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COSMOLOGY : OLD AND NEW
regions of the Hell are expressed in the following verse of Chahadhālā :
मेरु समान लोह गलि जाय, ऐसी शीत उष्णता थाय। (Rocks of iron melt and freeze, such are the extremes of temperature in the hells.)
The last physical property which can be determined by touch is the smoothness or roughness of the surface of a body which fundamentally depends upon the arrangement of crystals in the surface. When a metallurgist examines the surface of a piece of steel under a microscope, he sees a hotch-potch arrangement of crystals which is responsible for the physical nature of the outer surface. It shows that the arrangement of crystals in things can assume infinite number of ways, although for practical purposes these groupings have been classified
We shall now discuss the five kinds of taste : Bitter, sour, acidic, sweet and astringent.
Bitter (tikta) like quinine. Sour (kaju), the result of unripeness in fruits.
Acidic (amla) the taste of an acid such as the sulphuric acid of the tartaric.
Sweet (madhura) like sugar. Astringent (kasāya) the taste of red chillies.
These are physical properties associated with matter and should not be confounded with the well known sad-rasa asociated with articles of food. The latter are :(milk, curd, ghee, sugar, oil and salt.)
Winifred Cullis, professor of physilogy at the London School of medicine and Dr. E.E. Hewer in their article on physiology 277 describe the organ of taste as follows :
“We taste with the minute projections that can be seen with a lens on the surface of the tongue. These projections carry sensitive cells that are in connection with nerve fibres. Four tastes can be distinguished-salt, sweet, sour and bitter : sweet things are best appreciated at the tip of the tongue and bitter things at the back."
It appears that the learned doctors had never the opportunity of tasting red chillies, otherwise there would have been no difficulty in recognizing the astringent taste of these as quite separate from the four tastes enumerated by them.
277. See An Outline for Boys and Girls and Their Parents, p. 81.
