ABSTRACT
In the western sector, the cultivation of summer crops like rice and millets would depend largely on the trapping of river water with the help of dams and over ground channels. The intensification of cereal cultivation by way of introduction of summer crops like rice and millets from the close of the mature Harappan Phase signifies the growing importance of cereal crops in the whole of north-western South Asia. As for cereals, which may have been cultivated by different groups of Vedic speakers, there are four separate vocables—yava, dhanya, odana and sasa or sasya. Probing the dietary habits of Rgvedic communities, one can notice a marked preference for cereal-based foods. The importance attached to cereal crops both in the form of staple diet as well as ceremonial offerings to divinities would be unrealistic unless large-scale farming was practised by the peasants whose activities dominate various portions of the text.
