Previous Year Question
With reference to the history of India, the terms ‘kulyavapa’ and ‘dronavapa’ denote:
Correct Answer: A
Detailed Solution
Kulyavapa and Dronavapa were units of land measurement, particularly attested in copper-plate land grants from Gupta-period Bengal.
The terms were fundamentally related to the quantity of seed and the area that could be sown with it. According to the epigraphic analysis in Epigraphia Indica, a kulyavapa represented as much land as could be sown with a kulya measure of grain. Dronavapa was similarly related to the drona measure of seed. Thus, these were agriculturally defined measures of area, rather than merely abstract linear units.
In inscriptions from Gupta-period Bengal, units such as dronavapa, kulyavapa and pataka occur repeatedly as land measures. Recent epigraphic scholarship independently confirms their use in the Gupta-period land-measurement system of Bengal.
An important relationship is also established epigraphically:
1 Kulyavapa = 8 Dronavapas
The Paharpur inscription records 12 dronavapas as equivalent to 1½ kulyavapas, confirming this ratio.
Important Correction
Those acre conversions should not be memorised as fixed values. Modern scholarship shows substantial disagreement when these ancient units are converted into acres. D. C. Sircar and S. K. Maity, for example, proposed markedly different absolute estimates. The relative ratio of 1 kulyavapa to 8 dronavapas is much more securely supported by inscriptions.
Kulyavapa + Dronavapa → measurement of land
Vapa → associated with sowing
1 Kulyavapa = 8 Dronavapas