Chapter 05: History of Rice in Southeast Asia and Australia
Prof. Lindsay Falvey
Formerly-Dean, Faculty of Land and Food Resources
University of Melbourne 3010
Melbourne, Australia
Southeast Asia is the home of rice. Although its origins may be elsewhere, it is in this region that technologies have been refined in the last millennium and where rice is synonymous with food in most languages. Beginning with selection of grains that did not naturally fall to the ground prior to ripening as an unconscious action of our forebears, rice was quickly domesticated[1]as it had a rather narrow gene group was associated with the shattering of grain.Hence selecting plants that did not shatter led to exclusion of most of the other types– yet by coincidence an abscission layer that facilitated harvesting was retained. From such recent genetic work, we know now work tells us that rice, Oryza sativa,was domesticated from either of two wild types distributed from India to South East Asia.Previously we had postulated various sites for the origin of rice, as no doubt is mentioned elsewhere in this book,the most common being the southwest Himalayas.[2]
The prehistory of Southeast Asia includes evidence of human settlement dated to 40,000 BCE and what may be tools dated to 75,000 BCEyears, both discovered in Malaysia. By the Mesolithic period, early Southeast Asian agricultural societies had domesticated the chicken and pigas part of food production systems that were apparently easier to maintain than in some other regions. It is said that this ease produced the oldest customs of Southeast Asiathat centre on food ceremonies. But we know almost nothing of these early people.
The elevencountries of Southeast Asia today are an arbitrary construct that, without care, can lead to underestimation of the older empires of Srivijaya, Malacca, Pagan, Khmer, Ayutthaya and so on. It was such kingdoms that attracted Indian, Chinese and European trade and which accepted aspects of the new cultures to form today’s countries. The peoples of Southeast Asia themselves possibly came from southern China around 2,500 BCE, initially to the Philippines. The ancient Greeks knew the Malay Peninsula as Aurea Chersonesus (golden peninsula) and the ancient Indians knew mainland southeast, possibly the river deltas of what is now Thailand as Suvarnabhumi (land of gold), which today is interpreted to refer to agricultural potential. The Chinese also knew the region well and the mixture of cultures that ensued makes it impossible to determine exact stories of the origins of Southeast Asian rice, although cultural traits do provide hints as introduced later in this chapter.
Rice cultivation in China seems to predate that of India and is the most likely source of rice in the northern mainland parts of Southeast Asia, but this is more as a result of geographical proximity and migration that of antiquity. In fact, the earlier introduction of rice around coastal Southeast Asia probably came from India for the western coasts of Southeast Asia and from China for those eastern, with Singapore in the middle. Even though the earliest writings, which of course are from India, do not indicate the presence of rice, this may be taken only as evidence of its earlier domestication in China not of the source of the spread of rice and its technologies to Southeast Asia. So, having perhaps settled some of the parochial claims to having introduced rice to Southeast Asia, let’s see what we can be a little more sure about.
Rice cultivation in coastal Southeast Asia probably preceded that of the inland[3] and it is supposed that the rise in sea level between 8000-4000 BCE submerged most evidence of coastal rice production that would otherwise have complemented such findings as those of Khok Phanom Di, Thailand that date from 6000-4000 BCE. Some claim that cultivation of root crops predated rice[4] in Southeast Asia, but the relatively recent domestication (c. 2000 BCE) of yams in the region[5] suggests that only in the later settled hills did yams preceded rice cultivation, which in these regions would have been dryland rice. Rice was the storable foodstuff between seasons, and its origin in Asia is yet to be fully revealed to us.
If rice cultivation in India and China is placed at nearly 10,000 years ago, and it is known that rice was cultivated in central and east China at 6000-5000 BCE, we may suppose that it would have required only a thousand or two years to disperse to Southeast Asia. Linguistic similarities for the word ‘rice’ hint at early associations around the food; etymologically, we may link the northern Chinese word for rice, tao or dao or dau, to words of southern China, Thailand and Indochina, k’au (for grain), hao, ho, heu, deu, and khaw, while the Dravidian Indian root arisi may be linked to ris, riz, arroz, rice, oruza, and arrazz. Similarly, in peninsular Southeast Asia, the terms padi and paray for rice and bras or beras for milled rice are of Austronesian origin, and the Chinese words ni or ne (for wild rice) seems to be related to the word nu (for glutinous rice) in Southeast Asia. But all this provides no clear path for the dissemination of rice cultivation.
Historical records suggest a line by which rice spread from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China to other regions or countries, though exact dates may be lacking. In one direction, the mainland Southeast Asia may have been the source of Sri Lankan rice before 543 BCE as it is similar to that of the Malay Archipelago and Indonesia from between 2000 and 1400 BCE, which has mutated from its original Yangtze River type of around 5000 BCE.[6]Javanica rice originated in mainland Asia and then differentiated into a dryland ecotype related to the hill rices of Southeast Asia, and the wetland ecotypes of bulu and gundil in Indonesia, which in turn spread to the Philippines in about 1000 BCE.
What is now the north of Vietnam became prosperous with rice cultivation about 250 BCE in association with harbors for trade along the coast, and thereby attracted the attention of China, which in about 207 BCE sent an imperial delegate to the Red River region to rule an annexed kingdom called Nam-Viet that became a Chinese province in 111 BCE. Within a century, Indian influence entered what is now the south of Vietnam in the Champa kingdom.
The ancient kingdoms were either rice-based as in mainland Southeast Asia, or maritime states dependent on sea trade, such as Malacca and Srivijaya. Trade between China and India influenced agricultural development with goods carried across the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, at least until the sixth century when the Srivijaya kingdom on Sumatra developed ships that could sail around the southern coast. The Srivijaya kingdom was the first major kingdom in the region with its capital in Palembang where Indian and Chinese influences blended. The great Palembang rice fields are mentioned in various ancient reports and seem to have used Indian technologies.
By the tenth century, shipping technologies allowed Srivijaya to be bypassed and it was duly plundered by the Indian Chola state. Meanwhile, a series of rice-based kingdoms competed on the extremely fertile Java, while Muslim traders increasingly influenced Southeast Asia from the Twelfth Century, although Malacca displaced Srivijaya with the assistance of Chinese patronage. By the sixteenth century, Europeans arrived as traders, first from Portugal, then the Netherlands and Spain and eventually France and Britain, to carve up the region as colonial powers with only Thailand escaping direct colonization. All of this history had its particular impact on rice in Southeast Asia.
But let us go back a step to review the detail of what may have happened. The first cultivation of rice, as distinct from its natural wild distribution, may have been in southern China bordering on Southeast Asia, but could have been in Southeast Asia itself, or in India; what is more certain although still with an element of doubt is that rice was probably first cultivated some 9,000 years ago.Today rice is assumed to be an irrigated crop, yet for most of its agricultural history it has been planted in naturally flooding areas. We think its first irrigation was in 780 BCE in China.[7] Rice seed broadcasted into receding flood water areas was probably the earliest form of wet rice domestication[8] as indicated from early prehistoric archaeological sites.[9] Opportunistic harvesting had long given way to agriculture before any written records of South East Asia and certainly before the major rice kingdoms of the Khmer and Tai. Early Mon and Khmer influence[10] probably began the rice revolution of Southeast Asia[11] by building on the agro-cities of the shallow and gentle floodplains.
Expansion of the Rice Countries
Rice is synonymous with lowland Southeast Asian agriculture. Shifting cultivation, possibly including some dry rice within a range of vegetable crops are thought to have predated the use of wild wet, and certainly, domesticated, wet rice production in inland areas. One theory suggests that dry rice sown with a digging stick into the ashes of a cleared and burned forest predates the cultivation of wet rice. The theory which is based on a traditional stories in Vietnam, that rice originated in the mountains and moved to the plains, may be challenged in terms of river valley based migration patterns, and the apparent absence of relevant historic sites in the mountains. Rice seed broadcasted into receding flood water areas was labour efficient, and probably became the earliest form of wet rice domestication as a simple modification of primitive husbanding of useful plants in their natural environments.
Shifting cultivation in upland and mountainous regions of Southeast Asia long predates that of today's hill tribe groups. The extensive use of fire in forest farming provided a labour cost-effective means of introducing root and tree crops, particularly along the water courses of lowland and contiguous rising regions before the creation of irrigation fields.[12] From the Neolithic seeking out of natural swamps with slowly receding water regimes co-existing with hunters and gathers for millennia there was a slow transition to integrating the techniques of migrants[13] from China who arrived by sea as well as down the river valleys of mainland Southeast Asia. The Khok Phanom Di site dated at 2,000-1,400 BCE is now land-locked but was once an estuary with mangroves and fresh ponds suited to rice production with the benefits of alluvial deposition to maintain fertility. The Ban Kao culture of Kanchanaburi dated at 2,000-500 BCE further supports the likelihood of agricultural technology at least co-originating from sea migration.
With such new technologies in agriculture, seasonal variations in rice yields could be reduced, albeit with increased labour inputs. However, with larger population densities supportable through these systems, division of labour, and increased efficiency for its use would soon develop through the iron age allowing further increases in settlement size. Prior to the iron age, three hectares seems to have been a maximum area for an independent site compared to more than twenty hectares, possibly in association with reservoirs or moats, once iron was introduced. This more managed rice production allowed the development of politics, social ranking systems, and military organisation.
Once introduced, rice encouraged foreign contact and technological development. Sea trade widened technological awareness and food supply which allowed more free time for development of a society. Technical innovations of puddling, ploughing and even contrived annual replenishment of alluvium, led to a reliable form of low intensity rice-agriculture by the eighth century across the mainland. The greater potential of the wet rice cultivation system to sustain the development of a civilisation was now clear.[14] The alternatives, hunting and gathering or reliance on another staple, could not have produced this situation. Hunting and gathering relied on small groups and low population densities. The best available alternative cereal was the widely adaptable species, millet, which had predated rice as a staple throughout the region; however, its shifting cultivation prohibited large population concentrations with the labour economies of wet rice.
In what is now Thailand and Cambodia, Indian scripts record the regularity of the rice surpluses.[15] Fragments of Funan (Chinese) records also describe the inhabitants of these areas in a manner suggestive of Austronesians, and also describes their honest nature and devotion to agriculture. Noting that… they sow one year and harvest for three, … records also indicate the people’s involvement in ornamental engraving, silver utensil production, and trade in gold, silver, pearls, and perfumes . Later documents suggest Mon, Khmer and Tai residents, although the influence of Funan beyond coastal areas appears to have been minimal and their understanding of changes inland was probably limited.[16] Other Chinese records nevertheless do confirm the existence of significant cities in the ChaophrayaBasin from the seventh century CE, particularly around Nakhon Pathom and U-Thong.[17]
Early settlement of U-Thong, probably from the first century BCE, suggests the emergence of irrigation canal engineering skills in Thailand.[18] A thirteen kilometre straight geological formation running east from U-Thong to, what would have been at that time, the head of the Gulf of Siam suggests separate development from coastal trading settlements. The ability to control water links directly to the subsequent Khmer Empire and suggests that the intervening Dvaravati cultural period of the region probably focused more on trade than political domination.[19]
The Dvaravati culture appears to have arisen in what is now Burma and Thailand and beyond between the sixth and ninth centuries and seems to have been based on Buddhism, the Mon language, and overland trade between the Gulf of Martaban and the Gulf of Siam via the Three Pagoda Pass between Burma and Thailand. More a civilisation than an Empire, no capital is known to have existed although archaeological sites appear to be densest around the fringes of the central plain. Sites fan out from those around the Gulf along trade routes to Burma, Cambodia, Chiang Mai, towards northern Laos, and northeast towards the Khorat Plateau. Frequent finds of foreign objects provide further evidence of the trade orientation of the civilisation. Foreign ideas, tools, and innovations flowed speedily along trading routes and demand for rice stimulated the testing of new techniques for producing food surpluses along trading routes.[20] Lasting until the eleventh or twelfth century CE, Dvaravati influence is otherwise poorly understood. Ethnically it is suggested that it was controlled by peoples of Mon[21] or Mon-Khmer origin although there appears little supporting or contrary evidence.
While the Dvaravati Empire is difficult to define, the production of the centre of U Thong contains evidence of its Mon origin, Indian influence, and ability to absorb diverse pre-existing cultures, migrants, and seafarers, such as from the Funan trading sites. Its culture appears to have extended beyond its governed realm, interfacing easily with the expanding Khmer rice culture. It was around this time that migration from the southeast China and Vietnam introduced the water buffalo which displaced draught cattle and ultimately assisted expansion of rice production within the Chaophraya Delta.[22]
Meanwhile, coastal areas showed different development patterns. By the sixth century a widespread network of agricultural communities existed in peninsula Southeast Asiaas much as they did in the inland areas and the great river deltas. The cultural differences of the Peninsula and Indonesia and Malaysiatoday reflect these different origins, and histories, even in some agricultural practices such as raceme rather than whole-stalk harvesting techniques. However, the deltas and plains have long been a focus of the region, both because of their subsequent history and their potential, which was clearly apparent to Indian Missionaries of the third to second century BCE. Upland river valleys in the west and south west of what is now Thailand leading into areas of northern Laos and southern Yunan remained sparsely populated by the aboriginal Austronesian or Austro-Asiatic speaking groups, possibly ancestors of some of today’s hill tribes. These peoples were poorly equipped to deal with the technologically superior wet rice growers.
Wet rice irrigation probably evolved to river off-takes to augment natural pondages. Ponding and canalling of water to maintain a stable rice growing environment would have been an easy development with rice terraces evolving as an adjunct of nature’s own micro-environments. In contrast to this hydraulic domination, populations closer to the sea where water was abundant, or in the delta where water remained mainly uncontrollable, adapted their lives to the flux of water and its control.[23] In all cases, life in the mainland of Southeast Asia was increasingly dominated by water; the ancient name Sayam or ‘Siam’ may have even contained the meaning of ‘people of the river’[24] or ‘water people’.