SACRED' ISLES IN THE WEST. 39 



not to be found in any other Sanscrit books, are justly supposed to origin 

 i^ate from the spoken diale6ls. Cnshndguru, or black Jguru, is called 

 zlso'lSild'Jdtu, stone bitumen, or Petroleum: another name for it is asma^ 

 jam or stony, Ymxn'^Sildja!tUy Avicen and Simeon Sethi have made 

 Seldhitf and ^Seldc'hiium. It is naturally soft; but sometimes it is found 

 in an indurated state : and this stone ja'tu is really, what we call jet, and 

 the French, jay et. Ja'fu, in Sa?iscrit, is a fossil, fatty and tenacious sub- 

 stance. The Sild-Ja'tu is said to be an exudation from stones, as implied 

 by its name, and to be found sometimes floating on water; it- is very 

 black, and of a disagreeable smelllv 



The famous Averroes says, that amhar is a sort of camphiret and he 

 is perfectly corre6l; that is^ what he says is perfe(5lly conformable to the 

 notions of the Hindus on that subjedl; and even Boerhaave resembles it 

 to camphire. The word ambaris derived from, the Sanscrit Abhra, and 

 which the more modern Greeks could not write otherwise than A/at«§ ampar, 

 but which is to be pronounced ./46^r : and we have framed our pronuncia« 

 tion from their vicious orthography, not considering that they did not 

 pronounce it so themselves: thus, they write Tempit for Tibet, but pro- 

 nounce it Tebit. 



When the Portuguese artivedm Ltdi'a, they found that amber was called 

 there abar, and that the H/w^// merchants dtstinfyuished- three sorts of it. 

 The first was Pdnah-ambar, which they were told signified golden ambar. 

 Puambar or Coambar was the second sort, and iinpliedas much as water 

 arnbari because it was supposed to come from the sea. The tliird was called 

 Maniambar, being supposed to be the excrements of a large fish: this was 

 black. The second sort was of a greyish colour, and Ferdinand Lopez 

 \NntQz Coambar iov PuamlK.r, V>\xto*CA(iv Portuguese authors write Po?- 



