Sanguis Draconis, Dragon’s Blood, Xue Jie 血竭

‘The substance which is mentioned by Dioscorides under the name of [?], as a costly pigment and medicine brought from Africa, and which is also described by Pliny who distinguished it from minium, was certainly the resin called Dragon’s Blood. It was not however that of the Rotang Palm, Calamus Draco, or even of any tree of the Indian Archipelago, but was on the contrary a production of the island of Socotra.

Dragon’s blood is, we believe, not named by any of the earlier voyagers to the India islands. Ibn Batuta, who visited both Java and Sumatra between A.D. 1325 and 1349, and notices their producing benzoin, cloves, camphor, and aloes-wood, is silent about dragon’s blood. Barbosa, whose intelligent narrative (A.D. 1514) of the East Indies is full of reference to the trade and productions of the different localities he visited, states that aloes and dragon’s blood are produced in Socotra, but makes no mention of the latter commodity as found at Malacca, Java, Sumatra, or Borneo.

The fact we wish to prove is corroborated by the accounts of early commercial intercourse between the Chinese and Arabs recently published by Bretschneider.

From the 10th to the 15th century there was carried on between these nations a trade, the objects of which were not only the productions of the Arabian Gulf and countries further north, but also those of the Indian Archipelago. One of the islands with which the Arabs and Persians carried on a great commerce was Sumatra, whence they obtained the precious camphor so much valued by the Chinese, but not, so far as it appears, the resin dragon’s blood. As to the productions brought from Arabia they are enumerated as Ostriches, Olibanum, Liquid Storax, Myrrh, and Dragon’s Blood, besides a few other articles not yet determined. It is worthy of remark that the Chinese are still the principal consumers of dragon’s blood, though like the rest of mankind they have to content themselves with the plentiful drug of Sumatra and Borneo, instead of the more ancient sort produced in Socotra.

The first clear account of the production of the resin in India is that given by Rumphius, who in his Herbarium Amboinense describes the process by which it is collected at Palembang.’ (Pharmacographia, Fluckiger & Hanbury, 1879)