It is harder by far to collect sugars for a group photo than you would imagine. The reason? When we think of “sugar” it’s typically just the white crystalline stuff that comes to mind, but those closer to the sources of production will affirm over and over, even in just their pride for local produce and the many unique tastes of terroir, that sugar is a plant-season-region-bound thing, still in its way tied to old crafts and trades, not purely an industrial product; still in its way medicinal, not just the poison white refined sugar has become in the industrial economy. And when things belong still in these multiple, layered, hyper-local worlds, it takes some doing to assemble them all in a single place-time.
The Indian jaggeries assembled here were procured through various sources on- and off-line, but the kithul took some very generous help from friends. Soham Kacker went off to be Curator of Living Collections at the Lunuganga Trust, in Sri Lanka and knew of my wish for kithul so he found a friend to play mule. Sharon Atapattu-Tissera of Hideaway Resort, Ulle, Pottuvil was kind enough to source even more from a trusted producer. I’m so very grateful to them both for making this portrait possible.
Winters present the only real opportunity, because Bengal’s prized khejur gud or Indian sugar date palm jaggery is produced only then, and because the drier air of the late Indian winter and early spring keeps the other palm jaggeries of the subcontinent drier, longer. I present four here, all palm sugars, all but the coconut native to this region, though India is a secondary center of coconut origin, too:
- the toddy palm/ Borassus flabellifer,
- the Indian sugar date palm/ Phoenix sylvestris (L). Roxb,
- the fishtail palm/Caryota urens, and
- the coconut palm/ Cocos nucifera.
Each of these palms flower different times, and tappers know best which plants to pick for their purpose: older, shorter, water-stressed, or other, judged by environmental conditions as much as the number of leaf fronds and other details. Ladders are fashioned to reach the blossoms out of bamboo or just alternating indentations made in the tall tree trunks, and ropes tied between trees at times to allow arboreal passages–or none of these. Tapping happens by making incisions at the base of their immature inflorescences, applying lime or some other secretly guarded mixture of spices and herbs to the cuts both to prevent infections as also to ensure sap release, and then tapping or massaging the flowers in such way that allows the free flow of sap–which is then artfully caught in earthen matkas mounted impossibly to collect the sap at the cut ends of the inflorescences. None of it is a one-climb affair: tappers go up and down the trees over days and months to prep, attend to the inflorescences, and collect sap. They work whole groves of trees in single days. It’s no small task, or feat.
The vascular sap that eventually fills their mud containers is called neera or neero or pathaneer in almost all regions, is clear as water and can be drunk as-is: it’s deliciously light, sweet, and nutrient-rich. I remember seeing pathaneer from the palmyrah or panamaram as a child regularly sold by vendors near temples and in other public places in Tirunelveli and drinking it from palmyrah palm leaf-fashioned boat-like cups with bits of ice apple/nungu thrown in, sharbat style, for texture, on the banks of the Tamraparani river.
In Bengal it’s khejurer ros, the juice of the date sugar palm. Within hours pathaneer will have fermented and soured becoming the cloudier cal or kallu–a mildly alcoholic toddy that was, in the days before baker’s yeasts, the additive that allowed appams to become these soft lacy delectable things. To control the fermentation, this sap is boiled until it thickens and darkens (usually), producing first a molasses and then a jaggery that can be set in moulds, typically coconut shells.
A great deal has been written and videographed about the tapping of palm inflorescences to collect sap, which is a difficult art and a dying one because there is nothing about it that makes commercial sense. Or, applying fair trade logic would make these jaggeries much, much more expensive, which perhaps they should be if we’re to start valuing them enough. Tapping was also a caste-based activity, with the Nadars or Shayanars in the South tapping palmyrah, the Tiyans tapping coconut on the Coromandel, the Billavas being the Tulu-speaking toddy drawers of the South Canara district, the Siulis [Seulis] or Gachis in Bengal–and all of them reviled while the sap and its resulting sweetness was prized and revered. To bring about the uplift and reintegration of such communities, many of whom have abandoned tapping anyway, means losing the old lifeways, or paying dearly to keep what truly matters about them. So I want to describe the ecology and tapping of each jaggery type because it’s time we pay attention to what it takes to bring these precious sweeteners to our tables.
Borassus flabellifer: PANAVELLAM
I’ve written much about the panampazham or toddy palm fruit [processing, rice cakes, payasam, malpuas, and fibre wicks] but little about the fan-shaped leaves [which were once local stationary for all the palm leaf manuscripts of the Tamil written traditions], young shoots [பனங்கிழங்கு/ panangkizhangu which are still boiled and eaten as nutritious snacks], and not enough about the lives of the climbers and tappers. All these are in a way intermingled in panavellam, the dark jaggery of the toddy palm which is, somewhat fittingly as we shall see, bitter-sweet. This is also called karupatti after it’s the near-black-firm form.
Nonetheless, or perhaps as a result, panavellam is regarded as richly medicinal. It is often mixed with dry ginger/sukku and black pepper and sold in cubes that are ready to be dissolved into kashayams to treat common colds and respiratory ailments. In this form, they are called sillu karupatti or sukku karupatti.
The Nadars /Shanars of the southern districts of Tamil Nadu were the traditional toddy-tapping caste: low in status, kept out of villages, denied access to wells. Robert Hardgrave’s landmark study on The Nadars of Tamilnad: the political culture of a community in change [University of California Press, 1969], the only ethnographic study after the missionary Robert Caldwell’s damning and socio-politically damaging 1849 account of the Tinnevelly Shanars, describes the landscapes of the panamaram thus (pp. 18-19):
Farther to the south, the Tambraparni River cuts across the center of Tinnevelly District from the Ghats to the sea at Punnakayal, between Tuticorin and Tiruchendur. Winding through the district, each side of the river is bordered with a ribbon of green, irrigated paddy fields, the wealth of Tinnevelly. The district takes its name from the central town of Tinnevelly—Tirunelveli in Tamil, meaning “sacred paddy hedge.” To the southeast, the rich soils of the Tambraparni give way to the teris, the vast sandy tract of the palmyra forest. Farther to the south, crossing the border of Tinnevelly into Kanyakumari, the country becomes more luxuriant, as the palmyras mix with coconut, and the vibrant green of the paddy fields returns. With the exception of Kanyakumari, which shares the tropical vegetation of Kerala, the southern districts of Tamilnad east of the Ghats offer what Robert Caldwell described as only “varieties of flatness and barrenness. The only point open to dispute is whether the black, blistered cotton-soil plain, or the parched, unenclosed, and almost uninhabited plains of the granitic districts, or the fiery-red sandy plains of the palmyra forests are the least fertile and inviting.”
The southeastern portion of Tinnevelly District, including Tiruchendur and the greater portions of Srivaikuntam and Nanguneri taluqs, is one of the most desolate areas in South India. The teris, ranges of deep, loose, red sands, are peculiar to the region and are often destitute of vegetation. In the teris, two of which cover an area of some forty square miles each, the sands constantly shift with every blast of wind, forming ridged dunes. Despite the substratum of stiff red clay, the loose surface sands driven by the southwesterly winds, moved the sands toward the east at a slow but calculable rate. Caldwell recorded that the teris “gradually overwhelmed trees, fields, and even villages in its course.” The teris originated, according to local tradition, in showers of earth which in ancient times covered certain guilty cities. Beneath the teris, many Nadars claim, lay the ruins of the once great cities of a Nadar kingdom.
He continues with a description of the revered palmyrah and its reviled community of caretakers on pp. 25-9:
The “Palm poem,” Tala Villasam, by the Tamil poet Arunachalam of Kumbakonam, extols to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, the supernatural origin of the palmyra and its eight hundred and one uses. In a remote age, man, as he grew discontent with creation as it came from the hands of Brahma, supplicated Siva to supply one thing which would at once feed the hungry, heal the sick, and enrich the people, who, for want of it, were “trembling like water on the leaf of the lotus.” Siva responded to man’s entreaty and directed Brahma to create the palmyra. The tree was dedicated to Ganesa, the elephant-headed son of Lord Siva. It was praised as the Kalpa tree, the Hindu Tree of Life, and it was enthroned as one of the five trees of the Hindu paradise. “The palmyra lives a thousand years,” eulogized a Tamil proverb, “and lasts another thousand years when it dies.”
The palmyra is perhaps the least elegant of all palms. It thrives alone where others would die in arid sands, sinking roots as deep as forty feet to draw water far beneath the surface.32 Almost as straight as the mast of a ship, the palmyra reaches a height of from sixty to ninety feet, with an erect plume of fan-shaped leaves at its top. The leaves are stiff, with none of the grace of the coconut’s long drooping leaves, and they are of manifold use: in the thatch- ing of houses among the lower classes, in the manufacture of mats, baskets, and vessels of almost every description; and the slips of the young leaf form the traditional stationery of southern India. The palmyra is the only palm whose wood is of value, supplying the finest rafters. The greater praise for the palmyra, however, is for the value of its products as food. The young root is edible, as is the ripe fruit, but the unripe fruit is greatly preferable “inasmuch as it contains the purest, most wholesome, and most refreshing jelly in existence.”
The most highly valued product of the palmyra is the saccharine sap or juice of the tree. The unfermented juice, called “sweet toddy,” is used without cooking or preparation and is a staple in the diet of the Nadar tappers, who take it early in the morning before they begin their labor. When the juice of the palmyra is allowed to ferment, a process which takes but a few hours, a sweet liquor or toddy is produced.” Both the sweet and the hard toddy were sold locally for cash by the tappers, but in the regions of the palmyra forest, where the industry was the foundation of eco- nomic life, most of the palmyra juice was boiled into a hard, coarse sugar called jaggery, or into palmgur candies. This was the work of the Nadar women, who collected firewood and boiled the juice over a slow fire in large earthen pots. When the juice thickened, it was poured either into coconut shells or into pits dug in the ground for the purpose. The hard, black jaggery cakes were often eaten as the midday meal of the tappers, but most of it was sold, either for low-grade sugar or for the distillation of arrack, the native “gin.”
The work of the panaiyeri, or climber, begins before daybreak, and in the course of the day, working until noon and then again from late afternoon until night, he will ascend thirty to fifty trees, climbing each twice–sometimes three times to extract the juice.
During the season in which the sap flows, from March through the hottest months of the year until September, the tapper can never leave the trees unattended, even for a day. As a dairy cow must not be left unmilked, so the palmyra-proverbially “the Shanars’ cow” -will cease to yield its juice if untapped. The sap of the palmyra is drawn from the flower stalk at the top of the tree, which when bruised or sliced yields, drop by drop, about one pint of juice each day. The flow is received in small earthen pots attached to each stalk. The sap is then collected two or three times during the day by the climber, who with each climb trims the stalk to allow free flow of the juice.
Climbing the palmyra is both dangerous and arduous. Each year, many of the climbers, no matter how skillful, fall from the trees to die or to remain crippled for life. In ascending the tree, the climber clasps the trunk with joined hands, supporting his weight with the soles of his feet, which, held together by a short span of rope, bend inward like grasping hands. Then in a series of springs, in which both hands and feet move together, the climber ascends the tree as rapidly as a man could walk a distance of equal length.37 In years of climbing, the body of the tapper becomes twisted, his powerful chest scarred, and his hands and feet like the enormous paws of some animal.
The season in which the sap of the palmyra flows is only six months in length, and the yield varies with the rainfall. The climber owned neither the land nor the trees which he tapped- only the sharp, tappers’ knife, a few earthen pots, and meager clothing. His home was a palmyra-thatched hut, and if the palmyra tope, or grove, was situated far from his own village, he would leave to take seasonal residence with his family among the trees. The tapper received no money for his labor, but a share system gave the produce of alternative days to the climber and to the owner. Whether in the districts to the north of the Tambraparni, where the owners of the lands were Maravars, Naickers, Vellalas, or others of high caste, or in the barren palmyra forests of Tiruchendur, where the Nadans held the land, the climber was bound to the trees by tradition and an accumulation of debts. The profits of climbing were small and usually exhausted by the panaiyeri two or three months after the end of the season, and, even with the cottage industries from the by-products of the palmyra, such as mat- or basket-making by the women, the climber had little recourse other than to seek the enfettering advances from the owners.38 Even in the best of yields, the climber led a marginal existence, his poverty “as deep as that of the Pariar and Puller slaves in the rice-growing districts.”
Tamilians are not the only ones to extract and value the toddy palm’s sugar. All along the Malabar coast, taal and talgud are well known and as loved as they are in the south, though I don’t know if they carry community-caste associations as much in those regions as here. On the road to Banteay Srei in Cambodia way back in 2015, we came upon women cooking the sap down into a much more golden jaggery than I’ve ever seen here, and setting them in small rings fashioned from palm leaves. The strikingly lighter color possibly owes to the use of bleaching chemicals. I’m told that they make rice cakes with fruit pulp, rice, and jaggery, too.
Caryota urens: KITHUL hakuru
The fishtail palm is Thippili pana in Tamil [literally, long pepper panamaram owing to the long pepper-like appearance of its flowers and fruits] is native to Sri Lanka, India, Myanmar and Malaysia.
Although the fishtail palm grows all along India’s Coromandel coast, in the Western Ghats, it is not tapped as fervently as the panamaram–at most just for local, family uses. Otherwise, it is used just ornamentally: I’ve seen it in many a common hotel parking lot. My photographs below are mostly from a tree I found at the Auroville Botanical Garden, profusely showering its flowers at its base, and dotting the leaves of saplings growing below with yellow pollen.
It is in Sri Lanka, however, that the palm acquires a cultural and culinary centrality that mirrors that of the toddy palm in Tamil Nadu’s southern districts, and here Yvonne Everett’s 1995 ethnobotanical study of “The Kithul Palm” in highland Sri Lanka provides the best overviews of the palm’s landscapes and its traditional tapping. I quote and excerpt from that work at some length:
Caryota urens is native to lowland rain forests of tropical Asia including Sri Lanka. The genus Caryota has 27 species found across tropical Asia to the Malay archipelago, Australia, and New Guinea. The name Caryota stems from the Greek karyotes, meaning “nutlike.” This is in reference to the small, hard fruits of the palms. Urens translates as “burning,” and is linked to the irritating, needle-like crystals found on the outer shell of the fruits. A tall, unarmed palm, kitul grows to an average height of 15-20 m and diameter of 30-50 cm. It has a sparse crown of very large bipinnate leaves, often 2-3 meters long and 1-2 meters wide … the leaves are glabrous, dark, green and shiny. The fishtail-like shape of the outward-turned 15 cm long leaflets give the palm its English name [162, 164].
In Sri Lanka kitul palms are common in the mid and low country interior up to 1,500 m. In the lowlands, the palms occur predominantly in the natural forest. In contrast, in the largely deforested mid-elevation highlands palms are managed in small holder forest gardens. These planted gardens are dense stands of uneven- aged, mixed species of perennials surrounding individual family homes … Tree canopies on adjoining plots commonly blend together into neighborhood patches of forest-like vegetation.
This vegetation structure provides a suitable habitat for the 17% of garden trees that are remnants of the native forest flora and are not specifically planted but rather persist as self-seeding or animal dispersed “volunteers”. The kitul, dispersed by civet cats (Civettictis sp.) and only occasionally transplanted, is one of the most common volunteers. [165] […]
Unlike some other sugar palms, kitul is not easy to tap. The process of tapping the sensitive kitul flower and maintaining the flow of sweet sap requires skill and experience. A specialized occupational caste of tappers has emerged as a traditional cottage industry of sugar and alcohol producers in Sri Lanka. In some areas, a unique set of tenure relationships between palm owners and tappers developed. In the past, tapping was a major source of income for many people in the lowlands, particularly in villages bordering the forest. Many tappers traditionally gleaned their toddy from palms inside the forest. […]
In the highlands, a different culture of tapping has emerged. Typically there will be several people in each village known as tappers who tap all of the palms in their neighborhood. Here the palms are found in privately owned forest gardens. In this case, the tree belongs to the landowner. When a palm approaches flowering, the owner notifies a tapper. In general, from the time of the first sweet toddy production, the tapper and the tree’s owner then share the yield equally by alternating days. [166]
The tappers’ skill lies in maximizing the sap flow to the inflorescence while retarding flower extension. When a palm is about to flower, the inflorescence becomes visible in the tree top. About two months after a young inflorescence first emerges, the tapper climbs the palm and carefully removes the outer layers of the sheath or spathe protecting the flowers. As discussed below, tapping activities are typically carried out by men. The tapper ties a forked stick into place under the inflorescence to replace the spathe’s supportive function. Next, he gently cuts and removes the very hard, protective interior spathe layers covering the inflorescence. Tappers say that the number of layers indicates the number of individual flowers to come from the inflorescence, ranging from one to twelve. The tapper makes a roughly 15 cm long, 5 cm wide, and 2 cm deep incision in the side of the flower.
Tappers apply a special “medicine” in this cut to stimulate sap flow. The exact recipe for the medicine is the individual tapper’s secret. In the Welimada area, the ingredients include chilies, pepper, salt, garlic, mustard seed, ginger, cloves, coconut grounds, citrus fruit, and vinegar. Salt, lime, saffron, and lime juice are used in other areas. The ingredients are ground to a pulp, rolled into a ball, wrapped in a banana leaf, and briefly placed in the hot coals of a fire. The tapper applies the resulting paste in the incision on the flower and tightly packs the hole with fluffy fibers from the inside of the palm bark. Tappers report that the paste seals the cut and keeps the area clean; thus, rotting is reduced. The tappers say that the medicine’s function is to “soften” the flowers.
Once he has applied the paste, the tapper gently taps the flower stalk with a special mallet to bruise the area between the stem and the incision. He inserts three needles made from kited, citrus wood, or bamboo on top and on the two sides of the flower between the palm stem and the hole. More of the medicinal paste is spread over this area. Next, he takes strips of cloth and tightly wraps them around the flower base and up over the incision. Agave fiber, kitul, or coconut twine are then wrapped around the cloth. Then he places four 30-40 cm long sticks cut from kitul leaf stalks on each side of the flower, tying them tightly to give the inflorescence support and avoid wind breakage. Beyond the first hole and tied area the tapper cuts a new incision … Again, he applies the medicine in the hole and carefully inserts a needle of citrus, bamboo, or kitul through the flower at the incision point. The hole is tightly sealed with fluffy fiber. To keep the flower stalk from further flowering, the tapper wraps cloth tightly around the inflorescence. Then he cuts off the end of the inflorescence (about 30 cm) and a bit of sap flows out. Three days later the tapper climbs the tree again and cuts a thin slice from the end of the inflorescence. The next day the tapper checks his work. If he finds a small 1/2 cm shoot emerging from the cut, or if the cut is covered with small droplets of sap, the tapper has succeeded. If on the other hand, a longer shoot has emerged, then the treatment has failed and repairs must be undertaken. In the latter case, the tapper takes three needles soaked in salt water and rubbed with coconut oil and inserts them around the second incision. He then waits for three more days in hopes that he will block further growth. If the process is successful, a clay pot covered with wire mesh to keep out insects and squirrels is hung below the end of the inflorescence by tying it with kitul or coconut coir rope to the leaves. The tapper then cuts a thin slice off the end of the inflorescence every evening. He climbs the tree twice daily, in the early morning and in the late afternoon to empty the pot which fills with sweet toddy in the interim.
The quality and quantity of sap flow differs considerably with geographic location, season, site quality, and probably with as yet unstudied genetic variation in the palms. Results based on interviews with tappers and farmers in two climatic regions indicate that palms begin to flower sooner and give higher yields in the Kotmale area than in the Welimada area [16-167].
Kithul sap is boiled down into a syrup or treacle or kithul pani as it’s called locally. Even further boiling produces a jaggery that will set and keep: kithul hakuru. This kithul is the taste of the classic Sri Lankan watalappam and the kiri pani: yogurt (made from buffalo or cow milk), set in earthenware kiri hatti that you see in the accompanying images and drizzled with kithul pani.
Phoenix sylvestris (L). Roxb: KHAJUR GUD
Khajur [or Khejur] gud is the undisputed queen of them all. “Almost all the palm sugar produced in Bengal is made from the wild date (Phoenix sylvestris). In certain parts of the Sunderbans a small amount is produced from the palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis),” reports Annett in 1913 (284). He adds: “Date sugar has always been a favorite luxury with the native population… preferred in its own districts to cane sugar” (285). Unlike the rough crudity of the palmyrah palm, matching much more the elegance of the tall fishtail palm, the Khajur tree is a beautiful one. “Khejur bag choto ghar/ eita hoila Jasahar,” goes a saying in Bangladesh, indicating that Jessore of Bangladesh is famous for graceful beauty of Phoenix sylvestris [quoted in Bandhopadhyaya et al. ND: 691]. In truth, the tree grows almost all over India, though it is tapped for sugar primarily in Bengal and becomes there the stuff of emotion and poetry. Ratna-di, as close to a Bengali aunt from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as I ever had, used to make Nolen Gurer Sondesh for us, and would laugh about the special-ness of such sweets: only from that one tree, only in that one season. Its rarity was its wonder. [Pictured above right: a sondesh variety that hides a small portion of pure liquid gur on the inside, brought by the same Kolkata Auntyji from whom I learned to make Gaund ki laddoos]
Indeed, the enthusiasm of Bengalis from both sides of the border for khajur gud is hard to capture without efflorescence. A Bengali riddle reported in Bandhopadhyaya et al. ND: 691 provides some indication of this jaggery: Kanta bhara anga heri sudirgha aakar/ pran aache shire tar kesher sambhar/ jihobar agrete madhu· bindu bindu jhare/ jurai rasona khani pan kari nare: I’m tall with a spiny body/ I have vitality only in my head full of hairs / honey dews fall from the tip of my tongue/ humans beings are satiated by my juice–who am I? And a a saying from Hooghly district in West Bengal [Bandhopadhyaya et al. 692], which Hardgrove perhaps unwittingly echoes in his likening of the palmyrah palm to the Nadar’s milch cow, is quite plain: Kather gai matir dona/ buddhi thake to due khana–there is a wooden milch cow and earthen milk container, if you have any intelligence you will milk and drink!
The season for extracting sap from the Indian sugar date palm is winter: October to January, which is notably before the flowering season which starts in January. [For palmyrah palms it is March to June, and after the emergence of inflorescences.] Trees grow wild or are cultivated, but the date palm takes 10-12 years to produce sap, palmyra palms take 12-15.
Here is Annett again, describing the tapping process [1913: 297-8]:
The tapping is a delicate operation commenced in October and done in several stages. With the heavy claws, all the old leaves are cut off below the crown, and all the leaves from one side of it leaving only a few at the top, the bases of the petioles and the sheaths being carefully removed. Then with the lighter daws [bill hooks] the outer zone of the loose soft tissue is pared off in long slices leaving only a thin covering of it over the sap-supplying inner zone which corresponds to the woody zone in the older wood of all palms. Very great care most be taken not to expose this inner tissue at this stage: otherwise the tree is sure to rot and die, as often happens when the operation is entrusted to inexperienced hands. The experts at this work are called Siulis [Seulis] or Gachis [also a caste nomenclature, not unlike Nadar]. After this first operation-the trees are given about 8 days rest, by which time the fine covering of soft tissue gets a little hardened and begins to crack. The second operation consists in removing this covering, great care being taken not to cut into the inner zone, which is now for the first time simply exposed. Then comes a rest of 12 to 14 days which brings us to the beginning of November. The Gachi as a rule divides his trees into six convenient groups called palas, each containing 50 or 60 trees, the number which he can operate on in one day, 300 to 400 being the total number which one man can manage. Next after midday he cuts two eye-shaped notches 3-4 inches long and about 1 inch deep at the base, their lower sides being straight and converging to a point, below which a split bamboo spout is driven into the tree. About 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon an earthenware pot is suspended under the spout and the juice which trickles down is collected. The pots are removed early next morning, at 6 or 7 A.M., before the sun gets on them, and the juice boiled into sugar. On the following night juice is again collected generally without renewing the cut though the surface is as a rule cleaned with the hard stem of a palm-leaf. A much smaller quantity is generally obtained than on the first night. On the third evening also more juice is, as a rule, collected, but it is only small in amount and of very poor quality. Each night’s juice has a distinctive name given to it. That of the first night is called Jiran (rest), of the second night Dokat (second cut) and of the third night Tekat (third cut). On the fourth and fifth nights no juice is collected. After six days the cut is renewed a little, and for three days juice is again obtained, being given the same names as before. The tapping process goes on in this way throughout the season. The first 2-3 weeks’ supply is very valuable, for the gur produced from it, called Nolen-gur [“new gud”], has a very pleasant smell and is much appreciated by the consumers. It fetches a high price.
Of course it is not to be supposed that in all cases such a regular system of tapping is carried out. Sometimes the trees are cut for 2-3 days in succession, and sometimes they may be cut every fourth day. But such frequent tapping soon destroys the trees.
In other regions where Phoenix sylvestris (L). Roxb grows, fruits sometimes come to local markets. These are small red-yellow dates which turn black as they ripen further, not commercially prized but a on-your-walk-home munching snack that nonetheless dots many a childhood memory of people and place. The demand for patali gur is such that the khajur trees in tapping areas are rarely allowed to fruit, so these can only be found in markets like our own, where they are sold as Echampazham.
Likewise, adulteration with cane sugar in the market for patali gud, as khajur gud is known in its solid form, is widespread, according to some–so it pays to obtain this from a good, trusted source. The taste of a true Bengali sandesh is this jaggery, as is the flavor and color of a classic payesh.
Note: Khajur/ Patali/ Nolen gud is a product of the Indian sugar date palm, also called the silver date palm or the wild sugar date palm. This is Phoenix sylvestris (L). Roxb, NOT Phoenix dactylifera, which is the date palm of origins further West of us, introduced in India possibly by Alexander or the Arabs in the 3rd or 7th c., but which is far more valued for its fruit to be tapped for toddy and sugar. Many online sources confuse the two, including reputed ones like the Locavore.
Cocos nucifera: madda god, suri god
Coconut trees, of all palms, are the ones with the most valuable fruits. Coconut cropping is primary, though the mentions of cocoanut liquor in old texts like Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa [Canto IV, v. 42] and the Visnudharma Sutra (100-300 CE), suggest that tapping has been an ancient activity for this palm, too. In present times, however, jaggery production is more secondary, generally reserved for older and less-producing trees which become “sap trees,” though these are often the tallest.
Here is Drury’s 1873 account of tapping and jaggery production, much briefer than others as it happens in much the way the palmyra is tapped:
The mode of extracting the toddy is the same as that used in other palms (see Borassus). Spirit distilled from the toddy is called arrack. Good vinegar is also made from it, particularly at Mahe. One hundred gallons of toddy yield 25 of arrack. To procure the sugar or jaggery, the fresh toddy is boiled down over a slow fire, when the syrup is further evaporated to the brown coarse sugar. This jaggery is mixed with chunam for making a strong cement, enabling it to resist great heat and to take a fine polish. The toddy is called Tenna-kulloo, and Narillie in Dukhanie. If taken before sunrise it is very refreshing and delicious. The native doctors recommend it in consumption; and it is said that if regularly taken, it is good for delicate persons suffering from habitual constipation. [Drury 1873: 150]
It is perhaps no surprise that coconut jaggery is today known best in Goa, where it is madda god or suriche/suri god/सुरी गॉड [presumably: su-ruchi, or good tasting gud] is pyramid jaggery because it’s shaped in pyramidal moulds, or Goan jaggery, used by Goan Catholics in recipes where jaggery is required. Goa is after all, is ex-Portuguese Catholic country where brews of coconut wine and fermented cashew apple feni could once be found in most homes, much as rice wine is common in Coorg. Coconut toddy shops abound in Kochi’s backwaters, but it’s unclear if the jaggery as such is so common there, too
Post Script
Cane jaggeries, for their part, deserve separate treatment — if jaggeries like Kerala’s Marayur are any indication, even cane sugar production is a hyperlocal activity, producing varied results from place to place. Marayoor jaggery and Central Travancore jaggery, both of which are cane sugars, have been awarded local GI-tags.
I’ll end with an image of three cane jaggery types: our local “mandai vellam” (for its head-like shape), a cane jaggery from Northern Nigeria called mazarkwaila, sent to me by my very dear friend Ozoz Sokoh of Kitchen Butterfly, and of course Mexico’s piloncillo, from Mi Tienda in Houston, which gets its name from the pylon-shaped moulds used to pour and set. This one is dark (oscuro) not blanco likely because it’s made from purple sugarcane rather than green–here we would say Pongal karumbu because the purple-stalked one is what we use for Pongal-time offerings, as opposed to aalay karumbu or factory cane. The sugar cane farmer in the image below is the one who helped me understand the difference, back in Thanjavur in 2021, by juicing each and making me taste the flavor difference.
SOURCES CONSULTED
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