Ancient Indian ergonomics wisdom and its contemporary significance

Abstract

The use of ergonomics principles can be traced back to ancient times, much before the coining of the term ‘ergonomics’. Ancient civilisations of Greece, China, and India followed well laid down principles of usability and human factors. These are evident in their furniture design, tool design, and other practices to minimise workers’ workload. In ancient India, most daily activities like cooking, dining, defecation, etc., and occupations like pottery making, shoemaking, education in gurukuls (traditional residential schools), etc., used one or the other asanas (postures). The aim was to maintain the body’s natural shape, avoiding the ill effects of poor body posture. The present paper reviews those domains of practice viz. posture, architecture, agriculture and furniture design in ancient India (2500 BCE to 1100 CE), where modern ergonomics principles seem evident.

Keywords:

• Ancient ergonomics
• agriculture
• architecture
• asanas
• human factors

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nitin Maurya

Charu Maurya is currently working as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Assam, India. She was awarded a PhD in the area of ergonomics from Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana in 2014. Charu represented India at the BRICS Young Scientist Forum 2019 held in Brazil. She has a keen interest in the areas of innovation, ergonomics and ancient knowledge.

Nitin Maurya is a scientist with the National Innovation Foundation - India, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India and leads the organisation’s efforts towards the diffusion of green grassroots innovations across the country. His current interest area lies in leveraging the potential of grassroots innovations for solving local problems by modifying them suitably and generating livelihood opportunities.