2 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XIIL 



A. D., nor Vardhamihira (505-587 a. d.) in his work Brihatsamhitd 

 allude to the turquois. Agasti, in his versified treatise on gems, the 

 Agastimata, and a very late work, the Ratnasamgraha, each devote a 

 stanza to the turquois.^ The date of the former work is not satis- 

 factorily established. Inward evidence leads one to think that it is 

 posterior to the sixth century a. d., and that a work under this name 

 possibly existed in the thirteenth century, while in its present shape 

 it is, in all likelihood, of much later date. Of greater importance is the 

 little mineralogical treatise Rdjamghantu written by Narahari, a 

 physician from Kashmir, not earlier than the beginning of the fifteenth 

 century. According to Narahari, the two words as given above are 

 used to distinguish two varieties of the stone, as the hue is either ash- 

 colored or greenish. He remarks that it is astringent and sweet to 

 the taste, and an excellent means to provoke appetite; every poison, 

 whether vegetable or mineral, or a mixture of both, is rapidly neutral- 

 ized by turquois; it also relieves the pain caused by demoniacal and 

 other obnoxious influences.^ As, in all likelihood, the acquaintance 

 1 L. PiNOT, /. c, pp. 138, 197. 



^ Compare R. Garbe, Die indischen Mineralien, p. 91 (Leipzig, 1882). In the 

 introduction the date of Narahari's work is calculated at between 1235- 1250; Prof. 

 Garbe has been good enough to inform me that he has now arrived at the conclusion 

 that the work cannot be earlier than the fifteenth century. The turquois, accord- 

 ingly, appears on Indian soil very late during the middle ages, in the Mohammedan 

 period. The evidence gathered from mineralogical literature is corroborated by the 

 records of Indian medicine. The famous Bower Manuscript assigned to the year 450 

 A. D., the brilliant edition and translation of which has just been completed by Dr.* 

 A. F. R. HoERNLE (Calcutta, 1893-1912), does not make any mention of turquois, 

 nor do the ancient physicians of India. (For this reason, J. Jolly, Indische Medicin, 

 does not note the stone.) — It is asserted on the authority of the Periplus Maris 

 Erythrm (Ch. 39), a Greek work of an unknown author from the latter part of the 

 first century (probably written between 80-89 A. D., roughly about 85; see the recent 

 discussion of the date by J. F. Fleet, Journal Royal Asiatic Society, 191 2, pp. 784-7) 

 that turquois was exported from the Indian port Barbaricon. Mr. W. H. Schoff, 

 in his new translation of the work (The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, pp. 38, 170, 

 London, 1912), feels very positive on this point, and explains that "the text has 

 callean stone, which seems the same as Pliny's callaina (xxxvii, 33), a stone that 

 came from 'the countries lying back of India,' or more definitely, Khorassan; his de- 

 scription of the stone itself identifies it with our turquois, etc." This opinion, how- 

 ever, is more than hypothetical. First of all, as already pointed out by Lassen 

 (Indische Altertumskunde, Vol. Ill) p. 14, Leipzig, 1858), it is doubtful whether the 

 kallcanos of the Periplus is identical with the callaina of Pliny, because the localities 

 where, according to the latter, the stone is found are too remote from India to make 

 it possible for it to have been exported from the port of Barbaricon at the mouth of 

 the. Indus. Secondly, the supposed identification of Pliny's callaina or callais with 

 the turquois is no more than a weak guess, and one that is highly improbable; and a 

 mere guess, even though it may be repeated by a dozen or more authors, will never 

 become a fact. It is said in Daremberg and Saglio (Dictionnaire des antiquit^s 

 grecs et romains. Vol. II, p. 1463): "On suppose que c'est la turquoise;" and H. 

 Blumner (Technologic und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kiinste bei Griechen 

 und Romern, Vol. Ill, p. 249, Leipzig, 1884) justly concludes that the evidence does 

 not by any means seem to be sufficient to establish the identification of the turquois 

 with the callais of the ancients as a positive fact. The vague "description" given 

 by Pliny (XXXVII, 110-2, 151) of the stone bears out no striking reference to the 



