Jaykrishna Indraji Thakar was the first to author a book on botany in Gujarati in the early 20th century when plants were named only in English or Latin. Titled Vanaspatishashtra and published in 1910, it chronicled years of research work, vast surveys, and painstaking details about plant life.
Jaykrishna was born in Lakhpat, Kutch, in 1849 and did not have access to formal education. A visitor from Bombay introduced him to English and taught him the basics of the language. Jaykrishna later went to Bombay to study further but had to discontinue his education due to financial constraints. He taught primary English and learned Persian too for some time.
When his frail health started troubling him, Jaykrishna sought advice from an acquaintance who sent him to Bhagwanlal Indraji, a renowned archaeologist, ayurveda practitioner, and botanist in Bombay. Bhagwanlal was taken by Jaykrishna’s sincerity and took him under his wing as an assistant. The association provided Jaykrishna with invaluable opportunities to accompany Bhagwanlal on his study tours, where the latter would note down the local names of the area’s flora and learn many things about the subject. Jaykrishna also read an English book on botany recommended by Bhagwanlal, which prompted him to explore his interest in the field.
Sometime later, Bhagwanlal introduced Jaykrishna to Sakharam Arjun, a botany expert and the head of Grant Medical College in Bombay. The young enthusiast brought along some botanical samples, impressing Sakharam with his depth of understanding and passion for the subject. From 1877 to 1886, Jaykrishna worked hard on identifying the plants mentioned in the works of ancient ayurvedic masters such as Charaka and Sushrut, which was Bhagwanlal’s long-standing ambition.
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Impressing the British
Jaykrishna’s ability to identify flora and correlate their local names with their Latin counterparts impressed several British personalities, including Chester Macnaghten, the first principal of Rajkumar College in Rajkot, Herbert Birdwood, Bombay High Court Justice, and D MacDonald, the principal of Grant Medical College. Jaykrishna helped Birdwood a great deal with his book, A Catalogue of the Flora of Matheran. He also provided important information to Rustomjee Khory for his book Materia Medica of India and Their Therapeutics, though he was never credited for it. “I think it is a great shame that Dr Khory has not mentioned you publicly in his Materia Medica…” wrote Macnaghten in his letter to Jaykrishna.
In 1886, Macnaghten even recommended Jaykrishna to the Rana of Porbandar for a flora survey of Barda hills. The Maharaja then asked Frederic Lely, the administrator of Porbandar State, to send for Jaykrishna—and the latter sent a letter to Birdwood conveying the same. In 1886, Jaykrishna joined Porbandar State as Curator of Forest Gardens with a salary of Rs 100 per month, which was considered a handsome amount during those days. But Birdwood wasn’t very pleased, so he expressed discontent in a letter to Lely saying: “Jaykrishna is worth than Rs 200 per month.”
During his time in Porbandar, Jaykrishna faced resistance from local shepherds who grazed their cattle in the Barda forest. The botanist eventually won them over by demonstrating his intent to preserve the forest without harming their interests. Later on, the shepherds even provided useful information to Jaykrishna for Vanaspatishashtra.
Jaykrishna would study the region’s flora on camelback and collect plant samples and materials like gum, bark, and fibers. His collection was displayed at exhibitions at the Congress sessions in Ahmedabad in 1902 and Bombay in 1904 and won Jaykrishna several silver and gold medals too.
At the age of 61, Jaykrishna compiled his research work and published it in the form of Vanaspatishashtra with the subtitle, ‘Botany: A Complete and Comprehensive Account of Flora of Barda Mountain (Kathiawad)’. The book included English, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit names for classical Latin plant names and some literary knowledge on botany as well.
But compiling the research into a mammoth book wasn’t the only hard work involved — Jaykrishna mortgaged his wife’s jewellery to print the first thousand copies. The 719-page book was priced at Rs 10, and nearly 250 copies were gifted to friends and acquaintances by the author himself.
Seeing Jaykrishna struggle with the promotion of his book, Lely said that Vanspatishashtra would have sold more copies if it had been written in English. In response, Jaykrishna clarified that he hadn’t written the book for monetary gain — he wanted to provide Indians with a method to identify flora by themselves.
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A source of pride
The modest sales of Vanaspatishashtra did not dishearten Jaykrishna, but they did hinder his plans to write more books. Returning to his village, he studied the plants of Kutch and wrote another remarkable book in Gujarati titled, Kutch Swasthanni Vanaspati ane Teni Upayogita’ (Plants of Kutch and their Utility). After accepting the position of Superintendent of Kathada Rajmahal Garden, he took the initiative of planting trees in Kutch and created plantation barriers to prevent the advance of the desert. His writings on herbs were featured in the magazine Vaidya Kalpataru and the journal of the Bombay Natural History Society.
MK Gandhi, too, held Jaykrishna in high esteem, having used Vanaspatishashtra for his naturopathy experiments in South Africa. Gandhi invited the botanist to deliver lectures to the students of Gujarat Vidyapith. Congress president Madan Mohan Malaviya asked Jaykrishna to teach at Benaras Hindu University, but the latter declined due to his advanced age and health issues.
Jaykrishna’s extensive collection of botanical samples was displayed to the Viceroy and other guests of the Kutch state. A portion of his collection is exhibited at a palace in Bhuj.
Gandhi’s close aide Mahadev Desai met Jaykrishna in 1925 and was full of praise for him. He likened Jaykrishna’s dedication to botany to an ascetic’s devotion to God. “His study of botany is like Fabre’s study of insects. Europe made Fabre world famous. Let’s see when Kutch makes Jaykrishna Indraji famous,” he wrote.
Urvish Kothari is a senior columnist and writer based in Ahmedabad. He tweets @urvish2020. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)