By Ritambhara
The Taittiriya Upanishad belongs to the Taittiriya school of the Krishna Yajurveda. Its third chapter, the Bhriguvalli, tells how the sage Bhrigu learns Brahman from his father Varuna. Bhrigu first concludes that food is Brahman (3.2). The chapter then lays down a series of vows on food, and the Taittiriya Upanishad food vow opens section 3.7.
annaṃ na nindyāt, tad vratam, prāṇo vā annam, śarīram annādam
prāṇe śarīraṃ pratiṣṭhitam, śarīre prāṇaḥ pratiṣṭhitaḥ
“Let him never despise food; that is the vow. Breath is food, and the body is the eater of food. The body rests on breath, and breath rests on the body.”
What the vow claims
Nindyāt comes from the root nind, to blame or belittle. Vrata is a binding vow. Anna derives from the root ad, to eat, so annam is that which is eaten and annāda is its eater. The verse sets eater and eaten in mutual dependence, and the text calls this “food resting on food”. A person who despises food therefore despises the ground of his own life. A. Mahadeva Sastri’s 1903 translation, made with the classical commentaries, renders the rule as a bar on condemning food “as though it were his Guru”. The reason lies in the chapter itself, since food was the first form under which Bhrigu knew Brahman.
The vow widens in the next sections
Section 3.8 forbids rejecting food, and names water as food and light as its eater. Section 3.9 commands annaṃ bahu kurvīta, let him make food plentiful, and names earth as food and space as its eater. The duty grows from the body to the elements, and the knower answers for the earth that bears food.
The vow and the waste of food
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Food Waste Index Report 2024 found that 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted in 2022. That is about one-fifth of the food available to consumers. Households discarded 60 per cent of it, an average of 79 kg per person each year. UNEP also reports that food loss and waste produce 8 to 10 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In the terms of the Bhriguvalli, each discarded meal breaks the first vow, because it treats the eaten as worthless. It breaks the third vow as well, since the earth’s yield goes to rot and emissions in place of plenty.
The Taittiriya Upanishad binds the knower by vow to honour food and to increase it. Under present conditions, that vow requires every household and market to eat what it buys and to count each wasted meal as a breach.
