Ethnobotany of India, Volume 1

Eastern Ghats and Deccan

T. Pullaiah, K. V. Krishnamurthy, Bir Bahadur

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315342153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Alternativ- & Komplementärmedizin

Ethnobotany of India: Volume 1: Eastern Ghats and Adjacent Deccan, the first of a five-volume set, provides an informative overview of human-plant interrelationships in this southern area of India. The volume looks at the ethnic diversity, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, ethnoveterinary medicine, and ethnic food of the region. With chapters written by experts in the field, the book provides comprehensive information on the tribals (the indigenous populations of the region) and knowledge on plants that grow around them.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

K. V. KRISHNAMURTHY,¹ T. PULLAIAH,² and BIR BAHADUR³

¹Department of Plant Science, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli–620024, India

²Department of Botany, Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur–515003, India

³Department of Botany, Kakatiya University, Warangal–506009, India

CONTENTS

Abstract

1.1Physical Features and Geomorphology of the Study Region

1.2Ethnic Diversity of the Study Region

1.3Worldviews and Belief Systems

1.4Traditional Knowledge on Ethnoecology, Ethnonomenclature, and Ethnotaxonomy

1.5Traditional Agricultural Crop Diversity

1.6Utilitarian Ethnobotanical Knowledge

1.7Food Plants

1.8Medicinal Plants

1.9Plants of Ethnoveterinary Importance

1.10Plants That Are Used for Purposes Other Than Food and Medicine

1.11Conservation, Documentation, and Management of Traditional Knowledge on Plants

1.12Mainstreaming Traditional Botanical Knowledge

1.13Conclusions

Keywords

References

ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces the scope and contents of this volume, which deals with the ethnobotany of the Eastern Ghats and adjacent Deccan region of India. The physical features and geomorphology of the study region are briefly introduced. The ethnic diversity, worldviews and belief systems, ethnoecology, ethnotaxonomy, ethnonomenclature, traditional crop biodiversity, utilization aspects of plants of different ethnic communities (food, medicine, veterinary medicinal plants, etc.), documentation, conservation and management of ethnoplant resources, etc. of the study region are briefly introduced. The importance of mainstreaming traditional botanical knowledge of the study region is also emphasized.

1.1PHYSICAL FEATURES AND GEOMORPHOLOGY OF THE STUDY REGION

It is generally agreed upon that the Indian subcontinent was part of the Gondwanaland, got separated from it, drifted northwards and finally collided with the Asian tectonic plate to position itself as we see it today. The drifting took place by the early Cretaceous period and collision around 50–65 million years ago. The present day Indian subcontinent consists of four geomorphic provinces, each of which is structurally and lithologically distinct and physiographically contrasted; the four provinces also have an altogether different evolutionary history (Valdiya, 2010); the four provinces are: (i) The mountainous Himalayan province that girdles the northern border of the subcontinent; (ii) The flat and expansive Indo-Gangetic plains in the middle; (iii) The plateaus and uplands of peninsular India; and (iv) the coastal plains along the seaboard (Arabian Sea on the West, Bay of Bengal on the east and the Indian Ocean on the south). South of the Himalayan mountains is peninsular India, a shield of Archaean antiquity. Four well-defined crustal blocks, called Cratons (containing the oldest granite rocks) make up this mosaic of peninsular shear zones: (i) The Dharwar Craton (3.20 to 3.40 Ga) in south India, covering parts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala; (ii) The Bastor Craton (3.01 Ga) in central India, covering parts of north west Andhra Pradesh, south west Odisha, Chhattisgarh and north east Maharashtra; (iii) the Singhbhum Craton (3.56 Ga) in eastern India, covering northern Odisha, and south West Bengal; and (iv) The Bundelkhand Craton (3.31 Ga) in north western India covering eastern Rajasthan, southwest Uttar Pradesh and north west Madhya Pradesh. Each of these cratons have undergone “events of crustal rifting and sagging or shrinking of dismembered blocks, with the attendant volcanism, as well as deformations, metamorphosis, and granatization or charnockitization” (Valdiya, 2010). These processes have resulted in the welding of the crustal blocks into composite rigid cratons. During subsequent geological history these craton regions underwent several other geological and geomorphological changes.

Peninsular India is triangular in shape and the apex of the triangle is at the southernmost end of India (at Kanyakumari). It is about 2,200 km long in the N-S direction and around 1,400 km wide in E-W direction (in the region of greatest width). It consists of three physiographic regions: the mountain ranges on its three sides, the uplands and plateaus, the latter two constituting the longer part within the confines of these mountain regions and the coastal plains along the eastern and western seaboards (Figure 1.1). The peninsular Indian region covered in this book is bordered on the north by the Vindya-Satpura hill range that trends in the ENE-WSW direction, the Sahyadri hill range that extends 1, 600 km southwards from the Tapti valley to Kanyakumari on the western side and the East Coast hill range, which forms a series of physiographically discontinuous hill ranges on the East. The plateaus enclosed within these three hill ranges are the Deccan plateau. It encompasses practically the plains of Maharashtra (especially the Vidarba region), Odisha, the adjoining parts of the undivided Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The average elevation of Deccan is 600 m above msl. Covering the whole of Karnataka, adjoining Tamil Nadu and the undivided Andhra Pradesh is the Mysore Plateau, which is made up of Archaean gneisses, granites and high-grade metamorphic rocks.

FIGURE 1.1Major mountain systems of India.

The major rivers of the Deccan region are the following: The Mahanadi, which has its source in Dandakaranya near Sihawan Rajpur district, has a length of 857 km, covers an area of 141,600 km² and the with a volume of average annual flow of 67,000/66,640 million cubic meters. The Godhavari river has its source at Trimbek Plateau near Nasik and has a length of 1,465 km, a drainage area of 312,812 km²and an annual volume flow of 105,000/118,000 million cubic meters. The Krishna river has its source near Mahabaleshwar (northern Sahyadri), runs for a length of 1,400 km, covers an area of 258,948 km² and has an annual volume flow of 62,800/67,670 million cubic meters. The Kaveri river has its origin in Talakaveri at central Sahyadri, runs for a length of 800 km, has an annual water flow of 87,900 km² and covers a drainage area of 20, 950 million cubic meters. The Pennar river originates near Kolar district in Karnataka, runs a length of 910 km, has an annual water flow of 55, 213 km² and covers a drainage area of 3, 238 million cubic meters.

The east coast (=eastern seaboard) stretches from Athagarh in Odisha to beyond Ramnad in Tamil Nadu. It is about 126 km wide. It is a coast of emergence, characterized by well-defined beaches, many sand dunes and sand spits and many lagoonal lakes associated with backwater swamps. The eastern seaboard is believed to have originated in the post-Cretaceous times and has grown and got modified since then. The shore between Visakhapatnam and Ganjam is a shore characterized by cliffs. Pulicat, Kolleru and Chilka lakes are the most prominent lakes in the east coast.

The most important study region covered in this book is the Eastern Hill range or Eastern Ghats (E. Ghats). These are ‘tors’ of geological antiquity and are geologically older than the Himalayas and Western Ghats. The Ghats orogeny had happened around 1600±100 million years ago. This hill range that lies on eastern side of the Deccan plateau of peninsular India forms a chain of physiographically discontinuous, elevated hill range that does not have any structural unity (Krishnamurthy et al., 2014). Many geographers consider the Khondmal hills in Odisha as the northern extremity of E. Ghats, while others consider the Simlipal massif of northern Odisha as the northern extremity. The E. Ghats traverse through the states of Odisha, undivided Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and parts of Karnataka and finally meet the Nilgiris of W. Ghats in the Moyar valley (Figure 1.2). BR hills form the southwestern extremity of E. Ghats while the southern extremity is near Ramnad in Tamil Nadu. The discontinuity in this hill range is mainly due to the great rivers, mentioned earlier, and the small rivers like Dahuda, Vamsadhara, Nagavalli, Sarada, Varaha, etc. that cut through the range.

FIGURE 1.2Four major sections of Eastern Ghats with section 2 divided into two subsections (Source: Murthy et al 2007b [Proc. Nat. Sem. Conserv. Eastern Ghats, 2007, EPTRI]. Used with permission.)

The E. Ghats over an area of about 75,000 km², with an average width of about 200 km in the north and about 100 km in the south. A maximum area of about 48% of E. Ghats falls in the undivided Andhra Pradesh, while its area in Tamil Nadu and Odisha is about 25% each and the remaining 2% pass through Karnataka (see Krishnamurthy et al., 2014). The hill range has a length of 1,750 km. the average elevation is about 700 m, though individual peaks may rise up to a height of 1,675 m msl. Most geologists believe that the E. Ghats is geologically heterogeneous in origin: two distinct kinds of hill ranges make up the so-called E. Ghats. The first one (often called the northern E. Ghats runs parallel to the east coast in a N-SW direction up to Krishna valley (Ongole). This is the true E. Ghats and is also called the E. Ghats Mobile Belt (EGMB). The other part runs south of Krishna valley and has hills that are of heterogeneous character. However, in this volume, E. Ghats is been considered to include both these regions, as many others have done earlier. The composite E. Ghats generally is considered to have three major sections: North (North Odisha to Guntur in undivided Andhra Pradesh), Middle (Krishna river to near about Chennai in Tamil Nadu), and South (the rest of the E. Ghats in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka). In Karnataka E. Ghats runs from Bellary, through Chitradurga, Kolar, Tumkar and ends in BR hills. There are 138 major hills in E. Ghats (Krishnamurthy et al., 2014).

1.2ETHNIC DIVERSITY OF THE STUDY REGION

India is remarkable for its diversity, both biological and human. The Indian subcontinent has about 427 tribal communities (Singh, 1993) with about 62–65 million people (Vinodkumar, 2007), although others speak of 4635 well-defined groups under 532 tribes (of which 72 are primitive including 36 hunter-gatherer tribes). The great ethnic human diversity of India is due to its position at the tri-junction of the African, the northern Eurasian and Oriental realms, as well as to its great variety of environmental regimes. Its plant (and animal) wealth has been continuously attracting humans in many streams starting from about 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, at different historical times and from different directions. This has brought together a great diversity of human genes and human cultures into India and their subsequent mix-up to various degrees. While in other parts of the world the dominant human culture of those parts has been known to absorb or eliminate other cultures that might enter there, the tendency in India, from historic times, has been to isolate and subjucate the subordinated cultures, thereby segmenting the cultural (and thereby the human) diversity (Gadgil et al., 1996). In the light of this background, the second chapter of this volume contributed by Bir Bahadur et al. provides a detailed account on the ethnic diversity of E. Ghats and Deccan region of India, the ethnobotany of which is the focus of this volume. They have not only explained the origin of the great ethnic diversity of this region, essentially based on the works of Gadgil et al. (1996) and Thangaraj (2011), but also have given details on the various ethnic tribes and their distribution in different parts of the region of study mentioned above.

1.3WORLDVIEWS AND BELIEF SYSTEMS

Societies, cultures and knowledge systems evolved almost simultaneously with the first establishment of modern human species in different parts of the world all along its migratory routes from Africa. The evolution and establishment of each one of the three was critically dependent on the evolution and establishment of the other two. All the three were not only dependent on the environmental conditions that prevailed in the different places where the human species got settled but also on the threads of culture and knowledge systems that the settling human population already possessed and carried along with it during their migration. Thus, there are two components in their social behavior, culture and knowledge system: one that they had before actually settling down and the other after they got settled to a place. The first component largely explains most, if not all, common aspects of social life, cultures and knowledge systems of the different ethnic societies of the world, however far away they are from each other at present. However, we should not also rule out parallel or independent evolution of certain common components in societal organization, culture and knowledge systems of different ethnic societies of the world.

Hunting-gathering and nomadic society, and cultures and knowledge systems associated with it, were the earliest to evolve as humans were on a constant move during their early migration from Africa, as well as around places of settlement within a reasonably smaller territory until about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago when agriculture and the societies, cultures and knowledge systems associated with evolved and almost replaced the hunter-gatherer culture. It is this hunter-gatherer, short-distance-nomadic populations “settled” on the various migratory routes who have greatly contributed to the evolution of societies, cultures and knowledge systems. These pockets of human population are to be rightly referred to as Indigenous communities. The occupation of new environmental niches by these human societies was initially enabled by the effective tool-making and using abilities, control over fire and the group-gathering and hunting for food. These adaptations fine-tuned the utilization of the natural resources available around them (Gadgil, 1987). The interrelationship between different members of an ethnic/tribal group, which make social life possible, is called...