Scenes from a Vrendra Kyastha Kitchen

Bihani Sarkar
(Paper delivered at the Pkadarpaa workshop, University of Kyoto, March 2013.)

I ought to open with a disclaimer of sorts: my specic research-area is literature on the warrior goddess cult, but I have been invited today to talk about food in Indian culture, a subject that I know both intimately through years spent in a traditional Bengali joint-family from North Calcutta, and yet not at all as a specialist in terms of the historical and the scholarly.

Given my ignorance on the subject as an academic inquiry, for which I am deeply apologetic to my learned audience, todays talk will be an informal blend of largely personal observations of customs from my upbringing that seem to continue, or preserve in a slightly modied state, old traditions, along with textual descriptions about the experience of food from the medieval period. My object is to be at once the sociologist and the textual scholar: I wish to frame a record of current traditions of my household, a Vrendra Kyastha one, with a historical interrogation and exploration of the medieval background in which many of them might have emerged.

This workshop on the Pkadarpaa provides an opportunity for historians of Indian culture to explore a range of questions about the social, scientic and even aesthetic, aspects of life in medieval India:

Were there certain formal codes of etiquette involved during processes of cooking and eating in the past? Were Brhmaa purity rules upheld in the kitchen, as they are now in traditional kitchens, and it seems from the Pkadarpaa at least, that such rules were not stringently enforced. Was there a theory behind eating, for instance were certain kinds of food meant to cause particular physiological effects, such as the control of humours? Recipes in the Pkadarpaa seem to have been formulated according to medical conceptions of the body prevalent at the

time. For example, the second chapter links diets to different seasons, which are mapped out in a day, according to the state of the body at that time. A sour diet is recommended for spring; a sweet, sour and salty diet for summer; sour and bitter for monsoon; sweet and bitter for autumn; sweet, sour, bitter and astringent for winter; and bitter and sweet for the dewy season (Pkadarpaa 2.22-27). These are said to benet a persons health in specic ways, for instance a diet for the summer part of the day is said to neutralize pitta or bile while a monsoon diet neutralizes vta, the windy humour. We have also read in todays session how different rice-dishes in Chapter 7 are said to have specic health-benets in verses advertising their various rewards. The complex, systematic relation between food and yurveda underlying cooking manuals would be an important subject to understand. How were treatises (stras) on cooking, of which there were quite a few, perceived and how were they used, if we assume that they were used? In ancient Indian culture, which has left behind treatises on subjects as diverse as sex (kmastra), robbery (caurastra), farming (kistra), computation (gaitastra) and perfumery (gandhastra), it seems possible for the entire spectrum of human activity to have been organized and treated as scientic branches of knowledge.

So, did textually encoded regulations on cooking leave an impact on social custom and philosophies of food, or were they written down simply because it was the norm to codify? What kinds of historical hypotheses can be responsibly derived from such a work? Since we know so little about the hard facts of medieval Indian life, it is of crucial importance that we make broader observations from a work like the Pkadarpaa with an obvious connection to realia. However, it is also important that we do so responsibly, because there need not be a necessary link between doctrine and usage -- all rules were not scrupulously followed, and it is important to concede that things on the ground might have differed from the scenario presented in normative texts. In other words, we need to be careful in making claims about custom while studying such texts, and to keep testing our assertions. Can we for instance make useful conclusions about the organizational aspects of cooking and understand thereby the operation of a

medieval Indian palace, whose environment seems to provide the context for this work? Can we proceed to make further observations about the structure of the social, and economic, system in place at the time, and the different roles of people within that system beginning with its fundamental unit, the household? I hope that the study of this culinary treatise as undertaken in these workshops throws welcome light on these issues.

Having touched upon the etiquette of eating and the aesthetics of food, I am brought to mind the tale of Gomin from Dains prose work the Daakumracarita, circa the 7th century CE. This little episode, intended to illustrate the virtues of a good wife, contains a vivid portrait of a feast and its preparation by an enterprising and imaginative young heroine named Gomin,1 that reveals much about how, at one level, food in medieval India was thought of as an experience akin to poetry, dance and music.

In the story, aktikumra a rich mans son, wishing to nd a model wife, challenges an impoverished maiden Gomin to cook a full meal with only a prastha of unhusked rice (li/dhnya), which in modern terms would roughly equal two kilograms. Gomin begins this seemingly impossible task by systematically undertaking an elaborate sequence of processes encompassing the creation of food from its raw agricultural state to its nal transformation into a lavish and pleasurable repast. First she separated the rice (taula) from the chaff (tua). She then had her old nurse, her sole companion in the world, sell the husks to goldsmiths who would use them to polish jewellery. The money (kkii) from the transaction is used to purchase rm re-wood (khni), neither too dry nor too moist, a middling sized cauldron (mitapac sthl), and two earthen dishes (arve). Gomin threshed the rice in a wooden mortar (ulkhala) with a pestle (musala) of khadira wood and after offering a part in worship to the hearth (cullpj), put the prepared rice on the boil in water ve times its amount. When the rice was perfectly cooked, she covered the mouth of the pot, reduced the re
Dain, Daakumracitam, Revised in one Volume by G.J.Agashe from the rst edition of Bhler and Peterson in two parts, Second Edition, Government Central Press, Bombay, 1919, pp. 111-112.
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and strained its glutinous, carbohydrate-rich stock (maa). From the sappy rewood left-over she made charcoal (agra) and asked her nurse to sell this. With the wealth obtained, the nurse was asked to buy vegetables (kam), ghee (ghta), curds (dadhi), oil (tailam), emblic myrobalan (malaka) and tamarind (cicphalam). Gomin prepared two kinds of vegetable accompaniments (upadan). With a palm-fan, she gently cooled the rice-stock, which had been poured into a young reed cup placed on top of moist sand, mixed it with salt and perfumed it with incense. She crushed the malaka so that it exuded its lotusfragrance, and gave it to aktikumra with the oil as unguents for his bath. When he had bathed, he was courteously made to sit on a platform on ground that had been duly washed, and in front of him were placed two moist platters on a quarter cut from a pale-green plantain leaf. He was offered the scented rice-stock to drink as a refreshing sherbet. When his fatigue had departed and his entire body had been hydrated, she placed upon his plate two ladles of the rice with a broth (spa) of ghee and the vegetable accompaniments. He then ate the remaining rice as a cooling dessert with buttermilk (klaeya) and a sour gruel (kcik), and with curd scattered with trijtaka, a blend of three spices (cardamom, mace and cinnamon). To drink, he was given aromatic water (pnyam) that had been stored in a new pitcher, perfumed by aloe, fragranced with newly blossomed pal owers, and fully blown lotuses. When he drank this he experienced exquisite rapture, all his senses of hearing, touch, smell and taste ooded with bliss. Dain waxes eloquently about this moment, evoking hints of the erotic in conveying how food can encapsulate the sensory world in its fulness. aktikumra is described as (+ (one whose hearing is enchanted by the gurgling sound of the stream of water), .136(8: (whose cheeks were rough with hair bristling in pleasure, made erect by the thrill of contact), <=?CDE(F (his nostrils aring at the bursting ood of perfume), and 31=IJL(M (whose tongue was overwhelmed by the intensity of sweetness). Crowning his pleasure, there followed a glorious siesta on the terrace.

In employing such a quantity of detail in his description of the whole process, Dains technique is more of a meticulous ethnographer recording facts, rather than that of a story-teller creating ction, and the passage has a ring of realism about it. Gomins episode shows that there was an art to feasting in India: even if one had paltry ingredients and however impoverished the circumstances, one didnt cook just to sate hunger, but used ingredients as materials to craft a variegated experience for the senses, one that could even, like a sublime work of art, make guests experience a transformed and ecstatic state of awareness. Food must have been understood as a sophisticated affair in the past, conceived and executed thoughtfully not just in order to nourish the body in a medical sense, but also to heighten a range of emotions in the eater by animating the sensepalette.

In his encyclopaedic work the Mnasollsa describing various aspects of court life, the 11th century Western Clukya king Somevara regards food as one of twenty kinds of delectations (bhog) to be cultivated by a man of rank. In the section entitled The Delectation of Victuals (annabhoga), the following is said about the grand and mannered ceremony of feasting in a palace:
Having summoned kinsmen, kings of neighbouring kingdoms, vassals, reputed soldiers, dependant friends, and servants adept in singing and playing instruments, and having seated them at a site betting to himself, he must feed them. Along with his sons, grandsons and greatgrandsons, a king should partake of salted dishes (bhojya), sweets (bhakya), drink (peya), chutneys (lehya), and foods which are to be sucked (coya) 2: thus must a king enjoy the ve desirable diets [...] He should make kings of neighbouring kingdoms etc. eat from a gold and silver platter...He should have victuals of cooked food and drink described previously to be heaped on a sprawling gold dish with a golden bowl ... inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, served with a gold drinking cup, properly washed in water, and polished with a white cloth. Having covered the part from his thigh to his navel with a white napkin, a king seated on a throne-cushion facing east, should feast on warm rice suffused with ghee accompanied by moong lentils. While eating facing east, he acquires long life; when eating facing south, fame in excess; abundant wealth facing west; and the reward of honest speech when turned towards the north. With pleasure, as betting his tastes and his health, a king should feast on rice interlaced with a variety of meats, or with sprouts dressed with vinegar, with different sorts of vegetables, lumps of delightful pulse-cakes (parpaa), twenty four gallons of treacle and its derivatives. He should enjoy cooked dishes, in the interim milk-rice mixed with sugar and ghee, and afterwards fruits having sweet and sour juices. He should drink a delicious aromatic beverage and also have sugared and spiced curds , and afterwards drink thick sour milk...In spring, he should eat what is sour, in summer what is cool and sweet, during monsoon what is caustic, in autumn what is known as sweet, in winter what is warm and oily, and Cf. Pkadarpaa 1.4: bhakya bhojya tath lehya coya peya payogatam | bheda rasn a ca uddhasaskrabhedata |
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as for the dewy season, what is hot and sour. That, which a king should enjoy in this manner, is known as the delectation of victuals.3

Apart from conveying that the experience of food in an Indian palace was a formal and exquisitely ritualized affair, the passage also shows its socio-political importance in cementing key connections of the ruler. Partaking of food is not an activity undertaken by a king in regal solitude but a socially cohesive one, and its performance centred on him surrounded by his entire cohort evokes and affirms the classically concentric circles of power of a medieval Indian kingdom. Food must have played an integral role in social interactions in a culture based on kinship, in which hospitality was seen as fundamental in sustaining networks of kith and kin, sacralized even in the brahmanical law-codes. Manusmti 3.105-107 says (quoting Bhlers translation): A guest who is sent by the sun in the evening must not be driven away by a householder, whether he have come at supper time

sauvare rjate ptre rtiyantravidhrite | bhojayen maaledn yathyogyapradeata | vile kcane ptre svarakaccolasayute | lohagaglakair yukte rukmapiglakair vte | bharmauktisamopete kanakasthlasayute | jalapraklite samyak sitavastrapramrjite | vardhayet prvakathitam annapakvnnapnakam | runbhipradenta sachdya sitavsas | gaddiky samsna prvsammukho npa | anna mudgasamopeta bhujtoa ghtaplutam | prcmukhas tu bhujna yu ca labhate bahu | yaa ca labhate tyartham anan dakiadimukha | riya tu labhate pu bhujna pacimnana | satyavkyaphala prpnoty anan dhanadadimukha | lakamsasamyukta vidalair v vimiritam | lehai ca vividhair hdyair lepita v tathodanam | msaprakrakair mair amlamirai ca pallavai | nnvidhais tath kai phalapatrasamudbhavai | vaakai parpaair hdyai khrakhaopakhaakai | yathruci yathstmya sukha bhjta bhpati | pakvnna pyasa madhye arkarghtamiritam | tata phalni bhujta madhurmlarasni ca | pibec ca pnaka hdya lihyc chikarim api | ceta majjik pacd dadhi cdyt tato ghanam | tatas takrnnam anyt saindhavena ca sayutam | kra vpi pibet pact pibed v kjika varam | msam amlena bhujta dugdha v arkaryutam | lavaena tath cmla kra kaukayakai | vasante kau anyd grme madhuratalam | varsu ca tath kra madhura aradi smtam | hemante snigdham ua ca iire py uam amlakam | eva bhujta yad bhpo annabhoga sa kathyate | 13. 1585-1600
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annabhoga samkhyta somevaramahbhuj |

or at an inopportune moment, he must not stay in the house without entertainment. Let him not eat any dainty food which he does not offer to his guest; the hospitable reception of guests procures wealth, fame, long life and heavenly bliss. Let him offer to his guest seats, rooms, beds, attendance on departure and honour while they stay, to the most distinguished in the best form, to the lower ones in a lower form, to equals in an equal manner. Rules concerning hospitality apply even to Brhmaas when interacting with lower castes at home (ibid 3.111-114), and in this context strictness concerning avoidance of those less pure is relaxed. For, the consequence of inhospitality is dire-- the foolish man, Manu 3.115 warns, who eats rst without having given food to these persons, does, while he crams, not know that after death he himself will be devoured by dogs and vultures.

Above the realm of the secular, hospitality played a crucial role in rites worshipping gods and ancestors, during the course of which they were offered food and drink, and treated like guests. The remnants of the gods were then shared by devotees as prasda, divinely empowered gifts. This continues in the religious life of the modern Indic world, where food for deities retains a dimension that is powerfully sacred. The idea that food is integral to appeasing gods, and thereby in sustaining the self and the universe seems to go back to the model of the Vedic sacrice, during which offerings of food and libation are made into the re believed to be carried by smoke to the devas in heaven. The continuity of life and universal order are seen to be preserved as consequences. In this respect, it can be said that the role of the cook resembles the classical Vedic sacricer (yajamna), who in offering comestibles into the re as oblation, enacts a process analoguous to cooking.

Leaping from the past to the present, I would now like to offer as an example of living tradition, the custom of my household, for pointing out issues that could potentially be at play in our imaginary kitchen in the past that produced food such as those described in the Pkadarpaa. My family are kyasthas originally from

Varendra (now in the district of Rajshahi in Bangladesh). The practices of my household regarding cuisine conform to the world-views of the Brahmanical substrate, and preserve old regional traditions fast-dying in modern Bengal. For example, rules concerning purity are strictly followed in the kitchen and during meal-times. We are a meat and sh eating family, but in the process of cooking, are careful to segregate meat from vegetables. They are cooked in different utensils, which are stored in different parts of the kitchen. Contact between the two is strictly avoided, for any intermingling is thought to change the condition of pure vegetarian foods. We were even taught in childhood that once meat or sh was put on our plate, we could not place the plate in parts of the kitchen where vegetarian dishes were kept. Onions and garlic though used, are kept separately, for they grow under the earth and are thus considered impure. To ensure the purity of food, cooks in my household have always been brhmaas, a fact which allows their role to extend outside the kitchen: the cook takes over the responsibilities of our household shrine (the hkur ghar), during times when my mother and aunt, who are directly responsible for looking after that area, are abroad.

Food which is eaten becomes contaminated and is known as enho in modern Bengali, juh in modern Hindi, ucchia in Sanskrit. This must be kept separate from untouched food, and disposed of immediately. Everything it has been in contact with loses purity, even plates, bowls and any surface on which it is kept. When enho plates and glasses are removed from the table, it must be wiped clean with a wet cloth. Contact with such impurity regulates social behavior: if a person has touched enho food, or utensils in which enho food is kept, s/he becomes contaminated, and must avoid contact with others, who have not touched enho objects. The children in my house were taught when going to wash their hands after a meal, to cup the left hand under the right, so that morsels of ucchia do not drop on the ground. During marriages it was considered extremely romantic for a newly-wed couple to share from the same plate: the fact that they partake of the others ucchia, which otherwise would have been forbidden, was seen to be a symbol of their union. We eat with our right hands,

and were taught that the left hand should never come in contact with any article of food, since it is considered impure, associated particularly with washing after defecation. This extends into other patterns of behaviour: money and gifts for instance are never handed with the left hand, but always with the right. In strictly orthodox brhmaa households, these norms can be more stringently applied, and in a variety of other ways.

The inherent purity and impurity of foods is reected in the Dharmastra that contains passages teaching practices still observed in my household, and in many other traditional households. Chapter 5.1-57 deals with lawful and forbidden food, and a long list of what can and cannot be eaten is given here. There is clearly an underlying sense in this taxonomy that food in the Brahmanical perception is responsible for much more than the physical health of an individual, for, borrowing the words of Axel Michaels, it also makes one pure internally and morally. Statements concerning the lawful or unlawful nature of meat are particularly revealing in how this understanding of food in constituting the moral sanctity of an individual was formulated, but in ways that were often contradictory. While some verses are outright in their condemnation of meat as an impure substance (Mnavadharmastra 5.50-54), others unabashedly declare it to be the duty of the twice-born to eat meat (ibid 5.28-29), and some adopt a middle position, asserting that the eating of meat is conditional on its being rst and foremost offered to the gods and only after being sprinkled with water to the accompaniment of Vedic spells (ibid 5.7, 5.31-32, 5.36, 5.41). What seems important about such conicting statements is the implication that, though there was a consensus about purity and impurity being intrinsic to food, understandings of what exactly was pure, what impure and to what degree, seem to have varied. These variations in opinion could have manifested spatially, from region to region, and temporally, over different time-periods.

Furthermore, though idealized in dharmaastric literature, rules about pure and impure foods seem not to have been strictly followed to the letter: Dr. Vasudeva kindly pointed out to me a farce the Palumaana, the Onion Adornment, by

Harijvanamira and in this work brhmaas are shown to openly dote on garlic and onions; grand paeans are addressed to these vegetables, and their eating is justied by arguments about their health benets: garlic manages to revive one character from a swoon, while onions are said to give virility. We have encountered the abundant use of garlic, and meat, in the Pkadarpaa itself, even in sweet dishes. As for my household, double-standards apply very much here too, as we have seen.

However, it is not just conceptions of purity that have remained in my family kitchen, but also the importance of observing sacred days in a joyous and festive manner, which involves the preparation of ne, age-old recipes associated with parvans. The most important festivals celebrated by the household are talaah, Lakm Pj, Sarasvat Pj and Makarasakrnti, during which time special fare, entirely vegetarian, is cooked. talaah in the bright quarter of the month of Mgha is usually followed by women. All the food eaten on talaah is cold, cooked the previous night, as no res are meant to burn in the kitchens on that day. Since the occasion is celebrated on the Sixth lunar-day of the month, six kinds of vegetables, no more no less, are used to make the stew that is special to this sacred day, and the quantity of each vegetable is also a multiple of six. My mother and aunt carefully count the vegetables the previous night to make sure that the numbers are correct. Makarasakrnti falls on the cusp of the months of Mgha and Paua, and is an extremely auspicious occasion in the brahmanical calendar. Women in the household observe this occasion by making dumplings and crepes known as phe and puli. Lakm Pj is the most important ritual of the family, when we worship our lineage goddess Lakm with much fanfare, using the rice that is ritually offered to her for the meal after the worship. The entire household hums with activity for the pj in the evening: some are entrusted with cutting fruits, some preparing the drv grass, some in making lpan paintings of Lakms feet all over the house, everyone is involved in welcoming the goddess. The house is steeped with fruits, owers and the warm splendour of all the ritual implements taken out of their storage place on this celebratory day. Sarasvat Pj is an occasion when performances of ne arts are

given by family members as offerings to the goddess of wisdom and speech, followed by a lavish meal. Both rituals require members of the family (who are willing) to fast during the day, preferably without water.

Traditionally, it is the household that has been the locus for the culinary arts. One cannot exist without the other, and in envisaging food in medieval India it is also necessary to understand the environment that nurtured its development. A traditional brahmanical household is like a complex organism with internal systems and processes, which can even be perceived as a microcosm of the entire social structure and its intricate net of hierarchies and relationships. And the faculty of Consciousness, responsible for the life of this sophisticated organism from which wider society derives, is the womenfolk of the household. They and they alone are the channels of traditional lore, the ones who create and sustain living culture. In a society in which the role of women was generally circumscribed and carefully regulated in public, it was the private domain of the home that allowed to some degree female power and initiative to shine forth and ourish in the past. In my house, the persons governing all its systems, from maintaining household traditions, to managing staff, nances and the daily business of keeping accounts and distributing money, are my mother and my aunt; in particular my mother who possesses the knowledge once known by my grandmother, and has been my teacher for this talk. In describing today the ars culinaria of my household, I have only transcribed what she had told me.

Bihani Sarkar, Nachwuchsinitiative, University of Hamburg.