SPIKENARD OF THE ANTIENTS. I 15 



Schrnanthus, is a considerable article, it seems, of hi- 

 dian commerce, and therefore, cultivated with dili- 

 gence, but less esteemed than the black sort, or Car a* 

 If a la, which has a more fragrant root, and affords an 

 extremely odoriferous oil*. All those plants would, 

 perhaps, have been called nards by the antients; and 

 all of them have stronger pretensions to the appellation 

 of the true spikenard i than the Febrifuge Andropo- 

 gon, which the Hindus of Behdr do not use as a per- 

 fume. After all, it is assuming a fact without proof, 

 to assert that the Indian spikenard was evidently grami- 

 neus; and, surely, that fact is not proved by the word 

 arista, which is conceived to be of a Grecian origin, 

 though never applied in the same sense by the Greeks 

 themselves, who perfectly well knew what was best 

 for mankind in the vegetable system, and for what 

 gift they adored the goddess of Eleusis. The Roman 

 poets (and poets only cited by Dr. Blane, though 

 naturalists also are mentioned ) were fond of the 

 word arista, because it was very convenient at the 

 close of an hexameter, where we generally, if not 

 constantly, find it; as Homer declares In Luciak, 

 that he began his Iliad with MW, because it was the 

 first commodious word that presented itself, and is 

 introduced laughing at a profound critic, who dis- 

 covered in that single word an epitome of the whole 

 poem on the wrath of Achilles. Such poets as 

 Ovid and Lactanti us, described plants which they 

 never had seen, as they described the nest of the 



* 12 Hort. MaLib. tab. 12 andgH. M.p. 145. Sec also the Fh r a 

 InJua. and a note from Herman on the valuable oil of St 



I 2 phoenix 



