IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
366 SING-IRANICA
countered by Buhse in the low mountains near Reshm (white galbanum). Galbanum is also called kilyâni in Persian.
Borszczow has discovered in the Aralo-Caspian region another species of Ferula, named by him F. schaïr from the native word .air (=Persian . ir, "milk-juice") for this plant. The juice of this species has the same properties as galbanum; also the plant has the same odor.
Abu Mansur' mentions a Ferula under the name saklnnaj (Arabic form, Persian saklnna), which his translator, the Persian physician Achundow, has identified with the Sagapenum resin of Ferula persica, said to be similar to galbanum and to be gathered in the mountains of Luristan. According to FLOCKIGER and HANBURY,2 the botanical origin of Sagapenum is unknown; but there is no doubt that this word (ray6 irnvov in Dioscorides, III, 95, and Galenus; sacopenium in Pliny, XII, 56), in media val pharmacy often written serapinum, is derived from the Persian word.
The galbanum employed in India is imported from Persia to Bombay. WATTS distinguishes three kinds known in commerce,—Levant, Persian solid, and Persian liquid. The first comes from Shiraz, the second has an odor of turpentine, and the third is the gaoshir or jawâshir; the latter being a yellow or greenish semi-fluid resin, generally mixed with the stems, flowers, and fruits of the plant. It is obtained from the stem, which, when injured, yields an orange-yellow gummy fluid. Generally, however, the galbanum of commerce forms round, agglutinated tears, about the size of peas, orange-brown outside, yellowish-white or bluish-green inside. The odor is not disagreeable, like that of asafoetida, and the taste is bitter.
Galbanum consists of about 65 per cent resin, 20 per cent gum, and from 3 to 7 per cent volatile oil.
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 84.
2 Pharmacographia, p. 342.
' Commercial Products of India, p. 535.
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