The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c16: Farming and fauna
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c16
- Language
- English
Farming and fauna
c16.1
Whilst a city of the size of Mohenjo-daro or Harappā implies a substantial middle class financed from trade and industry, the basic economy was necessarily agricultural, and there is evidence for a considerable variety in the crops available to the Harappans. On the other hand, as already noted, the building up of the flood-plain by alluvial deposits during the past three or four thousand years has obscured such evidence of field-systems and irrigation as might otherwise have survived. Our knowledge is derived solely from grains and fruits which happen to have endured in the occupation-material.
c16.2
Wheat and barley have both been identified: the wheat as *Triticum compactum* or *T. sphaerococcum*, both of which are grown in the Punjab to-day, and the barley as *Hordeum vulgare* of the six-rowed variety such as is found in pre-Dynastic graves in Egypt. The corn was ground on flat or saddle-shaped slabs of stone, as generally in the ancient world prior to the second century B.C.; and grain of one kind or another was pounded in wooden mortars as in modern Kashmir (p. 21). Charred peas from Harappā were thought to be field-peas (*Pisum arvense* L.); and melon-seeds and a lump of charred sesamum were found on the same site. A few date-stones are recorded from Mohenjo-daro, and two small faïence objects from Harappā appear to represent date-seeds, but these may prove no more than the occasional importation of dates, possibly from the shores of the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, certain conventionalized tree-forms on pottery may be derived from palms, and a pot from Harappā has been likened to a coconut fruit. Similar evidence for the pomegranate is more doubtful. Other tree-forms suggest the banana, which is thought to be native to southern Asia.
c16.3
Perhaps most interesting of all are undisputed traces of cotton cloth which have survived at Mohenjo-daro in contact with copper or silver objects through the creation of metallic salts in the damp alkaline soil.¹ The occurrence is by far the earliest known; in Egypt cotton, though an abundant crop to-day, was not cultivated in ancient times. Bast fibres were also found at Mohenjo-daro, in one instance wound round a fish-hook, but linen has not been observed there.
c16.4
¹ Marshall, II, 585; Mackay, I, 591; J. Turner and A. Gulatti in *Bulletin* no. 17, Technological Series, no. 12 (Indian Central Cotton Committee, Bombay).
c16.5
As stock-farmers, the Harappans had domestic dogs, humped cattle, buffalo and, more doubtfully, pigs, the bones of which occur in some quantity but may represent semi-wild scavengers. The probable use of the camel, the horse, the ass, and less certainly the elephant by the Harappans has already been noted (p. 60).
c16.6
That the cat, useful in all societies for preserving grain from rodents, was known in Harappan times is proved by a brick from Chanhu-daro bearing the footprint of a cat slightly overlapped by those of a dog. "The two tracks on the brick must have been impressed when it was freshly laid out to dry in the sun. The one with the mark of the posterior lobe tripartite on the hind margin of the main lobe evenly outlined is that of a dog.... The deep impress of the pads and their spread indicate the speed of both animals."² Other animals are represented only by terra-cotta figurines or lifelike representations on seals. From these we can infer that, in addition to the great humped cattle, there was a short-horned humpless species; and it may be added that in one form or another there is evidence also for monkeys, hares, doves, parrots and other birds,³ and many major wild animals such as Indian bison, rhinoceros, tiger, bear, sambhar, spotted deer, and hog-deer, some of which have vanished from the Indus. As a whole, the fauna is a varied one and implies in part the proximity of jungle or marsh such as no longer varies this arid region.⁴
c16.7
² Mackay, *Chanhu-daro*, p. 222.
c16.8
³ The survival of small pottery cages shows that birds and perhaps singing insects were kept as pets.
c16.9
⁴ See above, p. 6; and for the fauna generally, Marshall, I, 27-9; II, 649 ff.