DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3906#0070
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The occupation of an atashbaz is not constant for the demand for fire-works
fluctuates with the season—being most brisk in Baisakb, Jeth, and Asarh when
Hindu marriages take place; and slowest between Muharram and Chahlam when
Muhamadans do not marry.
Attar.—A native druggist has large profits. Two-thirds of the drugs he
keeps are wild flowers, herbs, leaves, fruits, nuts, and roots, which women
gather in jungles and sell for a trifling price. The rest of his medicines are
purchased for something like four to six annas per seer. Yet when he places
these varied drugs in stock he prices all alike at a high price regardless of cost-
price. If an attar could sell off his whole stock at his shop-prices he would realize
perhaps 400 per cent, on cost-price but he cannot hope to sell the whole of a
stock, for native drugs being chiefly vegetable, deteriorate in virtue by time. Still
his profits are very high.
Another source of profit, really excessive profit, is the collusive'connection
which exists between hakims and attars in large cities. They play into one
another's hands thus. A hakim gives a patient a prescription which he takes to
an attar who does not happen to be on good terms with the hakim who wrote it.
It is made up. The hakim asks the patient to show the medicine. He con-
demns it and tells his patient to try another attar, naming a friend. The patient
goes to this second attar and has to buy the same articles over again, paying Es.
5 for what the first after gave for Es. 3. The hakim receives from the friendly
attar a share of the loot.
In a large city like Lucknow an attar with a connection among hakims can
well pay Es. 10 License Tax and perhaps more.
B.
Balliwala.—This is a trader in beams of undressed wood used for scaf-
folding by masons and others, and also as rafters in thatched and tiled roofing.
Ballis are of three kinds :—tarah (used in roofing), gola (shorter and thicker than
tarak but used for same purposes), and balli proper which is used to erect scaf-
folding. All these are made of the long, straight, tapering trunks of trees
from which the branches are lopped and the bark removed. The wood is
generally tdkhu.
The importer of ballis buys a plot of forest, at Muhamdi or Dilawarpur,
hews the trees and roughly dresses the trunks as taraks, golas, or ballis as the
case may be. They are then carried to the Gumti and floated down in bera-
bandi, i. e., chained rafts of 400 ballis each, to the Icalan Icothi ghat near Husen-
The occupation of an atashbaz is not constant for the demand for fire-works
fluctuates with the season—being most brisk in Baisakb, Jeth, and Asarh when
Hindu marriages take place; and slowest between Muharram and Chahlam when
Muhamadans do not marry.
Attar.—A native druggist has large profits. Two-thirds of the drugs he
keeps are wild flowers, herbs, leaves, fruits, nuts, and roots, which women
gather in jungles and sell for a trifling price. The rest of his medicines are
purchased for something like four to six annas per seer. Yet when he places
these varied drugs in stock he prices all alike at a high price regardless of cost-
price. If an attar could sell off his whole stock at his shop-prices he would realize
perhaps 400 per cent, on cost-price but he cannot hope to sell the whole of a
stock, for native drugs being chiefly vegetable, deteriorate in virtue by time. Still
his profits are very high.
Another source of profit, really excessive profit, is the collusive'connection
which exists between hakims and attars in large cities. They play into one
another's hands thus. A hakim gives a patient a prescription which he takes to
an attar who does not happen to be on good terms with the hakim who wrote it.
It is made up. The hakim asks the patient to show the medicine. He con-
demns it and tells his patient to try another attar, naming a friend. The patient
goes to this second attar and has to buy the same articles over again, paying Es.
5 for what the first after gave for Es. 3. The hakim receives from the friendly
attar a share of the loot.
In a large city like Lucknow an attar with a connection among hakims can
well pay Es. 10 License Tax and perhaps more.
B.
Balliwala.—This is a trader in beams of undressed wood used for scaf-
folding by masons and others, and also as rafters in thatched and tiled roofing.
Ballis are of three kinds :—tarah (used in roofing), gola (shorter and thicker than
tarak but used for same purposes), and balli proper which is used to erect scaf-
folding. All these are made of the long, straight, tapering trunks of trees
from which the branches are lopped and the bark removed. The wood is
generally tdkhu.
The importer of ballis buys a plot of forest, at Muhamdi or Dilawarpur,
hews the trees and roughly dresses the trunks as taraks, golas, or ballis as the
case may be. They are then carried to the Gumti and floated down in bera-
bandi, i. e., chained rafts of 400 ballis each, to the Icalan Icothi ghat near Husen-