Technology and Culture Among The Iron Workers of Bihar During The 17th and 18th Centuries

The Medieval History Journal
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Technology and Culture among the Iron Workers of Bihar during

the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Asha Shukla Choubey
The Medieval History Journal 2003 6: 75
DOI: 10.1177/097194580300600104
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Technology and Culture among the Iron

Workers of Bihar during the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries
Asha Shukla
Choubey*
This paper focuses on the mining and metallurgical technology in

Bihar in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This technology
was integral to the traditional life of craftsmen and the key to understanding their culture. It analyses the craft production systems, marketing and financing patterns within which the iron workers operated.
The paper seeks to explore a rather obscure area of past experience
—
the social and cultural ethos of the iron workers community and to
reconstruct their mindset, values and the worldview. Using various
categories of oral traditions like proverbs, folk songs and tales, myths
and popular literature, this paper emphasises that the cultural complexities of the world of the iron workers had a rich symbolic content,
with an underlying coherent and articulate philosophy of their own.
study of technology is an essential key to the understanding of

peoples culture. These words of M.J. Herskovits perhaps aptly
sum up the twofold focus of this paper-the narration of the history
of the technology of iron craft and, equally significant, understanding
the meaning of this history in human terms through an ethnographic
The
sketch of the iron workers. It is necessary

1
at
the outset, that the
M.J. Herskovits, Man and his Works, New York, 1952: 241.
*Indraprastha College,
Delhi University, Delhi 110 054. Email:
choubey367@rediff-
mail.com.
76
trajectories and parameters of the terms Technology and Culture

be clearly delineated and defined. It has long been recognised by
scholars that the history of technology of any craft is no longer the
story solely of machines and processes, nuts and bolts. Technology
can be best appreciated as a human activity and as a part of ongoing
life. Fernand Braudel aptly asserts, The history of technology is that
of human history in all its diversity. Technologies do not appear in
a vacuum-they have a socio-economic and cultural context. Socioeconomic changes are often influenced, if not determined by particular technological events; on the other hand, socio-economic changes
sometimes induce and at other times repel technological mutations.
Technology and society exist in an inextricably interwoven relationship.
Technology is neither culturally, nor morally or politically neutral.
The technology of a craft cannot be analysed in isolation from the
culture of those who create it and are dependent on it. Culture is an
integrated whole and any craft in its form and usage, partakes of the
values and symbolisms inherent in the culture pattern. The genesis of
the culture of the craftsmen can be analysed from the point of view
of their thoughts and worldview. These relate to their philosophy
of existence and social adjustment, knowledge of reality, hedonistic
pattern or modes of enjoyment of life. The thoughts in turn were expressed in community structure and custom, institutions and conventions, rituals, attitudes towards religion, festivities, routine of daily
life, ceremonial rites, social imperatives and taboos, peculiarities of
food, matrimonial restrictions, ethnic insularities and structure of
families. An analysis of the culture of the craftsmen also raises questions about the degree and mechanics of caste and occupational
mobility and hierarchy of classes and their i...rteraction.3 These cultural
complexities had a deep foundation and their own dialectics. They
2
Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism 15

-18 Century: The Structures
th
The Limits of the Possible, vol. 1, London 1982: 430. Also, Arnold
Pacey, The Culture of Technology, Oxford, 1983: 2.
3 In recent
years, scholarship on the craftsman has rapidly grown in which the
rituals and traditional symbols associated with various crafts, caste and subcaste
formation, social mobility, kinship structure have been analysed. See, for example,
G.S. Bhatt, The Chamar of Lukhnow, in The Eastern Anthropologist, SeptemberNovember 1954, vol. VIII(1): 27-41; Jan Brouwer, The Makers of the World: Caste,
Craft and Mind of South Indian Artisans, New Delhi, 1995; Nita Kumar, The Artisans
of Banares: Popular Culture and Identity, New Jersey, 1988; P.K. Misra, The Nomadic
Gaduliya Lohar of Eastern Rajasthan, Calcutta, 1978; Ronaldo Maduro, Artistic
Creativity in a Brahmin Painter Community, Berkeley, 1976; Eberhard Fischer and
of Everyday Life,
77
should not be regarded as peripheral, obscurantist, backward, but

rather as important social activities with a rich symbolic content, with
an underlying coherent and articulate philosophy. The culture of the
low caste groups cannot be taken as being representative of the Little
Tradition relatively uncontaminated by the Great Tradition. Nor can
it be dismissed as being a poorly Sankritised prototype of the upper
caste culture since the latter is tacitly accepted as pervasively normative. The theoretical concepts of Great and Little Tradition, stemming
from Robert Redfield and Milton Singer and of sanskritisations5
associated with Srinivas, which have been used to study the traditions
of the low caste Hindus, strikingly downplay and even reject any
serious attempt to distinguish the cultural values and institutions of
upper and lower caste groups. In fact, they ultimately amount to
what Joan Mencher has called a view from the top down.~ A number
of anthropological studies have emphasised that there are significant
Haku Shah, Rural Craftsmen and Their Work: Equipment and Techniques in the
Mer Village of Ratadi in Saurashtra, Ahmedabad, 1970. Studies on weavers include
Mattison Mines, The Warrior Merchants: Textiles, Trade and Territory in South India,
Cambridge, 1984; and Vijaya Ramaswamy, Textiles, and Weavers in Medieval South
India, Delhi, 1985. On Punjab, and the artisans in general, see H.C. Sharma,
Changing World of Artisan, 1849-1947, in Indu Banga (ed. ), Five Punjabi Centuries:
Polity, Economy, Society and Culture, c.1500-1900, Delhi, 1997. On Himachal, see
Mahesh Sharma, Artisans and Monastic Credit in early Twentieth Century Himachal,
The Indian Ecouomic and Social History Review, vol. 36(2), 1999.
4
Milton Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernises: An Anthropological Approach
to Indian Civilisation, New York, 1972.
5
The term Sanskritisation was used by M.N. Srinivas, Religion and Society among
the Coorgs of South India, Oxford, 1952. He defined it as a process of mobility
whereby the lower Hindu castes or tribals are incorporated into the upper castes
(frequently the twice-born caste or the dominant caste) by adopting the ritual idiom,
way of life and customs of the upper caste. Sanskritisation is a positional change
and not a structural change in that it contributes to a change in the position of the
caste although the caste hierarchy remains the same. Sanskritisation is not a mechanical process. A groups claim to a higher position in the caste hierarchy may he
denied. There can also be a case of incomplete Sansktritisation in that a group may
be incorporated in the upper caste but assigned a low position in the entire section.
Complete Sanskritisation occurs when a high caste not only accepts the claims of
an aspiring group for higher position but also establishes what McKim Marriot has
termed food transactional relations with the neophyte group.
The most appropriate model of Sanskritisation is provided by Owen Lynchs Case
Study of Jatavs/Chamars of Agra in his The Politics of Untouchability, New York,
1969.
6
Joan Mencher, The Caste System upside-down or the
Anthropology, vol. 15, 1974: 469-93.
not- so-
mysterious east,
Current
78
differences in the cultural traditions of low class Hindus compared

to those of caste Hindus, above all in the area of socio-religious
ideology? These studies include works by Pauline Mahar Kolenda,
Owen Lynch, Eleanor Zelliot, Michael Moffatt and Ravindra Khare.8
It has also been suggested by a few scholars, notably Robert J. Miller
and Gail Omvedt that there exists a parallel, alternate or counter
cultural tradition carried principally by either the untouchables or
the tribals.9 However, the use of the words alternate and counter
implies a reactive and subordinate tradition, conditioned by the
hegemony of caste Hindu culture and society and only partly
independent of them.
It needs to be emphasised that the cultural system of the craftsmen
deserves investigation in its own conceptual and structural perspective and with close attention to the peculiarities of its own history.
It should also be noted that the culture of the craftsmen was not
homogenous, to be regarded as a single undifferentiated entity, for
the category of the craftsmen itself was not an undifferentiated category but a complex one. There were fundamental variations among
the craftsmen according to the craft and within each craft, according
to their product.
The social world of the craftsmen remains an obscure area of past
experience and reconstructing their culture admittedly poses problems in the face of a striking paucity of sources. The craftsmen have
left behind them no written record of their personal thoughts and
feelings. The overwhelming weight of documentation on the crafts
of Bihar in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries originates from
7
For an exhaustive list of these anthropological studies, see David N. Lorenzen,
Traditions of non-caste Hinduism: The Kabir Panth, Contributions to Indian
Sociology, New Series, vol. 21(2), July-December, 1987: 281-83.
8
Pauline Mahar Kolenda, Changing caste ideology in a north Indian village,
Journal of Social Issues, vol. 14(4), 1958: 51-65; Changing religious practices of an
untouchable caste, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 8(3), 1960:
279-87; Religious anxiety and Hindu fate, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 23, 1964:
71-82; Eleanor Zelliot. Chokhamela and Eknath: Two bhakti modesof legitimacy
for modern change, Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 15, 1980: 136-56;
Michael Moffatt, An Untouchable Community in South India, Princeton 1979;
Ravindra Khare, The Untouchable as Himself: Ideology, Identity and Pragmatism
among the Lucknow Chamars, New York, 1983.
9
Robert J. Miller, Button, button ... great tradition, little tradition, whose tradition
Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 39, 1966: 26-42. Gail Omvedt, Adivasis, Culture
and Modes of Production in India, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 12(1),
1980: 15-22.
79
the European sources-the reports of the factors of the English East

India Company and the private accounts of the individual travellers.
However, even the European sources focus mainly on the prospects
of trade, centres of production of different commodities, prices,
financing patterns and take little cognisance of the situation of the
craftsmen. In the case of Bihar, the problem of sources gets magnified
in that, unlike some other regions of the country, Bihar was not so
well defined geographically or linguistically, nor did it form the base
of a separate kingdom for any length of time. Hence Bihar does not
have a separate integrated account of its regional history, either in
Persian or any other language. It also needs to be stated that the
sources in Persian that do exist are not concerned with the lot of the
craftsmen.
Yet, an attempt to reconstruct the mindset, values, worldview
of the craftsmen can be undertaken by using various categories of
oral traditions like myths, legends, proverbs, popular sayings, folk
songs, rituals and traditional customs that are current even today.
The oral traditions are in fact living history and in using them one
proceeds from the known to the less known in the task of historical
reconstruction. 10 The literature of the monotheistic bhaktas like Kabir
is also of immense importance in determining current popular consciousness and popular attitudes towards state and society. These
sources are valuable in providing a point of entry into the mental
world of the craftsmen and the sociocultural ethos of the craft communities, leading us to probabilities. They provide sufficient information to enable us to present an outline even though not all questions
can be answered. At the same time, it also implies that the chronological and area base of the sources employed gets extended, drawing
data from even before the seventeenth and later than the eighteenth
centuries. However, this can be done without an apology for societal
changes in time and space are far slower and follow separate dividing
spans from the political events.
To turn to technology first. The development of mining and iron
metallurgical processes in Bihar received an impetus due to the
widespread availability of rich iron ores in the hills of Chotanagpur
and Santhal Parganas. The working of iron mines was a profitable
industry of Ramgarh, from where iron was exported to other parts of
10
Vijaya Ramaswamy,
Weaver Folk Traditions
Economic and Social History Review, vol.
as a
Source of History, The Indian
XIX(1), 1982.
80
Bihar and Bengal proper.&dquo; Between Bhagalpur and Dumka,

Buchanan found several iron mines, which were worked by about a
hundred houses of smelters. 12 Referring to Monghyr, Twining observed the existence of iron ore that was more precious than gold to
the industrious inhabitants of Monghyr, sustaining by its abundant
and cheap supplies an extensive manufactory of iron utensils of
almost every description. 13 The largest deposit of iron ore was in
Sighbhum, which on account of its immense potentialities of mineral
I
resources had earned the name of Indias Northern Ontario .14
of
kinds
of
ores
in
Bihar
15
The rich deposits various
iron
gave birth
to what can be termed as backyard furnaces. With the easy availability of a raw-material base for local metallurgy and in the absence
of any other vocation, the smelters were always ready to utilise the
poorest and inferior ash ridden ores of iron, after winnowing and
washing them repeatedly into workable quantities. 16 Moreover iron
smelting was a labour-intensive operation, which could utilise the
services of all the members of the family.
Buchanan has described mining or gathering of ore at several mines
at Bhagalpur. The smelters would winnow the sand brought down
by torrents from the hills. During the winnowing they would dexterously throw out the light siliceous matter while the ore remained
behind in small grains. The ore could also be found mixed with earth
and pebbles in veins running three or four feet under the surface.
11
Francis Buchanan, An Account of the Districts of Behar and Patna in 18111812, Patna, 1839, (rpt) 1986, vol. II: 676.
12
F. Buchanan in Robert Montgomery Martin, The History, Antiquities, Topography
and Statistics of Eastern India, Comprising Districts of Behar, Shahbad, Bhagalpoor,
Gorakhpoor, Dinajpoor, Puraniya, Rangpoor and Assam in Relation to their Geology,

Mineralogy, Botany, Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, etc., London, 1838,
vol. II: 199.
13
Thomas Twining, Travels in India—A Hundred Years Ago, London, 1893:
127-28.
14 and Orissa Administrative Report, 1936-37: 118.

Bihar
The widespread availability of various kinds of iron ores in almost all the regions
outside the alluvial plains of the Ganges, the Indus and Brahmaputra rivers, has
been commented upon by Holland and Fermor cited in Dilip Chakraborti, The
Beginning of Iron in India, Antiquity, vol. I, June 1976: 115-16.
16
The surveys of Ball, Dunn, Krishnan and Roychowdhary have been cited in
ibid.: 116-17; see also Iqbal Ghani Khan, Metallurgy in Medieval India, 16 to 18
th
Centuries, in Aniruddha Roy and S.K. Bagchi (eds), Technology in Ancient and
15
Medieval India, Delhi, 1986: 72.
81
The miners would dig shafts about a cubit in diameter until they
reached the vein, which was from one to two feet thick, and they
would cut as much as they could reach. The substance taken out
from the vein was dried and winnowed and then beaten and rewinnowed. 17 It would seem that most of the mines were no more than
pits, a few feet deep, and mining could not be carried below the
water level. The mines had to be abandoned as soon as the water
level was reached. This can be ascribed to the lack of any haulage
equipment or pumping mechanism. The sole digging tools that were
employed by the miners were the iron crowbars and spades.
Iron smelting was completely isolated from technological innovation. In his description of iron smelting, Buchanan has remarked
on its low technological level: poor preparation of the ore mass, lack
of knowledge of the ore and charcoal proportions by the local metal
workers whom he characterised as totally ignorant timid creatures.
The heat of the furnace was so ineffectual that it could not vitrify the
stony particles of the ore. Consequently, they had to be reduced to a
coarse powder to separate these particles by winnowing. The only
means of performing this operation was by beating the ore with a
stick, whenever it was found in solid masses. The same people would
mine, prepare charcoal, and smelt. This precluded the possibility of
judging the nature or richness of the ore. They never weighed nor
measured either the ore that went to the furnace or the masses of
crude iron that came from it. 18
Iron smelting furnace at Bhagalpur was primitive. Buchanan has
given a description of the smelting furnace at Bhagaipur9 (see Sketch
1). It consisted entirely of kneaded clay with crude, though ingenious,
bellows attached for pumping air into the furnace to keep it burning.
The clay was carefully dried before use. The fire was first lit in the
furnace, and the ore dropped from above it. The furnace was three
17
F. Buchanan in Montgomery Martin, Historical Documents of Eastern India,
Bhagalpur, III, (rpt) 1990: 190.
18
F. Buchanan in Montgomery Martin, Eastern India, vol. II: 261.
19
Ibid.: 261-63. Sketch 1 has been taken from ibid.: 262. For a description of the
furnace/hearth, see also T.N. Mukharjee, A Monograph on Brass, Bronze and Copper
Manufactures of Bengal, in Art in Industry through the Ages, Monograph Series on
Bengal, vol. I, New Delhi, 1975: 331; L.S.S. OMalley, Bengal District Gazetteers,
Santal Parganas, Calcutta, 1910, Delhi, (rpt) 1984: 201-2; W.W. Hunter, A Statistical
Account of Bengal, Monghyr and Purnea, vol. XV, Calcutta, 1875-78: 138.
82
and a half feet Iiigh.10 The upper extremity was round and about 18
inches in diameter. It was slightly concave, and in its centre was a
hole (b) about two inches wide, which descended gradually,
widening towards the ground (c) where it was from nine inches to a
foot in diameter. Under the top, the furnace contracted a little, and
then it swelled like a bottle, but very little towards the rear and a
good deal towards the front, at the bottom of which there was
semicircular opening (d), which communicated with the inner cavity
of the furnace (b,c). In this opening was laid a pipe of baked clay
(e), which received the muzzles of the bellows; and when going to
work, the opening around the pipe was covered with kneaded clay.
Some charcoal was put in the furnace, and having been kindled, the
bellows were applied. The cavity on the top of the furnace was then
covered with charcoal, and as this kindled, some of the prepared ore
was thrown on it, and thrust into the hole, as the fuel below was
consumed. This was repeated until the ore intended for the smelting
had fallen through the aperture; and the fire was kept up until the
workmen judged that the operation was complete. The clay and the
pipe were then removed from the front of the furnace, and the mass
of iron was taken out. It was cut into two while still hot. It was then
cooled in mud. A good deal of the mud penetrated its pores, and
added to the weight. It was always sold in this state. Sometimes a
quantity of iron dross was added when smelting iron.
The bellows (bhatlZi and also bha11thi, south of the Ganges) were
the most ingenious part of the apparatus. Bellows varied greatly in
their form and size. For the smaller furnaces, a pair of bellows was
used, each made from a single goat skin. The bellows employed for
the larger furnaces were made of bullock hide. Some forms were
worked by hand, while in others one or two persons stood with one
foot on each bellow and transferred their weight alternately from one
to another.2 The hand bellows were the duhanthi, when worked with
both hands, ekhanti when worked with one hand and supaua in south
west Shahabad. In the south east it was also termed the kath banthi.2z
20
The smelting furnaces of Bhagalpur
latters height being 2.5 to 3 metres.
were
smaller than those of
Mysore, the
21
George Watt, A Dictionary of Ecouomic Products of India, Calcutta, 1889-93,
Delhi, (rpt) 1972: 512.
22
George A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life being a Discussive Catalogue of the
Surrounding of the People of that Province, 1885, Delhi, (rpt) 1975: 86-87.
83
Sketch 1
The bellow would provide a continuous blast.2&dquo; Each bellow was

formed from a cylinder of wood about 18 inches in diameter, and six
inches high. This was hollowed, so as to leave thin edges and a thin
bottom. The top was covered with a hide, tied firmly round the mouth
of the wooden vessel. However, the skin was not tight like a drum.
On the contrary, the skin was larger than the space it covered and it
could be moved up and down to a considerable extent. In its centre
was a hole about an inch in diameter, through which was passed a
23
The
use
of bellows is also
depicted
in
Mughal
miniatures in the Khamsa of
Nizami, (c. 1595), Walters Art Gallery. See S.C. Welch, The Emperor AkharsKhamsa
of Nizami, Journal of Walters Art Gallery, vol. XXIII, 1960: 94-95, figures 2-3,
reproduced in S.P. Verma, Technology in Mughal India: Evidence of Mughal
Painting, in Roy and Bagchi (eds), Technology in Ancient and Medieval India:
plate 9. The bellows were made of skin bags with a delivery tube at the bottom
connected with the furnace sideways. The opening of the skin bag consisted of two
(wooden) clippers for trapping the air being pumped into the furnace.
84
wooden button, that held a string tied to the end of a bamboo, fixed
like a spring of a turners lathe. When at rest, the spring raised the
skin, so that its upper surface was a hemisphere. The muzzle of the
bellows, a bamboo, about four feet long, passed through a hole in
the side of the wooden cylinder. Two of these bellows were placed
close to each other. The workman, who was to blow with them, put
his heel first on the hole in one skin and depressed it, expelling the
wind by the muzzle. He then put his other heel on the other hole.
Thus treading alternately on the two cylinders, he expelled the wind,
while the spring raised the hide, when he lifted one of his feet to
throw the whole of his weight on the other. When power had to be
increased, another workman stood behind, and both would tread at
the same time. This would provide much wind, but with very severe
labour. During this operation, the mass of metal would not appear to
be ever melted; it was only so far softened that the particles were in
a slaggy porous mass.24 There was no development over the age old
skin and wood bellows in any part of India in respect of either construction or driving force. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the forges of ironsmiths manufacturing muskets in Kashmir were still
fed by these bellows worked manually by single operators, as in the
case through India generally.25
The lot of the iron smelters was marked by earnings that were
barely adequate for a livelihood and by a pattern of mortgage of
produce with the moneylenders/traders. This is reflected in
Buchanans report on the 150 iron smelters (ko~ residing in Bangka.
Buchanan refers to them as notorious drunkards who live very
poorly. They smelted for only five months in a year, on an average
20 days a month throughout the year, spending the rest of the time
on farming, gathering of wild fruits or mahuyaa flowers or idling
during the two months of the wedding season. The smelting of the
ore was done on their farms. An iron smelter assisted by his wife,
and a boy or girl who helped in collecting ore could smelt twice a
day. They could thus procure daily about five ser of iron. They
exchanged this iron for seven and a half ser of rice. This was barely
24
F. Buchanan in Martin Montgomery, Eastern India, vol. II: 228.

The bellows of Kashmir have been described by Moorcroft and Trebeck, Travels
in the Himalayan Provinces, London, 1837, vol. 11: 197-98. These bellows compare
with the bellows used by the rural blacksmiths in Bihar. See also, Irfan Habib,
Technology and Barriers to Social Change in Mughal India, The Indian Historical
Review, Delhi, vol. V(1-2), July 1978-January 1979: 166.
25
85
Nineteenth century Patna Qala11l painting on paper depicting a Loharor ironsmitli

bellows to supply a blast to the fire, anvil, a pair of thongs or
pincers and a few hammers. The Patna Qalain flourished for about two centuries
in Bihar between AD 1760 and the early years of the twentieth Century. This painting
has been taken from the Patna Museum.
working on his hearth,
enough for family subsistence. Buchanan informs that 25 traders had

advanced grain to the smelters in Bangka. In turn, the traders sold
the crude iron called Bhinda to the forgers at the rate of Re. 1 to
Rs. 1 V2 a man. Each family in Bangka made in a year 30 man (about
1100 kilograms) of crude iron, or in all 4500 man. In addition to
Bangka, there were 100 families of smelters in Tarapoor who made
annually about 3000 man of crude iron. In Lakardewani the smelters
made 2100 man annually between 70 houses. In the whole district
of Bangka therefore, the annual produce of crude iron was 9600
man or about 350000 kg.
An iron makers family could make about Rs. 23/4 a month. Many
of the smelters also carried on cultivation for part of the year. They
cultivated four or five bighas of non-irrigated highland. But the iron
smelters family also had certain outlays. Each smelter paid from
Re. 1 to Rs. 11/ as rent for use of ore and charcoal and about 12 annas
or 3/4of a rupee as lease for the plot of land he cultivated. This land
was generally cultivated for a few years, and then left fallow as the
86
smelters often moved out in search of new ore and fuel. Farming
was thus an absolutely necessary ancillary occupation for the iron
makers family. The effort at introducing the mechanical fans and
hammers amongst the Agarias of Chotanagpur failed completely.
This innovation implied that a large number of iron smelters would
have to work in one workshop-a mode of working to which they
were unaccustomed. Being on the constant move in search of ore
and fuel and working on their tiny primitive furnaces in their native
jungles had become a part of their traditional way of life
The smelted crude iron supplied by the subsistence smelter was
subjected to forging. Before the iron reached the village, it had to be
frequently worked into special planks for making ploughshares, hammers, hoes and other implements. The forging was done by special
blacksmiths. Some blacksmiths did nothing else except forge the
crude iron, while others employed part of their time forging and a
part in making agricultural implements and coarse utensils used in
rural areas. They all resided near the mines because according to
Buchanan, the crude low grade iron was never sent to distant markets.
It can be added that the smelted ore contained so many additives
that it required repeated treatment for purification. In the process of
this work, the forging was usually given its initial working shape.
Five or six men were employed at each forge (Maruya), which did
not differ much from a common Indian blacksmiths forge. The hammer to strike the iron weighed perhaps four or five pounds. The crude
iron was heated and hammered three or four times and was then fit
for sale, being formed into little wedges, bars, or plates according to
various purposes for which it was intended. 27
In Bangka, a torge, with six men, could mould daily 10 sereach of
three kinds of iron-one fitted for ploughshares, one for hoes, and
one for hatchets. 28 Ninety serof crude iron worth Rs. 3 gave 40 ser of
forged iron, worth, at the advanced price, Rs. 4/z. The forger required
7Y2 annas worth of charcoal to forge this quantity. He also required
an amount to meet the expenses of the implements. With these
outlays, each man at the forge could make two annas a day. The
iron intended for adaptation to the ploughshares (phial) was the
26
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Cultural and Social Constraints on Technological
Innovations and Economic Developments: Some Case Studies, The Indian Economic
Social History Review, vol. III(3), September 1966.
27
F. Buchanan in Martin Montgomery, Eastern India, vol. II: 265.
28
Ibid.
87
highest priced, selling at Monghyr for about six ser for the rupee.
Iron, which could be moulded again for making a hoe, hatchet or
some other implement, was cheaper. It sold at about eight ser for the
rupee.29 We find therefore, that a higher quality of iron was used for
farming implements than other articles.31 In working into coarse
goods, it lost one-third, and when moulded into fine goods, it lost
half. The iron of Kharakpur was reckoned as the best that came to
Monghyr. It was considered superior to Birbhum or Ramgarh.
The iron craft was characterised by a high degree of specialisation.
Iron smelting was done by the Lohars of Chotanagpur, the Agoria,
Lohra and Asura tribes of Lohardaga and eastern portion of Sarguja.
The Kols at Bhagalpur lived almost entirely by iron smelting. Marya
was a small iron working caste found in the Santhal Parganas. Iron
smelting was supposed to be a much less respectable form of industry
than working on iron which other people had smelted.
Besides the iron smelters, there were various other categories of
blacksmiths. The chief iron working castes ofBihar were the Kamars
and the Lohars. The Lohars worked on iron alone. The Kamars did
not confine themselves to fabrication or iron implements alone but
worked on other metals like brass, bronze as well as gold and silver.
Buchanan noted that in some rural parts of Bhagalpur, Patna, and
Gaya districts, the professions of the blacksmiths (Lohar) and carpenter (Barhai) were united in the same person. Such persons chiefly
made whole implements of agriculture and coarse furniture of wood
and iron. In some places they were called Barhai and in other places
Lohar although in general the people were considered to be belonging to the same caste.31 However in most parts of the Purnea district,
the Barhai did not make the more common implements of agriculture,
which was done by the blacksmiths (Lohar) alone. The Barhais were
left to making simple household furniture, boats and carts.32 Buchanan
notes that most of the carpenters were also turners, which enabled
them to make spinning wheels and boats, the most indispensable
product of the turners lathe. Thus, having been deprived of orders
29
Ibid.: 264.
V.I. Pavlov, Historical Premises for Indias Transition to Capitalism (late
eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century), Moscow, 1978: 126.
31
Ibid.; H.H. Risley, Tribes and Castes ofBengal, Ethnographic Clossary, London,
1891, Indian reprint, Calcutta, 1981, vol. I: 23.
32 F.
Buchanan, An Account of the District of Purnea in 1809 to 1810, Patna,
1828: 529.
30
88
for the
farming implements, local carpenters switched to making

carpenters goods, means of transport and most important, tools for
spinners and perhaps other artisans as well. However, the removal
of farming implements from their sphere of production led to a decline
in the social status of the carpenters of Bengal and Bihar, and some
of them were considered to be impure.33
Buchanan informs us that the regular village blacksmiths, whether
Kamars or Lohars, were employed in making iron implements of
agriculture and coarse work for country use. Sometimes they also
forged crude iron. They could be a regular part of the estate or
manorial establishment and were entitled to a certain share of the
crop. Buchanan was obviously using the word estate according to
the existing British terminology implying a multitude of villages and
land comprising the zamindari estate.
Buchanan also noted two classes of blacksmiths who did not belong
to the manorial establishment-one, the blacksmiths in the forests
who forged the crude iron as it came from the smelters; second, the
blacksmiths in the town who made the finer kind of goods for the
local market like spears, swords, matchlocks and a crude kind of
cutlery. In the district of Bihar the Lohars numbered 1219 of whom
207 were concentrated in the Patna city. Those who combined both
the profession of Lohar (blacksmiths) and Barhai (carpenter) numbered 513 in Bihar district.34 The Lohats produced goods entirely for
internal consumption. They made vessels for boiling sugar and sweptmeats, and the drums called iiakarah, nails, locks, and chest
for the doors of the inhabitants turned on pivots. In towns in/Patna
district, the Loham made four annas a day and about two allllas in
the rural areas. The blacksmiths at Bhagalpur and Tarapoor were
considered good workers, and were capable of making anything.
There were 40 houses of blacksmiths in Monghyr who chiefly made
goods imitating European products. These included household
utensils for well-to-do families like tea kettles, fish kettles, iron ovens,
saucepans, frying pans, chafing irons, snuffers, chauka angithi
hi~5ges,
(kitchen stoves), forks, knives, scissors, various locks, tongs,

While the
goods were very coarse compared with

originals, they were cheap and served their purpose.
the
etc.
English
33
Ibid.: 329-31, 221.

34 Buchanan, Patna-Gaya:
of Bengal
Patna
(Appendix), 770; W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account

District, Calcutta, 1875-78: 143.
89
The
the Sikulagars of Monghyr won particular

Buchanan gives a list of articles commonly made-double-
armourers or
renown.
barrelled guns, rifles, pistols, single-barrelled pistols, fowling pieces,

muskets, ordinary and carved matchlocks, swords, spears and
ramrods. Buchanan reported that at Monghyr was a house of Koftgurs,
or inlayers and platers who plated iron tea kettles, and
inlay gun
barrels, sword blades or spears with gold or silver. Twenty families
in Monghyr were engaged in this occupation.
A few Lohars called Pinjrasaz lived entirely by making rather neat
cages for birds, composed of iron wire. The blacksmiths also made
the shoes and nails for horses,35 but the Nalbund or farriers fixed the
shoes. There also existed a few Tirgars, who manufactured iron tipped
arrows for the hill tribes in the south of the district of Gaya. They
purchased the heads from the blacksmiths. Four hundred heads cost
Re. 1. They collected the reeds (sar) and feathers and fitted the whole.
They earned between Rs. 2 and Rs. 21h for 100 arrows.-16
Another specialised branch of blacksmiths trade was that of the
cutler or Sangur. He prepared knives, scissors and razors. In addition
to the usual hearth, bellows, anvils, hammers, tongs and chisels, the
grindstones and the polishing wheels were the characteristic tools of
the cutlers shop. They were made of sand and lakh or fine grit, and
were discs about half an inch thick and one foot or one and a half
feet in diameter, mounted on a wooden axle or spindle three to
four inches in diameter. The spindle was mounted horizontally in a
shallow pit and a deeper pit was cut to accommodate the disc. The
disc revolved through a cord passing over the spindle. The cord was
often worked by hand or could pass over a large driving wheel
worked by a treadle. The tempering of his blade was considered by
the cutler as an operation requiring care and skill.37
There was also the maker of needles and knitting needles or
Suiwalah. At Bhagalpur, there were two houses of needle workers
who lived entirely by this profession. They had not yet acquired the
art of forming the eye in the needle after the European manner, but
merely made a hole through the thick end of the needle so that the
thread passed with difficulty through the cloth. 38
35
F.
Buchanan, Patna-Gaya: 640.
Ibid.
36
37
T.N.
38
F. Buchanan in Martin
Mukharjee,
Monograph: 332
Montgomery, Eastern India,
vol. II: 262-66.
90
Monghyr was a well-known metal working centre of the seveneighteenth centuries in Bihar, the best firearms and
swords in India being made here. Haji Mustafa, translator of Siyar
al-Mutakherin, the famous eighteenth century Persian history of India,
remarks, The European reader may possibly hear with surprise that
these fire locks manufactured at Monghyr proved better than the
best tower proofs sent to India for the Company use; and such was
the opinion which the English officers gave then when they made
the comparison by order of the Council in Calcutta.39 Twining in
turn writes, A traveller from Europe is surprised to see presented to
him for sale in the interior of India, knives and forks, saucepans, grid
teenth and
irons and tea kettles, which would not discredit an ironmongers

shop in London.4 It is not surprising that Monghyr was labelled the
Birmingham of the East.
A study of the organisation and scale of iron manufacture in
Monghyr leads to certain conclusions. It had 40 blacksmiths shops.
In each shop worked two or three men, generally partners or persons
of the same family. When anyone received a large order, he hired

his neighbours. A common labourer got two annas per day, and a
skilful workman was allowed three annas. There were 13 gun
makers shops and 700 to 800 guns were produced annually.&dquo; Yet,,
the well-known metal working centre of Monghyr, also housing a
specialised class of workers-the gunmakers, was marked by a
modest scale of manufacture. It had just a few more than 100 artisans.
They led a modest existence, offering no opportunities at all for capital
accumulation. The technology employed remained rudimentary. The
barrels of firearms were made by twisting a rod round an iron spindle
was afterwards
then c,
and thPn
arZri
hammering --it --z,together.
--- --. The
- h - -bore
- - - wac
l- polished
and enlarged by borers of different sizes. The tea kettles were made
in sundry pieces joined by soldering. This was a loss, as the solder
being copper was dangerous and they had to be turned when used.
During Buchanans survey, the workmen had adopted the European
bellows. These improvements were introduced by the Europeans of
the regiments formerly in garrison.
Both in range and in value, weapons and household articles
for the richest sections predominated in the total volume of the
39 K.K.
Dutta, Survey of Indias Social Life and Economic
Century (1707-1813), Calcutta, 1961: 108.
40
Twining, Travels
41
T.N.
Mukharjee,
Conditions in the 18
th
in India: 127-28.
Monograph: 334.
91
production of Monghyr. Indeed,
Buchanan says explicitly that the

chief articles were different kinds of firearms, mostly sold to passengers and carried towards the west and tea kettles and chafing
dishes sent to Calcutta.&dquo; Equestrian equipment was also manufactured-stirrup irons, horseshoes, and padlock. All this equipment
was used by the nobility or the privileged mounted troops. This
explains the decline of Monghyr following a reduction of demand
for articles of this type. Goods meant for the peasants and craftsmen
could not compensate for the reduction in aristocratic consumption.43
Of the farming implements, there is mention by Buchanan of only
sickles with teeth, sickles without teeth, spuds and large sickles for
cutting grass. Artisan implement remained primitive till the close of
the eighteenth century and required little iron. The excessive utilisation of skill and resources on a few luxury items at the cost of
socially relevant products proved to be counter-productive. It could
neither inculcate cost effectiveness nor increase production or labour
saving devices. 44
Iron craft was being operated through varied systems of production
in which the blacksmith could be a servant of the village community,
standing outside the sphere of commodity production, an independent commodity producer and a credit bound producer. An interesting system, somewhat analogous to cooperation, is reported to
have been in vogue, to some extent, in the Santhal Parganas. The
blacksmiths would often group themselves into a band of six men to
conduct a workshop conveniently situated under a grove of shady
trees in the villages, while another man supplied the implements
and capital. All the six men would work the whole day, and out of
the seven articles manufactured, each labourer would get one, while
the seventh article was given to the man who supplied the implements
and capital. 45
The dominant mode of metal craft production was the family based
small work unit and the metal craft was organised on a domestic
basis. The employment of outside labour was almost negligible. The
blacksmiths worked by themselves without any assistance. The wife
of the blacksmith rendered help to her husband only in operating
42
43
"
Montgomery Martin, Eastern India, vol. II: 266.

Pavlov, Indias Transition to Capitalism
: 126.
Iqbal Ghani Khan, Metallurgy in Medieval India: 85; see also, Irfan Habib,
F. Buchanan in
Technology
45
T.N.
to Social Change: 167-74.

Monograph: 337.
and Barriers
Mukharjee,
92
the bellows. There was a ritualistic taboo which prohibited the women
from touching the forge or fire. The larger number of blacksmiths,
the makers of rough agricultural implements and those who had not
specialised in any branch of the metal trade, required next to no
tools or outfit. The working capital was provided from the advances
received from the traders and merchants. There were countless
numbers of tiny family workshops of the blacksmiths all grouped
together. In a sense, the term workshop is a misnomer. There was
no plant worth speaking of. The work of the blacksmith was carried
out entirely in the backyard of his dwelling house or small shanty.
He had his hearth, and bellows to supply a blast to the fire. He also
had an anvil, a few pairs of tongs or pincers and a few hammers. A
cold chisel would complete his most slender equipment. When the
blacksmith or smelter decided to shift his workshop from one place
to another, he simply had to take along a bag of tools and his family
which assisted as workmen and he was ready to get on with the job
anywhere, for furnaces, kilns, and forges could be built anew.
Village being the basic unit of social and economic organisation, a
major mode of iron craft production was directed at meeting the needs
of the peasants and the village communities. In this mode, the position
of the blacksmith was that of a servant of the village community. The
productive activity of the rural blacksmith, serving the village community and meeting local needs, was not meant for commodity production, based on a competitive principle and cash exchange. Instead,
it was meant for the maintenance of the community life of the village
as a whole. These blacksmiths lived in the village and offered set
products and services, contributed to agricultural production and also
played an important role on occasions of social and religious ceremonies. The village blacksmiths were tied by a whole set of economic
and social relations to the locality. The role, duties and obligations
of the blacksmiths like the other village craftsmen were ensured by
custom, convention, usage and social and economic compulsions.
Their relations were based on the formal and elaborate pattern of
jajmani relations or individual patron-client relations.46 In return
46
The
principle behind the jajmani system has been explained by sociologists.

place, it makes use of hereditary personal relationships to express the
division of labour: Each patron family has a family of specialists at its disposal for
each specialised task. Second, it regulates presentations and counter presentations
In the first
in
not
way which accords with custom; for the usual tasks, repayment is in kind; it is
made individually for each particular service rendered but is spread over the
93
for their services, they were given a fixed remuneration in kind

They received four arhis (about a man) of paddy per plough. The
latter was usually a part of the harvest. In the Patna district the blacksmiths, and the carpenters belonging to the &dquo;manorial establishment&dquo;
were paid for the implements of agriculture from a share of the produce.4g In Shahabad district (western Bihar), the harvester, carpenter,
blacksmith, shoemaker (most probably also the harness maker),
village Brahmin and weigher were paid from the heap before division.4~ The amount of crop was settled by a survey, and from this
the allowances above were deducted, and the share due to the landlord was usually paid in kind, sometimes however, in money. In
1810, Buchanan wrote on the situation in Purnea, None of the blacksmiths enjoy any popularity. Their customary business is manufacturing simple tools for agriculture and adjusting their wooden or
metal parts. They are everywhere paid in cereals, are well rewarded
and have permanent work.10
The village blacksmiths and the peasants were closely integrated
by a system of economic as well as customary interdependence. This
is validated by a case study of the ir6n workers of Chotanagpur. In
the Chotanagpur villages, the settled agriculturists like the Oraons
and the Mundas depended upon the bom loha (heavy iron) which
was indigenously manufactured at the bhatti or an iron-smelting
furnace of the Asurs, Agarias. The Lohars or the blacksmiths used
whole year, as is natural for a permanent relationship in an agricultural setting; a

little food may be provided each day, and there is always the right to a fixed quantity
of grains at harvest time, and finally there are obligatory presents (often of money)
on the occasion of the main festivals of the year and, above all, at the major family
ceremonies, which are advantageous occasions for the praja of the house. A fact
which underlines the limited but effective solidarity between jajman and praja is
that those who are considered the main servants of the village enjoy a gift of land
from the communal funds which are at the disposal of their patrons collectively.
Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, Chicago, 1970: 98-99. Also see, T.N. Madan,
Social Organisation, in V.B. Singh (ed.), Economic History of India 1857-1957,
Bombay, 1975: 74-75; Girish Mishra and Braj Kumar Pandey, Sociology and
Economics of Casteism in India: A Study of Bihar, Delhi, 1996: 9; Deepak Lal, The
Hindu Equilibrium, vol. I, Oxford, 1988: 48-50.
17
Irfan Habib, Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of
Mughal India, Journal of Economic History, vol. 29(1), March, 1969: 41.
48
F. Buchanan, Bihar and Patna, vol. II: 639.
49
F. Buchanan, An Account of the District of Shahabad in 1812-13, Patna, 1834:
367.
50
F.
Buchanan,
Purnea:
535, 536.
94
the Asur smelted bom loha for their manufactures. The Asurs also
acted as the village blacksmiths and manufactured as well as mended
agricultural tools, implements and household fittings required by the
peasants. This network of economic security gave the village craftsmen a stable base that often outweighed fluctuating economic incentives. The government proposal made in 1870s in Chotanagpur to
procure iron bloom from the Agarais, and for the manufacture of
implements in the government workshops, fell apart. E.T. Dalton,
then Commissioner of Chotanagpur, pointing out the flaws of the
plan observed: the Agarias were a Kol or Munda clan of a most
primitive type, exceedingly shy of strangers and have always been
in the habits of dealing with Lohars and will not take to dealing with
new customers and Lohars who have influence over them, will do
all they can to retain their monopoly .51 The Agarias and the Lohars
were unwilling to give up their traditionally patterned reciprocal
relationship and therefore resisted any innovation which would
upset this.
Yet, the expanding market relations in seventeenth and eighteenth
century Bihar did cast their shadows on these traditional relationships
and the slow transformation of village artisans into small scale commodity producers. The iron manufacturers were moving in the ruralurban direction and between rural localities through a hierarchy of
markets-hats, gal1j and mandi linked by a specialised community
of merchants who controlled the flow of credit. The LoharDokandars
or Furosh of Patna purchased iron in considerable quantities from
traders who brought iron from Ramgarh. They had a capital of
Rs. 1000, not huge but sizeable. The Lohasaz retailed a variety of
ironwares, chiefly nails, hinges, locks, pots aud chains. They had a
capital of Rs. 200 to Rs. 500 and were confined to Patna. In areas outside Patna, these ironwares were sold by the makers in shops or in
streets. By the end of the eighteenth century, Buchanan informs us
that the peasants in iron rich areas between Dhumka and Bhagalpur
were engaged for five months in a year in the mining of ore, the production of charcoal and the smelting of ore in primitive furnaces.
The entire peasant family participated in the manufacturing process.
The ore which was of low quality was usually delivered to the merchant in exchange for grain. Gradually, a part of the peasants became
51
E.T. Dalton to Under Secretary, Government of Bengal,

Cultural and Social Constraints: 255.
19 July 1872, cited in S.
Bhattacharya,
95
professional smelters who engaged in the trade twenty days a month

throughout the year.
However, it should not be inferred that the system of intra commun-
ity bounds was facing dissolution or disruption through the operation

of market forces. In fact, village life to a large extent was still characterised by immobility. Few thought of leaving their villages so long as
the economic and social conditions did not force a big chunk of village
population to migrate to other places.5- The blacksmiths were combining their customary service obligation to the village community with
production for market also. As late as 1901, the Census Village Survey
Monograph on Village Parba in Sridega Subdivision, district Ranchi,
established that the Jajmani System still prevailed there with regard
to the supply of ploughshares in the village. The families in the village
were apportioned between the Lohars. Cash payment was not made
for supply of ploughshare but an annual remuneration of 10 ser of
paddy for each plough was fixed. It was only by 1907 that the agriculture implements other than ploughshare were placed outside the
ambit of the jajmani system and were sold in cash.
The social world of the metal craftsmen in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Bihar, was a complex one. The people were organised into a number of distinct hereditary castes (jati). The caste was
the first level of community organisation. The fabrication of iron
implements was confined to the Lohars and the Kamars. In Bihar,
the Loharsworked as both blacksmiths and carpenters. This was unlike the Loharsof western Bengal where none of the Lohars combined
carpentry with working in iron.
The Lohar or blacksmiths and Kamars were a large and extremely
heterogeneous aggregate. It comprised members of several different
tribes and castes with multifarious internal divisions, who had taken
up the profession of working in iron from time to time. The Lohar
and Kamar caste was marked by specific local groups, of subcastes
bearing geographical names, of subcaste names which signified
recruitment from higher orders who for one or another reason seem
to have sunk to lower levels or subgroups which were specialising
52
As late
as
1921, it was reported that only one
in four males and less than
10 females of the rural tracts had visited Patna,
one
in
Calcutta, Gaya or Puri. An enquiry

conducted during 1918-20 revealed that on an average, during each month, in south
Bihar only one person in 11, in north Bihar one in 13 and in Chotanagpur one in 31
ever undertook a railway journey. P.C. Tallents, Report on the Census of India, 1921,
vol. VII, Part I, Patna, 1921: 3-4.
96
in a particular production technique. Thus the Lohars were further

layered horizontally and vertically into a network of subgroups, each
striving for its own self definition and self regulation. The Kanaujia
Lohars claimed to be the highest in rank, and they alone had a wellmarked set of exogamous sections. They regarded Vishwakarma the
celestial artificer and architect, as their legendary ancestor and worshipped him as tutelary deity. The Brahmanical gotras were looked
upon as an appendage testifying the respectability of the castes. The
Kanaujia, Mathuriya and Mahur or Mahulia professed to have come
in from north-west provinces as against the Maghaiya Lohars who
seemed to be indigenous to Bihar. It is likely that the Mahur or
Mahulia broke off from some comparatively high caste, for all Hindus
could take water from their hands.53 The Koka Lohars probably were
a branch of the Barhai who took to working in iron and separated
from the parent groups. 54 The Kamar-Kalla Lohars were perhaps a
degraded offshoot from the Sonar caste. 55 The Kamia Lohars found
in Champaran had emigrated from Nepal and were regarded as ceremonially unclean. Many of them were Muslims.56 In Lohardaga were
found the Manjhal Turiyas who were a branch of the Turi caste and
the Munda Lohars who were certainly Mundas and the Sad Lohars
claiming to be immigrant Hindus. 57 In the Santhal Parganas there
were three subcastes of Lohars: Mirbhuinia from the neighbouring
district of Birbhum; Govindpuria, from subdivision of Govindpur, in
northern Manbhum; and Shergarhia, from the pargana of that name
in Burdwan.5~ The name Agoria or Angoria appeared in Hazaribagh
as the appellation of a subcaste of the Loharswhose special function
was the smelting of iron ore from which rough pig iron was manu-
factured by members of the Lohondia subcaste. The Loharsubcaste

of the Barhai or the carpenter caste worked only in iron but disclaimed all connection with the Lohars whom they regarded as people
of a different race. The Maghaya subcaste of the Barhai worked in
both wood and iron.
The large number of subcastes in the case of Lohars and Kamars,
coupled with the fact that in some cases we can determine with
53
Ibid.
Ibid.: 22.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid.
54
97
approximate certainty the tribes of which they formed a part, points

the conclusion that the aggregate termed the Lohar and Kamar
made up of drafts locally levied from whatever groups
were available for employment in a comparatively menial occupation.
The labour force of the Lohars and Kamars was expanding through
entrants or new recruits from the surrounding population. These
recruits could be from the ranks of agricultural labourers or from the
mass of ordinary or unskilled people who formed an unemployed
to
caste was
reserve.
The social world of the Lohars and Kamars, like all other craftsmen,
permeated with rather elaborate hierarchical values. The craft
occupations were unequally placed. Each craftsman knew where he
belonged and was, in a large measure, reconciled to his place in the
total scheme of things. Intercaste social relationships were prefixed
by the concept of purity and pollution. The extent and degree of
purity and pollution depended amongst others, on occupational
pursuit, food habits, domestication of animals like keeping of pigs
or fowls, engagement of priests in observance of rituals, marriage
customs, types of marriage and the like. Thus, the low caste of a person was indicated through services like attendance on lifes crises of
the upper castes, removal of carcass from the village lanes, work on
tanning, taking of beef and pork derived from animals slaughtered
alive or from dead animals, engagement of a degraded Brahmin for
observing rituals, marriage customs like widow marriage to the late
husbands younger brother, bride price, prevalence of divorce, marriage by capture and elopement. 59
The blacksmiths (Lohars) were considered impure in Bihar, while
they were pure in Bengal. 60 In Bihar, the Lohars ranked with Koiris
and Kurmis and the Brahmins would take water from their hands,
always a basis for judgment in the caste conscious set-up.61 The social
standing of the Kamarswas high and the Brahmins could take water
from their hands toO.62 The Maryas ranked with the Chamars and
the Lohars.G3
was
59
Bhabesh Chakraborty, Castes in Chotanagpur Villages, Bulletin of the Cultural
Research Institute, vol. VIII(3 and 4), Scheduled Castes and Tribes Welfare
Department, Govt. of West Bengal, 1969: 107-8.
60
F. Buchanan, Patna-Gaya I: 335.
61
Risley, Tribes and Castes, vol. II: 24.
62
Ibid., vol. I: 392.
63
Ibid., vol. II: 81.
98
The Lohars and Kamars like their other caste brethren sought to
give a ritual sanction to their status in the caste hierarchy. This is
exemplified in the legend of origin of the Kamars.~4 The first Kamar
was created by none other than Lord Shiva, as a champion of gods,
to fight a demon, Lohasur (Lohar+Asur). The Asur had obtained a
gift of immortality and warred successfully with gods. The Kamar
was armed by Lord Shiva with a set of blacksmiths tools. His hammer
was formed from Shivas drum (damaru), a skull was converted into
an anvil, pincers were made out of the snake girdle worn by the
God, while the scared bull (Nandi) parted with a piece of his skin to
furnish the bellows. The Kamar killed the Asur hy tricking him into
getting into his furnace and reducing him to molten iron. From this
were forged eight different kinds of iron, corresponding to the eight
classes of Kamar. Of these, the Lohar-Kamar worked in iron and
others on brass utensils, bell metal, gold, brass mirrors and so on.
The myths and traditions of social origin espoused by craft-caste
groups almost invariably claimed that their present low status was
somewhat undeserved. Typically, they attributed a past fall in social
status to the rash and foolish action of some ancestor of the group or
to an accident provoked by fate or to the trickery of Brahmins or
some other upper caste persons This is exemplified in the case of
the Kanaujia Lohars and Kamars, who claimed descent from an
intrigue between a sudra woman and the celestial architect and
artificer Vishwakarma.66 Thus ritual sanction was sought by claiming
mythological origins and aspiring to a Brahmanical or supra-
Brahmanical status. 67
An important component in the social world of the craftsmen was
the worship of gods, annual festivities, religious ceremonies, daily
ritual observances and customs. The beliefs and practices of the
craftsmen were rooted in popular forms of Hinduism, and included
animistic ideas, superstitions, cult of the mysterious, a world full of
64
Ibid.; also, T.N. Mukharjee, A Monograph: 279.

David N. Lorenzen, Tradition of Non-Caste Hinduism: The Kabir Panth.
66
Risley, Tribes and Castes, vol. II: 66, 295; vol. I: 388.
67
The turn of the twentieth century in Bihar witnessed the phenomenon of the
social upgradation of the lower castes in the Hindu social hierarchy. Barhais
(carpenters) and Lohars (blacksmiths) declared themselves to be Vishwakarma
Brahmins, that is, descendants of the celestial chief architect and wanted to be
recorded as such in the 1911 census. In 1921, they claimed to be Dhiman (intelligent)
Brahmins. These claims, however, were not recognised by the concerned authorities.
See also, Girish Mishra and Braj Pandey, Sociology and Economics
: 76--77.
65
99 .
spirits both benign and malignant, the supernatural, the superempirical and the esoteric. Verrier Elwin has suggested that the
Agarias clung to their demonstrably inefficient techniques because
fully established in ancient myths and therefore

regarded as unquestionable, if not infallible. Every detail of the ironsmiths operation such as making of charcoal, the manufacture of
bellows, the use of charge without flux, was sanctified in myths.
Magical tests for finding good or bad omens, use of dreams and divination for locating the smithy, recitation of mantras and charms to
obtain good iron were indispensable.6 These myths were obviously
the particular idiom and an integral part of the iron workers culture.
The religious usages of the Lohars and Kamars were reflective of
the different elements from which they had been formed. The
Kanaujia Lohars and the other Lohar subcastes in Bihar posed as
orthodox Hindus employing Maithil Brahmins, worshipping the
greater gods and performing ceremonies andbratas (ritual fasting).
The Brahmins were not held to incur any social degradation by
performing these functions. The tutelary god of the Kanaujia Lohars
was Vishwakarma. He was a god peculiar to the Lohars, Barhais
and Kamar. They worshipped him once a year on the last day of
the month of Bhadra (August-September). On this occasion, homage
was paid to the tools of the craft-the Lohars and the Kamars worshipped the hammer, anvil and other tools used in the craft. It was a
quiet domestic pooja with offerings of parched rice, fruits, ornaments,
water from the Ganges, without the installation of a deity. In Chotanagpur, though some superficial profession of Hinduism was made,
the real worship of the Chotanagpur Lohars was addressed to Manasa
Ram Thakur, Baranda Thakur, Phulai Gosain, Dalli Gorai, Bhadu and
Mohan Giri-the last being perhaps the mountain God ( marang baru)
of the Mundas and Santak. To him goats were sacrificed on Monday
or Tuesday in months of Magh (January-February), Ashar (JuneJuly) and Agahayan (October-November), the flesh being eaten afterwards by the worshippers as prasad.69 The Kamars would worship
two Muslim saints-Miran or Shaikh Sadu and Saiyad. They would
make offerings of cocks and delicacies to the latter and give it to the
the latter
were
poor Muslims. The Kamars of Bihar would also show

68
Verrier
69
Risley,
70
The Agaria, London, 1942.

Tribes and Castes, vol. II: 22.
Ibid., vol. I: 391.
Elwin,
reverence
to
100
minor gods like Hanuman, Bandi, Gorayia, Kali, Jwala Mukhi, Jalpa
Bhairah. The Agarias would not consider any operation complete
without invocation of the deities, Lohasur Baba, Koelasur, Agysur
and their ancestors. The Lohars of Santhal Parganas took to employing
low Brahmins, but in Lohardaga, the aboriginal priests (pahan) and
the local sorcerer (mati, ojha, or sukha) ministered to their spiritual
wants. The Sad Lohars employed the village barber to act as the
priest in the marriage ceremony.&dquo; The Marayas did not employ
Brahmins for religious and ceremonial purpose and the function of
the priest was discharged by select members of the caste.2
It may be inferred that the religion of the iron workers (who were
a part of the low caste) can be distinguished from the more orthodox
Hinduism of the upper castes. The non-caste Hinduism containing
both the Great and Little Traditions was subject to the hegemonic
influence of the traditions of caste Hinduism. At the same time, it
bore its own distinctive characteristics. Upper caste hegemony based
on concrete economic and political advantages and authority, limited
the extent to which non-caste Hinduism could overtly challenge caste
Hindu beliefs and values; but within these limits there was space for
dissent. One typical strategy of non-caste Hinduism was to accept
many of the behavioural forms or structures of caste Hinduism, while
at the same infusing them with an ideological content that was an indirect opposition to basic socio-religious values characteristic of caste
Hinduism. The results of this strategy are well illustrated in the myth
of social origins professed by non-caste Hindus, and in their interpretation of the concept of pollution, karma, sanskars, bhakti, grace,
sa-auna and nirguna god?3
The social customs of the Loharsalso reveal characteristic diversities
based on the exogamous divisions of the caste. The Lohars of Chotanagpur practised adult as well as infant marriage with bride price.
Polygamy, without any limits on the number of wives, was allowed.
However, amongst the Lohars who did not belong to Chotanagpur,
infant marriage was the rule and adult marriage the rare exception.
The ceremony was modelled on the orthodox type. A bridegroom
price was paid and polygamy was lawful only if the first wife proved
barren. A diversity of practices prevailed with regard to divorce.
71
Ibid., vol.
72
Ibid.: 80.
73
Compare,
II: 23.
David N. Lorenzen, Tradition of Non-Caste Hinduism: 280.
101
Lohars professed to prohibit it altogether, while other

subcastes admitted it only with the permission of the panchayat.
Remarriage of divorced wives was regarded with disfavour; yet it
was recognised. Among the Asurs and Agorias, the man did not marry
a woman belonging to the same totemistic name. In fact, he did not
eat, cut or injure the plant or animal whose name his totemistic section
would bear, for instance Basriar (bamboo) and Makruar (spider).
Marriage was usually adult marriage. Polygamy was permitted and
great licence of divorce prevailed.4
The iron workers like any other members of the community were
subject to all the prejudices and psychological pressures which society
brings to bear on the individual. The literature of the monotheistic
Bhaktas and the proverbs are two important entry points into analysing these pressures. Keeping in mind the mass and more specifically
the artisanal following of the Bhakti leaders, a study of the thoughts
and attitudes of the medieval Bhaktason the society and state assumes
importance to determine the current popular consciousness.75 The
most prominent Bhakta-the poet of the oppressed, himself belonging to the lower caste of weavers, Kabir-was an important
mouthpiece of popular attitudes towards state and society. His
writings display militant iconoclasm including scathing attack against
Brahmanical pride, caste prejudice, religious obscurantism, untouchability as well as against the dogmatism he perceived within Islam.
The monotheistic Bhaktas spearheaded the movement for equality
with the upper castes not by seeking mythological origins or claiming ritual privilege but by a total negation of caste. Kabir rejected
caste thus:
Kanaujia
a saint, the caste to which he belongs.

the
warrior, the tradesmen, all the thirty-six castes
For, the priest,
are
based
alike
upon a search for God. The barber has sought
It is needless to ask of
74
Tribes and Castes, vol. 1: 80.

The idea of the Bhaktas as representative of popular consciousness is dealt
with by Harbans Mukhia, Ideology of the Bhakti Movement, The Case of Dadu
Dayal, in Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (ed.), History and Society: Essays in Honour
of Professor Niharranjan Ray, Calcutta, 1978. The nature of participation of the
professional and artisan classes in the Bhakti Movement in northern India has been
discussed by Irfan Habib. The historical background of the monotheistic movements
of the 15-17
th centuries, Seminar on Ideas—Medieval India, University of Delhi,
Risley,
75
1965,
mimeo.
102
God, as the washerman and the carpenter. Even Raidas was a seeker
after god.
No_one knoweth the mystery of me, the weaver
Though the world cometh to me to get the cloth woven
When ye folks hear the Vedas and Puranas.
Then I see that whole creation stretched out
like the Lords workshop
Of the earth and the sky the Lord hath made a loom
and the Sun and the Moon the warp and woof
So I pray and my mind is pleased with the Lord
and I, the weaver, realised the Lord within my own home
Sayeth Kabir: when the loom breaks
then the thread merges in the thread of the world.
The monotheistic Bhaktas emphasised that mans personal virtues

alone, and not his caste, entitled him to call himself human:
The whole universe is the creation of Brahma
Tell me, 0 Pandit, since when have Brahmins been created.
Dont waste your life by crying (that you are a)
Brahmin at every step,
If you are a Brahmin because a Brahmin woman
gave birth to you, why are
Brahmin
and why are we Sudras?
you
Kabir says that (the man) who really worships
Brahman [the Creator],
we call only him the [true] Brahmin.
.
Sometimes, Kabir phrases his social protest even more directly.

Through the religious colouring of his poetry rings the clear voice of
a
toilers passionate condemnation of social and economic inequality.
They who wear dhotis of three and half yards,

and threefold sacred cords
And
display rosaries on their necks and in their

hands are the polished jugs;
They are the cheats of Benaras, and not the saints of the Lord.
I cannot
respect such saints
Who devour trees
along with all their boughs
103
They scour their vessels before placing on the hearth

and wash the wood before it is lighted
and digging out the earth they make double fireplaces.
But devour the whole man they
They live as sinners and transgressors
Yea, they abide ever in ego and all their kindred are
drowned with them.
They follow the lead of their minds and so do the deeds. 76

Here, Kabir expresses the mood and sentiments of all people, whose
lot was equally hard, whether they lived in the region of the upper
Indus or in the Ganges valley. The Kabir Panth, Nanak Panth and
Daria Panth, represent the earliest anti-caste movements in Bihar.
Their influence remained confined to small pockets here and there
and amongst the untouchables and artisans. The influence of Brahmanism was so pervasive that they could not make any headway. 77
The proverbs give expression to sentiments on social relationships,
which have a direct bearing on the structural setting of the society.
They reflect tensions present in the social structure and by giving an
institutionalised expression to them, provide a healing touch.78 They
give a vivid expression to the anxieties, the troubles, annoyances
and the humour of the daily life of craftsmen. 79 Vendetta against the
upper castes and caste brethren was purged through gibes and mockeries. Tensions were thus relieved as they felt that they were level
with the socially dominant groups. The proverbs typify generic professional traits as the stamp of a culture that is essentially corporatenot in the sense of an organised guild, but in the sense of caste-based
collective. This culture is one that seeks pride in ones own station.
In the process, it also highlights tensions between the lower castes.
76
Translated by I.D. Sereberiakov, The Poetry of Weavers and Tanners,

Chattopadhyaya (ed.), Indian Studies Past and Present, vol. VIII, 1966-67: 194.
77
Today, the Kabir Panthis have an important Math (monastery) at Dhanauti in
Saran, which was established by Bhago Das, who was the first compiler and editor
of Kabir Beejak. The Daria Panthis who owe their origin to Daria Saheb, an
eighteenth century Ujjainia poet-ascetic from Dharkandha village of Shahabad, have
remained limited in number. Girish Mishra and Braj Kumar Pandey, Sociology and
D.P.
: 87.
Econontics
78
Surajit Sinha, Expressions of sentiments in the songs associated with the Karma
festival of rural Manbhum, Man in India, vol. 37(1), January-March 1957: 34.
79
Risley in W. Crooke (ed.), People of India, first published 1915, (2nd edn),
1969, Delhi: 130.
104
One stroke of a blacksmith is worth a hundred strokes of a goldsmith.

And seven strokes of a carpenter equal one by a Lohar.80 Thus could
the goldsmith get even with the Loharswhen the goldsmith said the
Lohar is a bad friend; he will either burn you with fire or stifle you
with smoke.H1 Even the blacksmiths shop was always an untidy mess;
it was like the place where donkeys rolled. Sparks were the lot of
the blacksmiths legs. It was advisable not to sit near a blacksmiths
forge for fear of sparks. Even his pet mynah was said to mimic the
noise of the hammer and it was advised not to buy his mynah even
for a pice, the lowest price.
The dirty living of the Kamar was the theme of the proverb, which
took a dig at the Kainmatans cloth-So thin that the hair on his legs
show through and so dirty that it will not burn.~2 The above proverbs
perceived the blacksmith in condescendingly dismissive terms. He
was low in esteem, worthless in public opinion, a man to whom the
nature of his employment denied all possibility of moral or.political
virtue. He was obviously neither admired, nor worthy of any serious
regard. He was neither coveted by friends, nor feared by enemies,
nor envied by fellowmen.
A major dimension in an iron workers identity to be noted is that
of gender. The iron craftsmen were all male-logically, the world of
these craftsmen was aggressively male. Hence an attempt has been
made to conceptualise the problem of the traditional division of labour
between sexes in iron crafts. 83 A blacksmiths craft was an occupation
in which women were only partly engaged as assistants to men. This
was unlike certain other crafts in which women fully participated
like spinning, basket making, bamboo work, mat making. It was
also unlike those crafts which were the sole realm of men in which
women were not allowed to participate at all, like cocoon rearing,
weaving, carpentry, and working in gold and copper smithies. It was
only in the Santhal Parganas, that the Lohars often cultivated land
themselves while the women of the household laboured at the forge.81
80
Risley, People of India: 137.
81
Ibid.: 134.
82 Appendix I, 315.
Ibid.:
83
J. Brouwer, A Matter of Liminalities, a Study of Women Crafts in South India,
Man in India, vol. 67(I), March 1987. The division of labour according to gender
has been conceptualised by J. Brouwer. He concludes that this division followed
unconscious Hindu conceptions about the male and the female, particularly in the
symbolism of the body and its consequent rule of contamination.
84
Ibid.: 80.
105
The division of labour according to gender has been generally

explained on a twofold basis-functional: women were engaged in
sedentary work requiring maximum possible exertion, and making
less use of tools; and ritualistic: the lower the ritual rank of the craft,
the more the women participated in the craft, one major exception
being spinning. No high caste women were considered degraded by
spinning.
A major and interesting point of reference in the gender participation could be the deep connection between myths and iron crafts,
reinforced by the ritualisation and attribution of religiosity to craft
usages. This was reflected in the strict adherence to certain rules of
purity and the belief that infringement of these rules would destroy
the success of their craft operations. These rules totally excluded the
participation of women, for being impure, from certain crafts. The
wife of the blacksmith could help her husband in operating the bellows but her participation ended there. Buchanan points out that in
the operation of the bellows, the woman usually clasped her arms
around the waist of the man who blowed but took no further part in
the operation. She did not touch the forge or the fire, which is invariably said to be Mother Goddess Kali. Buchanan attributed this to
a strange superstition which is referable to the belief in the power
of the male and the female influences so common in the ruder as
well as the more advanced religions in India. 85 In fact, in all other
metal crafts, the notion of impurity of women predominated. Thus
for the goldsmith, gold was equivalent to goddess Lakshmi. Though
copper was the principal raw material of the copper worker, he mostly
worked with an alloy called panchloha, which means an alloy of
five metals. The copper workers called the alloy a holy one because
they considered it to be representative of the universe (brahmanda).
Both gold and copper smithies excluded women from their operations. The Agarias would abstain from sexual intercourse on the
of important operations
suggested that the well defined gender based division of
labour was an empirical manifestation of the intermingling of mythical
ideas, religious awe and craft usages of the craftsmen. However, even
within the division of labour, a definite pattern of relationship had
eve
It can be
85
W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account of
Bengal, Monghyr, vol. xv, Calcutta, 1875-78:
138.
86
Verrier
Elwin, The Agaria: 86.
106
emerged as a result of the family functioning as a work group. This

idyllic companionship in work is described in the traditional songs
of the Agoria, the blacksmiths of Lohardaga. In one of the songs, the
boy sings to the girlCome to the forest and cut a green tree,
Come to the furnace and blow the bellow for me.
Another song saysShe presses down the bellows with the strength of her heels.
He wields the hammer with all his might.87
and development of iron mining and metallurgical
in
seventeenth
and eighteenth century Bihar had a great improcess
in
an
iron
metal craft for a variety of goods ranging
on
ushering
pact
from agricultural implements, tools used by various professions,
The
growth
weapons and guns, to cooking utensils and other articles of domestic

and personal use. A few conclusions emerge from the above survey
relating to the metal-working artisans.
First, the blacksmith revealed tremendous capacity to utilise the
primitive technology at his disposal to the maximum, even as the
technology of production remained nearly stable. While the weaver
could easily move with his loom to urban centres in response to
commercial demands, the metalworking craft was witness to a far
lower degree of spatial mobility. The metalworkers could also not
be expected to innovate larger, less portable, costlier and more efficient furnaces owing to the high capital outlay involved. The absence
of the power drive denied to the Indian smiths the ability to obtain
high enough temperatures in large forges or furnaces. The failure to
impart a sufficient amount of air to the furnaces meant that only small
amounts of metal could be melted at one time in each furnace. This
greatly affected the quality of the metal when it had to be used in a
large mass as in cannon.88 Thus, the blast furnace and consequently
87
Ibid.: 169.
Irfan Habib, Technology and Barriers to Social Change: 166. The development
of power driven bellows occurred in China much earlier than in Europe. They were
essential for the production of good cast iron. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. IV, Part II, London, 1965: 378-79.
88
107
iron were prominently missing in sixteenth to eighteenth

The lack of investment capital with the smelters and
India.
century
low rates of profit were major factors in preventing
and
the
forgers
the development of technology. Buchanan fails to mention any technological innovation apart from open pit mines, small clay furnaces
and primitive bellows unable to liquefy iron resulting in a low percentage of extraction.89 It is not surprising that despite the intrinsically
good quality of iron ore, Indian iron manufactures could not compare
with the European in quality.
Second, within the class of blacksmiths, the division of labour for
commodity production was emerging and maturing. The blacksmiths
in rural areas were no longer merely village community artisans.
They bought from merchants ingots of low quality iron and forged
them into special planks for the production of ploughshares, hoes,
axes and other tools.
Third, an important factor that emerges is that the blacksmiths could
not carry on production without advances. In the case of Bhagalpur,
in late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, merchants advanced grain
to the peasants who were engaged part of the year in pig iron casting
and who handed the finished pieces of metal to the merchants in
exchange for grain. The merchants distributed the metal for further
processing to the village blacksmiths, to whom they also advanced
money and from whom they collected forgings. They formally sold
the metal to the blacksmiths and then purchased the forgings from
them. F. Buchanan emphasised that these village blacksmiths never
work but when they receive advances. Merchants usually sell them
the crude iron, and purchase the forged, so soon as made. 90
In exploring the identity of the iron workers, how exactly do we
characterise them-as poor and illiterate men, for poverty, economic
stringency, insecurity and ignorance were fundamental facts of their
lives; as exploited and injured workers, for their low capital investment and control of the market by the middle men gave them a subordinate position with regard to others in the market place: or in the
context of categories like caste, community, religion, ideology and
the
cast
89
The socioeconomic constraints have been discussed by Tapan Raychaudhuri,
Non-Agricultural Production, in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The
Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. I, 1200-1750, Cambridge, 1982, New
Delhi, (rpt) 1984: 284-86, 320 ff.

.: 265.
Ibid
90
108
certain network of social relations, all of which condemned them as

lower class and backward? Yet, we cannot dismiss the iron workers
in incredibly simplistic terms-as people who never talked politics,
never conspired, never thought, were unquestioning in their humility,
exceedingly well disposed towards the superior classes, incapable
overeating an autonomous culture of their own. The material milieu
of the iron workers reveals stark facts ostensibly prohibitive to
culture. Their struggle for existence was hard, continuous and self
degrading. Economically dependent upon patrons and customs, hidebound in caste and outcaste restrictions, professionally skilled but
driven to cunning for a bit of surplus over the honest grain or subsistence measure, these iron workers or martyrs of crafts had little
time or means or even freedom to indulge in education.
As Max Weber notes, for such dispriveleged social strata intellectualism is both economically and socially inaccessible.91 However,
this does not mean that they were intellectually dead or defunct
through cerebral disuse. They were not intellectuals of analytical
criticality but they certainly exercised their mind or mind stuff. This
mind stuff bore and preserved sanskaras or impressions from their
forebears, ancestors, elders, kith and kin and professional groups.
Since social prestige or respect had been denied to most of the craftsmen, the acute agony experienced by them through generations,
was expressed through a complete identification with the creative
thinking of the Bhaktas. The latter became the focal point for the
compact grouping and concentration of the craftsmen. They listened
to the liberating gospels of Kabir, Tulsidas, Dadu, Raidas putting
cordial devotion over restrictive codes and formalistic ritualism. They
realised that they could be pious without being Brahmins or
Brahmanical. They could realise God within themselves, without
visiting temples. Their thinking was thus spontaneous, genealogically

inherited without any meditative intellect or critical dialectics. They
could even sniff and scoff at orthodox rigidities. This wisdom filled
them with perennial wit and a satirical sense of humour, as is evident
in the proverbs and monotheistic literature which are so full of salt
and ironical sting.
Thus, ironwares constituted an indispensable part of human needs
and as such the services of the iron workers were a daily requisition
91
Max
Weber, The Sociology of Religion, Boston, 1964.
First
published
1922.
109
for manufacturing a variety of goods. No village or town could be

complete without the iron worker, and in this sense he remained a
cohesive
entity within the society. Yet, he remained condemned to
obscurity, a faceless worker or a
face in the crowd. The iron worker

thus carried on with the craft that he conceived not merely as a means
of living but as a way of life.
B

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The Medieval History Journal

Technology and Culture among the Iron Workers of Bihar during

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Technology and Culture among the Iron

This paper focuses on the mining and metallurgical technology in

study of technology is an essential key to the understanding of

sketch of the iron workers. It is necessary

the outset, that the

Delhi University, Delhi 110 054. Email:

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trajectories and parameters of the terms Technology and Culture

Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism 15

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should not be regarded as peripheral, obscurantist, backward, but

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differences in the cultural traditions of low class Hindus compared

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the European sources-the reports of the factors of the English East

Weaver Folk Traditions

Economic and Social History Review, vol.

Source of History, The Indian

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Bihar and Bengal proper.&dquo; Between Bhagalpur and Dumka,

Gorakhpoor, Dinajpoor, Puraniya, Rangpoor and Assam in Relation to their Geology,

14 and Orissa Administrative Report, 1936-37: 118.

Medieval India, Delhi, 1986: 72.

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Downloaded from mhj.sagepub.com by Pratyay Nath on October 8, 2010

smaller than those of

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The bellow would provide a continuous blast.2&dquo; Each bellow was

miniatures in the Khamsa of

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F. Buchanan in Martin Montgomery, Eastern India, vol. II: 228.

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Nineteenth century Patna Qala11l painting on paper depicting a Loharor ironsmitli

working on his hearth,

enough for family subsistence. Buchanan informs that 25 traders had

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farming implements, local carpenters switched to making

(kitchen stoves), forks, knives, scissors, various locks, tongs,

goods were very coarse compared with

Ibid.: 329-31, 221.

(Appendix), 770; W.W. Hunter, Statistical Account

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the Sikulagars of Monghyr won particular

barrelled guns, rifles, pistols, single-barrelled pistols, fowling pieces,

Buchanan, Patna-Gaya: 640.

vol. II: 262-66.

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irons and tea kettles, which would not discredit an ironmongers

of the same family. When anyone received a large order, he hired

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production of Monghyr. Indeed,

Buchanan says explicitly that the