310 
Acosta. This is what Orta,* in Clusius’ edition of the Aromata, 
says: “Juncus odoratus grows in great abundance in the Arabian 
provinces of Mascat and Kalhat. The natives call it ‘Sachbar,’ 
some also ‘ Haris cachule’ (Hashish ghasul), that is lotion grass 
and the fowers‘ Foca’ . . . With the Indians no special 
name has arisen; but they dub it Mascat grass, some also Mecca 
grass, and also Camel Hay. There are in those countries plenty 
of asses, mules, horses, etc., which know no other fodder. 
It is imported into India for medical purposes; but the greatest 
quantities come with the horse-dealers (of Mascat and Kalhat) who 
take it tied up into bundles with them in their ships to use it as 
litter for their horses . . . Iremember that at Diu they sold 
many bundles of Juncus for a mere trifle; . . . but the natives 
do not appreciate it, as they are a rough and savage people, and 
they do not use it. We, however, and the Arab and Persian 
doctors employ it. The (Arab?) natives wash themselves and 
their beasts with it.” In the ‘Coloquios dos simples e drogas’ the 
same authort also observes that the Arab and Persian doctors in 
India call it by its Arabic name Izkhir (Adhav, as he renders it) 
and the learned physicians of the Nizam of MHaiderabad, 
‘Esquinanto,’ and they are well aware that this is a Greek name. 
The grass has been collected in the interior of Mascat by Aucher 
.and Bornmiiller, and although I cannot find any reference to its 
growing there so very profusely, there can be no doubt that Orta’s 
and Acosta’s accounts are substantially correct. The horse trade 
from Arabia to India ceased, or was in any case greatly reduced, 
when the Portuguese dominion in the Indian Seas came to an 
end, and with it most likely the import of ‘lzkhir’ into India 
disappeared. For this there was also another reason; the Indian 
drug dealers must soon have found out that they not only had the 
Same grass growing in the Panjab, but also that it came in its 
properties so near to other indigenous aromatic grasses with which 
the native doctors had long been familiar that the foreign article 
could well be dispensed with. The influence of the Persian 
physicians and the reputation of their pharmacopoeias were 
sufficiently weighty also to transfer the foreign name ‘ lzkhir’ 
to the native drug. Not only was and still is the C. Schoenanthus 
of the Panjabt sold in the bazars as ‘Jzkhir,’ but the name has 
also passed on, with or without the qualifying epithet ‘ajami’ 
(foreign) or ‘ Hindi, to Vetiveria zizanioides (A. muricatus) and 
other indigenous aromatic grasses, so that it has become with 
certain writers almost a generic name. Thus the ‘ lzkhir’ of the 
‘Abir Izkhir’ of the Ain-i-Akbari§ (end of the L6th century) is 
VV. zizanioides; the ‘ Taleef Sherif ’| has ‘ gundheel’ (C. Martint) 
as synonymous with ‘lzkhir, and the author of the ‘ Makhzan- 
el-Adwiya’ (1771 A.D.){ enumerates no fewer than six Hindi 
synonyms for ‘/zkhir,’ most of them vernaculars of C. Martini. 
It will be seen that the vernacular synonymy of C. Schoenanthus 
was, in India at any rate, just as confused as the scientific nomen- 
clature of the species at present is. 
* Garcia de Orta, Arom. Hist. lib. i., cap. xxxiv. (in Clusius, Exot., p. 203). 
+ Garcia de Orta, Coloy. Simpl. e drog. (ed. 1872), pp. 197y, 199y. 
+ Baden Powell, Punjab Prod. (1868), p. 383 ; Andropogon iwarancusa in part, 
8 Hooper in Calcutta Review, Oct., 1904. 
|| Taleef Sherif, transl. Playfair, p. "129. 
@ Dymock, Veget, Mat, Med, Western India, ed, 2 (1885), p. 851, 
