The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  The old adage that you are what you eat thus acquired a new meaning in India. Predictably, the highest dietary restrictions were on those of the highest caste, Brahmins, who, because of their primary priestly function, were generally forbidden to eat any meat or fish, and had to avoid even certain vegetables—garlic, onions, leeks, and so on—which were thought to stimulate carnal desires. On the other hand, those on the bottom rung of the caste society, the outcastes, had virtually no food restrictions at all.

  Caste rules specified not only the dietary taboos to be observed by different castes, but also the dining practices they had to observe. ‘No man of one creed will drink, eat, or marry with those of another,’ observes Nikitin. ‘Some of them feed on mutton, fowls, fish, and eggs, but none on beef … The [high caste] Hindus eat no meat, no cow flesh, no mutton, no chicken. They take their meals twice a day, but not at night, and drink no wine or mead. They neither eat nor drink with Mohammedans. Their fare is poor … They live on Indian corn, carrots … and different herbs. Always eating with their right hand, they will never set the left hand to anything. Nor do they use a knife; the spoon is unknown. While travelling every one carries a stone pot to cook his broth. They take care that Mohammedans do not look into their pot, nor see their food, and should this happen, they will not eat it; some therefore hide themselves under a linen cloth lest they should be seen when eating … They sit down to eat, and wash their hands and feet, and rinse their mouths before they do.’ Adds Battuta: ‘The nobles of the Marathas are Brahmins and Katris (Kshatriyas). Their food consists of rice, vegetables, and oil of sesame … They wash themselves thoroughly before eating …’

  ‘In eating, they use the right hand only,’ confirms Marco Polo, a late thirteenth century Venetian traveller. ‘So also they drink only from their own drinking vessels, and every man has his own; nor will anyone drink from another’s vessel. And when they drink they do not put the vessel to their lips but hold it aloft and let the drink spout into the mouth … They are very strict … in abstaining from wine. Indeed, they have made a rule that wine-drinkers and seafaring men are never to be accepted as sureties.’

  Not only was interdining between castes prohibited in the Hindu society, but even within a family each individual usually took his or her meal separately. The family did not ever sit together for meals. ‘They eat not with one another, nor with their wives,’ states Nikitin. ‘It is an established usage of infidels never to eat in the presence of each other,’ adds Ferishta. Hindus considered eating to be a private act, and that it was preferable to do it in private, like other private acts.

  There were of course occasions when several Hindus (all of the same gender, and usually all of the same caste) feasted together, as at a wedding reception. But even on such occasions, though they sat down together for the feast, they were only physically together, not socially together, for they ate in silence, and did not engage each other in conversation. And it was unthinkable for anyone to touch the food served to anyone else. ‘When someone takes something from your food, what remains is a leftover, and cannot be eaten,’ notes al-Biruni.1

  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF the Delhi Sultanate and the large scale migration of Turks into India added several new elements to the dietary diversity of Indians. Muslims feasted on beef, but considered it abominable to eat pork; Hindus on the other hand considered it abominable to eat beef, but many Hindus, including high caste Rajputs, feasted on pork. While Hindus preferred to sit alone to eat, Muslims preferred to dine together in groups. And while the cuisine of Hindus, even of nobles and rajas, was quite simple, Muslim aristocracy favoured gourmet food. A medieval chronicle describes, no doubt with some exaggeration, a sultan being served a dish prepared with ‘300 and more ingredients in it.’ Several of these ingredients were no doubt Indian spices, to the use of which Turks took to in India. At the same time, Indians on their part added pilau and kuruma to their cuisine under the influence of Turks.

  Turks loved to feast on rich food. According to Shahab-ud-din, 2500 oxen, 2000 sheep, as well as a large number of other animals, and many different kinds of birds, were daily slaughtered in the kitchen of the sultan of Delhi. This claim might be rather hyperbolic, but it is not entirely incredible, when we consider that the raja of Vijayanagar every day supplied for the kitchen of Abdur Razzak, the visiting Persian envoy, ‘two sheep, four couple of fowls, five mans of rice, one man of butter, and one man of sugar, and two varaha gold coins,’ as the ambassador himself states.

  Some of the stories told about the gluttons of the age are quite astounding. Battuta, for instance, speaks of an Ethiopian who was renowned as much for his appetite as for his valour: ‘He was tall and corpulent, and used to eat a whole sheep at a meal, and I was told that after eating he would drink about a pound and a half of ghee.’ Even more fantastic are the dietary practices attributed to Begarha, the sultan of Gujarat. A man of gigantic size and gargantuan appetite, he, according to legend, ate about fourteen kilos of food every day, and his breakfast consisted of a cup of honey, a cup of butter, and over a hundred plantains. And, most curious of all, his daily diet included of a swig of poison!

  As for the food served at Muslim feasts, Isami, a mid-fourteenth century chronicler, gives an account of a banquet held in the Deccan in honour of the local sultan. ‘It was the eighth part of the day when trumpets announced that the banquet was ready. Silk tapestries were spread and table cloths laid. Leavened and unleavened bread were kept ready, various items of salad were there, green and crisp. Then came roast quail and partridge and roast chicken and roast lamb. Curry puffs and cooked vegetables were there as accompaniments. Juicy almond puddings and halvahs were served as dessert and these were scented with camphor and musk. The meal ended with the distribution of betel and the tambula …’ The tableware used at this feast were imported from China.

  THERE WAS NO bar on anyone drinking alcoholic beverages in ancient India, but their consumption fell sharply in the late classical period due to the decline of economic prosperity, the collapse of towns and the virtual disappearance of urban lifestyle, as well as due to the enforcement of caste taboos. Brahmins were now required to totally abjure alcoholic drinks. They, notes Battuta, do not ‘drink wine, for this in their eyes is the greatest of vices.’ Al Masudi, a tenth century Iraqi historian, offers a curious (but sensible) explanation for this. ‘Hindus,’ he writes, ‘abstain from drinking wine, and censure those who consume it; not because their religion forbids it, but in the dread of it clouding their reason and depriving them of their powers.’

  In Islam too wine drinking was considered a major sin. Nevertheless, drinking was fairly common among the Muslim aristocracy in India and Afghanistan. And some of them were very heavy drinkers. According to Baihaqi, an eleventh century historian of the Ghaznavids, nobles at garden parties often ‘drank to excess. They passed the night there and the next morning they again drank … [One noble] when he once sat down to drink, would continue boozing for three or four entire days.’

  Baihaqi once witnessed a garden cocktail party hosted by Sultan Masud of Ghazni, and offers an amusing account of it. As the feast progressed, the courtiers, reports Baihaqi, ‘began to get jolly, and the minstrels sang … [One noble] drank five goblets, his head was affected at the sixth, he lost his senses at the seventh, and began to vomit at the eighth, when the servants carried him off.’ Some drank as many as twelve cups, and fell into torpor. One noble drank eighteen cups, then politely requested the sultan’s permission to leave. Presently ‘the singers and buffoons all rolled off tipsy.’ But the sultan continued to drink. ‘He drank twenty-seven full goblets … He then rose, called for a basin of water and his praying carpet, washed his face, and read the midday prayers as well as the afternoon ones, and so acquitted himself that you would have said he had not drunk a single cup. He then got on an elephant and returned to the palace.’

  In Delhi the attitude of rulers towards drinking varied from sultan to sultan. Several of them were heavy imbibers, who regularly held conviv
ial parties with their courtiers. But some others, even when they were secret drinkers themselves, prohibited that indulgence to their courtiers, or at least prohibited them from holding cocktail parties, for drunkenness often led to indiscipline and rebellions. In Delhi the strictest measures against drinking were those taken by Ala-ud-din Khalji, who sought to enforce prohibition by seizing the vast quantities of liquor stored in the homes of nobles and pouring them out on streets, and by imprisoning prohibition violators. He had so many of them arrested that in a short while there was no more any room for them in the prisons, so the guilty were interned in pits dug along the road near the royal palace. But despite such harsh and humiliating punishments, people persisted in wine drinking, so the sultan had to eventually modify his regulations, and permit people to drink privately at home. Muhammad Tughluq also tried to enforce prohibition—‘Any Muslim who drinks is punished with eighty stripes, and shut up … for three months,’ notes Battuta—but he had no more success in it than Ala-ud-din. The common attitude of the Muslim aristocracy of the age, as the early medieval Ghaznavid poet Asjadi puts it, was:

  I do repent of wine and talk of wine

  Of idols fair with chins like silver fine

  A lip-repentance and a lustful heart,

  O god, forgive this penitence of mine.

  The most widespread indulgence of medieval Indians—indeed, the universal indulgence of medieval Indians, irrespective of class and caste and religion and sex—was chewing betel leaves, a mild stimulant with antiseptic and breath-refreshing qualities. Commonly termed paan, this was a treat that even the poorest of the poor could afford, and was considered a healthy habit. ‘The inhabitants of India have little taste for wine and intoxicating drinks, but content themselves with betel, an agreeable drug, the use of which is permitted without the slightest objection,’ comments Shahab-ud-din. For chewing, the betel leaf was lightly daubed with slaked lime, and then put in the mouth along with a few shavings of areca-nut. Those who could afford it added pinches of various spices and flavouring ingredients to the chew, but that was not essential, for though it improved the taste of the chew, added little or nothing to its effect.

  ‘The betel is a leaf which resembles that of orange,’ writes Razzak. ‘It is held in great esteem in Hindustan, in the many parts of Arabia, and the kingdom of Hormuz, and indeed it deserves its reputation. It is eaten this way: they bruise a piece of areca nut … and place it in the mouth; then moistening a leaf of betel … together with a grain of quicklime, they rub one on the other, roll them up together, and place them in the mouth. Thus they place as many as four leaves together in their mouths, and chew them. Sometimes they mix camphor with it, and from time to time discharge their spittle, which becomes red from the use of the betel. This masticatory lightens up the countenance and excites an intoxication like that caused by wine. It relieves hunger, stimulates the organs of digestion, purifies the breath, and strengthens the teeth … [And it has] strong invigorating and aphrodisiac virtues … It is probably owing to the stimulating properties of this leaf … that the king of that country (Vijayanagar) is enabled to entertain so large a seraglio.’

  NOTHING MUCH IS known about the sport and pastime of medieval Indians, except that the Muslim aristocracy were avid about polo; Sultan Qutb-ud-din Aibak in fact died in an accident while playing polo. The game is believed to have originated in Persia several centuries before the Common Era, and was introduced into India by Turkish invaders. In time the Hindu aristocracy also passionately took to it, and later so did the British officers in India.

  Polo was a game of the elite. Virtually nothing is known about the games played by the common people in medieval India. Villagers no doubt played various rustic games, but the entertainment high points of their lives would have been attending the fairs, carnivals and temple festivals held in nearby towns, to which people from all the nearby villages flocked. The major attractions at these carnivals were performances by touring magicians, jugglers and acrobats. The feats performed by some of them were indeed astounding, if we are to believe medieval chroniclers. ‘The juggler swallowed a sword like water, drinking it as a thirsty man would drink sherbet,’ reports Amir Khusrav about a performance. ‘He also thrust a knife up his nostril. He mounted a little wooden horse and rode in the air. Large bodies were made to issue out of small ones; an elephant was drawn through a window, and a camel through the eye of a needle … Sometimes they (the jugglers) transformed themselves into angels, sometimes into demons … They sang enchantingly …’ There is no doubt a good amount of poetic fancy in this report of Khusrav, but Indian magicians of the age were indeed reputed for the awesome illusions they created.

  Similar are the feats attributed to Indian sorcerers and yogis, many of which are truly incredible. ‘First of all, they can bring a dead man to life,’ writes Khusrav credulously. ‘If a man has been bitten by a snake and is rendered speechless, they can resuscitate him after even seven months … They can procure longevity by diminishing the daily number of the expirations of breath. A yogi who could restrain his breath in this way lived … to an age of more than 350 years … They know how to convert themselves into wolves, dogs and cats … They can also fly like fowls in the air, however improbable it may seem. They can also, by putting antimony on their eyes, make themselves invisible at pleasure …’

  These acrobatic and magical shows were usually held in towns during their annual temple festivals, to which people from all the nearby villages flocked. Apart from attending these annual events the everyday life of medieval Indian villagers would have been quite drab and routine. Most people of medieval India, villagers as well as townsmen, were addicted to taking siesta daily, which was an essential restorative for them in the generally sweltering climate of India. In summer ‘the weather was very hot that at midday people kept indoors taking their siesta, so there were few people in the streets,’ Barani observed. And everyone, including the sultan, slept in the open at night in summer—‘the sultan slept on the roof of the palace, having only a few eunuchs around him,’ reports Battuta.

  THERE IS VERY little information about the lifestyle of the common people in medieval chronicles, but there is in them a good amount of data on the lifestyle of the affluent. The urban rich in peninsular India in the mid-fifteenth century lived in palatial, multi-storeyed mansions, according Razzak. This was confirmed a few decades later by the Portuguese traveller Paes, who noted that the cities in the peninsula had large populations and had several rows of handsome buildings. The city of Vijayanagar, according to him, was as large as Rome and very beautiful, and had lakes and shady parks in it. But while the nobles lived in grand mansions, the common people lived in modest houses of just three or four small rooms, including kitchen. And the poor everywhere in India lived in mud-and-thatch single room hovels. In Kerala, kings even forbade the common people from roofing their houses with tiles instead of with thatch; they had to get royal permission to use tiles.

  The walls and floors of the houses of commoners, and the mats on which their residents sat and slept, were invariably plastered with cow-dung, which Indians ‘looked upon as a clean substance,’ according to Chau Ju-Kua, an early thirteenth century Chinese chronicler. Confirms Marco Polo: ‘The people of this country have a custom of rubbing their houses all over with cow-dung.’ Another common feature of the Hindu homes was that people generally, even the poor, adorned their front-yard with rangoli, auspicious decorative designs, plain or colourful.

  As for chairs and tables, there would have been hardly any of that in the homes of most medieval Indians, for, as Marco Polo notes, all the people of India, ‘great and small, kings and barons included, do sit upon the floor only.’ But beds seem to have been fairly common in the homes of the affluent, and are described in detail by Battuta. ‘The beds in India are light, and can be carried by a single man,’ he writes. ‘Every person when travelling has to transport his own bed, which his slave boy carries on his head. It consists of four conical legs with four crosspieces of
wood on which braids of silk or cotton are woven. When one lies down on it, there is no need for anything to make it pliable, for it itself is pliable. Along with the bed they carry two mattresses and pillows and a coverlet, all made of silk. Their custom is to put linen or cotton slips on the mattresses and coverlets, so that when they become dirty they wash the slips, while the bedding inside remains clean.’ According to Marco Polo, ‘nobles and great folks slept on beds made of very light cane work, hanging from the ceiling by cords for fear of tarantulas and other vermin, while the common folk slept on the streets.’

  THE DRESS AND ornaments of the people, as well as their lifestyle, varied considerably from region to region in medieval India, and even within each region these varied according to the religion, class and caste of the people. But the common people everywhere in India, particularly in the peninsula, were scantily dressed, because of the warm and humid climate of India, and also because they could afford nothing better. ‘The common people go quite naked, with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle,’ states Varthema, about what he saw in peninsular India. ‘The blacks of this country go about with nearly naked bodies, wearing only a piece of cloth called langoti, extending from the navel to above their knees,’ writes Razzak about Kerala. ‘The king and the beggar both go about in this way …’

  In coastal Maharashtra, according to Nikitin, ‘people are all naked and barefooted. Women walk about with their heads uncovered and their breasts bare. Boys and girls all go naked till seven years, and do not hide their shame.’ Adds Battuta: ‘The women of … all the coastal districts wear nothing but loose unsewn garments, one end of which they gird round their waists, and drape the rest over their head and shoulders. They are beautiful and virtuous, and each wears a gold ring in her nose.’