History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c15.s6: Painted Grey Ware
History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c15.s6
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Painted Grey Ware
v1.c15.s6.1
The painted grey ware (PGW) is one of the most characteristic ceramic of the middle Ganga Valley (Tripathi). Technologically it has proved to be the most enigmatic pottery, and culturally too the PGW problem has been vexing the brains of scholars since its discovery in the forties. The pottery was first noticed in the excavations at Ahicchatra (present Ramnagar, Dist. Bareilly, U.P.) but the chronological position was later clearly established at Hastinapur (Dist. Meerut, U.P.) which was excavated by B.B. Lal (1954-55, pp.5-151) of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1948-49. Since then a number of PGW sites have been discovered. They suggest that the culture was spread in western U.P., Haryana, eastern Punjab and eastern Rajasthan. Recent exploration by Rafiq Mughal of Pakistan have brought to light a few PGW settlements in the erstwhile Bahawalpur state, on the fringe of Thar Parkar desert of Pakistan (Lal, B.B. *Ibid*). Similarly the misconception regarding the superficial identity between the PGW and the grey ware from Thessaly in Greece has to be removed. The author had occasion to visit the neolithic site in Thessaly viz., Sesklon and Dimini whence the grey ware has been reported. It should be remembered that in Greece the pottery occurs in Neolithic levels which are now dated in the fifth millennium B.C. and is entirely different in form and fabric.
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Nevertheless B.B. Lal (*Ibid*) is inclined to attribute the authorship of the PGW to the Aryans of the Mahabharata period. It is also important to note that the PGW is a Iron Age Culture.
v1.c15.s6.3
The PGW is a wheel turned pottery of extremely fine fabric. It is ash grey in colour and is painted with designs in black which are mostly linear such as groups of lines, sigmas, spirals etc. It is represented by bowls with vertical sides and dishes with incurved rim. The core of the pottery is uniformly grey but the surface colour sometimes changes into light orange as is evident from the specimens from Ahicchatra. Although the technique of producing the ceramic was not clearly known till recently, the experiments by K.T.M.. Hegde have been helpful in understanding it (Hegde, 1975, pp. 187-190). He observes: “After painting, the pots were stacked in a saggar. The gaps between the pots in the saggar were probably filled with goat droppings or some other carbonaceous material.......and sealed the saggar in a kiln, gently raising the temperature of the kiln to about 800°C and retaining the kiln at that temperature for some time, at least over twelve hours. In this way red ochre pigment was reduced into magnetite and the evenly baked PGW was produced”(Hegde, 1975, *Ibid*). Thus according to him, the black pigment of the painting is magnetite. The black slipped pottery which is found associated with the PGW at many north Indian sites, also belongs, technologically to the same class as the PGW. The black slip, according to Hedge, was produced by the application of liquid clay containing finely ground red ochres burnishing it and then firing the ware under reducing conditions (Hegde 1975, p.198)