Before They Were “Beedis”: The Story of “Biries”

      The story behind a remarkable pre-Independence tobacco advertisement from Calcutta

I came across this beautiful old chromolithograph advertisement while researching our collection, and one little word immediately caught my attention.

“SMOKE 111 THREE ONE BIRIES.”

Biries?

We all know them today as bidis or beedis. So I started wondering, did “biries” eventually become “beedies”?

Well, not exactly.

And that’s what made me want to dig a little deeper into this advertisement.

So, what were “biries”?

A bidi, or biri/ beedi, is the familiar Indian hand-rolled cigarette, traditionally made by wrapping tobacco in a tendu leaf and tying it with thread.

Tobacco itself was not native to India. The plant behind this story is Nicotiana tabacum, commonly known as tobacco. The plant originated in the Americas, with the genus Nicotiana having its centre of origin around the Andes. This plant was introduced into India by Portuguese traders at the beginning of the 17th century and Indians adapted it into existing traditions of smoking and leaf-wrapping. ICAR records 1605 as the year tobacco cultivation was introduced, initially in Gujarat, from where it gradually spread to other parts of India. 

Historical records even mention leaf-wrapped tobacco products in India as early as the early 1700s.

 

What I found particularly interesting, though, was the word itself.

There wasn’t always one fixed spelling.

Historical sources use forms such as biri, beri, bidi, beedi and beedie. One interesting theory connects the word to beeda, a Marwari term for a preparation wrapped in betel leaf.

So, rather than thinking of it as:

BIRI….. BIDI…..  BEEDI

it’s probably more accurate to think of these as different spellings that existed alongside each other.

And our advertisement has preserved one of those older forms:

I love finding little details like this in old objects. Sometimes one word can open up an entire history.

And then I found the story behind “111”

Once I looked more closely at the advertisement, another clue stood out.

At the top it says: 111 THREE ONE

and underneath: REGD. No. 111 

At the bottom is the name:

SHANKARLAL DAYARAM, 152, HARRISON ROAD, CALCUTTA

So I searched for the name and address.

And this is where things became really interesting.

 

There is a trademark record for 111, belonging to Shankar Lal Dayaram of 152 Harrison Road, Calcutta, filed in 1942.

And what was the trademark registered for?

“BIDIS (COUNTRY CIGARETTES)”

The same brand.

The same proprietor.

The same address.

Suddenly, this wasn’t just an attractive old advertisement.

We had a documentary connection to the business behind it.

“Country cigarettes”

I found this description particularly fascinating.

The trademark calls them “Bidis (Country Cigarettes).”

It gives us a little glimpse into how these products were being classified during colonial India.

The bidi was an Indian-made cigarette, very different from the factory-made paper cigarettes that were becoming increasingly popular.

By the early twentieth century, the bidi had become an important commercial product, and by the 1920s and 1930s, the industry was growing rapidly.

And advertising was becoming part of that story too.

 

More than just an advertisement

Look at this poster again. It has everything you’d expect from a carefully designed commercial advertisement:

A beautiful central portrait.

Elaborate typography.

Illustrated packets.

A registered brand number.

The manufacturer’s name.

A Calcutta address.

And yet, for me, the most fascinating part is still that one little word:

BIRIES

Today, we would probably spell it bidis or beedis.

But this old advertisement has captured a moment when several versions of the word were still being used.

And that’s what I love about old advertisements.

They don’t just tell us what people bought.

They sometimes tell us how people spoke, how businesses were built, how products were marketed, and how language itself changed.

This little advertisement from colonial Calcutta has preserved all of that in one beautiful piece of printed paper.

And now, whenever I look at the words “SMOKE THREE ONE ONE BIRIES,” I don’t just see an old tobacco advertisement.

I see a little piece of India’s commercial and linguistic history.

The story behind the advertisement is only part of its journey. And now, this little piece of history is looking for a new home.

If you’d like to bring this remarkable 111 Three One “Biries” advertisement into your own collection, you can find it here:

Click here to view the 111 Three One “Biries” Shankarlal Dayaram Advertisement Poster from Purathanam Collection.

Research notes

• Bidi Smoking and Public Health - Prakash C. Gupta & Samira Asma, editors.
• History and Struggles of Beedi Workers in India - Dr. Yash Chauhan, AITUC publication.
• Regulation and resistance: defactorisation in the beedi industry of colonial Malabar, 1937–1941.
• Training module on National Tobacco control program for Panchayati Raj Institutions (Tobacco not native to India) 
• Trademark record for 111 - Shankar Lal Dayaram, 152 Harrison Road, Calcutta, 1942.
• Research on the history and variant spellings of biri/bidi/beedi.
• Smokeless Tobacco and Public Health in India  - Prakash C. Gupta Monica Arora, Dhirendhra Sinha, Samira Asma &Mark Parascondola, editors. (Tobacco not native to India and about the plant)