CASSIA PODS AND CAROB 421 



and extremely hard. The interior [the pulp] is as black as [Chinese] 

 ink and as sweet as sugar-plums. It is eatable, and is also employed in 

 the pharmacopoeia." 



The tree under consideration has not yet been identified, at least not 

 from the sinological point of view. 1 The name a-lo-p'o is Sanskrit; and 

 the ancient form *a-lak(rak, rag)-bwut(bud) is a correct and logical 

 transcription of Sanskrit aragbadha, aragvadha, dragvadha, or argvadha, 

 the Cassia or Caihartocarpus fistula (Leguminosai) , already mentioned 

 by the physician Caraka, also styled suvarnaka ("gold-colored") and 

 rajataru ("king's tree"). 2 This tree, called the Indian laburnum, 

 purging cassia, or pudding pipe tree from its peculiar pods (French 

 caneficier), is a native of India, Ceylon, and the Archipelago 3 (hence 

 Sumatra and Malayan Po-se of the Chinese), "uncommonly beautiful 

 when in flower, few surpassing it in the elegance of its numerous long, 

 pendulous racemes of large, bright-yellow flowers, intermixed with the 

 young, lively green foliage." 4 The fruit, which is common in most 

 bazars of India, is a brownish pod, about sixty cm long and two cm 

 thick. It is divided into numerous cells, upwards of forty, each con- 

 taining one smooth, oval, shining seed. Hence the Chinese comparison 

 with the pod of the Gleditschia, which is quite to the point. These pods 

 are known as cassia pods. They are thus described in the " Treasury of 

 Botany " : "Cylindrical, black, woody, one to two feet long, not splitting, 

 but marked by three long furrows, divided in the interior into a number 

 of compartments by means of transverse partitions, which project 

 from the placentas. Each compartment of the fruit contains a single 

 seed, imbedded in pulp, which is used as a mild laxative." Whether 

 the tree is cultivated in Asia I do not know; GARCIA DA ORTA affirms 

 that he saw it only in a wild state. 5 The description of the tree and 

 fruit in the Yu yan tsa tsu is fairly correct. Cassia fistula is indeed 

 from twenty to thirty feet high (in Jamaica even fifty feet) . The seed, 

 as stated there, is of a reddish-brown color, and the pulp is of a dark 

 viscid substance. 



1 STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 496) lists the name a-p'o-lo (instead of 

 a-lo-p'o) among "unidentified drugs." Bretschneider has never noted it. 



2 A large number of Sanskrit synonymes for the tree are enumerated by RODIGER 

 and POTT (Zeitschrift /. d. K. d. Morg., Vol. VII, p. 154); several more may be added 

 to this list from the Bower Manuscript. 



3 GARCIA DA ORTA (Markham, Colloquies, p. 114) adds Malacca and Sofala. 

 In Javanese it is tenguli or trenguli. 



4 W. ROXBURGH, Flora Indica, p. 349. 



5 Likewise F. PYRARD (Vol. II, p. 361, ed. of Hakluyt Society), who states that 

 "it grows of itself without being sown or tended." 



