Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s3.1

c6.s3.1

Many other aspects of science and technology are not at all referred to in the accounts which are reproduced in the following pages. Textiles, armaments, horticultural techniques, or the breeding of animals are among those omitted aspects. The design or construction of boats and other sea-faring vessels are also not referred to. A mention in this respect may, however, be made of an observation made by Solvyns in the *Les Hindous*. Introducing the 40 or so sketches of boats and river vessels in use in Northern India in the 1790s, he observed: ‘The English, attentive to everything which relates to naval architecture, have borrowed from the Hindoos many improvements which they have adapted with success to their own shipping.’48 Commenting on Indian rowing, an early eighteenth century observer remarked: ‘Their water-men row after a different manner from ours. They move the oar with their feet, and their hands serve instead of the *hypomochlion*, or roller on which it turns.’49