Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c7.1

c7.1

The thesis submitted is but a part of a larger work which is to follow. It is intended to serve as a mere sample of the kind of work which can be produced with the materials that can yet be gathered from the unexplored field of Indian literature and current traditions. The indebtedness of human civilisation to plants and the study of plant-life is indeed very great. There is hardly any department of human culture, or any phase of human civilisation, whether it be pure poetry or pure philosophy or pure religion, science, art, language, dress and ornament, trade or agriculture, where plants and the study of plant-life have not played an important part.