ABSTRACT

Field patterns and land-owning castes are intimately related. The land owned by different castes display different field patterns. It is because the amount of land under the possession of each caste varies and there are variations in the characteristics of farming and mode of living. In general, high castes have large land holdings and low caste people have small and therefore, field patterns of the two are different. The objective of the present paper is to study the evolutionary relationship of field patterns with the land-owning castes in a Punjab village. A reconstruction of field landscape showing fields occupied by different castes as existed in the year 1884  and 2016 has been attempted for village Dhanowali located in tehsil and district of Jalandhar in Punjab. The study is based on unpublished village maps and primary data available in Jamabandi and Shajra Nasab showing caste of the land owners collected from the revenue office and the Patwari of the concerned village. The study reveals that high castes have larger fields and land holdings than the low castes in 1884 as well as  the existing 2016 field maps of the village. 'Jat' a traditional dominant land-owning caste in the village like many of the other villages in Punjab have big land holdings with large and rectangular fields situated in the prime land type areas close to the abadi-deh (settlement). The fields and holdings of other castes are smaller and found more near the village boundary in the inferior land type areas. The low castes do not own cultivated land but provide farm labour. The fields and holdings of the richer farmers are larger than the poor farmers irrespective of their caste.