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After 325 years, seminal treatise bears
new fruit
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - Fully 325 years after its
publication in Amsterdam, the 132-volume Hortus
Malabaricus ("Garden of Malabar"), a treatise on the
medicinal plants of the southern Indian state of Kerala,
has finally been translated from Latin into English -
and it has unlocked a wealth of information for
historians, botanists and medical researchers.
Its original author, Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede,
the Dutch governor of the former princely state of
Cochin between 1670 and 1677, would have approved of the
effort taken by the Kerala University in bringing out an
English version after it defied translation for
centuries.
"Several attempts were made to bring
out Dutch and English translations of the Hortus
Malabaricus, but all of them failed, so much so that
there is a superstition surrounding it - we have just
broken that superstition," said Dr B Ekbal, the vice
chancellor of Kerala University, in an interview soon
after its much-awaited release for general sale this
month.
Rheede's feat was almost superhuman
considering that he brought out the 12 finely
illustrated volumes between 1678 and 1703 in Latin, the
accepted language for scientific work in Europe at that
time, and also employed three other scripts - the local
Malayalam, Arabic and Sanskrit. Plant names appeared in
the Portuguese and Flemish languages as well.
Ekbal, a well-known neurosurgeon and health
expert, said that apart from its obvious botanical and
medical importance, Hortus Malabaricus throws
light on the intense rivalry between European maritime
powers on the coast of Malabar and in Ceylon (now Sri
Lanka) and on the socio-cultural history of these
regions.
The various volumes are replete with
copious introductions, forewords, dedications,
references and certificates given by or for people
ranging from Rheede himself to the native physicians on
whom he relied. They contain much information about the
social and cultural conditions of the time in Kerala, as
well as the rest of India.
"None of this could be
properly studied, analyzed or appreciated by
contemporary scholars because the text was in old Latin
and so the vast fund of information contained in the
several volumes remained inaccessible," Ekbal said.
Hortus Malabaricus is many things to many
people depending on their background and interest.
Professor K S Manilal, who labored 30 years to bring out
the English version, complete with annotations and
modern botanical nomenclature, said the volumes were
important to people of Kerala because they represented
the earliest example of printing in the Malayalam
language, now spoken by at least 30 million literate
people.
For botanists, the work, which has
detailed descriptions and illustrations of 780 rare
plant species, represents a landmark in plant science
and was extensively referred to 75 years later by Carl
Linnaeus, the Swede who pioneered plant classification
and is considered to be the father of modern botany.
Hortus Malabaricus is not only historical, but it
actually created history.
According to Manilal,
the book decided the political fortunes of Malabar and
Ceylon and was in fact the product of political rivalry
between van Rheede and the formidable Ryklof van Goens,
who was bent on establishing the Dutch colonial capital
at Colombo rather than Cochin.
"Van Rheede's
main purpose in producing the volumes was to prove
Malabar's superiority in terms of ready supply of
valuable spices, cotton, timber and the availability of
essential drugs for Dutch officers and their families in
the East Indies," Manilal said.
Van Rheede was
able to show that many valuable drugs purchased in
European cities, including those used for the treatment
of Dutch officers in the Indies, were actually made from
medicinal plants originating in Malabar and exported
through Arabian and other trade routes.
It
worked. The Dutch government approved the opinion of van
Rheede over that of his superior, while his publication
went on to create a stir in the scientific and political
circles of Europe, further stimulating the rivalry for
colonies in India.
But the Dutch, who had
captured Cochin from the Portuguese in 1663 after years
of coastal warfare, lost it to the British in 1795. They
later withdrew forever to the East Indies, leaving
behind in what became modern Kerala and Sri Lanka a
string of ruined fortifications and, of course,
Hortus Malabaricus.
Manilal says the
treatise would be invaluable to nature conservationists
trying to trace the migration, disappearance and
possible extinction of many useful plants from their
original habitats in the western areas of peninsular
India, a zone recognized as one of the world's
biodiversity hotspots.
In today's world, where
the value of natural drugs is gaining fresh recognition
but is bedeviled by such issues as intellectual property
rights and biological patent laws, van Rheede's work and
its English translation have a new and special
relevance.
In recent times, several of India's
traditional plant-based remedies, such as those from
turmeric and neem, have come under assault by biopirates
and Indian groups. The government has had to defend them
from being patented by recourse to ancient texts to show
"prior art".
But some patent experts think that
translating such texts as Hortus Malabaricus may
actually help biopirates rather than hinder them,
especially in the absence of universal acceptance of the
Biodiversity Convention, which is in serious trouble
with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights agreement under the World Trade Organization.
"By publishing the Hortus Malabaricus in
English you will be handing it to them [biopirates] on a
platter," said B K Keyala, one of India's foremost
patent experts. Keyala said the details of medicinal
plants and their uses given in the translated version,
which is being made available at US$500 for a set by
Kerala University, will be tapped by biopirates who
cannot be prevented from taking out patents on extracts
from the plants and processes to do that.
(Inter
Press Service)
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