A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s1: The Plough
A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s1
- Language
- English
The Plough
v1.c19.s1.1
The Sumerians developed the plough about 2900 B.C. Possibly, the Harappans learnt the use of the plough from the Sumerians. All primitive ploughs were made of wood, and wood is a perishable material. Hence there is no possibility of finding an actual wooden plough from a Harappan site. However, a terracotta model of a plough, 7 x 19.7 centimetres has been discovered from Mohenjo-daro (Fig. 78). This toy plough is kept in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay. Its shape is rather peculiar. There is a longish beam and the plough breast terminates in a rectangular manner. There is no indication that it had a handle (munna) for the ploughman to hold.
v1.c19.s1.2
Apart from the terracotta plough toy, there is indirect evidence of the existence of the plough in the Harappan times. In an earlier chapter, I have referred to the site of Kalibangan in western Rajasthan. Its pre-Harappan levels have been dated 2450 to 2300 B.C. The people of Kalibangan had domesticated cattle, and carried on agriculture. To the south-east of the pre-Harappan settlement a ploughed field was discovered by B. B. Lal and B. K. Thapar. This is the earliest ploughed field so far excavated anywhere in the world. It showed a grid of furrows, with one set more closely spaced (about 30 centimetres apart) running east-west, and the other widely spaced (about 1.90 metres apart), running north-south (Fig. 80). This pattern bears a remarkable resemblance to ploughing as is now carried on in the neighbourhood, where mustard and gram are grown in two sets of furrows in the same field. Compare, on the other hand, the state of agriculture in Europe. In Germany, the cultivation of small plots with hoes was still the sole economy down to about 2000 B.C.
v1.c19.s1.3
Allchins, relying on Lambrick, who, according to them, had personal knowledge of Sind, describe as follows how crops were grown in the river-rain tract of the Indus. "The principal foodgrains, that is wheat and barley, would have been grown as spring (rabi) crops: that is to say, sown at the end of the inundation upon land which had been submerged by spill from the river or one of its natural flood channels, and reaped in March or April. In modern practice such land is neither ploughed nor manured, nor does it require additional water. Lambrick remarks that ‘the whole operation involves an absolute minimum of skill, labour and aid of implements.’ Other crops, including cotton and sesamum, would be sown as autumnal (kharif) : that means they would be sown at the beginning of the inundation and harvested at its close, in autumn. For this fields surrounded by earth embankments would be required, most probably along the banks of natural flood channels. Although this method is more precarious than the former, both exploit the natural fertility of the alluvium, and the annual inundation. Both systems are still in use.¹ According to my experience of cultivation in the riverain areas of the Punjab, when the land has appropriate moisture or wattar, as it is called, land is ploughed, seed is sown and the soil is smoothened with a plank. The practice followed by the Harappans could not have been different. For the proper sowing of crops, soil has to be stirred and seed has to be covered.
v1.c19.s1.4
¹ Allchins, B. and R. *The Birth of Indian Civilisation—India and Pakistan before 500 B.C.*, p. 261