What is it about?
A brief historical survey of fire in India, a place ideally suited for burning.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
No survey of fire on Earth, or fire in human culture, can ignore India. But it has double value because the British regime pioneered the ideas and institutions behind landscape fire management that disseminated throughout the empire and to the U.S. Records of this experience are exceptionally well preserved.
Perspectives
Originally, I intended the essay as a claim marker for what I expected to be a return for a longer study. That hasn't happened, and may not, but I still nurture hopes and hold to my collected documents.
Stephen Pyne
Arizona State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nataraja: India's Cycle of Fire, Environmental History Review, January 1994, JSTOR,
DOI: 10.2307/3984707.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
