Abhaksya and abhojya: an exploration in dietary language.

• Author: Olivelle, Patrick
• Position: Dharma literature of India

IF THE WAY TO A PERSON'S HEART iS through the stomach, then the way to the soul of a civilization may be through its dietary practices. Examining the food habits of a people has been a staple among anthropologists, some of whom, like Mary Douglas (1966) in her piece on Jewish dietary laws "The Abominations of Leviticus," have ventured into interpreting the food taboos and dietary restrictions encoded in ancient texts. The ancient Indian literature on dharma devotes considerable attention to matters of food: what kinds of animals and vegetables may or may not be eaten, from what sorts of people one may or may not receive food, what types of conditions make food unfit for consumption, and so on. Such practices have drawn considerable attention among scholars; what has been ignored, however, is the vocabulary used to indicate food prohibitions, a vocabulary that may give us new insights into the ancient Indian world. (1) And that is the focus of this paper.

The dharma vocabulary of food proscriptions contains four words: abhaksya, abhojya, anadya, and apeya. In this paper I will focus on the first two, abhaksya and abhojya, which alone underwent significant semantic developments and assumed technical meanings. Apeya is restricted to liquids, principally milk. Anadya is, relatively speaking, the most frequent term in the vedic literature, occurring a total of nine times, often in the metaphorical sense that the Brahmana should not be eaten by the king: brahmano 'nadyah. (2) This term occurs with some frequency in the dharma literature, but it did not develop the kind of technical meaning that the other two did. (3)

Abhaksya and abhojya are, of course, the negative forms of bhaksya and bhojya. The positive forms of the words have been studied in detail by Toru Yagi (1994). I will only mention that these two terms, even though they are gerundives, for the most part lack any prescriptive or permissive meaning: they do not mean "what should be eaten" or "what may be eaten" but are simply types of food.

It is within the context of the negative forms, abhaksya and abhojya, that the terms assumed a strong proscriptive, or more precisely proscriptive, meaning. Of the two, abhaksya occurs only once in the vedic literature in a somewhat obscure passage in the Kathaka Samhita (35.16), and abhojya occurs twice, once in the Samavidhana Brahmana (1.5.13) and once in the Gopatha (1.3.19). (4) The emergence of these forms and their semantic development occur principally within the context of lists containing items of foods that are either totally forbidden or for some reason have become unfit for consumption. These lists are absent in the vedic literature and in the Srauta and Grhya Sutras. They make their first appearance in the Dharmasutras. (5) These lists must have become sufficiently standard by Patanjali's time (2nd cent. B.C.) for him to use a stock example repeatedly: abhaksyo gramyakukkuto 'bhaksyo gramyasukarah--"it is forbidden to eat a village cock; it is forbidden to eat a village pig" (1.1.1 [5:16]; 1.1.1 [8:10]; 7.3.14 [320:22]).

A close reading of these lists in the dharma literature and the use of the two terms within them permit us to draw the following conclusions:

1. Abhaksya refers to items of food, both animals and vegetables, that are completely forbidden; they cannot be eaten except under the most dire circumstances. (6) Generally, these lists refer to food sources rather than cooked food served at a meal. Thus, carnivorous animals, web-footed birds, garlic, red resins of trees are all abhaksya. I translate abhaksya as "forbidden food."

B-i) Abhojya, on the other hand, refers to food that is normally permitted but due to some supervening circumstances has become unfit to be eaten. These lists contain not food sources but food that is actually served at a meal. Thus, food contaminated by hair or insects, food touched by an impure man or woman, food given by a person from whom food cannot be accepted, food that has turned sour or stale are all abhojya. I translate abhojya as "unfit food."

B-ii) Abhojya takes on a secondary meaning referring not directly to food but to "a person whose food one is not permitted to eat." This meaning is sometimes very clear and explicit; sometimes, as in the common compound abhojyanna, the meaning is ambiguous, especially in cases other than the nominative where the masculine marks the compound as a bahuvrihi. Thus, the statement abhojyannam nasniyat may, as a karmadharaya, mean: "He should not eat unfit food," or, as a tatpurusa, "He should not eat the food of a man whose food one is not permitted to eat." The latter, I think, is the meaning in most instances.

An examination of the dharmasastric lists of forbidden and unfit foods, I believe, supports these conclusions.

GAUTAMA

Gautama is the most clear and systematic. He begins his discussion of food (GDh 17.1-8) with a list of people from whom food and other articles may be accepted:

17.1 prasastanam svakarmasu dvijatinam brahmano bhunjita.

A Brahmin may eat food given by twice-born men renowned for their devotion to their respective duties.

Note the use of bhuj. He goes on to say:

17.6-7 pasupalaksetrakarsakakulasamgatakarayitrparicaraka bhojyannah vanik casilpi

A man who looks after his animals or plows his fields, a friend of the family, his barber, and his personal servant--these are people whose food he may eat, as also a merchant who is not an artisan.

Bhojya for Gautama is a person whose food one may eat; and conversely abhojya means the opposite. Gautama concludes the discussion with sutra 8, where abhojya has the primary meaning of food that is not to be eaten.

17.8 nityam abhojyam

Their food is not fit to be eaten everyday.

In the next twelve sutras (GDh 17.9-21) Gautama lists items of food that should not be eaten due to some circumstance.

Food into which hair or an insect has fallen; what has been touched by a menstruating woman, a black bird, or someone's foot; what has been looked at by an abortionist or smelt by a cow; food that looks revolting; food that has turned sour, except curd; recooked food; food that has become stale, except vegetables, chewy or greasy foods, meat, and honey; food given by someone who has been disowned by his parents, a harlot, a heinous sinner, a hermaphrodite, a law enforcement agent, a carpenter, a miser, a jailer, a physician, a man who hunts without using the bow or eats the leftovers of others, a group of people, or an enemy, as also by those listed before a bald man as people who defile those alongside whom they eat; (7) food prepared to no avail; a meal during which people sip water or get up against the rules, or at which different sorts of homage is paid to people of equal stature and the same homage is paid to people of different stature; and food that is given disrespectfully.

There is no verb or verbal equivalent in this list, and it is clear that the term abhojyam of sutra 8 is carried over into these sutras (anuvrtti), especially since most of these items have neuter singular endings. This is confirmed by both Haradatta and Maskarin, who comment: abhojyam iti sarvatranuvartate ("the term abhojyam is supplied everywhere from the previous sutra"). This list contains, on the one hand, food that has been spoilt for a variety of reasons and, on the other, food that is unfit because it was given or touched by the wrong individual.

The next five sutras (GDh 17.22-26) deal with milk:

The milk of a cow, a goat, or a buffalo, during the first ten days after it gives birth; the milk of sheep, camels, and one-hoofed animals under any circumstances; the milk of an animal from whose udders milk flows spontaneously or of an animal that has borne twins, gives milk while pregnant, or has lost her calf.

These sutras, likewise, lack a verb or verbal equivalent. In other texts, the term apeyam ("not to be drunk") would be found within such a list. We must assume that here the anuvrtti of abhojyam in sutra 8 continues. Note that Gautama here deals both with animals whose milk can normally be drunk and those, such as sheep, camels, and one-hoofed animals, whose milk is completely forbidden. Lists of drinks, especially milk, tend to include both unfit and forbidden milk; apeya appears to cover both categories. Most lists treat milk in a somewhat different way than food.

Then Gautama (GDh 17.27-34) turns to forbidden foods. Here the term abhaksyah comes at the very end of the list; but it is clear that it governs the entire list:

Animals with five nails, with the exception of the hedgehog, hare, porcupine, Godha monitor lizard, rhinoceros, and tortoise; (8) animals with teeth in both jaws, with a lot of hair, or without any hair; one-hoofed animals; Kalavinka sparrows; Plava herons; Cakravaka geese; Hamsa geese; crows; Kanka herons; vultures; falcons; water birds; red-footed and red-beaked birds; village cocks and pigs; milch-cows and oxen; meat of animals whose milk-teeth have not fallen and of animals that are sick or wantonly killed; young shoots; mushrooms; garlic; resins; red juices flowing from incisions on trees; woodpeckers; Baka egrets; Balaka ibis; parrots; Mad-go cormorants; Tittibha sandpipers; Mandhala flying foxes; and...