Most people in this country are aware that Parsuram, the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, was blessed with an axe (the Parasu) after a terrible penance to please Lord Shiva. He is credited with fighting the advancing ocean, thus saving the narrow strips of land between the Sahyadri and the sea in the modern-day states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. This entire land is known as Parshuram Kshetra.
It is also known, as part of the exploits of Parshuram that he had thrown his axe (or hatchet) towards the ocean to stop it from advancing and the land saved from being devoured by the ocean became known as Kerala in modern times.
However, it is perhaps not very well known outside Kerala that Parshuram was also an ?agricultural extension agent? and his discourse to a group of distraught Brahmins facing agricultural crises is part of the text called the Krishi Gita.
Krishi Gita has recently been published by the Secunderabad based Asian Agri-History Foundation whose Chairman, Dr. Y.L. Nene is a noted agricultural scientist and was a deputy director general of the International Crop Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, Hyderabad This publication is in line with the other ?bulletins? published by the Foundation since 1996, the first being Surapala'sVrikshayrveda, dated about 1,000 years ago. Krishi Gita has been written as a discourse between the Brahmins, who had tenure rights over land in ancient Kerala and Lord Parshuram, a great sage and one of the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu. Presumably, says in the introduction to the bulletin, the farmers of that era too experienced many agricultural crises and Krishi Gita opens with the narration oft such episode by a distraught lot of Brahmins to Lord Parshuram and requesting him to abate their agonies by prescribing the best agricultural practices.
The introduction adds: ?During the ?dialogue? Parshuram imparts knowledge of an array of ?improved? crop production techniques to the Brahmins. Undoubtedly, Lord Parshuram was a leading exponent of improved agricultural practices and perhaps the world'sfirst agricultural extension agent.? The hatchet that he wields symbolises a potent tool to clear wild growth to promote agriculture. Also for the early man who was a denizen of forests, the hatchet was probably an indispensable tool to facilitate shifting cultivation, the earliest form of agriculture. In another perspective, the axe is symbolic of deforestation and signify ecological degradation, if imprudently used.
Regarding the genesis of Krishi Gita, [the time of compilation and its author(s)] the introduction adds, it is difficult to make firm judgments. The stanzas apparently contain no temporal signatures. It is also difficult to deduce the time of compilation by evaluating the contemporary political events as reference to aspects such as conquests including that of the Europeans is conspicuously absent in the entire text.
No historically confirmable rulers are mentioned except the names of a few dynasties (Chera, Chola and Pandyan) which essentially ruled southern India for hundreds of years .From the nature of the contents, it is however, apparent that the lyrics may have been written /compiled over a relatively long period (may be centuries!), which perhaps led to the abstraction of the time stamp. The lyrics without doubt have been transmitted through oral traditions or palm leaf writings from one generation to another. During that process, the contents almost certainly got improvised. What is before us, therefore, is a cumulative product of such improvisations that might have happened over a rather long period of time.
Dr. Nene in his foreword, writes, inter alia: ?It seems several versions of Krishi Gita are available. The one we have translated is classified as D.No. 298 by Adyar Library, Chennai. The original author is not known and there is no date indicated in the manuscript. Since the crops described in the text are the indigenous ones and not introduced by Europeans (Portuguese, we believe the date to be 15th century.
He adds: ?Through the courtesy of Dr. M.R. Rao. Hon. Editor to AAHF, we requested Dr. B. Mohan Kumar to translate the text from Malayalam into English. Dr. Kumar has done a fine job of translation. Two excellent commentaries, one by Dr. Kumar himself, and the other by Dr. P.K. Ramchandran Nair, have highlighted the salient features of the text, and have indicated practices that need to be validated. The AAHF is highly grateful to Dr. Rao, Dr Kumar and Dr. Nair.
?We have reproduced the text edited by Vidwan C. Govindan Wariar.?
Here area few paragraphs from Krishi Gita (translation) from Part 1 and lines 69 to 89 in particular. After the preliminaries such as hailing Lord Parshuram, the distraught Brahmins told him about their woes. He spoke about the practices to be adopted and seeds to be sown with respect to rice (Oryza sativa): ?Everyone of you may sow the seed (= cultivar) Kamadara with pleasure. Sow the seed Mukinavelutha with full confidence and Girikashala is also appropriate for your lands. Avoid sowing the highly reputed seed Cheravith (which ripens in a short time) and the much-celebrated Dandan seed. With regard to the yield of the seed Vettuveli eari there is no cause for anxiety and so is the corpulent Churunakariyan. Both these seeds are the same for the members of the society. Rumours about the performance of the seed Vazhakannan is also increasing in these places. The demand for the seed Vellachenelly is also rising and it is high yielding too. The rich prefer to cultivate a seed called Sampathalam In the Thulu region (northern parts of Kerala and the adjoining State of Karnataka) all these seeds are pre-germinated before sowing in the field.?
(The AAHF is situated at 47 Icrisat Colony-I , Brig. Sayeed Road, Secunderabad 500 009.)
