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Zhao Rugua on Dammar (du’nou xiang 篤耨香)
Tu-nau-hiang [du’nou xiang] comes from the country of Chön-la [Zhenla, Cambodia]: it is the exudation of a tree with resembles the pine [shan] (杉) and juniper [kuai] (檜) family in shape; but the gum [xiang] (香) lies concealed in the bark. When the tree is old, it runs out spontaneously, as a white and vitreous resin, for which reason it does not melt, though the summer heat may be at its height; this is called tu-nau [du'nou].
If, in the summer months, the trunk of the tree is scorched by a fire kept burning around it, this will cause the fluid resin to flow out freely again; it may be gathered during the winter, when it hardens; for this variety of incense is liquid in the summer, and hardens during the winter; it is called “heï [hei] (or black) tu-nau”. The natives fill gourds (瓢 p’iau [piao]) with it, [page 200] and the shippers afterwards transfer it into porcelain vessels. The flavour of this incense is pure and lasting; the black variety easily melts and leaks through the gourd; but by breaking the gourd and exposing it to the fire, one may obtain something similar to the original substance. This is the article now called tu-nau-p’iau [du'nao piao] or “gourd dammar”.
Hirth & Rockhill's Note on Dammar
The Chinese word tu-nau transcribes the Malay damar. In the fifteenth century Ying-yai-shöng-lan [Yingya shenglan] the form ta-ma-ïr [da ma er] occurs (打麻兒). Crawfurd, Hist. Indian Archipelago, I, 455, says: “In almost every country of the Indian islands there are trees which afford damar. Rumphius enumerates four varieties. These produce different sorts of the rosin, which take their names in commercial language from their colour or consistency. One is called Damar-batu in Malay, or Damar-selo in Javanese, which means the stony rosin, and another in common use Damar-putch, or white rosin . . . Damar is used for all the purposes to which we apply pitch, but chiefly in paying the bottoms of ships and vessels.”
Marsden, Hist. Of Sumatra, 128, says that white dammar is a species of turpentine, yielded by a tree growing in Lampoon called cruyen, the wood of which is white and porous. It differs from the common sort, or dammar battoo, in being soft and whitish, having the consistence, and somewhat the appearance of putty.” See also Yule and Burnell, Glossary, 228.
- Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, trans. and annot.
Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chï (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911), Part II, chapter 6, pp. 199-200.
