The Emperor Shahjahan, whose dining habits so intrigued Manrique, was the fifth Mughal to rule India. The first was Babur, or ‘the Tiger’, a contemporary of Henry VIII. Babur (1483–1530) was a Timurid prince from the central Asian kingdom of Fergana in what is now Uzbekistan. His goal in life was to re-establish the Timurid line as the major power in the region. And to this end, aged fifteen, he conquered the city of Samarkand which had been the capital of Timur’s empire. It was a beautiful city, a centre of Muslim learning, where Turkish and Persian traditions blended with those of central Asia and Afghanistan to create a sophisticated Islamic culture. Known as ‘the pearl of the Eastern Muslim world’ Samarkand was the ultimate central Asian prize. But Babur was unable to hold the city and he was deposed by the Uzbeks. Many years of living rough in the mountains followed. But this experience did not crush Babur’s ambition. He set his sights on Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and eventually gathered together a large enough fighting force to capture the city. Then, in 1526 (while Henry VIII was falling in love with his wife’s maid of honour, Anne Boleyn), Babur launched his decisive attack on Hindustan, as northern India was then known.
Babur was not the first Muslim to invade Hindustan. His ancestor Tamur had sacked Delhi in 1398, and the city had been ruled by a series of Muslim sultans since the twelfth century. During this period, Muslims from Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan had settled in northern India and the Deccan. Alongside Rajput and Jat high-caste rajas and chiefs, these Muslim warriors had established themselves as a landed aristocracy. They ruled over the peasants, village artisans and labourers, some of whom, especially the untouchables or lower castes, converted to Islam in the hope of escaping their lowly status. Northern India was thus divided into a patchwork of miniature kingdoms. Many of these paid tribute and allegiance to an assortment of Muslim sultans and Hindu kings who ruled over larger territories. In the urban commercial and trading centres, Hindu and Muslim merchant communities thrived.
‘Hindu’ was originally simply the Persian name for a person who came from Hindustan, which lay east of the River Indus. The Mughals lent the term religious meaning as they used it to refer to any Indian who had not been converted to Islam. But Hinduism was not an organised religion with a clear doctrine. The Indian population in the early sixteenth century was made up of a medley of sects and communities, most of whom loosely subscribed to a number of central beliefs such as the endless cycle of life and the need to propitiate a pantheon of gods. But religion in India at this period was more a matter of orthopraxy, or, in other words, how the individual behaved, rather than a matter of orthodoxy which implies subscription to a defined set of beliefs. This allowed for a certain fluidity of practice across the Hindu and Muslim communities. Muslims joined Hindus in ceremonies to appease Sitla, the goddess of smallpox. Hindus worshipped at the shrines of Sufi saints, although they were not necessarily prepared to share food with their fellow Muslim worshippers.3
Babur was disappointed by his new conquest. ‘Hindustan is a place of little charm,’ he wrote, ‘the cities and provinces . . . are all unpleasant’. Despite the Muslim influence in the region for over three centuries he was surprised to discover how different India was from central Asia and Afghanistan. ‘Compared to ours it is another world . . . once you cross the Indus, the land, water, trees, stones, people, tribes, manners, and customs are all of the Hindustani fashion.’ The people paraded about naked apart from grubby loincloths and lacked beauty; society was devoid of grace or nobility, manners or etiquette. No one possessed any poetic talent, a sign of the highest cultivation in his homeland. He and his lieutenants retreated to the bathhouses to escape ‘the heat, the biting wind . . . and the dust’. The one good thing about Hindustan was that it was ‘a large country with lots of gold and money’.4 Babur planned to consolidate his hold over India and then return, saddlebags bursting with treasure, to his beloved homeland in central Asia where he intended to recapture Samarkand. His plans came to nothing and he died in India. Instead of re-establishing the Timurids in central Asia, he founded a new dynasty of Indian rulers: the Great Mughals. This was the name given to them by the Europeans who were hazily aware that on his mother’s side Babur was descended from the great Mongol, Ghengis Khan. Babur, who held the Mongols in contempt as barbarians, would have been horrified.5
One of Babur’s chief complaints against Hindustan was that the food was awful. ‘There [is] no good . . . meat, grapes, melons, or other fruit. There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets,’ he grumbled.6 Babur came from a culture which took great pleasure in eating. One of the earliest Muslim cookery books from Baghdad described food as ‘the noblest and most consequential’ of the six pleasures (the others were drink, clothes, sex, scent and sound).7 Having spent much of his life after he lost Samarkand hiding out in the mountains, Babur was used to the hearty meat-based diet of the nomadic horse-riding shepherds of the central Asian steppes. This consisted of dishes which could be prepared easily over a campfire. At a garden party at Khyber in the 1920s, a British civil servant sampled the sort of kebabs Babur would have eaten in the early sixteenth century. The local Afridis, a warlike nomadic mountain people, had invited the British to watch a display of guns, fireworks and ‘an exhibition of how they attack an enemy’s position’. As the guests stood around in a marquee, genteelly sipping cups of tea, an ‘old Afridi came up and offered us lumps of sheep’s flesh strung along a skewer and freshly roasted. These had to be pulled off and eaten in the fingers.’8 Pilau was the other dish essential to any central Asian cook’s repertoire. It made good use of the fatty tails of the local sheep. Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian professor of oriental languages who travelled widely in central Asia in the 1860s, described the method of preparation:
A few spoonfuls of fat are melted (. . . the fat of the tail is usually taken) in a vessel, and as soon as it is quite hot, the meat, cut up into small pieces, is thrown in. When these are in part fried, water is poured upon it to the depth of about three fingers and it is left slowly boiling until the meat is soft; pepper and thinly sliced carrots are then added, and on top of these ingredients is put a layer of rice, after it has been freed from its mucilaginous parts. Some more water is added, and as soon as it has been absorbed by the rice the fire is lessened, and the pot, well-closed, is left over the red-hot coals, until the rice, meat, carrots are thoroughly cooked in the steam. After half an hour the lid is opened, and the food served in such a way that the different layers lie separately in the dish, first the rice, floating in fat, then the carrots and the meat at the top, with which the meal is begun.9
Vambery pronounced it excellent, although Eugene Schuyler, an American diplomat who dined with the Muslims of Tashkent, had his reservations: ‘pleasant but . . . too greasy and insipid to be long agreeable to an European palate’.10
In central Asia meat was strongly associated with masculinity. Hunting for game was regarded as a way of keeping fit and well trained for battle. In India, too, meat was associated with strength and valour. In the Indian epics such as the Mahabharata, the gods sit down to gargantuan meals of roast meat, and Ayurvedic medical thought regarded meat as the prime form of sustenance and the most efficacious medicine. It was considered that environmental essences contained in the soil were transferred from plants and then into herbivores, which, in turn, were eaten by carnivores. Each transference created a more powerful distillation of essences. Meat was thus the most intense of foods. Kings, who were expected to excel as hunters and warriors, to display sexual prowess with their numerous wives and concubines, and to deal decisively with the burdens of government, all relied on a meaty diet.
One of the best records of Hindu courtly cuisine has been left to us by the twelfth-century King Somesvara III. He belonged to the Western Chalukyan dynasty of kings who ruled over parts of present-day Maharashtra and Karnataka. Unusually for a king, he was more interested in the arts and literature than in waging war. Although parts of the kingdom were slipping out of Chalukyan hands, h
e busied himself with writing an encyclopaedic account on the conduct of kingly affairs. Delightfully entitled Manasollasa, meaning refresher of the mind, it paid some attention to the conduct of affairs of state and the qualities needed by a king. But most of the space was devoted to kingly pleasures and enjoyments, from hunting, massage and sex, to jewellery, carriages, royal umbrellas and, one of his favourite preoccupations, food.11 Meat-based aphrodisiacs and concoctions to promote youthfulness in kings often featured in Ayurvedic medical treatises.12 Somesvara had paid attention to such texts and noted that a king needed to eat a ‘suitable, healthy and hygienic’ diet. This might include lentil dumplings in a spicy yogurt sauce, fatty pork fried with cardamoms or roast rump steak. Some of Somesvara’s other favourite dishes sound less appetising: fried tortoise (said to taste like plantain) and roasted black rat.13 Five centuries later the habit of eating fabulous meats was still being kept alive by the kings of Vijayanagara, one of the largest and most powerful Hindu kingdoms in the south. Alongside mutton, pork and venison, ‘sparrows and rats, and cats and lizards’ could all be found on sale in the markets of the capital city.14
Recipe for roast black rat from the kitchens of King Somesvara III,
Chalukyan king, 1126 to 1138.
The rats which are strong black, born in the fields and river banks are called maiga; these are fried in hot oil holding with the tail till the hair is removed; after washing with hot water, the stomach is cut and the inner parts are cooked with amla [sour mango] and salt; or the rat is kept on iron rods and fired on red hot coal, till the outer skin is burnt or shrinks. When the rat is cooked well, salt, jeera [cumin] and sothi [a flour made from lentils] are sprinkled and relished.15
However, this positive attitude towards meat had been complicated by a counter-movement towards vegetarianism. Both Buddhism and Jainism, which were founded in the fifth century BC, promoted vegetarianism as a way of demonstrating compassion.16 The practice of vegetarianism had been given an additional boost by the Emperor Asoka, who ruled a large proportion of the Indian subcontinent from 268 to 231 BC.17 Asoka, influenced by Buddhist teachings, exhorted his subjects to adopt the path of dharma, which can loosely be translated as humanitarian conduct.18 He communicated with his subjects by the unusual method of engraving a series of edicts on rock faces and specially constructed rock pillars. One of these regretted the wanton slaughter of ‘several thousands of animals’ which had been made into soups in the ruler’s kitchens and declaimed: ‘Here no animal shall be killed or slaughtered.’ Various other rock messages reminded Asoka’s subjects which animals it was prohibited to slaughter or castrate, on which days fishing was banned, and urged them to remember that it was meritorious to abstain from slaughter.19
By the time Babur conquered Hindustan, vegetarianism had become a powerful statement of one’s position in Indian society. Brahmans, who as the priestly caste had once performed rites of sacrifice, were now firmly vegetarian. They condemned meat because it heightened the passions and encouraged the virile, animal side of human nature. Orthodox Brahmans avoided all foods which were thought to stimulate the passions (which were known as rajasic). These included meat, onions and garlic. Instead, they made a virtue of their light, nutritious and easily digestible, vegetarian (sattvic) diet which enabled their bodies to channel the energy that would otherwise have been used to digest food into the improvement of the mind.20
Vegetarianism introduced a new principle into the Indian social hierarchy. Unlike political power (which was based on physical strength and violence, sustained by an impure diet rich in meat), religious power was predicated on the principles of purity symbolised by vegetarianism. This conveniently placed the now strictly vegetarian Brahmans firmly at the top of the social pile.
A high place in the caste system was not always based on a vegetarian diet. The aristocratic Italian wanderer, Pietro della Valle, noticed that the Rajputs, the ruling warrior caste of Rajasthan, ate meat ‘without thinking themselves prejudic’d, as to degree of nobility’. Hunting was an important part of Rajput culture. The essences of the landscape were thought to be found in even greater concentration in the flesh of undomesticated animals. Game was therefore highly valued. Rajasthani cuisine still has an important branch of shikar (hunting) recipes such as boar cooked with fried onions, coriander, cumin, garlic and ginger over an open fire.21 And wild meat is still said to increase a man’s ‘virility by helping him acquire semen, and with it, the qualities of courage and strength’.22
However, the majority of Indians appeared to newcomers to be vegetarian, either through religious conviction or poverty. European visitors to Mughal India were as disgruntled as Babur had been about the quality of the available food. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a French jeweller who travelled through India buying precious stones, found that in the large villages with a Muslim governor it was possible to find ‘sheep, fowl and pigeons for sale’ but in villages populated by the Hindu merchants known as Banians stores were very limited. Pietro della Valle grumbled, ‘I found much trouble in reference to my diet . . . as these Indians are extremely fastidious in edibles, there is neither flesh nor fish to be had amongst them; one must be contented only with Rice, Butter, or Milk, and other such inanimate things.’23
In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hindustan the staple food of the rural peasants, who formed the majority of the population, and also of the urban artisans and labourers, was khichari, a simple dish of two grains, usually rice and lentils, boiled together in a little water. Every region had a variation on the recipe according to which grain they grew as a staple crop. Thus, millet sometimes replaced the rice, or chickpeas were used instead of lentils. Tavernier noticed that Indian soldiers made the meal more luxurious by dipping their fingers in a bowl of melted ghee (clarified butter) as they ate. Pickles or salt fish also went well with khichari. The very wealthy displayed their purchasing power by employing cooks who were heavy-handed with the spices. Tavernier wrote of the food prepared for the princes of Aurangabad: ‘Their rice and vegetables, which constitute, as I have said, all their dishes, were so full of pepper, ginger and other spices that it was impossible for me to eat them, and I left the repast with a very good appetite.’24
For all ‘Hindus, of whatever station of life’, there was a taboo on the consumption of beef. The Venetian Niccolao Manucci described how to eat beef was regarded as ‘a very low thing, a defilement, and sinful beyond all imagination’. This had not always been the case. Ayurvedic medical texts discussed the qualities of cow’s flesh and warned that it was ‘heavy, hot, unctuous and sweet’, difficult to digest and to be eaten with caution. Yet beef broth was considered the most effective of medicines, especially for emaciatory diseases, and people with active occupations were advised to eat a beef-rich diet.25 Well into the first century AD, Indians routinely sacrificed cows and ate the meat. The Mahabharata even mentions Brahmans enjoying good beef dinners, though it also includes a passage where ‘a cow complains about the wanton carnage committed on her relatives’. This was an early sign of growing uneasiness about the killing of cows. The epics were originally oral folk tales but they were set down in writing by Brahman scholars who inserted religious and didactic sections. The resulting contradictions in the text reveal the way attitudes towards the consumption of beef altered over time.26 A practical explanation for this change is that as the country became increasingly agrarian, Indians relied more heavily on cows as draught animals and producers of milk and became more reluctant to slaughter them.27
By the time Babur conquered Hindustan, the cow had become a sacred animal. Manucci was astonished to discover that not only did ‘these people hold it an abomination to eat of the cow’, they held the products of the cow sacred and would drink a mixture of milk, butter, cow dung and urine in order to drive out sin. He was disgusted to find that ‘they hold out two hands and receive the cow’s urine of which they take a drink. Then, turning the cow’s tail into a sort of holy-water sprinkler, they immerse it in the said liquid, and wit
h it they daub their faces. When this ceremonial is over, they declare they have been made holy.’28
The Mughals’ hearty appetite for beef and mutton clashed with the dietary habits of many of their new subjects. Muslims regarded food as a pleasure. According to the Koran one of the activities the pious could look forward to in the gardens of paradise would be eating and drinking with relish.29 This attitude was in conflict with the solemn approach that many Hindustanis took to their food. For them, eating was more a medico-moral activity than an enjoyable bodily pleasure. Food was an integral part of man’s relationship with the gods. Propitiatory food offerings were customarily made before a meal and men were thus seen as eating the leftovers (prasadum) of the gods. In the villages, the position in the caste hierarchy of each particular occupational group was determined by which neighbours the group would accept food from and whether they would consent to eat in each other’s company. Within the family, the superior position of the oldest male was demonstrated by the fact that he was served meals first and often ate on his own. On an individual level, Indians attempted to keep their bodies in balance with the environment by adjusting their diet to the climate, the season and their occupation. When he ate, what he ate and who he ate with was thus a significant statement of a Hindu’s position in the natural, moral, familial and social order.30
In the kitchens of the Mughals these apparently mismatched culinary cultures came together to produce a synthesis of the recipes and foods of northern Hindustan, central Asia and Persia. The result was the superb Mughlai cuisine which, for many people outside India, is synonymous with Indian food. The Mughal encounter with Indian food got off to a bad start, however. Although Babur was disappointed with the provisions in the markets he decided, ‘since I had never seen Hindustani food’, to keep on four of the Hindustani cooks who had worked in the kitchens of India’s defeated sultan, Ibrahim Lodi. Babur was to regret his curiosity. In his memoirs he described how he began vomiting after a Friday-evening meal of rabbit stew, saffron-flavoured meat and one or two titbits from a Hindustani dish of meat dressed in oil, served on a thin chapatti. Worried that he had been poisoned, he forced a dog to eat his vomit. The dog soon showed signs of feeling unwell, as did the pages who had shared Babur’s meal. It was discovered that one of the Hindustani cooks had been bribed by the ousted sultan’s mother to sprinkle poison on the meat. Everyone survived, including the dog. But the cook, having confessed under torture, was skinned alive and the taster was hacked to pieces. Given the brutality of these punishments, the instigator of the plot, the sultan’s mother, got off very lightly. She was simply imprisoned. The incident did Babur little harm, merely renewing his zest for life. His memoirs do not tell us whether he continued to employ Hindustani cooks in his kitchens.31
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