_Brass and Copper Work._--The village brazier, like the village smith,
manufactures the necessary vessels for domestic use. Chief among these
vessels is the _lota_, or globular bowl, universally used in
ceremonial ablutions. The form of the _lota_, and even the style of
ornamentation, has been handed down unaltered from the earliest times.
Benares enjoys the first reputation for work in brass and copper. In
the south, Madura and Tanjore have a similar fame; and in the west,
Ahmedabad, Poona and Nasik. At Bombay itself large quantities of
imported copper are wrought up by native braziers. The temple bells of
India are well known for the depth and purity of their note. In many
localities the braziers have a special repute either for a peculiar
alloy or for a particular process of ornamentation. Silver is
sometimes mixed with the brass, and in rarer cases gold. The brass or
rather bell-metal ware of Murshidabad, known as _khagrai_, has more
than a local reputation, owing to the large admixture of silver in it.
Pottery.
Pottery is made in almost every village, from the small vessels
required in cooking to the large jars used for storing grain and
occasionally as floats to ferry persons across a swollen stream. But,
though the industry is universal, it has hardly anywhere risen to the
dignity of a fine art. Sind is the only province of India where the
potter's craft is pursued with any regard to artistic considerations;
and there the industry is said to have been introduced by the
Mahommedans. Sind pottery is of two kinds, encaustic tiles and vessels
for domestic use. In both cases the colours are the same,--turquoise
blue, copper green, dark purple or golden brown, under an exquisitely
transparent glaze. The usual ornament is a conventional flower
pattern, pricked in from paper and dusted along the pricking. The
tiles, which are evidently of the same origin as those of Persia and
Turkey, are chiefly to be found in the ruined mosques and tombs of the
old Mussulman dynasties; but the industry still survives at the little
towns of Saidpur and Bubri. Artistic pottery is made at Hyderabad,
Karachi, Tatta and Hala, and also at Multan and Lahore in the Punjab.
The Madura pottery deserves mention from the elegance of its form and
the richness of its colour. The United Provinces have, among other
specialties, an elegant black ware with designs in white metal worked
into its surface.
_Mineral Resources._
Putting aside salt, which has been already treated, the chief mining
resources of India at the present day are the coal mines, the gold
mines, the petroleum oil-fields, the ruby mines, manganese deposits,
mica mines in Bengal, and the tin ores and jade of Burma. Other minerals
which exist but have not yet been developed in paying quantities are
copper ore, alum, gypsum and plumbago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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