FARM FOLKLORE

Agriculture has stemmed from folk science or traditions of environmental conservation, documented orally

- BABULAL DAHIYA

Folk literature is people's literature, village literature, or, one may say, agricultural literature. This is because even today, 60-70 per cent of the population depends on farming. That's why when a city dweller goes to buy wheat or rice, their business is completed in just 10-12 words. A bag or sack in hand, they ride a bicycle or rickshaw to the seller; bargaining, weighing, money—with these few words, wheat and rice will arrive at their home. But when a farmer grows the same grain in the field, from the preparation of the field to storage in the granary, approximately 250 words are used. These words are not formally recognised and yet called dialects.

Agriculture started some 10,000 years ago; people settled in plains and started digging wells. Before the discovery of iron, all prehistoric settlements were located along rivers and drank their waters. But with the expansion of agriculture and discovery of iron ore, other cottage industries also developed, creating a farming-dependent society with barter systems in villages. The literature created from this experiential knowledge, or the oral traditions that developed, came to be called folk traditions and folk literature. Before modern, chemical-based, environmentally-destructive farming, all agriculture stemmed from folk science or folk traditions of environmental conservation, where the environment was protected at every step. This is because farming was for the entire village's sustenance, in contrast to the present-day merchant farming. It involved conservation, not reckless exploitation of natural resources.