Dragon's Brain Perfume: An Historical Geography of Camphor.

• Author: Kuo-Tung, Ch'en
• Position: Reviews of Books

Dragon's Brain Perfume: An Historical Geography of Camphor. By R. A. DONKIN. Brill's Indological Library, vol. 14. Leiden: BRILL, 1999. Pp. xix + 308, maps, figs. $85.50.

While the principal spices (in particular, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and mace) have been better studied, camphor has not been investigated with sufficient attention until this publication. Donkin's book is very useful for those who are interested in historical medicine, incenses, and perfumery. It also deals with cross-cultural trade appropriately.

In this erudite study, the author consults a great variety of source materials, mainly in Western languages, from classical to modern. Apparently, Donkin does not read any East Asian languages and, in that realm, has relied much upon secondary source, which results in two types of problems. First, he misses some important works that deal with camphor, such as those by Yamada Kentaro (e.g., Nakai koyakuhu: Supaisu ruuto no kenkyu [Records of South Sea Drugs and Perfumes: A Study of the Spice Route] [Tokyo: Hosei Univ. Press, 1982]). Second, he has sometimes been misled by translated or secondary sources. For example, he mixes romanization systems; thus the word for Blumea camphor in Mandarin appears sometimes as ai," sometimes as "gnai." The full name of Blumea camphor in Chinese is ai-na. The second syllable, na, is very likely a borrowing. Donkin mentions that in Thailand Blumea camphor is called "nat" (p. 169); this might be the origin of the na in ai-na. Moreover, ai is used to cover two different genera o f Compositae plants. Not only Blunea spp., but also Artemisia spp. are called ai. To make a distinction between the two genera, the component "na" is added to designate the Blumea spp. Not knowing how to write the word in Chinese characters, the author also confuses the ai in ai-na with that in the country name "Ai-lao" (today's Laos) (p. 170); however, these represent different words, written with different characters. The ancient Chinese believed that ai-na was produced in the Piao (Pyu) country, which is today's Myanmar, not Laos. An even more embarrassing mistake caused by the author's ignorance of Chinese is that on page 63 the plate with...