Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Karnataka (CUK) Battu Satyanarayana has held that agriculture in ancient India was in an advanced stage of production with traditional ways of cultivation and, cattle were the backbone of every farmer and this became part of culture.
Inaugurating a two-day workshop on “Ancient India: Agriculture and Animal Domestication” organised by the Department of History and Archaeology of the university here recently, he said that domesticated dogs, cats and other animals showed co-existence and they became part of the culture and tradition.
“Today, farmland and crops are severely affected due to the use of heavy pesticides and chemical fertilizers. We must learn from our ancient Indian farmers who cultivated various crops using organic manure such as cow dung-based fertilizers. This way, history will help us give future directions to modern society,” he said.
Earlier, coordinator of the workshop Arjun R, who delivered an introductory speech, said that agriculture and animal domestication was part of the earliest economy of human society.
“The origin and expansion of agriculture in India began in the Neolithic period. We cultivated barley, wheat, millet and rice. Carbonised grain retrieved from the archaeological sites have been well studied. South Indian farmers mainly depended on millets such as brown top millet (Brachiaria ramose), foxtail millet, little millet (Panicum sumatrense), Kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum), mung (Vignaradiata), black gram (Vigna mungo), Horse gram (Macrotyloma uniflorum), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), finger millet (Eleusine coracana) and pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan). Cattle herders and pastoral communities were very robust in the South Indian Neolithic and Iron Age period (3200 BCE-300 CE), particularly in the northeastern Karnataka region, where there are more than 500 such sites,” he said.
In the different sessions spread over two days, resource persons spoke on various themes.
Professor K.P. Rao from the University of Hyderabad explained the emergence of agricultural practices in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh regions and presented various archaeo-botanical evidence from the excavated sites.
Dr. Arati Deshpande Mukherjee from Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, focused on conducting animal genetic studies and isotope methods analysis on the wild and domesticated cattle (Bosindicus) in the Indus Valley civilisation in north-western India.
Professor V. Selvakumar from Tamil University, Thanjavur, emphasised the various professional communities such as farming communities and craft-making communities during the Sangam Age in the Kaveri river valley.
Cultivation of Tinai (foxtail millet), craft production and pastoralism contributed to the foundation of internal and external trade in South India, he said. He recalled the lifeways of herding communities in Budihal in Kalaburagi district during the 1990s archaeological excavations.
Faculty members and students of the Department of History and Archaeology attended the two-day workshop.
