A History of Agriculture in India v1.c18.s5: Rajasthan
A History of Agriculture in India v1.c18.s5
- Language
- English
Contents
- v1.c18.s5.t1 (i) Kalibangan — 13 parts
- v1.c18.s5.t2 (ii) Ahar—Banasian Culture — 15 parts
Rajasthan
(i) Kalibangan
v1.c18.s5.t1.1
An important discovery of a pre-Harappan township in Rajasthan was made by B.B. Lal and B.K. Thapar in 1971. The mound is known as Kalibangan or black bangles, as fragments of black bangles were found strewn over it by the local inhabitants. Another site which is close by is called Pilibangan, or yellow bangles.
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Kalibangan is on the left bank of the dry bed of the Ghaggar (the ancient Sarasvati) in the Ganganagar District in the erstwhile Bikaner State. The settlement is in two parts, following the Harappan pattern, viz. a citadel on the west, and the town on the east. Both the citadel and the town were protected by a fortified wall. The site has yielded evidence of two periods of occupation, of which the lower is pre-Harappan, and the upper belonged to the Indus civilization. Below the Harappan citadel are the remains of a pre-Harappan small township which represents a different culture. Carbon determinations show a date between 2450 and 2300 B.C. for the pre-Harappan levels. The pre-Harappans were in a chalcolithic stage like the Harappans. Proto-Harappan seems to be a more appropriate term for their culture.
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The pre-Harappan settlement was fortified, and within the walled area there were houses made of mud-bricks of the same size as that of the fortification wall. An ordinary house consisted of a courtyard, around which were located the living-rooms. Adjoining the walls of the houses were small platforms or *chabutaras*. Some of the houses had ovens resembling *tandoors*, and cylindrical pits lined with lime-mortar, used possibly for the storage of foodgrains. This is the pattern which prevails in the villages in Rajasthan even now.
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¹⁴ Deshpande, M.N. 'The Harappan Settlements in Ganga-Yamuna Doab', Indian Inst. Adv. Studies, Seminar, Simla, Nov. 1977
v1.c18.s5.t1.5
The citadel consisted of two almost equal but separately patterned parts. Both these parts were surrounded on all sides by a fortification wall, reinforced at intervals with rectangular bastions. The southern half contained half a dozen massive platforms of mud and mud-bricks, each separated from the other by a passage, and the northern half contained the residences of the elite.
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Because of the depredations of brick-robbers, no plans are available of the buildings which stood upon the platforms. But the available remains indicate that some of these might have been used for religious purposes. On one of the platforms were located a well, a fire altar and a rectangular pit lined with baked bricks containing bovine bones and antlers, representing perhaps sacrifices. On yet another there was a row of fire altars, a well and a series of bathing-floors. The presence of these features in the citadel is noteworthy. In the city, there were no street-drains or bathing-platforms. These amenities suggest that the inhabitants washed and bathed and performed their rituals in the citadel area.
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The city had a grid of streets which divided the area into blocks. Four arterial streets running north-south and three running east-west have been uncovered, and it is surmised that the unexcavated northern portion of the city may contain more.
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To avoid damage to the houses from vehicular traffic, wooden fender-posts were provided on some of the street-corners. There has so far been no evidence of regular street-drains. House-drains, which were either of wood or of baked bricks, discharged their contents into storage-jars buried in the floor of the street.⁶
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According to Raikes, the desertion of Kalibangan and other sites in the Sarasvati Valley took place owing to a change in the course of the river about 1800 B.C. to 1700 B.C. Owing to the tectonic changes, the Yamuna, which used to flow in the present bed of the Sarasvati, turned westwards.
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Faulted strata and ruptured walls were revealed in the excavated trenches in the pre-Harappan settlement. It seems that the pre-Harappan settlement was destroyed by an earthquake. It was rehabilitated, and subsequently flourished for about six hundred years.
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The past never disappears. It survives in the present in some shape.
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⁶Thapar, B.K. ‘Digging up the Past’, *Times of India Annual*, 1977
v1.c18.s5.t1.13
B.B. Lal¹ points out that the Marwari women cover their entire arms with silver bangles like the nude dancing-girl from Mohenjo-daro. Tandoor is still in use in the villages of the Punjab for baking chapaties. In Rajasthan, villagers have platforms in front of their homes where they sit to gossip or to enjoy the warmth of the sun in winter. Sets of copper instruments, viz. tweezers (mochna), tooth-pick, and a small spoon-like device for removing wax from the ears, are still sold in the towns of Himachal Pradesh. The Harappans had a similar kit of tools.
(ii) Ahar—Banasian Culture
v1.c18.s5.t2.1
The village of Ahar, about 3 furlongs [605 metres] from the Udaipur Railway Station, is known in medieval inscriptions as Aghatapura. It was the capital of Guhila kings, the ancestors of the Ranas of Mewar, before they migrated to Chittor. Close to it, on the bank of a rivulet, also called Ahar, lies a mound locally known as Dhulkot. There are other sites on the banks of the Banas and its tributaries, and hence the culture is called Banasian.
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For security, a hill-girt valley was chosen by the people of Ahar. There is a fairly good amount of rainfall, so that water for drinking and irrigation is available. This region provided excellent hunting. Deer and wild boars are still plentiful.
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For building houses, schist was available and it could be easily broken into the required size of slabs. Quartz nodules were available in abundance to strengthen and beautify the walls of mud houses.
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The plinth of houses was built with roughly dressed slabs of schist. The walls were made with mud or mud-bricks. Timber was used, but sparingly. The roof was sloping and was thatched with bamboos, and additionally covered with grass and leaves.
v1.c18.s5.t2.5
These stone-and-mud-walled houses, with sloping roofs, were fairly large. The largest one so far exposed has a length of 33 feet [10 metres]. Other houses have a range between 22 × 17 feet and 10 × 9 feet [6.7 × 5.2 metres and 3 × 2.75 metres]. A reconstruction of the village of Ahar by H.D. Sankalia (Fig. 72) shows that even now there are villages in Rajasthan which are not distinguishable from it.
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Saddle querns were found in the kitchen, near the chulah. Though grains—charred or not charred—have not been discovered from Phases Ia and Ib, some cereal, e.g. wheat, must have been ground into flour, made into dough and converted into chapaties by baking on pans of clay, numerous fragments of which were found. Initially, it appeared that jwari (a kind of millet) was used in Phase Ic, the grains of which were found mixed with
v1.c18.s5.t2.7
¹Lal, B.B. ‘The Indus Civilization: Problems and Issues’, Indian Inst. Adv. Studies, Seminar, Simla, Nov. 1977 clay in making pottery. There is some doubt about this find, as it was from a disturbed layer.
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The prehistoric Aharians certainly ate rice. According to Vishnu-Mittre, rice was of the long-seeded strain, perhaps the ancestor of the fragrant *Basmati* rice. Abundant impressions of rice husks on potsherds have been found from Phase a, Period I.
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Fish, turtles, fowl, cattle, buffalo, goat, sheep, deer and pig were also eaten by the people of Ahar. The bones of the domesticated cattle, *Bos indicus*, predominate among those of other animals.
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Three terracotta toy wheels indicate the use of cart by the people of Ahar. The Aharians possessed seven kinds of pottery. Of these, the Black-and-Red was used as a table ware. Red Ware and Grey Ware were also used.
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Copper tools and weapons were made from the copper ore smelted from deposits in the Aravallis. Five copper axes, one knife blade, a copper sheet, a bangle and two rings were found. The occurrence of copper slag indicates that the Aharians smelted copper.
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The Ahar axes, though thinner and with a more flaring edge, are not otherwise different from the flat socketless axes discovered from other sites in India.
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Ahar is the only site where during this period lithic blades were not used for household purposes, along with copper, and stone axes. Hence the Ahar Culture has been called the Copper Age Culture.⁸
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⁸ Sankalia, H.D. *The Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan*
v1.c18.s5.t2.15
The Banasian culture is distinctive in its absence of a stone industry of any kind in its earlier phases and in the presence of numerous copper objects, particularly axes made of locally available copper. Black and Red Wares are predominant, with lustrous Red Wares appearing in later phases. Radiocarbon datings carried out at the University of Victoria, Australia, indicate the beginning of the Ahar culture around *c.* 1990 to 2144 B.C. Some late dates, 1727, 1552, 1273 B.C., are indicated by samples analysed at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. According to Allchin, the Banasian phase might have extended from 1800 to 1400 B.C.