History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c24.s5.22

v1.c24.s5.22

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.