From the early seventh to the thirteenth century, the subcontinent was ruled by local and regional dynasties. Drawing an analogy with the West, some historians call this time the Feudal Period or the Middle Ages. Food habits were becoming more sophisticated, and for the first time they were recorded in some detail in the literature, including many distinctive regional dishes that are popular to this day. During this period, texts on food were composed that were neither medical nor religious, notably the Manasolassa and the Lokopakara. They are not cookbooks in the modern sense, since they lack detailed recipes, but they provide valuable information about the dishes of the time.
At its peak the Buddhist Pala dynasty controlled most of north and central India from its base in Pataliputra. Parts of this empire were taken over by the Hindu Senas, while from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries the Eastern Ganga dynasty controlled Orissa and parts of West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. The Gurjara Pratiharas, based in Malwa, ruled over much of northern and western India from the sixth to the eleventh centuries and later fragmented into various states, including the Rajput kingdoms.
Several dynasties contended for control over southern India: the Chalukyas in Karnataka, the Pallavas with their capital in Kanchipuram, and the Chola Empire, which at its peak controlled much of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka. Later South Indian dynasties were the Pandyas and the Cheras. By 1343, the last of these dynasties had disappeared, to be replaced by the mighty Vijayanagar Empire.
During the many power struggles, local rulers were granted land in return for their service and loyalty. The agricultural sector became more organized, and major improvements were made in cultivation, implements, irrigation, the handling of seeds, insect control, the use of manure and weather forecasting. Foreign visitors continued to marvel at the country’s prosperity.
In the early eighth century the Arabs conquered Sindh in northwest India, but their main interest was in trade rather than military dominance. Indian merchants benefited from association with the conquering forces, and some became extremely rich. They endowed magnificent temples, including the Jaganath temple in Orissa (now Odisha) and the Jain temples at Mount Abu in Rajasthan. This wealth became a magnet for raiders from the north, and at the end of the first millennium Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030), leader of a principality in Afghanistan, began raiding northern India for plunder. His successors established the first of the Islamic dynasties that would rule much of the subcontinent for centuries to come. Jains, their numbers diminished, came to be concentrated in the west and southwest of India, while Buddhism, which had once had a foothold in the east, almost disappeared on the subcontinent.
One of the challenges of writing about the history of Indian food is the absence of cookbooks. According to Arjun Appadurai,
While gastronomic issues play a critical role in Hindu texts, culinary issues do not. That is, while there is an immense amount written about eating and feeding, precious little is said about cooking in Hindu legal medical or philosophical texts . . . Food is principally either a moral or medical matter in traditional Hindu thought.1
Ingredients and raw materials are mentioned in food texts, sometimes in connection with their effect on the doshas or their seasonality, but there is little description of the processes that transform them into dishes, except in generic terms. One reason may be that the emphasis on the moral and medical aspects of food prevented it from becoming a source of independent gustatory pleasure. The brahmins, the producers and guardians of the major textual traditions, did not particularly care about the culinary aspects of eating; nor did the affluent merchants, many of whom were strictly vegetarian Jains or Vaishnavs. Restrictions on commensality and concerns about pollution precluded the emergence of a restaurant culture and the kind of gastronomical experimentation that appeared in China around the same time.
A corollary of this was the fact that no pan-Indian Hindu cuisine emerged until modern times. While other social and cultural forms were highly standardized, there was no culinary tradition common to the entire country. Although some fairly elaborate regional and courtly high cuisines developed, Hindu culinary traditions ‘stayed oral in their mode of transmission, domestic in their locus, and regional in their scope . . . traditional Hindu cuisine was thoroughly Balkanized’.2
One of the first non-medical culinary texts was the Manasolassa, a composition in Sanskrit verse by King Somesvara III (ruled 1126–38). Somesvara was the eighth king of the Western Chalukya dynasty, which controlled much of southwest India from the late tenth century to the thirteenth, a region that today includes Karnataka, Goa and parts of Maharashtra, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The land was rich and fertile, producing rice, lentils, black pepper, cardamom, betel nuts and leaves, coconut and sugar, and the kingdom had strong commercial ties with Southeast Asia, Central Asia and China.
It was fashionable for rulers of the time to display their learning by writing about various topics. The Manasolassa (its name means ‘delight’ or ‘refresher of the mind’) covers medicine, magic, veterinary science, precious stones, vehicles, the art of acquiring and ruling a kingdom, elephants, painting, music, dance, literature, women, fish, plants and cuisine. Cuisine is covered in the section called ‘Annabhoga’, or ‘enjoyment of food’ (verses 1341–1600; pp. 113–28 in the Arundhati translation).3 It describes nearly a hundred dishes, many of which exist today, especially in southern and western India. Others are rarely encountered: blood-filled sausages, goat’s head in sour gruel, grilled stomach membrane and barbecued river rats.
Somesvara, like most Indian rulers, was a ksatriya, which meant that he did not have to conform to the vegetarian regime of the brahmins.4 Meat, especially game, was considered an appropriate food for royalty, so there are a lot of recipes for game birds, deer and wild boar. However, chicken and beef are missing.
The most common spice to appear in the Manasolassa is asafoetida, often dissolved in water – a practice still followed in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Other flavourings are fresh or ground ginger, turmeric, black pepper, rock salt, mustard seeds, coriander, cumin and occasionally camphor and cardamom. Cloves are mentioned in only one recipe; cinnamon not at all. Just a few recipes call for onions and garlic, perhaps indicating that, proscriptions aside, they were not in common use in western India. Spices are added both during cooking and afterwards. Citrus fruit, Indian gooseberry (amla), tamarind, pomegranate or yoghurt impart sourness. Coconut is not used as a cooking ingredient, although coconut water is mentioned as a healthy drink.
The six basic flavours (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent) were combined in individual dishes and in meals. Somesvara writes that meat should be eaten with sour items, milk with sweet ingredients, salt with acidic substances, and astringent foods with acidic or salty items. In keeping with the prescriptions of Ayurveda, food should also be appropriate to the season. Pungent food is eaten in spring, cold and sweet food in summer, sweet dishes in autumn, sweet in winter, salty food in the rainy season, hot and oily items in late autumn, and hot and acidic dishes in the cool season.
Dishes were deep-fried, shallow-fried or cooked in liquid, and sometimes more than one technique was used. For shallow- and deep-frying, the cooking medium was sesame oil or ghee. Grilling over hot coals was common, especially for meat threaded on metal skewers.
A typical royal meal started with hot cooked rice and green lentils mixed with ghee, followed by tender pieces of meat prepared with lentils and then some kind of curry (spiced stew). The next course was meat mixed with sour leaves and seasonal fruit and vegetables flavoured in different ways. Any item could be mixed with rice. Midway through the meal, payasam (rice and milk pudding) and sweet and sour fruit were served. Throughout the meal the king sipped water, fruit juice (panakam) and spiced buttermilk. The meal ended with yoghurt to promote digestion.
The dietary staple was rice, as it is today in the region. Somesvara identifies eight varieties, including red rice (still grown in parts of India, notably the south and the northeast); large-grained rice; fragrant rice; rice produced in Kalinga; thick, coarse rice; small rice; and 60-day rice (rice grown during the hot season and harvested in 60 days). Rice was cooked in a copper or earthenware pot over a slow fire. While still al dente, it was removed from the heat, the water drained off and milk or ghee added. The rice water could be flavoured with spices and drunk.
A dish of boiled spiced lentils was served with any kind of rice or with ‘less pleasant’ grains (that is, those eaten by poor people), such as millet or uncultivated rice. The text lists seven kinds of pulse: mung, hyacinth bean (lablab), chickpea, pigeon pea, urad (black lentils), red lentils (masur) and black-eyed peas. Boiled lentils were flavoured with asafoetida, salt and turmeric powder and topped with slices of fresh ginger. Pieces of aubergine, goat meat or animal marrow could be added to the dal, and black pepper or ground ginger sprinkled on top for extra flavour.
Paratha is a pan-fried unleavened bread that can be plain or filled with vegetables.
Savouries and sweets were popular, and many were similar to those still eaten today. Discs of white flour ‘thin as white cloth’ were fried to make a bread called mandakas, similar to modern parathas, and polikas (a word related to the modern puranpoli), a sweet paratha stuffed with lentils and sugar. Balls of white flour were baked in hot coals and were especially good if slightly charred – a dish similar to Rajasthani baatis, hard dough balls cooked in ashes and served with dal and churma, a sweet wheat-based pudding. The same dough, mixed with sugar, milk, ghee, black pepper and ground cardamom, was shaped into little balls that were fried in ghee and then stuffed into a wheat envelope to make a dish called udumbara (perhaps from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘fig’, a reference to its shape).
Lentil or chickpea flour mixed with asafoetida, salt, sugar, ground black pepper, cardamom and water was ground to a paste, formed into little discs and deep-fried to make purika, a forerunner of modern papdi (round crispy wafers used in the popular street food papdi chat). A fermented paste of ground urad dal and black pepper was shaped into balls and deep-fried to make vadika, which was soaked in milk or yoghurt. A modern incarnation of this is the popular Indian street food dahi vada – fried spicy lentil balls smothered with fresh yoghurt and topped with ground cumin, other spices and a sweet-and-sour chutney.
Dhosika was a crêpe made from a paste of ground urad dal, black-eyed peas or green peas flavoured with asafoetida, cumin, salt and ginger, and cooked in a lightly oiled hot pan. Its modern descendant is dosa, which is made from a batter of lentils and rice. According to K. T. Achaya, rice was probably added as an ingredient in the thirteenth century.5 Deep-fried snacks included the vidalapaka, a blend of five lentils seasoned with turmeric, rock salt and asafoetida; katakarna, patties made of a paste of green peas and cow peas; and iddarika, balls of urad-flour paste dusted with pepper, cumin and asafoetida.
Some of the Manasolassa’s many meat recipes are complex and highly aromatic, belying the notion that elaborate meat dishes appeared only with the arrival of the Muslims. Pieces of meat marinated in custard apple and ginger were threaded on to skewers, grilled over red-hot coals and flavoured with ground black pepper and a sour juice. Pieces of meat were beaten until they were as thin as palm leaves, flavoured with ground ginger, sugar, yoghurt and cardamom, and fried.
Papri chaat, a popular street food, is based on papris – crisp round wafers topped with potatoes, chickpeas and sauces.
Barbecued Rat
The strong black rats that live in fields and along riverbanks are called maiga; they are held by the tail and fried in hot oil until the fur comes off. The rat is then washed in hot water, the stomach cut open and the inner parts cooked with Indian gooseberry and salt. The rest of the rat is put on an iron skewer and fried over red-hot coal until the skin is charred. When the rat is well cooked, it is sprinkled with salt, cumin and dried ginger.
Kebabs
Lamb or goat is cut into small pieces, which are mixed with asafoetida, turmeric and ginger and strung on to iron skewers. The kebabs are turned constantly over hot coals, and flavoured with salt and pepper once cooked. This dish is called bhaditrakam; it is tasty, light and wholesome, and stimulates the appetite. In another recipe, the meat is marinated with a sour substance (perhaps citron juice) and asafoetida, and then mixed with ginger juice, coriander, ground fenugreek and ground cumin. The mixture is cooked in ghee until the liquid dries up and then flavoured with pepper.
Meat from the back of an animal was considered the best. It was grilled to make kebabs or made into a curry-like dish. Sheep blood and meat were cooked with a sour juice until the liquid dried up, then seasoned with asafoetida, ground cumin, camphor and black pepper, and fried in ghee. Blood was mixed with water, lemon juice, ginger, cumin, asafoetida, pepper, coriander, salt and fat and stuffed into intestines, which were tied to look like ropes and cooked slowly until they hardened – a twelfth-century black pudding. A dish called panchvarni (‘five colours’) was made by simmering pieces of intestine with mustard seed, myrobalan, ginger, sour flavouring, salt and asafoetida until the sauce thickened. Intestines were also grilled on skewers until they became hard and crisp.
A part of the animal called the vapa, perhaps the stomach membrane, was folded into layers, cut into pieces and fried in oil or grilled on skewers over hot coals. It could also be flattened with a rolling pin, flavoured with citrus fruit and salt, cut into pieces and fried. Goat brain was simmered with a gruel of fermented rice.
In the Manasolassa, Somesvara lists 35 varieties of fish together with information on their habitat (fresh or salt water), size, appearance and feeding habits. Fish were raised in large ponds. Some were fed a purely vegetarian diet of sesame-seed balls, chickpea flour or cooked rice; others ate meat, or meat and grains. Large fish were cut into pieces, small ones were cooked whole. After scaling, the fish were smeared with salt and oil to remove the smell, then washed with turmeric water, drained, boiled and seasoned. The roe was cooked until it became hard, cut into pieces, deep-fried and seasoned with salt, pepper and asafoetida water. Tortoise, meanwhile (said to taste like ripe plantain), was prepared by removing the legs and shell and roasting it in oil in a hot pan. Crab meat was roasted in a copper pan.
Fruit, leaves, stems and flowers were served raw or cooked and with or without meat. Leafy vegetables (25 varieties are named by Somesvara) were mixed with yoghurt or citrus juice. Fruit (40 are listed, of which most have no English equivalent), roots, and bamboo shoots and leaves were salted or mixed with ground black mustard seed, sesame oil and salt.
For a delicious soup, grind cinnamon, cumin, mustard, black pepper, cardamom and coriander seeds with water. Boil any type of dal until it reaches the consistency of gruel, add the ground spices and cook, stirring. Garnish with mustard seeds, cumin seeds, asafoetida and curry leaves fried in a little ghee or oil.
A salad of raw mango, plantain, bitter gourd and jackfruit in a sesame and black mustard-seed dressing sounds like a dish that would be served in a contemporary upscale Indian restaurant.
Some of the sweet dishes were made with khoya – cow’s or buffalo’s milk thickened by being boiled over a slow fire. Sikharini (drained spiced yoghurt) again makes an appearance. Milk was split by adding a souring agent and drained through cloth to make curds or chhana; the curds were blended until smooth, mixed with sugar and fried in small balls.
Drinks called panaka were prepared from various fruit, sometimes mixed with buttermilk. People also drank fresh coconut water, diluted molasses sprinkled with pepper, and majjika (churned buttermilk flavoured with black pepper and mustard seeds). Alcoholic drinks include gaudi, a rum-like drink made from sugar or molasses, and madhvi, made from the flowers of the mahua tree.
A somewhat earlier work from the same region describes a more down-to-earth cuisine. Lokopakara, which means ‘for the benefit of the people’, was written in the local language Kannada (not Sanskrit, like the Manasolassa) in about 1025 by Chavundaraya II, a Jain poet and scholar at the court of Jaisimha II (ruled 1015–42), one of the Western Chalukya kings. In addition to discussing food, it contains chapters on astrology, architecture, omens, perfumes, water divining and veterinary and human medicine.
The chapter called ‘Supa Shastra’, or ‘The Art and Science of Cooking’, gives 57 rudimentary recipes, all for vegetarian dishes without onion or garlic. Many are for sweet dishes and snacks, perhaps because these are the most complicated to prepare. The very first recipe describes the correct method of cooking rice, which should be washed three times before being boiled in a lot of water, which is drained off at the end (still the preferred way of cooking rice in India).
Barley (which by then had almost been replaced by rice as the staple grain) is an ingredient in only two dishes. After being soaked in milk, it was dried and roasted, ground into a flour, flavoured with ground saffron, cinnamon, cinnamon leaves and cardamom, and mixed with sugar and ghee to make a porridge. A similar dish, called rave unde, made with wheat or semolina flour, is still served at festivals and ceremonies in Karnataka. Alternatively, a paste of barley and milk was formed into balls and fried in ghee. Today kajjaya, a similar dish made with rice, is served on special occasions.
The most commonly used lentils were mung, urad and chana dal. The lentils were cooked in water until thick, then mixed with a paste of cardamom, cumin, coriander, black pepper and mustard seed. The dal was flavoured with tamarind or lemon juice and garnished with mustard and cumin seeds, asafoetida and curry leaves fried in a little oil, a mixture called oggarane.6
A few sweet dishes were made by curdling hot milk to make chhana, which was mixed with sugar, ghee, ground cinnamon and ground cardamom and formed into balls. Laddus, one of the most popular Indian sweets (see chapter Five), were made by mixing savige – vermicelli made from a dough of rice flour, yoghurt and ghee – with ghee and a sugar syrup, forming it into balls and frying it in ghee. Tamarind or jujube juice was added for flavour. A mixture of finely grated coconut, dates and sugar was stuffed into pieces of dough that were fried in ghee – the modern Karnataka sweet sajjappa.
The most complex recipe is for sikharini. Yoghurt was mixed with cinnamon, dried ginger, black pepper, rock salt, jaggery, nutmeg, zedoary (white turmeric), the flowers of Mesua ferrea (ironwood), myrobalan, honey and sugar-cane juice, and finally with edible camphor.
A gruel made from rice and flavoured with cassia extract, ground barley, sesame seeds, urad dal, asafoetida and turmeric powder was formed into balls that were dried in the sun and stored. When deep-fried, they swelled into large balls called sandige, still a popular snack in Karnataka, especially during the rainy season. A paste of ground urad dal soaked in water drained from yoghurt and flavoured with asafoetida, cumin seeds, coriander and black pepper was used to prepare idlis. However, the recipe does not include rice, nor is it fermented. According to Achaya, rice was probably not adopted as an ingredient until the fifteenth century.7 It is said that fermentation was introduced by the cooks of Indonesian Hindu kings who visited South India in search of brides between the eighth and twelfth centuries, but a more likely explanation is that it was a natural process that was discovered independently in India, since nearly all cultures use fermentation in some form.
Unlike the Chinese, Indians rarely attempt to make vegetarian dishes that resemble meat or fish. There is an exception in Lokopakara, however: a dough of parched chickpea flour is pressed into fish-shaped moulds, then fried in mustard oil.
A large section of Lokopakara covers methods of preserving various foods by using yoghurt, salt and jaggery, and ways of removing toxicity and bitterness from fruit, vegetables, shoots and leaves that grew in the wild – an indication of the importance of economy in the diet of common people. For example, unripe mangoes are cut into pieces, smeared with black pepper and jaggery and dried in the sun, while ripe mangoes can be preserved for days in sugar syrup or honey.
According to a poet at the court of the last independent Hindu king of Delhi, Prithviraj Chauhan (1149–1192), meals at the royal palace included meat flavoured in various ways; five kinds of sag (green vegetables); fruit; vegetables flavoured with the six tastes; pickles and condiments; buttermilk; and yoghurt.8 Sweet dishes included kheer, a rice pudding flavoured with cardamom, other spices and nuts; payesh (payasam), rice cooked slowly in milk and sugar; rabari, milk thickened by boiling and mixed with sugar; and kesara, a ball made of flour, sugar and ghee. Savoury dishes include khirora, a steamed rice-flour ball; bara, small deep-fried lentil balls; khandvi, a savoury made from chickpea and wheat flour; and lapsi, cracked wheat boiled in milk and eaten with sugar and spices. The wealthy enjoyed khichri, mixed rice and lentils prepared with ghee, spices and vegetables.
The food of the common people lacked richness and variety. The Arab geographer al-Idrisi (1099–1161) wrote: ‘Their food consists of rice, chickpeas, beans, haricots, lentils, peas, fish and animals that died a natural death.’9 Other staples were the ancient sattu and khichri without ghee. Milk, milk products and sugar were reserved for the upper classes. Another Arab traveller commented that Hindus disapproved of the drinking of wine both by themselves and others, not on religious grounds but because of its intoxicating effect.10
Laddoos, balls made of chickpea flour, semolina or other ingredients, are perhaps the most popular Indian sweets.
Eastern India (modern West Bengal and Bangladesh) is one of the most fertile areas in the subcontinent. Barley and rice were staples from early times, since little wheat grew there. Other common foods were fruit (including citrus), roots, leafy green vegetables, the stalks and flowers of vegetables (a characteristic feature of modern Bengali cuisine), milk and milk products, jaggery, crushed fried barley and chickpeas. At least twelve varieties of sugar cane are mentioned in the literature. Popular vegetables included patola, a small member of the gourd family, aubergine, radishes and bitter gourd. Typical flavourings included turmeric powder and paste, mustard seeds, dried ginger, cumin seeds, long pepper, cloves, coriander seeds and asafoetida. Both betel creepers and betel-nut trees were cultivated, and the chewing of paan was common. Coconut trees were ubiquitous, and both the kernel and the water of the nut were consumed.
With exception of some orthodox brahmins, widows and Jains, most Bengalis were not vegetarians. Law-writers of the Middle Ages found it necessary to sanction the eating of fish (provided it had scales) and meat, except on certain days each month.11 Dried fish was not considered fit for human consumption, although it was eaten by poor people along the coast. Although alcohol was prohibited, songs written in the twelfth century show that there were many taverns in Bengal selling not just intoxicating beverages but also cannabis. A poem by an eighth-century Buddhist mystic reads:
There is a woman winemaker who enters two rooms
She ferments wine with fine barks.
Hold me still, Shahaja, then ferment the wine
So that your shoulders are held strongly and your body is free from age and death.12
A series of epic poems called Mansamangal, written between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, depicts the daily life of the affluent.13 They ate aubergines fried in oil, green vegetables cooked with cumin seeds, pepper, fresh ginger, various kinds of lentils and fish, especially rohu (carp) and ilish (Tenualosa ilisha), goat and duck meat, various pitha (a kind of pancake made with rice flour and jaggery) and many varieties of rice.
Khichri, a dish of rice and lentils, is one of the oldest Indian dishes, with many variations. |
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In a poem describing a meal at the home of a rich merchant, the dishes and the order in which they are served are nearly identical to those that would be served as the midday meal of an upper-middle-class Hindu family in Bengal today: a bitter dish (sukhta); a liquid dish (jhol); mixed vegetables (ghanta); green leafy vegetables (saka); boiled lentils (dal); fish served whole, in pieces or as balls; meat; a sour dish (ambala); rice-flour sweets (pitha); thickened milk-based sweets (ksira); and yoghurt.14
A twelfth-century description of a marriage feast indicates the skill of the cooks. The boiled rice was white, fragrant and delicious, each grain separate from the others. It was mixed with ghee. Dishes of yoghurt with black mustard seeds made guests scratch their heads because of their pungent taste. Delicious broths were made from venison and fish. The dishes were so skilfully made that guests could not distinguish between those that were vegetarian and those that were not.15
The diet of ordinary people consisted of boiled rice, yoghurt, vegetables and gourds, served on banana leaves. Boiled rice was dried in the sun to make muri, or puffed rice, a popular dish in eastern India and Bangladesh.
Returning home to Italy from China in 1292 CE, the merchant traveller Marco Polo landed on the Coromandel Coast and spent a year in South India. He called the kingdom of the Tamil Pandyas near modern-day Tanjore ‘the richest and most splendid province in the world’, and noted the abundance of pepper, ginger, cubebs (Java pepper), nuts and turmeric. Although most people avoided alcohol, he reported, many were addicted to chewing a leaf called tambur (paan), sometimes mixing it with ‘camphor and other spices and also, with lime . . . They go about chewing this leaf and spitting out the resulting spittle.’ They also used paan to express disdain by targeting the spittle at another person’s face, which sometimes led to violent clashes. The people ‘worship the ox’, did not eat beef (except people of low social status) and daubed their houses with cow dung. Polo reported that a group of their holy men, the Yogis, ate frugally and lived longer than most, some as long as 200 years (a typical example of his tendency to exaggerate). The men belonging to one religious order – probably the Jains – wore no clothes and led ‘a harsh and austere life’. They believed that all living beings have a soul, and took pains to avoid hurting even the tiniest creatures.16
Vegetarianism was prevalent in Gujarat from ancient times. The Jain presence was and still is strong in the region, and in the twelfth century CE King Kumarapala (ruled 1143–72) supported Jainism and banned the slaughter of animals in his kingdom. Many merchants who converted to Vaishnavism from the sixth century onwards were vegetarians.
Jain literature composed between the seventh and fifteenth centuries mentions many Gujarati vegetarian dishes that are still eaten today, including dukkia (dhokla, a steamed cake made of chickpea flour), vedhami (also called puranpoli, a bread stuffed with sweet spiced lentils), kacchari (kachori, a puffy deep-fried bread stuffed with lentils), kosamri (a lentil salad spiced with mustard seeds), sarkara (dudhpeda, a round sweet made of khoya – thickened milk – and sugar) and ghrtapura (thevara), a sweet soaked in sugar syrup.17
