Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/foodgrainsofindi00churrich#page/n5/mode/2up

Download pdf Book : http://ia700102.us.archive.org/18/items/foodgrainsofindi00churrich/foodgrainsofindi00churrich.pdf

Where is the variety gone? If you wish to see some of the grains, you should visit village bazaars in the interiors (any part of India). One may still find some varieties not seen in the cities and in "big bazaars". I saw one such bazaar last year with a wide variety of bajra and jowar for sale. The book talks of some varieties preserved in England. Wonder if it is still there.

@Amita Roy: The book talks of hundreds of varieties of rice preserved in England.

Recently an exhibition and sale of some variety of indigenous rice, which have become very scarce in the market, was conducted in Mysore, to revive and popularise these varieites. It was a big success!

Certain varieties of grains and pulses are also detailed in the Arthashastra as well as the Greek commentaries derived from Megasthenes' Indika.

Like in Egypt pyramids, in some stone-age 'cists' (graves) the dead are found buried with 'ragi' grains (a traditional variety of indigenous grain) in Karnataka State (India).

Unlike most other places where civilisations rooted, India must have been the only place which had variety of grains and ability to generate huge surpluses to support the chaturvarnya system, the feudal States (kingships) and trade. It must have been this huge surplus which must have attracted other "traders, travelers and invaders. A land which spewed golden smoke was the land which cooked myriad meals.

@ SS It is more likely that the chaturvarnya system was used to generate the huge surpluses which then supported the rise of Kingdoms. The varna and jati system has been analyzed specially by Marxists as tool for the expropriation of labor to work the land including use of religious and ideological tenets by the elite to sustain this expropriation. Slavery played the same role in Ancient Egypt and Greece for instance but without any sweetening of the pill as there was in India. Egypt was brute force and violence. Greeks did not even think of slaves as human. The elite of society always manage to grab what they want. Looking at current events i wonder of that has changed :( And cooking was very very important. Not only was pakshastra one of the 64 arts but most treatises ( including Arthashastra) give a special place to the proper cooking of food.

It is futile to argue that one is a precondition of the other. (whether Chaturvarnya system helped generate the surplus or it was a tool for expropriation of the surplus. The two things are intertwined and organically connected. i.e. they cannot be posed as a chicken and egg problem. But the fact is in any event, the religion provides the super structure support for perpetuating the building pillars. The point is that India perhaps was generating surpluses not seen in other parts of the world. Hence the super structure here was stronger in terms of psychic penetration in a truly plural society.

@ SS In general conversation the discussion may strike you as a futile one but in terms of a scholarly analysis of the evolution of varna and jati and the consolidation of peoples at different stages of material culture into a coherent whole ( which we have tangentially discussed on another thread) I assure you it is not. Yes, the soil, weather and water conditions in the Indian sub continent were conducive to the generation of a sharply growing surlpus after the 6th century BCE ( after the destruction of a previously established IVC culture which seems however to be based more centrally on trade than the post vedic people like the Mauryans) For the Mauryans the central issue was the generation and growth of an agricultural surplus which was monetised through the explosion of the circulation of 'money' in the economy as opposed to barter. ( The process had been started by the Nandas and was probably the reason for their fabulous wealth ) which stimulated trade and contributed to a swelling royal treasury and allowed them to hold a huge standing army. The incorporation of hitherto marginalized or far flung people with differing beliefs in to the varna system at various levels as agriculturists, artisans, shudras etc was the work in progress that the chaturvarnya system was engaged in during the first millennium BCE.. The consolidation and extension of the chaturvarnya system happened due to the success of the methods used for incorporating everyone into the system and harnessing labour to generate surplus. From our standpoint and rightly so, the caste system is an evil but please remember it was a method of carving out order from chaos thousands of years ago. If you consider the methods used by different civilizations ( of which very few existed at all) it compares well enough and in fact positively if you consider the practice of slavery which was the counterpart in many other societies. And i do hope I will be spared a rant against the caste system because , if you read carefully, i am evaluating a system as it existed at the time , not for the current period or indeed for all the times when this method of creating order had outlived its usefulness and became a perverted tool of exploitation.

...Marxists are ghastly people (in fact they are barely human ~ believing that emotion plays no significant role in the story of society and that 'suffering' can be reduced to a simple formula ie. 'they've got it and we want it'... in fact we demand it for free) and their analysis of history is abject, dispassionate horse manure... a simple attempt to understand, or at least empathise with tradition or heritage can teach you 5000 x more than anything dear old Karl ever came up with in his rat infested grotto in North London ~ presumably where he was obliged to flee to escape from his continental creditors....(yes, the British have much to answer for)...

I expect the whole of London was rat infested. Some people reveal their human quality of anger only when to comes to spewing venom against a person long dead. I don't understand where Marxism enters into this discussion. The chatuvarnya system cannot be laid at the door of only a Manu or Chanakya. They were merely ideologues and subservient to a social and political system which evolved over a long period of time as the most systematic division of labour. There is no reason for any one to rile against it in the historical context. It is only when someone tries to foist it on today's society (like the revivalists) that one gets concerned. The West does not suffer from this hangover as much as Indians do (with the exception of some intellectuals from the West who sorely miss the perceived glory of the recent past (of their imagination). So, Sumedha, please understand where the rant comes from and learn to accommodate a genuine concern of the current times. The caste system is blatant and thoroughly obnoxious and totally contrary to the bourgeois principles of equality and fraternity (more importantly, universal franchise).

@ SS You and i discussing something interesting in a fairly coherent manner, I think but some interjections have me foxed :). Wonder what they mean, if anything at all !! From a discussion of grains, to agriculture to surplus to varna we are managing to cover quite some ground!!

Marx's ghost comes to haunt once in a while (actually, now and then) whenever there are crises besotting the world. It is good to shed some tears whenever he rises from his high gate cemetery in London for the benefit of some friends. The vituperative is perhaps due to a response of mine in another thread belonging to another era about a certain fascinating English gentleman of the Bombay Marines featured in one of Valmay Young's photos. Nick Balmer has given a fascinating account and correspondence on Hawkins' life there.