i 
2. 
3. 
a fire in the biaxii cooking hut, about fifty meters from the house 
ina secluded spot. A cauldron with several liters of water was set 
to boil, and twenty-four cagrupanga leaves were added. This was 
left and he returned to the house to chat with his family and eat 
a light supper. 
About 7:00 P.M., Chindoy returned to the hut with several enor- 
mous leaf blades of sikse tomakéio (Colocasia esculenta Schott) and 
two liters of biaxii remaining from a previous occasion. Behind the 
hut, he dug up ‘four pairs’ (eight sections about 4 25 em.) of 
the bidxa liana. These had been buried for three weeks, to keep 
them fresher, he said. The sections were carefully scraped to remove 
all dirt from the bark, an operation which took twenty-five minutes. 
During this time, the fire subsided, but, when the cleaning was 
finished, he revived it to continue the boiling for about forty-five 
minutes, 
Now the medicine-man began scraping the bark from the sections 
of liana with a knife. This tiring process lasted about half an hour, 
during which time six sections were scraped down to the wood. He 
decided that it would be too much work to scrape the bark from 
the remaining two, and further decided against mashing up the wood 
as he had previously intended. About one and a half liters of scrap- 
ings from the liana were accumulated. 
A flat stone was placed on the Colocasia leaves, and the bark 
scrapings were pounded on this with a smaller round stone, collected 
on the leaves and dumped into a large enamel bowl. The scrapings 
appeared to be reduced to one liter in volume. 
The two bottles of previously prepared biazii were then shaken, 
producing a froth in the bottles. Their contents, about one and a 
half liters, were emptied into the bow] of fresh bark scrapings, and 
about one-half of the simmering cagrupanga infusion (one liter) was 
also adced to the bowl. Chindoy washed his hands and proceeded 
to knead, rub and squeeze the scrapings in the bowl for several 
minutes. Then the scrapings were thrown into the cauldron of 
cagrupanga leaves and the cauldron taken off the fire. The liquid in 
the bowl, consisting of previously prepared biaati (1.5 liters) and 
an infusion of cagrupanga leaves (1 liter) in which about 1 liter of 
mashed bidra bark scrapings had been kneaded and squeezed, was 
ready for consumption as soon as cooled. 
In brief, the ingredients of biawti were: 
24 leaves of B. Rusbyana. 
Bark from a stem of B. Caapi (or possibly B. inebri- 
ans) about 1.5 meters long and 4 cm. in diameter. 
1.5 liters of previously prepared biawit. 
(129 ] 
