Shyamaka Charu (Boiled Barnyard Millet, the Vedic Pot of Grain)
Cook 20 min · Servings not given in the source
Ingredients
- barnyard millet (dehulled grain) — 30 g
- water — 140 ml (open-pot figure from the source table)
Method
- Pick over the barnyard millet for grit and husk, then rinse it in two or three changes of water and drain it.
- Tip the rinsed grain into a small open pot, pour in the 140 ml of water and set it on a medium flame.
- Let it bubble gently with no lid, giving it a stir from time to time, for 18 to 20 minutes.
- It is done when every grain has turned soft and swollen all the way to the centre. Lift it off the fire and serve it hot, plain.
From the old texts
“For Soma Vanaspati (the wood-lord or tree) he then prepares a pap of syâmâka millet”
The printed pageThe Çatapatha-Brâhmaṇa in the Mâdhyandina-Çâkhâ with extracts from the commentaries of Sâyaṇa, Harisvâmin and Dvivedagaṅga [series label White Yajurve (ed. Albrecht Weber), Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler's Verlagsbuchhandlung; London: Williams and Norgate, 1855, p. 449
Anonymous Vedic prose text (tradition links its later books to Yajnavalkya), Shatapatha Brahmana (Madhyandina recension) (Vedic period, first millennium BCE (approximate; the text gives no date)), Shatapatha Brahmana V, 3, 3, 4 (Rajasuya: the offerings to the "Divine Quickeners"), translated by Julius Eggeling — read the translation.
Which grain: “Syamaka ... Bot.—Echinochloa frumentacea Linn.” (K. R. Srikantha Murthy (tr.), Bhavaprakasa of Bhavamisra, Vol. 1 (Purvakhanda incl. Nighantu), Krishnadas Academy, Varanasi, 2001 - Dhanya varga, printed p. 375)
Amounts and times: the old text gives none, so they are from Raparthi Akshitha (2022). In Vitro Glycaemic Profiling of Foods Prepared from Minor Millet Grain Processed by Traditional and Modern Methods. M.Sc. thesis, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), Hyderabad, PDF p. 54 (printed p. 36).
Tips
- From the source: these figures were measured with hand-pounded grain in an open pot. For machine-dehulled grain in a pressure cooker the same table gives 160 ml water and 20-24 minutes.
- From the source: 30 g cooked in the open pot weighed about 100 g (Table 4.8, mean of six trials).
- From the text: Eggeling notes that a Vedic pap (karu) could be boiled in water or in milk. Only the water version has a measured amount, so that is the one given here.
- The amounts are the source's own measured portion: 30 g of grain at a time.
Adapted from Shatapatha Brahmana, SBE 41 p. 70 (V, written in our own words.