The Origin of Tomato Rasam
by KVK Murthy
Legend has it — and it finds mention in some histories (“Annals of the Court of T’eng Hsi Li,” by Tsin Ch’i Pao, c. 4th century BC, German translation Rudolf Steinhäger, Graz 1902, Eng. translation William Tyndale, Basil Blackwell Oxford 1912) — that my noble ancestor, one Brihadeeswara Sarma (variantly Iyer or Aiyer in some versions of apocrypha) travelled to China sometime in the middle of the fourth century before the Christian era. How an ascetic and devout Brahmin from Tanjore in southern India found himself in the Middle Kingdom is understandably lost in the overlays of mystery, and the truth shall probably never be known; and even the aforementioned work of Chinese scholarship adumbrates that his presence at the Celestial Court had already been of some duration at the time of writing. But a persistent (and fond) family version, handed down over more than twenty centuries maintains that the gentleman was scolded one day, for some unnamed infraction, by his wife of forty-seven years; and in a fit of extraordinary pique he set out on foot and struck north, vowing never to look back and never to suffer his wife’s acerbic tongue again.
In time, he travelled over the Himalaya Mountains and into Tibet, a wild and ungodly land those days; and not wishing to tarry amongst its uncouth denizens he trudged on east till he came to the land of the flat-nosed and yellow-skinned.
One day he sat down to light a fire for his evening meal — a most frugal affair. It must be mentioned that, being a Brahmin and thereby forswearing all meat, he carried with him the few provisions he needed, and these he husbanded carefully knowing that the lands beyond his own would be ignorant of the both the benefits and the delights of vegetarian cuisine. Much was the revolt of his soul when he saw the slaughter of animals, birds, fish and reptiles for food in that benighted land.
After the ritual purificatory prayers he set about making a concoction of ground pepper, turmeric and tamarind paste, which he cooked in hot water over a slow fire. He garnished it with fried mustard seed, red chillies and some leaves, decanted the extract from the sediment, and used it as an accompaniment to his meagre dish of rice.
His actions — to say nothing of the fragrant aromas of mustard and pepper and turmeric — drew the attentions of some tillers in a rice field who, beholding him, looked upon him as one would some exotic being. Being a kind man, he allowed them to sample his creation, whereupon they appeared to be transported with an almost ecstatic delight. They feted him and made much of him. He politely declined their offered meals of rice and crabs, smilingly preferring his own. Seeing this, they forswore meat for the rest of their lives, declaring that they would subsist thenceforth on the Brahmin’s wonder food, if he would but reveal to them the secret thereof. Disarmingly, he expatiated — in so far as sign language would allow of expatiation — on the virtues of tamarind and turmeric and pepper, of their salutary effects on the humours, on the choler, on the mind.
Inevitably, word soon reached the Son of Heaven in his imperial court about the round-eyed black man with tufted hair, who was said to have crossed the seven mountain systems and the seven rivers. He was sent for, and the imperial guard duly escorted him to the Presence, where he performed the kow-tow most impressively.
On being asked by the Emperor what brought him to the Middle Kingdom he replied truthfully that it was the tyranny of his wife which drove him; yet giving her credit for being unwittingly through her ire the cause of so great an adventure as his travels had been, and for the extreme rare good fortune of an audience with the Offspring of Heaven himself. Whereupon the latter smiled, and expressed himself passing pleased at the reply.
He then commanded the Brahmin to concoct for him the elixir his natives spoke so ravingly of; and the now bemused Brahmin was led to the imperial kitchens by the Emperor himself. But the kitchens were filthy and noisome with blood, meat, entrails and offal, and the Brahmin requested his august guide to have them cleansed forthwith of these impure presences. And when this was accomplished — to the scarce-disguised chagrin of the royal cooks — the Brahmin performed a ritual purification again with verses from the ancient Sanskrit. And before long, the fragrant vapours wafted through the dark caverns, and the Emperor cried that there was nothing in his vast empire to equal the heavenly aroma. He forthwith proclaimed himself a vegetarian, and commanded that thenceforth no living form would be slaughtered for food.
But Brihadeeswara Sarma — now christened Pu Li So Mei — regretfully told the Emperor that the latter’s empire’s reaches boasted no tamarind tree, whose fruit was so vital to the cooking now so beloved of the Emperor and his people; and caravans were dispatched to the high mountain passes in the south to fetch the wonder fruit and the seed whereby the empire could be abundant in this. Pu Li was asked if the juice of the tomato could be an adequate substitute in the interim, and after due ritual experiment declared that it would suffice, though not entirely.
This is said to be the origin of tomato rasam.
In time the Emperor offered Pu Li So Mei the gift of his own favourite concubine and the Brahmin, having tired of the rigours of his travels, sired no fewer than seven offspring. It is said that I am descended from the third of these, a woman of great beauty and an exquisite scroll painter: some of her works were stolen from the Imperial Palace in 1900 during the so-called Boxer Rebellion, and found their way to the auction houses of Europe.
Ironically, Pu Li So Mei’s Tanjore wife — who had never heard of China, much less been there — is referred to in family legend, by some curious process of induction or association, as “China Maami.”
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Dr. Pei Lin Hsiao
SOAS
London.
EDITORIAL NOTE:
The above was edited and transcribed by the undersigned, from a batch of papers left behind by the late Dr. Hsiao, who was killed in the blitz in 1940. Researches by the editor, perforce perfunctory, failed to reveal any information on Dr. Hsiao’s evidently gifted female ancestor. If Dr. Hsiao was privy to knowledge not in the public or scholastic domain then he took it to the grave with him. The looting of the Imperial Palace in 1900 however is a fact of history.
Further, as regards the common south Indian meal staple which Dr. Hsiao writes of, again the editor’s inquiries drew a blank as to its origins: and as for a possible Chinese connection, the suggestion was met with incredulity and mirth.
The name Brihadeeswara Sarma was by itself no means rare, and the editor’s pertinacity, sorely tried as it was, brought forth no traveller from Tanjore to China in the 4th. Century BC, much less an abandoned wife memorialised as “China Maami,” although the sobriquet was borne by many a contemporary who had travelled with their husbands to the eastern seaboard of the People’s Republic of China in the 1990s in the wake of the computer revolution.
All this however is not to impugn the veracity of Dr. Hsiao’s narrative. It is unlikely that a scholar of his integrity and accomplishments — his translations of Pre-Prakrit erotica are the only ones extant — would perversely claim ancestry from the distaff side of an obscure, decidedly eccentric south Indian Brahmin of the 4th century BC whose own existence is speculative at best. We must therefore regretfully conclude that Dr. Hsiao’s grave holds the key. And graves as we know are proverbially silent.
