Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Its juice blackens the pupil, cuts off an
incipient cataract, strengthens the eye
and sharpens the eyesight. Boiled together
with their stalks, anemones further the
formation of milk. If a woman inserts the
anemone with the help of a woollen tam-
pon (
ūfa
), she increases the flowing of the
menstrual blood (i.e. if an abortive effect
is aimed at). Ibn Riwān is even of the
opinion that seeds of anemones, if taken
during several consecutive days, would
cure leprosy.
the Portuguese. The following kinds are
under discussion: (1) the yellow myrobal-
anus (
halīla
¡
afar, Terminalia citrina
). Its
juice has an aperient effect and purges
yellow gall. As an ointment, it dries up
wound-boils, and pulverised and diluted
with rose-water, it heals burns; (2) the
myrobalanus of Kābul (
halīla
¡
kābulī
),
the ripe fruit of
Terminalia chebula
, is con-
sidered as the finest. Its effect is like that
of the first one and, besides, it has the
property of conferring a lucid intellect;
(3) the black myrobalan (
halīla
¡
aswad
),
the unripe fruit of the
Terminalia chebula
,
as large as a small olive; (4)
balīla
¡
, Termi-
nalia bellerica
; and (5)
amla
¡
, useful against
haemorrhoids, in the Eastern and West-
ern Middle Ages considered as a kind of
myrobalanus, in fact, however, the fruit
of a completely different family of plants,
namely the
Phyllanthus emblica
(Euphorbi-
aceae). However, the nomenclature is not
established with certainty.
The fruits were harvested at various
stages of ripeness: small, unripe, dried,
they served as medicine; the ripe fruits
of the size of walnuts were used for the
preparation of tannin, which was in high
demand. In India, where the myrobalanus
tree is indigenous, the fruits were widely
used as medicine, especially as stomachics
and purgatives; the Tirphala or Triphala
(“tri-juiced medicine”), consisting probably
of three of the kind mentioned above, was
in particular esteemed. The Arabs mixed
the fruits with spices in order to increase
their digestive effect. The myrobalanus
has now disappeared from the pharmaco-
poeias in the West, but may still be used
here and there in the East; only for the
preparation of tannin is it still to be found
on the market.
(A. Dietrich)
Myrobalan
Arabic
halīladj
is the plum-like fruit of
the Terminalia chebula-tree, a Combra-
tacea of South-Asia and the Malayan
archipelago. Being a useful and cheap
substitute (
badal
) for gall or oak-apples
(
af
), they were used already in antiquity
for extracting tannic acid and as a medi-
cine. The term appears also as
ahlīla
¡
or
ihlīla
¡
and goes through Persian
halīla
back to Sanskrit
harītakī
. Synonyms are
hārsar
(indicated as “Indian” and probably
to be derived from the Sanskrit term men-
tioned above), and
mufarfa
(with variants).
These fruits were allegedly unknown to
the earlier Greeks: the
βάλανος μυρεψική
of Dioscorides is the fruit of a kind of
Meringa, known to the Arabs as behen-
nut (
bān
). The later Greeks called this
μυρολάλανος
(“salve-acorn”), and when
the Arabs imported from India the real
myrobalanus both were confounded, not-
withstanding their completely different
medical effect.
The Arabs knew five kinds of myrobal-
anus, all of which had reached Europe
perhaps already at the time of the School
of Salerno, but they were imported in
great quantities and used in the Western
pharmacies only through the trade of
(A. Dietrich)
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