Ancient Buddhist Cuisines mainly includes variety of rice preparations, dairy products and meat preparations along with sweets, salts and spices, oils and oilseeds and fruits and vegetables. Rice remained a major cereal of Indian Cuisine which was also included within the ancient Buddhist cuisine. Buddhist cuisine include all the cereals and pulses which were largely available in India along with the dairy products, meat preparations and beverages which were common in all the genres of ancient India.Division of Ancient Buddhist Cuisine
Ancient Buddhist cuisine was mainly divided into four categories. They were divided into Soft Food such as boiled rice, Hard Food such as roots and fruits, Beverages and Replenishable Articles.
Rice in Ancient Buddhist Cuisine Ancient Buddhist Cuisine included Rice which formed one of the staple foods of northern India. As mentioned in Ancient Buddhist Cuisine, rice included both varieties of ‘Virhi’ which was the common form of rice along with ‘Sali’ which was a fine form of variety. Along with this, there were three more types of rice namely Raktasali, Kamalasali and Mahasali which was mentioned in the Buddhist text on food. The Buddhist text narrates number of ways in which rice was cooked with some choicest flavours. Usually, boiled rice was preferred by the Buddhist along with other preparations. Next to boiled rice, the favourite preparation of rice was a gruel which is highly praised in the Buddhist works.
Pulses in Ancient Buddhist Cuisine
Buddhist text also mentions some of the most popular pulses that were cultivated in India. These include pulses like Moong, masura, masa, kulattha and kaldya or peas which was consumed with great choice. Among the common cuisines the Buddhist preferred soup which was taken with round fried pulse balls.
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