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 tra-ditions that developed, came to be called folk traditions and folk literature. Before modern, chemical-based, environmen-tally-destructive farming, all agriculture stemmed from folk science or folk traditions of environmental conservation, where the environment was protected at every step. This is be-cause 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.
It is true that in the absence of a writing practice, the experiences and research could not be documented. But for their discovered knowledge to remain useful for the next generation, our farmer ancestors would condense it into sayings. These still occasionally reso-nate in folk expressions and proverbs. A few examples would be appropriate here. The most crucial aspect in farming was water conservation. That’s why it was said, “Without water, there is no farming.” Building a pond was considered virtuous. One person might build a pond, but the purpose was always public. It raised the water level of the entire village. This is why in many folk songs of the Bagheli dialect, a new daughter-in-law express-es to her father-in-law or brother-in-law her desire to have a pond built near the house.
If the field is ploughed once or twice when moisture comes between the months of Ashadh and Kwar (June-July to September-October), it would absorb all the water from three months of rains. This would not only increase the village’s water level but also lock sufficient moisture in the field for winter crops like wheat and chickpeas. But how would this become useful for environmental conservation in folk sayings? Let’s look at this proverb: “Gohun bha kahe? Asadh ke dui bahe.” There is a story behind this proverb. In a village, all farmers had similar land. But one farmer’s wheat was much better than the others’. When farmers visited that field, they asked, “Brother, the soil is the same for all farmers, so why is your wheat so much better?” He explained that after the monsoon rains in Ashadh, he had ploughed his field twice, both cross-wise and length-wise. Thus, all the moisture kept accumulating in the field, which is why his wheat was better than others. Similarly, there is a saying about the month of Sawan: “Saman bahe. Gohun gahe.” This means, “If you plough when moisture comes in Sawan, you will have a good wheat crop in your field.”
In our Bagheli folk literature, there is also a saying about a lazy farmer. During the three-month rainy season, when there are periods of rain break for four-five days, diligent farmers take advantage and plough their fields, allowing moisture to accumulate. The saying describes a lazy farmer who sits idle throughout the rainy season but starts ploughing his field two-three times after it ends. Other farmers mock him: “Bahe nahin tay ek Asadh. Ab ka bahte baram-bhar.” (“You did not plough your field even once in Ashadh when it was the right time for the field to absorb rainwater and store moisture. But now that your field has dried up, you are ploughing it repeatedly. What benefit is there now?”). Now, of course, after the Green Revolution, the farming method has completely changed.
In ancient times, crop rotation or mixed farming was a practice that fully maintained the sustainability of field fertility and environmental conservation. If chickpeas were sown in the field in the first year, then the next year would see mixed farming of kodo millet or sorghum. This system kept the field’s fertility intact. While bacteria in chickpea roots would generate nitrogen in the field, kodo stalks would rot and make the land fertile for the next year. Similarly, mixed sorghum farming was such an environmentally protective method that many types of grains would be produced in the same sorghum field. According to folk literature’s proverb-like instructions, sorghum would be cultivated with specific gaps. In the lower gap, there would be 0.6 m shrubby black gram and green gram, and in the upper gap, there would be 1.2 m sesame and 1.5 m ambari (a fibre crop). The thin pigeon pea that ripens in March should expand when sorghum, sesame, black gram and green gram are harvested in November. There is a saying: “Kadam-kadam par bajra, dadur kudni jwar. Je jan aisa boihain, unke bharen kothar.” “Dadur kudni jwar” here refers to sowing sorghum at a distance of 0.45-0.6 m, which is as long as a frog’s jump. Only then will all the grains growing above and below the sorghum fill the farmer’s granary. Sorghum grows up to 2.1 m tall.
In this way, our Bagheli literature and tradition has many oral traditions, idioms, folk sayings and proverbs for envi-ronmental conservation. These would guide the next generations from time to time. If there were restrictions on not eating kaitha fruit (wood apple) until Dussehra, not using amla (gooseberry) until Kartik Ichchha Navami, or not picking pickled chiraunji (a dry fruit) until Akshay Tritiya, the reasoning behind it was that they should not be completely destroyed before their time and their lineage should be preserved. Kaitha ripens around Dussehra, and chiraunji fruit ripens in the bright fortnight of Vaisakh. Similarly, the me-dicinal properties in amla come only after Kartik.
Similarly, today there are many Ayurveda companies that procure herbs in bulk. But in the rural Bagheli tradition, a day before procurement, one would go with turmeric rice and pray to the herb, saying (in this tentative English translation): “O such-and-such herb! Can we take you for treatment tomorrow morning? You will be fruitful for us.” In this way, from all these traditions, one can easily estimate how much the procurer would have exploited that herb. In fact, if someone climbed a tree to cut wood or pick fruit, they would first touch the base of the tree before climbing. Similarly, some herbs were harvested at midnight by extracting their exposed roots. Therefore, in our Bagheli tradition, at every step, there was non-destructive exploitation of natural resources, which was synonymous with environmental conservation.
(Babulal Dahiya is a litterateur and expert in folk traditions)
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This article was originally published in the May 16-31, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth