The Indian Subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent - Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan - is separated from Central Asia by the Himalayas and their westerly extension, the Hindu Kush. We can divide the environments of South Asia, at least as far as the history of early agriculture is concerned, into five zones of climate, rainfall seasonality, and agricultural colonization history (see Figure 6.2 for rainfall seasonality):

The Indus Valley and Baluchistan. Baluchistan witnessed the oldest agriculture in South Asia, documented by the introduction of a Southwest Asian economy at Mehrgarh by the seventh millennium BC. This economy continued in Baluchistan with no significant outside introductions until the appearance of one of the world's greatest early urban civilizations - the Harappan (or Indus Valley, or Sarasvati) civilization of Pakistan and northwestern India. By the end of the Mature Harappan Phase (2600 to 1900 Bc), a number of important new food crops had appeared, especially rice from China or eastern India, and millet species from tropical Africa (Fuller 2002, 2003; Fuller and Madella 2002). These introductions would have allowed, by perhaps 2000 BC, a regime of both summer and winter cropping (Fentress 1985), the latter depending on irrigation because the Indus river system receives most of its floodwater during the spring and summer.

2. The Ganges Valley. This region, much wetter generally than the Indus and with increasing summer monsoon rainfall reliability, had a mixed economy of both Southwest Asian winter crops and rice (a monsoon crop) established at the start of the Neolithic, ca. 3000 BC, although the possibility of earlier rice cultivation should not be overlooked. The Southwest Asian crops were initially of more importance in the west, but rice increased its dominance as time went by, to attain the enormous significance it holds in the Ganges Basin today. The Ganges farming story thus began, on current evidence, perhaps 4,000 years after Mehrgarh, presumably by partial derivation from a westerly Pre-Harappan source combined with a more shadowy hint of influence, in the form of domesticated rice (Oryza sativa), from China or

Southeast Asia.

3.Inland peninsular India. South of the Indus and Ganges basins, the interior Deccan Plateau regions of India have a dry monsoonal climate and were first settled in the north and west by Pre-Harappan farmers around 3500 BC, in this case with an economy based on the Southwest Asian cereals together with native grams (legumes) and millets. New research is suggesting the possibility of an indigenous domestication of at least two species each of grams and millets in Karnataka by 2800 BC (Mehra 1999; Fuller 2002, 2003). African pearl millet and sorghum were introduced via Harappan sea contacts, by about 2000 BC. In some drier regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka there were also developments of cattle pastoralism, together with long-term survival of hunter-gatherers in exchange contact with the farmers (Misra 1973; Possehl and Kennedy 1979).

4.The humid coastal regions of southwestern, eastern, and northeastern India are generally terra incognita as far as evidence of early agriculture is concerned, as is Sri Lanka.13 Eastern and northeastern India must have played roles in either an independent development of rice cultivation or its successful introduction into the subcontinent from the east, perhaps around 3000 BC, but we have no clear archaeological evidence for this as yet from countries such as Bangladesh or Burma.

5.Likewise, the Himalayan region has no detailed archaeological record of early agriculture, except for the presence of sites with a mixture of Southwest and East (or Central) Asian Neolithic affinities in Kashmir.

What we have in South Asia is therefore quite a complex situation. Unlike Southwest Asia, a firm and fairly unitary homeland and expansion history for agriculture cannot be established. The reality was clearly a mix of external introduction from several sources, combined with some currently rather faint hints of independent internal development, especially in the south.

The domesticated crops of the Indian subcontinent

The crops involved in the South Asian story fall into four groups in terms of ultimate origin: Southwest Asian, African, East Asian, and native South Asian (Willcox 1989). The major Southwest Asian cereals and legumes were introduced into the region in domesticated form, with the possible exception of barley, which could have been domesticated locally. It is also possible that a species of hexaploid wheat (Triticum sphaerococcum), grown widely in Harappan sites, was domesticated from a wild forebear in the northwestern subcontinent.

The African millets and legumes appear to have been introduced initially into the Indus region during the period of trading activity with Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, focused on the Akkadian, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Isin-Larsa periods (2350 to 1800 Bc). The two main millet species are sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and pearl millet (Pennisetum sp.), both of which appeared in the late Harappan and Deccan Chalcolithic around 2000 Bc. These are both highly productive summer crops, well attuned to the drought conditions that frequently occur in monsoonal areas. Finger millet, Eleusine coracana, is believed to be of Ethiopian origin, although its actual presence in South Asian sites is still under debate. The African legume species Vigna unguiculata (cowpea) and Lablab purpureus (hyacinth bean) had also arrived in South Asia by Late Harappan times."

The third group of crops is of East Asian origin. The most important is Asian rice, Oryza sativa, domesticated first in the Yangzi Basin by about 7000 BC, although since many eastern and northeastern parts of India are also significant homelands of wild rice it is likely that some local long-grained (indica) varieties were brought into cultivation here as the rice economy developed. However, there is no clear-cut evidence so far for any early and independent Indian domestication of rice, which occurs widely in northern India by at least 2500 BC (Singh 1990; Kajale 1991). Two of the millets widespread from the late Harappan onward are also possibly of external origin, these being foxtail millet (Setaria italica), probably domesticated first in the Yellow Basin of China, and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), probably domesticated in central Asia

(Weber 1998; Zohary and Hopf 2000).

The domesticated food plants native to the subcontinent are all summer crops, such as the legumes black and green gram (Vigna sp.) and horse gram (Dolichos sp.), a number of grain-bearing plants in the Paspalum and Chenopodium genera, and two minor species of millet (Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata). Dorian Fuller (2003) has suggested that a number of these plants were domesticated independently in the Karnataka region of south India. All are of relatively minor significance today.

The upshot of the above is that the pre-Iron Age South Asian Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures, between 3000 and 1000 BC, flourished on the basis of combinations of crops introduced from Southwest Asia via the Indus Valley, from central Africa via the Harappan trading system, from other regions of central and eastern Asia, as well as crops of local origin. Given that the agricultural colonization of South Asia required a crop register to be compiled from such disparate sources, it is not surprising that the earliest Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures in India proper should date to around 3000 Bc, perhaps four millennia after the establishment of indigenous or unblended economies such as those of Mehrgarh in Pakistan and Pengtoushan in the Yangzi Basin. Agricultural spread into the Indian subcontinent clearly required considerable gestation and adjustment.