Articles
Gastronomy, Household and State Formation in Early Modern South Asia:
Representation of Food and Feasts in Indo-Persian Sources
2021 年 11 巻 p. 4-17
詳細
2021 年 11 巻 p. 4-17
This paper explores the inter-linkages between the culinary practices, household and the state in the early modern period as represented in the Indo-Persian sources. In drawing out these intricate connections the sources of the period reveal, in rich details, the political significance of gift-exchanges (in particular, the exchange of fruits and food delicacies), feasts and festivities and supper invitations. These events served to reinforce political alliances, and were a part of a symbolic economy of exchange that legitimated imperial rule, and organized social and political arrangements in the imperial court culture.
The interconnections between feast/food habits and the Mughal ‘political economy’ help us understand the social and political identities and the self-perception of communities. These inter connections, though very significant, have often been ignored especially in the context of early Modern South Asian history. By making gastronomy and food practices the centre point of my study, I seek to argue that the domestic site was as much a political domain involved in the structuring of Mughal sovereignty and forging significant socio-political alliances.
In early modern South Asia gastronomy was linked to the political process and constituted an important means of articulating authority in the imperial court culture. The culinary practices served to reinforce social and political hierarchies, and the food etiquette was crucial to their reproduction within the imperial court culture. Furthermore, the choices of food and drink were crucial markers of identities, giving us important insights into the social history of the period. A person’s sense of selfhood and identity was crucially shaped by his/her choices of food: ‘We are’, as David Sutton, says in a different context, ‘what we eat’ (Wilson 2006:14).
In medieval Islamic societies, the cuisine served at feasts was associated with immense social prestige. In serving, what were termed as ‘luxury foods’, members of the urban elite household highlighted and reaffirmed their status, power and wealth to the host (Waines 2003: 571-80). Many scholars have shown that the preparation and consumption of meals was a very significant aspect of the social life in the early modern period and even later. Questions about what food to lay on the table, allocation of seating arrangements by gender, list of invitees, etc. were crucial decisions, and served to reproduce social distinctions and gender differences (Faroqhi 2005: 204-21). There was a huge stress on table manners and the hosts made a conscious effort to avoid giving offence to the sensitivities of their guests (Stone 1977: 225). Apart from the table etiquettes and norms of sociability, the choice of what and how to cook also became very significant: the range and cost of ingredients used, extensive preparation, pleasant smells, use of large cooking pots and considerable space for serving a variety of dishes. Extravagant feasts were also organised by the rulers as a means of reinforcing relations with his nobility and the subjects. In fact, in many early modern societies, while the ruler displayed his wealth and power through lavish banquets for his favourites at court, the householder’s concern in organising feasts was to maintain a network of urban or inter-urban contacts (Waines 2003: 571-80). In her work on the Ottoman Empire Leslie Peirce notes that food symbolism was inextricably linked with and was a very significant part of the imperial organization, so much so that ‘refusing to attend (a ceremonial gathering for feasting) or rejecting food was a sign of withdrawal of allegiance to the ruler’ (Peirce 1993:175).
In this paper, I would be using gastronomy as the unifying pole around which I would connect the history of the Mughal state formation, gender relations, and the social history of the household. The paper would first explore how in Mughal court culture and aristocratic households, food was invested with considerable symbolic significance, and was ritually placed within a purity-pollution axis. Secondly, that there was a continual inter-change between the Perso-Islamic and Indic traditions, and the Indic culinary preferences did influence the Mughal elite perception of food, forcing them to recognize certain food items as polluted and impure. Thirdly, the paper will discuss how the Mughal gastronomical practices were tied to the process of the reproduction of community identities and state formation. Last but not the least, I argue that the shift from ‘nature’ to ‘culture’ was indeed articulated in and through gastronomical practices, and was crucially based on the greater reliance on aromas, herbs and spices in the preparation of a dish. The shift from ‘raw’ to ‘cooked’ was also a shift towards greater refinement in tastes and attentiveness to smells and flavors of the food served and consumed.
Mughal cuisine was a product of a fascinating combination of varied influences (Turkish, Afghani, and Persian mixed in with Kashmiri, Punjabi, and a touch of Deccan), colours and fragrances. Each emperor had their favourite cuisine and they often experimented with novel spices in their food. It will become amply clear from the details provided in the latter part of this paper that cooking and serving food in the Mughal royal kitchens was about observing a certain adab (norms of conduct), table manners and protocols. For instance, meals in the royal Mughal household began with the recitation of the Bismillah-e-Rahman-e-Rahim (In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful). The food was eaten on the floor; sheets of leather covered with white calico protected the expensive carpets. This was called dastarkhwan which ran for hours and almost all the Mughal emperors liked to enjoy their food, spending long hours at the banquet. It was customary for the emperor to set aside a portion of food for the poor before eating. The emperor began and ended his meals with prayers. The emperors usually dined with their queens and concubines but on festive occasions they chose to dine with their nobles and courtiers. The daily meals were usually served by the eunuchs; however, as a number of dishes were prepared and served during each meal, there was an elaborate kitchen staff for chopping and cleaning, washing and grinding as well as serving the food (Husain 2019: 7-13). There is also a mention of head and subordinate tasters (chashnigirs) who tasted the food after it was tasted by the cook (Beveridge 2006: 541). Moreover, there was the hakim (royal physician) who performed the duty of preparing the menu making sure to include medicinally beneficial ingredients, like the silver warq coating over each grain of rice for the pulao, which aided digestion and acted as an aphrodisiac. In fact, Indian fruits and herbs were well known for their medicinal value and Seema Alavi’s work on ‘Islam and Healing’ has shown that the medical knowledge gathered from Hindustan by Arab traders from the seventh century went into the making of many of the ancient Arab medical texts. Hindustani prescriptions such as Attriphal ka Nuskha (prescriptions made from three fruits), were very much part of these Arabic compendiums (Alavi 2007: 275). For instance, Kitab al-Hawi (translated as The Comprehensive book on Medicine) written in the 10th century by an Arab, Al-Razi who had a great knowledge of the Indian medical tradition is an example of one such compendium (Avari 2007: 220). Apart from ensuring the medicinal value of the food, great care was also taken to provide the best possible taste to it. This was ensured by cooking food mainly in rainwater mixed with the water of the Ganges and was served in dishes made of gold and silver studded with precious stones, and especially jade as it detected poison.
With the passage of time, indigenization in the cooking style became obvious and certain Indian ingredients, like Kashmiri vadi, sandalwood powder, suhaga, betel leaves, white gourd, and batasha, and fruits like mango, phalsa, banana etc., were used to give different flavours to dishes. Besides these Indian ingredients, the Mughal royal kitchen in the 16th century saw an additional ingredient - the chilli (Husain 2019: 7-13) - brought in by the Portuguese, with whom trade relations of the Mughals had already been established.
Food practices and the organization of feasts were also crucial in the reproduction of gendered identities and in the systematization of gender roles. In fact, manliness had in the 17th and 18th centuries come to be defined not just by martial performances in public spaces, but also by the contribution of men in the domestic or the household spaces (O’Hanlon 1999: 47-93). It has been suggested by Rosalind O’ Hanlon that the 18th century saw a shift in the norms of manliness, and cultural refinement, etiquette and consumption that defined ideal manhood in northern India. The ideal man was called a mirza – cultured, social and refined in etiquette. It needs to be emphasized here that culinary and feasting practices were significant to the transformation in the norms of manliness, and a mirza was crucially defined by his gastronomical choices. It is amply evident from the Mirzanama1 and the biographical dictionaries written in the 18th century that gastronomical practices were assigned a significant symbolic capital in the elite households, and were crucial in articulating elite norms of manliness (Ahmad 1975: 99-110). Organizing of feasts and the distribution of food thus became an important part of the Mughal culture of feasts, hosted by nobles in the honour of the emperor occasionally but more often as a means to strengthen friendships and networks of alliances with other members of their social class.
It becomes amply clear from the above description that household spaces were utilized to build political alliances and display loyalty and service for the state and the ruler. Unfortunately, even though historians are now beginning to realize the historical significance of the households in the Mughal empire, their focus has still remained on the imperial center. An important exception is the work of Munis Faruqui who has sought to shift the focus away from the imperial court to the princely households and their incessant negotiations with the regional and local chieftains and power-holders in order to better grasp the process of Mughal imperial expansion (Faruqui 2012). We need to remind ourselves that the households of the nobles, chieftains and aristocrats were just as important as imperial and princely households in legitimating Mughal imperial rule in South Asia. Moreover, Mughal imperial courtly norms were imbibed, modified and contested in these elite households. Without a study of the aristocratic households then, we cannot hope to understand the ‘reception’ and the wider ‘diffusion’ of Mughal court culture and cuisine. Representing a smaller, more compact, and for the common subjects more accessible version of the state in the locality, these aristocratic households included a large administrative staff consisting of the secretaries, accountants, stewards, cooks, store keepers, stablemen, etc. Other professional services were provided by the physicians, astrologers, architects, painters, musicians and dancers (for details, refer to Faruqui 2012). Abul Fazl for example, is famous for having a lavish kitchen in his house, with superintendents who looked after its upkeep, a cook, many servants to see if the food was properly laid and served. (Bhakkari 1970: I, 72).
An important feature of aristocratic households that comes out from the scrutiny of the contemporary Persian sources is the emphasis on the need to cultivate friendships among elites, and community-kin groups. Ties of friendship were politically significant as they fostered political networks and promoted the interests of the nobles. Furthermore, in developing political relations with potential allies in the localities, these households served as conduits that connected the local power-holders with the Mughal imperial court. In order to cultivate affect-laden, and also formal, relations with the local elites and the common subjects, the aristocratic households were marked by the effusion of feasts and festivities, and gift-exchanges and entertainment parties. In the extant Persian sources there are detailed descriptions of grand feasting parties, musical and dance evenings, festival celebrations, etc. – events which served as occasions for the nobles to invite each other over to their place and renew their mutual relations and networks of vertical linkages and political allies (for details, refer to Beveridge 1902). For instance, whenever Sayyid Khan Chaghata, who was a high noble in Multan during the time of Akbar, organized the urs feast in his house, he would call and feed about 1000 nobles every day. In front of each man would be placed a meal consisting of 9 shirmal loaves, nine trays of dishes followed by sweets to round off the meal. (Bhakkari 1970: I, 191).
The important point is that the Indo-Persian tazkiras (or biographies) represent the aristocratic households as replicas of the imperial or the princely establishments, with their independent financial administration, a motley of attendants, separate apartments for wives and concubines, who were constantly served by a team of slaves and eunuchs, several ‘external’ apartments, kitchens, courtyards, etc. For instance, a noble who was an Iranian by descent and became the diwan of Prince Sultan Parvez had such extravagant food items, carpets, dresses and gardens in his household that people were astonished to see it. In replicating the imperial court, elite households served to represent the state in the locality, acting as its representative for the subjects. At the same time, with their vast establishment and networks of resource dispensation, regular feasting parties etc., these households served to consolidate imperial sovereignty, extending and strengthening political alliances with the local power relations. Working as conduits for the state, their significance in the expansion of the empire cannot be over-emphasized.
The imperial visits to the aristocratic households were imbued with a lot of symbolic significance. These visits were a source of blessing (baraka) for the honored noble, and reaffirmed his position in the locality as a representative of the sacred imperial Mughal authority. Since imperial sovereignty was sacred, and centered on the body of the king_ his presence at a noble’s household, invested that household with analogous sacredness and divine, if delegated, authority. An interesting point to note here is that these visits were infused with an element of food symbolism. It is owing to this reason that our tazkiras revel in imperial visits to the elite households, providing extra-ordinary, even exaggerated descriptions of the feasts and the reception that the Mughal rulers enjoyed at the household of a noble. To take an instance, Bhakkari mentions a noble, Hakim Ali whose house was an architectural marvel of the time; it was built beneath a reservoir. Akbar paid him a visit, and while he was at his place, says Bhakkari, he would dive into the reservoir to reach his place; and while he was resting at his house, Akbar would read books, apply his expensive perfumes, enjoy sumptuous feasts, and retire on his comfortable bed (Bhakkari 1970: I, 243-4). In yet another instance, Khudawand Khan Dakani who held a high position under the Nizamul-Mulk regime (of Ahmadnagar) was invited by Abul Fazl to his house (at the instructions of Akbar) for a feast consisting of lavish food and drinks (Bhakkari 1970: I, 227). Bhakkari in his tazkirah also gives details of the elaborate preparations that a Mughal noble Zain Khan Koka made when he hosted a party in the honour of Akbar. For instance, ‘tanks were filled with rose water, preparations of a syrup of milk mixed with sugar blended with yazd (pure and holy) roses was served to the guests, and the entire sitting space was sprinkled with yazd rose water’ (Bhakkari 1970: I, 123-4).
The point to highlight here is that the consumption of food in the Mughal period had not remained confined to the usual sense of taste but had come to inhabit the world of smell to produce a holistic culinary experience. This is a clear reflection of the fact that in the Mughal culinary practice, the meaning of food was reproduced through an entanglement of the olfactory with that of the gustatory senses. Many anthropologists have shown, food, in its varied guises, contexts, and functions, can signal rank and rivalry, solidarity and community, identity or exclusion, and intimacy or distance (for details, refer to Wilson 2006). Food was an important marker of elite identity, but in order to fulfil this function, there was, we notice from our sources, considerable investment of symbolic meanings through expensive aromas, herbs, and spices. Levi-Strauss was indeed right in suggesting the correlation of cooking with culture, but, in the case of early modern South Asia, food was removed from ‘nature’ not just by the act of cooking, but also by the incorporation of herbs and aromas, as well (Lévi-Strauss and Weightman 1990: I, 5-15). Food was for the Mughal aristocrat, not just a matter of taste (a function of salivary glands), but a matter of smell as well. Since it was both taste and smell that shaped gastronomical practices, all rituals of collective food sharing required particular attention to the surroundings, which acquired their own significance.
The aristocratic households, our tazkiras tell us, were centers of immense charitable activities, distributing alms and providing succor to the ‘deserving poor’, the saiyads and nobles who had fallen on bad times, widows who had no means of maintenance, Sufis and saints. For instance, Bhakkari, in his biographical account, Zakhirat refers to the charitable activities of a very high ranking amir, during the period of Akbar, Murtada Khan Sheikh Farid Bukhari of Delhi who had constructed many sarais and hospices when he was the governor of Gujarat.
He (Murtada Khan Sheikh Bukhari) bedecked Delhi and Faridabad with edifice of ornament and water-tanks…He had made a list of the Sayyid-residents of the entire province of Gujarat, male or female, young, old or a child, even an expectant woman, and paid for the marriage expenses of their sons and daughters out of his own estate (Bhakkari 1970: I, 137-8).
Another instance is that of Nawwab Miyan Muhammad Khan Niyazi who was a high ranking amir during Akbar’s reign. He not only paid a handsome salary to his soldiers but also fed the people of his entire chowki every day. If his servant died, his pension was given to his son regularly and if he was childless, then to his widow (Bhakkari 1970: I, 137-8). Mention can also be made of Raja Ram Das Kachhwaha who had a very friendly relationship with Akbar. He is known to give away huge sums of money as charity to the community of the charans2, bhats3 and the courtesans (Bhakkari 1970: I, 239). It is evident from the above instances that in representing the Mughal state as a redistributive system, benevolent and charitable, the aristocratic households played a crucial role. Moreover, it was through distribution of food, other charitable activities etc. that the state did reach out to the socially inferior groups.
Apart from reinforcing the redistributive nature of the Mughal state through food practices, the sources provide fascinating details about the gendered nature of food practices in elite households as well. Though aristocratic women cooked infrequently, they managed and controlled the kitchen establishment or matbakh khana, deciding issues concerning the menu, guest list, seating arrangement, and of course, the use of funds marked for food. These were political choices, and women exercised these options in ways that allowed them to participate in the political process. At the same time, women’s control over food also allowed them to exercise some control over religious matters – in the management of ritual. Most rituals centered around food, and the Mughal biographical dictionaries provide considerable evidence to women’s management of food practices that go with rituals. The food that was distributed after such ritual events as nazr, fatiha, bibi ki kahani, etc. was entirely managed by women, and this was indeed an important source for the exercise of women’s agency in the sacred and ritual domains (for details, refer to Thackston 2002; Beveridge 1902, 2006; Bhakkari 1970).
The gender dimension to the history of food is also suggested from the articulation of motherhood in the Persian sources, in particular the biographical dictionaries. In these sources, the mother is represented as the provider of food; she is someone who nourishes the family. In an interesting study of maternity and motherhood in medieval Islamic discourse, Katherine M. Kueny has argued that there was an ambivalent relationship between mothering and food. The good mother is a good cook who nourishes, sustains and services the child’s physical and emotional needs while remaining an invisible figure herself only to serve others. This makes the maternal role ambiguous; as mothers, women are powerful providers of food but they are also socially and domestically disempowered by their nurturing, serving role (Sceats 2000: 11). However, the impression we get from our sources is that the nurturing/feeding roles of women were a source of considerable power for them; their role as food provider was an important resource, and served to create empowering spaces for the exercise of their agency and subjectivity.
Islamic law defines three kinds of kinship: relationship by blood (nasab), affinity (musahara), and milk (rida’a). The term rida’a denotes the relationship between a child and a woman, not its own mother but one who nursed it (Faroqhi 2005: 233). This has made many scholars to refer to the woman both ‘as body and as food’ (Bynum 1987: 245-59). This act of breastfeeding also gave rise to the political institution of fosterage whereby a mother’s milk was used to create stable political alliances or familial relationships which were sometimes even stronger than ties of blood. Foster parents for infants were selected from amongst noble households on the advice of courtiers during a queen’s pregnancy, and the foster mother was invited to the palace to assist the mother with suckling within the first week of birth (Bynum 1987: 245-59).
In medieval Islamic polities, political allegiances were, to a very large extent, based on milk kinship. Milk-kinship/ fosterage gave breast- feeding a particular emotional as well as political valence restructuring family networks, codes of kinship and understandings of motherhood. The early modern biographies show the significance of the institution of milk-kinship to the political process. It highlights an important, but neglected facet of state-formation, and that is the role of the mother, and relations based on her milk, in shaping and strengthening alliances at the court. Caroline Walker Bynum argues that to accept and even sentimentalize the female bodily functions such as lactation, indicate a new acceptance of the ‘body’ and in the process creates a new image of women (Bynum 1987: 245-59). Bynum describes this as ‘woman as body and as food’.4 It gave the mothers an opportunity to indirectly manipulate the domain of the household, court and family, turning the power structures in their favour. Thus, the very sensitive act of child rearing (either one’s own or fostering someone else’s child) acquired political symbolism making the demarcation between the public and the private domains extremely fuzzy.
Apart from the dimension of gender, food and feasts in the medieval period, were markers of class identity, as already mentioned previously. Jack Goody has highlighted in his work, that cuisine not only represented structures of production and distribution and of social and cosmological schemes but of class and hierarchy (Goody 1982). An interesting aspect is that while the Mughal imperial sources provide detailed records of the lives of social and political elites, they also make incidental references to the lower-class individuals who had apparently crossed the social divide that separated the elites from the plebian elements. Some among them are mentioned by their names and professions, and a considerable number among them happen to be associated with food – cooks (bawarchi or bakawal), tasters, fruit suppliers, wine distillers, etc. It is a reflection of the social and cultural significance of food that in the historical sources and biographical diaries there is mention of the lower-class groups associated with the supply and cooking of food.
In so far as the imperial court is concerned, in the early Mughal period, the domestic space was quite tenuous and was constantly intruded by the ‘external’ forces. Indeed, in Baburnama, Babur recollects the domestic space as no more than a shifting camp, with his relations, nobles, wives, concubines, slaves and servants, perpetually on the move. In the early Mughal period, there were no regular taxes to realize, no permanent administrative staff and no bureaucratic structures worth the name. However, even as the court was peripatetic, the imperial household was marked by strong, intimate relations; tied to the political process, these relations were crucial to state formation. His detailed description of his conquests in ‘Hindustan’ are marked by interesting references to food and feasts; sometimes using the act of eating as a metaphor for self fulfillment and satiation of desires, including, interestingly, the desire for conquest and dominion. To take an instance, when he reached Dizak, on way to Hindustan, he and his men had ‘loaves of fine flour, fat meat, plenty of sweet melons and abundance of excellent grapes’ (Beveridge 2006: 148). Recalling that moment, Babur, in his memoir, describes the victory over hunger as akin to wining a new dominion.
Baburnama also reveals the significance of food, and its circulation, in reproducing inter- and intra-community alliances. His account refers to extravagant wine and opium parties that he helped organize to reaffirm his ties with members of his community and political allies (see Balabanlilar 2012). For example, to celebrate the birth of his son, Babur got on a boat for an excursion with fourteen other men. He writes: ‘we drank until the late afternoon, and then, disgusted by the bad taste of the spirits, we agreed to switch to ma’jun’ [a mild narcotic concoction made into a chewable pellet] (Beveridge 2006: 481-82). These activities occurring within the household spaces and described in impressive details by Babur highlights their political implications; since the imperial sovereignty was shaped by the strength of relations occurring within domestic/informal spaces, food and feasts and gift-giving were political activities that served to reinforce Mughal rule in India. The feasts, opium and wine parties mentioned in Baburnama were used for building inter and intra kinship solidarities and were marked by an element of excess and disorder. These feasts, seen as social acts, pose a striking contrast to the ones mentioned in Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama where feasts and culinary practices were controlled activities, and were marked by a strict enforcement of discipline and order. It seems that with the centralization and bureaucratization of the Mughal empire under Akbar, gastronomical practices were used not only for building political alliances, but equally for the assertion of imperial authority, and hierarchical distribution of authority in the centralized-bureaucratic dispensation.
A careful reading of Babur’s memoirs reveals the intricate relations between the imperial household and the state. In this respect, as we know from Lisa Balabanlilar’s work, among others, that the Mughal state was scarcely different from the Timurid state in Central Asia, and broadly followed the Turko-Mongol traditions of rule (Balabanlilar 2012). Distribution of food – fruits, dry nuts, sweets, etc. – was an important means of building household relations, and there was considerable investment in the packaging and presentation of these food baskets (Beveridge 1902: 117-29). At the same time, food was, in a text like Baburnama, identified with space; it became a marker of spatial identities. Babur in his autobiography discusses the fruits and vegetables of Hindustan (India) in great detail like mango, jack fruit, orange, coconut, etc. along with occasionally incorporating couplets of famous poets to emphasize their taste, colour etc. The following excerpt from Babur’s memoir describing in detail the qualities of the Indian mango makes the significance of fruits and food very evident.
Mangoes when good, are very good, but, many as are eaten, few are first –rate. They are usually plucked unripe and ripened in the house. Unripe they make excellent condiments (qatiq), are good also preserved in syrup. Taking it altogether, the mango is the best fruit of Hindustan. Some so praise it as to give it preference over all fruits except the musk-melon, but such praise outmatches it. It resembles the kardi peach. It ripens in the rain. It is eaten in two ways: one is to squeeze it to a pulp, make a hole in it, and suck out the juice, the other to peel and eat it like the kardi peach. Its tree grows very large and has a leaf somewhat resembling the peach- tree’s. The trunk is ill-looking and ill-shaped, but in Bengal and Gujarat is heard of as growing handsome [khub] (Beveridge 2006: 503-4)..
Apart from the above mentioned detailed description of mango, Babur also inserts a couplet by Amir Khusrau here which is as follows:
Naghzak-i ma [var. khwash] naghz-kun-i bustan, Naghztarin mewa [var.na ‘mat]-i-Hindustan (Beveridge 2006: 503).
Our fairling, [i.e. mango] beauty-maker of the garden, fairest fruit of Hindustan (Beveridge 2006: 503 footnote).
Babur also mentions another anecdote in his autobiography where, while in Kabul, he prayed in the garden for divine instruction, and soon thereafter he received half-ripened mangoes preserved in honey from Daulat Khan; he saw that as a propitious sign, and decided to go ahead with his expedition to Hindustan (Beveridge 2006: 440). Descriptions of food, and their circulation, in Baburnama are varied and detailed, but they are often used as metaphors for regional space; and so, if the mangoes represented Hindustan, the melons and grapes stood in for his Central Asian homeland. At the same time, he compares these fruits to construct a narrative of the cultural superiority of Central Asia when compared with Hindustan. In fact, throughout in his autobiography, he keeps comparing the fruits of Central Asia with those found in India, and builds the narrative of the cultural superiority of his Central Asian homeland.
How should a person forget the pleasant things of these (Afghan territories or Babur’s Central Asian homeland) countries, especially one who has repented and vowed to sin no more? How should he banish from his mind the permitted flavours of melons and grapes? (Beveridge 2006: 645).
The significance of food and culinary practices in early Mughal period is also suggested in Gulbadan Begum’s Ahval-i-Humayuni. Indeed, Humayun’s interrupted reign has been covered in some details by several contemporary works,5 but, Gulbadan Begum’s Ahval, stands apart from all of them in that it describes the process of state formation from the vantage point of the domestic spaces, and reveals the extent to which the state and the household constituted each other. Gulbadan was Humayun’s sister and wrote this work around 1587, on Akbar’s instruction, to facilitate his project of compiling an official history of the Mughal empire. She prefers to call her work, ‘ahval’, meaning ‘state of affairs’, rather than using the standard terms, tarikh or tazkireh that were used for historical chronicles; she did probably see her work as distinct from the conventional chronicles of the period (Lal 2005). Unlike the usual eulogized portrayal of the rulers and their political and military achievements that we find in historical chronicles, Gulbadan’s Ahval documents the everyday, ordinary and mundane events occurring in domestic spaces; her work draws our attention to the routine activities of the state, and their associations with the household. Moreover, by placing the imperial women at the center of these activities, her work highlights their role in gift-exchanges, marital alliances, childbirth, adoption, and feasts and festivities; these activities were deeply political activities, and were indeed linked to state formation.
Interestingly, Ahval-i-Humayuni or Humayunnama highlights the fact that feasts and other activities related to food played a crucial role in the maintenance and strengthening of political alliances (see Lal 2003). Therefore the work provides impressive details about the celebrations and feasts held by the senior women of the court (even the kings were not privy to this activity) on various occasions. This arrangement and execution of celebrations by senior Mughal women is seen by scholars like Ruby Lal as ‘yet another demonstration of the ritualized hierarchy as the principle of the Mughal domestic universe’ (Lal 2005: 127-8).
These feasts, like the ones mentioned in Baburnama, were marked by excess and disorder along-with a certain relaxation in gender boundaries. For e.g., on the anniversary of Humayun’s succession to the Mughal throne (r.1530-56), the Mughal royal elite organized a magnificent gathering known as the ‘mystic feast’ (tuy-i tilism). Among the attendees, the clearly fascinated Gulbadan Begum’s attention was drawn to a startlingly unconventional couple, both women: Shad Begum and Mihringaz Begum. Describing them, she said: ‘they had a great friendship for one another and they used to wear men’s clothes, played polo and used bow and arrow for shooting’ (Balabanlilar 2010: 123-147). The presence of these women, dining and drinking alongside their male counterparts during the courtly celebrations reflects not only a negotiation of gender boundaries but also the tremendous power that the organization of feasts placed in the hands of senior women. Food related festivities and feasts thus become a means of assertion of subjectivity and agency by women in the Mughal court. Moreover, the excess and splendidness of the Mughal courtly feasts can be gleaned from Gulbadan’s text that describes the overall layout of a feast given by Maham Begum who was Babur’s preferred wife.
A jeweled throne, ascended by four steps, and above it gold-embroidered hangings, and laid on it a cushion and pillows embroidered in gold. The covering of the pavilions and of the large audience tent was, inside, European brocade, and outside, Portuguese cloth. The tent-poles were gilded; that was very ornamental. (My Lady) had prepared a tent-lining and a kannat and sar-i-kannat of Gujrati cloth-of-gold, and an ewer for rose-water, and candlesticks, and drinking-vessels, and rose-water sprinklers-all of jeweled gold. (Beveridge 2006: 113).
During the preparations of the feast, Maham Begum also ‘ordered that common people (mardum adami) and soldiers (sipahi) also decorate their houses and make their quarters beautiful’ (Lal 2005: 126). This again reiterates the fact stated earlier that eating was not just an act related to the sense of taste but the sense of smell, elements of display and splendor too had a role to play in making it a wholesome experience during the Mughal period. Moreover, such feasts were organised to perfection; taking into account the minutest of details like the seating arrangements, order of presents, list of invitees, the proper conduct and norms to be followed etc.
In the early modern period, food in South Asia was invested with a complex range of symbolic meanings, and while perceptions of healthy diet might have influenced the choice of food, a person’s dietary regimen was crucially determined within a purity-pollution axis. We know from Mughal imperial chronicles that the Mughal rulers and members of their household treated particular food items as pure, and certain others as potentially polluting. In my study of the Mughal biographical dictionaries, as I argue below, the nobles, scholars and sufi-saints also placed a huge emphasis on the choice of food, and in considering certain food choices as polluting and impure, they were indeed influenced by Indic dietary practices. These symbolic associations of food in Mughal elite biographies help us trace the contours of the engagement between the Perso-Islamic and Indic cultural values at the dining table - in the choice, the symbolic meanings, and social perceptions of food.
The shifts in perception of meat consumption in Mughal courtly culture represents one of the most obvious instances of the gastronomical engagement between the two traditions. We get to know from Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama that Akbar sought to restrict meat consumption, and set aside a couple of days in a week when meat would neither be cooked nor served at his court and establishment. In fact, Abul Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari too mentions that Akbar used to feel perplexed about the fact that despite the availability of various kinds of food to man, he insists on killing and eating other living creatures. Fazl goes on to say that Akbar’s intention had been to quit eating meat slowly. For instance, Akbar initially abstained from meat on Fridays, and then went on to abstain on Sundays also. Later, he even quit eating meat on the first day of every solar month, Sundays, on lunar and solar eclipses, on days between two fasts, the Mondays of the month of Rajab.6, the feast day of every Ilahi7 month, the whole month of Farwardin8 and the month in which Akbar was born, viz. the month of Aban9 (Moosvi 2010: 100-01). Jahangir continued the practice, and while the evidence concerning the succeeding rulers is scarce, it does seem that consumption of meat was tolerated in moderation. From the Mughal sources we get a sense that meat had come to be associated with impure desires (or nafs), and the authors of these biographies commend several scholars, saints and nobles for renouncing meat. The fact that they highlight their dietary preferences as evidence of their heroic and manly qualities reveals that meat had come to be associated with impure and potentially polluting traits among the ruling and aristocratic classes, as well. In some of the Mughal sources, it is even suggested that the renunciation of meat facilitated the acquisition of supernatural powers. In several others, it is mentioned that it was only after a person renounces meat that he could practice incantations and black magic (Bhakkari 1970: I, 65). Abul Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari also contains passages on Akbar’s drink and diet preferences where it is mentioned that Akbar used to drink the water of the Ganges whenever he was at the camp or on march. Fazl writes that there was no fixed time for eating but the officials used to prepare things in such a manner that as soon as anyone would ask for food, hundred dishes were prepared in an hour (Moosvi 2010: 100-01).
Composite cooking is highlighted in the contemporary cookbooks, as well. We could, for instance take the case of Nuskha-e-Shahjahani which is a cookbook written in the reign of Shah Jahan, and provides interesting recipes from the Mughal royal kitchen. The chapters of this fascinating cookbook transports one into the aromas of various spices and herbs used in the preparation of multiple dishes like soups, pulaos, kababs, fish, samosas, sweets and breads. Some of the dishes, mentioned in the cookbook, are clearly of Indic origin, and the application of herbs and certain spices again reveal the influence of Indic cooking traditions in shaping Mughal gastronomical practices. The cookbook also contains elaborate details about cooking things like naan (bread), aash (soup), qaliya and do-piyazah (lamb cooked with onions and vegetables), bharta (a dish in which vegetables are mashed before or after their preparation), zeer biryani and pulao (exquisite rice dishes), kabab, harissa, shisranga and khagina (various kinds of grilled meat) and shiriniha (a Mughal sweet dish). The work is exceptional in the sense that along with mentioning the method of cooking, the ingredients used (along with their exact quantity) and how many people can be served once the food item is cooked, it provides a brief historical journey of the food item and at times also mentions the linguistic roots of the name of the food. For instance, the cookbook states that the word naan ‘originated in Persia and is a generic word for bread. Amir Khusrau, the Sufi poet, mentions the cooking of naan tunuk (a classic whole wheat flatbread baked on a griddle) in the royal kitchens of Delhi. With the arrival of the Mughals, various varieties of dishes were introduced in the imperial kitchens, both sweet and salty. Some were cooked in an iron tandoor and some on an iron griddle’ (Husain 2019:14). Similarly, the cookbook gives details of about 8 varieties of aash (soup). For e.g. aash-e-keshtaleh (thick soup with lamb, vegetables and wheat noodles), aash-i-bawardi (thick yoghurt soup with lamb stuffed bread), aash-i-lang barah (thick yoghurt-flavoured lamb soup with noodles), aash lang barah chashnidar (sweet lamb soup with vegetables and noodles), aash-e- sangsheer (lamb soup with chickpeas and vegetables), aash-e-nakhudi (thick sweetened lamb and vegetable soup), shorbe nakhud aab (soup made with chicken organs), shorbe gosht [minced lamb soup with rice] (Husain 2019:30-9).
Therefore, it becomes amply clear from the detailed descriptions above that while examining the culinary practices in Mughal court culture, one can clearly notice their complex inter-relations with state formation. The Indo-Persian Mughal sources of the period too reveal the political significance of the exchange and circulation of food as ‘gifts’ to the reproduction of the political order. These sources provide interesting evidence concerning the culinary practices and eating etiquette in the court culture, and a careful reading of them reveal the complex inter-connections between gastronomy and imperial sovereignty. At the same time, the detailed description of the everyday lives of the ruling classes in these accounts help us understand the relationship of food, diet and dining etiquette with social and political identities and the self-perception of communities. Food practices are a crucial marker of community identity, perhaps, the primary means of forging social identifications and difference. Indeed, studying them help us in identifying the complex linkages among food, identities and the state in early modern South Asia.
* Assistant Professor at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (India) and Visiting Fellow at Max Planck Institute of Human Development, Berlin (Germany). Email address: shivangini.history@gmail.com.
This work was supported by the JSPS-ICSSR Grant for a Bilateral Joint Research Project (April 2016-March 2018).
1 In the Mughal period, several didactic texts of different kinds were written, providing the necessary guidelines for an acceptable code of etiquette and comportment. One such text was written in the year 1660 by a Mughal noble, Mirza Kamran titled Mirzanama. It was a manual listing the criteria and norms of conduct for the gentleman who called himself a Mirza in the seventeenth century. According to the text, the three basic attributes of a ‘gentleman’ or Mirza were: A pure and high pedigree, a high rank (1000 zat and above) and dignified manners. Apart from these, the Mirza should have an elegant outward appearance and virtuous habits. He should be well versed in ethics, history and poetry. He should be adept in the etiquette of dining, music, speech, riding, hunting and bathing. It was these norms of manliness and proper conduct, on the basis of which the texts of the period characterised a Mughal noble as a gentleman or a Mirza.
2 It refers to a caste of performers who lived/are living in Sindh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. They are known for their literary and poetic talents and always received court patronage.
3 They are a community of bards known from their phakra (speaking poetically in praise of others) who are found in the states of Maharashtra, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Punjab and Rajasthan. They kept records of genealogy and wrote about the exploits or the heroic deeds of their masters.
4 People in Western Europe did not simply associate body with woman. They also associated her body with food. Woman was food because her breast milk ensured the survival of the human beings. Medieval writers and artists were fond of the theme, borrowed from antiquity, of lactation offered to a father or other adult male as an act of filial piety. The cult of the Virgin’s milk was one of the most extensive in late medieval Europe (Bynum 1987: 260-76).
5 See, for example, Khwandamir 1940, Johar Aftabchi 1882, and Bayazid Bayat, 1941. All these sources contain details about the laws, official promulgations and ordinances of Humayun’s reign. They also describe the architectural activities, court festivities and political and military feats of Humayun’s rule. For details, refer to Lal 2005.
6 Rajab is a month in the lunar calendar.
7 Ilahi calendar was introduced by Akbar. It was somewhat based on the Zoroastrian calendar and it began with 21st of March as their new year.
8 A month which lasted from 21 March to 20 April and was based on the Zoroastrian calendar.
9 Another month in the lunar calendar which begins in October and ends in November and is based on the Zoroastrian calendar.
