The socio-cultural connections of spices with the Indian life are best exemplified by the folklores of the country. These folklores are remains of an ancient mythology that has survived the test of time so far. The folklores depict the legends, customs, beliefs, and traditions of the rural and tribal people of India. Many studies have gone into the cultural traditions of folklores (such as Hem Barua’s Folk songs of India). It was actually the British people who initially started documenting the folklore traditions existed in various parts of India. As in the folk songs of the rest of the world, love constitutes the principal theme of folk songs in India too. Plants and flowers were often used as symbols and similes for comparison to describe beauty and love. Occasionally we find the use of spices in such descriptions in folk songs. A folk song from Bihar describes the fair colour and fragrance perceptible in a healthy woman (translation):
Your legs are strong as pillars
And shine like yellow turmeric
Your hair smells of ajowan
The incense of your cloves
Fills the world….
Then again:
Your eyebrows are like sesame
Like the stripped seed the parting of your hair.
In folk songs turmeric and saffron were the most favoured spices. In a Konkini cradlesong a woman compares the colour of her child with that of turmeric:
Shall I call my child fair complexioned
Shall I call him turmeric black?
Spices are repeatedly mentioned in the folk songs of Kerala such as the Manjappattukal (yellow songs) and Vadakkan pattukal (northern songs). Cherusseri Namboothiri composed his masterpiece Krishnagatha almost towards the end of the middle ages where in he uses many references on spices. In one such passage, the poet describes the young Krishna of the Git-Govind legend (translation):
“ Dark as a dark rain cloud
His hair beautifully knotted
A flute in his hand
An anklet on his feet
And a thread across his chest
His clothes, the color of yellow turmeric”.
Many folksongs mention of young wives beautifying themselves by the application of turmeric. Fresh turmeric paste mixed with sandal paste was infact the most important skin ointment and beauty aid for achieving a blemishless, glowing skin used by the ladies of the upper class Hindus
In Devendra Satyarthi’s collection of north Indian folk songs, a song from Kashmir alludes the saffron flowers in Pampore and the painful separation of the lass and her lover:
Do you remember that song of saffron?
My lover is on the way to Pampore
Where the flowers are in close embrace
But we are far removed from each other
Listen to my cry, listen to my cry…..
In a Maithili song the composer makes turmeric speak at the time of the birth of a son:
Says turmeric:
I shall colour,
I shall dye you, oh my child,
I shall dye Devaki’s head cloth
I shall give it my color….
The birth of a male child is celebrated with lot of festivities, and lot of traditions is attached to such festivities. In Maithili folk songs there are many examples of such festivities. One such traditional festivity follows like this: the new mother, on the sixth day after child birth is escorted to a courtyard for a ceremonial bath and she dresses in new cloth, put turmeric powder and kumkum on her forehead… and the dancers – the ladies in the nearby houses dance and sing:
The clever husband reaches the street
The street emits the smell of ajowain
The returning husband asks his wife
Who had delivered a male child?
Why do I smell of ajowain in the street?
Teasingly she replies
Because my mother in law has pain in the stomach
I hav’nt yet given birth to a child.
The clever husband reaches the courtyard
He smells of dry ginger
Have you delivered my darling, he asks?
Teasingly she replies
My sister –in-law has headache
Hence you smell ginger
My lord, I have not yet delivered…
………………………………….
The song concludes:
The clever husband reaches his wife’s room
I lost, you won my lord
The wife exclaims
Remember your promise
I have given birth to a male child.
The Punjabi folksongs also have sprinkling of spices. A well known one:
The baskets are full of pomegranates
Hearing our woes
Even the stones from the rocks weep
A young woman separated from her lover laments:
In the market are sold mustard leaves
You said you would come in fifteen days
But ages have passed since then
May you live long and endear none else….
………………………………………
Chilies are on sale in the market
I shall purchase a ticket
I shall go to Pindi
May you live long
The night is dark
I shall light an oil lamp….
Guru Golakh Nath was a renowned saint. He was once camping in a king’s garden and the door keeper describes the beauty of the Guru to the Queen like this:
A Sadhu has camped in the palace gardens
He is radiant like the sun
As if a thousand flowers were in bloom
Of Sweet marjoram mustard and jasmines.
Spices have also played a role in many superstitions and ritualistic beliefs that existed in many parts of India (as well as in other countries). In India a ritual is practiced even now on the Diwali day. After the men and children have gone to bed, the women beat and drive out “alakshmi” or “Moodevi”, who is the goddess of misfortune. The driving out ceremony is performed with small sticks and breaking red chilies and cutting sour lime.
In rural India in earlier times there was a test employed by midwives to confirm whether a woman is pregnant or not. The midwives insert a clove of garlic into the woman’s vagina or burn incense, myrrah and other aromatic substances near the entrance of the the sexual organs so that fumes envelope the woman’s lower part. If the woman failed to taste or smell the garlic or the aromatic vapours, she was pregnant. The ancient Indian books of love have also given many instances on the use of spices.
Spices also played important roles in the religions beliefs and practices of India. In Vishnupurana, we get the story of the origin of Tulsi, the plant held as most sacred to Lord Krishna. In fact, even now in north India, the cast Hindus on the eleventh day of Karthika lunar month (Oct – Nov) celebrate the Tulsi marriage with Vishnu; and this ceremony marks the opening of the annual marriage season among the high cast Hindus. It is also interesting to note that in northern India Tulsi is not used for worshipping Lord Ganesh (perhaps indicating the division of the Shaiva-Vaishnava cult.). Instead spices like turmeric; kumkum, yellow mustard, nutmeg and cloves are used. The Abhisheka ceremony requires the use of 18 articles, turmeric being one (Mahindran, 1982).
In the worship of Lord Shiva the high cast Hindus use cloves, cardomom and turmeric; for the worship of Saraswathi (goddess of learning) cloves, nutmeg, turmeric and cinnamon are required; for Kali (the goddess of destruction of evil) cloves and cardamom are needed. For propitiating planets such as Saturn, Rahu, and Ketu, Hindu scriptures prescribe black sesame seeds and yellow mustard seeds, and for Jupiter turmeric alone is enough (Vrat Purana).
In Rajasthan, in the Balaji temple (situated on the road from Udaipur to Nathdwara) only saffron is offered to the diety. The serpent worshippers of Kerala and other southern states use turmeric powder as the chief offering, the best example being the naga temple of Mannarsala, a small hamlet near the town Harippad, in the Aleppey district of Kerala. In the famous temple of Kodungallor, black pepper is among the offerings given to the goddess Kali. In those days it was also a practice to anoint the bodies of the expectant mother with turmeric mixed with oil. Turmeric was also associated intimately with wedding ceremonies. Dutt in his Materia Medica of Hindus says: “The rubbing of turmeric and oil is an essential part of the Hindu marriage festival, as well as in some religious ceremonies.” Balfour writes: “the root (rhizome of turmeric) enters into many of the religious ceremonies of the Hindus. The entire or the corners of every new article of dress, whether of man or woman, are stained before wearing it with paste made up of the turmeric root and water. Mixed with lime it forms the liquid used in ‘arati’ ceremony for warding of the evil eye. Women use it largely as a cosmetic and some smear all the body with it as a detergent. Clothes dyed with it are deemed a protection against fever. The Hindus of the sect, Vaisnavaites prepare their ‘tiruchurnam’ from turmeric in conjunction with lime-juice, with which they make the peculiar mark on their foreheads”. Fresh turmeric paste mixed with sandal paste and rose water was the most important skin ointment used by upper class ladies for a blemish less and silky skin.
In fact turmeric dominated the life of Hindus in those days, so much that a separate icon of god Ganesha known as Haridra Ganesha (Turmeric Ganesha) came into existence, reports Rao (1916) in his classical book, Elements of Hindu Iconography. Rao also mentions the use of another spice, pomegranate, along with lotus, water pot and Kalpakalatha as the ‘weapons’ in the Lakhmi -Ganpati idols.
The above examples are enough to understand that in the ancient and medieval and even in modern India spices had played and are still playing significant roles in the socio-cultural and religious lives of the Indian people.
Next issue: Spices in traditional medicine.
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Great.
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