Talk:Hand-book of the Trade Products of Leh (1874)

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Discussion for: Hand-book of the Trade Products of Leh (1874) • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Hand-book of the Trade Products of Leh (1874) covers J. E. T. Aitchison's Hand-book of the Trade Products of Leh (Calcutta, 1874): the dictionary of trade products and the appendices printed with it, including the Ladakh trade reports for 1867 to 1873 by Henry Cayley, R. B. Shaw and Aitchison. Aitchison's other botanical work is not described here.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and unresolved identifications here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

The copy used

The book is cited from the Wellcome Library copy scanned by the Internet Archive (item b21780547), as reproduced on Wikimedia Commons. Every quotation on the page was checked against the page images. The page numbers are the printed ones; the scan's PDF page is 18 higher in the dictionary and 20 higher in the appendices.

Spellings

Place names and terms are given as Aitchison prints them: Charras, Kandir, Nasha, Pai, Jigdah, Karmak, Yang Hissar, Postgraum, Kurgilik. The 1867 report spells the drug "Churrus". The preface is dated at "Marri". The page identifies none of these with a modern place or spelling beyond the links to Yarkand, Yengi Hissar and Kashmir.

Turki terms

Aitchison states in the preface (p. ii) that a word given as Turki or Yarkandi is the Yarkandi traders' word for the product, perhaps only a technical one, spelt by ear, and that he could check it less well than the Bhote and Kashmir terms. Kandir and Nasha are his Turki words in that sense.

Aitchison's views

Aitchison's description of charras as a poison, his belief that it caused "half the insanity of the Sikhs in the Punjab" and his call for a prohibitive duty (pp. 53–54) are reported as his, in his words. The page does not adopt them.

Authors not linked

R. B. Shaw, author of the reports for 1871 and 1873, is named as the book prints him. The book gives no fuller name for him.