Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c2.1

c2.1

My thesis on Plants and Plant-life as in Indian treatises and traditions, submitted and finally approved for the Griffith Memorial Prize for 1925, is being presented at last in the following pages to the reading public. I must humbly mention that this thesis is rather a result of certain specific inquiries, undertaken by me in 1923, to satisfy a curiosity as to what wealth of information on the subject of Plants and Plant-life might yet be gathered from Indian literature which is a continuous record of many centuries and a vast store-house of human experiences, fancies and speculations. It was not an easy task for me to face the difficulties of exploiting the various sources of information, specially where these remained concealed in Sanskrit and other Indian works not accessible to me in English translations. It is happy to recall to my mind that when I had proceeded with the task the prospect was far from being bright, but to my great astonishment, within a month I was able to collect numerous passages having bearings upon the subject, and enabling me to conceive a much wider plan of treatment than one restricted to the requirements of the Science of Botany. This is to say, that in this thesis the plan has only been partially carried out. I have little doubt that a vivid account of how much human civilisation has derived from Plants and Plant-life in its progress, on the basis of the materials collected by me, will read like a romance which may be calculated not only to fascinate but also to instruct.