Garum Masala
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For some context, the emperor Ashoka, scion of the Maurya empire, consolidated various smaller republics into an empire that covered most of Afghanistan and North-West Pakistan of today. These areas bordered the regions that were controlled by the Greeks at the time. Ashoka's time was one of consolidation and relative peace, people were more mobile, trade and cultural exchange flourished.
This article [1] sheds a little more light on the story. In fact, the visual image & depictions of the Buddha had significant Greek influence, the first images of the Buddha apparently surfaced outside India centuries after his death. The common depiction with curly hair was most probably not what the historical Buddha looked like [2].
[2] https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/05/15/what-did-the-bu...
> Most modern scholars believe he was most likely born sometime around 480 BC or thereabouts in Śākya Gaṇarājya, an oligarchic state in the northern Indian subcontinent and he most likely died sometime around 400 BC or thereabouts.
Siddhartha Gautama was born in present day Nepal, in the city of Kapilvastu in the Lumbini region. There are archaeological remains of the palace where he was born along with scriptures explicitly matching the origins and design.
The article also goes to great lengths to emphasize a lot of details are nebulous, however they are documented well since the Buddha was a royal prince. For that reason not sure where the idea that the depiction of Chinese Buddha should be accurate is insinuated either.
Strictly speaking Buddha was not a royal price but scion of an aristocratic family. As a comparison think of someone born in a patrician family of Rome when his father is a Consul of Rome. The Wikipedia article has good details about the Shakyas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakya
Is that so?
It was propheised at his birth (so the legend goes) that he would either become an enlightened teacher, or a "wheel-turning" world monarch (chakravartin). That doesn't prove he wasn't a royal prince, but then I guess I'm not sure exactly what a "prince" is.
In an oligarchy you can still have powerful military rulers "whose chariot wheels roll everywhere"
To continue the comparison with the Roman republic. Consuls where great leaders bestowed with great power and honoured for their military successes. The Roman republic had a taboo of monarchy, one that Caesar himself played with dangerously and which got him killed.
Prince comes from princeps (the first), a title used by the Emperor Augustus.
"On the other hand, the Sri Lankan tradition suggests that Ashoka was already a devoted Buddhist by his 8th regnal year, converted to Buddhism during his 4th regnal year, and constructed 84,000 viharas during his 5th–7th regnal years.[89] The Buddhist legends make no mention of the Kalinga campaign.[91]
Based on Sri Lankan tradition, some scholars, such as Eggermont, believe Ashoka converted to Buddhism before the Kalinga war.[92] Critics of this theory argue that if Ashoka were already a Buddhist, he would not have waged the violent Kalinga War. Eggermont explains this anomaly by theorising that Ashoka had his own interpretation of the "Middle Way".[93]
Some earlier writers believed that Ashoka dramatically converted to Buddhism after seeing the suffering caused by the war since his Major Rock Edict 13 states that he became closer to the dhamma after the annexation of Kalinga.[91] However, even if Ashoka converted to Buddhism after the war, epigraphic evidence suggests that his conversion was a gradual process rather than a dramatic event.[91] For example, in a Minor Rock Edict issued during his 13th regnal year (five years after the Kalinga campaign), he states that he had been an upasaka (lay Buddhist) for more than two and a half years, but did not make much progress; in the past year, he was drawn closer to the sangha and became a more ardent follower.[91]"
On the contrary, Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism after Kalinga war is told in Ashoka's edicts, which I think is just too convenient. But then, Sri Lanka has had historical wars with Hindu kings from India, so that is there...
At the end, I should not have spoken so authoritative.
That is incorrect. Garam does indeed mean hot, but individual spices in garama masala don't need to be roasted, in fact I believe most, if not all, of them are not roasted, rather simply ground together.
The garam refers to the taseer (in Ayurvedic terms) of the spice blend, as in is it cooling (such as fennel is cooling), or is it warm (such as black pepper is warm/hot) to the body.
Almost all, if not all, of the ingredients of garam masala are warming to the body.
Most of the spices are indeed lightly roasted before grinding to bring out more flavor. It may differ regionally and may be based on grinding method. Grinding can generate heat as well.
Additional fact: Many regions have specific blends: * Bengalis use punch-pooraN masala, * Marathi / Maharashtrians use KaLa (black) masala also called as goda (gauDa) masala and many other regional blends.
Maybe it's a regional thing?
Black cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, nutmeg etc.
Again, regional differences aside, I don’t believe any of those are roasted beforehand. At least the garam masala that I’m familiar with is like that.
If you're buying powder this has either already happened or it is too late.
Given that, there are spices that are toasted and some which are not.
For example, toasted cumin is just divine, toasted clove is also interesting. However, I'm not sure if say black pepper, black and green cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves etc. are ever toasted, at least we haven't tried that. Perhaps I should experiment one of these days..
Moreover, even with cumin, toasted cumin serves different purpose than regular cumin. Regular cumin is added in oil/ghee, while toasted powdered cumin in used as is. Most of the spices are anyway cooked in ghee or oil which enhances flavor.
Also, with garam masala, we use both whole (as a mixture of whole spices) as well as ground.
No, I'm telling you that you can toast all of them, and you might like it.
> For example, toasted cumin is just divine, toasted clove is also interesting. However, I'm not sure if say black pepper, black and green cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves etc. are ever toasted, at least we haven't tried that.
I suggest you try it.
Black cardamom and cinnamon definitely both toast nicely.
Tej patta is a herb, not a spice.
I don't think dry heat is quite such an easy win with herbs as it is with spices.
> Also, with garam masala, we use both whole (as a mixture of whole spices) as well as ground.
Sure. People make garam masala all sorts of ways: Do whatever makes you happy. I'm just suggesting you try something awesome, not trying to tell you or anyone else "what" garam masala is.
Will do, I’m curious now. Sounds like a cool project for this weekend :)
I don’t know. Is a raw onion as good as a nice caramelised one? Maybe some people think they’re just different. Maybe it’s like coke and pepsi. Maybe they taste no difference at all. Or maybe just with some spices. Maybe some people even like the mix of toasted and non-toasted. Whatever their preference it is because it’s their preference, and so that’s the recipe they hand down to their kids.
I’m just saying you should try the caramelised onion, and don’t just stick to the raw ones because that’s the recipe you know.
But, again, we use ground fresh toasted cumin as is, usually sprinkled on the top of dishes. While, regular cumin is cooked with oil/ghee. Cooking toasted cumin will char/burn it.
The reason most people will use powdered garam masala is that it is much more efficient. A little powder can provide similar flavor as many whole spices.
Without getting into a flavour debate, it undeniably makes some (e.g. cumin) a lot easier to powder finely.
> Maybe it's a regional thing?
It's regional insofar as the exact constituents of garam masala are regional - nutmeg, for example, is a pretty regional one and not super widespread.
It can be roasted, raw, or ground, depending on which stage you're using it in.
One of my childhood memories is eating a lot of mangoes (which is hot) in one sitting in summer (which is when mangoes are available), and them getting nose bleed (because its hot). Worth it :)
Some people get nose bleed from just being in summer heat or high temperature.
Taseer is not based on spiciness or taste, it is based on how one's body temperature changes after consuming that food.
Food considered to be "acidic" often has no particularly low pH, and vice versa. And most of all: you can't influence your body's pH (i.e. blood) by eating something specific. You would be dead immediately if this was possible.
The pH of your stomach content might vary if you just ate, but your body will create the acid by itself. As soon as you see food.
There might be still something to whole acidic/basic idea, but it has nothing to do with pH ;)
Typically this can be achieved by either soaking the individual spices out in the heat, or a partial roast.
It still appears to be, ultimately, Indo-European and cognate with English 'warm', among others: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
I don't mean "heat" in the ayurvedic sense, I just mean in terms of the burning sensation on the palate.
Also, chillis lose some heat with cooking. Again: From Thai cooking, fresh chillis are used sparingly as a topping, but Bird's Eye chillis can be used in a stir fry enough to kill a small child (joke, but they can use a lot).
In Italian it's "piccante" which comes from archaic "piccare" "to sting". And to me, chili pepper sting and punch more than give me a feeling of heat
I'm not sure Hindi does either though? Garam is certainly ambiguous.
New World spices and vegetables revolutionized Indian cooking, like it did most other Old World cuisines.
1. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/empire/id1639561921
What a lot of people imagine as separable cultures along borders were really cultural gradients or mixtures (this village here is mostly X, the villages north and south of here are Y, but the village even further south is also X, and we all speak each others’ language).
A lot of our discourse and views on culture are still poisoned by jingoistic nationalism from the 19th and 20th centuries (a cover for othering political foes and motivating the masses to fight and die for political goals), as well as concepts like imperialism and the couple centuries of European political hegemony, plus the elimination of non-prestige dialects/local languages and cultures via mass media.
It’s hard for us to imagine, but in a time before modern concepts of race/organized religion/nationalism the world was quite a dynamic cultural melting pot that wasn’t organized along these more recent distinctions. Greeks traded from Britain to India, pagan religions often saw other cultures’ pantheons as the same religion with different names and traditions, people noticed physical differences between groups of people but weren’t applying racist concepts to them. In a way, people of antiquity were often more tolerant and accepting than many contemporary people. But they could also just decide to kill and invade their neighbors with no pretext beyond wanting their stuff.
The proselytization that is central to Christianity and Islam doesn’t exist in any religion.
Those are the only historic cultures that insist that they are right and everyone else is very wrong. Most historic cultures believed in stuff but didn’t fight and kill for it, primarily because they knew they could learn shit from other cultures.
There hasn't been much of discussion or writing about the extinction of cultures, syncretism, open border civs at the hands of Islam.
Greek / Roman / Indian influence in Eurasia to Indonesia is probably another tragedy that the world forgot.
Only pockets like Bali remain from that era now.
The sequels however cleverly mixed in a dose of politics and empire building, it isn't part of the religions per-se.
In hoc signo vinces
Zoroastrians also tried to convert, imagine the wololo move in Age of Empires.
And in the case of the Greek kingdom at topic, it was founded by a Macedonian, populated by Greeks and Macedonian veterans of Alexander's campaigns (who, yes, took local brides and so whose children are that gradient), with a polity modeled in Greek tradition, speaking Greek and Macedonian.
There are enough counter examples, I don't even know where to begin. Of course it is useless (as I heared a historian claim only recently) to apply the modern concepts of racism and nationalism before the 20th century.
FWIW, there could be no b-but my genepool because they had no concept of genetics. Their idea of genus is however much more detailed and often times entirely made up.
Some tasty bits:
Ancient Greece–Ancient India relations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece%E2%80%93Ancient...
_Shape of Ancient Thought: Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies_ by Thomas McEvilley - https://archive.org/details/shapeofancientthoughtstudiesingr...
Edit: if you want to help, consider funding a PhD student in Sanskrit. It’s about $8k per year, matched by government support. While a Sanskrit PhD it might seem like a route to poverty, a modern approach would be highly technical — ie, about image processing, AI etc.
If I had the gumption and ready money, I would just reach out to university deans with a letter indicating an intent to fund a particular profile. It might help to have a professor in the USA to help with the mentoring, because some of the academic connections may be valuable.
But this particular topic has potential because the tech could be cutting edge — so you can contribute to a field that has been very staid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea
<Super Ignorant Take Ahead...> I remember being taught in American History class that Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson studied and admired Native American systems of government when drafting the Constitution but my kids weren't taught this (though to be fair American History was removed as a separate subject and no longer covered in depth in their schooling). Most 'mericans would say it comes out of enlightened Europe when John Adams cited the Mohawks, who he argued enjoyed “complete individual independence,” while tribal leaders brought major decisions like declarations of war to “a national assembly.” and Thomas Jefferson said “the only condition on earth to be compared with ours is that of the Indians, where they still have less law than we. The Europeans are governments of kites over pidgeons [sic].”
To me it seems today Persian history is so artificially removed from Greek popular history, but when my son and I explored Alexander the Great's history it lead to us exploring Persian history and feeling the popular narrative was manipulated from the reality with so much missing connections.
I responded negatively to a previous post on here about 'Islamic Golden Age History' because it artificially divides us when huge portions of that golden age thought was coming from Christians and recently conquered lands only tangentially 'Islamic' and again popular history Pigeon holing and artificially separating us all.
'Islamic Golden Age' thought is also much Christian mindset thought (though not Germanic western European post Roman Christian thought which somehow becomes all Christian according to historians). Persia IS one of the progenitors of Western thought alongside Greece (Alexander the Great adopted much from Persia along with lots and lots of other cross pollination). But we sure aren't given that impression from popular history.
Now today I learned Indian spices were influential in Roman food. But I was taught Europeans didn't covet Indian spices until way later. Why? What use does that narrative have? Over eighty percent of the 478 recipes in the fifth century Roman cookbook of Apicius included pepper and that cookbook was widely known about since the 1800s apparently.
OK too many words, and hopefully I didn't offend with my Islamic Golden Age stuff. I'm not trying to lesson the Importance of the Islamic world, but expand it. I just hate that today we self isolate and apply that isolating viewpoint to the past when it doesn't appear to have been the case.
They also loved Chinese silk.
I'm kind of surprised you hadn't run into this yet. It seems like every Roman author is bemoaning the popular love of food drenched in pepper and transparent silk clothes. Try reading Juvenal, it's quite funny to see what he decries and what he considers normal.
Europeans never stopped importing spice, from ancient times to the present day. To my knowledge there was never a complete interruption.
"I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes. ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body."
No idea why this was taught, but it was untrue. However it is somewhat true that most Europeans couldn't afford many spices until the 1600s, in this is a case where being supply constrained probably kept a cap on demand too.
The rise of Venice in the medieval era was due in large part to their carefully constructed trade monopoly for spices.
> Medieval high society had an insatiable appetite for spiced sauces, sweets, wine, and ale... In Mairano’s era, Venetian traders in London sold a pound of pepper for a sum equivalent to a week’s work for an unskilled laborer.[1]
Venice had agreements with the Ottoman empire for access to spices coming via the Spice Road as well as the rulers of Egypt (sometimes also Ottoman) for spices coming via the Red Sea.
It's true that Portuguese and Spanish exploration was partially fueled by a desire to avoid the Venetian monopoly on spices though:
> Bad news came in 1501, however, when word reached Venetian merchants that the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama had sailed around Africa to India, bypassing the Mediterranean and—so it was feared—diverting the flow of pepper away from Venice.
But the demand was always there - it was supply that was constrained.
[1] https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-133/controller-confus...
A pound? In my pantry, 100g of black pepper is two years' supply.
I suspect they didn't often sell a pound and instead that is just the price with units converted and inflation corrected for the readers convenience.
Because spices were a major driver for European colonialism in Asia from the 1600s onwards (East India Company, VOC, etc), but they did not significantly influence British, Dutch, etc history before that.
But it is true that demand for these spices drove exploration. But the 1600s was too early for colonialism in most areas where the spice trade was vibrant until another 150 years.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/spice-trade-pepper-ven...
Foreign Sailors on Socotra: The Inscriptions and Drawings from the Cave Hoq (a book mentioned in the article) refers to this as an “academic myth” and suggests that the island’s name is of South Arabian origin.
Past thalassocracies and syncretic empires just really challenge my default worldview.
I expect a few of you have got beyond beige goop with raisins in.