Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.69

c20.69

It has been observed that although the Hindoos live chiefly on vegetable diet, they cultivate few horticultural plants, and pay little attention to gardening. In this climate the whole country may be called a garden, and nature furnishes many things spontaneously which elsewhere can only be obtained by the most laborious exertions. Their abstemious habits are easily satisfied, and a small spot is sufficient to raise all the plants which they require: These are confined to spinnage and some of the Brassica tribe. The chilly or red pepper, some badjee or spinnage, some cucumbers and pumpkins, and a few flowers, compose the principal articles in their little gardens. This is merely because these articles are daily and hourly wanted for their culinary purpose, and to save the trouble of going into the fields for them. Cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, the brinjal, bendy, a variety of beans, or pulse, and yam, are cultivated on a more extensive scale. These are reared in the common fields, and as a regular crop, particularly the yam, which attains great perfection in Malabar. But corn and fruit trees are the great objects of attention. The soil of the Malabar vallies is alluvial earth.