Part 7 - Details of Sweets in the Mahabharata

(1) The best known and the most extensively used sweet was madhu or honey. It was included in every feast (II.4.2), in every meal (III.157.7-8; VIII.28.12; XII.133.7), in alms given to Brahmins (II.5.106; VII.58.16), in sraddha offerings (XIII.88.15), in many different food preparations (XIII.63.26-27), and in offerings to gods. It was one of the most important ingredients in the preparation of intoxicating drinks, including the famous Soma, so much so, that in the Rgveda "honey is a less definite sense, the word 'madhu' more often denoting Soma or mead" (a liquor made from fermented honey, milk, water and spices). Madhu as mead was an ancient concept, with parallels in many Indo-Aryan languages (Macdonell and Keith 1912: II.123-124). In later literature, however, the sense of honey was more or less firmly established, but even in the Mahabharata, there are places where madhu does occur as an intoxicating beverage (II.45.26, 47.11; VII.5.30, 87.61; XIII.23.25; XV.1.19). Conspicuous among POONA & LIBRARY

= 140 all honeyed preparations was 'madhuparka (V.38.3, 87.19; IX.61.23; XII.202.5; XIII.52.15), made of an admixture of equal parts of curds, ghee and honey, and set before a guest as a respectful offering. It could well have been an intoxicant made from curds and fermented honey. (11) The only other sweet mentioned in the Mahabharata is guda or jaggery, but there are hardly about four references to it (V.38.5, 152.5; XII. 205.12; XIII.101.61). The presence of jaggery leads us to the existence of sugar- -cane whose product it is, but sugarcane or Iksu too, is mentioned only about three times (XII.37.25; XIII.61.78; XIV.86.21), and mainly in the didactic portions. (iii) Another by product of sugarcane and jaggery was molasses or phanita which was generally added to milk products such as ghee and buttermilk as a sweetn- -ing (XIII.63.13, 26). A history of the sugarcane plant reveals that it was known to literature right from the days of the. Atharva and the Yajurveda (Macdonell and Keith 1912 : I-74). Guda or Jaggery, on the other hand, is mentioned for the first time in literature, in the aphorisms of Panini, who also refers to two other products of sugarcane, phanita or molasses and sarkara or refined, granulated sugar. Large

- 141 quantities of sugarcane were needed to produce these sweet ingredients, and so there were huge sugarcane groves (Iksuvanas) (Agrawala 1963 : 111). Thus, though the Aryans became acquinted with the sugarcane plant at a very early date, the art of turning its juice into molasses, jaggery and sugar was a late acquisition. The Mahabharata, as noted earlier, refers to all three, sugarcane, molasses and jaggery, but none are very conspicuous. Honey was the only true sweetening element in the diet. This predominant position of honey dates back to Rgvedic days. It was, in fact, the earliest sweet known to the Indians and for a long time remained so. Slowly sugarcane juice and its products like jaggery and sugar began to assume importance, first in Panini and then in the Buddhist cononical works, which reveal, that by their time, sugarcane was the most important source of sweet ingredients. It was a common crop met with everywhere (L. Gopal 1964: 58). Its juice was squeezed by machines and was available in plenty, while its products were manifold, like guda, phanita, sarkara and matsyandika (sugar candy) (Om Prakash 1961 : 68). Thus, on the basis of this cumulative evidence, the beginnings of sugar-making in India can be assigned to about 500 B.C. Against this background the absence of sugar in the Mahabharata is very significant. It places the Epic on par with the later Samhitas and Brahmanas, where the

- 142 word 'sarkara', occurs not as sugar but as grifty particles of sand or gravel (Lallanji Gopal 1964: 65), which is also true of the Mahabharata (VI.1.22, 3.37, 19.37).