This book presents a comprehensive socio-cultural history of crafts and crafts persons in pre-colonial Eastern India. It focuses on the technology of crafts as being integral to the traditional lives of the crafts persons and explores their cultural and social world. It offers an in-depth analysis of the complexities of craft technologies in the three sectors of cotton textile, sericulture and silk textile and mining and metallurgy in the regions of Bihar and Jharkhand in Eastern India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Apart from technology, the book discusses a range of socio-economic themes including craft production systems; marketing and financing patterns; impact of contact with the world market; craft persons’ identities in terms of caste affiliations and group divisions; negotiations for upward caste mobility; contestations and dissent of lower castes; power and social stratification; functioning of caste panchayats; gender division of craft labour; myths, beliefs and religiosity attributed to craft usages; social and ritual traditions; and contemporary craft traditions. Rich in archival and diverse sources, including oral traditions, paintings, and findings from extensive field visits and interactions with crafts persons, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of crafts, medieval Indian history, social history, sociology and social anthropology, economic history, cultural history, science and technology studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest government and non-governmental organisations, textile historians, craft and design specialists, contemporary craft industrial sector, and museums.

"This book discusses the development of non-agricultural production in pre-colonial Indian cities. The author's purpose is twofold: firstly, to analyze the technological, organizational and social evolution of urban crafts in medieval India along with the economic and socio-political atmosphere in which this sphere of production existed and, secondly, to compare the above-mentioned processes with their counterparts in other medieval societies, especially the better known European ones, and thus ascertain the level that India had achieved in this sphere by the beginning of colonial era. Research material collected from various types of sources allows the author to critically re-asses the established notions of medieval Indian crafts as artistically exquisite but technologically backward and organizationally primitive. Comparative study of ""stagnant"" medieval Indian crafts vis-a-vis ""progressive"" European ones makes it possible to realize that in some industries or technological operations India did really lag behind, on others it was ahead, but all in all the level of technology and organization achieved by urban industries of medieval India was approximately equal to what Europe had during the craft and even early stage of manufactory period. As far as general socio-political conditions are concerned, this juxtaposition, however, is not wholly favorable for India. No study of medieval crafts will be adequate if the researcher concentrates exclusively on technology, forms of organization and economic relations, but forgets the people who were involved in these activities. Bearing this in mind the author undertakes the reconstruction of medieval craftsmen's socio-psychological profile and tries to denote the main features of his world outlook. The book may be of interest to the scholars and students of medieval Indian history, especially its economic, social and cultural aspects, and to all those who, in their thoughts and researches, try to situate medieval India in world history."

With special reference to the social and economic conditions in Patna District.

This book is a collection of essays by eminent historians exploring a millennium of India s history between the eighth and the eighteenth century, conventionally understood as early medieval and medieval India. Though these terms are subjected to critical