Page:The materia medica of the Hindus (1877).djvu/19

 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.

I avail myself of this opportunity, publicly to tender my cordial thanks to those gentlemen who have assisted me in carrying this work through the press. To Dr. George King, Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, I feel myself particularly beholden. He has helped me most materially in a variety of ways, and has thereby enabled me to avoid many errors and mistakes. On many occasions he has spent hours in identifying various drugs for me; and he has revised nearly all the last proofs, before the sheets were printed. The recent names of plants in the glossary are entirely due to his pen, and they entailed on him considerable and tedious labour. Without these names I should