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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
MANNA 349
There is, further, an oak-manna collected from Quercus vallonea Kotschy and Q. persica. These trees are visited in the month of August by immense numbers of a small white Coccus, from the puncture of which a saccharine fluid exudes, and solidifies in little grains. The people go out before sunrise, and shake the grains of manna from the branches on to linen cloths spread out beneath the trees. The exudation is also collected by dipping into vessels of hot water the small branches on which it is formed, and evaporating the saccharine solution to a syrupy consistence, which in this state is used for sweetening food, or is mixed with flour to form a sort of cake.'
Aside from the afore-mentioned mannas, SCHLIMMER2 describes two other varieties which I have not found in any other author. One he calls in Persian §iker eighal (" sugar eighal "), saying that it is produced by the puncture of a worm in the plant. This worm he has himself found in fresh specimens. This manna is brought to Teheran by the farmers of the Elburs, Lawistan, and Dimawend, but the plant occurs also in the environment of Teheran and other places. Although this manna almost lacks sweetness, it is a remarkable pectoral and alleviates obstinate coughs. The other is the manna of A pocynurn syriacum, known in Persia as .iker al-oh- and imported from Yemen and Hedjaz. According to the Persian pharmacologists, it is the product of a nocturnal exudation solidified during the day, similar to small pieces of salt, either white, or gray, and even black. It is likewise employed medicinally.
Manna belonged to the food-products of the ancient Iranians, and has figured in their kitchen from olden times. When the great king sojourned in Media, he received daily for his table a hundred baskets full of manna, each weighing ten mines. It was utilized like honey for the sweetening of beverages.' I am inclined to think that the Iranians diffused this practice over Central Asia.
The Yu yan tsa tsu has a reference to manna of India, as follows: "In northern India there is a honey-plant growing in the form of a creeper with large leaves, without withering i,n the autumn and winter. While it receives hoar-frost and dew, it forms the honey." According to G. WATT,4 some thirteen or fourteen plants in India are known to
1 FLÜCKIGER and HANBURY, Pharmacographia, Q. 416; HANBURY, Science Papers, p. 287; SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 358) attributes the oak-manna to the mountains of Kurdistan in Persia.
2 Terminologie, p. 359.
3 C. JORET, Plantes dans l'antiquité, Vol. II, p. 93. Regarding manna in Persia, see also E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 163.
4 Commercial Products of India, p. 929.
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