History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c15.s1: Black-and-Red Ware
History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c15.s1
- Language
- English
Black-and-Red Ware
v1.c15.s1.1
The black-and-red ware is one of the most important ceramic industries of ancient India (Srivastava, pp. 372-417). The vessels of this ware are usually black inside and on the rim on the exterior, while the remaining part of the external surface is red. This result in the colouration of the ceramic has generally been ascribed to the peculiar firing technique. Till recently the black-and-red pottery was taken to be characteristic of the megalithic burials of South India, but recent discoveries in different parts of the country indicate that the antiquity of the pottery goes back to the latter half of the third millenium B.C., as it has been found at Harappan sites in Saurashtra. Moreover, it is also a distinguishing feature of the Ahar culture of the Copper/Bronze Age, datable to the first half of the second millenium B.C. In Central India and the Deccan the black-and-red pottery has been found to be associated with the chalcolithic painted black-on-red pottery. (Fig.1) The ceramic also occurs in the early historical levels almost all over the country, and above all, it is a distinguishing feature of the megalithic culture of South India belonging to the latter half of the first millenium B.C. All this goes to show that the pottery was in use in India from the middle of the third millenium B.C. till about the beginning centuries of the Christian era. Its distribution is equally widespread; it is found almost all over the country from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east and from Punjab in the north to Kerala in the south. It will thus be clear that the BR ware has a wide distribution in the country both in terms of time and space. It may, however, be stated that it does not occur anywhere in the country after the opening centuries of the Christian era. The ware thus has a long history of 2500 years and it can be called the most important ceramic of ancient India.
v1.c15.s1.2
The BR pottery has been reported from outside India as well. It occurs in the Neolithic Egypt at such classic sites as Al Tasa, Al Badari and Naqda where it was formerly dated to the fourth or the fifth millenium B.C. But the new radio-carbon determinations have stretched back the beginning of settled life in West Asia to a much earlier period in the 8th millenium B.C. and consequently the date of the BR ware in Egypt may also go back to an earlier period. The pottery from these Egyptain sites has been referred to as the Black-topped ware (Honey, p. 16, Fig. 1). It also occurs in the Neolithic Greece.
v1.c15.s1.3
Fig.1 Chalcolithic Black and Red Ware (all except the one in the centre, top row)
v1.c15.s1.4
The most important problem is the technique of manufacture of the BR ware. So far it was presumed that the peculiar colour was the result of firing the pots in an inverted position in the kiln. By this process the portion of the pot, which was oxidised, turned red whereas the remaining part being fired under reducing conditions, turned black. This was the contention of Flinders Petrie and also of Gordon Childe (1937, pp. 43-44).
v1.c15.s1.5
This was, however, contested by Lucas who, on the basis of his own experiments, is of the opinion that the colour effect of the ceramic cannot be obtained merely by inverted firing (Lucas, pp 434-36). It is in fact due to the covering of that portion of the pot, which is to be done according to Lucas in two ways - viz. a) by the simultaneous production of the red of the body (apart from any wash of red colour) and the black of this interior and the rim or b) by producing ware wholly red first and then by a secondary operation blackening the interior and the rim.
v1.c15.s1.6
The first method was adopted by A.L. Mercer, a pottery manufacturer in USA., who, in one continuous operation made excellent imitations of the red-bodied black-topped ware, which are now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford (Gordon Childe, 1937, pp. 43-44). In this case the desired result was obtained by keeping the pot upside down with its rim being buried in sawdust to the depth of an inch. In other words this was merely the inverted firing technique.
v1.c15.s1.7
Lucas (pp. 434-36) also thought that some process similar to that practised by Mercer may have been in use in ancient times. But at the same time he is rather doubtful, for he is unable to conjecture how it could have been done. He is, therefore, of the opinion that possibly the method employed consisted of two distinct operations (as in the making of modern black pottery in Egypt), the first being the making of a red pot and the second being the subjecting of the rim and the interior of the pot to the action of dense smoke in order to blacken them.
v1.c15.s1.8
This second operation is analogous to that practised in Sudan and elsewhere at present, but instead of the whole pot being covered with chaff and other material which produce a pot entirely black on the rim only would have been covered as only this and the interior had to be blackened. G.G. Majumdar (pp. 90- 93) is also of the opinion that the BR pottery can be made only by the double firing process. Lucas (pp. 434-36) actually manufactured a few pots by employing this technique. The pots coated with a thin wash of red ochre were baked in a small electric muffle furnace. And when red hot, placed mouth downwards on a layer of sawdust in which the rim was buried. The result was a red pot with a black rim and generally, though not always, a black interior, but the red body was almost always badly smoke stained. In this process, however, the thin red wash which was applied to the pot, could be discerned even in that part of the pot which was black by merely scraping the surface and the same could also be noticed in the section.
v1.c15.s1.9
We thus have two different processes of making the BR pottery. However, Majumdar (pp. 90-93) is of the opinion that the Indian BR ware was the result of the double firing process. It may also be stated that according to Paramasivan (pp. 231-52) the megalithic BR pottery of India was baked at 600° 700°F. He further observes that the black-and-red colouring of the megalithic pottery from Maski (Dist. Raichur, Karnataka) is only due to the presence of iron in the clay. According to him, “If the baking is done in a reducing atmosphere, the pottery becomes black. An oxidising atmosphere gives red ware”.
v1.c15.s1.10
He describes three ways in which the reducing atmosphere can be created, but does not specify the way in which the Maski megalithic BR pottery was made.
v1.c15.s1.11
Thus there still ranges a controversy about the technology of the Black-and-red-ware. Scholars have tried to attribute the authorship of the pottery to Dravidians (Soundara Rajan, p. 74) or Aryans (Sinha, p. 11) but what seems to be the case is that this peculiar technique either originated or was introduced in Gujarat first and then diffused, in course of time to different areas. It seems to have been perfected by the megalith-builders of South India.