8
early Iron Age were exactly like those of the implements now in the hands of the village gods, as I found from a specimen obtained from a grave in the Pudukotta territory. While the shapes of tools used for secular purposes have changed with time on account of changes of fashion or other causes, the gods have stuck to the oldest fashions of tools.
Pre-historical iron tools have not been found in sufficiently large numbers considering the wide spread of iron manufacture in ancient India; for iron objects of all kinds are with great ease 'utterly destroyed and lost by oxidation when exposed to damp, yet, from the very durable character of the pottery the iron age people produced and the vast quantity of it they left, it is evident that in a large number of cases they must have occupied the old neolithic settlements; and the celts and other stone implements are now mixed up with the highly polished and brightly coloured sherds of the later-aged earthernware. Except in a very few cases the dull-coloured and rough surfaced truly (or rather early) neolithic sherds occur but very sparingly.'[1] Indian iron age pottery was so good that Foote remarks that the people who could make such high class pottery … must have attained a considerable degree of civilization.[2] Foote discovered at Maski near Raichur, in the Hyderabad State, 'the right jamb of the door of a small hut-urn, the prototype of the hut urns now met with in various parts of the country, some of which show remarkable resemblance to the same objects of Western classical antiquity, such as were found under the volcanic tufa near the Alban Lakes to the South of Rome. They were in some cases filled with the ashes of the dead after cremation, which were introduced by a little front door. The door was secured in place by means of a rope passing through two rings at its sides and tied round it. The whole resembled in shape a cottage with vaulted roof'.[3] The little door of another little hut-urn found by Foote 'had no hinges but was kept closed by two rude bolts working through flattish rings, on either side of the door, into a wider ring in the centre of it. . . . One in the British Museum . . . . is filled with the ashes of the dead, which were introduced by a little door. This door was secured by a cord passing through two rings at its sides and tied round the vase. The cover or roof is vaulted and apparently intended to represent the beams of a house or cottage. The exterior had been ornamented with a meander of white paint, traces of which remain. The ashes were placed inside a large, two-handled vase which protected them from the superincumbent mass. They have no glaze upon their surface but a polish produced by friction.'[4] But these hut-urns probably belonged to a late age, when on account of the influence of the fire-cult, cremation had been adopted in the place of the more ancient custom of burial.
- ↑ Foote, op. cit., p. 24.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 25.
'The true iron-age vessel (pottery) is distinguished by showing rich colours and highly polished surfaces with, in some cases, elaborate and artistic mouldings.' Foote, op. cit., p. 25; but Indian artists even of the ancient days avoided painting human figures, such as were 'admirably done by the Greek vase painters'. (Ibid., P. 34.) The early Indian had generally a prejudice against portrait-painting or reproducing the figures of kings on coins. - ↑ Foote, op. cit., p. 35. Not only urns but temples also were shaped like huts.
- ↑ Foote, op cit., p. 35
