The wealth of India- A Dictionary of Indian Raw Materials & Industrial Products: An Old and Rare Book (Set of 23 Books)

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THE WEALTH OF INDIA (First Supplement Series)

The Wealth of India, acclaimed as a reference standard for information on raw materials of India has in the recent past played a major role in India's claim for priority in the US patent case on turmeric. The encyclopaedia, after conclusion of the original series and revision of the initial volumes was diverted to electronic publishing through the project AHEAD (Asian Health. Environmental and Allied Databases) sponsored by International Development Research Centre, Canada. CD-ROM entitled Wealth Asia (D 2.1) released under this project included full-text database of the entire Wealth of India series. D 2.2 and D 2.3 followed with updates on all entries (A-Z) for specific periods. Data for further updates are under processing. In the meantime, the clientele of the Wealth of India within the country clamoured for the volumes in the print medium and hence a Supplement Series to the Wealth of India Raw Materials is being launched. The five volume series shall contain supplementary information (wherever available) for all A to Z entries for the period 1987-94, presented in the same format as the parent series.

The publication of this series has significant potential in the light of the present global trend to go herbal and look for alternate plant-based systems of medicine.

This is the first volume of the Supplement Series to the well-known multi-volume encyclopaedic work The Wealth of India. To place the contents of the present volume in context, it would be helpful to briefly review the history of The Wealth of butia and its antecedents. The starting point is the authoritative sis-volume Dictionary of Economic Producer prepared by George Wan (1851-1931). The sis voluines were published during 1889-1893, followed by an index in 1896. In 1908. Wat himself prepared an ahridged version of the Dictionary, entitied The Commercial Products of India. Walt was a medical graduate of the University of Glasgow who came to India in 1873. Though employed as u surgeon, he assiduously took to studying and collecting economic plants through field work. Ten years later, Watt received official sanction for his hobby, when he was asked to organize, during 1883-1884, an exhibition of Indian economic plants at Calcutta. Thus spurred, Watt spent the next 25 years of his life on his monumental dictionary. For this work he drew on his own notes, inputs from some 180 European and Indian correspondents as well as on published government reports.

From the very beginning of their rule in India till the second world war, the British were solely concerned with the agricultural and economic produce of India. The war forced new realities. The British required help from the industrial India in their war effort. It became clear that lodia's independence would be a mere matter of time after the war ended. India's preparations for its independence had already begun, there was now an ever increasing participation by the Indians in the governance of their own country. When the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was set up in 1942, one of the first tasks it took up was the revision and expansion of Watt's Dictionary. The new work would be called The Wealth of India. It would not only run a series on raw materials, following Watt, but would also, as befit a new nation, focus on industrial products.

The A to Z of raw materials was covered in eleven volumes (along with two supplements) while the parallel series on industrial products comprised nine parts. All these titles were published during 1948-1976 (Table 1). When the first volume on raw materials came out in 1948, not unexpectedly it carried a foreword by India's first prime minister and science visionary, Jawaharlal Nehru. He wrote: "I have no doubt that this book... will be of great value to the builders of new India. It should be of value also in educating the average citizen, who should take interest in this fascinating land and its enormous potentialities". Nehru could not have foreseen the extended interest the series would generate not only in India but also elsewhere. As it has turned out, it is the raw wealth of India rather than the industrial wealth which has caught the world's eyes. Interest in the natural wealth of India has significantly increased in recent years because of the concerted efforts being made the world over to incorporate traditional knowledge systems into the proprietary mainstream.

The original raw materials series was taken up for revision and enlargement. Existing entries were sought to be updated and additional plants included. A total of three volumes (plus a supplement) of the revised series were brought out during 1985-1992. These titles covered entries from A to Ci (Table 1) At this stage it was decided to go digital, taking each opportunity to expand the data base. Three CD-ROMs were brought out during 1996-1997 under a programme funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada. All the printed volumes on raw materials so far (1948-1992) went into the disc labelled D 2.1, while updated information was incorporated in D 2.2 and D 2.3. In these discs, in addition to the Indian data, information obtained from other Asian regional institutions was also included. These CDs are however not operative any more. We shall be shortly bringing out a comprehensive and uptodate CD on the natural wealth of India.

CD is not a substitute for the book. Accordingly, all the information collected for CD updates, suitably augmented, is being processed to print supplements to The Wealth of India - Raw Materials series. The First Supplement Series (updation period 1987 to 1994) is being published in five volumes and will follow the style and format of the parent series. Although the supplementary information is at times fragmentary, every effort has been made to give it a cohesive presentation, so as to easily blend with the parent volumes. Even some of the botanical names which have since changed have been retained with the new name following after an sign to indicate the latter's validity. Cross references have been provided wherever necessary; and the lists of books and periodicals cited in the volume are included in the preliminary pages. The volumes will be appended by a general index including synonyms of botanical names, zoological names, common English names, Indian language names, cultivars of crops, trade names, names of drugs and other products. The Index would also include active principles and other chemical compounds.

The present volume spans articles from A to Ci. Plant entries include all the articles featuring under these alphabets in the main series, the major ones being Acacia, Arachis, Artemisia, Brassica, Camellia, Catharanthus, Citrus, and a few new entries. Animal entries include updated articles on Bees, Camel. Cantharidin and Civet. Minerals include 16 entries, the major being Bauxite and Building Stones. Entries not updated are not repeated, for them the main series should be consulted. The information taken from two updates (prepared for the CD) has been merged, checked, edited and standardized for style and citation so as to give the entire text a uniformity in keeping with the format of the main published volumes. The reference citations mainly follow the BIOSIS pattern. The cross-references and the general index serve as a search facility for easy reference of the volume.

A work of this breadth and magnitude cannot be accomplished without the dedicated services of a large number of people. The Wealth of India project team (led by Ramesh Chand) has spared no pains in going through the vast amount of literature; analysing, critically evaluating and collating information; and seeing it through various stages of production and printing. The planning and execution of this volume owe a lot to M.L.. Sharma, former Head and project co-ordinator, Wealth of India Division and to A.K. Sen. I would like to thank the staff of the reference section, library as also the units of production. DTP, and art and graphics. The Director-General of CSIR, R.A. Mashelkar, and the Institute Research Council, headed by G. Thyagarajan, have been consistent in their support for the project. We shall gratefully receive and suitably acknowledge feedback from the users of this volume. This feedback would enable us to improve the forthcoming volumes.

**Contents and Sample Pages**