Friends remember the days at the Main Gate, each one of us scurrying inside with one in hand , clandestinely smuggling it into the class and gormandizing on them ... inside the flappable desks for a camouflage !!!!!!!
THE YAJUR VEDA mentions the bael tree, but the Charaka Samhita, an Ayurveda treatise from the 1st millennium BC, was the first book to describe its medicinal properties. Hindu scriptures abound in references to the bael tree and its leaves. The devotees of Lord Shiva commonly offer bael leaves to the deity, especially on Shivaratri; this probably explains why bael trees are so common near temples. Hindus also believe that goddess Lakshmi resides in bael leaves.
As food: Indonesians beat the pulp of the ripe fruit with palm sugar and eat the mixture at breakfast. The sweetened pulp is a source of sherbet in the subcontinent. Jam, pickle, marmalade, syrup, jelly, squash and toffee are some of the products of this versatile fruit. Young bael leaves are a salad green in Thailand.
Other uses: Bael fruit pulp has a soap-like action that made it a household cleaner for hundreds of years. The sticky layer around the unripe seeds is household glue that also finds use in jewellery-making. The glue, mixed with lime, waterproofs wells and cements walls. The glue also protects oil paintings when added as a coat on the canvas. The fruit rind yields oil that is popular as a fragrance for hair; it also produces a dye used to colour silks and calico.
Nutrition: A hundred gm of bael fruit pulp contains 31 gm of carbohydrate and two gm of protein, which adds up to nearly 140 calories. The ripe fruit is rich in beta-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A; it also contains significant quantities of the B vitamins thiamine and riboflavin, and small amounts of Vitamin C. Wild bael fruit tends to have more tannin than the cultivated ones; tannin depletes the body of precious nutrients, and evidence suggests it can cause cancer.
Medicinal uses: The bael fruit is more popular as medicine than as food. The tannin in bael has an astringent effect that once led to its use as a general tonic and as a traditional cure for dysentery, diarrhoea, liver ailments, chronic cough and indigestion. In fact, Vasco da Gama's men, suffering from diarrhoea and dysentery in India, turned to the bael fruit for relief. The root juice was once popular as a remedy for snakebites.
The seed oil is a purgative, and the leaf juice mixed with honey is a folk remedy for fever. The tannin-rich and alkaloid-rich bark decoction is a folk cure for malaria.
As food: Indonesians beat the pulp of the ripe fruit with palm sugar and eat the mixture at breakfast. The sweetened pulp is a source of sherbet in the subcontinent. Jam, pickle, marmalade, syrup, jelly, squash and toffee are some of the products of this versatile fruit. Young bael leaves are a salad green in Thailand.
Other uses: Bael fruit pulp has a soap-like action that made it a household cleaner for hundreds of years. The sticky layer around the unripe seeds is household glue that also finds use in jewellery-making. The glue, mixed with lime, waterproofs wells and cements walls. The glue also protects oil paintings when added as a coat on the canvas. The fruit rind yields oil that is popular as a fragrance for hair; it also produces a dye used to colour silks and calico.
Nutrition: A hundred gm of bael fruit pulp contains 31 gm of carbohydrate and two gm of protein, which adds up to nearly 140 calories. The ripe fruit is rich in beta-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A; it also contains significant quantities of the B vitamins thiamine and riboflavin, and small amounts of Vitamin C. Wild bael fruit tends to have more tannin than the cultivated ones; tannin depletes the body of precious nutrients, and evidence suggests it can cause cancer.
Medicinal uses: The bael fruit is more popular as medicine than as food. The tannin in bael has an astringent effect that once led to its use as a general tonic and as a traditional cure for dysentery, diarrhoea, liver ailments, chronic cough and indigestion. In fact, Vasco da Gama's men, suffering from diarrhoea and dysentery in India, turned to the bael fruit for relief. The root juice was once popular as a remedy for snakebites.
The seed oil is a purgative, and the leaf juice mixed with honey is a folk remedy for fever. The tannin-rich and alkaloid-rich bark decoction is a folk cure for malaria.
Not sure whether bael is same as KOYITOH !
8 comments:
Medicinal Uses - Simply Amazing!!
Wood you try this?
I certainly wood!
Kya karein, kya na karein, ye kaisi mushkil hay
KOYITOH bata de iska hal o mere bhai!
The first para. was ABesque. When it talked about Indonesians, I thought it was Naresh and scrolling down, yep!
Good one nonetheless. In class VI, we would throw coins at the vendors and they would throw a koitho ball back at us, that would displease Miss Mable Vincent. Oh how I wish I could say sorry to her!
Koyintho and Bael are two different fruits. Koyintho was what we used to eat in school.I'm so shameless, I used to buy it from the vendor at the gate of my daughter's school whenever I went to pick her up!Its still sold outside schools in Bangalore.
Two different Fruits?
Koyitho and Bael are Ek Gaadi key Do Bael!
Naresh...I think Koyitoh ( Kaveet as we used to call it at home) is different from Bael...OMG...if we ate Koyitoh for diarrhoea or dysentry we'd end up in the ICU...hehehe...
Btw...just recently my nephew bought that from the market and as usual I was flooded with sweet memories. I bit on it with abandon and relished it.... still thinking I was a kid. And lo and behold .. Ffor the next few hours the 32 decided to go on strike :-{
With your blog I am again reminded of both memories- the sweet and the sour ones....:-}
Friends
Hark ! I can hear the rumblings of ABesque write up taking shape - the oblation for the stuff to emerge - is his inseperable 'peg' which fuels his imagination.
A lull before the storm. The last one was probab the ' Scarlet box '
Touch Wood! Perhaps the same wood powered Robin Hood!
Nice write up, Naresh. Keem 'em comin'.
the last koitho i had was way back in the seventies.
the bael fruit probably was best used as a pulp for a cold drink during summer as in belo ponna.
i wonder from where you pick up these facts.
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