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1 results

  • 2 - South India

  • from VIII - Systems of Agricultural Production
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 226-234

  • Summary

    South Indian agricultural production was developing first of all on the basis of utilizing the natural features of the land and by way of adaptation to them. Dry cultivation was most widespread in southern India and, compared to the northern parts, more reliable there. Storing rain and high-flood water in special reservoirs or with the help of dams became the main method of irrigation. In the beginning of the nineteenth century only 3 to 7 per cent of cultivated territory was irrigated in southern India. Irrigation management in the medieval period was often uneconomical. The main crop on the wet lands was paddy, the most important foodgrain of southern India. The Indian cultivator knows the usefulness of crop-rotation, of fallows, of manuring. The system of agriculture developed and traditionally consolidated in southern India was extensive in principle, oriented to labour-saving and not to land-saving.