Abstract
Dairy products have existed in China from at least the Han Dynasty onward. Later, under the influence of Buddhism, dairy items such as yogurt, butter and ghee were required for ritual purposes. The domestic dairy industry in medieval China is an understudied topic, but even more so is the use of dairy in contemporary Japan, where Chinese traditions of Buddhism were transplanted in full. The kanji describing various dairy products were also known in Japan, but we must ask whether these substances were available in Japan, and to what extent. Unlike luxury consumables such as aromatics and medicines, perishable foodstuffs were unlikely to have been transported from the mainland. This study will document and discuss the transmission of a dairy industry from China to Japan, with a focus on the role of these products in religious and medical contexts.
Highlights
The consumption of milk products is very ancient on both sides of the Eurasian continent. Orlando (2018, p. 12084) notes that “the people who practiced dairy pastoralism in Mongolia ~33,000 y ago were mainly local in origin and not of western Eurasian steppe pastoralist descent”
This study has attempted to demonstrate the importance of dairy as an example of a transfer of material culture from China to Japan in the medieval period
It is evident that we must consider the utilization of dairy products in materia medica, and in Buddhist and Daoist literatures
Summary
The consumption of milk products is very ancient on both sides of the Eurasian continent. Orlando (2018, p. 12084) notes that “the people who practiced dairy pastoralism in Mongolia ~33,000 y ago were mainly local in origin and not of western Eurasian steppe pastoralist descent”. The role of dairy in premodern China is slowly becoming recognized today, despite some past preconceived notions that peoples in East Asia seldom enjoyed milk and cheese until the twentieth century. Toleno (2017), for instance, points out the significance of congee as a cross-cultural item within social history Building on these important studies, the present paper will first survey the role of dairy in medieval China, and examine its introduction from China into Japan as an underappreciated example of material culture between the two countries in the premodern period. Dairy was treated as a valuable form of medicine, a fact that is reflected in the contemporary materia medica literature It was primarily, but not exclusively, the medical aspect of dairy, rather than culinary, that prompted its transmission to Japan. I will further point out the value in utilizing a diverse array of primary sources, from state codes and materia medica to Buddhist commentaries, when evaluating the consumption of a commodity in premodern East Asia
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