Food for Jest: Sanskrit Satirical Allegories and ‘Non-Food’

Abstract

The relatively new emphasis on culinary history has demonstrated that food is an extremely significant socio-cultural significator. Food history includes unravelling recipes and ‘material-cultural’ artefacts from various spatial-temporal contexts. It also includes examining food practices connected with social identities and strata. Noticeably, the excesses of food are correlated with the ‘other’ of Sanskrit culture—groups situated at the boundaries or marginalized. Instead of the generalising vegetarian non-vegetarian dialectic, the matter of concern is what is regarded as accepted food in different contexts and for specific identities. Anxiety surrounds such enactments of cuisine which are contrary to general normative injunctions regarding edibility. Anxiety would also emerge around specific expectations bound up with different kinds of social sections, which could be religious or cultic in nature, related to power and authority, or related to social strata and gendered roles.

One of the ways in which social attitudes are expressed is through what becomes the subject of laughter. Mirth (hāsya), which is intrinsic to satire, serves the function of amusement and is one of the main rasas (sentiments) of Sanskrit aesthetics. In many instances satire is a ruse to highlight a character or situation that is contrary to the norm. Food intersects with satire in literature to demonstrate the situations when individuals and communities are seen as deviating from accepted practice, which is done thorough mirth, allegories, sarcasm and ridicule. This presentation aims at uncovering the intricate connection of food, metaphors, and social satire in Sanskrit texts, particularly the compositions of Kṣemendra, the early medieval satirist and litterateur from Kashmir. Satire also reveals the intersection between sanction and prohibition. This connects with the theme of the panel which seeks to examine the idea of edibility and its negation or “non-food.”