India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c9.s1.8

c9.s1.8

The cultivated land was divided into separate holdings known as *kshetra* (*Dhānyānāṁ bhavane kshetre khañ*, V.2.1). The distribution of plots implied some kind of cadastral survey of which Pāṇini gives indication when he refers to the measuring of fields in terms of the *kāṇḍa* measure. Almost synonymous with *kshetra* was *kedāra* (IV.2.40) which word is unknown in the earlier Brahmanical literature. But the *Arthaśāstra* understands *kedāra* in the sense of a wet-field, and possibly it was distinguished from *kshetra* in this special sense. A collection of adjoining wet fields was known as *kaidārya* or *kaidāraka*. Other areas used as barn (*khala*, IV.2.50) were close to one another in a group called *khalinī* (IV.2.51) or *khalyā* (IV.2.50). The general word for arable land was *karsha* (IV.4.97), but the area actually brought under the plough was called *halya* (IV.4.97) and *sītya* (IV.4.91). *Halya* was the unit of land cultivated with one plough, as may be inferred from the examples *dvi-halya* and *tri-halya* cited in the *Kāśikā* (IV.4.97). Patañjali distinguishes a bigger unit of land measure called *parama-halyā*, in excess of the normal unit *halyā*, and similarly *parama-sītya* of *sītya* (*Bhāshya*, I.1.72; I.186).