When you wish to dye your hair, take some of the powder, mix it with water so as to form an unctuous paste, and grind it very fine in an iron mortar; apply it to the hair, and tie it up with fresh-gathered castor oil leaves. Should the hair not be dyed as required, wet the hair with water, as also the leaves, and tie it up again, as the dye will not have the desired effect if the hair be not kept moist with it. The mortar must be of iron, or the mixture will be spoiled.
Eight rattīs (seed of abrus precatorius) make one masha, twelve and a half mashas one tolā or sicca rupī weight.
No. XXIX.—To dye the beard and moustache.—[Vol. i. p. 320.]
Boil four or five anolas (myrobalan emblic, Lin.) for a short time in water, till they impart their colour to it. Grind up indigo leaves (busmuh) on a sil (a rough slab of stone, with a stone roller), with the above decoction, and use the preparation as a dye, after having exposed it to the sun for a short time. This receipt was given me by Seyd Husain, an old peshkār at Prāg.
No. XXX.—Perfumed tobacco cakes.—[Vol. ii. p. 8.]
Tobacco, one mŭn, gurh (thick sugar), one mŭn; gulkand (gūlabī) conserve of roses, ten sers; gulkand (séo), five sers; paurī, three tolās; musk, one tolā, amber, one ditto; ugur, pāo bur, i.e. a quarter of a tolā; tugger, one quarter of a tolā.
The tobacco and gour to be mixed, and left in a gharā for five days, the other ingredients to be then added, and the whole buried for ten days before use. One of the cakes is sufficient for a quart bottle of rose-water, into which it is to be broken; and in this state of solution it is sufficient to impregnate with its flavour a mŭn of tobacco. This receipt was procured from one of the attendants on her Highness the Bāiza Bā’ī.
No. XXXI.—Authorities quoted in the Work.—[Vol. ii. p. 181.]
“Moor’s Hindū Pantheon;” “Ward, On the Religion, &c., of the Hindoos;” “Wilford’s Dissertation on Egypt and the Nile;” “Asiatic Researches;” “Maurice’s Indian Antiquities;” “Frazer’s Tour through the Himalaya Mountains;” “Capt. J. A. Hodgson’s Survey of the Ganges and Jumna;” “Adam’s Roman Antiquities;” “Mishcat ul Masabih;” “Dow’s History of Hindostan;” “Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajah’stan,” and “Travels in Western India;” “Herklot’s Qunoon-e-islam;” “Franklin’s Shah Alum,” and “Life of George Thomas;” “The Ku’rān;” “Ainslie’s Materia Medica;” “Louden’s Encyclopedia of Plants.”