Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

'204 GHARU-WOOD. 11,10-11
kinds of perfumed oils, which were exported far and wide over the Eastern world. Le Strange,
Lands of the Eastern^Caliphate, 293. Edrisi, op. cit, I, 394, speaks of the rose-water of Djur in
Fars as being particularly pure. In another passage (supra, p. 141) our author mentions rose-
water among the products of Asia Minor (Lu-mei).
Rose-water, gulab in Persian, is not to be confounded with the «essence of roses» 'atr in '5
Persian, our attar of roses, which is an essential oil obtained from the petals of the flower, the
chief seat for the manufacture of which is at Ghazipur on the Ganges. «The attar is obtained after
the rose-water is made, by setting it out during the night and till sunrise in the morning in
large open vessels exposed to the air, and then skimming off the essential oil which floats at the
top». Yule and Burnell, Glossary, 494. The acommon substitute)) of which our author speaks 10
seems to have been prepared in much the same way as the attar. We are told, however, that the
Arabs and Persians did not know of attar of roses, it was a discovery of Princess Nurdjihan, wife ,
of Jehangir. L. Langles, Recherches sur la dficouverte de I'essence de rose, 1804.
The Chinese rose is the Rosa indica. Lour. According to the Pon-ts'au the people in
southern China prepared a fragrant water from the petals of the fe'ta»(ir-z»« flowers. Bret- 15
Schneider, Bot. Sinic, III, 303. See also Duarte Barbosa, op. cit., 188.
11.
GHARU-W^OOD m ^).
Gli'dn-Mang comes from different places. That coming from Chon-la is
the best; the second quality is that of Chan-ch'ong, and the poorest qualities 20
are those of San-fo-ts'i and Sho-p'o. It is customary to distinguish between
«Upper Coast» and «Lower Coast» countries; Chon-la and Chan-ch'6ng are
called «Upper Coast»; Ta-shi, San-fo-ts'i and Sho-p'o are called «Lower
Coast)) ^
This incense is, as a rule, considered superior in quality if it comes 25
from a living tree; and inferior, if from a decayed one. The hard and black
kind is considered superior, the yellow (or brown) inferior. The shape of this
incense varies widely, and several varieties have, accordingly, to be distin-
guished ; one looks like a rhinoceros horn (si-kio), and is called ti-kio-ch^on
iW ^^
"rhinoceros horn gharu-wood»); another which resembles the beak 30
of a swallow (yen-k'ou), is called yen-¥6u-c¥6n (^ p JJg); another kind,
resembling aconite roots (fu-tsi) is called fu-td-ch'6n (pjfvj- ^ ^); another
kind resembles a shuttle (so) and is called so-ch'on {H^ |^), If the graining
be well marked and the
m m UYveins
close together, it is called hong-ko-dfon
35
But, on the whole, when judging of the. quality, more importance is
attached to fragrance than to appearance. Furthermore, the common opinion
that it is a product of P'o-ni (y^ '^^ Borneo) is a fallacy ^
Some authorities assert that sh6ng-kie-c¥on or «fresh» (^ &t) gharu