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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
APPENDIX IV
THE BASIL
I propose to treat here briefly of the history of a genus of plants
1which has not yet been discussed by historians,— Ocimum, an extensive genus of the order Labiatae. I do not share the common opinion of most commentators of Theophrastus and Pliny, that their WKCµov or ocimum is identical with the Ocimum basilicum of Linné. Theophrastus touches on okimon in several passages; but what he describes is a shrub, not an herb, nor does he emphasize any of the characteristic properties of Ocimum basilicum. FkE justly comments on Pliny (xx, 48) that this species is not understood by him, it being originally from India (or rather, as will be seen, from Iran), and never found in a wild state. From what Varro says, he infers that Pliny's ocimum must be sought among the leguminous plants, the genus Hedysarum, Lathyrus, or Medicago.' Positive evidence of this conclusion comes from Ibn alBaitdr, whose vast compilation is principally based on the work of Dioscorides, with the addition of annotations of Arabic authors. Ibn al-Baitâ.r, in his discussion of the plant which we call Ocimum, does not fall back on the okimon of Dioscorides (II, 171), and, in fact, does not cite him at a11.2 He merely reproduces the data of Arabic writers: this is decisive, and leads us to reject any connection between the ocimum of the ancients and the species coming from the Orient and
known to our science of botany as Ocimum.3
There is good reason to assume that at least one species, if not several, is a native of Persia, and was diffused from there to India and China, probably also to the West. This is Ocimum basilicum, the sweet or common basil. The name ßa n?w 6v ("royal") as the designation of an Ocimum first occurs in Byzantine literature, in Aetius (sixth century) and Symeon Seth; and, since the king of Persia was known to the Greeks simply as "the king" ((avcAds), it is more than probable that the Greek term is reproduced after the model of Persian . âhsiparam (spram) or . âh-i sfaram, which means as much as "fragrant
1 Cf. BOSTOCK and RILEY, Natural History of Pliny, Vol. IV, p. 249. z Cf. LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. II, p. 186; Vol. III, p. 191.
3 Leclerc upholds the opposite opinion, although Sprengel, Fée, and Littré argue in the same manner as here proposed.
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