Agriculture development in ancient and medieval India

Pages: 1462-1464
Mahender Singh (Department of History, Dayanand College, Hisar, Haryana)

The Indus Valley Civilization has witnessed among others the use of plough and the wheeled cart in raising the production of wheat, barley, rice, maize, millets, cotton, etc. Horticulture was concentracted around the urban centres with a preponderance of people, not directly engaged in agriculture. The Harappan culture (3500 B.C. 1500 B.C.) is, rightly called the age of irrigated farming. The Vedic literature indicates that the cultivators in the Vedic period possessed a fair knowledge of the fertility of land, selection and treatment of seeds, seasons of sowing and harvesting, rotation and other cultural practices of crops, manuring for increase of production of crops and the like. Jaittiriva Samhita mentions that rice would be sown in summer and pulses in winter on the same field. The Arthashastra, the chief source of all sorts of knowledge of this period, mentions the name of various crops like Sali (rice), varichi (rice), tila (sesamum), masha, masura, yoda(barley), godhuma (wheat), atasi (linseed) and sarshapa (mustard). The mash pulse began to be used as a horse food during the Mauryan and Kushan period. Regarding the state of agriculture in Tamil land, Sastri, and Srinivasachan observe: “Cultivable land was abundant and the necessities of life plentiful. The fertility of the lands watered by the Cauvery is a recurring theme of Tamil poets… The poets of the sangam period counselled the kings as to how to store water, enrich the land and improve the conditions of the people. They emphasized the dignity of labour. The transplanting of paddy seedlings was the most important agricultural operation.”