DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

48 SADDLE QUERN AND RITES [2.6
which sloped upwards from the user, who must have knelt with the pointed
end gripped between her knees. The slope allowed greater and more
uniform pressure on the thrust. The current flat saddle-quern reduces
no harder substance than sea-salt, which comes in large crystals that
have to be ground down for the table or cooking pot. The general use
of the flat quern is to pulp soft leaf-vegetables, coconut meat, condiments
and spices, added to Indian curries; even here the Andhra region uses a
more efficient utensil, resembling a mortar and pestle.
Fig. 5. Indus Valley
saddle-quern.
The “ pestle,” which fills almost the whole of the mortar, is not used for
jpounding but rolled with a conical grinding motion in the matrix,
without lifting except at the end to take out the pulp. On the saddlequern,
the upper-class women of western India use the top grip, the
lower the end grip, which is harder because the stone has to be rolled
a quarter turn while being shoved back and forth. The class difference
seems really to be of geographical origin, the top-grip being northern,
the end grip southern. This may lend force to the literary tradition that
the local brahmins came from the north, but should also indicate that
the south continued to use the saddle-quern for hard grinding much
later than the northerners because the mealie-stone is easier to use
with the end grip. With the implement (which developed with the first
agriculture before the end of the stone age) is performed a ceremony in
force even among brahmins, yet without sanction in any of the brahmin
scriptures which prescribe rites from birth to death. Before or on the
name-day of a child (twelfth after birth), the top roller stone is dressed
up, passed around the cradle containing the child and finally deposited
at the foot of the infant, in the cradle. The theory given is that of
sympathetic magic, namely that the child would grow up as strong
and unblemished as the stone, to be as long-lived and free from
infirmity. The dress is accordingly the cape (kunci) of a little baby ;
but there is the additional decoration with red and yellow pigment,
plus a necklace, none of which are used on the child. The symbolism is