JADWAR. 195 
Chinese, procured from the mountains of that country, The two next kinds are the 
produce of the mountains of Tibet, of Nepal, of Morung, and Rungpore; the fourth 
kind is from the hills of the Dukhun, and the fifth, called Antuleh, is the produce of 
Andaloosee or Spain." Of these, the Morung, Rungpore, Dekkan, and Andalusian kinds 
may be dismissed, as they have certainly nothing to do with the Indian Aconites. 
So much is then evident from these sources, that as early as the 10th or probably 
the 6th century the roots of an Aconite supposed to possess extraordinary powers as an 
antidote reached the Orient and India under the name of Jadwar or Zedwar (whence 
Zedoar), and that the home of this drug was China or Kathai, which of course need not 
have meant China proper, but merely Tibet. 
When Hamilton in the beginning of the last century endeayoured to obtain the 
plant which yielded Biss, he paid a'so some attention to the “ Nirbishi or Nirbikhi,”, but 
met with the usual ditfieulties in procuring genuine specimens through natives, as he 
says in his Catalogue of the plants collected in Nepal, published by Madden, in Trans. 
Bot, Soc, kdinb. v., 1858, p. 127, under No. 1248: “Caltha? Nirbisia, Nirbishi vel 
Nirbikhi. Ham. Nepal, 99......  Montanorum unus hane pro radice indica toxicaria 
ostendebat, alter autem sequentem (Caltha? Со40а) afferebat." Hamilton meant. as appears 
from p. 99 of his Account of Nepal, the plant which “has no deleterious qualities, but is 
used in medicine.” The specimen, however, which is named “Caltha Nirbisia” in his 
herbarium (now incorporated in the Wallichian collection at the Linnean Society, London) 
has on the label the note, * Brought as the poison plant." It is a very young plant, no 
doubt an Aconite, but not determinable. I tasted a morsel of it; it was slightly and purely 
bitter, but did not cause the tingling sensation characteristic of the poisonous Aconites cf 
the ferox-group. This was the basis of Don's genus Nirbisia, Royle was not more fortu- 
nate in his attempt to discover the source of the Nirbisi of the Indian bazaars. He had 
been told in Sirmore and Garhwal that Delphinium pauciflorum (= D. denudatum) was the plant . 
which produced the Mirlisi; but on comparing it with the best kind of Nirbisi in the Indian 
bazaars which is brought down from Bissehur and Umritsar he “ found it of a very different 
nature.” The term Nirbisi, he adds (TI. Bot. Him., p. 50), implies that the drug is 
used as an antidote to poison, being composed of the privative preposition лі” and 
біз, poison; and winds up the paragraph with this conclusion :—'*It is therefore probable 
that the Nirbisi is the true Zedoar or  Geiduar of Avicenna, whatever may be the 
plant which produces it,” Since then Madden (Trans. Bot, Soc, Edinb, v., 1858, p. 129) 
has pointed out that he “found the beautiful Delphinium kashmerianum Royle... ... with 
cylindrical tuberous roots, absolutely identical in form with the ordinary Nirbisi,” and 
he had no doubt that this was its true source. The root of Delphinium kashmerainum, 
however, can hardly be described as tuberous, It is long, slender, fusiform, more 
or less obliquely descending, and resembles rather that of ап Aconite of the section 
Lycoctonum, on а somewhat reduced scale. If there exists in the bazaars of North- West 
India а drug of this shape under the name of Mirbisi, it may be the ordinary, but cannot 
be the genuine Jadwar. Having no doubt the latter in mind, Madden futher on says: 
“The Tibetans told Major Н. Strachey it came from the east," This agrees with a 
note by Strachey accompanying a sample of Jadwar obtaincd by him and preserved in 
the museum at Kew. It reads: “ Nirbisi (Hind.) Bomar (Tib.) Jadwar (Pers) from 
Khywong of Nianpyul (Nepal?) vid Gartok—Zedoary.” Aitchison obtained evidently 
the same drug at Leh under the name Jadwar-Khaiai, and he says (Trade Prod. of 
Leh, р, 101): “This root comes from Nepal to Lhasa, and thence vid Gartok to Leh. 
Ann. Roy, Bor. Gaz». Оліс., Vor. X. 
