RHIZ0:^1A ZINGIBERIS. 635 



ZINGIBERACEv^. 



RHIZOMA ZINGIBERIS. 



Had Ix Zingiber Is ; Ginger; Y. Gingembre ; G. Ingiver. 



Botanical Origin — Zhigiber ofic'inale Roscoe {AiiKyniura Zingiber 

 L.), a reed-like plant, with annual leafy stems, 3 to 4 feet high, and 

 flowere in cone-shaped spikes borne on other steins thrown up from 

 the rhizome. It is a native of Asia, in the warmer countries of which 

 it is universally cultivated,^ but not known in a wild state. It has 

 been introduced into most tropical countries, and is now found in the 

 West Indies, South America, Tropical Western Africa, and Queensland 

 in Australia. 



History — Ginger is known in India under the old name of 

 Sringavera, derived possibly from the Greek Ziyyi^epi As a spice 

 it was used among the Greeks and Romans, who appear to have 

 received it by way of the Red Sea, inasmuch a.s they considered it to 

 be a production of Southern Arabia. 



In the list of imports from the Red Sea into Alexandi'ia, which in 

 the second century of our era were there liable to the Roman fiscal 

 duty {vedigal), Zingiber occurs among other Indian spices.""* During the 

 middle ages it is frequently mentioned in similar lists, and evidently 

 constituted an important item in the commercial relations between 

 Europe and the East. Ginger thus appears in the tariff of duties le%'ied 

 at Acre in Palestine about a.d. 1173;^ in that of Barcelona^ in 

 1221; Marseilles^ in 1228; and Paris'^ in 1290. The Tarif des Peages, 

 or customs tariff, of the Coimts of Provence in the middle of the 13th 

 century, pro^'ides for the le^•J'ing of duty at the towns of Aix, Digne, 

 Valensole, Tarascon, Avignon, Orgon, Ai-les, k,Q., on various commodities 

 imported from the East. These included spices, as pepper, ginger, 

 cloves, zedoary, galangal, cubebs, saffron, canella, cumin, anise; dye 

 stuffs, such as lac, indigo, Brazil wood, and especially alum from 

 Castilia and Volcano ; and groceries, as racalicia (liquorice), sugar 

 and dat€S.^ 



In England ginger must have been tolerably well known even 

 prior to the Norman Conquest, for it is frequently named in the Anglo- 

 Saxon leech -books of the 11th century, as well as in the Welsh 

 "Physicians of Myddvai" (see Appendix). During the 13th and 14th 

 centuries it was, next to pepper, the commonest of spices, costing on an 

 average nearly l.*;!. ^d. per lb., or about the price of a sheep.^ 



^ The mode of cultivation is described by etc. de Barcdomi, Madrid, ii. (1779) 3. 



Buchanan, Journey from Madras through * Mery et Guindon, Hist, des Artes . . . 



Mysore, etc. ii. (1807) 469.— Fig. of the de la Municipality de Marseille, i. (1841) 



plant in Bentley and Trimen'a Medic. 372. 



Plantjf, part 32 (1878). « Bevue archeoloyifjue, ix, (1852) 213. 



- Vincent, Commerce and Navigation of ^ Collection de Cartulaires de France, 



the Ancients, ii. (1807) 695. Paris, viii. (1857) pp. Ixxiii-xci., Abbaye 



* Becued des Historiens des Croisades ; de St. Victor, Marseilles. 



Lois, ii. (1843) 176. ® Rogers, Hist, of Afjriculture and Prictg 



* Capraany, Mernorias aobre la Marina, in England, i. (1866) 629. 



