pose essentially useful. This is intended as an apology for the pains which have been taken to procure a determinate answer to a question of no apparent utility, but which ought to be readily answered in India. "What is Indian spikenard?" All agree, that it is an odoriferous plant, the best sort of which, according to Ptolemy, grew about Rangamritica or Rangamati, and on the borders of the country now called Butan: it is mentioned by Dioscorides, whose work I have not in my possession; but his description of it must be very imperfect, since neither Linnæus nor his disciples pretend to class it.

"In order to procure information from the learned natives, it was necessary to know the name of the plant in some Asiatic language. The very word nard occurs in the Song of Solomon; but the name and the thing were both exotic: the Hebrew lexicographers imagine both to be Indian; but the word is

in truth Persian.

"The Arabs have borrowed the word nard, but in the sense, as we learn from the Kamus, of a compound medicinal unguent. Whatever it signified in old Persian, the Arabic word sumbul, which, like sumbalah means an ear or spike, has long been substituted for it; and there can be no doubt, that by the sumbul of India the Mussulmen understand the same plant with the nard of Ptolemy and the nardostachys, or spikenard, of Galen.

"A Mussulman physician from Delhi assured me positively, that the plant was not jatumansi, but sud, as it is named in Arabic, which the author of the Tohfatu' Mumenin particularly distinguishes from the Indian sumbul. He produced on the next day an extract from the Dictionary of Natural History, to which he had referred; and I present you with a translation of all that is material in it. "1st, Sud has a roundish olive-shaped root, externally black, but white internally, and so fragrant as to have obtained in Persia the name of subterranean musk; its leaf has some resemblance to that of a leek, but is longer and narrower, strong, somewhat rough at the edges, and tapering to a point. 2dly, Sumbul means a spike or ear, and was called nard by the Greeks. There are three sorts of sumbul or nardin; but when the word stands alone, it means the sumbul of India, which is an herb without flower or fruit (he speaks of the drug only) like the tail of an ermine, or of a small weasel, but not quite so thick, and about the length of a finger. It is darkish, inclining to yellow, and very fragrant; it is brought from Hindostan, and its medicinal virtue lasts three years." It was easy to procure the dry jatamansi, which corresponded perfectly with the description of the sumbul; and, though a native Mussulman afterward gave me a Persian paper, written by himself, in which he represents the sumbul of India, the sweet sumbul, and the jatamansi as three different plants, yet the authority of the Tohfatu'l Mumenin is decisive, that the sweet sumbul is only

another denomination of nard; and the physician, who produced that authority, brought, as a specimen of sumbul, the very same drug, which my pandit, who is also a physician, brought as a specimen of the jatamansi: a brahman of eminent learning gave me a parcel of the same sort, and told me that it was used in their sacrifices; that, when fresh, it was exquisitely sweet, and added much to the scent of rich essences, in which it was a principal ingredient; that the merchants brought it from the mountainous country to the northeast of Bengal; that it was the entire plant, not a part of it, and received its Sanscrit names from its resemblance to locks of hair; as it is called spikenard, I suppose from its resemblance to a spike, when it is dried, and not from the configuration of its flowers, which the Greeks probably never examined. The Persian author describes the whole plant as resembling the tail of an ermine; and the jatamansi, which is manifestly the spikenard of our druggists, has precisely that form, consisting of withered stalks and ribs of leaves, cohering in a bundle of yellowish brown capillary fibres, and constituting a spike about the size of a small finger. We may on the whole be assured, that the nardus of Ptolemy, the Indian sumbul of the Persians and Arabs, the jalamansi of the Hindoos, and the spikenard of our shops, are one and the same plant; but to what class and genus it belongs in the Linnæan system, can only be ascertained by an inspection of the fresh blossoms. Dr. Patrick Russell, who always communicates with obliging facility his extensive and accurate knowledge, informed me by letter, that "spikenard is carried over the desert, from India, I presume, to Aleppo, where it is used in substance, mixed with other perfumes, and worn in small bags, or in the form of essence; and kept in little boxes or phials, like atar of roses." He is persuaded, and so am I, that the Indian nard of the ancients, and that of our shops, is the same vegetable.

"I am not indeed of opinion, that the nardum of the Romans was merely the essential oil of the plant, from which it was denominated, but am strongly inclined to believe, that it was a generic word, meaning what we now call atar, either the atar of roses from Cashmir and Persia, that of Cetaca or Pandanus, from the western coast of India, or that of Aguru, or aloe wood, from Asam or Cochin China, the process of obtaining which is described by Abulfazl, or the mixed perfume called abir, of which the principal ingredients were yellow sandal, violets, orange flowers, wood of aloes, rose water, musk, and true spikenard all those essences and compositions were costly; and most of them being sold by the Indians to the Persians and Arabs, from whom, in the time of Octavius, they were received by the Syrians and Romans, they must have been extremely dear at Jerusalem and at Rome. There might also have been a pure nardine oil, as Atheneus calls it; but nardum

the Devaraja call it also pampi, and by their account the dried specimens, which look like the tails of ermines, rise from the ground, resembling ears of green wheat both in form and colour: a fact, which perfectly accounts for the names stachys, spica, sumbul, and khush, which Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Persians. have given to the drug, though it is not properly a spike, and not merely a root, but the whole plant, which the natives gather for sale, before the radical leaves, of which the fibres only remain after a few months, have unfolded themselves from the base of the stem. It is used, say the Butan agents, as a perfume and in medicinal unguents, but with other fragrant substances, the scent and power of which it is thought to increase: as a medicine, they add, it is principally esteemed for complaints in the bowels."

VALERIANA.

Generic Character. Flowers triandrous, leaves entire, four fold, the inner radical pair petioled, and cordate; the rest smaller, sessile, and sub-lanceolate; seeds crowned with a pappus.

The plants now received, are growing in two small baskets of earth; in each basket there appears above the earth between thirty and forty hairy spike-like bodies, but more justly compared to the tails of ermines, or small weasels; from the apex of each, or at least of the greater part of them, there is a smooth lanceolate, or lanceolate-oblong, three or five-nerved, short petioled, acute or obtuse, slightly serrulate leaf or two shooting forth. [The term spica, or spike, is not so ill applied to this substance as may be imagined; several of the Indian grasses, well known to me, have spikes almost exactly resembling a single straight piece of nardus: and when those hairs, or flexible arista-like bristles are removed, Pliny's words, frutex radice pingui et crassa,” are by no means inapplicable. See Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.] No. 6. represents one of them in the above state; and on gently removing the fibres or hairs which surround the short petiols of these leaves, I find it consists of numerous sheaths, of which one, two, or three of the upper or interior ones are entire, and have their fibres connected by a light brown coloured membranous substance, as at b; but in the lower exterior sheaths, where this connecting membrane is decayed, the more durable hair-like fibres remain distinct, giving to the whole the appearance of an ermine's tail: this part, as well as the root, are evidently perennial. The root itself, beginning at the surface of the earth where the fibrous envelope ends, is from three to twelve inches long, covered with a pretty thick light brown coloured bark; from the main root, which is sometimes divid

ed, there issues several smaller fibres. No. 5. is another plant with a long root; here the hair-like sheaths, beginning at a, are separated from this, the perennial part of the stem, and turned to the right side; at the apex is seen the young shoot, marked b, which is not so far advanced as at No. 6; ccc show the remains of last year's annual stem. When the young shoot is a little further advanced than in No. 5. and not so far as in No. 6. they resemble the young convolute shoots of monocotyledonous plants.

June, 1795. The whole of the above plants have perished, without producing flowers, notwithstanding every care that could possibly be taken of them. The principal figure in the drawing, marked No. 4. and the following description, as well as the above definition, are therefore chiefly extracted from the engraving and description in the second volume of the Researches, and from the information communicated to me by Mr. Burt, the gentleman who had charge of the plants that flowered at Gaya, and who gave sir William Jones the drawing and description thereof. [Which we have copied from the Calcutta edition. Vide No. 3.]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PLANT.

Root, it is already described above.

Stem, lower part perennial, involved in fibrous sheaths, &c. as above described; the upper part herbaceous, sub-erect, simple, from six to twelve inches long.

Leaves, four fold, the lowermost pair of the four radical are opposite, sessile, oblong, forming, as it were, a two-valved spathe; the other pair are also opposite, petioled, cordate, margins waved and pointed; those of the stem sessile and lanceolate; all are smooth on both sides.

Corymb, terminal, first division trichotomous.

Bracts, awled.

Calyx, scarce any.

Corol, one petaled, funnel-shaped, tube somewhat gibbous. Border five cleft.

Stamens, filaments three, project above the tube of the corol; anthers incumbent.

Pistil, germ beneath. Style erect, length of the tube. Stigma simple.

Pericarp, a single seed crowned with a pappus."

The result of these observations is, that there grew in Arabia and Syria a fragrant grass, which was considered as a nard, and was probably known under that name. 2dly, That the true Indian nard, or spikenard, was a plant of a different kind, and not native of Syria. 3dly, That the atar, or essential fragrance of this plant, is called absolutely nard, or spikenard; and probably was known anciently under the same appellation.

I apprehend that these three particulars occur in Scripture; and that they deserve our attention. This word nard is repeated somewhat awkwardly, Cant. iv. 13, 14. "Camphire with spikenard: spikenard with saffron." Why should this plant be twice named? It will appear that this peculiarity struck us formerly, vide FRAGMENTS, on Solomon's Song, and not without reason: but if we may suppose that the first nard means the Syrian or Arabian plant, or the whole genus of scented grasses, "three sorts of nardin," which no doubt was well known to Solomon, but the second nard means the Indian nard, or true spikenard, then it is very probable that the words are clear, and that the latter word merely wants some discriminating epithet, answering to spike, which transcribers not understanding, have dropped; or, that a different mode of pronunciation distinguished the names of these two plants when mentioned in discourse; [they are also differently pointed in the printed copies] and I think it worth observing, that the first word is nardim, plural. "Copherim, henna plants, plural, with nardim, nards." But the following seems to be put absolutely, "nard, or the nard, singular, with the crocus." This distinction, if admitted, and it certainly was admitted by the ancients, and in the Arabic Dictionary of natural history, as we have seen above, removes all difficulty, and completely justifies the passage.

The third acceptation of the term nard, or spikenard, occurs in the Gospels. Mark, xiv. 3. mentions "ointment of spikenard, very precious;" which, verse

5. is said to have been worth more than three hundred pence, denarii; and John, xii. 3. mentions "a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly; the house was filled with the odour of the ointment, it was worth three hundred pence," denarii. As this evangelist has determined the quantity, a pound, and the lowest value, for Mark says more, was eight pounds fifteen shillings, I think we may safely suppose that this was not a Syrian production, or an ointment made from any fragrant grass growing in the neighbouring districts; but was a true atar of Indian spikenard; an unguent containing the very essence of the plant, and brought at a great expense from a remote country.

I would query also whether there might not be in the answer of our Lord, some allusion to the remoteness of the country from whence this unguent was brought: "wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, Xorμov, shall be her memorial." q.d. "This unguent came from a distant country, to be sure, but the Gospel shall spread to a much greater distance, yea, all over the world; so that in India itself, from whence this unguent came, shall the memorial of its application to my sacred person be mentioned with honour." The idea of a far country, connected with the ointment, seems to have suggested that of "all the world."

The above instance, is, I think, clear; and perhaps, we may now revert with advantage to the Canticles, where we find the bride saying, "My spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof." From the word nard being singular here, literally "my nard giveth his scent," shall we say this was in the form of an "essence, in a small bag," or, was it a number of sprigs of the fragrant grass, worn like a nosegay in the bosom of this fair lady? It is certain that the "savour of her good ointments" is mentioned, verse 3. as highly attractive and that an ointment of spikenard might be intended, as used for perfume, needs no proof: but, if so, then we have this perfume in its artificial state alluded to, both in the old and the new testament, and the passages which mention it, mutually illustrate each other.

It appears, on the whole, that we are beholden to both the gentlemen who have obliged the world with their opinions on the subject of the spikenard; and though they differ in respect to the particular plant intended by the Indian spikenard, yet they have each of them contributed to illustrate the application and use of this word in Scripture.