Peasant Life in India (A Study in Indian Unity & Diversity)

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Foreword The undersigned has pleasure in submitting the present report on the material culture of rural India. The survey was planned in 1959 and Dr. Surajit Chandra Sinha, Superintending Anthropologist and Officer-in-Charge of the Central India Station, was placed in command over the operation. A team of workers coming from all over India was selected specially for this purpose, and they have also furnished their specific findings which form separate chapters in the present report. I have pleasure in recording that the entire team under Dr. Sinha worked as a happy family, and it has only been on account of their joint endeavours that this overall picture of India has been built up within the short period of less than two years.

It is necessary at this point to record with a deep sense of gratitude the voluntary aid given by Sm Manju Sen, Sarvasree Ranjit Dasgupta and Dibyendu Raychaudhuri in the prepara- tion of the maps. Shri Kalikinkar Ghosh Dastidar and Shri Kalisadhan Samanta also placed their help unstintedly in preparing the beautiful pen and ink drawings which illustrate the whole report.

The authorities of the Venus Printing Works also deserve our special thanks, as it has been only through their willing co-operation that we have been able to place the report finally before the public within a comparatively short time.

Introduction As one goes through separate sections of the present report, one is struck by a general accordance between the findings in regard to various items of material culture in rural India. Firstly, there is a certain measure of local differentiation; and there is also a considerable amount of interpenetration in almost every case. Secondly, the boundaries of the culture areas or sub-areas do not tally with Grierson's boundaries of either linguistic families like Indo-Aryan and Dravidian or of branches within either of these families. Material items of culture seem to have independent extensions of their own; and these, very roughly, tend to be in accord with one another. On their basis, India becomes divided very roughly into two distinguishable, but overlapping, regions meeting at a broad zone which runs from Maharashtra to Bihar in some cases and to Orissa or West Bengal in others. This broad belt has also been the area where several material traits have interpenetrated again and again bringing about changes in form or function.

**Contents and Sample Pages**