Changes in the Indian
menu over the ages
THE FOOD that we Indians have been eating has
been, over the millennia, steadily evolving both in variety and taste.
Fortunately for us, these have been identified from relics and fossils,
and also described in the written lore over the years.
As discussed in the last article two weeks
ago, the late Dr. K. T. Achaya has analysed these in a scholarly and
entertaining way in his books Indian Food: A Historical Companion and A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food.
He traces how our food habits and preferences have changed in stages
over the last 4000 years, from the Indus Valley days through the Vedic
times and after the influence of Buddhist and Jain thought, and their
impact on the Dharma Sutras and Arthasastra of around 300 BC.
By the time we reach the Middle Ages (1000-1200 AD), we find several
texts and commentaries across the country that talk about culinary
habits of local people and their kings. A meal was now expected to have
six components of quality and taste.
Royal meal
These are madhura (sweet), amla (sour), lavana
(salty), kata (pungent), tikta (bitter) and kasaya (astringent), as
prescribed earlier on by Sushruta (around 600 AD). The
Bhavissayattakaha (of AD 1000) describes the royal meal of King
Shrenika thus. First were served fruits that could be chewed (grape,
pomegranate, ber), then fruits to be sucked (sugarcane, oranges,
mangoes).
Food that could be licked came next and in
the fourth course came solid sweet items such as sevaka, modaka and
phenaka. Rice followed next and the sixth was of broths. Curd
preparation made the seventh course and the eighth ended with thickened
milk flavoured with saffron. Items such as parpata (papad) and vataka
(vadam) were common.
The extant vegetables ranged pretty much as
before cucumber, brinjal, snake gourd and other gourds, yams, French
beans and cluster beans, leafy greens, onions and garlic, coconut,
cowpea, sweet potato (?) and such. It was with the entry of the
Portuguese that a floodgate of new vegetables entered the Indian land
and kitchens.
They brought potato, tomato, tapioca,
groundnuts, corn, papaya, pineapple, guava, avocado, rajma (kidney
bean), cashew, sapota (chiku), and of course capsicum and chilli in all
its forms (and I felt bad hearing about idli importation!). Perhaps the
cauliflower and cabbage came from Europe or Latin America too, but
certainly a particular form of cottage cheese did come from the
Portuguese. It was this that became the chhana of Bengal and Orissa
the base for many Bengali sweets (Sandesh in its modern form, and of
course inventions called Rasogolla, Khirmohan, Mouchak, Pantua,
Sitabhog, Chhena Puda, and so forth).
The Portuguese word for grain, grao, was
taken up to describe Indian pulses as Bengal gram, horse gram and other
grams. While the Arabs and Central Asians brought bajra, jowar, lobia
and forms of bread (roti) into India, the Portuguese enriched Indian
food through their diverse introductions. When we eat Aloo-poori, we
partake of the richness of the produce of people from West Asia and
Latin America!
Mughal influence
The next major influence on Indian cuisine came
with the Mughals, starting with Babar who came in 1526 to stay but four
years here. While he remained aloof to the Indian supper-tables, his
son Humayun took to them easier and also introduced a few new items to
it. It is with Akbar, and through the book Ain-i-Akbari, that we know
of many new dishes, ovens and recipes that came into India through the
Mughal court. Dishes like khichri, palak-sag, biryani, pilaf, haleem,
harisa, qutab (samosa), yakhni, kabab, do-pyaza, dumpukht, naan,
tandoori, chapati (phulka) and khushka.
The delicious cold kulfi was made at court by
freezing a mixture of khoa, pista nuts and zafran essence in a metal
cone after sealing the open top with dough. (The only modification
today is to use aluminium or plastic cones with their own caps).
Jahangir, unlike his father, enjoyed meat, but will be remembered for
popularizing falooda (a jelly made from boiled wheat strainings mixed
with fruit juices and cream).
With the Mughal introduction of the varieties
of bread, meat dishes (particularly of fowl) and the ovens to make
them, and their methods to make ice locally, the cuisine of much of
North India transformed forever.
The Chinese had their influence too, though
not to the extent of the Portuguese and the Moghuls. Mulberry,
blackberry and the litchi fruit came to us through them. Of Chinese
origin are also the sweet cherry and the peach. China also developed
the leafy variety of Brassica juncea (rai), which we in India use as a
vegetable. Camphor is a Chinese import and introduction (it is even
today called chinakarpura).
The soybean was imported from China into
India in 1908 for cultivation, though it caught on widely only after
the U.S. variety was introduced in 1970s. And the most precious
introduction of China to India (and to the world at large) is of course
their cha or teh, namely tea. Just imagine what we do first thing in
the morning we pay obeisance to the Arabs with a cup of coffee (they
brought it to us in the 1600s) or to the Chinese with our steaming
cuppa.
Introduction of apple
Compared to this cornucopia, the British
brought us little in terms of food. Fish and chips or Yorkshire pudding
pale in comparison to what we got from the Arabs, Portuguese and
Moghuls, but the British did sensitise us to at least one fruit, namely
the apple. Local varieties of apple are recorded to have occured in
Kashmir (called amri, tarehli and maharaji), and Dalhara in 1100 AD
talked about a "ber as big as a fist and very sweet, grown in North
Kashmir", which is likely an apple. But it was the colourful Britisher
Frederick "Pahari" Wilson who established a flourishing apple farm in
Garhwal, where they grow red and juicy Wilson apples to this day.
In these days of American imports into India
such as Pizza, Burgers, French fries and colas, it is well to remember
the best import we have had from these, namely apples and express our
gratitude to the American Mr. Stokes.
He settled in Kotgarh near Simla in the 1920s
and started apple orchards there, and helped in the proper grading,
packing and marketing of the fruit.
India-America amity
The two varieties he introduced, called
`Delicious', have now become the major Indian apple varieties, making
the Himachal apple growers happy and more prosperous than before. He
married a local girl and settled down.
His descendants Smt. Vidya Stokes
(politician) and Dr. Vijay Stokes (scientist) are well known. Though
Australian apples are increasingly found in the Indian market, it is
still the Delicious that rules the roost. Next time you bite into an
Indian apple, you are celebrating Indo-American amity!
One wonders, going as far back as the scriptures, what Lord Rama ate. Perhaps it is easier to tell what Lord Rama did not eat.
No potato, no tomato, no cauliflower, broccoli,
cabbage, corn, tapioca, rajma, nor of course chillies in any form! But
then, I could be wrong since the sarva vyapi or the omnipresent might
very well have partaken of all these whenever He was in Europe and the
Americas.
(Concluded)
D. Balasubramanian