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Abstract
This article conceptualizes the entanglements between home remedies, vernacular medical knowledge, and gender in Hindu middle-class urban households of early twentieth-century North India through the genre of printed healing recipes in Hindi and the space of the kitchen. It focuses particularly on the vibrant and eclectic “home recipes” written by Yashoda Devi, the leading woman Ayurvedic practitioner of the period. In the process, the paper attempts to theorize recipes as a distinct genre, often authored by women, and an arena where literate women’s voices came to be heard, recorded, and published in colonial India. Putting a spotlight on women kitchen pharmacists, the article shows how they were repositors, consumers, domestic doctors, writers, and transmitters of local, home-based health practices and quotidian preventive medicine. While often upholding idealizations of the “good” housewife, these printed recipes also conjoined gender identities and positive kitchen experiences, resting on authority and sharing between women in the field of everyday medicine. Finally, the article shows how these popular Ayurvedic recipes were often projected as upholders of noninvasive, low-cost medicine beyond the regimentations of the colonial state.
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Devi, Yashoda, ed. 1909. Strī Dharma Śikṣak [Teacher of women’s duties]. July. (A Hindi monthly journal dealing with female education and socioethical issues).
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Devi, Yashoda. 1911. Garbh Rakṣā Vidhān [Statutes for safe pregnancy]. Allahabad: Sri Ram Sharma.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1912. Ghar kā Vaid [Household doctor]. Allahabad: Banita Hitaishi Press.
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Devi, Yashoda, ed. 1913. Strī Dharma Śikṣak. March.
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Devi, Yashoda, ed. 1924. Strī Cikitsak [Female doctor]. January. (A Hindi monthly journal devoted to the treatment of female diseases).
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Devi, Yashoda. 1926. Narī Svāsthya Rakṣā: Ārogya Vidhān arthāt Strī Rog Cikitsā [Women’s health care: Treatment of feminine diseases – a manual of Ayurvedic medicines of female diseases, together with the method of their preparation, and application or use]. Allahabad: Strī Auṣadhālay.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1930. Vaidik Ratn Saṃgraha arthāt Devī Anubhav Prakāś [A collection of Ayurvedic medical gems: The illustration of Devi’s medical experience]. Allahabad: Strī Auṣadhālay.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1931a. Dampati Ārogyatā Jīvanaśāstra arthāt Ratiśāstra-Santatiśāstra aur Devī Anubhav Prakāś [The science of healthy conjugal life: The science of sexual intercourse and procreation and light of Devi’s knowledge]. 2nd ed. Allahabad: Devi Pustakālay.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1931b. Nārī Dharmaśāstra Gṛh-Prabandh Śikṣā [Education on home management for women]. Allahabad: Devi Pustakālay.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1938. Nārī Śarīr Vijñān Strī Cikitsā Sāgar: Sambhog Vijñān [Women’s physiology and women’s medical treatment: Science of intercourse]. Allahabad: Strī Auṣadhālay.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1940a. Pradar Rog Cikitsā [Treatment of leukorrhea]. Allahabad: Sri Ram Sharma.
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Devi, Yashoda. 1940b. Ṛtu Doṣ (Māsik Dharma ke Rog): Nidān aur Cikitsā [Cures of menstrual disorders]. Allahabad: Sri Ram Sharma.
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Dutt, Kishori. 1918. Gṛhavastu Cikitsā [Treatment by household drugs]. Kanpur: Kishori Dutt.
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Editor. 1922. “Ḍôkṭarī Davāeṃ” [Allopathic doctor’s medicines]. Cām̐d [Moon] (November): 64–67.
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Editorial Note. 1923. “Gharelū Davāeṃ” [Home remedies]. Cām̐d (May–June): 82.
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Gharelū Cikitsā [Household cure]. 1929. By Anek Suvikhyāt Ḍôkṭar tathā Anubhavī Strī-Puruṣ [“Many Eminent Doctors and Experienced Men and Women”]. Allahabad: Cām̐d Kāryālay.
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“Gharelū Davāeṃ” [Home remedies]. 1922–1925. Cām̐d.
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“Gṛh Cikitsā” [Home cure]. 1930–1931. Sudhā [Nectar].
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“Gṛh Vijñān” [Home science]. 1932. Cām̐d.
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Mukhopadhyay, Kirankumar, comp. 1929. Dadī ke Nusk͟he arthāt Ghar kā Doctor [Grandmother’s recipes: The household doctor]. Allahabad: Kirankumar.
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Native Newspaper Reports of the United Provinces. 1907–9. Allahabad: Government Press.
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Report on the Administration of UP, 1907–8. 1908. Allahabad: Government Press.
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Sharma, Hanumanprasad. 1931. Āhār Vijñān [Science of food]. Banaras: Mahashakti Sahitya Mandir.
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Thakur, Jyotirmayi. 1932. Gharelū Vijñān [Domestic science]. Prayag: Adarsh Granthmala.
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Thakur, Jyotirmayi. 1933. Strī aur Saundary [Women and beauty]. Prayag: Mahila Hitkari Pustak Mala.
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Thakur, Jyotirmayi. 1948. Āhār aur Ārogyatā [Food and health]. Banaras: Sahitya Sevak Kāryālay.
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Vaidya, Babu Haridas. 1935. Cikitsā Cām̐droday: Pehlā Bhāg [Healing practices: Part 1]. Agra: Satya Vratt Sharma.
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Vaidya, Jagannath Prasad Shukla. 1921. Ārogyavidhān athvā Bhārat meṁ Mandāgni [Health solutions or indigestion in India]. Prayag: Standard Press.
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Vaidyaraj, Radhavallabh. 1916. Aupsargik Saṃnipāt [Plague]. Aligarh: Ārogyasindhu Kāryālay.
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Arnold, David. 1993. Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Berger, Rachel. 2013. Ayurveda Made Modern: Political Histories of Indigenous Medicine in North India, 1900–1955. New York: Palgrave.
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Berger, Rachel. 2018. “Alimentary Affairs: Historicizing Food in Modern India.” History Compass 16, no. 2: 1–10.
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Brandt, Susan H. 2022. Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Daechsel, Markus. 2006. The Politics of Self-Expression: The Urdu Middleclass Milieu in Mid-Twentieth Century India and Pakistan. New York: Routledge.
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Ernst, Waltraud, ed. 2002. Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 1800–2000. London: Routledge.
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Girija, K. P. 2022. Mapping the History of Ayurveda: Culture, Hegemony and the Rhetoric of Diversity. London: Routledge.
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Gould, William. 2005. Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Gupta, Charu. 2001. Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. Delhi: Permanent Black.
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Gupta, Charu. 2005. “Procreation and Pleasure: Writings of a Woman Ayurvedic Practitioner in Colonial North India.” Studies in History 21, no. 1: 14–44.
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Gupta, Charu. 2016. The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
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Gupta, Charu. 2020. “Vernacular Sexology from the Margins: A Woman and a Shudra.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 43, no. 6: 1105–1127.
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Gupta, Saumya. 2023. “Culinary Codes for an Emergent Nation: Prescriptions from Pak Chandrika, 1926.” Global Food History 9, no. 2: 175–193.
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Hardiman, David, and Projit Bihari Mukharji, eds. 2012. Medical Marginality in South Asia: Situating Subaltern Therapeutics. London: Routledge.
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Harrison, Mark. 1994. Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Haynes, Douglas E. 2023. The Emergence of Brand-Name Capitalism in Late Colonial India. London: Bloomsbury.
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Hussain, Syed Ejaz, and Mohit Saha, eds. 2015. India’s Indigenous Medical Systems: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach. Delhi: Primus.
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Langford, Jean M. 2002. Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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Leong, Elaine. 2018. Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Levine, Philippa. 2003. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. New York: Routledge.
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Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2009. Nationalizing the Body: The Market, Print and Daktari Medicine in Colonial Bengal, 1860–1930. London: Anthem Press.
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Mukherjee, Sujata. 2017. Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India: Women’s Health Care in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Bengal. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Nijhawan, Shobna. 2012. Women and Girls in the Hindi Public Sphere: Periodical Literature in Colonial North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Nijhawan, Shobna. 2018. Hindi Publishing in Colonial Lucknow: Gender, Genre, and Visuality in the Creation of a Literary “Canon”. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Orsini, Francesca. 2002. The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Prasad, Srirupa. 2015. Cultural Politics of Hygiene in India, 1890–1940: Contagions of Feeling. New York: Palgrave.
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Rai, Saurav Kumar. 2016. “Gendering Late Colonial Ayurvedic Discourse: United Provinces, c. 1890–1937.” History and Sociology of South Asia 10, no. 1: 21–34.
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Ray, Utsa. 2015. Culinary Culture in Colonial India: A Cosmopolitan Platter and the Middle-Class. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
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Sarkar, Tanika. 2001. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism. Delhi: Permanent Black.
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Savary, Luzia. 2014. “Vernacular Eugenics? Santati-Sastra in Popular Hindi Advisory Literature (1900–1940).” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 3: 381–397.
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Sengupta, Jayanta. 2010. “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal.” Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 1: 81–98.
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Sharma, Madhuri. 2012. Indigenous and Western Medicine in Colonial India. Delhi: Foundation Books.
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Singh, Maina Chawla. 2000. Gender, Religion, and “The Heathen Lands”: American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860–1940s. New York: Garland Publishing.
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Somesh, Dhruthi, Rohit Rao, Ranjini Murali, Seema Mandoli, and Harini Nagendra. 2022. Chasing Soppu. Bengaluru: Azim Premji University.
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Sreenivas, Mytheli. 2008. Wives, Widows and Concubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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Walsh, Judith. 2004. Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave Them Advice. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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Whaley, Leigh. 2011. Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1800. New York: Palgrave.
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White, David Gordon. 1996. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Search for other papers by Charu Gupta in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article conceptualizes the entanglements between home remedies, vernacular medical knowledge, and gender in Hindu middle-class urban households of early twentieth-century North India through the genre of printed healing recipes in Hindi and the space of the kitchen. It focuses particularly on the vibrant and eclectic “home recipes” written by Yashoda Devi, the leading woman Ayurvedic practitioner of the period. In the process, the paper attempts to theorize recipes as a distinct genre, often authored by women, and an arena where literate women’s voices came to be heard, recorded, and published in colonial India. Putting a spotlight on women kitchen pharmacists, the article shows how they were repositors, consumers, domestic doctors, writers, and transmitters of local, home-based health practices and quotidian preventive medicine. While often upholding idealizations of the “good” housewife, these printed recipes also conjoined gender identities and positive kitchen experiences, resting on authority and sharing between women in the field of everyday medicine. Finally, the article shows how these popular Ayurvedic recipes were often projected as upholders of noninvasive, low-cost medicine beyond the regimentations of the colonial state.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 176 | 176 | 27 |
| Full Text Views | 8 | 8 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 20 | 20 | 2 |
