EARTH-EATING AND THE EARTH-EATING HABIT IN INDIA. 251 



earth are sold in the villages as a regular food. In Java and Sumatra this earth is speci- 

 ally prepared for use. The sand and any hard substances are first removed and then it 

 is reduced to paste by kneading it with water. The dressed clay is finally moulded into 

 small cakes or tablets about the thickness of lead pencils, which are baked or roasted in 

 an iron saucepan. The Javanese often consume the clay made into little figures of 

 animals and men. Some of these earths have been analysed and have been found to 

 consist mostly of the remains of animalculse and plants deposited in fresh water. 



The Annamites look upon raw and baked clay as a great delicacy. In Tonkin the 

 " Geophages " or earth-eaters prepare little shavings or fritters of clay baked on hot 

 bricks. A sample was chemically examined by M. Demoussy of the Paris Museum 

 (Jardin des Plantes) with the result that in composition and properties it was like kaolin 

 and was totally destitute of nutrition. The Chinese are addicted to the habit and eat 

 a white clay free from all organic remains. Hanbury l refers to two earths sold in the 

 shops for medicinal and other purposes. The first of these was an aluminous earth 

 {Chih-shih-che) of a pale pinkish colour, or white, in soft, friable irregular masses 

 with the composition of kaolin ; the second was an argillaceous earth [Fei-hwo-shih) of 

 a pale yellowish colour, soft to the touch, and formed into little rectangular oblong 

 blocks, like those sold in the Indian bazars. The Chinese, in many parts, mix gypsum 

 with pulse, and thus form a jelly, which they greatly relish. 



Among the Ainos, the aborigines of Japan, there is a kind of clay which is eaten to 

 a considerable extent, mixed with fragments of the leaves of a plant, and used as an 

 ingredient in the preparation of soup. The clay occurs in a bed in the valley of Tsie- 

 tonai (eat-earth valley) on the north of the coast of Yesso. It is of light-grey colour 

 and fine consistence, and is consumed, not as a matter of necessity but because it is 

 believed to contain some beneficial ingredient. 



II. The Earth-Eaters of India. 



Such are a few of the reference we have been able to find to the tribes and peoples 

 among whom the earth-eating habit has been noticed on other continents, and in other 

 parts of Asia. If we turn to India, the first thing which strikes the observer is that habits 

 of this kind are no new thing, and were as well known in classic times as at the present 

 day, having been mentioned by both Sanscrit and Arabic writers. 



The most noteworthy of these references occurs in the poems of Kalidasa, whose 

 period may, with some certainty, be placed in the fifth century a.d. The following trans- 

 lation of the slokas Nos. 3 and 4, of Canto III of Raghuvamsa, are perhaps the most 

 interesting passages in this connection. 



■ l 3. While the king was in the queen-consort's company in his private chamber, he 

 did not feel any pleasure from smelling the sweet odour of her mouth, which had become 

 fragrant by partaking of baked clay, just as an elephant is not satiated by smelling the 

 fragrant exhalations which emanate from the dried-up water-pool in the forest, after it 

 has been partially filled by the first shower of rain towards the close of the hot weather. 



1 Science Papers, p. 219. 



