Hortus Malabaricus

  Hortus Malabaricus (meaning Garden of Malabar) is a comprehensive treatise that deals with the medicinal properties of the flora in the Indian state of Kerala. Originally written in Latin, it was compiled over a period of nearly 30 years and published from Amsterdam during 1678-1703. The book was conceived by Hendrik van Rheede, who was the Governor of the Dutch administration in Kochi (formerly Cochin) at the time. The book has since been translated into English and is being prepared in Malayalam.^[1][2]

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Van Rheede is said to have taken a keen personal interest in the compilation of the Hortus Malabaricus. The work was edited by a team of nearly a hundred including physicians, professors of medicine and botany, amateur botanists (such as Arnold Seyn, Theodore Jansson of Almeloveen, Paul Herman, Johannes Munnicks, Joannes Commelinus, Abraham a Poot), Indian scholars and vaidyans (physicians) of Malabar and adjacent regions, and technicians, illustrators and engravers, together with the collaboration of company officials, clergymen (D. John Caesarius and Carmelite Mathaeus of St. Joseph). Van Rheede was also assisted by the King of Cochin and the ruling Zamorin of Calicut. Prominent among the Indian contributors were three Gouda Saraswat Brahmins named Ranga Bhat, Vinayank Bhat and Appu Bhat.^[3] The ethnomedical information presented in the work was extracted from palm leaf manuscripts by a famous practitioner of herbal medicine named Itty Achutan.   The comprehensive nature of the book is noted by Whitehouse in his Historical Notices of Cochin:

All the country around was diligently searched by the natives best acquired with the habitats of plants; and fresh specimens were brought to Cochin where the Carmelite Mathaeus sketched them, with such striking accuracy, that there was no difficulty in identifying each particular species when you see his drawings. A description of each plant was written in Malayalam and thence translated into Portuguese, by a resident at Cochin, named Emmanuel Carneiro. The Secretary to Government, Herman Van Douep, further translated it into Latin, that the learned in all the countries of Europe might have access to it. The whole seems then to have passed under the supervision of another learned individual named Casearius, who was probably a Dutch Chaplain and a personal friend of Van Rheede. A book of its size, on which such care was expended, must have consumed a fortune before its publication, and confers honour, both on those who compiled it and the place where it was compiled.

The Hortus Malabaricus comprises 12 volumes of about 500 pages each, with 794 copper plate engravings. The first of the 12 volumes that comprise the book was published in 1678, and the last in 1703. It is believed to be the earliest comprehensive printed work on the flora of Asia and the tropics.^[4] Mentioned in these volumes are plants of the Malabar region which in his time referred to the stretch along the Western Ghats from Goa to Kanyakumari. The book gives a detailed account of the flora of Kerala, along with sketches and detailed descriptions. Over 742 different plants and their indigenous science are considered in the book. The book also employs a system of classification based on the traditions adopted by the pre-ayurvedic practitioners of that era. Apart from Latin, the plant names have been recorded in other languages viz. Sanskrit, Arabic and Malayalam.

See also

• History of Kerala
• Geography of Kerala
• Dutch East India Company

References

External links

• Review of reference to Hortus Malabaricus
• A scanned copy of Hortus Malabaricus
• 325-year-old Dutch work on Kerala's plant wealth revived
• Malayalam version of Hortus Malabaricus
• `Hortus Malabaricus' - a feather in the varsity's cap