Paan once symbolised courtly status in India. Then it became an unsanitary, ‘native’ habit

The 18th-century portrait of an East India Company official, by the artist Dip Chand, contains a detail that one might easily miss. The ornate hookah with its coiled pipe is obvious as the Englishman, likely to be William Fullerton, reclines on a richly carpeted platform, as Indian attendants, two of them holding fans, stand around him.

But placed prominently before Fullerton is a pāndān, a spittoon and vessels, likely containing lime, areca nut, or aromatics, arranged with deliberate care. A rosewater sprinkler and itr container complete the ensemble. These objects signal that chewing paan was an accepted component of elite sociability.

The spittoon, within easy reach, acknowledges the bodily process associated with paan while containing it within the codes of courtly decorum.

In pre-colonial artwork of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, paan appears across canvases as an integral element of courtly culture and elite status. In these images, the paraphernalia associated with paan – the betel box (pāndān), spittoon (pīkdān) and implements used to prepare the leaf – are part of a carefully ordered constellation of objects that structured elite social interaction.

Paintings and written accounts from the pre-colonial years show that European travellers to the subcontinent, growing in number as colonial ambitions expanded, were curious about social and cultural practices.

Over the years, as colonial trade and exchange gave way to administrative control, English perceptions of hygiene, sanitation and conduct meant that paan was increasingly condemned by colonial officials as an unsanitary, “native” habit.

Paan began to fade from social life and canvas, reflecting its trajectory from a practice of curiosity – that Europeans wrote of chewing and trying themselves – to an ethnographic detail and finally to a perfunctory observation.

Paan in the royal courts

Like the image of Fullerton, a depiction of David Ochterlony, the British resident in Delhi’s Mughal court shows the pāndān and spittoon on the carpet while he smokes a hookah and watches a nautch performance.

The painting seems like a deliberate attempt to capture the lives of “White Mughals”. However,the durbar scene with objects of leisure and opulence – the carpet, the nautch, hookah and the etiquette of paan – do hint at the significance of each of these seemingly innocuous objects.

Paan is embedded in an environment of leisure and sensory refinement in both artworks. An early 18th-century painting of a courtly gathering shows writing implements, paper-trimming tools, floral offerings, and paan paraphernalia arranged on the carpet between the host and guests.

Juxtaposing intellectual tools with objects of consumption signals a culture of etiquette in which conversation, hospitality and bodily pleasure were inseparable. Paan, in such images, is a part of sociability and cultivated leisure.

Paan appears in scenes that are not explicitly concerned with courtly ceremony. In the 16th-century Mughal painting from the Tuti-nama series, depicting Khujasta awaiting a romantic evening while her parrot delays her through storytelling, there is a bowl of prepared paan in the composition.

Though unmentioned in the text, the presence of paan signals anticipation and sensory readiness, linking it to romance. In the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, offering of paan was seen as the initiation of steps leading towards the moments of pleasure.

Across such artworks, paan and its associated implements are present within the scene but rarely named – their meanings operate tacitly within shared cultural codes.

Travel accounts, like that of Thomas Roe in the early 17th century, reflect upon the ceremonial symbolism of paan. Roe, the English envoy to Mughal Emperor Jahangir, wrote that the emperor once offered him paan from his own betel box, a gesture of exceptional honor.

Courtly etiquette to ethnographic detail

In 19th-century colonial imagery, paan and its paraphernalia start becoming an ethnographic detail. Paan shifts from being a marker of courtly etiquette and sociability to a cultural habit that is classified and documented.

The writings and illustrations of James Forbes are an early example of this transition. Forbes made drawings of the betel plant and the areca nut with detailed descriptions: he writes of the areca nut – “better known as suparee” – as resembling a large nutmeg enclosed within a membranous covering and growing upon a tall, slender trunk crowned with graceful branches.

Beyond botanical description, Forbes also noted the social uses of paan. He observed that most Indians carried paan in small boxes – like Europeans carried tobacco. Paan was offered to visitors during social calls and served throughout the day as a sign of hospitality.

On ceremonial occasions the areca nut was sliced thin, mixed with cardamom and lime, folded into a betel leaf, and secured with a clove. The prepared leaves were presented on silver trays by attendants to each member of the company. Forbes remarked that offering paan at the end of a visit served as a subtle signal that it was time for guests to depart.

Such descriptions record the symbolism of paan while translating it into categories legible to European readers. In colonial visual culture, this process intensified as artists began depicting paan as a discrete ethnographic object.

In images such as A Hindoo Man of Rank eating Pawn by Charles D’Oyly, chewing paan is detached from the social interactions that previously structured it. The man is alone, surrounded by the identifiable paraphernalia of paan consumption – the betel box and spittoon.

Similarly, representations of paan vendors foreground their occupation rather than social exchange. Here, the preparation of paan becomes a craft rather than a part of hospitality rituals, especially among the elite.

Such images reflect a broader colonial impulse to visually catalogue Indian customs, transforming practices of social relationships into ethnographic data.

In a series of works from Thanjavur dating to the 1840s, occupational couples – such as a Sikh soldier and his wife or a Jain horse groom and his wife – are depicted with the wife offering betel to her husband. The act of presenting paan becomes the defining feature of these images, reduced to a labeled cultural type.

The history of paan

The linguistic history of paan shows that its cultural circulation is wide, shaped by currents of trade and exchange in the Indian subcontinent. The many names of paan reflect its geographical and cultural spread.

The Anglo-Indian dictionary Hobson-Jobson says that the word paan derives from the Sanskrit parṇa, meaning “leaf”. Another Sanskrit term, tāmbūla, became tambul in Persian and al-tambul in Arabic. Betel sellers in North India were known as tambolis or tamolis.

The word supari for areca nut is derived from the Sanskrit supriya, meaning “pleasant”. In the Malabar region, the nut became known as areca, a term adopted by the Portuguese. Gujarati and Deccani usage rendered it as suparji. Among the Marathas, a prepared roll of betel leaf filled with areca nut and lime was known as kali, meaning “bud.” The Malayalam word vettila, meaning “leaf,” entered Portuguese usage as betle or betre.

Indigenous to South Asia and Southeast Asia, the betel plant was cultivated in humid conditions, with ritual observances. In parts of Bengal, for instance, owners of betel vineries were required to bathe before entering them, while women in states of ritual impurity were forbidden to approach the plants.

Beyond the subcontinent, offering of betel had distinct cultural meanings. In the Malay world, the presentation of “sirih” was a formal gesture of apology for serious offenses. In Sri Lanka, paan was believed to provide digestive and medicinal benefits. Classical Indian texts also recommended consuming betel leaves after meals and prescribed them for ailments ranging from headaches to swollen glands.

In colonial archives, these layers were flattened. By the early 20th century, colonial attitudes had already been reshaping the perception of paan.

In a 1923 essay, English author EM Forster contrasted the curiosity early European travellers had for paan with the moral disdain later exhibited by Anglo-Indian society. Forster described paan as a mild sacrament that enabled sociability in a society marked by strict dietary restrictions.

He emphasised the grace with which an Indian hostess prepared and presented paan, treating it as an art form comparable – if not superior – to the celebrated ritual of English tea. He also admired the craftsmanship of traditional paandaan, suggesting that Western spice boxes might even have been inspired by betel boxes.

By the 19th century, the material culture of paan in India was being transformed. The decline of princely courts weakened patronage that supported elaborate metalwork for the paandaan and spittoons.

The rise of colonial bureaucratic institutions imposed new norms of bodily discipline and spatial regulation. The spittoon, once an accepted fixture of elite gatherings, had no place within the sanitised interiors of colonial offices. Its disappearance from public spaces signaled a subtle yet significant reordering of bodily practices.

Paan continued to be consumed in domestic and informal settings, but the visible traces of its consumption were being excised from environments governed by colonial standards of hygiene and propriety.

Paintings from the late 18th and early 19th century reflect these changes.

In some depictions of durbars influenced by European conventions – where chairs replace carpets and the space bears resemblance to English aristocratic settings – the traditional paraphernalia of paan is conspicuously absent.

But the etiquette of paan represented an enduring form of shared human pleasure. Whether offered in a Mughal court, exchanged among guests in a household, or depicted in a painting, paan was a social and cultural symbol of hospitality and refinement, one that colonial frameworks misunderstood or reduced to a spectacle.

Sonal is Assistant Professor of History at Motilal Nehru College and currently a Fulbright Scholar at Kenyon College, Ohio.