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3 - South India

from X - Non-Agricultural Production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
L. Alaev
Edited by
Tapan Raychaudhuri  and
Irfan Habib
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Summary

In south India, as in other parts of the country, handicrafts were based almost exclusively on manual labour and development of professional habits. Technical improvements in the implements are not traceable. Technological improvements were to a great extent checked by caste rules, which fixed the methods of work. Natural sources of energy (for instance, water and wind power) were not used. To a very limited extent charcoal (in metallurgy) and cattle power (in oil-pressing and some other industries) were used.

Non-agricultural production demonstrated a great variety of forms of economic organization and of methods of integration into the macro-system of the economy. The classification given below is relative as there were no water-tight compartments. The two main kinds of handicrafts were, first, ‘natural’ and, second, market-oriented ones.

The first included the domestic crafts inside the agricultural families, inter-community professional crafts which met the demands of a narrow locality; and the manufactures attached to the chiefs’ courts.

For example, at the Golconda court guns, muskets, expensive arms and cloth etc. were produced. These workshops were natural in the sense that they were concerned with the immediate consumption of the court, the nobles, the army and not connected with the market. The labour in such workshops might be compulsory to some extent. It seems that this form of production did not develop much in south India which may perhaps be explained with reference to the limited resources commanded by the south Indian rulers in comparison with the Mughal emperors.

Keywords

non-agricultural productionoil-pressingeconomic organizationIndian artisansshipbuildingtextile productionsouth Indian handicraftsrural commodity
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Economic History of India , pp. 315 - 324
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1982

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