Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c4.11

c4.11

By this the officer in charge of Agriculture and his assistants are supposed to be conversant with the treatise of Agriculture (*Krishitantra*) and knowledge of the life of Bushes and Trees, and well trained in the art of utilisation of their knowledge. Dr. Shama Shastri in his translation has represented *Krishitantra* as a science or scientific treatise dealing with *Gulma-Vriksháyurveda* and he cannot but do so in regard to the matters dealt with in this particular section. But from the construction of the sentence it is clear that *Krishitantra* and the *Gulma-Vrikshāyurveda* are two separate terms used to denote the two departments of knowledge. If in a particular context one has been treated as a subsection of the other, necessarily, the implication is not that the departments of knowledge signified by them were not independent; the point which is clear from the *Arthaśāstra* is the interdependence of the two. A treatise of Agriculture will be incomplete without a chapter dealing with the application of Botanical knowledge to the art of plantation, cultivation, manuring and the rest. In the other two references the term *Vrikshāyurveda* looms large and the *Krishitantra* does not find any mention. But here, too, the purpose is just to show the application of the knowledge relating to ancient science of plant-life for agricultural, horticultural, irrigational and economic purposes.