________________
the saline (kashấya) quality of body
as in the case of salt. “In the ordinary course of things these sensations are excited by the contact of specific sapid substances with the mucous membrane of the mouth, the substances acting in some way or other, by virtue of their chemical constitution, on the endings of the gustatory fibres. When we taste quinine, the particles of quinine, we must suppose, set up chemieal changes in the cells of the taste buds or in the other parts of epethelium, and by means of these changes gustatory impulses are started. Substances which taste sweet or bitter are always found to contain certain definite groups in the molecule, especially the hydroxyle (OH) and amido (NH2), groups. Moreover, it seems as if a certain definite balance between positive and negative radicals must exist in order that a subs. tance shall taste sweet, for when such substance is so altered chemically that this balance is upset, the resulting derivatives are, according to circumstances, either bitter or tasteless.” Does this not show what is implied in the rasa-nama karma ?
445
