The agriculturist householders played a very important part in the economic life of India. Although the inscriptions of the period under survey show that large areas of land were uncultivated or covered with jungle, they also point to the gradual expansion of cultivation.
This may have been due mainly to the increase in population. Riparian regions of the country were densely populated and were almost fully under cultivation.
Huen-ts bears testimony to the fact that almost in every part of northern India, from the borders of Afghanistan to those of Burma, fields were regularly cultivated and produced grains, fruits, and flowers in great abundance, but “as the districts vary in their natural qualities they differ also in their natural products”.
He makes a general mention of mango, tamarind, madhuka, jujube, wood-apple, myrobalan, tinduka, udumbara, plantain, coconut, and jack fruit among fruits; of rice and wheat, ginger, mustard, melons, pumpkins of oilcans as the products of the fields; and of gold, silver, white jade, and crystal lenses among other products of the country.
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Special mention has often been made of the produce of particular areas, e.g. the sugarcane and sugar candy of Gandharan; grapes and saffron of Uddiyana; pulse and wheat of Bolor; sugar-cane, grapes, mango, udumbara, and plantain of Parnotsa; upland rice and spring wheat of Takka; upland rice of Jullundur; upland rice and sugar-cane of Kausambi; jack fruit of Pundravardhana; and jack fruit and cocoa of Kamarupa.
According to the pilgrim, Magadha produced a kind of rice with large grain of extraordinary savour and fragrance called by the people ‘the rice of the grandee’, while the country about the Pariyatra mountain produced, besides spring wheat, a peculiar kind of rice which became ready for cutting in sixty days. The most important crop of Bengal was paddy.
There is reference to the system of transplanting paddy plants in the fields from a seed-bed. The other two methods of rice cultivation, as now prevalent, are sowing by drill and by broadcast, which must have also been known in ancient times.
The processes of reaping and threshing, which were not exactly the same in different parts of the country, appear to have been similar to those practised in various regions today. Irrigation of the fields was regarded necessary in many parts of the country and cultivators often combined in excavating irrigational canals. Sometimes, artificial lakes were created by the rulers for irrigational purposes and measures were adopted for the prevention of floods. Interesting in this connection is the history of the Sudarsana Lake and the activities of the engineer Suyya during the reign of King Avantivarman of Kashmir.