[b:4377e1deb1]A Story of Agrimony [/b:4377e1deb1]
Once upon a time, two skillful writers went to the capital to have the imperial examination in summer. They hurried on with their journey for fear that they would miss the examination. So they were weak because of tiredness.
One day, they entered the desolate desert. There was no inn at all. They were both thirsty and hungry.
One skillful writer had suffered from vacuity fire flaming upward due to tiredness. Blood ran out of his nose suddenly. The other one was astonished to see that and had to stuff his friend's noses with paper. But the blood ran out of his mouth while the noses were stuffed.
The other skillful writer had no idea. "What shall I do?"
"Water! If there's water."
"How can I get water for you? We are in the desert."
Just when they were talking, a red-crowned crane was flying past. "Wait! Give me yours wings and let me fly out of the desert." The one with nose bleeding cried out.
The crane was frightened by him and dropped a piece of weed held in its mouth.
The other skillful writer picked it up and said, "There's no wings, but you can take it to moisten your mouth.
The one with nose bleeding put it into his mouth and chawed. After a while, his nose stopped bleeding unexpectedly. They were very delightful, "Aha, the red-crowned crane brought us the xian-cao (mystery weed)."
They didn't miss the examination at last. And several years later, they were both the officials of the imperial court.
They met one day and recalled the experience in the desert. They both wanna find the weed which can stop bleeding.
So they drew a figure of the weed and ordered the heelers to get it. Many years later, it was found finally.
It's a kind of herb of which the leaves are feather-like and the flowers white. It has the actions of astringing to stop bleeding, supplementing, eliminating stagnated food and killing intestinal worms. In order to commemorate the red-crowned crane (xian-he in Chinese) which brought them the weed, they termed the herb[b:4377e1deb1] Xianhe-Cao[/b:4377e1deb1], (i.e., agrimony).
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Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:02 am
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