Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/569

Revd. Father J. E. Blatter, S. J. Professor of Botany, St. Xavier's College, Bombay, in his account of this palm in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. XXI, has reprinted an English translation of a Tamil poem, entitled "Tâla Vilasum," written by "Arunachalam, a poet of Terruk-Kudantei, the same with Combaconam in the province of Tanjore." This poem enumerates no less than 801 different purposes to which the Palmyra may be applied. The extracts given below show some of its uses in medicine :

Griping of the bowels, diarrhœa and lodging of small fish bones in the œsophagus may be removed by eating dried Palmyra pulp.

If the flour of the dried edible Palmyra-root (Odial) be mixed with Cocoanut milk, salt water and fish, and if the paste be steamed, the cake when eaten will daily add strength to any body. The middle pieces of the Odial are cleared of their outer fibrous skin, soaked in water, then dried and powdered ; If the flour be mixed with the cocoanut milk, salt water, fish and herbs, and if the paste be steamed and then ghee be added to it, the cake will indeed be very sweet ; if certain fruits and pungent substances be added to the above, the cake will be of an agreeable taste. If the Odial flour be mixed with the scrapings of the kernel of the cocoanut and powdered rice, cummin, pepper and chilly ; if the paste be steamed and the cake be broken and dried, it can be preserved for two months. No other cakes will resemble the above. Sweets are more agreeable to cakes of the above description. If curds, milk, ghee, and cocoanut milk be added to the paste of the Odial flour, and be steamed, the cake, when used, has the power of retinendi seminis virilis in corpore sine pollutione, conferendique facultatem horas in thalamo jugali protrahere, and increasing muscular strength ; the person will not be reduced by labour.

Toddy if taken daily, will increase one's muscular strength and give a gloss to his person ; if used by children in small quantity it will remove itch and many other diseases. If powdered load-stone and scoria of iron and file be put into the pot that is attached to the incised blossom, and the toddy collected in such a pot be drunk for seven days in the morning.

If shell-lime be put in the pot that should be attached to the blossom, and the toddy be used, hunger, thirst, languor and laziness will be removed, heat in the constitution will be destroyed and coolness be created. Toddy will be very sweet if powdered pepper be put in it and boiled. If toddy be boiled nicely, and if slices of ash-coloured pumpkin be boiled in it.

Eng. : — The Coco-nut Palm.

Sans. : — Nârikela, nari-kera, nari-keli, langalin.