Author: Asha Shukla Choubey Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 100047769X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 222
Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive socio-cultural history of crafts and crafts persons in pre-colonial Eastern India. It focuses on the technology of crafts as being integral to the traditional lives of the crafts persons and explores their cultural and social world. It offers an in-depth analysis of the complexities of craft technologies in the three sectors of cotton textile, sericulture and silk textile and mining and metallurgy in the regions of Bihar and Jharkhand in Eastern India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Apart from technology, the book discusses a range of socio-economic themes including craft production systems; marketing and financing patterns; impact of contact with the world market; craft persons’ identities in terms of caste affiliations and group divisions; negotiations for upward caste mobility; contestations and dissent of lower castes; power and social stratification; functioning of caste panchayats; gender division of craft labour; myths, beliefs and religiosity attributed to craft usages; social and ritual traditions; and contemporary craft traditions. Rich in archival and diverse sources, including oral traditions, paintings, and findings from extensive field visits and interactions with crafts persons, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of crafts, medieval Indian history, social history, sociology and social anthropology, economic history, cultural history, science and technology studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest government and non-governmental organisations, textile historians, craft and design specialists, contemporary craft industrial sector, and museums.
Author: Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Publisher: Forgotten Books ISBN: 9781330327685 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 157
Book Description
Excerpt from The Indian Craftsman Dr. Coomaraswamy's study of the Indian craftsman raises questions of the widest and deepest interest, questions that will not only give consciousness to modern Eastern thought, but help us with some of the most advanced of our Western problems. He tells us of a condition of life among the eastern Aryans that still exists, and he tells it in such a way as to make us feel that there is no reason why it should not go on existing. Why, we ask, has this custom of the centuries, which seems so reasonable in the East, and through which the western Aryan once passed, changed in one part of the world and not in the other, and what are the merits of the change? If we examine our own Western economic history, more particularly the history of England, we find that the break up of the conditions of English craftsmanship and the English village order, cannot be traced back beyond the industrial revolution of the 18th century, and the enclosure of the common lands that accompanied it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: Kuldeep Singh Thind Publisher: ISBN: 9788124605233 Category : Artisans Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The basic aim of the book is to expose the major contributions of artisans and craftsmen in portraying the society in different perspectives. These artisans and craftsmen, were drawn mostly from the shudras, lower caste of the community, suppressed and have-nots section of the society, but were highly talented. The work is also designed to create interest among the reader and scholars alike, to understand the society of the period under reference through the immortal art of these creative people. The artisans such as potters, weavers, carpenters, architects, sculptors, brick-makers, metallurgy and metal workers, leather workers, painters, and the workers engaged in the profession of ivory, glass and mirror, perfume and cosmetic, musical instrument, oil, salt and liquor makers, etc. were the heroes of that time, who not only met the day-to-day requirement of the then society, but also portrayed different aspects of their life, in its true color, through their workmanship. It was the architect who designed and constructed houses to live in, as well as water tank, well and channel, royal building, stupa, temple and fort, bridge, pillar and rock-edict etc., which met the need of the society. Today, we feel proud of the rich heritage of old Indian art and architecture, credit for which solely goes to the then artisan who crafted immortal creations. However, the invaluable contribution made by the historians in immortalizing their creations, by putting them in black and white, is no less important. It is the historian, whose mighty pen has immortalized not only Ashoka the great, as a king but also the creators of the stupas of his times on equal footings. It is with this aim in view that the present book has been presented to the posterity, in order to pay rich tributes to the creators of our rich cultural heritage. Unluckly there was no proper institutionalized provision for the education of artisans and craftsmen, so generally the former adopted the occupation of their parents and hereditary skill was enhances as it was transferred from father to son, and generation to generation. Contemporary sources reveal that the social stautus of artisan class was based on the nature and economic conditions of a particular profession.