DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

SURVIVAL OF PRIMITIVE IMPLEMENTS 47
archaiccult, and not merely from Jnanesvar. Such festivals allow us
to trace the main course of agriculture when cereals became the
prime means of sustenance, cultivation having to move down from
the hilltops to the river valleys. The tribal origin of these festivals is
suggested by the fairs in settlements that are still tribal (apart from
the semi-tribal Mhase above) :
Akalkuwa, Budrukh 197 February 15,000
(Mewasi, W. Khandesh) 198 April 16,000
Manibeli (same section) 681 March 10,000
Mulgi (same section)
Sararighede (Shahada
E, Khandesh) 2091 (tribal 287) Dec 50,000
The point is that leaving tribal life for agriculture would mean a great
increase of population. If the change were peaceful, the old gods in
the agreed cult-spots would still be remembered and worshipped at the
great annual festivals, though every village has its red-daubed stones
for normal cult purposes. Not all the fair-spots remain little villages
to which pilgrims gather with the utmost discomfort. Pandharpur has
developed into the official center of Vaisnava sanctity in Maharastra
though the god Vithoba, as remarked above, seems to have been a
local deity assimilated to Visnu. The place is at the intersection of old
trade routes. The older pilgrimage foci have their importance (mahatmya)
sanctified by interpolation into the Mahdbharata and the Puranas.
Indian pilgrims drifted as far from India as Baku in search of cultspots
and trade.
Fig. 4.
Modern Indian saddle-quern.
The exclusive study of fetishes, superstitions, ritual would lead
us far astray,,but we can show the survival of primitive implements
as well. The saddle-quern is found all over the world in prehistoric
excavations, but also used in Indian kitchens today (Fig. 4) even
when the cooking is done on an electric or kerosene stove. It is no
longer used to grind corn into meal or flour, for the rotary quern or
mechanised flour-mill has displaced it for that purpose. The form
has also changed from the old pointed narrow saddle-quern (Fig. 5)