SINHAS Vol 29 No 2 Surabhi Pudasaini

Prototyping an Architecture of Production in the Gorkhali Polity

Surabhi Pudasaini

Abstract
From the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the Gorkhali state effortfully maintained a metal workshop called the Kadel Chowk within the ruling household. This workshop made many kinds of things. It produced sensitive tools of statecraft. It made appliances and paraphernalia related to the care and health of ruling elites. It crafted ornaments for divine and ruling bodies. Describing its trajectory, operations, and output, this paper approaches the Kadel Chowk as a node in and illuminative of a marketplace of things and skills. Using administrative documents pertaining to the Kadel Chowk, it demonstrates how to use familiar sources to tell new stories. Pointing to the limits of the administrative archive, it explores ways to synthetize varied sources from across time. Anchored in the Kadel Chowk, the thrust of the paper is programmatic. It advocates for a program of building out a body of knowledge—empirical and conceptual—about production across different sectors. By offering pillars and foundations to uphold such a program, this paper prototypes an architecture of production in the Gorkhali polity.

Keywords: Production, skills, things, workshop, metalworks, materiality