Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.53

c20.53

Some kinds of rice are found to ripen earlier than others, and to thrive in different degrees of moisture: they have hence not all the same seasons of reaping and sowing. They have their particular situations and soil. In the husbandry of Malabar the skill of the Kudian or cultivator, is therefore exerted, to discover the grounds best adapted to each. He has discovered that it is useful to change his seed: but one crop of rice follows another in eternal succession. The hill rice requires 8 or 9 months to ripen, and that on the inundated fields but three. The hill crop is more precarious, as it depends entirely on a favourable season of rain. In the upper lands they observe a regular rotation. It is in these situations where they grow their green crops: these are confined to a few kinds of pulse, and gingelly or ellu. In these hills they plough for some kinds of culture as often as seven times. But rice is the great article of cultivation in Malabar: they also cultivate, the sugar cane and dholl; and the climate would probably answer for all the tropical plants.