THE INTRODUCTION OF MAIZE TO THE MAINLAND CHINA AND ITS SUBSEQUENT GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand the diffusion of maize in the Mainland China. The hypothesis which was proposed by the author is that maize was brought by Pacific seafarers from South America to Asia in the Old World. Data for this paper were collected from local gazetteers edited in the Ching Dynasty. No field study has yet been made on this problem. However, some researchers have made studies on the introduction of maize by using the historical approach. But the writer adopts here the biogeographical approach which was initiated by N. Vavilov. Main contents are as follows: 1) Some of the crops which were introduced from the New World have played an important role in reorganizing the agricultural system in the Old World. It has been pointed out that several exotic crops were cultivated as subsistence and/or commercial crops and contributed much to the support of a dense population in hilly areas and valleys of China. Maize is today among the most important exotic crops in that country. 2) A comparative study of historical documents supports the statement of Bencao gangmu written by Li Shi Zehn. The first reference to maize in Chinese documents is in Tiannanbencao written by Lan Mao who lived in the earlier half of the 15th century. It also provides evidence that maize was widely cultivated in the western Yunnan Highlands fifty years after the Portuguese' arrival in Canchow and Foochow. At that time, there were no places where the crop was cultivated in a considerably vast area. 3) It is interesting and important to learn that various varieties of maize are found in the Yunnan and Kweichow Highlands where evidence suggests that the cultivation of maize is the oldest in China. These facts together point out that maize was introduced not from the coast of China directly but from west to this part of Kweichow and Yunnan. 4) This inference is also supported by the following additional evidences: a) The changing colours of kernels (Fig. 1) show the long establishment of maize cultivation in Yunnan and Kweichow. b) Numerous ways of maize cooking (Fig. 2) show that maize is one of the older foodstuffs in Yunnan and Kweichow districts. This follows the general rule that the longer a crop is used as a foodstuff, the more varied are the methods of cooking. 5) The dispersal route of maize to the Yunnan and Kweichow Highlands may be related to the methods of maize cultivation and cooking. A study of the cultivation and Booking customs of grain amaranthus in connection with maize may provide the most effective solution to the problem of maize dispersal. The plant is more often cultivated on newly cleared mountain slopes as well as maize, or cultivated in rotation with maize in the Himalayan Highlands and is therefore in many ways related to maize. The amaranthus is a South American plant but is not eaten there. However, in the Central Himalayan Highlands, it is cooked to make cake for a ritual purpose and the people of Yunnan and Kweichow eat this grain in the same way. Assuming that neither the Portuguese nor the Spanish brought the amaranthus to the Old World, the present writer proposes that amaranthus was brought to the Old World in the pre-Columbian times by some seafarers in the Pacific similar to the Polynesians. This may support the author's hypothesis that maize was also introduced to mainland China in pre-Columbian times.