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Agricultural Technology Depicted in Mughal Paintings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2011
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Most of the historians of medieval India have been interested in the political, administrative and economic aspect of the period, while some have exhibited fondness for religious and cultural history, albeit in a limited sense. Of late, new sectors of study have been explored: for example, the development of technology during the medieval period.
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Notes
1 See the collection of his articles in three volumes: Studies in Indian Cultural History (3 vols.; Hoshiarpur 1961; Poona 1960; and Poona 1969).
2 To name a few: Irfan Habib, Harbans Mukhia, M.A. Alvi, Iqtidar Alam Khan, AJ. Qaisar, Qaisar Zaman, Iqbal Ghani Khan, Ishrat Alam and others.
3 For an excellent article on agricultural technology, see Mukhia, Harbans, ‘Agricultural Technology in Medieval India’, in: Roy, A. and Bagchi, S.K. eds., Technology in Ancient and Medieval India (Delhi 1986) 107–127.Google Scholar
4 For archaeological evidence of the use of the plough in the Indus Culture (at Kalibangan), see Indian Archaeology, 1968–9-A Review (Delhi 1971) 29–30Google Scholar. Also, Plate XXXIV. But doubt remains whether it was drawn by men or oxen. Plough cultivation employing oxen during the Vedic Age is a well-established fact, for which see Bloch, Jules, ‘La Charrue vedique’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 8 (1935) 412Google Scholar. See also Wojtilla, Gyula, ‘Some Problems of the Sanskrit Terminology of Agriculture’, Sanskrit and World Culture, SCHR, OR 18 (Berlin 1986) 360.Google Scholar
5 For this inference, see R.S. Sharma, ‘Class formation and its Material Basis in Upper Gangetic Basin (c. 1000–500 B.C.)’, The Indian Historical Review (July 1975) 2. For material evidence of iron share at Atranji Khera (a painted Gray Ware site identified with the ‘Aryan’ settlement) in Uttar Pradesh, see Gaur, R.C., Excavations at Atranjikhera: Early Civilization of the Upper Ganga Basin (Delhi 1983) 429Google Scholar and Fig. 123, no. 6 on 430.
6 Fryer, John, A New Account of East India and Persia &C, 1672–81 II. Crooke, W. ed. (London 1912) 108.Google Scholar
7 Cf. Anwar-i Suhaili, Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, f. 61.
8 Ibidem, f. 113.
9 British Museum (henceforth BM), Department of Oriental Antiquities (henceforth OA) no. 1934–1–13–01 (a scattered folio from Tarikha-i Alfi).
10 BM Oriental (henceforth Or.) No. 12208, f. 19a (Khamsa of Nizami).
11 See Muhammad Shadiyabadi, Niftah-ul Fuzala' (c. 1469. Manuscript illustrated c. 1630: Mandu School), BM Or 3299, f. 145a, s.v. zinjir.
12 Cf. Mukjerji, N.G., Handbook of Indian Agriculture (Calcutta 1915) 83, 99Google Scholar. For the Malabar region, see the Report of General Sir Alexander Walker, (c. 1820) in Dharampal, , Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (Delhi 1971) 181.Google Scholar
13 See Robert Trow-Smith, Man, the Farmer (London 1973) 15, and the figures on 41 (above) and 46.
14 For ox-drawn wheeled plough, see Ibidem, fig. on 41 (above) and 46. For horse-drawn plough, Ibidem fig. on 55; also Huggett, Frank E., The Land Question and European Society (London 1975)Google Scholar fig. on 85. For horse-drawn wheeled plough, see Ibidem, fig. on 24.
15 Cf. William Terry's Account in Foster, W., Early Travels in India (reprint; Delhi 1968) 298.Google Scholar
16 BM Or. 12208, f. 19a (Khamsa of Nizami).
17 Tarikh-i Alfi, BM OA, no. 1934–1–13–01.
18 See Falk, Toby and Digby, Simon, Paintings from Mughal India (London 1979) pl. 18Google Scholar (c. 1610: ‘King Dara Meeting herdsmen in a landscape’. From the H. Kaverkian Collection).
19 Babumama, BM Or. 3714, f. 173b.
20 Cf. Trow-Smith, Man the Farmer, 40.
21 See Goedhuis, Michael, Indian Painting (London 1978) 118Google Scholar, pi. 93. It is a dispersed folio of a Babumama manuscript.
22 Bloch, ‘La Charrue vedique’.
23 The Book of Duarte Barbosa, 1500–171. H. Longworth Dames, tr. Hakluyt Society (reprint; London 1967) 192.
24 See the Report of Captain Halcott (1795–96) on Drill Husbandry in Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology 209–214 (also pi. V); Buchanan, Francis, A Journey From Madras Through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (reprint; Delhi 1988) I, pl. XIGoogle Scholar; III, pl. XXIV.
25 Needham, J., Science and Civilization in China VI, part 2 (reprint; Cambridge 1986) 251–276Google Scholar (on agriculture by Francesca Bray); Huggett, Land Question, 68 and note, figure on 85.
26 Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (Delhi 1963)Google Scholar 25 and note 7 (the evidence is from Nuskha dar fani falahat, India Office Library, f. 306).
27 Cf. R.C. Gaur, Excavations at Atranjikhera, 246, 249.
28 The Dutch factor at Agra duringjahangir's reign states that ‘large numbers of wells have to be dug in order to irrigate the soil [ … ] ’, see Jahangir's India, tr. W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl (reprint; Delhi 1972) 48. Irfan Habib takes this statement to be a reference to the annual construction of kachcha wells since these ‘seldom survived the Monsoons’, see Irfan Habib, Agrarian System, 28, note 23.
29 Forbes, R.J., Studies in Ancient Technology II (Leiden 1955) 38–39.Google Scholar
30 For example, see Babumama, BM Or. 3714, f. 314 and 320.
31 Cf. Anwar-i Suhaili, Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, f. 61.
32 Nqfahat-ul Uns min Hazrat-ul Quds, BM Or. 1362, ft. 142a.
33 See BM OA1920–9–17–0297: ‘Shahjahan visiting a Shaikh’; Arnold, T.W. and Wilkinson, J.V.S., The Library of Chester Beatty: Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures II (Bloomsbury 1936) pl. 75Google Scholar(b): ‘Shahid meets Wafa at Well’; Falk and Digby, Paintings from Mughal India, pl. 26.
34 Khamsa of Nizami, BM Or. 12208, f. 45a: ‘Shapur kneeling before Shirin’. Also see BM OA 1920–9–17–013(2): ‘Mary worshipped by Angels’.
35 Babumama II, Beveridge tr. (reprint; Delhi 1979) 487.
36 Forbes, James, Oriental Memoirs: A Narrative of Seventeen Years Residence in India I (London 1834) 167Google Scholar. The accounts of Babur and Forbes should be compared with what Francis Buchanan wrote concerning the Bangalore territory in South India: ‘[ … ] the ground for sugar-cane is watered by the machine which the Mussulmans call Puckally and the natives Capily. It consists of two bags of skin raised by a cord passing over a pulley, and drawn by two oxen, or buffaloes, descending on an inclined plane. The great imperfection of this contrivance seems to be, that the cattle are forced to reascend the inclined plane backwards.’ Buchanan's observation that the cattle were forced to reascend the inclined plane ‘backwards” is not substantiated by Babur and Forbes. It would seem foolish to make the animals perform this feat. See Buchanan, Journey from Madras I, 356.
37 Babumama II, Beveridge tr., 487.
38 Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, 38.
39 Ibidem.
40 See Ettinghausen, R., Paintings of Sultans and Emperors of Delhi (New Delhi 1961) pl. 5Google Scholar: ‘The Golden City of Dvarka’ (from a dispersed folio of a Razmnana manuscript in the Freer Gallery of Art, no. 54.6).
41 Coomaraswamy, A.K., ‘The Persian Wheel’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 51 (1931) 283–284.Google Scholar
42 Ettinghausen, Paintings of Sultans, pi. 5; Tyulayev, S., Miniatures of Babumama (Moscow 1960) pl. 25Google Scholar (left, upper corner).
43 Coomaraswamy, ‘Persian Wheel’, 283.
44 Irfan Habib is the first scholar to suggest that the saqiya or Persian wheel was a foreign importation (see his ‘Technological Changes and Society: 13th and 14th Centuries’ in: Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Varanasi 1969) 12–15. See Harbans Mukhia, ‘Agricultural Technology’, note 96, for a few names of scholars who hold opposite views on this issue. We can here add two more who mistakenly think that the Persian wheel was indigenous: Coomanawany, ‘Persian wheel’, and Nath, R., ‘Rehant versus the Persian Wheel’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 12 (1970) 82–84.Google Scholar
45 See Laufer, B., ‘The Noria or Persian Wheel’, Oriental Studies in Honour of Cursetji Erachji Pavry Jackson, A.V.W. ed. (Oxford 1933) 238Google Scholar. Laufer, too, confuses noria with Persian wheel.
46 Cf. the pot-garland of the saqiya in Akbarnama, Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter V& A), 86–117.
47 Babumama II, Beveridge tr., 486.
48 Habib, ‘Technological Changes’, 12–15.
49 Usher, A.P., A History of Nechanical Inventions (Boston 1959) 129.Google Scholar
50 R. Nath, one of the warm advocates of Indian origine of the Persian wheel, cites several Sanskrit sources for the use of the words araghatta and ghatiyantra (which he mistakenly identifies with saqiya); but none of the sources cited by him inform us that the wheel was moved by animals. Actually, one of the sources cited by him says that the wheel waws rotated by foot (padawart). This draws the following comment by Nath: ‘[ … ] at times the mechanism was not worked by bullocks but, instead, by a man, who used to ascend the latters of the wheel and this continuously helped it to rotate’. It is indeed fantastic to visualize that saqiya could be operated by feet. See Nath, ‘Rehant versus the Persian wheel’, 82–83.
51 See Habib, ‘Technological Changes’, 12; see also Harbans Mukhia, ‘Agricultural Technology’, note 96.
52 Cf. Archaeological Survey of India - Annual Report, 1909–10 (Calcutta 1914) pi. XLIV (panel in Jain temple, 12th century A.D., Mander, Marwar).
53 BM OA 1959–4–11–02 (c. 1790, Marwar, ‘A Boar Hunt by Raja Dulal Singh of Gajner’).
54 Harbans Mukhia, ‘Agricultural Technology’, note 96.
55 For the wheels hanging high in the space, cf. Babumama, National Museum, Delhi, f. 122; see its reproduction in Randhawa, M.S., Paintings from the Babumama (Delhi 1983) pl. VIGoogle Scholar; for another composition, see V & A no. D. 383–1885: ‘A prince holding a Party in a Garden’. For two more of such depictions, see Khamsa of Nizami, fols. 65a and 99b. BM OR 12208. For the wheels just above the ground, cf. Arnold and Wilkinson, Library of Chester Bealty, pl. 49(a); Khamsa, f. 294b; BM OA 1921–4–11–04: ‘Bullock and Ass at a Well’.
56 See Akbarnama, V & A 86–117 (bottom left).
57 Ibidem. For watering fields, see BM OA 1920–9–17–0297: ‘Shah Jahan visiting a Shaikh’. Sujan Rai (Khulasat-ut Twarikh Zafar Hasan ed. (Delhi 1918) 79 says that the water thus drawn with saqiya was helpful for agriculture (zira't).
58 Ibidem.
59 Ibidem.
60 Arnold and Wilkinson, Library of Chester Beatty, pi. 23: ‘Akbar receiving congratulations on the Birth of Murad’.
61 See a folio from the Razmnama lodged in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, Accession no. 43.55.1 am grateful to my colleague, Dr. S.P. Verma, who kindly provided me a copy of this painting.
62 For flail in Europe, see Trow-Smith, Man the Farmer38 (the lower figure). For threshing in China, see Needham and Bray, Science and Civilization in China VI, 345–362.
63 Fryer, New Account, 108.
64 James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, 168.
65 The Chinese used baskets, trays, sieves and even fans for winnowing. It was also done with shovels and forks by tossing the harvest. See Needham and Bray, Science and Civilization in China VI, 363–378.