Nice architecture, but man, those things must've been a public health nightmare. Anything that got tracked in on anyone's feet when the water was low would have eventually have wound up in the water supply when the level increased.
Wells, in general, are a public health nightmare in India. Most of India, except a few states, has heavy quantities of fluoride in the soil.
Ground water is not portable and drinkable because of this. India has suffered numerous episodes of widespread fluorosis. Removal of fluoride to normal levels is one of the major expenditures of water works.
I can't find anything on the Internet to support the theory that greeting by way of Namaste was practiced for hygiene reasons. Do you have any citations for that?
I think galtwho is saying that the people who said Namaste instead of shaking hands were more likely to pass on that greeting as they were less likely to die of a handshake illness. I.e. it came about through natural selection, rather than because someone had decided it was healthier.
On reading galtwho's comment again, I feel you are right. I thought he/she was repeating the post-hoc reasoning that is common in India, where people would take a ritual and assert that ancient Indians knew about scientific ideas that are common knowledge today and based the ritual on those ideas.
