126 STRUCTURE OF THE 
From Leh nearly the whole of it is exported to Yarkand, a very little to Kashmir, 
and thence to India, It is highly valued as a talisman to carry continually about the 
person, and as an antidote to be taken in poisoning, or in certain fever illnesses, such 
as cholera. Owing to the above circumstances and the smallness of the supply, it is 
usually sold in its own weight of silver or gold. By the Yarkands it is called Farfi: 
by the Kashmiris Jadwar; by the Bhotes Bonga; and in the Panjab Nirbisi.” I take 
this root to be the article to which the tales of the Arabs about the Zedsar and the 
Bish mus refer. A description of it will be found at the end of the special part: as to 
the species from which it is obtained, I can only point out that it resembles the roots 
of A. hetsrophylloides of Sikkim to a very high degree indeed. The vernacular name 
of the Nepalese settlers in Sikkim for this species is moreover Nirbanshi, which reads 
very like a corruption of JNirbishi. : 
It is quite intelligible that the origin of so valuable a drug should be kept 
secret, and that on the other hand substitutes should be sought which were more easily 
obtainable. Moodeen Sheriff (Suppl, Pharm. Ind., p. 29) states that three varieties 
of Jadwar are generally used in medicine at present, adding that he believed them to 
be “ е roots of some species of Aconite like A. heterophyllum, which is not poisonous,” 
one of which he thinks is a kind of Айз, but I suspect that also the two others are not 
exactly the genuine article. Thus the mystery of the miraculous Zedoar is not yet 
quite unravelled, although it is certain that the plant is an Aconitum, closely allied 
to, if not identical with A. heterophylioides. Its home is probably Nepal, and possibly 
Sikkim, from whence it is exported to Tibet and by a very circuitous route to India, 
acquiring on its way the epitheton “Kathai”! Some of the poisonous and non- 
poisonous aconites of the Himalaya are so similar that even an otherwise well-trained eye 
might be deceived. Could it then be that the native collectors use as a guide the 
. instinct of a mouse or some such rodent living about and feeding on the non-poisonous 
Aconite roots, but leaving alone the poisonous? And if so, would not their naive 
imagination attribute to the plant, which is almost indistinguishable from its most 
deadly kindred and to the animal feeding upon it, miraculous powers such ав were 
claimed for the Zedoar and the Bish mus? Is there not after all a grain of truth in 
the apparently absurd tale which has exposed the Oriental writers to the ridicule of 
the worthy herbalists of Europe ? : 
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$2. STRUCTURE OF THE ROOTS OF ACONITUM. 
Three main types of root-structure may be distinguished in Aconitum, They are 
intimately connected with the duration and rejuvenation of the individual plartts, and they 
afford at the same time the most salient feature by which to characterise the three 
principal sections of the genus, 
1. Annual roots. There is only one species of annual duration known in the 
genus, viz., А. gymnandrum, a native of Eastern Central Asia from the frontiers of Sikkim 
to the mountains around Kuku Nor. The root is very slender, fusiform, usually vertically 
descending, of a type very common in annuals, This species, which is also very peculiar 
on account of the long slender claws of the sepals, constitutes the section Gymnaconitum. 
2. Perennial roots. А. laeve, A luridum, and А, moschatum among the Indian 
species possess long, perennial, rhizome-like roots which pass at the upper end into a short 
