The starting point for an understanding of any nation’s food is its physical features, its environment, climate and weather, its soil and its landscape. India is a country of astonishing geographical diversity, with virtually every climate imaginable: the frigid peaks of the Himalayas, the cedar woodlands of Kashmir, the lush tropical forests of Kerala, the bone-dry deserts of Rajasthan and the flood plains of Bangladesh and Bengal, as well as 7,500 miles of coastline and ten major river systems.
For hundreds of millions of years, the Earth’s land made up a single continent called Pangaea, which floated in a giant ocean. About 200 million years ago parts of Pangaea began to drift away, and it eventually broke into two land masses: Laurasia and Gondwana. (The latter name comes from a region of India inhabited by a tribal people called Gonds.) Gondwanaland was the precursor of modern-day Antarctica, South America, Africa, India and Australia. The Indian subcontinent broke away from Gondwanaland some 90 million years ago and drifted north before colliding with the Eurasian Plate. It smashed into what is now Central Asia with such violence that it squeezed the earth’s surface 8 km (5 miles) upwards, forming the Himalayas.
In the north, the Himalayan range (from the Sanskrit word himalaya, ‘abode of snow’) extends 2,400 km (1,500 miles) from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Burma (Myanmar). Some of the world’s highest mountains, including Everest and K2 – both nearly 9,100 m (30,000 ft) high – are here. These ranges have often been called a barrier that isolates India from the rest of Asia, but in reality there has always been continuous communication between India and Western and Central Asia through passes and valleys, including the famous Khyber Pass. Transhumant pastoralists with their flocks and merchants from Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan came here thousands of years ago. In the northeast, high snow-covered peaks made communication more difficult, but there was always trade with Tibet and China.
Melting snows from the Himalayas and seasonal rains feed the mighty river systems of the subcontinent: the Indus, which drains into the Arabian Sea, and its five tributaries, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas (called panj ab, ‘five rivers’ in Persian and Urdu); the Yamuna-Ganga (Ganges in English); and the Brahmaputra, which flows southeast through Assam into the Bay of Bengal. Their basins form the 3,200-km-long (2,000-mile), 240 to 320-km-wide (150 to 200-mile) Indo-Gangetic plain, the cradle of North Indian civilization.
The northern and eastern parts of this plain form India’s most productive agricultural region because of the rich sedimentary soil deposited by the rivers and the large reserves of underground water that have been supplemented by extensive irrigation systems. The Indian states of Punjab and Haryana and the Pakistani province of Punjab produce wheat, barley, rye and other grains. Bengal, Bangladesh and Assam produce two, sometimes three, crops of rice each year.
The Indo-Gangetic plain was once covered with dense forests that are now much depleted, notably in the barren wasteland of Rajasthan’s great Thar Desert. The only staples that grew here before irrigation were the so-called coarse grains: sorghum and millet.
Much of the southern part of India is occupied by the Deccan Plateau, a dry, rocky region bordered to the north by the Vindhya and Satpura mountain ranges and the Narmada River. These mountains have served as a partial barrier to communication between northern and southern India, and fostered the development of distinct cultures, languages and cuisines in the four southern states, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The three major rivers of South India, the Kaveri, the Godavari and the Krishna, flow into the Bay of Bengal. Their deltas are the rice bowls of southern India.
Between the Western Ghats, an ancient mountain range running down the west coast of India, and the Indian Ocean lies a narrow coastal strip, the lush, green Malabar Coast. Thanks to abundant rainfall, it is one of India’s most fertile regions and the historical centre of India’s spice trade. This was the first part of India to be visited by Europeans in the late fifteenth century.
The last glacial period, which ended about 12,500 years ago, was not as severe or extensive in northern India as in Eurasia and North America, and southeastern India escaped it entirely. Its end made the gathering of food easier and contributed to an increase in population.
India comprises a very wide range of weather conditions and climatic regions: tropical in the south, temperate and alpine in the north. The Himalayas serve as a barrier to cold winds from the north, keeping the subcontinent warmer than other countries at similar latitudes. Many regions have their own unique microclimates. The traditional Indian calendar has six seasons:
Vasanta (spring), mid-March to mid-May (during which many festivals are held)
Grishma (summer), mid-May to mid-July
Varsha (rainy or monsoon), mid-July to mid-September
Sharad (autumn), mid-September to mid-November
Hemant (winter), mid-November to mid-January
Shishir (cool season), mid-January to mid-March
Today the Indian Meteorological Department designates four official seasons: winter (December–early April), summer/pre-monsoon (roughly April–June), rainy/monsoon (June–September) and post-monsoon (October–December). In Ayurveda, the seasons determine diet, with cooling foods recommended in the hot months, drying foods in the wet seasons, and so on.
India’s climate, agriculture and entire economy have been dominated by the monsoons, or tropical rain-bearing winds. The southwest monsoon blows from the Indian Ocean across the Indian land mass between June and September, bringing rains to western, northeastern and northern India. More than 75 per cent of India’s rainfall occurs during this period. Later in the year the wind reverses direction and, as the northeast monsoon, carries rain to southern India. From ancient times, Indian merchants used these winds to power their sailing ships westwards across the Arabian Sea to the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, the Roman Empire and Africa, and eastwards across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and China.
A field of millet, a traditional Indian grain.
The timing of the monsoons and the amount of rain they bring are critical for food supplies. Before modern methods of irrigation and the Green Revolution (see pages 273–4), the failure of the monsoon resulted in devastating famines.1 The heaviest rainfall (more than 2 m/80 in. a year) occurs in northeastern India and along the western coastal strip, allowing the cultivation of rice, which requires a lot of water. The northern plain receives moderate rainfall – between 1 and 2 m (40 and 80 in.) annually – but many crops, including wheat, can be grown without irrigation. Wheat, a winter crop that is the dietary staple in northern India and Pakistan, is sown at the end of the rainy season and ripens in December. Barley also grows in northern India. Much of India has two growing seasons: winter and summer. Winter crops, called rabi, are sown in winter and harvested in summer, while summer crops, or kharif, are sown in summer and harvested in winter.
Areas of low rainfall (50–100 cm/20–40 in.) are home to dry-zone crops, including varieties of millet that can be grown without irrigation even when rainfall is scanty. Corn flourishes on the plains and in the hills and can thrive in both dry and moderately damp regions. Sugar cane grows nearly everywhere, but is mainly cultivated in the irrigated lands of the Upper Ganges Valley and the Punjab.
A prevailing theory used to be that European and Central and South Asian agriculture originated in a ‘core area’ in southeastern Turkey, where all major groups of crops were domesticated at the same time. More recent evidence suggests that crops were domesticated at different times in different places. In South Asia, the domestication of native crops may have developed independently at as many as six sites: southern India, the Ganges plain, Orissa, Saurashtra in Gujarat, the Indo-Gangetic Divide and Baluchistan.2 They were spread by the movement of hunter-gatherers or farmers from one area to another or by contact between different areas (a process known as cultural diffusion).
The two core crops common to every major agricultural civilization are cereals (annual grasses grown for their grain) and pulses (the edible seeds of leguminous plants). Both are relatively rich in carbohydrates and protein, so that together they contribute to a balanced human diet. The rotation of crops or the mixing of legume and cereal crops also enhances soil fertility. Every culture has had its own combination of staple cereals and companion legumes: in the ancient Middle East, it was wheat or barley and various legumes and beans; in Central America, corn and beans; in China, rice or sorghum and soy beans; and in India, barley, wheat, rice, millet or sorghum with lentils. Today the most widely consumed grains on the subcontinent are rice and wheat.
An emblematic feature of Indian cuisine is the consumption of pulses. Dal, a Hindi word that means both raw and prepared lentils, may be the closest India has to a national dish. India is by far the world’s largest producer of pulses, and the average Indian gets nearly four times as much nutrition from pulses as do Americans or Chinese.3 The protein content of pulses is on average equivalent to 20–25 per cent of their weight. Pulses are hardy, grow in most soil and climatic conditions, and add nitrogen to the soil.
Indian pulses have four separate places of origin. Urad and mung dal were cultivated in the grasslands of South India starting in the early to mid-third millennium BCE, together with two local millets.4 Chana dal (also called chickpea, garbanzo bean or Bengal gram), masur dal, green peas and grasspeas came from Western Asia to the Indus Valley in the fourth millennium BCE, probably around the same time as wheat and barley, since they are found together at most archaeological sites. Since all are winter crops, they were later adopted in North India as part of a two-season cropping system.
Hyacinth bean and cow peas plus sorghum and millet most probably came from the savannas of Africa to the grasslands of South India early in the second millennium BCE and were easily assimilated into existing agricultural systems. The plants may have been carried by coastal pastoralists and fishermen in small craft.5 Another common lentil, pigeon pea, appears to have originated in Orissa and northern Andhra Pradesh and migrated south.
LATIN NAME |
ENGLISH NAME |
HINDI NAME |
PROBABLE REGION OF ORIGIN |
Cajanus cajan |
red gram |
arhar, tuvar |
India: Orissa, Northern Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh |
Vigna mungo |
urad, black gram |
urad |
South India: forest–savanna margin |
Vigna radiata |
mung, green gram |
mung |
South India: forest–savanna margin |
Macrotyloma uniflorum |
horse gram |
kulthi |
India: savannas, peninsula(?) |
Cicer arietinum |
chickpea, Bengal gram, garbanzo beans, chana dal |
chana |
Southwest Asia, Levant |
Lathyrus sativus |
grass pea |
khesari |
Southwest Asia, Levant |
Lens culinaris |
lentil |
masur |
Southwest Asia, Levant |
Pisum sativum |
pea |
matter |
Southwest Asia, Levant |
Lablab purpureus |
hyacinth bean |
sem |
East Africa |
Vigna unguiculata |
cow pea |
chowli, lboia |
West Africa, Ghana |
Source: Dorian Q. Fuller and Emma L. Harvey, ‘The Archaeobotany of Indian Pulses: Identification, Processing and Evidence for Cultivation’, Environmental Archaeology, XI/2 (2006), p. 220.
Soy beans came to India from China some time after 1000 CE, either via the Silk Route or through Burma and Assam. They were then cultivated in northeastern India, where they were fermented and prepared in stews or chutneys (freshly ground relishes of vegetables, fruits, nuts and other ingredients). The British tried to develop a commercial soy-bean industry elsewhere in India, but their efforts failed. Interest was revived in the 1930s when Mahatma Gandhi advocated soy beans as a cheap source of high-quality protein, and the Maharaja of Baroda promoted their use and cultivation. But soy beans never caught on, perhaps because, by treating them as dal, Indians undercooked the whole beans, which led to digestive problems.
During the Green Revolution, American varieties proved to be ideal for growing in Central India. It was at first thought that they would be used to make high-protein dairy products, such as soy-bean milk, cheese and yoghurt. In 1972 the Seventh Day Adventists opened the first soy dairy in Poona and several cookbooks on the use of soy products were published.
In the 1960s and ’70s India was facing a new problem – a shortage of cooking oil. Soy beans were the ideal solution. Oil extraction plants were built throughout the country, production increased dramatically, and today about 90 per cent of the soy beans grown in India are used to make cooking oil.6
Wheat and barley are two of the world’s oldest cultivated cereals and once grew wild over much of Western Asia. The complex process of domesticating wild wheat grasses began in the mountains of southern Turkey in about 10,000 BCE, spread to the rest of Southwest Asia and into Mesopotamia, then travelled to Europe, North Africa, Egypt and Central Asia. By 6500 BCE wheat was grown in Baluchistan, India.
LATIN NAME |
ENGLISH NAME |
HINDI NAME |
PROBABLE REGION OF ORIGIN |
Triticum spp. |
wheat |
gehun |
Euphrates Valley |
Hordeum vulgare |
barley |
jau |
Euphrates Valley |
Oryza sativa |
rice |
dhaan (paddy) |
Yangtze Valley |
Paspalum scrobiculatum |
kodo millet |
kodra |
India |
Sorghum bicolor |
sorghum |
jowar |
Africa |
Pennisetum glaucum |
pearl millet |
bajra/bajri |
Africa |
Eleusine coracana |
finger millet |
ragi |
Africa |
Panicum sumatrense |
little millet |
kutki |
Western India |
Panicum miliaceum |
broomcorn, common millet |
cheena |
Manchuria |
Setaria italica |
foxtail millet |
kangni |
probably China |
Brachiaria ramosa |
browntop millet |
pedda-sama |
India |
Echinochloa frumentacea |
barnyard millet |
jahngora |
unknown |
Fagopyrum esculentum |
buckwheat |
kuttu/koto |
Central Asia |
Source: Steven Weber and Dorian Q. Fuller, ‘Millets and their Role in Early Architecture’, based on the paper presented at ‘First Farmers in Global Perspective’, seminar of Uttar Pradesh State Department of Archaeology, Lucknow, India, 18–20 January 2006.
The two main varieties are bread and durum (hard) wheat. Durum has a high gluten content, which gives it elasticity, so the dough can be rolled very thin. Today 90 per cent of the wheat grown in India (and worldwide) is durum. Finely ground, it makes a flour called atta in Hindi that is used to make parathas, puri and other delicious Indian breads. Atta contains both the germ (the embryo of the wheat kernel) and the endosperm, the nutritious tissue surrounding the germ. The Green Revolution greatly increased India’s wheat output, and today it is the world’s second largest wheat producer, after China. Wheat is mainly grown in northern India and the Pakistani province of Punjab.
Barley was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent about 12,000 years ago, and came to the Indus Valley via settlements in Baluchistan. During the second millennium BCE barley was the main cereal in India, and it is the only one mentioned in the Rig Veda (see chapter Two). Because it can grow in fairly dry, poor soils in marginal areas, it came to be considered a poor man’s food. Today India ranks only 28th in the world for barley production. But like other ancient ingredients, such as sesame, barley still plays a role in some Hindu religious ceremonies, including the shraddha (a ceremony performed to honour one’s ancestors).
500 g (5 cups) millet flour
90 g (6 tbsp) ghee
pinch of salt
Sift the millet flour into a bowl and gradually add warm water to make a semi-soft dough. Knead for five minutes. Divide the dough into balls 8 cm (3 in.) in diameter. Flatten the balls with your palms until they form discs 13–15 cm (5–6 in.) in diameter. Heat a heavy pan and cook each disc for 2 minutes on the first side and 30–40 seconds on the other, turning until both sides are crisp and golden brown. Using tongs, hold it over a flame to make it crisp. Smear ghee on the bread before serving.
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Millet and sorghum, the so-called coarse grains, grow in arid, semiarid or mountainous areas with marginal fertility and moisture. They have a short growing season, so during years of scarcity they can provide quick nutrition. Their protein content ranges from 6 per cent to 14 per cent, similar to wheat, and they contain no gluten. The main millets grown in India and their origins are shown in the table on p. 17.
India was home to several native millets which were later supplemented by imported varieties from sub-Saharan Africa and perhaps China in the second millennium BCE. After processing, millets can be ground into flour and prepared as bread or boiled to make a porridge.
Domestic consumption of coarse grains has fallen sharply since the Green Revolution of the 1970s because of a preference for wheat, which is softer, easier to use and considered more ‘modern’. But recently there has been a resurgence of interest in these grains, driven by health concerns (see chapter Thirteen). India leads the world in millet production, most of it grown in the western part of the country.
The origin of rice has been the subject of considerable research and controversy. The latest theory (at March 2012) is that it was first domesticated in the Pearl River valley in China between 10,000 and 8000 BCE, after which the two main varieties – indica (long grain) and japónica (short grain) – were cultivated in central China. In the third millennium BCE rice cultivation expanded into Southeast Asia and west across Nepal and India.7 However, it appears that a wild progenitor of rice (Oryza nivara) grew on the Ganges plain much earlier, and archaeological finds at Lahuradewa in Uttar Pradesh date rice use and its associated pottery to as long ago as 6400 BCE.
Today India is the world’s second-largest rice producer, after China. The main growing areas are along the eastern and western shoreline areas, the northeast, and the Ganges basin. In eastern and southern India, rice is the staple and wheat is eaten only as a supplement in the form of bread.
Fruit and vegetables that are probably indigenous to India include some varieties of pumpkins, melons and gourds, including members of the Curcumis and Citrullus families. The cucumber, ash gourd, parwal, snake gourd and bitter gourd are very ancient and play an important part in the Indian diet. (The Cucurbita species, which include pumpkin, squash and marrow, originated in the New World. Some varieties may have reached India thousands of years ago by seeds floated across the Pacific,8 but most were introduced during the Columbian Exchange, notably pumpkin.) Other indigenous plants include aubergine (eggplant); green leafy vegetables collectively known as shaka in Sanskrit; amla, the Indian gooseberry; ber, the Indian jujube; myrobalan, a plum-like fruit; jamoon, a sweet, astringent fruit; bael, a hard-shelled fruit with a yellow aromatic pulp; jackfruit; and one of India’s great culinary gifts to the world, the mango.9 In the early stages of their domestication 4,000 years ago, mangoes were very small and fibrous, but they were later improved by selective breeding, especially by the Mughals and the Portuguese. India is also the original home of many varieties of citrus fruit. Two indigenous nuts are the chironji, the seeds of which are used to flavour sweet dishes, and the chilgoza, the nut of an evergreen tree. Although okra (lady’s fingers; bhindi in Hindi) most likely originated in Africa, it was probably domesticated in India.
Bael is a sour fruit used in Ayurveda to cure gastrointestinal and other ailments. It also plays a role in Hindu religious rituals.
Jackfruit, which originated in India, is used in many different preparations. |
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The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) was likely domesticated independently in two locations: around the Pacific Ocean/Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Linguistic evidence indicates that coconuts were cultivated in South India 2,500–3,000 years ago. The plant has myriad uses as a source of fuel, drink and food. Today India is the world’s third-largest producer, and coconut plays an important role in the cuisine of Kerala. The origin of bananas and plantains, members of the Musa genus, is also problematic. They probably originated in New Guinea, but they were grown in India very early on. Onions and garlic were grown in Southwest Asia and Afghanistan from ancient times but are not mentioned in the earliest Indian texts. When the onion first appeared, it was as a food of the despised tribal population and foreigners, which may explain later taboos.
Sugar cane is a perennial grass that was first domesticated in New Guinea in about 8000 BCE and quickly spread to Southeast Asia, China and India. Its stems are filled with a sappy pulp that is up to 17 per cent sucrose. The stems are crushed to extract the juice, which is boiled down to make a solid piece of dark brown sugar, called gur or jaggery. In the third century BCE Indians discovered the technique of refining the juice into crystals. Sugar has always played an important role in the Indian diet, and its consumption per capita is one of the highest in the world.
A fruit stand in New Delhi selling both imported and local fruits.
Grapes, peaches, plums, apricots, pomegranates, saffron, spinach, rhubarb, apples and marijuana (Cannabis sativa) came to India from China and Central Asia, Afghanistan and Persia at different times. Indigenous nuts were supplemented by almonds, pistachios and walnuts from West and Central Asia, and later peanuts and cashews from the Americas. Starting in the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese established trading posts throughout the subcontinent, a wave of fruit and vegetables arrived from the New World, among them papayas, guavas, chayote, sapodilla, avocado, potatoes, tomatoes, pineapples, cashews and chillies, all of which thrived in India’s tropical climate (see chapter Ten).
The quintessential feature of Indian cuisine is the use of spices. Spice is a broad term, covering different parts of a plant: bark (cinnamon, cassia), seeds (cumin, coriander, cardamom, mustard), underground roots or stems, called rhizomes (ginger, turmeric), stigma (saffron) and flower buds (cloves). The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has registered 109 spices, of which 52 are supervised by the Spice Board of India.
Spices indigenous to India are ginger, turmeric, tamarind, black (also called round) pepper (Piper nigrum), curry leaves (Murraya koenigii), pippali or long pepper (P. longum), green and black cardamom (which grew wild in the Western Ghats, sometimes called the Cardamom Hills) and holy basil or tulsi (Ocimum sanctum), although the last is not used as an ingredient, perhaps because it is sacred to the deity Vishnu and worshipped by many Hindus. Sesame seed (Sesame indicum), one of the oldest oilseed crops, was domesticated very early. Other spices arrived from Western Asia very early on, including cumin, fenugreek, mustard seed, saffron and coriander. Asafoetida (hing), the dried gum from an underground rhizome (widely used by orthodox Hindus and Jains as a substitute for garlic), originated in Afghanistan, which is still a major producer. Cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cassia from South China, and cloves and nutmeg from Indonesia reached India from the third century CE onwards. Cloves were not grown in India until about 1800.
Long pepper, which has a pungent, almost earthy taste, was once the most popular form of pepper, but has largely been replaced with black pepper and chillies and today is used mainly in Ayurvedic medicine.
The betel vine (Piper betle) and betel nut (Areca catechu) may have initially been domesticated in Southeast Asia, but soon became part of Indian culinary and social life as the main ingredients in paan (betel quid). Chillies (the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, which also includes sweet or bell peppers) were brought from the New World in the sixteenth century and quickly became assimilated into the cuisine as a replacement for long pepper. In Indian languages, the word is an extension of the word for pepper; for example, in Hindi, kali or hari mirch, meaning black or green pepper. Most of the spices used in India today have Sanskrit names, indicating their ancient provenance.
Many explanations have been offered for the intensive use of spices in India, Mexico and other hot countries – and most are myths. Hot spices do not, for example, induce enough perspiration to cool the body. Nor have they been used to mask the flavour of tainted meat, since those who ate such food would still be likely to become ill and even die. Spices do provide nutrients, such as vitamins A and C, but in very small amounts. The latest theory, backed by a body of scientific evidence, is that a taste for spices evolved over the centuries in hot climates because they contain powerful antibiotic chemicals that can kill or suppress the bacteria and fungi that spoil foods. Some spices can kill or stop the growth of dozens of species of bacteria; the most potent are garlic, onion, allspice, cinnamon, cumin, cloves and chillies. The antibiotic effects are even stronger when ingredients such as chillies, onions, garlic and cumin are combined. Turmeric has been used for thousands of years in India and China to combat infection and reduce inflammation. Recent research has shown that spices, especially turmeric, are powerful antioxidants that can reduce inflammation, enhance the absorption of the protein in grains and chickpeas, lower cholesterol and even slow the progress of cancer.10 Frying in oil before cooking, a common technique, enhances the therapeutic properties of turmeric and other spices.
From a gastronomical point of view, the purpose of spices is to add flavour, texture and body to dishes. They also provide flavour and excitement at low cost for poor people whose diet is otherwise bland and unvarying. In preparing simple vegetable dishes, cooks may use just two or three spices, whereas more complex meat dishes are made with a dozen or more. Spices may be added once, twice, even three times during the cooking process. They may be ground into a powder or masala (‘mixture’ in Hindi), used whole (especially peppercorns, cardamom and cloves), or ground with water, chillies and onions, yoghurt or tomatoes to make a paste. Spices are generally dry-roasted or briefly fried first to intensify their flavour.
A seal from the Indus Valley showing a bull, c. 2450–2200 BCE.
People often equate the use of spices with heat. The burning sensation in the mouth associated with ‘hot’ food is produced by black pepper and chillies. The pungency of pepper is due to the volatile oil piperine and resin, which together increase the flow of saliva and gastric juices. Chillies’ heat is produced by capsaicin, an alkaloid found mainly in the membranes lining the pod (not in the seeds, as is generally believed). Generally speaking, food in South India tends to be hotter than that in the north, although Pakistani food can also be quite mouth-searing.
Animals native to the Indian subcontinent include the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), which was domesticated in about 4000 BCE; the zebu, or humped cattle, also known as Brahman cattle (Bos indicus); and the chicken (Gallus gallus), which was probably originally raised for fighting, not food. Sheep and goats, which originated in Afghanistan and Central Asia, were being raised in India by the third millennium BCE. Because they graze on natural vegetation, they are useful in rural economies where crop and dairy farming are not feasible. Genetic data implies that pigs were domesticated from wild boar in India several millennia ago.
The other common breed of cattle (B. taurus) originated in the Fertile Crescent and may have been brought to India by the Indo-Aryans, where it interbred with local breeds. Both the cow and the zebu are thought to share a common ancestor in B. primigenius, the wild cattle or aurochs that roamed Eurasia at the end of the last ice age.
India’s once-vast forests abounded with game, including wild boar, quail, partridge, hare and many varieties of deer, including antelope, spotted deer and blue deer (nilgai), but these have largely disappeared.
As with plants and animals, it is difficult to categorize which people are indigenous and which are alien, especially in the remote past. The historian Romila Thapar wrote:
The game of ‘who was there first’, played by those claiming to speak on behalf of Aryans, or Dravidians, or Austro-Asiatics, or whatever, is historically not viable. Not only are the claims to these identities as being historical and having an immense antiquity untenable but the paucity of the required evidence to prove this makes it impossible to give answers with any certainty.11
There is now genetic evidence that the subcontinent’s earliest inhabitants migrated from Africa between 70,000 and 50,000 BCE along the coast of Arabia. Tools found at Jawalapuram, a 74,000-year-old site in southern India, match those used in Africa in the same period. From there people migrated to other parts of Asia, Indonesia, Australia and Europe. DNA testing has indicated links between some groups in South India and Australian aboriginals (although the aboriginals bear an ancient DNA called Denisovan, while Indians do not).12 In India, the descendants of these earliest peoples are sometimes called Munda, the name of an Austro-Asiatic language related to the national languages of Vietnam and Cambodia.
These original inhabitants were hunter-gatherers who ate fruit, nuts, tubers and the meat of various animals. From about 10,000 BCE they began to settle in or near rock shelters and to domesticate dogs, cattle, sheep and goats. Large animals were used for transportation and traction, smaller ones for meat. They cultivated wheat, barley and millet as well as peas, chickpeas, green gram and mustard. Excavations in northern Rajasthan indicate that forests were cleared and grain seeds planted as early as 8000 BCE. At first they used stone tools to grind wild grains and plants; these were later supplanted by the wooden plough.
Our knowledge of these early people was enhanced by the discovery in 1974 of the village of Mehrgarh on the Kachi Plain of Baluchistan. Excavations revealed that the residents lived in mud-brick houses, made tools out of locally mined copper ore, produced terracotta pottery and seals, and lined their basket containers with bitumen. As early as 6500 BCE they were cultivating primitive forms of barley and wheat. Over the following millennia, they developed higher-yielding strains of wheat and barley and cultivated jujubes, grapes, red lentils, field peas, chickpeas, linseed and dates, and domesticated wild sheep, goats and cattle. Their main cooking fuel was juniper wood. In eastern Baluchistan, rice was cultivated in summer, perhaps a sign of contact with regions to the east.
Mehrgarh was abandoned in 2500 BCE for unknown reasons, and by 2000 BCE the region had become desert. One theory for this is that its inhabitants moved to the more fertile Indus Valley, and Mehrgarh is now regarded as a precursor of the Indus Valley civilization.
In southern India, the valleys of the Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri and other rivers were settled as early as the third millennium BCE. The people spoke Dravidian languages, which are unrelated to any other language family in the world. Today some twenty Dravidian languages are spoken in southern and central India, with a small pocket of speakers of Brahui in Pakistan and Afghanistan.13 By 2000 BCE they had spread over a very wide area, including present-day Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
By reconstructing the language of these ancient inhabitants, called Proto-Dravidian, and comparing it with the remains of plants, tools and artefacts found in archaeological excavations, scholars have formed a picture of how they lived, farmed and ate.14 In the Neolithic period (2800–1200 BCE), their dietary staples were two pulses and two millets. Cereals were ground into flour and mixed with pulse flour to make what may have been the ancestors of such typical South Indian foods as idli, vadai and dosa.15 The discovery of large open bowls and open pots suggests the boiling of flour-based porridges and gruels and communal dining.
Throughout the second millennium BCE there was a selective uptake of new crops (wheat, barley, rice) from the northwest. New vessels included perforated bowls, some with spouted lips, which archaeologists speculate may have been used for steaming, as colanders, to extrude a sorghum flour dough boiled in milk, or to strain yoghurt. Ceramic platters were later used, perhaps indicating that people were eating flat-breads or rice, over which other dishes would be poured.
Together with Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization is one of the early cradles of Old World civilization and one of the most fascinating stories in the history of archaeology. In the 1920s the British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler began excavating the remains of ancient cities of vast proportions in what is now Sindh, Pakistan. Archaeological digs have continued to reveal the extent and sophistication of this vast civilization, whose citizens knew the arts of writing, town planning, metallurgy, architecture and drainage.
Major sites of the Indus Valley civilization, 2600–1900 BCE.
At its peak, the civilization extended over more than 1 million sq. km (386,000 sq. miles) in the Pakistani provinces of Baluchistan, Sindh and Punjab and the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, almost to the outskirts of New Delhi. Archaeologists have discovered more than 1,500 villages and small cities and five large cities. The most famous are Mohenjo Daro in the south, which covered more than 200 ha (500 acres) and had 40,000 inhabitants, and Harappa in the north (150 ha/370 acres). These cities flourished between 2500 and 1600 BCE.
Today much of the land is desert, but in ancient times it was fertile and forested, allowing the production of surplus wheat and barley and the technological competence to develop an urban civilization. A ploughed field at Kalibangan in Rajasthan has been dated to as early as 2800 BCE. It has a grid pattern of furrows, placed about 30 cm (12 in.) apart running east–west, with others spaced about 190 cm (75 in.) apart running north–south. This allows the planting of two crops (such as mustard and chickpeas) in the same field, a practice still followed in the region.
The Indus Valley civilization was an affluent commercial society, with merchants engaged in trade by land and sea with Central Asia, Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. Technology allowed the construction of seagoing ships that were mentioned in Akkadian texts. Seals from the civilization have been found in Oman and Iraq. The merchants exported barley, cotton and cotton goods, sesame and linseed oils, wood, iron, gems, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, copper and gold. Some merchants lived in special quarters in Mesopotamian cities, so there was probably some exchange of food customs between the two civilizations.
Artefacts found in excavations in the Indus Valley include ceramics, stone, copper and bronze statues and jewellery, especially bangles, whose elegance indicates a high level of sophistication. Clay seals and pottery depict elephants, tigers, the Indian humped bull and a horned deity seated in a yogic posture that some people interpret as a prototype of the Hindu god Siva. Excavations reveal well-planned urban centres with streets in a grid pattern, brick houses, water and sewage systems, and what may be brick granaries with raised platforms and ventilated floors. A room in a building excavated on one of the main streets of Mohenjo Daro has five conical pits and places to hold large jars and may have been a public restaurant. A central feature of Mohenjo Daro is a large pool, called the Great Bath, which could have been used for ritual bathing – a sign of a concern for personal cleanliness that characterized later Indian civilization. There is little evidence of military conflict or warfare or the palace of a powerful ruler, such as those found in Egypt and the Middle East. Some scholars theorize that the Indus cities were ruled instead by powerful elites, such as landowners, merchants and ritual specialists.
No one is sure where these early urban dwellers came from, or what language they spoke. Their script has not yet been deciphered, although one theory is that they spoke a Dravidian language.
The civilization grew up beside rivers that were fed by the melting snows of the Himalayas and emptied into the Arabian Sea near present-day Karachi. During the monsoons these rivers flooded, leaving a rich, fertile silt. Their tributaries provided links to other towns and regions along the coast and inland, and access to such resources as copper, semi-precious stones, minerals and timber. One of the main rivers was the Indus; another was the Saraswati, which features in many ancient Vedic hymns (and is the name of a Hindu goddess). The Saraswati had disappeared by around 2000 BCE, leading some to believe that it was a myth or an underground river. Modern scientists have been using satellite photography and other technology to attempt to identify its possible location.16
Agricultural operations included ploughing, furrowing, building channels and dams, and irrigating. The main crops were wheat and barley, planted in autumn and harvested in spring or early summer. Archaeologists have found the remains of West Asian winter crops and South Asian summer crops, including millet, wheat, barley, black and green lentils, peas, chickpeas, grass peas, sesame, melon, cucumber and mango.
Bread was a staple of the Indus Valley diet. More than 200 varieties are listed in ancient Mesopotamian tablets, and we can speculate that a similar variety existed in the Indus civilization. A collection of Mesopotamian recipes from about 1600 BCE indicates that unleavened dough made from flour and water was rolled out and then stuck on the very hot surface of a clay oven, called a tinuru, with an opening on the bottom to add fuel and let in air – just like modern Indian tandoors. To make leavened bread, a little beer or leftover sour soup was added to the dough, which was shaped into a loaf and baked in a domed container at the bottom of the tinuru.17 The most basic way of cooking meat was to grill it directly on a fire, perhaps skewered on sticks. This was a precursor of the modern kebab; in fact, one theory of the origin of that word is that it comes from an Akkadian root meaning ‘to burn, to char’.
Cooking pot from the Indus Valley, 3300–2800 BCE.
Analysis of the residue in cooking pots and human and bovine teeth (then, as now, bovines were fed leftovers) at Farmana, 60 km (37 miles) from New Delhi, confirms that between 2500 and 2000 BCE cooks in the Indus Valley were using turmeric, ginger and garlic as flavourings – the ingredients for a 4,000-year-old north Indian curry. (Throughout this book the word ‘curry’ denotes a meat, fish or vegetable stew served with rice, bread or another starch.18) A charred lump of sesame seed was found in Harappa, together with wheat and peas. Bananas appear at three widely dispersed sites. Even rice, long assumed to be a late addition, has turned up as the main grain in at least one village in the third millennium BCE.19 Roasted barley, boiled lentils, chickpea flour and baked tubers were other foodstuffs. Common people probably ate a simple diet of wheat or barley with lentils, a few vegetables and occasionally a little meat or fish – just as they do in India today.20
Sugar cane was not known to the Indus Valley people; the main sweeteners were honey, dates, palm sugar and such fruit as jujube, jamun and mango. Pomegranate, grapes, apples, plums, apricots, pistachios, walnuts, almonds and pine nuts were available from the highlands, and coconut, bananas, jackfruit and citrus fruit were grown in the eastern regions. Sea salt and rock salt were available. Cooking oil was made from butter, mustard and sesame seeds, and perhaps cotton seed and linseed.
In addition to settled agriculturists, the Indus Valley was home to pastoral nomads wandering with their herds of water buffalo. Selective breeding produced varieties adapted to such tasks as pulling ploughs and ox-carts and carrying goods. Buffaloes were an important source of milk. (Even today, the region around Sahiwal near Harappa is famous for its grazing and the excellent quality of its milk.21) Buffalo’s milk has a higher fat content than that of cows, and is good for making ghee, clarified butter and yoghurt. Goats and sheep were raised as pack animals, as a source of meat and dairy products and for their wool or hair.
The diet of the Indus Valley people was supplemented by game, including deer and wild boar. The bones of wild pigs have been found at many sites, but pigs were probably not domesticated. Cows were not known.
Given the long coastline and many rivers, fish and seafood played an important role in the diet of the Indus Valley people. Fish are the most common symbol on the civilization’s seals, and large quantities of seashells and fish bones (including those of freshwater and marine catfish, carp, eel and shad) have been found. Often the fish was dried and sold as far away as Mesopotamia.
It was once commonly thought that the Indus Valley civilization was suddenly wiped off the face of the earth by an invasion of Indo-European hordes from the north, who destroyed the cities. This theory has been discounted, however, and scholars now believe that the civilization disintegrated gradually over hundreds of years (perhaps between 1900 and 1300 BCE) as its people dispersed and formed new political entities at the eastern and northern edges of the region. The cause may have been desertification, a natural calamity such as an earthquake or flood, the sedimentation of rivers or some combination of the above.
Another explanation is that extensive flooding (perhaps similar to the Indus Valley floods that devastated Pakistan in the summer of 2010) and shifting rivers destroyed the agricultural foundation of the Indus cities, forcing the inhabitants to develop new agriculture strategies or move to more stable regions. The cultivation of summer crops such as rice, millet and sorghum made possible an expansion into the Ganga-Yamuna-Doab region and Gujarat.
As the cities of the Indus declined, refugees may have merged with other groups to form small city states or chiefdoms in Afghanistan and Central Asia and near the Ganges and Yumuna river systems. In the first millennium BCE, these new polities formed the basis of a second major urban civilization. There was no significant break between the two urban civilizations, but rather a gradual transition from one to the other. Much of the continuity reflects not only similar environments, but also subsistence practices, raw materials and some symbols. As the prominent Indus Valley archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer wrote:
Even today, in the modern cities and villages of Pakistan and India, we see the legacy of the Indus cities reflected in the traditional arts and crafts as well as the layout of houses and settlements [to which we would add food customs]. These remnants of the past do not represent a stagnation of culture but rather highlight the optimal choices made by the Indus people.22
