Food Sources: Earth, Water, and Air - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 15

consists of plains: the great Indus and
Gangetic Plains of the north and the broad
river valleys of the south. Except for the
extreme tip of the southern peninsula,
where there is a significant winter mon-
soon as well, the rainfall received is mainly
from the summer monsoons. These are so
bountiful that nearly half of the area of
the Union of India has an average annual
rainfall of over 100 cm. Some mediaeval
writers could, therefore, be excused for
their exaggeration when they said, as Abu
'l-Fal, that the whole of the land of India
was cultivable or, as Bābur, that its crops
needed no artificial irrigation. Nature has
also made possible another phenomenon,
regarded in mediaeval times as the special
characteristic of Indian agriculture, viz. ,
the sowing and reaping of two harvests in
the year—one ( ¶ arīf ) collected after the
end of the rains, and the other ( rabī ) at
the end of the winter.
A comparison of 11th/17th century
area statistics with modern returns sug-
gests that the cultivated area during the
11th/17th century was about half of the
area cultivated at the beginning of this
century in such large regions as Bihār,
eastern and central Uttar Pradesh, Berār
and Western Pākistān. In western Uttar
Pradesh, eastern Pan ¡ āb and Gu ¡ arāt,
the area cultivated was smaller by one-
third to one-fifth. The great extent of for-
est in mediaeval times is also indicated
by the information we possess about par-
ticular localities. We know, for example,
from the chroniclers' accounts of cam-
paigns in Kaehr (now Rohilkhand) that
extensive forests existed in this region in
the 13th and 14th centuries. While these
were largely cleared during the following
three or four centuries, the Tarāī for-
est still covered, further to the east, most
of north-eastern Uttar Pradesh (now a
densely populated area), down to the end
of the 18th century.

All descriptions of mediaeval agricul-
tural practice apply equally well to the
traditional practice in Indian villages
today. There existed the same combina-
tion of simple and crude tools with certain
ingenious methods and devices. While the
fitting of the “iron point” to the wooden
plough is referred to in a work as old as the
Manusmriti , Fryer (1672-81) found that in
fact the “coulters” of Indian ploughs were
“unarmed mostly, Iron being scarce”, and
that hard wood was being used instead. Yet
on the other hand, Amān Allāh usaynī
(early 17th century) notices the use of dib-
bling in sowing cotton, and Thévenot in
Gu ¡ arāt observed the use of fish manure
in planting sugar-cane.
Rainfall was generally supplemented by
artificial irrigation, from wells, tanks and
canals. Bābur has described for us the two
most common methods of lifting water
out of wells. One involves lifting water
in a leathern bucket ( čaras ) pulled out of
the well by yoked oxen drawing a rope
passed over a wooden wheel, “a laborious
and filthy method”. The other (the raha
or arha ), which deeply interested Bābur,
is called in English the Persian wheel.
The henklī , based on the use of weights,
has been described by Fryer. Large tanks
for irrigation purposes were usually con-
structed by damming streams and rivu-
lets. Fīrūz · āh (752-90/1351-88) is said
to have built several tanks by means of
such dams ( bands ). The Udaypūr lake,
created by a massive dam in the 16th
century, was originally about 40 miles in
circumference. Abandoned channels of
rivers, which became active during the
inundations, served as natural canals and
were important sources of irrigation in
the Indus basin. Human effort was often
needed to keep them in use by clearing
silted sections. In addition there were some
big man-made canals. The best known
of these was Fīrūz · āh's West Jamunā