that it was the mansion of a benevolent nymph. Even the Véda celebrates it; as in the following text of the A't'harvana: " May "Dúrvà, which rose from the water of life, which has a hundred "roots and a hundred stems, efface a hundred of my fins and pro long my existence on earth for a hundred years!" The plate was engraved from a drawing in Dr. ROXBURGH's valuable collection of Indian graffes. 12. CUS'A; or Cus'HA: SYN. Cut'ha, Darbha, Pavitra. VULG. Cusha. KOEN. Poa Cynofuroides. Having never seen this most celebrated grass in a state of perfect inflorescence, I clafs it according to the information, which Dr. RoxBURGH has been fo kind as to fend me: the leaves are very long, with margins acutely fawed downwards but smooth on other parts, even on the keels, and with long points, of which the extreme acuteness was proverbial among the old Hindus. Every law-book, and almost every poem, in Sanferit contains frequent allufions to the holiness of this plant; and, in the fourth Véda, we have the following addrefs to it at the close of a terrible incantation: Thee, O Darbha, the learned proage or death; thee they call the claim a divinity not fubject to armour of INDRA, the preferver of regions, the destroyer of enemies; · a gem that gives increase to the field. At the time, when the ocean refounded, when the clouds murmured and lightnings flashed, then 'was Darbha produced, pure as a drop of fine gold.' Some of the leaves taper to a most acute, evanescent point; whence the Pandits often say of a very sharp-minded man, that his intellects are acute as the point of a Cus'a leaf. 13. BAND 13. BANDHU'CA: SYN. Ractaca, Bandhujivaca. LINN. Scarlet IXORA. CAL. Perianth four-parted, permanent; divifions, coloured, erect, acute. COR. One-petaled, funnel-form. Tube, cylindrick, very long, flender, somewhat curved. Border four-parted; divifions, egged, acute, deflected. STAM. Filaments four, above the throat very fhort, incurved. Anthers oblong, depreffed. PIST. Germ roundish, oblate beneath. Style, threadform, long as the tube. Stigma two-cleft, just above the throat; divifions, externally curved. PER. SEEDS: FLOWERS bright crimson-scarlet, umbel-fafcicled. Leaves oval, crosspaired, half-stem-clasping, pointed; pale below, dark green above, leathery, clothing the whole plant. Stipules between the oppofite leaves, erect, linear. Stem ruffet, channelled. The Bandúca-flower is often mentioned by the best Indian poets; but the Pandits are ftrangely divided in opinion concerning the plant, which the ancients knew by that name. RA'DHA'CA'NT brought me, as the famed Bandhúca, fome flowers of the Doubtful PAPAVER; and his younger brother RAMA'CA'NT produced on the following day the Scarlet IXORA, with a beautiful couplet in which it is named Bandhúca: foon after, SERVO'RU showed me a book, in which it is faid to have the vulgar name Dóp'bariya, or Meridian; but by that Hindustáni name, the Mufelmans in fome districts mean the Scarlet PENTAPETES, and, in others, the Scarlet HIBISCUS, which the Hindus call Súryamani, or Gem of the Sun. The last-mentioned plant is the Siafmin of RHEEDE, which LINNÆUS, LINNAEUS, through mere inadvertence, has confounded with the Scarlet Pentapetes, described in the fifty-fixth plate of the same volume. I cannot refrain from adding, that no Indian god was ever named IXORA; and that Is'wara, which is, indeed, a title of SIVA, would be a very improper appellation of a plant, which has already a claffical name. 14. CARNICA'RA: SYN. Drumótpala, Perivyádha. It is wonderful, that the Pandits of this province, both priests and phyficians, are unable to bring me the flower, which CA'LIDA'SA mentions by the name of Carnicára, and celebrates as a flame of the woods: the lovely Pavetta, which botanists have fufficiently described, is called by the Bengal peasants Cáncrà, which I should conclude to be a corruption of the Sanferit word, if a comment on the Amaracósh, had not exhibited, the vulgar name Cat'ha-champá; which raises a doubt, and almost inclines me to believe, that the Carnicára is one of the many flowers, which the natives of this country improperly called wild Champacs. 15. MA'SHANDARI': VULG. Mafandarí in Bengal; and Baftra in Hindustán. LINN. American CALLICARPUS; yet a native of Java? CAL. Perianth one-leaved, four-parted; Divifions pointed, erect. STAM. Filaments four, thread-form, coloured, longer than the corol. PIST. Germ above, egged. Style thread-form, coloured, longer than the ftamens. Stigma thickish, gaping. PER. |