Food
Food (àhàra) is material nutriment ingested by organisms to satisfy the pangs of hunger and to sustain the body. In ancient India food was categorised as either hard or soft (S.I,162) and could be consumed by being either eaten, drunk, chewed or sucked. The Buddha praised moderation in eating (Sn.707) and encouraged this in his monks and nuns. To this end and for reasons of health, he made a rule that they should not eat after noon. ‘I do not eat in the evening and thus I am free from illness and affliction and enjoy health, strength and ease’ (M.I,473). The Buddha also suggested to his disciples that they recite these words as a reflection before eating. ‘We will eat in moderation. Reflecting wisely we will not eat for fun, for amusement or for physical attractiveness but only for the maintenance and continuance of this body, for allaying the discomfort of hunger, for assisting in living the holy life and with the thought “I will end the old desires and not give rise to new ones and thus be healthy, blameless and live in comfort” ’ (M.I,273). The Buddha said that when you give a hungry person food you give them more than just a material substance, you also give them all the things that food imparts - life, beauty, satisfaction, strength and intelligence (A.III,42).
Like other ancient Indian thinkers, the Buddha saw that existence could be related in one way or another to food. He underlined food’s fundamental importance when he said: “All that lives subsists on food” (D.III,211). One the ten sounds that could be heard in a city were: “Eat, drink, and eat more” (D.II,170). The quest for food is the basis of all human action as consuming it provides the energy to sustain life. Thus the Pāli word for food, āhāra, is derived from the Sanskrit ā-hṛ, to fetch, to bring near, or to convey to oneself. The Buddha spoke of four types of food or sustenance: material; mental impressions; volition; and consciousness. The first of these, material sustenance (kabalinkāra), maintains the body and can be either gross (oḷārika) or subtle (sukhuma), while the other three maintain the mind. The craving for both creates the momentum that leads to repeated rebirth. Actual food consisted of either meals and drinks, snacks and feasts, juices and syrups (anna, pānakhajja, bhojja, leyya, A.I,394) and these could be consumed by being either chewed or drunk, munched or savored (asitapītakhāyitasāyitaṃ, M.I,422)
An important quality of food is taste and the ancient Buddhists identified six different types; sweet (madhura), sour (ambila), saltiness (lavaṇa), bitterness (tittaka), savory (kaṭuka) and pungency or alkalinity (kasāya). Sometimes the qualities of hotness (uṇha) and coldness (sīta) were added to these six. The receptors for these flavors were the 17000 taste buds (rasaharaṇi) in the mouth and parts of the throat (A.III,250; D.III,167; Ja.V,293). Early Buddhist texts also mention the three spices, the four types of sweets, the five bovine bounties, the five kinds of tasty meat, and the eighteen varieties of solid eatables (A.II,95; Ja.I,236; Ja.VI,324; V,472; I,186). The three spices, according to some lists, consisted of cumin seeds, a cumin and asafetida compound, and garlic. The four sweets were honey, ghee, butter and sugar, the third milk, cream butter ghee and the skimming of ghee but what made up the others is not given.
Some later Buddhists attempted to classify life forms according to the fineness of the food they consumed. In this schema crocodiles were the lowest because they were known to sometimes eat pebbles, higher still were peafowl which feed on snakes and scorpions, then came hyenas which can digest horn and bone, then elephants, deer, cows, rabbits, and other animals in ascending order. Higher than these were villagers whose food was course, then urbanites who ate for dainty fare, followed by kings and their courtiers who had the best of what was available, and at the top were the gods who lived on ambrosia. (As.331) The early Buddhists had ideas about how food supported life, although these were probably influenced by the medical theories evolving at the time. Both accepted that there was some kind of fire or heat element (tapo or udaraggi) in the stomach, which was responsible for digesting food and allowing for its assimilation into the organism. (A.III,346) It was this fire which also caused the warmth characteristic of living beings. (M.I,296) Food was recognized as having two constituents; bulk (rūpa) and nutritional essence (ojā), some types having more of one than the other. Bulky foods such as grains would allay the pangs of hunger but only briefly, while foods rich in nutritional essence such as butter or ghee satisfied for much longer. It was believed that the flesh of herbivorous animals such as cattle and deer was more nutritious than that of carnivores such as tigers and crocodiles. The nutritional essence of food was identified as one of the four things that build physical form. While food is essential for the maintenance of life it was believed that it could be dangerous if too much of the same type was eaten, if the heat in the stomach was low or if one had bad digestion. In such circumstances one could die of visūcika, a word sometimes translated as cholera (Mil.153).