CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 100 of 120

Correct — A, Textile production. The dadni system was how the English East India Company bought Bengal's cloth in the first half of the eighteenth century. The word comes from the Persian dadan, to give or advance, and the mechanism is exactly that: the Company handed money in advance to local merchants — the dadni merchants — who contracted to deliver piece-goods of a stated quantity, quality, price and date, and who passed the advance down to the actual weavers, directly or through dalals and paikars, keeping a fixed commission. Advances mattered because a weaver needed yarn and food during the months of work before the cloth existed. The Company abolished the arrangement in 1753, complaining that dadni merchants delivered late or disappeared with the money, and moved to buying through its own gomastas.

• (b)Warfare — Nothing military attaches to the term. Dadni belongs to the commercial records of the Company's Bengal factories, where it names a procurement arrangement for goods.
• (c)Payment to officials — Officials in this period were remunerated through assignments and salaries of quite different kinds. An advance under dadni went to a merchant contracting to supply cloth, not to a servant of the state.
• (d)Revenue collection — Revenue in Bengal was raised through the zamindari and farming arrangements of the Nawab's administration. Dadni ran on the other side of the ledger — money paid out to obtain goods, not money gathered in.

Textile buying in Bengal ran on advances. Merchants, middlemen and weavers settled a contract specifying quantity, quality, price and delivery date, and a large part of the value was paid up front so the weaver could buy raw material and feed a household through the production period. The Company plugged into this by advancing to intermediary merchants, who were therefore called dadni merchants. The relationship carried real coercion — advances taken bound a weaver to deliver at the contracted price whatever the market did.

The word to hold on to is dadan, an advance, because it tells you the system is about paying ahead for something to be made. Once you see that, textile production is the only option in the list that fits a commodity contract; warfare, official pay and revenue collection are all money moving for other reasons. It also helps to remember the sequence, since papers like to test the turn: dadni merchants first, then abolition in 1753 after too many defaults, then direct procurement through the Company's own gomastas — a change that pressed harder on the weavers, not less. The word survives in later usage too, which is why the stem says 'primarily associated with' rather than asking for a definition.

• Dadni derives from the Persian dadan, to give or advance; the merchants who took the advances were the dadni merchants.
• It was the East India Company's method of procuring Bengal piece-goods in the eighteenth century.
• Advances passed from the Company to merchants, and on to weavers directly or through dalals and paikars, on a fixed commission.
• Contracts fixed quantity, quality, price and delivery date before production began.
• The Company abolished the dadni arrangement in 1753 after repeated defaults and shifted to buying through its own gomastas.

• Reading dadni as a revenue term because so many eighteenth-century Persian words are.
• Assuming abolition in 1753 improved the weaver's position; buying through gomastas tightened the pressure.
• Confusing the merchant who received the advance with the weaver who did the work.

As a term-to-activity match, or as a statements item on how the Company procured Bengal textiles before and after 1753.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the dadni system in eighteenth-century Bengal, the advances given by the East India Company went first to

  • (a)Weavers directly
  • (b)Intermediary merchants who contracted to supply goods
  • (c)Zamindars of the producing districts
  • (d)The Nawab's customs officials

  Answer(b) Intermediary merchants who contracted to supply goods — they were called dadni merchants and passed the advances on to weavers, often through dalals and paikars.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  After abolishing the dadni system, the East India Company procured Bengal textiles chiefly through

  • (a)Its own gomastas
  • (b)Portuguese private traders
  • (c)The Nawab's treasury
  • (d)Village panchayats

  Answer(a) Its own gomastas — the Company dropped the merchant contractors in 1753 and bought directly through its own agents.