﻿OF THE ANTIENTS. 413 



" of a brownish line inclining to red or yellow, rather 

 " fragrant, and with a punge*nt, but aromatic scent." 

 This is too slovenly a description to have been written 

 by a botanist; yet I believe the latter part of it to be 

 tolerably correct, and should imagine that the plane 

 was the same with our Jatamansi, if it were not com- 

 monly asserted that the Javan spikenard was used as 

 a condiment; and if a well informed man, who had 

 seen it in the island, had not assured me that it was a 

 sort of Pimento, and consequently a species of Myrtle, 

 and of the order now called Hesperian. The resem- 

 blance before mentioned between the Indian sunibul 

 and the Arabian Sud, or Cyprus, had led me to sus- 

 pect that the true nard was a grass, or a reed ; and, as 

 this country abounds in odoriferous grasses, I began to 

 collect them from all quarters. Colonel Kyd oblig- 

 ingly sent me two plants with sweet-smelling roots ; 

 and, as they were known to the Pandits, I soon found 

 their names in a Sanscrit dictionary : one of them is 

 called gandliasaflii, and used by the Hindus to scent 

 the red powder of Sapan, or Bakkam-wood, which they 

 scatter in the festival of the vernal season ; the other 

 has many names, and, among them, nagaramastac 

 and gonarda; the second of which means rustling in 

 the water; for all the Pandits insist that nard is ne- 

 ver used as a noun in Sanscrit, and signifies, as the root 

 of a verb, to sound, or to rustle. Soon after, Mr. Bur- 

 row brought me, from the banks of the Ganges near 

 Heridwar, a very fragrant grass, which in some places 

 covers whole acres, and diffuses, when crushed, so 

 strong an odour, that a person, he says, might easily 

 have smelt it, as Alexander is reported to have smelt 

 the nard of Gedrosia from the back of an elephant : 

 its blossoms were not preserved, and it cannot, there- 

 fore, be described. From Mr. Blane of Lucnow, I 

 received a fresh plant, which has not flowered at Cal- 

 cutta ; but I rely implicity on his authority, and have 

 no doubt that it is a species of Andropogon : it has 



