206 DR. ROXBURGH ON THE GENUS AQUILARIA. 



suitable appellation for a ligneous substance, in which a discriminative sign of its excel- 

 lence is its specific gravity exceeding that of water. Grammarians have therefore given a 

 different turn to the etymology of the word, as indicating a substance than which nothing 

 is weightier, that is, more valuable*. I observe, nevertheless, among the Sanscrit syno- 

 nyma for Aloe-wood, Laghu, properly signifying light. It is difficult to assign a satisfac- 

 tory reason for this name. 



Other Sanscrit denominations which merit notice are, Crimija, signifying produced by 

 insects, and Gandha-cashtha, fragrant wood. The first implies a notion, which is not an 

 improbable one, that the conversion of the wood into an aromatic substance is occasioned 

 by wounds of insects. The other corresponds in its import with the Arabic name TJud, a 

 term answering in sense, as in sound, to the English word wood, and applied emphatically 

 by the Arabian physicians to the aromatic wood in question. 



Avicennat has treated, under separate heads, of TJud (which his translator writes Hand) 

 and Aghdluji, written in the Latin version Agalugen. But later authorities among the 

 Arabian and Persian physicians concur in affirming that Aghdluji is the same with TJud, 

 being its Greek denomination J. They clearly intend the Agallochon of Dioscorides§. 



It is not, therefore, right to derive Agallochum from the Arabic, since this, on the con- 

 trary, is confessedly borrowed from the Greek. Neither is its origin to be sought in the 

 Hebrew Ahalim and Ahaloth, as proposed by Salmasius||, since it is more obvious to de- 

 duce it from the language of the country whence the drug was brought, and the Indian 

 name Aguru, or with the Sanscrit pleonastic termination ca, Aguruca, is much nearer to 

 the sound of the Grecian term. 



It may be remarked by the way, that the Portuguese Pao de Aquila, as noticed by 

 Rumphius, is an undoubted corruption either of the Arabic Aghdluji or of the Latin 

 Agallochum, and it is, by a ludicrous mistake, that from this corruption has grown the 

 name of Lignum Aquilce, whence the genus of this plant now receives a botanic appellation, 

 and which many authors^ have vainly attempted to distinguish from the Lignum Aloes 

 and Calambac**. 



The generic and specific names of the plant then are both drawn from the same original 

 term, a circumstance, however, not unprecedented in the Linnean nomenclature. 



* Commentators on the Amera-cdsha. 



f Quoted by Garcias, Hist. Aromat. p. 65, and Salmasius, Plinianse Exercitationes, p. 1055. 

 % 'Tohfet til muminin' and ' Mekhzen til adveyeh.' § Dioscorides, lib. i. cap. 21 



|| Plinianse Exercitationes, p. 1054. From the same Hebrew word Salmasius deduces Aloe. Isidorus derives it from 

 allar, a silly etymology, as Salmasius remarks. 

 \ Bauhin, Pomet, Lemery, &c. 

 ** A Malay name of the Aloe-wood, derived, according to the conjecture of Rumphius, from the Chinese Kilam. 





