Famine has never visited India, and there has never been a general scarcity in the supply of nourishing food. For:
there is a double rainfall in the course of each year; one in the winter season where the sowing of wheat takes place as in other countries, and the second at the time of the summer solstice, which is the proper season for sowing rice and bosporum and sesame and millet — the inhabitants of India almost always gather in two harvests annually, and even should one of the sowings prove more or less abortive they are always sure of the other crop
The fruits, moreover, of spontaneous growth, and the esculent roots which grow in marshy places and are of varied sweetness, afford abundant sustenance for man
But further, there are usages observed by the Indians which contribute to prevent the occurrence of famines among them: whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste; among the Indians on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain unmolested. Besides, they neither ravage the enemy’s land with fire, nor cut down its trees.
—Megasthenes, according to Diodorus, 2.35—2.42.
