Pottery Techniques In Peasant India

Introduction In 1959, the Anthropological Survey of India initiated a survey of about a dozen items of material culture in order to find out if any regional distinction was present between one portion of India and another. A preliminary report entitled Peasant Life in India: A Study in Indian Unity and Diversity was published in August, 1961. It contained 16 distribution maps which show how India can be divided into well-marked culture areas, and how there is a considerable amount of interpenetration between them.

The present authors were members of the original team of investigators. When the first round of their work was over with the publication of the above report, they were entrusted with the task of carrying on a more detailed survey of the art of pottery manufacture all over the country. Accordingly, Baidyanath Saraswati and N. K. Behura covered 122 districts in which 278 manufacturing centres were visited. Biman Das Gupta, S. K. Ganguly, Tarasish Mukhopadhyay, Bikash Raychaudhuri and P. R. G. Mathur were responsible for reports on 18 more districts in which 28 centres were visited. So that, in all, 143 districts and 306 centres were covered. This may be considered to be a fairly good sample (44-4%) out of India's total of 322 districts.

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