ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS CROCUS AND SAFFRON. 



XI 



probably it is at least two hundred years older. Our next date is that of the 

 Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, made by Jews resident 

 at Alexandria, about 300—275 B.C. The word karkom is there rendered by k P 6kos, 

 which is therefore by far the earliest clue that we have to its meaning. Then come 

 the earlier Latin writers, using crocus and crocum, shortly before the Christian era. 

 They do not bear directly upon the meaning of karkom, but in estimating the 

 improbability of the word having come from India, it should not be forgotten 

 that even the Latin writers using the word crocus are earlier than our Sanskrit 

 authorities for the word kunkuma. At last, from one to six centuries after the 

 Christian era"" we come to the Aramaic words kurkam, dT)3, kurkama, N»3"yfi, &c, 

 obviously identical with, and used to translate or explain the Hebrew karkom. And 

 here arises the first suspicion that karkom might mean Turmeric, and not Saffron, 

 for it is clear that these obscure Aramaic names, which are only intelligible through 

 the Greek and Arabic renderings of them given in the old glossaries, sometimes 

 signified Turmeric as well as Saffron. In Low's Aramaische PJlamennamen* these 

 names, as well as those for SafHower, are most exhaustively treated, with the 

 general result that they signify sometimes Saffron the drug, sometimes Saffron the 

 plant or flower, sometimes Turmeric the drug.} What has already been said of the 

 manner in which the Arabic name kurkum was transferred from Saffron to Turmeric, 

 makes it quite intelligible that these Aramaic words should have been applied to 

 both, if karkom originally meant Saffron. But if it originally meant the obscurely- 

 known Indian drug Turmeric, § it is not easy to understand how it came to be 

 applied to the common Saffron, plentiful in the Levant. 



* M. Renan refers the most ancient Targums, those of Onkelos and Jonathan, to the second century after 

 Christ, the Syriac Peshito version to the same century, the rest of Syriac literature to the fourth and later centuries, 

 the Talmud of Jerusalem to the fourth, and that of Babylon to the fifth century. I believe 60 B.C. to be the 

 earliest date now supposed to be possibly admissible for the Targum of Onkelos. 

 + Pp. 215-220: Leipzig, 1 88 1. 



; Dr. Low seems to think, p. 215, that sometimes the words signify Curcuma longa, the plant which produces 

 Turmeric, and that the Turmeric was then grown in Syria. This seems extremely improbable, for there was clearly 

 great confusion between Saffron and Turmeric. No such confusion could possibly arise in a country where both 

 plants were known, but only where one at least was only known in its market shape as a drug. Then at the 

 end of his article, p. 220, Dr. Low adds, " Auch des H. L. a^-fl kann fiiglich nur die Indische Pflanze sein, 

 nicht Crocus." I much regret that I fail to understand to what part of the preceding article or argument this 

 conclusion " fiigt sich," fits itself. The exhaustive citations, which show that some centuries after the Christian 

 era the Aramaic words meant both Saffron and Turmeric, leave it an absolutely open question which was signified 

 by the Hebrew word a long 1,000 years before. And Dr. Low, so far as I can see, adds no argument of h 

 own to connect the superadded conclusion with the citations. This is the more to be regretted, as his authority 

 is so very convincing on such a point. 



§ The Indian plant it cannot originally have meant, unless it be originally an Indian word, which if it be. 

 it is the Sanskrit kunkuma, and that signifies not Curcuma longa, but Crocus sativus. 



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