Cross-Cultural Ethnobotany of Northeast India/Arvind Saklani and S.K. Jain. 1994, x, 453 p., 48 col. photographs, line drawings, $20.
Contents: Preface. I. The land and the people: 1. The land. 2. Vegetation. 3. The ethnic groups of northeast India--their life and activities. II. Cross-cultural ethnobotany - what is ethnobotany? Cross-cultural ethnobotany; review of literature; methodology; presentation of data: 1. Plants used in more than one state. 2. Plants used in only one state. III. Survey of folk market. IV. Concept of local names of plants. V. Epilogue References. Appendix. Index to local names. Index to English names.
"The book Cross-Cultural Ethnobotany of Northeast India is unique in at least three ways. It deals with the plant resources of that region of India which is universally recognised as one of the centres of biological diversity and speciation on the earth, the northern Himalaya and east India. The region is ethnically the most diverse in India, the cults, races and ethnologies showing change very few hundred kilometres. Few such multidisciplinary treatises have been written on this floristically and ethnically rich region.
"It is for the first time that in this part of the globe, a comparison has been made among the people on the basis of their knowledge of, and relationship with, plants of the region.
"The book deals with 1296 species of plants, of which 472 are reported to be used among more than one ethnic group, and 824 species are unique to a single culture. Numerous, hitherto unrecorded uses of plants discovered during intensive field work, have been described in the book.
"The book is a window to the rich botanical and ethnic diversity of northeast India." (jacket)
[Arvind Saklani is a Research Associate at the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow.
S.K. Jain was formerly Director, Botanical Survey of India. His books include Dictionary of Indian Folk Medicine and Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plants of India.]