The opinion of botanists and of the public in general is that it comes from India; but Roxburgh says that it is only cultivated in that country. It is the same in the Sunda Isles, where the battari is certainly this species. It is the kao-liang, or great millet of the Chinese. It is not said to be indigenous in China, nor is it mentioned by Chinese authors who lived before the Christian era.[1942] From these facts, and the absence of any Sanskrit name, the Asiatic origin seems to me a delusion.
The plant is now cultivated in Egypt less than the common sorghum, and in Arabia under the name dokhna or dokhn.[1943] No botanist has seen it wild in these countries. There is no proof that the ancient Egyptians cultivated it. Herodotus[1944] spoke of a “tree-millet” in the plains of Assyria. It might be the species in question, but it is not possible to prove it.
The Greeks and Romans were not acquainted with it, not at least before the Roman empire, but it is possible that this was the millet, seven feet high, which Pliny mentions[1945] as having been introduced from India in his lifetime.
We must probably seek its origin in tropical Africa, where the species is generally cultivated. Sir William Hooker[1946] mentions specimens from the banks of the river Nun, which were perhaps wild. The approaching publication of the Graminæ in the flora of tropical Africa will probably throw some light on this question. The spread of its cultivation from the interior of Africa to Egypt after the Pharaohs, to Arabia, the Indian Archipelago, and, after the epoch of Sanskrit, to India, lastly to China, towards the beginning of our era, tallies with historical data, and is not difficult to admit. The inverse hypothesis of a transmission from east to west presents a number of objections.
Several varieties of sorghum are cultivated in Asia and in Africa; for instance, cernuus with drooping panicles, mentioned by Roxburgh, and which Prosper Alpin had seen in Egypt; bicolor, which in height resembles the saccharatus; and niger and rubens, which also seem to be varieties of cultivation. None of these has been found wild, and it is probable that a monograph would connect them with one or other of the above-mentioned species.
Coracan—Eleusine coracana, Gærtner.
This annual grass, which resembles the millets, is cultivated especially in India and the Malay Archipelago. It is also grown in Egypt[1947] and in Abyssinia;[1948] but the silence of many botanists, who have mentioned the plants of the interior and west of Africa, shows that its cultivation is not widely spread on that continent. In Japan[1949] it sometimes escapes from cultivation. The seeds will ripen in the south of Europe, but the plant is valueless there except as fodder.[1950]
No author mentions having found it in a wild state in Asia or in Africa. Roxburgh,[1951] who is attentive to such matters, after speaking of its cultivation, adds, “I never saw it wild.” He distinguishes under the name Eleusine stricta a form even more commonly cultivated in India, which appears to be simply a variety of E. coracana, and which also he has not found uncultivated.
We shall discover its country by other means.
In the first place, the species of the genus Eleusine are more numerous in the south of Asia than in other tropical regions. Besides the cultivated plant, Royle[1952] mentions other species, of which the poorer natives of India gather the seeds in the plains. According to Piddington’s Index, there is a Sanskrit name, rajika, and several other names in the modern languages of India. That of coracana comes from an old name used in Ceylon, kourakhan.[1953] In the Malay Archipelago the names appear less numerous and less original.