Late-season North Indian mango with golden-yellow skin, juicy honeyed flesh, and a thick perfume — eaten by squeezing and sucking the chilled fruit.
Named after the town of Chausa in Buxar district, Bihar — where Mughal emperor Sher Shah Suri defeated Humayun at the Battle of Chausa in 1539. The variety is said to have been planted around the battlefield and named by Sher Shah in commemoration of his victory.
The Chausa — variously spelled Chaunsa — closes the North Indian mango season. It is the last major variety to ripen in any given year, picking up where Dasheri and Langra leave off and carrying through August into early September. The variety's name comes from the small town of Chausa in present-day Buxar district, Bihar, where in 1539 the Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri defeated Mughal emperor Humayun at the Battle of Chausa. By widely-told tradition, Sher Shah ordered Chausa-named mangoes planted around the battlefield to commemorate the victory; the cultivar that bears the place's name dates from those plantings.
A ripe Chausa is among the most overtly sweet of all Indian mangoes — Brix routinely lands at 19–24°, sometimes higher in well-watered orchards. The fruit is medium-large (250–400 g), oval-elongated with a slight beak at the apex, and the skin ripens to a uniform bright yellow with a faint blush. The flesh is deep golden, juicy to the point of dripping, with a soft melting texture and a slight fibre — enough to give the fruit body but not enough to read as fibrous on the tongue. The aroma is honeyed and lightly floral, less perfumed than Alphonso but heavier and more saturating.
The Indian Chausa is grown across Bihar (especially around the original Chausa-Buxar region), eastern Uttar Pradesh, and into West Bengal. Across the border in Pakistan's Punjab — also originally seeded by Sher Shah's plantings — the cultivar evolved into a distinctly heavier, smaller-stoned commercial line, marketed as Pakistani Chaunsa. The two are siblings, and on the modern global mango shelf they often appear side by side; connoisseurs claim to taste the difference (Pakistani Chaunsa is slightly less sweet but with more aroma), but blind panels rarely confirm it.
In the kitchen, Chausa is the classic late-season sucking mango — chilled, rolled between palms, top nipped, and the syrupy pulp squeezed straight into the mouth. The dark amber aamras made from Chausa in Bihari households marks the end of summer in much the same way the saffron-orange Alphonso aamras marked its beginning across the country. Increasingly, Chausa pulp is the preferred input for premium mango ice creams and the modern mango-honey desserts of north Indian dessert restaurants — the cultivar's heavy sweetness needs no added sugar.