IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
472 TRAVELS OF IBN BATUTA IN BENGAL, CHINA,
f 1!
several months. It preserves all its qualities, and is one of i
the best kinds of aloes.'
On the Clove.
The trees that bear cloves grow to a great age and size. They are more numerous in the country of the infidels than in that of the Mahomedans ; and they are in such profusion that they are not regarded as property. What is imported into our country consists of the wood (or twigs) ; what the people of our countries call the Flower of Clove consists of those parts of the flowers which fall, and which are like the flowers of the orange tree. The fruit of the clove is the nutmeg, which we know as the sweet nut._ The flower which forms on it is the mace. And this is what I have seen with my own eyes.2
1 According to Crawfurd the tree yielding Agila, eagle-wood or aloes-wood, has not been ascertained, but probably belongs to the Legurninosce. There can be no doubt, he adds, that the perfumed wood is a result of disease in the tree, produced by the thickening of its sap into a gum or resin. The name Aloes CAAdn in Cosmas, p. 336) is probably a corruption of the Arabic name with the article Al-' U'd, The Wood" (par excellence). It has nothing to do with any kind of aloe properly so called. The name Agila, which has been modified or erroneously translated into Aquila, Eagle-wood, Adler-holz, etc., is believed to be a corruption of Aguru, one of the Sanscrit terms for the article. Both Ktkuli and Kumâri aloes are mentioned by Avicenna among the good kinds, but not as standing highest. He names as the best the Mandali, and the Hindi Jibali or Indian mountain aloes; the Samandûri ; the Kurnâri ; the Sa-►zfi (from Champa) ; the Kcfkuli; and the Chinese kind termed Kazrûri. Gerarde, in his " Herbal'," speaks of three kinds of lign-aloes as known in England in his time, differing greatly in quality and price. Gutzlaff also in our day speaks of three kinds in the markets of Cochin-China.
The term 'Athccs, according to Dulaurier, is not known elsewhere in this application ; the word in Arabic means sneezing ; perhaps it indicates an effect, like the Scotch sneeshin for snuff ? (See Gildemeister, pp. 64-27 ; J. R. G. S., gig, 102 ; Gerarde, p. 1623; Jllaltebrun in his Trans. of Barrow's Cochin China, ii, 351 ; Vartherza's Travels with Mr. Badger's notes.)
2 And yet it is thick with misstatements. The legend that cinnamon is the bark, the clove the flower, and the nutmeg the fruit, of one and the same tree, has come down to our day in Upper India, for I have been asked by a respectable Mahomedan at Dehli if it were not so; and Ibn Batuta is much more likely to have picked up this bit of economic botany in the Dehli Bazar than in the Moluccas as Lassen will have it. Strange
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