Rice Origin, Antiquity and History PDF

Preface

I was born in a small village of eastern India in mid-1930s. Rice was grown as the main crop in my village. I remember an incident when I was a young boy of about seven years old. My father, who was a farmer and came from a priestly community, consulted the new almanac for the year. He found that astrologically it would be more auspicious if I did the ceremonial sowing of rice for that year. There was (and is) a special day in the lunar calendar for ceremonial sowing of rice. On that day, my father and mother woke me up early in the morning, took their bath and asked me too to take my bath.We put on new clothes. Then they arranged all the items for worshipping the Goddess of Wealth in a new bamboo basket along with a small iron share and a small sample of rice seeds. Then my father and myself proceeded to our rice field. It was just dawn when we reached the rice field.

My father sprinkled water on a small piece of land in the field, installed the icon of the Goddess in the field and worshipped Her. He covered the head of the deity with a new small red scarf, applied sandal paste and vermillion on her forehead, offered her flowers and incense, lit a lamp and offered fruits and coconut to the Goddess. Then he muttered some prayers in Sanskrit and asked me to join him. Though I could not understand a word of it, I knew, he must have meant, "O Goddess of Wealth, bless us with a rich crop of rice this year so that we have enough to eat and enough to sell to meet all our needs. Bless us with happiness and prosperity." Then he asked me to "plow" a small patch of land of the field with the share, sow the rice seeds, level the ground and water it. Then we bowed before the Goddess once again and left for home.

That year, if I remember vaguely, rainfall was sufficient (there were no irrigation facilities in my village), there were no pests or diseases (there were no insecticides in those days) and the plants grew lush green (there were no chemical fertilizers in those days; farmyard manure was the only source of manuring). When the rice plants were filled with grains in the month of September, there was the festival of "eating new rice" in the whole village. There was special prayer in the village temple; special dishes were prepared in every house; people were dressed in new clothes and, as per customs, younger people sought the blessings of their elders. In the month of December, when the newly harvested crop was brought home, as per custom, the Goddess of Wealth was worshipped on every Thursday. The floor was decorated with rice paste, the doors were decorated with rice earheads and special dishes of rice were prepared in every house. Every year, I used to wait anxiously for the month of December because my mother used to prepare special dishes of rice on every Thursday.

Rice was everything to us. It was our breakfast in the morning, lunch at noon, snacks in the evening and dinner at night. On festive occasions, special dishes were made of rice only. Our festivals revolved round the rice crop. It was a food crop and also a cash crop for us. Rice was our language too. If a boy was uncontrollable, we used to call him a "wild rice" meaning that he is as nuisance as a wild rice plant. If a girl was very beautiful, we said that she is "made of a single grain of rice". Rice was our God. If somebody had to swear, he would hold a handful of rice in his hand and swear by the Goddess of Wealth. In fact, rice was our life.

I have described the life of the people in a small remote village of eastern India in mid 1930s but the pattern of life was not much different in any other village in the whole of eastern, southeastern or southern Asia. If one draws a line from Kerala State of India to Honshu Island of Japan on the map of Asia and visits any village in the east of this line, he would find the same life style. In fact, it was more or less the same one or even two thousand years ago.

To be sure, let us visit the Shinto shrine, Sumiyoshi Taisha, near Osaka in Japan in the month of June. The rice planting ceremony is held here every year on June 14 and the ceremony is more than 1,700 years old.

Sumiyoshi Taisha is the nation's leading shrine boasting its old history and vast size. The shrine preserves a deity rice field at the corner of its premises to hold the annual rite for the planting of seedlings. The ceremony features a mixture of entertainment, prayers and amusement. Beautiful professional entertainers from the nearby geisha quarters serve as women planting rice seedlings. Shrine maidens attired in red and white clothes and children wearing dance clothing and pretty makeup also participate. Farming cattle adorned with costumes show up. Some participants emerge on the stage laid over the paddy to perform the Noh play and interlude and chant a Noh text. The whole area where the event takes place gives an air of an ancient or medieval Japan.¹

Or let us visit the Ifugao people in the northern part of Luzon Island of the Philippines where rice has been traditionally grown in terraces since 2000 years.

The Ifugaos are a tribe with a rich culture. Numerous centuries old rituals are performed in their rice growing. The rice culture leader called  tomona determines the start of the planting season. Rice planting season is ushered in by the tunod ritual in the tumun-ok or payoh which is the main terrace selected hundreds of years ago from among those belonging to the kadangyan (nobility). A statue of a rice god called bulol in a sitting position is touched by the hand with blood from butchered chicken or pig. Seeding starts in the months of November and December and planting of rice seedlings commences in January and February.²

Throughout the history of mankind, man was a hunter-gatherer except for the last 10,000 years or so when he started domesticating plants and animals of his surroundings. Wild rice (Oryza rufipogon and Oryza nivara) grew abundantly in South and Southeast Asia and also in the southern part of China. In fact, it grows like that even today. The plant did not miss the attention of early man (rather of early woman). He started collecting its seeds for his subsistence and propagating the plant near his habitat.

In course of time, man has changed the plant a lot. Today he has rice varieties which can be grown in countries of the equatorial belt such as in Java Island and also in high latitude countries such as Hokkaido Island of Japan. It is grown near sea coast and also in high Himalayan valleys. It is grown in uplands and also in 30 feet deep water. There are types which hardly yield one ton per acre and also types which yield more than 3 tons. Man has also changed the shape, size, color and quality of its grains. There are long fine grains which cook fluffier and have aroma. And there are types which stick together when cooked. Man has learnt to use almost all parts of the plant. Mats, shoes, hats, boards, etc are made from its straw. Husk is used for packing, as pulverizers, etc. Bran is used for producing oil. The grain is used in various ways besides being used as staple food, for noodles, dumplings, cakes, pop rice, rice flakes, wines, etc. Today it is the staple of one third of the mankind.

And with the passage of time, man has carried the crop far and wide. China passed it on to Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines before the start of the Christian era. In the fourth century BC, Greeks carried it to Central and West Asia and to Greece. In the eighth century, Arabs introduced it into Spain and in the next century in Sicily. From Spain, rice was carried to Po valley of Italy and from there to France. Spaniards, Portuguese and British carried it to the New World. The most recent introduction of rice was into Australia. Today rice is cultivated in all the continents of the world except, of course, Antarctica. However, ninety percent of world's rice is still grown and consumed in Asia only.³

Rice has changed man's life and life-style. Once man domesticated rice, he gave up his nomadic life and became sedentary to grow this crop. In the Neolithic age, he made tools of bones, stones, bamboos and woods to sow, weed, harvest and thresh. Today he makes tractors, harvesters and combines to do the same job. He terraced the hills so that water remains deposited in his rice fields, built tanks and canals to irrigate his rice fieds and marveled in engineering skills. Let us visit some of these tanks built in the first five centuries of Christian era in Sri Lanka.

Some of them were of considerable size, great artificial lakes and many of these ‘tanks' . . . . were skillfully connected with each other to form a vast irrigation system. Modern irrigation engineers have evinced much admiration for the way in which the ancient Sinhalese succeeded in their irrigation schemes which are far from easy, even to their modern counterparts . . . . The construction of these early irrigation systems was a remarkable practical feat. They required constant attention and their construction and maintenance must be regarded as the leading feature of early Sinhalese economic life.⁴

The same thing happened in Cambodia when Jayavarman II and his successors were ruling the country in the 9^th century AD. They built a sophisticated irrigation system that included giant man-made lakes and canals that ensured three crops of rice in a year.

The Angkorian system of aquatic management was so sophisticated that architectural historian Sumet Jumsai na Ayudhya has argued that it actually represented a new stage of civilization in Southeast Asia . . . . [The emperor] was literally, the lord of life, the master of the waters—it was thanks to his hydraulic craft that the land could produce three or even four rice crops per year. Later, when the Angkorian Empire finally collapsed, it was largely due to the breakdown of its system of aquatic management and the falling into obsolescence of its vast system of dikes, canals and reservoirs^.5

The same was the case of Vijayanagara Kingdom of India which flourished in the fifteenth century. Its prosperity was based on a vast number of tanks which irrigated the crops and on which the prosperity of the kingdom depended.

The importance of irrigation was well understood from early times; dams were constructed across streams and channels taken off from them wherever possible. Large tanks were made to serve areas where there were no natural streams, and the proper maintenance of these tanks was regularly provided for. The extension of irrigation was encouraged at all times by granting special facilities and tax concessions . . . .⁶

The Asian rice has a cousin that was born and nurtured by the people of West Africa. A different kind of wild rice (Oryza barthii) grows wild in sub-Saharan Africa. The people around the inner delta region of river Niger domesticated it about 3000 years ago and created a different type of rice which we now know as Oryza glaberrima. Its cultivation spread from inner delta region of River Niger down the stream in the valley of River Sokoto and then to area around Lake Chad. Its cultivation also spread upstream of River Niger and then to the valleys of River Senegal and River Gambia. The people had not only developed the plant but also the technology to grow this crop.⁷ When the people of this region were carried to the New World, they not only carried this plant to the new World but also provided the technology for its successful cultivation there^.8 When the Asian rice was introduced in the homeland of this African rice, the Asian rice was gradually replacing the local one because the Asian one's better yielding capacity though the local one has better intrinsic merits. Now, thanks to efforts of agricultural scientists, the merits of both the types have been combined and new types of rice have been developed.⁹

This book is an attempt to tell the story of rice from the time when it was first domesticated in the river valleys of Yangtze about seven thousand years ago and in the valleys of Mekong and Ganga soon thereafter and how the people of various countries have shaped the plant, how they have improved the techniques of its cultivation, how they have found various uses of its grain and other plant parts and in turn how the plant has shaped cultures of the various peoples and helped build their civilizations. It is an attempt to tell how the plant has influenced their languages, beliefs, customs, social habits, festivals, etc. It attempts to tell how man has carried the crop to different regions of the world where topography, soil, climate, vegetation and ethnic and social conditions differ. In each of these regions of the world, people went through their own trials and tribulations for its cultivation, their own successes and failures, their own experiences and learning. And "this is what the human story is, not the emperors and the generals and their wars, but the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing . . . ."¹⁰ 

A book narrating all these aspects of this magnificent crop in all the parts of the world is difficult to be narrated by a single person. The story can be told better by persons who have first hand knowledge and experience of this crop in their own countries. The editor acknowledges with gratitude the contributions of all the authors who willingly agreed and contributed chapters for the book.

I would be ungrateful to my wife (Usha), daughter (Surabhi), sons (Shamik, Sujagya) and daughter-in-laws (Charu, Reena) if I did not acknowledge their continuous support and encouragement during preparation of the book. I am especially thankful to my grandson (Shaunak) and grand daughters (Shansita, Suhani) for diverting my attention and keeping me refreshed and entertained with their playful activities.

^1. Tanaka, Junzo (2003).

^2. Peñafiel, Samuel R. (2006).

^{3. Nanda, J.S.} (2003).

^4. Pakeman, S.A. (1964), Quoted by Toynbee (1972:113).

^5. Barnhart, James (2003).

^6. Nilakanta Sastri, K.A. (1955:298).

^7. Porteres, R. (1956).

^8. Carney, Judith A. (2002).

^9. NERICA varieties are the hybrids between the African rice, Oryza glaberrima and the Asian rice, O. sativa. The hybrid derivatives are better than either of the parents in one respect or the other over their parents, either through superior weed competitiveness, drought tolerance, pest or disease resistance or simply through higher yielding potentials. See website: http:// www.warda.org.

^10. Robinson, Kim Stanley (2002:333).