Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.21

c20.21

It has been objected to these instruments that they are simple, clumsy and crude. This does not however make them less useful. Simplicity cannot surely be counted a fault; in some of our districts the plough is by far too complicated a machine. They are not unhandy to the people who have been in the habit of using them. They appear awkward to us because we have not been in that habit, and because the Indian Husbandman can afford to throw away nothing on ornament. The same instrument painted and smoothed by the plane would have given a very different idea of its value. The judgement of the eye decides more than we imagine. All this however depends rather upon taste and opulence, than on utility. The circumstances of an Indian Husbandman are not to be compared to those of our substantial tenants. They can study effect and appearance, which are in fact essential to their credit as good farmers. It is not however very long since we have painted and polished our ploughs. I have seen them within these few years in some parts of the country covered by the unremoved bark of the tree.