SUBSTANCES USED AS INCENSE IN THE EAST. 401 



Valeria indisa, Linn., yielding the Vellai-kingiliyam incense of 

 Southern India. 



Ferula galbaaiflua, Boiss. et Buhse, yielding Galbanum used as 

 incense by the Jews. 



The Baga-dhup of Canara is a fragrant resin of the colour of the 

 glass used for making Hock bottles, it is used in Malabar by the 

 Saraswat Brahmins as a substitute for the Sarala or oleo-resin of 

 the Himalayan Pinus longifolia. 



It is hardly necessary to say much about frankincense as it is so 

 well known, but it is curious that the botauical source of a substance, 

 which is one of the oldest articles of commerce, has only been ascer- 

 tained within the last 50 years. The Book of Exodus, and the recent 

 discoveries of Prof. Diimichen of Strassbourg in the temple of Dayr 

 el Behri in Upper Egypt, shew that it was a well known article of 

 commerce 1 700 years before the Christian era, and one of the inscrip- 

 tions at the temple states that thirty-one of the trees producing it 

 were brought to Egypt from the land of Punt (the Somali coast) 

 as an offering to the god Amnion. The name which frankincense 

 bears iu the East is of Semitic origin and signifies " milk," from the 

 juice being milky when it first exudes from the tree ; in Hebrew it 

 is Lebonah and in Arabic Luban, the latter word being in use among 

 the Musalmans of India. The Hindus call it Visesha. Formerly 

 this gum-resin was supposed to be obtained from a kind of Juniper, 

 until Colebrooke in the 11th Vol. of the Asiatic BesearcJies described 

 the Bosivellia serrata, of Roxburgh growing in India, and erroneously 

 supposed that he had discovered the source of the commercial article. 

 This mistake was not corrected until Carter, in 1846, brought spe- 

 cimens of the true Olibamim plant from Ras Fartak on the S.-E. 

 coast of Arabia (Joum., By. Br., El. As. Soc, II. (1848, 380) tab. 23). 

 Lastly Birdwood, in a monograph (1870), described some specimens 

 of the Olibanum tree from the African coast, also Carter's plant 

 which was still growing in Bombay {Linn. Trans., XXVII. 111-148). 



It is probable that this incense was brought to India in pre-historic 

 times by Arab traders, and we know that Alexander, B. C. 325, 

 found a vessel loaded with it at the mouth of the Indus. The bark 

 of the frankincense tree, called by the Arabs Kishar—kundar or 

 Kashfa, forms a separate article of trade, which is known in India as 



