Chapter MYNA to MYSORE THORN of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

that the Arab practitioners whom he had consulted applied to the whole class the name delegi, a word which we cannot identify, unless it originated in a clerical error for alelegi, i.e. ihlilaj. The last word may perhaps be taken as covering all myrobalans; for according to the Glossary to Rhazes at Leyden (quoted by Dozy, Suppt. i. 43) it applies to the Kabuli, the yellow, and the black (or Indian), whilst the Emblic is also called Ihlilaj amlaj.

In the Kashmir Customs Tariff (in Punjab Trade Report, ccxcvi.) we have entries of

“Hulela (Myrobalan).
Bulela (Bellerick ditto).
Amla (Emblica Phyllanthus).”

The kinds recognised in the Medieval pharmacopoeia were five, viz.:—

(1) The Emblic myrobalan; which is the dried astringent fruit of the Anwula, anwla of Hind., the Emblica officinalis of Gaertner (Phyllanthus Emblica, L., N. O. Euphorbiaceae). The Persian name of this is amlah, but, as the Arabic amlaj suggests, probably in older Persian amlag, and hence no doubt Emblica. Garcia says it was called by the Arab physicians embelgi (which we should write ambalji).

(2) The Belleric Myrobalan; the fruit of Terminalia Bellerica, Roxb. (N.O. Combretaceae), consisting of a small nut enclosed in a thin exterior rind. The Arabic name given in Ibn Baithar is balilij; in the old Latin version of A vicenna belilegi; and in Persian it is called balil and balila. Garcia says the Arab physicians called it beleregi (balirij, and in old Persian probably balirig) which accounts for Bellerica.

(3) The Chebulic Myrobalan; the fruit of Terminalia Chebula, Roxb. The derivation of this name which we have given under CHEBULI is confirmed by the Persian name, which is Halila-i-Kabuli. It can hardly have been a product of Kabul, but may have been imported into Persia by that route, whence the name, as calicoes got their name from Calicut. Garcia says these myrobalans were called by his Arabs quebulgi. Ibn Baithar calls them halilaj, and many of the authorities whom he quotes specify them as Kabuli.

(4) and (5). The Black Myrobalan, otherwise called ‘Indian,’ and the Yellow or Citrine. These, according to Royle (Essay on Antiq. of Hindoo Medicine, pp. 36–37), were both products of T. Chebula in different states; but this does not seem quite certain. Further varieties were sometimes recognised, and nine are said to be specified in a paper in an early vol. of the Philos. Transactions.² One kind called Sini or Chinese, is mentioned by one of the authorities of Ibn Baithar, quoted below, and is referred to by Garcia.

The virtues of Myrobalans are said to be extolled by Charaka, the oldest of the Sanskrit writers on Medicine. Some of the Arabian and Medieval Greek authors, referred to by Royle, also speak of a combination of different kinds of Myrobalan called Tryphera or Tryphala; a fact of great interest. For this is the triphala (‘Three-fruits’) of Hindu medicine, which appears in Amarakosha (c. A.D. 500), as well as in a prescription of Susruta, the disciple of Charaka, and which is still, it would seem, familiar to the native Indian practitioners. It is, according to Royle, a combination of the black, yellow and Chebulic; but Garcia, who calls it tinepala (tin-phalin Hind. = ‘Three-fruits’), seems to imply that it consisted of the three kinds known in Goa, viz. citrine (or yellow), the Indian (or black), and the belleric. [Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. pt. iv. 32 seqq.] The emblic, he says, were not used in medicine there, only in tanning, like sumach. The Myrobalans imported in the Middle Ages seem often to have been preserved (in syrup ?).

C. B. C. 340.—[Greek Text] “dioti h gennhsiV tou karpou en th arch esti cwriV glukuthtoV. Twn murabalanwn de dendrwn en th apch, otan fanwsin, oi karpoi eisi glukeiV koinwV de eisi strufnoi kai en th krasei autwn pikroi…”—Aristoteles, De Plantis, ii. 10.

C. A. D. 60.—[Greek Text] “foinix en Aiguptw ginetai trugatai de metopwroushV thV kata thn opwran akmhV, paremferwn th ’Arabikh murobalanw, poma de legetai.”—Dioscorides, de Mat. Medica, i. cxlviii.

C. A.D. 70.—“Myrobalanum Troglodytis et Thebaidi et Arabiae quae Iudaeam ab Aegypto disterminat commune est, nascens unguento, ut ipso nomine apparet, quo item indicatur et glandem esse. Arbor est heliotropio…simili folio, fructus magnitudine abellanae nucis,” &c.—Pliny, xii. 21 (46).

c. 540.—A prescription of Aëtius of Amida, which will be found transcribed under ZEDOARY, includes myrobalan among a large number of ingredients, chiefly of Oriental origin; and one doubts whether the word may not here be used in the later sense.

c. 1343.—“Preserved Mirabolans (mirabolani conditi) should be big and black, and the envelope over the nut tender to the tooth; and the bigger and blacker and tenderer to the tooth (like candied walnuts), the better they are.…Some people say that in India they are candied when unripe (acerbe), just as we candy³ the unripe tender walnuts, and that when they are candied in this way they have no nut within, but are all through tender like our walnut-comfits. But if this is really done, anyhow none reach us except those with a nut inside, and often very hard nuts too. They should be kept in brown earthen pots glazed, in a syrop made of cassia fistula⁴ and honey or sugar; and they should remain always in the syrop, for they form a moist preserve