History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India, Incorporating the History of Hindu Chemistry by Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray c40.s4: Mixtures Like Soups, Solutions, Etc.

c40.s4.1

A soup is a physical mixture of a peculiar kind, from which evaporation ordinarily sets the water free. When meat is boiled in water, there is the application of heat, with chemical changes in the meat; but the combination of meat-particles and water-particles in the soup is only a physical combination, and not a chemical one. It is, of course, not a true compound, neither is it a quasi-compound like milk (in which the water-particles are energisers of the Earth-particles). Milk, for example, retains its milky substance, when it coagulates or becomes solid (this of course is also the case with *mono-bhautic* substances, whether elementary or compound, eg., water, which becomes ice); but the substance we call a soup or solution ceases to be a soup or solution, the moment it solidifies. Uddyotakara notices gruel, baths, and lyes (alkaline solutions) as mixtures of this class.