Vegetarian Thali

A Thali is defined to be a plate. This is a meal in India, which is associated with selected variants of dishes. A Thali is served with different Indian curries in small cups placed in a big round plate or a plate with in-built cups which is included with a sweet, pickle, curd along with puries or chapaties or roties and papad. A Thali can be a Vegetarian or non-Vegetarian and served differently depending upon ones own cultures & regions. In this article, we shall emphasise much on vegetarian Thali. For instance, a Maharastrian Thali is served with roties. As a primary rule, a thali is not
dished-up with both Indian breads and rice at the same time in any culture.


A Thali is of two kinds:


• Limited
• Unlimited


Limited Thali: In limited thali Indian breads, dishes and rice are hand out once limitedly and charged according to that.
Unlimited Thali: In an unlimited thali except sweet every dish is provided till the person satisfies
in filling his stomach. And an unlimited thali’s price will be a bit higher than the limited one.


Now that we know about the Veg Thali, I would like to signify the importance of Jain Thali, which is considered to be unique within the Veg Thali. Jain community is purely vegetarian community because they believe the saying, “Ahinsa paramo dharmaha” which is often inscribed on Jain temples. The saying which means, Non-violence resembles their food habits and they also consider this as an essential religious duty and this shapes the Jain’s entire life style which is a significant hallmark of their identity.


Jain’s food conduct is determined keeping in view of:
• Taking the foods which involve least possible injury.
• No question of killing five sensed beings or mobile beings.
• Avoiding destruction even to one sensed being as far as possible.


Considering the above factors, the Jain’s use cereals like wheat, rice, jawor etc., pulses like gram etc., and oil seeds. The objective behind using the cereals, pulses & oil in their food is that they were extracted from the plants only after dried-out and here after the plant does not grow and so is considered the Jain’s philosophy. Similarly they believe that, they are not causing any harm to the living beings. Similarly the vegetables like potatoes, radish, carrots, ginger, onion are not used as part of their food because the roots of the herbs are pulled out of the soil. Hence, they fear that might cause harm for other living beings in the soil. So, they avoid using the vegetables coming from the roots. While coming to the green leafy and non-leafy vegetables they use them as a part of their food and Jain’s also admit that plants must be destroyed for the sake of food and they accept such violence because it is indispensable for the human survival and considering their instructions they are minimizing the violence against the plants.


Finally I would like to summarise the Jain Thali with the great saying - ‘A Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind’