VIZAGAPATAM.
Sondi-mandu ('Sondis' drug') and can be bought in the weekly markets. There are numerous recipes1[1] for making it, but the ingredients are always jungle roots and barks.It is sold made up into small balls with rice.
This beer is the common drink in places where the ippa tree is rare, such as the Pádwa and Koraput taluks (where theippatree is plentiful, as in Gunupur taluk, it is almost unknown), and seems a harmless kind of beverage. Sometimes, however, the fermented grain is afterwards distilled, and the spirit so made is potent enough.
At first the authorities endeavoured to administer the liquor revenue directly, under amáni, but gradually the renting system was reverted to everywhere except in Malkanagiri, Kotapad and Naurangpur. It was tried, indeed, in these also in 1880, but was a miserable failure. Both in the rented and the amani taluks the methods followed were much the same. Strong waters made for home consumption were entirely exempt from taxation, but manufacture for sale was only permitted under a license. Each retail shop had its own still alongside, and the license covered both. This system is necessary in a country which is too rugged to admit of easy transport from a central distillery to outlying shops, and in which strong drink transported by a highlander through highland villages would be unlikely to reach its destination without paying heavy toll en route.
After ten years of renting, the pendulum swung back again and the amáni system rose once more into favour. In 1893, in the amáni taluks, the right to distil and to sell in the same licensed premises was, for the first time, sold separately; in 1897 this policy was extended to the whole of the Agency except the Gunupur farm; in 1901 this farm was abolished; and at present the right to distil and sell is separately sold throughout the agency tracts except in 36 villages (mainly in Golgonda taluk) which, for abkári purposes, are included in the ordinary tracts. The stills make liquor both from ippa flowers and from grain.
To prevent smuggling from the Agency to the rest of the district, where the price of spirit is higher, a preventive belt, five miles wide, was established in 1890 along the frontier between the two; and in this no shops or stills may be set up,
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- ↑ 1 One given on p. 264 of Mr. CarmiChael's Manual contains 23 ingredients compare Mr. H. G Turner's letters in G.O., No. 532, Revenue, dated 2nd May 1874.
