Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c24.20

c24.20

17. The bellows are two goat skins taken off the animal, by opening the hinder part only. The orifices at the legs are sewn up, and a piece of bamboo is inserted, and tied tightly into the neck of each skin, and these bamboos being inserted into the outer part of the blast pipe, which is made conical for that purpose, the vacant openings are then stopped with wet clay. The open end of the skin is finished by folding the edge of one side, as a flap, about four inches over the other edge, and sewing up the upper and lower corners, so as to leave a part of both flaps open for about nine inches. When the skin is filled with wind, and pressed, the inner flap closes therefore against the outer, and stops the passage. Each skin is managed by one man, who places it in his lap, and squeezes it down with the elbow and lower part of the right arm, grasping at the same time a projecting sort of handle of leather, formed at about the part where the tail of the animal might have been. To enable the blower to fill the skin again with wind, a piece of string is attached to the lower corner of the posterior part, which is tied to a peg driven into the ground about a foot behind the man's elbow, and keeps the skin distended to its full extent as it lays in his lap; and a loop of leather is also fastened to the outer flap, through which the arm is passed, by which the opening into the skin is distended upon raising the elbow; and the skin being pulled out horizontally by the neck in one direction, and the string and the peg in the other; upon pulling up the middle part vertically by the leather grasped in the hand, the skin is opened out into a triangular shape, and fills with wind through the open flap. While squeezing one skin in blowing also, by pressing the hand forward, so as to pull against the string attached to the posterior part, the valve flaps are made to close fairly and properly, so as to allow hardly any wind to escape. The left hand is employed in assisting the right, or in squeezing the distended parts of the skin upon the side. It will be observed, that as both the necks of the skins open into the blast pipe, a portion of the wind expelled from one skin passes back again into the other; as they are worked alternately, a defect which might have been remedied in a most simple manner, by attaching little hanging door valves to the ends of the pipes.