Food for humans is more than a mere biological necessity. It is also a cultural construct, and cultural meanings underlie all aspects of the human relationship to food: production, preparation, exchange, and consumption (Lévi-Strauss 1969; Douglas 1975). The cultural construction of food, furthermore, is part of the broader social construction of reality (Berger and Luckman 1967; Berger 1969). Cultural ideas and norms relating to food are thus linked to other significant aspects of culture such as kinship, purity, ritual, ethical values, and social stratification. As Khare (1976) has argued convincingly, no aspect of food can be studied adequately except within the broader cultural system to which it belongs.

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of the roles food plays in defining types of ascetic ideology and levels of ascetic practice in India. Even within the context of asceticism, however, food needs to be studied within the broader cultural system of India, in spite of – one might indeed argue precisely because of– the fact that the Indian ascetic ideology is deeply anti-cultural, rejecting most social and cultural products and categories.

The Role of Food in the Indian Socio-Cosmic Order

It will be useful, therefore, to examine briefly at the outset the place food occupies in the Indian cultural system. I deal here principally with what Khare (1976) calls the primordial level of food circulation, namely, the role food plays in Indian cosmological speculations.