Food In The Mughal Period
INTRODUCTION
Food is much more than the simple act of eating and drinking. What we eat becomes a powerful symbol of who we are. In any historical period, the culinary practices and the dining etiquette play a crucial role in the institution and maintenance of social identities and relations of power. In the Mughal period, food was invested with a complexity of meanings, powerful imagery and deep symbolic significance.
THEMES
This work seeks to construct a culinary history of early Mughal period in the time of the first three Mughal kings, Babur (1487-1530), Humayun (1508- 56) and Akbar (1556- 1605). I have attempted to explore the relations of gastronomy with the political culture of the period, playing a role in the making of Mughal imperium. In doing so, I have studied the representation of food, with a view to correlate it with early Mughal identity and power relations. I have looked at the changing role of early Mughal culinary practices and dining rituals which also influenced the consolidation of the empire in South Asia. In focussing on the early Mughal period, one of my purposes, is to examine the Central Asian heritage, and the extent to which the Turko-Mongol traditions influenced the culinary history of Mughal India. One of the efforts of my work is to look at how the Mongol and the Timurid perception of food, and rituals of consumption, interacted with the indigenous culinary practices, dining etiquette and aesthetics, and taboo.
SOURCES
Mainstream Mughal
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