A H i s t o r i c a l D i c t i o n a r y B of I n d i a n F o o d * 1 A H i s t o r i c a l HJ D i c t i o n a r y of I n d i a n F o o d K . T . A c h a y a D E L H I OXFORD UNI VERSI TY PRESS C A L C U T T A C H E N N A I M U M B A I 1 9 9 8 Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0X2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associates in Berlin Ibadan © Oxford University Press 1998 ISBN 019 564254 6 Typeset by All India Press, Pondicherry 605001 Printed at Saurabh Print-O-Pack, Noida, U.P. , and published by Manzar Khan Oxford University Press , YMCA Library Building Jai Singh Road New Delhi HO 001 PREFACE Several readers of my earlier book, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, published by Oxford University Press in 1994, felt there was need for a historical dictionary that would bring together, in alphabetical order, material scattered all over the earlier volume, besides of course relevant new material. Some cut-off point was necessary, and 1947, the year of Indian Independence, seemed appropriate. In the event, this is only relevant to a few entries, such as wheat milling or sugarcane products, where certain production figures for 1947 were in order. Of course the general thrust of the volume is the progression, over some four thousand years, of food materials themselves, and their conversion to edible products, in the Indian sub-continent. The choice of entries was not confined to food per sef nor could it be when the basis of Indian dietetics is a holistic one that even embraces a cosmic moral cycle. Ayurveda is the science of life as a whole, and its precepts have for millennia governed, to greater or lesser degrees, the choice and style of food in India. Accordingly, ayurvedic parameters of taste (rasa), aftertaste (vip&ka), potency (vlrya) and guna or property (hot-cold, heavy- light, oily-dry and so on), have been noted in the entries for several common food materials, and in turn their effect on the humoural balance (dOsha) of the body. Hindsight has generally been avoided; thus the &mla or Indian gooseberry is now known to have an exceptional content of vitamin C, but traditional medicine had its own reasons for the value of ftmla in several restorative blends. Being a historical dictionary, the country's oldest literatures, which are Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil and Kannada, have naturally been drawn upon extensively, as have the often illuminating accounts of visitors to India, starting with the Greeks in the fourth century . Entries which enumerate bc these sources, with historical dates, therefore seemed warranted. Another fascinating area, especially in the realm of food, is the transfer of words across languages, from the aboriginal Munda tongues into Sanskrit, from Tamil and Malayalam (often by way of Portuguese or Spanish) into English, and in reverse from these languages into Indian tongues. Archaeological, literary, historical, botanic and genetic evidence have all been drawn upon to situate Indian foods in time and place. Of particular interest is the recent migration, following Columbus and Vasco da Gama, of food plants from the New World to India through Portuguese and Spanish agency. So quickly did these become integrated that today the potato, tomato, vi • Preface papaya and above all the chilli are all but indispensable to Indian cuisine. Brief notes on the origins and transfer of these food materials are included in this dictionary. Despite extensive cross-referencing in the text, some repetition could not be avoided if each entry was to be reasonably complete; thus the entry on meat dishes would include preparations from Kashmir, Hyderabad and Kodagu, which would also figure in entries devoted to these cuisines. In a book dealing with Indian food, it would have been pedantic and tiresQme to italicize Indian words, like dh&l or rOti or ghee. In writing Indian words in English, except for indicating lengthened vowels, diacritical marks have been avoided. Phonetic forms of spelling close to the original sound have been sought, like palfto, chana (for the Bengal gram), chhftna (for precipitated milk solids), and Sushrutha Samhitd (for the medical text). References are listed together at the end of the text, followed by their own author index, and three other textual indexes; of Authors, Literary Works, and Historical Persons; of Latin Names; and of Indian Words. In the msh into modernization, many traditional food preparations will be lost irretrievably unless documented by those in a position to do so. Women would be at a particular advantage in such efforts. B angalore K. T. ACHAYA MAY 1997 CONTENTS Preface v List o f Headwords with Corresponding Page Numbers ix T 1 ext R 277 eferences I ndexes Author Index with Reference Numbers 307 Index of Authors, Literary Works and Historical Persons 313 Index of Indian Words 319 Index of Latin Names 345 LIST OF HEADWORDS WITH CORRESPONDING PAGE NUMBERS ftch&r, 1 b&jra, 12 adhrak, 1 baking, 12 agriculture in India, 1 balanced meal, 13 Ah&ra, 3 bamboo, 13 ahimsa, 3 banana, 13 ajamedha, 3 banyan, IS almond, 3 barks, IS alms as food, 3 barley, 15 amaranths, 4 basil, 16 ftmla, 4 bath, 16 amphorae, 4 bath, 16 aniseed, 4 beans, 16 annaprasanna, 5 beaten rice, 16 antelope, 5 beef, 16 appam, 5 beer, 18 apple, 6 bees, 18 apricot, 6 begging bowl, 18 apQpa, 6 bellows, 18 areca nut, 6 Bengal gram, 18 arhftr, 8 Bengali food, 19 arishta,9 Bengali sweets, 22 aroids, 10 b€r, 23 arrack, 10 besan, 23 asafoetida, 10 betel leaf, 24 ftsava, 10 beverages, 24 ash gourd, 10 beverages, alcoholic, 25 ashvamedha, 10 bhang, 28 aval, 10 birinj, 29 aviyal, 10 biriy&ni, 29 avocado, 11 biscuit, 29 Ayurveda, 11 bittergourd, 29 black gram, 29 badam, 12 boar, 29 baghaar, 12 bottlegourd, 29