Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s4.17

c8.s4.17

He takes two meals a day, in the forenoon, and the afternoon, but according to Cārāyaṇa, and earlier teacher, the last meal had better be taken in the evening.⁴ Three kinds of hard or soft food and drinks, bhakṣya, bhojya and peya corresponding to the khādanīya, bhojanīya and pāna of the Buddhist sacred books,⁵ have been mentioned by Vātsyāyana. Among his articles of diet we notice rice, wheat, barley, pulses, a large number of vegetables, milk and its preparations including ghee, meat and sweets, besides salt and oil. Among the sweets, we have molasses (guḍa) and sugar (śarkarā) as well as sweetmeats (khaṇḍa-khādyāni).⁶ Fish is nowhere mentioned by our author as an article of diet. Meat was eaten boiled as soup, and dry or roasted. To desist from eating meat, as prescribed in the law books, was considered to be an act of merit (dharma).⁷ The nāgaraka's drinks (*pānakāni*) were also various: besides water and milk, he drank fresh juice, perhaps of the various kinds of palm, extracts of meat, *congey* (or rice gruel), sherbets, juice of fruits such as mangoes and citrons mixed with sugar; of stronger drinks, he used various wines like *surā*, *madhu*, *maireya* and *āsava*,—which he drank from a *chaṣaka*, a vessel of wood or metal, often accompanied by various kinds of sweets, and savouries of bitter and acrid taste in order to impart a relish to drink.¹