352 Sino-Iranica 



according to his statement, generate between the knots great humidity, 

 like starch when it is much coagulated. The Indian carpenters, who 

 work at these canes, find thick juice or pith, which they put on the lum- 

 bar region or reins, and in case of a headache on the forehead; it is used 

 by Indian physicians against over-heating, external or internal, and 

 for fevers and dysentery. 1 The most interesting of all accounts remains 

 that of Odoric of Pordenone (died in 1331), who, though he does not 

 name the product and may partially confound it with bezoar, alludes 

 to certain stones found in canes of Borneo, "which be such that if any 

 man wear one of them upon his person he can never be hurt or wounded 

 by iron in any shape, and so for the most part the men of that country 

 do wear such stones upon them." 2 



J. A. de Mandelslo 3 gives the following notice of tabashir: "It 

 is certain that on the coast of Malabar, Coromandel, Bisnagar, and 

 near to Malacca, this sort of cane (called by the Javians mambu [bam- 

 boo] ) produces a drug called sacar mambus, that is, sugar of mambu. 

 The Arabians, the Persians, and the Moores call it tabaxir, which in 

 their language signifies a white frozen liquor. These canes are as big 

 as the body of a poplar, having straight branches, and leaves something 

 longer than the olive-tree. They are divided into divers knots, wherein 

 there is a certain white matter like starch, for which the Persians and 

 Arabians give the weight in silver, for the use they make of it in physick, 

 against burning feavers, and bloudy fluxes, but especially upon the first 

 approaches of any disease." 



1 C. Markham, Colloquies of Garcia da Orta, pp. 409-414. A list of Sanskrit 

 synonymes for tabashir is given by R. Schmidt (ZDMG, Vol. LXV, 1911, p. 745). 



2 Yule, Cathay, new ed. by Cordier, Vol. II, p. 161. 

 8 Voyages and Travels, p. 120 (London, 1669). 



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