Thali ( , meaning "plate" or "tray") or bhojanam ( , meaning "full meal") is a round platter used to serve food in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Thali is also used to refer to an Indian-style meal made up of a selection of various dishes which are served on a platter.
History
Early history
According to archeologist Bindeshwari Prasad Sinha, dish-on-stand and simple dishes belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization may be regarded as the prototype of Indian dishes as thalis but these do not have accompanying bowls commonly seen with thalis.
[Potteries in Ancient India. Page 139, Bindeshwari Prasad Sinha, Department of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology.] According to Sinha the distinctive thali accompanying bowls instead appears in the Painted Grey Ware culture.
[Potteries in Ancient India. Page 139, Bindeshwari Prasad Sinha, Department of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology.] Archeologist B.B. Lal similarly suggests food was eaten from the Painted Grey Ware dishes and bowls. B.B Lal notes that "typical dinner set in the Painted Grey Ware consists of the thali (dish), katora (bowl) and lota (drinking vessel),"
/ref> Earliest textual sources on thali comes from
Ayurveda, Sangam and medieval period
Indian cookbooks.
A chapter in ancient Sushruta Samhita text is dedicated to dining etiquette, method of serving food and proper placement of each dish before the diner, it is the earliest known textual evidence on thali presentation.[An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita: Uttara-tantra, pp556, Kunjalal Bhishagratna]
This dining and serving etiquette from Sushruta Samhita is also adopted in medieval Indian cookbooks with some variations.["Lokopakara" Agri-History Bulletin No. 6 - (Trans) Ayangarya, Y. L. Nene, Nalini Sadhale, Valmiki Sreenivasa (Trans), 2004]
The Manasollasa texts chapter Annabhoga describes dining etiquette, method of serving food and the way in which district officers and other nobles should be treated at dinner in the court.[Life in Mānasôllāsa, P116, P. Arundhati, 1994]
The Ksemakutuhalam culinary text advises the cook to serve boiled rice in the middle of the plate. Pulse, meat, vegetables and fish are placed (in that order) on the right, and broths, drinks, water and pickles on the left.[Kṣemakutūhalam by Kṣemaśarma, Sanskrit treatise . D. K. Ved, Darshan Shankar, page 308 · 2009]
In Ayurvedic tradition, six tastes known as Shadrasa is used to classify foods according to their qualities for ideal meal. These six tastes include; sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter, astringent. Thali presentation often includes all six of these flavors.[Textbook of Ayurveda - Book 1 - Page 310, Vasant Lad · 2002]
Foreign accounts
Greek ambassador
Megasthenes[Gochberg, Donald S., et al., ed. "World Literature and Thought: Volume I: The Ancient Worlds"; Fort Worth, TX; Harcourt Brace; 1997, pp. 410-416.] in his work
Indica notes the dining manners of
Mauryan Empire court:
Portuguese ambassador Domingo Paes[Robert Sewell (1900). A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India. Asian Educational Services. pp. 263.] who visited the court of Vijayanagar Empire notes:
Portuguese ambassador Duarte Barbosa in coastal trading town of Kozhikode in Kerala notes the way local chieftains dined:[The Book of Duarte Barbosa: Including the coasts of Malabar, eastern India, further India, China, and the Indian archipelago by Duarte Barbosa, Mansel Longworth Dames, Fernão de Magalhães, page 89, 1989.]
Meera Mukherjee suggests tripod or three-footed stool may have been similar to "Mukkali" stool, a type of vernacular furniture more commonly found in southern parts of India.[Craftsmen of India - Volume 44 - Page 395, Meera Mukherjee, 1978] While Chowki, Palagai or Bajot, a four-legged stool are more commonly used with thali today.
Kansa metal
Thalis are traditionally made with Kansa metal, a mixture of
copper and
tin. Although it is similar to bronze, Kansa has higher tin content than bronze. The fifth chapter of the text
Rasaratna Samuchaya is dedicated to Kansa with significant information about Kansa kitchenware, diningware and its benefits.
Thali/Bhojanam meal
Thali refers to the metal plate that a thali meal may be served on, while
Bhojanam refers to full meals. Thali is popular method of serving meals in South Asia.
The idea behind a thali is to offer different flavours of sweet, salt, bitter, sour, astringent and spicy on one single plate (technically the last two are actually forms of
chemesthesis rather than true flavours). According to Indian food custom, a proper meal should be a perfect balance of all these six flavours. Restaurants typically offer a choice of vegetarian or meat-based thalis. Vegetarian bhojanams are very typical and commonplace in
Tamil Nadu canteens
Dishes served in a thali vary from region to region in the Indian subcontinent and are usually served in small bowls, called
katori in India. These katoris are placed along the edge of the round tray, the actual thali; sometimes a steel tray with multiple compartments is used. Typical dishes include rice,
dal, vegetables,
roti,
papad, dahi (yogurt), small amounts of
chutney or pickle, and a sweet dish.
[ "Decording Indian Cuisine", in Spicy Thali blog, 26 June 2011. (Entry. Retrieved 3 June 2012)] Rice or roti is the usual main dish that occupies the central portion of the thali, while side dishes like vegetable curries and other aforementioned delicacies are lined circularly along the round thali. Depending on the restaurant or the region, the thali consists of delicacies native to that region. In general, a thali begins with different types of breads such as puris or chapatis (rotis) and different vegetarian specialities (
Curry). However, in South India and Southeast Asia, rice is the only staple served with bhojanams. Thalis or Bhojanams are sometimes referred to by the regional characteristic of the dishes they contain. For example, one may encounter
Andhra cuisine bhojanam,
Nepalese cuisine thali, Rajasthani thali,
Gujarati cuisine thali, Maharashtrian thali, Manipuri
chakluk,
Tamil cuisine unavu and
Thai cuisine unavu. In many parts of
South Asia,
Southeast Asia and the
Caribbean, the bread and the rice portions are not served together in the thali. Typically, the bread is offered first with rice being served afterwards, often in a separate bowl or dish.
Affordability
The Economic Survey of India 2020 has a section called
Thalinomics, the survey found that the vegetarian thalis became 29% more affordable compared to 2006-07, while non-veg thalis became 18% more affordable.
See also
Further reading
