Why Ghee Appears In Ancient Hindu And Buddhist Texts

There are a lot of reasons to use organic ghee in your cooking, and it has been a common part of Indian cuisine for thousands of years.

Clarified butter, traditionally made by simmering butter and sifting away the milk solids, is a popular cooking ingredient, in no small part because it lasts a lot longer than standard butter, and is the best fat for deep frying due to having a much higher smoke point than most vegetable oils.

However, in some religious cultures, most notably Hinduism and Buddhism, ghee carries much greater importance, and Buddhist texts in particular consider it the highest form of enlightenment.

The Nirvana Sutra, a particularly important Buddhist text, explores the concept of purification of spirit and enlightenment using a dairy analogy.

Essentially, the text claimed that there were five stages to milk:

• Kṣīra, or milk.

• Dadhi, or curdled milk.

• Navanīta, or butter.

• Sarpis, which is as yet unknown.

• Sarpir-maṇḍa.

The latter, described as the culmination of every step before it, is strongly believed to be an early form of ghee, most likely the ancient medical Ayurvedic recipe.

This form of ghee is made from raw milk that is boiled, cooled down to 43 degrees Celsius before being covered and left at room temperature for 12 hours, given a touch of dahi and left overnight to create more yoghurt that can be churned to create buttermilk and finally cultured butter that simmers into ghee.

Ghee, therefore, is a metaphor for enlightenment itself, as each stage changes milk much like how each stage of enlightenment changes a person even if they are still fundamentally themselves.

In Hinduism, some types of ghee are used in fire rituals that are a fundamental part of religious ceremonies such as marriage, which often requires a form of ghee much purer than those found in mass-produced products.