82 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



like tinder, and he then sets fire to it and burns it as 

 nearly as lie can to ashes. With all his labour, however 

 (and he works hard at this spasmodic sort of toil), he will 

 not be able to work all the logs into position to get burnt ; 

 and at the end of a week he will rest from his labour, and 

 contemplate with satisfaction the three or four acres of 

 valuable teak forest he has reduced to a heap of ashes, 

 strewn with the charred remains of the larger limbs and 

 trunks. He now rakes his ashes evenly over the field and 

 waits for rain, which in due season generally comes. He 

 then takes a few handfuls of the coarse grain he subsists 

 on and flings them into the ashes, broadcast if the ground 

 be tolerably level ; if steep, then in a line at the top, so as 

 to be washed down by the rain. The principal grains are 

 Kodon (Pas'palum), Kiitki (Panicum), and coarse rice. 

 But nearly all the ordinary crops raised in the plains 

 during the autumn season are also grown more or less in 

 these dhya clearings, as they are called, though usually 

 from greatly degenerate seed, the produce of which is 

 often scarcely recognisable as the same species. A few 

 pumpkins and creeping beans are usually grown about the 

 houses in addition to the dhya crop. Such is the fertilising 

 power of the ashes that the crop is generally a very pro- 

 ductive one, though the individual grains are far smaller 

 than the same species as cultivated in the plains. A 

 fence against wild animals is made round the clearing by 

 cutting trees so as to fall over and interlace with each 

 other, the whole being strongly bound with split bamboos 

 and thorny bushes. The second year the dead trees and 

 half-burnt branches are again ignited, and fresh wood is 

 cut and brought from the adjoining jungle, and the same 

 process is repeated. The third year the clearing is usually 

 abandoned for a fresh one. Sometimes the owner of a 

 dhya will watch at night on a platform in the middle of 

 the field and endeavour to save it from wild animals, but 

 oftener he does not think it worth the labour, and lets 

 it take its chance till ripe, while he earns his livelihood 

 in some other way. 



The dhya clearings are of course favourite resorts for 

 all the animals of the neighbourhood. The smaller species 



