A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s6.1

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.