singularly beautiful Tamarind tree (ever the most graceful, and amongst the most magnificent of trees).…”—Mem.
of Col. Mountain, 98.
1877.—“The natives have a saying that sleeping beneath the ‘Date of Hind’
gives you fever, which you cure by sleeping under a nim tree (Melia azedirachta), the lilac of Persia.”—Burton,
Sind Revisited, i. 92. The nim (see NEEM) (pace Capt. Burton) is not the ‘lilac of Persia’ (see
BUCKYNE). The prejudice against encamping or sleeping under a tamarind tree is general in India.
But, curiously, Bp. Pallegoix speaks of it as the practice of the Siamese “to rest and play under the beneficent
shade of the Tamarind.”—(Desc. du Royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 136).