Proto-Tibeto-Burman Grain Crops

Abstract

The Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages are spread over the entire Himalayan region, from Kashmir in the west, across northern South Asia, southwestern China and northern mainland Southeast Asia, in a wide variety of ecological zones from very high altitude to tropical. They include over 200 languages falling into four major subgroups (Western, Central, Sal, Eastern), with various additional smaller subgroups (Bradley 2002). Much ink has been spilled in the linguistic literature about the original homeland of the early Tibeto-Burman groups, but it is clear that this must have been somewhere south and west of the early Chinese civilization in the upper Yellow River valley. One frequent hypothesis is that the area of greatest genetic linguistic diversity within a language group is the point of origin; on this criterion, this would be in the mountains of northeastern India, southeastern Tibet and northern Burma, where the four major subgroups meet and there are some additional smaller subgroups as well. If this is so, we would expect highland grain crops indigenous to this area to have been the staple, if agriculture was present before the breakup of Proto-TB or Proto-Sino-Tibetan (ST). The TB languages with the longest literary history include Tibetan (7th C. AD), Burmese and Newari (both early 12th C. AD). Tibetan tradition lists six main crops including five grains plus beans. Burmese tradition has seven main grain crops. Sagart (1999) has hypothesized that the Sinitic groups had five major crops: three grains, Setaria italica millet, Panicum miliaceum millet and rice, plus beans, and later wheat, introduced about 4000 years BP. The location and date of rice domestication(s) is contested, as other speakers will certainly discuss. Even for grains first domesticated elsewhere, it is not unreasonable for there to have been Proto-TB etyma (cognate words) if they were introduced early enough. This paper will explore some of the etyma that we would expect to find among TB groups for the grain crops domesticated in the area, including rice, millets including Setaria, Panicum and Eleusine coracana as well as buckwheat, Job’s tears and older introduced crops such as sorghum, wheat and barley.