<P> India has many huge mountains which abound in fruit - trees of every kind, and many vast plains of great fertility...The greater part of the soil, moreover, is under irrigation, and consequently bears two crops in the course of the year...In addition to cereals, there grows throughout India much millet...and much pulse of different sorts, and rice also, and what is called bosporum (Indian millet)... Since there is a double rainfall (i.e., the two monsoons) in the course of each year...the inhabitants of India almost always gather in two harvests annually . </P> <P> The Tamil people cultivated a wide range of crops such as rice, sugarcane, millets, black pepper, various grains, coconuts, beans, cotton, plantain, tamarind and sandalwood . Jackfruit, coconut, palm, areca and plantain trees were also known . Systematic ploughing, manuring, weeding, irrigation and crop protection was practiced for sustained agriculture . Water storage systems were designed during this period . Kallanai (1st - 2nd century CE), a dam built on river Kaveri during this period, is considered to be one of the oldest water - regulation structures in the world still in use . </P> <P> Spice trade involving spices native to India--including cinnamon and black pepper--gained momentum as India started shipping spices to the Mediterranean . Roman trade with India followed as detailed by the archaeological record and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea . Chinese sericulture attracted Indian sailors during the early centuries of the common era . Crystallised sugar was discovered by the time of the Guptas (320 - 550 CE), and the earliest reference of candied sugar come from India . The process was soon transmitted to China with traveling Buddhist monks . Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 CE, for obtaining technology for sugar - refining . Each mission returned with results on refining sugar . Indian spice exports find mention in the works of Ibn Khurdadhbeh (850), al - Ghafiqi (1150), Ishak bin Imaran (907) and Al Kalkashandi (fourteenth century). </P> <P> Noboru Karashima's research of the agrarian society in South India during the Chola Empire (875 - 1279) reveals that during the Chola rule land was transferred and collective holding of land by a group of people slowly gave way to individual plots of land, each with their own irrigation system . The growth of individual disposition of farming property may have led to a decrease in areas of dry cultivation . The Cholas also had bureaucrats which oversaw the distribution of water--- particularly the distribution of water by tank - and - channel networks to the drier areas . </P>

Who emerged over time as rulers of early farming villages