Nanchinadu: Harbinger of Rice and Plough Culture in the Ancient World

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Historians are not contented with sweeping generalizations. Vasilii Prokhorovich Goriacbkin, in bis Collected Works in Three Volumes: Sobranie Sochinenii V Trekb Tomakh (Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1972), says that the bistory of the plough, not yet been sufficiently investigated, needed an author to write it. The theme, bow rice from the wild status became an integral part of man's culture, bas fascinated many scholars in the past. With his deep knowledge of linguistics, etymology, and archeo- astronomy, Dr Sankaran Nair has made the story of the origin of rice cultivation in this book by exploring the ploughing ceremonies around the ancient world. It is curious to know that there lived a people who prohibited ploughed agriculture. While their world, before the introduction of the plough, was known by the word ṛta, the word pramṛta represented a world after the introduction of the plough (narigol). It is curious to know that the very people who probibited ploughed agriculture in the initial days turned to be its advocates with the passage of time. Using linguistic and etymological methods, Dr Nair bas lit up some of the dark corners of the dawn of bistory and built up arguments quite consistently with other disciplines.

When the United Nations General Assembly decided to observe the year 2004 as the International Year of Rice (IYR), they chose the motto "Rice Is Life" for its implementation, a theme that primarily helped the world to realize its true meaning. A staple food that provides a steady, easily digestible supply of starch-based energy, protein and vitamins, rice has fed more humans for a longer period of time than any other crop. Though IYR officially ended on 31 December 2004, the positive effects of the year's activities still linger among humanity, who relied on rice for their lives and livelihoods.

Due to its versatility, rice crop is found today grown as far north as Manchuria in China, as far south as Uruguay in South America and New South Wales in Australia. They grow in the desert conditions of Saudi Arabia and in the wetland deltas of Southeast Asia. While rice farming is carried around more than 330 metres elevation in Nepal and Bhutan, the rice-fish farming system found in Kuttanadu, Kerala, 1.2 to 3.0 metres (4 to 10 ft) below sea level, is unique in the world. Ability to grow in this wide spectrum of climates made rice to become the most widely eaten food of the world. For millions of people rice is 3/4 of their total diet. This most cultivated cereal has attained the status of the Earth's most geographically diverse crop. Except Antarctica, rice is now grown in more than 100 countries on all continents. With two domesticated species Oryza sativa (the most common, grown throughout Asia, Australia, the Americas and Africa); and Oryza glaberrima (grown on a small scale in western Africa), rice have emerged as our most popular cultivated plant.

Over the years the booming construction activities in Kerala had devoured thousands of hectare of paddy fields which not only took a toll on the state's rice production but also affected its ecological balance. During the period 1970-2008, the area under rice cultivation in Kerala had fallen sharply from 8.7 lakh ha (1970-71) to 2.3 lakh ha (2007-08).

Learning and chanting the complete Sambitas, there existed a group of people well acquainted with all the Vedic knowledge, unpolluted by mispronunciation, elision of syllables and interpolations. This made India a cradle of linguistic investigation, particularly in the knowledge of phonetics and grammatical sciences.

The Vedic concept of order is represented by a (course of things, righteousness). It is the same word as the Avestan asba (phonetically altered in ancient times as arta ot arela) and the Cuneiform Persian arta. Bloomfield points out that the syllable arta is from Vedic fta. It is called in Egyptian maat, Chinese tao, Accadic kittu/ mescbaru, Hebrew sedeq / sedaqa, Greck dike, themis and moira, and Roman namen. Yet another meaning that these terms share is "world order," which means justice.

Kautilya, also known as Vishnu Gupta or Chanakya (321-296 BC), was well known for his treatise, the Arttha Listra. Here, the word arttha refers to the science dealing with the means to be adopted for acquiring and protecting wealth. Only four manuscripts of this treatise have become available to the world. Though he lived in the court of Chandra Gupta Maurya, the modern world had to wait to know about this treatise, only when two of them were obtained from the Trivandrum MS Library. A reading of Arttha Listra brings to our mind the grave amnesia from which awareness of the Indian past is suffering.

Kautilya, who gave great importance to agriculture, named the ploughed land in the possession of the king as 'sita,' which means agriculture. The Hariamsa Maba Puranam mentions karsakānām cba siteti" which means 'for the farmers, you are like their goddess Sita' (the plough-line made on earth). Several Brahmanas and Grilyasutras adore and entreat Sita as the deity of agriculture.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages