Kharif and Rabi seasons

I came across this interesting Indus Valley civilisation bowl today. 

Intrigued by what was depicted on it, I spent an hour digging around and here is what I found...

First I stumbled across the article "Distribution and features of the Indus Civilization" by Dilip K Chakrabarti which gave me the origin of the bowl. It was found in Nausharo site in Baluchistan 

In the article I also found the actual unrolled full decoration of the vessel. It was even more interesting now that I could see both sides...

Why are there cattle with chicken on their back tied to trees with broad leaves and then goats tied to large fruit bearing trees? These are the kind of questions I like asking. I am that boring...To find out I had to try to identify the animals and plants on the image...

The chicken first...It is most likely the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a tropical bird in the family Phasianidae, the primary progenitor of the domestic chicken... 

The cattle second...It is one of many subspecies of the  humped Zebu cattle (Bos indicus) 

The goat is our old friend, Ibex. Sindh Ibex to be more precise, the subspecies which lives in lower areas of Pakistan...

Animals were by our ancestors used as calendar markers, where animal marks part of the solar year which corresponds to some part of its reproduction cycle. So I decided to learn more about the reproduction cycles of red junglefowl, Zebu cattle and Sindh ibex and see what happens...

In my post "Symbols of the seasons" I proposed that in the past each season had its animal symbol: Goat=Winter, Ram=Spring, Bull=Summer and Lion=Autumn. This corresponds to the part of the zodiac that these animals fall into... 

Sindh Ibex mating season is November-December. Winter...

I couldn't find much info about natural mating season of Zebu cattle. Except two notes from "Zebu cattle of India and Pakistan": 

Dhani cattle (Mating has slight peak May to August)

Kankrej cattle (Mating tendency March to August)

1/8/2022. Just came across this article entitled "Seasonal fluctuations of reproductive functions in Zebu cattle" in which we read that "Fertility maxima coincided with the onset of the rainy season (June to August), with significant rank correlations between conceptions and temperature (+ 0.827), pressure (− 0.751) and precipitation (+ 0.632)"...

Ha!

Knowing that Aurochs, the ancestors of all the Eurasian cattle bread in nature July-August, it seems that mating season of Zebu was also in nature summer activity (May to August). I talked about natural reproductive seasons of wild cattle and sheep in my post "Ram and bull".

O yeah. The chicken. It seems that the mating season for the red junglefowl in India starts in April, peaks in May and ends in June...Right in Taurus. Or as the ancients would say: "on top of the bull"... 

Now what about tying the different quadrupeds to different trees. Well as I said Goat represents Winter, and the half of the year starting with winter (November-May), and Bull represents Summer, and the half of the year starting with summer (May-November)...

What is really really cool, is that the agricultural year in Indus valley is divided into two parts, two harvests, with two completely different crops: 

Kharif season (May to November)
Rabi season (November to May)

Cool right? And guess when the main large fruit season, like for instance pomegranate, is in Indus valley? Rabi season, goat season, of course...

Cool right? 

Wait till you see this:

The broad lief tree is Ficus religiosa or sacred fig (also known as bodhi tree, pippala tree, peepul tree, peepal tree or ashwattha tree). 

This tree is Drought deciduous, Dry season deciduous plant. It sheds its leaves during the peak of the dry season, between February and April. And new leaves start growing in end of April beginning of May, during Taurus...Beginning of summer, season marked by Bull...

I mean...

Sooooo...What can I say...One hour to get all this data...Everything fits perfectly...Nothing is random on this image. The trick to understanding it is to have the key. And the key is: it is that simple and it is that "shallow"...Enjoy it...It's beautiful...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...