"Myrobalan - The elixir of life in the hand of the Medicine Buddha" englische Version unseres Buches

The adventure of rediscovering this mythological but still existing plant, - an endangered, drupe-bearing forest tree with many variations...

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The book contains more than 45 related black & white pictures, facsimiles of old texts, scientific data - ethnological knowledge of different Asian nations and their mythological inter-connections revolving around this special botanic species with cosmic symbolic importance...3 color prints are worked into the title page, 1 plate with a color print of the earliest correct European woodcut of 1540 comes in separate papersafe...

Arura (spoken 'Aroora')   - Myrobalan is the Tibetan name for a fruit growing on a wild tree belonging to the Terminalia plant family. This is an extensive botanical group of trees that is specially adapted to the different variations of subtropical Asian mountain climate.

The fruit is a drupe remotely resembling olives, but mostly bigger.

It has a yellowish-green color when ripe. The taste of the fruit is strange and unique. It is said to have all six kind of taste.

At the beginning of the spice trading with India, fruits of this family of trees were known in Europe under the name Myrobalan. That time they were called "purging plums" in the pharmacies.

The old scriptures of the Indian naturopathy, the Ayurveda as well as the Tibetan system of natural medicine - mention seven to eight different kind of Arura (its Tibetan name), which differ in shape, color, size and structure of skin.

Its vitamin content has been compared to that of apples with the result that Arura... "contains about 10 to 20 times more vitamins and valuable trace elements!"

The research culminates in the finding, that... "myrobalan is highly nutritive and should be guarded to not disappear due to deforestation...… The dietary importance of the fruit cannot be overestimated !"

Only today it will be very difficult to find such kind of myrobalan forests left in the mountain regions of Asia. In the early industrial times this fruit was used in large amounts by the factories for tanning leather or making coloring agents and writing ink. Today India is flooding the markets with cultivated genetical enhanced fruits of plantations.

After 1920, the progress in chemistry sentenced the fruit to industrial uselessness. This is why this tree lost its economic importance as a living being and, as a result, was sent to the sawmills. Today its wild stock is reduced to such an extent that it is a problem to find a cohesive unit in a natural forest, hills full of fragrant Arura trees are now a matter of cultivation at the foot of the water-rich Himalayan valleys.

The wild Arura-tree depended very much on the help of a special mammal, the barking deer, to spread its seeds around. But this animal is today more easy to find in gourmet restaurant menu cards than inside Asian forests.

After the destructive lumbering the tree is now depending very much on human intervention to even survive in its natural habitat. Ponadan Project is engaged in protecting the last wild original stands of Myrobalan-trees and regenerate these sensitive species in their natural Asian habitats.

Please help us by ordering our wild forest products...!

Thank you for your attention !

Hardbound book with natural grass rope with real dry myrobalan fruits  and an original leaf as a bookmark

1. limited edition,  200 Ex.,  2002 - only few left, now only of second choice, with little stains or minor damages...

160 pages, with many faksimile drawings of original old sources and  with a color foto reprint of the eldest  German wooden graving of Leonhart Fuchs' rediscovered handwrite... the first correct European image of around 1550 A.D. !

also now available as     kindle e-book