116 HISTORY OF 
ancient India, they incorporated the poisonous Indian Aconites into their Pharmacopceas 
under the generic name Bish (Sanskr. Visha), that is, poison, [un аз 5 (or Bikh) ix 
used at present in India for the Aconite poison, as the poison кат éfoyjw. The first of 
the Arab writers to mention Bish is Hobaish of Bagdad (ninth century), who is quoted 
by Ebn Baithar (Transl. Sontheimer, i. p. 199) as stating that Bish is a plant growing 
in India. It appears again in Abu Mansur Muwaffak about 975 (Lib. Fundam. Pharm., Lat. 
‘Transl. by Seligman, p. 47; Germ. transl. by Achundow, p. 168); and in Avicenna (980— 
1037; Lib. Canon. Lat. Transl., by Ger. Carmon. corr. Alp. Bellun. ii. cap. 499); but the 
use of the nomen genericum “bish” for the Indian drug could not fail to increase the 
confusion to be expected in à literature whieh was to a great extent based on uncritical 
compilation. No wonder that the comparison of the Arab pharmacopeeas yields во 
little result concerning the origin and the nature of their “bish” beyond the broad fact 
that it consisted of the root of one of the poisonous Aconites of India. Still, there 
is perhaps, in the tangle of conflicting and absurd statements, a hint with respect to 
the particular part of India from which “bish” was then procured. Muwaffak enu- 
merates “halahil” (Transl Achundow, pp. 168, 169) as one of the kinds of Bish, 
adding that it grows by the side of Valeriana Jatamansi. It is the most deadly of 
all, and a dose smaller than a mustard-grain kills, It is like amber, or, as is stated a 
little farther on, quite black, shining and hard, Further, Ebn Baithar (Transl. Sonthei- 
тет, i p.199) quotes from Isa Ben Ali that there are three kinds of Bish, and that 
one resembles the horns which are found by the side of Spica Nardus Indica, Now 
there is no doubt about the Valeriana Jatamansi or its synonym, the Nardus Spica 
Indica, one of the few Indian drugs which reached the classic west long before the 
dawn of Arabian civilisation. It is Nardostachys Jatamansi, a native of the Alpine 
Himalaya from Tehri-Garhwal eastwards, the very region which, in our days, 
supplies the Indian bazaars with Bith. Further, a portion of the modern drug has a 
fracture almost like amber, the result of roasting, whilst another, steeped in cow’s uring, 
is black right through, hard and shining. Moreover, one of the common vernacular 
names of A. feroz (sens. lat.) in Hindi is Sin7ya (Singya Bish, Jur) that is, horn (horn- 
poison) from the shape of the tubers. This description of the “halahil ” Bish, as horns 
which are either amber-like or black, hard and shining, and its localisation in the 
Central Himalaya seems, indeed, to point strongly to its identity with А, feror (sens. 
lai) The strength of this evidence is scarcely weakened by the conflicting and confused 
descriptions of a Bish from Halahala by Ebn Samhun, а Spaniard who lived 
at some time between 998 and 1128, and of the Halahala plant mentioned by Dutt (7. e, 
p. 98) as yielding one of the nine virulent poisons of the Sanskrit writers, Ebn Samhun 
(according to Ebn Baithar: Transl. Sontheimer, 1, р. 199) says that “the ‘bish’ grows in 
the country of China in the neighhourhood of Sind, near a town called Halahal. 
Except in this place, it is found nowhere else. This plant raises a stem ап ell high. 
The leaves resemble those of lettuce or cichory which are eaten. The plant is found 
near Halahal, in the neighbourhood of Sind. If dry it is one of the food-articies of 
the people of this country and does no harm: if one moves from Sind for one hundred 
paces and eats this plant, it kills him who eats of it on the spot.” This sounds very 
like a confused echo from Greek, Arab, and Indian sources, whilst the description of the 
Halahala plant, quoted by Dutt ae possessing bunches like grapes and leaves like those 
of the palm-tree, and its alleged distribution from the Himalaya to the Concan, excludes 
Aconitum altogether. x (n 
