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Indigo Use as Described in Ancient Herbal Medicine Textbooks
Narongsak Rawarin

The Manuscript Conservation Group, The Research Institute of Northeastern Art and Culture Mahasarakham
University 44000, Thailand
Corresponding author: naka609@gmail.com

Abstract

This article presents a study on the use of indigo (Indigofera tinctoria L.) as described in ancient herbal
medicine books in which Kram/Kam (indigo) or Moh Nil (indigo pot dye) is defined as a specific term. The
term çindigoé is mentioned in 45 herbal drug recipes from 2 sets of herbal drug books including: (1) Ten
herbal drug books under the Northeastern palm-leaf manuscript conservation project at Mahasarakham
University where indigo is used as an ingredient in 36 herbal recipes; and (2) Seven transliterated documents
on herbal recipes (both published and unpublished) by the researchers where indigo is stated in 9 herbal
recipes. Particularly, those 2 sets of documents highlight 45 kinds of diseases from 45 herbal recipes that can
be classified into 9 groups including 1) black death, 2) black magic, 3) fever/blister, 4) dental and oral cavity
diseases, 5) abscess, 6) poisoning, 7) leucorrhoea, 8) rashes, and 9) other ailments. Furthermore, indigo is
used as an ingredient in 10 herbal formulas and as liquid vehicle or ingredient in 5 herbal products.
Meanwhile, there are 13 ways of indigo usage and preparation, namely drinking/healing, soaking, pouring,
boiling, cutting, grinding, rubbing, scratching, fumigation, keeping in the mouth, inhaling, praying, and
spraying with the mouth.

Keywords: Thai herb, pharmacopoeia (herbal medicine textbook), indigo, palm-leaf, Thai notebook

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