Agrarian Economy of Ancient India

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The book aims at presenting a detailed and systematic study of the economic conditions of ancient India dealing with different aspects of agrarian economy such as origin of agriculture and pastoralism, land rights, paradigms of land tenure, measurement of land, economic dimensions of land and the feudal economy. In accordance with this aim, economic condition is presented in this book primarily not as the sum total of the economic history of individual kings, but as an explanation of the economic developments and changes of whole ancient India. The distinctive characteristic of this book lies in the fact that it presents a synthesis of agrarian and feudal economy that prevailed in ancient India.

The book presents a deteriorating and grim scenario of the economic condition of the people of ancient India. It also negates and questions the notion of Ram Rajya in ancient India, i.e. a state where people enjoyed economic and social prosperity and equality, and did not witness any kind of misery and inequality. The scope of the book has however been restricted to agrarian economy of ancient India from the earliest time to 1200 A.D. It is based on the literary and epigraphical traditions of ancient India. It will be useful for the students of economics, particularly those studying the economic history of India and researchers in this field.

The topic Agrarian Economy of Ancient India (From the earliest times to 1200 C.E), appealed to me and I took it up. But it presented difficulties partly because I am not a Sanskritist and partly because the literature of ancient India is a storehouse of human experience and wisdom gathered in course of ages, and religious in nature. It is so vast and scattered that there is scarce material in them on agrarian economy. The chronology of these traditions, literary as well as the epigraphical, are uncertain. Another difficulty in studying the agrarian economy of ancient India lies in the fact that in spite of many common features, Indian agrarian system has regional variations and differentiations. Moreover, it has intimate linkages with other forms of agrarian economy, like pastoralism, land economy, economic thought and feudal economy, etc. In view of paucity of early works on agrarian economy, along with the predominance of official orientation of literary and epigraphical traditions and amorphous nature and regional variations, it is an onerous job to present the agrarian economy of ancient India in its true perspective. The present work is a synthesis and summation of existing knowledge on the agrarian economy of ancient India on the combined bases of archaeological and literary traditions of ancient India.

It was a tremendous task to do full justice to this topic. I do not therefore claim to have drawn a complete and finished portrait and I do not claim this to be pioneer work, and hope that the material that I have been able to lay my hands on, its systematic presentation, and the inferences that it has led me to draw, may form an interesting and attractive book on ancient Indian agrarian economy.

The most fateful change in the human history might have occurred some ten thousand years ago when the transition from hunting-gathering to farming took place. During the preceding 150,000 years, anatomically modern humans had successfully inhabited almost all habitable and accessible regions on the earth and in so doing had learned to subsist, as 'hunter-gatherers', on a great diversity of plant and animal foods. But human population densities remained low throughout these many millennia. However, the most fundamental and far-reaching consequences of the 'agricultural revolution' in the early Holocene period was that it enabled more food to be obtained, and more people supported, per unit area of exploited land. It thus facilitated long-term sedentary settlement and the maintenance of larger and more complex social groups, which in turn enabled urban society to develop.

Credit goes to human beings for the origin of agriculture and its growth, as they continued to practice, evolve and develop the science of producing food in its manifold aspects in all ages and all over the world. V.C. Srivastava rightly holds that the history of agriculture is practically co-terminus with the history of civilization. The story of agriculture, from the earliest stage of incipient farming along with gathering in the Mesolithic period, to biotechnological and genetic farming of the present century is interesting, engrossing and instructive. It is linked with the evolution of man on one hand and associated with the latest scientific and technological culture of recent times on the other.

With the passage of time agrarian affairs like other affairs had undergone a process of evolution which was the result of innumerable contributions by ancient economic thinkers. They played a key-role in the agrarian affairs of the early Indian kings/states. Thus, the early Indian rulers/states themselves took part in a number of economic activities keeping a close watch and control in sectors like trade, treasury, commerce, agriculture, land system and labour problems, etc.

However, ancient Indian economic thought is a field still practically untilled, and economic thought in any age only reflects its time and life. It moves with the variation of economic condition. The economic interpretation of our past economy is one of the first fruits of the study of early Indian economic thought which enabled us to visualize not only the life of our ancestors but also helped us to recognize and interpret even the purpose of their everyday economic activities and affairs. Our knowledge of early economic thought acknowledged the contribution and role of great thinker like Kautilya and established his due position among the economists of the world.

The economic thought of any civilization or age was the reflex of the life of humans of that age or civilization, and the economic life of any people or epoch is again conditioned and programmed very largely by their natural and social environment. The physical background of ancient Indian agrarian economy could hardly have been very different from what it is in the present-day economic scenario.

The origin, antiquity and sources of agriculture and pastoralism in ancient India are very vexed, hazy and controversial. As the issues are associated with prehistoric culture, literary traditions are of no use. Fortunately, archaeological material has recently been retrieved to throw useful light on these problems. "These materials have been reported from sites of Vindhya-Ganga regions of Koldihwa, Mahagara, Kunjhun, Panchoh, Chopani-Mando, Tokwa, Narhan, Chirand, Senuwar, etc. Plant remains, agricultural tools and pots, dental pathology, settlement remains, etc. have been utilized to throw light on the origin and antiquity of cultivation in India."3 The antiquity of cultivation of plants in the Indian subcontinent may be traced back to seven to six millennium B.C., if not earlier, in our present state of knowledge.

The growing of crops and the rearing of cattle and domestication of animals are indispensable ingredients of agrarian economy and the significant step in a chain of operation which provided foodstuff for ancient man. Thus, the study of the origin of agriculture and pastoralism in ancient India is currently engaging the attention of the scholars, and it continues to baffle the scholars of ancient Indian economic history.