“It’s black and hot!
Da demand always high never low!
You can pay for it in gold!
Of course you can eat it! Tis not just for show!”
In the novel ‘The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World’ by William Dalrymple; he tells us about this commodity which was perhaps one of the most precious things ever!
Now you can simply find it on your table and you may not even think twice before using it like a ‘King’!
There were times when this was bought with so much money that a country’s budget had a percentage of the share!
read on!
Do not worry! The commodity I am speaking of is something which is so common for Indians that we never realise it is so precious! The pepper!
The most common confusion we always have is which is the salt and which is the pepper! When it is inside a covered that is!
Go to any grand hotel and if there are a couple of shakers then rest assured the first one you would pour will be pepper!
Even if it has lesser holes which is apparently how you distinguish from the salt shaker!
After some time the salt just stops flowing! While the one commodity you want in lesser amount, the pepper just flows!
Of course the pepper is something my daughter loves to remove from her Pongal or from the vada! It is put with relish while cooking and removed with equal relish while eating!
If you have a cold or sore throat, my mother would announce that she is making Milagga rasam! Though here Milagga is chilly in literal translation, the actual spice they put is pepper!
Even garam masala has this as the major spice and most sambar powders or rasam powders and those powders whose recipe has been kept in secret has pepper as the chief element or one of the important element!
You cannot make khara pongal without pepper!
I still remember my history teacher telling us how pepper was a very valuable spice and I used to think we have it every other day! And NO! I did not think of collecting all the pepper corns from my pongal and selling them!
But in the history of trading of spices, it has been shown that pepper was the king!
Known as the “King of Spices”, pepper was the most important spice traded internationally. Pepper was one the earliest commodities that was traded between the orient and Europe. In medieval times, pepper frequently changed hands as rent, dowry and tax!
Used whole or cracked or powdered, pepper affords many health benefits. Its taste and the unmistakable flavor it add to foods were among the reasons that it was highly prized in ancient times and even now!
Pepper cultivation began thousands of years ago in India, where it was native, and it was soon introduced to the major islands of Indonesia by traders.
Two species of pepper were domesticated: long pepper (Piper longum) in the northeast of India and black pepper (Piper nigrum) in the southwest. Long pepper was the most popular pepper in Rome because of its greater pungency, while black pepper dominated in medieval Europe because it was more readily available to traders. Long pepper is now mostly forgotten.
Pepper was a key component in the ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine.
There are numerous records of pepper’s medical use in India that date back at least 3000 years!
The encyclopedia Britannica states how Pepper was a key component in the ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine. It also found its way to China in antiquity. There is written evidence that it was being traded overland from India to Sichuan Province by the 2nd century BCE. Pepper is also mentioned in histories of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) published in the 5th century CE and in a Tang Dynasty account four centuries later. Pepper was probably brought to China from India initially for medicinal purposes, but it did not take long for it to become an important spice in food!
Egyptians used pepper and it is known that there was active trade between India and Arabia by that time, and the Egyptians were sending ships down the Nile to what they called the Land of Punt to obtain exotic goods like frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon!
The author in the novel states how people used to pay in millions and even billions for the trade and that has been recorded as trading receipts! Apparently there was one rich man who used to complain how the amount of pepper his cook puts in the dish may even bankrupt him!
So the next time you remove those peppercorns from your Pongal just know how valuable they actually are! Valuable also are indian ‘brains!’ Like the birthday celebrity Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman! Now he is ‘Export Material!’
Now let us put some salt and pepper on the salad and eat and then sleep!
Shubh Ratri!
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