5 - Harvesting the Golden Fields
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
Summary
Like most other economies of the time, the Ahom economy too was primarily agrarian. However, one significant difference in the case of the Ahom economy was the striking universality of the agricultural process. As a matter of fact, it may be said that agriculture constituted the primary occupation of all the people during this time. Unlike other parts of India, agricultural activity here was not confined to a particular occupational group. On the contrary, it was common for all sections of the population, including the aristocracy to engage themselves in agricultural pursuits. This fact was succinctly put across in his Observations on the Administration of the Province of Assam by Baboo Anundaram Dakeal Phookun1 where he states, ’… The Assamese, one and all, from the poorest peasant to the nobility of the country, are devoted to agricultural pursuits. In ancient times, the sovereigns themselves had their private farms. In Bengal and other parts of India, tillage is exclusively the occupation of the cultivating class. There is, however, not a single family in Assam that is not engaged in the culture of lands, and every family provides itself by agriculture with almost all the necessaries of life.
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- Science, Technology and Social Formation in Medieval Assam , pp. 80 - 105Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2012