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History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c26.s3.t1: Food storage

History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c26.s3.t1

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English

Food storage

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Granaries for grain storage of surprising sophistication and size have been found at Mohenjodaro, Harappa and Lothal. On a high brick-built base at Mohenjodaro were set some 27 storage blocks of wood arranged crosswise, with vents on the sides to ensure air circulation by convection (Wheeler, 1976, p. 86).

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Half-way up the structure was an unloading platform; this could be approached by carts carrying grain, which probably arrived along the river. Adjoining the granary were a row of brick-lined pounding platforms with a central hole, still carrying fragments of burnt wheat and husked barley. At Harappa, the mud platform, situated again by the river, was 52 by 42 metres, and 1.2 metres high, and on it stood two identical granary blocks about 7 metres apart (Vats, 1940, I, p. 15 & II, Pl. 6). Each block had six chambers, with corridors between them opening outside and approached by a short flight of steps. The floor was raised off the ground to permit air to circulate, and small triangular vents sucked in this air to pass through the chambers. Some form of state authority was clearly involved in the procurement and distribution of grain on a large scale. At Lothal, the granary, or perhaps warehouse, overlooked the dock (Rao, 1962, pp. 14-30). It was 51 by 45 metres and stood on a platform 3.5 metres high. The vanished wooden granary, probably destroyed by fire, appears to have rested on palettes or blocks 3.7 metres square and a little over a metre high. Never in Indian history till recent times was grain to be stored on this scale.

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*Professional cooking and dining*

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*Royal cooking* : The royal kitchen was called *rasavati* or *mahānasa* (Auboyer, 1965, p.265). That of king Sandāsa is depicted as merely an open thatched hut in Cave 17 at Ajanta (Schlingloff 1987, p.109). The cook is seated on the floor, pointing to a cooking pot with one hand, while looking at the back of the hut, where a dog is seen that has made off with the meat destined for the royal table. Among a king’s morning tasks was a consultation with the cook. The cook’s duties were not only to keep away marauding crows and dogs, but to ensure food variety and freedom from poison for which an official food-taster was always around (Auboyer, 1965, p.259). The cook was called the *ālāraka* or *sūpakāra* (Law, 1934, p. 68), and there were specialists like the *avalika* (for use of condiments and spices), *apupika* (for baking) and *kandavika* (for frying) (Deshmukh, 1981, pp.99-110). Buddhist literature has *odanika* for a cook, the *Arthaśāstra* *bhojanadātṛ*, and the *Viṣṇu Purāṇa* *sudas* for a king’s cook (Dayal, 1983, p. 157). In pre-Aryan south India, lavish hospitality was expected of royalty; one poet was fed with the “soft boiled legs of sheep fed on sweet grass, and large chops of hot meat roasted on the points of spits... (besides) sweets of excellent taste in varied shapes”, and of course strong liquor, sometimes scented and flavoured.

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*Public dining* : The austere Vedic and Brahmin injunctions on food purity and ritual precluded their eating in public, but the rest of the population had no such inhibitions. In the commercial districts of the city were shops (Auboyer, 1965, p.121) piled with “cooked rice and prepared food ready for eating, whose pungent odours assailed the nostrils”. Early European visitors to north India describe Lahore’s “brilliantly lighted bazaars which had a great number of occupied tents or cookshops exhaling the aroma of spicy dishes” and displaying “large spits bearing the flesh of winged creatures... nor did these bazaars lack the simple foods of the native, (to meet whose taste) many tents hold different dishes made of rice, herbs and vegetables (besides) the ubiquitous flat bread”.

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In Agra (Sebastian, 1982, p. 263) “entire streets are wholly occupied by skilled sweetmeat makers (with) dainties of all sorts in the innumerable bazaars”.

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Early south India had few dining taboos, and eating in hotels must have been a common practice. One work of about the 3rd century AD, *Mathuraikkañcī*, describes (*Kanakasabhai*, 1904, pp. 125-135) thus the market place of Madurai; “the hotels and restaurants are now, in the cool of the evening, crowded with visitors who feast upon luscious fruits such as the jackfruit, mango and plantain, and on sugar candies, tender greens, edible yams, sweetened rice and savoury preparations of meat”. In the heyday of Vijayanagar in the 16th century AD, visitors like Varthema, Barbosa and Paes describe the markets overflowing with meat and vegetables (Randhawa, 1982, II, pp. 113-114).

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These large establishments catering to cooking and feeding large numbers would not have required special preparation technologies, as at present, domestic practices on a larger or more intensive scale would have sufficed.

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