CAMPHOR 



Two Forms 



THE CAMPHOR TREES 



D.E.P., 

 ii., 84-93. 

 Camphor. 



Two Forms. 



TnHian Oamphot- 

 wood. 



in 1903-4, 2,020,256 lb., valued at Rs. 9,31,943; in 1904-5, 2,314,816 lb., valued 

 at Us. 10,78,031 ; and in 1906-7, 2,120,048 lb., valued at Re. 8,89,068. Turning 

 now to the EXPORTS : these go mainly to Afghanistan, Kashmir, Dir, Swat and 

 Bajaur. The following were the amounts exported in 1903-4, 2,439,248 lb., 

 valued at Rs. 10,68,916 ; in 1904-5, 2,731,008 lb., valued at Rs. 12,40,253 ; and 

 in 1906-7, 2,991,072 lb., valued at Rs. 14,53,888. The chief item in this traffic 

 is India's contribution to the Tibet and Central Asiatic demand for green tea. 



In conclusion, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to enter into the details 

 of the strenuous efforts that have been made and are being made by the 

 Tea Association and tea merchants of India and England to extend the 

 area of demand for all grades of Indian tea. The enlightened action 

 which has resulted in securing the services of expert scientific officers 

 to investigate the disabilities of the industry and to improve the methods 

 of production and manufacture deserve the highest commendation. 

 The initial stage in this reform was accomplished by the Government 

 of India in 1895, namely the deputation of the Reporter on Economic 

 Products to the tea districts with instructions to institute inquiries into 

 and to publish a report on the " Pests and Blights of the Tea Plant." 

 In consequence the first scientific officer Dr. Harold H. Mann was 

 appointed by the Association. The subsequent history is one of progress. 

 Mann's investigations cover every possible aspect of inquiry, and the 

 results of his labours may be described as both highly interesting scien- 

 tifically and of the greatest practical importance to the industry. 



CAMPHOR : Pharmacog. Ind., iii., 200. 



The vernacular names in India, like the majority of the European 

 names, are very similar, viz. Camphor (Engl.), camphre (Fr.), Icamfer 

 (Germ.), canfora (Ital.), Mrpura (Sansk.), Mfur (Arab.), and Mpur 

 (Hind.), etc., etc. It has been suggested that they may have been derived 

 from the Javanese Mpur, which seems to denote both lime and camphor. 

 The Sanskrit medical writers were familiar with the two qualities pakva 

 and apakva. The former would mean prepared by the aid of heat, and 

 might thus be viewed as the Camphor of Cinnamotnum Camphora, 

 while the latter would be native or natural camphor, and be accepted as 

 denoting the camphor of Dryobalanops Camphora. The last- men- 

 tioned was historically first known. But neither of the plants named 

 are indigenous to India, nor even cultivated plentifully to-day, and there- 

 fore the pakva and apakva Mrpura could only have been known to the 

 people of India subsequent tp the establishment of the Chinese and Arab 

 commerce. But the history of the names for the clove (and there are 

 many other examples) show that it is not necessarily the case that com- 

 mercial names, at present in use, originated from the indigenous names 

 of the plants in question, so that the Sanskrit Mrpura might easily enough 

 have given the Javan Mpur. 



History. The bhimsini Camphor trees of the Ain-i-Akbari (Blochmann, transl., 

 78-9) were doubtless annainonmtn xeyiitniciim, the wood of which might 

 have been called camphor-wood from its smelling something like camphor, and 

 might easily have been viewed by Abul Fazl as an Indian discovery of the plant 

 that yielded camphor. One of the earliest notices of camphor is that of the 

 Arab merchant Sindbad (who lives to us in The Thousand and One Nights as a 

 hero of fiction rather than of actual adventure and exploration), whom Baron 

 Walckener thought had lived about the time of Solaiman, a Muhammadan 

 merchant of the beginning of the ninth century. Sindbad describes the mode 

 of extracting the camphor by making incisions in the trees that produce it. 

 Tliis was during his second voyage when he visited the peninsula of Riha, 



244 



