History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c32.s2.t9.43

v1.c32.s2.t9.43

As a potter’s wheel continues to revolve from the force of the previous impulse, so also the wheel of pots circulates continuously with momentum gained by the human force or movement of the running water. The man who stands very close to it must be an operator. The presence of an animal (elephant?) to the right and the warrior with the prancing horse to the left cannot be satisfactorily explained. One noticeable absence in the panel is the horizontal wheel which is an important part of the ‘Persian- wheel’ mechanism. Anyway, this solitary piece of evidence would suffice to testify the existence of such indigenous devices in the northern villages in ancient India (Srinivasan, 1970, pp. 379-389). So it is a misnomer to brand ‘*araghatta*’ as ‘*Persian- wheel*’. We may safely say that they represent pre-Persian wheel technology and operated on the water surface.