Author: Irfan Habib
Publisher: Tulika
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 139
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788189487485
Description
This book covers an important aspect of our history, on which no general work or textbook yet exists. It aims at covering the whole range of technology, from the tools and skills of ordinary men and women to the instruments of astronomers and the equipage and weaponry of war.
A key element of the study is that it is essentially historical, that is, changes in technology are carefully traced and their consequences examined. Larger questions, such as those of constraints on technological development and the role of the social and economic environment, are also addressed. Much of this may be found by the reader to be very new unless he has kept abreast with the relevant literature of the last thirty or forty texts, containing significant information about specific aspects of pre-modern technology.
There are special notes on technical terms, sources of the history of technology, the problem of invention versus diffusion, and the development of medieval technology outside India. There are as many as 41 illustrations, all but five taken from medieval sculpture, painting and book-illustrations.
The volume is addressed to the general reader as well as the student, who would like to read about something on which conventional textbooks have little to offer. A special effort is made keep the style non-technical without loss of accuracy. It is hoped that the theme is sufficiently interesting not only for the historian but for any citizen wanting to know what common people, men and women, did with their hands and tools in earlier times.
The Aligarh Historians Society, the sponsor of the project of A People's History of India, is dedicated to the cause of promoting the scientific method in history and resisting communal and chauvinistic interpretations.
Contents
Preface
1. AGRICULTURE
1.1. Crops and Tools
1.2. Irrigation
1.3. Agricultural Processing
Extract 1.1: Modes of Water-lift in India
Extract 1.2: The Madag lake, Dharwar District, Karnataka
Extract 1.3: Liquor Distillation
Note 1.1: Technical Terms
Note 1.2: Bibliogra[hical Note
2 CRAFTA
2.1 Textile Technology
2.2 Mining and Metallurgy
2.3 Bulding Industry
2.4 Other Crafts and Tecniques
Extract 2.1: The Main Stages of Cotton-processing
Extract 2.2: The Manufacture of Damascened Steel Swords in Kachch
Extract 2.3: Gold Work at Agra
Extract 2.4: On Glass: Entries in Tek Chand Bahar’s Dictionary
Extract 2.5: Akbar’s Invention of Refrigeration through use of Saltpetre
Note 2.1: Sources for the History of Technology
Note 2.2: Biobliographical Note
3 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, LAND TRANSPORT AND NAVIGATION
3.1 War Equipment before Gunpowder
3.2 Gunpowder Firearms
3.3 Inland Transport and Communications
3.4 Oceanic Navigation
Extract 3.1: Improvements in Manufacture of the Musket in Emperor Akbar’s Arsenal
Extract 3.2: Ship Repairs near Qutb Shahi Port of Narsapur, 1679
Note 3.1: Invention and Diffusion of Techniques
Note3.2: Bibliographical Note
4 MEDIEVAL INDIAN TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT
Note 4.1: Medieval Technology in the World Outside Europe
Note4.2: Bibliographical Note
Index