Information on sesame (tila)

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 1/2/99 10:02:50 AM Central Standard Time,
ashanaidu at HOTMAIL.COM writes:

> 1. Page 17.
>     At Harappa an unmistakable "lump of charred sesame" was found at a
>  depth of about two metres (Referenced from M.S.Vats, Excavations at
>  Harappa, Manager of Publications, Delhi, 1940, vol 1, p 466).
>
>  2. Page 31.
>     The Rigveda mentions neither rice or wheat but only barley (yava);
>  the Yajurveda has all three, besides a panicum cereal, an oilseeed
>  (tila, sesame)...
>

>  5.page 36
>    A wild sesame seed, jartila, permitted as food to ascetics, is
>  recorded in the Taittiriya Samhita.(Referenced from M.S. Randhawa at
>  item 3 above).

Burrow derives Sanskrit tila from Dravidian *ceL or *teL related to Tamil eL
(eLLu in colloquial usage). Kuiper says "Sanskrit tila-, m. "the sesamum plant
or seed" and the prefixed form jartila- "wild sesamum" TS ZB must be
borrowings from Munda."

Frank C. Southworth in "Reconstructing social context from language: Indo-
Aryan and Dravidian Pre-history", p. 270, says "Sesame seeds were found at
Harappa, one of the major sites in the Indus Valley civilization (Vats 1940).
Sesame was important both as a food and an ingredient of religious ceremonies
inancient India, and is still so today. Assuming a connection between
Dravidian eLLu and Akkadian ellu, it is impossible to determine without
further evidence which was the source, or whether there was perhaps some third
source. Nonetheless, since sesame was grown in the ancient Indus Valley and
was involved in the trade with mesopotemia (see Ratnagar 1981:52 (note 30),
80), the resemblance between the words for sesame provides support for
assuming some sort of relationship between speakers of Dravidian languages and
the Indus Valley civilization."

Regards
S. Palaniappan