vin ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS CROCUS AND SAFFRON. 



So far it is immaterial whether karkom, QJH3 in the Song of Solomon really 

 means 'Saffron' or 'Turmeric'; immaterial too which plant originally bore the name. 

 But both these questions face us as soon as we attempt to go any further into the 

 matter, and both are mixed up with the third question, whether the word karkom 

 itself was not imported from India as a loan-word from Sanskrit ? The answer 

 given to this last question by those 4 ' who have attempted to answer it has often 

 been that karkom the word did come from India, being the Sanskrit kuhkitma, 

 ar§[JT. They have often added that karkom the plant or dye also came from India ; 

 but not keeping constantly before them the difference between Saffron and Turmeric, 

 have failed to make it clear whether they mean that Saffron, or that Turmeric, or 

 that both plants or dyes were introduced from India.t 



What follows is an attempt to show : First, that ' Turmeric ' was introduced 

 from India, but was probably called kurkttm, A<, which has never been its name 

 there, from the likeness of the dye it affords to the Saffron which already bore 

 the name kurkum. 



Secondly, that Saffron, far from having come from India, has never even been 

 commonly cultivated there, except in a small part of Kashmir, and that the Saffron 

 of the market, so much used in India, always was, as it now is, imported into the 

 country, and not exported from it. 



Thirdly, that the word karkom, DSH3, did not come from India, but that, if it 

 be indeed identical with the Sanskrit kithktima, it was introduced into that language 

 from some language of Western Asia ; and that in the Song of Solomon, iv, 14, 



* Fiirst, Lexicon, Hebrew and Chatdee, sub voce, OiH? ; Weber, Hindu Pronunciation of Greek Words, and 

 Greek Pronunciation of Hindu Words, translated in the Indian Antiquary for May, 1873. In his list of Sanskrit 

 words introduced into Greece through Phcenicio-Babylonian commercial intercourse, he includes kuhkuma, Q3^3i 

 Curcuma krokos, but gives no evidence which touches this particular word. 



f The hopeless confusion made by the lexicographers between Saffron and Turmeric sufficiently appears 

 from the following quotations. Perhaps it is too much to expect that the botany of scholars should be any 

 better than the notorious scholarship of botanists. The English translators of Gesenius seem to have supposed 

 that 'Indian Saffron' and '■Crocus Indicus' were a kind of crocus.' ! ' 03*13, Crocus, Saffron, both the common 

 plants, and also Crocus Indicus or Indian Saffron." — Robinson's Gesenius, p. 495. Q3~l3, Curcuma, Crocus 

 Indicus, the Crocus whether the Indian or the common." — Tregelles' Gesenius, p. 414. It has been rightly 

 pointed out by L6vv (Aramliische Pflanzennamen, p. 220), that in order to make sense of the passage in Gesenius 

 it must be corrected to "D3"*l3, Curcuma longa, Turmeric, or Crocus sativus, Saffron," thus clearly stating the 

 two alternative interpretations of the word which are possible. The corresponding passage in Furst's Hebrew and 

 Chaldee Lexicon, by Davidson, p. 697, though fuller and more imaginative, is no less confused. It is as follows : 

 "D3"*l3, Indian Saffron, Crocus, Turmeric; originally a dye-stuff, then sweet-smelling water, ointment, oil, &c, 

 prepared from it. Song of Solomon, iv, 14. (Here follow the Chaldee, Armenian and Arabic forms of the word.) 

 The word, like the plant, came from India. The Sanskrit kankuma (sic), Crocus sativus, was changed among 

 the Phoenicians into Q3"}3, carcom, and D"ri3, crocom, out of which has arisen the Greek xpoKos." 



