Agriculture Production in Mughal India

Agriculture Production in Mughal India

History Optional Notes {PDF}

Complete Notes Package (Paper I & II) | 4500+ Pages | Instant Download

Discounted Price | Buy Now @ ₹1,180 →

India’s vast land area, spread across diverse climatic zones, has made agriculture its predominant productive activity throughout history, and the Mughal period was no exception. Large tracts of land were kept under the plough, and both Indian and foreign contemporaries praised the fertility of Indian soil, which supported a remarkably wide range of food crops, cash crops, fruits, vegetables, and spices. This article examines agriculture production in Mughal India — the extent of cultivation, the techniques of tillage and irrigation, the major crops grown, crop productivity and yields, and the role of cattle and livestock in the agrarian economy.

Extent of Cultivation

• In the absence of complete data, it is difficult to establish the exact area under the plough during the Mughal period, though the available figures offer a reasonable idea of cultivable land.
  • Abul Fazl, in the Ain-i Akbari, provides area figures for all Mughal provinces in North India except Bengal, Thatta, and Kashmir. For most provinces — Delhi, Agra, Awadh, Lahore, Multan, Allahabad, and Ajmer — separate figures are given for each pargana, with a few exceptions. These figures belong to the year c. 1595.
  • For the 17th century, area figures for various regions are available in an accountancy manual of A.D. 1686, later reproduced in the historical work Chahar Gulshan (1739–40). This manual provides measured area figures for each province, along with the total number of villages and a break-up of measured and unmeasured villages.
• Although the A’in provides area figures for most parganas, it is difficult to determine to what extent a pargana was actually measured.
  • The figures available from Aurangzeb’s reign present a somewhat clearer picture, showing that almost 50% of villages remained unmeasured till A.D. 1686.
  • These figures also show an increase in the measured area compared to the A’in (1595), though it is difficult to say whether this reflects a genuine extension of cultivation or simply the inclusion of previously unmeasured area under measurement.

The Debate over Measurement Figures

• Historians disagree on what these measurement figures actually represent — whether the area actually under crop, cultivable land, or the total measured area.
  • W.H. Moreland held that these figures represented the total cropped area.
  • Irfan Habib, by contrast, holds that they would have included cultivable area that was not sown, as well as land under habitation, lakes, tanks, and parts of forests.
  • Shireen Moosvi agrees with Habib and calculates this “cultivable waste” at around 10% of the measured area — though she cautions that even after deducting this share, the remaining area cannot be taken as the net cropped area, since large tracts of cultivated land were never measured at all. She further notes that land under kharif and rabi crops was often measured separately, and the two figures added together and recorded as the measured area.
  • Given these complications, measurement figures from the Mughal period alone are not sufficient, by themselves, to ascertain the true extent of cultivation.
• Irfan Habib and Shireen Moosvi have therefore drawn on other available evidence — detailed figures for some areas from revenue papers, jama figures, and dastur rates — comparing these with figures of actually cultivated area from the beginning of the 20th century.
  • Their estimates suggest that the cultivated area almost doubled between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
  • The increase in Bihar, Awadh, and parts of Bengal is attributed to the clearance of forest, while in Punjab and Sind, the spread of the canal network also contributed significantly to the extension of cultivation.

Means of Cultivation and Irrigation

• The Indian peasant employed a variety of implements and techniques for cultivation, depending on the nature of the soil and the requirements of the crop, while irrigation methods likewise varied considerably across regions.

Means and Methods of Cultivation

• Tillage was performed by harnessing a pair of oxen to a wooden plough fitted with an iron ploughshare. Unlike in Europe, neither the horse- or bullock-drawn wheeled plough nor the mould-board was ever used in India.
  • Given the size of the country, regional variations in plough size and weight were to be expected — from a light plough that a tiller could carry on his shoulder, to heavier versions built for harder soils. For softer soil, the iron ploughshare or coulter could even be dispensed with, particularly since the price of iron was high.
  • Many contemporary European travellers noted with surprise that the Indian plough merely turned the soil rather than digging deep — a practice that in fact suited Indian conditions, since deep digging would have caused a loss of soil moisture, and it was only the upper layer of soil that was more fertile in any case.
• A separate device, the patella (a wooden board), was used in parts of north India for breaking clods of earth. Like the plough, it was harnessed to a pair of oxen and dragged across the field, usually with a man standing on it to provide weight.
• The sowing of seeds was generally done by scattering seed by hand, though the 16th-century traveller Barbosa refers to the use of a kind of seed drill in coastal regions for sowing rice.
• Efforts were made to enhance soil fertility through artificial means.
  • Use of flocks of goats and sheep: Widely practised in South India, and commonly used in Northern India as well, this involved allowing flocks to spend a few nights in the field, their droppings being considered good manure. It was reckoned that a flock of 1,000 animals spending five or six nights on one kani of land (1.32 acres) was enough to keep the land fertile for six to seven years. Fish manure also appears to have been used in coastal areas.
  • Rotation of crops was practised for optimum land utilisation through the year and to maintain soil productivity. Peasants, drawing on generations of experience, had acquired considerable knowledge of which crop should replace another in a given field for a better yield.
• A semi-circular sickle was used for cutting the crop, which was then spread on the ground for threshing — either by beating it with sticks, or by having animals move over the spread-out crop.
  • The threshed material was placed in open baskets, and its contents thrown outward at a controlled speed so that the wind scattered the chaff while the grain fell to the ground.

Means of Irrigation

• Indian agriculture depended heavily on rainfall for its irrigation needs, and the availability of rainwater in a particular region was the chief criterion in selecting crops for sowing. Alongside rain, a number of devices were used for artificial irrigation.
• Well-irrigation was the most widespread method employed across the country, with various techniques used to lift water depending on the water table and available technology.
  • In the Northern plains, both masonry and non-masonry wells were dug — the latter less durable and requiring fresh digging every year, the former durable and better suited to fixing advanced water-lifting devices. Masonry wells had raised walls and enclosures or platforms, were built of brick or stone, and were usually lined inside with terracotta rings, giving them the name “ring wells.”
  • Several devices were used to lift water from these wells:
    • The simplest method was drawing water by hand with rope and bucket, without mechanical aid — a method of limited capacity, unsuitable for irrigating large fields.
    • The second method employed a pulley over the well, using the same rope and bucket, allowing larger amounts of water to be drawn with less effort. Both these methods were generally used for domestic supply or for irrigating small plots.
    • A third method combined the rope-and-pulley with the added power of a pair of oxen, enabling the irrigation of larger areas.
    • A fourth device worked on the lever principle: a long rope, lashed to the fork of an upright beam or tree trunk, was set in a swinging position, with the bucket fastened to one end of the pole and a counterweight — heavier than the filled bucket — at the other. This device required only one person to operate.
    • A fifth method employed a wheel. In its earlier form, pots attached to the wheel’s rim were rotated using animal power to lift water from shallow surfaces, though this form was of no use for wells. For lifting water from wells, a more elaborate version used a garland of pots with three wheels, a gear mechanism, and animal power, ensuring a regular supply of large quantities of water — including from deep wells — suitable for irrigating large fields. Given the complexity of the machine and the animal power required, this device would have been expensive, and therefore accessible mainly to peasants of substantial means.
• Lakes, tanks, and reservoirs were used uniformly across the country for irrigation, and were the most prevalent method in South India, where dams were constructed across rivers.
  • Since building such reservoirs lay beyond individual means, this responsibility typically fell to the state, local chiefs, or temple management.
  • The massive Madag lake, built by the Vijayanagar rulers on the Tungabhadra river with three earth embankments bridging gaps in the hills — each fitted with sluices built of huge hewn stone slabs — stands as a marvel of the civil engineering of the period.
  • Rajasthan was another region abundant in large water reservoirs.
    • The Dhebar lake in Mewar, according to the Ain-i Akbari, had a circumference of 36 miles, while the Udaisagar is said to have measured 12 miles in circumference.
    • Rajsamand and Jaisamand were other important lakes built in Mewar during the 17th century, while similar dam-based reservoirs in the Marwar and Amber regions were known as the Balsan and Mansagar respectively.
  • Almost every cluster of villages had smaller reservoirs and lakes for storing rainwater.
    • In the 1650s, the Mughal administration proposed advancing Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 to cultivators in Khandesh and Berar for the construction of irrigation dams — and it is notable that the wide network of such small dams built in Khandesh remains in use even today.
• In the Northern plains, canals figured prominently as a means of irrigation. Canal-building was known from the reign of Sultan Firoz Tughluq in the 14th century, a trend that appears to have continued under the Mughals.
  • The Nahr Faiz, built during Shah Jahan’s reign, ran roughly 150 miles, carrying water from the Yamuna to a large area, while another canal, about 100 miles long, was cut from the river Ravi near Lahore. Remains of several canals also survive across the Indus delta.
  • Irfan Habib notes that the chief limitation of Mughal canals was that they did not often run above the level of the surrounding plain, so the water they could supply for irrigation was limited to what could be lifted from them.
  • Even so, the canal network in the region kept expanding over time — though canals are not reported from South India.

Agriculture Produce

• Given its extensive land area, varied soils, and differing climatic conditions, Mughal India could boast a large variety of agricultural products, discussed here under three heads: food crops, cash crops, and fruits, vegetables, and spices.

Food Crops

• The majority of seasonal crops in North India were grown across two principal cropping seasons — kharif (autumn) and rabi (spring) — with peasants in some areas managing to raise as many as three crops a year by fitting in short-term crops between the two. Rice was the main kharif crop, and wheat the main rabi crop.
  • In South India, these distinct crop seasons were absent; instead, on wet lands, one paddy (rice) crop occupied the fields from June/July to December/January, and another from January/February to April/May.
  • Rice and wheat remained the two major food crops throughout the country.
• Rice: Regions with high rainfall (40″ to 50″) accounted for the bulk of production — the whole of the Northeast, Eastern India (Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, and parts of Eastern U.P.), the southern coast of Gujarat, and South India.
  • In South India, two main rice-growing seasons — kuddapah-kar and samba-peshanam — were named after the varieties cultivated in summer and winter respectively. Rice cultivation is also reported from the irrigated tracts of Punjab and the Deccan.
  • Every region had its own variety of rice, ranging from coarse to fine quality, with Bengal and Bihar producing the finest quality.
• Wheat: Like rice, wheat too had its specific regions — chiefly Punjab, Sind, and Western Uttar Pradesh, areas with comparatively little rainfall. References to its cultivation are also found in Bihar, Gujarat, the Deccan, and even parts of Bengal.
• Barley: Grown extensively in the Central plains, with the Ain-i Akbari recording its production in Allahabad, Awadh, Agra, Ajmer, Delhi, Lahore, and Multan.
• Millet: Reported, with some exceptions, mainly from wheat-producing zones, with jowar and bajra being the two principal varieties.
• Pulses: Grown across various regions, with the important varieties including gram, arhar, moong, moth, urd, and khisari — the last grown extensively in Bihar and the region of present-day Madhya Pradesh. Abul Fazl notes that consuming khisari was injurious to health, a fact confirmed by modern research.
• Maize: Long believed absent from India during the 17th century, recent research has established that maize (makai or makka) was indeed grown in Rajasthan and Maharashtra, and possibly other regions, during the second half of the 17th century.

Cash Crops

• Crops grown mainly for the market — termed cash crops, and referred to in Persian records as jinsi kamil or jinsi ala (superior-grade crops) — occupied the fields for almost the entire year, unlike seasonal food crops.
  • The major cash crops of the 16th–17th centuries were sugarcane, cotton, indigo, and opium. All were known in India from historical times, but their demand grew sharply in the 17th century as manufacturing and commercial activity expanded, and a large foreign market opened up for these commodities — prompting Indian peasants to expand cultivation in response to demand.
• Sugarcane: The most widely grown cash crop of the period, recorded in most dastur circles of Agra, Awadh, Lahore, Multan, and Allahabad in the Ain-i Akbari.
  • Sugar from Bengal was considered the finest in quality, while Multan, Malwa, Sind, Khandesh, Berar, and parts of South India also testify to sugarcane cultivation in the 17th century.
• Cotton: Grown throughout the country, with large-scale cultivation concentrated in present-day Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Bengal; contemporary sources also record its cultivation in Ajmer, Allahabad, Awadh, Bihar, Multan, Thatta (Sind), Lahore, and Delhi.
• Indigo: Another widely cultivated cash crop under the Mughals, yielding the blue dye neel, much in demand in both Indian and European markets.
  • Its cultivation is recorded in the dastur circles of Awadh, Allahabad, Ajmer, Delhi, Agra, Lahore, Multan, and Sind, and is also referred to in Gujarat, Bihar, Bengal, Malwa, and the Coromandel coast of South India and the Deccan.
  • The most sought-after varieties were those of Bayana and Sarkhej: Bayana, near Agra, was considered to produce the best-quality indigo and fetched the highest price, while Sarkhej, near Ahmedabad, was ranked second in quality but still commanded a high price. Other notable centres for quality indigo included the regions around Khurja and Aligarh (U.P.), Sehwan (Sind), and Telingana (Deccan).
• Opium: Cultivated at numerous places across India, with the Mughal provinces of Bihar and Malwa producing good-quality opium. It was also grown in Awadh, Bihar, Delhi, Agra, Multan, Lahore, Bengal, Gujarat, Marwar, and Mewar in Rajasthan.
• Tobacco: Appears to have spread across India within a short span of time, despite not being mentioned as a crop anywhere in the Ain-i Akbari. It was likely introduced into India by the Portuguese during the 16th century, and its cultivation was noticed in almost every part of the country, particularly in Surat and Bihar.
• Coffee: Cultivation seems to have begun during the second half of the 17th century, while tea does not figure as a common beverage during this period.
• San or sunn-hemp, a fibre-yielding plant, was cultivated across all the core provinces of the Mughal Empire — Awadh, Allahabad, Agra, Lahore, Ajmer, and others.
• Sericulture (the rearing of silkworms on the mulberry plant) was carried on in Bengal, Assam, Kashmir, and along the western coast, with Bengal as the principal region of production.
• Oilseeds: Plants grown for oil extraction fell under both food and cash crop categories, the main ones being rapeseed, castor, and linseed. Rapeseed is recorded in all provinces from Allahabad to Multan, as well as in Bengal, though the cultivation of oilseed plants overall remained relatively limited.

Fruits, Vegetables, and Spices

• Horticulture appears to have reached new heights during the Mughal period, with emperors and nobles laying out lavish, carefully planned orchards and groves — almost every noble of consequence maintaining gardens on the outskirts of the towns where he resided.
• A number of fruits familiar today were introduced into India during the 16th and 17th centuries.
  • Pineapple (anannas), brought from Latin America, was introduced by the Portuguese and quickly became popular, being extensively cultivated across the country.
  • Papaya and cashew-nuts were introduced through the same agency, though their spread was somewhat slower, while leechi and guava appear to have been introduced later still.
  • Cherries were brought from Kabul and grown in Kashmir through grafting — a technique also used to improve the quality of oranges and other citrus fruits, apricots, mangoes, and many other fruits.
  • Coconut was grown not only along coastal regions but inland as well, while seeds of various melons and grapes were brought from Kabul and successfully cultivated in imperial and noble gardens; ordinary melons, meanwhile, were grown everywhere on riverbeds by the peasantry.
• A large variety of vegetables were grown across the country, with the Ain-i Akbari providing a long list of those in use at the time; potato and tomato, however, appear to have been introduced only in the 17th century and after.
• Spices: India had been renowned for its spices for centuries, and the southern coast witnessed large-scale spice exports to various parts of Asia and Europe.
  • Pepper, clove, and cardamom were available in abundance, while ginger and turmeric were cultivated extensively, with the Dutch and English purchasing large quantities for export.
  • Saffron, grown in Kashmir, was celebrated for its colour and flavour, while pan (betel leaf) was produced in many areas — the Maghi Pan of Bihar and various Bengal varieties being especially famous; betel-nut was also produced in coastal regions.
  • Large forest tracts supplied a range of commercially important products as well, including lignum (used for medicinal purposes) and lakh, both exported in large quantities.

Productivity and Yields

• Shireen Moosvi has worked out the productivity of crops and per-bigha yields for Mughal India using data from the Ain-i Akbari.
  • The Ain provides schedules of crop yield and revenue rates for the zabti provinces — Lahore, Multan, Agra, Allahabad, Awadh, and Delhi — with yields listed separately for high, middling, and low categories for each crop, allowing an average yield to be computed. Abul Fazl, however, does not explain the basis of these three categories; it appears likely that the low yields correspond to non-irrigated land, while the other two relate to irrigated fields.
• Based on various 16th-century records, Moosvi has estimated the following average crop yields (average of high, middling, and low yields), expressed in man-i Akbari per bigha-i Ilahi:

• Comparing these figures with yields from around the close of the 19th century, Moosvi finds no major change overall in the productivity of food crops between the two periods, though cash crops show a definite increase in productivity by the 19th century.

Cattle and Livestock

• Cattle played a vital role in agricultural production, being employed in key activities such as ploughing and irrigation, while their dung served as manure. Dairy products, too, contributed substantially to agriculture-related output, with peasants — alongside certain specialised castes — engaged in cattle-rearing.
• The extensive use of cattle in agricultural operations points to a large cattle population overall, aided by a high land-to-man ratio that would have made grazing land abundantly available.
  • Contemporary European travellers noted the large numbers of cattle present in Indian fields, and Irfan Habib suggests that the per capita cattle population in Mughal India compares favourably even with modern statistics.
  • The abundance of butter or ghee said to form part of the common diet likewise points towards a substantial cattle population.
• Oxen were used for transporting goods, both as pack-animals and for pulling bullock carts — the banjaras, a migrant trading community, are said to have maintained flocks ranging from a few hundred to a thousand animals. Flocks of thousands of sheep and goats were reared as well.

In summary, agricultural production in Mughal India rested on a sophisticated combination of traditional tillage techniques, an impressive range of irrigation devices — from simple rope-and-bucket wells to elaborate geared water-wheels and vast state-sponsored reservoirs and canals — and a remarkably diverse basket of food crops, cash crops, fruits, vegetables, and spices, several of which, like maize, tobacco, and pineapple, arrived through new trade contacts during this very period. Together with the detailed yield data compiled by scholars such as Shireen Moosvi and Irfan Habib, and the crucial role played by cattle and livestock, this agrarian base formed the foundation upon which the wider fiscal and commercial economy of the Mughal Empire was built.