Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2: III
Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2
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III
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As contrasted with the eighteenth century European consideration and discussion on Indian sciences, the accounts of Indian technology did not give rise to passionate controversy. Perhaps such passion was neither possible nor necessary, as it ordinarily did not challenge any fundamental European dogma or belief. The results of the technology were there for all to observe and utilise. And it may incidentally be the lack of such controversy itself that explains the complete current ignorance of most aspects of this technology.
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It appears that Indian medical men (with whatever names they may be termed at the end of the eighteenth century) made considerable use of surgical techniques in different parts of India. According to Colonel Kyd in ‘Chirurgery (in which they are considered by us the least advanced) they often succeed, in removing ulcers and cutaneous irruptions of the worst kind, which have baffled the skill of our surgeons, by the process of inducing inflammation and by means directly opposite to ours, and which they have probably long been in possession of.²¹ Dr H. Scott (Chapter XVII) seems to corroborate the above and further reports the prevalence of plastic surgery in Western India, in his letters to the President of the Royal Society, London. In 1972, he states:
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In medicine I shall not be able to praise their science very much. It is one of those arts which is too delicate in its nature to bear war and oppression and the revolutions of governments. The effects of surgical operation are more obvious, more easily acquired and lost by no means so readily. Here I should have much to praise. They practice with great success the operation of depressing the crystalline lens when become opaque and from time immemorial they have
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cut for the stone at the same place which they now do in Europe. These are curious facts and I believe unknown before to us.22
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Two years later he refers to the ‘putting on noses on those who lost them’ and sends to London a quantity of ‘Caute’, the cement used for ‘uniting animal parts’.23
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Inoculation against the smallpox seems to have been universal, if not throughout, in large parts of Northern and Southern India, till it was banned in Calcutta and other places under the Bengal Presidency (and perhaps elsewhere) from around 1802-3. Its banning, undoubtedly, was done in the name of ‘humanity’, and justified by the Superintendent General of Vaccine (A vaccine (the Latin *vacca*, meaning cow) from the cow, for use in the inoculation against smallpox was manufactured by Dr E. Jenner in 1798. From then on, this vaccine replaced the previous ‘variolous’ matter, taken from human agents. Hence the method using the ‘vaccine’ came to be called ‘Vaccine Inoculation’.) Inoculation in his first report in March 1804.24
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The most detailed account of the practice of inoculation against the smallpox in India is by J.Z. Holwell, written by him for the College of Physicians in London.
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After giving the details of the indigenous practice, Holwell stated (Chapter VIII, pg 158): ‘When the before recited treatment of the inoculated is strictly followed, it is next to a miracle to hear, that one in a million fails of receiving the infection, or of one that miscarries under it.’ It is possible that Holwell’s information was not as accurate as of the newly appointed Superintendent General of Vaccine Inoculation in 1804. According to the latter, fatalities amongst the inoculated were around one in two hundred amongst the Indian population and amongst the Europeans in Calcutta, etc., ‘one in sixty or seventy’.25 The wider risk, however, seems to have been in the spreading of disease by contagion from the inoculated themselves to those who for one reason or another had not been thus inoculated.
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It is possible that there were some areas in India where inoculation did not prevail. This, of course, is a matter for enquiry. But wherever it did, it appears to have been universal over a whole tract. After the imposition of British rule in Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, areas of Madras Presidency, etc., this situation seems to alter. According to the Superintendent General of Vaccine Inoculation, a section of the people, either ‘from indigence’ or ‘from principle’, did not any longer (*circa* 1800) receive the inoculation.²⁶ Those who did not receive it ‘from principle’ seem to have been the Europeans in Calcutta, etc. Partly this may have been due to the greater mortality (i.e. one in sixty or seventy, as indicated above) amongst them. Further it may have also resulted from the persistence of Christian theological objections to any inoculation amongst them.²⁷
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Not receiving it ‘from indigence’, on the other hand, pertained to sections of the Indian population. Like many other categories of specialists, (including school teachers, doctors, establishments of religious institutions and places, village establishments, etc.), it is probable that the inoculators in India had also been maintained on subventions from public revenues. With the imposition of British rule, the Indian fiscal system began to collapse and various categories of specialists and functionaries were thrown out on the streets and left to wholly fend for themselves. It is this development, and the simultaneous deepening of poverty amongst the people, that most probably resulted in many not being inoculated ‘from indigence’. Such a situation must have naturally made the practice of inoculation seem even more undesirable to the Europeans who, while they themselves did not like to be inoculated, yet could not function without whole contingents of Indian domestic servants.
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So what, till the latter part of the eighteenth century, when practised universally in any tract, was a relatively effective method involving no contagious effects (since all were similarly inoculated), had begun to seem by 1800 a great hazard to the Europeans in Calcutta. But in spite of the bannings, prohibitions, etc. resorted to in Calcutta and other cities and towns, the introduction of vaccine inoculation was very halting. Such halting development must have been caused by insufficient provision of resources or by sheer indifference. Or, as hinted by the officiating Superintendent General of Vaccination for N.W.P. (the present U.P.) in 1870, it may also have been caused by the peoples’ reluctance to get vaccinated as, according to this authority, the indigenous inoculation possessed ‘more protective power than is possessed by vaccination performed in a damp climate.’28 Whatever the causes, the indigenous inoculation seems to have been still practised around 1870. For areas near Calcutta, those who were not so inoculated are estimated at 10 per cent of the population around 1870, and for the Benares area at 36 per cent.29 The frequent smallpox epidemics which were rampant in various parts of India in the nineteenth and early twentieth century may largely be traced back, on the one hand, to the state’s backwardness and indifference in making the requisite arrangement for universal vaccination; and on the other hand, to having made the existence of the indigenous practice of inoculation most difficult not only by withdrawing all support for it, but also forcing it to be practised secretly and stealthily.
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Another important point which emerges from Mr Holwell’s account of the Indian method of inoculation relates to the prevalence of some theory of bacterial infection amongst the mid-eighteenth century Indian inoculators. According to them: The small-pox is more or less epidemical, more mild or malignant, in proportion as the air is charged with these animalculae’, i.e. bacteria, and that these ‘adhere more closely, and in greater numbers, to glutinous, fat, and oily substances.’ That these ‘imperceptible animalculae floating in the atmosphere...are the cause of all epidemical diseases, but more particularly of the small-pox;’ that ‘they pass and repass in and out of the bodies of all animals in the act of respiration, without injury to themselves, or the bodies they pass through;’ but ‘such is not the case with those that are taken in with food,’ as these ‘are conveyed into the blood, where, in a certain time, their malignant juices excite a fermentation’ and end ‘in an eruption on the skin.’30
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Similarly interesting accounts are available on Indian agriculture. The observation by Alexander Walker (Chapter XII), that ‘the practice of watering and irrigation is not peculiar to the husbandry of India, but it has probably been carried there to a greater extent, and more laborious ingenuity displayed in it than in any other country,’31 is in dramatic contrast to present day text-book accounts of ‘the comparative absence of artificial irrigation’ in eighteenth century India.32 How Indian agricultural principles, implements and practices (and these may have somewhat varied in different parts of India itself) compared with those elsewhere (China, Egypt, various countries of Europe, etc.), can only be known after a detailed comparative study of the subject. The causes of relative scarcity of resources constantly facing the Indian husbandman also need to be enquired into. It is probable that in most parts of India such scarcity was of late eighteenth century origin, and directly resulted from political causes. But it seems clear that besides widespread artificial irrigation, the practices of (i) crop rotation, (ii) manuring, (iii) sowing by means of the drill plough, and (iv) use of a variety of other implements were fairly widespread. The nature and quality of soils seemed to be well understood and in areas like Malabar, certain species of paddy are propagated by cuttings. The use of the drill plough, however, (and perhaps also of some other implements and practices), as noted in Chapter XIII, varied from husbandman to husbandman, the poor not being in a position to use it as it required larger resources not only in implements but also in draught cattle. The latter-day decline in the variety and efficiency of agricultural implements seems to be a result of the general economic impoverishment brought about by the state appropriating all it possibly could in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. (The material concerning the proportion of the gross produce of agriculture taken away by the state constitutes a major portion of British Indian archival documents. Theoretically, the land revenue due to government was fixed at 50%. In large parts of India under British rule till 1855 or so, the proportion that during most years actually went towards governmental land revenue was appreciably higher. For instance, according to certain enquiries in the Madras Presidency Ryotwary areas during the 1850s, about one-third of the irrigated land had over the years altogether gone out of cultivation as the amount of land revenue on such land had begun to approximate the gross produce itself, and at times even exceeded it.)
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The composition of the ‘Madrass Mortar’ (Chapter IX) is very curious, while the process of making paper (Chapter XI) is perhaps not very different from that currently in use in the manufacture of hand-made paper. Chapter X, on the process of making ice, however, is still more fascinating. It was first published in 1775 in London. But it appears that this subject and the manner in which ice was made had been observed even earlier by a number of Britishers in India and had given rise to considerable scientific curiosity in England. The artificial making of ice seems to have been till then unknown in Britain (and perhaps also in other European countries). The observation that ‘boiling the water is esteemed a necessary preparative to this method of congelation’ aroused particular interest. Sir Robert Barker, the author of this article, while referring to this point wondered ‘how far this may be consonant with philosophical reasoning’ (i.e., with scientific proof). As a consequence, after carrying out various experiments, the professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University provided the following explanation:
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The boiled and common water differ from one another in this respect; that whereas the common water, when exposed in a state of tranquility to air that is a few degrees colder than the freezing point, may easily be cooled to the degree of such air, and still continue perfectly fluid, provided it still remains undisturbed: the boiled water, on the contrary, cannot be preserved fluid in these circumstances; but when cooled down to the freezing point, if we attempt to make it the least colder, a part of it is immediately changed into ice; after which, by the continued action of the cold air upon it, more ice is formed in it every moment, until the whole of it gradually congealed before it can become as cold as the air that surrounds it. From this discovery it is easy to understand, why they find it necessary to boil the water in India, in order to obtain ice.33
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Dr H. Scott (Chapter XVII) makes mention of many other processes and dyeing and other agents and substances. ‘Dammer: a substance in universal use through the whole Eastern world,’34 for covering the bottom of ships and for other uses where water proofing was required, was one such.
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But the substance which seems to have evoked most scientific and technical interest in the Britain of the 1790s was the sample of *wootz* steel sent by Dr Scott to Sir J. Banks, the President of the British Royal Society. The sample went through examination and analysis by several experts.35 It was found in general to match the best steel then available in Britain, and according to one user, ‘promises to be of importance to the manufactures’ of Britain.36 He found it ‘excellently adapted for the purpose of fine cutlery, and particularly for all edge instruments used for surgical purposes.’ After its being sent as a sample in 1794 and its examination and analysis in late 1794 and early 1795, it began to be much in demand; and some 18 years later the afore-quoted user of steel stated, ‘I have at this time a liberal supply of wootz, and I intend to use it for many purposes. If a better steel is offered to me, I will gladly attend to it; but the steel of India is decidedly the best I have yet met with.’37
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Till well into the nineteenth century, Britain produced very little of the steel it required and imported it mostly from Sweden, Russia, etc. Partly, Britain’s lag in steel production was due to the inferior quality of its iron ore, and the fuel, i.e., coal, it used. (Writing in 1824, J.M. Heath, later a leading manufacturer of iron and steel at Sheffield, stated: ‘It is well known that England is entirely dependent upon foreign countries for all the iron required for this purpose, and last year the importation of foreign iron into England, for the purpose of making steel alone, exceeded 12,000 tons...Year after year does the Society for the Encouragement of Arts offer a premium for the manufacture of English Iron fit for steel making, and to this time the premium has never been claimed; nor is it likely that it ever will, from the nature of the English ores, and the inferior quality of the English fuel.’ (Madras Public Proceedings, January 1825)) Possibly such lag also resulted from Britain’s backwardness in the comprehension of processes and theories on which the production of good steel depended.
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Whatever may have been the understanding in the other European countries regarding the details of the processes employed in the manufacture of Indian steel, the British, at the time wootz was examined and analysed by them, concluded ‘that it is made directly from the ore; and consequently that it has never been in the state of wrought iron.38 Its qualities were thus ascribed to the quality of the ore from which it came and these qualities were considered to have little to do with the techniques and processes employed by the Indian manufacturers. In fact it was felt that the various cakes of *wootz* were of uneven texture and the cause of such imperfection and defects was thought to lie in the crudeness of the techniques employed.
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It was only some three decades later that this view was revised. An earlier revision in fact, even when confronted with contrary evidence as was made available by other observers of the Indian techniques and processes, was an intellectual impossibility. That iron could be converted into cast steel by fusing it in a close vessel in contact with carbon' was yet to be discovered, and it was only in 1825 that a British manufacturer 'took out a patent for converting iron into steel by exposing it to the action of carburetted hydrogen gas in a close vessel, at a very high temperature, by which means the process of conversion is completed in a few hours, while by the old method, it was the work of from 14 to 20 days.39
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According to J.M. Heath, founder of the Indian Iron and Steel Company, and later prominently connected with the development of steel making in Sheffield, the Indian process appeared to combine both of the above early nineteenth century British discoveries. He observed:
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Now it appears to me that the Indian process combines the principles of both the above described methods. On elevating the temperature of the crucible containing pure iron, and dry wood, and green leaves, an abundant evolution of carburetted hydrogen gas would take place from the vegetable matter, and as its escape would be prevented by the luting at the mouth of the crucible, it would be retained in contact with the iron, which, at a high temperature, appears [from the above-mentioned patent process] to have a much greater affinity for gaseous than for concrete carbon; this would greatly shorten the operation, and probably at a much lower temperature than were the iron in contact with charcoal powder.40
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And he added:
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In no other way can I account for the fact that iron is converted into cast steel by the natives of India, in two hours and a half, with an application of heat, that, in this country, would be considered quite inadequate to produce such an effect; while at Sheffield it requires at least four hours to melt blistered steel in wind-furnaces of the best construction, although the crucibles in which the steel is melted, are at a white heat when the metal is put into them, and in the Indian process, the crucibles are put into the furnace quite cold.⁴¹
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The above quoted British authority however did not imply that the Indian practice was based on a knowledge ‘of the theory of his operations’ by the Indian manufacturer. He felt it to be impossible ‘that the process was discovered by any scientific induction, for the theory of it can only be explained by the lights of modern chemistry.’⁴² And feeling that ‘all speculation upon the origin of the discovery seems useless’, he proceeded to deal with the more practical matters.
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Several scores of British accounts (some more, some less detailed) pertaining to widely separated areas of India, and perhaps pertaining to about a hundred districts, are available on the Indian manufacture of iron and steel. Though some date to the 1790s, most were written during the period 1820-1855. That included in Chapter XV is probably the most graphic and detailed amongst them, while the one in Chapter XVI tries to provide some perspective and comparison of the different processes and corresponding details prevailing in different countries. Though there seems to be some fairly detailed accounts of the process of Indian iron and steel manufacture in other European languages dating back to the late seventeenth century,⁴³ that in Chapter XIV is probably one of the earliest British accounts of it.
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The design, measurements, and construction of the furnaces and accessory implements, described in Chapter XV, require much detailed examination by experts. Similar examination is essential of the large amounts of data provided in Chapters XV and XVI. But a cursory study of the data seems to indicate that the proportion of iron recovered from the ore and the amount of charcoal required to produce a given quantity of crude iron in Central India is comparable with the respective ratios pertaining to the manufacture of iron and steel in Sweden, etc. It is possible that these quantities varied considerably in different parts of India. Maybe, with the continuous deterioration which had set in, the consumption of fuel in the production of iron increased considerably. It is perhaps due to this later development, or basing himself on the data from some selected areas, that Mahadeva Govind Ranade remarked (in the 1890s) that indigenous Indian ‘processes involve a great waste of power and resources, as much as fourteen tons of fuel being required to produce one ton of iron.’ And thus he concluded: ‘Besides the effects of foreign competitors, the collapse of the iron industry has been brought about by the increasing scarcity of fuel.’⁴⁴
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According to Chapter XV,⁴⁵ 140 seers of charcoal produced 70 seers of crude iron at Aggeriya, etc., in the district of Jabalpur. At Jowli, in the same district, 165 seers of charcoal were required to produce 77 seers of crude iron. How much charcoal was required to convert the crude into malleable and wrought iron is not indicated in Chapter XV. However, considering that the amount of charcoal required to convert the ore into crude iron is of the same order as the quantities required in European countries, it may be inferred that the requirement of fuel in subsequent processes would not have been very different.
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It is not easy to estimate the total number of such furnaces which may have been in operation in various parts of India in the eighteenth century. Certain mid-nineteenth century enumerations, however, place the number of furnaces operating in certain districts, talooks, etc., in hundreds. It is, therefore, probable that the number of iron and steel furnaces functioning throughout India in the latter part of the eighteenth century was in the region of 10,000. According to the data given in Chapter XV, the production of iron per furnace amounted to somewhat above half a ton per week. Assuming that a furnace on an average worked about 35-40 weeks a year, the potential production of iron per furnace may be assumed at 20 tons annually.
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Besides the furnaces and accessories so graphically described in Chapter XV, certain other devices varying from area to area also appear to have been used in Indian metallurgy. One such was the use of the *Panchakki* (water-mill) in the crushing of ore by the manufacturers of Kumaon and Garhwal. According to J.D. Herbert and J. Manson ‘in reducing the ore to fragments, the Dhunpoor miners employ the *Panchakki* or water-mill. When water is present no better plan can be devised.’⁴⁶
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Several questions arise out of the material on technology described and discussed here. One of them arises from the generally shared European opinion—at times asserted—that the Indian manufacturer of iron and steel (and, in other instances, of other commodities, or practitioners in other professions) could not have had any knowledge ‘of the theory of his operations’. Though such opinions essentially originated from the ethnocentric views and inclinations (Even the British Royal Society does not seem to have remained untouched from such inclinations. Referring to the letter of Dr Scott on *wootz*, it quoted him as having written that it ‘admits of a harder temper than anything known in that part of India.’ What Dr Scott had actually stated was that ‘it appears to admit of a harder temper than anything we are acquainted with.’ As is obvious, Dr Scott’s ‘we’ implied ‘we in Europe’. But as this must have seemed inadmissible in the pages of the *Philosophical Transactions*, the observation got altered to ‘than anything known in that part of India.’ (See *Philosophical Transactions*, vol.85, p.322; and chapter XVII, pp.256 in this volume).) of the societies to which such observers belonged, and were not in their essence derived from the subject observed and described, these, as mere statements which generally hold true at all times, need not be disputed. But most practitioners of a profession which they have learnt after a long apprenticeship and in which their essential job is to repeat ever more perfectly what they had done before, never require, and seldom possess, such knowledge. The possession of such knowledge and its development and refinement is, at all times, the function of a separate, though interlinked, group. Such division between the practitioners and the theoreticians is currently more evident than ever before.
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It is possible that the link between the practitioners of the various techniques or professions and the professors of the theoretical knowledge relating to them had largely snapped in India by the end of the eighteenth century. It is even probable that though not altogether snapped, such a break had begun to take place centuries earlier. This, however, is a view which cannot be determined by mere conjecture. Its substantiation requires detailed studies of Indian techniques and processes as they operated over several centuries up until the early nineteenth.
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Even if these links had already snapped but the practices had continued, it is very probable that in a changed political climate—resulting, for instance, from the success of the early eighteenth century resurgence—they could have been restored by fresh interaction between the practitioners and the surviving professors with their knowledge of the theoretical aspects. Or even forged anew.
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Another question that arises from the above discussion on the manufacture of Indian iron and steel is that if the manufacturing processes were so very superior and widespread throughout the country, why did they disappear? So far, our knowledge of such widespread manufacture has itself been very scanty. Therefore, answers to such a question at present can merely be tentative. The disappearance seems to have resulted mainly from large-scale economic breakdown resulting from hostile state policy. From about 1800 onwards, India was to be treated as a consumer of British manufactures. Yet some of the British in India did visualise the undertaking of large scale production of iron and steel in India. But even they, when they came forth with such plans, were at great pains in stating that such production would in no way injure the production in Britain or the consumption of British iron in India. Even this type of proposition was, however, difficult for the British Government to contemplate. For example, replying to an early application for setting up such works in the Bengal area, the London authorities in 1814 stated: ‘But as we entertain strong doubts as to the policy of encouraging the prosecution of such works to any extent, we direct that no further expense may be incurred.’⁴⁷