Kadali

Rambhά. Vern. Kalά. Beng. Kelά. Hind.

The economical uses of this most valuable plant are too well-known to need any notice here. I will refer only to one of them.

The leaves and leaf-stalks when burnt yield alkaline ashes which can be used instead of country soap or fuller's earth, in washing clothes. In the Noakhally jail, the old leaves are collected, dried and burnt to ashes. The ashes being placed on a piece of cloth supported on four posts, water is made to percolate through them into an earthen vessel. The alkaline water thus obtained is used for steeping clothes intended to be washed. As the stems of the plantain are cut down soon after the fruit is gathered, there is always a large quantity of leaves and stalks available in all gardens where it is cultivated. They can be readily economised in the simple method above described, if not manufactured into cloth or paper.

The unripe fruit, called mochaka in Sanskrit, is considered cooling and astringent; it is much used in diabetes in the form of a ghrita prepared as follows:-

Kadalyάdi ghrita.1 Take of plantain flowers twelve seers and a half, watery juice of the root-stock of the plantain tree sixty-four seers; boil them together till reduced to one-fourth and strain. To the strained decoction add four seers of prepared clarified butter and the following substances in the form of a paste, namely, unripe plantains, cloves, cardamoms, red sandal wood,wood of Pinus longifolia, (sarala), jatamansi root, the three myrobalans, Raphanus sativus (mulaka), and the fruit of Feronia elephantum (kapittha) in equal parts, one seer in all, and prepare a ghrita in the usual way. This medicine is generally given along with some preparation of tin or other metallic medicine in diabetes. Dose, about two tolas.