Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.24

c20.24

It has been found by experience that these crops not only thrive in the same field; but improve each other. Rye and oats for instance, serve to support the weak creeping tares, and add besides to the bulk of the crop by growing through the interstices. Clover and rye grass are sheltered by the corn. This analogy will apply to the Husbandry of India. These similar experiments may be carried further, where the climate and soil are superior. In India different kinds of seeds when sown in the same field are kept separate by the Drill, or they are mixed together, and sown broadcast. In the last case they are commonly cut down as forage. A plant called sota gowar, is sown broadcast with sugar cane, in Guzerat. The gowar serves as a shelter to the sugar cane, from the violent heat of the sun, during the most scorching season of the year. Joar and badgery are sown together, in the same country late, not for the sake of a crop, but for straw, which is very nutritive, and very abundant. This is one of the instances in which the natives provide a green crop for their cattle. Other grains are sown both together and separately, merely for their straw. Soondea, darrya joar, rateeja and goograjoar are sown together: but with the exception, of goograjoar which is allowed to ripen, the rest are reaped while they are green.⁷