Domesticated rice (Oryza sativa), typically a water-intensive crop, is widely cultivated in the semi-arid zones of South India and Sri Lanka and is a staple among sedentary populations in these regions when the opposite should prevail in light of environmental constraints. This paper investigates the origins of large-scale rice cultivation in South India and Sri Lanka and the attendant innovations in hydraulic technologies using a wide range of sources but with a special focus on Tamil ”Caṅkam” texts, the earliest surviving textual corpus for the Dravidian language family.

中文翻译：

---

南印度和斯里兰卡历史早期的水稻和水

驯化水稻（Oryza sativa）通常是一种耗水量大的作物，在印度南部和斯里兰卡的半干旱地区广泛种植，并且是这些地区久坐不动的人口的主食，而鉴于环境限制，情况恰恰相反。本文调查了南印度和斯里兰卡大规模水稻种植的起源以及随之而来的水利技术创新，使用了广泛的来源，但特别关注泰米尔语“Caṅkam”文本，这是现存最早的德拉威语文本语料库语族。