Black earth and smelting locations

Deccan Herald, Last updated: 18 July, 2011

Sashi Sivramkrishna

TRADITIONAL OCCUPATIONS

Sashi Sivramkrishna discovers that most of the old smelting sites in Tumkur and Chitradurga districts are under cultivation today, but are covered with debris of iron slag, pottery pipes and crucibles. Traditional iron smelting declined rapidly after the setting up of the Bhadravati Iron and Steel Works in 1923.

Francis Buchanan in his ‘Journey of 1800-1801...’ had extensively reported on iron and steel smelting in several parts of erstwhile Mysore, including present-day Tumkur and Chitradurga districts. It was more than 200 years later while retracing his ‘Journey’ that we decided to investigate what remains of traditional iron smelting along his route.

Driving along narrow village roads in and around Channarayadurga, we asked several villagers if they were aware of iron smelting having been carried out here decades, if not centuries, ago.

The answer was neither forthcoming nor encouraging. One villager, however, asked us to look for an ironsmith in Channarayadurga who had his workshop alongside the road. Once again, our question on iron smelting was met with reluctance; it was only later that we realised that this may have been because people had come asking about iron…not iron smelting but iron ore, which as we know is presently in great demand.

We pulled out our copy of Buchanan’s ‘Journey’ and explained that we were trying to find old smelting sites. The book seemed to have convinced him that we were not in search of ore. He led us to a well ploughed field and picked up a few stones. These were rich in iron, evident from the metallic sound that emanated by knocking two pieces together. But what about smelting sites? He told us he could show us remnants but we would have to come back some other time.

Sites near Channarayadurga

A few weeks later, we decided to go back. We drove around the hill on top of which the overwhelming Channarayadurga fort could be seen. When the terrain began turning a little rocky, we decided to walk. After about a kilometer, as we approached a cultivated plot of land, our friend asked us to look carefully at the ground. We began to notice pieces of pottery and clumps of what looked like molten metal lying all around and across the entire field.

This was not the only field; at each place Buchanan reported from, we were able to trace iron smelting sites, ranging from half an acre to eight acres.  Most of the sites are presently under cultivation but even now lay covered with debris of iron slag, pottery pipes and crucibles. The farmers told us that while ploughing the land, the debris keeps surfacing; it would never end. Some of debris collected by the farmers lay in large heaps at the corner of the fields.

The soil in these plots was black, almost like ash. The black earth, we were told, extends to a depth of five feet and in spite of rain over several years, it still remains that way. We checked the adjacent plots; they had a typical brown soil of the region. The size of the sites seemed to be much larger than what Buchanan had seen; making it possible that the scale of operations had increased through the 19th century. Our blacksmith friend from Channarayadurga recollects his grandfather telling him how he melted iron and steel.

We then carried out our search for smelting sites along the Hiriyur-Srirangapatna highway. At Doddabaylikere, we were told the village itself was built on a smelting site. Here we could see debris embedded in the village streets. At another small village, Yelladekere, we struck up conversation with a local tea shop owner but he was unaware of any iron smelting sites. Buchanan had reported from Yelladekere and we were confident there must be some old smelting site here. He promised us he would check with an old man in the village and we should come back after a few days. When we did, he was more excited than us. There was indeed a site…and it was exactly like what we had described. Buchanan must have seen it after all!

When did smelting die?

With loads of debris in the boot of our car, we got back to Bangalore. As the excitement slowly wore off, I began to pose some questions; how important could iron smelting have been 200 years ago, when and why did traditional iron smelting die in this region?
Over the next few months, I unearthed several interesting facts. It was no small village activity; it was carried out extensively across vast regions of the Deccan plateau producing large quantities of iron and steel for agriculture and war. Imagine tens of thousands of soldiers carrying weapons, wearing armours accompanied by cannons and ammunition.

That would amount to a few thousands of tons. Iron and steel was truly an industry. The steel produced in this region was also considered of exceptional properties ideally suited for sword blades. It is called wootz; steel smelted from iron using leaves to increase carbon content. Wootz was even exported from India to several parts of the world. And then I learnt something quite important; traditional iron and steel smelting required large quantities of charcoal as fuel. Each kilo of metal produced needs anywhere between 70 and a 100 kg of wet wood.

This demand for wood for iron smelting had denuded large tracts of forests across the world, in North America, Europe, England and even Africa. Could this have happened in India too? Searching through records, a statement by the General Dobbs in 1854-1855, Superintendent of the Tumkur District, reported in B L Rice’s Gazetteer caught my attention:

“The district generally is very bare of trees. The jungles were however extensive when I first assumed charge in 1835, but these are disappearing fast under the axe of the iron and steel manufacturers…In the immediate neighbourhood of Tumkur (Davaraidrug Hills) where three-fourths of the wooding has disappeared.”

“I stopped the progress of destruction by prohibiting iron forges altogether … Even greater ruin was caused in the Chitaldrug District from the same cause…”  In spite of the shortage of wood and restrictions imposed on traditional iron smelting, the activity continued for decades even as bamboo replaced many hardwood species as raw material for charcoal production. 

From my investigations, it seemed that it was only after the setting up of the Bhadravati Iron and Steel Works in 1923 that traditional smelting declined rapidly. No wonder then that the ironsmith from Channarayadurga could recollect his grandfather smelting iron. Paradoxically, the Bhadravati plant itself used charcoal as fuel for smelting.

But what surprised me even more was the fact that charcoal making (now from Prosopis juliflora) continues to thrive in this same region and so too does iron-smithy, although at a very small scale. Only traditional iron smelting declined and completely ceased.

A Looming Past

A Looming Past (2010):  weaves together a multi-layered narrative of the lives of traditional coarse blanket makers in a small southern Indian village in Karnataka State, Yaravarahalli.  This documentary not only shows the ancient process of blanket weaving but also subtly reveals the relationship between the weaver and shepherd as well as the weaver and trader, all of whom belong to the same broadly-defined caste; the Kuruba.  A Looming Past is an attempt to capture the sights and sounds of an ancient occupation in its contemporary and increasingly frayed context and at a critical juncture in its long and textured history.

• Screened at Dokubazaar: Ljubljana Independent Documentary Film Festival, Slovenia, 2010
• Screened at Forumdoc.bh.2010: 14e Documentary and Ethnographic Film Festival, Brazil
• Screened at 3^rd ETNOFilm: Festival of Ethnographic Film, Rovinj, Croatia, 2011.
• Screened at the 12^th Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film, London, 2011.
• Screened at Days of Ethnographic Cinema, Russia, 2011.

The entire film (in 3 parts) has been uploaded on Youtube.  Follow this link to watch the film.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=studiokabooka&oq=studiokabooka&gs_l=youtube.3..35i39.35.1269.0.1494.8.8.0.0.0.0.174.667.4j3.7.0...0.0...1ac.7cwE6vbZE-Q

Please do send me your comments about the film.







 
 

The Curse of Talakad

 

The Curse of Talakad was completed in 2005 after a year and a half of intense research. It was Francis Buchanan's Journey that gave me that final breakthrough I was looking for.

You can watch the entire documentary on Youtube; follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=studiokabooka&oq=studiokabooka&gs_l=youtube.12...0.0.0.13008.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1ac.



 The Curse of Talakad was screened at several film festivals;

• Film South Asia ’05 (Kathmandu, Nepal)
• The International Film and Video Festival (Oregon, USA),
• XVIII International Festival of Archaeological Films (Rovereto, Italy)
• VII International Archaeology Film Festival (Bidasoa, Spain)
• AGON, 6th International Meeting of Archaeological Film of the Mediterranean Area (Greece)
• Screenings were also held at National Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS, Bangalore), Suchitra Film Society, Bangalore International Centre and Bangalore Club.

I also published The Curse of Talakad as a book, which has a lot more historical details than the doc.

Watch it and let me know what you think.

Back on the Buchanan's Trail ... this time to Mathodu

Here's our recent article which appeared in Deccan Herald early January 2012.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/217836/through-looking-glass.html

Through the looking glass...

BACK & FORTH
Sashi Sivramkrishna & Sandeep Rao visit Mathodu, a large centre for glass manufacturing in early colonial south India. The duo retrace Francis Buchanan’s ‘Journey’, which records the process of bangle-making in the region. 

The year 2011 was drawing to a close. It was vacation time. The weather was perfect; cool, dry and clear blue skies. From the abundant choice of locations around Bangalore, we finally settled on a slightly lesser-known one; the Vani Vilas Sagara dam near Hiriyur. And we could make it a little more adventurous by visiting Mathodu en route. Mathodu? But why? The hesitation among the group members was hardly surprising. Mathodu is not exactly a tourist spot.

Over the last few years, we have retraced parts of Francis Buchanan’s ‘Journey’, a survey of erstwhile Mysore and other regions of southern India carried out during the years 1800-01. Buchanan had visited Muteodu, now Mathodu, and reported something that we thought would be fascinating to investigate, glass-making.

Mathodu was perhaps the largest centre for glass manufacturing in pre- and early-colonial southern India. This glass was used for making bangles and the excess produced was sold in large quantities to “bangri-makers from the westwards”. The bangles were made in five colours: black, green, red, yellow and blue, and interestingly, the black ones most in demand.  The glass itself was made from local materials, all found in the neighbourhood of the village. A mixture made of alkaline mud or soulu mannu collected from fields, quartz sand and various ores like kemudu (red iron ore) and copper that acted as dyes was put into a furnace where it burned for as many as 15 days and nights before being wrought into bangles.

The furnaces were rather large, of about eight feet in diameter and ten feet in height, in which some 50 to 100 crucibles containing the mixture were placed. Buchanan describes the glass as “opaque and very coarse”, perhaps more like porcelain than the transparent type.

Asking the locals
We took the road from Tumkur to Huliyar and then further westwards, deviating northwards before Hosadurga. We stopped at a small provision store just as we entered the village, introduced ourselves and asked the woman behind the counter whether someone could tell us more about glass manufactured here several decades ago.

“Glass. Of course. They used to make it right behind that fort wall over there,” she said, pointing to what looked like a mantapa in ruins. “Go along that mud path and you can see where the glass was made”. This had to be the place. We recalled reading Buchanan’s record that the “furnaces are constructed in a high terrace, which is built against the inside of the town wall.”

A sketch made by him also showed the town wall alongside the furnace. By this time, a few other villagers had joined us and were quite excited to find people from Bangalore coming in search of glass-making. And, as usual, showing them a copy of Buchanan’s Journey only deepened their interest. “You mean someone from England wrote about Mathodu 200 years ago? Is this a sketch of the furnaces at Mathodu?”

References to Mathodu
We were led to the area where the furnaces were supposedly located. While looking around, we saw small patches of the “white efflorescence” or soda on the soil. People call it choulu mannu, the same as soulu mannu that Buchanan speaks of, used extensively for washing clothes.

Benjamin Heyne, another surveyor appointed by the East India Company, published a volume entitled ‘Tracts’ in 1814, dedicating an entire chapter to the ‘Description of Glass Works at Matod’ in which he refers to this soda as “washerman’s earth”; surely a close fit between what we were hearing and what Buchanan and Heyne had recorded. But we wanted to see that one small piece of hard evidence.

Unfortunately, there were no traces of the furnaces although we were told that just about twenty years ago, they were intact. Neither were the villagers positive about finding any old bangles made from Mathodu glass. Our disappointment soon turned to contentment when we were shown pieces of discarded crucibles with a layer of glazed porcelain clinging to their sides. It felt as if we had found what we were looking for.  Could we say how old the crucibles might be? Not really, because no one knew for sure when glass-making at Mathodu ceased. But there were some answers to this question in other published works.

The ‘Imperial Gazetteer’ of 1881 and B L Rice’s ‘Gazetteer’ of 1897 state that the Mathodu glass works, though operational, were on the decline. Dewan Bahadur L K Ananthakrishna Iyer, however, in his classic work of 1930, ‘Mysore Tribes and Castes’ unequivocally reported “till very recently, the glass used in the manufacture of bangles was made at Mattod...”

From this we inferred that the Mathodu glass works may have ceased operations c.1920s. One major cause of the decline in glass-making, just as our earlier work on iron smelting in this same region had revealed, may well have been scarcity of fuel (charcoal) that arose from deforestation and regulated access to forests.

Our village friends insisted that we meet the local village head. He was thrilled to find so much written about his village in Buchanan’s Journey and Heyne’s Tracts. But his remark that we were perhaps the first people to come here in recent times in search of Mathodu’s glass works made us feel that this detour was indeed worthwhile. Before leaving we thought we should point out something else that Buchanan reports.

It is an extremely insightful comment, recorded at Mathodu on May 5, 1801: “The Vedawati is distant one coss to the west. Its banks, according to the natives, afford many places where dams might be formed to great advantage. At a place called Mari Canavay, they say, that by building a mound between two hills 500 yards distant, an immense reservoir might be formed, which would convert a large proportion of the Heriuru district (Taluc) into rice-grounds.”

More than a century later, Karnataka’s first modern dam was built precisely at this point. It was time for us to leave Mathodu for the Vani Vilas Sagara dam built on the river Vedavati at Mari Kanive.

Our first article on Buchanan’s Journey published in the Deccan Herlad in 2005.

More than 200 years later we are now working on a project retracing Buchanan’s journey. It took Buchanan a year and few months to complete this task; we realized that ours would take even longer. On his journey from Madras to Seringapatnam (now Chennai to Srirangapatnam) via Bangalore, Buchanan had passed through a place called Satghadam. This article revisits Buchanan’s journey from Satghadam to Bangalore; it is an excerpt from our work thus far and barely 20 pages out of Buchanan’s tour de force of 1500 pages.

Satgudi is a small village. A narrow street which passes through it was lined with houses on both sides, people sitting in their verandahs, busy rolling beedis. To our right was a steep hill rising up to a height of about 1000 feet. Perched along the ridge of the hill was a fort wall. This was no doubt Satghadam or Elamulla Durga that Buchanan speaks off … the seven hill forts.

“The hills approaching here, a stone wall, with a gateway, marks the boundary of Satghadam. On the north this gate is commanded by a naked rocky hill, irregularly fortified by various walls and castles, after the country fashion. These are called Satghadam, the Decany pronunciation of Satghur, or the seven castles …”

We began our climb to the fort ruins at half past noon. As we reached the top of the hills, we saw a fort wall running across the granite rocks. Several more structures began to appear, including doorways, a few brick rooms, a horse stable, a stone room with an inscription on the roof mentioning 1905 June, and another with a half moon and circle. We noticed something else interesting in one of the doorways. A Ganesha carved on a stone pillar.

Human sacrifice

Buchanan says nothing about Satghadam’s history. Searching through the 1895 Manual of North Arcot District, we found some interesting information. The fort was possibly constructed by the Marathas, and later came to be occupied and modified by later Mohamedan rulers. The natural hollows in the rocks were ingeniously utilized as powder magazines. The District Manual narrates an interesting story about a Ganesha idol in the fort which bore an inscription, “Twist the neck and take the money”. This was supposed to refer to the sacrifice of a human victim, and no one was willing to earn wealth at such a price. Then one day, a bairagi, twisted the neck of the idol itself and found a bounty of gold coins, which he appropriated.

“The principal cultivation in it is that of dry grains, with some fruit gardens, for which it is celebrated.”
On our way down, we stopped at what seemed like a watch tower. From here we could see the fertile plain below that Buchanan speaks off. Buchanan had also noted the cultivation of a large variety of fruits below Satghadam. Today, some of the best custard apple in South India comes from this area. Pomegranate, banana and mango are also grown here.

“The Nabob (of Arcot) has here an extensive garden, which he lets to some Armenians at Madras. The fruit, especially the oranges, are reckoned the best in the Carnatic, and the choicest are sent to the Nabob, and other persons of distinction.”
Armenians here?
Buchanan had noted that some of the best oranges in the Carnatic were grown here by some Armenians. These fruit gardens belonged almost entirely to one family. But we found no cultivation of oranges. Buchanan made no mistake about the oranges at Satgudi. The District Manual confirmed this. Till 1895, oranges were still to be found here, though the trees were dying out. It adds that the grafts taken from Satgudi survive at Vellore, Ambur and some other places.

“I am gravely informed by my interpreter, a Brahman, that he has relations, who live by performing a variety of wonderful feats. Among others, they can make a mango stone, in the course of four hours, shoot out a small tree a foot high…”
No one was aware of this old mango trick! Buchanan explains in detail the way it was done; definitely worth a try.

“I went to Naiekan Eray, by the Pedda Naikana Durga Pass …the mountains of the Ghats have not quite so barren an aspect as those to the east; and contains many trees, some of which are fit for timber…”

“The country about Naiekan Eray rises into swells, like the land in many parts of England, and is overlooked by the high barren peaks of the Ghats, which close the view to the eastward. Among these peaks, the most remarkable is that occupied by Pedda Naiekana Durga, or the Great Chief’s castle…”

“Specimens of the following trees were brought to me, as being the most useful trees on the Ghats of this place. The names are in Telinga… Nara Vaypa, Yegu, Naro, Neruddy, Muddi, Topissi…”
The Pedda Nayakan Durga Pass cuts through the Eastern Ghats and is an important elephant corridor. That morning five elephants were spotted by the local people in the neighbourhood. Electric fences have been installed to direct the elephants through the forests and prevent them from straying into cultivated fields. Naiekaneri is now a Reserve Forest. The local people and forest officials were most helpful and confirmed that all the twenty species mentioned by Buchanan are still found here.

Great chief’s castle
Remnants of the fort still stand on a hill about half a kilometer away from the road. The fort was a stronghold of the Palegar of Charagal. Colonel Oldham had camped at Pedda Nayakana Durga in 1791, from where he joined Lord Cornwallis at Venkatagiri. This was perhaps the last important event witnessed by this fort.

“Vencataghery was formerly the usual residence of the Pedda Naieka Polygar, and the ruins of his fort are still conspicuous. It is built on a rising ground…”
Buchanan’s next stop was Venkatagiri, where he saw the remains of a fort and palace. Today this town is called V Kote, Kote meaning fort. Surprisingly people here were completely unaware of any fort in the vicinity. After repeated enquiries, we were told that we could find a stupa nearby an old temple. This was definitely the old fort. It was on rising ground just as Buchanan says, with an old temple and a granite pillar. All but gone, even in people’s memory.

“In the morning I went to Baydamungulum; leaving on my right a hill crowned with a fortress, and a temple dedicated to Seitadevi…”

On our way out of V. Kote, we could find no Sitadevi temple or a fortress that Buchanan had seen. But we found a mantapa on a small hill to the north of the town. This hillock comes to the right when exiting V. Kote towards Betmangala. We were sure that this was the fortress that Buchanan mentions. The temple is not here anymore; perhaps the idol may have actually been shifted to another temple. People mentioned to us that there was a Sita temple some ten kilometers away.

“I went sixteen miles to Tayculum … the last two miles of our road lay between two immense piles of granite, gradually crumbling into fragments that roll down into the plain’.

“The soils here are impregnated with salt … The natives allege that if they walk on this saline earth, their bare feet become blistered.”

“Tayculum is strongly situated at the end of a small hill of granite, and has a triple wall, each line strengthened with various defences … On the outside of the hill is a temple of Siva, and within it one of Vishnu; both of which are ruinuous.”
Though the landscape seemed dry and arid at many places, there was no knowledge of saline soil in the area. The biggest problem faced now is the scarcity of water, forcing people to migrate to Bangalore. National Highway 4 or “Old Madras Road” from Chennai to Bangalore via Kolar is sometimes called “Tekal Bypass”. With it, development too seems to have bypassed this small village.

Tekal may not have changed much from what Buchanan may have seen. Imprisoned by barren rocky hills on both sides, Tekal’s surroundings is a picture of stark beauty. We located both, the Shiva and Vishnu temples, each situated on either side of the road. The Shiva temple was in ruins, but the Vishnu temple is in better condition and undergoing repair. The archaka family has been in charge of the temple for generations. They say it the temple was built by the Cholas, making it about a thousand years old. At one point of time, they say Tekal had 101 temples, 101 tanks and 101 orchards. Today only a few houses and two temples survive, barely.

“The mud here is excellent for making walls. It is a reddish ferruginuous clay intermixed with small fragments of quartz, and other materials of decayed granite; and a wall constructed of it will, with tolerable care, resist the rains for many years.”
As we drove towards Malur, Buchanan’s Waluru, we noticed several brick factories; SVB, MSB, VBS, CBI, LBW… Buchanan had pointed out that the mud in this region was extremely well suited for making walls, and could resist the rains for several years. We spoke to a worker at one of the factories and his comment was just the same. “Put the brick in water for a day and it won’t even crack”.

“Waluru is a town containing about five hundred houses, and by far the richest, and best built, that I have yet seen above the Ghats. Most of the houses… are in general clean, and, had they any windows, would be comfortable.”

“The town consists of a castle, of a fort or city, and of a Petta or a suburb. The castle is occupied by a Rajput and fifteen of his family… formerly Jaghirdars of this place…”

“At this place there is a weekly fair; and today one was kept, to which people flocked in great numbers from all the neighbouring country.”

Waluru to Malur

Malur seems to have lost its looks, at least that which Buchanan had seen. Today it is but another typical small town with iron rods jutting out from unfinished concrete structures. We passed through Malur on a Thursday. It was the also the day of the week that Buchanan had seen the weekly fair at Malur. This tradition continues even now but the market was a rather sad sight with just a few vendors selling vegetables. The façade of the marketplace, now in ruins, seemed to indicate that it could have been an important place many years ago.

We had one more thing to check at Malur; the Rajput families that Buchanan spoke of. There are quite a few Rajput families still living here, perhaps 25. We were directed to one Rajaram Singh who knew that his roots were from Rajasthan but nothing more.

“In this neighbourhood are many kitchen gardens, which are very well cultivated … the gardens are on sloping ground, watered from wells by the Yatam, or, as the English say, by the Pacota…”

“In the morning I traveled from Catcolli to Bangalore, through a very naked country, of which about six tenths appear to be arable. The remainder is covered with low bushes, and much of it seems capable of being brought into cultivation.”
... Catcolli to Kadgodi
Our next stop was Kadgodi. There was nothing to write home about from this small town which seems to await Bangalore’s arrival. En route to Kadgodi we noticed an old well, dry and abandoned. We were told it was attached to a local temple long ago. Buchanan had seen several wells in this area that watered kitchen gardens. Today we still find many vegetables being cultivated here to serve the Bangalore market. We met a farmer who has built a nylon netted sheltered nursery for cabbage, tomato and cauliflowers.

Rural India is changing … its landscapes may soon be covered with sheets of plastic. The road from Kadgodi to Bangalore is no longer “naked”. Almost immediately after Kadgodi is Whitefield, now a suburb of Bangalore. It is now one of the most sought after residential areas, apart from being a major industrial and software hub.

It is more than 200 years since Buchanan made his journey, a period which covers our entire colonial and post-colonial history. Even as the sun sets on our past, the shadows linger on. The question is, for how much longer?

Boats of Beypore

On December 24, 1800, Buchanan reached Vay-pura, which he mentions was also called Baypour in his maps.  He describes Baypour as most beautiful, especially the north side of the river where it enters the sea. He noticed the building of ships of war but the biggest industry at that time was timber.  The native collector informed him that in 1798, almost 10,000 teak trees were brought down the river.  The timber is cut on the Ghats, and conveyed by elephants to the part of the river which in the rainy season has water sufficient to float it.  This teak was suitable for ship-building.  There was something else noted by Buchanan which we found very interesting:

“At Vay-pura some private gentlemen, with the view of supplying the dock yard at Bomaby with Teak plank, have erected a saw mill … the power intended to have turned this mill was the wind; which appears to me to be far too precarious a moving power for such heavy machinery”.

Buchanan had inspired us to visit Beypore; our first visit was in December 2006.  We were lucky to find that traditional ship-building was still carried out in Beypore, although the demand now comes mainly from the Gulf and Europe.  Throughout 2007 we recorded the process of ship-building having decided to make a documentary film on the subject. Unfortunately, we were unable to do that.  But we still have not given up our plans and are now actively contemplating an ethnographical film on people’s lives and boats in Beypore.  Just last week, we (re)visited Beypore and set the ball rolling … 

Documentary Film Festival Screenings

A Looming Past has been selected for screening at ...

DOKUBAZAAR - Ljubljana Independent Documentary Film Festival 2010
FORUMDOC.BH.2010 - 14e Documentary & Ethnographic Film Festival, Belo Horizonte, Brazil