Rasa, Guna and Aharya: Some Concepts, Practices and Symbolism in the Food Cultures of the Indian Sub-continent

Speaker: Prof. R. Mahalakshmi, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Chair: Prof. Amrit Srinivasan

Food is nourishment, necessary for life, and yet there is no single understanding of what nourishing or appropriate – across and within cultures. By bringing in some key concepts known in early Indian sources, the talk will focus on environments and cultures, histories and social dynamics, and the symbolic universe that food traditions reveal, which have left a mark on the food cultures as they have evolved in the Indian sub-continent