Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/646

 628 PBAPHULLA OHANDRt BABU even in the period of the Rig Veda. This becomes a plausible explanation if we consider the fact that in several references dhana perform many o! the functions of rice. In offerings to Indra dhana were prepared into a food by being steeped in clarified butter (i, 16, ); in modren times cluzr is prepared out of rice exactly in the same way. (akes we?e made out of dhana and then they were baked (vi, 29, 4). Here, on the contrary, it seems that rice could not have been meant unless they pounded dhana and then made the caka Dhana were considered to be a suitable food for the gods; for example, Indra was ked to take them: ladrisirdhi dhana, that is, "eat suitable grain" (iii, 35,3). /)hana were sometimes psched (bhrijj) and then tken (iv, 4, 7). TMs passage again makes it probable that dl, zna meant rice. Rice can be parched either in the sun or in hot water, or fried in hot sand, etc.; and these form even now some of the most popular and cheap eatables of rural India. Dhaza again were regularly mixed with in preparing the offerings at the .scrifices x. Thus we see that the agricultural organisation of the early Aryans was much more complex and developed than what we could at first imagine. All the necessary processes were gone through by the people of the time. Their system of cultivation was neither the de one of the travelling Teuton nor even that of the settled Briton in the island*. They had advanced much further, though. in time they.were earlier by st least twenty centuries. Not only was the whole process sepiated into parts/ one after another, with all the nice det8s, but they had different naanes for each of these, which fact abundantly proves the superior culture and the more complex ideas attendant on it. I iil, 48, 4; iil, 52, 1; viii, 91, 2. s Cunnlngham's Orowth o! English Indur and Commerce, Earl/ M4dd