A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customes of ancient and modern nations in the manufacture and use of inebriating liquors : with the present practice of distillation in all its varieties: together with an extensive illustration of the consumption and effects of opium, and other stimulants used in the East, as substitutes for wine and spirits / By Samuel Morewood.

  • Morewood, Samuel.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customes of ancient and modern nations in the manufacture and use of inebriating liquors : with the present practice of distillation in all its varieties: together with an extensive illustration of the consumption and effects of opium, and other stimulants used in the East, as substitutes for wine and spirits / By Samuel Morewood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    effects. The term arrack being common in eastern countries where the arts of civilized life have been so early cultivated, it is more reasonable to suppose that the Tartars received this Avord through their eastern connexions with the Chinese, or other oriental nations, than to attribute it to a derivation foreign to their language, or as a generic term of their own. The great source of all Indian literature, and the parent of almost every oriental dialect, is the Sanscrit, a language of the most venerable and unfathomable antiquity, though now confined to the libraries of the Brahmins, and solely appropriated to religious laws and records. Mr. Halhed, in the preface to his Grammar of the Bengal language, says, that he was astonished to find a strong similitude between the Persian, Arabian, and even the Latin and Greek languages, not merely in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutation of refined arts or improved manners might have incidentally introduced, but in the very groundwork of language— in monosyllables—in the names of numbers, and the appellations which would be first employed on the immediate dawn of civilisation. Telinga is a dialect of the Sanscrit, in which the word areca is found, it is used by the Brahmins in writing Sancrit, and since to the latter all the other tongues of India are more or less indebted, the term areca, or arrack, may be fairly traced through the different lan- guages of the East, so that the general use and application of this word in Asiatic countries cannot appear strange.*—To these consi- derations may be added, that in Malabar the tree which yields the material from which this oriental beverage is produced is termed areca, and, among the Tongusians, Calmucks, Kirghises, and other hordes, koumiss, in its ardent state, is known by the general term, Arrack or Rak. Klaproth says, that the Ossetians, (anciently Alans,) a Caucasian people, applied the word Arak to denote all distilled liquorsf—a decided confirmation of the foregoing observa- tions and opinions. The distillation of koumiss is generally effected by means of two earthen pots closely stopped, the upper one of which is usually covered with wet clay, the condensed vapour running slowly through a small wooden pipe into a receiver. Some distil it in copper vessels after the manner of the Chinese. The spirit is at first very weak, but generally brought up by a second operation, when greater * Vide the Grammar and Dictionary of the Mahratta Language by Dr. Carey ; also the translation of the Laws of Menu, by Sir William Jones. | Asia Polyglotta, p. 89. Hist. Tatars, 8vo. vol. ii. p. 517.