History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s3.t4.2

v1.c24.s3.t4.2

S.R. Rao (p.79) has identified the figure of a seed-drill on an Harappan seal from Lothal (Randhawa, p.157). This will mean that the Harappans practised line-sowing by using seed-drills. The inference receives support from the pre-Harappan ploughed field exposed by excavations at Kalibangan (Lal, pp. 1-4). The furrows reveal a grid pattern running at right angles to each other, the north-south ones having an average distance of 1.9 meters and the east-west having 30 cm. only. The present practice in Kalibangan in fields with this ploughing pattern is taken to suggest that this was done for mixed cropping, the horizontal furrow for sowing one crop and the vertical for another.