India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c9.s6.t1.52

c9.s6.t1.52

The next season for settling loan accounts from agricultural produce was Agrahāyaṇa, when the crops of the *Hemanta* season are harvested. These crops (called *haimana* in Kauṭilya) were sown during the rainy season; they are still one of the two principal crops of the year known as *kharīf*, producing rice, pulses, seasamum, maize and millet. Pāṇini mentions such loans as *āgrahāyaṇika* (also *agrahāyaṇaka*, IV.3.50), which were to be repaid on Āgrahāyaṇī, the Full-moon day of the month Agrahāyaṇa. It incidently shows that the month was reckoned to close on the full-moon day, for it would be natural to fix the period of repayment in terms of full and not half-months. We may thus understand how a *daśaikādaśa* debt contracted in the month of Śrāvaṇa, to meet the expenses of sowing the rainy crop, with stipulation to be repaid on the Agrahāyaṇī day would be called *pañchaka*, on account of the interest-bearing period being five months.