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Paramacharya on South Indian Food-Extracted From Ra.Ganapathi's Book

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Pl enjoy this good collection of explanations by Paramacharya of Kanchi...Many have samskrit base....
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To the awe and amazement of his devotees, Paramacharya often discussed about down-to-earth laukika matters with keen interest, deep understanding and knowledge. In this lecture, he explains the origin and meaning of the names of common Indian dishes and their connection to spirituality. In these explanations, I have mostly used the translated words of what Paramacharya actually spoke, extracted from the Tamil publication titled Sollin Selvar (The Expert of Words), Sri Kanchi Munivar by Sri Ra. Ganapathy.

A South Indian Meal

A typical South Indian meal is served in three main courses: sambar sAdam, rasam sAdam and more (buttermilk) sAdam. Sambar is also known as kuzhambu in Tamil, a term that literally translates to 'get confused'. Paramacharya explains how these three courses are related to the three gunas of spirituality: the confusion of sambar is tamo guna, the clarified and rarified flow of rasam is rajo guna and the all-white buttermilk is satva guna. Our meal reminds us of our spiritual path from confused inaction to a clear flow of action and finally to the realized bliss of unity.

sAdam

Cooked rice, the main dish of a South Indian meal is called sAdam. That which has sat is sAdam, in the same way we call those who are full of sat, sadhus. We can give another explanation for the term: that which is born out of prasannam is prasAdam. What we offer to Swami (God) as nivedanam is given back to us as parasAdam. Since we should not add the root 'pra' to the rice we cook for ourselves, we call it sAdam.

rasam

Rasam means juice, which is also the name of filtered ruchi. We say 'it was full of rasa' when a speech or song was tasteful. Vaishnavas, because of their Tamil abhimAnam, refer to rasam as saatthamudhu. It does not mean the amudhu (amrita) mixed with sAdam. It was actually saatramudhu (saaru or rasam + amudhu), which became saatthamudhu.

Vaishnavas also have a term thirukkann amudhu that refers to our pAyasam. What is that thirukkann? If rudrAksham means Rudra's eye, does 'thirukkann' mean Lakshmi's eye? Or does the term refer to some vastu (article) added to pAyasam? No such things. Thiru kannal amudhu has become thirukkann amudhu. Kannal means sugercane, the base crop of suger and jaggery used in pAyasam.

I was talking about rasam. If something is an extraction of juice, then would it not be clear, diluted and free of sediments? Such is the nature of our rasam, which is clear and dilute. The other one, served earlier to rasam in a meal, is the kuzhambu. Kuzhambu contains dissolved tamarind and cut vegetable pieces, so it looks unclear, its ingredients not easily seen.


buttermilk

A western meal normally ends with a dessert. In a South Indian meal, desserts such as pAyasam are served after the rasam sAdam. Any sweets that were served at the beginning are also taken at this time. After that we take buttermilk rice as our final course. Paramacharya explains that since sweets are harmful to teeth, our sour and salty buttermilk actually strengthens our teeth, and this has been observed and praised by an American dietician. We gargle warm salt water when we get toothache. The buttermilk is the reason for our having strong teeth until the end of our life, unlike the westerners who resort to dentures quite early in their life.

vegetable curry

even lthough cut vegetable pieces are used in sambar, kootoo and pacchadi, in curry they are fried to such an extent that they become dark in color (the term curry also means blackness or darkness in Tamil). May be this is the origin of the name curry.

uppuma (kitchadi)

If the term uppuma is derived from the fact that we add uppu or salt, then we also add salt to iddly, dosa and pongal! Actually, it is not uppuma but ubbuma! The rava used for this dish expands in size to the full vessel where heated up with water and salt. The action of rava getting expanded is the reason for the term ubbuma.


iddly

The term iduthal (in Tamil) refers to keeping something set and untouched. We call the cremation ground idukaadu (in Tamil). There we keep the mrita sarira (mortal body) set on the burning pyre and then come away. The term iduthal also refers to refining gold with fire. The (Tamil) term idu marunthu has a similar connotation: a drug given once without any repetition of dosage. In the same way, we keep the iddly wet flour on the oven and do nothing to it until it is cooked by steam.

idiyaappam

(This is rice noodles cooked in steam). Brahmins call it seva while others call it idiyaappam. But unlike an appam which is a cake, this dish is in strands. The term appam is derived from the Sanskrit ApUpam meaning cake. The flour of that cake is called ApUpayam. This word is the origin of the Tamil word appam.

appalaam

The grammatical Tamil term is appalam. This dish is also made by kneading (urad dhal) flour, making globules out of it and then flattening them. So it is also a kind of appam. Because of its taste a 'la' is added as a particle of endearment!


laddu

ladanam (in Sanskrit) means to play, to throw. ladakam is the sports goods used to play with. Since the ball games are the most popular, ladakam came to mean a ball. The dish laddu is like a ball, and this term is a shortened form of laddukam, which derived from ladakam.

Laddu is also known as kunjaa laadu. This should actually be gunjaa laadu, because the Sanskrit term gunjA refers to the gunjA-berry, used as a measure of weight, specially for gold. Since a laddu is a packed ball of gunjA like berries cooked out of flour and sugar, it got this name.

The singer of mUka panca sati on Ambal Kamakshi describes her as Matangi and in that description praises her as 'gunjA bhUsha', that is, wearing chains and bangles made of gunjA-berries of gold.


pori vilangaa laddu

Made of jaggery, rice flour and dried ginger without any ghee added to it, this laddu is as hard as a wood apple, though very tasty, and hence got its name from that fruit and the original pori (puffed rice) flour used to make it.


Indian Dishes of Turkish Origin

Our halwa is a dish that came from the Turkish invasion. bahU kalam (long ago) before that we had a dish called paishtikam, made of flour, ghee and sugar. But then the Arabian term halwa has stuck in usage for such preparation.


sojji

sUji is another name from the Turkish. It has become sojji now. It is mostly referred to these days as kesari. In Sanskrit, kesaram means mane, so kesari is a lion with kesaram. It was a practice to add the title 'kesari' to people who are on the top in any field. Thus we have Veera Kesari, Hari Kesari as titles of kings in Tamilnadu. The German Keisar, Roman Caesar and the Russian Czar -- all these titles came from only from this term kesari.

What is the color the lion? A sort of brownish red, right? A shade that is not orange nor red. That is the kesar varnam. The powder of that stone is called kesari powder, which became the name of the dish to which it is added for color.


vada

A Tamil pundit told me that the name vada(i) could have originated from the Sanskrit mAshApUpam, which is an appam made of mAsham or the urad dhal. He also said that in ancient Tamilnadu, vada and appam were prepared like chapati, baking the flour cake using dry heat.

dadhya araadhana

Someone asked me about the meaning of this term. He was under the impression that dadhi was curd, so dadhiyaaradhana(i) was the curd rice offered to Perumal. Actually, the correct term is tadeeya AradhanA, meaning the samaaradhana(i) (grand dinner) hosted to the bhagavatas of Perumal. It got shortened in the habitual Vaishnava way.

Vaishnavas offer the nivedanam of pongal with other things to Perumal in their dhanur mAsa ushad kala puja (early morning puja of the Dhanur month). They call it tiruppakshi. The original term was actually tiruppalli ezhuchi, the term used to wake of Perumal. It became 'tiruppazhuchi', then 'tiruppazhachi' and finally 'tiruppakshi' today, using the Sanskrit kshakara akshram, in the habitual Vaishnava way. It is only vegetarian offering, nothing to do with pakshi (bird)!

The term dhanur mAsam automatically brings up thoughts of Andaal and her paavai (friends). In the 27th song (of Tiruppaavai), she describes her wake up puja and nivedanam with milk and sweet pongal to Bhagavan, which culminates in her having a joint dinner with her friends. Vaishnavas celebrate that day as the festival koodaara valli, following the same sampradhAyam (tradition). The name of this festival is from the phrase koodaarai vellum seer Govinda, (Govinda who conquers those who don't reach Him) which begins the 27th song. It was this 'koodaarai vellum' that took on the vichitra vEsham (strange form) of 'koodaara valli'.


pAyasam

payas (in Sanskrit) means milk. So pAyasam literally means 'a delicacy made of milk'. This term does not refer to the rice and jaggery used to make pAyasam. They go with the term without saying. Actually pAyasam is to be made by boiling rice in milk (not water) and adding jaggery. These days we have dhal pAyasam, ravA pAyasam, sEmia pAyasam and so on, using other things in the place of rice.

Vaishanavas have a beautiful Tamil term akkaara adisil for pAyasam. The 'akkaar' in this term is a corruption of the Sanskrit sharkara. The English term 'sugar' is from the Arabian 'sukkar', which in turn is from this Sanskrit term. The same term also took the forms 'saccharine' and 'jaggery'. And the name of the dish jangiri is from the term jaggery.

kanji

Before we become satiated with madhuram (sweetness), let us turn our attention to a food that is sour. As an alternative to sweetness, our Acharyal (Adi Sankara) has spoken about sourness in his Soundarya Lahiri.

Poets describe a bird called cakora pakshi that feeds on moon-beams. Sankara says in Soundarya Lahiri that the cakora pakshi were originally feeding on the kArunya lAvaNyAmruta (the nectar of compassion and beauty) flowing from Ambal's mukha chanran (moon like face). They got satiated with that nectar and were looking for somthing sour, and spotted the full moon, which being only a reflection, issued only sour beams!

Acharyal has used the term kAnjika diya, which gives an evidence of his origin in the Malayala Desam. He said that since the cakora pakshis were convinced that the nectar from the moon was only sour kanji, they chose to feed on it as an alternative.

The term kAnjika means relating to kanji, but the word kanji is not found in Sanskrit. It is a word current only in the Dakshinam (south). There too, kanji is special in Malayala Desam where even the rich lords used to drink kanji in the morning. This was the variety came to be known as the 'Mayalayam Kanji'.

Kanji is good for deham as well as chittam. And less expensive. You just add a handful of cooked rice rava (broken rice), add buttermilk, salt and dry ginger, which would be enough for four people.

The buttermilk added must be a bit more sour. The salt too must be a bit more in quantity. With the slight burning taste of dry ginger, the combination would be tasty and healthy.

tAmbUlam

It is customary to have tAmbUlam at the end of a South Indian dinner. In the North, tAambUlam is popularly known as paan, which is usually a wrap of betel nut and other allied items in a calcium-laced pair of betel leaves. In the South, tAmbUlam is usually an elaborate and leisurely after-dinner activity. People sit around a plate of tAmbUlam items, drop a few cut or sliced betel nut pieces in their month, take the betel leaves one by one leisurely, draw a daub of pasty calcium on their back and then stuff them in their month, chatting happily all the while.

The betel leaf is known by the name vetrilai in Tamil, literally an empty leaf. Paramacharya once asked the people sitting around him the reason for calling it an empty leaf. When none could give the answer, he said that the usually edible plants don't just stop with leaf; they proceed to blossom, and bear fruits or vegetables. Even in the case of spinach or lettuce, we have to cook them before we can take them. Only in the case of the betel leaf, we take it raw, and this plant just stops with its leaves, hence the name vetrilai or empty leaf.



 
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Wow...Very great explanations. Only Periyava can give explanations like this. He has said simple explanations to even sastras and vedic hymns. But, the explanations for even food items shows how down-to-earth he is...

Pranams
 
Sabesan Narayanaswami ji,

Excellent collection of Paramacharya's sayings.

Please keep it up

All the best
 
paramacharya on South Indian Food....

Recently I had to visit the doctor for treating mouth ulcers .

Usually I follow the grand mother's remedy-- take sour butter milk mouthful, keep for sometime and take out.Doing a few times will cure the ulcers.

But this time it was not working much.Hence I met the Doctor.

I share my surprise, when , along with an anti biotic ,the doctor prescribed another medicine--the active ingredient was the bacteria from curd. What to say!!!

Greeting
 
South indian food

Beautiful. Reading the article itself is a feast. Thanks for the painstaking translation.
Some one jocularly said how the name dosai came into existence.
While preparing it gives a sound chai. again when it is placed on the other side again it gives a chai oosai. So do chis (two times the sound chai comes) and hence the name dosai.
Actually it comes from thoi and chey meaning dip the karandy in the dosai maavu and then chei that is make dosa. Thoi sey Thoi sey has become thosai . In due cource we called it dosai.

again ittu avi has become ittavi Keep and cook.(it cooks by itself as the paramacharyal has clarified..In due course ittavi became ittali and then idly.
Aacharyal also used to say kuzambu contains than (thaan means vegetables.) Rasam does not contain thaan
If one has ahangaram (Thaan engira ahangaram ) kuzambu will be the result (confusion). If thaan goes (if ahangaram is effaced) rasam will be the result (Good clear essence will be the result)
pranams
 
Translations of paramAchArya's conversations and discourses

Thanks to our good and elderly friend Sabesan Narayanaswami for posting my translation in the Kanchi Forum (Annam Atma ParipAlanam thread) verbatim here, although he has not mentioned my name.

For over three years now, I have been translating and posting paramAchArya's conversations and discourses compiled by shrI rA ganapati and others and published in Tamil books, in the Kanchi Forum and selectively in the Hindu Dharma Forum. Members and others may please read them from the following threads which are public (that is no membership required) at the Kanchi Forum:

Forum: Devotees' Experiences
For this Sanyasi, perform Thirukalyanam - 9th time
For this Sanyasi, perform Thirukalyanam - 9th time :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Devotee experience with Sri MahaPerivaa (from Press)
Devotee experience with Sri MahaPerivaa (from Press) :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Forum: Our life under THEIR guidance
Annam Atma ParipAlanam
Annam Atma ParipAlanam :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Paramacharya bhASyAmrutam
Paramacharya bhASyAmrutam :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

(because of the 'database error', I have to break this post into two parts)...
 
Paramacharya Devotees Who Sought Jnana
Paramacharya Devotees Who Sought Jnana :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Paramacharya's anugraha to Celebrities
Paramacharya's anugraha to Celebrities :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Guru upAkhyAnam (Tales about Gurus)
Guru upAkhyAnam (Tales about Gurus) :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

guru sat charitam (Guru's Holy Life)
guru sat charitam (Guru's Holy Life) :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Recently, I have started posting from the Tamil books on our shRingeri gurus:

guru kripA vilAsam (On the Greatness of the Guru)
guru kripA vilAsam (On the Greatness of the Guru) :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

guru upanyAsa manjarI
guru upanyAsa manjarI :: Forums @ KanchiForum.org

Readers might easily understand the time and efforts I have put in, in pouring over the Tamil pages and translating them to match the originals as perfectly as possible, to the best of my abilities. Since the volume of what I have done already is rather huge and as it would be a needless duplication, I have not myself posted the translations in this forum.

Members and readers may please read my translations from the above threads. Since I have given due credit to the sources I have translated, in case anyone posts any of these translations elsewhere, it would be fair, ethical and decent for the person to mention the source as well my name as the translator.
 
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Dear Friend Saidevo-I am extremely sorry,honestly it was not intentional.I only knew it was from Raa Ganapati's book.However I am happy it has drawn you in this thread and through you we come to now the wealth of information on the other translations.I am very grateful to you Shri Saidevo .Afterall we are all working with a common aim to propagate the Greatness Of Periava.
 
namaste shrI Sabesan Narayanaswami.

You are great to have owned your mistake, which I too thought was not possibly intentional, and that was why I took care in choosing my words to relate the truth, as I could not help keeping silent about it, my being just a humble and ordinary man in the lower rungs of sAdhana. I am sorry if any of my words did hurt you, and you know that my only purpose was to relate the truth rather than blame the person.

One reason why I did not post the translations across many forums was the possible copyright issues, although we are only spreading the message of kAnchi paramAchArya. When this issue was raised by me in KF, I was assured that the first copyright on anyone writing about paramAchArya accrues to kAnchi srImaTham and since my translation was in no way commercial and I did not have any copyright of my own thereto, I was asked to post a disclaimer at the beginning of my threads, as in my post dated Dec 02, 2006 in the 'annam Atma paripAlanam' thread.

With such a disclaimer, I shall post any further translations by me, in KF, HDF as well as here.
 
i am thrilled to see the way so many bhaktas are showing keen interest in getting to know about the great saint maha periava.every word of maha periava gives lot of meaning
 
Thank you for the collection of information. now we can tell our kids the name of the dish and how it is is named.

Thanks again
Uma Ganesan
 
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