DELINEATING PEASANT CULTURE AND THEIR TECHNOLOGIES [200-600CE]

Abstract

This paper /article is tended to delve into details of the peasant culture and the development of different technologies particularly the agricultural one resulting in the expansion of cultivable land and acceleration of cultivation of food items or the cereals between the 200-600 CE. By exemplifying important treatises like Dharma shastras, Arthashatra and Kamasutra and other archaeological sources, the researcher substantiates two types of developments during this period—acceleration in the process of urbanization in the vicinity of the Centre or near the abode of the political authority by breaking the shackles of Brahmanical values while in the villages peasants found constrained to do aways with the Brahmanical values. These types of developments have also been described by the Greek traveler Strabo and in the Jataka stories which mentions different types of cereals like rice, wheat, barley, lentil, meat, fish, clove, different variants of clothes etc. While in the magnum opus of Kalidas, it was described how the Vidushak shows how the food for the common masses were differentiated to that of the elites. In the peasant culture of the early times of India not only sweets or puddings were served but also dissension or the peasant’s rebellions appeared in the context of issuance of excessive land grants and the transfer of not only the villages but also the villagers.