9 9 



XVll 



form no exception to this rule. Almost all well known plants 

 have several synonyms, and some have as many as twenty to forty 

 names ; gulancha has thirty-nine, chebulie myrobalan thirty, the 

 lotus thirty-eight, with half as many for ifc 3 varieties, and so on. 

 Native physicians learn these synonyms by rote, just as they do 

 their grammars and dictionaries. Sanskiit medical works, like 

 most other works in the laDguage, are composed in rhyme, and 

 any one of the numerous synonyms of a drug may be used to 

 designate it in prescriptions containing the article according to 

 the fancy of the writer and the necessities of metrical composi- 

 tion. Many names again are common to numerous articles, and 

 it is often impossible without the help of annotations to make cut 

 which drug is meant by a particular term. In the absence of any 

 scientific description of plants, however, these synonyms some- 

 times serve to describe their prominent characters, and thus 

 prove an aid to their indentification. In the glossary appended 

 to this work, I have not attempted to give a complete list of all 

 these synonyms. As a general rule I have given only the princi- 

 pal or current name of each plant. Some plants have however 

 more than one well-known and currently-used names. In such 

 instances, I have given those names in the first column only, with 

 a reference to the synonyms under which their vernacular and 

 Sanskrit equivalenta have been given. 



I avail myself of this opportunity, publicly to tender my 

 cordial thanks to those gentlemen who have assisted me in carry* 

 ing this work through the press. To Dr. George King, Superin- 

 tendent of the Royal Botanis Gardens, I feel myself particularly 

 beholden. He has helped me most materially in a variety of 

 ways and has thereby enabled me to avoid many errors ard 

 mistakes. On many occasions he has spent hours in identifying 

 various dru^s for me; and he has revised nearly all the last 

 proofs, before the sheets were printed. The recent names of 

 plants in the glossary are entirely due to his pen, and they 

 entailed on him considerable and tedious labour. Without these 

 names, I should have been obliged to content myself with the old 

 names, gleaned from the woiks of Roxburgh and others, which 

 are now only tclerated as synonyms, ani which would have 



seriously impaired the usefulness of the glossary as a work of 



C 



