c. The camphor of Blumea balsamifera, D.C., produced and used in China under the name of ngai camphor.
The relative ratios of value in the Canton market may be roundly given as b, 1; c, 10; a, 80.
The first Western mention of this drug, as was pointed out by Messrs Hanbury and Flückiger, occurs in the Greek medical writer Aëtius (see below), but it probably came through the Arabs, as is indicated by the ph, or f of the Arab kāfūr, representing the Skt. karpūra. It has been suggested that the word was originally Javanese, in which language kāpūr appears to mean both 'lime' and 'camphor.'
Moodeen Sheriff says that kăfūr is used (in Ind. Materia Medica) for 'amber.' Tābashīr (see [TABASHEER]), is, according to the same writer, called bāns-kāfūr 'bamboo-camphor'; and ras-kāfūr (mercury-camphor) is an impure subchloride of mercury. According to the same authority, the varieties of camphor now met with in the bazars of S. India are—1. kāfūr-i-ḳaiṣūrī, which is in Tamil called pach'ch'ai (i.e. crude karuppuram; 2. Ṣūratī kāfūr; 3. chīnī; 4. batai (from the Batta country?). The first of these names is a curious instance of the perpetuation of a blunder, originating in the misreading of loose Arabic writing. The name is unquestionably fanṣūrī, which carelessness as to points has converted into ḳaiṣūrī (as above, and in Blochmann's Āīn, i. 79). The camphor alfanṣūrī is mentioned as early as by Avicenna, and by Marco Polo, and came from a place called Pansūr in Sumatra, perhaps the same as Barus, which has now long given its name to the costly Sumatran drug.
A curious notion of Ibn Batuta's (iv. 241) that the camphor of Sumatra (and Borneo) was produced in the inside of a cane, filling the joints between knot and knot, may be explained by the statement of Barbosa (p. 204), that the Borneo camphor as exported was packed in tubes of bamboo. This camphor is by Barbosa and some other old writers called 'eatable camphor' (da mangiare), because used in medicine and with betel.
Our form of the word seems to have come from the Sp. alcanfor and canfora, through the French camphre. Dozy points out that one Italian form retains the truer name cafura, and an old German one (Mid. High Germ.) is gaffer (Oosterl. 47).
c. A.D. 540.—"Hygromyri cõfectio, olei salca lib. ij, opobalsami lib. i., spicænardi, folij singu. unc. iiii. carpobalsami, arnabonis, amomi, ligni aloes, sing. unc. ij. mastichae, moschi, sing. scrup. vi. quod si etiã caphura non deerit ex ea unc. ij adjicito...."—Aetii Amideni, Librorum xvi. Tomi Dvo.... Latinitate donati, Basil, MDXXXV., Liv. xvi. cap. cxx.
c. 940.—"These (islands called al-Ramīn) abound in gold mines, and are near the country of Ḳansūr, famous for its camphor...."—Maṣ'ūdī, i. 338. The same work at iii. 49, refers back to this passage as "the country of Manṣūrah." Probably Maṣ'ūdī wrote correctly Fanṣūrah.
1298.—"In this kingdom of Fansur grows the best camphor in the world, called Camfera Fansuri."—Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. xi.
1506.—"... e de li (Tenasserim) vien pevere, canella ... camfora da manzar e de quella non se manza...." (i.e. both camphor to eat and not to eat, or Sumatra and China camphor).—Leonardo Ca' Masser.