Charred Mango Pānakam

Late post, 1 of 2, on pānīya, pānakam and the summer awaiting the respite of rain, this one using charred mangoes and the next Indian laburnum.

“The sun’s rays become stronger and more intense … Unhealthy winds blow from the south-east.
The earth is heated; the rivers run narrow and shallow in their beds; the quarters of the sky glare with a
blazing light, the birds Chakravakas with their mates roam about in quest of cool ponds and reservoirs of
water; herds of deer are tormented and overwhelmed with thirst; trees, plants and creepers are scorched by the intense heat, and withered leaves drop off from the trees which alone serve to make the identification of their parents possible” (Suśruta Samhita v.1/शूत्रस्थान/Sūtrasthāna p.54).

The month of Vaiśākha, the spring month after Caitra which most anticipates summer, is a ‘Dharma Sadhaka’ or (virtue-prone); to it no other month is equal, says Nārada in the Skanda Purana–just as there is no holy text equal to the Veda; there is no tīrtha [holy place] equal to the Gaṅgā [Book II, section 7, Chapter 3, verse 1-5]. Likewise, in Vaiśākha, there is no charitable gift comparable to that of water. “Water” takes two primary forms: takra or buttermilk and pānaka.

Takra or buttermilk is its first and most common form. “He who gives buttermilk that is destructive of heat and distress in the month of Vaiśākha, becomes learned and wealthy on the earth,” says the Skanda Purana’s section on charitable gifts [Book II, section 7, Chapter 3, verse 41-46]. But then an equal measure of attention to pānaka: “If anyone gives pānaka mixed with fully ripe mango fruits in the month of Vaiśākha, all his sins shall certainly perish,” and “he shall shall obtain sāyujya [identification] with Viṣṇu” [verses 51, 49].

The text carries two reminders for our modern times. First, before water became a “basic human right,” pānīya, ‘something one drinks’ usually equated with water, in the form of pānaka or a medicated water, a water potion, was a great kindness—a sacred gift with the power to quench the thirst of the wayfarer as much as to absolve the wrongs of the giver. Along with fans, umbrellas [see the story of Hemakānta in Chapter 10], food and such other things that afforded relief from the summer’s distressing heat, pots of pānīya sweetened into pānaka and flavored with musk, camphor, jasmine and the fragrant root of the vetiver [Andropogon muricatus] were such kindnesses that they stood equivalent to “ninety-six Śrāddhas” (offerings to ancestors to free them from suffering). Not giving them meant being reborn as a Cātaka bird, dependent on rainfall for drinking water [Book II, section 7, Chapter 2, verse 17-19]—and who would want to risk that?

Water, in the old ways, dressed this way or that, was a great moral compulsion whose virtues spanned lifetimes. Among the prouder recollections my father had of his childhood was of his own old father, who’d lost all in some misguided bullock-cart venture, sitting outside on the hottest days, serving passers-by buttermilk. It was a gesture his son would try to emulate in his own way, till his dying day. The Skanda Purana directs buttermilk to be given to Brahmanas, presuming them poor, but it has not been uncommon for Brahmin families who could afford it to set up roadside “neer mor pandals”/ நீர் மோர் பந்தல் or stalls serving thin, lightly spiced buttermilk to any thirsty passerby. At least as early as my grandparents’ generation, charity was not just something Brahmin families received, but which was a moral impulsion to give. Elsewhere, “Pankha Ekadashi” is celebrated: in which a hand woven pankha (fan) along with musk melon and sharbat are distributed as prasad. For the promise of salvation, yes, but meanwhile all this presents its own kind of special this-worldly joy, this business of gifting relief and offering water to the thirsty (in Hindi: “pyase ko pani pilana…” [thank you for the Ekadeshi detail and phrase, Abha Aunty], which is I think a lot of what my father relished, too.

Second, pānaka is not so much the lime-and-palmyrah-jaggery drink we know today—that’s a Ram Navami special, made with camphor and tulsi leaves that’s somehow come to stand in as the representative pānakam—but rather an entire category of syrups, beverages, linctuses, draughts, drinks, water-potions, cordials, mixtures of water and treacle, or as it is translated in so many of our old texts. The Nalapākadarpaṇa has two chapters, one devoted to syrups and the other to drink, which conjure various pānakas. Along with ragas and shadavas (variously translated as soups, syrups, chutneys, and sauces), pānakas complete a trio of different kinds of liquidy preparations, that include thicker (in texture) sauces, in-between soups and light drinks. All three are straightforwardly “soups” in lexicon of the Suśruta Samhita, with ragas and shadavas themselves being “light, tissue building, spermatopoietic, agreeable, relishing, and appetising in their properties. They alleviate thirst, epileptic fits, vertigo and vomiting, and remove the sense of fatigue or exhaustion” (SS I 1907, p.541). Pānaka, by contrast, is more akin to what we would recognize as “juice”: “Water saturated with treacle, khanda (unrefined sugar), sugar or grapes, and made acid with the admixture of an acid substance, and scented with camphor, should be deemed the best of refreshing beverages” (SS I 1907, pp. 542-3).

The Caraka Samhita prescribes all these in cases of vomiting precipitated by mental shock, along with “agreeable discourses, consoling and cheering speeches, well-known stories based on tradition, (delightful) companies, beneficial diversions capable of exciting the sentiment of love” (CS 1890, p.1581). These are to be prepared with “Diverse kinds of scents agreeable to the mind, of mangoe [sic] and other fruits united with flowers and earth, agreeable pot-herbs” and so on (CS 1890 p. 1582).

Now, vaiśākha is also the season of mango-fall and although we’re well past it now, all the mango trees of our region dropped a considerable number of immature fruits—to large to ignore, too small to use as regular mangoes. “An unripe Amra, in its first stage of development, tends to generate the Vayu and Pittam,” says Suśruta, whereas “Ripe Amra is pleasant, cosmetic, relishing and tonic, helps the formation of fresh blood, and leaves an astringent after-taste. It is sweet and heavy, is a tissue-builder and tends to increase the formation of semen and also subdues the Vayu and Pittam (SS I 1907, 499-500).

Ours were squarely in between, perhaps could deliver a partial sāyujya [identification] with Viṣṇu as the Skanda Purana promised? In any case, we tried. We turned the bushels of fallen mangoes into what we know now as the modern panna, whose meaning folds backwards into the pānaka and pānīya of its own origins, and becomes the quintessential thirst-quencher of the hot season. Pannas are mostly made with boiled fruit; ours were charred like the Gujarati baflo. The thick texture of juiced mango does leave pānaka considerably resembling a soup of the old comprehensions, but we thinned it almost into an agua fresca, sweetened it with jaggery and finished it with black salt and roasted-crushed cumin.

The fact that there was always some on hand all summer long was, to my mind, a continuation of the old tradition of keeping such gifts ready for guests happening by, seeking relief from distress and dis-ease that the heat sets upon us all. Salvation comes in many forms, a glass of cooling pānaka no less for offering both respite and delight to those who partake, alongside other obeisances to Viṣṇu, whose favorite season this is said to be.

Sources Consulted

Skanda Purana II. 1950. trans. G.V. Tagare. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Also online at Wisdomlib.org.

Suśruta Samhita v.1 1907. Calcutta: Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna

Caraka Samhita. 1890. Calcutta: Abinash Chandra Kaviratna.