﻿408 ON THE SPIKENARD 



required in preparing a small quantity of it. Thus 

 had I nearly persuaded myself, that the true nard was 

 to be found en the banks of the Ganges, where the 

 Hindu women roll up its flowers in their long black 

 hair after bathing in the holy river; and I imagined, 

 that the precious alabaster-box mentioned in the scrip- 

 ture, and the small onyk, in exchange for which the 

 poet offers to entertain his friend with a cask of old 

 ivine, contained an essence of the same kind, though 

 differing in its degree of purity with the nard which 

 I had procured ; but an Arab of Mecca, who saw in 

 my study some flowers of the Cetaca, informed me 

 that the plant was extremely common in Arabia, 

 where it was named Cadhi; and several Mahomedans 

 of rank and learning have since assured me, that 

 the true name of the Indian Sumbul was not Cetaca, 

 but Jatamansi. This was important information : find- 

 in qr, therefore, that the P and anus was not peculiar to 

 Hindustan, and considering that the Sumbul of Abul- 

 fazl differed from it in the precise number of leaves 

 on the thyrsus, in the colour, and in the season of 

 flowering, though the length and breadth correspond- 

 ed very nearly, I abandoned my first opinion, and be- 

 gan to inquire eagerly for the Jatamansi, which grew, 

 I was told, in the garden of a learned and ingenious 

 friend, and fortunately was then in blossom. A fresh 

 plant was very soon brought to me. It appeared on 

 inspection to be a most elegant Cyprus with a po- 

 lished three-sided culm, an umbella with three or four 

 dnsiform leaflets minutely serrated, naked proliferous 

 peduncles, crowded spikes, expanded daggers; and 

 its branchy root had a pungent taste with a faint aro- 

 matic odour \ but no part of it bore the least resem- 

 blance to the drug kno \ n in Europe by the appella- 

 tion of Spikenard, and a Museltnan physician from 

 Dehli assured me positively, that the plant was not 

 Jatamansi. but Sud, as it is named in Arabic, which 

 the author of the Tbhfatu'l Munierm particularly dis- 

 tinguishes from the Indian Sumbul. He produced on 



