I’m not quite sure what lead to what that got me started on this, but here is a DIY for that classic symbol of all things varyingly Indian, Hindu, feminine, sacred, powerful: kumkumam.
The classic “red dot” that adorns many an Indian forehead or the parting of many a married woman’s hair has its own history by now, all the way from the belief in a “third eye,” to science-seeking explanations about the pineal grand and its nerve endings on the forehead which need protection from light to enhance melatonin production, to the racism of the Jersey city “dot busters” of the late 80s and the Telugu Desam’s “pasupu kumkumam” welfare schemes for women in the last years. There was a time when Indian Catholics, to distinguish themselves from the unconventional Protestants, would wear the “pottu.” Non-believing Communist Party of India icons like Brinda Karat who sports unforgettably large pottus, and fashionable, modernized Indian women who wear pottus, do so to finish a “look”–indicating that the kumkuma pottu or bindi is as much an ethnic adornment and a beauty marker as anything more religious. (So, no, sorry guys, the pottu is not “Hindu” but Indian).
Outside India, still other practices hold sway: South African Indians will wear pottus when married and regardless of whether dressed in Indian clothes or western. Malay Tamils are almost never without a little black dot on their foreheads–bright red kumkumam seems less critical than the presence of the dot itself.
Symbols, right? They’re nodal points for meaning-creation rather than anything that can be fixed with finality. Studying them as elements of culture could perhaps lead us to their originary meanings or to make sense of contemporary usages (eg: why is a state-sponsored public welfare scheme called “pasupu-kumkumam”?), though most contemporary forms are equally interpretive and strategic (eg: I interpret the pottu as a beauty marker and strip it of any other symbolism). And therein lies the essential difference between symbolic and interpretive anthropology, for those of you interested!
There are a hundred explanations for the mysteries of the red dot, regionally and culturally specific and undeniable. This post is not about unpacking them but sharing a thing or two I learned on my way to making kumkumam followed by a recipe for how to make it yourself. I have had neither mother nor grandmothers who could show me how this was done, so I’ve had to learn it all less intuitively and more by way of science. That process is not only satisfying, but then there’s confidence of sourcing your own ingredients free of adulterants and harmful chemicals–and becoming somewhere the grandmother you never had.
I first had to learn what kumkumam is not before I could get to what it is. A section on the chemistry of kumkumam follows, but I’m still learning.
1. Kumkumam is not turmeric mixed with slaked lime
There are many many sources which will tell you that “authentic” kumkumam is nothing but turmeric mixed with chunnambu or slaked lime. That’s the trouble with the internet: the more often you see something repeated, the more you’re likely to think it’s true. Buyer beware!
While it is true that the addition of slaked lime (alkaline) to powdered turmeric (acidic, and ph indicator) produces a deep red mixture–I’ve found that that redness does not keep, but yellows with age. That is: poor color stability, presumably owing to the incomplete or imperfect deprotonation. See the section on the chemistry of kumkumam below.
(It’s ok for a quick fix though).
2. Kumkumam is not vermillion
Here’s one thing I would like to clarify once and for all. Kumkumam is not vermillion, vermillion is not kumkumam. Vermillion is a brilliant red pigment made from mercury sulphide (cinnabar). The earliest cinnabar was mined, not produced, in what is modern-day Turkey in the 8th c. BC. The Chinese may have been the earliest to produce a synthetic version in the 4th c. BC. The Romans, the Chinese, even the empires of Latin America used the pigment liberally–but nowhere do we find its uses in India, and certainly not for bodily use. Mercury sulfide is toxic!
The best we can say is that we call kumkum vermillion in the same way that we call an orange an orange — or Tamilians call turmeric “manjal,” meaning yellow. The color is a metonym: not just a property but standing in for the thing itself.
3. Kumkumam is not produced from the sindhoor tree
Again, color similarities produce massive confusions. What we in India call the “sindhoor tree” is Bixa orellana, or achiote–native to Central and South America, the source of annatto, a natural orange-red condiment used as an industrial food coloring (ever wondered why some butters are yellower than others? Now you know. Annatto). True, the waxy arils coating the achiote seeds (bit like mace and nutmeg) were also used to manufacture cosmetics: so this is known as the “lipstick tree.”
True, this is natural, non-toxic–and also non-Indian. Which matters only because the uses of kumkum in the Indian subcontinent surely predate the arrival of any plants from the Americas. So, while it might be the case that kumkum can be produced safely from the “sindhoor tree,” chances are that’s not its original method either.
Nonetheless, that brings me to my next point which is that…
4. Kumkum can be made a few different ways!
My prior 3 points notwithstanding, I’m also not here to insist on a single most authentic way of making kumkumam. As I’ve understood, there are regional practices and adaptations that produce kumkumam differently. For example, the use of saffron in Kashmiri kunkumam. Saffron in Tamil is kumkuma-poo: kumkuma-flowers, once again an observation about color similarities. Saffron and a little turmeric makes kumkumam, too; some say the most expensive and valuable type! And the sindhoor tree. Plus the turmeric+slaked lime quick fix method. Plus, really, the more artificially produced commercial kumkumams–which represent a method of producing the desired vermillion-colored powder, too. There are many paths!
See the color variations below: turmeric+slaked lime, classic kumkumam, and commercial packaged kumkumam.
What I was in search of was this: as close as we can get to temple kumkumam, or a powder with a certain color stability, made with locally available, natural and non-toxic ingredients.
(“Natural” ≠ non-toxic necessarily. Just saying. Mercury sulphide or cinnabar or vermillion = “natural”, too).
I don’t have access to local saffron, nor to the sindhoor tree. And the turmeric+ slaked lime quick combination wasn’t great for color stability.
So…
5. Classic Temple Kumkumam
I’d heard of the use of borax in making kumkumam, which felt weird until I learned that, indeed, that the use of padikaram (alum), vengaram (borax), and lime juice are the ingredients of classic kunkumam. As with most ingredients in India, the best will come from some places, and in some seasons–many of us will swear by kumkumam “from my native” or some other known source. But we only have what we have to work with, so here at least is the process.
I’ve adapted the recipe for household scales from Deivathin Kural vol. 3 — the talks, discourses, stories of Maha Periyava, the 68th pontiff of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, Sri. Chandra Sekharendra Saraswathy, compiled by Ra. Ganapathy.
100g pasupu or whole turmeric, crushed
20g vengaram (borax, suhaaga), powdered
10g padikaram (alum, phitkari), powdered
lime juice from 1-2 limes
Eeya patram or tin coated vessel
Porcelain jar or other box for storage
*None of these weights need to be absolutely perfect. Most recipes I’ve seen use greater quantities of vengaram than padikaram (see the Chemistry of Kunkumam below to understand why, and how to make color adjustments).
- Crush the whole turmeric coarsely. You can also just use good quality powdered turmeric.
- Powder the padikaram and vengaram using a mortar and pestle.
- Mix these with lime juice, and store in the eeya/tin vessel, mixing multiple times in the day until the liquid is absorbed.
- Now dry this thoroughly in a shady spot (for a day or more). You should see the color slowly changing from the yellow of pasupu to the red of kumkum.
- See the Note above, and adjust by adding more vengaram+lime juice and shade re-drying, if you’ve not yet got the color you desire.
- Powder the mixture and sieve and powder again to get as fine a kumkumam as possible.
- Mix in a few drops of pure cow ghee. Some people add sesame oil here, instead.
- Store in a porcelain jar or kumkumam box.
Above: all ingredients mixed with dry turmeric powder in the foreground, and mixed with fresh turmeric in the background. The fresh ingredients reddnen faster, and return to a more yellow state as they dry. The dry turmeric takes much longer to redden as it dries.
The Chemistry of Kunkumam
The active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin, which is a ph indicator (like litmus paper): it changes color when the solutions it is added to are either acidic or basic. In acidic solutions, it is yellow; in basic ones it becomes orange-crimson.
Now we know that vengaram is alkaline, so a simple addition of tumeric to borax should alter ph and color–and it does, as I discovered accidentally, when the stone I used to crush the vengaram had a spot that turned instantly red when I used it to crush dry turmeric roots.
But there’s more to it than that, because we’re adding lime juice (hunh? acidic) and alum (sulphate salts, essentially)–and then finally ghee, albeit a miniscule quantity. Why on earth? Read the quotes below, wade through if you must, then I’ll try and simplify in lay terms after though chemist I most certainly am not.
“The simple answer of why it [turmeric] turns red in alkaline [solutions] is this. Active ingredient of turmeric is curcumin – chemically a biphenol and 1,3 diketone. Curcumin has an extended conjugation, and as you know, two aromatic phenolic rings. This tautomerism, extended conjugation & aromatic phenolic rings combine to make curcumin/ Turmeric yellow. Phenols like curcumin, are chemically acidic but easily drop their acidic proton when in alkaline environment. The loss of proton at any of the phenolic sites converts the phenolate ion from benzenoid structure– into a quinonoid one. When it switches into quinonoid the extended conjugation is altered & the tautomerism alters. When a benzenoid form goes into a quinonoid form, a bathochromic shift arises in the optical properties and VOILA: the quinonoid form now appears with a longer wavelength than its benzenoid form–red and not yellow! Intriguingly, breakdown of curcumin is pH-dependent with it degrading much slowly in acidic environments and quickly in neutral-basic conditions. Curcumin degrades rapidly with hydrolytic degradation at physiological pH or greater — a worrisome disadvantage in therapeutic use.
Curcumin is more stable in acidic conditions probably owing to its conjugated diene structure which is gradually destroyed as the proton is removed during dissociation of phenolic groups in the curcumin structure (H2A−, HA2− and A3−) at higher pH, thus causing curcumin to be more prone to degradation as detected using HPLC . In the pH range of 8.08 to 8.75, it is postulated that curcumin exists in equilibrium in three forms: H3A, H2A− and HA2” [Source: Lambe, Mary. (2017). Re: Why does curcumin have a red color in the alkaline condition? ]
And then this:
“Curcumin is a weak Brönsted acid, with three labile protons, and accordingly three pKas have been estimated corresponding to three prototropic equilibria. Both NMR and absorption spectrometry have been used to estimate the pKa. The first pKa in the pH range of 7.5 to 8.5 changes curcumin from yellow to red. The chemical reactivity and solubility of the anionic curcumin, i.e., in the basic pH range increases and this form of curcumin is more water soluble than the neutral form” [Source: Kavirayani Indira Priyadarsini, “The Chemistry of Curcumin: From Extraction to Therapeutic Agent,” Molecules 2014, 19, 20091-20112; doi:10.3390/molecules191220091]
So the point is that the chemical reaction that produces pasupu-kumkumam de-protonizes curcumin (being a Brønsted-Lowry acid, it gives up its protons easily) and structurally alters into a quinonoid form, which has different optical properties (a longer wavelength)–which we perceive as red. Curcumin is the key ingredient, as is the borax or vengaram.
What of lime juice? Note that turmeric degrades much more slowly in acidic environments, and the degradation is what we’re seeking, but it has to be slow and controlled. That’s the addition of lime juice, which takes time to penetrate the crushed rhizome particles and with it carry the solution of borax and alum. The whole process takes time, which is why the bright red appears also slowly, as time wears on and the roots soak.
Alum: a sulphate salt, in solution with lime juice presumably aids the deprotonation.
The effects of light:
“Curcumin decomposes when exposed to sunlight, both in ethanolic and methanolic extracts and as a solid, vanillin, vanillic acid, ferulic aldehyde and ferulic acid have been identified as the degradation products” [Bachar Zebib, Zephirin Mouloungui, and Virginie Noirot, “Stabilization of Curcumin by Complexation with Divalent Cations in Glycerol/Water System,” Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications Volume 2010, Article ID 292760, doi:10.1155/2010/292760]
Pause for a moment to note the products of turmeric degradation: vanillin, vanillic acid (yes, the same as what is found in natural vanilla), ferulic aldehyde and ferulic acid (a phenolic acid widely found in the plant kingdom, and widely used in anti-ageing creams and explaining perhaps the use of topical turmeric applications for skin health). The magic of turmeric! Vanillin as a degradation product is particularly fascinating, suggesting a relatedness of turmeric and vanilla–and possibly their captivating fragrances–which bears some further investigating.
Shade drying partly protects against this possible degradation of turmeric and I presume to extend lime juice soaking time, or otherwise the liquid might dry too quickly (perhaps producing reds on the outsides and yellows still inside, or a yellower kumkumam–I’ve not tried).
Water solubility: Now we know from everyday cookery that turmeric in its natural state is not water soluble–it needs lipids or fats to dissolve. That’s a lot of the reason turmeric works well in milk and the whole “toomuric” “golden latte” craze {{eyeroll}}, but isn’t used in kashayams or boiled herbal teas much at all. So as curcumin ph increases, water solubility improves–possibly facilitating the penetration of the lime juice, possibly also just explaining why kumkumam is water soluble while turmeric is not.
Of course, me being me had to see whether there’d be a difference between using fresh haldi from the garden vs. dried. Very interestingly, the fresh turmeric never reddened as much as the dried pasupu, suggesting some property or ingredient of the fresh root interfering with the chemical reactions that result in the brilliant red of kumkumam. Net-net: fresh is not the same as dried (and no, good Kitchn folks, that’s not because turmeric has to be boiled before drying; it does not). Whatever offending agent interferes with the deprotonation of curcumin or keeps the mixture more acidic than alkaline must be something that dries out.
The final addition of ghee: possibly for fragrance, possibly for those lipids to dissolve whatever trace curcumin remains, possibly for preservation–or all three.
Happy belated birthday! I loved reading this post. Just looking at the lovely pictures you took feels like it helped my BP drop 😀 I hope you had a lovely day on the 5th. xoxo
Hello Deepa
I tried to make kumkum following the combination of alum, borax, lime, and turmeric. Some sites suggested that it was lemon that produced the red color. My observation was the opposite. On researching, as you noted in your post, it is the alkaline nature of borax that gives the red color to the turmeric powder. It’s very nice to note that someone else tried the combination and got the same result. It’s a wonderful and informative article. Thanks for sharing.
Happy to know that what I discovered was something substantiated in your experiments, too! Thank you for taking the time to let me know. It’s very good of you!
Stumbled by your site and now completely mesmerised. Stay as passionate about researching the old Indian traditions…. we need to unearth them…God bless you. The image of Devi has taken my breath away.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to leave that comment! It means a whole lot to know that folks reading find this as important as I do.
Very good study.
There are many ways people use chemical to organic kumkum.
Using Alum and Borax is the right way
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!
Greetings !
So surprised by your depth of work Deepa akka.
Humbled thanks for your passion in exploring our Indian tradition 🙏
Thank YOU Prathap, for sharing in my interest & taking time to comment. Depth of work and interest in these things shouldn’t be a surprise at all–and yet it is. That’s a little sad. But perhaps some of us are working to change that!
I had gone through your detailed work on kumkumam ,Really apprreciate your work,Thanks for sharing
thank you!
My pleasure!
[…] Potassium aluminum sulfate) is the most common, non-toxic and inexpensive of mordants. It’s used to make kumkuma and is what I’ve used in my experiment below. Can give brighter colors when combined with […]
[…] juice in East Africa, not to be confused with “kungu,” likely a derivative of kumkuma, which is the word used for all colors of “Indian holi powder” in the same regions). […]
It’s really good information and I appreciate your effort for literature review with reference to Kumkum.
It will be nice, if you can share some information regarding natural Dhoop and Alta (Hindi name)
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll do my best! But I work very, very slowly on these things I’m afraid, so it may take time.. 🙂
[…] was black. The toxicities of many of these materials determined or restricted human use. Kumkuma was never vermillion except in color consonance and the “karpoora namam” of Lord Venkateswara in Tirupati remains […]
Hello!
Wonderful write up on Kumkuma.I would like to add a small note to the use of Cinnabar (HgS) in India.The earliest references to the use of Hingula / Cinnabar ( HgS) can be found in Kautilya’s Arthashastra ( approximately 3rd century BCE) in the context of testing gold. References can also be found in Garuda Purana and Brihat Samhita (Not on medicinal use though).Later texts in Ayurveda like Rasendramangala -6 to 8 Cent. A.D, Chakradatta- 11th century A.D. describe the use of purified Hingula obtained from Darada desa ( Gilgit- Baltistan?!) for various therapeutic purposes.While it’s widely used in Ayurveda, in ancient days it was imported from Darada desa or Mleccha desa.It is also known as Cinipishta- reference to import from Cina desa.
Thanks for those details — let me research them further and amend the post as necessary. I meant, however, that cinnabar has no known cosmetic/topical uses in India, and that it is almost certainly not what was originally called “kumkuma”. As I say, let me study what was known about early therapeutic/alchemical uses and add that to the post as needed. Thank you!
I would also like to point out to the use of Turmeric in various Ayurvedic kashayas.It is incorrect to say it is not used in Kashayas. Aacharya Charak has mentioned the use of Haridra in one of his 10 Vishaghna Mahakashayas.
Just to clarify here, this post is not dealing with kashayas, nor have I made the claim that turmeric is not used 🙂 Just that traditional kumkuma is not a mixture of turmeric and slaked lime.
Hi there. I came across this article and am now convinced that I’d be so much better off making my own kumkum. However, I have a quick question – does the tray for trying HAVE to be tin or is it alright to use steel/brass/aluminum?
I’d say use stainless steel as an alternative. I’m not 100% certain about the effects of the metal drying surfaces on the resulting reactions .. I’m about to make another batch myself, this time from specifically sourced turmeric from 3 different regions. There are a lot of variables! good luck with your experiment 🙂
Thanks so much for your prompt response. I will try the steel thaali.
Also, I will be using Lakadong turmeric which has a deep orangish yellow hue. Fingers crossed 🙂
Hello Ma’am, A quick doubt- the red color the final kumkum will stay permanently or do I have to add borax every 1-2 yrs or so? Also,I’m very grateful to you for this post. My mother started developing black spots and pimples recently at the middle of her eyebrows where she usually applies kumkum. Now I have decided that I am going to make it myself. I was also really concerned about the use of borax powder whilst I was searching for a correct kumkum making procedure. Your post literally came in clutch and cleared almost all my doubts :). I will update you as soon as I make it. Thank you so much. Please don’t stop these blogs!
Hello Abhishek, thanks for your kind comment & very good question. I have also had the same experience of skin irritations while using commercial/common kunkuma — that plus my own curiosity led me to research and write this post. I am by no means an expert, but I do not think that any traditional kunkuma would be tampered with after the first procedure of making it. The reason is because (although I don’t cover it in this article), there is a ritual purification process also involved — have bath, wear clean clothes, only use new/clean vessels and cloth etc. etc. Once you have done all that and offered the kunkuma, there’s no way to re-modify the existing powder for the sake of color. I also would not know the proportions to suggest. My response therefore is that if your kunkuma loses color or any such, simply make small new batch. One other thing I have also not covered in this post (I may do a “part 2”) is that it’s best to use good quality round turmeric roots of a certain maturity to achieve the best kunkuma. See this series of posts on the process for images of what best to use — had I seen them myself I may have written my post to incorporate some of these elements also 🙂 I really must add a “part 2” covering the turmeric selection process for this, but I have many experiments to do myself before I am ready to advise on that! Meantime, good luck with your process and please let me know how it goes.