Social and Rural Economy of Northern India, cir. 600 B.C.–200 A.D. v1.c16.46

v1.c16.46

Other factors occasionally aggravated scarcity or destroyed crops over a small area. Depredations of live pests called for serious attention. The Atharvaveda prepares spells for the extermination of vermins and insects (IV.50, 52). The Chāndogya Upaniṣad tells that locusts (mataci) blighted the face of the Kuru land by ruining its crops so that a sage had to move to a neighbouring country along with his wife and live on sour gruel (kulmāsa, I. 10. 1-3). Locusts (śalabhāḥ) swarming upon a corn-field appear in Epic similes (Rām. VII. 7.3; Mbh. VIII. 24.22). Gobhila prescribes sacrifices at molehills to the king of moles (akhurāja,—Gṛhyasūtra, IV. 4.34). In the Arthaśāstra rats figure as a veritable nuisance for which no better remedy is devised than rearing of cats. Birds, beasts and thieves caused much annoyance and necessitated the employment of field-watches of which the Jātakas contain many examples. In one case a plot entrusted to a watchman is ravaged by parrots before his nose (IV. 277; cf. V. 336). The peasants are constantly preoccupied against the forays of deer-herds in harvest time (I. 143, 153, 154; IV. 262). The fowlers and hunters rendered a social service by the destruction of these pests and if Megasthenes' evidence is to be credited, they received in Maurya India a subsidy of grain from the king for the salutary job (Str. XV. i. 41). Corns might be destroyed by hailstorm (aśmavṛṣṭi, Rām. III. 34.39; karakavassam, Mil. p. 308). A corn disease called setaṭṭhikā² (blight) sometimes spoiled rich rice-fields, as another called mañjeṭṭhikā exterminated sugar-canes (Cv. X. 1.6; An. IV. 279) and caused famine and mortality (dvibitikā setaṭṭhikā salākāvuttā, Vin. III. 6.15, 87; IV. 323; An. I. 159; Sn. IV. 323; dussassam setaṭṭhikam salākavuttam, An. I. 160). Over-population may have occasionally caused shortage of food for which the Arthaśāstra prescribes reclamation and colonisation of waste lands¹ (svadeśā-bhisyandavamanena, II. 1); but this factor bore no analogy to the present population problem which is accentuating unemployment, starvation and want all the year round.