FoodMuseum - Narcotics & Medicines

PRM Inv. nr. 1892.29.13

Holy rice in paper .

Japan, 1892

Voltaire Cang - HOLY RICE, IN PAPER WRAPPING WITH PRINTED INSCRIPTION

Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), British Japanologist and professor of Japanese in Tokyo, described this object briefly as a ‘little arrow-head-shaped parcel of rice that has been offered to the goddess. The Japanese call it o semmai, and eat it with reverence’. He includes this among ‘the remains of the daily offerings made by the priests, as part of their morning service’, including other foods, tea, and water. These are ‘partaken of by the faithful’ as part of their meals, although they sometimes use them for other purposes, such as applying them onto afflicted or diseased areas of the body.

This rice packet is included among the trinkets and ‘charms from the large and popular Buddhist temple of Asakusa, in Tokyo, that are also ‘typical specimens of those sold at hundreds of shrines all over the land’. Indeed, the large printed characters on the wrapping read as ‘ o sen mai ’ , with ‘o’ as the honorific, ‘sen’ meaning ‘washed or purified’, and ‘mai’ as the character for rice. The smaller inscription refer to its source, Sensji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple and one of the most important.

Sensji still sells holy rice today in similarly shaped and printed packets.

Their purpose and function, however, have changed slightly from a century ago. Today, Asakusa holy rice is bought by and for expecting mothers as part of a ‘good luck package’ that also includes a small paper charm that they are instructed to tie to their sash or insert in their mother-child handbook (used by pregnant women in Japan before and after giving birth), and a larger paper amulet to be hung or displayed on the family altar. The small handful of purified rice is to be boiled together with the regular rice meal and consumed ten days before the scheduled date of birth, all to assure a safe delivery for the mother.

Many other temples in Japan sell rice previously offered to Buddha or the saints in small packets for use as charms, not necessarily for expecting mothers only. As in Chamberlain’s time and his holy rice from Asakusa, these are partaken of by the mainly Buddhist faithful as part of their regular meal, in prayer and gratitude for health and a happy life for oneself and family.

PRM Inv. nr. 1896.1.59

Sample of hemp used for smoking.

India, Berar 1896

Paul Levy - Hashish

I don’t know if he ever smoked or ate hashish (or “haschish,” as he spelled it) but my cultural hero, Lytton Strachey, would almost certainly have been in favour of legalising the drug. We can be confident of this because of a poem he wrote about it sometime between September 1906 and December 1908. If he didn’t take it himself, someone must have given him a particularly graphic and accurate account of the drug. [I am quoting from my own published 1972 commentary on the poem – I am literary co-executor of the Strachey estate.]

The delight in ambiguity, the pleasure in discovering a contradiction and passively witnessing its mystical resolution, the aphrodisiacal heightening of sexual fantasies and experiences, the visions, and the feeling that each of one’s senses is doing the job of one of the others, are all phenomena reported by users of cannabis resin. The use of this drug was not so common in Strachey’s day as it is at present, but there were then no penalties. It is obvious not only from the positive attitude manifested towards the drug in this poem, but also from his general social views, that were Lytton Strachey alive today his voice would be added to the chorus of voices deploring the existing laws on soft drugs. “The Haschish” carries on a bit

Oh, let me dream, and let me know no more

The sun’s harsh sight and life’s discordant roar;

Let me eclipse my being in a swoon,…

Where vague remembrance finds delicious fare –

Looks that are felt, and lusts as light as air,

And curious embraces…

And love’s last kiss, exquisitely withdrawn,

And copulations dimmer than the dawn….

Of all occult and unimagined joys

Waves into vision – forms of golden boys

Embraced seraphically in far lands

By languid lover, linking marvellous hands

With early virgins crowned with quiet wreaths

Of lily, frailer than the air that breathes

The memory of Sappho all day long

Through Lesbian shades of fragmentary song,…

But it does link us nicely to my “new” (1987) edition of The Alice B Toklas Cook Book “with extra recipes and introduction by Paul Levy,” which, in truth, contains only one celebrated recipe, “Bryan Gysen’s Haschich Fudge.”

Miss Toklas spelled the drug as “haschich,” whereas the author of the recipe actually spelled his name “Brion Gysin” (1916-86). He was a performance poet and painter of the Beat school, and the discoverer of the “cut-up technique” adopted by his friend, William S. Burroughs.

Alice B. Toklas regarded herself as the wife of Gertrude Stein, and was the principal cook in the household. She appears to think the recipe easy to execute, one “which anyone could whip up on a rainy day.” “This is the food of Paradise – of Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises; it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chapter meeting,” she continues with heavy irony, “of the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution].” Her descriptions of the effects of ingesting the dish are positively Stracheyean: “Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by ‘un évanouissement réveillé’.”

As for the recipe itself, I’d imagine you can use any of the specimens of processed hemp held by the Pitt Rivers. You start by finely grinding peppercorns, nutmeg, coriander and cinnamon, adding the spices to pitted dates, dried figs, almonds and peanuts, plus the Cannabis sativa (she gives no real quantities for the fruits, nuts or hash). You combine the mixture with sugar and butter. Made into a cake or shaped as walnut-sized balls, and eaten with care, “two pieces are quite sufficient.” Re-reading Miss Toklas, I am pleased to learn that I had some confusion about the two species of hemp, C sativa and Cannabis indica, and that it is the more common and normally more potent C sativa that was grown for rope. During the First World War, my Russian-Jewish grandfather grew it in Lexington, KY, USA, as his cash crop and contribution to the War effort. The cannabis crop was later extirpated to make way for the family farms’ mainstay, burley tobacco; but in 1966, when I visited there with several friends from Harvard, the cannabis still grew as volunteers around and under the fencing. We naturally tried to smoke the easily identified green plants, but to no effect, except for that of hyperventilation.

A couple of years later, there was enough of the real thing available, that in Cambridge, MA, I unwittingly ate a large portion of “Brion Gysin’s Haschisch Fudge” on the eve of an important examination at Harvard. Its effects resulted in a performance that startled the examiners, as it did me. In retrospect, I should, of course, have recognised the recipe.

PRM Inv. nr 1913.5.51.1

Jar of saline ash used in place of salt in cookery.

Kenya, Muranga. Kikuyu 1913

Gosewijn van Beek - The gost of Beatrice Blackwood and the spirit of salt.

“Look, over there sir.”

The attendant who guided me through the semi-darkness of the main hall of the Pitt Rivers museum whispered in my ear. His voice was hushed and reverent. He nodded in the direction of a shadowy person moving between the display cabinets on the far side of the hall. She seemed quite insignificant, a lean black figure lost in the unlit corridors moving past like a ghostly vision.

“There is Miss Blackwood, sir. She still comes here regularly, you know.”

From his demeanor I guessed that this was a sight of special significance, more significant in his eyes than the treasures on display in the museum, let alone the mundane objects I was looking for. Also there was no doubt that this shadowy appearance was out of bounds for ordinary mortels such as me. I was only a young anthropology student of 23. I was just visiting while on an internship at some London museum, and from abroad as well. Even if I had dared, there was no question of approaching her and she moved out of my life as silently as she had appeared.

The chance encounter with the legendary Miss Beatrice Blackwood could hardly have been more theatrical. It was like an apparition. For the first time I felt within touching distance of history, like Charly Brown of Peanuts fame who sees Pig Pen passing by, carrying ’the dust of ancient civilizations’. In his typical Charlie Brown kind of way he then dryly notes that ‘history is passing before my eyes’. His reflection is moving in a melancoly way. At the time I truly felt I had catched a glimps of history.

Anyway, Charlie Brown’s musings are very apt in evoking the ephemeral nature of the world around us. History often is indeed ‘passing before our very eyes’. Such as when I look at the photo in front of me of a rather scrappy cupboard that is hidden somewhere in the Pitt Rivers museum. It shows an assortment of small bottles and vials containing what we normally would call grimy dirt and slimy muck. If we found this unsightly mess under the sink of an abandoned home, we would pick it up with a latex glove and throw it away. If we found it exhibited in a securely locked display cabinet, that would be in the hall of the Food Standards Agency with an educational warning. But if we find it in an anthropological museum, we surely must be looking to specimen of traditional products: food, condiments, the stuff of survival. And indeed we are. Moreover, on two of the yellowish labels I recognise the name of Miss Blackwood. We meet again, after 50 years.

If you have to survive on the food available in the Pitt Rivers museum, a pinch of salt will not come amiss. Much of the fare that can be collected from the museum’s exhibits will certainly need a Display Pitt Rivers Museum

kick to make them palatable, besides the obvious fact that salt is in itself a basic ingredient of the human diet. So this rather unpalatable looking cabinet would be an essential find for any locked-in survivalist. Two of the items on display apparently contain salt or a salty substance: the tiny label-less bottle in the centre (nr. 1938.36.793) and the larger tube on the far right (nr. 1913.5.51). While the first one might be the most convenient to use in case of an emergency, the last one is the more interesting to contemplate. It also looks by far the most obnoxious of the two. That is only to be expected for it does not contain salt per sé, but ‘saline ash’, collected in 1908 from the Kikuyu (present day Kenya) by the anthropologist William Routledge.

While the need for and hankering after salt is universal, its availability in pure form is patchy. Many pre-industrial societies could only suplete their dietary insufficiencies of salt by barter or by the local production of salty substances in roundabout ways. And, as traded salt usually was prohibitively expensive, these last methods often stayed alive as traditional alternatives. Such could have been the case for the Kikuyu. For the Kukukuku in Papua New Guinea, where Miss Blackwood undertook her research into the technology of a stone age people, salt from vegetable ashes was a well known and important technology. In the posthumous compilation of her articles and fieldnotes (The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut, 1978) there are numerous entries on salt alone plus a concise description of the technique used. A lengthy quote is by far the shortest way to illustrate the method. As such it might be helpfull for the aspiring survivalist who has no ready access to any source of salt, including those available in museum cabinets.

The whole plant, including the root is burnt; the ashes are collected in a pandanus leaf, water is poured over them, and they are then pushed into a length of bamboo and heated over a fire until thoroughly dry, when the powder is stored in bamboo containers for use as required. The resulting product looks not unlike very brown sugar and has a slightly bitter taste.

(The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut, 1978: 41)

Of course, Miss Blackwood has recorded the plants used for making this form of native salt. Most of them turn out to belong to the Impatiens family, of which the Policeman’s Helmet (Impatiens glandulifera) is a widespread representative in Western Europe. It could mean the technique might also be useful in England and Europe; a question of careful experiment.

The local production of salt-like substances might have looked like this in many places of (inland) New Guinea. Among the Bedamuni, a group of semi-nomadic horticulturalist-hunters in the rainforests of the Western Province, cristaline salt was bartered irregularly from the Highlands. The supply was always scanty at the most, however, and people generally depended on the production of vegetable ashes. These would be sprinkled over food when they ‘had a craving for it’. Interestingly, they would use the same expression in describing the urge to go on a cannibalistic raid to an enemy hamlet.

Whatever that indicates, it certainly shows the importance attributed to saline sources in this particular society. In fact, there is an addition to the story of salt with these Bedamuni that highlights this status of salt in an unexpected and quite remarkable way. It will involve delving into the initiation of boys, ritual homosexuality and the growth of pigs…

But this, unfortunately, is all we have time for at the moment. I hope we will meet again at the next instalment.

Bayliss-Smith, Timothy and Richard Feachem - Susistence and Survival. Rural Ecology in the Pacific. London, Academic Press 1977

Blackwood, Beatrice - The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut. Oxford, Pitt Rivers Museum 1978

Beek, A.G.van - The Way Of All Flesh: Hunting and Ideology of the Bedamuni on the Great Papuan Plateau. Leiden University 1987

PRM Inv. nr. 1917.53.776

Onion stuck with pins and a metal coil

Used in sympathetic magic.

The onion has a piece of paper wrapped around it.

UK, England ,Somerset near Wellington Rockwell Green, 1891

“... It is an onion stuck full of pins, and bearing on a label the name of a certain John Milton, a shoemaker in Rockwell Green, the hamlet where the onion was prepared to bewitch him. In a low cottage-alehouse there, certain men were sitting round the fire of logs on the hearth, during the open hours of a Sunday afternoon, drinking, when there was a gust of wind; something rustled and rattled in the wide old chimney, and a number of objects rolled into the room. The men who were there knew perfectly what they were, caught them up, and carried them off. I became possessed of four of them, but three have disappeared mysteriously. One which has gone had on it the name of a brother magistrate of mine, whom the wizard, who was the alehouse-keeper, held in particular hatred as being a strong advocate of temperance, and therefore likely to interfere with his malpractices, and whom apparently he / designed to get rid of by stabbing and roasting an onion representing him

. .. My friend, apparently, was never the worse, but when next year his wife had an attack of fever, there was shaking of heads among the wise. That publican-magician was a man to have seen. He was a thorough-going sorcerer of the old bad sort, and the neighbours told strange stories about him. One I have in my mind now. At night, when the cottage was shut up, and after the wife had gone to bed, there would be strange noises hard, till the neighbours were terrified about the goings on. One night his wife plucked up courage and crept downstairs to peep through the key-hole, and there she saw the old man solemnly dancing before the bench, on which sat "a little boy, black all over, a crowdin' (fiddling) to 'un." '

(This is presumably one of the 'Charms' listed under Tylor's name on page 460 of 'Catalogue of the Exhibition of Objects Connected with Folk-Lore in the Rooms of the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House: Prepared by the Chairman of the Entertainment Committee', same publication, pp. 433-60. [JC 23 11 2007, 7 12 2007])

PRM Inv. nr: 1896.16.13

Pieces of kava root strung on a string .

Tonga, Polynesia 1895

“ Kava ready for use. I procured the root freshly dug up, and cut it up, dried it on a board: it is not usually, though occasionally thus prepeared ”. ds. N.S. Penguin (?), 1895

A note about kava by Gosewijn van Beek :

As customs vary, so do attitudes towards life’s more relaxing pleasures. Therefore, like all anthropological museums worth their stuff, the Pitt Rivers Museum is full of sinful substances.

Take the kava root for example, collected in 1902 from the island of Fiji (1902-4-1). Because of its size it would probably serve all the participants on a Pitt Rivers survival expedition as an after-dinner relaxant.

The brew made of the kava root ( Piper methysticum ) has important cultural significance in many parts of Oceania. Its use is often ceremonial, as in Fiji, and associated with the use of special implements (http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID124831.html).

Kava’s sedative and euphorant effect makes it eminently suitable for inducing shamanistic trances, as shown by its use elsewhere in the Melanesian region.

The preparation of the sophoriphic drink is easy. It only requires chewing the root, spitting it out in the bowl and letting it ferment for a while. This was demonstrated in the 1960ties by the daugther of a Fijian chief in the museum in Leiden when she presided over a kava ceremony for the benefit of the author and his fellow interns. (to be continued)

PRM Inv. nr 1921.6.43

Earth cake

Zanzibar 1921

Linda Roodenburg: A note on Gyophagy

People eat clay, not only when they are very hungry, but also because it contains healthy minerals. If it is darkish red, it is full of iron and specific kinds of clay contain salt, calcium and magnesium.

There are several samples of edible clay in the Pitt Rivers Collection, from different parts of the world. Gyophagy is the word for eating clay. Indonesians for example, distinguished different kinds of 'ampo', which they prepared with great care.

In his manual for comparative ethnology of the Dutch East Indies (1883), Dr. G.A. Wilken wrote about preparing and eating clay: "First, they washed the clay and removed sand and stones. After soaking it an overnight in water, the clay was kneaded into flat cookies or small pipes. Then they were salted and finally roasted."

In Java, women told Wilken that it helps against sickness in the first months of pregnancy. But there are more reasons to eat clay. Dr. Wilken also mentioned that the miners of the Oranje-Nassau Mine on Borneo changed their opium addiction for an addiction to clay containing 28% bitumen:

‘…their faces are pale and swollen; their eyelids are inflamed. They are lethargic, constipated and because of that melancholic as well.’

In 17th Century Europe clay was used as a red pigment, for example in bakery. And it was supposed to contain healthy qualities. Modern naturopathy still does. Because of its absorbent ability and detoxifying effect, in water dissolved clay is a remedy against food poisoning and diarrhea. In the Andes people know that too. There exist a dish of potatoes with a clay sauce. The dissolved clay neutralizes the toxic substances that potatoes may contain.