The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.338

v1.c10.338

**Food and Drink** : Nothing also has been met with in sculpture regarding the nature of the food which the people of Orissa ordinarily used twelve hundred years ago. The principal article was no doubt, as now, rice, but it is not shown in any form on the temple. Fish, meat and vegetables are also unrepresented, but sweetmeats, cakes and other articles of luxury are occasionally delineated, and these indicate a state of considerable social refinement. Reference has already been made (p. [111]) to the figure of Gaṇeśa in the Great Tower of Bhuvaneśvara holding a bowl in which are shown a number of globular lumps, each made up of a collection of small round grains exactly representing the sweetmeat now generally known by the name of *moticur*, or "broken pearl". It is made of a paste of gram fried in *ghi*, and subsequently steeped in syrup. In the temple of Bhagavatī and that of Mukteśvara, there are several figures in bas-relief, with cakes of different kinds in their hands, but their nature cannot be clearly ascertained.