# Hindi: Rajma



## lcfatima

I have seen and heard rajma (the legume) as raajma and raazma. It actually isn't one type of bean, there are some small and large varieties labeled as such, all kidney bean shaped though. It seems to be claimed as a famous dish of Punjabi Indians, Hindu Kashmiris, as well as Nepalese. Who is the true owner of rajma (if there is such a thing) and should it really be a j or z?


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## Illuminatus

I have _always_ heard and relished it as raajma राजमा (with a jeem). For me, it means a specific brownish-red kidney bean.

Here, it is a well-known Punjabi dish. I am not sure where it originated


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## lcfatima

Some people do say razma. It also comes up in google. I wasn't sure if this was a case of linguistic over correction, or if really was supposed to be a /z/ but /j/ is so widely used that it is now accepted as correct and not a mistake (like people saying jeera).


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## panjabigator

Never heard anything but <raajmaa> and I always thought it was Panjabi.


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## BP.

Icf, are we talking about what we call Lobia in Urdu?


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## panjabigator

Aren't lobia different?  They're a different color.  In the US, we call them black eyed beans.


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## BP.

Lobias are different colours depending on the variety. Usually we get whitish and dark red ones. I've never been able to get the hang of the nomenclature - black eyed beans, kidney beens, haricots...


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## Illuminatus

The Lobia I know is creamy white in colour.


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## lcfatima

Jee nahin BP saheb, Lobia are black eyed peas because they look like an eye, they have a black spot on them.

Rajma are reddish brown.


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## lcfatima

My googling is leading me to the conclusion that raazma may be the Kashmiri pronunciation.


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## panjabigator

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Lobias are different colours depending on the variety. Usually we get whitish and dark red ones. I've never been able to get the hang of the nomenclature - black eyed beans, kidney beens, haricots...



Hmm, never tried a dark red lobia, unless of course it is raajma.  I have difficulty with daal nomenclature so I just go with color.


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## lcfatima

tarah tarah ke raajma hote hai.n, kuch brown and speckled mexican beans ki tarah, kuch surakh mirch ki tarah laal laal. But I am pretty sure the white one with a black eye is a lobia.

By the way, is that sentence correct, or should I pluralize rajma to rajmay? Or should it be feminine because rajma is rajma ki daal. Kya koi is joomlay ki islah kar sakta hai?


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## Faylasoof

lcfatima said:


> tarah tarah ke raajma hote hai.n, kuch brown and speckled mexican beans ki tarah, kuch surakh mirch ki tarah laal laal. But I am pretty sure the white one with a black eye is a lobia.
> 
> By the way, is that sentence correct, or should I pluralize rajma to rajmay? Or should it be feminine because rajma is rajma ki daal. Kya koi is joomlay ki islah kar sakta hai?



All the _raajma_ dishes (red kidney beans) I have eaten in the UK are mostly served in Punjabi restaurants. Doesn't mean the dish originated in the Punjab but I always assumed so. 

_Lobia_, the word as we use it, usually refers to white beans but I searched and it only confused me.

In Arabic, _lobia _seems to refer to more than one kind of beans. To make it worse, Arabs also use the word _fool _for beans -or at least some beans (?). They have a special bean dish called _fool_ or _fool musaddas_! It is normally made from broad beans.

In Farsi, _lobia_ seems to refer to both beans in general and also specifically to haricot beans - dictionary definition.

I've also found a glossary of cooking ingredients in Urdu here, and it lists _raajma_ = _laal lobia_ = kidney beans.  The fact it says _laal lobia_ implies that there exist other kinds of _lobia_!

So we can conclude that _lobia_ are beans but there seems to be a varied use of this word. I'm no longer sure if _lobia_ refers to one or several kinds of beans.

I always considered _raajma_ to be the name of the red bean dish. Now bearing in mind the general Prakrit rules of gender assignment to nouns, all the nouns (with some exceptions no doubt) that end in _-aa_ are masculine:

_ghoRaa _= stallion, _gadhaa _= male donkey, _k-heeraa _= _khayaar_ = cucumber, _hatauRaa_ = large mallet or hammer --- all masculine.

Thus, _raajmaa_ should be masculine, assuming it is not an exception to the rule I mention above. Should _raajma _-> _raajme _in a genitive?  The rules of Prakrit would suggest yes, assuming the word _raajma_ is referring to the beans themselves and _not_ the name of the dish itself, regardless of whether it is made of beans or other legumes. _Daal_ of course is feminine so _raajme ki daal_ will always be feminine. 

After all this I need a helping of _raajma _to recover my energy.


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## panjabigator

> After all this I need a helping of _raajma _to recover my energy.



Amen/ameen!

Saal mubaarak sabhi ko!


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## Faylasoof

Aap ko bhee! raajma taqreeban tayyaar ho gaya! mujhe ijaazat deN aur saal-e-aa'indah mileNge!!


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## BP.

Yeah, saal-e-nau mubaarak to everybody!


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## arsham

انواع لوبیا
لوبیای چشم بلبلی/سیاه چشم (lūbyā-ye chašm-bolbolī/syāh-chašm) black-eyed bean
لوبیا سبز (lūbyā-sabz) green bean, French/runner bean
لوبیای سفید/مرمری (lūbyā-ye sefīd/marmarī) navy bean
لوبیا قرمز/گلی (lūbyā-qermez/golī) kidney-bean
لوبیا چیتی (lūbyā-chītī) wax bean (not sure of the translation!)


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## BP.

Faylasoof said:


> ...
> I've also found a glossary of cooking ingredients in Urdu here, and it lists _raajma_ = _laal lobia_ = kidney beans.  The fact it says _laal lobia_ implies that there exist other kinds of _lobia_!
> ...



Fayla, even though arsham has listed numerous _anw'a-o-iqsaam_ of _lobia_, I can myself bear witness of having eaten the _surkh_, _safaid_, _khaaki_, _sabzi-ma-il_ and even _chitkabra lobia_, in vastly varying sizes!

However, is the word _daal_ reserved for dicotyledonous grains that have been de-skinned to leave behind the two cotyledons? The whole grains are called just by their plant names - _maTar_ refers to _beejaan-e-maTar_, not the shoots or roots right?


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## lcfatima

In spoken Arabic where I live, lobia means what I call green beans in American English, a sabzi, not a daal. These green beans are called phaliaN as far as I know.

Lobia/Black eyed peas produce the green "long bean" or "runner bean" according to my housekeeper, who calls this hard green bean "lobia ka baccha" but I am not sure what its true name is in Hindi/Urdu.  




> Thus, _raajmaa_ should be masculine, assuming it is not an exception to the rule I mention above. Should _raajma _-> _raajme _in a genitive? The rules of Prakrit would suggest yes, assuming the word _raajma_ is referring to the beans themselves and _not_ the name of the dish itself, regardless of whether it is made of beans or other legumes. _Daal_ of course is feminine so _raajme ki daal_ will always be feminine.
> 
> After all this I need a helping of _raajma _to recover my energy.


 
Thanks for the clarification. Ab dil raajma banaane ko chaa raha hai!


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## Faylasoof

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Fayla, even though arsham has listed numerous _anw'a-o-iqsaam_ of _lobia_, I can myself bear witness of having eaten the _surkh_, _safaid_, _khaaki_, _sabzi-ma-il_ and even _chitkabra lobia_, in vastly varying sizes!



BP, I never really seriously doubted this! But when I started reading around, I began to wonder whether I've been using the word incorrectly all my life!!




> However, is the word _daal_ reserved for dicotyledonous grains that have been de-skinned to leave behind the two cotyledons? The whole grains are called just by their plant names - _maTar_ refers to _beejaan-e-maTar_, not the shoots or roots right?



I don't think you need to skin them to call it _daal_. Take _k-haRee masoor _(with skin). It is a_ bona fide daal_! True, _maTar_ and _chana_ are skinned but there are good reasons for those.


BTW, is _moong_ a monocot or a dicot? I thought it was mono, but it is a long while I had a close look. It is called _moong daal_, just as _raajma daal_.


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## BP.

Both _moo.ng_ and _masoor_ are dicotyledonous. You're right they remain _daal_s even with the epidermis. Not so for _chana_ and _maTar_ (or _lobia_ for that matter) I guess.


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## Qureshpor

For all "daal" lovers...

*Indian Pulses **[url]http://www.agri-history.org/pdf/Indian_pulses.pdf*[/URL]


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## lcfatima

Interesting to see the names in Hindi-Urdu for some of those legumes in that document. In the document, on option in nomenclature for lobhia is chowli, and that is interesting because BP thought raajma were lobhia...chowli can also be red colored and the red ones are sometimes cooked with raajma.

Since this thread, I read the raajma was brought to North India and nearby regions by the Europeans and it is not a native legume.


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## marrish

lcfatima said:


> Interesting to see the names in Hindi-Urdu for some of those legumes in that document. In the document, on option in nomenclature for lobhia is chowli, and that is interesting because BP thought raajma were lobhia...chowli can also be red colored and the red ones are sometimes cooked with raajma.
> 
> Since this thread, I read the raajma was brought to North India and nearby regions by the Europeans and it is not a native legume.


Just a small clarification: the spelling _'lobhia'_ which is there in this otherwise wonderful paper, is better not to be followed.

It's _lobiaa_, without aspiration. This word is an Arabic borrowing.


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## lcfatima

Oh yes, thanks for the correction.


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## arsham

It seems like "faSûlia" with sâd is more common in Arabic compared to lûbiyâ.


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