IIIF Color HighRes
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
ASAFOETIDA 355
Shahrokia.' We do not know, however, what species here come into question.
Cao 2u-kwa states that the home of asafoetida is in Mu-kû-lan * {,q_Ati, in the country of the Ta-si (Ta-d ik, Arabs).2 Mu-kii-lan is identical with Mekrän, the Gedrosia of the ancients, the Makä of the Old-Persian inscriptions. Alexander the Great crossed Gedrosia on his campaign to India, and we should expect that his scientific staff, which has left us so many valuable contributions to the flora of Iran and north-western India, might have also observed the plant furnishing asafoetida; in the floristic descriptions of the Alexander literature, however, nothing can be found that could be interpreted as referring to this species. H. BRETZL3 has made a forcible attempt to identify a plant briefly described by Theophrastus,4 with Scorodosma fcetidum; and A. HORT,5 in his new edition and translation of Theophrastus, has followed him. The text runs thus: "There is another shrub [in Aria] as large as a cabbage, whose leaf is like that of the bay in size and shape. And if any animal should eat this, it is certain to die of it. Wherefore, wherever there were horses, they kept them under control" [that is, in Alexander's army]. This in no way fits the properties of Ferula or Scorodosma, which is non-poisonous, and does not hurt any animal. It is supposed also that the laser pitium or silphion and laser of Pliny' should, at least partially, relate to asafoetida; this, however, is rejected by some authors, and appears to me rather doubtful. GARCIA DA ORTA7 has already denied any connection between that plant of the ancients and asa. L. LECLERC8 has discussed at length this much-disputed question.
The first European author who made an exact report of asafoetida
1 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediœval Researches, Vol. II, pp. 193, 254. The interpretation of lu-wei (" rushes ") as asafoetida in the Si yu ki (ibid., Vol. I, p. 85) seems to me a forced and erroneous interpretation.
2 HIRTH and ROCKHILL, Chao Ju-kua, p. 224.
3 Botanische Forschungen des Alexanderzuges, p. 285. ' Histor. plant., IV. IV, 12.
5 Vol. I, p. 321.
)(Ix, 15. The Medic juice, called silphion, and mentioned as a product of Media by Strabo (XI. xi'', 7), might possibly allude to a product of the nature o' asafoetida, especially as it is said in another passage (XV. II, Io) that silphion grew in great abundance in the deserts of Bactriana, and promoted the digestion of the raw flesh on which Alexander's soldiers were forced to subsist there. According to others, the silphion of the ancients is Thapsia gar ganica (ENGLER, Pflanzenfamilien, Vol. III, pt. 8, p. 247). Regarding the Medic oil (oleum Medicum) see Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIII, 6.
7 C. Markham, Colloquies, p. 44.
8 Traité des simples, Vol. I, p. 144.
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