Five grains

Rice grains showing diversity

Bi'ur Chametz, burning to remove five Chametzgrains during an annual Jewish festival period

Five grains, traditional set phrase for lists or groupings which may contain non-grain crops.^[1] Particular instances of Five grains of a single crop or other substance such as minerals and metals have historical or cultural significance as well.^[2]

Five grains may refer to:

in East Asia

• Five Cereals (China), various lists of the most important cultivated crops assigned since the earliest mythological times in Chinese cuisine, farming, and civil and spiritual culture^[1]
• Baijiu liquor, whose varieties include Five Grains Liquid (Wuliangye, 五 粮 液)
• Korean cuisine (section Grains), in whose myths deities brought seeds of five grains
• Ogokbap, five-grains rice in Korean cuisine, with image in the Indonesian Wikipedia at http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogokbap
• A group of crops in Japanese cuisine and spiritual culture whose guardian is Ukanomitama no kami, a spirit to whom Kasama Inari Shrine is dedicated, and which are honored with a Five Grains Garden in Manyo Botanical Garden, Nara

in West Asia

• Pas Yisroel, "Bread of an Israelite" which discusses "the five classical grains of Judaism" in Rabbinical tradition, including the grain Emmer
• Matzo or Matzah, unleavened cracker bread in Jewish cuisine regarding which "There are five grains that may not be used during Passover in any form except for Matzah"; see also Chametz
• Chametz (section The five grains), leavened or leavenable grains and their flours in Jewish cuisine which are taboo during certain festival periods in Jewish tradition; see also Matzo
• Five grains of musk are included with Cubeb (section Uses, subsection Medicinal) in an aphrodisiac recipe in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights popularly known in English as the Arabian Nights

in Europe

• Five grains of incense are used in the course of Christian religious Dedication, (section Medieval Western customs) of altars and sacred places, as with Exsultet Easter Proclamation and the use of the Paschal candle

over the Atlantic

• "Five grains of corn," the daily ration of starving settlers from Europe traveling by ship in search of New World settlement, a tradition of Christian Thanksgiving lore ^[3]

in Mesoamerica

• In the Mayan board game Bul, if 5 tossed corn kernels marked on one side came up blank, the count was 5^[4]
• In the Mexica Aztec board game Patolli, 5 dimpled beans or stones were used like dice^[4]

in chemistry

• Using Grain (unit), a 325mb tablet of aspirin is sometimes referred to as "five grain aspirin."
• "Five grains of gold" are used in such European formulae as that for the gilding of buttons, where they are used in an amalgam of mercury^[5]
• The chemical specification of Coyoteite, NaFe3S5·2H2O, which was performed by electron microprobing of five grains of this mineral

References