History Of Science And Technology : Exploring New Themes
Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction/Rattan Lal Hangloo. 2. Narmada Homo Erectus: the most primitive human fossil of India/Arun Sonakia. 3. Megalithic high tin bronzes/Sharada Srinivasan. 4. Crafts on the move? the case of the megaliths of peninsular India/Jaya Menon. 5. In search of technology: journey from Ai Khanum to Mathura via Taxila (200 BC-AD 300)/Suchandra Ghosh. 6. Architecture and technological advancement: a case study of select forts of Deccan/M.N. Rajesh and M. Ramakrishna. 7. A social history of a minor technology: the tradition of bronzes, brass, bell metal and Dokra manufacture in Bengal/Nupur Dasgupta. 8. Craft technologies and craft communities in peninsular India: an overview of sixteenth to eighteenth centuries/Vijaya Ramaswamy. 9. Glimpses of craft technology in Kashmir/Rattan Lal Hangloo. 10. Textile technology in medieval Orissa: a case study of production and export during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries/K.N. Sethi. 11. Hydraulics and water management at Fatehpur Sikri/Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi. 12. Air dynamics and building construction in medieval India: a case study of Sheesh Mahal of Farrukhnagar/S.S. Subodh. 13. Minting technology in Mughal India/Najaf Haider. 14. Massive forge-welded iron cannons of India/R. Balasubramaniam. 15. Scientific attitudes in medieval North India: context, nature and articulation (AD 1000-1500)/Surinder Singh. 16. Mining and metallurgy in medieval Deccan/S. Jay Kishan. 17. Science and Islam: from pluralism to religious essentialism/S. Irfan Habib. 18. The Needham-Hora controversy: disagreements over the chronology and approach to the history of science/Dhruv Raina. 19. Building interdisciplinary scientific specialties: a case of the solid state and structural chemistry unit, IISc, Bangalore/Debasmita Patra, E. Haribabu and P.K. Basu. 20. Technology of defence production in India under British rule: Cossipore factory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries/Arun Bandopadhyay. 21. Jawaharlal Nehru and science and technology: the 1958 scientific policy resolution reconsidered/Nasir Tyabji.
Despite being a relatively new entrant to the domain of history, the history of science and technology has attracted a substantial number of researchers into its fold. More important, it is now being taught as an important component of the postgraduate course in history in several universities.
The present book defines science and technology in different historical and cultural perspectives because historians must always be attentive to the consequences of knowledge. The variety of essays in this volume is a fascinating glimpse of the cornerstones of the history of science and technology in India. They touch upon the themes ranging from the most primitive human fossils of India to the reconsideration of the scientific policy resolution in Nehruvian era and analyze the key dynamics of how our present has come about. There is something eminently and undeniably noble about this volume because its goal is to suggest a sound start for examining the nature and consequences of the significant advances made by Indian science and technology from antiquity down to our own times.
