Candy has its origins mainly in Ancient India. Between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, the Persians, followed by the Greeks, discovered the people in India and their "reeds that produce honey without bees". They adopted and then spread sugar and sugarcane agriculture. Sugarcane is indigenous to tropical South and Southeast Asia, while the word sugar is derived from the Sanskrit word "sharkara". Pieces of sugar were produced by boiling sugarcane juice in ancient India and consumed as "khanda", dubbed as the original candy and the etymology of the word.