Pottery-Making Cultures and Indian Civilization

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THE author of this book, Dr. Baidyanath Saraswati, has applied some methods in the study of Indian culture which, so far as I am aware, have not been used by any other student of cultural anthropology in this country. Long ago, Kroeber and Wissler, and before them Ginsberg and others, used similar techniques in the study of primitive cultures. Kroeber refined the method of correlation of various elements of both the material and socio-religious life of communities, and tried to rebuild the cultural history of a particular area. But somehow this never received much attention in India, although this is a land where distinctive elements of various cultures have been deliberately preserved through the ages, and thus offer an excellent opportunity for testing the validity of the method itself. Perhaps an interest in culture—history has itself been largely overshadowed after the rise of interest in Functional and Structural Anthropology. Yet, there is reason to believe that the potentiality of the methods in some of their studies by, say Wissler, Kroeber or even Graebner, has not been completely exhausted. They are still capable of throwing new light on some culture processes.

I am glad, therefore, that Dr. Baidyanath Saraswati has volunteered to apply these methods in order to describe, as well as analyse historically, one particular aspect of India’s material culture and its social and ritual concomitants. In trying to do so, he has naturally also been able to land upon some of the basic themes of Indian or ‘Hindu’ civilization, as he calls it, in several places. And in the description of the core-elements of that civilization, he has also lain under contribution his knowledge of the ways in which superior elements of that culture, like sacred lore, music and some of the arts, are transmitted among experts from one generation to another.

Dr. Saraswati has thus been able to build up a cultural history of India which has a very wide sweep. The challenge which he has thus thrown to other scholars holds large potentialities. Others may pursue the same methods in their study of numerous unexplored fields, and thus either prove or disprove the reliability of the methods in question. Such collective or co—operative testing of particular techniques of investigation may lead to fresh and healthy developments in Indian anthropology.

And it is from this point of view that I welcome this work which comes from the labours of a highly original and painstaking scholar.

Preface

IN 1959, under the auspices of the Anthropological Survey of India, Professor Nirmal Kumar Bose initiated a survey of about three dozen items of material culture with a view to locating the culture zones of India. On the basis of the findings of this survey, he concluded that the structure of Indian unity could be compared to a pyramid and that there was more differentiation at the material base of life and progressively less as one mounted higher and higher (Bose l96l:IV). Methodologically, this pattern of unity in India’s variety of cultures has emerged out of a synchronic study; the findings, however, remain open to examination diachronically. It also draws our attention to the processes by which the pyramidal unity of India has been sustained over time and space. These are some of the problems which are of special interest to the present monograph on pottery-making cultures. Indeed, Professor Bose’s survey of material culture has been the most potent source of inspiration for writing this book.

Of all the items of material culture, pottery is the most important index of early cultures. In the earliest times, beginning from the Neolithic Age, it was perhaps made by every housewife, as is the practice even today in many primitive societies. But, with the passage of time, pottery-making became far removed from the province of ordinary family life and developed into a highly specialized craft. Indeed, in modern times the use of pottery has permeated life so much that ours is called the Ceramic Age. It is, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that the cultural history of mankind is the history of pottery-making cultures. So far as India’s cultural traditions are concerned, many archaeologists are of opinion that the emergence of crude, hand-made and ill-tired pottery signalled the dawn of Indian civilization, that the appearance of pottery made on the turn-table was an indication of a developing culture, and that the epoch-making innovation of the potter’s wheel and the subsequent development in pottery technology, particularly in the methods of tiring and surface treatment, was evidence of a full-grown civilization.

Also, in the contemporary history of pottery-making, India’s position is unique. For, here like all other vocations, pottery—making is a hereditary and monopolistic occupation of an endogamous group of people which is related to the other groups of Indian society classified under the jati-varna scheme. Under this scheme, while on the one hand, there is a vocational distinction between pottery-making and pottery-using cultures. On the other, the two are intrinsically woven into a common system of production. inseparable in their social organization of tradition. Therefore, by looking into the contemporary pottery—making cultures, it is possible to gain a fair understanding of the basic format of Indian society and civilization.

Archaeologists have already traced the development of Indian civilization on the basis of ancient pottery cultures. They are, of course, better equipped than anthropologists in a diachronic study of this kind, but their interpretation of data most often suffers from the natural limitations of conjecture. The data collected at the excavation sites are inevitably incomplete and hence their interpretation is always through inference. For instance, they may accurately describe the ancient techniques of pottery-making and may also classify the various forms of pottery, but difficulties arise when they try to reconstruct the use of pottery and also the social system of production and the processes under which certain pottery forms and techniques have changed or persisted. In brief they have no tool to correlate material culture with the total cultural system of the area of the time they investigate. Most archaeologists are, therefore, now of opinion that the sociological interpretation of archaeological facts would become more meaningful if ethnological data of the right kind are brought into adequate use (Leshnik 1967).

Similarly, the anthropologist’s study of civilization will remain incomplete and inconclusive without gleaning through the facts of the past of all artifacts, pottery is one which anthropologists may study in collaboration with archaeologists. But should an anthropologist depend largely upon his own resources, he will have to develop, ultimately, a method which can reconstruct the past on the basis of the present. This book enters into an adventure of this kind and hopes to identify at least some of the characteristic features of Indian society and civilization through a study of contemporary pottery—making cultures in North India.

For the purpose of this study, North India refers to a wide linguistic and cultural area which extends, more or less, from the Karakoram range in the north to the Godavari and Narmada valleys in the south, and from the Kathiawad peninsula in the west to the Brahmaputra valley in the east. This area is ethnologically different from the Dravidian—speaking South which geographically extends from the Godavari in the north to Cape Comorin in the south, bounded by the Arabian Sea on the west and the Bay of Bengal on the east. It will suffice to say that the selected cultural regions of India are roughly formed by the administrative or State boundaries of Jammu & Kashmir, the Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in the north; Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa in the south; Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west; and Bihar, Assam, Bengal and Orissa in the east. This precisely forms the main block of the Indo-Aryan languages and dialects with a few scattered pockets of the other linguistic families such as Austric and Sino-Tibetan. However, in the context of this book, the more eastern States such as Assam, Bengal and Orissa have been excluded, because in respect of many items of material culture they tend to show greater affinity with the South than with the rest of India.

The fieldwork for the present study was carried out in two phases between December 1961 and August 7 965. The number of districts* and villages in all the 12 States surveyed (Map 1) is as follows:

Sl. No. ----- Name of State ----- No. of districts ----- No. of village/pottery centres

1. ----- Jammu & Kashmir ----- 3 -----8
2. ----- Himachal Pradesh ----- 3 ----- 7
3. ----- Punjab Pradesh ----- 7 ----- 28
4. ----- Uttar Pradesh ----- 11 ----- 24
5. ----- Bihar ----- 3 ----- 4
6. ----- Madhya Pradesh ----- 13 ----- 38
7. ----- Rajasthan ----- 13 ----- 43
8. ----- Gujarat -----7 ----- 35
9. ----- Maharashtra ----- 11----- 27
10. ----- Goa ------ 1----- 6
11. -----Andhra Pradesh ----- 74 -----222

Of these, the last two States were visited for the purpose of checking up the extensions of the North Indian traditions.

The book consists of three parts: The first part deals mainly with the potter craft which covers the techniques and organization of production. The productive techniques have been described only briefly, because a detailed report on this subject has already been published (Saraswati and Behura 1966, Saraswati 1967). The distribution of a few selected pottery traits which comprise the tools and techniques of manufacture has been considered separately. For, this will help us immensely in locating the major technological traditions in pottery-making. If these traditions are plotted out on the map of India, they will indicate the distribution pattern of pottery technology or of the pottery-making zones. Since pottery-making is a hereditary monopolistic occupation, such technological zones will also suggest the grouping of potters on the basis of technology and occupation. Having thus defined the pottery-making cultures technologically, the next step is to examine the potter craft in relation to its organization of production. For, this will eventually characterize the system which binds the potters economically to the rest of the Indian population. In other words, it will constitute the network of economic relationship between the pottery-making and pottery-using cultures.

The second part of the book has been devoted to the potter caste. It undertakes to examine the pottery- making groups socially and culturally. The foremost task is to explain the nature of relationship between the pottery-making and pottery-using cultures. There is need to examine how socially and culturally the potters form an integral part of the peasant community structure. This will necessitate a description of the potters’ social structures and the organization of their religious beliefs and practices. Here, the potters may be grouped according to their social and cultural traits, as has been done in the case of the technological groups. From this, it will become easier to explain how far these social groups are identifiable with the technological groups. Also, in their religious context, the socially and technologically related groups may have many beliefs and practices in common. But, what is crucially important is to know the modes by which they have been absorbed in a much wider socio-religious system called Hinduism, It transpires that the sacred complex formed in the pottery-making cultures is composed of both brahminic and non-brahminic elements. There are also Moslem potters. It is worthwhile to examine them separately so as to find out whether or not they share the pottery-making traditions with their Hindu counterparts. Their participation in the mainstream of Indian social life needs to be understood for explaining the totality of Indian cultural traditions in pottery-making.

The third part concludes that there is a continuity in Indian civilization so far as the potter craft traditions are concerned. It appears that this continuity was possible because of the jati-varna complex which is a peculiar element in Indian society. It also becomes clear that the system which has been efficacious in preserving the technological traditions for over live thousand years is also potent in holding together the diverse regional pottery-making cultures. Considering the pattern of unity in diversity in the pottery-making cultures as also in the higher forms of culture, it seems unlikely that the grand design of Indian culture is the product of one particular region or locality. What seems possible is that although different regional cultures grew and developed indigenously, they were drawn into a common system of tolerant co-existence that granted freedom of faith as the highest ideal of life but enjoined the system of the jati-varna on each regional culture so as to provide minimum economic security to every individual and to legitimize all the varied faiths regionally practised by different societal and cultural groups. This has been the Indian style of cultural integration, and this is the main thesis expounded in this book.

It must be made explicit at this point that the only purpose of this book is to highlight the principles that lay at the foundations of Indian civilization and still bind the varied forms of regional cultures into a living organic whole. If the principles and ideals of this ancient Indian system can be brought home to the readers, the author of this book will feel amply rewarded.

From the Jacket:

This is an unusual exploration into India's timeless civilization by an anthropologist who has devoted six years to extensive survey of the peasant potters of more than half of India. 'The author of this book' writers Professor N.K. Bose, …have not been used by any other student of cultural anthropology in this country. His method of correlation of material culture with the total cultural system marks a departure from the conventional studies of cultural processes. He has suggested new methods of reconstructing history and his data on contemporary pottery-making afford a reassessment of Indian archaeological materials.

The author's extensive experience with inter-disciplinary inquiry yields insights. From a detailed analysis of the ethnographic data on pottery-making, he makes some significant observations. There is a continuity in potter-craft tradition in India, traceable from the pre-historic times. The survival of the ethnic groups of potters, well within their respective technological zones of pre-historic pottery-making, makes the aryanization of India doubtful. Different regions of India have evolved their own indigenous cultures providing extreme diversity to the material base of Indian society - their unity lies in the basic philosophy of life, in the bigher forms of culture. To an average Indian, the diversity of cultures - food, dress, language, worship - does not really matter, so long as he believes that every way of life has its own contribution to humanity, and that before the inexorable law of Nature, every being has an equal right to survive through the full course of its cosmic life. This idealization of diversity has helped India develop a tradition of tolerance which is the soul of her civilization.

Apart from its contribution to anthropology, the book will be of particular interest to historians of culture and philosophers of social history.

About the Author:

Baidyanath Saraswati (b. 1932) is a visiting Fellow at the Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. He has worked at the Anthropological Survey of India, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla. He is especially well known for his extensive field research and writings on Indian civilization. Among his major books are Pottery Techniques in Peasant India (co-author, N.K. Behura), Kashi: Myth and Reality of a Classical Cultural Tradition, Brahmanic Ritual Traditions: In the Crucible of Time, and Contributions to the Understanding of Indian Civilization.