Lands, crops and implements
Types of land, rain-fed and irrigated crops, and farm implements.
The essentials
Ancient Indian writers classified land carefully. The Sanskrit lexicon Amarakosha lists many kinds of land, for example urvara (fertile), ushara (saline or barren), maru (desert) and land that is fallow. Land was also grouped by its water source: devamatrika land depends on rain ("the gods as mother"), while nadimatrika land is watered by rivers ("the river as mother").
Crops were grown in two broad seasons. Rain-fed crops were sown with the monsoon and harvested in autumn; crops on irrigated or moisture-holding land were grown in winter. (The later terms kharif and rabi come from Arabic and Persian.) Major crops included rice (vrihi, shali), barley (yava), wheat (godhuma), many pulses (mudga – green gram, masha – black gram), sesame (tila), mustard, sugarcane (ikshu) and cotton (karpasa).
Key points
- Plough: hala or langala; the iron ploughshare (phala) made deep tillage possible in later times.
- Other implements: spade or digging tool (khanitra), sickle (datra), harrow/leveller, winnowing basket (shurpa).
- Bullocks drew the plough; texts discuss the number of oxen per plough.
- Iron tools spread in the Ganga plain in the first millennium BCE and helped clear forests for farming.
- Water lifting: wells, the persian wheel (araghatta) and channels were used in different periods.
Exam tips
- Remember the pair devamatrika (rain-fed) and nadimatrika (river-fed) — a favourite question.
- Learn the Sanskrit names of a few crops: vrihi, yava, godhuma, ikshu, tila.
Common mistakes
- Thinking that kharif and rabi are Sanskrit words.
- Confusing ushara (barren/saline) with urvara (fertile) because the words look similar.