What did people eat during the Rajaraja Chola times?
What were their favorite snack?
Did they consume meat? Did they drink alcohol in celebration?
A thread!
Warning: Reading this thread could trigger the foodie in you!
#PonniyinSelvan1
Kalki has documented some (not ALL) of the Chola's eating habits.
Mostly through Vandhiyadhevan!
Vanthiyathevan is the hero we always wanted: he flirts well, sleeps better, and eats like a king!
He relishes the good food served by Sendhan Amudhan's mom.
He Starts with Idiyappam and Coconut Milk, a combination straight from heaven.
Then moves on to Puliyodarai, and Corn Flour Paniyaaram.
Finishes off with curd rice.
Sumptous!
Ponniyin Selvan &Poonguzhali eat the fiber rich Varagu Rice (Kodo Millet) as cooked by the mute queen Mandakini.
What about snacks?
Some of Chola snacks: Roasted peanuts with a sprinkling of fresh coconut, millet & jaggery toffee made with sea water, or spiced guava and jamun
Food had moved beyond sustenance & had become a luxury for Cholas.
Records show they cultivated paddy, sugarcane, banana, brinjal, black gram, cow peas (‘karamani’) & spinach.
The phrase "Chozha Naadu Soru Udaithu" shows how fertile the land was, and droughts were unheard of.
Their food was bereft of the current day masala.
It was healthy - with a good mix of protein, carbs, fat and vitamins.
They included ghee- good fat, as part of their food and ate all their veggies.
Some natural fruit sugar was fine too - banana, jackfruit and sugarcane.
They relished their time preparing food. Avarai beans, cooked in tamarind gravy & served with bamboo shoot curry, is a time-consuming dish to prepare.
This dish was prized for its flavour & health benefits, & the texture, once soaked &cooked, had a rich, melt-in-the-mouth feel.
Due to abundance of sugarcanes, they savored sugar -in the form of akkara adisal (Sugar Pongal).
Their favorite snack seems to be Adhirasam, a sweet delicacy.
Fermented foods like Dosas, Appam, were regular foods too.
Post food, they had the habit of chewing Betel leaves.
Of course, they did consume meat as well.
From fish fry to Tortoise/Rabbit To Roasted Peppery Goat, it was a feast.
Historians say non-vegetarian food such as ‘kari choru’ (rice & meat cooked together) was common.
Offering ‘chatti choru’ (pot rice) is still in practice in TN.
Both men and women seemed consumed alcohol - as a celebration.
But they were well aware of the ill effects of alcohol.
Go back 1000 years, and one could see the then TASMACs displaying warning boards in entrance: "Bali Aaveer!" (You'd d!ë)
This is documented in Pattinapaalai:
All in all, during peace times, the Cholas savored good food, dressed up, drank alcohol, sung and danced, paid 16.66% tax, prayed to god, celebrated their king and lived with responsibility.
Live and Let Live.
A lesson 21st century could learn from history.
#Cholas #TamilNadu
If you liked this thread, please follow @labstamil for more such content.
@krishashok @kbalakumar you might be interested in this thread on Chola period foods!
Want to read a delightful retelling of Ponniyin Selvan in 300 pages?
Want to travel along the path of Vandhiyathevan covering 100 spots with helpful google map links to guide you?
Ponniyin Selvan Route Map is the book you need to read!
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Everybody knows the Greek Odyssey story of Trojan Horse.
But do you know its potential predecessor version, one that of a "Trojan" Elephant used in ancient India for the same decoy purposes?
A short thread (1/6)
In Pratijnayaugandharayana, a Sanskrit play, the story goes thus:
Pradyota, king of Ujjain wanted to capture the Kaushambi , of Vatsa kingdom, ruled by King Udayana. These are in current day Madhya Pradesh (Ujjain) and South UP (Kaushambi)
The problem: King Udayana had mastered the art of charming elephants with his Veena.
He could pacify the angry army elephants, mesmerizing them with magical spells and charming the opponent's elephant army with his music.
So the Ujjains had to come up with a deceptive plan!
What exactly is the argument of Poet Arivumathi in his book "Thamizh Murugan" which is the inspiration for Dhanush x Vetrimaaran's next project?
A thread rebutting his book using his own sources. Do read this important thread, RT it and think for yourself (1/n)
Arivumathi starts by saying Murugan is a Thamizh Kadavul who is an exception to the rule of Gods having religious identity. He claims Murugar has only ethnic identity according to Sangam poems "before time"
What is "before time"? Before big bang? 😂
What he perhaps means is "வரலாற்றுக்கு முந்தைய" prehistoric period million years ago.
He adds a safety clause that these Sangam poems themselves have some Puranic interpolations.
Which ethnicity? Much to the disappointment of Tamil exceptionalists, he says Murugar is a "Dravidian Dheivam", giving a new meaning to the word Dheivam as "warrior" A mortal man, not GOD. A brave warrior, but not GOD.
He says rulers of land become rulers of mind of people, eventually "remembered with gratitude" deemed worthy of worship over time.
But by this logic, Tamils must be worshipping other brave warrior kings as Gods too in temples - Karikalan, Rajaraja, Rajendra, Nedunchezhiyan, Senguttuvan? But such temples are not found, only temples built to Gods by these noble Tamil kings are found.
Perhaps Arivumathi was thinking of rationalists giving Thayir Padai Padayal at Marina beach for their king when making this statement.
A historic moment for TN today as a non-DMK/ADMK CM will be sworn in after 50 years. Even expert pollsters missed reading the Vijay tsunami. This is no overnight success. He had carefully and consciously planned his politics in his films.
An unbiased 🧵on how Vijay won TN (1/n)
Vijay's rise starts with his father, SA Chandrasekhar, famous director who had observed MGR from close quarters. Infact, MGR as CM met SAC and said he'd watched his "Needhiku Dhandanai" (Punishment to Justice) film 5 times, offering him advance for his own MGR films productions.
SAC realised the power of cinema in capturing public imagination, as he'd seen MGR's charismatic image of a do-gooder. MGR was partly inspired by Hollywood actor and Democratic political activist Gregory Peck who often portrayed protagonists with ‘fiber’ within a moral setting.
If any of you feel disappointed with TN results, please read this thread that may change your mood:
You feel fearful or uncertain or confused about Vijay's TVK, which is understandable for multiple reasons - his having EVR as a leader, his Jan 14 Tamil New Year wish, his opposition to Parandur, promise of freebies, general lack of serious policies etc. But look historically.
DMK was built on a foundation of hate, with decades of toxic articles, cartoons, speeches, rallies which culminated with the anti-Hindi protests that finally catapulted them to power. As early as 1948, poet and Mahatma Ramalingam Pillai worried about our beautiful Tamil being polluted with such disgusting discourse.
You are mistaken if you think Dravidawood detests all Brahmins equally. It despises only the men. But it loves the Brahmin women so much that it wants to liberate them.
An important thread that deconstructs this "Give your daughter to us" theme from 12 films since the 80s:
The template is simple:
- A fair, innocent, spirited but 0ppressed TB heroine "Mami"
- Her family is a cage that cuts her wings
- Her fiance/family are regressive, passive, weak, beta males
- Her savior is a progressive, strong, alpha Dstock man who liberates her from her cage
Nat'l award winning Sethu (1999) illustrates this template precisely.
- Heroine: Abitha Kuchalambal (called Agragaarathu mami by hero's friends), daughter of a temple priest
- She is a innocent, temple-going, murukku-making trad girl
-Her fiance is a beta, fearful temple priest
Should you have children of spirit or children of blood? Are humans overpopulating our way into extinction?
Is demography destiny or is it a Hindutva hype?
What does history & science tell us?
How should Hindus think about these civilizational existential questions? (1/14) 🧵
In 1798, Malthus predicted that population would outgrow food. He was spectacularly wrong. The Green Revolution, technology, and human ingenuity turned scarcity into surplus. Credible economists have mathematically established this.
Yet, this Thanos-ish thinking is popular.
Civilizations don't collapse from too many people. They collapse from too few.
Global fertility is already below replacement in most of the developed world. Without using fancy words, lets understand the math with simple numbers. Then we will know the true risk staring at us.