According to the Mahavamsa, which tends to be reticent on the subject of food, the legendary King Vijaya ate rice given to him by the Yakkhini Kuveni and cooked by his followers. It has been the staple diet of the people of this island for all our recorded history and earlier.
Rice seems first to have been cultivated in the Yangtze valley of China about 10,000 years ago. On the Indian sub-continent, the crop is first encountered about 4,500 years ago in association with the Mohenjo-Daro-Harappa civilisation. Over the next 1,500 years it spread Southward.
The European terms for rice, including its scientific name (Oryza sativa) are most probably derived from the Sanskrit ‘vrisi’, although some sources think it came from the Tamil ‘arisi’.
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