AKBAR AND TECHNOLOGY 5 Abu'l Fazi goes on to describe the do-ashyana, also mentioned in the initial passage on encampment: The do-ashyana is set up with eighteen pillars. Pillars of six gaz each are raised and wooden boards put over them. To them, by way of male and female fits (ba-tarz-i nar-o-mada), pillars of four gaz [in length] are attached, and so the upper room (bala-khana) is formed. Its interior and exterior are ornamented in the same way [as the wooden raoti]. In expeditions, it serves as the place of the Emperor's bed-chamber.10 These extensive translations are offered to show that, as 'Arif Qandahari says, much innovation went in providing materials which could be used instantly to set up wooden structures, and not simply tents. A wood-and-bamboo palace like the 'Wooden Raoti' and a double storeyed Structure like the Do-ashyana could be set up and dismantled at each stage of journey. Blochmann's translation suggests that 'bolts and nuts* were put into use to attach the several parts.11 If correct, this would be testimony to an early use of screw as an attachment, though even in Europe, the screw did not come into use in carpentry before the sixteenth century.12 The words, ahan jama, iron-cover, are, however, decisive in excluding the screw. Obviously, what we are told of are iron-tubes that clothed the ends of masts and beams, with protrusions ('male1) designed to fit into hollows ('female') of corresponding tubes fitted to other masts and beams, and vice-versa. These could extent both length-wise or at right-angles to the mast or beam. It is thus that modem iron scaffolding is often rigged up; and it would be interesting to see if there is any early evidence of the use of this device in timber construction in India. The principle was known in ancient Iran, where kariz clay pipes used to be fitted to each other this way, each being at one end 'male', and, at the other, 'female'. TEXTILES 'Arif Qandahari is also our earliest source for Akbar's interest in textile technology. He says: His Majesty has such an eye for the five points that he has introduced [lit. invented] selken clothes, brocade, tapestry and carpets of silk and brocade in India, and instructed highly skilled masters in that art, so that the work in India is now much better than the work of Persia and Europe. He has so well practised the making of designs (tarrahi) that if Mani [the great artist] was alive, he would bite his fingers in astonishment at such design-making and dyeing.13 This passage is important in showing that Abu'l Fazi did not invent his attribution of Akbar's innovativeness in the realm of textile craft,