Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/207

SALT, ABKARI AND MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE. collected the revenue by imposing what amounted to a poll-tax on all the inhabitants — whether they sold or drank liquor or not — graduated according to their supposed means. In 1868 Government got to know of this, and indignantly took the farm under their own management. Improvements in the system were not so easy to effect, however, as at first sight appeared; for the hill people know of several forms of strong drink all of which can easily be made at home; and even if it had been possible to stop the manufacture of these in the thousands of scattered huts dotted about the hundreds of jungly and secluded valleys in the Agency, the coercion necessary would speedily have driven the hill men to resistance. The most popular of these drinks is the liquor distilled from the blossom of the Bassia latifolia, called ippa in Telugu and mohwa in Uriya. This tree flowers in the month of Chaitra (March and April). The people burn the grass under the trees beforehand, so as to facilitate the gathering of the blossoms, and when these fall they turn out and collect them. If the blossoms are dried in the sun they will keep good for some weeks; and if they are fried and then pressed into balls (the frying makes them sticky) they will keep a couple of years. Some of them are mixed with jaggery and eaten, some are sold to the Sondis (see below) to be distilled into spirit, and in parts of the Agency {e.g., the Savara and Kuttiya Khond hills) some are retained for distillation at home. This latter process is simple- The flowers are soaked in water for three or four days and are then boiled with water in an earthenware chatty. Over the top of this is placed another chatty, mouth downwards, the join between the two being made air-tight by being tied round with a bit of cloth and luted with clay. From a hole made in the upper chatty a hollow bamboo leads to a third pot, specially made for the purpose, which is globular and has no opening except that into which the bamboo pipe leads. This last is kept cool by pouring water constantly over it, and the distillate is forced into it through the bamboo and there condenses. Besides ippa liquor the hill people brew beer from rice, sámai (the millet Panicum miliare) and ragi. They 'mash' the grain in the ordinary manner, add some more water to it, mix a small quantity of a ferment with it, leave it to ferment three or four days, and then strain off the grain. The beer so obtained is often highly intoxicating, and different kinds of it go by different names, such as ''londa. pandiyam and maddikallu. The ferment which is used is called the sáraiya-mandu'' ('spirit drug') or 187