One story goes like this: During the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan, in the 16th century, there was a cholera outbreak. Doctors and healers desperately tried to control it. One of the suggested remedies was to prepare foods with lots of spices to kill the bacteria they contained. Thus, spicy chaat was born, which is believed to have been consumed by the entire population of Delhi.
A slight variation attributes it to the court physician named Hakim Ali, who realized that the fetid water from an abandoned local canal could cause serious waterborne diseases and thought that the only way to prevent this was to add an abundant dose of spices to the food: tamarind, red chilies, coriander, mint, etc. This is why the food came to be called chatpati (spicy).
The tamarind, whose water-soaked version is the base of today's panipuris, was cultivated in India since prehistoric times. The Arabs referred to it as Tamar-ul-Hindi (fruit of India), and Marco Polo called it tamarindi in 1298.
The great master of our culinary history and food, KT Achaya, makes many references to various ingredients and dishes that make up the chaat repertoire. Achaya writes that papdi is mentioned in Mânasollasa in the 12th century as purika. The description matches the current papdi, which is crispy fried with the addition of cumin seeds and ajwain, made with chickpea flour, maida, or wheat flour, and not puris.
