DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

5.8] SESAMUM OIL 137
The word taila is used in classical Sanskrit, and most Indian languages,
for ‘ oil’ in general, but means literally ‘ from tila (sesamum)’. The
first widely used Indian vegetable food-oil was derived from sesamum.
The solitary, late-vedic reference to sesamum (known to pre-Aryans) AV.
1.7.2. is doubtful (tailasya or taulasya) though the crop seems to
have been known to the Indus culture. Vedic society, and the frontier
regions, laid the greatest stress upon pastoral foodstuffs, while only
butter-fats were used in ritual; thus Panini mentions tila thrice but not
taila explicitly. The nourishing seed seems first to have been eaten
boiled into a rich gruel with rice. The Arth., on the other hand, has over
41 references to taila, not to speak of 4 or more to tila, which shows
how the economy changed from pastoral to agrarian. Correspondingly,
we have names Tilottama (‘as fine as sesamum’), for the loveliest of
the Apsaras houris in heaven (Mbh. 1.203-4 ; reason for name,
1,203.17) who turned the heads of gods and demons by her beauty.
Black sesamum is still used in the tilanjali food ceremony for the
Manes : tila seeds (as representing both wild and cultivated plants,
cf. SB. 9.1.1.3) are the older ritual gifts. The sesamum is particularly
to be given at the beginning of the sun’s northern course, i.e. passage
into Capricorn (three weeks too late in the current Indian calendar),
the famous makara-samkranti, which incidentally comes about the time
of the second sesamum crop in drier parts of the country. With this is
connected a special rite, known in western India as the sugad,
wherein specially made small earthern vessels (su-ghata) are filled
with tila and first-fruits of all sorts, decorated on the outside with
turmeric and red pigment, and worshipped by the women; the women
that are married but not widowed exchange such pots among
themselves as gifts. That is, we have again the ancient purna-kumbha
fertility rite not known to the puranas or brahmm ritual as such. That
the twelvefold division of the Zodiac (and the particular sign) do not
belong to the oldest Indian calendar shows how new ritual could
arise when suited to the means of production and the mentality of the
producer. The later coconut made its way into all sorts of ritual, and
has a festival day of its own in the west (August full-moon) which
has grown out of the coastal strip less than two centuries ago. It