Agriculture in Protohistoric India

The present work is an attempt to reconstruct the beginnings of agriculture in the Indo-Pak subcontinent on the basis of archaeobotanical remains obtained from archaeological excavations in recent years. The author presents in this book the story of agriculture in the Indo-Pak subcontinent right from the sixth millennium B.C. to the sixth century B.C. All the cultural settings falling within this time-range and covering the entire subcontinent — from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Baluchistan to Assam — have been surveyed.

The period encompasses the time bracket between the Neolithic, when the cultivation of cereal plants was introduced for the first time, and the beginnings of the early historical period around 600 B.C., a span designated here as “Protohistoric.” In the context of this march from savagery to civilisation through the domestication of plants and animals, the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent has its own story to unfold — one no less fascinating than that told by other regions of the ancient world. The inhabitants of Mehrgarh in the Kachi plains of Baluchistan had started the cultivation of wheat and barley as far back as the sixth millennium B.C., while the sites of Koldihawa and Mahagara, about 85 kilometres south-east of Allahabad, jointly indicate that the cultivation of rice in this part of India may have begun in the same period — evidence that, if confirmed, could establish India as the earliest rice-producing country in the world.