Author: Abbey Perreault / Source: Atlas Obscura
Today, making a donation might land you a tax deduction, but in medieval South India, it would likely be an occasion to have your name carved into stone. During the Chola period, temple walls served as a slightly more permanent community bulletin board, except carved by hand and written in Tamil, one of the longest languages in the world.
Announcements and public records that made it onto the temple included government mandates, sales of properties, and temple finances—including, most importantly, records of donations given by worshippers.Researchers have been studying these medieval, temple-wall inscriptions for years, parsing through thousands of epigraphs to piece together financial accounts of medieval South Indian history. But Andrea Gutiérrez, who studies South Asian foodways at the University of Texas, saw the writing on the wall a little differently. Some of these inscriptions, Gutiérrez argues, have something baked into them: They are, in a sense, recipes. Though donations could be general offerings, often for anointing, bathing, or decorating gods, many were intended to be put towards naivedya, food offerings prepared for, and served to, the temple god.
According to Gutiérrez, suddhannam, or boiled white rice, was (and continues to be) the “naivedya par excellence,” since it was one of the most highly-valued foods in medieval South India. Countless inscriptions dictated suddhannam provisions, often giving no specific instructions or recipes. This tends to be the case with many inscriptions, Gutiérrez notes. The dishes were often common, and the temple cooks well-versed in naivedya, so no further details had to be given beyond the name or quantity of the dish.
But medieval naivedya could take many forms. Some dishes, such as suddhannam, are presented daily, while others, such as jaggery rice fried in ghee, would be reserved for festival days. Some inscriptions cover standard offerings, while others go into elaborate detail as to which ingredients ought to be used. As a general rule, the larger the donation given, the more stipulations for expensive ingredients, perhaps more ghee or unrefined sugar.
In India and beyond, sugar played a significant role in medieval temple offerings. As Gutiérrez pored through thousands of inscriptions, she was struck by their sweetness. Nearly every dish involved sugar, including vegetable dishes and sour curries. In some cases, the dish might call for jaggery, an unrefined variety that would have been easier and less costly to access and prepare. But often, she found, temple recipes specified using carkarai, a somewhat refined brown sugar that required more skill, labor, and processing…
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