The cure-all bulb was once spurned
By Sheela Reddy

ONCE upon a time rulers paid tonnes of gold for onions. However, it was not the price of the onion bulb that Greek historian Herodotus found so remarkable as the quantities of the bulb that the pharoahs required to feed the slaves who built the pyramids.

Herodotus does not mention where those onions came from, but it is not hard to imagine the Indian merchants laughing all the way to their shores with their shiploads of gold. After all, the Indian merchant enjoyed one great advantage over his rivals in China, which while being the world’s largest producer of onions, was possibly also the world’s largest consumer of the indispensable bulb.

On the other hand, merchants in India, which was, and is, the second largest producer of onions, had no dearth of onions to supply and trade, with help coming along from an unexpected source. Ancient Indian scholars, sages and ascetics — all had an aversion for the vegetable that almost amounted to a phobia.

Injunctions to avoid onions occur in ancient Indian texts almost from the day onions were first grown here. As far back as the Sutra period, 800 BC to 300 BC, Indians were enjoined to avoid onions.

Warnings against onions recur through the Dharmashastras, in the Mahabharat and in the Manusmriti. There is a passing reference in the ancient texts to the fact that the people of Vahalika in central India liked onions: "Onions are eaten here with pleasure." Needless to say, this predilection for the bulb was not likely to win them points in Brahminical circles of their time.

Buddhist texts also refer to the reviled vegetable — there was a complaint lodged against a certain convent of nuns who were accused of uprooting an entire field of onions. But oddly enough, or perhaps it was such an unmentionable subject, that the onion figures nowhere in Jain texts. Nor is it included in the list of five forbidden fruits and vegetables that Jains were asked to avoid. Fruits or vegetables grown underground were generally a taboo for Jains because they are considered to be breeding grounds for invisible insect life which is destroyed in the picking.

Explanations were neither proffered nor demanded on why onions should be avoided. The first and rather cryptic reasoning surfaces in Kalhan’s Rajatarangini. "Cut onions," declared the Kashmiri historian obscurely, "look like flesh."

Reasonable or not, the repeated warnings seem to have had a general effect on people’s tastes. Chinese traveller Hieun Tsang observes: "People avoided onions."

Another Chinese traveller was equally struck by this peculiar repulsion:"Indians believe that eating onions of any kind causes pain, poor eyesight and weakens the body, causing progressive degeneration." For the travellers from China, where every part of the onion plant is considered indispensable for good health, this phobia about onions must have seemed curious enough to be recorded.

Some historians, like Refaqat Ali Khan, whose twin passions for history and cooking have given rise to many fascinating insights into the history of Indian cuisine, believe that like most taboos, the ban on onions imposed by Brahmins, applied only to them and the middle class, leaving the rich and the poor free to indulge in its pleasures.

And indeed, the repeated and forceful warnings on the ill-effects of eating onions, which continued unabated through the centuries, seems to argue that people were excessively fond of the bulb, no matter how hard the learned tried to dissuade them from eating it.

Onions began to be fashionable only in the Mughal era, moving up from the thalis of humble peasants and workers to rule as the king of the kitchen in Akbar’s reign and thereafter. One popular folktale of Mullah Do Pyaza illustrates the growing status of the onion in Indian cooking. The mullah was a courtier in Akbar’s time who devised an ingenious way of feeding unexpected guests who turned up for dinner. Each time there was an addition to the table, he would clap his hands, thus signalling to the cook that he should drop an extra onion into the meat dish. The mullah began to acquire a reputation, not for parsimony but for serving the best meat in the city. One day there was so much clapping, and so many onions dropped into the dish, that the meat was quite transformed, earning the mullah his place, if not in history, at least in popular memory.

The legendary Do Pyaza (literally two portions of onion to each portion of meat) first made its appearance in the Ain-i-Akbari, and since then it has been passed on, with innumerable modifications on the way. Refaqat Khan, who has co-authored a series of recipes with his wife, Masooma, gives their family recipe:

Leg of mutton (approximately one-and-a-half kg)

Onions-1 kg.

Garlic-6 cloves (chopped)

Ginger-1 inch (chopped)

Lemon juice-2 tsp.

Whole red chillies-6

Cumin seed-1 tsp

Bay leaves-2

Oil-1/2 cup

Peppercorn-12 nos.

Salt to taste.

Clean and trim leg of mutton. Rub with salt and boil whole with bay leaves in a covered pan for 20 to 25 minutes or till meat is done but is still quite firm.

Cool and refrigerate for two hours.

Place meat on a chopping board and with a sharp knife cut meat against the grain into 21/2 or 3-inch slices. Set aside. In a flat-bottom skillet heat oil and add garlic, chillies and all other spices. Stir, add onions and fry for one minute. Reduce heat, place meat gently in the skillet and fry the reverse side. Sprinkle lemon juice and remove.

It was during the Mughal times, too, that the onion began to take its place as the king of medicines. Overnight, from being regarded as the perpetrator of every conceivable illness under the sun, the onion became the cure-all bulb. An onion, claimed Unani medics, could cure anything from lack of perspiration to constipation, bronchitis, headaches, sleeplessness, sports, heart ailments. Its uses ranged from working as an antiseptic to a diet pill (drink onion juice with honey and shed those unwanted pounds).

By the nineteenth century, the onion had become irreplaceable in the kitchen as well as the medicine cabinet. An English medical officer, Edward Balfour, observed in midnineteenth century that "the onion is a common vegetable all over India, and it is sown and broadcast at almost all seasons of the year."

Balfour, who compiled an exhaustive Cyclopaedia of India — Products of The Mineral, Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, Useful Arts and Manufactures, published in 1873, writes: "This is a favourite pot vegetable of the natives of India, and is a constant ingredient in all their curries, pullaos etc.

"With the Brahmins, however, and the sects of Hindoos who abstain from animal food, the onion is not eaten from a fancy that it resembles that of flesh.

"Onion juice is reluctantly taken when prescribed medicinally as a powerful stimulant by those who would reject spirituous liquors."

A stimulant so powerful indeed that it may be the chief reason why Indians have had a love-hate relationship with the vegetable for so many centuries.

So potent indeed are the effects of an onion believed to be that one veteran who entered the Guinness Book of World Records a few decades ago attributed his longevity to a daily consumption of onions. He also sired a child at eighty. The viagra of vegetables?