MIWA. Metrology of Indian Waters is a sub-blog of ‘Urbrel Hypotheses’, focusing on Sara Keller’s postdoc project on historical Indian waterscapes.
Water in India is an environmental challenge, just as it is a human one. In the context of a growing hydraulic crisis, it is clear that political, social and religious issues affect the question of access and quality of water just as much as technical and financial problems do. Against this sometimes dramatic background, our objective is to map the knowledge and means of accessing and upgrading water in the pre-modern Indian World.
In a social context that is strongly influenced by Brahmanical ideas, water appears as an ambivalent element due to its sanitary functions: It is both a factor for exclusion (pure/impure) and an essential resource for the purification process. Thus, water represents both a border marker and border passer. The blog aims to show studies regarding pre-modern hydraulic knowledge in an archeological, social and religious perspective.
The blog ‘MIWA. Metrology of Indian Waters’ presents the project and the construction of its database. It also shares upcoming events related to the project and it has a function of scientific watch (‘veille’), gathering the latest information on water and studies related to hydro-knowledge in India.
