History Of India and the Environment
History Of India and the Environment
Environment—that is a world alive and related to a living centre, the
habitat of an animal, the hunting grounds and pastures of nomads, the
fields of settled peasants. For human beings the environment is both an
objective ecological condition and a field of subjective experience. Nature
sets limits, man transgresses them with his tools and his vision. Man
progressively creates a specific environment and makes history. In this
process it is not only the limits set by nature which are transgressed but
also the limits of human experience and cognition. From the elementary
adaptation to the natural environment to the establishment of great
civilisations, the horizon of experience and the regional extension of
human relations constantly expand.
The conception of the environment changes in the course of this
evolution. Ecological conditions which may appear hostile to man at one
stage of this evolution may prove to be attractive and inviting at another
stage. The hunter and foodgatherer armed only with stone tools preferred to
live on the edge of forests near the plains or in open river valleys, areas
which were less attractive to the settled peasant who cut the trees and
reclaimed fertile soil. But initially even the peasant looked for lighter soils
until a sturdy plough and draught animals enabled him to cope with heavy
soils. At this stage the peasant could venture to open up fertile alluvial plains
and reap rich harvests of grain. If rainfall or irrigation were sufficient he
could grow that most productive but most demanding of all grains: rice.
Wherever irrigated rice was produced, plenty of people could live and great
empires could rise, but, of course, such civilisations and empires were very
much dependent on their agrarian base. A change of climate or a devastation
of this base by invaders cut off their roots and they withered away.
Indian history provides excellent examples of this evolution. Prehistoric
sites with stone tools were almost exclusively found in areas which were not
centres of the great empires of the later stages of history: the area between
Udaipur and Jaipur, the valley of the Narmada river, the eastern slopes of the
Western Ghats, the country between the rivers Krishna and Tungabhadra Raichur Doab), the area of the east coast where the highlands are nearest
to the sea (to the north of present Madras), the rim of the Chota Nagpur
Plateau and both slopes of the mountain ranges of central India.
The cultivation of grain started around 7000 BC in Southern Asia,
according to recent archaeological research. This was a time of increasing
rainfall in the region which has always depended on the monsoon. Before
venturing into the open plains of the lower Indus the precursors of the
Indus civilisation experimented with cultivating alluvial lands on a small
scale in the valleys of Baluchistan. There they built stone walls
(gabarbands) which retained the sediments of the annual inundation.
Initially the archaeologists mistook these walls for dams built for
irrigation, but the holes in these walls showed that they were designed so
as to retain soil but not water. Such constructions were found near Quetta
and Las Bela and in the Bolan valley. In this valley is also the site of
Mehrgarh which will be described in detail in the next chapter.
