Pottery Traditions of India: Harappan Ware to NBPW

Pottery is the one craft that runs unbroken through Indian history. Clay vessels break but their pieces never rot, so every mound an archaeologist digs gives up thousands of potsherds, and each change of shape, colour, slip or painted motif marks a change of people, technology or trade. For that reason whole cultures are named after their pottery rather than after a king or a kingdom. Examiners like this topic because the names are fixed and testable: Ochre Coloured Pottery, Black and Red Ware, Painted Grey Ware, Northern Black Polished Ware and Rouletted Ware appear in SSC, Railway, Defence and State papers almost every year, usually as a one line match between a ware, its period and its site.

Why pottery matters to the historian

Pottery dates a site. A layer with grey ware painted in black cannot belong to the same century as a layer of glossy black polished bowls, so the order of layers gives the order of cultures. Pottery also measures technology: handmade pots belong to early village cultures, while the fast potter wheel marks a settled craft specialisation. Finally, pottery traces trade, because a vessel made in one region and found in another proves contact. Indian archaeology divides the ancient sequence into Neolithic handmade ware, Chalcolithic painted ware, Painted Grey Ware of the Later Vedic age, and Northern Black Polished Ware of the second urbanisation.

Harappan pottery

Harappan pottery of the mature phase, roughly 2600 to 1900 BCE, is mostly wheel made, well fired and red in colour, with designs painted in black on a red slip. The favourite motifs are intersecting circles, the pipal leaf, fish scales, chequerboards, peacocks and the horned deity. Characteristic shapes include the dish on stand, the S shaped jar, the goblet with a pointed base used once and thrown away, and the perforated jar that may have been a strainer for brewing. Harappan sites also yield great numbers of terracotta figurines, among them the mother goddess figures, the bull, the toy cart and the whistle shaped bird.

Chalcolithic painted pottery

The Chalcolithic or copper stone cultures of central and western India are each known by a ware. Ochre Coloured Pottery, worn and ill fired with a colour that rubs off on the fingers, is found in the upper Ganga and Yamuna doab and is associated with copper hoards. Black and Red Ware, fired upside down so that the inside and rim turn black while the outside stays red, belongs to the Ahar or Banas culture of south eastern Rajasthan and later to the megalithic builders of the south. Kayatha, Malwa and Jorwe wares follow one another in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, Jorwe ware being a matt painted black on red pottery known from Inamgaon and Daimabad.

Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished Ware

Painted Grey Ware is a fine, thin, wheel made grey pottery painted with simple black lines, dots and spirals, mostly bowls and dishes. It is dated roughly between 1100 and 600 BCE and its sites, Hastinapur, Ahichhatra, Atranjikhera, Mathura and Kurukshetra, lie in the upper Ganga valley, which is why it is linked with the Later Vedic age and with the geography of the Mahabharata. Northern Black Polished Ware, about 700 to 200 BCE, is the luxury ware of the Mahajanapadas, the Nandas and the Mauryas. It is a glossy, mirror like, steel grey to jet black pottery of very fine clay, found from Taxila to Bengal and as far south as Amaravati, and it is the type fossil of the second urbanisation. Rouletted Ware, a wheel turned dish with rows of impressed dots inside, is found at Arikamedu and other coastal sites and marks the Indo Roman sea trade of the early centuries of the Common Era, alongside imported amphorae.

Living pottery traditions of the states

• Blue Pottery of Jaipur in Rajasthan, a Turko Persian technique that uses no clay at all but quartz powder, powdered glass and fuller earth, glazed in cobalt blue and copper green and fired at a low temperature.
• Khurja pottery of Bulandshahr district in Uttar Pradesh, a glazed ceramic in floral patterns, and the shining black pottery of Nizamabad in Azamgarh district, rubbed with vegetable oil and silvered with a zinc and mercury mixture.
• Longpi or Longpi Hampai pottery of Ukhrul district in Manipur, made without a potter wheel from weathered serpentinite rock mixed with clay and shaped entirely by hand and mould.
• Molela terracotta votive plaques of Rajsamand district in Rajasthan, Bankura Panchmura terracotta horses of West Bengal, Gorakhpur terracotta of Uttar Pradesh and the black Manipuri and Nagaland wares.
• Kagzi or paper thin pottery of Alwar, the unglazed red earthenware of Pokhran, and the giant terracotta horses offered to Ayyanar in Tamil Nadu villages.

Terracotta beyond the pot

Baked clay was also a sculptural medium. The Mauryan and Sunga periods produced moulded plaques of women and deities, the Gupta period produced large terracotta panels at Bhitargaon and Ahichhatra, and medieval Bengal covered whole brick temples at Bishnupur with terracotta tiles showing scenes from the epics. These panels are the poor province answer to stone sculpture in regions where good building stone was scarce, and they are a frequent one mark question in art and culture papers.