In a medical tradition that used dozens of regional names for the same herb, a dictionary was not a luxury — it was a safety device. The Nighaṇṭuśeṣa, a glossary by the great Jain scholar Hemacandra, collects the synonyms of medicinal plants so that a physician who knows a plant by one name can recognize it by another.
The names of a tree
Take sandalwood. The Nighaṇṭuśeṣa gives it a small constellation of names — śrīkhaṇḍa, malayaja, candana, gandhasāra — each drawn from a different region or property, all pointing at the same fragrant wood.
Names of Śrīkhaṇḍa: Śrīkhaṇḍe syān-Malayajaṃ, Candanaṃ, Śvetacandanam. Gośīrṣakaṃ, Gandhasāraṃ, Bhadraśrīs-Tailaparṇikam, Phalakī, Surabhiḥ, Sāraṃ, Mahārhaṃ, Rohaṇodbhavam.
The same page moves through pāṭalā (trumpet flower), agaru (agarwood), and red sandalwood — each with its roll call of aliases.
The three myrobalans
The glossary is especially generous with the fruits of Ayurveda's most famous trio — the three myrobalans that anchor countless formulations.
Harītakī named — Harītakyā, Abhayā, Pathyā, Hemavatī, Amṛtā. Bibhītaka named — Vibhītaka, Tuṣavāsa, Vaheṭaka. Āmlī named — Āmlakyāṃ, Śivā, Dhātrī, Vayaḥsthā, Ṣaṭrasā, Amṛtā, Parvakaṭī, Niṣphalā, Māṃkadī, Śrīphalā.
Harītakī is Abhayā, Pathyā, Amṛtā. Āmalakī is Dhātrī, Vayaḥsthā, Śivā. Knowing these aliases was not trivia — it was how a prescription written in one region could be filled in another.
A scholar's gift to physicians
Hemacandra was a polymath — grammarian, poet, and lexicographer — and the Nighaṇṭuśeṣa is the medical wing of his lexicography. The manuscript itself, in the Bhandarkar collection, is a clean copy with 'good calligraphy,' the kind of reference a working physician would keep close. It is a reminder that the materia medica was held together not just by herbs, but by words — and by dictionaries that made sure no plant was lost behind an unfamiliar name.