Ethnobotany of India-The Malwa Region

The Ethnobotany of India: The Malwa Region was written with the objective of giving its readers a glimpse of the rich treasure of ethnic diversity possessed by the great Malwa region. The tribal people are a repository of experience and knowledge on indigenous flora and fauna. Unfortunately, this traditional wisdom that they have developed over years of observation, trial, and error, is rapidly vanishing due to modern civilization’s assault on tribal areas. It is, therefore, essential to document the traditional knowledge before it is lost forever. This book aims to do precisely that. The present ethnobotanical work was carried out by conducting extensive and periodic ethnobotanical surveys and assessments of the field and knowledge bank of the tribal-inhabited localities of the Malwa region of India. Unlike the majority of ethnobotanical researchers, who either confine themselves to ethnomedicine or to one or more socio-economic aspects in their research, the present book deals with almost all aspects of ethnobotany. Besides containing information on the land, people, and the ethnobotanical uses of plants in the Malwa region, indices of practical uses, families, local names, as well as a glossary of words used by the tribal people of Rajasthan has also been appended in this book. The data presented is based on actual ethnobotanical surveys conducted by the author for a period spread over more than ten years (2000-2018) to collect first-hand accounts of ethnobotanically interesting species at their flowering or fruiting stage. The description is supported by a collection of 44 photographs. As far as possible, technical terms have been avoided in plant descriptions to make reading interesting and accessible to the lay reader.