Consider the following statements about the Rigvedic period:

  1. Irrigation from wells allowed agriculture to expand away from flood plains and strips on river margins into the present Punjab and Haryana plains having underground water levels reasonably close to the surface.
  2. Draught-animal power was employed to draw up water out of the wells.

Which of the following information support/supports the above statements?

  1. There is evidence in the Rigveda of the use of ashma chakra (stone pulley wheel) and ahava (strapped wooden pails) to draw up water.
  2. Mention has been made in the Rigveda of the use of implements like parashu/kulisha (axe) and datra/sreni (sickle).
  3. There is a history of the use of ox, even before the Rigveda, for ploughing the land and pulling the carts.

Select the answer using the code given below:

  • 1 and 2 only
  • 1, 2 and 3
  • 1 and 3 only
  • 3 only

Answer: (c) 1 and 3 only

  • Item 1 directly supports Statement I & II: The terms ashma chakra (a stone pulley system) and ahava (buckets attached to ropes) are explicitly detailed in the Rigveda. This confirms that Vedic communities used functional mechanical setups to draw water from deep hand-dug wells (kupa or avat), allowing them to farm inland areas away from seasonal river floods.
  • Item 2 does not support the mechanics of well irrigation: While axes (parashu) and sickles (datra) prove that the Rigvedic people cleared vegetation and harvested crops, these tools don’t provide any information about how water was drawn from wells or how draft animals were used for irrigation.
  • Item 3 directly supports Statement II: Zooarchaeological findings from the Indus Valley Civilization confirm that castrated bulls/oxen were used to pull heavy carts and plows long before the Rigvedic era. The Rigveda builds on this existing technology, showing that these draft animals were later used to pull the heavy ropes and pulleys needed to raise water from inland wells.

The Water-Lifting Technology Matrix

  • The Paradigm Shift: Early text interpretations often frame the Rigvedic people as purely river-bound, nomadic pastoralists. However, textual layers confirm a steady shift into the Sarasvati-Drishadvati doab (modern Punjab and Haryana plains) by relying heavily on underground water tables.
  • Key Engineering Terms:
    • Avata / Kupa: Artificial dug wells lined to prevent collapse.
    • Ashma Chakra: A stone pulley wheel or ring-stone wheel system rigged above the well head to handle rope friction under heavy load tension.
    • Ahava: Leather or wooden pails tied securely to ropes to lift groundwater to the surface.
    • Khanitrama: Man-made channel streams or field-trenches dug to distribute water from the wellhead to crop tracts.

Rigvedic Production and Tooling Vocabularies

  • Langala / Sira: The basic wooden plough used to break up plain soil.
  • Phala: The ploughshare, which during the early Vedic phase was predominantly made of wood or occasionally flint/stone. (True heavy iron-tipped ploughshares, or krishna-ayas, only became common in the Later Vedic phase as settlements pushed east into the dense jungles of the middle Gangetic valley).
  • Yava: A broad canonical term initially referring to all wild and cultivated grains/barley, serving as the foundational starch crop of the early Vedic economy.