History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c26.s3.t1.5

v1.c26.s3.t1.5

*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”.