Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency (Volume 25) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FAMINE PLANTS. WILD HERBS, TUBERS, etc., USED AS FOOD DURING SEASONS OF SCARCITY/ Notwithstanding the efforts made by Government to inquire into and study the various plants used as food by the natives of India during seasons of drought, it is curious to find so many errors in the various reports that have been published on this subject?plants and vegetables that are eaten all the year round in ordinary times being sometimes included in the list of famine foods. The officers who were employed on relief works during the last famine in some districts of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, having for the first time seen natives using certain wild herbs naturally enough concluded that these were resorted to for want of ordinary food, or, in other words, that they were famine plants. It is a difficult task for a single man, howsoever long he may have resided in this uountry, to obtain an accurate list of all the food-grains and vegetables eaten by the natives of India during ordinary seasons and those of scarcity. Hence the most intelligent of these officers do not appear to have steered clear of such mistakes, and I particularly remember a certain gentleman who once belonged to the covenanted service of this Presidency and whose goodness of heart led him to constantly mix himself up with aud inquire into the wants, habits and customs of the poor natives in the districts he happened to be located, asking me the question " Do the natives eat tackla (Cassia tora) ? it has such a disagreeable smell." Now the natives use this plant not only during famines, but almost all the year round, specially at the commencement of the rainy season; they also partake of it made into " shak bdji" on every Monday of the month Shrdwan. The question was, therefore, one that much surprised me, the mo...