DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

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COMMENTARY TO ILLUSTRATIONS
while his father and the other Sakyans were ploughing ; the shadow of the tree under
which he sat remained miraculously fixed. The sculpture preserves a tradition which
proves that Buddha’s father was not a king but a tribal oligarch who put his own land to
the plough, while retaining the right to bear arms (cf. p. 213) : change to foodproduction,
but not yet a change to caste. The Buddha and the gods adoring him have
been systematically mutilated ; the ploughman and heavy plough (with humped oxen)
would pass without comment to this day.
16. Pedestal of a Bodhisattva statue from Sahri-Bahlol, in the Peshawar Museum,
perhaps as late as the 4th century A. p.; the plough and worker on the right compare
with the preceding.
17. Harrow ploughing (pp. 69-72). Note that, the seed drills are single hand-tubes,
and that the sowing is done separately, by the women.
18. Kabir (p. 292) weaving and preaching to his disciples ; a miniature in the British
Museum.
19. Tanners pit for soaking buffalo hides in line before the hair and flesh are
worked off. The tanners are of the dhor caste, and have been driven out of the village
by the encroachment of factory production. Lack of capital prevents their using permanent
vats, modern technique, rubber boots or gloves for protection ; it also puts them at
the mercy of the middleman, as the hides have to be paid for in cash. The potters are in
a similar position. Both are losing to factory production.
20. Manufacture of brown sugar (jagari, or gur) The sugar-cane juice is boiled
down in large pan (right background), allowed to crystallize partially in the stone vat
(foreground), from which it is scraped off in a sticky state and tramped down into
moulds (left brackground).
21. Village hut at Ambarnath ; clean and sanitary, of wood and sorghum stalks.
22. Mang slum hut at Poona (p. 32) of mud and tin from old kerosene drums.
Caste prevents the occupant being allowed too near the other slum residents;
poverty inhibits a better construction, as the man himself is a rentless squatter on the
land.
23. Women waiting for relief food in the Bihar famine, 1951. An estimated 3.5
million people died in the Bengal famine of 1943, under British rule and wartime
conditions. But railways and government action now make the direct effects of a
famine small, without removing the root causes, or diminishing secondary effects
and the misery.
24. Making cakes of cattle-dung to be diried for use as fuel. This creates a shortage
of fertility for the fields, while the land has already been deforested.
25. Sindri fertiliser factory, built by the Indian government after independence.
Neither private enterprise nor the British could manage this vitally necessary advance
in production.
26. Bhakra-Nangal hydel channel, another of the state-planned national projects.
Such, multi-purpose schemes are needed in far larger