Echoes from the past

Indian farming goes back to prehistory. Archaeologists have found rice grains in the Ganga Plain from as early as the 7th or 8th millennium BCE — about 9,000 to 10,000 years ago.

But a careful historian adds a warning. Finding rice grains does not prove people were farming rice; they may have gathered wild rice. Proper, planned rice farming may have taken a few thousand more years to master. Finding grains is not the same as finding farms.

At Mehrgarh in Baluchistan — a site older than the Sindhu-Sarasvatī (Harappan) civilisation — barley and millets were grown in the 7th millennium BCE. Later, barley and wheat were the main (staple) crops of the Harappans, and some Harappan sites show rice in the 3rd millennium BCE.

At the Harappan site of Kalibangan in Rajasthan, archaeologists found a field ploughed in two directions, with furrows crossing at right angles, from about 2800 BCE. This shows intercropping — growing two or more different crops in the same field at the same time. Amazingly, farmers in the same area were photographed doing exactly the same thing in the 1960s, some 4,800 years later!

Over time farmers learnt to grow many more crops:

• oilseeds: sesame, safflower, linseed, mustard, castor;
• pulses (legumes): green gram, black gram, fenugreek;
• fibre crops: cotton, hemp, jute;
• fruits: grapes, dates, jujube (ber), jackfruit, mango, mulberry, black plum (jamun).

The Vedas mention yava (barley), godhūma (wheat) and vrīhi (rice).

Animals were domesticated (tamed to live and work with people) too: cattle, donkeys, sheep, goats, dogs, pigs, fowl and others, from the early (pre-urban) phase of the Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilisation, about 3500 BCE.

Later, many Indian texts recorded farming knowledge: Kauṭilya's Arthaśhāstra, the Sangam literature of the early Tamils, the Amarakoṣha, the Kṛiṣhiparāśhara, Varāhamihira's Bṛihatsamhitā and Surapāla's Vṛikṣhāyurveda.

Some of this advice is very practical. The Vṛikṣhāyurveda says seeds sprinkled with milk, rubbed with cow dung, dried and coated with honey and false black pepper will surely sprout, and that newly planted trees in dry land should be watered morning and evening for fifteen days. The Bṛihatsamhitā describes grafting — joining part of one plant onto another so they grow as one, combining good features such as pest resistance or sweeter fruit. Grafting is still used today.