GRAMWEJE. (JO 7 



Australia. The fine rice of the West Indies is considered 

 insipid by the Indian labourers. 



TRITICUM SATIVUM, Lam. 



Fig.—BenfL and Trim., t 294. Wheat [Eng,), Ble (Fr.). 



Hab. — The Euphrates region. Cultivated in N.-W. India 

 the Central Provinces, and Bombay. 



Vernacular.— G^un {Iliml), Gahun{J/r/;\), Godumai {Tarn), 

 Godumulu {Tel), Kotanpam {MaL), Godhi {Gan.), Gam 

 {Beng.)^ Ghayum {Guz.). 



History, Uses, &C. — Wheat, as the most important of 

 the cereals, has given rise to numerous myths, for an account 

 of which we cannot do better than refer the reader to the late 

 ^^' W. Mannhardt's learned monograph Die Komendmwnen 

 (Berlin, 1868), In the myth of Persephone-kora, daughter of 

 ^eus, the god of the heavens, which by their warmth and rain 

 produce fertility, and of Dimeter or Ceres, the maternal 

 goddess of the fertile earth, we perceive that she was conceived 

 as a divine personification of this grain, in summer appearing 

 beside her mother in the light of the upper world, but in the 

 autumn disappearing, and in winter passing her time, like the 

 seed under the earth, with the god of the lower world. As a 

 pendant to the Greek myth, we have the Indian myth of Sita 

 ^^ ^* the Furrow,^' husbandry personified, and apparently once 

 Worshipped as a kind of goddess. In the Rig-Veda Sita is 

 invoked as a deity presiding over Agriculture, and appears to 

 ^^ associated with Indra. In the Vajasanctja, Sita '' the 

 Furrow " is personified and addressed, four furrows being 

 ^^quired to be drawn at the ceremony when certain stanzas are 

 ^^oited. Sita is so named because she was fabled to have 

 sprung from a furrow made by her father Janaka while 

 ploughing the ground to prepare it for a sacrifice instituted by 

 *^^ to obtain progeny, whence her epithet Ayonija "not 

 Womb-born.''* Wheat was used in sacrifice by the Greeks and 



Of course, these mytlis are more or less applicable to all food-grains. 



