Abstract
Scholarship abounds on contemporary Hindu food offerings, yet there is scant literature treating the history of food in Hinduism beyond topics of food restrictions, purity, and food as medicine. A virtually unexplored archive is Hindu temple epigraphy from the time that was perhaps the theological height of embodied temple ritual practices, i.e., the Cōḻa period (ninth-thirteenth centuries CE). The vast archive of South Indian temple inscriptions allows a surprising glimpse into lived Hinduism as it was enacted daily, monthly, and annually through food offerings cooked in temple kitchens and served to gods residing in those temples. Through analyzing thousands of Tamiḻ inscriptions from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries CE, I have gleaned information concerning two distinct material cultural facets. (1) The practice of writing these rare but remarkable recipes which themselves are culinary textual artifacts has allowed us to access (2) Hindu food offerings of the past, also complex, sensory historical artifacts. In exploring these medieval religious recipes for the first time, I aim to show: the importance that food preparation held for temple devotees, the theological reality of feeding the actual bodies of the gods held in these temples, and the originality of the Cōḻa inscriptional corpus in bringing about a novel culinary writing practice that would be adopted more extensively in the Vijayanagara period (fourteenth-seventeenth centuries CE). This study, a radical new attempt at using historical sources inscribed in stone, sheds new light on medieval Hindu devotees’ priorities of serving and feeding god. The examination of this under-explored archive can help us move our academic analysis of Hindu food offerings beyond the hitherto utilized lenses of economics, sociology, and anthropology. Further, it contributes to our understanding of medieval temple worship, early culinary studies, and the history of food in India.
Highlights
Scholarship abounds on contemporary Hindu food offerings, yet there is scant literature treating the history of food in Hinduism beyond topics of food restrictions, purity, and food as medicine
The examination of this under-explored archive can help us move our academic analysis of Hindu food offerings beyond the hitherto utilized lenses of economics, sociology, and anthropology
Namely, food—is no longer accessible to us? Due to this predicament, scholarship abounds on Hindu food offerings in contemporary India and the South Asian diaspora, yet scant academic literature treats the history of Hindu food offerings
Summary
Before detailing the intricacies of medieval temple recipes, I must first justify my claim that these carvings on temple walls are, recipes, since they appear in the midst of sometimes complex donative deeds that are public declarations and essentially, financial transactions. In effect, the Cōla inscriptional recipes are doublyrecipes, for they first involve the giving and receiving of the recipe as cooking method for a certain dish—the actual recipe or receipt—and secondly, because each inscription records a gift of land, gold coins, or similar that will have interest accrue from it as a gift from donor to (usually) temple recipient This second sense is how the inscription functions, as “receipt” of the donation. Whereas some recipe-writing is prescriptive in nature (informing on desired action or behavior, or how one should cook, ideally), the Cōla temple recipes are descriptive and detail actual practice—how food items were actuallyprepared on a daily basis—not an ideal representation of how they ought to be prepared The significance of these recipes, lies in the fact that the highly detailed nature of the inscriptional register meant that the important details of what mattered to the donor and temple recipient became inscribed in stone. We are able to find the first true recipes ever to be written in the Tamil language on temple walls during the Cōla period
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