1879.—"So the dog went to a mainá, and said: 'What shall I do to hurt this cat!'"—Miss Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, 18.

"

"... beneath

Striped squirrels raced, the mynas perked and picked.

The nine brown sisters chattered in the thorn ..."

E. Arnold, The Light of Asia, Book i.

See [SEVEN SISTERS] in Gloss. Mr. Arnold makes too many!

MYROBALAN, s. A name applied to certain dried fruits and kernels of astringent flavour, but of several species, and not even all belonging to the same Natural Order, which were from an early date exported from India, and had a high reputation in the medieval pharmacopoeia. This they appear (some of them) to retain in native Indian medicine; though they seem to have disappeared from English use and have no place in Hanbury and Flückiger's great work, the Pharmacographia. They are still, to some extent, imported into England, but for use in tanning and dyeing, not in pharmacy.

It is not quite clear how the term myrobalan, in this sense, came into use. For the people of India do not seem to have any single name denoting these fruits or drugs as a group; nor do the Arabic dictionaries afford one either (but see further on). Μυροβάλανος is spoken of by some ancient authors, e.g. Aristotle, Dioscorides and Pliny, but it was applied by them to one or more fruits[[179]] entirely unconnected with the subjects of this article. This name had probably been preserved in the laboratories, and was applied by some early translator of the Arabic writers on Materia Medica to these Indian products. Though we have said that (so far as we can discover) the dictionaries afford no word with the comprehensive sense of Myrobalan, it is probable that the physicians had such a word, and Garcia de Orta, who is trustworthy, says explicitly that the Arab practitioners whom he had consulted applied to the whole class the name delegi, a word which we cannot identify, unless it originated in a clerical error for alelegi, i.e. ihlīlaj. The last word may perhaps be taken as covering all myrobalans; for according to the Glossary to Rhazes at Leyden (quoted by Dozy, Suppt. i. 43) it applies to the Kābulī, the yellow, and the black (or Indian), whilst the Emblic is also called Ihlīlaj amlaj.

In the Kashmīr Customs Tariff (in Punjab Trade Report, ccxcvi.) we have entries of