An English traveller visits a village in the Doab in the seventeenth century. He records that the peasants own a few pairs of oxen, and he describes how they sow their seed and keep their fields clear of weeds. He also notes that the villagers reap one harvest after the autumn rains and another in spring, and that a few fields near a well yield even a third crop. In his journal he asks how farming in such a village was organised and what tools and methods the peasants relied upon.
The village in the passage gives at least two crops a year, one in each seasonal cycle. Which term describes land that produced a minimum of two crops a year?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → do-fasla
Option (1) polaj — Incorrect. Polaj is land cultivated every year for each crop in turn and never left fallow. It is a land-revenue class, with no bearing on the number of crops.
Option (2) jins-i kamil — Incorrect. Jins-i kamil means perfect crops, the cash crops such as cotton and sugarcane that the state encouraged for more revenue. It names a kind of crop.
Option (3) banjar — Incorrect. Banjar is land left uncultivated for five years and more. Such land gave no harvest.
Option (4) do-fasla — Correct. Farming ran on two seasonal cycles, the <strong>kharif (autumn) and the rabi (spring)</strong>. So most regions, except the most arid, gave <strong>a minimum of two crops a year, called do-fasla</strong>; places with assured water even gave three.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.4 An abundance of crops |