"Soomboolkhar, 'the white oxide of arsenic.' There are six kinds of this, one named Sunkia, the third Godanta, the fourth Darma, the fifth Huldea. The Yunani physicians do not allow this to form a part of their prescriptions, as they believe it destroys the vital principle. The physicians of India, on the contrary, find these drugs more effectual in many disorders, than others of less power, such as the calx of metals. For this reason too I am in the habit of seldom giving these remedies internally, but I usually confine my use of them to external application and as aphrodisiacs which I prescribe to a few friends, who may have derived no benefit from Yunani prescriptions. It is better however to use as few of them as possible."

"Para, 'Mercury.' It is very generally used throughout India in many ways, both in its native and prepared state, but in the latter we ought to be very cautious, for it is seldom sufficiently killed or removed from its native state, in which it is a dangerous drug." 2

"Loha, 'iron.' It is commonly used by physicians in India, but my advice is to have as little to do with it as possible."3

At the end of the present work is appended a glossary of Indian plants described by Sanskrit writers. In the body of the work I have selected for notice only such drugs and plants as have some definite use in a particular disease, or class of diseases. Numerous other plants used in medicine incidentally, or for economic purposes, are mentioned by Sanskrit writers, but these are not pf sufficient importance in a medicinal point of view to deserve detailed notice in a work of this sort. I had prepared an alphabetical list of these plants with their vernacular and scientific names for my personal use. Dr. King kindly undertook to revise this glossary for me, and, at his suggestion, it is printed as an appendix to this work.

1. Taleef Shareef, translated by George Playfair, page 99,

2. Idem, page 26.

3. Idem, page 146,

The Bengali equivalents of the Sanskrit terms in the glossary-have been taken mainly from Sir Rάjά Rάdhakάnta Deva's Encyclopedia of Sanskrit learning entitled the Sabdakalpadruma. The Hindi names have been obtained from the vernaculars given in the Bhάprakάsa; the Amrita-sάgar, a Hindi translation of a treatise on Sanskrit medicine; and the Kesava-binoda-bhάsa Nirghantu, a Hindi treatise on therapeutics translated from the Sanskrit by Pandit Kesava-prasada Dvivedi of the Agra College.

The scientific equivalents of these Sanskrit and vernacular terms have been gleaned chiefly from Roxburgh's Flora Indica, Jameson's Report on the Botanical garden of the North-West Provinces for 1855, O'Shaughnessy's Bengal Dispensatory, Powell's Report on Panjab Products, etc. The translations of these writers have been verified, whenever it was practicable to do so, by identifying the plants in the Royal Botanic Gardens. The rest have been given chiefly on the authority of Roxburgh after carefully comparing his descriptions with the characters assigned to them by Sanskrit writers. Some plants, the identification of which was doubtful, have been omitted from the list. The scientific names of many of these plants have been ascertained for the first time, by Dr. King, after examination of specimens procured by me. Dr. King has also furnished the recent botanical names of numerous plants the old names for which have now become obsolete. With regard to the spelling of the Sanskrit and vernacular terms, I should mention that professor H. H. Wilson's system of transliteration, or as it is now sometimes called the Hunterian System, has been adopted, so far as is necessary to arrive at the correct pronunciation of the words, but the minute distinctions between the two varieties of the dental and palatal S, the four varieties of N, and the long and short sounds of some of the vowels, which are not always practically observed in pronouncing them, have not been insisted upon in correcting the proof-sheets. The vernacular terms have been for the most part, spelt as they are written in standard Bengali and Hindi dictionaries. The spoken language varies so much in different parts of the country and among different classes of people, that it would be hopeless to attempt any thing like a complete vocabulary of names as pronounced by the people of the different provinces of which Hindi and Bengali are the vernaculars.

One great peculiarity of the Sanskrit language consists in its having numerous synonyms for material objects, and medicines form no exception to this rule. Almost all well-known plants have several synonyms, and some have as many as twenty to forty names; gulancha has thirty-nine, chebulic myrobalan thirty, the lotus thirty-eight, with half as many for its varieties, and so on. Native physicians learn these synonyms by rote, just as they do their grammars and dictionaries. Sanskrit medical works, like most other works in the language, are composed in rhyme, and any one of the numerous synonyms of a drug may be used to designate it in prescriptions containing the article according to the fancy of the writer and the necessities of metrical composition. Many names again are common to numerous articles, and it is often impossible without the help of annotations to make out which drug is meant by a particular term. In the absence of any scientific description of plants, however, these synonyms sometimes serve to describe their prominent characters, and thus prove an aid to their identification. In the glossary appended to this work, I have not attempted to give a complete list of all these synonyms. As a general rule I have given only the principal or current name of each plant. Some plants have however more than one well-known and currently-used names. In such instances I have given those names in the first column only, with a reference to the synonyms under which their vernacular and Sanskrit equivalents have been given.