Bhat
Bhat (Hindustani: भट (Devanagari), بھٹ (Nastaleeq)), also spelled as Butt (Pahari: بٹ), both of which are a shortened rendition of Bhatta, also spelled Bhatt, (Hindustani: भट्ट (Devanagari), بھٹٹ (Nastaleeq)), is a common surname in India and Pakistan.
Etymology
Historians state the surname is a distorted form of Bhatta, which originates from Sanskrit (भटट), meaning "scholar" according o the Brāhmaṇa. While the original shortened rendition of "Bhatta" was "Bhat" or "Bhatt," many of the migrants to the Punjab region started spelling their surname as "But" or "Butt" which is the spelling of the clan used in the Pahari language.
Origin
The earliest reference of Bhatt can be found in Chandragupta Maurya's empire. In Mudrarakshasa, while describing different divisions in Chandragupta's army, a reference can be found to Bhatt-Bala. Here Bala means a division, hence Bhatt-Bala would mean a division composed of Bhatt.
People named Bhat or Butt were said to be a clan of Brahmin descendants of intellectual Vedic and Dardic saints that inhabited the banks of the Saraswati River, which ran dry around 2000 BC. This forced the community to migrate to the Kashmir region of the Indian subcontinent in search of "ultimate truth".
Rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa (Asian rice) or Oryza glaberrima (African rice). As a cereal grain, it is the most widely consumed staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in Asia. It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize, according to 2012 FAOSTAT data.
Since a large portion of maize crops are grown for purposes other than human consumption, rice is the most important grain with regard to human nutrition and caloric intake, providing more than one-fifth of the calories consumed worldwide by humans.
Wild rice, from which the crop was developed, may have its native range in Australia. Chinese legends attribute the domestication of rice to Shennong, the legendary emperor of China and inventor of Chinese agriculture. Genetic evidence has shown that rice originates from a single domestication 8,200–13,500 years ago in the Pearl River valley region of China. Previously, archaeological evidence had suggested that rice was domesticated in the Yangtze River valley region in China.
Podcasts:
