Ayurveda knows this plant as rohini (the healer), mamsa rohini (healing the injured flesh) and charmankasa (used in tanning the leather) or charmakan (causing, fresh skin), as Bhava Prakasha calls it. Its speciality of action is that it helps quick regeneration of the tissues so that the process of healing is hastened up.
In English this is called Red Wood tree.
It is whan in Hindi, ron, rohini in Gujarati, sohan in Oriya, ruhin, potar in Marathi, shemmaram (the red tree) in Tamil and swami maram (the lordly tree) in Kannada, .
This is a very large tree of the forests. The trunk is stout, straight and round with a diameter of one to two feet. Leaves are at the ends of the branches and very close, dense and shady. Leaves are compound and neem like with six to twenty leaflets on the central axis. They are yellow or yellowish green on the upper side and rather whitish below.
When tender, the leaves are red and very beautiful. Leaves are much like neem leaves, bitter in taste and smell. Flowers are small and numerous as in the mango tree. Fruit is like a drum in appearance and bluish red in colour. Seed has a thin papery cover and it is winged. The whole tree is thus lofty, very graceful, imposing and beautiful.
The bark of the stem is the principle part of medicinal value. This occurs usually in half quills of a rich red brown colour.
It is bitter in taste, cold in virility, bitter in post-digestive effect and capable of being effective in the vitiations of all the three viz. vata, pitta and kapha. It is antiperiodic (acting against intermittent fevers like malaria), febrifuge (removes fever) and also a tonic. It contains resin, tannic and gallic acids, starch and a bitter principle. It is employed beneficially in dysentery, diarrhoea, intermittent fever, and general debility.
The advised dosage is four to five drachms in 24 hours in doses of about a drachm every time. If administered in large doses, it may lead to virtigo (dizziness of the head) and stupor. Decoction of the bark is a substitute for that of the oak-bark of European medicine and is well advised for gargling, vaginal injections, enema and also for external applications in rheumatic swellings. The dosage found useful is one ounce three times a day in malarial fever.
The powdered bark forms a good poultice for wounds and injured regions in general.
Rohin tree grows chiefly in forests. It is thus one of the important forest products. The bark is also very useful in tanning animal hides into leather. The colouring given by this bark to the leather is very beautiful and such a leather is quite expensive. The bark is also exported to foreign countries because of this reason. The wood of the tree is very hard and durable; it forms a good timber for furniture making. A type of fibres is obtained from this bark and these are used in rope making.
Charaka groups rohini in one of his famous ten drugs, the dashemani.