When did dal become India’s favoured food ?

In India the word daal is commonly used for lentils, a generic term used for an enormous number of lentils which range in colour from ivory white and yellow – both deep and pale – to pale red, olive green, brown, maroon and black. Lentils to India are as the meat loaf is to Europe and the United States. Ranging from yellow and red to deep black, these tiny disc-shaped members of the legume family are eaten in some form at least twice a day in ‘any self-respecting Indian household,’ according to Kavita Mehta, founder of the web-based Indian Foods Co. In fact, India is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of lentils, which are known here as daal. Cultivated from the earliest days of civilisation, lentils are somewhat indispensable to the Indian diet. Daal with rice either as a separate dish or combined and cooked as in the khichri (kedgeree), can be termed the national dish of India. It is a popular food of the rich as well as the poor, ruling the kitchen in all corners of the country, though different regions prefer different tastes, spices and combinations. The phrase, ‘sharing daal-roti’ has passed into our lexicon as a metaphor for bonding.

On Vinayaka Chaturthi in South India, salted preparation of whole soaked chickpea called sundal was necessary for the festival. In 2000 BC at several feasts only vadas were eaten and on purnamashi day and on deepavali sweets stuffed paratha (poli) were eaten. At the Tirupati temple dedicated to Lord Venkateshwara, after offering to the deity, pilgrims were given a prasad of urad laddus.

Achaya’s book describes how in the temple kitchen 30 cooks remained busy making approximately 70,000 laddus every day, for which 3 tonnes of urad daal, 6 tonnes of sugar and 2.5 tonnes of ghee, besides good amounts of raisins, cashew nuts and cardamom, were used.

Classical literature of India has interesting accounts on the use of lentils. King Someshwar of Kalyana in Madhya Pradesh, in his Manasollasawritten about 1130 AD, mentions dishes in which pulses are the base while some were made using pulses with cereals. Vidalapaka was made from a mix of five pulse flours (chana, rajma, masoor, moong and parched tuvar), seasoned with rock salt, turmeric and asafoetida and cooked on slow heat. Similarly parika appears to have resembled the bonda of today, being described as cakes of besan, spiced with salt, pepper, asafoetida and sugar and finally fried in oil. Pulses were blended with vegetables or meat to prepare flavourful curries and this practice was much in vogue. Thus moong daal was seasoned with pieces of lotus-stem and chironji seeds, asafoetida and green ginger, fried in oil and boiled to a curry to which might have been added fried brinjal pieces, mutton pieces or even marrow, the dish being finished with black pepper and dry ginger. Dhosaka (dosa) and idarika (idli) were made only with pulses.

A 16th century work lists foods of the Gangetic plains as sattu (the flour of roasted pulses), and pulse preparations like bara (vada), pakauri (pakoda), identified as a boiled pakoda and the rolled up khandavi pancake, now identified with Gujarat. In Bihar several dishes were made using daal such as, bara – a patty of fried pulses, phulaura, which is like the present day dahivada, thilauri – balls of urad – or moong daal with sesame seeds, dried in the sun, and deep-fried. Kachauris were wheat cakes filled with spiced lentil.

In the east, however, masoor daal is a favoured food for the ill and recuperating and Bengal favours chholar daal (chana daal) for its various preparations during special social occasions and festivities.

Whether it is Gujarat in western India or U.P. in northern India, Bengal in eastern India or Tamil Nadu in southern India, a meal is not complete without a dish of daal made in different ways.

It was winter. The ponds were all frozen. At the court, Akbar asked Birbal, “Tell me Birbal! Will a man do anything for money?” Birbal replied, “Yes”. The emperor ordered him to prove it. The next day Birbal came to the court along with a poor Brahmin who merely had a penny left with him. His family was starving. Birbal told the king that the Brahmin was ready to do anything for the sake of money. The king ordered the Brahmin to be inside the frozen pond all through the night without clothes if he needed the money. The poor Brahmin had no choice. The whole night he was inside the pond, shivering. He returned to the durbar the next day to receive his reward. The king asked, “Tell me Brahmin! How could you withstand the freezing cold temperature all through the night?” The innocent Brahmin replied, “I could see a faintly glowing light a kilometre away and I withstood with that ray of light.” Akbar refused to pay the Brahmin his reward saying that he had got warmth from the light and withstood the cold and that was cheating. The poor Brahmin could not argue with him and so returned disappointed and empty-handed. Birbal tried to explain to the king but the king was in no mood to listen to him. Thereafter, Birbal stopped coming to the durbar and sent a messenger to the king saying that he would come to the court only after cooking his khichri. As Birbal did not turn up even after five days, the king himself went to Birbal’s house to see what he was doing. Birbal had lit the fire and kept the pot of uncooked khichri one metre away from it. Akbar questioned him “How will the khichri get cooked with the fire one metre away? What is wrong with you Birbal?”

Birbal who was busy ‘cooking’ the khichri, replied, “Oh my great King of Hindustan! When it was possible for a person to receive warmth from a light that was a kilometre away, then it is possible for this khichri, which is just a metre away from the source of heat, to get cooked.” Akbar realised his mistake and rewarded the poor Brahmin.

There are many such stories related to lentils like the one that I shall now recount. However, I am not sure of its authenticity. The story goes that when Aurangzeb imprisoned Shah Jahan he was asked to choose one grain, which can be served to him. Upon the advice of his daughter Jahan Ara he chose Bengal gram. A wise reply, befitting a king. Bengal gram or chana daal can be prepared in different ways and in different garbs without making its eater bored; the preparations range from savouries to curries to dry dishes to breads and finally to sweets.