Life in Ancient India as Depicted in Jain Canons

Author(s): Jagdishchandra Jain
Publisher: New Book Company

Page 91

CHAPTER I
PRODUCTION
I
LAND Every activity which results in creation of wealth is to be regarded as productive. The productive agents of material wealth are Land, Labour, Capital and Organisation, which are called Factors of Production in Economics.
The rural economy of India was based chiefly on a system of village communities of landowners or what is known as peasant proprietorship. The common occupation of the villagers was agriculture or farming.
AGRICULTURE. METHODS OF PLOUGHING Around the gama lay its khetta or pastures, and its woodland or uncleared jungle. Khetta or agricultural land is considered among ten kinds of external possessions, the rest being buildings, gold ctc , sccds of grains, collection of wood-fuel and grass, fricnds and relatives, conveyance, furniture such as bed, sofa etc., male and female slaves and utensils A khetta is dividad into setu and ketu; the former being irrigated by Persian wheels (arahatta) etc., and thc latter by rainfall. Various methods of irrigation were adopted in different countries. For example, in the country of Lata the fields received their moisture from rainfall, in Sindhu from rivers, in Dravida from ponds, in Uttarāpatha from wells and in Dimbharelaka from floods
Agriculture was carried on by ploughing. It is said that p'oughing (kisikamma) being done at the right time yields plenty of fruit. The Brhatkalpa Bhasya refers to the festival in honour of the ploughing deity (Sita-janna). Phodikamma is mentioned as a ploughman's profession dealing in ploughing the field. In a prosperous country the lands Were ploughed with hundreds and thousands of ploughsharcs, and sugar-cane, barley and ricc were cultivated by shrewd (pannalta) farmers (karisaya).8 Wercad of the gähävai Ananda who limited the cultivable
! Rhys Davids, Cambridge History of India. Vol. 1, p. 298. 1 Brh. Bha, 1. 825.
ibid., 1. 826. ibid., 1. 1239. Uttard. Ti, Jp 10d. 3. 3647. Of the Grhva Şūtias (e g Coblitu, IV 4 281,5 B 1 vol xxx) where the gaddess Sita is the rustie desty of the lurowa and sacrifice may be ofkid to her anywhere but preferably on a ficld of rice o bailey (1 M Ipte, Sorial and Religious Life in the Grhyd Sūtras, X, p. 129) In the Mahibhrirata (VII, 103 19) Sita is a goddess of harvest. The legend of the birth of Sila is mentioned in the Ramayana (I. 66 14f), and it is by furrows ing the earth with a plough that Janaka gives birth to Sitä (Sylvan Levi, Are Aplan
und Pre-Draudian in India, pp. 8-15). 1 Uudi, 1, p. 11. 8 Ovd. 1 p. 2; Ava. Ti., (Hari.), 947, p. 426a.