India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c8.s6.t1.15

c8.s6.t1.15

What was the nature of the *kulmāsha* food? In the *Nirukta*² *kulmāsha* is an inferior food, which is confirmed by the *Chhāndogya Upanishad* where the people of Ibhyagrāma (richmen’s village) in Kurukshetra begin eating *kulmāsha* after the crops were damaged by hail-storm (I.10.2). The *Kummāsa-piṇḍa Jātaka* (No. 415) refers to it as the coarse food of the poor (*dalidda*) workman which he could carry in the form of a ball or lump, and to which on account of his poverty he could not even add a little fat and jaggery (*atelam*, *alonikam*).¹ *Kulmāsha*² thus appears to have been a coarse thick gruel prepared by stewing beans, maize, or any inferior grain in a covered vessel with a little water (*appodaka*) and also adding *guḍa* and oil to it. *Yāvaka* was different from *kulmāsha* in that it was first pounded in a mortar (made *aulūkhala*, *Bhāshya*, II.307) and then boiled like the latter. Charaka considers *kulmāsha* as a steamed food (*svinna-bhakshya*), heavy to digest and dry in effect (Sūtra-sthāna, XXVII.259). The *Kaulmāshī* day of Pāṇini most probably coincided with the Full-Moon day of Chaitra, and the *Vaṭakinī* of Kātyāyana with the Full-Moon day of *Kārttika*, when *kulmāsha* and *vaṭaka* cakes of *māsha* paste form the ceremonial food respectively. The Hindi equivalent of *kulmāsha* is *ghughrī*. (Cf. *Bhojana-kutūhala*, P. K. Gode, A. B. O. R. I., XXII.256).