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History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s5: Manuring

History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s5

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Manuring

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The surplus economy of the Harappans may imply the use of fertilisers, but their nature and extent cannot be determined. The evidence about the use of manure in the Vedic period is not clear. Some scholars take the terms karīṣa, śakrt, śakan, śāka and śaka, meaning cowdung, to stand for cow-dung manure (Satavalekar, pp.19-20; Macdonell and Keith, I, p.182). A passage in the Ṛgveda (I. 151.10) speaks of Rbhus separating the śakrt from other parts. The word karīṣa occurring in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (II.1.1.7) denotes dry cowdung. Cowdung was collected in cowstalls (Atharvaveda, XII. 3.4). It is not unlikely that cowdung was used, as in modern times, both as fuel and manure, but there is no clear reference to its use as manure. The Atharvaveda (III. 14.5) provides the only positive reference in mentioning cowdung as a useful manure for the śāli variety of rice.

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The Arthaśāstra (VII. 11.9) observes that the qualities of land (bhūmi) can be contrived (kṛtrima). The expression (kṣetra-śodha occurring in the Rāmāyaṇa (I.66.13-14) means improving the field and implies the use of fertilisers. The Kṛṣi-Parāśara (verse 111) recognises the importance of manure for crops and says that without manure the paddy simply grows up, but does not yield any fruit. We cannot determine the stages through which the knowledge and use of manures originated and grew.

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The first systematic account of agriculture which is available in the Arthaśāstra (II. 24.24-25) refers to the treatment of seeds, but not to the application of manure to the soil. But, there are indications that the fertilising qualities of cowdung, cow-bones, fish and green manures were not unknown; these were used for plants and not crops.

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The actual practice about the use of manures is best recorded in the Haracarita (p.65). Bāṇa gives a very graphic picture of heaps of old and rubbish things together with cowdung (purāṇapāmsūtikirakārīṣakūta), brought in carts, being applied for the improvement of fields that had become weak in their fertility properties.

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The Kṛṣi-Parāśara is the only text which records the method of preparing manure out of cowdung (verses 107-9). It says: in the month of Māgha (January - February) a dung heap is raised with the help of a spade. When it is dried in the sun, smaller balls are made out of it. In the month of Phālguna (February-March) these dried balls of dung are placed into holes dug for the purpose in the fields, and at the time of sowing they are scattered in the field’. Apparently the author of the text cannot be expected to have identified the component elements of the cowdung manure, but, possibly, he was aware of its fertilising properties and also appreciated the way in which they could be preserved and increased. Gangopadhyaya (pp. 58-59) analyses this method of preparing the dung manure and shows that the practice of not disturbing dung-heap means the minimisation of the loss of nitrogen, the chief fertilising element, that of drying dung into balls results in reducing active ammonia which may be injurious to the plants, while that of placing the dung balls in pits increases humus that contributes to the fertility of the soil.

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Some other manures are suggested in texts on Vṛkṣāyurveda (the science of plant life). The term is not restricted to the diseases of plants and trees and their treatment, but covers other aspects of their healthy growth. It can be traced in the Arthaśāstra (II. 24.1). The earliest available account of the science in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā contains some prescriptions about manure. It advises seeds to be sown in a parikarmita soil (Bṛh.S. LIV. 20). Bhaṭṭotpala explains the term to mean a soil in which sesasum was previously sown. The Bṛhatsaṃhitā prescribes that a circular hole (avaṭa), a cubit in diameter and two cubits deep, is to be dug and then filled with the milky decoction. When it dries up, it is to be burnt with fire and then pasted over with ghee and honey mixed with ashes. It is to be filled first with soil (mṛttikā), then with the powder of bean (māṣa), sesamum (tila) and barley and then again with soil. Finally, sprinkling the soil with the washings of fish and meat, it should be beaten and reduced to a thick consistency (Ibid. 24-25). The text further advises that a proper inflorescence and fructification the plants are to be watered with a mixture of two āḍhakas of powder of the excreta (śakṛt) of goats and sheep, one adhaka of sesamum, one prastha of barley powder (śaktu), one droṇa of water and one tulā of beef, all kept together for seven nights.

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The only Sanskrit text, other than the Kṛṣi-Parāśara, which refers to the application of manures to cultivable land, is the Kāśyapīyakṛṣisūkti. In the section (VI) dealing with the work done at the time of the commencement of agriculture, it says that, after duly ploughing the field, the cultivator should place in it cow-dung, goat-dung, or compost (vālaga) in order to increase its fertility (verses 263-64). In section XIII, dealing with the method of cultivation to be followed for various grains, it advises that paddy seedlings are to be transplanted in a rice-field softened by ploughing and carefully manured with goat-dung and cow-dung with latā and vratati (verse 431)30. Later, in the same section, exhorting the cultivator to do cultivation twice every year, it says that “it is desirable that the second cultivation is to be done after having raised the fertility of the soil by manuring with goat-dung or cow-dung or compost etc” (verse 513) (Raychaudhari, p.68, verse 477). In section XIV, dealing with the cultivation of pulses and other grains, the cultivator is advised to apply rich manure to the root of each seedling after weeding (verse 551) (Raychaudhari, p. 69, verse 512). The section dealing with the cultivation of vegetables mentions sprinkling of small quantity of cow-dung as one of the two primary activities and adds that people know that it is for the sake of promoting the fertility of the soil.

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It is clear that the author of the text was familiar with the fertilising quality of the manures. They were applied after the ploughing of the field and sometimes at the time of the transplantation or later after weeding. The manure was of a rudimentary nature, in the form of the easily available cow-dung and the goat-dung. Green manure as a compost of easily available vegetation was also used.

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Bhaṭṭotpala in his commentary supplements the information in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, in many cases by quoting from Kāśyapa and the Agnipurāṇa. But the quotations do not introduce any new prescription of a fertilising device.

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Both the Viṣnudharmottarapurāṇa and the Agnipurāṇa have a chapter each on Vṛkṣāyurveda.

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Varāhamihira (Bṛhatsaṃhitā, 54.16-18) recommends a few prescriptions for curing the sterility of the trees. It can be cured by administering Kulattha, Māṣa, Mudga, sesamum and barley by sprinkling milk which has been first boiled and then cooled. For trees, creepers, thickets and plants alike it prescribes the sprinkling of two āḍhakas of the powder of the dung of sheep and goats, one āḍhaka of sesamum, one prastha(= 1/4 āḍhaka) of śaktu, a droṇa (= 256 palas) of water and a tulā (=100 palas) of beef,31 all mixed together and kept for a week (seven nights).

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The Vṛkṣāyurveda of Surapāla gives detailed instructions about the preparation of manures and their applications32. These include a few general recipes with some specific ones for particular plants. In this text we have two sections, entitled, corpse-water(kuṇapa-jala)(verses 97-106) and nourishment (poṣaṇa) (verses 107-64), dealing with manures and fertilising prescriptions. It requires the pit at the root of a plant to be treated by besmearing with the paste of sesamum, oil cake and Viḍaṅga, sprinkling with the milky water or corpse-water, fumigating with ghee and remedying with oil-cake. Water, in which dung, fat, flesh, marrow, brain and blood of a hog is buried under the earth for a fortnight, is called kuṇapa (corpse-water) (verse 105). A second method of preparing it is to collect as much as available lymph, narrow and flesh of a horse, hog, fish, sheep, goat and other horned animals, put them in water and boil them in fire. The flesh and other things are to be properly kept in a greased vessel and to be closed. In it are to be kept powdered oil-cake of sesamum, honey, boiled beans (māṣa), with their soup, and ghee. There is no fixed proportion of these objects. They are to be kept in a vessel in a lukewarm place for a fortnight (verses 102-5).

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The text lays down several prescriptions for the nourishment of plants, in the form of manuring formulae. It recommends that for the proper growth of a young plant a porridge made of fish, meat and sesamum should be administered cold every seventh day (verse 107). Other nourishing prescriptions are the sprinkling of juice extracted from the fruits of herbs, urine, fat, milk, corpse- water, ordure and meat, of kuṇapa mixed water in which meat and Kiṇva have been boiled (verses 112b-114), of the fat of deer and hog, honey and ghee and the juice extracted from the leaves of Nicula (verse 118); fumigation with the flowers of Siddhārtha and Arjuna mixed with the meat of deer along with Viḍaṅga, Rohita and Niśā (verse 116) and with the incense of plantain leaf, Siddhārtha and Śafarī fish (verse 117); besmearing with ghee, Vidanga, milk, water and honey, and fumigating with the pollen of Nalā, Kuṭha and Aja (verse 119); nourishing with the fat of python and Dhammiṇa (Hindi Dhāmina) (verse 120)33 and stinging of the creepers at the root by the thorn of a Vṛścika plant, fumigating with the śapharī fish and ghee and nourishing with the fat of hog and rat (verse 121).

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There are some special manuring prescriptions for particular plants: for grapes (drākṣā) manuring the roots with the powdered ordure of cocks and nourishing with the broth of fish and meat (verse 122); for mango nourishing with the juice of ripe Ankola fruit, ghee, honey and the fat of a hog (verse 123); for palm and coconut trees (tṛṇapādapa) watering with the boiled juice of the flesh of a cow, hog, and porpoise and anointing with Śapharī fish and pounded sesamum (verse 124)34 ; for coconut (nārikela) plastering at night with the paste of maireya wine, Kinva (a drug causing fermentation), sesamum, bean, surasava35, mixed with honey (kṣaudra), salt and Viḍaṅga (verse 125) or watering with alkaline water mixed with barley powder or with sour barley gruel (tuṣajala); for pāṇyāmala36 nourishing with the soup (yūṣa) of beans (verse 125); for date tree (Kharjūrī), orange (kamalā = nāranga) and bread-fruit (lakuca) the juice of black mustard containing barley husk and oil-cake (Piṇyaka)³⁷ (verse 127); for pomegranate (Dāḍimī) nourishing with the flesh of a cat, blue jay, deer, elephant and hog, plenty of fat and buffalo milk (verse 128), applying lumps of flesh of jackal (pheru) mixed with flesh of domestic animals (paśu) and inundating with copious water in which sugar has been dissolved (verse 129), plastering with turmeric, ghee, śapharī fish and honey (kṣaudra) and fumigating with the powder of triphalā³⁸ mixed with ghee (verse 130), and nourishing with non-poisonous snakes (duṇḍubha) boiled in milk and the broth of śapharikā fish (verse 131)³⁹ for bread-fruit tree (panasa) watering with the decoction of three myrobalans and decorating with husk (palalāka) (verse 133); for Kola (berry) nourishing with water mixed with liquorice (yaṣṭimadhūka), sesamum and honey and irrigating at the root with corpse-water (kuṇapa) (verse 134); for Karkandhuka (jujube), bread-fruit (Lakuca), badarī (jujube), dhātrikā (Āmalaka) and Jambu (rose apple) trees anointing with ghee and plastering with plenty of barley mixed with paste of honey, Kṛśarā and Rodhra, fumigating with sesamum, honey and barley for twelve days and watering with diluted milk at the time of efflorescence (verse 135) and watering with an unstinted quantity of liquor (sidhu) (verse 136); for Bilva and Kapittha trees feeding with jaggery (guḍa), ghee, milk and honey (verse 137); for plantain trees (kadali) dressing of the roots with old straw, dry cowdung (karīṣa) and ashes and sprinkling with the washings of the flesh or kasa⁴⁰ (verse 138); for Tinduka tree watering with the soup of rice and beans, and for Paravata trees with the juice of the leaves of Nicula (verse 139); for Matulungi (citron) trees, nourishing with the solution of sesamum oil-cakes mixed with the decoction of milk, flesh, jhaṣa fish, cowdung, rice and Kiṇva (a drug causing fermentation) (verse 140); for Bījapūraka (citron) nourishing with the flesh or a jackal coated with jaggery; for orange (Nāgaraṅgaka or Nariṅgaka) feeding with broth of meat, jaggery (guḍa) and milk (verse 141), watering with the infusion of Viḍaṅga, beans, sesamum, mustard and Bilva mixed with flax (uma), flesh of hare (śaśakāṃsa) and milk, and fumigating with the unguent of the flesh of hare (verse 142); for Madhuka, fumigating with abundant lumps of flesh, mixed with a little (kalā) of the powder of Aṅkola bark and seasoned with the root (siphā) and leaves (dala) of Jālini⁴¹ (verse 143); and for Śyāmā, Kadamba and Karikesaraka (Nāgakesara), nourishing with sour gruel (sauvīra)⁴², whey (mastu), curd (dadhi), Kola (berry) and sesamum mixed with wine (sidhu), iṇḍi, alkaline ashes (kāca) and corpse- water (kuṇapa) (verse 144).

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The text recommends flowering plants to be sprinkled with the decoction of rose-apple, Pallavaka (=Aśoka), Uṣīra (the fragrant root of a plant) and Musta (grass) mixed with wine (verse 145); and Ketakī to be sprinkled with the infusion of aromatic substances like cardamom and nourished with the broth of flesh (verse 146). It goes on to recommend measures based on superstitious tradition. Ketakī is to be fed with water (from the mouth of a woman) only once (verse 147); Bakula to be sprinkled with wine from the mouth of a young woman: mango tree (Makanda) to be scratched with the top of Kuvāra as with the tip of a finger nail of a woman (verse 148); Aśoka to be kicked amorously by a young woman (verse 149); Kurabaka (a species of Amaranth) to be clasped in a sportive embrace of a coquette within her lovely creeper-like arms; and Tilaka to be merely glanced by her (verse 150).

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The text mentions fertilising devices for creepers also: Mādhavī, Karavīra, and Kuraṇṭa to be sprinkled with wine (vāruṇī) in the evening (verse 152); Pāṭalā to be irrigated profusely with cold water mixed with milk (verse 153)⁴³; Karpāsikā (cotton plant) to be washed with the flesh of fish (jhaṣa), Yūthī (jasmine) to be nourished with milk, sesamum, cowdung and water⁴⁴ and Sephālikā to be nourished with flesh, plenty of fish (jhaṣa) and flesh- broth (verse 154).

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According to the text, Cirabhaṭī, Lambu, Karkaru, Trapasu and others belonging to the category of Śāka (pot-herbs) are to be fumigated with the bone and ordure of a hog on a Sunday (verse 155); Alābu (gourd) creeper to be sprinkled with the scum of rice kept overnight (verse 156); and Paṭola to be burnt (karālita) by straw fire in the month of Phalguna and sprinkled with a solution of oil-cake mixed with spirituous liquor (verse 157).

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In another manuscript of Vṛkṣāyurveda, which, though drawing heavily upon Surapāla’s text, is not identical with it⁴⁵, we find some additional provisions about the preparation and application of manure. It mentions the dung of goats, sheep and cows as the general manure (verse 117). The flesh of the fish mixed with Vidanga and rice is to be applied to the plants in cow-dung and urine and is also used for watering them (verse 118). The plants are to be watered with the decoction of barley, Mudga, sesamum, Masa and Kuluttha, when cooled down (verse 120). It recommends the application of powder prepared from white mustard, plantain leaves, fish and ordure of hog and cat, all in equal parts, and mixed with ghee and wine (verse 158), fumigation with the fumes of ghee mixed with earth, sprinkled with barley-water, and regular watering with diluted milk on carrion-water and plastering with Viḍaṅga and sesamum oil-cake (verse 159). It advises feeding of trees with ghee and honey in which the decoction of Aṅkola has been mixed and nourished with the fat of hog and deer as well as white mustard (verses 160-61). For creepers in general it advises piercing with the thorn of Vṛścika plant, fumigating with incense and feeding with the fat of mice and hogs (verse 156).

v1.c24.s5.19

The text recommends the use of Aṅkola oil as an important manuring agent. The huskless seeds of Aṅkola are to be pounded and soaked seven times in sesamum oil. Then they are to be rubbed with hot water and the oil expressed by the oil-machine. Another method is to plaster two bell-metal plates with this paste and place them in the sun facing each other. The oil dripping from them is to be collected in another bell-metal vessel placed beneath them (verses 112-114).

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There are detailed instructions about separate manuring ingredients for specific trees and plants: Jātī, Mallikā and Mādhavī creepers (verses 115-116), date palm, coconut (verses 122, 133-34), bread-fruit tree (verses 123, 151), mango (verses 124-26, 146), pomegranate (verses 127-29, 147-48), citron and orange (verses 130-32,155), arecanut (verse 135), plantain (verses 136-38), jujube (verses 139-40, 154) myrobalan (verse 145), Kapittha and Bilva (verse 152), Madhūka (verse 153), Campā (verse 141), Valtī (verse 142), grapevine (verse 143), Gostanī (red grape) (verse 150), Saurabha (coriander) (verse 157).

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Connected with the question of the use of manure is the problem of the prevalence of the practice of rotation of crops. Each crop takes away some of the fertilising properties of the soil. Under the system of rotation of crops the succeeding crop requires elements not consumed by the preceding one, with the result that the soil gets time to recoup the lost elements. Thus the soil maintains its properties in a cycle of crops.

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We have to determine whether the cultivator resorted to the practice of leaving the field fallow after a crop to recover the lost properties or made use of the system of rotation of crops46. The modern practice does not encourage any high expectation about the currency of the system of rotation of crops. The Indian farmer, though familiar with many fertilising agencies, does not seem to have made much use of them. Hence, the chances of keeping land fallow after a crop increase. A passage in the Cullavagga, after enumerating the processes in cultivation, says that one has to do just the same the next year, and the same all over again the year after that. This suggests that one crop a year was the normal practice. But the passage is not conclusive. Possibly, in emphasising the monotonous routine of household life, it does not pay heed to the number of crops cultivated in a year. The Yuktikalpataru (p.6) would imply that the rotation system was not much in vogue. It says that land loses fertility from cultivation year after year; when one plot of land loses in fertility, cultivation should be done elsewhere. The Arthaśāstra suggests that ordinarily a cultivator raised only one crop each year. It requires the Superintendent of Agriculture (Sītādhyakṣa), who arranged cultivation on crown land, to decide on wet crops, winter crops or summer crops (II.24.19). Elsewhere the text advises that for replenishing the treasury during financial stringency, the offices under the Samāhartā should make the farmers sow the fields in summer (Ibid, V.2.8), implying thereby that ordinarily the field was not cultivated in summer. The term khila47, occurring in the texts as well as epigraphic records, stands for land left fallow48.

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The pithy sayings circulating under the name of Khanā contain much traditional information which can be applied to the close of the ancient period. Khanā suggests knowledge of the system of rotation, especially when she observes ‘My worthy cultivator, plant radish towards the end of the third season of the year, sow mustard towards the end of autumn, and if you mind to take money, sow maize in the following month of Caitra’ (IHQ, VII, p. 24). There is evidence to show that people recognised two, and sometimes even a third, crop season. But two crop seasons do not necessarily establish the practice of rotation of crops, though the cultivation of three crops will imply the implementation of the system, even if rudimentary. The advancements made in the knowledge of soil, seeds and seasons would have helped the cultivator discover the benefits of rotation of crops. But, in the last analysis, much depended on the properties of the field, and the resources and the needs of the cultivator. In the inscriptions of later periods we have terms referring to fields which yielded a crop in Śarada only or in Grīṣma only, or, in some cases, both in Śarada and Grīṣma49; apparently the practice of rotation of crops was not common.

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In the Arthaśāstra (II. 24.12-14) we have references to grains grouped as pūrvavāpa, madhyavāpa and paścādvāpa. Even if this is interpreted to refer to sowings one after another in the same field, it will not amount to the practice of rotation. Actually we have here a preferential of crops as first, middle and last.

v1.c24.s5.25

Even in the very early stage of the domestication of plants there was a rudimentary awareness of the crop season, the proper time for sowing the few seeds known then. This knowledge grew in course of time. A Taittirīya Saṃhitā passage (V.1.7.3) speaks of two crops a year. But, another passage in the same text (VII.2.10.2) says that barley ripened in summer being sown in winter, rice ripened in autumn being sown in the rains, while beans and sesamum ripened in winter and the cool season, implying that there were three crops.

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In modern India also there are some regional variations in crop seasons on account of the variations in the timings of rains and other seasons. There are generally speaking two main crops: the Kharif and the Rabi. In ancient India also the pattern of two crop seasons parallel to the Kharif and Rabi was the general rule. This is implied by the *Gobhila Gṛhyasūtra* (I.4.29) referring to the two harvests of rice and barley. It requires a householder to offer *Āsasyabali* consisting of barley from the barley harvest in the hot season till the rice harvest in autumn and that consisting of rice from the rice harvest till the barley harvest. Megasthenes points out that as there is a double rainfall in the course of each year the inhabitants of India almost always gather in two harvests annually (Majumdar, pp. 233, 252). In the *Mahābhārata* (XII. 100.1-11) the season of the two main crops of Caitra and Margasirsa is mentioned as the time for invading any kingdom. The *Bṛhatsaṃhitā* (XXXIX. 13-14) also mentions two crops *graiṣmika* and *śarada*. In some inscriptions the fields are described in terms of their being manageable to the two crop seasons of *śaradya* and *graiṣmika* (vide Note 49).

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The *Arthaśāstra* evidence has been differrently interpreted. One passage (II.24.19) refers to *kaidāram*, *haimanam* and *graiṣmikam* crops. *Haimanam* is winter crops and *graiṣmikam* is summer crops. *Kaidāram*⁵⁰, according to Shamasastry and Kangle, refers to wet crops. Some scholars take *pūrvavāpa*, *madhyavāpa* and *paścādvāpa* in another passage (AS, II. 24.12-14) as referring to three seasons⁵¹, but Kangle correctly takes them to refer to the rating of crops in priority⁵². S.P. Raychaudhuri (Raychaudhuri p.81), following Shamasastry's translation of II. 24.10, says that the *Arthaśāstra* evinces acquaintance with there harvests. But, the reading refers to rain distributing wind and sunshine properly and creating three periods for the drying of cow-dung cakes (Kangle, II, p. 172 f.n. 9), and not to three sowings⁵³. Though the relevance of these passages is doubtful, another passage in the text does not leave any doubt about three crop seasons being actually followed, at least in some parts. In its advice about the seasons for marching on an expedition it mentions three crops: monsoon crops, winter crops and spring crops. It says that a king should march against the enemy on an expedition in Mārgaśirsa for destroying his monsoon crops and winter sowing, in Caitra for destroying his winter crops and sprinig sowings, and in Jyeṣṭha for destroying spring crops and monsoon sowings (AS. IX. 1.34-36).

v1.c24.s5.28

The pattern of three crop seasons is indicated by some other sources also. Pāṇini mentions *āśvayujaka*, *graiṣma* or *graiṣmaka* and *vasanta* or *vāsantaka* named after the season of sowing. Hemachandra mentions four seasons of sowing, *Śarad*, Hemanta, Griṣma and *Aśvayujī*, and four of reaping, Agrahāyaṇa, Vasanta, *Śarad* and Śiśira (*Abhi.C.* VI.3. 116-118).

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