By Ritambhara
Krishi Parashara paddy drainage advice, from a Sanskrit verse manual on rice, told farmers to lower the water in their fields in the month of Bhadra. Two global meta-analyses published in 2019 found that draining rice fields partway through the season cuts methane emissions by about half.
The Krishi Parashara is attributed to the sage Parashara, and its date is disputed. Girija Prasanna Majumdar and Sures Chandra Banerji translated it for the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, in 1960. They dated it to about 950 to 1100 CE and argued for a Bengal origin. Other scholars date it centuries earlier. It belongs to the same small body of Sanskrit farming texts as Surapala’s Vrikshayurveda on tree care.
Rice first, then the rain
The Krishi Parashara opens with a case for farming itself. In the Majumdar and Banerji translation, verse 8 reads: “Blessed is agriculture, holy is agriculture, and agriculture is the life of the creatures.” Verse 5 adds that people wearing gold still starve when rice runs short. Later verses forecast a year’s rain from the positions of the sun, moon and planets, a method that rests on astrology.
Seed, weeds and oxen
Verse 157 tells farmers to gather seed in Magha or Phalguna, the late winter and early spring months, and dry it thoroughly in the sun. Later verses ask for seed of one kind, cleaned of chaff and kept away from oil, salt and smoke. Verse 190 claims that weeding during the monsoon doubles the yield. Verse 84 tells the cultivator to spare the draught animals from suffering.
The Bhadra drainage verse
Verse 193 gives the instruction on water: “For freedom of paddy from disease, drain off water in Bhadra; preserve water then up to the roots only.” Verse 194 warns that fields kept full in Bhadra suffer disease and give a poor crop. Bhadra runs from about mid-August to mid-September, when the monsoon rice crop stands in the field. The Krishi Parashara paddy drainage rule therefore lowers the water midway through the season.
What drainage does to methane
Agronomists now call draining a paddy partway through the season mid-season drainage. Microbes in flooded, oxygen-starved paddy soil produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. A 2019 meta-analysis by Xiaoyu Liu and colleagues, in Agricultural Water Management, found that mid-season drainage cut methane by 52 per cent against continuous flooding. A second 2019 meta-analysis, led by Yu Jiang in Field Crops Research, found a 53 per cent cut, with yields 3.6 per cent lower.
Rice cultivation produced 16.68 per cent of Indian agriculture’s greenhouse gases in 2020, according to India’s Fourth Biennial Update Report to the UN climate convention. Down To Earth reported the figure in January 2025.
Key facts on the Krishi Parashara:
- Date: disputed; its 1960 translators suggest about 950 to 1100 CE
- Water rule: drain paddy fields in Bhadra, mid-August to mid-September (verse 193)
- India today: rice produced 16.68 per cent of farm emissions in 2020 (Fourth Biennial Update Report)
The Krishi Parashara gave a disease reason for draining paddy, and field trials have since added a climate reason. Its drainage verse asks today’s rice growers, including those in Kerala’s paddy fields, to set field water by the stage of the crop.
Sources
- Girija Prasanna Majumdar and Sures Chandra Banerji (ed. and tr.), Krsi-Parasara, Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1960, via archive.org
- Manju V Kumar, Sadvidya Journal 17(1), December 2023
- Enroute Indian History, Krishi Parashara
- Bangla Date Today, months of the Bengali calendar
- Liu et al., Agricultural Water Management 213, 2019
- Jiang et al., Field Crops Research 234, 2019
- Down To Earth, 14 January 2025
- Salata Institute, Harvard, Methane Research Brief 6: India, January 2025
