Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.13

c6.s2.13

Similarly interesting accounts are available on Indian agriculture. The observation by Alexander Walker (Chapter XII), that ‘the practice of watering and irrigation is not peculiar to the husbandry of India, but it has probably been carried there to a greater extent, and more laborious ingenuity displayed in it than in any other country,’31 is in dramatic contrast to present day text-book accounts of ‘the comparative absence of artificial irrigation’ in eighteenth century India.32 How Indian agricultural principles, implements and practices (and these may have somewhat varied in different parts of India itself) compared with those elsewhere (China, Egypt, various countries of Europe, etc.), can only be known after a detailed comparative study of the subject. The causes of relative scarcity of resources constantly facing the Indian husbandman also need to be enquired into. It is probable that in most parts of India such scarcity was of late eighteenth century origin, and directly resulted from political causes. But it seems clear that besides widespread artificial irrigation, the practices of (i) crop rotation, (ii) manuring, (iii) sowing by means of the drill plough, and (iv) use of a variety of other implements were fairly widespread. The nature and quality of soils seemed to be well understood and in areas like Malabar, certain species of paddy are propagated by cuttings. The use of the drill plough, however, (and perhaps also of some other implements and practices), as noted in Chapter XIII, varied from husbandman to husbandman, the poor not being in a position to use it as it required larger resources not only in implements but also in draught cattle. The latter-day decline in the variety and efficiency of agricultural implements seems to be a result of the general economic impoverishment brought about by the state appropriating all it possibly could in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. (The material concerning the proportion of the gross produce of agriculture taken away by the state constitutes a major portion of British Indian archival documents. Theoretically, the land revenue due to government was fixed at 50%. In large parts of India under British rule till 1855 or so, the proportion that during most years actually went towards governmental land revenue was appreciably higher. For instance, according to certain enquiries in the Madras Presidency Ryotwary areas during the 1850s, about one-third of the irrigated land had over the years altogether gone out of cultivation as the amount of land revenue on such land had begun to approximate the gross produce itself, and at times even exceeded it.)