I WAS once in a shop in Kumbakonam. Since I was working on handlooms, I was looking for traditional designs.
The man took out an absolutely ��razzle-dazzle��1 saree and said, ��Madam this is the latest.�� I asked him if it had a name, and he told me, ��Enter the Dragon.�� There was I looking for traditional crafts in the heart of the weaving belt and what I encountered was this!
We have a demand for crafts of this kind on the one hand, and on the other we have people who turn up their nose at such things and say, ��this is not authentic.�� So what is it that Dastkar or a similar NGO to restore? There is a sense of identity that makes things uniquely Indian. At the same time Indian craftsmen are trying to tie in, somewhere and somehow, with the market factor, both in textiles and crafts.
With this self-reflexive story as an entry point, I would like to take you down the road of Indian craft history beginning from what Indian crafts were like 2000 years ago. The earliest archaeological evidence of crafts goes back to the pre-Christian era. Metals like copper and iron have been found at certain megalithic sites in Tamil Nadu.
Copper rattles, rings, bangles and rods, dating back to the first and second century AD have been found at Arikkamedu2 in Pondicherry. T.V. Mahalingam, leading the archaeological excavations at the lower Kaveri valley megalithic sites, had unearthed copper objects at Tirukkampuliyur and Alagiri, both in Tiruchirapalli district.3 Kunnattur in Chinleput district4 yielded copper artefacts such as utensils, bowls, bells and rings.
Sanur in the same district yielded iron objects such as spears, daggers, knives, hooks, bars, wedges, arrowheads and sickles.
It is, however, significant in the context of metallurgy in Tamil Nadu that bronze is not found at the early megalithic sites mentioned above, but is available in plenty in non-megalithic sites.
Adichchanallur and Korkai on the banks of the Tamraparani river in Tirunelveli district are both major sites for bronze objects. Adichchanallur, datable to the second-first century B.C. has yielded bronze bowls, pots, highly ornamental cylindrical jars and a huge bronze vase stand decorated with four rams having long horns which radiate from the centre of the vase base.5
In South India there are exquisite bell metal objects, characterised by their high content of tin. These crafted objects were not different from objects of aesthetic beauty. Beautiful things were not produced for their own sake. Everything had value and utility. Because man or woman is innately creative and cannot mechanically produce anything, what was produced carried its maker��s aesthetic tastes and worldview.
There are literary references to the existence of crafts through the ages. There is a poem from the Rigveda that says that day and night come upon us like a weaver moving the shuttle. In the Sangam period (early Christian era) texts, steel is used as a metaphor in poetry. References to the use of furnaces and bellows made of goatskin in the melting of iron and the making of steel is also referred to in Sangam literature.
The perumpanattrupadai describes the kollan (blacksmith) blowing the bellows made of fine animal skin.6 The Jain religious epic Perungadai7 uses the burning of raw metal in the furnace as a poetic metaphor for mental purification. The raw iron mixed with sand was heated along with coal. The sand used in the smelting process was of a special variety.8
Crafts were a part of the everyday vocabulary of the Indian people. I would like to briefly quote from a poem by Andal, a 7th century mystic saint, a Vaishnavite. The following lines are from her composition Nachiyartirumozhi, meaning ��the sacred words of the Nachchiyar��, i.e. Andal. She is referring to Krishna: ��My beautiful lover, it is as if he has put clay around me and poured molten metal into my heart.��
Here Krishna is the craftsman and she the crafted object, the object of his love. The metal casting technique referred to here is what is called ghanam in Tamil, which is solid casting. Andal came from the heart of the metal craft producing areas: Nachiyakovil, Tiruchirapalli, Swamimalai, names we are familiar with. So this was a metaphor that was not far removed from her life and from the lives of people around her.
Similar metaphorical usages occur in the writings of the eighth century philosopher Shankara. In his Brahmasutrabhasya (1,2,12) he uses the phrase ��like images wrought of copper and other molten metal poured from a crucible into the mould.�� The parable of molten copper assuming the shape of the mould is used by Shankara as an illustration of the mind flowing into and taking the shape of objects comprehended by the senses.9
In India, crafts was the specialised work of certain caste groups or communities. Moving directly to the period of the great temple building activity of southern India, I would like to show how a particular group or community would go up or down in social status depending on the economic importance of the craft work that they were doing.
For instance, the earliest reference is to the rathakaras or to the kashtakaras because quite a few of the early buildings or temples were made of wood. When the technology changed from wood to stone, the carpenters or the takshaka (who were also known as the rathakaras) got socially pushed down and the shilpis moved up the social ladder. This shows that there is a nexus between the status a person or community occupied, the kind of work they did, and the kind of economic importance they enjoyed.
In the great temple building era temples were not merely sacred centres; they were also seats of power. When state formation took place every important kingdom would assert its grandeur through a deity who was larger than life, through a temple complex that virtually replicated the palace.
This was something that began from the seventh-eighth century onwards: the sacred bolstered the secular. Hence the Brihadeshwara temple dedicated to Siva in Tanjavur is an example of the power of Rajaraja Chola being reflected in an enormous temple structure.
When a temple came into being it was not just a temple, but also a temple town. It had craftsmen, weavers, musicians and dancing girls. Almost every kind of professional was settled in and around the temple and the tirumadaivilagam that Tam