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to Barygaza. While Theophrastus may have referred to it as boutyros, the Romans knew it more intimately as laser , which is the word that the author of the Periplus would probably have used. It entered into Roman medicine as a remedy for fevers and tropical digestive disor- ders. (Pliny, XIX, 15).
Fabricius needlessly alters the text to read bosmoros, a grain, which he does not identify. McCrindle suggests wild barley or millet. The following passages from Strabo throw some light on that question:
He says (XV, ii, 13) “By the vapors which ascend from so many rivers, and by the Etesian winds, India, as Eratosthenes states, is watered by the summer rains, and the level country is inundated. During the rainy season, flax and millet, as well as sesamum, rice and bosmoros are sown; and in the winter season, wheat, barley, pulse, and other esculents with which we are unacquainted.” And again:
(XV, ii, 18) “Onesicritus says of bosmoros that it is a smaller gra ; n than wheat, and is grown in countries between rivers. It is roasted after being threshed out, and the men are bound by oath not to take it away before it has been roasted, to prevent the seed from being exported.
The treasuring of this bosmoros and the prejudice against its ex- portation indicate the native millet, which was regarded as particularly pure, and was the grain most used for temple-offerings.
Other grains which might suggest themselves, are the African millets, Holcus sorghum (Hindu juar) or Kaffir corn (see Pliny, XVIII, 10, for description of its remarkable size and prolific increase) and Pennisetum typhoideum (Hindu, bajra ) or spiked millet. Both are im- portant crops in modern India, but were probably brought from Africa more recently than the date of the Periplus, and being native in So- maliland, would not be probable articles of import there.
Wild barley, suggested by McCrindle, was also native in Egypt and Somaliland, and therefore not likely to have been imported.
Another possible grain is the Indus valley wild rice, Oryza coarc- tata (Hindu, barirdhan), which has been confused with wheat. See Watt, p. 823.
The common millet, Panicum miliaceum , while grown in India, was native in Egypt and the Mediterranean countries.
Altogether the bosmoros of Strabo was most probably “Poor man’s millet,” Panicum Crus-galli; which is extensively cultivated to-day in China and Japan as well as India. The native name given it in Ben- gal, bura shama, might readily be Hellenized into bosmoros.
According to Watt ( op . cit., 843) Panicum Crus-galli, order Graminece, is a large, coarse plant, preferring wet ground, such as
