitedRaj , pp. 169–71.

[69] DarbhangaCensus , 1891 , p. 161; Yang, LimitedRaj , pp. 344–45.

[70] Cited in AGRPD, 1879–80. No doubt, it also enabled many more people to go "on the road" for pilgrimages and melas.

The widespread accessibility and, presumably, ownership of carts also explains the diminishing importance of the separate category of "trading carriers." Not that the latter category of traders completely disappeared from the scene, but village-based petty traders were increasingly capable of making their own transportation arrangements. No wonder the number of carts in Patna Division increased by leaps and bounds: by almost 140 percent over a period of three decades: from 83,713 in 1913 to 126,182 in 1930 to 200,786 in 1940.^[71]

The rising star of the rich peasantry can also be plotted from statistics regarding landholdings. Survey and settlement figures from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveal that some peasants were gaining at the expense of others; moneylenders in particular were increasingly involved in buying up or in securing mortgages of tenant rights. The most dramatic shift occurred in Champaran, where evidence from the 1890s and second decade of the twentieth century clearly documents the growing presence of moneylenders. By the latter period they accounted for 46 percent of the sales and 58 percent of the area mortgaged. And in Muzaffarpur, where the inroads were much more modest in scale, the trend was much the same-moneylenders were responsible for 12.9 percent of the overall transfers but raiyats 78.6 percent. As one administrator noted, the "tendency [was] for the land to pass out of the hands of Koeris and Kurmis and lower cultivating classes into the hands of Brahmins and Rajputs."^[72]

Furthermore, well-to-do peasants and moneylenders, from whose ranks most petty traders were drawn, consolidated their strategic roles in the local economy and society by also taking over the leaseholders of periodic marketplaces. Although the land on which the haats stood generally belonged to landholders, the latter typically sought renters who could act "as brokers or go-betweens between the buyer and seller and as referees on any matter of dispute. They are the bazaar weighmen also."^[73] These lessees recouped the costs incurred in acquiring the

[71] Compiled from "Census of Live-stock in Bihar. . . during Year 1913," B & O Rev. Procs., Agric., Jan.-Mar. 1915, Feb., no. 19; GOBi, ReportontheLive-stock CensusofBiharfortheYear1940 (Confidential) (Patna: Govt. Printing, 1942), pp. 14- 15.

[72] MSR , p. 33; J. A. Sweeney, FinalReporton theSurveyandSettlement Operations(Revision)inthe DistrictofChamparan(1913-1919) (Patna: Govt. Printing, 1922), PP. 334-35.

[73] In Shahabad buyers paid one pice, sellers half to three-quarters of a pice. S. C. Bayley, Commr., to Secy., Rev. Dept., no. 336, Aug. 1, 1872, P.C. Monthly Bundles, vol. 1, Basta 6, 1872-73.

lease of the haat(haatwai) by levying a fee of one-half to one pice per rupee of sale made by a seller. Landholders also benefited from fees paid by shopkeepers, with retailers of such items as grain, spices, cotton, and fish generally paying more than those specializing in vegetables. Income from the haats of Muzaffarpur alone were said to yield 150,000 rupees; that from the entire province of Bihar and Orissa more than 5 million rupees.^[74]

The greatly extended circuits over which petty traders conducted their business further emphasizes the rising prominence of petty traders in the rural marketing system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some beoparis even competed with the larger town-based traders, as was the case in Sitamarhi subdivision, from which the pack bullocks and carts of traders from Hajipur in the south and from Saran, Champaran, and Darbhanga returned loaded with the area's abundant surplus grain. That many of them were petty traders can be gauged from the fact that most of these transactions involved small quantities, and most of the purchases went directly to stock the periodic marketplaces. In fact, the bulk of the surplus produce marketed passed through the hands of petty traders (beoparis ).^[75]

A late-nineteenth-century source estimated that twenty miles was the perimeter of the petty trader's circuit, a distance completed in a day or two at most. The petty trader was a familiar figure because he served as the beopari of a specific set of haats that he frequented regularly. Visits as often as three times a month to restock the retail shops of the market were not uncommon; nor were profits of one anna per rupee's worth of transaction, or a return of more than 6 percent for such endeavors. In another sense, too, these traders were "not necessarily or even ordinarily strangers" because "[f]requently they are the more substantial raiyats themselves, but the village money-lender probably still does the bulk of the business."^[76] In the second century of colonial rule as well, some

[74] L. F. Morshead, Offg. Commr., Tirhut, to Secy., BOR, B & O Rev. Procs., Apr.June 1915, Apr., no. 12, enclosure; Bayley to Secy., no. 336, Aug. 1, 1872, P.C. Monthly Bundles, Basta 6, 1872–73. See also pp. 201–6, regarding illegal market cesses collected by landholders and others.

[75] ReportoftheBiharBanking Committee , p. 61; T. Norman, Colltr., Muzaffarpur, to Commr., Patna, Nov. 19, 1883, and W.R. Bright, SDO, Sitamarhi, to Colltr., Muzaffarpur, Nov. 12, 1883, P.C. Rev. Basta no. 288, 1883. See also Prasad, BiharCooperation , p. 54, for an estimate that moneylenders averaged an investment of fifteen hundred rupees in their businesses.

[76] Hubback, IndianBanking , p. 31; C.T. Metcalfe, Offg. Commr., to Secy., GOB, Jan. 23, 1876, Bengal Statistical Procs., Drought, 1876–77, Feb. 1876.

petty traders, along with the village-based beoparis , were itinerant traders who "wander from village to village buying grain."^[77]

Transactions in agricultural produce were also conducted at the periodic markets themselves, where petty banias assembled on haat days. Often their customers were women, especially when small amounts were involved. Government reports suggest that these women were generally not aware of competitive market rates because they were not likely to walk an extra mile or two to another haat in search of a more favorable price for their offerings. Moreover, they felt pressed to sell quickly because they needed to generate cash to make purchases of such "necessities . . . as cloth, salt and spices, or petty luxuries."^[78] Some enterprising individuals, however, were known to monitor prices at the different markets. Mawal Teli's two sons, Thajwa and Ghughulia, for instance, went to different markets in search of the best price for grain and rope, and once having secured that, they would sell it in the haat of their own village.^[79]

A small quantity of food crops was sold at market by the cultivators themselves. This was a growing practice, especially among the larger cultivators. For some, their own village offered a ready outlet because it was a haat , as in the case of Pakaha and Silhauri. Others relied on neighboring markets. Cultivators who had surplus grain in the periodic market of Shamdas Bagahi sold it to their village banias; some enterprising inhabitants, however, cut out the middlemen and became shopkeepers themselves. For people residing in proximity of higher-level markets, such as those of the village of Dharampur, there was the option of seeking a better price at the standard market (in this case, that of Amnaur) rather than relying on their neighborhood haat .^[80]

A small quantity of grain also reached the hands of beoparis through pallowalas , buyers of small quantities of grain who generally sold their purchases to bazaar banias or larger dealers. Many petty banias who sold

[77] GOB, ReportontheAdministrationof theLicenseTaxinBengal fortheYear1880–81 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1881), p. 18.

[78] ReportoftheBiharBanking Committee , p. 61.

[79] "Budget of Mawal . . . of Village Pachlakhi. . .," ChanakyaSociety , 9thAnnualReport , 1918–19 , p. 93. Although the development of railways generated an all-India market that evened out regional price levels for medium- and low-value goods, price differentials at the local level, between town and site of production, for instance, persisted, providing enterprising cultivators and traders a small margin for profit. See Derbyshire, "Economic Change and Railways," pp. 528–29; Hurd, "Railways," pp. 745–46.

[80] Shamdas Bagahi, Mirganj thana no. 410; Dharampur, Parsa thana no. 129; Pakaha and Silhauri, Parsa thana nos. 59 and 61, SVN.

goods on retail, such as in village Rajapur where they dealt in spices, tobacco, salt, and other minor items, in turn also sold to beoparis (in this case salt and saltpeter). Another trickle of grain involved petty banias operating through a barter system by which villagers turned in grain to them in exchange for "necessaries" at the shops of the banias . Such transactions were conducted particularly near the end of the harvest or after the harvest when surplus grain was plentiful.^[81]

In addition, developments in trade and communications also ushered in a new presence in many localities: representatives of dealers from other areas. Some of these "dealers" were actually large firms, generally based in Patna or Calcutta. The three most prominent firms in Patna were Messrs. Ralli Brothers and Messrs. N.J. Valetta and Company, which together accounted for more than half of that city's sizable export trade in oilseeds, and a Parsi firm with headquarters in Bombay that dealt in wheat and linseed. Firms based in Calcutta also played a significant role in the oilseed trade of north Bihar, particularly that of Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur, their agents operating out of Darbhanga and collecting on behalf of the Calcutta market. But although firms constituted a new element on the trading scene, at the local and village levels their representatives were intermediaries and agents who were essentially petty traders. In other words, these firms too relied on the village banias as the most efficacious conduit for the surplus of the countryside.^[82]

Indeed, throughout north India, village-level beoparis initiated the relay that transferred agricultural goods from the fields to the markets: "It does not make any real difference whether they carry on their activities on their own and sell the commodities to the merchants in the markets and towns, or serve big dealers in a regular manner, or are engaged as agents on commission and buy on behalf of their principals, and deliver the produce to them.. . . [T]heir main job is to collect the agricultural produce from villages and village markets and to carry it to the wholesale mandis and town."^[83]

[81] "Report on the Village Jolhatwa. . .," Chanakya Society , 9thAnnualReport , 1918-19 , pp. 84-85; Rajapur, Mirganj thana no. 395, SVN; ReportoftheBiharBankingCommittee , p. 127.

[82] Hunter, AccountofPatna , p. 169; Bright to Colltr., Nov. 12, 1883, P.C.'s Rev. Basta no. 288, 1883. In the wheat trade too, Ralli Brothers, for instance, in Patna City, would only deal with petty traders. See D. B. Allen, Assistant to Director of Agricultural Dept. to Commr., Patna, Dec. 2, 1885, Bengal Rev. Procs., Aug.-Oct. 1886, App. A.

[83] Husain, AgriculturalMarketing , p. 101.

Familiar also is the following description from Sind, where the village-based petty trader relied on his superior economic, social, and political resources to carve out a dominant position in the village society and economy: "The village bania was the lynchpin of the system, occupying a pivotal position as merchant and moneylender. As merchant, he was a middleman. He bought produce from the cultivators at the threshing floor; some he kept for retailing locally, the rest he re-sold to the dealers. His position as a trader made him a natural source of credit and so he was also a moneylender."^[84]

Although they comprised the linchpin of the rural marketing system, beoparis did not always monopolize the system; rather, they vied with one another for the spoils of trade. Furthermore, they also faced competition from another quarter. Increasingly, more and more cultivators elected to bypass petty traders and strike their own deals. An eyewitness to this new trend, A. P. MacDonnell reported in the 1870s that the development of roads in Darbhanga had prompted many more people from the northeast area of Madhubani to use carts to carry their surplus grain to Darbhanga town. In his words, the "result was . . .strings of ryots' carts bringing grain . . .to sell, while other strings of carts from Sarun and South-West Mozufferpore were proceeding to the rice country as usual to buy."^[85] Such initiative was also in evidence in the early 1880s in Muzaffarpur, when grain shortages were made up by importations from the rice-producing areas east of Darbhanga and from Nepal, much of this conducted by "villagers from all parts of the district, who travelled together in considerable bodies, taking their own carts and pack-bullocks with them."^[86]

A conspicuous part of this new trend was the growing presence of women, whose rising numbers in the throngs of mela-goers and pilgrims in the late nineteenth century has already been noticed. In the words of one contemporary observer, "One meets on the roads the string of raiyats and their womenfolk with their bhangi[bahangi , the net used

[84] David Cheesman, "'The Omnipresent Bania': Rural Moneylenders in NineteenthCentury Sind," MAS1 6 (1982): 450.

[85] A. P. MacDonnell, Offg. Colltr., Darbhanga, to Commr., Patna, no. 542G, June 22, 1877, with AGRPD 1876–77, Appendix B. This report also notes that because peasants had secured better prices by taking their grain to Darbhanga than by selling to the traders coming to their villages, the practice of going to the town market would continue.

[86] AGRPD 1883–84, p. 24.

to carry goods with a sling pole] loads and headloads as well as the bepari with his pack pony or bullock."^[87]

By the early twentieth century the movement of agricultural surplus from the sites of production to the primary markets by beoparis as well as by the cultivators themselves was so commonplace that observers found it difficult to gauge "what proportion of the principal staples is sold in the villages and what proportion is brought in by the cultivator to the market. Both methods of first sale are common enough."^[88] The testimony of the villagers of Rampur Kumharkole in Muzaffarpur confirms that both methods were employed: "We sell our produce either to banias or other villagers coming to our doors for the purpose[,] or sometimes we take it for sale to banias of Mahnar road (a market at a distance of about two miles from this village) which is done according to individual suit and convenience."^[89]

But petty traders expanding their trading horizons and enterprising cultivators expanding into petty trading in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not necessarily two distinct categories of people. The rise of both categories in the nineteenth century stemmed from the same source: an emerging well-to-do peasantry. Many had at least a foot in the door of moneylending as well. These developments saw not only an overall surge in the numbers of people involved in trade but also the representation of many new faces in the ranks of peasants drawn from the highest echelons in the social and economic hierarchy of village society.

The rise of a prosperous peasantry solidly anchored in the local political, economic, and social systems was attained at the expense of the rest of village society. As was noted in one local study of marketing from the 1930s, "The tendency is for a more prosperous ryot to buy up produce from the poorer ones and start as a middleman."^[90] Declining returns from cultivation—even as deindustrialization added numbers to the ranks of cultivators—therefore became an "alarming symptom in the. . . condition of Behar" in the late nineteenth century, a condition that made it impossible for many to earn a subsistence solely from agri-

[87] Hubback, IndianBanking , p . 30.

[88] Ibid.

[89] "Village Rampur Kumharkole," by Maulavi M. A. Ahsan, of Co-operative Department, BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 2, p. 834.

[90] B. B. Mukherjee, AgriculturalMarketingin India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1937), p. 18.

culture. Consequently, most turned to other sources of income—according to one study of a village in Darbhanga, as much as 63 percent of the total population. For the overwhelming majority of these villagers, perhaps as much as 89 percent, that meant hiring out their labor.^[91]

In one respect, however, the categorization of moneylenders-cum-petty traders as "amateur" or "professional" represented a significant distinction. In the popular imagination professional moneylenders were invariably maligned. Consider Sadashiva Prasad's detailed account of moneylenders in the Muzaffarpur subdivision of Hajipur: it divides them into the four categories of landholders, banias , agriculturists, and outsiders (i.e., Kabulis and Punjabis) and then singles out the banias and the outsiders for condemnation. The former are labeled "insidious," "niggardly," and "thrifty," the latter "the worst and most oppressive."^[92]

Petty traders characteristically initiated the next round of exchanges by taking their supplies to the local dealers, the goladars , or to commission agents called arhatdars . Along with capital, an arhatdar typically possessed "a good pucka [brick] house in the centre of the grain market. There he will house the beparees from the mofussil, coming with their grain to sell them to large dealers, or for the purpose of exportation by the rail or river. A commission of one pice per maund is charged for the goods so housed; but it often happens that the beparees borrow money from the owner of the aruth house on the security of their goods before they are cleared. In that case the aruthdar freely advances the money at 12 annas per cent., and realizes the principal and interest from the sale proceeds."^[93]

The principal dealers in the town of Muzaffarpur were Badri Lal and Fakira Lal, who specialized in grain as well in oilseeds. As befit their position as grain merchants, they had golas for storing their supplies.^[94] By the late nineteenth century golas capable of holding substantial quantities of grain were commonplace. Granaries of ten thousand maunds and over were widespread in the markets of Saran; in some of

[91] Harrison, "Behar Ryot," p. 288; BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 2, pp. 127, 277. See also my LimitedRaj , pp. 181–205, for a discussion of seasonal migration as an option for many peasants.

[92] BiharCo-operation , pp. 49–53.

[93] Syud Ameer Hossein, "Mahajani Statistics."

[94] "Note of Interview with Traders and Indigenous Bankers at Muzaffarpur," Nov. 9, 1929, BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 3, p. 206; Testimony of Registrar of Cooperative Societies, BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 2, p. 7. At the haat level as well as at the level of the higher-order markets, the more substantial peasants were generally the ones who sold their produce directly to these local dealers.

the larger markets such as Siwan and Maharajganj, "superior" golas stored as much as twenty thousand maunds. As before, however, the preferred strategy was to dispose of stocks as quickly as possible. Thus, even large markets of Mirganj and Katia were not known for holding large stocks of grain. Rather, dealers there made arrangements with merchants and brokers from nearby Champaran and Gorakhpur to provide a "regular supply."^[95]

Although Badri Lal and Fakira Lal of Muzaffarpur did not engage in this line of business, some of their fellow goladars dealt in grain—they gave the sellers an advance of up to 90 percent of the value and then had to sell it on behalf of their clients. Arhatdars also made money by charging traders for the use of their godowns. A fee termed choongi in Gaya market extracted one pice or a quarter of a seer of grain or other goods on every rupee's worth of goods sold by traders. Patna arhatdars , who handled as much as nine-tenths of that city's substantial trade in oilseeds and food grains, generally charged a fee of a half percent for acting as "commission agents" on behalf of their trader clients.^[96]

In the words of one official report, the typical circuit of grain and markets in the region can be described as follows: "From the haats and from the hands of the petty beparis, grain was sold again in the primary markets to larger dealers, who are sometimes, but not as a rule, agents of merchants on a large scale, and thus the grain finds its way to the secondary markets at the main road junctions, the district headquarters towns, or railway centres. The primary markets are usually to be found every 6 miles. In Bihar there is, as a rule, a large mart every 15 miles, where grain can be stored in a warehouse, it is generally to these that the larger producers and the beparis take their grain rather than to the local hats , where commodities of all kinds are bought and sold once a week."^[97]

If the fundamental rung of marketing can be characterized as increasingly occupied by "amateurs," the highest rungs can be described

[95] J. C. Drummond, Offg. Colltr., Saran, to Offg. Secy., GOB, no. 5Ct., Nov. 10, 1873, Bengal Scarcity and Relief Procs., Dec. 1874, no. 44; Lt.-Col. A. Mackenzie, Asst. Commissary General, on special duty, to Commr., Patna, no. 592, June 13, 1874, Bengal Scarcity and Relief Procs., Sept. 1874, 3435–37. See also Famine Narratives, e.g., Jan. 24, 1874.

[96] Rattray report; Bayley to GOB, no. 44R, June 17, 1875, P.C. Rev. Basta no. 326, 1877; License-TaxReport , 1880—81; "Interview with Traders and Bankers at Muzaffarpur," 1929, BiharBankingCommittee , vol. 3, p. 206; Testimony of Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Bihar BankingCommittee , vol. 2, p. 7.

[97] ReportoftheBiharBanking Committee , p. 61.

as increasingly dominated by professional traders and merchants, for whom moneylending and banking were declining in significance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Furthermore, their ranks in the nineteenth century were filled increasingly by members of the socalled bania castes, mostly Marwaris and Aggarwals, but also Khatris; some were also Agrahris and Muslims.

A Marwari and Aggarwal presence in the ranks of traders and merchants dates back at least to the Mughal period, when Jains from the western Indian areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat, many of whom were Marwari Banias, settled in eastern India in the train of Rajputs allied to Mughal rulers. Their arrival in eastern India marked a return of sorts, because the region was the site of many holy places associated with Jainism. By the seventeenth century Jains had taken up residence in Bihar; by the 1630s Patna was considered to be a "homeland" of the Jains. As the autobiography of the seventeenth-century Jain merchant Banarsidas recounts, his business trips carried him across north India, from Agra to Patna. The career of Fateh Chand, better known by the designation Jagat Seth given to him by the Mughal emperor in 1722, offers another illustration of the extensive circuit of contacts developed by Jain merchants. Fateh Chand's grandfather started off in Patna in 1652, and his father moved on to Dacca and then to Murshidabad, from which Jagat Seth, remembered in Ghulam Husain's history as "a famous banker. . . whose wealth was reckoned by corors [crore or one hundred lakhs, i.e., 10 million], and who has never had his equal," commanded a credit network extending across the subcontinent. In the age of revolution, this family became bankers to regional powers, both the nawab of Bengal and the emerging "English."^[98]

A much more substantial in-migration of trading communities into the region occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when Marwaris fashioned intermediary positions for themselves in the new circuits of trade (and pilgrimage) emerging under British rule. By the late eighteenth century, through their involvement in the trade of cash crops such as opium, nonagricultural goods such as cotton and wool shawls, and grain, this community extended its trading bases down

[98] Surendra Gopal, "Jain Merchants in Eastern India under the Great Mughals," in BusinessCommunitiesofIndia: AHistoricalPerspective , ed. Dwijendra Tripathi (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984), pp. 69–75, esp. pp. 75–77; Banarsidas, Ardhakathanaka .

the Ganges to Mirzapur, Patna, Bhagalpur, and the rising metropolis of Calcutta.^[99]

The stories of two of Patna's premier firms, Messrs. Kallu Babu Lallu Babu and Gurumukh Rai Radha Krishna Jalan, add details to this colonial phase of the history of Marwaris and Aggarwals. A firm engaged in diverse enterprises, Kallu Babu Lallu Babu, as noted previously, traces its roots in the region back to the eighteenth century. Originally from Ramgarh in Rajasthan, the Aggarwal firm of Gurmukh Rai Radha Krishna Jalan established its Patna chapter in the mid-nineteenth century, when Gurumukh Rai started a grain and cloth business in the city. His sons, Madan Gopal, Nandu Lal, Gajju Lal, and Radha Krishna continued the family firm until 1915, when they divided into two separate firms. Of these four, Radha Krishna became the major success story, rising to considerable prominence, his status recognized by the honorific rank of Rai Bahadur, accorded him by the colonial government, and by his official positions in the city as the "native member" on the Patna council and as a leading member of the Patna Chamber of Commerce. As for his commercial interests, they extended from his banking business to his paper business, registered under the trademark of the Bengal Paper Mill, to the Darbhanga Sugar Company, in which the Maharaja of Darbhanga was a partner. In Bankipur the Jalan family had an arhatiya (commission) business under the name of Messrs. Jalan and Sons; in Calcutta the same business was transacted through Messrs. Gurumukh Rai Radha Krishna. Radha Krishna Jalan's family established as the primary residence and head office the fort in Patna built by the ruler Sher Shah (the Qila House), which is indicative of the standing the family attained in the city and the region. He was also responsible for erecting the Satyanarainji temple in the city; in addition, the family was the major patron of art in the region, including of the Patna School of painters.^[100]

By the late nineteenth century, Aggarwals and Marwaris were a formidable presence in the region's wholesale trade. They apparently gained entrée to the wholesale trade through their growing ascendancy as moneylenders and bankers and through their involvement in the

[99] Timberg, TheMarwaris , pp. 10–11, 43–48.

[100] BharatiyaVyapariyonkiParichya , pp. 8–10; C. R. Bhandari, B. L. Soni, and K. L. Gupta, AgarwalJatikaItihas (Bhanpura: Agrawal History Office, 1937), pp. 244–45; Jnanendra Nath Kumar, TheGenealogicalHistoryofIndia , part 2 (Calcutta: Victoria Press, 1949), p. 160.

long-distance trade in nonfood items. By the late nineteenth century they-particularly the Aggarwals-dominated the hundi (bills of exchange) business, for example, in Darbhanga. The Marwaris of that district, on the other hand, enjoyed a lucrative export trade in piece goods from Calcutta and were "said to be the wealthiest of all classes of the Hindu trading community." By the late nineteenth century, Marwaris virtually monopolized the cloth trade in Darbhanga, a position attained at the expense of Aggarwals, "who were the chief dealers in piece-goods" until the mid-nineteenth century.^[101]

Banking, moneylending, and cloth were also the stock businesses of Aggarwals and Marwaris in other areas. In Saran, Aggarwals monopolized the positions of bankers and moneylenders, particularly in Chapra and Siwan. Chapra's Marwaris, who had established themselves in that town in the 1830s and 1840s, had by the late nineteenth century taken over the cloth and cotton trade. They imported cloth principally from Calcutta and Banaras and cotton from Mirzapur, Agra, and Kanpur at an annual worth of forty-six to fifty lakh rupees. They then supplied dealers in the interior of the district, in Champaran, Nepal, and Gorakhpur. An 1891 report described the district's Marwaris as the "principal dealers in cloths .. .found almost at all big markets . ..[, and [they] are[,] generally speaking[,] wealthy." Similarly, Aggarwals and Marwaris played leading roles throughout the region and were described variously as the premier "trading classes" or simply as the "bankers and traders."^[102]

In the course of staking out their position in the trade, banking, and moneylending, Aggarwals and Marwaris displaced other people of bania castes, as well as a variety of Sudra castes whose representation in the ranks of petty traders have already been noted. For instance, in Darbhanga, Aggarwals and Marwaris were relative latecomers, nouveaux riches compared to the Khatris, who were the "old inhabitants of the district." But by the late nineteenth century the Khatris were regarded as having "once [been] the wealthiest class" because they had been "superseded by the Agarwalas who . . . monopolised the banking

[101] DistrictCensus , 1891 , pp. 160, 155, 161. Immigrants from Rajasthan to Bihar numbered 4,000 in 1891 and around 11,000 in 1901. This total does not include those people already residing in the region. Marwaris in the region were mostly Aggarwals, and ranged in number from a low of 401 in Champaran to over 3,000 in Gaya. See also, Timberg, Marwaris , p. 201

[102] DistrictCensus , 1891 , pp. 131, 51, 79; Hunter, AccountofShahabad , p. 193; AccountofChamparan , p. 242; AGRPD 1876-77.

and money-lending business." In Shahabad, Aggarwals advanced at the expense of Agrahris, who, although active in the district since the late seventeenth century, were by the late nineteenth century principally involved in the "import [of] Manchester piece-goods."^[103]

Because of their predominance in trade and banking, the better-off banias , especially Aggarwals, Marwaris, and Khatris, although belonging to the third highest varna (class) category of Vaishya varna, sought higher-caste ranking. Often regarded as the equals of the literate Kayasths, these groups aspired to even higher status, that of Kshatriya ranking. In fact, Muzaffarpur's Aggarwals and Khatris were said to have "better claims to be classed among the superior classes to which they have pretension. They demand a place among the Rajputs.. . . They wear sacred threads . . . like people of the higher classes."^[104]

The overwhelming bania presence in the ranks of traders and merchants was challenged only by Bengalis, who were active principally in the trade of one commodity and that only in some areas of north Bihar. Relative latecomers, Bengalis staked out positions primarily as "petty merchants" and to a lesser extent as wholesale dealers and traders. But they operated mostly in north Bihar where they had secured entrance into intermediary positions through the door opened by the oilseed trade, a trade whose final destination was Bengal, at one time Murshidabad and later Calcutta. Their beginnings apparently date back to the early colonial period: by then Bengali capital had already made its mark in the oilseed trade, particularly in the trade flowing out of the northern portions of Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur, and from Bhagalpur and Purnia. By the late nineteenth century the sizable Bengali presence in the oilseed export trade had extended to other parts of north Bihar, for instance, to Champaran, where agents for Bengali firms collected the oilseeds of the district—as much as sixteen thousand tons annually. The grain trade, however, remained beyond the reach of Bengali middlemen, because it was anchored in the larger system of moneylending and landholding.^[105]

More conspicuous in the retail than in the wholesale trade—although not entirely absent in the latter—was a large assortment of

[103] Hunter, Shahabad , p. 193; DistrictCensus , 1891 , pp. 51, 152, 7. In Patna, however, Khatris managed to hang on to their positions, as is evidenced by their description as "generally rich brokers and cloth-sellers. Some are zamindars."

[104] DistrictCensus , 1891 , pp. 128, 7, 79.

[105] Geddes and MacDonnell report; AGRPD 1876–77; Swinton, Govt. Customs, to BOR, Oct. 28, 1816, Bengal, Board of Commrs. at Behar and Benares, Jan. 20, 1817. no. 14A. See also Bengal Statistical Procs., 1876–77, 10.

castes, particularly such Sudra castes loosely identified as banias or at least associated with the bania category as Kalwars, Sunris, and Telis. Although they had played similar roles in the first century of colonial rule, in the second century they labored in the shadows of the well-to-do bania groups who had gained the upper hand in trade through their "professional" expertise as bankers and moneylenders. In the words of an 1891 report, "Foreign goods are largely imported by road, rail, and river, and Bengalis and Marwaris crowd in the towns. The Marwaris especially have great combination. All this no doubt makes it very hard for the village Baniyas to make a good living."^[106] Furthermore, at the village level they increasingly faced competition from the rising rich peasantry, no longer content merely to be grihasthabeoparis and no longer constrained by the "tyranny of distance." Indeed, improvements in transportation tended to encourage their participation, whereas in the earlier era ladu beoparis had staked out positions in the local trade by monopolizing the intermediary roles of transporters.^[107]

Increasingly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the grain trade of Gangetic Bihar came to be dominated by "amateurs" at the level of the local marketing system and by "professionals" at the level of the regional marketing system. The emergence of the amateur represented, however, not the advent of a new group in village society and economy but the rise of grihastha beoparis as a rich peasantry, a category of peasants in command of the political, social, and economic resources of their locality. Similarly, the growth of a professional group at the highest levels of the marketing system constituted not the rise of a new group of traders and merchants but the consolidation by a group with long-standing stature in the system. What was new, however, was that they had the credit and connections to operate in the larger systems of trade and marketing to which local systems were increasingly yoked. From the ranks of these "professionals" there sprang in the 1930s and early 1940s "the nascent Indian capitalist class [who] created wider commercial, financial and industrial networks spanning the subcontinent, a process backed by the closer integration of the indigenous produce and credit markets across the land" and "the modern Indian business class, which controls large-scale industry today."^[108]

[106] DistrictCensus , 1891 , p . 7.

[107] In some areas such as Darbhanga, Telis and Sunris continued to eke out an existence as retail and small-time wholesale traders by virtue of being the principal owners of pack bullocks and horses. See DistrictCensus , 1891 , p. 162.

[108] Ray, "The Bazaar," p. 264.