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115-427: Kurmi is traditionally a non-elite tiller caste in the lower Gangetic plain of India, especially southern regions of Awadh , eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar and Jharkhand . The Kurmis came to be known for their exceptional work ethic, superior tillage and manuring, and gender-neutral culture, bringing praise from Mughal and British administrators alike. There are several late-19th century theories of

230-619: A Pinus resinosa stand, aged 90 to 100 years. Brahmin Traditional Brahmin ( / ˈ b r ɑː m ɪ n / ; Sanskrit : ब्राह्मण , romanized :  brāhmaṇa ) is a varna ( caste ) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the Kshatriya , Vaishya , and Shudra . The traditional occupation of Brahmins is that of priesthood ( purohit , pandit , or pujari ) at Hindu temples or at socio-religious ceremonies, and

345-523: A "depressed community" and barred them therefore from recruitment into the police service. The governor’s office was flooded with letters from an outraged Kurmi-kshatriya public and was soon obliged to rescind the allegation in an 1896 communique to the police department "His Honor [the governor] is ... of the opinion that Kurmis constitute a respectable community which he would be reluctant to exclude from Government service." The first Kurmi caste association had been formed in 1894 at Lucknow to protest against

460-1032: A Brahmin family, Ramananda welcomed everyone to spiritual pursuits without discriminating anyone by gender, class, caste or religion (such as Muslims). He composed his spiritual message in poems, using widely spoken vernacular language rather than Sanskrit, to make it widely accessible. The Hindu tradition recognises him as the founder of the Hindu Ramanandi Sampradaya , the largest monastic renunciant community in Asia in modern times. Other medieval era Brahmins who led spiritual movements without social or gender discrimination included Andal (9th-century female poet), Basava (12th-century Lingayatism), Dnyaneshwar (13th-century Bhakti poet), Vallabha Acharya (16th-century Vaishnava poet), Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (14th-century Vaishnava saint) were among others. Many 18th and 19th century Brahmins are credited with religious movements that criticised idolatry . For example,

575-595: A Buddhist kingdom, states Leider, may have been because Hindu texts provide guidelines for such social rituals and political ceremonies, while Buddhist texts do not. The Brahmins were also consulted in the transmission, development and maintenance of law and justice system outside India. Hindu Dharmasastras , particularly Manusmriti written by the Prajapati Manu, states Anthony Reid, were "greatly honored in Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), Cambodia and Java-Bali (Indonesia) as

690-560: A big influence on soil temperature. Draper et al. (1985), for instance, documented this as well as the effect it had on root growth of outplants (Table 30). The mounds warmed up quickest, and at soil depths of 0.5 cm and 10 cm averaged 10 and 7 °C higher, respectively, than in the control. On sunny days, daytime surface temperature maxima on the mound and organic mat reached 25 °C to 60 °C, depending on soil wetness and shading. Mounds reached mean soil temperatures of 10 °C at 10 cm depth 5 days after planting, but

805-472: A broadcast slash fire in a clearcut does not give a uniform burn over the whole area. Tarrant (1954), for instance, found only 4% of a 140-ha slash burn had burned severely, 47% had burned lightly, and 49% was unburned. Burning after windrowing obviously accentuates the subsequent heterogeneity. Marked increases in exchangeable calcium also correlated with the amount of slash at least 7 cm in diameter consumed. Phosphorus availability also increased, both in

920-466: A crop requiring skill and enterprise on the part of the cultivator. These, said such commentators as Denzil Ibbetson and E. A. H. Blunt, were the qualities of the non-patrician 'peasant' – the thrifty Jat or canny Kurmi in upper India, .... Similar virtues would be found among the smaller market-gardening populations, these being the people known as Keoris in Hindustan, .... As the economic pressures on

1035-448: A general deterioration in site productivity; Endean and Johnstone (1974) describe experiments to test prescribed burning as a means of seedbed preparation and site amelioration on representative clear-felled Picea/Abies areas. Results showed that, in general, prescribed burning did not reduce organic layers satisfactorily, nor did it increase soil temperature, on the sites tested. Increases in seedling establishment, survival, and growth on

1150-454: A great proportion of the Kurmis, Kacchis and Koeris were in this district as well as in others supplanted by Brahmans ... " and bemoaned the loss of agricultural revenue in part due to, "this unfavourable mutation amongst the cultivators ..." In the first half of the nineteenth century, economic pressures on the large landowning classes increased noticeably. The prices of agricultural lands fell at

1265-621: A later planned caste union, the Raghav Samaj , with the Koeris. Again in the 1970s, the India Kurmi Kshatriya Sabha attempted to bring the Koeris under their wing, but disunity troubled this alliance. Many private caste-based armies surfaced in Bihar between the 1970s and 1990s, largely influenced by landlord farmers reacting to the growing influence of left extremist groups. Among these was

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1380-683: A rough surface finish, whereas secondary tillage tends to produce a smoother surface finish, such as that required to make a good seedbed for many crops. Harrowing and rototilling often combine primary and secondary tillage into one operation. "Tillage" can also mean the land that is tilled. The word "cultivation" has several senses that overlap substantially with those of "tillage". In a general context, both can refer to agriculture. Within agriculture, both can refer to any kind of soil agitation. Additionally, "cultivation" or "cultivating" may refer to an even narrower sense of shallow, selective secondary tillage of row crop fields that kills weeds while sparing

1495-549: A significantly higher volume (329 cm ) than open plantations (204 cm ). Wang et al. (2000) recommended that sheltered plantation site preparation should be used. Up to 1970, no "sophisticated" site preparation equipment had become operational in Ontario, but the need for more efficacious and versatile equipment was increasingly recognized. By this time, improvements were being made to equipment originally developed by field staff, and field testing of equipment from other sources

1610-459: A similar sturdy animal. Horses are generally unsuitable, though breeds such as the Clydesdale were bred as draft animals. Tilling could at times be very labor-intensive. This aspect is discussed in the 16th-century French agronomic text written by Charles Estienne : A raw, rough, and tough soil is hard to till and will neither bring forth corn, nor any other thing without great labor, however

1725-657: A table of slash weight and size distribution on one acre of a hypothetical stand of white spruce. When the diameter distribution of a stand is unknown, an estimate of slash weight and size distribution can be obtained from average stand diameter, number of trees per unit area, and merchantable cubic foot volume. The sample trees in Kiil's study had full symmetrical crowns. Densely growing trees with short and often irregular crowns would probably be overestimated; open-grown trees with long crowns would probably be underestimated. The need to provide shade for young outplants of Engelmann spruce in

1840-699: A teacher, author, strategist, philosopher, economist, jurist, and royal advisor, who assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya in his rise to power and is widely credited for having played an important role in the establishment of the Maurya Empire . Historical records from mid 1st millennium CE and later, suggest Brahmins were agriculturalists and warriors in medieval India, quite often instead of as exception. Donkin and other scholars state that Hoysala Empire records frequently mention Brahmin merchants who "carried on trade in horses, elephants and pearls" and transported goods throughout medieval India before

1955-434: Is commonly used to prepare clearcut sites for planting, e.g., in central British Columbia, and in the temperate region of North America generally. Prescribed burning is carried out primarily for slash hazard reduction and to improve site conditions for regeneration; all or some of the following benefits may accrue: Prescribed burning for preparing sites for direct seeding was tried on a few occasions in Ontario, but none of

2070-665: Is endorsed in Ralph Lilley Turner's A Comparitive Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages (1962-1985), where he lists cognates across many Indo-Aryan languages including Bhojpuri , Bihari , and Eastern Hindi . With the continued waning of Mughal rule in the early 18th century, the Indian subcontinent 's hinterland dwellers, many of whom were armed and nomadic, began to appear more frequently in settled areas and interact with townspeople and agriculturists. Many new rulers of

2185-537: Is from verifiable records or archaeological evidence, and much that is constructed from ahistorical Sanskrit works and fiction. Michael Witzel writes: Current research in the area is fragmentary. The state of our knowledge of this fundamental subject is preliminary, at best. Most Sanskrit works are a-historic or, at least, not especially interested in presenting a chronological account of India's history. When we actually encounter history, such as in Rajatarangini or in

2300-489: Is often referred to as conventional tillage , but as conservational tillage is now more widely used than intensive tillage (in the United States), it is often not appropriate to refer to this type of tillage as conventional. Intensive tillage often involves multiple operations with implements such as a mold board, disk, or chisel plow . After this, a finisher with a harrow , rolling basket, and cutter can be used to prepare

2415-425: Is undertaken to ameliorate one or more constraints that would otherwise be likely to thwart management objectives. A valuable bibliography on the effects of soil temperature and site preparation on subalpine and boreal tree species has been prepared by McKinnon et al. (2002). Site preparation is the work that is done before a forest area is regenerated. Some types of site preparation are burning. Broadcast burning

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2530-565: The Bhumi Sena , the membership of which was drawn mainly from youths who had a Kurmi origin. Bhumi Sena was much feared in the Patna region and also had influence in the districts of Nalanda, Jehanabad and Gaya. The Central Bureau of Statistics of Nepal classifies the Kurmi as a subgroup within the broader social group of Madheshi Other Caste. At the time of the 2011 Nepal census , 231,129 people (0.9% of

2645-616: The Brachmanes , and the other the Sarmanes ... Patrick Olivelle states that both Buddhist and Brahmanical literature repeatedly define "Brahmin" not in terms of family of birth, but in terms of personal qualities. These virtues and characteristics mirror the values cherished in Hinduism during the Sannyasa stage of life, or the life of renunciation for spiritual pursuits. Brahmins, states Olivelle, were

2760-538: The Gopalavamsavali of Nepal, the texts do not deal with brahmins in great detail. According to Kalhana 's Rajatarangini (12th cent. CE) and Sahyadrikhanda (5th–13th cent. CE) of Skandapurana, Brahmins are broadly classified into two groups based on geography. The northern Pancha Gauda group comprises five Brahmin communities, as mentioned in the text, residing north of the Vindhya mountain range . Historically,

2875-500: The Gupta Empire era" (3rd century to 6th century CE), when Buddhism dominated the land. "No Brahmin, no sacrifice, no ritualistic act of any kind ever, even once, is referred to" in any Indian texts between third century BCE and the late first century CE. He also states that "The absence of literary and material evidence, however, does not mean that Brahmanical culture did not exist at that time, but only that it had no elite patronage and

2990-475: The Imperial Gazetteer brought out by Hunter. Risley is best known for the now discounted attribution of all differences in caste to varying proportions of seven racial types which included "Dravidian," "Aryo-Dravidian," and "Indo-Aryan". The Kurmi fell into two such categories. In the ethnological map of India published in the 1909 Imperial Gazetteer of India and based on the 1901 Census supervised by Risley,

3105-725: The farm tractor was introduced, which made modern large-scale agriculture possible. However, the destruction of the prairie grasses and tillage of the fertile topsoil of the American Midwest caused the Dust Bowl , in which the soil was blown away and stirred up into dust storms that blackened the sky. This prompted re-consideration of tillage techniques, but in the United States as of 2019, 3 trillion pounds of soil were estimated to be lost due to erosion while adoption of improved techniques for controlling erosion are still not widespread. In

3220-469: The forest fire hazard on harvested sites. Forest managers interested in the application of prescribed burning for hazard reduction and silviculture, were shown a method for quantifying the slash load by Kiil (1968). In west-central Alberta, he felled, measured, and weighed 60 white spruce, graphed (a) slash weight per merchantable unit volume against diameter at breast height (dbh), and (b) weight of fine slash (<1.27 cm) also against dbh, and produced

3335-617: The 14th-century. The Pāli Canon depicts Brahmins as the most prestigious and elite non-Buddhist figures. They mention them parading their learning. The Pali Canon and other Buddhist texts such as the Jataka Tales also record the livelihood of Brahmins to have included being farmers, handicraft workers and artisans such as carpentry and architecture. Buddhist sources extensively attest, state Greg Bailey and Ian Mabbett, that Brahmins were "supporting themselves not by religious practice, but employment in all manner of secular occupations", in

3450-503: The 18th century came from such nomadic backgrounds. The effect of this interaction on India's social organisation lasted well into the colonial period. During much of this time, non-elite tillers and pastoralists, such as the Kurmi, were part of a social spectrum that blended only indistinctly into the elite landowning classes at one end, and the menial or ritually polluting classes at the other. The Kurmi were famed as market gardeners. In western and northern Awadh , for example, for much of

3565-563: The Brahman and Rajput landlords as ineffective and their morality as false. In the rural Ganges valley of Bihar and Eastern United Provinces, the Bhakti cults of Rama , the incorruptible Kshatriya god-king of Hindu tradition, and Krishna , the divine cowherd of Gokul, had long been entrenched among the Kurmi and Ahir. The leaders of the Kisan Sabhas urged their Kurmi and Ahir followers to lay claim to

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3680-688: The Brahmins Raja Ram Mohan Roy led Brahmo Samaj and Dayananda Saraswati led the Arya Samaj . Some Brahmins formed an influential group in Burmese Buddhist kingdoms in 18th- and 19th-century. The court Brahmins were locally called Punna . During the Konbaung dynasty , Buddhist kings relied on their court Brahmins to consecrate them to kingship in elaborate ceremonies, and to help resolve political questions. This role of Hindu Brahmins in

3795-504: The Congress party. The Triveni Sangh suffered badly in the 1937 elections, although it did win in some areas. The organisation also suffered from caste rivalries, notably the superior organisational ability of the higher castes who opposed it, as well as the inability of the Yadavs to renounce their belief that they were natural leaders and that the Kurmi were somehow inferior. Similar problems beset

3910-518: The Gangetic Plain." In the writings of the occupational theorists, the Kurmis and the Jats came to be extolled for their yeoman-like purposefulness, tirelessness, and thrift, all of which, according to writers such as Crooke, Ibbetson, and Blunt had been largely abandoned by the landed elite. Crooke wrote about the Kurmi in 1897: They are about the most industrious and hard-working agricultural tribe in

4025-499: The Indian subcontinent. It seems likely that Kannauj and Middle country was the place of origin of majority of migrating Brahmins throughout the medieval centuries. Coming from Kannauj is a frequent claim among Brahmins in areas distant from Madhyadesha or Ganges heartland. The term Brahmin appears extensively in ancient and medieval Sutras and commentary texts of Buddhism and Jainism . Modern scholars state that such usage of

4140-532: The Kshatriya mantle. Promoting what was advertised as soldierly manliness, the Kisan Sabhas agitated for the entry of non-elite farmers into the British Indian army during World War I; they formed cow protection societies ; they asked their members to wear the sacred thread of the twice-born , and, in contrast to the Kurmis own traditions, to sequester their women in the manner of Rajputs and Brahmins. In 1930,

4255-596: The Kurmi of the United Provinces were classified as "Aryo-Dravidian," whereas the Kurmi of the Central Provinces were counted among "Dravidians". In the 1901 Census of India, the category of varna , the four-fold graded system, was included in the official classification of caste, the only time this was the case. In the United Provinces (UP), the Kurmi were classified under "Class VIII: Castes from whom some of

4370-624: The Kurmis of Bihar joined with the Yadav and Koeri agriculturalists to enter local elections. They lost badly but in 1934 the three communities formed the Triveni Sangh political party, which allegedly had a million dues-paying members by 1936. However, the organisation was hobbled by competition from the Congress-backed Backward Class Federation, which was formed around the same time, and by co-option of community leaders by

4485-872: The Mughals, later to the British Raj. The East India Company also recruited sepoys (soldiers) from the Brahmin communities of Bihar and Awadh (in the present day Uttar Pradesh) for the Bengal army . Many Brahmins, in other parts of South Asia lived like other varna, engaged in all sorts of professions. Among Nepalese Hindus, for example, Niels Gutschow and Axel Michaels report the actual observed professions of Brahmins from 18th- to early 20th-century included being temple priests, ministers, merchants, farmers, potters, masons, carpenters, coppersmiths, stone workers, barbers, and gardeners, among others. Other 20th-century surveys, such as in

4600-553: The Muslim custom of marrying first cousins and of burying their dead. In some regions, the Kurmis' success as tillers led to land ownership, and to avowals of high status, as noted, for examples, by Francis Buchanan in the early 19th century among the Ayodhya Kurmis of the Awadh. Earlier, in the late eighteenth century, when Asaf-Ud-Dowlah , the fourth Nawab of Awadh , attempted to grant

4715-472: The Province. The industry of his wife has passed into a proverb: Bhali jât Kurmin, khurpi hât, Khet nirâwê apan pî kê sâth. "A good lot is the Kurmi woman; she takes her spud and weeds the field with her lord." According to Susan Bayly, By the mid-nineteenth century, influential revenue specialists were reporting that they could tell the caste of a landed man by simply glancing at his crops. In

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4830-551: The Ram- and Krishna-loving Koeris, Kurmis and Ahirs ... In either case, these calls were buttressed with appeals to Sanskritic varna theory and Brahmanical caste convention. ... Kurmi and Goala/Ahir tillers who held tenancies from these 'squireens' found themselves being identified as Shudras, that is, people who were mandated to serve those of the superior Kshatriya and Brahman varnas. The elite landowning classes, such as Rajputs and Bhumihars , now sought to present themselves as flagbearers of

4945-539: The Rigveda and, both then and later, a social ideal rather than a social reality". According to Vijay Nath, in the Markandeya Purana (250 CE), there are references to Brahmins who were born into the families of Raksasas . He posits that this is an indication that some Brahmins are immigrants and some are also mixed. According to Abraham Eraly , "Brahmin as a varna hardly had any presence in historical records before

5060-518: The Royal tradition of Thailand , particularly for the consecration and to mark annual land fertility rituals of Buddhist kings. A small Brahmanical temple Devasathan , established in 1784 by King Rama I of Thailand, has been managed by ethnically Thai Brahmins ever since. The temple hosts Phra Phikhanesuan (Ganesha), Phra Narai (Narayana, Vishnu), Phra Itsuan (Shiva), Uma , Brahma , Indra ( Sakka ) and other Hindu deities. The tradition asserts that

5175-706: The Thai Brahmins have roots in Hindu holy city of Varanasi and southern state of Tamil Nadu, go by the title Pandita , and the various annual rites and state ceremonies they conduct has been a blend of Buddhist and Hindu rituals. The coronation ceremony of the Thai king is almost entirely conducted by the royal Brahmins. According to 2007 reports, Brahmins in India are about five per cent of its total population. The Himalayan states of Uttarakhand (20%) and Himachal Pradesh (14%) have

5290-560: The USA's Northern Corn Belt states lacks consistent yield results; however, there is still interest in deep tillage within agriculture. In areas that are not well-drained, deep tillage may be used as an alternative to installing more expensive tile drainage. Plowing: Tilling can damage ancient structures such as long barrows . In the UK, half of the long barrows in Gloucestershire and almost all

5405-551: The Vindhya mountain range formed the southern boundary of the Āryāvarta , the territory of the ancient Indo-Aryan peoples , and Gauda has territorial, ethnographic and linguistic connotations. Linguistically, the term "Gauda" refers to the Sanskrit-derived languages of northern India. The Pancha Gauda Brahmins are: Subcastes of Gaur Brahmins are: Subcastes of Kanyakubja Brahmins are: The Pancha Dravida Brahmins reside to

5520-455: The ancient Hindu tradition. At the same time, there was a proliferation of Brahmanical rituals in the daily life of the elite, a greater stress on pure bloodlines, more stringent conditions placed on matrimonial alliances, and, as noted by some social reformers of the day, an increase among the Rajputs of female infanticide , a practice that had little history among the Kurmi. The second half of

5635-463: The book "Horse-Hoeing Husbandry: An Essay on the Principles of Vegetation and Tillage," which argued that soil needed to be pulverized into fine powder for plants to make use of it. Tull believed that, since water, air, and heat were clearly not the primary substance of a plant, plants were made of earth, and thus had to consume very small pieces of earth as food. Tull wrote that each subsequent tillage of

5750-551: The burial mounds in Essex have been damaged. According to English Heritage in 2003, ploughing with modern powerful tractors had done as much damage in the last six decades as traditional farming did in the previous six centuries. Modern agricultural science has greatly reduced the use of tillage. Crops can be grown for several years without any tillage through the use of herbicides to control weeds, crop varieties that tolerate packed soil, and equipment that can plant seeds or fumigate

5865-490: The burned sites were probably the result of slight reductions in the depth of the organic layer, minor increases in soil temperature, and marked improvements in the efficiency of the planting crews. Results also suggested that the process of site deterioration has not been reversed by the burning treatments applied. Slash weight (the oven-dry weight of the entire crown and that portion of the stem less than four inches in diameter) and size distribution are major factors influencing

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5980-478: The burns was hot enough to produce a seedbed that was adequate without supplementary mechanical site preparation. Changes in soil chemical properties associated with burning include significantly increased pH, which Macadam (1987) in the Sub-boreal Spruce Zone of central British Columbia found persisting more than a year after the burn. Average fuel consumption was 20 to 24 t/ha and the forest floor depth

6095-640: The classical period of India. Some of the Brahmin occupations mentioned in the Buddhist texts such as Jatakas and Sutta Nipata are very lowly. The Dharmasutras too mention Brahmin farmers. According to Haidar and Sardar, unlike the Mughal Empire in Northern India, Brahmins figured prominently in the administration of Deccan sultanates . Under Golconda Sultanate Telugu Niyogi Brahmins served in many different roles such as accountants, ministers, in

6210-401: The control did not reach that temperature until 58 days after planting. During the first growing season, mounds had 3 times as many days with a mean soil temperature greater than 10 °C than did the control microsites. Draper et al.'s (1985) mounds received 5 times the amount of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) summed over all sampled microsites throughout the first growing season;

6325-418: The control treatment consistently received about 14% of daily background PAR, while mounds received over 70%. By November, fall frosts had reduced shading, eliminating the differential. Quite apart from its effect on temperature, incident radiation is also important photosynthetically. The average control microsite was exposed to levels of light above the compensation point for only 3 hours, i.e., one-quarter of

6440-449: The crop plants. Primary tillage loosens the soil and mixes in fertilizer or plant material, resulting in soil with a rough texture. Secondary tillage produces finer soil and sometimes shapes the rows, preparing the seed bed. It also provides weed control throughout the growing season during the maturation of the crop plants, unless such weed control is instead achieved with low-till or no-till methods involving herbicides . Tilling

6555-499: The crop row. In comparison to no-till, which relies on the previous year's plant residue to protect the soil and aids in postponement of the warming of the soil and crop growth in Northern climates, zone tillage produces a strip approximately five inches wide that simultaneously breaks up plow pans, assists in warming the soil and helps to prepare a seedbed. When combined with cover crops, zone tillage helps replace lost organic matter, slows

6670-454: The daily light period, whereas mounds received light above the compensation point for 11 hours, i.e., 86% of the same daily period. Assuming that incident light in the 100–600 μE/m /s intensity range is the most important for photosynthesis , the mounds received over 4 times the total daily light energy that reached the control microsites. With linear site preparation, orientation is sometimes dictated by topography or other considerations, but

6785-466: The defining documents of law and order, which kings were obliged to uphold. They were copied, translated and incorporated into local law code, with strict adherence to the original text in Burma and Siam, and a stronger tendency to adapt to local needs in Java (Indonesia)". The mythical origins of Cambodia are credited to a Brahmin prince named Kaundinya, who arrived by sea, married a Naga princess living in

6900-515: The deterioration of the soil, improves soil drainage, increases soil water and nutrient holding capacity, and allows necessary soil organisms to survive. It has been successfully used on farms in the Midwest and West of the USA for over 40 years, and is currently used on more than 36% of the U.S. farmland. Some specific states where zone tillage is currently in practice are Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Its use in

7015-403: The difference that the latter was not sacerdotal. The Brahmins were expected to perform all six Vedic duties as opposed to other twice-borns who performed three. Historical records, state scholars, suggest that Brahmin varna was not limited to a particular status or priest and the teaching profession. Chanakya , a Brahmin born in 375 BCE, was an ancient Indian polymath who was active as

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7130-402: The eighteenth century, the Muslim gentry offered the Kurmi highly discounted rental rates for clearing the jungle and cultivating it. Once the land had been brought stably under the plough, however, the land rent was usually raised to 30 to 80 per cent above the going rate. Although British revenue officials later ascribed the high rent to the prejudice among the elite rural castes against handling

7245-484: The etymology of Kurmi . According to Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya (1896), the word may be derived from an Indian tribal language, or be a Sanskrit compound term krishi karmi , "agriculturalist." A theory of Gustav Salomon Oppert (1893) holds that it may be derived from kṛṣmi , meaning "ploughman". According to Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1926), the Bengali word kuṛmī or kurmī derives from Sanskrit kuṭumbin . This view

7360-550: The flooded lands. Kaudinya founded Kambuja-desa, or Kambuja (transliterated to Kampuchea or Cambodia). Kaundinya introduced Hinduism, particularly Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and Harihara (half Vishnu, half Shiva), and these ideas grew in southeast Asia in the 1st millennium CE. The Chams Balamon (Hindu Brahmin Chams) form a majority of the Cham population in Vietnam . Brahmins have been part of

7475-535: The forest floor and in the 0 cm to 15 cm mineral soil layer, and the increase was still evident, albeit somewhat diminished, 21 months after burning. However, in another study in the same Sub-boreal Spruce Zone found that although it increased immediately after the burn, phosphorus availability had dropped to below pre-burn levels within 9 months. Nitrogen will be lost from the site by burning, though concentrations in remaining forest floor were found by Macadam (1987) to have increased in two out of six plots,

7590-589: The fortunes of the non-elite peasants, such as the Kurmi, who worked them. After the rebellion, the landowning classes, defeated but still pressed economically in the new British Raj , attempted to treat their tenants and labourers as people of lowly birth and to demand unpaid labour from them. According to historical anthropologist Susan Bayly , In some instances these were attempts to stave off decline by reinvigorating or intensifying existing forms of customary service. Elsewhere these were wholly novel demands, many being imposed on 'clean' tillers and cattle-keepers like

7705-400: The groundswell of egalitarian sentiment being espoused then by the devotional Vaishnava movements, especially those based on Tulsidas 's Ramcharitmanas , the Kurmi largely resisted these demands. Their resistance, however, did not take the form of denial of caste or of caste-based imposition, but rather of disagreement about where they stood in the caste ranking. A noteworthy attribute of

7820-577: The high Rocky Mountains is emphasized by the U.S. Forest Service. Acceptable planting spots are defined as microsites on the north and east sides of down logs, stumps, or slash, and lying in the shadow cast by such material. Where the objectives of management specify more uniform spacing, or higher densities, than obtainable from an existing distribution of shade-providing material, redistribution or importing of such material has been undertaken. Site preparation on some sites might be done simply to facilitate access by planters, or to improve access and increase

7935-619: The increased dependence of peasant cultivators such as the Kurmi. In the Benares division, which had come under the revenue purview of the British East India Company in 1779, the Chalisa famine of 1783 and the relentless revenue demand from the Company reduced the status of many Kurmi cultivators. A British revenue agent wrote in 1790, "It unfortunately happened that during the famine aforesaid

8050-629: The kshatriya title of Raja to a group of influential landed Ayodhya Kurmis, he was thwarted by a united opposition of Rajputs , who were themselves (as described by Buchanan), "a group of newcomers to the court, who had been peasant soldiers only a few years before ..." According to historian William Pinch: Rajputs of Awadh, who along with brahmans constituted the main beneficiaries of what historian Richard Barnett characterizes as "Asaf's permissive program of social mobility," were not willing to let that mobility reach beyond certain arbitrary socio-cultural boundaries. ... The divergent claims to status in

8165-527: The land themselves, many supplementing their income by selling their labour services to other farmers. Many of the prominent thinkers and earliest champions of the Bhakti movement were Brahmins, a movement that encouraged a direct relationship of an individual with a personal god. Among the many Brahmins who nurtured the Bhakti movement were Ramanuja , Nimbarka , Vallabha and Madhvacharya of Vaishnavism, Ramananda , another devotional poet sant . Born in

8280-478: The material or occupational theorists led by the ethnographer and folklorist William Crooke (1848–1923), author of one of the most widely read provincial Castes and Tribes surveys, and such other influential scholar-officials as Denzil Ibbetson and E. A. H. Blunt . Seeing caste as a fundamental force in Indian life, Risley, especially, influenced official views as expressed in both the Censuses of British India and

8395-456: The mid 1930s Frank and Herbert Petty of Doncaster, Victoria, Australia developed the Petty Plough . This steerable plough could be pulled by either two horses or a tractor and the disc wheels could be steered in unison, or separately allowing the operator to plough the center of rows as well as between and around orchard trees. Primary tillage is usually conducted after the last harvest, when

8510-652: The mortality of white spruce. Significant difference in height was found between open and sheltered plantations for black spruce but not for white spruce, and root collar diameter in sheltered plantations was significantly larger than in open plantations for black spruce but not for white spruce. Black spruce open plantation had significantly smaller volume (97 cm ) compared with black spruce sheltered (210 cm ), as well as white spruce open (175 cm ) and sheltered (229 cm ) plantations. White spruce open plantations also had smaller volume than white spruce sheltered plantations. For transplant stock, strip plantations had

8625-515: The mouth of Purusha , being that part of the body from which words emerge. The Purusha Sukta varna verse is now generally considered to have been inserted at a later date into the Vedic text, possibly as a charter myth . Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton, a professor of Sanskrit and Religious studies, state, "there is no evidence in the Rigveda for an elaborate, much-subdivided and overarching caste system", and "the varna system seems to be embryonic in

8740-528: The new British rulers. They were the first community to take up Western education and therefore dominated lower level of British administration in the 19th century. Similarly, the Tamil Brahmins were also quick to take up English education during British colonial rule and dominate government service and law. Eric Bellman states that during the Islamic Mughal Empire era Brahmins served as advisers to

8855-460: The nineteenth century (and earlier) illustrate the point that for non-Muslims, while varna was generally accepted as the basis for identity, on the whole little agreement prevailed with respect to the place of the individual and the jati within a varna hierarchy. Although the free peasant farm was the mainstay of farming in many parts of north India in the 18th century, in some regions, a combination of climatic, political, and demographic factors led to

8970-468: The nineteenth century also largely overlapped with the coming of age of ethnology—interpreted then as the science of race—in the study of societies the world over. Although later to be discredited, the methods of this discipline were eagerly absorbed and adopted in British India, as were those of the emerging science of anthropology. Driven in part by the intellectual ferment of the discipline and in part by

9085-414: The north, these observers claimed, a field of 'second-rate barley' would belong to a Rajput or Brahman who took pride in shunning the plough and secluding his womenfolk. Such a man was to be blamed for his own decline, fecklessly mortgaging and then selling off his lands to maintain his unproductive dependents. By the same logic, a flourishing field of wheat would belong to a non-twice-born tiller, wheat being

9200-532: The number of times the farmer travels over the field, significant savings in fuel and labor are made. Conservation tillage is used on over 370 million acres, mostly in South America, Oceania and North America. In most years since 1997, conservation tillage was used in US cropland more than intensive or reduced tillage. However, conservation tillage delays warming of the soil due to the reduction of dark earth exposure to

9315-447: The number or distribution of microsites suitable for planting or seeding. Wang et al. (2000) determined field performance of white and black spruces 8 and 9 years after outplanting on boreal mixedwood sites following site preparation (Donaren disc trenching versus no trenching) in 2 plantation types (open versus sheltered) in southeastern Manitoba. Donaren trenching slightly reduced the mortality of black spruce but significantly increased

9430-586: The orientation can often be chosen. It can make a difference. A disk-trenching experiment in the Sub-boreal Spruce Zone in interior British Columbia investigated the effect on growth of young outplants ( lodgepole pine ) in 13 microsite planting positions: berm, hinge, and trench in each of north, south, east, and west aspects, as well as in untreated locations between the furrows. Tenth-year stem volumes of trees on south-, east-, and west-facing microsites were significantly greater than those of trees on north-facing and untreated microsites. However, planting spot selection

9545-491: The others showing decreases. Nutrient losses may be outweighed, at least in the short term, by improved soil microclimate through the reduced thickness of forest floor where low soil temperatures are a limiting factor. The Picea/Abies forests of the Alberta foothills are often characterized by deep accumulations of organic matter on the soil surface and cold soil temperatures, both of which make reforestation difficult and result in

9660-490: The patrician landed groups continued through the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, there were increasing demands for unpaid labour directed at the Kurmi and other non-elite cultivators. The landed elites' demands were couched in avowals of their ancient rights as "twice-born" landowners and of the Kurmi's alleged lowly, even servile, status, which required them to serve. At times encouraged by sympathetic British officials and at other times carried by

9775-420: The performing of rite of passage rituals, such as solemnising a wedding with hymns and prayers. Traditionally, Brahmins are accorded the highest ritual status of the four social classes, and they also served as spiritual teachers ( guru or acharya ). In practice, Indian texts suggest that some Brahmins historically also became agriculturalists , warriors , traders , and had also held other occupations in

9890-518: The plough, the main reason was the greater productivity of the Kurmi, whose success lay in superior manuring. According to historian Christopher Bayly , Whereas the majority of cultivators manured only the lands immediately around the village and used these lands for growing food grains, Kurmis avoided using animal dung for fuel and manured the poorer lands farther from the village (the manjha ). They were able, therefore, to grow valuable market crops such as potatoes, melons and tobacco immediately around

10005-802: The police recruitment policy. This was followed by an organisation in Awadh that sought to draw other communities — such as the Patidars , Marathas , Kapus , Reddys and Naidus  — under the umbrella of the Kurmi name. This body then campaigned for Kurmis to classify themselves as Kshatriya in the 1901 census and, in 1910, led to the formation of the All India Kurmi Kshatriya Mahasabha . Simultaneously, newly constituted farmers' unions, or Kisan Sabhas —composed of cultivators and pastoralists, many of whom were Kurmi, Ahir, and Yadav ( Goala ), and inspired by Hindu mendicants, such as Baba Ram Chandra and Swami Sahajanand Saraswati —denounced

10120-598: The policy of seeking and obtaining for field testing new equipment from Scandinavia and elsewhere that seemed to hold promise for Ontario conditions, primarily in the north. Thus, testing was begun of the Brackekultivator from Sweden and the Vako-Visko rotary furrower from Finland. Site preparation treatments that create raised planting spots have commonly improved outplant performance on sites subject to low soil temperature and excess soil moisture. Mounding can certainly have

10235-536: The political compulsions in both Britain and India, two dominant views of caste emerged among the administrator-scholars of the day. According to Susan Bayly: Those like (Sir William) Hunter , as well as the key figures of H. H. Risley (1851–1911) and his protégé Edgar Thurston , who were disciples of the French race theorist Topinard and his European followers, subsumed discussions of caste into theories of biologically determined race essences, ... Their great rivals were

10350-429: The population of Nepal) were Kurmi. The frequency of Kurmis by province was as follows: The frequency of Kurmis was higher than national average (0.9%) in the following districts: Notes Citations Tillage Tillage that is deeper and more thorough is classified as primary, and tillage that is shallower and sometimes more selective of location is secondary. Primary tillage such as ploughing tends to produce

10465-460: The resulting Kurmi-kshatriya movement was the leadership provided by educated Kurmis who were now filling the lower and middle levels of government jobs. According to William Pinch: The mantle of leadership in this phase befell the well-connected Ramdin Sinha, a government forester who had gained notoriety by resigning from his official post to protest a provincial circular of 1894 that included Kurmis as

10580-547: The revenue administration, and in the judicial service. The Deccan sultanates also heavily recruited Marathi Brahmins at different levels of their administration. During the days of Maratha Empire in the 17th and 18th century, the occupation of Marathi Brahmins ranged from being state administrators, being warriors to being de facto rulers as Peshwa . After the collapse of Maratha empire, Brahmins in Maharashtra region were quick to take advantage of opportunities opened up by

10695-596: The same time that the East India Company, after acquiring the Ceded and Conquered Provinces (later the North-Western Provinces ) in 1805, began to press landowners for more land revenue . The annexation of Awadh in 1856 created more fear and discontent among the landed elite, and may have contributed to the Indian rebellion of 1857 . Economic pressures also opened marginal areas to intensive agriculture and turned

10810-494: The seasons be temperate in moisture and dryness   ... you must labor it most exquisitely, harrow it and manure it very oft with great store of dung, so you shall make it better   ... but especially desire that they may not be watered with rain, for water is as good as poison to them. The popularity of tillage as an agricultural technique in early modern times had to do with theories about plant biology proposed by European thinkers. In 1731, English writer Jethro Tull published

10925-538: The seed bed. There are many variations. Conservation tillage leaves at least 30% of crop residue on the soil surface, or at least 1,000 lb/ac (1,100 kg/ha) of small grain residue on the surface during the critical soil erosion period. This slows water movement, which reduces the amount of soil erosion. Additionally, conservation tillage has been found to benefit predatory arthropods that can enhance pest control. Conservation tillage also benefits farmers by reducing fuel consumption and soil compaction. By reducing

11040-473: The slash. The S.F.I. scarifier, after strengthening, had been "quite successful" for 2 years, promising trials were under way with the cone scarifier and barrel ring scarifier, and development had begun on a new flail scarifier for use on sites with shallow, rocky soils. Recognition of the need to become more effective and efficient in site preparation led the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests to adopt

11155-522: The social class from which most ascetics came. The term Brahmin in Indian texts has also signified someone who is good and virtuous, not just someone of priestly class. The earliest inferred reference to "Brahmin" as a possible social class is in the Rigveda , occurs once, and the hymn is called Purusha Sukta . According to a hymn in Mandala 10 , Rigveda 10.90.11-2, Brahmins are described as having emerged from

11270-461: The soil is wet enough to allow plowing but also allows good traction. Some soil types can be plowed dry. The objective of primary tillage is to attain a reasonable depth of soft soil, incorporate crop residues, kill weeds, and to aerate the soil. Secondary tillage is any subsequent tillage, to incorporate fertilizers, reduce the soil to a finer tilth , level the surface, or control weeds. Reduced tillage leaves between 15 and 30% crop residue cover on

11385-445: The soil or 500 to 1000 pounds per acre (560 to 1100 kg/ha) of small grain residue during the critical erosion period. This may involve the use of a chisel plow, field cultivators, or other implements. See the general comments below to see how they can affect the amount of residue. Intensive tillage leaves less than 15% crop residue cover or less than 500 pounds per acre (560 kg/ha) of small grain residue. This type of tillage

11500-581: The soil without really digging it up. This practice, called no-till farming , reduces costs and environmental change by reducing soil erosion and diesel fuel usage. Site preparation is any of the various treatments applied to a site to ready it for seeding or planting. The purpose is to facilitate the regeneration of that site by the chosen method. Site preparation may be designed to achieve, singly or in any combination, improved access by reducing or rearranging slash and ameliorating adverse forest floor, soil, vegetation, or other biotic factors. Site preparation

11615-540: The soil would increase its fertility, and that it was impossible to till the soil too much. However, scientific observation has shown that the opposite is true; tillage causes soil to lose structural qualities that allow plant roots, water, and nutrients to penetrate it, accelerates soil loss by erosion , and results in soil compaction . The steel plow allowed farming in the American Midwest , where tough prairie grasses and rocks caused trouble. Soon after 1900,

11730-561: The south of the Vindhya mountain range. The term "Dravida" too has territorial, linguistic and ethnological connotations, referring to southern India, the Dravidian people, and to the Dravidian languages of southern India. The Pancha Dravida Brahmins are: The Dharmasutra and Dharmashastra texts of Hinduism describe the expectations, duties and role of Brahmins. According to Kulkarni, the Grhya-sutras state that Yajna , Adhyayana (studying

11845-407: The state of Uttar Pradesh , recorded that the primary occupation of almost all Brahmin families surveyed was neither priestly nor Vedas-related, but like other varnas, ranged from crop farming (80 per cent of Brahmins), dairy, service, labour such as cooking, and other occupations. The survey reported that the Brahmin families involved in agriculture as their primary occupation in modern times plough

11960-432: The state of site preparation in Ontario noted that blades and rakes were found to be well suited to post-cut scarification in tolerant hardwood stands for natural regeneration of yellow birch . Plows were most effective for treating dense brush prior to planting, often in conjunction with a planting machine. Scarifying teeth, e.g., Young's teeth, were sometimes used to prepare sites for planting, but their most effective use

12075-459: The term Brahmin in ancient texts does not imply a caste, but simply "masters" (experts), guardian, recluse, preacher or guide of any tradition. An alternate synonym for Brahmin in the Buddhist and other non-Hindu tradition is Mahano . Strabo cites Megasthenes, highlighting two Indian philosophical schools Sramana and Brahmana : Megasthenes makes a different division of the philosophers, saying that they are of two kinds, one of which he calls

12190-456: The twice-born would take water and pakki (food cooked with ghee ), without question;" whereas, in Bihar , they were listed under: "Class III, Clean Sudra, Subclass (a)." According to William Pinch, "Risley's hierarchy (for United Provinces) was far more elaborate than that for Bihar, suggesting that contending claims of social respectability may have been more deeply entrenched in the western half of

12305-491: The vedas and teaching), dana pratigraha (accepting and giving gifts) are the "peculiar duties and privileges of brahmins". John Bussanich states that the ethical precepts set for Brahmins, in ancient Indian texts, are similar to Greek virtue-ethics, that "Manu's dharmic Brahmin can be compared to Aristotle's man of practical wisdom", and that "the virtuous Brahmin is not unlike the Platonic-Aristotelian philosopher" with

12420-446: The village, sow fine grains in the manjha , and restrict the poor millet subsistence crops to the periphery. A network of ganjs (fixed rural markets) and Kurmi or Kacchi settlements could transform a local economy within a year or two. Cross-cultural influences were felt also. Hindu tillers worshipped at Muslim shrines in the small towns founded by their Muslim overlords. The Hindu Kurmis of Chunar and Jaunpur , for instance, took up

12535-426: The warmth of the spring sun, thus delaying the planting of the next year's spring crop of corn. Zone tillage is a form of modified deep tillage in which only narrow strips are tilled, leaving soil in between the rows untilled. This type of tillage agitates the soil to help reduce soil compaction problems and to improve internal soil drainage . It is designed to only disrupt the soil in a narrow strip directly below

12650-587: Was first performed via human labor, sometimes involving slaves . Hoofed animals could also be used to till soil by trampling, in addition to pigs, whose natural instincts are to root the ground regularly if allowed to. The wooden plow was then invented. ( It is difficult to pinpoint the exact date of its invention . However, the earliest evidence of plow usage dates back to around 4000 BCE in Mesopotamia ( modern-day Iraq ) . It could be pulled with human labor, or by mule , ox , elephant , water buffalo , or

12765-434: Was found to be preparing sites for seeding, particularly in backlog areas carrying light brush and dense herbaceous growth. Rolling choppers found application in treating heavy brush but could be used only on stone-free soils. Finned drums were commonly used on jack pine–spruce cutovers on fresh brushy sites with a deep duff layer and heavy slash, and they needed to be teamed with a tractor pad unit to secure good distribution of

12880-621: Was increasing. According to J. Hall (1970), in Ontario at least, the most widely used site preparation technique was post-harvest mechanical scarification by equipment front-mounted on a bulldozer (blade, rake, V-plow, or teeth), or dragged behind a tractor (Imsett or S.F.I. scarifier, or rolling chopper). Drag type units designed and constructed by Ontario's Department of Lands and Forests used anchor chain or tractor pads separately or in combination, or were finned steel drums or barrels of various sizes and used in sets alone or combined with tractor pad or anchor chain units. J. Hall's (1970) report on

12995-481: Was largely confined to rural folk, and therefore went unrecorded in history". Their role as priests and repository of sacred knowledge, as well as their importance in the practice of Vedic Shrauta rituals, grew during the Gupta Empire era and thereafter. However, the knowledge about actual history of Brahmins or other varnas of Hinduism in and after the first millennium is fragmentary and preliminary, with little that

13110-431: Was reduced by 28% to 36%. The increases correlated well with the amounts of slash (both total and ≥7 cm diameter) consumed. The change in pH depends on the severity of the burn and the amount consumed; the increase can be as much as 2 units, a 100-fold change. Deficiencies of copper and iron in the foliage of white spruce on burned clearcuts in central British Columbia might be attributable to elevated pH levels. Even

13225-471: Was seen to be more important overall than trench orientation. In a Minnesota study, the N–S strips accumulated more snow but snow melted faster than on E–W strips in the first year after felling. Snow-melt was faster on strips near the centre of the strip-felled area than on border strips adjoining the intact stand. The strips, 50 feet (15.24 m) wide, alternating with uncut strips 16 feet (4.88 m) wide, were felled in

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