A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s1.2

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.