Curcuma Starch, Tikor—The pendulous, colourless tubers of some species of Curcuma, but especially of C. angustifolia Roxb. and C. leucorrhiza Roxb., have long been utilized in Southern India for the preparation of a sort of arrowroot, known by the Hindustani name of Tikor, or Tikhur, and sometimes called by Europeans East Indian Arrowroot.[2347] The granules of this substance much resemble those of Maranta, but they are neither spherical nor egg-shaped. On the contrary, they are rather to be described as flat discs, 5 to 7 mkm. thick, of elliptic or ovoid outline, sometimes truncate; many attain a length of 60 to 70 mkm. They are always beautifully stratified both on the face and on the edge. The hilum is generally situated at the narrower end. We have observed that when heated in water, the tumefaction of the grains commences at 72° C.
Curcuma starch, which in its general properties agrees with common arrowroot, is rather extensively manufactured in Travancore, Cochin and Canara on the south-western coast of India, but in a very rude manner. Drury[2348] states that it is a favourite article of diet among the natives, and that it is exported from Travancore and Madras; we can add that it is not known as a special kind in the English market, and that the article we have seen offered in the London drug sales as East Indian Arrowroot was the starch of Maranta.
ZINGIBERACEÆ.
RHIZOMA ZINGIBERIS.
Radix Zingiberis; Ginger; F. Gingembre; G. Ingwer.
Botanical Origin—Zingiber officinale Roscoe (Amomum Zingiber L.), a reed-like plant, with annual leafy stems, 3 to 4 feet high, and flowers in cone-shaped spikes borne on other stems thrown up from the rhizome. It is a native of Asia, in the warmer countries of which it is universally cultivated,[2349] but not known in a wild state. It has been introduced into most tropical countries, and is now found in the West Indies, South America, Tropical Western Africa, and Queensland in Australia.
History—Ginger is known in India under the old name of Sringavera, derived possibly from the Greek Ζιγγίβερι. As a spice it was used among the Greeks and Romans, who appear to have received it by way of the Red Sea, inasmuch as they considered it to be a production of Southern Arabia.
In the list of imports from the Red Sea into Alexandria, which in the second century of our era were there liable to the Roman fiscal duty (vectigal), Zingiber occurs among other Indian spices.[2350] During the middle ages it is frequently mentioned in similar lists, and evidently constituted an important item in the commercial relations between Europe and the East. Ginger thus appears in the tariff of duties levied at Acre in Palestine about a.d. 1173;[2351] in that of Barcelona[2352] in 1221; Marseilles[2353] in 1228; and Paris[2354] in 1296. The Tarif des Péages, or customs tariff, of the Counts of Provence in the middle of the 13th century, provides for the levying of duty at the towns of Aix, Digne, Valensole, Tarascon, Avignon, Orgon, Arles, &c., on various commodities imported from the East. These included spices, as pepper, ginger, cloves, zedoary, galangal, cubebs, saffron, canella, cumin, anise; dye-stuffs, such as lac, indigo, Brazil wood, and especially alum from Castilia and Volcano; and groceries, as racalicia (liquorice), sugar and dates.[2355]
In England ginger must have been tolerably well known even prior to the Norman Conquest, for it is frequently named in the Anglo-Saxon leech-books of the 11th century, as well as in the Welsh “Physicians of Myddvai” ([see Appendix]). During the 13th and 14th centuries it was, next to pepper, the commonest of spices, costing on an average nearly 1s. 7d. per lb., or about the price of a sheep.[2356]
The merchants of Italy, about the middle of the 14th century, knew three kinds of ginger, called respectively Belledi, Colombino, and Micchino. These terms may be explained thus:—Belledi or Baladi is an Arabic word, which, as applied to ginger, would signify country or wild, i.e. common ginger. Colombino refers to Columbum, Kolam or Quilon, a port in Travancore frequently mentioned in the middle ages. Ginger termed Micchino denotes that the spice had been brought from or by way of Mecca.[2357]