History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s6.56

v1.c24.s6.56

The Arthaśāstra (II.24.18) refers to a number of devices for lifting water for irrigation. These are hastaprāvartimam, skandhaprāvartimam, srotoyantra-pravartimam and nadīsarastāṭakakū-podghatam. The precise meaning of these expressions has not been determined. Kangle translates them as meaning ‘set in motion by the hand’, ‘set in motion by shoulders’, ‘set flowing in channels by a mechanism’ and ‘lifted from rivers, lakes, tanks and wells.’ It may be pointed out that prāvartimam here does not qualify a mechanism or device set in motion. It refers to the diversion of water or its being brought from one’s own irrigation work (svasetu). Kangle takes hastaprāvartimam as referring to the carrying of water in pitchers. Laping suggests that it may refer to any one of the devices - the swing - basket, the shadoof, dhenkli or tath, the picota, the spoon irrigation lever and bucket being emptied into higher basin. Skandhaprāvartimam is interpreted by Laping as referring to the raising of water by the help of draught animals, as in the case of mot. Meyer takes srotoyantra to refer to the Persian wheel. Laping suggests that it may refer to a more primitive water wheel, one turned with the feet, but prefers to take it to denote ‘some device for the regulation of the outflow, probably a sort weir or spillway’. Kangle’s rendering, though in effect brining out the nature of the irrigational method, does not emphasise the device referred to in the original expression. It is to be rendered better as ‘diverted (regulated or brought) by the device of sluices’. In this case the water flows to the fields through channels. In the fourth expression the term udghātam reminds us of oghāṭitam in the Hathigumpha inscription. Kangle’s rendering of it as ‘lifted from’ does not indicate the nature of the device. It may refer to the digging out of channels. This does not involve any complicated or expensive device for manipulating or regulating the flow of water from the original source of reservoirs. It meant the natural flow of water through a channel from a source (river, lake, tank or well) at a higher level to a field at a lower level⁵⁷.