AGRICULTURE
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AGRICULTURE |
The Indus seals provide clues to the agriculture of the Indus civilization, chiefly through their astonishing range of animal motifs, after making due allowance for the ambiguous or plainly mythical nature of many motifs. So, too, do excavated animal bones and preserved plant remains, such as carbonized grain, and the impressions of stalks and grains in pottery and bricks. Overall, however, the evidence for Indus agriculture is ‘extremely patchy’, notes McIntosh,1 as the following three examples illustrate. The elephant is frequently depicted on the seals, and elephant bones have been recovered from many Indus sites (Lothal and Kalibangan, as well as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, among others), but it is debatable whether the Indus elephant was domesticated or not. Rice was undoubtedly domesticated in the Indus valley later than in the Ganges valley – but it is not obvious from the small amount of evidence available whether rice domestication started before the Mature period of the Indus civilization, occurred during the Mature period, or quite possibly belonged to the Late period of the early second millennium BC. As for grain storage, there is strong evidence for very early grain storage facilities within mud-brick structures at Mehrgarh – but the supposed brick granaries described by Wheeler at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro most likely had some other, unknown, purpose, as we know.
The uncertainty extends to the climate and the river systems, as we also know. While many current archaeologists think that the ancient climate was similar to today’s climate, they have no doubt that the Indus and other rivers, such as the ancient Saraswati, have considerably changed their courses and deltas over the past five millennia. How did Indus agriculturalists relate to the ever-changing rivers?
The zooarchaeologist Richard Meadow sums up the relationship as follows: ‘agriculture in the Greater Indus Valley traditionally depended not on elaborate artificial irrigation works, but on the manipulation of flood waters and of features of the landscape to contain or exclude them.’2 In other words, in the valley the farmers may have used simple technologies for water storage and flow regulation and also created embankments to contain water, yet they do not appear to have invested in dams and canals, as the ancient Egyptians did. (On the other hand, such structures might have existed and been obliterated by subsequent erosion and modification of the land.) One such technology was probably the shadoof, an elementary water-lifting device consisting of a bucket pivoted against a counterpoise that was common along the Nile river in Egypt. A seal image from Mohenjo-daro convinced Marshall that it depicted a man operating a shadoof, ‘whose counterpoise is seen at the end of the pole above and behind his head’.3 Probably he was right, although the seal drawing is decidedly sketchy. Certainly, outside the Indus flood plains, dams and reservoirs were used to slow down water, trap runoff and store water. In the hills of Baluchistan, evidence exists of dam-like stone structures known as gabarbands, which were constructed about halfway across hill torrents and small rivers in order to capture both soil and water. At Dholavira there is a sophisticated, stone-built water conservation system consisting of channels and reservoirs, one of which is more than 5 metres deep with a series of 31 steps leading from top to bottom. Perhaps the so-called dockyard at Lothal was another such reservoir.
Freshwater fishing in the rivers was probably commonplace, unsurprisingly. Copper fishhooks have been excavated from many houses. Fishing nets, too, were used, as depicted on a potsherd from Harappa; the nets were weighted with terracotta sinkers, which have been found in settlements ranging from cities to villages. Saltwater fish, caught on the coast, were transported – presumably in dried form – as far inland as Harappa, where their bones have been discovered in considerable quantities.
Crops were grown when the heaviest flooding of the rivers had receded, during two basic growing seasons – the winter and dewy season, and the summer and rainy season (monsoon) – as discussed earlier. In some places the ground was fertile enough for seed to be broadcast without prior preparation; in others ploughing was required. No ploughs survive, but their existence is strongly suggested by a terracotta toy plough found at Banawali and a miniature clay yoke discovered at Nausharo, not to mention terracotta models of carts pulled by bullocks. Moreover, studies of cattle bones indicate pathologies characteristic of the type of physical stress caused by traction for transport and ploughing. There is also the remnant of a ploughed field found at Kalibangan – the world’s earliest-known ploughed field – that corresponds with a method of ploughing still used in the region. The field was first ploughed in narrow strips in one direction, and then in wider strips at right angles to the first direction. The seed planted today in the narrow strip is horsegram (a variety of bean) and in the wider strip mustard – the second of which was grown in the Indus civilization, though there is no evidence that mustard was the crop planted in this ancient Kalibangan field.
The wide variety of Indus crops was mentioned earlier, too. Not all of these were cultivated during the same period, however. Agriculture in the Mature period concentrated on wheat, barley and pulses – that is, the West Asian group of domesticated crops, grown across an area from western Europe to the Indus area. At the very end of this period, or during the Late period, new crops – several varieties of millet and also rice – came under cultivation, although it is possible that these new crops were cultivated in Gujarat earlier than this, as early as the beginning of the Mature period. Millet and rice were more suited than wheat and barley to a monsoon climate, since they could be planted after flooding. They changed the productivity of some areas that were already under cultivation and brought new areas under cultivation.
Millets, supposedly originating in Africa, were cultivated in Arabia during the fourth millennium BC, from where they eventually made their way to the Indus area, via the Indus trade with Oman. Today, they are known in the Indian subcontinent by their Hindi-Urdu names: jowar (sorghum, Sorghum bicolor), bajra (pearl millet, Pennisetum typhoideum) and ragi (finger millet, Eleusine coracana). As Possehl explains:
Votive objects made of terracotta, including zebus (humped bulls) and a wheeled cart, from Harappa.
The importance of these [millets] is that they are summer grasses that prosper during the southwest monsoon, unlike wheat and barley, which are winter grasses that do not thrive as monsoon crops. The millets thus led to double or year-round cropping and were important, if not critical, additions to the prehistoric food supply.4
The beginning of rice cultivation is more obscure, as remarked. Indeed, many books on the Indus civilization, including Marshall’s 1931 study Mohenjo-daro, do not mention rice, or mention it only in passing, because the evidence for its cultivation is deemed to be too slight. A complicating factor is that rice is indigenous to parts of South and East Asia, including the Indus area and the Ganges valley; in other words, it grew wild there, before it was domesticated. In Gujarat, at Lothal and Rangpur, Indus pottery has revealed charred rice husks and impressions of rice husks and leaves. But, according to studies by at least one scholar, Naomi Miller, this fact probably does not suggest the presence of rice domestication. Miller thinks that the rice in question was wild rice, which had been eaten by grazing cattle, excreted in their dung and then burned by people as fuel or used as a tempering agent in the firing of pottery.
A bullock-cart from the Indus valley.
The domestication of rice probably involved a number of different centres. On the basis of genetic evidence, it happened in at least two areas of Asia: ‘a perennial wild rice in East Asia produced the short-grained japonica variety’, whereas in South Asia, ‘an annual wild rice gave rise to the long-grained indica variety, which also spread through Southeast Asia and China’, according to McIntosh.5 The South Asian development may have occurred as early as 5000 BC in the Ganges valley, ‘if not earlier’, argues Chakrabarti, but it was definitely underway by the third millennium BC.6 Yet it is not at all clear how or when rice domestication got going in the Indus valley, and whether it was influenced by domestication in the Ganges valley. ‘The evidence for rice as a crop is limited in the Indus region as a whole,’ McIntosh cautiously writes, ‘though it may have been present at Harappa’ – where rice husks have been found in pottery and bricks.7 Its domestication could conceivably have started with the sowing of wild rice in the wetlands created by Indus flood water retained in valley depressions, rather as today’s rice farmers take advantage of the margins of the artificial Lake Manchar, a fluctuating body of water located west of the Indus and created in the 1930s by the construction of the Sukkur Barrage. However it was that domestication actually began, the earliest unequivocal occurrence of cultivated rice, of the indica variety, seems to belong to an eastern Indus site, Hulas, in the Ganges-Yamuna region, dating from the end of the Mature period (2000 BC or later).
Animal life in the Indus civilization was abundant, judging from the seal motifs, painted imagery on pottery, terracotta figurines and fossil bones. Among real species, the seals depict the humped bull or zebu (Bos indicus), the non-humped bull (Bos taurus), the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), the gaur or Indian bison (Bos gaurus), the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), the tiger (Panthera tigris), the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) and the gharial, a fish-eating crocodile (Gavialis gangeticus). Not included in the seal motifs, but depicted in other art, are the bear, dog, hare, monkey, parrot, peacock, pig, ram, squirrel and some birds too roughly portrayed to be definitely recognized. For example, a model in pottery from Mohenjo-daro with a long and wide-spreading tail and eyes represented by oval pellets may be a peacock, a creature plainly painted on pottery from Chanhu-daro. (Meluhha is said in cuneiform sources to have been a land of ‘haia-birds’ with cries able to ‘fill the royal palaces’ – probably peacocks.) The goat is surprisingly under-represented, though it does appear in its wild form as the ibex and the markhor, sporting easily identifiable horns. Not depicted at all, either in the seal motifs or in other art, are horses and camels. A puzzling, one-horned animal is very frequently depicted on the seals (over 60 per cent of the Mohenjo-daro seals and around 46 per cent of the Harappan), and is also modelled in several one-horned terracotta figurines (from Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro). It is generally termed a ‘unicorn’, a creature legendarily associated with India by ancient Greek writers; its zoological identity, if it actually existed, is much debated. In Marshall’s view, its lack of naturalism in the seals suggested the ‘unicorn’ was a mythical creature.
Indus seal stone made of steatite with a zebu (humped bull) motif, from Mohenjo-daro.
Cattle, goats, sheep and dogs had undoubtedly been domesticated. Cattle – that is, the humped zebu, the non-humped bull and the water buffalo – were the most important of the domesticated animals. ‘These distinctive species were adapted to different habitats and were probably used in different ways by the Indus people’, argues Kenoyer, basing his view on the marked varieties of hump and horn displayed by Indus figurines of cattle, combined with observations of cattle in the present-day Indus area and how they are used. He explains:
Several breeds now found in the greater Indus valley result from selective breeding and geographic adaptation that may have begun during or even before the period of the Indus cities. Large humps and medium-length horns are characteristic of the cattle found in the central plains, while in Gujarat and parts of Sindh, the cattle are distinguished by smaller humps and wide, spreading horns. Both varieties are well adapted to the heat, and their lumbering gait is effective in pulling ploughs or oxcarts. The smaller non-humped cattle and a range of crossbreeds are found along the foothills and highland regions, where they easily graze on the rocky slopes. Because of their adaptability to the highlands, these species would have been useful pack animals, carrying much more than the twenty-kilogram average for human porters.8
The water buffalo, by contrast, inhabits the marshy land near the rivers, suitable for wallowing in mud, as required by its relatively hairless skin. Although it, too, might have been used for pulling carts and ploughing, it was probably used more for milk production, judging from current agricultural practice in an area around the Ravi river not far from Harappa. Sahiwal has long been noted for its breed of water buffalo, which produces milk with a higher fat content than cow’s milk. Sahiwal buffaloes may have been famous in the days of ancient Harappa, too.
The domestication of goats (Capra hircus) and sheep (Ovis aries) is clear from the bones of both species discovered at various sites. At Harappa, goat remains are relatively rare, whereas sheep remains are plentiful. The large size of the sheep bones suggests that the animals were bred to produce meat and wool, according to Kenoyer. However, direct evidence for Indus wool production from goats and sheep is lacking. For example, the surviving impressions of vanished textiles mentioned earlier do not include wool; nor are woolly sheep and woollen textiles ever depicted in the Indus area, as they are in Mesopotamia; nor have any combs (for removing wool from sheep) or spindle whorls (for spinning wool) been discovered, as they have been in Europe. Additionally, analysis of sheep remains from the coastal Indus settlement of Balakot indicates that most male sheep were culled young, before the best age for wool production. Possibly the Indus civilization did use wool but preferred to import it from Mesopotamia.
Dogs (Canis familiaris) were part of Indus households, judging from the occurrence of their bones and from dog imagery. The bones of a dog unearthed in a house at Mohenjo-daro led zoologists to conclude that: ‘the remains are those of one of the domestic or semi-domestic dogs that are common at the present day around every Indian village, and at the present time live around the site of the excavations’, according to Marshall’s 1931 report.9 Dog figurines often wear collars. One such is clearly a pet dog, another is a performing dog in the act of begging, yet another a fighting dog, and a fourth may be a retriever for hunting, since it has a kill in its mouth. It could be that Indus hunters captured, trained and even exported wild red dogs, which are celebrated hunters, since cuneiform texts refer to a ‘spotted dog’ or a ‘red dog’ from Meluhha. A brick from Chanhu-daro, which must have been laid out to dry in the sun, carries a trail of paw prints of a dog pursuing a fleeing cat. Whether or not cats, as well as dogs, were domesticated, is unclear.
Dog figurine with a collar made of terracotta, from Harappa. It suggests domestication.
Elephants must have been hunted for their meat and their ivory, which was carved into ornaments, gaming pieces and inlay. In the seal motifs and in other imagery, elephants are always depicted without human riders, which perhaps suggests that they were not employed for heavy labour, unlike in historic India. Yet, one seal does show an elephant with a cloth on its back (a caparison?), while a lively terracotta figurine of an elephant’s head from Harappa – perhaps a toy or a puppet – bears traces of coloured paint: red-and-white bands across its face. This decoration is reminiscent of the present-day Indian custom of painting the faces of elephants, especially for festivals and religious processions. So it is possible that Indus elephants were domesticated, too.
The earliest definite evidence for the domesticated horse (Equus caballus) in the Indian subcontinent comes from the Punjab in the period between 1700 and 1500 BC, post-dating the disappearance of the Indus civilization, according to most archaeologists. A few researchers, mostly from India, including Chakrabarti and S. P. Gupta, argue for the horse’s earlier presence during the Mature period. The issue is controversial, as we already know, because of its political connotations for Hindu nationalists. While there is definitely no imagery of horses from the Mature period, it is at least conceivable that there are bones of horses. But Meadow’s detailed studies of equid bones from the Mature period and before indicate that the bones are most probably those of the onager, also known as the steppe ass (which resembles a donkey to untutored eyes). This wild equid, Equus hemionus, is native to northern South Asia, unlike Equus przewalskii, the ancestor of Equus caballus (the domesticated horse), which is indigenous to the steppe region from Ukraine to Mongolia. ‘Morphologically, the two species are similar and it is often difficult to distinguish their bones’, notes McIntosh.10
We now have a picture of the plants and animals available for consumption by the Indus civilization. How did its people prepare them as food? Unfortunately, the evidence is very thin. There are few remains of ancient vegetables, for instance, and ‘no representations of elaborate feasts are preserved’, as Kenoyer remarks. Reconstruction of Indus meals must therefore depend on what is known to have been available in the cities’ markets, plus information about vegetables, fruits, nuts, honey and so forth known to be indigenous to the Indian subcontinent.
South Asian steppe asses, or onagers. The steppe ass resembles a donkey in appearance, while its bones, which have been found at Indus sites, resemble the bones of the ancestor of the domesticated horse.
Kenoyer guesses that: ‘Wheat probably was the foundation for most meals, but other staple dishes would have been made from roasted barley, stewed or fried lentils, gram (chickpea) flour, baked tubers and various wild grains’ – perhaps including wild rice. ‘Meat preparations would have been grilled and roasted, stewed or fried and even minced with various herbs and spices.’11
Exactly what those herbs and spices were can only be conjectured on the basis that basil, coriander, garlic, onion, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, fenugreek and cumin grew wild in north India, whereas cloves, cardamom, nutmeg and various types of black pepper grew primarily in south India. But we should not assume that these latter, sought-after spices – which are mentioned in the later Vedic texts – were unavailable to the Indus area during the third millennium BC. Long-distance trade is a remarkable, if somewhat underappreciated, fact of the ancient world – whether in the Mediterranean area, Mesopotamia or Asia as a whole. If Meluhha could successfully trade with Mesopotamia at this exceptionally early period (as it unquestionably did), then it is possible that south Indian spices were available at Indus settlements near the coast such as Lothal and Dholavira, which enjoyed easy access via the Arabian Sea to the coasts of the Indian peninsula. Conceivably, even inland at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, Indus cooks spiced their dishes with such exotic subcontinental imports.
Map showing trade routes of the Indus civilization by land and sea.
