Ancient Marathi literature reveals India’s savannas are not degraded forests

Savannas successful occidental Maharashtra are acold older than commonly believed and should not beryllium treated arsenic degraded forests, according to a survey that mines medieval Marathi lit and surviving oral traditions to reconstruct the region’s ecological history.

Published successful the British Ecological Society journal People and Nature , the probe shows open‑canopy, tree–grass landscapes person persisted for astatine slightest 750 years, agelong earlier assemblage timber extraction, and calls for conservation strategies that explicitly worth section civilization alongside biodiversity.  

Led by Ashish N. Nerlekar from Michigan State University and Digvijay Patil from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, the squad reviewed 28 georeferenced excerpts from biographies, hagiographies, myths, communicative poems and ovī (verse–prose performances), dated from the 13th to the 20th period CE and acceptable across Ahilyanagar, Pune, Satara, Solapur, Sangli and Nashik. The texts repeatedly notation flora emblematic of savannas: hivara (Vachellia leucophloea), khaira (Senegalia catechu), taraṭī (Capparis divaricata), bābhūḷa (Vachellia nilotica), paḷasa (Butea monosperma) and grasses specified as Pavanyā (Sehima nervosum), alongside descriptions of open, thorny landscapes with abundant writer and seasonal drought. In all, the authors identified 62 works species; 44 were wild, of which 27 were savanna indicators, 14 generalists and only three forest indicators, an overwhelming awesome of open‑canopy savannas successful the past. 

Mr. Nerlekar said, “It’s fascinating that thing hundreds of years aged could truthful intimately lucifer what is astir contiguous and opposition truthful overmuch with what radical romanticize the past scenery to be.” A salient transition from the Ādiparva (16th century) describes cowherders settling near Baramati for writer and h2o from the Nira River, adjacent arsenic the onshore was “full of thorny trees.” Founding myths of Shinganapur (Satara) and Vir (Pune) necktie the sprouting of hivara or taraṭī trees to ineffable omens, while dhanagarī‑ovīs performed by Dhanagara pastoralists evoke “scrub jungles” and “terrifying forests” beyond settlements. Local idioms, the authors clarify, notation to savanna scrublands, not dense rainforests. 

The survey decodes humanities terminology to debar modern misreadings. In Marathi and Sanskrit, vana (forest) and jāṅgala (jungle) traditionally denote wild, unsettled tracts and drier landscapes—grasslands, scrublands and savannas—contrasted with anūpa, the wetter marshes and closed‑canopy forests. Ecologically, the authors distinguish two savanna types found successful Maharashtra: fine‑leaf savannas in drier zones (up to 1,000 mm yearly rainfall) and broadleaf savannas in wetter zones (≥700 mm), with some co‑occurring crossed the 700–1,000 mm band. Many taxon cited successful the texts transportation classical savanna adaptations: thick bark, spines, clonal maturation and resprouting; traits shaped by frequent fire, browsing and grazing. 

Crucially, the literate grounds is triangulated with 11 different lines of evidence, strengthening the lawsuit for antiquity. These include archival paintings and photographs that picture sparsely wooded uplands with continuous grass; colonial gross records noting extended pasture commons and hay meadows; hunting logs and bird lists dominated by savanna species; hero stones commemorating cattle raids successful pastoral economies; Chalcolithic pottery bearing blackbuck motifs; faunal remains from grazers of adust and bedewed savannas; Holocene pollen showing long‑term savanna enlargement with a consistently grassy under storey; and dated phylogenies of savanna‑endemic lizards and plants tracing diversification to arid phases implicit millions of years.

Together, these strands indicate climate, herbivory and fire, not wholesale deforestation, structured Maharashtra’s savannas implicit heavy time, with a mid‑Holocene monsoon weakening driving a displacement from wetter broadleaf to drier fine‑leaf savannas. 

Maharashtra’s argumentation has a nonstop accusation connected these savannas. Today, unfastened grassy expanses cover tens of thousands of square kilometres in the state; nationally, savannas and grasslands are often miscast as “wastelands” and targeted for afforestation under carbon‑capture programmes. “These centuries-old stories supply america a uncommon glimpse into the past, and that the past was a savanna past, not a forested past,” Mr. Nerlekar explained, warning that tree‑planting successful people unfastened ecosystems risks biodiversity loss, compromised ecosystem services and pastoralist livelihoods. 

A cardinal proposal of the insubstantial is to follow a biocultural approach: conserve biodiversity with cultural practice alternatively than isolated from it.

The authors enactment that threats to biological and cultural diversity are often intertwined; commodification and homogenization tin erode both agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge, and areas affluent successful taste diversity frequently overlap with biodiversity hotspots.

In occidental Maharashtra, galore savanna sites are sacred earthy landscapes; plants specified as hivara, taraṭī and taravaḍa feature successful ritual signifier and are tied to pastoral deities from Jejuri to Shinganapur and Vir.

Unlike the well‑documented sacred groves of wood biomes successful the Western Ghats, sacred savanna sites remain poorly recognized. Elevating these places wrong conservation planning, the authors argue, offers shared opportunities to protect both quality and culture. 

The survey besides sets future directions like, documenting oral traditions before they erode; embedding savanna history in policy grooming and nationalist awareness; and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across ecology, conservation biology, spiritual and literate studies, and anthropology. Globally, the authors caution, akin misconceptions person driven histrion plantations into past savannas in Africa, South America and Madagascar, with damaging consequences—an avoidable way for Maharashtra and India if restoration is tailored to natural savanna dynamics rather than an imagined forested past.