Moong dal in English, Hindi, Kannada (hesaru bele), Telugu and Tamil

In Kannada, hesaru is green gram and bele is any split pulse, so hesaru bele is moong dal, the split and skinned green gram. IFCT 2017 names the whole bean hesare kalu. Telugu and Tamil have the same pair of words: pesalu for the whole bean and pesara pappu for the dal in Telugu, pasipayir and payatham paruppu in Tamil. Malayalam calls the dal cheru payar parippu. Northern languages mostly keep one word and add dal or sabut: moong dal for the split, sabut moong for the whole.

So the one-line answers are these. Hesaru bele in English is moong dal or split green gram; pesara pappu in English is the same thing; the moong dal English name is split green gram, and on packs abroad split mung bean or yellow lentils, although it is not a lentil. When a recipe written in English says yellow moong dal, dhuli moong or petite yellow lentils, it means this dal. If it says green moong or sabut moong it means the whole bean, which has its own page on green gram (whole moong).

The botanical name is Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek, in the bean family Fabaceae; older books use the synonym Phaseolus aureus, just as IFCT still files urad under Phaseolus mungo. It is easily mixed up with black gram, Vigna mungo, the urad of idli and dosa, because the beans are similar in size and shape. IFCT 2017 lists the split form under food code B010 as green gram, dal, and the whole bean under B011 as green gram, whole.

In Indian English, and in IFCT, the bean is green gram, and gram names other pulses too, as in Bengal gram and red gram. International research calls it the mung bean. Dal is both the split pulse and the dish made from it, so moong dal is at once an ingredient and a curry. On a menu, moong dal tadka means the dish; in a shop, moong dal means the raw split pulse.

The table follows the IFCT 2017 local-names list for green gram, dal, in the language order used on every COWBERRY page, with every name romanised in Latin letters. Two spellings are added below the IFCT ones because they are what people actually type: the Hindi moong dal (IFCT prints mug dal) and the Kannada hesaru bele (IFCT prints hesara bele). IFCT records no Sanskrit name for the dal. A language without an IFCT entry gets a dash in the table, not a guess. Across the north and east the word is one word with shifting vowels, moong, mung, mug, muga, mogu; only the four southern languages use different words: hesara, pesara, payatham and cheru payar.

Source: IFCT 2017 (ICMR-NIN) local-names list. — means no name recorded in the source.

Hindi ‘Moong dal’: Wikipedia: Mung bean. Kannada ‘Hesaru bele’: spelling variant of the IFCT 2017 name ‘Hesara bele’.

Four other dals get mistaken for moong at the shop or in a recipe written in another language.

Toor dal (arhar, pigeon pea)

Cajanus cajan. Kannada thugare bele, Telugu kandi pappu, Tamil tuvaram paruppu, Hindi arhar dal, Marathi turdal. The halves are bigger, flatter and a deeper mustard yellow, it needs soaking or a longer cook, and it is the sambar and dal-fry dal of the south and west. Moong is paler, smaller and rounder.

Chana dal (Bengal gram)

Cicer arietinum. Kannada kadale bele, Telugu sanaga papu, Tamil kadalaiparuppu, Hindi chana dal. Bigger and thicker than moong dal, with a nutty bite that survives cooking; it is the dal of puran poli, chana dal fry and roasted namkeen. No one mistakes it for moong once cooked, but a Telugu recipe that just says pappu could mean any dal.

Masoor dal (red lentil)

Lens culinaris. Skinned masoor is salmon-orange, flat and round, and cooks as fast as moong. Whole masoor is brown. Of the five dals on this page, masoor is the only true lentil.

Urad dal (black gram)

Vigna mungo. Kannada uddhina bele, Telugu minapapappu, Tamil ulutham paruppu. Skinned urad is ivory-white and the same size as moong dal, so a mislabelled bin is the usual mix-up; the difference shows in the pot, where urad turns sticky and viscous, the quality that makes idli, dosa and vada batter work. Moong cooks to a loose, soft mash instead.

Green gram is a warm-season pulse grown in many parts of India. COWBERRY's split green moong comes from Rajasthan and Central India, grown on farms that use cow-based organic methods.

Like other pulses, moong fixes nitrogen from the air into the soil, which FAO says contributes to soil fertility; FAO also notes that including pulses in crop rotations can improve chemical fertiliser use efficiency. From the field the beans go to a dal mill, where they are cleaned, conditioned and split, skinned for yellow dal or left green for chilka. What happens after that, in the kitchen, is on the moong dal guide, the numbers are on moong dal protein per 100 g, and the simplest first recipe is moong dal khichdi.

What is moong dal called in English?

Split green gram, or split mung bean. IFCT 2017 lists it as green gram, dal; packs abroad may say yellow moong dal, petite yellow lentils or mung dal. Green gram is the name used in India and in IFCT, mung bean the name in international research; both mean Vigna radiata. The whole bean is green gram, whole, or sabut moong, not plain moong dal.

What is split green gram in Hindi?

Moong dal, written mug dal in IFCT's romanisation; the skinned yellow kind is dhuli moong dal and the skin-on kind is chilka moong dal or moong dal chilka. The whole bean is sabut moong. Urdu uses the same word, moong dal, so one name covers both languages.

What is split green gram?

Split green gram is the mung bean (Vigna radiata) cut into halves at a dal mill, with or without its green seed coat; in Indian kitchens it is moong dal. It cooks in about 20 minutes without soaking, one of the quickest dals to cook, and gives 23.9 g protein per 100 g (IFCT 2017).

Is hesaru bele the same as pesara pappu?

Yes. Hesaru bele (Kannada) and pesara pappu (Telugu) are both split green gram, moong dal; Tamil payatham paruppu and Malayalam cheru payar parippu are the same dal too. The whole bean has its own word: hesare kalu in Kannada, pesalu in Telugu and pasipayir in Tamil. A recipe from any of the four states means the same pulse.

What is the difference between moong dal and urad dal?

Moong dal is split green gram (Vigna radiata); urad dal is split black gram (Vigna mungo). Skinned, both are small pale halves, but urad is whiter and turns sticky and viscous when ground or cooked, which idli and dosa batter depend on, while moong cooks to a soft, loose mash for dal and khichdi.