The cultivation of this plant is prehistoric in the south of Europe, in Egypt, and in Asia. The Greeks knew it by the name kegchros, and the Latins by that of milium.[1896] The Swiss lake-dwellers of the age of stone made great use of millet,[1897] and it has also been found in the remains of the lake-dwellings of Varese in Italy.[1898] As we do not elsewhere find specimens of these early times, it is impossible to know what was the panicum or the sorghum mentioned by Latin authors which was used as food by the inhabitants of Gaul, Panonia, and other countries. Unger[1899] counts P. miliaceum among the species of ancient Egypt, but it does not appear that he had positive proof of this, for he has mentioned no monument, drawing, or seed found in the tombs. Nor is there any material proof of ancient cultivation in Mesopotamia, India, and China. For the last-named country it is a question whether the shu, one of the five cereals sown by the emperors in the great yearly ceremony, is Panicum miliaceum, an allied species, or sorghum; but it appears that the sense of the word shu has changed, and that formerly it was perhaps sorghum which was sown.[1900]
Anglo-Indian botanists[1901] attribute two Sanskrit names to the modern species, ûnû and vreehib-heda, although the modern Hindu and Bengali name cheena and the Telinga name worga are quite different. If the Sanskrit names are genuine, they indicate an ancient cultivation in India. No Hebrew nor Berber name is known,[1902] but there are Arab names, dokhn, used in Egypt, and kosjæjb in Arabia.[1903] There are various European names. Besides the Greek and Latin words, there is an ancient Slav name, proso,[1904] retained in Russia and Poland, an old German word hirsi, and a Lithuanian name sora.[1905][P2 Corrected type at P1] The absence of Keltic names is remarkable. It appears that the species was cultivated especially in Eastern Europe, and spread westward towards the end of the Gallic dominion.
With regard to its wild existence, Linnæus says[1906] that it inhabits India, and most authors repeat this; but Anglo-Indian botanists[1907] always give it as cultivated. It is not found in Japanese floras. In the north of China de Bunge only saw it cultivated,[1908] and Maximowicz near the Ussuri, on the borders of fields and in places near Chinese dwellings.[1909] Ledebour says[1910] it is nearly wild in Altaic Siberia and Central Russia, and wild south of the Caucasus and in the country of Talysch. He quotes Hohenacker for the last-named locality, who, however, says only “nearly wild.”[1911] In the Crimea, where it furnishes bread for the Tartars, it is found here and there nearly wild,[1912] which is also the case in the south of France, in Italy, and in Austria.[1913] It is not wild in Greece,[1914] and no one has found it in Persia or in Syria. Forskal and Delile indicated it in Egypt, but Ascherson does not admit this;[1915] and Forskal gives it in Arabia.[1916] The species may have become naturalized in these regions, as the result of frequent cultivation from the time of the ancient Egyptians. However, its wild nature is so doubtful elsewhere, that its Egypto-Arabian origin is very probable.
Italian Millet—Panicum Italicum, Linnæus; Setaria Italica, Beauvois.
The cultivation of this species was very common in the temperate parts of the old world in prehistoric times. Its seeds served as food for man, though now they are chiefly given to birds.
In China it is one of the five plants which the emperor sows each year in a public ceremony, according to the command issued by Chin-nong 2700 B.C.[1917] The common name is siao mi (little seed), the more ancient name being ku; but the latter seems to be applied also to a very different species.[1918] Pickering says he recognized it in two ancient Egyptian drawings, and that it is now cultivated in Egypt[1919] under the name dokhn; but that is the name of Panicum miliaceum. It is, therefore, very doubtful that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. It has been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings of the stone epoch, and therefore à fortiori among the lake-dwellers of the subsequent epoch in Savoy.[1920]
The ancient Greeks and Latins did not mention it, or at least it has not been possible to certify it from what they say of several panicums and millets. In our own day the species is rarely cultivated in the south of Europe, not at all in Greece,[1921] for instance, and I do not find it indicated in Egypt, but it is common in Southern Asia.[1922]
The Sanskrit names kungû and priyungû, of which the first is retained in Bengali,[1923] are attributed to this species. Piddington mentions several other names in Indian languages in his Index. Ainslie[1924] gives a Persian name, arzun, and an Arabic name; but the latter is commonly attributed to Panicum miliaceum. There is no Hebrew name, and the plant is not mentioned in botanical works upon Egypt and Arabia. The European names have no historical value. They are not original, and commonly refer to the transmission of the species or to its cultivation in a given country. The specific name, italicum, is an absurd example, the plant being rarely cultivated and never wild in Italy.
Rumphius says it is wild in the Sunda Isles, but not very positively.[1925] Linnæus probably started from this basis to exaggerate and even promulgate an error, saying, “inhabits the Indies.”[1926] It certainly does not come from the West Indies; and further, Roxburgh asserts that he never saw it wild in India. The Graminæ have not yet appeared in Sir Joseph Hookers flora; but Aitchison[1927] gives the species as only cultivated in the northwest of India. The Australian plant which Robert Brown said belonged to this species belongs to another.[1928] P. italicum appears to be wild in Japan, at least in the form called germanica by different authors,[1929] and the Chinese consider the five cereals of the annual ceremony to be natives of their country. Yet Bunge, in the north of China, and Maximowicz in the basin of the river Amur, only saw the species cultivated on a large scale, in the form of the germanica variety.[1930] In Persia,[1931] the Caucasus Mountains, and Europe, I only find in floras the plant indicated as cultivated, or escaped sometimes from cultivation on rubbish-heaps, waysides, waste ground, etc.[1932]
The sum of the historical, philological, and botanical data make me think that the species existed before all cultivation, thousands of years ago in China, Japan, and in the Indian Archipelago. Its cultivation must have early spread towards the West, since we know of Sanskrit names, but it does not seem to have been known in Syria, Arabia, and Greece, and it is probably through Russia and Austria that it early arrived among the lake-dwellers of the stone age in Switzerland.