J AGGERY.
Kund, . . . . AHAB. Guda, Gura, . SANSK.
Coompta sugar, BOMBAY. Kara vellam, . . Tau. Jagan, Cur, Ow., HIND. Nalla bellum, . . TEL.
Unrefined sugar, produced by evaporating the juices of palms, the cocoanut, the date, the Caryota urens, the Nipa fruticans, palmyra, and gomuti. In Bengal, it is from the Elate sylvestris or wild date that it is made. In Ceylon three palms yield palm sugar, the cocoanut palm (Cocos nucifera), the palmyra palm (Borassus flabelli formis), and the kittal or jaggery palm (Caryota urens). From each of these palms the juice of the flowering stalk is collected under the name of toddy, and from it jaggery is regularly prepared ; but it is from the palmyra palm that nearly all the palm sugar is obtained, and it is from the saccharine matter of the cocoanut palm that arrack is made in Ceylon. This palm becomes productive there in about six or seven years. In collecting
its toddy, the spathe is stripped off from the spadix before it has fully expanded ; the spadices are afterwards beaten between pieces of hard wood, and slices are cut with a sharp knife so as to allow the juice to flow out. Each spadix con tinues to yield juice for about 40 days, at nearly the average rate of half a gallon in 24 hours. When it is intended to prepare jaggery from the toddy, great care is taken by burning pieces of wood in the small earthen vessels to be attached to the flowers, and rubbing their interior with charcoal, to remove any impurities likely to promote fermentation ; and as an additional precaution chips of the bark of the Vateria Indica are placed in each, in order to retard fer mentation.