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Food
Before discussing the food habits of the ancient Tamils it may be pointed out that Indians, throughout the ages, have been mainly vegetarians. Not that they did not love the taste of meat; on the contrary when they got it they ate it with great delight.[1] Nor did they throw to the dogs the game they hunted, without consuming it themselves. But Indians never made the flesh of animals their staple food like the people of Western Europe. The latter living in countries where cereals cannot be produced in abundance, have been forced by their environment to adopt meat as their chief article of food and add to their dietary a minimum quantity of vegetable substance, because meat by itself is not a perfect food and because they cannot resist nature's urge to consume vegetable products charged with the chlorides, and iodides, the sulphates and phosphates and other salts necessary for the healthy life of a body. To use Indian phraseology, meat is their food and vegetable their curry; that is they eat meat to sustain their bodies and cereals and other vegetarian food to add relish to their meat. In India the position is reversed. Rice, wheat, the millets and the pulses are our food, and meat (and green-vegetables) our curry; that is we eat rice or wheat or millet and the seeds of legumes to rebuilid tissue lost by combustion, and meat and green vegetables turned into curry to add relish to the cereals which are mostly insipid in themselves and unfitted to stimulate to activity the glands which secrete saliva and other juices necessary for dissolving and digesting starches and proteids. In other words meat is food to Europeans and but curry to Indians. In this connection I may point out that curry, kari[2], is the name in Tamil not only of curried meat or vegetable and of sauce in general, but also
- ↑ A bard thus describes how he gobbled meat when he was plied with it by a royal patron:
துராஅய் துற்றிய துருவையம் புழுக்கின்
பராரை வேவை பருகெனத் தண்டிக்
காழிற் சுட்ட கோழூன் கொழுங்குறை
யூழி னூழின் வாய்வெய் தொற்றி
யவையவை முனிகுவ மெனினே சுவையPorunarāṛṛuppaḍai, 103-107.'He urged me many times to eat the stout, well boiled loin of a ram fed with bundles of arugu grass (Agrostis Linearis). I ate big lumps of fat flesh, roasted at the end of iron spikes, and, as they were hot, shifted them from the right side of the mouth to the left to cool them. I then said we did not require any more boiled or roasted meat.' And again—சொல்ல யுழுகொழு வேய்ப்பப் பல்லே
யெல்லையு மிரவு மூன்றின்று மழுங்கி
யுயிர்ப்பிடம் பெறாஅ தூண்முனிந்துIbid., 117-119.Our teeth, on account of eating meat night and day, became blunt like the blade (plough-share) of the plough with which the garden in the back yard is ploughed, and having no place for rest got disgusted with food. And again—பால்வறைக் கருனை காடியின் மிதப்ப
வயின்ற காலைIbid., 115-116.'When I swallowed milk and fried meat till I was filled to the neck.' - ↑ கறி
