The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v1.c19.s5.1

v1.c19.s5.1

The beginnings of agriculture in Bengal, as in the rest of India, have to be traced back to the pre-historic past (*supra* p. 562). Even so, it seems very probable that in the initial stage both settlement and agriculture followed the courses of the great river-systems of the province, which acted as powerful fertilising agents of the soil in their neighbourhood. With the growth of population, however, (owing partly perhaps to an increase in birth-rate, partly to immigration) there came about a steady increase in the cultivated area. One can discern indications of this extension of cultivation in the copper-plate inscriptions of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. As stated above (p. 265), most of these interesting documents (*supra* pp. 49, 51) relate to the purchase of land. Curiously enough, however, the character of the land purchased is, in most cases, described as *aprada*, *aprahata* and *khila* (unsettled, uncultivated and fallow). One particular plate (Gunaighar Grant of Vainyagupta)¹ describes five plots of land donated to a Buddhist monastery as *śūnya-pratikara-hajjika-khila-bhūmi* (water-logged, waste land, paying no requital or tax). Another (Tippera Plate) records how a community of Brāhmaṇas were settled and given lands for cultivation within a forest region, “where deer, buffaloes, boars, tigers, serpents, etc., enjoy, according to their will, all pleasures of home life.”² These instances suggest the inference that the three centuries, to which these inscriptions relate, witnessed a steady extension of cultivation and rural settlement. It is possible, though we have no positive evidence to prove it, that this movement of agricultural extension commenced much earlier, and continued with intermittent force and varying effect from century to century, and from region to region. The pressure of a growing population, the growing desire of priests for material prosperity, and the religious zeal of kings, — all served in various ways to organise a widespread attack on some of the ‘negative’ lands of the province, which settlement and agriculture had at first avoided.