LIGNUM SANTALI. 599 



SANTALACE^. 



LIGNUM SANTALI. 



lAgnuin Santalinwm album vel citHnum,; Sandal Wood; F. Bois de 

 Santal dtrin ; G. Weissea oder Gelbes Sandelholz. 



Botanical Origin — Santcdum alburn^ L., a small tree, 20 to 30 

 feet high, with a trunk 18 to 35 inches in girth, a native of the moun- 

 tainous parts of the Indian peninsula, but especially of Mysore and 

 parts of Coimbatore and North Canara, in the Madras Presidency; it 

 grows in dry and open places, often in hedge-rows, not in forests. 

 The same tree is also found in the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, 

 notably of Sumba (otherwise called Chandane or Sandal-wood Island), 

 and Timur. 



In later times, sandal wood has been extensively collected in the 

 Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, where its existence was first pointed 

 out about the year 1778, from Santcduin Freycinetianuni Gaud, and 

 S. pyndari^im A. Gray ; ^ in the Viti or Fiji Islands ft-om S. Yasi 

 Seem. ; in New Caledonia from S. austro-ecdedonicum, VieiU ^ ; and in 

 Western Australia from Fusanus spicatus Br. (SantaluTn spicatum 

 DC, ;Si. cygnoriiTii Miq.).* The mother plants of Japanese and 

 West Indian sandal wood are not known to us. 



In India the sandal-wood tree is protected by Government, and is 

 the source of a profitable commerce. In other countries it has been 

 left to itself, and has usually been extirpated, at least from all accessible 

 places, within a few years of its discovery. 



History — Sandal wood, the Sanskrit name for which, Chandana, 

 has passed into many of the languages of India, is mentioned in the 

 Niruhta or writings of Yaska, the oldest Vedic commentary extant, 

 written not later than the 5th century B.C. The wood is also referred 

 to in the ancient Sanskrit epic poems, the Ramayana and Mahabha- 

 rata, parts of which may be of nearly as early date. 



The author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, written about the 

 middle of the 1st century, enumerates sandal wood (S^Xa crayaXiva) 

 among the Indian commodities imported into Omana in the Persian 

 Gulf' 



The T^avSdva mentioned towards the middle of the 6th century by 

 Cosmas Indicopleustes,® as brought to Taprobane (Ceylon) from China 

 and other emporia, was probably the wood under consideration. In 

 Ceylon its essential oil was used as early as the 9th century in 

 embalming the corpses of the princes. 



^ Fig. in Bentley and Trimen's Medic. Madagascar, also supplies some sandal 



Plants, part 18 (1877). wood. 



-Seemann, Flora Vitiensis, 1865-73. * Whether Santalum lanceolatum Br., a 



210-215. tree found throughout N. and E. Australia, 



^ The natural woods having been nearly and called sandal wood by the colonists, is 



exhausted, the tree is now under culture an object of trade, we know not. 



in the island. Catalogue des produits 'Vincent, Commerce and Namgation of 



des colonies fran(^ises. Exposition de 1878. the Ancients, ii. (1807) 378. 



p. 332 ; they state there that the island of ' Migne, Patrologice Cursus, series Graeca, 



Nossi-be, on the north-'vc3tem coast of torn. 88. 446. 



