CICER 



ARIETINUM 



Chick-pea 



THE BENGAL GRAM 



Sanskrit 

 Literature. 



Varieties. 



Tibetan Plant. 



Kabul Gram. 



Indian Special 

 Eaces. 



Never seen 

 Wild. 



Cultiva- 

 tion. 

 Area. 



Distribution. 



Chief Gram- 

 producing Area. 



transl., ii., 350). It is curious, however, that no mention is made of gram in 

 the Memoirs of Bdber (written about 1519 A.D.), so that it may fairly be inferred 

 gram was not an important article of food with the army under the first great 

 Mughal conqueror of India. Baber's silence regarding it may, however, have been 

 a pure omission, or a consequence of its not having been a pulse new to him 

 on his arrival in India, for it seems certain it was known to the people of 

 India from a fairly remote period. By Hindus it is invariably described under 

 its Sanskrit name, or some derivation from that. Susruta (Ayur Veda (Hessler, 

 transl.), bk. i., ch. xx., 49), for example, alludes to it under the name of hariman 

 fkata as one of the specially wholesome articles of food. The name hariman- 

 dkakam is very largely given to it by the present Tamil-speaking races. It is 

 mentioned hi the Puranas but apparently not in the Institutes of Manu. The 

 vinegar made from the dew found on the leaves is referred to under the name 

 chana-kdmla by most of the Sanskrit medical writers. 



Varieties. While it is quite correct to say of it to-day, as it was when the 

 Ain-i-Akbari was written, that Bengal gram is not cultivated to any extent in 

 Kashmir, still there is a special form of the plant fairly extensively produced hi 

 the western temperate and alpine regions, between 9,000 and 15,000 feet in 

 altitude, such as in Piti, Lahul, Kumaon and Tibet. This has been described 

 by botanists as a distinct species under the name of c. among nricttw, steph. 

 It bears the following vernacular names : tizhu, jawane, banyarts, sdrri or serri 

 names apparently unconnected with those given to c. ai-i<-tinnnt and since 

 c. Mo>if/u rirrfiu is only met with hi alpine Central Asia, it may be assumed 

 to be there indigenous. 



So also a very special variety or distinct species is known as kabuli gram. 

 This has been much talked of recently, and even experimentally grown in India, 

 but with indifferent results. It is apparently a form peculiar to the country 

 indicated by its name, though it is specially mentioned by Buchanan-Hamilton 

 as met with by him in Dinajpur about 1809. It is thus a form that has been 

 experimentally grown hi India for a century or more. It is a much more robust 

 plant than the ordinary gram, and has large white seeds. But in addition to 

 these special Trans-frontier varieties, India itself has also several fairly distinct 

 cultivated forms indicated by the colour of the pea, viz. red to yellow, brown, 

 creamy white and almost black. But in no part of India or of its mountainous 

 frontier has any botanist recorded the existence of wild or even naturalised 

 representatives of any form of gram. They all exist purely and simply as 

 cultivated plants, and on the plains are usually rabi crops. It seems highly 

 probable, however, that the forms of chick-pea originated in the tract of country 

 between the Caucasus and the Himalaya. And if that opinion be accepted 

 they can be regarded as having been carried into Southern Europe, Persia and 

 India hi very ancient times. But it seems probable that at least one of the 

 forms may have originated in Persia, so that the chick-pea may have been also 

 indigenous to that country. 



CULTIVATION. Area. During the five years ending March 1905, the 

 average area shown in the volume of Agricultural Statistics for British India 

 as devoted to this crop, comes to almost 1 1 million acres, and for the Native 

 States a little under 2 million acres, so that an estimate of 12 million acres 

 for the whole of India would be under rather than over the mark. The 

 most important producing province is that of Agra, which during the 

 period named possessed an average of 3| million acres, or say one-third 

 of the Indian area. This is followed by Oudh (with 1 million acres), by 

 the Panjab (which fluctuates very greatly, the area in 1899-1900 having 

 been only 658,468 acres, and the very next year 3,405,121) ; by Bengal 

 (with approximately one million acres) ; by Bombay, the Central Pro- 

 vinces and Mysore (with each normally a little under a million acres) ; by 

 Gwalior (which has as a rule \ million acres) ; by Berar, Madras and the 

 North- West Frontier Province (with each about 150,000 acres) ; by Sind, 

 Upper Burma, Alwar, Bharatpur and Kotah (with each about 70,000 

 to 100,000 acres) ; and lastly by all the other Provinces arid Native 

 States (which have each much smaller areas). It may thus be accepted 

 that the upper basins of the Ganges and the Indus (which correspond with 



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