Transcript India - narod.ru

India
Keselman Liza 10 IT
Natural history in India has a long heritage with
a recorded history going back to the Vedas.
Natural history research in early times included
the broad fields
of paleontology, zoology and botany. These studies
would today be considered under field of ecology
but in former times, such research was
undertaken mainly by amateurs, often physicians,
civil servants and army officers.
Although the growth of modern natural history in
India can be attributed to British colonialism and
the growth of natural history in Britain, there is
considerable evidence to suggest that India with
its diverse landscapes, fauna and flora along with
other tropical colonies helped in creating an
increased interest in natural history in Britain and
elsewhere in the world. Natural history in India
was also enriched by older traditions of
conservation, folklore, nature study and the arts
Over a thousand sites of the Indus
Valley civilization across North West India,
before 1700 B.C. have been studied to date. A
large number of animal bones have been
found at these sites; one-fifth of these
comprising bones of wild fauna, such as
the jackal, hare, chital, rhinoceros and elepha
nt. Most seeds found in the dwellings of some
Western Indian sites are of wild plants now
extinct to the region.
The fauna and flora of those times are richly
represented in the clay pottery and tablets
excavated from these sites. Clay tablets document
many species of now locally extinct wildlife
including rhinoceros and elephant. A tiger seal has
been found in Harrappa dating back to 3000 B.C.
The Swamp Deer or Barasingha was found in Mehrgarh in
Baluchistan till 300 B.C. and probably became locally extinct due
to over-hunting and loss of riverine habitat to cultivation. A
species of wild cattle, Bos primegenius nomadicus or the zebu
vanished early on from its range in the Indus basin and western
India, possibly due to inter-breeding with domestic cattle and
resultant fragmentation of wild populations due to loss of
habitat.
The first recorded domestication of the elephant
was in Harappan times and the animal ultimately
went on to serve as a siege engine, mount in war,
status symbol, work animal, and an elevated
platform for hunting.
The Vedas represent some of the oldest historical
records available (1500 – 500 BC) and they list the
names of nearly 250 kinds of birds besides many
other notes on various other fauna and flora. In
the vedic texts, Aryavarta, the land of the Aryans,
was considered to be co-terminous with the range
of the Blackbuck.
Sometimes, these referred to the lands North of
the Vindhyas; at others times, it included lands to
the South. A notable piece of information
mentioned in the Vedas is the knowledge of brood
parasitism in the Indian Koel, a habit known well
ahead of Aristotle(384 – 322 BC). This is possibly
because both the Indian Koel and its host
the House Crow were common and easy to
observe.
The medical treatises
of Charaka and Sushruta mention wildlife from the
point of view of the meats the forests yielded and
their associated attributes. The stratification of Hindu
society into the caste system saw the warrior caste
or kshatriya setting itself apart on hereditary lines;
one assertion of which was the right to eat certain
animals. The treatises espoused rules as to when,
and who could or could not eat flesh of particular
animals; for example, the flesh of the lion and tiger
were to be consumed solely by regents and that too
on rare occasions.
The elephant was
another well studied
wild animal and the
capture, training and
maintenance of
elephants was
documented in the
2000 year old
text Gajashastra writte
n in the Pāli script.
The Tamil literature of the Sangam period, depicts
a classification of land into 5 eco-types; ranging
from the littoral to wet paddy fields.
The End.