Scope

Six types of tastes are described in the Bhaga Shastra – salt, sweet, sour, hot, bitter and pungent. It states that every meal should include all these tastes, so that the appetite is satisfied and the tongue is neutralized by all the tastes being together. As per the instructions in Bhaga Shastra, in order for all parts of the body, mind and brain to function properly, a balanced diet of all these tastes is a must.

Further, the purpose of having all six tastes is to balance the tridoshas in the body, namely vaata (acidic), pitta (alkaline) and kapha (phlegm). Every ingredient used in Hindu cooking is classified as per their dosha properties. For e.g. too much of vata foods such as flat beans, corn, jackfruit, Bengal grams, will lead to belching, itchiness or prickliness on the skin. Excess of pitta foods results in giddiness, acidity and imbalance in the brain and mood disorders. Excess kapha food leads to chills and cold.

Bhaga Shastra further classifies foods into rajasik, tamasik and sattvik types. Rajasik food makes one feel agitated, aggressive, lustful and egoistic. Tamasik food makes a person lazy, sleepy and depressed. Satvik food gives clarity to the person and brings him peace of mind leading to bhakti (devotion), tripti (fulfillment) and ananda (bliss). It is therefore not surprising that the Bhagashastra has a huge variety of sweet dishes made from rice, broken wheat, flattened rice, millets, maize, lentils (both split and whole). Many of these sweets are made during festive occasions – with certain sweets made specifically on a particular festival. For e.g. pongal in the Tamil New Year festival of Thai Pongal, kolukattai or modak for Ganesh Chaturthi, saffron sweet rice for Basant Panchami in Punjab, sandesh for Durga Puja in Bengal, karah prasad in celebrating festival of Sikh Gurus, kheer and laddoo in almost all Hindu festivals, payasam in South Indian festivals, especially Onam, and the list just goes on. In fact, India has the largest variety of sweet dishes in the world.

Ingredient and Process of Cooking

Depending on the sweet, the ingredients and the time required to make them vary vastly. However, some standard ingredients are integral to Bhagashastra sweet dishes – they include a wide variety of rice or wheat, clarified butter or ghee, unprocessed sugar such as jaggery or palm sugar, milk, cardamom for flavor and coconut.

Ingredients:

Small Rice/Broken Rice – ½ padi

Pure Water – 1½ padi

Ghee – 2 r.e

Saffron – ¼ palam

Grated Coconut – 12 palam

Brown Sugar – 25 palam

Milk – ¼ padi

Raisins – 2 palam

Almonds – 2 palam

Cardamom Powder – 1 r.e

Ghee – 10 palam

Cloves – 1/8 palam

Rock Sugar – 5 palam

Method:

1. Boil water in a pot that has capacity to hold 3 padis of water and put little ghee into it. Add the rice into it. After the rice is cooked, drain the water and spread it in a tray and cool the rice.

2. Dissolve saffron in milk and pour it into the rice and mix well. Add grated coconut into it. Make sugar syrup out of brown sugar by following the sugar syrup recipe at the beginning of this chapter.

3. Mix with the rice. Soak almonds in hot water and remove the skin and slice them. Wash raisins in water, remove the stem and dry them.

4. Fry both almonds and raisins in ghee and add it to the rice. Cardamom Powder can also be mixed to the rice. Heat 10 palam ghee in a coated pan and fry the cloves in it.

5. Remove the cloves and add the rice to this ghee. Then keep the vessel on slow fire and add the powdered rock candy to the rice.

References

Hindu Bhaga Sasthiram: Click Here

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