What did Indians eat before chilli

What did the Indians eat before the chilli entered India as an import brought in by the Portuguese from South America. Today, one cannot think of Indian food without hot chilli. (A similar question about the Italians. What did they eat before tomato made its appearance?)

I have asked this question to several people, though none has come out with a good enough answer. Cooking not being in the main line of Sanskrit scholarship, I do not know of any old work devoted to this topic, though, I am sure, there would be at least a few on shelves of libraries that specialize in old manuscripts. I can only give a few pointers based on general knowledge.

Pre-chilli Indian food must have been pretty bland, somewhat like today's Japanese food of the vegetarian variety. For over two millennia, Indian food has been mainly vegetarian, avoiding meats generally. and fish in most places. Though India was known for its spices, most of the strong spices, miri or pepper for example, grow only in the extreme south of India. Given the difficulties of transport, it would not have been generally available to
the rest of the country.

Kautilya, in his Arthashastra, mentions the following in Ch. 2 at p.34 under the heading 'Tiktavarga' or 'Pungent class': "Long pepper, black pepper, ginger, cumin seed, kiratatikta (Agathotes Chirayta), white mustard, coriander, choraka (a plant), damanaka (Artemisia Indica), maruvaka (Vangueria Spinosa), sigru (Hyperanthera Moringa), and the like together with their roots (kánda) come under the group of pungent substances
(tiktavarga)." (taken from the English translation available at scribd.com).

Most of these botanical terms can be traced on the internet, though I could not identify any of them with equivalents I can recognize.

The Russian traveller Afanasii Nikitin, who spent 3 years in South India from 1471 to 1474, has the following to say about the food habits of the Hindus: "Hindus do not eat any meat, neither beef, nor mutton, nor fowl, nor fish, nor pork, although they have many pigs. They eat twice a day, but not at night, and drink neither wine nor mead. And they do not eat or drink with the Muslims. Even with each other, they do not eat or drink, nor with their wives. They eat rice, and kichri with butter, and various greens, and cook
these with butter and milk, and eat only with their right hands, and take nothing with their left hands. They have not heard of knives or spoons. And, on their journeys, they each carry their own pots to cook porridge. They turn away from Muslims, to prevent them from looking at their pots or food. If a Muslim casts his eye on the food, then the Hindu will not eat it. That is why they eat covered with a napkin, so that nobody would see." (For those interested, an excellent translation of his travel account is available at
http://tangentialia.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/afanasii-nikitins-journey-across-three-seas/

The unknown seer who composed the famous 'Rudram' (Prayer to Lord Rudra - another form of the more well-known Shiva) in Yajurveda asked for the following in blessing: 'Milk, Honey, fruits...paddy, barley, black gram, gingilly seeds, green gram, castor oil seeds, wheat and White Bengal gram, with elongated bushy millets (small paddy) and fine Superior paddy and excellent roots and all readily available grains in the Jungles'. This gives us a general idea of what ancient Indians were eating.