糖在現代之前是什麼樣的存在？

12-21

很好奇東西方對糖的生產和認識，還有一貫的用途，比如是否像食鹽一樣珍貴，期待大神回答。

手上剛好有季羨林先生的《糖史》英文版，裡面有非常詳細的內容。以我的能力恐怕是不能概括這本書的，我想選擇introduction的段落來分享，希望有興趣的米娜桑可以買來深入閱讀～～

雖然是純英文，莫慌，相信我，肯定看得懂的！
手打的難免會出現差錯，請原諒我~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
如果我的分享侵犯了作者權益，我一定會立刻跪著刪掉！

I am not a natural scientist. When it comes to mathematics, physics, chemistry and other important branches of natural science, my knowledge is perhaps only of middle schoole level. So why would I write this History of Sugar?

This involves a long process, which I will lay out here.

Most people think that sugar is a highly significant substance. Though we are inseparable from our sugar, using it every day to make our lives sweeter, and perhaps cannot imagine life without it, it would seem that few people ever stop to think about the long and complex history of cultural exchange behind many of the everyday things in our lives. Sugar is one such substance, and is perhaps the most important of them. When and where did I first notice the very special history behind sugar? It becomes clear if we take a look at the word for sugar within the most spoken languages of the West:
English: sugar
German: Zucker
French: sucre
Russian: caxap
Italian: zucchero
Spanish: azúcar

And here are the terms for what the Chinese call "ice sugar":
English: candy
German: Kandis-Zucker (there is also a verb: kandieren)
French: candi, sucre candi
Russian: 跪了，小的不會打。。。
Italian: candito
Spanish: candi

This is not a complete list, but there is no need for that. From these few languages, we can see that the Western terms for sugar and candy share the same source, a foreign one. The fact that the terms have foreign origins shows us that "sugar" and "candy" did not arise in these countries.

These foreign terms originated in the Vedic and ancient Sanskrit terms sarkara and khandaka, as well as the Pali term sakkhara. This demonstrates that the "sugar" and "candy"of Europe came from India. The spread of these two things from India to Europe was not direct. Instead, it passed through intermediaries in Persia and Arabia. I will discuss this further below.

What about China? The situation in China differs from that in Europe. We knew about sugar cane very early on, and later were able to refine it into sugar. Europe did not have this. But, in the process of producing sugar, China learned certain things from Arabia and Persia.

In the New Book of Tang, we find a passage describing emissaries sent by Tang emperor Taizong to Magadha to learn the methods of producing sugar from cane. These methods were brought back to Yangzhou and were a success.

Also, in Further Biographies of Eminent Monks, the biography of Xuan Zang recounts a mission to the Bodhi Monastery, which provided them with makers of sugar to bring back to China, where they successfully made sugar.

These two passages seem to be describing the same event. This demonstrates that China did learn the technology to make sugar from India. Furthermore, a page has been found among the various manuscripts uncover at Dunhuang that writes, in crude handwriting, about the process for producing sugar, with the term written as a transliteration of sarkara and being identified as "rock honey". The handwriting shows that this was not written by some scholar or high monk. It appears that a worker wrote down this passage, uncovered at Dunhuang, on the edge of the desert and far from the region of cane cultivation. This tells us that the technology for producing "rock honey" had already spread to common people. The fact that the text used a transliteration of the Sanskrit term sarkara further bolsters the theory that this technology came from India.

Meanwhile, Hindi also contains the term cini (meaning "from China"), used to discribe "white sugar". This demonstrates with certainty that India learned the method for producing white granular sugar from China, or it imported white sugar from China.

Does this not reveal a relationship of mutural learning between China and India?

I became intensely interested in this fact. In my work on India studies, I focused on Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit during my time om Germany. When I first returned to China, I lacked access to some of the basic texts and publications, and so I was forced to shift my focus to the history of Chinese and Indian cultural relations. It was natural that I would become interested in this mutual learning. Consequently, I began to take notice of related texts, and in Europe, I found two massive tomes on the matter, Geschichte des Zuckers by Edmund Oscar von Lippmann, and The History of Sugar by Noel Deerr. I also came across various essays on the matter. To date, I have not found other books like the two above-mentioned histories of sugar, but in the acient literature, notably Buddhist and Hindu, there are many records concerned with cane and sugar with immense historical value. There are also two very important books, the Susruta Samhita and the Caraka Samhita, as well as passage in other books. All of these texts greatly expanded my knowledge on cane and sugar while heightening my interest in the subject.

糖史：英文/季羨林著；（美）克羅斯比（Crosby, J.）譯.
—北京：新星出版社，2013.11

歐洲的甜品甜得能齁死人，不是沒有道理的。

在當時，就是一種炫富，媽蛋，你看我們家就是這麼有錢，甜不死你！

我記得一個故事，忘記是從那裡看的了，說的是一個挺困難的時代，忘了是在集中營還是三年困難時期，有姐弟二人苟延殘喘地活著。一個偶然的機會，他們得到一塊糖，有塑料包著的方塊糖，二人視如珍寶，每當難受和絕望的時候，就拿出來舔一下，這塊糖他們吃了一年多，每一天的堅持，都是為了下一次舌尖同糖塊的輕觸，最後他們終於活了下來。
每當我吃甜的東西，都會想起這個故事，我們習以為常的甜味，在某些時候，某些地方，可以成為支撐人們忍受煎熬、忍受痛苦的唯一希望。但我們吃的時候，想的最多的竟然是怕胖……。

在上一代人眼裡，糖還是奢侈品！雖然糖不像鹽那樣是必需品，但在古代也是一種很重要的貿易商品，因為優良的提純技術，明朝時候就大量出口蔗糖

古希臘人認為糖消磨了人的意志，使食用者犯困，是「甜蜜的惡魔」。

糖（化合物）_百度百科。
甜與權力 (豆瓣)。

《資治通鑒-卷八十一》
後將軍王愷，文明皇后之弟也；散騎常侍、侍中石崇，苞之子也。三人皆富於財，競以奢侈相高。愷以〈米台〉澳釜，崇以蠟代薪；愷作紫絲步障四十里，崇作錦步障五十里；崇塗屋以椒，愷用赤石脂。帝每助愷，嘗以珊瑚樹賜之，高二尺許，愷以示崇，崇便以鐵如意碎之；愷怒，以為疾己之寶。崇曰："不足多恨，今還卿！"乃命左右悉取其家珊瑚樹，高三、四尺者六、七株，如愷比者甚眾；愷恍然自失。

王愷用麥芽糖洗鍋，石崇以蠟燭代替柴草來煮飯；王愷用紫色的蠶絲作路兩旁的屏幕，長達40里，石崇就用錦作屏幕，長50里；王愷用赤石脂當塗料，石崇用香料和成泥來刷牆。有一次，王愷把晉武帝所賜的珊瑚樹拿出來當眾炫耀，高二尺多，堪稱稀世珍寶。石崇當場用鐵如意將其擊碎，然後取出他所藏的六、七株珊瑚樹，每枝高達三四尺，光彩耀目，讓王愷隨意挑選。後來，石崇為他的奢侈不僅付出生命的代價，失寵後鋃鐺入獄，最終人頭落地，而且有關他鬥富之事，千年以來時時讓人聞到奢華糜爛的腐朽之味。

古代歐洲是不產蔗糖的，來自東方的糖和香料一樣是奢侈品

鹽是必需品哈