Ill 



ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS CROCUS AND SAFFRON. 

 Much more obscure is the history of 'Crocus/ whose ultimate origin is lost 



:^^;°i^ ce - The word ™™ in **«« »~ «*< r 



Hebrew. DJn3, Karkom I TT c />o 



■-' ^ Hindustani, ^pi <£ Kuhkum, or 



Chaldee. ffiT£, Kurkam, or BITO) ^ OT <■'<•> 



£**»», and Mgjrg Kurk&ma, or * ^ (^ **"*"* 



M03"Jia Kurkama. 



SYRIAC. nisia^'ia^ Kurkama. 



Armenian. *(\^„ t «r Khekhrum. 

 Arabic. *of Kurkum* 



Kashmiri. A"^. [ 



Tamil. @/ej@ldld Kuhkumam, and with 

 the addition of y, /,?, 'flower,' 

 @/Ej@LQuy, Kuhkumappu\ 



Greek. KpoKos krdkos. • 



Persian. J^ Kurkum, jj Karkum, Latin. Craraw and OT «» 



and 



X£ Karkam,\ and also Y^ 

 Kumkum.t 



Sanskrit, ^-pr Kuhk 



uma. 



Italian. Croco (literary), grogo or gruogo 

 (local). 



Gaelic. Crock. 



Irish. cfioe or cjton. 



All the Eastern words in this list fall at once into two groups, according to 

 the consonants which appear in them. Those of the first group always show the 

 consonants KRKM. They occur in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian 

 and Persian, and obviously are merely different forms of the same word. Those 

 of the second group are just as obviously different forms of one word They 

 replace the R by N or M, thus showing the sequence of consonants K M KM 1 

 which occurs in Persian, Sanskrit, and modern Indian languages allied to Sanskrit 

 as well as in some other Indian languages, which, although not related to Sanskrit' 



* Also signifies Turmeric. 



t See Haft Kulzum ; the last form, karkam, also means a rainbow. Lagarde, Gesammelte Abhandlungen 

 p. S», believes that the pronunciation kurkum alone was ever used in the sense of Saffron. 

 % See Burhan i Kati. 



§ Elmslie, Kashmiri Vocabulary, 1872, p. ,59, and Stewart, Punjab Plants, p. 239, give Murat kern* » th* 

 vernacular for Crocus saHvus. Neither of them give the word in any Oriental' chaS'teV but her cafbe i ^ 

 doubt of , s connect™ with Sanskrit kunkuma. Mr. Downes, Medical Missionary in Kasmir, whilst writing W 

 has sent the word to Mr. Maw written in Persian character as ^ which would read kung in the system 



Dr Z T U °V ' "T ""k 6 adOPted ' haVe bee " UnaWe f ° find any expla " ati0 " ° f the ' f " the form longs. 

 Dn Elmshe m his preface observes, "the language as now spoken has not been reduced to writing," and in his 



Direc ions for Readmg," says that both . and 6 are to be sounded as the o in the English word mote 



\ Wmslow, Tamil Diet, p. 804, gives 'European Saffron' as the equivalent of the last word; whence it 

 would seem that ,n this combination P u, flower, is used ia the figurative sense of excellence, and not literally o 

 the flower of Crocus sativus. «=i«uiy 01 



S,n v T? ^ aShmiri ^. d ° eS I10t affect the **»>** for ^ is either a truncated form, or corruption, of the 

 Sanskrit kunkuma j or else ,s a completely independent name for < Saffron,' not referable at all .0 this group of words. 



