Felicis mali, quo non praesentius ullum,
Pocula si quando saevae infecere novercae,
Miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba,
Auxilium venit, ac membris agit atra venena.
Georgics II. v. 126.
Vide Heyne’s note i, 438.
[1877] P. turunj, wrinkled, puckered; Sans. vījāpūra and H. bijaurā (Āyīn 28), seed-filled.
[1878] Bābur may have confused this with H. bijaurā; so too appears to have done the writer (Humāyūn?) of a [now mutilated] note in the Elph. Codex (f. 238), which seems to say that the fruit or its name went from Bajaur to Hindūstān. Is the country of Bajaur so-named from its indigenous orange (vījāpūra, whence bijaurā)? The name occurs also north of Kangra.
[1879] Of this name variants are numerous, santra, santhara, samtara, etc. Watts classes it as a C. aurantium; Erskine makes it the common sweet orange; Firminger, quoting Ross (p. 221) writes that, as grown in the Nagpur gardens it is one of the finest Indian oranges, with rind thin, smooth and close. The Emperor Muḥammad Shāh is said to have altered its name to rang-tāra because of its fine colour (rang) (Forbes). Speede (ii, 109) gives both names. As to the meaning and origin of the name santara or santra, so suggestive of Cintra, the Portuguese home of a similar orange, it may be said that it looks like a hill-name used in N. E. India, for there is a village in the Bhutan Hills, (Western Duars) known from its orange groves as Santra-bārī, Abode of the orange. To this (mentioned already as my husband’s suggestion in Mr. Crooke’s ed. of Yule’s H.J.) support is given by the item “Suntura, famous Nipal variety”, entered in Seth’s Nursery-list of 1914 (Feronia Nurseries, Calcutta). Light on the question of origin could be thrown, no doubt, by those acquainted with the dialects of the hill-tract concerned.
[1880] This refers, presumably, to the absence of the beak characteristic of all citrons.