Food Tradition of Tamilian and Legacy Change

தமிழர் உணவின் மரபும் மாற்றமும்

Abstract

After human being have created in this world, they began to know the nature of life and to live. The nomadic man lived together as a group. The basic human needs are food, clothing and shelter. Man has tried in many ways to achieve self-sufficiency of basic necessities. Tamilians are the first race to appear in the world and they ate foods naturally obtained from plants. They tasted animals, birds, fish etc., that is the organisms live in water and on land. Only after the finding fire till then they ate only raw food. After the discovery of fire, they added the flavouring ingredients as well used different methods of cooking like baking, boiling, grilling, frying etc., and prepared food and ate. Sangam literature exemplifies the ethics of individual human life and the functions of society as the life repository of Sangam Tamilians. Sangam literature showed that Tamils ate vegetable, meat and wine and they enjoyed all kinds of food. The didactic literature that emerged after the Sangam Period, support for the vegetarian diet and condemns meat and alcohol consumption. These descriptions illustrate the reasons why the meat and wine are festive food, food served at weddings, lovingly served food to the guest, by the common man to the barbarians should be rejected. This research article is written to know the food structure of the Tamilians and legacy change of food methods due to time and social change through the Sangam Period Literature like Ettuththogai, Pathuppaattu and Tholkappiyam and Didactic Literature like Thirukkural, Naladiyar etc.