THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY OF SUGAR

 

SARKARA

India has a long ancient history of making sugar which was called śarkarā (शर्करा) in Sanskrit meaning "Grit," "gravel," or "pebbles."

Before sugarcane juice was refined into pure, clear crystals, the boiled-down sugar cooled into rough, coarse, gravel-like grains. The word originally referred to those crunchy, sand-like granules.

śarkarā (शर्करा) in Sanskrit still remains in use as Shakkar in Hindi/Punjabi, Sakhar in Marathi, Carkkarai in Tamil, Sharkkara in Malayalam etc

Traders from India took it to Persia around the 6th century CE, the Persian Empire adopted sugarcane cultivation and processing, adapting śarkarā into shakar, then to Arabia it became al-sukkar (سُكَّر). Arabs took it to Europe and became succarum in Latin (or saccharum, which also influenced Greek sakkharon—the root behind modern chemistry terms like saccharine), then to France where it became sucre. It crossed the English Channel and became sugre in Middle English to finally Sugar in modern English. Italians adopted it as zucchero, and Germans as Zucker. Arabic al-Sukkar became Azucar in Spanish.

MISRI/MISHRI

In the meanwhile, the Egyptians developed the rock Sugar which found its way to back India and became Misri/Mishri. Egyptian refiners mastered advanced techniques to clarify, boil, and slowly cool sugar syrup around threads to grow large, pure, translucent crystals. Egypt became famous across the Mediterranean and Middle East for exporting this high-grade, rock-candy-style sugar.
Mishri = Egyptian sugar (crystalline rock sugar).

KHANDA

Speaking of the rock-candy-style sugar, ancient India was also a pioneer in this sugar which was called Khanda in Sanskrit. In some western Indian languages the name for Sugar is Khaand.

Khaṇḍa (खण्ड) literally means "a piece," "fragment," or "broken off portion."

In ancient India, boiled sugarcane syrup was poured into shallow vats to cool and solidify into thick slabs. These slabs were then chopped up into small, hard, breakable pieces—what locals called khaṇḍa-khāḍya (broken sugar pieces).

This Khanda also travelled to Persia and became Qand, commonly found in the Persian names of the sweet Gulkand, Kalakand etc. The kand in Jimmikand/Shakarkand Sweet Tuber/Sweet Potato is not from Persian Qand. It is Sanskrit Kand for bulb, tuber, corm, or swollen underground root.

The Persian word Qand became qand/qandi (قَنْد) in Arabic which became sucre candi in French which eventually gave the English word Sugre Candy or simply Candy.

CHINI

Buddhist monks and traders took śarkarā to China from India where the Chinese developed a special refining technique which converted Sarkara into crystialised white Sugar. This returned back to India via a Chinese settler in Calcutta who set up the first refined Sugar mill in India. This porcelain white (Chini mitti) Sugar became Chini.

That pioneer was Tong Atchew (also recorded in colonial documents as Yong Atchew, Yang Dazhao, or Yang Tai Chow). From Guangdong/Canton who arrived in Bengal during the late 18th century. He is celebrated as the first Chinese settler in India and the man whose sugar manufacturing operations.

Lord Hastings granted him around 650 bighas of land (~220 acres) on the banks of the Hooghly River at an annual rent of just 45 rupees. The local Bengali residents began calling the Chinese entrepreneur "Achi," and the small township that developed around his plantation came to be known as Achipur—a sleepy hamlet near Budge Budge (about 30 km south of Kolkata) that still bears his name today.

In Bengali it was originally called শর্করা (Shorkora). Around circa 18th century when refined white granulated sugar techniques were re-imported via Chinese traders and refiners in Bengal, it created a distinct line between traditional Shakkar/Shorkora (raw/coarse) and Chini (processed white sugar).

The word Chini travelled back to Punjab and created a clear distinction between Shakkar and Chini. In Punjab Shakkar is commonly the raw unrefined brown sugar or powder jaggery while Chini is exclusively the white crystalline refined Sugar.

JAGGERY

The same Sanskrit word śarkarā traveled through Tamil/Malayalam (cakkarā) to Portuguese (jágara) to give us the English word jaggery. In ancient India, unrefined cane syrup boiled down into gritty, solid lumps was the primary sweetening agent. This is why languages like Malayalam (Sharkkara) and Eelam Tamil still use the word specifically for jaggery.