Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Food in Telugu history

What people in the Telugu lands ate, and why it changed: the dishes of a 12th-century royal kitchen in the Manasollasa, the rice, ghee and millets seen by a 17th-century English merchant, the crops of the 19th century from rice and millets to 36,000 acres of chillies, everyday meals of jonna, pickles and gongura, the foods of the hill peoples, famine foods, and ration cards in the 1940s.

What people ate in the Telugu lands depended on water. In the river deltas rice grew well, while in the dry uplands people lived mainly on millets such as jonna (great millet), sajja and korra.12 Over the centuries new crops such as tobacco came in, and by the 1880s chillies covered large areas. In bad years the poor fell back on forest foods.134 This page follows that story. It adds to the Food section of Daily life & festivals, which tells what Marco Polo, the poets and the gazetteers saw.

About the sources. Old records say much about the food of kings and little about the food of the poor. For the 12th century this page uses Om Prakash’s study of food in ancient India (1961), which describes the Manasollasa.5 For later centuries it uses an English merchant’s account of Golconda, district manuals and gazetteers, census reports and the reports of the Hyderabad famines.6124

A royal kitchen in the 12th century

Someshvara III, a Chalukya king of Kalyani, came to the throne in 1127 and ruled for about eleven years.7 According to R. G. Bhandarkar, he wrote a Sanskrit book called the Manasollasa, in five parts. Its third part describes the pleasures open to a king.7

The book gives detailed rules for a royal meal. Om Prakash sums up its order of dishes.8 Boiled rice came first, and then rice cooked in milk with sugar and ghee. Fruits and sweet-and-sour dishes followed, then drinks, thick curds and a spiced curd dish. Last of all came buttermilk with salt, or a sour gruel.8 The king was to sit on a cushion with a white napkin over his lap, and eat with his close relatives and trusted courtiers.9

The Manasollasa describes many meat dishes in detail, but deals with vegetarian dishes in one verse.5 It recommends gram (chickpea) in many dishes.10 It also names a dhosaka, a salted dish of pulses and spices fried in ghee.11

Rice, ghee and millets at Golconda

In the 1620s an English merchant, William Methwold, described the Golconda kingdom.6 He wrote that some places gave two crops of rice in a year, and a few even three, but most gave only one.6 Wheat grew far inland, but people ate little of it.6 His editor, W. H. Moreland, adds that the lowlands grew mainly rice, millets and pulses. Tobacco, then a new crop, was grown largely for export.3

Methwold also noticed that food followed caste. Brahmins ate nothing that had life, drank no wine, and lived on milk, pulses, herbs, roots and fruit, with ghee “by the pint”.12 The Komatis, the trading caste, also ate no meat.12 The largest group, the cultivators whom Moreland identifies as the Kapus, ate any meat except beef.13 Methwold explains why: the cow gave them milk and butter, and its work at the plough gave them all the fruits of the earth.13

Crops of the 19th century

By the 1880s the district manuals counted crops acre by acre. The Manual of the Kistna District (1883) gives these areas for the Krishna (then Kistna) district, which then included Guntur:1

CropAcres (about 1883)
Riceover 300,000
Korra (Italian millet)almost as much as rice
Varigu (common millet)245,000
Jonna (great millet)200,000
Sajja (spiked millet)163,000
Maize53,000
Chillies36,000
Ragi22,000
Wheat400

The manual called the 36,000 acres of chillies “astonishing”.1 Coriander covered another 22,000 acres. No sugarcane was grown, and the palmyra palm gave the district its sugar.1

In the Nizam’s Telangana, jonna was the chief food crop.2 In the Karimnagar district, the Imperial Gazetteer of 1909 reported, jonna covered 45 out of every 100 acres sown, with rice far behind.14

Everyday meals

The Kurnool district manual of 1886 describes a working family’s food closely.15 Jonna was the staple food, except in Markapur, where people ate sajja and korra.15 It was ground into flour and baked as cakes, or broken and cooked into a pudding, or washed and cooked like rice.15 The pudding kept longer if it was boiled in sour rice-water instead of plain water.15

Pickles and chutneys gave the taste. People ate mango pickle, and tamarind chutney with gongura (roselle leaves).15 Lime and citron pickles were a luxury of the rich.15 Almost all the non-Brahmin farming families ate mutton, especially at festivals and at vows to the village goddess, when sheep were killed.15 Richer Brahmins preferred rice or arika (kodo millet) to jonna.15

Across Hyderabad State the picture was similar. The poor ate cakes of jonna and sajja, with curries of vegetables and pulses seasoned with tamarind, chillies or both.16

Food from the hills and forests

The hill peoples had foods of their own. The Konda Reddis pounded the pith of a forest palm into flour and ate it as a thin porridge. The same palm gave them palm wine.17 The Gonds of Adilabad pressed oil from mahua seeds and ate mahua flowers, wild roots and fruit when their crops ran short.18 The Chenchus of the Amrabad hills lived on roots, fruit and small game.19 Their lives are told on Tribal peoples of the Telugu lands.

Famine foods

When the rains failed, the poor turned to the forest and the tank beds. The Hyderabad famine report of 1899–1900 describes what they ate.4 The usual forest foods of the hill peoples, such as yams, ebony fruit and mahua flowers, had failed too.4 But in Rajura taluk the bamboo flowered and seeded widely, and its seed fed many people.4 The poorest ate the leaves of trees and creepers, cooked with a little jonna flour or without it. They also ate roots dug up from tank beds, young peepal leaves, grass seeds and the pith of jonna stalks.4

The famine of 1918–1920 brought the same hunger. The rise in the price of jonna and rice, the staple grains, left farmers in great distress.20 Some families sold their cattle and land, and some even gave up their children in return for food.21 Others lived on tamarind seeds, the seeds of the sendhi tree, and roots and leaves. They boiled the seeds and then pounded them to eat.21 For the great famines of these years, see Famines, floods and cyclones.

Ration cards

By the late 1940s grain was shared out by ration. The Hyderabad administration report of 1950 shows daily rations fixed by the type of work. An underground worker in the coal mines got 12 ounces of rice and 12 ounces of jonna, wheat or pulses a day.22 Hyderabad and Secunderabad had 510 and 110 ration shops.22 Poor families in Hyderabad city could also buy grain at lower prices through cheap grain shops.23

Where the sources disagree

Did Telangana eat rice? The Imperial Gazetteer of Hyderabad (1909) says that the poor lived mainly on cakes of jonna and sajja. But it adds that in the Telangana districts rice was also eaten “to a large extent”.16 The Hyderabad census of 1931 disagreed. It said rice covered only about five in every hundred acres sown in Telangana. Jonna covered as much land as all the other grains together and was the main food. Rice, it argued, was grown mainly to sell.2

Footnotes

  1. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (1883), p. 366 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Census of India 1931, Vol. XXIII: H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, Part I: Report (1933), p. 17 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. W. H. Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda in the Early Seventeenth Century (1931), introduction, p. xviii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  4. Report on the Famine Relief Operations in His Highness the Nizam’s Dominions during 1309 Fasli (1899–1900), Vol. I (1901), p. 26, “Forest produce as famine foods” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. Om Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India (1961), p. 226 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  6. William Methwold, “Relation”, in Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda (1931), p. 8 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. R. G. Bhandarkar, “Early History of the Dekkan”, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part II (1896), p. 221 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  8. Om Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India (1961), p. 230 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  9. Om Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India (1961), p. 232 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  10. Om Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India (1961), p. 205 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  11. Om Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India (1961), p. 285, list of food preparations (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  12. Methwold, “Relation”, in Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda (1931), p. 16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  13. Methwold, “Relation”, in Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda (1931), p. 17 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  14. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 179, Karimnagar district (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  15. Narahari Gopalakristnamah Chetty, A Manual of the Kurnool District in the Presidency of Madras (1886), p. 130 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  16. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 26 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  17. Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Tribal Hyderabad: Four Reports (1945), p. 2 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

  18. Siraj ul Hassan, The Castes and Tribes of H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, Vol. I (1920), p. 229 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  19. Hyderabad Revenue Department, report to the government of February 1942, in Fürer-Haimendorf, The Chenchus (1943), p. 376 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  20. Report on the Famine Relief Operations in His Exalted Highness the Nizam’s Dominions during 1918–1919 and 1919–20 (1923), p. 6 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  21. Report on the Famine Relief Operations … 1918–1919 and 1919–20 (1923), p. 10 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  22. Report on the Administration of the Hyderabad State (1950), p. 238, food and civil supplies (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  23. Report on the Administration of the Hyderabad State (1950), p. 239 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩

Photos

References

Sources (13)
  1. J. F. Fleet, R. G. Bhandarkar and others (Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency), Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part II: History of the Konkan, Dakhan and Southern Maratha Country (opens in a new tab), Government Central Press, Bombay, 1896, pp. 221. R. G. Bhandarkar, 'Early History of the Dekkan'. [Public domain]
  2. Om Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India: From Earliest Times to c. 1200 A.D. (opens in a new tab), Munshi Ram Manohar Lal, Delhi, 1961, pp. 205, 226, 230, 232, 285. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  3. W. H. Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda in the Early Seventeenth Century (Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., No. 66) (opens in a new tab), Hakluyt Society, London, 1931, xviii, 8, 16–17. Cite-only; paraphrased. Includes William Methwold's 'Relation' of about 1626. [Public domain in India]
  4. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 366. [Public domain]
  5. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1909, pp. 26, 179. [Public domain]
  6. Khan, Gulam Ahmad, Census of India 1931 vol.23 H.E.H. the Nizamʼs dominions (Hyderabad State); pt.1- Report (opens in a new tab), 1933, pp. 17. Public domain in India; paraphrased. [Public domain]
  7. Narahari Gopalakristnamah Chetty, A Manual of the Kurnool District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1886, pp. 130. [Public domain]
  8. Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Tribal Hyderabad: Four Reports (opens in a new tab), Revenue Department, Government of H.E.H. the Nizam, Hyderabad, 1945, pp. 2. Public domain in India; paraphrased. [Public domain in India]
  9. Syed Siraj ul Hassan, The Castes and Tribes of H.E.H. the Nizam's Dominions, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Times Press, Bombay, 1920, pp. 229. [Public domain]
  10. Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, The Chenchus: Jungle Folk of the Deccan (The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad, Vol. I) (opens in a new tab), Macmillan & Co., London, 1943, pp. 376. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  11. A. J. Dunlop, Report on the Famine Relief Operations in His Highness the Nizam's Dominions during 1309 Fasli (1899–1900), Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Government Central Press, Hyderabad, 1901, pp. 26. [Public domain]
  12. Famine Commissioner, H.E.H. the Nizam's Government, Report on the Famine Relief Operations in His Exalted Highness the Nizam's Dominions during 1918–19 and 1919–20 (1328, 1329 and Azur 1330 Fasli) (opens in a new tab), Government Central Press, Hyderabad, 1923, pp. 6, 10. [Public domain]
  13. Government of Hyderabad, Report on the Administration of Hyderabad State, September 1948 - March 1950 (opens in a new tab), Government of Hyderabad, 1950, pp. 238–239. Public domain in India; paraphrased. [Public domain in India]

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