A History of Agriculture in India v1.c23.s8.16

v1.c23.s8.16

Fig. 144. Geographical distribution of records of rice, together with dates in the Indian subcontinent these areas show today considerable varietal diversity. In addition, the north-western and north-eastern foothills of the Himalayas (Ramiah and Ghose, 1951) and the Guyanas (Porteres, 1949) are known to show much variation. The difficulties resulting from considering the centres of diversity as centres of origin are well known by now (cf. Zohary, 1970). With the ancestral species present in its original habitat in all these regions of variability and with the knowledge that this species is found good enough even today for harvesting, the changeover from rice-gathering to rice-culture could have been attempted in each of these regions and at various times. This can be witnessed even today in some areas such as the Jeypore tract in Orissa in eastern India. Further, the transition from the wild to the cultivated form in rice is of a much lower magnitude than that involved in at least the principal cereals. And this ennoblement could have been effected by the people inhabiting these regions.¹¹