NERD or NARD CI1)) is mentioned in three places in the Song of Solomon, and by Mark and John in the N. T. , under the name of vcipaos. Both are translated in the A. V. by the word spikenard, which indicates a far-famed perfume of the East, that has often engaged the attention of critics, but the plant which yields it has only been ascertained in very recent times.
That the nerd of Scripture was a perfume is evident from the passages in which it occurs. In Cant. i. 12, iv. 14, we find it mentioned along with many of the most valued aromatics which were known to the ancients, and all of which, with the exception perhaps of saffron, must have been obtained by foreign commerce from distant countries, as Persia, the east coast of Africa, Ceylon, the north-west and the south-east of India, and in the present instance even from the remote Himalayan mountains. Such substances must necessarily have been costly when the means of communication were defective, and the gains of the successful merchant proportionally great. That the nard or nardus was of great value we learn from the N.T. (Mark xiv. 3; John xii. 3, 5).
Before proceeding to identify the plant yielding 'lard, we may refer to the knowledge which the ancients had of this ointment. Horace, at a period nearly contemporary, ' promises to Virgil a whole cadus (about thirty-six quarts) of wine, for a small onyx-box full of spikenard' (Rosenmiiller, p. 168).
The composition of this ointment is given by Dioscorides, in lib. i. c. 77, rept vapStpou nopov, where it is described as being made with nut oil, and having as ingredients malabathrum, schcenus, costus, amomum, nardus, myrrha, and balsamum ; that is, almost all the most valued perfumes of antiquity.
The nard, PcipSos, was known in very early times, and is noticed by Theophrastus and by Hippocrates. Dioscorides, indeed, describes three kinds of nard. Of the first, called vapSos (nardos) simply, there were two varieties, the one Syrian, the other Indian. The former is so called, not because it is produced in Syria, but because the mountains in which it is produced extend on one side towards Syria, and on the other towards India.
This may refer to the Hindoo Khoosh, and to the extensive signification of the name Syria in ancient times, or to so many Indian products finding their way in those ages into Europe across Syria. These were brought there either by the caravan route from north-west India, or up the Persian Gulf and Euphrates. It is evident, from the passages quoted, that nard could not have been a produce of Syria, or its value would not have been so great either among the Romans or the Jews. The other variety is called Gangitis, from the Ganges, being found on a mountain round which it flows. It is described as having many spikes from one root. Hence it, no doubt, came to be called vap3dcrraxus ; and from the word stachys being rendered by the word spike, it has been translated spikenard. The second kind is by Dioscorides, called Celtic Nard (Pcip8os KeXTuoj), and the third kind mountain nard (vapaos 6peanj). If we consult the authors subse quent to Dioscorides—as Galen, Pliny, Oribasius, iEtius, and Paulus iEgineta—we shall easily be able to trace these different kinds to the time of the Arabs. As the author of this article has already said (v. infra), on consulting Avicenna, we are referred from narden to sunbul, pronounced s-um bul, and in the Latin translation from nardum to Spica, under which the Roman, the mountain, the Indian, and Syrian kinds are mentioned. So in Persian works on Materia Medico., chiefly transla tions from the Arabic, we have the different kinds of sunbul mentioned ; as—I. Sandal kindee. 2. Sunbul roomie, called also sunbul ukletee and narden ukletee, evidently the above Celtic nard, said also to be called slinbut italion, that is, the nard which grows in Italy. 3. Szenbul jibullee, or mountain nard. The first, however, is the only one with which we are at present concerned. The syno nyms given to it in these Persian works are,— Arabic, sunbul at teeb, or fragrant nard ; Greek, narden ; Latin, narcloom ; and Hindee, balchur and jatamansee.