Thread by @vakibs

The food baskets of the world: rice and wheat, the most important crops of humanity, are grown in a relatively small area of inhabited land.

Wheat grows in higher latitudes with precipitation distributed over the year.
Rice grows in lower latitudes with monsoonal precipitation.

Compare these maps with the pattern of precipitation.

Rice saplings prefer to be submerged in water when young, which suits the flooding of semi-tropical wetlands that happens in the monsoon time.

One needs to master irrigation to cultivate rice, but not necessarily for wheat.

Terraced rice fields are fascinating. This is from Yunnan in China. It is irrigation that can be seen like a work of art.

Where did irrigation first appear in history? It's surprisingly unclear.

The civilization of Mesopotamia was already growing crops (emmer wheat, barley, chickpeas) without doing much for irrigating the fields.

It is likely for cultivating rice that irrigation was first needed.

Now, the word "irrigation" itself, along with other related words in Indo-European languages: γεωργία (agriculture), arable, area etc. point to a common root.

This is possibly the Sanskrit root : √ṛ (to flow) from the verbal roots (Dhātupāṭha) of Pāṇini.

√ṛ+nyat = Āryam.

The rule for applying the suffix "ṇyat" is specified by Pāṇini "ṛhalōṇyat"(ऋहलोण्यत्), producing many words such as kāryam (kṛ), hāryam (hṛ), dhāryam (dhṛ) ...

This suffix means "that which is amenable for".

Āryam: the land made amenable for flowing (irrigated land).

So where exactly in India was irrigation first developed?

We know from archaeological evidence that the people of the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization were great masters of irrigation practices.

But perhaps even earlier, irrigation was used in the Gangetic plain to cultivate rice.

Unlike wheat or barley, cultivating rice requires a command on irrigation. It is unclear where this has been developed: south China, South East Asia, or the Gangetic plain itself.

By 2000 BCE, the Gangetic people had large kingdoms with a warrior culture.

https://twitter.com/sanjeevsanyal/status/1097140890785771520

The Manusmṛti refers to the river plains of the Indus and the Ganges, spread between the Himālaya and the Vindhya mountains, as Āryāvarta.

This means by the time of Manusmṛti, this entire land was irrigated. This was by far, the largest cultivated area on earth, at that time.

We tend to think of the primogenitor of Indian civilization as the Sarasvati-Sindhu valley. Here, urban planning and technology (especially irrigation) were developed to a high degree of sophistication.

However, was this the first place in India that was supporting agriculture?

I think it makes more sense to assume that irrigation was developed first, for cultivating rice. I am not sure whether this was an Indian development or imported from neighbors.

But once the technology was there, it supported a very large population in the Gangetic plain.

The Sanskrit word for rice "vrīhi" is something of a mystery. We do not know its origin. But certainly, this is the root of the words in Persian (Berenj), Telugu (Vari, Biyyam/Vrīhyam), Tamil (Arici), Greek (Oryz) etc.

What does "vrīhi" mean? I think it connects to irrigation.

The root "vṛ" is related to the root "ṛ", but in a repeated manner. It refers to cyclical movements and patterns. It generated words such as "vṛtta", "vṛtti" etc.

I think, at some long lost time in history, a grain was discovered that germinated repeatedly, on flood plains.

This was a time before the Sanskrit of Pāṇini, much earlier to even the composition of the Vēdas. This was perhaps, the first agriculture in India. It was then that this grain acquired a name "vrīhi". Cultivating this grain precipitated the Āryan (irrigation) culture in India.

Rice is often considered the purest form of food. Śuddhōdanam (pure rice, without any sauce) is given as Prasāda in sacred temples and Teerthas since a very ancient time. This pure taste refers to the Śānta Rasa, the peaceful mental state without any Vikāra (perturbation).

This importance of rice in Indian philosophy, points to a grain that was probably at the very basis of civilization. The grain, as well as the monsoon required for growing it, became both sacred.

The Ṛta (cosmic motion of the stars), predicts the sacred time for their renewal.

So I think we need to really consider the possibility that the river Ganga as the original mother of the Indian civilization. It is on the plains of Ganga that the solar dynasty of kings (Raghuvamśa) reigned. They established the ancient solar calendar for tracking the monsoon.

This was probably a very ancient time, only remembered in folk memory. The first urbanization of India occurred in the Vēdic time, clearly along the plains of the Sarasvati & Sindhu. By this time, the practices of astronomy were considerably refined, as can be seen in the Vēdas.