The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.311

v1.c10.311

On the Great Tower a scene represents churning, and the instrument delineated is identically the same with which we are now familiar, a churning stick, worked in a large earthen pan, with a twisted rope held in the two hands of a milk-maid. The stick is kept *in situ* by two rings attached to an adjoining post. (Illustration No. 166.) A kitchen scene at Sāñcī exhibits a winnowing fan, *kulā*, a wooden pestle and mortar, *okhli*, (both very like what is common now); a curry stone, *śila*, with feet and muller, and a board or table mounted on four tall legs used evidently for rolling bread, *cāki*. The grouping is thoroughly life-like and oriental. Adverting to it, General Cunningham, in his *Bhilsa Topes*, says : "This scene is one of the most curious and interesting of all the Sāñcī bas-reliefs. Women only are employed in all the domestic occupations : in drawing water, in husking and winnowing the corn, and in the cooking of food. The last fact is noticed by Quintus Curtius, who, speaking of the Indian king, says : ‘Women prepare his food’. The mortar and two-handed pestle are the same as those in use at the present day in India. The mortar (*okhli*) is exactly the same as the Greek *iedn*, and the Roman *pila*; and the pestle (*musar*) is the same as the Greek *Kopanon* and the Roman *pilum*. The primitive method of winnowing represented in the above scene is still used in India ; and it recalls one of the blessings of the prophet promised to the children of Israel : ‘The oxen, likewise, and the young asses that ear the ground, shall eat clean provender which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan’. Bishop Lowth reads, ‘winnowed with the van and the sieve’. But shovel is the nearest descriptive word in English for the present winnowing-basket, which does not seem to differ, even in the slightest degree, from the ancient one represented in the bas-relief.¹⁵⁴