In Egypt the cultivation of this species is perhaps not very ancient. The monuments of antiquity bear no trace of it. Græco-Roman authors who knew the country did not speak of it, nor later Prosper Alpin, Forskal, and Delile. We must refer to a modern work, that of Schweinfurth and Ascherson, to find mention of the species, and I cannot even discover an Arab name.[1954] Thus botany, history, and philology point to an Indian origin. The flora of British India, in which the Graminæ have not yet appeared, will perhaps tell us the plant has been found wild in recent explorations.
A nearly allied species is grown in Abyssinia, Eleusine Tocussa, Fresenius,[1955] a plant very little known, which is perhaps a native of Africa.
Rice—Oryza sativa, Linnæus.
In the ceremony instituted by the Chinese Emperor Chin-nong, 2800 years B.C., rice plays the principal part. The reigning emperor must himself sow it, whereas the four other species are or may be sown by the princes of his family.[1956] The five species are considered by the Chinese as indigenous, and it must be admitted that this is probably the case with rice, which is in general use, and has been so for a long time; in a country intersected by canals and rivers, and hence peculiarly favourable to aquatic plants. Botanists have not sufficiently studied Chinese plants for us to know whether rice is often found outside cultivated ground; but Loureiro[1957] had seen it in marshes in Cochin-China.
Rumphius and modern writers upon the Malay Archipelago give it only as a cultivated plant. The multitude of names and varieties points to a very ancient cultivation. In British India it dates at least from the Aryan invasion, for rice has Sanskrit names, vrihi, arunya[1958] whence come, probably, several names in modern Indian languages, and oruza or oruzon of the ancient Greeks, rouz or arous of the Arabs. Theophrastus[1959] mentioned rice as cultivated in India. The Greeks became acquainted with it through Alexander’s expedition. “According to Aristobulus,” says Strabo,[1960] “rice grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susida;” and he adds, “we may also add in Lower Syria.” Further on he notes that the Indians use it for food, and extract a spirit from it. These assertions, doubtful perhaps for Bactriana, show that this cultivation was firmly established, at least, from the time of Alexander (400 B.C.), in the Euphrates valley, and from the beginning of our era in the hot and irrigated districts of Syria. The Old Testament does not mention rice, but a careful and judicious writer, Reynier,[1961] has remarked several passages in the Talmud which relate to its cultivation. These facts lead us to suppose that the Indians employed rice after the Chinese, and that it spread still later towards the Euphrates—earlier, however, than the Aryan invasion into India. A thousand years elapsed between the existence of this cultivation in Babylonia and its transportation into Syria, whence its introduction into Egypt after an interval of probably two or three centuries. There is no trace of rice among the grains or paintings of ancient Egypt.[1962] Strabo, who had visited this country as well as Syria, does not say that rice was cultivated in Egypt in his time, but that the Garamantes[1963] grew it, and this people is believed to have inhabited an oasis to the south of Carthage. It is possible that they received it from Syria. At all events, Egypt could not long fail to possess a crop so well suited to its peculiar conditions of irrigation. The Arabs introduced the species into Spain, as we see from the Spanish name arroz. Rice was first cultivated in Italy in 1468, near Pisa.[1964] It is of recent introduction into Louisiana.
When I said that the cultivation of rice in India was probably more recent than in China, I did not mean that the plant was not wild there. It belongs to a family of which the species cover wide areas, and, besides, aquatic plants have commonly more extensive habitations than others. Rice existed, perhaps, before all cultivation in Southern Asia from China to Bengal, as is shown by the variety of names in the monosyllabic languages of the races between India and China.[1965] It has been found outside cultivation in several Indian localities, according to Roxburgh.[1966] He says that wild rice, called newaree by the Telingas, grows in abundance on the shores of lakes in the country of the Circars. Its grain is prized by rich Hindus, but it is not planted because it is not very productive. Roxburgh has no doubt that this is the original plant. Thomson[1967] found wild rice at Moradabad, in the province of Delhi. Historical reasons support the idea that these specimens are indigenous. Otherwise they might be supposed to be the result of the habitual cultivation of the species, all the more that there are examples of the facility with which rice sows itself and becomes naturalized in warm, damp climates.[1968] In any case historical evidence and botanical probability tend to the belief that rice existed in India before cultivation.[1969]
Maize—Zea mays, Linnæus.
“Maize is of American origin, and has only been introduced into the old world since the discovery of the new. I consider these two assertions as positive, in spite of the contrary opinion of some authors, and the doubts of the celebrated agriculturist Bonafous, to whom we are indebted for the most complete treatise upon maize.”[1970] I used these words in 1855, after having already contested the opinion of Bonafous at the time of the publication of his work.[1971] The proofs of an American origin have been since reinforced. Yet attempts have been made to prove the contrary, and as the French name, blé de Turquie, gives currency to an error, it is as well to resume the discussion with new data.
No one denies that maize was unknown in Europe at the time of the Roman empire, but it has been said that it was brought from the East in the Middle Ages. The principal argument is based upon a charter of the thirteenth century, published by Molinari,[1972] according to which two crusaders, companions in arms of Boniface III., Marquis of Monferrat, gave in 1204 to the town of Incisa a piece of the true cross ... and a purse containing a kind of seed of a golden colour and partly white, unknown in the country and brought from Anatolia, where it was called meliga. etc. The historian of the crusades, Michaux, and later Daru and Sismondi, said a great deal about this charter; but the botanist Delile, as well as Targionitozzetti and Bonafous himself, thought that the seed in question might belong to some sorghum and not to maize. These old discussions have been rendered absurd by the Comte de Riant’s discovery[1973] that the charter of Incisa is the fabrication of a modern impostor. I quote this instance to show how scholars who are not naturalists may make mistakes in the interpretation of the names of plants, and also how dangerous it is to rely upon an isolated proof in historical questions.
The names blé de Turquie, Turkish wheat (Indian corn), given to maize in almost all modern European languages no more prove an Eastern origin than the charter of Incisa. These names are as erroneous as that of coq d’Inde, in English turkey, given to an American bird. Maize is called in Lorraine and in the Vosges Roman corn; in Tuscany, Sicilian corn; in Sicily, Indian corn; in the Pyrenees, Spanish corn; in Provence, Barbary or Guinea corn. The Turks call it Egyptian corn, and the Egyptians, Syrian dourra. This last case proves at least that it is neither Egyptian nor Syrian. The widespread name of Turkish wheat dates from the sixteenth century. It sprang from an error as to the origin of the plant, which was fostered perhaps by the tufts which terminate the ears of maize, which were compared to the beard of the Turks, or by the vigour of the plant, which may have given rise to an expression similar to the French fort comme un turc. The first botanist who uses the name, Turkish wheat, is Ruellius, in 1536.[1974] Bock or Tragus,[1975] in 1552, after giving a drawing of the species which he calls Frumentum turcicum, Welschkorn, in Germany, having learnt by merchants that it came from India, conceived the unfortunate idea that it was a certain typha of Bactriana, to which ancient authors alluded in vague terms. Dodoens in 1583, Camerarius in 1588, and Matthiole[1976] rectified these errors, and positively asserted the American origin. They adopted the name mays, which they knew to be American. We have seen (p. 363) that the zea of the Greeks was a spelt. Certainly the ancients did not know maize. The first travellers[1977] who described the productions of the new world were surprised at it, a clear proof that they had not known it in Europe. Hernandez,[1978] who left Europe in 1571, according to some authorities, in 1593 according to others,[1979] did not know that from the year 1500 maize had been sent to Seville for cultivation. This fact, attested by Fée, who has seen the municipal records,[1980] clearly shows the American origin, which caused Hernandez to think the name of Turkish wheat a very bad one.