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
| 338 | SINO-IRANICA |
seems more likely that the plant was transmitted to China from Persia than from western Asia, but the accounts of the Chinese in this case are too vague and deficient to enable us to reach a positive conclusion.
In India, Lawsonia alba is said to be wild on the Coromandel coast. It is now cultivated throughout India. The use of henna as a cosmetic is' universal among Mohammedan women, and to a greater or lesser extent among Hindu also; but that it dates "from very ancient times," as stated by WATT,' seems doubtful to me. There is no ancient Sanskrit term for the plant or the cosmetic (mendhi or mendhikâ is Neo-Sanskrit), and it would be more probable that its use is due to Mohammedan influence. JORET2 holds that the tree, although it is perhaps indigenous, may have been planted only since the Mohammedan invasion.'
FRANÇOIS PYRARD, who travelled from z 6oI to 161o, reports the henna-furnishing plant on the Maldives, where it is styled innapa (= hinâ f ai, "henna-leaf"). " The leaves are bruised," he remarks, "and rubbed on their hands and feet to make them red, which they esteem a great beauty. This color does not yield to any washing, nor until the nails grow, or a fresh skin comes over the flesh, and then (that is, at the end of five or six months) they rub them again.i4
singulièrement la durée de l'opération." While the Persians dye the whole of their hands as far as the wrist, also the soles of their feet, the Turks more commonly only tinge the nails; both use it for the hair.
1 Commercial Products of India, p. 707.
s Plantes dans l'antiquité, Vol. II, p. 273.
Cf. also D. HOOPER, Oil of Lawsonia alba, Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. IV, 1908, p. 35.
4 Voyage of F. Pyrard, ed. by A. GRAY, Vol. II, p. 361 (Hakluyt Society). The first edition of this work appeared in Paris, 1611.
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