A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s6: Granaries
A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s6
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Granaries
v1.c19.s6.1
The best evidence of agriculture in the Harappan areas is in granaries, which have been discovered at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Mortimer Wheeler thus describes the granary at Harappa. "To the north of these 'lines' the ground is littered with a medley of broken walls and floors which have not been intelligibly planned. Amongst these *disjecta*, however, not less than seventeen circular brick platforms emerge as a unit. It was built of four concentric rings of bricks-on-edge, with fragments of a fifth (or possibly of packing) round a central hole which had apparently held a wooden mortar. Fragments of straw or husk were found about the centre, and burnt wheat and husked barley were noticed in the central hollow of one of the other specimens. There can be little doubt therefore that the platforms surrounded mortars for the pounding of grain with long wooden pestles, as in some parts of India today." In Fig. 85 we see two women pounding barley with wooden pestles in a village home in Haryana. The importance of the Harappa platforms is their indication that this process was there concentrated and possibly regimented.
v1.c19.s6.2
"A hundred yards [91 metres] north of the 'platform' area, and itself within a hundred yards of the river-bed, lay the remarkable group of granaries which supplies a key to the whole layout. These granaries, each 50 x 20 feet [15.2 x 6.1 metres] overall, are ranged symmetrically in two rows of six, with a central passage, 23 feet [7 metres] wide. They are built upon a podium of rammed mud, some 4 feet [over 1 metre] high, rivetted along parts of the eastern and western sides and the whole of the southern and with baked bricks stepped back to form a battered face, like the rivetment of the citadel defences. Incidentally, the continuous rivetment along the southern end and the absence of space at the sides prove that the approach was on the north, i.e. from the river-bank, suggesting the use of water-transport for incoming or outgoing supplies of grain.
v1.c19.s6.3
"The floors of the individual granaries were carried clear of the ground on sleeper-walls, three to each unit. In at least two instances, the central sleeper had rectangular thickenings as though to carry posts or piers for additional roof-support. The purpose of the sleepers, as in the closely similar granaries of Roman forts, was to provide intervening air-ducts to keep the overlying building dry and so to prevent sweating and mildew. The structures were entered from the central passage by short flights of brick steps, and the systematic use of the passage itself for something more than transit is indicated by the presence in it of a number of carefully laid brick floors. As the general level rose outside the area, the air-ducts beneath the floors tended to become choked, and accordingly small projecting air-vents, conducting from the higher level, were added at their outer ends. The combined floor-space of the 12 granaries was something over 9,000 square feet [836 square metres], and approximates closely to that of the Mohenjo-daro Granary as originally planned.
v1.c19.s6.4
"We may glance at the layout of the area as a whole. Its units consist of (i) ranges of a barrack-like quarters within a walled compound, (ii) serried lines of platforms apparently for pounding grain, and (iii) a marshalled array of uniform granaries within easy reach of the (former) river."4
v1.c19.s6.5
The isometric projection of the granary at Harappa can be seen in Fig. 86. There is a structural similarity between the Indus granaries and an Akkadian structure at Susa.
v1.c19.s6.6
It seems that trade in the Harappan times was by barter. The seals were not money, but were stamp seals, used for stamping packages. They were carved on steatite, a soft stone. It seems that families of merchants had adopted certain domestic animals as totems. That is why they engraved their likeness on the seals. From the ruins of a warehouse at Lothal 71 sealings were recovered, most of which bear impressions of cloth used for packing the cargo which was consumed by the fire. Circular plano-convex pieces of clay, according to B. B. Lal, may be regarded as tokens carried by merchants or their messengers.
v1.c19.s6.7
The granaries also indicate that payment to labourers was in kind. As in the Indus Valley, all important cities in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley had granaries. A text from Ur implies that one of the granaries stored enough barley to provide wages for 4,020 days; another text refers to the commandant of the granary who was responsible for seeing that 10,930 man-days’ payment was made out of his store, presumably in barley, to meet the wages of the workers from the town; the workers included scribes, overseers, shepherds and irrigators. Another text refers to royal barley, to be returned with interest, received by Lulamu from the granary of the canal-bank. All these documents are of *c.* 2130-2000 B.C. Another tablet of the same period records a harvest gathered from certain fields belonging to the temple of Nan-she in Lagash.⁵
v1.c19.s6.8
⁴ Wheeler, M. *The Indus Civilization*, pp. 32, 33
v1.c19.s6.9
⁵ Wheeler, M. *The Indus Civilization*, p. 35
v1.c19.s6.10
From the size of the granaries it can also be concluded that the peasants paid their dues to the Government in kind, who, in turn, used it for payments to employees of various kinds. The artisans, carpenters and others received their wages in kind from the farmers.
v1.c19.s6.11
Granary at Lothal: A structure standing on a platform and consisting of 12 blocks of brick forming channels about 26 inches [66 centimetres] broad and separated by air-ducts was identified by Mortimer Wheeler as a granary. It seems that agriculture, fishing and trade were the main occupations of the inhabitants of Lothal. The size of copper fish-hooks indicates that fish of large size were caught by the fishermen of Lothal in the rivers.