Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c21.5

c21.5

In working the plough, the cup is not filled with grain, but is fed by hand; this labour is performed by a woman, who walks on the left side of the plough with a bag or large pocket of grain before her, her right arm stretched out, and her wrist resting on the edge of the cup; her hand is filled with grain, and by moving her fingers she lets drop into the cup as much grain as supplies the three drills in due proportion. When the grain in her right hand is nearly expended, she fills it again from her left hand, observing never to take her right hand from the cup, while the plough is in motion, as that would leave a vacant space in the field. The Drill plough, which drops the grain by some piece of mechanism, will probably never sow a field so equally as is done in this way; and here is a remedy for the defect complained of in the English Drill plough. Whether the expense of two persons to work this plough, may or may not make against its being introduced into England, in preference to that now in use, I shall leave to be determined by those who are better acquainted with the subject; yet when it is considered, that supplying the cup is a labour performed by women, and how soon an acre is sown in this way, perhaps it might not be rejected on account of the additional expense, which would be but trifling. The first cost of a plough of this kind would be but a few shillings, whereas the patent Drill plough is an expensive machine.