1. To adapt Chakrabarty's terms (Chakrabarty 2008 [2000]: 243).
2. Of course, the language of science is unstable, and the botanical name/classification of a plant might well change. Nevertheless, at any given time scientific terminology provides a bridge between discourses of history, archaeology, botany, geography, ethnobotany, etc. One canbracketquestions of the socially constructed nature of contemporary scientific terms for the purposes of a particular enquiry, producing a useful sense/reference contrast. For a discussion of the dangers (impossibility?) of universal social constructionism, and the utility of highlighting it in certain contexts, see Hacking (1999).
3. Sanskrit pharmacological literature tends to reflect the material culture of the period more accurately than the idealized world of poetics and liturgy.
4. See also Ciurtin's two reviews (2005; 2006) of Donkin for an extremely thorough supplementary discussion and bibliography on this topic.
5. On the dating of camphor in India, see Donkin (1999: ch. 3) and also Sternbach (1974: 436–9). On camphor in Barus and other parts of Southeast Asia, see Guillot (2003: ch. 2), Nouha (1998), and Ptak (1998). Ciurtin (2004–5: 8–9) notes references that suggest the presence of camphor in Central Asia in the fourth century. The earliest references to camphor in India appear to be in medical texts but these are notoriously complex in composition and hard to date. An exhaustive search of critically edited texts for references to camphor could help better establish this chronology. Such a clear chronology of camphor in India (as with other materials) would then be of possible use to scholars looking to date and edit Indic texts in general.