Grains in Ancient India

[Radhakrishna Warrier]

I learnt the word vrīhi (व्रीहि) when we were taught the bahuvrīhi samāsam in high school Malayalam class.  Later, I read that vrīhi (rice) is not mentioned in the Vedas.  Also read that vrīhi and its Persian cognate baranj (برنج from Middle Persian brinj or blinj) could be borrowings from an eastern language from which Dravidian too borrowed the word for rice.

Can we glean from the Vedas any information about the daily diet of the average person of those times?  What was the staple grain consumed during the Vedic times?  Was it yava (barley)? Or wheat?  Was wheat popular in Vedic times?  I presume that wheat is mentioned in the Vedas.  Is the word used for wheat godhūma with a long ū or godhuma with a short u?  The former would literally mean the smoke (dust) raised by the cows.  Were barley and wheat used for ritual offerings in Vedic times? Is there any knowledge about the staple grain consumed during the time of Harappan civilization? 

At present it looks like barley and wheat do not find a place in ritual offerings.  At least not in Kerala, as far as I know.  It is rice that is the most prominent grain used in ritual offerings in Kerala.   Boiled hand-pound brown rice is a naivedyam (offering) in most traditional temples of Kerala and is called Padachoru (paṭaccōṟŭ പടച്ചോറ് ).   There are many varieties of pāyasam (kheer) but that which is offered as naivedyam has rice as the main ingredient.  Other popular offerings like Unniyappam and Ada have also rice as the main ingredient.  The piṇḍa offered to the pitṛ during śrāddha is again rice.  It is boiled rice mixed with a little sesame, yogurt and ghee, and rolled into balls by hand.  Different from the piṇḍa are kavyan (Sanskrit kavya) and havissŭ (Sanskrit havis).  I remember preparing, under instructions from my uncle, kavyan for the pitṛ and havissŭ for the deva-s.  Essentially, both were rice preparations.

Regards,

Radhakrishna Warrier

[V Subrahmanian]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 10:42 AM Radhakrishna Warrier <radwa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I learnt the word vrīhi (व्रीहि) when we were taught the bahuvrīhi samāsam in high school Malayalam class.  Later, I read that vrīhi (rice) is not mentioned in the Vedas.

 “व्रीहीन् प्रोक्षति ”   is a vidhi in yajna-s.  This must be in the Veda samhita/brahmana.

यवागूं पचति  is also part of the vedic ritual. 

So we have vreehi and yava as part of vedic ritual.

regards

subrahmanian.v

 

Regards,

Radhakrishna Warrier

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[shankara]

Namaste,

The word 'Vriihi' is found in several places in Veda samhitas and brahmanas, except in the Rgveda, as per Bloomfield's Vedic Concordance, page 911.

https://archive.org/details/Bloomfield1906VedicConcordance/page/n940

regards
shankara

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.

[Nagaraj Paturi]

नीवारशूकवत्तन्वी 

- नारायणोपनिषद्

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[Ramakrishnan]

Namamsi,

The Amarakosha lists vrīhi as being synonymous (or nearly synonymous) to dhānyam.

Does it mean it could have been used in a different sense (to mean any grain) by some authors?

Thanks,

Ram

--

[Venkata Sriram]

From चमक प्रश्नः

व्री॒हिय॑श्च मे॒ यवा॓श्च मे॒ माषा॓श्च मे॒

तिला॓श्च मे मु॒द्गाश्च॑ मे खल्वा॓श्च मे गो॒धूमा॑श्च मे

म॒सुरा॓श्च मे प्रि॒यंग॑वश्च॒ मेऽणवश्च मे

श्या॒माका॓श्च मे नी॒वारा॓श्च मे 

rgs,

sriram

[Sundareswaran N.K]

One may find some interesting and informative related aspects here:-

https://www.academia.edu/27733450/Concept_of_anna_in_the_Vedic_Literature

One may refer to 'lndia in the age of Brahmanas' by Jogi Basu too.

nks

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