Terminalia chebula Retz.

DeFilipps, Robert A. & Krupnick, Gary A., 2018, The medicinal plants of Myanmar, PhytoKeys 102, pp. 1-341 : 50-51

Terminalia chebula Retz.

Names.

Myanmar: hpan-khar-thee, mai-mak-na, mai-man-nah, mana, panga, phan-kha, thankaungh. English: myrobalan.

Range.

Native to India, Indo-China, Myanmar, and Thailand. Cultivated and imported elsewhere. Reported from Myanmar.

Uses.

Fruit: Used as astringent, antidysenteric, laxative, and tonic. After soaking crushed fruit in water overnight, the clear liquid is used as an eye drop to cure aching eyes. Drinking the fruit powder dissolved in milk daily promotes longevity. Seed: Made into a paste to treat pimples. Leaf: Used to cure eye problems and to make laxatives, carminatives, and thway-hsay (literally means "blood medicine"), the traditional blood purification mixture. Used to treat various male and female related disorders, and to treat hemorrhoids. Bark: Boiled and the liquid taken to treat diarrhea and dysentery. Crushed and used as a poultice to prevent excessive bleeding.

Notes.

Medicinal uses of this species in India are discussed in Jain and DeFilipps (1991). Medicinal uses of this species in China are discussed in Duke and Ayensu (1985).

Perry (1980) discusses uses of the species in East and Southeast Asia. In China, it is used as a laxative and tonic, deobstruent, carminative, astringent, expectorant, and as a remedy for salivating and heartburn; in Indo-China, the fruit is used as a purgative; on the Malay Peninsula, in addition to the uses listed above, the fruits (imported from India) are considered to be antidiarrheic, styptic, antibilious, and antidysenteric; and in Indonesia the unripe and half-ripe fruit (also imported) and galls from this plant are used as an astringent; the flowers are used in a large number of remedies for dysentery.

Reported constituents include oil, tannin, and chebulic and ellagic acids ( Perry 1980).

References.

Nordal (1963), Agricultural Corporation (1980), Perry (1980), Forest Department (1999).