Note 63 — The Third Book.
Reading edition
His fingers, in beauty and slenderness appearing as the Yed Bieza,[h] or the rays of the sun, being tinged with Hinna, seemed branches of transparent red coral.
Bahar Danush.
She dispenses gifts with small delicate fingers, sweetly glowing at their tips, like the white and crimson worm of Dabia, or dentifrices made of Esel wood.
Moallakat. Poem of Amriolkais.
The Hinna, says the translator of the Bahar-Danush, is esteemed not merely ornamental, but medicinal: and I have myself often experienced in India a most refreshing coolness thro’ the whole habit, from an embrocation, or rather plaster of Hinna, applied to the soles of my feet, by prescription of a native physician. The effect lasted for some days.
This unnatural fashion is extended to animals.
Departing from the town of Anna we met about five hundred paces from the gate a young man of good family followed by two servants, and mounted in the fashion of the country, upon an Ass, whose rump was painted red.
Tavernier.
In Persia, “they dye the tails of those horses which are of a light colour with red or orange.”
Hanway.
Ali the Moor, to whose capricious cruelty Mungo Park was so long exposed, “always rode upon a milk white horse, with its tail dyed red.”
Alfenado, a word derived from alfena the Portugueze or Moorish name of this plant, is still used in Portugal as a phrase of contempt for a fop.