Food and Diet During Paryushan

Even Jains who do not undertake a full fast eat differently during Paryushan. Root vegetables go, green vegetables often go, and eating stops at sunset. Each restriction has a stated reason, and knowing the reason makes the practice considerably easier to keep than following a list.

The principle underneath all of it

Jain dietary practice follows from a single doctrine: living beings are graded by how many senses they possess, and harm is weighed accordingly. Humans and animals have five senses; insects fewer; and at the bottom are ekendriya beings, with the sense of touch alone — life in earth, water, fire, air and plants.

Jain food practice cannot avoid harming one-sensed life, since plants are one-sensed. What it does instead is minimise the count and the severity. Every rule below is an application of that arithmetic.

Root vegetables and anantkay

Root vegetables — potato, onion, garlic, carrot, radish, beetroot, ginger, turmeric, yam, sweet potato, groundnut — are classed as anantkay, literally "infinite-bodied".

The classification rests on a specific claim. Most plant bodies house one soul. An anantkay body is held to house infinitely many souls sharing a single body, so that pulling up one potato destroys not one life but an uncountable number. A leaf picked from a plant that continues to live is a lesser act than uprooting the whole organism.

Many Jains avoid these year-round. Many more eat them ordinarily but give them up entirely for Paryushan, which is why the restriction is so visible during the festival.

How to tell

The practical test used is whether the part eaten grows below ground and whether the plant regenerates from it. Not every underground part is anantkay — and the lists differ slightly between communities, so a local list is worth having.

Green vegetables

Many families give up green vegetables as well during Paryushan, and particularly on parva days — the second, fifth, eighth, eleventh and fourteenth of each lunar fortnight. Fresh greens harbour small insect life that cannot be removed by washing, and harvesting them destroys plants at their most vital. The usual substitute is dried and stored food: pulses, grains, dried gourds and preserved preparations.

Not eating after sunset

Ratri bhojan tyag — giving up night eating — is one of the most consistently kept Jain practices, and during Paryushan it is close to universal. Insects are drawn to light and to food after dark, and are easily killed in cooking or swallowed unnoticed; and food eaten late is held to sit undigested and dull the attention. The stricter form is chauvihar, in which even water is given up between sunset and sunrise.

Other restrictions

• Unfiltered water — water is boiled and cooled before drinking, and traditionally is treated as usable for a limited number of hours before reboiling.
• Stale and fermented food — anything kept beyond its permitted period develops fresh life, so food is cooked and eaten the same day. Fermented items and alcohol are excluded outright.
• Honey — avoided year-round; its collection destroys bee life.
• Multi-seeded and certain fruits — some families avoid fruits with many seeds during the parva, each seed being a potential life.
• Sprouts — a germinated seed is a plant that has begun to live, so sprouted pulses are avoided.

What people actually eat

The restrictions remove a great deal, and the cuisine that developed around them is deliberately built from what remains — pulses, grains, dried gourds, yoghurt, dairy and asafoetida in place of onion and garlic.

• Khichdi, dal and rice, plain rotli with ghee
• Moong, chana and other pulse preparations
• Dahi and buttermilk-based dishes such as kadhi
• Dried and preserved vegetables kept for the season
• Fruit, taken before sunset
• For those keeping ayambil: plain boiled grain and pulses, no oil, ghee, dairy, sugar or spice

Asafoetida (hing) is the standard replacement for onion and garlic and does most of the work in giving depth to a dish. Cooking is timed so the last meal is finished before sunset, which in September in India means eating around 6 pm.

If you are hosting or cooking for a Jain guest

Practice varies, so the reliable move is to ask rather than assume. But a few points cover most situations:

• No onion, garlic, potato or any root vegetable — including as a hidden base in a sauce, stock or masala.
• Serve before sunset, or the meal cannot be eaten at all.
• Check for honey, gelatine, rennet in cheese, and eggs in baked goods.
• Someone keeping upvas will take nothing but boiled water — and this is not a refusal of hospitality.
• Someone keeping ayambil needs plainer food than seems reasonable to offer a guest. Offering it correctly is the courtesy.

After Paryushan

Most people return to their ordinary diet afterwards, and the tradition does not treat that as failure — the parva is a period of intensified practice, not a permanent standard imposed on householders. It is common, though, to keep one thing: a food given up for good, or the habit of not eating after sunset. The intent of the eight days is that something remains changed.