Scitaminee.] THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS. 359 
kinds are found in bazars, as poorubee, puharee, amba, moela, joala huldee, &c.; the three 
last are used in dyeing. Curcuma Zerumbet yields the medicinal root, highly valued by 
the natives, called kuchoor and nur-kuchoor; zerumbad and ark-ul-kafoor of the Arabs. 
It is warm with a little aroma, and is considered stomachic in doses of two to three 
grains, diaphoretie in ten grains, and emetic in doses of one dram. ‘Two kinds are 
found in bazars, one poorubee, from Bengal, the other puharee from the Hills. The 
plant, Curcuma Kuchoor, nob., producing the latter, is more nearly allied to C. montana 
than to C. zerumbet. It is cultivated in the hills above the Deyra Doon, in Sirmore, 
and Bissehur, being sown in April, and dug up in November, when the roots are 
scalded in boiling water, and then shaken in baskets until the fibrils and outer skin are 
rubbed off. The long Zedoary of the shops, Dr. Roxburgh was unable to trace; but 
the round Zedoary, fragrant in smell, with a warm bitterish taste, he found to be 
produced by Curcuma Zedoaria; to this, judwar and nirbisee are assigned as synonymes, 
but, as mentioned at p.50, there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining to what 
products as well as plants these rightfully belong, particularly as several kinds are 
enumerated. The fresh roots of C. Amada have the peculiar smell of a green mango, 
with the warmth of ginger, and are valued in Bengal as a stomachic. The pendulous 
tubers of Curcuma rubescens, leucorrhiza, and angustifolia, yield a very beautiful fecula 
or starch, which forms an excellent substitute for the West-Indian arrow-root, Zaranta 
arundinacea. It is sold in the bazars of Benares, Chittagong, and Travancore, and 
eaten by the natives; a very excellent kind, called tikhur, is also made at Patna and 
Boglipore, from the tubers of Batatas edulis. 
The different kinds of Cardamom are yielded by several species of this family, 
as, for instance, the most valuable of all, the lesser or Malabar cardamoms, called, in 
Northern India, chotee (small), and Goozuratee elachee, by Alpinia, now Elettaria Car- 
damomum, so abundant along the mountains of the western ghauts, and of which there 
appears to be a longer and narrower variety (long Malabar Cardamoms, Pereira). Dr. 
Roxburgh supposes that the Cardamomum medium of the writers on Materia Medica is 
the produce of his A/pinia Cardamomum medium, indigenous in the-mountains of Silhet, 
and of which the aromatic seeds, called do-keswa, are gathered and sold to the druggists 
in Bengal. The cardamoms which I procured in the bazars with the name of dura 
elachee, or great, and in Calcutta, as Bengal Cardamoms, are those with the 9-winged 
capsules, and most probably produced by this species. Amomum maximum,Roxb., is the 
only other species described by him with such capsules. A. sericewm is also called dooi- 
kesha. The remainder of the cardamoms are very uncertain, and require the comparison 
of specimens with the ripe fruit attached. The round or Cluster cardamoms of Sumatra 
are said to be yielded by Amomum Cardamomum, and those of Madagascar, or greatest 
cardamom, by A. angustifolium ; while on the western coast of Africa, A. Granum 
Paradisi (A. macrospermum,? Smith v. Rees) yields the grain of Paradise cardamom, or 
Meleguetta pepper (v. Guibourt and Pereira). Amomum maximum, of the Malay 
Islands, has seeds with a warm, pungent, aromatic taste, not unlike that of carda- 
moms. 
