Shodh Prabha: A Multidisciplinary Journal

Food Politics in Ancient India: Caste, Purity and Power (An Analysis of Dietary Regulations, Ritual Hierarchies, and Authority from the Vedic to the Early Medieval Era)

Far from being a mere biological requirement, food operates as a critical mechanism for articulating identity, enforcing social boundaries, and asserting institutional power. This study investigates the political dimensions of culinary practices and dietary regimes in ancient India from the Vedic era through the early medieval period. Employing a socio-historical and anthropological analytical lens, this paper demonstrates that food was utilized both as a tangible economic asset and a potent ideological resource through which elite factions and religious institutions established authority and reproduced stratified caste hierarchies. Four primary thematic domains are explored: the economic and ideological dynamics of meat consumption in the Vedic phase, the diverging dietary ethics championed by Brahmanical and Buddhist paradigms, the rise of institutional temple kitchens as mechanisms for socioeconomic redistribution and containment, and the application of ritual fasting as a mode of body discipline and community control. Rather than projecting vegetarianism or structural purity rules as unchanging essences of South Asian civilization, this paper charts their historical evolution against changing agrarian structures, state formation, and active inter-religious competition. Drawing upon textual lineages including Vedic collections, Dharmashastra legal text corpora, Buddhist canonical codes, and early medieval epigraphic records, this paper illustrates that dietary strictures were highly responsive historical structures through which social stratification and political legitimacy were continuously contested and consolidated.