Unfortunately two individuals that I know,
@CETMoorthy1 and
@Vanthi_Off dip this in milk or tea and eat it. Sushruta should take rebirth and talk them out of it! 😔
The connection b/w the South Indian Murukku (that crunchy, coiled, savory snack we all love) & the ancient medical treatise of the Sushruta Samhita is 1 of the most brilliant, hidden examples of how ancient Indian snack food was originally engineered as preventative medicine.
When people think of the Sushruta Samhita, they immediately think of plastic surgery, rhinoplasty & complex surgical tools. But Sushruta was a holistic genius. He knew that the ultimate goal of medicine was to ensure a patient never needed surgery in the 1st place.
Volume 1 (Sutra Sthana, Chapter 46) contains an entire, massive section dedicated to Ahara-tattva (the nutritional science of food). And this is where the fascinating origin story of the Murukku begins.
In the Sushruta Samhita, Sushruta categorizes deep-fried pastry items under the broad family of Bhakshyas (cooked, chewable foods). Among them, he singles out a distinct item called Śaṣkulī. Over centuries, as the Sanskrit word Śaṣkulī traveled across different regions of India, it underwent phonetic shifts: In the North & West, the word evolved through Prakrit into Chakli (retaining the circular, coiled meaning).
In the South cultures translated the physical action of making it, twisting the dough giving us the beautiful descriptive name Murukku (which literally means twisted in Tamil).
Sushruta was deeply concerned with the concept of Agni (metabolic digestive fire). He categorized foods based on whether they were Guru (heavy to digest)/Laghu (light to digest). He noted that deep-frying grain dough in ghee makes it highly caloric & strength-giving (Bala-vardhana), but it can be incredibly heavy for the stomach.
To fix this chemical problem, ancient Indian cooks did something brilliant that Sushruta documented: they introduced Masha (Black Gram/Urad Dal) into the rice flour matrix. By mixing rice flour with roasted, ground urad dal, they created a complete amino acid profile (rice is low in lysine but high in methionine, while dal is high in lysine but low in methionine).
A few might think why did Sushruta spend time documenting a fried, coiled snack in a medical text meant for surgeons? Because of shelf-life & thermodynamics.
In ancient India, monks, traders & soldiers traveling across vast empires needed food that met 3 strict scientific conditions:
- It could not contain moisture (water causes bacterial spoilage).
- It had to be compact & physically rigid so it would not crumble into dust in a horse carriage.
- It had to be nutrient-dense to sustain high physical exertion.
By taking the Śaṣkulī dough, piping it into tight, concentric, interlocking coils (which structurally reinforces the snack against breaking) & deep-frying it until 100% of the water content evaporated, ancient Indians invented the ultimate preservative-free, shelf-stable survival ration.
When you hear the crunch of a Murukku today, you are literally tasting a recipe that was vetted, chemically balanced & medically approved by the Father of Surgery himself, Acharya Sushruta, 1000s yrs ago.
So, the next time you serve Murukku/Chakli with tea, you can proudly tell your guests: You are not just eating a snack. You are consuming a highly engineered, ancient Ayurvedic military ration designed to preserve human tissue :))