THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
ALFRED L. KROEBER
COLLECTION
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
PUBLICATION 201
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SERIES VOL. XV, No. 3
SI NO-IRAN ICA
Chinese* Contributions to the History of Civilization
in Ancient Iran
With Special Reference to the History of
Cultivated Plants and Products
BY
BERTHOLD |LAUFER
Curator of Anthropology
The Blackstone Expedition
CHICAGO
1919
I /
FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
PUBLICATION 201
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SERIES VOL. XV, No. 3
SINO-IRANICA
Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization
in Ancient Iran
With Special Reference to the History of
Cultivated Plants and Products
BY
BERTHOLD LAUFER
Curator of Anthropology
The Blackstone Expedition
CHICAGO
1919
ft
CAK I n
SCIENCES
Add'1
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ............... 185
SlNO-lRANICA ................ 208
ALFALFA ................. 208
THE GRAPE-VINE .............. 220
THE PISTACHIO ............... 246
THE WALNUT ............... 254
THE POMEGRANATE .............. 276
SESAME AND FLAX .............. 288
THE CORIANDER ............... 297
THE CUCUMBER ............... 300
CHIVE, ONION, AND SHALLOT ........... 302
GARDEN PEA AND BROAD BEAN .......... 305
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC ............ 309
SAFFLOWER ................ 324
JASMINE ................. 329
HENNA ................. 334
THE BALSAM-POPLAR ............. 339
MANNA ....... ...... > 343
ASAFOETIDA ................ 353
GALBANUM ................ 363
OAK-GALLS ................ 367
INDIGO ................. 370
RICE .................. 372
PEPPER ................. 374
SUGAR ................ . 376
MYROBALAN ... ............. 378
THE "GOLD PEACH" ............. 379
F U-TSE ................. 379
BRASSICA ...... ....... ; . . . 380
CUMMIN ................. 383
THE DATE-PALM .............. 385
THE SPINACH ............... 392
SUGAR BEET AND LETTUCE
RICINUS ............. .... 403
THE ALMOND ................ 405
THE FIG ...... ........... 410
THE OLIVE ...... .......... 415
111
V
650
iv CONTENTS
PAGE
CASSIA PODS AND CAROB 420
NARCISSUS 427
THE BALM OF GILEAD 429
NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF FU-LIN 435
THE WATER-MELON 438
FENUGREEK 446
NUX-VOMICA 448
THE CARROT 451
AROMATICS 455
Spikenard, p. 455. Storax, p. 456. Myrrh, p. 460. Putchuck, p. 462. Styrax
benjoin, p. 464.
THE MALAYAN PO-SE AND ITS PRODUCTS 468
Alum, p. 474. Lac, p. 475. Camphor, p. 478. Aloes, p. 480. Amomum, p. 481.
P, o-lo-te, p. 482. Psoralea, p. 483. Ebony, p. 485.
PERSIAN TEXTILES 488
Brocades, p. 488. Rugs, p. 492. Yue no, p. 493. Woolen Stuffs, p. 496. Asbestos,
p. 498.
IRANIAN MINERALS, METALS, AND PRECIOUS STONES . . . 503
Borax, p. 503. Sal Ammoniac, p. 503. Litharge, p. 508. Gold, p. 509. Oxides
of Copper, p. 510. Colored Salt, p. 511. Zinc, p. 511. Steel, p. 515.
Se-se, p. 516. Emerald, p. 518. Turquois, p. 519. Lapis Lazuli, p. 520.
Diamond, p. 521. Amber, p. 521. Coral, p. 523. Bezoar, p. 525.
TITLES OF THE SASANIAN GOVERNMENT 529
iRANO-SlNICA 535
The Square Bamboo, p. 535. Silk, p. 537. Peach and Apricot, p. 539. Cinnamon,
p. 541. Zedoary, p. 544. Ginger, p. 545. Mamiran, p. 546. Rhubarb, p. 547.
Salsola, p. 551. Emblic Myrobalan, p. 551. Althaea, p. 551. Rose of China,
p. 551. Mango, p. 552. Sandal, p. 552. Birch, p. 552. Tea, p. 553. Onyx,
p. 554. Tootnague, p. 555. Saltpetre, p. 555. Kaolin, p. 556. Smilax pseudo-
china, p. 556. Rag-paper, p. 557. Paper Money, p. 559. Chinese Loan-Worda
in Persian, p. 564. The Chinese in the Alexander Romance, p. 570.
APPENDIX I IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN MONGOL 572
APPENDIX II CHINESE ELEMENTS IN TURKI 577
APPENDIX III THE INDIAN ELEMENTS IN THE PERSIAN PHARMA-
COLOGY OF ABU MANSUR MUWAFFAQ . . . 580
APPENDIX IV THE BASIL 586
APPENDIX V ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LOAN-WORDS IN TIBETAN 591
GENERAL INDEX 599
BOTANICAL INDEX 617
INDEX OF WORDS . . .621
Sino-Iranica
BY BERTHOLD LAUFER
INTRODUCTION
If we knew as much about the culture of ancient Iran as about
ancient Egypt or Babylonia, or even as much as about India or China,
our notions of cultural developments in Asia would probably be widely
different from what they are at present. The few literary remains left
to us in the Old-Persian inscriptions and in the Avesta are insufficient
to retrace an adequate picture of Iranian life and civilization; and,
although the records of the classical authors add a few touches here
and there to this fragment, any attempts at reconstruction, even
combined with these sources, will remain unsatisfactory. During the
last decade or so, thanks to a benign dispensation of fate, the Iranian
horizon has considerably widened: important discoveries made in
Chinese Turkistan have revealed an abundant literature in two hitherto
unknown Iranian languages, the Sogdian and the so-called Eastern
Iranian. 1 We now know that Iranian peoples once covered an immense
territory, extending all over Chinese Turkistan, migrating into China,
coming in contact with Chinese, and exerting a profound influence on
nations of other stock, notably Turks and Chinese. The Iranians were
the great mediators between the West and the East, conveying the
heritage of Hellenistic ideas to central and eastern Asia and trans-
mitting valuable plants and goods of China to the Mediterranean area.
Their activity is of world-historical significance, but without the
records of the Chinese we should be unable to grasp the situation
thoroughly. The Chinese were positive utilitarians and always inter-
ested in matters of reality: they have bequeathed to us a great amount
of useful information on Iranian plants, products, animals, minerals,
customs, and institutions, which is bound to be of great service to
science.
The following pages represent Chinese contributions to the history
of civilization in Iran, which aptly fill a lacune in our knowledge of
Iranian tradition. Chinese records dealing with the history of Iranian
peoples also contain numerous transcriptions of ancient Iranian words,
1 Cf., for instance, P. PELLIOT, Influences iraniennes en Asie centrale et en
Extreme-Orient (Paris, 1911).
185
1 86 SlNO-lRANICA
part of which have tested the ingenuity of several sinologues and
historians; but few of these Sino-Iranian terms have been dealt with
accurately and adequately. While a system for the study of Sino-
Sanskrit has been successfully established, Sino-Iranian has been
woefully neglected. The honor of having been the first to apply the
laws of the phonology of Old Chinese to the study of Sino-Iranica is
due to ROBERT GAUTHIOT. 1 It is to the memory of this great Iranian
scholar that I wish to dedicate this volume, as a tribute of homage not only
to the scholar, but no less to the man and hero who gave his life for
France. 2 Gauthiot was a superior man, a kiiin-tse %* -J* in the sense of
Confucius, and every line he has written breathes the mind of a thinker
and a genius. I had long cherished the thought and the hope that I
might have the privilege of discussing with him the problems treated
on these pages, which would have considerably gained from his sagacity
and wide experience ^^A^^Wlfnti.
f Iranian geographical and tribal names have hitherto been identified
on historical grounds, some correctly, others inexactly, but an attempt
to restore the Chinese transcriptions to their correct Iranian prototypes
has hardly been made. A great amount of hard work remains to be
done in this field. 3 In my opinion, it must be our foremost object first
to record the Chinese transcriptions as exactly as possible in their
ancient phonetic garb, according to the method so successfully inaugu-
rated and applied by P. Pelliot and H. Maspero, and then to proceed
from this secure basis to the reconstruction of the Iranian model.
The accurate restoration of the Chinese form in accordance with
1 Cf. his Quelques termes techniques bouddhiques et maniche'ens, Journal
asiatique, 1911, II, pp. 49-67 (particularly pp. 59 et seq.), and his contributions to
Chavannes and Pelliot, Traite" maniche'en, pp. 27, 42, 58, 132.
1 Gauthiot died on September u, 1916, at the age of forty, from the effects of a
wound received as captain of infantry while gallantly leading his company/ to a
grand attack, during the first offensive of Artois in the spring of 1915. Cf. the
obituary notice by A. MEILLET in Bull, de la Sociitt de Linguistique, No. 65,
pp. 127-132.
8 I hope to take up this subject in another place, and so give only a few examples
here. Ta-ho wi 31 -|fj ^fC is the Ta-ho River on which Su-li, the capital of Persia,
was situated (Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b). HIRTH (China and the Roman Orient, pp. 198,
313; also Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXIII, 1913, p. 197), by means of a Cantonese
Tat-hot, has arrived at the identification with the Tigris, adding an Armenian
Deklath and Pliny's Diglito. Chinese ta, however, corresponds neither to ancient
ti nor de, but only to *tat, dat, dad, dar, d'ar, while ho -Ig represents *hat, kat, kad,
kar, kal. We accordingly have *Dar-kat, or, on the probable assumption that a
metathesis has taken place, *Dak-rat. Hence, as to the identification with the Tigris,
the vocalism of the first syllable brings difficulties: it is * both in Old Persian and in
Babylonian. Old Persian Tigram (with an alteration due to popular etymology, cf.
Avestan tiyriS. Persian fir, "arrow") is borrowed from Babylonian Di-ik-lat (that
INTRODUCTION 187
rigid phonetic principles is the essential point, and means much more
than any haphazardly made guesses at identification. Thus Mu-lu
/fCB, name of a city on the eastern frontier of An-si (Parthia), 1 has
been identified with Mouru (Muru, Merw) of the Avesta. 2 Whether
this is historically correct, I do not wish to discuss here; from an his-
torical viewpoint the identification may be correct, but from a phonetic
viewpoint it is not acceptable, for Mu-lu corresponds to ancient *Muk-
luk, Mug-ruk, Bug-luk, Bug-rug, to be restored perhaps to *Bux-rux. 3
The scarcity of linguistic material on the Iranian side has imposed
certain restrictions: names for Iranian plants, one of the chief subjects
of this study, have been handed down to us to a very moderate extent,
so that in many cases no identification can be attempted. I hope,
however, that Iranian scholars will appreciate the philological con-
tributions of the Chinese to Iranian and particularly Middle-Persian
lexicography, for in almost every instance it is possible to restore with
a very high degree of certainty the primeval Iranian forms from which
the Chinese transcriptions were accurately made. The Chinese scholars
had developed a rational method and a fixed system in reproducing
words of foreign languages, in the study of which, as is well known,
they took a profound interest; and from day to day, as our experience
widens, we have occasion to admire the soundness, solidity, and con-
sistency of this system. The same laws of transcription worked out
for Sanskrit, Malayan, Turkish, Mongol, and Tibetan, hold good also
for Iranian. I have only to ask Iranian scholars to have confidence in
our method, which has successfully stood many tests. I am convinced
that this plea is unnecessary for the savants of France, who are the
is, Dik-lat, Dik-rat), which has passed into Greek Tiypijs and Ti-ypis and Elamite
Ti-ig-ra (A. MEILLET, Grammaire du vieux perse, p. 72). It will thus be seen that
the Chinese transcription * Dak-rat corresponds to Babylonian Dik-rat, save the
vowel of the first element, which cannot yet be explained, but which will surely be
traced some day to an Iranian dialect. The T'ai p'in hwan yil ki (Ch. 185, p. 19)
gives four geographical names of Persia, which have not yet been indicated. The
first of these is the name of a city in the form | | j Ho-p'o-kie, *Hat(r, 1)-
bwa-g'iat. The first two elements *Har-bwa correspond to Old Persian Haraiva
(Babylonian Hariva), Avestan Haraeva, Pahlavi *Harew, Armenian Hrew, the
modern Herat. The third element appears to contain a word with the meaning
"city." The same character is used in j fit ^!] Kie-li-pie, *G'iat-li-b'iet, name of a
pass in the north-eastern part of Persia; here *g'iat, *g'iar, seems to represent
Sogdian yr, *?ara ("mountain"). Fan-tou ^Hf or j 5G (Ts'ien Han $u, Ch. 96 A),
anciently *Pan-tav, *Par-tav, corresponds exactly to Old Persian Par0ava, Middle
Persian Par0u.
1 Hou Han $u, Ch. 116, p. 8 b.
2 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 143.
8 Cf. also the observation of E. H. PARKER (Imp. and As. Quarterly Review,
1903, p. 154), who noticed the phonetic difficulty in the proposed identification.
\
1 88 SlNO-lRANICA
most advanced and most competent representatives of the sinological
field in all its varied and extensive branches, as well as in other domains
of Oriental research. It would have been very tempting to summarize
in a special chapter the Chinese method of transcribing Iranian and to
discuss the phonology of Iranian in the light of Chinese contributions.
Such an effort, however, appears to me premature at this moment:
our knowledge of Sino-Iranian is in its infancy, and plenty of fresh
evidence will come forward sooner or later from Turkistan manuscripts.
There is no doubt that many hundreds of new Iranian terms of various
dialects will be revived, and will considerably enrich our now scanty
knowledge of the Iranian onomasticon and phonology. In view of the
character of this publication, it was necessary to resort to a phonetic
transcription of both ancient and modern Chinese on the same basis,
as is now customary in all Oriental languages. The backwardness of
Chinese research is illustrated by the fact that we slavishly adhere to
a clumsy and antiquated system of romanization in which two and
even three letters are wasted for the expression of a single sound. My
system of transliteration will be easily grasped from the following com-
parative table.
OLD STYLE PHONETIC STYLE
ng *
ch I
ch* &
j f (while j serves to indicate the palatal
sh 5 sonant, written also d).
Other slight deviations from the old style, for instance, in the
vowels, are self-explanatory. For the sake of the numerous compara-
tive series including a large number of diverse Oriental languages it
has been my aim to standardize the transcription as far as possible,
with the exception of Sanskrit, for which the commonly adopted method
remains. The letter x in Oriental words is never intended for the
combination ks, but for the spirant surd, sometimes written kh. In
proper names where we are generally accustomed to kh, I have allowed
the latter to pass, perhaps also in other cases. I do not believe in super-
consistency in purely technical matters.
The linguistic phenomena, important as they may be, form merely
a side-issue of this investigation. My main task is to trace the history
of all objects of material culture, pre-eminently cultivated plants,
drugs, products, minerals, metals, precious stones, and textiles, in their
migration from Persia to China (Sino-Iranica), and others transmitted
from China to Persia (Irano-Sinica). There are other groups of Sino-
Iranica not included in this publication, particularly the animal world,
INTRODUCTION 189
games, and musical instruments. 1 The manuscript dealing with the
fauna of Iran is ready, but will appear in another article the object of
which is to treat all foreign animals known to the Chinese according
to geographical areas and from the viewpoint of zoogeography in
ancient and modern times. My notes on the games (particularly polo)
and musical instruments of Persia adopted by the Chinese, as well as
a study of Sino-Iranian geographical and tribal names, must likewise
be reserved for another occasion. I hope that the chapter on the titles
of the Sasanian government will be welcome, as those preserved in the
Chinese Annals have been identified here for the first time. New
results are also offered in the notice of Persian textiles.
As to Iranian plants of which the Chinese have preserved notices,
we must distinguish the following groups: (i) cultivated plants actually
disseminated from Iranian to Chinese soil, (2) cultivated and wild
plants of Iran merely noticed and described by Chinese authors, (3) drugs
and aromatics of vegetable origin imported from Iran to China. The
material, as far as possible, is arranged from this point of view and in
chronological order. The single items are numbered. Apart from the
five appendices, a hundred and thirty-five subjects are treated. At
the outset it should be clearly understood that it is by no means the
intention of these studies to convey the impression that the Chinese
owe a portion of their material culture to Persia. Stress is laid on the
point that the Chinese furnish us with immensely useful material for
elaborating a history of cultivated plants. The foundation of Chinese
civilization with its immense resources is no more affected by these
introductions than that of Europe, which received numerous plants
from the Orient and more recently from America. The Chinese merit
our admiration for their far-sighted economic policy in making so
many useful foreign plants tributary to themselves and amalgamating
them with their sound system of agriculture. The Chinese were think-
ing, sensible, and broad-minded people, and never declined to accept
gratefully whatever good things foreigners had to offer. In plant-
economy they are the foremost masters of the world, and China presents
a unique spectacle in that all useful plants of the universe are cultivated
there. Naturally, these cultivations were adopted and absorbed by a
gradual process : it took the Chinese many centuries to become familiar
with the flora of their own country, and the long series of their herbals
(Pen ts'ao) shows us well how their knowledge of species increased
from the T'ang to the present time, each of these works stating the
1 Iranian influences on China in the matter of warfare, armor, and tactics have
been discussed in Chinese Clay Figures, Part I.
190
SlNO-lRANICA
number of additional species as compared with its predecessor. The
introduction of foreign plants begins from the latter part of the second
century B.C., and it was two plants of Iranian origin, the alfalfa and
the grape-vine, which were the first exotic guests in the land of Han.
These were followed by a long line of other Iranian and Central-Asiatic
plants, and this great movement continued down to the fourteenth
century in the Yuan period. The introduction of American species in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries denotes the last phase in
this economic development, which I hope to set forth in a special
monograph. Aside from Iran, it was Indo-China, the Malayan region,
and India which contributed a large quota to Chinese cultivations.
It is essential to realize that the great Iranian plant-movement extends
over a period of a millennium and a half; for a learned legend has been
spread broadcast that most of these plants were acclimatized during
the Han period, and even simultaneously by a single man, the well-
known general, Can K'ien. It is one of my objects to destroy this
myth. Can K'ien, as a matter of fact, brought to China solely two
plants, alfalfa and the grape-vine. No other plant is attributed to him
in the contemporaneous annals. Only late and untrustworthy (chiefly
Taoist) authors credit him also with the introduction of other Iranian
plants. As time advanced, he was made the centre of legendary fabrica-
tion, and almost any plant hailing from Central Asia and of doubtful
or obscure history was passed off under his name: thus he was ulti-
mately canonized as the great plant-introducer. Such types will
spring up everywhere under similar conditions. A detailed discussion
of this point will be found under the heading of each plant which by
dint of mere fantasy or misunderstanding has been connected with
Can K'ien by Chinese or European writers. In the case of the spinach
I have furnished proof that this vegetable cannot have been culti-
vated in Persia before the sixth century A.D., so that Can K'ien could
not have had any knowledge of it. All the alleged Can-K'ien plants
were introduced into China from the third or fourth century A.D. down
to the T'ang period inclusively (618-906). The erroneous reconstruction
alluded to above was chiefly championed by Bretschneider and Hirth;
and A. de Candolle, the father of the science of historical botany, who,
as far as China is concerned, depended exclusively on Bretschneider,
fell victim to the same error.
F. v. RiCHTHOFEN, 1 reproducing the long list of Bretschneider's
Can-K'ien plants, observes, "It cannot be assumed that Can K'ien
himself brought along all these plants and seeds, for he had to travel
1 China, Vol. I, p. 459.
INTRODUCTION 191
with caution, and for a year was kept prisoner by the Hiuii-nu." When
he adds, however, "but the relations which he had started brought the
cultivated plants to China in the course of the next years/' he goes on
guessing or speculating.
In his recent study of Can K'ien, HiRTH 1 admits that of cultivated
plants only the vine and alfalfa are mentioned in the Si ki* He is
unfortunate, however, in the attempt to safeguard his former position
on this question when he continues to argue that "nevertheless, the one
hero who must be looked upon as the pioneer of all that came from
the West was Chang K'ien." This is at best a personal view, but an
unhistorical and uncritical attitude. Nothing allows us to read more
from our sources than they contain. The Ts'i min yao $u, to which
Hirth takes refuge, can prove nothing whatever in favor of his
theory that the pomegranate, sesame, garlic, 3 and coriander were
introduced by Can K'ien. The work in question was written at least
half a millennium after his death, most probably in the sixth century
A.D., and does not fall back on traditions coeval with the Han and
now lost, but merely resorts to popular traditions evolved long after
the Han period. In no authentic document of the Han is any allusion
made to any of these plants. Moreover, there is no dependence on
the Ts*i min yao $u in the form in which we have this book at present.
BRETSCHNEiDER 4 said wisely and advisedly, "The original work was in
ninety-two sections. A part of it was lost a long time ago, and much
additional matter by later authors is found in the edition now cur-
rent, which is in ten chapters. . . . According to an author of the
twelfth century, quoted in the Wen hien fun k*ao, the edition then
extant was already provided with the interpolated notes; and accord-
ing to Li Tao, also an author of the Sung, these notes had been added
by Sun Kun of the Sung dynasty." 5 What such a work would be
able to teach us on actual conditions of the Han era, I for my part
am unable to see.
1 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 92. The new translation of this
chapter of the Si ki denotes a great advance, and is an admirable piece of work. It
should be read by every one as an introduction to this volume. It is only on points
of interpretation that in some cases I am compelled to dissent from Hirth 's opinions.
* This seems to be the direct outcome of a conversation I had with the author
during the Christmas week of 1916, when I pointed out this fact to him and remarked
that the alleged attributions to Can K'ien of other plants are merely the outcome of
later traditions.
3 This is a double error (see below, p. 302).
M3ot. Sin., pt. I, p. 77.
^ * Cf. also PELLIOT (Bull, de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. IX, p. 434), who remarks,
"Ce vieil et pre"cieux ouvrage nous est parvenu en assez mauvais 6tat."
192 SlNO-lRANICA
It has been my endeavor to correlate the Chinese data first of all
with what we know from Iranian sources, and further with classical,
Semitic, and Indian traditions. Unfortunately we have only fragments
of Iranian literature. Chapter xxvn of the Bundahisn 1 contains a
disquisition on plants, which is characteristic of the treatment of this
subject in ancient Persia. As it is not only interesting from this point
of view, but also contains a great deal of material to which reference
will be made in the investigations to follow, an extract taken from
E. W. WEST'S translation 2 may be welcome.
"These are as many genera of plants as exist: trees and shrubs,
fruit-trees, corn, flowers, aromatic herbs, salads, spices, grass, wild
plants, medicinal plants, gum plants, and all producing oil, dyes, and
clothing. I will mention them also a second time: all whose fruit is
not welcome as food of men, and are perennial, as the cypress, the
plane, the white poplar, the box, and others of this genus, they call
trees and shrubs (ddr va diraxt). The produce of everything welcome
as food of men, that is perennial, as the date, the myrtle, the lote-plum
(kundr, a thorny tree, allied to the jujube, which bears a small plum-
like fruit), the grape, the quince, the apple, the citron, the pomegranate,
the peach, the fig, the walnut, the almond, and others in this genus,
they call fruit (mlvak). Whatever requires labor with the spade, and
is perennial, they call a shrub (diraxi). Whatever requires that they
take its crop through labor, and its root withers away, such as wheat,
barley, grain, various kinds of pulse, vetches, and others of this genus,
they call corn (jurdak}. Every plant with fragrant leaves, which is
cultivated by the hand-labor of men, and is perennial, they call an
aromatic herb (siparam). Whatever sweet-scented blossom arises at
various seasons through the hand-labor of men, or has a perennial root
and blossoms in its season with new shoots and sweet-scented blossoms,
as the rose, the narcissus, the jasmine, the dog-rose (nestarun), the
tulip, the colocynth (kavastlk) , the pandanus (kedi), the camba, the
ox-eye (heri), the crocus, the swallow- wort (zarda), the violet, the
kdrda, and others of this genus, they call a flower (gul). Everything
whose sweet-scented fruit, or sweet-scented blossom, arises in its sea-
son, without the hand-labor of men, they call a wild plant (vahdr or
nihdl). Whatever is welcome as food of cattle and beasts of burden
they call grass (giyah). Whatever enters into cakes (pes-pdrakihd)
they call spices (dvzdrihd). Whatever is welcome in eating of bread,
as torn shoots of the coriander, water-cress (kakij), the leek, and
1 Cf. E. W. WEST, Pahlavi Literature, p. 98 (in Grundriss iran. Phil., Vol. II).
2 Pahlavi Texts, pt. I, p. 100 (Sacred Books of the East, Vol V).
INTRODUCTION 193
others of this genus, they call salad (terak or tarak, Persian tarah).
Whatever is like spinning cotton, and others of this genus, they call
clothing plants (jamah). Whatever lentil (macag) is greasy, as sesame,
duSdan, hemp, vandak (perhaps for zeto, 'olive,' as Anquetil supposes,
and Justi assumes), and others of this genus, they call an oil-seed
(rokano) . Whatever one can dye clothing with, as saffron, sapan-wood,
zafava, vaha, and others of this genus, they call a dye-plant (rag).
Whatever root, or gum (tiif), or wood is scented, as frankincense
(Pazand kendri for Pahlavi kundur), vardst (Persian barghast), kust,
sandalwood, cardamom (Pazand kdkura, Persian qaqulah, ' cardamoms,
or kdkul, kdkulj 'marjoram'), camphor, orange-scented mint, and
others of this genus, they call a scent (bod). Whatever stickiness
comes out from plants they call gummy (vadak). The timber
which proceeds from the trees, when it is either dry or wet, they
call wood (cibd). Every one of all these plants which is so, they call
medicinal (ddruk).
"The principal fruits are of thirty kinds, and there are ten species
the inside and outside of which are fit to eat, as the fig, the apple, the
quince, the citron, the grape, the mulberry, the pear, and others of this
kind. There are ten the outside of which is fit to eat, but not the
inside, as the date, the peach, the white apricot, and others of this kind;
those the inside of which is fit to eat, but not the outside, are the walnut,
the almond, the pomegranate, the coco-nut, 1 the filbert (funduk), the
chestnut (Sahbalut), the pistachio nut, the vargdn, and whatever else
of this description are very remarkable.
"This, too, it says, that every single flower is appropriate to an
angel (ameZospend), 2 as the white jasmine (saman) is for Vohuman, the
myrtle and jasmine (yasmin) are Auharmazd's own, the mouse-ear
(or sweet marjoram) is ASavahist's own, the basil-royal is Satvlro's
own, the musk flower is Spendarmad's, the lily is Horvadad's, the
camba is Amerodad's, Dln-pavan-Ataro has the orange-scented mint
(vddrang-bod), Ataro has the marigold (ddargun), the water-lily is
A van's, the white marv is Xursed's, the ranges (probably rand, 'laurel')
is Mah's, the violet is Tir's, the meren is Gos's, the kdrda is Dln-pavan-
Mitro's, all violets are Mitro's, the red chrysanthemum (xer) is Sros's,
the dog-rose (nestran) is Rasnu's, the cockscomb is Fravardin's, the
sisebar is Vahram's, the yellow chrysanthemum is Ram's, the orange-
1 Pazand andrsar is a misreading of Pahlavi andrgil (Persian nargU}, from
Sanskrit ndrikela.
2 These are the thirty archangels and angels whose names are applied to the
thirty days of the Parsi month, in the order in which they are mentioned here, except
that Auharmazd is the first day, and Vohuman is the second.
IQ4 SlNO-lRANICA
scented mint is Vad's, the trigonella is Dln-pavan-Dln's, the hundred-
petalled rose is Din's, all kinds of wild flowers (vahdr) are Ard's, Ac.tad
has all the white Horn, the bread-baker's basil is Asman's, Zamyad has
the crocus, Maraspend has the flower of ArdaSlr, Aniran has this
Horn of the angel Horn, of three kinds."
From this extract it becomes evident that the ancient Persians paid
attention to their flora, and, being fond of systematizing, possessed a
classification of their plants; but any of their botanical literature, if
it ever existed, is lost.
The most important of the Persian works on pharmacology is the
Kitab-ulabniyat J an haqd'iq-uladviyat or "Book of the Foundations of
the True Properties of the Remedies," written about A.D. 970 by the
physician Aba Mansur Muvaffaq bin 'All alharavi, who during one
of his journeys visited also India. He wrote for Mansar Ibn Nuh II
of the house of the Samanides, who reigned from 961 to 976 or 977.
This is not only the earliest Persian work on the subject, but the
oldest extant production in prose of New-Persian literature. The
text has been edited by R. SELIGMANN from a unique manuscript
of Vienna dated A.D. 1055, the oldest extant Persian manuscript. 1
There is a translation by a Persian physician, ABDUL-CHALIG
ACHUNDOW from Baku. 2 The translation in general seems good, and
is provided with an elaborate commentary, but in view of the im-
portance of the work a new critical edition would be desirable.
The sources from which Aba Mansar derived his materials should
be carefully sifted: we should like to know in detail what he
owes to the Arabs, the Syrians, and the Indians, and what is due
to his own observations. Altogether Arabic influence is pre-eminent.
Cf. Appendix III.
A good many Chinese plant-names introduced from Iran have the
word Hu S3 prefixed to them. Hu is one of those general Chinese desig-
nations without specific ethnic value for certain groups of foreign
tribes. Under the Han it appears mainly to refer to Turkish tribes;
thus the Hiun-nu are termed Hu in the Si ki. From the fourth century
onward it relates to Central Asia and more particularly to peoples of
1 Codex Vindobonensis sive Medici Abu Mansur Muwaffak Bin All Heratensis
liber Fundamentorum Pharamacologiae Pars I Prolegomena et textura continens
(Vienna, 1859).
1 Die pharmakologischen Grundsatze des A. M. Muwaffak, in R. Robert's
Historische Studien aus dem Pharmakologischen Institute der Universitat Dorpat,
1873. Quoted as "Achundow, Abu Mansur." The author's name is properly
Abdu'l-Khaliq, son of the Akhund or schoolmaster. Cf. E. G. BROWNE, Literary
History of Persia, pp. n t 478.
INTRODUCTION 195
Iranian extraction. 1 BRETSCHNEiDER 2 annotated, "If the character
hu occurs in the name of a plant, it can be assumed that the plant is
of foreign origin and especially from western Asia, for by Hu Sen the
ancient Chinese denoted the peoples of western Asia." This is but
partially correct. The attribute hu is by no means a safe criterion in
stamping a plant as foreign, neither does hu in the names of plants
which really are of foreign origin apply to West-Asiatic or Iranian
plants exclusively.
1. The word hu appears in a number of names of indigenous and
partially wild plants without any apparent connection with the tribal
designation Hu or without allusion to their provenience from the Hu.
In the Li Sao, the famous elegies by K'u Yuan of the fourth century
B.C., a plant is mentioned under the name hu Sen SB Iffl, said to be a
fragrant grass from which long cords were made. This plant is not
identified. 3
2. The acid variety of yu tt (Citrus grandis) is styled hu kan
$J ~H*, 4 apparently an ironical nickname, which may mean "sweet like
the Hu." The tree itself is a native of China.
3. The term hu hien 68 IE occurs only in the T'u kin pen ts*ao of
Su Sun of the eleventh century as a variety of hien (Amarantus) , which
is indigenous to China. It is not stated that this variety came from
abroad, nor is it known what it really was.
4. Hu mien man S5 M I? is a variety of Rehmannia? a native
of China and Japan. The name possibly means "the man with the face
of a Hu." 6 C'en Ts'aii-k'i of the T'ang says in regard to this plant that
it grows in Lin-nan (Kwaii-tuii), and is like ti hwan Jft jH (Rehmannia
glutinosa).
5. The plant known as ku-sui-pu H* ffi H (Poly podium fortunei)
is indigenous to China, and, according to C*en Ts'an-k'i, was called
1 "Le terme est bien en principe, vers Tan 800, une designation des Iraniens et
en particulier des Sogdiens" (CHAVANNES and PELLIOT, Traits maniche"en, p. 231).
This in general is certainly true, but we have well authenticated instances, traceable
to the fourth century at least, of specifically Iranian plants the names of which are
combined with the element Hu, that can but apply to Iranians.
2 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 221.
8 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 420; and Li sao ts'ao mu su (Ch. 2,
p. 1 6 b, ed. of Ci pu tsu lai ts*un $u) by Wu Zen-kie ^ 81 of tne Sung period.
See also T'ai p'ift yu Ian, Ch. 994, p. 6 b.
4 BRETSCHNEIDER, op. cit., No. 236; W. T. SWINGLE in Plantas Wilsonianae,
Vol. ii, p. 130.
* STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 372.
* Cf. analogous plant-names like our Jews-mallow, Jews-thorn, Jews-ear, Jews-
apple.
|g6 SlNO-lRANICA
by the people of Kian-si ffl R 3 hu-sun-kian t a purely local name
which does not hint at any relation to the Hu.
6. Another botanical name in which the word hu appears without
reference to the Hu is ?ui-hu-ken SI S8 t8, unidentified, a wild plant
diffused all over China, and first mentioned by 6'en Ts'an-k'i as grow-
ing in the river-valleys of Kian-nan. 1
7-8. The same remark holds good for ts'e-hu j! (Sc) ffl* (Bupleurum
falcatum), a wild plant of all northern provinces and already described
in the Pie lu, and for ts'ien-hu IJiJ fifl 8 (Angelica decursiva), growing in
damp soil in central and northern China.
9. Su-hu-lan lu #J ffli is an unidentified plant, first and solely men-
tioned by C'en Ts'an-k'i, 4 the seeds of which, resembling those of
Pimpinella anisum, are eatable and medicinally employed. It grows
in Annam. One might be tempted to take the term as hu-lan of Su
(Se-S'wan), but $u-hu-lan may be the transcription of a foreign word.
10. The ma-k'in J f or niu ^r k'in (Viola pinnata), a wild violet,
is termed hu k'in 48 ff in the Tun U 3 ]S by Ceh Tsiao SB ti (i 108-62)
and in the T'u kin pen ts'ao of Su Sun. 1 No explanation as to the mean-
ing of this hu is on record.
11. The hu-man (wan) SB S is a poisonous plant, identified with
Gelsemium elegans* It is mentioned in the Pei hu lu 1 with the synonyme
ye-ko ?S S, 8 the vegetable yun ^ (Ipomoea aquatica) being regarded as
an antidote for poisoning by hu-man. C'en Ts'an-k'i is cited as au-
thority for this statement. The Lin piao lu i 9 writes the name RP S,
and defines it as a poisonous grass; hu-man grass is the common col-
loquial name. The same work further says, ''When one has eaten of
this plant by mistake, one should use a broth made from sheep's blood
which will neutralize the poison. According to some, this plant grows
as a creeper. Its leaves are like those of the Ian hian 88 , bright and
thick. Its poison largely penetrates into the leaves, and is not employed
1 Pen ts'ao Jkort mu, Ch. 16, p. 7 b.
Op. cit. t Ch. 13, p. 6 b.
Op. cit., Ch. 13, p. 7 b.
4 Op. cit., Ch. 26, p. 22 b.
1 Op. cit., Ch. 26, p. 21 ; Ci wu mi* ii Cu k'ao, Ch. 14, p. 76.
Cf. C. FORD, China Review, Vol. XV, 1887, pp. 215-220. STUART (Chinese
Materia Medica, p. 220) says that the plant is unidentified, nevertheless he describes
it on p. 185.
1 Ch. 2, p. 1 8 b (ed. of Lu Sin-ytian).
1 According to MATSUMURA (Shokubutsu mei-i, No. 2689). Rkus toxitodtndron
(Japanese tsuta-uruSi).
Ch. B, p. a (ed. of W* yi* *M).
INTRODUCTION 197
as a drug. Even if an antidote is taken, this poison will cause death
within a half day. The goats feeding on the sprouts of this plant will
fatten and grow." Fan C'en-ta j? J$ ;*C (1126-93), in his Kwei hai
yii hen &', 1 mentions this plant under the name hu-man t'en Jfe ("hu-man
creeper"), saying that it is a poisonous herb, which, rubbed and soaked
in water, will result in instantaneous death as soon as this liquid enters
the mouth. The plant is indigenous to southern China, and no reason
is given for the word hu being prefixed to it.
12. Hu fui-tse $) M ? (literally, "chin of the Hu") is the name
of an evergreen tree or shrub indigenous throughout China, even to
Annam. The name is not explained, and there are no data in Chinese
records to indicate that it was introduced from abroad. 2 It is men-
tioned by C'en Ts'an-k'i as a tree growing in P'iii-lin *? #, and it is
said to be alluded to in the chapter Wu hin ci 3t f i of the Sun $u.
The synonyme k'io'r-su i^ & B? (" sparrow-curd," because the birds
are fond of the fruit) first appears in the Pao ci lun of Lei Hiao of the
fifth century. The people of Yue call the plant p*u-t*ui-tse Hf $1 ? ;
the southerners, lu-tu-tse ft 9$ ?, which according to Liu Tsi ^J U
of the Ming, in his Fei sue lu IB S $!fc, is a word from the speech of
the Man. The people of Wu term the tree pan-han-?un ^ & ^,
because its fruit ripens at an early date. The people of Siafi Ji style
it hwan-p'o-nai iSt 8MB! ("yellow woman's breast"), because the
fruit resembles a nipple.
13. In hu-lu $8 or 2B A (Lagenaria vulgaris) the first character is
a substitute for 3& hu. The gourd is a native of China.
14. Hui-hui tou 3 (literally, "Mohammedan bean") is a
plant everywhere growing wild in the fields. 8 The same remark holds
good for hu tou fi9 SL, a kind of bean which is roasted or made into
flour, according to the Pen ts'ao U i, a weed growing in rice-fields. Wu
K'i-ts'un, author of the Ci wu min $i t*u k*ao, says, "What is now hu tou,
grows wild, and is not the hu tou of ancient times." 4
15. Yen hu su J $1 ^ denotes tubers of Corydalis ambigua: they
are little, hard, brown tubers, of somewhat flattened spherical form,
averaging half an inch in diameter. The plant is a native of Siberia,
1 Ed. of Ci pu tsu cai ts*un su, p. 30.
a STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 161) is mistaken in saying that several
names of this plant are "possibly transliterations of Turkic or Mongol names."
There are no such names on record. The tree is identified with Elceagnus longipes
or pungens.
3 Ci wu min U Vu k'ao, Ch. 2, p. n b. _It is first mentioned in the Kiu hwan
pen ts'ao, being also called na-ho-tou ^ & .9.
4 See, further, below, p. 305.
198 SlNO-lRANICA
Kamchatka, and the Amur region, and flowers upon the melting of the
snow in early spring. 1 According to the Pen ts'ao kan mu, 2 the plant
is first mentioned by C'en Ts'an-k'i of the T'ang period as growing in
the country Hi H, and came from Nan-tun 3c M (in Korea). Li Si-Sen
annotates that by Hi the north-eastern barbarians should be under-
stood. Wan Hao-ku 3E #? "f, a physician of the thirteenth century,
remarks that the name of the plant was originally huan j hu-su, but
that on account of a taboo (to avoid the name of the Emperor Cen-tsun
of the Sung) it was altered into yen-hu-su; but this explanation cannot
be correct, as the latter designation is already ascribed to C'en Ts'an-k'i
of the T'ang. It is not known whether hu in this case would allude to
the provenience of the plant from Korea. In the following example,
however, the allusion to Korea is clear.
The mint, W $f po-ho, *bak-xa (Mentha arvensis or aquatica), occurs
in China both spontaneously and in the cultivated state. The plant
is regarded as indigenous by the Chinese, but also a foreign variety is
known as hu pa-ho (*bwat-xa) ffl ^ jSj. 3 C'en Si-Kan Ht H, in his
Si sin pen ts'ao Jttt#^, published in the tenth century, introduced
the term wu ij| pa-ho, "mint of Wu" (that is, Su-ou, where the best
mint was cultivated), in distinction from hu pa-ho, "mint of the Hu."
Su Sun, in his T'u kin pen ts'ao, written at the end of the eleventh
century, affirms that this foreign mint is similar to the native species,
the only difference being that it is somewhat sweeter in taste; it grows
on the border of Kiaii-su and Ce-kian, where the people make it
into tea; commonly it is styled Sin-lo M It po-ho, "mint of Sinra"
(in Korea). Thus this variety may have been introduced under the
Sung from Korea, and it is to this country that the term hu may refer.
Li 5i-en relates that Sun Se-miao dS JB 88, in his Ts'ien kin fail
T & jfr,* writes the word ^ ?f fan-ho, but that this is erroneously due
to a dialectic pronunciation. This means, in other words, that the first
character fan is merely a variant of ^, 6 and, like the latter, had the
phonetic equivalent *bwat, bat. 6
1 HANBURY, Science Papers, p. 256.
2 Ch. 13, p. 13.
3 The word po-ho is Chinese, not foreign. The Persian word for "peppermint"
is pudene, pudina, budenk (Kurd punk) ; in Hindi it is pudind or pudinekd, derived
from the Persian. In Tibetan (Ladakh) it is p'o-lo-lin; in the Tibetan written lan-
guage, byi-rug-pa, hence Mongol jirukba; in Manchu it is farsa.
4 See below, p. 306.
6 As Sun Se-miao lived in the seventh century, when the Korean mint was not
yet introduced, his term fan-ho could, of course, not be construed to mean "foreign
mint."
e In T'oung Pao (1915, p. 18) PELLIOT has endeavored to show that the char-
INTRODUCTION 199
In the following example there is no positive evidence as to the
significance of hu. Hu wan Si ce W 3i &> ^ (" envoy of the king of the
Hu") is a synonyme of tu hwo M ? (Peucedanum decursivum) . l As
the same plant is also styled k'ian ts'in $> W, k'ian hwo, and hu k'ian
$i & H ^6 ffi 31 , the term K'ian (*Gian) alluding to Tibetan tribes, it
may be inferred that the king of the Hu likewise hints at Tibetans.
In general, however, the term Hu does not include Tibetans, and the
present case is not conclusive in showing that it does. In the chapter
on the walnut it will be seen that there are two introduced varieties,
an Iranian (hu t'ao) and a Tibetan one (k'ian t'ao).
In hu ts'ai (Brassica rapa) the element hu, according to Chinese
tradition, relates to Mongolia, while it is very likely that the vegetable
itself was merely introduced there from Iran. 2
In other instances, plants have some relation to the Hu; but what
this relation is, or what group of tribes should be understood by Hu,
is not revealed.
There is a plant, termed hu hwan lien S8 3t 31, the hwan-lien (Coptis
teeta) of the Hu, because, as Li Si-Sen says, its physical characteristics,
taste, virtue, and employment are similar to those of hwan-lien. It
has been identified with Barkhausia re pens. As evidenced by the
acter fan, on the authority of K'an-hi, could never have had the pronunciation po
nor a final consonant, and that, accordingly, in the tribal name T'u-fan (Tibet) the
character fan, as had previously been assumed, could not transcribe the Tibetan
word bod. True it is that under the character in question K'an-hi has nothing to
say about po, but ^ is merely a graphic variant of ^, with which it is phonetically
identical. Now under this character, K'an-hi indicates plainly that, according to the
Tsi yun and Cen yun, fan in geographical names is to be read p'o (anciently *bwa)
| (fan-ts'ie Jjjf $fe), and that, according to the dictionary Si wen, the same char-
acter was pronounced p'o (*bwa) ij&, p'u Jf , an d p'an^(cf. also SCHLEGEL, Secret of
the Chinese Method, pp. 21-22). In the ancient transcription | or^ JE fan-ton,
*par-tav, reproduction of Old Persian Par0ava (see above, p. 1 87) Jan corresponds very
well to par or bar; and if it could interchange with the phonetic ^ pa, *bwat, bwar, it is
perfectly clear that, contrary to Pelliot's theory, there were at least dialectic cases,
where ^ was possessed of a final consonant, being sounded bwat or bwar. Con-
sequently it could have very well served for the reproduction of Tibetan bod. From
another phonetic viewpoint the above case is of interest: we have *bak-xa and
*bwat-xa as ancient names for the mint, which goes to show that the final con-
sonants of the first element were vacillating or varied in different dialects (cf . T'oung
Pao, 1916, pp. 110-114).
1 T'un ci (above, p. 196), Ch. 75, p. 12 b.
2 See below, p. 381. In the term hu yen ("swallow of theHu"), hu appears to
refer to Mongolia, as shown by the Manchu translation monggo cibin and the Turkl
equivalent qalmaq qarlogac (Mongol xatun xariyatsai, Tibetan gyi-gyi k'ug-rta; cf.
Ross, Polyglot List of Birds, No. 267). The bird occurs not only in Mongolia, but
also in Ce-kian Province, China (see Kwei ki sanfu lu ^ H H SK ft, Ch. 2, p. 8;
ed. of Si yin huan ts'un $u).
200 SlNO-lRANICA
attribute Hu, it may be of foreign origin, its foreign name being 91 $
IS 35 ko-hu-lu-tse (*kat-wu-lou-dzak). Unfortunately it is not indicated
at what time this transcription was adopted, nor does Li Si- Sen state
the source from which he derived it. The only T'ang author who
mentions the plant, Su Kun, does not give this foreign name. At all
events, it does not convey the impression of representing a T'ang
transcription; on the contrary, it bears the ear-marks of a transcription
made under the Yuan. Su Kun observes, "Hu hwan-lien is produced
in the country Po-se and grows on dry land near the sea-shore. Its
sprouts are like those of the hia-ku ts'ao 3t$f ^ (Brunella vulgaris).
The root resembles a bird's bill; and the cross-section, the eyes of the
mainah. The best is gathered in the first decade of the eighth month."
Su Sun of the Sung period remarks that the plant now occurs in Nan-hai
(Kwan-tun), as well as in Ts'in-lun H ffl (Sen-si and Kan-su). This
seems to be all the information on record. 1 It is not known to me that
Barkhausia grows in Persia; at least, Schlimmer, in his extensive dic-
tionary of Persian plants, does not note it.
Sou-ti Jfc US is mentioned by C'en Ts'aii-k'i as a plant (not yet
identified) with seeds of sweet and warm flavor and not poisonous, and
growing in Si-fan (Western Barbarians or Tibet) and in northern China
3b i, resembling hwai hian fjj (Pimpinella anisum). The Hu make
the seeds into a soup and eat them. 2 In this case the term Hu may be
equated with Si-fan, but among the Chinese naturalists the latter term
is somewhat loosely used, and does not necessarily designate Tibet. 3
Hiun-k'iun *=T iff (Conioselinum univittatum) is an umbelliferous
plant, which is a native of China. As early as the third century A.D.
it is stated in the Wu Si pen ts*ao* that some varieties of this plant grow
among the Hu; and Li Si- Sen annotates that the varieties from the Hu
and Zun are excellent, and are hence styled hu k*iun SB ^. 5 It is stated
that this genus is found in mountain districts in Central Europe,
Siberia, and north-western America. 6
1 What STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 65) says regarding this plant is
very inexact. He arbitrarily identifies the term Hu with the Kukunor, and wrongly
ascribes Su Kun's statement to T'ao Hun-kin. Such an assertion as, "the drug is
now said to be produced in Nan-hai, and also in Sen-si and Kan-su," is misleading,
as this "now" comes from an author of the Sung period, and does not necessarily
hold good for the present time.
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 22 b.
8 Cf . below, p. 344.
4 Cf . Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 115.
6 He also imparts a Sanskrit name from the Suvarnaprabhasa-sutra in the form
B) U TJMse-mo-k'ie, *ja-mak-gia. The genus is not contained in WATT'S Dictionary.
6 Treasury of Botany, Vol. I, p. 322.
INTRODUCTION 201
In hu tsiao (" pepper ") the attribute hu distinctly refers to India. 1
Another example in which hu alludes to India is presented by the
term hu kan kian $) ^ S: ("dried ginger of the Hu"), which is a
synonyme of T*ien-Zu 5 ^ kan kian ("dried ginger of India"), "pro-
duced in the country of the Brahmans." 2
In the term hufen ~ffl $^ (a cosmetic or facial powder of white lead),
the element hu bears no relation to the Hu, although it is mentioned
as a product of Kuca 8 and subsequently as one of the city of Ili (Yi-li-
pa-li). 4 In fact, there is no Chinese tradition to the effect that this
substance ever came from the Hu. 5 F. P. SMITH 8 observed with refer-
ence to this subject, "The word hu does not denote that the substance
was formerly obtained from some foreign source, but is the result of a
mistaken character." This evidently refers to the definition of the
dictionary Si min W %* by Liu Hi of the Han, who explains this hu
by f$ hu ("gruel, congee"), which is mixed with grease to be rubbed
into the face. The process of making this powder from lead is a thor-
oughly Chinese affair.
In the term hu yen W IB ("salt of the Hu") the word Hu refers to
barbarous, chiefly Tibetan, tribes bordering on China in the west; for
there are also the synonymes $un -$C yen and k'ian j& yen, the former
already occurring in the Pie lu. Su Kun of the seventh century equalizes
the terms Zun yen and hu yen, and gives Vu-ten 35 $t yen as the word
used in Sa-cou & JH. Ta Min 'J< BJ, who wrote in A.D. 970, says that this
is the salt consumed by the Tibetans (Si-fan), and hence receives the
designation %un or k'ian yen. Other texts, however, seem to make a
distinction between hu yen and %uh yen: thus it is said in the biography
of Li Hiao-po $ ^ f & in the Wei Su, "The salt of the Hu cures pain
of the eye, the salt of the Zun heals ulcers."
The preceding examples are sufficient to illustrate the fact that
the element hu in botanical terms demands caution, and that each case
must be judged on its own merits. No hard and fast rule, as deduced
by Bretschneider, can be laid down: the mere addition of hu proves
neither that a plant is foreign, nor that it is West-Asiatic or Iranian.
There are native plants equipped with this attribute, and there are
foreign plants thus characterized, which hail from Korea, India, or
1 See below, p. 374.
2 en lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 6, p. 67 b.
3 Cou Su, Ch. 50, p. 5; Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 5 b.
4 Ta Min i t'un ft, Ch. 89, p. 22; Kwan yu ki, Ch. 24, p. 6 b.
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 8, p. 6; GEERTS (Produits, pp. 596-601), whose transla-
tion "poudre des pays barbares" is out of place.
6 Contributions towards the Materia Medica of China, p. 231.
202 SlNO-lRANICA
some vaguely defined region of Central Asia. The fact, however, re-
mains that there are a number of introduced, cultivated Hu plants
coming from Iranian lands, but in each and every case it has been my
endeavor to furnish proof for the fact that these actually represent
Iranian cultivations. With the sole exception of the walnut, the his-
tory of which may tolerably well be traced, the records of these Hu
plants are rather vague, and for none of them is there any specific
account of the introduction. It is for botanical rather than historical
reasons that the fact of the introduction becomes evident. It is this
hazy character of the traditions which renders it impossible to connect
these plants in any way with Can K'ien. Moreover, it cannot be
proved with certainty that any names of plants or products formed
with the element hu existed under the Han. The sole exception would
be hu ts'ai, 1 but its occurrence in the T*un su wen of the Han is not
certain either; and this hu, according to Chinese tradition, refers to
Mongolia, not to Iran. Another merely seeming exception is presented
by hu fun-lei* but this is a wild, not a cultivated tree; and hu, in this
case, has a geographical rather than an ethnographical significance. In
the wooden documents discovered in Turkistan we have one good,
datable instance of a Hu product; and this is hu t'ie ("iron of the Hu"
and implements made of such iron). These tablets belong to the Tsin
period (A.D. 265-419),* while in no wooden document of the Han has
any compound with Hu as yet been traced. Again, all available evi-
dence goes to show that these Hu plants were not introduced earlier
than the Tsin dynasty, or, generally speaking, during what is known
as the Leu 'ao or six minor dynasties, covering the time from the
downfall of the Han to the rise of the T'ang dynasty. It is noteworthy
that of none of these plants is an Iranian name on record.
The element hu, in a few cases, serves also the purpose of a tran-
scription: thus probably in the name of the coriander, hu-swi* and
quite evidently in the name of the fenugreek, hu-lu-pa.*
Imported fruits and products have been named by many nations
for the countries from which they hailed or from the people by whom
they were first brought. The Greeks had their "Persian apple" GUTJXOP
Hepacriv, "peach"), their "Medic apple" (nfrov M^Suov, "citron"),
their "Medic grass" (Mij5in) ir6a, "alfalfa"), and their "Armenian
1 Below, p. 381.
9 Below, p. 339.
1 CHAVANNES, Documents chinois ddcouverts par Aurel Stein, pp. 168, 169.
4 Below, p. 298.
1 Below, p. 446. It thus occurs also in geographical names, as in Hu-c"*a-la
(Guzcrat); see HIRTH and ROCKHILL, Chao Ju-kua, p. 92.
INTRODUCTION 203
apple" (rj\ov 'ApueviaKov, "apricot"). RABELAIS (I483-I553) 1
already made the following just observation on this point, "Les autres
[plantes] ont retenu le nom des regions des quelles furent ailleurs
transporters, comme pommes medices, ce sont pommes de Medie, en
laquelle furent premierement trouve*es; pommes puniques, ce sont
grenades, apportes de Punicie, c'est Carthage. Ligusticum, c'est
livesche, apportee de Ligurie, c'est la couste de Genes: rhabarbe, du
fleuve Barbare nomine" Rha, comme atteste Ammianus: santonique,
fenu grec; castanes, persiques, sabine; .stoechas, de mes isles Hieres,
antiquement dites Stoechades; spica celtica et autres." The Tibetans,
as I have shown, 2 form many names of plants and products with Bal
(Nepal), Mon (Himalayan Region), rGya (China), and Li (Khotan).
In the same manner we have numerous botanical terms preceded
by "American, Indian, Turkish, Turkey, Guinea," etc.
Aside from the general term Hu, the Chinese characterize Iranian
plants also by the attribute Po-se (Parsa, Persia): thus Po-se tsao
("Persian jujube") serves for the designation of the date. The term
Po-se requires great caution, as it denotes two different countries, Persia
and a certain Malayan region. This duplicity of the name caused
grave confusion among both Chinese and European scholars, so that
I was compelled to devote to this problem a special chapter in which
all available sources relative to the Malayan Po-se and its products
are discussed. Another tribal name that quite frequently occurs in
connection with Iranian plant-names is Si-2un 1$ 3$, ("the Western
2uii"). These tribes appear as early as the epoch of the Si kin and
Su kin, and seem to be people of Hiun-nu descent. In post-Christian
times Si-2un developed into a generic term without ethnic significance,
and vaguely hints at Central-Asiatic regions. Combined with botanical
names, it appears to be synonymous with Hu. 3 It is a matter of course
that all these geographical and tribal allusions in plant-names have
merely a relative, not an absolute value; that is, if the Chinese, for
instance, designate a plant as Persian (Po-se) or Hu, this signifies that
from their viewpoint the plant under notice hailed from Iran, or in
some way was associated with the activity of Iranian nations, but it
does not mean that the plant itself or its cultivation is peculiar or due
to Iranians. This may be the case or not, yet this point remains to be
determined by a special investigation in each particular instance.
While the Chinese, as will be seen, are better informed on the history
1 Le Gargantua et le Pantagruel, Livre III, chap. L.
2 T'oung Pao, 1916, pp. 409, 448, 456.
3 For examples of its occurrence consult Index.
204 SlNO-lRANICA
of important plants than any other people of Asia (and I should even
venture to add, of Europe), the exact and critical history of a plant-
cultivation can be written only by heeding all data and consulting all
sources that can be gathered from every quarter. The evidence accruing
from the Semites, from Egypt, Greece, and Rome, from the Arabs,
India, Camboja, Annam, Malayans, Japan, etc., must be equally
requisitioned. Only by such co-ordination may an authentic result be
hoped for.
The reader desirous of information on the scientific literature
of the Chinese utilized in this publication may be referred to Bret-
schneider's "Botanicon Sinicum" (part I). 1 It is regrettable that no
Pen ts*ao (Herbal) of the T'ang period has as yet come to light, and
that for these works we have to depend on the extracts given in later
books. The loss of the Hu pen ts'ao ("Materia Medica of the Hu")
and the &u hu kwo fan ("Prescriptions from the Hu Countries") is
especially deplorable. I have directly consulted the Cen lei pen ts*ao,
written by T'ah Sen-wei in 1108 (editions printed in 1521 and 1587),
the Pen ts'ao yen i by K'ou Tsun-si of 1116 in the edition of Lu Sin-
yuan, and the well-known and inexhaustible Pen ts'ao kan mu by Li
Si-Sen, completed in 1578. With all its errors and inexact quotations,
this remains a monumental work of great erudition and much solid
information. Of Japanese Pen ts'ao (Honzo) I havt used the Yamato
hon&o, written by Kaibara Ekken in 1709, and the Honzo komoku keimo
by Ono Ranzan. Wherever possible, I have resorted to the original
source-books. Of botanical works, the Kwan k'unfan p'u, the Hwa p*u,
the d wu mih $i t'u k'ao, and several Japanese works, have been utilized.
The Yu yah tsa tsu has yielded a good many contributions to the plants
of Po-se and Fu-lin; several Fu-lin botanical names hitherto unexplained
I have been able to identify with their Aramaic equivalents. Although
these do not fall within the subject of Sino-Iranica, but Sino-Semitica,
it is justifiable to treat them in this connection, as the Fu-lin names
are given side by side with the Po-se names. Needless to say, I have
carefully read all accounts of Persia and the Iranian nations of Central
Asia contained in the Chinese Annals, and the material to be found
there constitutes the basis and backbone of this investigation. 2
There is a class of literature which has not yet been enlisted for the
1 We are in need, however, of a far more complete and critical history of the
scientific literature of the Chinese.
2 The non-sinological reader may consult to advantage E. H. PARKER, Chinese
Knowledge of Early Persia (Imp. and Asiatic Quarterly Review, Vol. XV, 1903,
pp. 144-169) for the general contents of the documents relating to Persia. Most
names of plants and other products have been omitted in Parker's article.
INTRODUCTION 205
study of cultivated plants, and this is the early literature on medicine.
Prominent are the books of the physician Can Cun-kin i it S or
Can Ki K 18, who is supposed to have lived under the Later Han at
the end of the second century A.D. A goodly number of cultivated plants
is mentioned in his book Kin kwei yil han yao Ho fail lun & S 3i 3&
3c ~}3 Ift or abbreviated Kin kwei yao lio. 1 This is a very interesting
hand-book of dietetics giving detailed rules as to the avoidance of
certain foods at certain times or in certain combinations, poisonous
effects of articles of diet, and prescriptions to counteract this poison.
Neither this nor any other medical writer gives descriptions of plants
or notes regarding their introduction; they are simply enumerated in
the text of the prescriptions. But it is readily seen that, if such a work
can be exactly dated, it has a chronological value in determining whether
a given plant was known at that period. Thus Can Ki mentions, of
plants that interest us in this investigation, the walnut, the pome-
granate, the coriander, and Allium scorodoprasum (hu swan). Unfortu-
nately, however, we do not know that we possess his work in its
original shape, and Chinese scholars admit that it has suffered from inter-
polations which it is no longer possible to unravel. The data of such
a work must be utilized with care whenever points of chronology are
emphasized. It was rather tempting to add to the original prescrip-
tions of Can Ki, and there is no doubt that the subsequent editions
have blended primeval text with later comments. The earliest com-
mentary is by Wan Su-ho : $t %R of the Tsin. Now, if we note that
the plants in question are otherwise not mentioned under the Han, but
in other books are recorded only several centuries later, we can hardly
refrain from entertaining serious doubts as to Can Ki's acquaintance
with them. A critical bibliographical study of early Chinese medical
literature is an earnest desideratum.
A. DE CANDOLLE'S monumental work on the "Origin of Cultivated
Plants " is still the only comprehensive book on this subject that we
have. It was a masterpiece for his time, and still merits being made
the basis and starting-point for any investigation of this kind. De Can-
dolle possessed a really critical and historical spirit, which cannot be
said of other botanists who tried to follow him on the path of his-
torical research; and the history of many cultivated plants has been
outlined by him perfectly well and exactly. Of many others, our con-
ceptions are now somewhat different. Above all, it must be said that
1 Reprinted in the Yii tswan $ tsun kin kien of 1739 (WYLIE, Notes on Chinese
Literature, p. 101). A good edition of this and the other works of the same author on
the basis of a Sung edition is contained in the medical Ts'un-Su, the / t'uti en mo
ts'uan Su, published by the Ce-kian Su ku.
206 SlNO-lRANICA
since his days Oriental studies have made such rapid strides, that his
notes with regard to India, China, and Japan, are thoroughly out of
date. As to China, he possessed no other information than the super-
ficial remarks of BRETSCHNEIDER in his "Study and Value of Chinese
Botanical Works," 1 which teem with misunderstandings and errors. 2
De Candolle's conclusions as to things Chinese are no longer acceptable.
The same holds good for India and probably also for Egypt and western
Asia. In point of method, de Candolle has set a dangerous precedent
to botanists in whose writings this effect is still visible, and this is
his over- valuation of purely linguistic data. The existence of a native
name for a plant is apt to prove little or nothing for the history of
the plant, which must be based on documentary and botanical evi-
dence. Names, as is well known, in many cases are misleading or
deceptive; they constitute a welcome accessory in the chain of evidence,
but they cannot be relied upon exclusively. It is a different case, of
course, if the Chinese offer us plant-names which can be proved to be
of Iranian origin. If on several occasions I feel obliged to uphold
V. Hehn against his botanical critic A. Engler, such pleas must not
be construed to mean that I am an unconditional admirer of Hehn;
on the contrary, I am wide awake to his weak points and the short-
comings of his method, but wherever in my estimation he is right, it
is my duty to say that he is right. A book to which I owe much in-
formation is CHARLES JORET'S "Les Plantes dans 1'antiquite* et au
moyen age" (2 vols., Paris, 1897, 1904), which contains a sober and
clear account of the plants of ancient Iran. 8
A work to which I am greatly indebted is " Terminologie me'dico-
pharmaceutique et anthropologique frangaise-persane, " by J. L.
SCHLIMMER, lithographed at Teheran, 1874.* This comprehensive work
of over 600 pages folio embodies the lifelong labors of an instructor at
the Polytechnic College of Persia, and treats in alphabetical order of
animal and vegetable products, drugs, minerals, mineral waters, native
1 Published in the Chinese Recorder for 1870 and 1871.
1 They represent the fruit of a first hasty and superficial reading of the Pen
ts'ao kan mu without the application of any criticism. In Chinese literature we can
reach a conclusion only by consulting and sifting all documents bearing on a problem.
Bretschneider's Botanicon Sinicum, much quoted by sinologues and looked upon as
a sort of gospel by those who are unable to control his data, has now a merely relative
value, and is uncritical and unsatisfactory both from a botanical and a sinological
viewpoint; it is simply a translation of the botanical section of the Pen ts'ao kan mu
without criticism and with many errors, the most interesting plants being omitted.
1 Joret died in Paris on December 26, 1914, at the age of eighty-five years
(cf. obituary notice by H. CORDIER, La Geographic, 1914, p. 239).
4 Quoted " SCHLIMMER, Terminologie." I wish to express my obligation to the
Surgeon General's Library in Washington for the loan of this now very rare book.
INTRODUCTION 207
therapeutics and diseases, with a wealth of solid information that has
hardly ever been utilized by our science.
It is hoped that these researches will chiefly appeal to botanists
and to students of human civilization; but, as it can hardly be expected
that the individual botanist will be equally interested in the history
of every plant here presented, each subject is treated as a unit and
as an independent essay, so that any one, according to his inclination
and choice, may approach any chapter he desires. Repetitions have
therefore not been shunned, and cross-references are liberally inter-
spersed; it should be borne in mind, however, that my object is not
to outline merely the history of this or that plant, but what I wish to
present is a synthetic and comprehensive picture of a great and unique
plant-migration in the sense of a cultural movement, and simultane-
ously an attempt to determine the Iranian stratum in the structure of
Chinese civilization. It is not easy to combine botanical, oriental,
philological, and historical knowledge, but no pains have been spared
to render justice to both the botanical and the historical side of each
problem. All data have been sifted critically, whether they come
from Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian, Arabic, or classical sources,
and in no instance have I depended on a second-hand or dogmatic
statement. The various criticisms of A. de Candolle, A. Engler, E.
Bretschneider, and other eminent authorities, arise from the critical
attitude toward the subject, and merely aim at the furtherance of the
cause.
I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Tanaka TyOzaburO in the
Bureau of Plant Industry of the Department of Agriculture, Washing-
ton, for having kindly prepared a translation of the notices on the
grape-vine and the walnut from Japanese sources, which are appended
to the chapters on the history of these plants. The manuscript of this
publication was completed in April, 1918.
The generosity of Mrs. T. B. Blackstone and Mr. Charles R.
Crane in contributing a fund toward the printing of this volume is
gratefully acknowledged.
ALFALFA
1. The earliest extant literary allusion to alfalfa 1 (Medicago saliva)
is made in 424 B.C. in the Equites ("The Knights") of Aristophanes,
who says (V, 606) :
"H0-0iop 5 rods irayovpovs kvrl irolas
"The horses ate the crabs of Corinth as a substitute for the Medic.*]
The term "Medike " is derived from the name of the country Media.
In his description of Media, Strabo* states that the plant constituting
the chief food of the horses is called by the Greeks "Medike" from its
growing in Media in great abundance. He also mentions as a product
of Media silphion, from which is obtained the Medic juice. 3 Pliny*
Intimates that "Medica" is by nature foreign to Greece, and that it
was first introduced there from Media in consequence of the Persian
wars under King Darius. Dioscorides 8 describes the plant without
referring to a locality, and adds that it is used as forage by the cattle-
breeders. In Italy, the plant was disseminated from the middle of the
second century B.C. to the middle of the first century A.D., 8 almost
coeval with its propagation to China. The Assyriologists claim that
aspasti or aspastu, the Iranian designation of alfalfa, is mentioned in
a Babylonian text of ca. 700 B.C.; 7 and it would not be impossible that
its favorite fodder followed the horse at the time of its introduction
from Iran into Mesopotamia. A. DE CANDOLLE* states that Medicago
1 1 use this term (not lucerne) in accordance with the practice of the U. S.
Department of Agriculture; it is also the term generally used and understood by the
people of the United States. The word is of Arabic origin, and was adopted by the
Spaniards, who introduced it with the plant into Mexico and South America in the
sixteenth century. In 1854 it was taken to San Francisco from Chile (J. M. WEST-
GATE, Alfalfa, p. 5, Washington, 1908).
XI. xiii, 7.
1 Theophrastus (Hist, plant., VIII. vn, 7) mentions alfalfa but casually by
saying that it is destroyed by the dung and urine of sheep. Regarding silphion
see p. 355-
4 xm, 43.
n, 176.
e HEHN, Kulturpflanzen, 8th ed., p. 412.
T SCHRADER in Hehn, p. 416; C. JORET (Plantes dans 1'antiquite 1 , Vol. II, p. 68)
states after J. Hale"vy that aspasti figures in the list drawn up by the gardener of the
Babylonian king Mardukbalidin (Merodach-Baladan), a contemporary of Ezechias
King of Juda.
8 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p, 103.
208
ALFALFA 209
saliva has been found wild, with every appearance of an indigenous
plant, in several provinces of Anatolia, to the south of the Caucasus,
in several parts of Persia, in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and in Kashmir. 1
Hence the Greeks, he concludes, may have introduced the plant from
Asia Minor as well as from India, which extended from the north of
Persia. This theory seems to me inadmissible and superfluous, for
the Greeks allude solely to Media in this connection, not to India.
Moreover, the cultivation of the plant is not ancient in India, but is
of recent date, and hardly plays any r61e in Indian agriculture and
economy.
In ancient Iran, alfalfa was a highly important crop closely associated
with the breeding of superior races of horses. Pahlavi as past or aspist
New Persian aspust, uspust, aspist, ispist, or isfist (Pustu or Afghan spastu,
SpeSta), is traceable to an Avestan or Old-Iranian *aspo-asti (from the
root ad, "to eat"), and literally means " horse-fodder." 2 This word has
penetrated into Syriac in the form aspesta or pespesta (the latter in the
Geoponica). Khosrau I (A.D. 531-578) of the Sasanian dynasty included
alfalfa in his new organization of the land-tax: 3 the tax laid on alfalfa
was seven times as high as that on wheat and barley, which gives an
idea of the high valuation of that forage-plant. It was also employed
in the pharmacopoeia, being dealt with by Abu Mansur in his book
on pharmacology. 4 The seeds are still used medicinally. 6 The Arabs
derived from the Persians the word isfist, Arabicized into fisfisa; Arabic
designations being ratba and qatt, the former for the plant in its natural
state, the latter for the dried plant. 6
The mere fact that the Greeks received Medicago from the Persians,
and christened it " Medic grass," by no means signifies or proves at the
outset that Medicago represents a genuinely Iranian cultivation. It is
well known how fallacious such names are: the Greeks also had the
peach under the name "Persian apple," and the apricot as "Armenian
apple;" yet peach and apricot are not originally Persian or Armenian,
but Chinese cultivations: Iranians and Armenians in this case merely
1 As to Kashmir, it will be seen, we receive a confirmation from an ancient
Chinese document. See also G. WATT, Dictionary of the Economic Products of
India, Vol. V, pp. 199-203.
2 NELDEKE, ZDMG, Vol. XXXII, 1878, p. 408. Regarding some analogous
plant-names, see R. v. STACKELBERG, ibid., Vol. LIV, 1900, pp. 108, 109.
3 NOLDEKE, Tabari, p. 244.
4 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 73 (cf. above, p. 194).
6 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 365. He gives yondze as the Persian name, which,
however, is of Turkish origin (from yont, "horse"). In Asia Minor there is a place
Yonjali ("rich in alfalfa").
6 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 35.
210 SlNO-lRANICA
acted as mediators between the far east and the Mediterranean. How-
ever, the case of alfalfa presents a different problem. The Chinese, who
cultivate alfalfa to a great extent, do not claim it as an element of
their agriculture, but have a circumstantial tradition as to when and
how it was received by them from Iranian quarters in the second
century B.C. As any antiquity for this plant is lacking in India or any
other Asiatic country, the verdict as to the centre of its primeval culti-
vation is decidedly in favor of Iran. The contribution which the Chinese
have to make to the history of Medicago is of fundamental importance
and sheds new light on the whole subject: in fact, the history of no
cultivated plant is so well authenticated and so solidly founded.
In the inscription of Persepolis, King Darius says, "This land Persia
which Auramazda has bestowed on me, being beautiful, populous, and
abundant in horses according to the will of Auramazda and my own,
King Darius it does not tremble before any enemy." I have alluded
in the introduction to the results of General Can K'ien's memorable
expedition to Central Asia. The desire to possess the fine Iranian
thoroughbreds, more massively built than the small Mongolian horse,
and distinguished by their noble proportions and slenderness of feet
as well as by the development of chest, neck, and croup, was one of
the strongest motives for the Emperor Wu (140-87 B.C.) to maintain
regular missions to Iranian countries, which led to a regular caravan
trade with Fergana and Parthia. Even more than ten such missions
were dispatched in the course of a year, the minimum being five or six.
At first, this superior breed of horse was obtained from the Wu-sun,
but then it was found by Can K'ien that the breed of Fergana was far
superior. These horses were called t 'blood-sweating" (han-kile ff jfil), 1
and were believed to be the offspring of a heavenly horse (t'ien ma
^ Kl). The favorite fodder of this noble breed consisted in Medicago
sativa; and it was a sound conclusion of General Can K'ien, who was a
practical man and possessed of good judgment in economic matters,
that, if these much-coveted horses were to continue to thrive on Chinese
soil, their staple food had to go along with them. Thus he obtained
the seeds of alfalfa in Fergana, 2 and presented them in 126 B.C. to his
imperial master, who had wide tracts of land near his palaces covered
1 This name doubtless represents the echo of some Iranian mythical concept,
but I have not yet succeeded in tracing it in Iranian mythology.
2 In Fergana as well as in the remainder of Russian Turkistan Medicago saliva
is still propagated on an immense scale, and represents the only forage-plant of that
country, without which any economy would be impossible, for pasture-land and hay
are lacking. Alfalfa yields four or five harvests there a year, and is used for the feed-
ing of cattle either in the fresh or dry state. In the mountains it is cultivated up to
an elevation of five thousand feet; wild or as an escape from cultivation it reaches
ALFALFA 211
with this novel plant, and enjoyed the possession of large numbers of
celestial horses. 1 From the palaces this fodder-plant soon spread to
the people, and was rapidly diffused throughout northern China.
According to Yen Si-ku (A.D. 579-645), this was already an accom-
plished fact during the Han period. As an officinal plant, alfalfa appears
in the early work Pie lu.* The Ts*i min yao $u of the sixth century
A.D. gives rules for its cultivation; and T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536)
remarks that "it is grown in gardens at C'an-nan (the ancient capital
in Sen-si), and is much valued by the northerners, while the people
of Kian-nan do not indulge in it much, as it is devoid of flavor. Abroad
there is another mu-su plant for healing eye-diseases, but different
from this species." 8
Can K'ien was sent out by the Emperor Wu to search for the
Yue-2i and to close an alliance with them against the Turkish Hiun-nu.
The Yue-i, in my opinion, were an Indo-European people, speaking a
North-Iranian language related to Scythian, Sogdian, YagnObi, and
Ossetic. In the course of his mission, Can K'ien visited Fergana, Sog-
diana, and Bactria, all strongholds of an Iranian population. The
"West" for the first time revealed by him to his astounded country-
men was Iranian civilization, and the products which he brought back
were thoroughly and typically Iranian. The two cultivated plants
(and only these two) introduced by him into his fatherland hailed
from Fergana: Ferganian was an Iranian language; and the words for
the alfalfa and grape, mu-su and p*u-t'ao, were noted by Can K'ien
in Fergana and transmitted to China along with the new cultivations.
These words were Ferganian; that is, Iranian. 4 Can K'ien himself was
an altitude up to nine thousand feet. Cf. S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan
(in Russian), p. 51. Russian Turkistan produces the largest supply of alfalfa-seed
for export (E. BROWN, Bull. Dep. of Agriculture, No. 138, 1914).
1 Si ki, Ch. 123.
* Cf. Chinese Clay Figures, p. 135.
8 Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 27, p. 23. It is not known what this foreign species is.
4 HIRTH'S theory (Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 149), that the
element yuan of Ta-yuan (Fergana) might represent a "fair linguistic equivalent" of
Yavan (Yavana, the Indian name of the Greeks), had already been advanced by J.
EDKINS (Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc., Vol. XVIII, 1884, p. 5). To me it
seems eccentric, and I regret being unable to accept it. In the T'ang period we have
from Huan Tsan a reproduction of the name Yavana in the form JUJ Jfl ^JS
Yen-mo-na, *Yam-mwa-na (PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole frangaise, Vol. IV, p. 278).
For the Han period we should expect, after the analogy of Jj| f$ Ye-tiao, *Yap
(Dzap)-div (Yavadvlpa, Java), a transcription J Jf Ye-na, *Yap-na, for Yavana,
The term $ @ Yu-yue, * Yu-vat (var) , does not represent a transcription of Yavana,
as supposed by CHAVANNES (M&noires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, Vol. IV, 1901,
PP- 558-559), but is intended to transcribe the name Yuan (*Yuvar, Yjjar),
still employed by the Cam and other peoples of Indo-China as a designation of
212 SlNO-lRANICA
very well aware of the fact that the speech of the people of Fergana was
Iranian, for he stated in his report, that, although there were different
dialects in the tract of land stretching from Fergana westward as far
as Parthia (An-si), yet their resemblance was so great that the people
could make themselves intelligible to each other. 1 This is a plain
allusion to the differentiation and at the same time the unity of Iranian
speech; 2 and if the Ferganians were able to understand the Parthians,
I do not see in what other language than Iranian they could have
conversed. Certainly they did not speak Greek or Turkish, as some
prejudiced theorists are inclined to imagine.
The word brought back by Can K'ien for the designation of alfalfa,
and still used everywhere in China for this plant, was mu-su @ ^,
consisting of two plain phonetic elements, 8 anciently *muk-suk (Japa-
nese moku-Suku), subsequently written H* ^ with the addition of the
classifier No. 140. I recently had occasion to indicate an ancient Tibetan
transcription of the Chinese word in the form bug-sug* and this appears
to come very near to the Iranian prototype to be restored, which was
*buksuk or *buxsux, perhaps *buxsuk. The only sensible explanation
ever given of this word, which unfortunately escaped the sinologues,
was advanced by W. TOMASCHEK, B who tentatively compared it with
Gilaki (a Caspian dialect) buso ("alfalfa"). This would be satisfactory
if it could be demonstrated that this buso is evolved from *bux-sox or
the like. Further progress in our knowledge of Iranian dialectology
Annam and the Annamese (cf. Cam Yuan or Yuon, Bahnar, Juon, Khmer Yuon,
Stien Ju6n). This native name, however, was adapted to or assimilated with Sanskrit
Yavana; for in the Sanskrit inscriptions of Campa, particularly in one of the reign
of Jaya-Rudravarman dated A.D. 1092, Annam is styled Yavana (A. BERGAIGNE,
L'Ancien royaume de Campa, p. 61 of the reprint from Journal asiatique, 1888).
In the Old- Javanese poem Nagarakrtagama, completed in A.D. 1365, Yavana
occurs twice as a name for Annam (H. J.ERN,Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde,
Vol.LXXII, 1916, p. 399). Kern says that the question as to how the name of the
Greeks was applied to Annam has not been raised or answered by any one; he over-
looked the contribution of Bergaigne, who discussed the problem.
1 Strabo (XV. n, 8) observes, "The name of Ariana is extended so as to include
some part of Persia, Media, and the north of Bactria and Sogdiana; for these peoples
speak nearly the same language."
* Emphasized by R. GAUTHIOT in his posthumous work Trois Me"moires sur
1'unite" linguistique des parlers iraniens (reprinted from the Memoires de la Societe
de Linguistique de Paris, Vol. XX, 1916).
8 The two characters are thus indeed written without the classifiers in the Han
Annals. The writings J$C Jff *muk-suk of Kwo P'o and yfc |?l *muk-swok of Lo
Yuan, author of the Er ya i (simply inspired by attempts at reading certain mean-
ings into the characters), have the same phonetic value. In Annamese it is muk-tuk.
4 Toung Pao, 1916, p. 500, No. 206.
Pamir-Dialekte (Sitzber. Wiener Akad., 1880, p. 792).
ALFALFA 213
will no doubt supply the correct form of this word. We have to be
mindful of the fact that the speech of those East-Iranian tribes, the
advance-guard of Iran proper, with whom the Chinese first came in
contact, has" never been committed to writing, and is practically lost
to us. Only secluded dialects may still harbor remnants of that lost
treasure. We have to be the more grateful to the Chinese for having
rescued for us a few words of that extinct language, and to place *buksuk
or *buxsux on record as the ancient Ferganian appellation of Medicago
sativa. The first element of this word may survive in Sariqoll (a Pamir
dialect) wux (''grass"). In Waxl, another Pamir idiom, alfalfa is
styled wujerk; and grass, wu$. "Horse" is yds in Waxl, and vurj in
Sariqoll. 1
BRETSCHNEiDER 2 was content to say that mu-su is not Chinese,
but most probably a foreign name. WATTERS, in his treatment of
foreign words in Chinese, has dodged this term. T. W. KINGSMILL S
is responsible for the hypothesis that mu-su "may have some connec-
tion with the Mr/Sw) fioTavrj of Strabo." This is adopted by the Chinese
Dictionary of GILES."* This Greek designation had certainly not pene-
trated to Fergana, nor did the Iranian Ferganians use a Greek name
for a plant indigenous to their country. It is also impossible to see
what the phonetic coincidence between *muk-suk or *buk-suk and
medike is supposed to be.
The least acceptable explanation of mu-su is that recently pro-
pounded by HiRTH, 6 who identifies it with a Turkish burtak, which is
Osmanli, and refers to the pea. 6 Now, it is universally known that a
language like Osmanli was not in existence in the second century B.C.,
but is a comparatively modern form of Turkish speech; and how Can
K'ien should have picked up an Osmanli or any other Turkish word for
a typically Iranian plant in Fergana, where there were no Turks at that
time, is unintelligible. Nor is the alleged identification phonetically
correct: Chinese mu, *muk, *buk, cannot represent bur, nor can su,
1 Cf. R. B. SHAW, On the Ghalchah Languages (Journal As. Soc. Bengal, 1876,
pp. 221, 231). According to TOMASCHEK (op. cit., p. 763), this word is evolved from
*bharaka, Ossetic bairag ("good foal").
2 Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 404.
3 Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc., Vol. XIV, 1879, p. 19.
4 No. 8081, wrongly printed MeSuci?. The word POT&VTI is not connected with
the name of the plant, but in the text of Strabo is separated from Mqdiicriv by eleven
words. MriSiKrj is to be explained as scil. 7r6a, "Medic grass or fodder."
6 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 145.
6 Kara burtak means the "black pea" and denotes the vetch.
214 SlNO-lRANICA
*suk, stand for Zak. 1 The entire speculation is deplorable, and we are
even expected "to allow for a change the word may have undergone
from the original meaning within the last two thousand years"; but
there is no trace of evidence that the Osmanli word has existed that
length of time, neither can it be reasonably admitted that the signifi-
cance of a word can change from "pea" to "alfalfa." The universal
term in Central Asia for alfalfa is bidd 2 or beda? Djagatai bida. This
word means simply "fodder, clover, hay." 4 According to TOMASCHEK, B
this word is of Iranian origin (Persian beda). It is found also in Sariqoli,
a Pamir dialect. 6 This would indicate very well that the Persians
(and it could hardly be expected otherwise) disseminated the alfalfa
to Turkistan.
According to VAMBERY, 7 alfalfa appears to have been indigenous
among the Turks from all times; this opinion, however, is only based
on linguistic evidence, which is not convincing: a genuine Turkish
name exists in Djagatai jonu$ka (read yonutka) and Osmanli yondza*
(add Kasak-Kirgiz yonurcka), which simply means "green fodder,
clover." Now, these dialects represent such recent forms of Turkish
speech, that so far-reaching a conclusion cannot be based on them.
As far as I know, in the older Turkish languages no word for alfalfa
has as yet been found.
A Sanskrit il A # 33L sai-pi-li-k'ie, *sak-bi-lik-kya, for the designa-
tion of mu-su, is indicated by Li Si-cen, 9 who states that this is the
word for mu-su used in the Kin kwan min kin & ^t $J ft (Suvar-
naprabhasa-sutra). This is somewhat surprising, in view of the fact
that there is no Sanskrit word for this plant known to us; 10 and there
can be no doubt that the latter was introduced into India from Iran
in comparatively recent times. BRETSCHNEIDER'S suggestion, 11 that in
I Final k in transcriptions never answers to a final r, but only to k, g, or x (cf.
also PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 476).
a A. STEIN, Khotan, Vol. I, p. 130.
8 LE COQ, Sprichw6rter und Lieder aus Turfan, p. 85.
4 I. KUNOS, Sulejman Efendi's Cagataj-Osman. Worterbuch, p. 26.
6 Pamir-Dialekte, p. 792.
8 R. B. SHAW, Journal As. Soc. Bengal, 1876, p. 231.
7 Primitive Cultur des turko-tatarischen Volkes, p. 220.
8 The etymology given of this word by Vambe'ry is fantastic and unacceptable.
9 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 27, p. 3 b. Mu-su is classified by hiui under ts'ai
("vegetables").
J0 This was already remarked by A. DE CANDOLLE (Origin of Cultivated Plants,
p. 104). Also WATT gives only modern Indian vernacular names, three of which,
spastu, sebist, and beda, are of Iranian origin.
II Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 404.
ALFALFA 215
Kabul the Trifolium giganteum is called sibarga, and Medicago sativa
is styled riSka, is unsatisfactory. The word sibarga means "trefoil"
(si, " three;" barga = Persian barak, varak, "leaf"), and is Iranian, not
Sanskrit; the corresponding Sanskrit word is tripatra or triparna. The
word riSka is Afghan; that is, likewise Iranian. 1 Considering the fact
that nothing is known about the plant in question in early Indian
sources, it is highly improbable that it should figure in a Buddhist
Sutra of the type of the Suvarnaprabhasa; and I think that Li Si-cen
is mistaken as to the meaning of the word, which he says he encountered
there.
The above transcription occurs also in the Fan yi min yi tsi
(section 27) and answers to Sanskrit qdka-vrika, the word qaka denoting
any eatable herb or vegetable, and vfika (or baka) referring to a certain
plant not yet identified (cf. the analogous formation $dka-bilva, "egg-
plant"). It is not known what herb is to be understood by qaka-vfika,
and the Chinese translation mu-su may be merely a makeshift, though
it is not impossible that the Sanskrit compound refers to some species
of Medicago. We must not lose sight of the fact that the equations
established in the Chinese-Sanskrit dictionaries are for the greater part
merely bookish or lexicographical, and do not relate to plant introduc-
tions. The Buddhist translators were merely anxious to find a suitable
equivalent for an Indian term. This process is radically different from
the plant-names introduced together with the plants from Iranian,
Indian, or Southeast-Asiatic regions: here we face living realities,
there we have to do with literary productions. Two other examples
may suffice. The Fan yi min yi tsi (section 24) offers a Sanskrit botani-
cal name in the form U UK 3fi cen-t'ou-kia, anciently *tsin(tin)-du-k'ie,
answering to Sanskrit tinduka (Diospyros embryopteris) , a dense ever-
green small tree common throughout India and Burma. The Chinese
gloss explains the Indian word by Si ffi, which is the well-known Dio-
spyros kaki of China and Japan, not, however, found in ancient India; it
was but recently introduced into the Botanical Garden of Calcutta by
Col. Kyd, and the Chinese gardeners employed there call it tin ("Chi-
nese"). 2 In this case it signifies only the Diospyros embryopteris of
India. Under the heading kan-sun hian (see p. 455), which denotes the
spikenard (Nardostachys jatamansi), Li Si-Sen gives a Sanskrit term
ir Sfl^ k'u-mi-Fe, *ku-mi-c'i, likewise taken from the Suvarnapra-
bhasasutra; this corresponds to Sanskrit kunci or kuncika, which applies
to three different plants, i. Abrus precatorius, 2. Nigella indica,
1 There are, further, in Afghan sebist (connected with Persian supust) and
dureSta.
* W. ROXBURGH, Flora Indica, p. 412.
2l6 SlNO-lRANICA
3. Trigonella foenum graecum. In this case the compromise is a failure,
or the identification of kunci with kan-sun even results from an error;
the Sanskrit term for the spikenard is gandhamdmsl.
We must not draw inferences from mere Sanskrit names, either, as to
the origin of Chinese plants, unless there is more substantial evidence.
Thus STUART 1 remarks under li ^ (Prunus domestica) that the Sanskrit
equivalent J It j& ku-lin-kia indicates that this plum may have been
introduced from India or Persia. Prunus domestica, however, is a native
of China, mentioned in the Si kin, Li ki, and in Mon-tse. The Sino-
Indian word is given in the Fan yi min yi tsi (section 24) with the trans-
lation li. The only corresponding Sanskrit word is kulinga, which
denotes a kind of gall. The question is merely of explaining a Sanskrit
term to the Chinese, but this has no botanical or historical value for the
Chinese species.
Thus the records of the Chinese felicitously supplement the meagre
notices of alfalfa on the part of the ancients, and lend its history
the proper perspective: we recognize the why and how of the world-
wide propagation of this useful economic plant. 2 Aside from Fergana,
the Chinese of the Han period discovered mu-su also in Ki-pin (Kash-
mir), 8 and this fact is of some importance in regard to the early geo-
graphical distribution of the species; for in Kashmir, as well as in
Afghanistan and Baluchistan, it is probably spontaneous. 4
Mu-su gardens are mentioned under the Emperor Wu (A.D. 265-290)
of the Tsin dynasty, and the post-horses of the T'ang dynasty were fed
with alfalfa. 5
The fact that alfalfa was used as an article of human food under
the T'ang we note from the story of Sie Lin-Si l ^ ,, preceptor at
the Court of the Emperor Yuan Tsun (A.D. 713-755), who wrote a
versified complaint of the too meagre food allotted to him, in which
alfalfas with long stems were the chief ingredient. 6 The good teacher,
of course, was not familiar with the highly nutritive food-values of
the plant.
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 358.
2 It is singular that A. DE CANDOLLE, in his Origin of Cultivated Plants, while he
has conscientiously reproduced from Bretschneider all his plants wrongly ascribed
to Can K'ien, does not make any reference to China in speaking of Medicago
(pp. 102-104). In f act > i ts history has never before been outlined correctly.
3 Ts'ien Han $u, Ch. 96 A.
4 A. DE CANDOLLE, op. cit., p. 103; G. T. VIGNE, Travels in Kashmir, Vol. II, p. 455.
6 S. MATSUDA ffi EB / A On Medicago sativa and the Species of Medicago
in China (Botanical Magazine fit ft $ ft fj, Tokyo, Vol. XXI, 1907, p. 243).
This is a very interesting and valuable study written in Japanese.
e Cf . C. PTILLON, Allusions litte"raires, p. 350.
ALFALFA 217
According to the Su i ki # M IS, written by Zen Fan > B& in
the beginning of the sixth century, "the mu-su (alfalfa) gardens of
Can K'ien are situated in what is now Lo-yafi; mu-su was originally
a vegetable in the land of the Hu, and K'ien was the first to obtain it
in the Western Countries." A work, Kiu Vi ki i)l ftfe IB, 1 says that east
of the capital there were mu-su gardens, in which there were three
pestles driven by water-power.
The Si kin tsa ki ffi M H IB 2 states, "In the Lo-yu gardens H& j$ la
(in the capital C'an-nan) there are rose-bushes SC?6 ftf (Rosa rugosa),
which grow spontaneously. At the foot of these, there is abundance
of mu-su, called also hwaifun H $& C embracing the wind'), sometimes
kwanfun jfe l& ('brilliant wind'). 3 The people of Mou-lin j$c HI 4 style
the plant lien-Si ts'ao 31 1 ^ ('herb with connected branches')." 5
The Lo yan k*ie Ian ki & Bi flfl H IB, a record of the Buddhist
monasteries in the capital Lo-yan, written by Yan Huan-Si tlf |f *L in
A.D. 547 or shortly afterwards, says that "Huan-wu M. B is situated
north-east of the Ta-hia Gate ^C JE P*J ; now it is called Kwan-fun
Garden jfc R M, producing mu-su." Kwan-fun , as shown by the Si kin
tsa ki, is a synonyme of mu-su.
K'ou Tsun-i, in his Pen ts*ao yen i? written in A.D. 1116, notes that
alfalfa is abundant in Sen-si, being used for feeding cattle and horses,
and is also consumed by the population, but it should not be eaten in
large quantity. Under the Mongols, the cultivation of alfalfa was
much encouraged, especially in order to avert the danger of famines; 7
and gardens were maintained to raise alfalfa for the feeding of horses. 8
According to Li Si-6en (latter part of the sixteenth century), 9 it was in
his time a common, wild plant in the fields everywhere, but was culti-
vated in en-si and Kan-su. He apparently means, however, Medicago
denticulata, which is a wild species and a native of China. FORBES
1 T'ai p*in yii Ian, Ch. 824, p. 9.
2 That is, Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital (C'an-nan in Sen-si),
written by Wu Kun ^| J) of the sixth century A.D.
8 The explanation given for these names is thus: the wind constantly whistles
in these gardens, and the sunlight lends brilliancy to the flowers.
4 Ancient name for the present district of Hin-p'in | zp in the prefecture of
Si-nan, Sen-si.
6 T'ai p'ifi yu Ian, Ch. 996, p. 4 b.
6 Ch. 19, p. 3 (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
7 Yuan Si, Ch. 93, p. 5 b.
8 Ibid., Ch. 91, p. 6 b.
9 Pen ts*ao kan mu, Ch. 28, p. 3 b.
fl8 SlNO-lRANICA
and HEMSLEY I give as Chinese species Medicago denticulata, falcata*
and lupulina (the black Medick or nonsuch), M. lupulina "apparently
common, and from the most distant parts," and say with reference to
Medicago sativa that it is cultivated in northern China, and also occurs
in a wild state, though it is probably not indigenous. This "wild"
Medicago sativa may be an escape from cultivation. It is an interesting
point that those wild species are named ye mu-su ("wild alfalfa"),
which goes to show that these were observed by the Chinese only after
the introduction of the imported cultivated species. 8 Wu K'i-tsiin 4
has figured two ye mu-su, following his illustration of the mu-su, one
being Medicago lupulina, the other M. denticulata.
The Japanese call the plant uma-goyaSi ("horse-nourishing"). 5
MATSUMURA 6 enumerates four species: M. sativa: murasaki ("purple")
umagoyasi; 1 M. denticulata: umagoyasi; M. lupulina: kometsubu-
umagoyasi; and M. minima: ko-umagoyasi.
In the Tibetan dialect of Ladakh, alfalfa is known as ol. This word
refers to the Medicago sativa indigenous to Kashmir or possibly intro-
duced there from Iran. In Tibet proper the plant is unknown. In
Armenia occur Medicago sativa, M. falcata, M. agrestis, and M.
lupulina. 6
Under the title "Notice sur la plante mou-sou ou luzerne chinoise
par C. de Skattschkoff, suivie d'une autre notice sur la me'me plante
traduite du chinois par G. PAUTHIER," a brief article of 16 pages appeared
in Paris, 1864, as a reprint from the Revue de V Orient? Skattschkoff,
who had spent seven years in Peking, subsequently became Russian
consul in Dsungaria, and he communicates valuable information on the
agriculture of Medicago in that region. He states that seeds of this
1 Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXIII, p. 154.
* Attempts are being made to introduce and to cultivate this species in the
United States (cf. OAKLEY and CARVER, Medicago Falcata, U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Bull. No. 428, 1917).
1 We shall renew this experience in the case of the grape-vine and the walnut.
4 Ci wu min li t'u k'ao, Ch. 3, pp. 58, 59.
* In the same manner, Manchu morxo is formed from morin ("horse") and
orxo ("grass").
8 Shoku butsu-mei-i, Nos. 183-184.
7 The flower of this species is purple-colored.
8 A. BEGUINOT and P. N, DIRATZSUYAN, Contribute alia flora dell' Armenia,
P- 57-
9 The work of Pauthier is limited to a translation of the notice on the plant in
the Ci wu mi* Si t'u k'ao. The name Yu-lou nun frequently occurring in this work
does not refer to a treatise on agriculture, as conceived by Pauthier, but is the literary
style of Wu K'i-tsun, author of that work.
ALFALFA 219
plant were for the first time sent from China to Russia in 1840, and
that he himself has been active for six years in propagating it in Russia,
Livonia, Esthonia, and Finland. This is not to be doubted, but the
point I venture to question is that the plant should not have been
known in Russia prior to 1840. Not only do we find in the Russian
language the words medunka (from Greek medike) and the European
I'utserna (lucerne) for the designation of Medicago sativa, but also
krasni ("red") burkun, letuxa, lugovoi v'azel ("Coronilla of the
meadows"); the word burkun, burunduk, referring to Medicago falcata
(called also yumorki), buruntik to M. lupulina. It is hard to realize
that all these terms should have sprung up since 1840, and that the
Russians should not have received information about this useful plant
from European, Iranian, or Turkish peoples. A. DE CANDOLLE* ob-
serves, "In the south of Russia, a locality mentioned by some authors,
it is perhaps the result of cultivation as well as in the south of Europe."
Judging from the report of N. E. HANSEN,* it appears that three species
of Medicago (M. falcata, M. platycarpa, and M. ruthenica) are indigenous
to Siberia.
The efforts of our Department of Agriculture to promote and to
improve the cultivation of alfalfa in this country are well known; for
this purpose also seeds from China have been introduced. Argentine
chiefly owes to alfalfa a great amount of its cattle-breeding. 3
1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 103.
2 The Wild Alfalfas and Clovers of Siberia, pp. 11-15 (Bureau of Plant Industry,
Bull. No. 150, Washington, 1909).
8 Cf. I. B. LORENZETTI, La Alfafa en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1913, 360 p.)-
THE GRAPE-VINE
2. The grape-vine (Vitis wnifera) belongs to the ancient cultivated
plants of western Asia and Egypt. It is not one of the most ancient
cultivations, for cereals and many kinds of pulse are surely far earlier,
but it is old enough to have its beginnings lost in the dawn of history.
Viticulture represents such a complexity of ideas, of a uniform and
persistent character throughout the ancient world, that it can have
been disseminated but from a single centre. Opinions as to the loca-
tion of this focus are of course divided, and our present knowledge of
the subject does not permit us to go beyond more or less probable
theories. Certain it is that the primeval home of vine-growing is to
be sought in the Orient, and that it was propagated thence to Hellas
and Italy, while the Romans (according to others, the Greeks) trans-
planted the vine to Gaul and the banks of the Rhine. 1 For botanical
reasons, A. DE CANDOLLE 2 was inclined to regard the region south of
the Caucasus as "the central and perhaps the most ancient home of
the species." In view of the Biblical tradition of Noah planting the
grape-vine near the Ararat, 8 it is a rather attractive hypothesis to con-
ceive of Armenia as the country from which the knowledge of the
grape took its starting-point. 4 However, we must not lose sight of the
fact that both vine and wine were known in Egypt for at least three or
four millenniums B.C., 5 and were likewise familiar in Mesopotamia at
a very early date. This is not the place for a discussion of 0. SCHRADER'S
theory 6 that the name and cultivation of the vine are due to Indo-
Europeans of anterior Asia; the word for "wine" may well be of Indo-
European or, more specifically, Armenian origin, but this does not
1 Cf . the excellent study of G. CURTEL, La Vigne et le vin chez les Remains
(Paris, 1903). See also A. STUMMER, Zur Urgeschichte der Rebe und des Weinbaues
(Mitt. Anthr. Ges. Wien, 1911, pp. 283-296).
* Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 192.
8 Genesis, ix, 20.
4 Cf. R. BILLIARD, La Vigne dans 1'antiquite*, p. 31 (Lyon, 1913). This is a well
illustrated and artistic volume of 560 pages and one of the best monographs on the
subject. As the French are masters in the art of viticulture, so they have also pro-
duced the best literature on the science of vine and wine. Of botanical works,
J.-M. GUILLON, Etude g<ne"rale de la vigne (Paris, 1905), may be recommended.
6 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 99.
6 In HEHN, Kulturpflanzen, pp. 91-95.
220
THE GRAPE-VINE 221
prove that the origin of viticulture itself is traceable to Indo-Europeans.
The Semitic origin seems to me to be more probable. The Chinese
received the grape-vine in late historical times from Fergana, an Iranian
country, as a cultivation entirely unknown in previous epochs; and
it is therefore sufficient for our purpose to emphasize the fact that
vine-culture in its entire range was at that time firmly established in
Western Asia, inclusive of Iran.
The first knowledge of the cultivated vine (Vitis vim/era) and of wine
produced from its grapes was likewise obtained by the Chinese through
the memorable mission of General Can K'ien, when in 128 B.C. he
travelled through Fergana and Sogdiana on his way to the Yue-i
and spent a year in Bactria. As to the people of Fergana (Ta-yuan) ,
he reported, "They have wine made of grapes." The same fact he
learned regarding the Parthians (An-si). It is further stated in the
same chapter of the Si ki that the wealthy among the people of Fergana
stored grape- wine in large quantity up to ten thousand gallons (U, a
dry measure) for a long time, keeping it for several decades without
risk of deterioration; they were fond of drinking wine in the same
manner as their horses relished alfalfa. The Chinese envoys took the
seeds of both plants along to their country, and the Son of Heaven was
the first to plant alfalfa and the vine in fertile soil; and when envoys
from abroad arrived at the Court, they beheld extensive cultivations of
these plants not far from the imperial palace. The introduction of the vine
is as well authenticated as that of alfalfa. The main point to be noted
is that the grape, in like manner as alfalfa, and the art of making wine,
were encountered by the Chinese strictly among peoples of Aryan
descent, principally of the Iranian family, not, however, among any
Turkish tribes.
According to the Han Annals, the kingdom Li-yi IS ~^, which
depended on Sogdiana, produced grapes; and, as the water of that
country is excellent, its wine had a particular reputation. 2
K'aii (Sogdiana) is credited with grapes in the Annals of the Tsin
Dynasty. 3 Also grape-wine was abundant there, and the rich kept up to
a thousand gallons of it. 4 The Sogdians relished wine, and were fond of
songs and dances. 5 Likewise in Si (Tashkend) it was a favorite bever-
1 This is also the conclusion of J. HOOPS (Waldbaume und Kulturpflanzen,
p. 561).
2 Hou Han Su, Ch. 118, p. 6 (cf. CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1907, p. 195).
8 Tsin $u, Ch. 97, p. 6 b (ibid., p. 6: grape- wine in Ta-yuan or Fergana).
4 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 4 b.
6 T'an Su, Ch. 221 B, p. I.
221 SlNO-lRANICA
age. 1 When the Sogdian K'an Yen-tien in the first part of the seventh
century A.D. established a Sogdian colony south of the Lob Nor, he
founded four new cities, one of which was called " Grape City" (P'u-
t'ao 6'en) ; for the vine was planted in the midst of the town. 1
The Iranian Ta Yue-Ci or Indo-Scythians must also have been in
possession of the vine, as we are informed by a curious text in the
Kin lou tse & 81 -dF, 3 written by the Emperor Yuan 7G (A.D. 552-555)
of the Liang dynasty. "The people in the country of the Great Yue-c'i
are clever in making wine from grapes, flowers, and leaves. Sometimes
they also use roots and vegetable juice, which they cause to ferment. 4
These flowers resemble those of the clove-tree (tin-hian T ?, Caryo-
phyllus aromaticus), but are green or bright-blue. At the time of
spring and summer, the stamens of the flowers are carried away and
scattered around by the wind like the feathers of the bird Iwan St.
In the eighth month, when the storm blows over the leaves, they are
so much damaged and torn that they resemble silk rags: hence people
speak of a grape-storm (p'u-t*aofun) y or also call it 'leaves-tearing storm*
(luy*/**ikM&),"
Finally we know also that the Aryan people of Ku5a, renowned
for their musical ability, songs, and dances, were admirers of grape-
wine, some families even storing in their houses up to a thousand hu
$ of the beverage. This item appears to have been contained in the
report of General Lu Kwan B 3fc, who set out for the conquest of Kua
in A.D. 384. 8
In the same manner as the Chinese discovered alfalfa in Ki-pin
(Kashmir), they encountered there also the vine. 8 Further, they found
it in the countries Tsiu-mo IL ^ and Nan-tou H 5fa.
1 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 7 b; also in Yen-k'i (Karasar): Cou Su,
Ch. 50, p. 4 b.
1 PELLIOT, Journal asiatique, 1916, 1, p. 122. 8 Ch. 5, p. 23.
4 Strabo (XI. xm, 1 1) states that the inhabitants of the mountainous region
of northern Media made a wine from some kind of roots.
1 Other sources fix the date in the year 382 (see SYLVAIN Lvi, Le "Tokharien
B," langue de Koutcha, Journal asiatique, 1913, II, p. 333). The above fact is
derived from the Hou Han lu ^ $, fift, quoted in the T'ai p'in yu Ian (Ch. 972, p. 3);
see also T'an Su, Ch. 221 A, p. 8. We owe to S. Le"vi the proof that the people of
Kuc"a belong to the Indo-European family, and that their language is identical with
what was hitherto known from the manuscripts discovered in Turkistan as
Tokharian B.
8 Ts'ien Han Su, Ch. 96 A, p. 5. Kashmir was still famed for itfi grapes in the
days of the Emperor Akbar (H. BLOCHMANN, Ain I Akbari, Vol. I, p. 65), but at
present viticulture is on the decline there (WATT, Commerical Products of India,
pp. 1 1 12, III4).
T Regarding this name, see CHAVANNES, Les Pays d'occident d'apres le Wei
lio (T'oung Pao, 1905, p. 536).
THE GRAPE-VINE 223
In the T'ang period the Chinese learned also that the people of
Fu-lin (Syria) relished grape-wine, 1 and that the country of the Arabs
(Ta-si) produced grapes, the largest of the size of fowl's eggs. J In
other texts such grapes are also ascribed to Persia. 3 At that epoch,
Turkistan had fallen into the hands of Turkish tribes, who absorbed
the culture of their Iranian predecessors; and it became known to the
Chinese that the Uigur had vine and wine.
Viticulture was in a high state of development in ancient Iran.
Strabo 4 attributes to Margiana (in the present province of Khorasan)
vines whose stock it would require two men with outstretched arms to
clasp, and clusters of grapes two cubits long. Aria, he continues, is
described as similarly fertile, the wine being still richer, and keeping
perfectly for three generations in unpitched casks. Bactriana, which
adjoins Aria, abounds in the same productions, except the olive.
The ancient Persians were great lovers of wine. The best vintage-
wines were served at the royal table. 5 The couch of Darius was over-
shadowed by a golden vine, presented by Pythius, a Lydian. 8 The
inscription of Persepolis informs us that fifty congius 7 of sweet wine
and five thousand congius of ordinary wine were daily delivered to the
royal house. 8 The office of cup-bearer in the palace was one of im-
portance. 9 The younger Cyrus, when he had wine of a peculiarly fine
flavor, was in the habit of sending half-emptied flagons of it to some
of his friends, with a message to this effect: "For some time Cyrus has
not found a pleasanter wine than this one; and he therefore sends some
to you, begging you to drink it to-day with those whom you love
best." 10
Strabo 11 relates that the produce of Carmania is like that of Persia,
and that among other productions there is the vine. "The Carmanian
1 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 58, 63.
a Tai p*in hwan yii ki, Ch. 186, p. 15 b.
3 For instance, Pen ts'ao yen i, Ch. 18, p. I (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
4 II. i, 14, and XI. x, 2.
6 Esther, i, 7 ("And they gave them drink in vessels of gold, the vessels being
diverse one from another, and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of
the king").
8 Herodotus, vn, 27; Athenaeus, xn, 514 f. According to G. W. ELDERKIN
(Am. Journal of Archaeology, Vol. XXI, 1917, p. 407), the ultimate source of this
motive would be Assyrian.
7 A measure of capacity equal to about six pints.
8 JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 95.
*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, I. in, 8-9.
10 Xenophon, Anabasis, I. ix, 25.
11 XV. n, 14.
224 SlNO-lRANICA
vine, as we call it, often bears bunches of grapes of two cubits in size,
the seeds being very numerous and very large; probably the plant
grows in its native soil with great luxuriance." The kings of Persia were
not content, however, with wines of native growth; but when Syria
was united with their empire, the Chalybonian wine of Syria became
their privileged beverage. 1 This wine, according to Posidonius, was
made in Damascus, Syria, from vines planted there by the Persians. 2
Herodotus 3 informs us that the Persians are very fond of wine and
consume it in large quantities. It is also their custom to discuss im-
portant affairs in a state of intoxication; and on the following morning
their decisions are put before them by the master of the house where
the deliberations have been held. If they approve of the decision in the
state of sobriety, they act accordingly; if not, they set it aside. When
sober at their first deliberation, they always reconsider the matter under
the influence of wine. In a similar manner, Strabo 4 says that their
consultations on the most important affairs are carried on while drink-
ing, and that they consider the resolutions made at that time more to
be depended upon than those made when sober. In the Sahnameh,
the Persian epic, deliberations are held during drinking-bouts, but
decision is postponed till the following day. 6 Cambyses was ill reputed
for his propensity for wine. 6 Deploring the degeneracy of the Persians,
Xenophon 7 remarks, "They continue eating and drinking till those
who sit up latest go to retire. It was a rule among them not to bring
large cups to their banquets, evidently thinking that abstinence from
drinking to excess would less impair their bodies and minds. The
custom of not bringing such vessels still continues; but they drink so
excessively that instead of bringing in, they are themselves carried out,
as they are no longer able to walk upright." Procopius, the great
Byzantine historian of the sixth century, 8 says that of all men the
Massagetae (an Iranian tribe) are the most intemperate drinkers. So
1 Strabo, XV. in, 22.
2 Athenaeus, I.
3 I, 133.
4 XV. Ill, 20.
6 F. SPIEGEL, Eranische Altertumskunde, Vol. Ill, p. 672. Cf . what JOHN FRYER
(New Account of East India and Persia being Nine Years' Travels 1672-81, Vol. II,
p. 210, ed. of Hakluyt Society) says of the modern Persians: "It is incredible to see
what quantities they drink at a merry-meeting, and how unconcerned the next day
they appear, and brisk about their business, and will quaff you thus a whole week
together."
6 Herodotus, in, 34.
7 Cyropaedia, VIII. vm, 9-10.
8 Historikon, III. XH, 8.
THE GRAPE-VINE 225
were also the Sacae, who, maddened with wine, were defeated by
Cyrus. 1 In the same passage, Strabo speaks of a Bacchanalian festival
of the Persians, in which men and women, dressed in Scythian style,
passed day and night in drinking and wanton play. On the other
hand, it must not be forgotten that such judgments passed by one
nation on another are usually colored or exaggerated, and must be
accepted only at a liberal discount; also temperance was preached in
ancient Persia, and intemperance was severely punished. 2 With all
the evils of over-indulgence in wine and the social dangers of alcohol,
the historian, whose duty it is to represent and to interpret phe-
nomena as they are, must not lose sight of the fact that wine con-
stitutes a factor of economic, social, and cultural value. It has largely
contributed to refine and to intensify social customs and to heighten
sociability, as well as to promote poetry, music, and dancing. It has
developed into an element of human civilization, which must not
be underrated. Temperance literature is a fine thing, but who would
miss the odes of Anakreon, Horace, or Hafiz?
The word for the grape, brought back by Can K'ien and still current
in China and Japan (budo), is Sf $& (ancient phonetic spelling of the
Han Annals, subsequently IS ^) 3 p*u-t'ao, *bu-daw, "grape, vine". Since
Can K'ien made the acquaintance of the grape in Ta-yuan (Fergana)
and took its seeds along from there to China, it is certain that he also
learned the word in Fergana; hence we are compelled to assume that
*bu-daw is Ferganian, and corresponds to an Iranian *budawa or
*buSawa, formed with a suffix wa or awa, from a stem buda, which in
my opinion may be connected with New Persian bdda ("wine") and
Old Persian ^and/cT? ( "wine- vessel ")= Middle Persian bdtak, New
Persian bddye* The Sino-Iranian word might also be conceived as a
dialectic form of Avestan madav ("wine from berries").
It is well known that attempts have been made to derive the Chinese
word from Greek Corpus ("a bunch of grapes"). ToMASCHEK 5 was
the first to offer this suggestion; T. KiNGSMiLL 6 followed in 1879, and
1 Strabo, XI. vm, 5.
2 Cf. JACKSON, in Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, Vol. II, p. 679.
3 The graphic development is the same as in the case" of mu-su (see above, p. 212).
4 Cf. HORN, Neupersische Etymologic, No. 155. The Chinese are fond of etymol-
ogizing, and Li Si-c'en explains the word p'u-t*ao thus: "When people drink (p'u
SI) it, they become intoxicated (t'ao 0)." The joke is not so bad, but it is
no more than a joke.
6 Sogdiana, Sitzungsber. Wiener Akad., 1877, p. 133.
6 Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc., Vol. XIV, pp. 5, 19.
226 SlNO-lRANICA
HiRTH 1 endorsed Kingsmill. No one gave a real demonstration of the
case. Tomaschek argued that the dissemination of the vine in Central
Asia is connected with Macedonian-Greek rule and Hellenic influence.
This is decidedly wrong, for the vine grows spontaneously in all north-
ern Iranian regions; and its cultivation in Iran is traceable to a great
antiquity, and is certainly older there than in Greece. The Greeks
received vine and wine from western Asia. 2 Greek Corpus, in all likeli-
hood, is a Semitic loan-word. 3 It is highly improbable that the people
of Fergana would have employed a Greek word for the designation of
a plant which had been cultivated in their dominion for ages, nor is
there any evidence for the silent admission that Greek was ever known
or spoken in Fergana at the time of Can K'ien's travels. The influence
of Greek in the Iranian domain is extremely slight: nothing Greek has
as yet been found in any ancient manuscripts from Turkistan. In
my opinion, there is no connection between p'u-fao and Corpus, nor
between the latter and Iranian *budawa.
It is well known that several species of wild vine occur in China, in
the Amur region, and Japan. 4 The ancient work Pie lu is credited with
the observation that the vine (p'u-t'ao) grows in Lun-si (Kan-su) , Wu-yuan
3C J^ (north of the Ordos), and in Tun-hwan (in Kan-su). 5 Li Si-6en
therefore argues that in view of this fact the vine must of old have existed
in Lun-si in pre-Han times, but had not yet advanced into Sen-si. It
is inconceivable how BRETSCHNEiDER 6 can say that the introduction of
the grape by Can K'ien is inconsistent with the notice of the grape in
the earliest Chinese materia medica. There is, in fact, nothing alarming
about it: the two are different plants; wild vines are natives of northern
1 Fremde Einflusse in der chin. Kunst, p. 28; and Journal Am. Or. Soc.,
Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 146. Hirth's arguments are based on unproved premises. The
grape-design on the so-called grape mirrors has nothing to do with Greek or Bactrian
art, but comes from Iranian-Sasanian art. No grape mirrors were turned out under the
Han, they originated in the so-called Leu-2'ao period from the fourth to the seventh
century. The attribution "Han" simply rests on the puerile assumption made in
the Po ku Vu lu that, because Can K'ien introduced the grape, the artistic designs
of grapes must also have come along with the same movement.
2 Only a "sinologue" could assert that the grape was "originally introduced
from Greece, vid Bactria, about 130 B.C." (GILES, Chinese Dictionary, No. 9497).
8 MUSS-ARNOLT, Transactions Am. Phil. Assoc., Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. 142.
The variants in spelling 06(rTpi>xos, /S6rpuxos, plainly indicate the status of a loan-
word. In Dioscorides (in, 120) it denotes an altogether different plant, Chen-
opodium botrys.
4 The Lo-lo of Yun-nan know a wild grape by the name ko-p*i-ma, with large,
black, oblong berries (P. VIAL, Dictionnaire francais-lolo, p. 276). The grape is
te-mu-se-ma in Nyi Lo-lo, sa-lu-zo or sa-o-zo in Ahi Lo-lo.
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 33, p. 3.
fl Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 438.
THE GRAPE-VINE 227
China, but have never resulted in a cultivation; the cultivated species
(Vitis vinifera) was introduced from Iran, and never had any relation
to the Chinese wild species (Vitis bryoniaefolid) . In a modern work,
Mun ts'uan tsa yen ^ JR. IS W, 1 which gives an intelligent discussion
of this question, the conclusion is reached that the species from Fergana
is certainly different from that indigenous to China. The only singular
point is that the Pie lu employs the Ferganian word p*u-fao with refer-
ence to the native species; but this is not an anachronism, for the Pie lu
was written in post-Christian times, centuries after Can K'ien; and it
is most probable that it was only the introduced species which gave the
impetus to the discovery of the wild species, so that the latter received
the same name. 2
Another wild vine is styled yin-yii 21 j| (Vitis bryoniaefolia or
V. labmsca), which appears in the writings of T'ao Hun-kin (A.D.
451-536) and in the T*ah pen ts'ao of Su Kun, but this designation has
reference only to a wild vine of middle and northern China. Yen Si-ku
(A.D. 579-645), in his K'an miu len su^l^lE f-, 3 ironically remarks
that regarding the yin-yii as a grape is like comparing the &' $> (Poncirus
trifoliata) of northern China with an orange (kii f|j) ; that the yin-yu,
although a kind of p'u-fao, is widely different from the latter; and that
the yin-yii of Kian-nan differs again from the yin-yii of northern China.
HIRTH'S theory, 4 that this word might represent a transcription of
New Persian angur, is inadmissible. We have no right to regard Chinese
words as of foreign origin, unless these are expressly so indicated by the
Chinese philologists who never fail to call attention to such borrowing.
If this is not the case, specific and convincing reasons must be adduced
for the assumption that the word in question cannot be Chinese. There
is no tradition whatever that would make yin-yii an Iranian or a foreign
word. The opposite demonstration lacks any sound basis: New Persian,
which starts its career from the end of the tenth century, could not come
into question here, but at the best Middle Persian, and angur is a
strictly New-Persian type. A word like angur would have been dis-
sected by the Chinese into an+gut (gur), but not into an+uk; more-
over, it is erroneous to suppose that final k can transcribe final r; 6
in Iranian transcriptions, Chinese final k corresponds to Iranian k,
g, or the spirant x> It is further inconceivable that the Chinese might
1 T'u Su tsi t'efi, xx, Ch. 113.
2 Compare the analogous case of the walnut.
8 Ch. 8, p. 8 b (ed. of Hu pei ts*un Su).
4 Fremde Einflusse in der chinesischen Kunst, p. 17.
8 Compare above, p. 214.
228 SlNO-lRANICA
have applied a Persian word designating the cultivated grape to a
wild vine which is a native of their country, and which particularly
grows in the two Kiafi provinces of eastern China. The Gazetteer of
Su-c'ou 1 says expressly that the name for the wild grape, $an p'u-t'ao,
in the Kiaii provinces, is yin-yii. Accordingly it may be an ancient
term of the language of Wu. The Pen ts'ao kan mu* has treated yin-yii
as a separate item, and Li i-6en annotates that the meaning of the
term is unexplained. It seems to me that for the time being we have
to acquiesce in this verdict. Yen-yu $ J| and yin-$e I? ^ are added
by him as synonymes, after the Mao & ^ j^F and the Kwan ya, while
ye p*u-t'ao ("wild grape") is the common colloquial term (also t'en
min or mu lun jSl & /fv H). It is interesting to note that the earliest
notices of this plant come only from Su Kun and C'en Ts'an-k'i of the
T'ang dynasty. In other words, it was noted by the Chinese naturalists
more than seven centuries later than the introduction of the cultivated
grape, sufficient evidence for the fact that the two are not in any way
interrelated.
It must not be imagined that with Can K'ien's deed the introduction
of the vine into China was an accomplished fact; but introductions of
seeds were subsequently repeated, and new varieties were still imported
from Turkistan by K'an-hi. There are so many varieties of the grape
in China, that it is hardly credible that all these should have at once
been brought over by a single man. It is related in the Han Annals
that Li Kwan-li $ M fj, being General of Er-i Bip (*Ni-'i), after
the subjugation of Ta-ytian, obtained grapes which he took along to
China.
Three varieties of grape are indicated in the Kwan &',* written
before A.D. 527, yellow, black, and white. The same varieties are
enumerated in the Yu yan tsa tsu, while Li Si-Sen speaks of four varie-
ties, a round one, called ts*ao lun lu 3 HI $fc (" vegetable dragon-
pearls"); a long one, ma Zu p*u-t*ao (see below); a white one, called
"crystal grapes" (Swi tsin p*u-t*ao); and a black one, called "purple
grapes" (tse ^ p'u-t*ao), and assigns to Se-6'wan a green (ifik) grape,
to Yiin-nan grapes of the size of a jujube. 4 Su Sun of the Sung mentions
a variety of seedless grapes.
1 Su lou fu ti, Ch. 20, p. 7 b.
2 Ch. 33, p. 4.
8 T'ai p'in yii Ian, Ch. 972, p. 3.
4 T'an Ts'ui J ^ , in his valuable description of Yun-nan (Tien hai yii
hen li, published in 1799, Ch. 10, p. 2, ed. of Wen yin lou yil ti ts'un Su), states that the
grapes of southern Yun-nan are excellent, but that they cannot be dried or sent to dis-
tant places.
THE GRAPE-VINE 229
In Han-Sou yellow and bright white grapes were styled Zu-tse & -3P
("beads, pearls"); another kind, styled " rock-crystal" (swi-tsin), ex-
celled in sweetness; those of purple and agate color ripened at a little
later date. 1
To Turkistan a special variety is attributed under the name so-so
S IB grape, as large as wu-wei-tse 3t !$c ? ("five flavors," Schizandra
chinensis) and without kernels $& $%. A lengthy dissertation on this
fruit is inserted in the Pen ts'ao kan mu si i. 2 The essential points are
the following. It is produced in Turf an and traded to Peking; in appear-
ance it is like a pepper-corn, and represents a distinct variety of grape.
Its color is purple. According to the Wu tsa tsu 3t J| fi., written in
1610, when eaten by infants, it is capable of neutralizing the poison of
small-pox. The name so-so is not the reproduction of a foreign word,
but simply means "small." This is expressly stated in the Pen kin fun
yuan ^ f ^ JM, which says that the so-so grapes resemble ordinary
grapes, but are smaller and finer, and hence are so called (IfO Hi %$
C ). The Pi Pen ^ H of Yu-wen Tin =? annotates, however,
that so-so is an error for sa-so ISI, without giving reasons for this
opinion. Sa-so was the name of a palace of the Han emperors, and this
substitution is surely fantastic. Whether so-so really is a vine-grape
seems doubtful. It is said that so-so are planted everywhere in China
to be dried and marketed, being called in Kian-nan/aw p*u-?ao ("foreign
grape"). 8
The Emperor K'an-hi (1662-1722), who knew very well that grapes
had come to China from the west, tells that he caused three new varie-
ties to be introduced into his country from Hami and adjoining terri-
tories, one red or greenish, and long like mare-nipples; one not very
large, but of agreeable taste and aroma; and another not larger than a
pea, the most delicate, aromatic, and sweetest kind. These three varie-
ties of grape degenerate in the southern provinces, where they lose
their aroma. They persist fairly well in the north, provided they are
planted in a dry and stony soil. "I would procure for my subjects,"
the Emperor concludes, "a novel kind of fruit or grain, rather than
build a hundred porcelain kilns." 4
Turkistan is well known to the Chinese as producing many varieties
1 Man lian lu^^^, by WujTse-mu ^ g $C of the Sung (Ch. 18, p. 5 b;
ed. of Ci pu tsu lai ts'un $u).
2 Ch. 7, p. 69. This valuable supplement to the Pen ts'ao kan mu was first
published in 1650 (reprinted 1765 and appended to several modern editions of the
Pen ts*ao) by Cao Hio-min J ^ |fc (hao Su-hien JJg ff ) of Han-Sou.
3 Mun ts'uan tsa yen H JSft $| H , cited in T'u $u tsi e'en, XX, Ch. 130.
4 M&noires concernant les Chinois, Vol. IV, 1779, pp. 471-472.
130 SlNO-lRANICA
of grape. According to the Hui k'ian li S ^ ("Records of Turkis-
tan"), written in 1772 by the two Manchu officers Fusamb6 and Surde,
"there are purple, white, blue, and black varieties; further, round and
long, large and small, sour and sweet ones. There is a green and seed-
less variety, comparable to a soy-bean, but somewhat larger, and of
very sweet and agreeable flavor [then the so-so is mentioned]. Another
kind is black and more than an inch long; another is white and large.
All varieties ripen in the seventh or eighth month, when they are
dried and can be transported to distant places." According to the
Wu tsa tsu, previously quoted, Turkistan has a seedless variety of
grape, called tu yen 31 US p'u-t'ao ("hare-eye grape").
A. v. LE Cog 1 mentions under the name sozuq saim a cylindrical,
whitish-yellow grape, the best from Toyoq and Bulayiq, red ones of
the same shape from Manas and ShichO. Sir AUREL STEIN* says that
throughout Chinese Turkistan the vines are trained along low fences,
ranged in parallel rows, and that the dried grapes and currants of
Ujat find their way as far as the markets of Aksu, Kashgar, and Turfan.
Every one who has resided in Peking knows that it is possible to
obtain there during the summer seemingly fresh grapes, preserved from
the crop of the previous autumn, and that the Chinese have a method of
preserving them. The late F. H. KiNG, 3 whose studies of the agriculture
of China belong to the very best we have, observed regarding this
point, "These old people have acquired the skill and practice of storing
and preserving such perishable fruits as pears and grapes so as to
enable them to keep them on the market almost continuously. Pears
were very common in the latter part of June, and Consul-General
Williams informed me that grapes are regularly carried into July. In
talking with my interpreter as to the methods employed, I could only
learn that the growers depend simply upon dry earth cellars which can
be maintained at a very uniform temperature, the separate fruits being
wrapped in paper. No foreigner with whom we talked knew their
methods." This method is described in the TV* min yao Jfw, an ancient
work on husbandry, probably from the beginning of the sixth century, 4
although teeming with interpolations. A large pit is dug in a room of
the farmhouse for storing the grapes, and holes are bored in the walls
near the surface of the ground and stuffed with branches. Some of
these holes are filled with mud to secure proper support for the room.
1 Sprichworter und Lieder aus Turfan, p. 92.
2 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, p. 228.
Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 343 (Madison, Wis., 1911).
1 See BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 77; HIRTH, Toung Pao, 1895, p. 436;
PELLIOT, Bulletin de I'Ecolefrancaise, Vol. IX, p. 434.
THE GRAPE-VINE 231
The pit in which the grapes are stored is covered with loam, and thus
an even temperature is secured throughout the winter. 1
The Jesuit missionaries of the eighteenth century praise the raisins
of Hoai-lai-hien 2 on account of their size: "Nous parlons d'aprds le
te*moignage de nos yeux: les grains de ces grappes de raisins sont gros
comme des prunes damas- violet, et la grappe longue et grande a propor-
tion. Le climat peut y faire; mais si les livres disent vrai, cela vient
originairement de ce qu'on a ente* des vignes sur des jujubiers; et
l^paisseur de la peau de ces raisins nous le ferait croire." 3
Raisins are first mentioned as being abundant in Yun-nan in the
Yiin-nan hi* (" Memoirs regarding Yun-nan"), a work written in the
beginning of the ninth century. Li Si-Sen remarks that raisins are made
by the people of the West as well as in T'ai-yiian and P'ifi-yan in San-si
Province, whence they are traded to all parts of China. Kami in
Turkistan sends large quantities of raisins to Peking. 5 In certain parts
of northern China the Turkish word kilmil for a small kind of raisin
is known. It is obtained from a green, seedless variety, said to originate
from Bokhara, whence it was long ago transplanted to Yarkand.
After the subjugation of Turkistan under K'ien-lun, it was brought to
Jehol, and is still cultivated there. 6
Although the Chinese eagerly seized the grape at the first oppor-
tunity offered to them, they were slow in accepting the Iranian custom
of making and drinking wine. 7 The Arabic merchant Soleiman (or
whoever may be responsible for this account), writing in A.D. 851,
reports that "the wine taken by the Chinese is made from rice; they
do not make wine from grapes, nor is it brought to them from abroad;
1 A similar contrivance for the storage of oranges is described in the Me"moires
concernant les Chinois, Vol. IV, p. 489.
a I presume that Hwai (or Hwo)-lu hien in the prefecture of ten-tin, Ci-li
Province, is meant.
* Me"moires concernant les Chinois, Vol. Ill, 1778, p. 498.
4 Tai p'in yu Ian, Ch. 972, p. 3.
6 An article on Kami raisins is inserted in the Me"moires concernant les Chinois
(Vol. V, 1780, pp. 481-486). The introduction to this article is rather strange, an
effort being made to prove that grapes have been known in China since times of
earliest antiquity; this is due to a confusion of the wild and the cultivated vine.
In Vol. II, p. 423, of the same collection, it is correctly stated that vine and wine be-
came known under the reign of the Emperor Wu.
6 Cf . O. FRANKE, Beschreibung des Jehol-Gebietes, p. 76.
7 The statement that Can K'ien taught his countrymen the art of making wine,
as asserted by GILES (Biographical Dictionary, p. 12) and L. WIEGER (Textes
historiques, p. 499), is erroneous. There is nothing to this effect in the $i ki or in
the Han Annals.
232 SlNO-lRANICA
they do not know it, accordingly, and make no use of it." 1 This doubt-
less was correct for southern China, where the information of the
Arabic navigators was gathered. The grape, however, is chiefly to be
found in northern China, 2 and at the time of Soleiman the manu-
facture of grape-wine was known in the north. The principal document
bearing on this subject is extant in the history of the T'ang dynasty.
In A.D. 647 a peculiar variety of grapes, styled ma Zu p*u t'ao
?L $6 (" mare-nipple grapes") were sent to the Emperor T'ai Tsun
:& ^ by the (Turkish) country of the Yabgu MM. It was a bunch
of grapes two feet long, of purple color. 3 On the same occasion it is
stated, "Wine is used in the Western Countries, and under the
former dynasties it was sometimes sent as tribute, but only after
the destruction of Kao-S'aii iS H (Turf an), when 'mare-nipple grapes'
cultivated in orchards were received, also the method of making wine
was simultaneously introduced into China (A.D. 640). T'ai Tsun
experienced both its injurious and beneficial effects. Grape-wine, when
ready, shines in all colors, is fragrant, very fiery, and tastes like the
finest oil. The Emperor bestowed it on his officials, and then for the
first time they had a taste of it in the capital." 4
These former tributes of wine are alluded to in a verse of the poet
Li Po of the eighth century, "The Hu people annually offered grape-
wine." 5 Si Wan Mu, according to the Han Wu ti nei Iwan of the
third century or later, is said to have presented grape-wine to the Han
Emperor Wu, which certainly is an unhistorical and retrospective
tradition.
A certain Can Hun-mao 3Ji $k $, a native of Tun-hwan in Kan-su,
is said to have devoted to grape-wine a poem of distinct quality. 6
The locality Tun-hwan is of significance, for it was situated on the
1 M. REINAUD, Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans
1'Inde et a la Chine, Vol. I, p. 23.
2 In the south, I am under the impression it is rather isolated. It occurs, for
instance, in San-se ou Jb ^ ^H m the prefecture of T'ai-p'in, Kwan-si Province,
in three varieties, green, purple, and crystal, together with an uneatable wild
grape (San se lou i, Ch. 14, p. 8, ed. published in 1835). "Grapes in the neighbor-
hood of Canton are often unsuccessful, the alternations of dry heat and rain being
too much in excess, while occasional typhoons tear the vines to pieces" (J. F. DAVIS,
China, Vol. II, p. 305). They occur in places of Fu-kien and in the Chusan Archi-
pelago (cf. Tu $u tsi t'en, VI, Ch. 1041).
8 Tan hui yao, Ch. 200, p. 14; also Fun Si wen kien ki %j j fig JL IS, Ch. 7,
p. I b (ed. of Kifu ts'un $u), by Fun Yen f % of the T'ang.
4 Ibid., p. 15.
6 Pen ts'ao yen t, Ch. 18, p. I.
6 This is quoted from the Ts'ien lian lu "jtj ^ ffc, a work of the Tsin dynasty,
in the Si leu kwo I'un ts'iu (T'ai p'in yu Ian, Ch. 972, p. I b).
THE GRAPE-VINE 233
road to Turkistan, and was the centre from which Iranian ideas radiated
into China.
The curious point is that the Chinese, while they received the grape
in the era of the Han from an Iranian nation, and observed the habit
of wine-drinking among Iranians at large, acquired the art of wine-
making as late as the T'ang from a Turkish tribe of Turkistan. The
Turks of the Han period knew nothing of grapes or wine, quite natu-
rally, as they were then restricted to what is now Mongolia, where soil
and climatic conditions exclude this plant. Vine-growing, as a matter
of course, is compatible solely with a sedentary mode of life; and only
after settling in Turkistan, where they usurped the heritage of their
Iranian predecessors, 1 did the Turks become acquainted with grape
and wine as a gift of Iranians. The Turkish word for the grape, Uigur
ozurn (other dialects uzum) , proves nothing along the line of historical
facts, as speculated by VAMBERY. 2 It is even doubtful whether the word
in question originally had the meaning " grape"; on the contrary, it
merely seems to have signified any berry, as it still refers to the berries
and seeds of various plants. The Turks were simply epigones and
usurpers, and added nothing new to the business of vine-culture.
In accordance with the introduction of the manufacture of grape-
wine into China, we find this product duly noted in the Pen ts*ao of
the T'ang, 3 published about the middle of the seventh century; further,
in the Si liao pen ts'ao by Mori Sen j I5fe (second half of the seventh
century), and in the Pen ts'ao $i i by C'en Ts'an-k'i Eft IK !, who wrote
in the K'ai-yuan period (713-741). The T'an pen ts*ao also refers to
the manufacture of vinegar from grapes. 4 The Pen ts*ao yen i, pub-
lished in 1116, likewise enumerates grape- wine among the numerous
brands of alcoholic beverages.
The Lian se kun tse ki by Can Yue (6 6 7-73 o) 5 contains an anecdote
to the effect that Kao-S'an offered to the Court frozen wine made from
dried raisins, on which Mr. Kie made this comment: "The taste of
grapes with thin shells is excellent, while grapes with thick shells are
bitter of taste. They are congealed in the Valley of Eight Winds
(Pa fun ku A R ^). This wine does not spoil in the course of years." 6
1 This was an accomplished fact by the end of the fourth century A.D.
2 Primitive Cultur des turko-tatarischen Volkes, p. 218.
3 Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 23, p. 7.
4 Ibid., Ch. 26, p. i b.
5 See The Diamond, this volume, p. 6.
6 Pen ts*ao kan mu, Ch. 25, p. 14 b. A different version of this story is quoted
in the Tai p'in yii Ian (Ch. 845, p. 6 b).
234 SlNO-lRANICA
A recipe for making grape-wine is contained in the Pei San tsiu kin
4fc Ul ?B K, 1 a work on the different kinds of wine, written early in the
twelfth century by Cu Yi-cufi 3c Ji *{*, known as Ta-yin Wen ; IS H.
Sour rice is placed in an earthen vessel and steamed. Five ounces of
apricot-kernels (after removing the shells) and two catties of grapes
(after being washed and dried, and seeds and shells removed) are put
together in a bowl of thin clay ($a p*en ffi rSi), 2 pounded, and strained.
Three pecks of a cooked broth are poured over the rice, which is placed
on a table, leaven being added to it. This mass, I suppose, is used to
cause the grape-juice to ferment, but the description is too abrupt and
by no means clear. So much seems certain that the question is of a
rather crude process of fermentation, but not of distillation (see below).
Sii T'in ^ 8, who lived under the Emperor Li Tsufi (1224-63) of
the Southern Sung, went as ambassador to the Court of the Mongol
Emperor Ogotai (1229-45). His memoranda, which represent the
earliest account we possess of Mongol customs and manners, were
edited by P'eii Ta-ya ^ ^C 51 of the Sung under the title Hei Ta H lio
& H ^ $& ("Outline of the Affairs of the Black Tatars"), and pub-
lished in 1908 by Li Wen-t'ien and Hu Se in the Wen yin lou yii ti ts'un
$u* Su T'in informs us that grape-wine put in glass bottles and sent
as tribute from Mohammedan countries figured at the headquarters
of the Mongol Khan; one bottle contained about ten small cups, and
the color of the beverage resembled the juice of the Diospyros kaki
[known in this country as Japanese persimmons] of southern China.
It was accordingly a kind of claret. The Chinese envoy was told that
excessive indulgence in it might result in intoxication.
1 Ch. c, p. 19 b (ed. of Ci pu tsu ai ts'uA Su}. The work is noted by WYLIE
(Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 150).
1 Literally, "sand-pot." This is a kind of thin pottery (colloquially called Sa
kwo ffi |&) peculiar to China, and turned out at Hwai-lu (Ci-li), P'in-tin &>u and
Lu-nan (San-si), and Yao-c"ou (Sen-si). Made of clay and sand with an admixture
of coal-dust, so that its appearance presents a glossy black, it is extremely light
and fragile; but, on account of their thin walls, water may be heated in these pots
with a very small quantity of fuel. They are a money and time saving device, and
hence in great demand among the poor, who depend upon straw and dried grass for
their kitchen fire. With careful handling, such pots and pans may endure a long
time. The proverb runs, "The sand-pot will last a generation if you do not hit it";
and there is another popular saying, "You may pound garlic in a sand-pan, but you
can do so but once" (A. H. SMITH, Proverbs and Common Sayings from the Chinese,
p. 204). Specimens of this ware from Yao-Sou may be seen in the Field Museum,
others from Hwai-lu are in the American Museum of New York (likewise collected
by the writer). The above text of the Sung period is the first thus ,far found by me
which contains an allusion to this pottery.
1 This important work has not yet attracted the attention of our science. I hope
to be able to publish a complete translation of it in the future.
THE GRAPE-VINE 235
In his interesting notice "Le Nom turc du vin dans Odoric de
Pordenone," 1 P. PELLIOT has called attention to the word bor as a
Turkish designation of grape-wine, adding also that this word occurs
in a Mongol letter found in Turfan and dated I398. 2 I can furnish
additional proof for the fact that bor is an old Mongol word in the
sense of wine, although, of course, it may have been borrowed from
Turkish. In the Mongol version of the epic romance of Geser or Gesar
Khan we find an enumeration of eight names of liquor, all supposed
to be magically distilled from araki ("arrack, brandy "). These are:
aradsa (araja), xoradsa or xuradsa, Siradsa, boradsa, takpa, tikpa,
marba, mirba.* These terms have never been studied, and, with the
exception of the first and third, are not even listed in Kovalevski's and
Golstuntki's Mongol Dictionaries. The four last words are characterized
as Tibetan by the Tibetan suffix pa or ba. Marwa (corresponding in
meaning to Tibetan Fan) is well known as a word generally used
throughout Sikkim and other Himalayan regions for an alcoholic
beverage. 4 As to tikpa, it seems to be formed after the model of Tibetan
tig-Pan, the liquor for settling (tig) the marriage-affair, presented by the
future bridegroom to the parents of his intended. 5
The terms aradsa, xoradsa or xuradsa, Siradsa, and boradsa, are all
provided with the same ending. The first is given by KOVALEVSKI*
with the meaning "very strong koumiss, spirit of wine." A parallel is
offered by Manchu in arfan ("a liquor prepared from milk"), while
Manchu arjan denotes any alcoholic drink. The term xoradsa or xuradsa
may be derived from Mongol xuru-t (-t being suffix of the plural),
corresponding to Manchu kuru, which designates "a kind of cheese
made from fermented mare's milk, or cheese prepared from cow's or
mare's milk with the addition of sugar and sometimes pressed into
forms." The word siradsa has been adopted by Schmidt and Kovalevski
in their respective dictionaries as "wine distilled for the fourth time"
or "esprit de vin quadruple;" but these explanations are simply based
on the above passage of Geser, in which one drink is supposed to be
1 T*oung Pao, 1914, pp. 448-453.
* Ramstedt's tentative rendering of this word by "beaver" is a double error:
first, the beaver does not occur in Mongolia and is unknown to the Mongols, its
easternmost boundary is formed by the Yenisei; second, bor as an animal-name
means "an otter cub," and otter and beaver are entirely distinct creatures.
8 Text, ed. I. J. SCHMIDT, p. 65; translation, p. 99. Schmidt transcribes arasa,
chorasa, etc., but the palatal sibilant is preferable.
4 Cf. H. H. RISLEY, Gazetteer of Sikkim, p. 75, where also the preparation is
described.
1 JXSCHKE, Tibetan Dictionary, p. 364.
e Dictionnaire mongol, p. 143.
236 SlNO-lRANICA
distilled from the other. This process, of course, is purely fantastic,
and described as a magical feat; there is no reality underlying it.
The word boradsa, in my opinion, is derived from the Turkish word
bor discussed by Pelliot; there is no Mongol word from which it could
be explained. In this connection, the early Chinese account given
above of foreign grape-wine among the Mongols gains a renewed
significance. Naturally it was a rare article in Mongolia, and for this
reason we hear but little about it. Likewise in Tibet grape-wine is
scarcely used, being restricted to religious offerings in the temples. 1
The text of the Geser Romance referred to is also important from
another point of view. It contains the loan-word ariki, from Arabic
'araq, which appears in eastern Asia as late as the Mongol epoch
(below, p. 237). Consequently our work has experienced the influence
of this period, which is visible also in other instances. 2 The foundation
of the present recension, first printed at Peking in 1716, is indeed trace-
able to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; many legends and
motives, of course, are of a much older date.
MARCO POLO relates in regard to T'ai-yuan fu, called by him Taianfu,
the capital of San-si Province, "There grow here many excellent vines,
supplying a great plenty of wine; and in all Cathay this is the only place
where wine is produced. It is carried hence all over the country." 3
Marco Polo is upheld by contemporary Chinese writers. Grape-wine
is mentioned in the Statutes of the Yuan Dynasty. 4 The Yin $an cen
yao ffc Si IE S, written in 1331 (in 3 chapters) by Ho Se-hwi ^P $r Sf,
contains this account: 5 "There are numerous brands of wine: that
coming from QarS-Khoja (Ha-la-hwo && SS ^) 6 is very strong, that
coming from Tibet ranks next. Also the wines from P'in-yan and T'ai-
1 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1914, p. 412.
2 Cf. ibid., 1908, p. 436.
8 YULE and CORDIER, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. II, p. 13. KLAPROTH
(cf. Yule's notes, ibid., p. 16) was quite right in saying that the wine of that locality
was celebrated in the days of the T'ang dynasty, and used to be sent in tribute to the
emperors. Under the Mongols the use of this wine spread greatly. The founder of
the Ming accepted the offering of wine from T'ai-yuan in 1373, but prohibited its
being presented again. This fact is contained in the Ming Annals (cf. L. WIEGER,
Textes historiques, p. 2011).
4 Yuan lien Ian % Jft- $ Ch. 22, p. 65 (ed. 1908).
6 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 25, p. 14 b. Regarding that work, cf. the Imperial
Catalogue, Ch. 116, p. 27 b.
6 Regarding this name and its history see PELLIOT, Journal asiatique, 1912, I,
p. 582. Qara-Khoja was celebrated for its abundance of grapes (BRETSCHNEIDER,
Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 65). J. DUDGEON (The Beverages of the Chinese,
p. 27), misreading the name Ha-so-hwo, took it for the designation of a sort of wine.
Stuart (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 459) mistakes it for a transliteration of "hoi-
THE GRAPE-VINE 237
yuan (in San-si) take the second rank. According to some statements,
grapes, when stored for a long time, will develop into wine through a
natural process. This wine is fragrant, sweet, and exceedingly strong:
this is the genuine grape-wine." 1 The Ts*ao mu tse & /fc -J% written
in 1378 by Ye Tse-k'i M -f* iff, contains the following information:
" Under the Yuan dynasty grape- wine was manufactured in Ki-niii
IK ^ and other circuits ! of San-si Province. In the eighth month
they went to the T'ai-han Mountain :fc f? Ul 2 in order to test the
genuine and adulterated brands: the genuine kind when water is
poured on it, will float; the adulterated sort, when thus treated, will
freeze. 3 In wine which has long been stored, there is a certain portion
which even in extreme cold will never freeze, while all the remainder is
frozen: this is the spirit and fluid secretion of wine. 4 If this is drunk,
the essence will penetrate into a man's arm-pits B8? , and he will die.
Wine kept for two or three years develops great poison."
The first author who offers a coherent notice and intelligent discus-
sion of the subject of grape-wine is Li Si-c"en at the end of the sixteenth
century. 5 He is well acquainted with the fact that this kind of wine was
anciently made only in the Western Countries, and that the method of
manufacturing it was but introduced under the T'ang after the sub-
jugation of Kao-6'aii. He discriminates between two types of grape-
wine, the fermented 18 $ 3, of excellent taste, made from grape-
juice with the addition of leaven in the same fashion as the ordinary
native rice-wine (or, if no juice is available, dried raisins may be used),
and the distilled ^ ffl. In the latter method "ten catties of grapes are
taken with an equal quantity of great leaven (distillers' grains) and
subjected to a process of fermentation. The whole is then placed in an
earthen kettle and steamed. The drops are received in a vessel, and
this liquid is of red color, and very pleasing." There is one question,
however, left open by Li Si-2en. In a preceding notice on distillation
JH JS he states that this is not an ancient method, but was practised
only from the Yuan period; he then describes it in its application to rice-
lands," or maybe "alcohol." The latter word has never penetrated into China in
any form. Chinese a-la-ki does not represent the word "alcohol," as conceived by
some authors, for instance, J. MACGOWAN (Journal China Brunch Roy. As. Soc.,
Vol. VII, 1873, p. 237); see the following note.
1 This work is also the first that contains the word a-la-ki fnf jfjlj ^ , from
Arabic 'araq (see T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 483).
2 A range of mountains separating San-si from Ci-li and Ho-nan.
3 This is probably a fantasy. We can make nothing of it, as it is not stated how
the adulterated wine was made.
4 This possibly is the earliest Chinese allusion to alcohol.
6 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 25, p. 14 b.
38 SlNO-lRANICA
wine in the same manner as for grape-wine. Certain it is that distillation
is a Western invention, and was unknown to the ancient Chinese. 1
Li Si-Sen fails to inform us as to the time when the distillation of grape-
wine came into existence. If this process had become known in China
under the T'ang in connection with grape-wine, it would be strange if
the Chinese did not then apply it to their native spirits, but should have
waited for another foreign impulse until the Mongol period. On the
other hand, if the method due to the Uigur under the T'ang merely
applied to fermented grape-wine, we may justly wonder that the Chinese
had to learn such a simple affair from the Uigur, while centuries earlier
they must have had occasion to observe this process among many
Iranian peoples. It would therefore be of great interest to seize upon
a document that would tell us more in detail what this method of
manufacture was, to which the T'ang history obviously attaches so
great importance. It is not very likely that distillation was involved;
for it is now generally conceded that the Arabs possessed no knowledge
of alcohol, and that distillation is not mentioned in any relevant litera-
ture of the Arabs and Persians from the tenth to the thirteenth cen-
tury. 2 The statement of Li Si-Sen, that distillation was first practised
under the Mongols, is historically logical and in keeping with our
present knowledge of the subject. It is hence reasonable to hold (at
least for the present) also that distilled grape-wine was not made
earlier in China than in the epoch of the Yuan. Mori Sen of the T'ang
says advisedly that grapes can be fermented into wine, and the recipe
of the Sung does not allude to distillation.
In the eighteenth century European wine also reached China. A
chest of grape-wine figures among the presents made to the Emperor
K'aii-hi on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 1715 by the Jesuits
Bernard Kilian Stumpf, Joseph Suarez, Joachim Bouvet, and Dornini-
cus Parrenin. 3
P. OsBECK, 4 the pupil of Linne*, has the following notice on the
importation of European wine into China: "The Chinese wine, which
our East India traders call Mandarin wine, is squeezed out of a fruit
which is here called Pausio, 6 and reckoned the same with our grapes.
1 Cf. BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 155; J. DUDGEON, The Beverages of
the Chinese, pp. 19-20; EDKINS, China Review, Vol. VI, p. 211. The process of
distillation is described by H. B. GRUPPY, Samshu-Brewing in North China (Journal
China Branch Roy. As. Soc., Vol. XVIII, 1884, pp. 163-164).
a E. O. v. LIPPMANN, Abhandlungen, Vol. II, pp. 206-209; cf. also my remarks
in American Anthropologist, 1917, p. 75.
1 Cf. Wan Sou Sen tien j| H J&, Ch. 56, p. 12.
4 A Voyage to China and the East Indies, Vol. I, p. 315 (London, 1771).
8 Apparently a bad or misprinted reproduction of p'u-t'ao.
THE GRAPE-VINE 339
This wine was so disagreeable to us, that none of us would drink it.
The East India ships never fail taking wine to China, where they often
sell it to considerable advantage. The Xeres (sherry) wine, for which
at Cadiz we paid thirteen piastres an anchor, we sold here at thirty-
three piastres an anchor. But in this case you stand a chance of having
your tons split by the heat during the voyage. I have since been told,
that in 1754, the price of wine was so much lowered at Canton, that
our people could with difficulty reimburse themselves. The Spaniards
send wines to Manilla and Macao, whence the Chinese fetch a con-
siderable quantity, especially for the court of Peking. The wine of
Xeres is more agreeable here than any other sort, on account of its
strength, and because it is not liable to change by heat. The Chinese
are very temperate in regard to wine, and many dare not empty a single
glass, at least not at once. Some, however, have learned from foreigners
to exceed the limits of temperance, especially when they drink with
them at free cost."
Grape-wine is attributed by the Chinese to the Arabs. 1 The
Arabs cultivated the vine and made wine in the pre-Islamic epoch.
Good information on this subject is given by G. JACOB.*
Theophrastus 3 states that in India only the mountain-country has
the vine and the olive. Apparently he hints at a wild vine, as does also
Strabo, 4 who says after Aristobulus that in the country of Musicanus
(Sindh) there grows spontaneously grain resembling wheat, and a vine
producing wine, whereas other authors affirm that there is no wine in
India. Again, he states 8 that on the mountain Meron near the city
Nysa, founded by Bacchus, there grows a vine which does not ripen
its fruit; for, in consequence of excessive rains, the grapes drop before
arriving at maturity. They say also that the Sydracae or Oxydracae
are descendants of Bacchus, because the vine grows in their country.
The element -dracae (drakai) is probably connected with Sanskrit
drdk$d ("grape")- These data of the ancients are vague, and do not
prove at all that the grape- vine has been cultivated in India from time
immemorial, as inferred by JORET.* Geographically they only refer to
the regions bordering on Iran. The ancient Chinese knew only of grapes
in Kashmir (above, p. 222). The Wei $u 7 states that grapes were ex-
1 HIRTH, Chao Ju-kua, pp. 115, 121.
2 Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 26. ed., pp. 96-109.
3 Hist, plant., IV. iv, u.
4 XV, 22.
XV. 1,8.
Plantes dans 1'antiquitS, Vol. II, p. 280.
7 Ch. 102, p. 8.
240 SlNO-lRANICA
ported from Pa-lai JJt IS (*Bwat-lai) in southern India. Huan Tsafi 1
enumerates grapes together with pears, crab-apples, peaches, and
apricots, 2 as the fruits which, from Kashmir on, are planted here and
there in India. The grape, accordingly, was by no means common in
India in his time (seventh century).
The grape is not mentioned in Vedic literature, and Sanskrit drdksd
I regard with SPIEGEL 3 as a loan-word. Viticulture never was extensive
or of any importance in Indian agriculture. Prior to the Moham-
medan conquest, we have little precise knowledge of the cultivation of
the vine, which was much fostered by Akbar. In modern times it is
only in Kashmir that it has been received with some measure of
success.
Huan Tsaii 4 states that there are several brands of alcoholic and
non-alcoholic beverages in India, differing according to the castes.
The Ksatriya indulge in grape and sugar-cane wine. The Vaigya take
rich wines fermented with yeast. The Buddhists and Brahmans partake
of a syrup of grapes or sugar-cane, which does not share the nature
of any wine. 5 In Jataka No. 183, grape-juice (muddikapanam) of in-
toxicating properties is mentioned.
Huan Yin 6 gives three Sanskrit words for various kinds of wine:
(i) ^ It su-loj *su5-la, Sanskrit sura, explained as rice- wine
1 Ta Tan si yu ki, Ch. 2, p. 8.
2 Not almond-tree, as erroneously translated by JULIEN (Me"moires, Vol. I,
p. 92). Regarding peach and apricot, see below, p. 539.
3 Arische Periode, p. 41.
4 Ta Tan si yu ki, Ch. 2, p. 8 b.
5 S. JULIEN (Me"moires, Vol. I, p. 93) translates wrongly, "qui different tout a
fait du vin distilleV' Distilled wine was then unknown both to the Chinese and in
India, and the term is not in the text. "Distillation of wines" is surely not spoken
of in the Cukranlti, as conceived by B. K. SARKAR (The Sukraniti, p. 157; and Hindu
Sociology, p. 1 66).
6 Yi ts'ie kin yin i, Ch. 24, p. 8 b.
7 This definition is of some importance, for in BOEHTLINGK'S Sanskrit Dictionary
the word is explained as meaning "a kind of beer in ancient times, subsequently,
however, in most cases brandy," which is certainly wrong. Thus also O. SCHRADER'S
speculation (Sprachvergleichung, Vol. II, p. 256), connecting Finno-Ugrian sara,
sur, etc. ("beer") with this word, necessarily falls to the ground. MACDONELL and
KEITH (Vedic Index, Vol. II, p. 458) admit that "the exact nature of surd is not
certain, it may have been a strong spirit prepared from fermented grains and plants,
as Eggeling holds, or, as Whitney thought, a kind of beer or ale." It follows also
from Jataka No. 512 that surd was prepared from rice. In Cosmas' Christian
Topography (p. 362, ed. of Hakluyt Society) we have o7xoo-o6pa ("coconut-
wine"); here sura means "wine," while the first element may be connected with
Arabic ranej or ranj ("coco-nut").
THE GRAPE-VINE 241
(2) If 3B mi-li-ye, *mei-li(ri)-ya, answering to Sanskrit maireya,
explained as a wine mixed from roots, stems, flowers, and leaves. 1
(3) ifc P mo-fa, *mwaS-do, Sanskrit madhu, explained as "grape-
wine" (p'u-t'ao tsiu). The latter word, as is well known, is connected
with Avestan mada (Middle Persian mai, New Persian mei), Greek
jueflv, Latin temetum. Knowledge of grape-wine was conveyed to India
from the West, as we see from the Periplus and Tamil poems alluding
to the importation of Yavana (Greek) wines. 2 In the Raghuvamga
(iv, 65), madhu doubtless refers to grape- wine; for King Raghu van-
quished the Yavana, and his soldiers relieve their fatigue by enjoying
madhu in the vine regions of the Yavana country.
According to W. AiNSLiE, 3 the French at Pondicherry, in spite of the
great heat of the Carnatic, are particularly successful in cultivating
grapes; but no wine is made in India, nor is the fruit dried into raisins
as in Europe and Persia. The Arabians and Persians, particularly the
latter, though they are forbidden wine by the Koran, bestow much
pains on the cultivation of the grape, and suppose that the different
kinds possess distinguishing medicinal qualities. Wine is brought to
India from Persia, where, according to TA VERNIER (1605-89), three
sorts are made: that of Yezd, being very delicate; the Ispahan produce,
being not so good; and the Shiraz, being the best, rich, sweet, and
generous, and being obtained from the small grapes called ki$mi$,
which are sent for sale to Hindustan when dried into raisins. 4 There
are two brands of Shiraz wine, a red and a white, both of which are
excellent, and find a ready market in India. Not less than four thou-
sand tuns of Shiraz wine is said to be annually sent from Persia to
different parts of the world. 5 The greatest quantity is produced in the
district of Korbal, near the village of Bend Emir. 6 In regard to Assam,
1 Compare above (p. 222) the , wine of the Yue-cl. According to BOEHTLINGK,
maireya is an intoxicating drink prepared from sugar and other substances.
2 V. A. SMITH, Early History of India, p. 444 (3d ed.).
3 Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 157.
4 Compare above, p. 231.
8 ' ' Wines too , of every clime and hue,
Around their liquid lustre threw;
Amber Rosolli, the bright dew
From vineyards of the Green-Sea gushing;
And Shiraz wine, that richly ran
As if that jewel, large and rare,
The ruby, for which Kublai-Khan
Offer'd a city's wealth, was blushing
Melted within the goblets there!"
THOMAS MOORE, Lalla Rookh.
6 AINSLEE, I.e., p. 473.
242 SlNO-lRANICA
TA VERNIER* states that there are quantities of vines and good grapes,
but no wine, the grapes being merely dried to distil spirits from. Wild
vine grows in upper Siam and on the Malay Peninsula, and is said to
furnish a rather good wine. 1
A wine-yielding plant of Central Asia is described in the Ku kin u
ifr 4* & 3 by Ts'ui Pao S 15 of the fourth century, as follows: "The
tsiu-pei-t'en SS W (" wine-cup creeper") has its habitat in the West-
ern Regions (Si-yu). The creeper is as large as an arm; its leaves are
like those of the ko 31 (Pachyrhizus thunbergianus, a wild-growing
creeper); flowers and fruits resemble those of the wu-t'un (Sterculia
platanifolia) , and are hard; wine can be pressed out of them. The
fruits are as large as a finger and in taste somewhat similar to the tou-k*ou
]a H (Alpinia globosum); their fragrance is fine, and they help to digest
wine. In order to secure wine, the natives get beneath the creepers,
pluck the flowers, press the wine out, eat the fruit for digestion, and
become intoxicated. The people of those countries esteem this wine,
but it is not sent to China. Can K'ien obtained it when he left Ta-yuan
(Fergana). This affair is contained in the Can K'ien Fu kwan li 36 il
ffi SB iS ('Memoirs of Can K'ien's Journey')-" 4 This account is re-
stricted to the Ku kin lu, and is not confirmed by any other book. Li
Si-Sen's work is the only Pen ts'ao which has adopted this text in an
abridged form. 6 Accordingly the plant itself has never been introduced
into China; and this fact is sufficient to discard the possibility of an
introduction by Can K'ien. If he had done so, the plant would have
been disseminated over China and mentioned in the various early
Pen ts'ao; it would have been traced and identified by our botanists.
Possibly the plant spoken of is a wild vine, possibly another genus.
The description, though by no means clear in detail, is too specific to
be regarded as a mystification.
The history of the grape-vine in China has a decidedly method-
ological value. We know exactly the date of the introduction and
1 Travels in India, Vol. II, p. 282.
2 DILOCK PRINZ VON SIAM, Landwirtschaft in Siam, p. 167.
8 Ch. c, p. 2 b. The text has been adopted by the Su po wu li (Ch. 5, p. 2 b)
and in a much abbreviated form by the Yu yan tsa tsu (Ch. 18, p. 6 b). It is not in
the Pen ts'ao kan mu, but in the Pen ts'ao kan mu Si i (Ch. 8, p. 27).
4 HIRTH (Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 91) states that this
work is mentioned in the catalogue of the library of the Sui dynasty, but not in the
later dynastic catalogues. We do not know when and by whom this alleged book
was written; it may have been an historical romance. Surely it was not produced
by Can K'ien himself.
6 See also T'u Su tsi t'en, XX, Ch. 112, where no other text on the subject is
quoted.
THE GRAPE-VINE 243
the circumstances which accompanied this important event. We have
likewise ascertained that the art of making grape-wine was not learned
by the Chinese before A.D. 640. There are in China several species of
wild vine which bear no relation to the imported cultivated species.
Were we left without the records of the Chinese, a botanist of the
type of Engler would correlate the cultivated with the wild forms and
assure us that the Chinese are original and independent viticulturists.
In fact, he has stated 1 that Vitis thunbergii, a wild vine occurring in
Japan, Korea, and China, seems to have a share in the development of
Japanese varieties of vine, and that Vitis filifolia of North China seems
to have influenced Chinese and Japanese vines. Nothing of the kind
can be inferred from Chinese records, or has ever been established by
direct observation. The fact of the introduction of the cultivated grape
into China is wholly ujnknown to Engler. The botanical notes appended
by him to HEHN'S history of the grape 2 have nothing whatever to do
with the history of the cultivated species, but refer exclusively to wild
forms. It is not botany, but historical research, that is able to solve the
problems connected with the history of our cultivated plants.
Dr. T. TANAKA of the Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department
of Agriculture, Washington, has been good enough to contribute the
following notes on the history of the grape-vine in Japan:
"The early history of the cultivation of the grape-vine (Vitis
vinifera) in Japan is very obscure. Most of the early Japanese medical
and botanical works refer to budo 36 3& (Chinese p*u-t*ao) as ebi, the
name occurring in the Kojiki (compiled in A.D. 712, first printed in
1644) as yebikadzura* which is identified by J. MATSUMURA* as Vitis
vinifera. It seems quite incomprehensible that the grape-vine, which
is now found only in cultivated form, should have occurred during the
mythological period as early as 660 B.C. The Honzd-wamyo ^ ^
fll & (compiled during the period 897~93P, first printed 1796) mentions
o-ebi-kadzura as vine-grape, distinguishing it from ordinary ebi-kadzura,
but the former is no longer in common use in distinction from the latter.
The ebi-dzuru which should correctly be termed inu-ebi (false ebi
plant), as suggested by Ono Ranzan, 5 is widely applied in Japan for
31 JC (Chinese yin-yti), and is usually identified as Vitis thunbergii,
1 Erlauterungen zu den Nutzpflanzen der gemassigten Zonen, p. 30.
8 Kulturpflanzen, pp. 85-91.
1 B. H. CHAMBERLAIN, Ko-ji-ki, p. xxxiv.
4 Botanical Magazine, Tokyo, Vol. VII, 1893, p. 139,
5 Honzd komoku keimS, ed. 1847, Ch. 29, p. 3.
244 SlNO-lRANICA
but is an entirely different plant, with small, deeply-lobed leaves,
copiously villose beneath. Ebi-kadzura is mentioned again in the
Wamyd-ruiju$d ^P & SB 3 $ (compiled during the period 923-931,
first edited in 1617), which gives budo as the fruit of Sikwatsu or Vitis
coignetiae 1 , as growing wild in northern Japan.
"These three plants are apparently mixed up in early Japanese
literature, as pointed out by Arai Kimiyosi. 2 Describing budo as a food
plant, the Honto Sokukan ^ 19 & ISi 3 mentions that the fruit was not
greatly appreciated in ancient times; for this reason no mention was
made of it in the Imperial chronicles, nor has any appropriate Japanese
term been coined to designate the vine-grape proper.
"In the principal vine-grape district of Japan, YamanaSi-ken
(previously called Kai Province), were found a few old records, an
account of which is given in Viscount Y. Fukuba's excellent discourse
on Pomology. 4 An article on the same subject was published by J.
DAUTREMER. 6 This relates to a tradition regarding the accidental dis-
covery by a villager, Amenomiya Kageyu (not two persons), of the vine-
grape in 1186 (Dautremer erroneously makes it 1195) a t the mountain
of Kamiiwasaki Jb $ $$, not far from Kofu Jff. Its cultivation must
have followed soon afterward, for in 1197 a few choice fruits were
presented to the Sogun Yoritomo (1147-99). At the time of Takeda
Harunobu (1521-73) a sword was presented to the Amenomiya family
as a reward for excellent fruits which they presented to the Lord.
Viscount Fukuba saw the original document relative to the official
presentation of the sword, and bearing the date I549- 6 The descendants
of this historical grape-vine are still thriving in the same locality around
the original grove, widely recognized among horticulturists as a true
Vitis vinifera. According to a later publication of Fukuba, 7 there is
but one variety of it. Several introductions of Vitis vinifera took place
in the early Meiji period (beginning 1868) from Europe and America.
"The following species of Vitis are mentioned in Umemura's work
Ino$okukwai-no-$okubutsu-$i ffc Jt $t* *L fil $0 t 8 as being edible:
1 MATSUMURA, Shokubutsu Mei-i, p. 380.
2 Toga jjC $t (completed in 1719), ed. 1906, p. 272.
1 Ch. 4, p. 50 (ed. of 1698).
4 Kwaju engei-ron jf^ HJ H Hj< ffe, privately published in 1892.
6 Situation de la vigne dans 1'empire du Japon, Transactions Asiatic Society of
Japan, Vol. XIV, 1886, pp. 176-185.
6 Fukuba, op. cit., pp. 461-462.
7 Kwaju saibaijenSo ^ tsj Jfc *g ^, Vol. IV, 1896, pp. 119-120.
8 Vol. 4, 1906.
THE GRAPE-VINE 245
" Yama-budO (Vitis coignetiae): fruit eaten raw and used for wine;
leaves substituted for tobacco.
"Ebi-dzuru (V. ihunbergii): fruit eaten raw, leaves cleaned and
cooked; worm inside the cane baked and eaten by children as remedy
for convulsions.
" Sankaku-dzuru (V. flexuosa): fruit eaten raw.
"Ama-dzuru \(V. sacchariferd) : fruit eaten raw; children are very
fond of eating the leaves, as they contain sugar."
THE PISTACHIO
3. Pistacia is a genus of trees or shrubs of the family Anacardiaceae,
containing some six species, natives of Iran and western Asia, and also
transplanted to the Mediterranean region. At least three species
(Pistacia vera, P. terebinthus, and P. acuminatd) are natives of Persia,
and from ancient times have occupied a prominent place in the life of the
Iranians. Pistachio-nuts are still exported in large quantities from
Afghanistan to India, where they form a common article of food among
the well-to-do classes. The species found in Afghanistan and Baluchis-
tan do not cross the Indian frontier. 1 The pistachio (Pistacia vera) in
particular is indigenous to ancient Sogdiana and Khorasan, 2 and still
is a tree of great importance in Russian Turkistan. 3
When Alexander crossed the mountains into Bactriana, the road
was bare of vegetation save a few trees of the bushy terminthus or
terebinthus. 4 On the basis of the information furnished by Alexander's
scientific staff, the tree is mentioned by Theophrastus 5 as growing in
the country of the Bactrians; the nuts resembling almonds in size
and shape, but surpassing them in taste and sweetness, wherefore the
people of the country use them in preference to almonds. Nicandrus
of Colophon 6 (third century B.C.), who calls the fruit /3ioT<kioj> or ^LTTOLKLOV,
a word derived from an Iranian language (see below), says that it grows
in the valley of the Xoaspes in Susiana. Posidonius, Dioscorides, Pliny,
and Galenus know it also in Syria. Vitellius introduced the tree into
Italy; and Flaccus Pompeius, who served with him, introduced it at
the same time into Spain. 7
The youths of the Persians were taught to endure heat, cold, and
rain; to cross torrents and to keep their armor and clothes dry; to
pasture animals, to watch all night in the open air, and to subsist on
wild fruit, as terebinths (Pistacia terebinthus), acorns, and wild pears. 8
1 WATT, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, Vol. VI, p. 268.
8 JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, pp. 47, 76.
* S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), pp. 20, 21.
4 Strabo, XV. n, 10.
5 Hist, plant., IV. iv, 7.
Theriaka, 890.
7 Pliny, xv, 22, 91. A. DE CANDOLLE (Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 316)
traces Pistacia vera only to Syria, without mentioning its occurrence in Persia.
8 Strabo, XV. in, 18.
246
THE PISTACHIO 247
The Persians appeared to the ancients as terebinth-eaters, and this
title seems to have developed into a sort of nickname: when Astyages,
King of the Medians, seated on his throne, looked on the defeat of his
men through the army of Cyrus, he exclaimed, "Woe, how brave are
these terebinth-eating Persians!" 1 According to Polyaenus, 2 terebinth-
oil was among the articles to be furnished daily for the table of the
Persian kings. In the Bundahisn, the pistachio-nut is mentioned to-
gether with other fruits the inside of which is fit to eat, but not the
outside. 1 "The fruits of the country are dates, pistachios, and apples
of Paradise, with other of the like not found in our cold climate." 4
Twan C'en-gi U $ ^, in his Yu yan tsa tsu S il H ffl., written
about A.D. 860 and containing a great amount of useful information
on the plants of Persia and Fu-lin, has the following:
"The hazel-nut (Corylus heterophylla) of the Hu (Iranians), styled
a-yiie H B , grows in the countries of the West. 6 According to the
statement of the barbarians, a-yiie is identical with the hazel-nuts
of the Hu. In the first year the tree bears hazel-nuts, in the second
year it bears a-ytie."*
C'en Ts'aii-k'i W I8t H, who in the K'ai-yuan period (A.D. 713-741)
wrote the Materia Medica Pen ts*ao Si i ^ ^ f& jft, states that "the
fruits of the plant a-yue-hun H ft iS are warm and acrid of flavor,
non-poisonous, cure catarrh of the bowels, remove cold feeling, and
make people stout and robust, that they grow in the western countries,
the barbarians saying that they are identical with the hazel-nut of the
Hu SB t^ ?. During the first year the tree bears hazel-nuts, in the
second year it bears a-yue-hun."
Li Sun ^ #0, in his Hai yao pen ts'ao JS ^ ^ ^ (second half of the
eighth century), states, "According to the Nan tou ki ^ $N 12 by
Su Piao ^ l&, 7 the Nameless Tree (wu min mu ffifc ^ /fC) grows in the
mountainous valleys of Lin-nan (Kwan-tun) . Its fruits resemble in appear-
ance the hazel-nut, and are styled Nameless Fruits (wu min tse $fc
1 Nicolaus of Damaskus (first century B.C.), cited by HEHN, Kulturpflanzen,
p. 424.
* Strategica, IV. m, 32.
8 These fruits are walnut, almond, pomegranate, coconut, filbert, and chestnut.
See WEST, Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 103.
4 MARCO POLO, Yule's edition, Vol. I, p. 97.
6 The editions of the Yu yan tsa tsu write | HJ, "in the gardens of the West";
but the T'u su tsi I* en (section botany, Ch. 311) and Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, in repro-
ducing this text, offer the reading 15 , which seems to me preferable.
6 Yu yan tsa tsujjH ^, Ch. 10, p. 3 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi Su).
7 This work is quoted in the TVi min yao Su, written by Kia Se-niu under the
Hou Wei dynasty (A.D. 386-534).
248 SlNO-lRANICA
?). Persians $& $r IK designate them a-yile-hun fruits." 1 For the same
period we have the testimony of the Arabic merchant Soleiman, who
wrote in A.D. 851, to the effect that pistachios grow in China. 2
As shown by the two forms, a-yue of the Yu yan tsa tsu and a-yue-hun
of the Pen ts'ao $i i and Hai yao pen ts*ao, the fuller form must repre-
sent a compound consisting of the elements a-yue and hun. In order to
understand the transcription a-yue, consideration of the following facts
is necessary.
The Old-Iranian word for the walnut has not been handed down to
us, but there is good evidence to prompt the conclusion that it must
have been of the type *agOza or *afigOza. On the one hand, we have
Armenian engoiz, Ossetic angoza or anguz, and Hebrew egoz; 3 on the
other hand, we meet in Yidgha, a Hindu-Kush language, the form
oguzo, as compared with New Persian koz and goz.* The signification
of this word is "nut" in general, and " walnut" in particular. Further,
there is in Sanskrit the Iranian loan-word dkhota, aksoja, or aksoda,
which must have been borrowed at an early date, as, in the last-named
form, the word occurs twice in the Bower Manuscript. 5 It has survived
in Hindustani as axrdt or dkrot. The actual existence of an East-
Iranian form with the ancient initial a- is guaranteed by the Chinese
transcription a-yue; for a-yiie M H answers to an ancient *a-nwie5
(nw'e5) or *a-gwie5, a-gwu5; 6 and this, in my opinion, is intended to
represent the Iranian word for "nut" with initial a-, mentioned above;
that is, *angwiz, afigwOz, agOz.
Chinese hun answers to an ancient *7wun or wun. In regard
to this Iranian word, the following information may be helpful. E.
1 If it is correct that the transcription a-yue-hun was already contained in the
Nan lou ki (which it is impossible to prove, as we do not possess the text of this
work), the transcription must have been based on an original prototype of early
Sasanian times or on an early Middle- Persian form. This, in fact, is confirmed by
the very character of the Sino-Iranian word, which has preserved the initial a-,
while this one became lost in New Persian. It may hence be inferred that Li Sun's
information is correct, and that the transcription a-yue-hun may really have been
contained in the Nan cou ki, and would accordingly be pre-T'an.
2 M. REINAUD, Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans
1'Inde et a la Chine, Vol. I, p. 22.
3 Whether Georgian nigozi and the local name Nlyovfa of Ptolemy (W.
TOMASCHEK, Pamirdialekte, Sitzber. Wiener Akad., 1880, p. 790) belong here, I do
not feel certain. Cf. HUBSCHMANN, Armenische Grammatik, p. 393.
4 In regard to the elision of initial a in New Persian, see HUBSCHMANN, Persische
Studien, p. 120.
6 HOERNLE'S edition, pp. 32, 90, 121.
6 Regarding the phonetic value of ^ , see the detailed study of PELLIOT (Bull.
de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. V, p. 443) and the writer's Language of the Yue-chi or
Indo-Scythians.
THE PISTACHIO 249
1 speaks of Terebinthus or Pistacea sylvestris in Persia thus:
"Ea Pistaceae hortensi, quam Tfreophrastus Therebinthum Indicam
vocat, turn magnitudine, turn totius ac partium figura persimilis est,
nisi quod flosculos ferat fragrantiores, nuces vero praeparvas, insipidas;
unde a descriptione botanica abstinemus. Copiosa crescit in recessibus
montium brumalis genii, petrosis ac desertis, circa Schamachiam Mediae,
Schirasum Persidis, in Luristano et Larensi territoriis. Mihi nullibi
conspecta est copiosior quam in petroso monte circa Majin, pagum
celebrem, una diaeta dissitum Sjirasd: in quo mihi duplicis varietatis
indicarunt arborem; unam vulgariorem, quae generis sui retineat
appellationem Diracht [diraxt, l tree '] Ben seu Wen; alteram rariorem,
in specie Kasudaan [kasu-dan], vel, ut rustici pronunciant, Kasud&n
dictam, quae a priori fructuum rubedine differat." ROEDIGER and PoxT 2
have added to this ben or wen a Middle-Persian form ven ("wild pista-
chio"). In the Persian Dictionary edited by STEINGASS (p. 200) this
word is given as ban or wan (also banak), with the translation "Persian
turpentine seed." 3 VULLERS* writes it ban. SCHLIMMER S transcribes
this word beneh. He identifies the tree with Pistacia acuminata and
observes, "C'est 1'arbre qui fournit en Perse un produit assez semblable
a la trmentine, mais plut6t mou que liquide, vu qu'on 1'obtient par
des d^coupures, dont le produit se rassemble durant les grandes chaleurs
dans un creux fait en terre glaise au pied de 1'arbre, de facon a ce que la
matiere se'cre'te'e perd une grande partie de son huile essentielle avant
d'etre enleve'e. Le rne'me produit, obtenu a Kerman dans un outre,
fixe a Tarbre et enleve* aussit6t plein, e*tait a peu prs aussi liquide que
la te're'benthine de Venise. ... La Pistacia acuminata est sauvage au
Kordesthan persan et, d'apres Buhse, aussi a Reshm, Damghan et
Dereghum (province de Yezd) ; Haussknecht la vit aussi a Kuh Kiluye
et dans le Luristan."
The same word we meet also in Kurd dariben, dar-i-ben ("the tree
ben"), and in all probability in Greek reptpwdos, older forms rkpiuvQos
and rpe/uflos. 6 Finally WATT* gives a BaluSi word ban, wan, wana, gwa,
1 Amoenitatura exotfcarum fasciculi V, p. 413 (Lemgoviae, 1712).
2 Zeitschr. Kunde d. MorgenL, Vol. V, 1844, p. 64.
3 This notion is also expressed by bandslb (cf. bindst, "turpentine").
4 Lexicon persico-latinum, Vol. I, p. 184.
* Terminologie, p. 465.
6 The Greek ending, therefore, is -0os, not -v8os, as stated by SCHRADER (in
Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, 8th ed., p. 221); n adheres to the stem: tere-bin-Oos.
7 Commercial Products of India, p. 902 ; and Dictionary of the Economic
Products of India, Vol. VI, p. 271.
250 SlNO-lRANICA
gwaw, gwana, for Pistacia mutica (or P. terebinthus, var. mutica); this
form comes nearest to the Chinese transcription.
While a compound *agoz-van(vun), that is, "nut of pistachio," as
far as I know, has not yet been traced in Iranian directly, its existence
follows from the Chinese record of the term. An analogy to this com-
pound is presented by Kurd kizvan, kezvdn, kazu-van, kasu-van ("pista-
chio" or "terebinthus-tree"). 1
The Honzo kdmoku keimo (Ch. 25, fol. 24), written by Ono Ranzan
/h ^ lH ll4, first published in 1804, revised in 1847 by Igu& Bosi #
P il /,, his grandson, mentions the same plant K R j? -?, which
reads in Japanese agetsu-konU. He gives also in Kana the names
fusudasiu or fusudasu.* He states, "The plant is not known in Japan
to grow wild. It used to come from foreign countries, but not so at
present. A book called Zokyohi furoku Ifc %. $L PH" & mentions this
plant, stating that agetsu-kon$i is the fruit of the tree c*a mu ffll ^C
(in Japanese sakuboku) ." 3
*A. JABA, Dictionnaire kurde-francais, p. 333. Cf. above the kasu-ddn of
Kaempfer.
2 These terms are also given by the eminent Japanese botanist MATSUMURA
in his Shokubutsu mei-i (No. 2386), accompanied by the identification Pistacia
vera.
8 This tradition is indeed traceable to an ancient Chinese record, which will be
found in the Cen lei pen ts'ao of 1108 (Ch. 12, p. 55, ed. of 1583). Here the question
is of the bark of the san or I' a tree /{flfl ^C $, mentioned as early as the sixth century
in the Kwan li ^ iS of Kwo Yi-kun as growing in wild country of Kwan-nan
Bf f^J (the present province of K wan-tun and part of Kwan-si), and described in a
commentary of the Er ya as resembling the mulberry-tree. This, of course, is a wild
tree indigenous to a certain region of southern China, but, as far as I know, not yet
identified, presumably as the ancient name is now obsolete. The Nan lou ki by
Su Piao (see above) says that the fruits of this tree are styled wu min tse $$ fa ^
(" nameless fruits"); hence the conclusion is offered by T'an Sen-wei, author of the
Cen lei pen ts'ao, that this is the tree termed a-yue-hun by the Persians (that is, a cul-
tivated Pistacia). This inference is obviously erroneous, as the latter was introduced
from Persia into China either under the T'ang or a few centuries earlier, while the
san or c'a tree pre-existed spontaneously in the Chinese flora. The only basis for this
hazardous identification is given by the attribute "nameless." A solution of this
problem is possible if we remember the fact that there is a wild Pistacia, Pistacia
chinensis, indigenous to China, and if we identify with it the tree san or Va; then it
is conceivable that the wild and the imported, cultivated species were correlated
and combined under the same popular term wu min. MATSUMURA (op. cit., No.
2382) calls P. chinensis in Japanese drenju, adding the characters JjJ $ The word
lien refers in China to Melia azedarach. The modern Chinese equivalent for P.
chinensis is not known to me. The peculiar beauty of this tree, and the great age to
which it lives, have attracted the attention of the indefatigable workers of our
Department of Agriculture, who have already distributed thousands of young trees to
parks throughout the country (see Yearbook of the U. S. Department of Agriculture
1916, p. 140, Washington, 1917). In the English and Chinese Standard Dictionary,
the word "pistachio" is rendered by fei ffi which, however, denotes a quite dif-
THE PISTACHIO 251
G. A. STUART^ has identified a-yiie hun-tse z with Pistacia vera, and
this is confirmed by Matsumura.
The Japanese name fusudasiu or fusudasu is doubtless connected
with Persian pista, from Old Iranian *pistaka, Middle Persian *pistak, 3
from which is derived Greek PHTTCLKIOV, (^ITTCLKLOV, TnartLKiov or \l/iaro.Kiov y
Latin psittacium, and our pistacia or pistachio. It is not known to me,
however, to what date the Japanese word goes back, or through what
channels it was received. In all likelihood it is of modern origin, the
introduction into Japan being due to Europeans.
In Chinese literature, the Persian word appears in the Geography
of the Ming Dynasty, 4 in the transcription [ki-] pi-se-tan [M] 2 19,
stated to be a product of Samarkand, the leaves of the tree resembling
those of the San c'a Ul ^ (Camellia oleifera), and its fruit that of the
yin hin 18 -3F (Salisburia adiantifolia).
The Persian word, further, occurs in the new edition of the Kwan yii
ki, entitled Tsen tin kwan yii ki *" ST R H IB. The original, the Kwan
yii ki, was written by Lu Yin-yan 1^1 JS $if, and published during the
Wan-li period in 1600. The revised and enlarged edition was prepared
by Ts'ai Fan-pin ^ ft fift (hao Kiu-hia A ft) in 1686; a reprint of
this text was issued in 1744 by the publishing-house Se-mei fan H H ^.
Both this edition and the original are before me. The latter 6 mentions
only three products under the heading "Samarkand"; namely, coral,
amber, and ornamented cloth (hwa %ui pn^L^ 'ft* ) . The new edition,
however, has fifteen additional items, the first of these being [ki-]
pi-se-t*an, written as above, 7 stated to be a tree growing in the region
of Samarkand. "The leaves of the tree," it is said, "resemble those
of the san c*a (Camelia oleifera) ; the fruits have the appearance of the
nut-like seeds of the yin hin (Salisburia adiantifolia), but are smaller."
The word pi-se-fan doubtless represents the transcription of Persian
ferent plant, Torreya nucifera. A revival on the part of the Chinese, of the good,
old terms of their own language, would be very desirable, not only in this case, but
likewise in many others.
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 334.
2 Wrongly transcribed by him o-yileh-chun-tzu.
3 These reconstructions logically result from the phonetic history of Iranian,
and are necessitated by the existence of the Greek loan-word. Cf ., further, Byzantine
pustux and fustox, Comanian pistac, and the forms given below (p. 252). Persian
pista is identified with Pistacia vera by SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 465).
4 Ta Min i t'un a, Ch. 89, p. 23.
6 WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 59.
6 Ch. 24, p. 6 b.
7 The addition of ki surely rests on an error (ScHOTT also reads pi-sc-t'an, which
he presumably found in his text; see the following note).
2$2 SlNO-lRANICA
pistdn ("a place abounding with pistachio-nuts"). 1 Again, the Persian
word in the transcription pi-se-ta >& S ^ appears in the Pen ts*ao
kan mu U i 2 by Cao Hio-min, who states that the habitat of the plant
is in the land of the Mohammedans, and refers to the work Yin san
ten yao 3 of 1331, ascribed by him to Hu-pi-lie M. >& 3$; that is, the
Emperor Kubilai of the Yuan dynasty. We know, however, that this
book was written in 1331 by Ho Se-hwi. 4 Not having access to this,
I am unable to state whether it contains a reference to pi-se-ta, nor do
I know whether the text of Cao Hio-min, as printed in the second
edition of 1765, was thus contained in the first edition of his work, which
was published in 1650. It would not be impossible that the tran-
scription pi-se-ta t accurately corresponding to Persian pista, was
made in the Mongol period; for it bears the ear-marks of the Yuan style
of transcription.
The Persian word pista (also pasta) has been widely disseminated:
we find it in Kurd fystiq, Armenian fesdux and fstoiil, Arabic fistaq or
fustaq, Osmanli fistiq? and Russian fistaSka.
In the Yuan period the Chinese also made the acquaintance of
mastic, the resinous product of Pistacia lentiscus* It is mentioned in
the Yin San Zen yao, written in 1331, under its Arabic name mastaki,
in the transcription $1 & % l!f ma-se-ta-ki. 7 Li Si-en knew only the
medical properties of the product, but confessed his ignorance regarding
the nature of the plant; hence he placed his notice of it as an appendix
to cummin (&i-lo). The Wu tsa tsu 3L H 3EL, written in 1610, says that
mastaki is produced in Turkistan and resembles the tsiao W (Zanth-
oxylum y the fruit yielding a pepper-like condiment) ; its odor is very
strong; it takes the place there pjE a condiment like pepper, and is
beneficial to digestion. 8 The Persian word for "mastic" is kundurak
(from kundur, "incense"), besides the Arabic loan-word mastaki or
1 As already recognized by W. SCHOTT (Topographic der Producte des chinesi-
schen Reiches, Abh. Berl.Akad., 1842, p. 371), who made use only of the new edition.
2 Ch. 8, p. 19; ed. of 1765 (see above, p. 229).
8 Cf. above, p. 236.
4 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 213.
6 Hence Pegoletti's fistuchi (YULE, Cathay, new ed. by CORDIER, Vol. Ill,
p. 167).
Greek axlvm (Herodotus, iv, 177).
7 The Arabic word itself is derived from Greek tiaarlxn (from /uaorTafeu', "to
chew"), because the resin was used as a masticatory. Hence also Armenian maz-
tak'e. Spanish oLmdciga is derived from the Arabic, as indicated by the Arabic
article a/, while the Spanish form mdsticis is based on Latin mastix.
8 Quoted in the Pen ts'ao kan mu Si i, Ch. 6, p. 12 b. The digestive property
is already emphasized by Dioscorides (i, 90).
THE PISTACHIO 253
mastaki. 1 The Persianized form is masdax; in Kurd it is mstekki. "On
these mountains the Mastich Tree brings forth plenty of that gum, of
which the country people make good profit. ... As for the Mastick
Trees, they bore red berries, and if wounded would spew out the liquid
resin from the branches; they are not very tall, of the bigness of our
Bully Trees : Whether they bring forth a cod or not, this season would
not inform me, nor can I say it agrees in all respects with the Lentisk
Tree of Clusius." 2 The resin (mastic) occurs in small, irregular, yellowish
tears, brittle, and of a vitreous fracture, but soft and ductile when
chewed. It is used as a masticatory by people of high rank in India to
preserve the teeth and sweeten the breath, and also in the preparation
of a perfume. 8 It is still known in India as the "gum mastic of Rum." 4
The case of the pistachio (and there are several others) is interesting
in showing that the Chinese closely followed the development of Iranian
speech, and in course of time replaced the Middle-Persian terms by the
corresponding New-Persian words.
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 137, 267.
2 JOHN FRYER, New Account of East India and Persia, Vol. II, p. 202 (Hakluyt
Soc., 1912).
8 WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 902.
4 D. C. PHILLOTT, Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. VI, 1910, p. 81.
THE WALNUT
4. The Buddhist dictionary Fan yi min yi tsi H8 a? i& 3fe,
compiled by Fa Yun fe 8, 1 contains a Chinese-Sanskrit name for the
walnut (hu t*ao iK $6, Juglans regia) in the transcription po-lo-$i
M !SI 6$, which, as far as I know, has not yet been identified with its
Sanskrit equivalent. 2 According to the laws established for the Buddhist
transcriptions, this formation is to be restored to Sanskrit paras*,
which I regard as the feminine form of the adjective parasa, meaning
"Persian" (derived from Parsa, "Persia"). The walnut, accordingly,
as expressed by this term, was regarded in India as a tree or fruit sus-
pected of Persian provenience. The designation parasi for the walnut
is not recorded in Boehtlingk's Sanskrit Dictionary, which, by the way,
contains many other lacunes. The common Sanskrit word for "walnut "
is dkhota, aksoja, ak$osa* which for a long time has been regarded as
a loan-word received from Iranian. 4
Pliny has invoked the Greek names bestowed on this fruit as testi-
mony for the fact that it was originally introduced from Persia, the
1 Ch. 24, p. 27 (edition of Nanking). BUNYIU NANJIO (Catalogue of the
Buddhist Tripitaka, No. 1640) sets the date of the work at 1151. WYLIE (Notes on
Chinese Literature, p. 210) and BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 94) say that it
was completed in 1143. According to S. JULIEN (Me"thode, p. 13), it was compiled
from 1143 to 1157.
1 BRETSCHNEIDER (Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, Chinese
Recorder, Vol. Ill, 1871, p. 222) has given the name after the Pen ts'aokan mu, but
has left it without explanation.
3 The last-named form occurs twice in the Bower Manuscript (HOERNLE'S
edition, pp. 32, 90, 121). In Hindustani we have axrot or akrot.
4 F. SPIEGEL, Arische Periode, p. 40. The fact that the ancient Iranian name for
the walnut is still unknown does not allow us to explain the Sanskrit word satisfac-
torily. Its relation to Hebrew egoz, and Persian koz, goz (see below), is perspicuous.
Among the Hindu-Kush languages, we meet in Yidgha the word oghuzoh (J. BIDDULPH,
Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, Appendices, p. CLXVII), which appears as a missing
link between Sanskrit on the one hand and the Semitic-Armenian forms on the other
hand: hence we may conjecture that the ancient Iranian word was something like
*agoza, angoza; and this supposition is fully confirmed by the Chinese transcription
a-yiie (above, p. 248). Large walnuts of India are mentioned by the traveller C'an
Te toward the middle of the thirteenth century (BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval
Researches, Vol. I, p. 146). The walnuts of the province of Kusistan in Persia, which
are much esteemed, are sent in great quantities to India (W. AINSLIE, Materia
Indica, Vol. I, p. 464).
254
THE WALNUT 255
best kinds being styled in Greek Persicum and basilicon, 1 and these being
the actual names by which they first became known in Italy. 2 Pliny
himself employs the name nuces iuglandes. Although Juglans regia is
indigenous to the Mediterranean region, the Greeks seem to have
received better varieties from anterior Asia, hence Greek names like
Kapva irepcriKCL or Kapva (nvwirLKa. 3
In fact, Juglans regia grows spontaneously in northern Persia and
in Baluchistan; it has been found in the valleys of the Pskem and
Ablatun at altitudes varying from 1000 to 1500 m. Another species
(Juglans pterocarpa, (( Juglans with winged fruits") is met in the prov-
inces of Ghilan and Mazanderan and in the vicinity of Astrabad. 4
A. ENGLER S states that the walnut occurs wild also in eastern Afghanis-
tan at altitudes of from 2200 to 2800 m. Ibn Haukal extols the walnuts
of Arrajan, Muqaddasl those of Kirman, and Istaxri those of the
province of Jlruft. 6
In Fergana, Russian Turkistan, the walnut is cultivated in gardens;
but the nuts offered for sale are usually derived from wild-growing trees
which form complete forests in the mountains. 7 According to A. STEIN,*
walnuts abound at Khotan. The same explorer found them at Yiil-arik
and neighboring villages. 9
1 That is, "Persian nut" and "nut of the king," respectively, the king being
the Basileus of Persia. These two designations are also given by Dioscorides (i, 178).
2 Et has e Perside regibus translatas indicio sunt Graeca nomina: optimum
quippe genus earum Persicum atque basilicon vocant, et haec fuere prima nomina
(Nat. hist., xv, 22, 87).
3 J. HOOPS, Waldbaume und Kulturpflanzen, p. 553. The Romans transplanted
the walnut into Gallia and Germania during the first centuries of our era. Numerous
walnuts have been brought to light from the wells of the Saalburg, testifying to
the favor in which they were held by the Romans. The cultivation of the tree is
commended in Charles the Great's Capitulare de villis and Garden Inventories.
Its planting in Gaul is shown by the late Latin term nux gallica, Old French nois
gauge, which survives in our "walnut" (German walnuss, Danish valnod, Old Norse
valhnot, Anglo-Saxon wealh-hnutu) ; walk, wal, was the Germanic designation of the
Celts (derived from the Celtic tribe Volcae), subsequently transferred to the Romanic
peoples of France and Italy.
4 C. JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 44. Joret (p. 92) states that the
Persians cultivated nut-trees and consumed the nuts, both fresh and dried. The
walnut is twice mentioned in the Bundahisn among the fruits serving as food, and
among fruits the inside of which is fit to eat, but not the outside (WEST, Pahlavi
Texts, Vol. I, pp. 101, 103; cf. also p. 275).
6 Erlauterungen zu den Nutzpflanzen der gemassigten Zonen, p. 22.
6 P. SCHWARZ, Iran im Mittelalter, pp. 114, 218, 241.
7 S. KORZINSKI, Sketches of the Flora of Turkistan, in Russian (Memoirs Imp.
Russ. Ac., 8th ser., Vol. IV, No. 4, pp. 39, 53).
8 Ancient Khotan, Vol. I, p. 131.
9 Ruins of Desert Cathay, Vol. I, p. 152.
256 SlNO-lRANICA
The New-Persian name for the walnut is koz and goz. 1 According
to HUBSCHMANN, this word comes from Armenian. 2 The Armenian word
is 8ngoiz; in the same category belongs Hebrew egoz, 3 Ossetic angoza,
Yidghal oyuza, Kurd egwz, Gruzinian nigozi.* The Persian word we
meet as a loan in Turkish koz and xoz. b
The earliest designation in Chinese for the cultivated walnut is hu
t*ao ffl ft ("peach of the Hu" : Hu being a general term for peoples of
Central Asia, particularly Iranians) . As is set forth in the Introduction,
the term hu ip prefixed to a large number of names of cultivated plants
introduced from abroad. The later substitution hu or ho t'ao t^ $6
signifies " peach containing a kernel," or "seed-peach," so called because,
while resembling a peach when in the husk, only the kernel is eaten. 6
In view of the wide dissemination of the Persian word, the question
might be raised whether it would not be justifiable to recognize it also
in the Chinese term hu t'ao fiS ft, although, of course, in the first line it
means "peach of the Hu (Iranians)." There are a number of cases
on record where Chinese designations of foreign products may simulta-
neously convey a meaning and represent phonetic transcriptions.
When we consider that the word hu SB was formerly possessed of an
initial guttural sonant, being sounded *gu (?u) or *go, 7 the possibility
that this word might have been chosen in imitation of, or with especial
regard to, an Iranian form of the type goz, cannot be denied: the two-
fold thought that this was the "peach styled go" and the "peach of the
Go or Hu peoples" may have been present simultaneously in the minds
of those who formed the novel term; but this is merely an hypothesis,
which cannot actually be proved, and to which no great importance is
to be attached.
1 Arabic joz; Middle Persian joz, joj. Kurd gvnz (guvnz), from govz, gdz (SociN,
Grundr. iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 268). Sariqoll ghauz (SHAW, Journal As. Soc.
Bengal, 1876^.267). PuStu ughz, waghz. Another Persian designation for " walnut "
is girdu or girdgan.
2 Grundr. iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 8; Armen. Gram., p. 393.
8 Canticle vi, 10. Cf. Syriac gauza.
4 W. MILLER, Sprache der Osseten, p. 10; HUBSCHMANN, Arm. Gram., p. 393.
5 RADLOFF, Worterbuch der Turk-Dialecte, Vol. II, col. 628, 1710. In Osmanli
jeviz.
6 The term ho t*ao is of recent date. It occurs neither under the T'ang nor
under the Sung. It is employed in the Kwo su ^ S, a work on garden-fruits by
Wan Si-mou EE tfr J|, who died in 1591, and in the Pen ts'ao kan mu. The latter
remarks that the word ho /^ is sounded in the north like hu ^ , and that the sub-
stitution thus took place, citing a work Min wu ci & $} jfe as the first to apply
this term.
7 Compare Japanese go-ma $} jftc and go-fun j$ %fr .
THE WALNUT 257
There is a tradition to the effect that the walnut was introduced
into China by General Can K'ien. 1 This attribution of the walnut to
Can K'ien, however, is a purely retrospective thought, which is not
contained in the contemporaneous documents of the Han Annals. There
are, in fact, as we have seen, only two cultivated plants which can
directly be credited to the mission of Can K'ien to the west, the
grape and the alfalfa. All others are ascribed to him in subsequent
books. BRETSCHNEIDER, in his long enumeration of Can-K'ien plants, 2
has been somewhat uncritical in adopting the statements of such a
recent work as the Pen ts'ao kan mu without even taking pains to ex-
amine the sources there referred to. This subject requires a renewed
critical investigation for each particular plant. As regards the walnut,
Bretschneider was exposed to singular errors, which should be rectified,
as they have passed into and still prominently figure in classical botani-
cal and historical books of our time. According to Bretschneider, the
walnut was brought from K'iang-hu ^1 W, and "K'iang" was at the
time of the Han dynasty the name for Tibet. There is, of course, no
such geographical name as "K'ian-hu"; but we have here the two
ethnical terms, "K'iafi" and "Hu," joined into a compound. More-
over, the K'iafi (anciently *Gian) of the Han period, while they may
be regarded as the forefathers of the subsequent Tibetan tribes, did
not inhabit the country which we now designate as Tibet; and the term
"Hu" as a rule does not include Tibetans. What is said in this respect
in the Pen ts'ao kan mu* is vague enough: it is a single sentence culled
from the Tu kin pen ts'ao iK * 3 of Su Sun M ffi (latter part of
the eleventh century) of the Sung period, which reads, "The original
habitat of this fruit was in the countries of the K'iafi and the Hu"
(Jib ^ ^ ffi ^ fiH). Any conclusion like an introduction of the walnut
from "Tibet" cannot be based on this statement.
Bretschneider's first victim was the father of the science of historical
and geographical botany, A. DE CANDOLLE/ who stated, referring to
him as his authority, "Chinese authors say that the walnut was
introduced among them from Tibet, under the Han dynasty, by Chang-
1 The first to reveal this tradition from the Pen ts'ao kan mu was W. SCHOTT
(Abh. Berl. Akad., 1842, p. 270).
2 Chinese Recorder, 1871, pp. 221-223; and Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 25. Likewise
Hirth, Toung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439. Also GILES (Biographical Dictionary, p. 12)
connects the walnut with Can K'ien.
3 Ch. 30, p. 1 6.
4 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 427.
258 SlNO-lRANICA
kien, about the year 140-150 B.C." 1 In Hehn's " Kulturpflanzen "*
we still read in a postscript from the hand of the botanist A. ENGLER,
"Whether the walnut occurs wild in North China may be doubted, as
according to Bretschneider it is said to have been imported there from
Tibet." As will be seen below, a wild-growing species of Juglans is
indeed indigenous to North China. As to the alleged feat of Can K'ien,
the above-mentioned Su Sun, who lived during the Sung period in the
latter part of the eleventh century, represents the source of this purely
traditional opinion recorded by Bretschneider. Su Sun, after the above
statement, continues, "At the time of the Han, when Can K'ien was
sent on his mission into the Western Regions, he first obtained the
seeds of this fruit, which was then planted in Ts'in (Kan-su) ; at a later
date it gradually spread to the eastern parts of our country; hence it
was named hu t* ao." 3 Su Sun's information is principally based on the
Pen ts*ao of the Kia-yu period (1056-64) H Sft -fit K > ^; this work
was preceded by the Pen ts'ao of the K'ai-pao period (968-976) ?M S
^ ^; and in the latter we meet the assertion that Can K'ien should
have brought the walnut along from the Western Regions, but cautiously
preceded by an on dit (2*) . 4 The oldest text to which I am able to trace
this tradition is the Po wu U fil %} ; of Can Hwa 5i ^ (A.D. 23 2-300). 5
The spurious character of this work is well known. The passage, at any
rate, existed, and was accepted in the Sung period, for it is reproduced
in the T'ai p'in yu Ian. 6 We even find it quoted in the Buddhist dic-
tionary Yi ts'ie kin yin i~~ ty f H H, 7 compiled by Yuan Yin 7C M
about A.D. 649, so that this tradition must have been credited in the
1 Besides Bretschneider's article in the Chinese Recorder, de Candolle refers to
a letter of his of Aug. 23, 1881, which shows that Bretschneider had not changed
his view during that decade. Needless to add, that Can K'ien never was in Tibet,
and that Tibet as a political unit did not exist in his time. Two distinct traditions
are welded together in Bretschneider's statement.
* Eighth edition (1911), p. 400.
* en lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 23, p. 45 (edition of 1521). G. A. STUART (Chinese
Materia Medica, p. 223) regards the "Tangut country about the Kukunor" as the
locality of the tree pointed out in the Pen ts'ao.
4 The text of the K'ai-pao pen ts'ao is not reproduced in the Pen ts'ao kan mu>
but will be found in the Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 17, p. 33. T'an Sen-wei |!f tR {5&>
in his en lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 23, p. 44 b), has reproduced the same text in his own
name.
>mm H it lb (or g) m m m (Ch. 6, p. 4, of the Wu-c"an
print).
* Ch. 971, p. 8.
7 Ch. 6, p. 8 b (ed. of Nanking). In this text the pomegranate and grape are
added to the walnut. In the same form, the text of the Po wu li is cited in the modern
editions of the 7V min yao Su (Ch. 10, p. 4).
THE WALNUT 259
beginning of the Tang dynasty. It is not impossible, however, that
this text was actually written by Can Hwa himself, or at least that the
tradition underlying it was formed during the fourth century; for, as
will be seen, it is at that time that the walnut is first placed on record.
Surely this legend is not older than that period, and this means that
it sprang into existence five centuries after Can K'ien's lifetime. It
should be called to mind that the Po wu ci entertains rather fantastic
notions of this hero, and permits him to cross the Western Sea and even
to reach Ta Ts'in. 1 It is, moreover, the Po wu ci which also credits to
Can K'ien the introduction of the pomegranate and of ta or hu swan
^C (S3 ) IS or hu i (Allium scorodoprasum) . 2 Neither is this tradition
contained in the texts of the Han period. The notion that Can K'ien
really introduced the walnut in the second century B.C. must be posi-
tively rejected as being merely based on a retrospective and unauthentic
account. 3
The question now arises, Is there any truth in Su Sun's allegation
that the walnut was originally produced in the country of the K'iaii?
Or, in other words, are we entitled to assume the co-existence of two
Chinese traditions, first, that the walnut was introduced into China
from the regions of the Hu (Iranians) ; and, second, that another intro-
duction took place from the land of the K'iaii, the forefathers of the
Tibetans? 4 There is indeed an ancient text of the Tsin period from the
first part of the fourth century, one of the earliest datable references
to the walnut, in which its origin from the K'ian is formally admitted.
This text is preserved in the T*ai p'in yu Ian as follows:
"The mother of Liu T'ao f'J i@, 5 in her reply to the letter of Yu
SI , princess of the country of Wu ^ 13, said, 'In the period Hien-ho
Jfc ?P (A.D. 326-335, of the Tsin dynasty) I escaped from the rebellion
1 Ch. i, p. 3 b.
2 See below, p. 302.
3 The tan-K'ien legend is also known in Korea (Korea Review, Vol. II, 1902,
P. 393)-
4 The term k'ian t'ao ^ $6 for the walnut is given, for instance, in the Hwa
kin Jfc H , "Mirror of Flowers" (Ch. 3, p. 49), written by C'en Hao-tse ffi f||
-J* in 1688. He gives as synonyme also wan swi tse^jjf He -J- ("fruits of ten thousand
years"). The term k'ian t'ao is cited also in the P'ei wen lai kwan k'iln fan p'u
(Ch. 58, p. 24; regarding this work cf. BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 70), and in
the P'an San li jj| [I] J& (Ch.is, p. 2 b; published in 1755 by order of K'ien-luh).
5 The T'u su tsi e'en and Kwan k'iin fan p*u (Ch. 58, p. 25) write this name Niu
Hfc. The Ko li kin yuan (Ch. 76, p. 5), which ascribes this text to the Tsin su, gives
it as S. The Tan Sun pai k'un leu t'ie Jjf 7JC & ft ^C iffi (Ch. 99, p. 12) has, "The
mother of Liu T'ao of the Tsin dynasty said, in reply to a state document, 'walnuts
were originally grown in the country of the Western K'ian. 1 "
260 SlNO-lRANICA
of Su Tsun Hit ift 1 into the Lin-nan mountains E! : Ul. The country
of Wu sent a messenger with provisions, stating in the accompanying
letter: 'These fruits are walnuts $) $fc and fei-tah ^ I8. 2 The latter
come from southern China. The walnuts were originally grown abroad
among the Western K'iafi (fi^tt^^S^^S). Their exterior is hard,
while the interior is soft and sweet. Owing to their durability I wish to
present them to you as a gift.' " 3 It is worthy of note, that, while the
walnut is said in this text to hail from the Western K'ian, the term
hu fao (not k'ian t'ao) is employed; so that we may infer that the intro-
duction of the fruit from the Hu preceded in time the introduction
from the K'ian. It is manifest also that in this narrative the walnut
appears as a novelty.
The Tibetan name of the walnut in general corresponds to a type
tar-ka, as pronounced in Central Tibetan, written star-ka, star-ga,
and dar-sga* The last-named spelling is given in the Polyglot Dic-
tionary of K'ien-lun, 5 also in Jaschke's Tibetan Dictionary. The element
ka or ga is not the well-known suffix used in connection with nouns, 6
but is an independent base with the meaning "walnut," as evidenced
by Kanaurl ka (" walnut"). 7 The various modes of writing lead to a
restitution */ar, dar, d'ar (with aspirate sonant). This word is found
also in an Iranian dialect of the Pamir: in Waxi the walnut is called
1 He died in A.D. 328. His biography is in the Tsin Su, Ch. 100, p. 9. See also
L. WIEGER, Textes historiques, p. 1086.
2 Literally, "flying stalk of grain." Bretschneider and Stuart do not mention
this plant. Dr. T. Tanaka, assistant in the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department
of Agriculture, Washington, tells me that fei-Zan is a synonyme of the fingered citrus
(fu Sou kan $$ ^ iftj", Citrus chirocarpus) . He found this statement in the Honzo
komoku keimd (Ch. 26, p. 18, ed. 1847) by Ono Ranzan, who on his part quotes the
T'un ya $1 $| by Fan I-&.
3 The Tai p'in yu Ian reads *S ^ 5? C # $ M The Tan Sun pai k'un
leu fie and the Tu S'u tsi ten, however, have ?Hl"&!lflfc^^S' " tn eir
substance resembles the ancient sages, and I wish to present them," apparently a
corruption of the text.
4 W. W. ROCKHILL (Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet, p. 340)
gives taga as pronunciation in eastern Tibet. J. D. HOOKER (Himalayan Journals,
p. 237) offers taga-$in (Sin, "tree") as Bhutia name.
5 Ch. 28, p. 55.
6 SCHIEFNER, Melanges asiatiques, Vol. I, pp. 380-382.
7 Given both by T. R. JOSHI (Grammar and Dictionary of the Kanawari Lan-
guage, p. 80) and T. G. BAILEY (Kanauri-English Vocabulary, Journal Royal As.
Soc., 1911, p. 332). Bailey adds to the word also the botanical term Juglans regia.
The same author, further, gives a word ge as meaning "kernel of walnut; edible part
of Pinus gerardiana"; while Joshi (p. 67) explains the same word as the "wild
chestnut." Thus it seems that ge, ka, originally referred to an indigenous wild-grow-
ing fruit, and subsequently was transferred to the cultivated walnut.
THE WALNUT 261
tar. 1 This apparently is a loan-word received from the Tibetan, for in
Sariqoll and other Pamir dialects we find the Iranian word ghoz. 2
Tarka is a genuine Tibetan word relating to the indigenous walnut,
wild and cultivated, of Tibetan regions. In view of this state of affairs,
it is certainly possible that the Chinese, in the beginning of the fourth
century or somewhat earlier, received walnuts and their seeds also
from Tibetan tribes, which resulted in the name K'ian t*ao. The
Lepcha of Sikkim are acquainted with the walnut, for which they have
an indigenous term, kdl-pdt, and one of their villages is even called
"Walnut-Tree Foundation" (Kol-ban). 3
G. WATT 4 informs us that the walnut-tree occurs wild and cultivated
in the temperate Himalaya and Western Tibet, from Kashmir and
Nubra eastwards. W. ROXBURGH B says about Juglans regia, "A native
of the mountainous countries immediately to the north and north-east
of Hindustan, on the plains of Bengal it grows pretty well, but is not
fruitful there." Another species of the same genus, /. plerococca Roxb.,
is indigenous in the vast forests which cover the hills to the north and
east of the province of Silhet, the bark being employed for tanning, while
J. regia is enlisted among the oil-yielding products. 6 J. D. HOOKER*
is authority for the information that the walnut occurs wild in Sikkim,
and is cultivated in Bhutan, where also Captain TURNER S found it
growing in abundance. KiRKPATRiCK 9 met it in Nepal. In Burma it
grows in the Ava Hills. In the Shan states east of Ava grows another
species of Juglans, with smaller, almost globose, quite smooth nuts,
but nothing is known about the tree itself. 10
The Tibetans certainly cultivate the walnut and appreciate it
1 R. B. SHAW, On the Ghalchah Languages (Journal As. Soc. Bengal, 1876,
p. 267), writes the word tor. A. HUJLER (The Languages Spoken in the Western
Pamir, p. 36, Copenhagen, 1912) writes tar, explaining the letter a as a "dark deep a,
as in the French pas."
2 W. TOMASCHEK (Pamirdialekte, p. 790) has expressed the opinion that WaxJ
tor, as he writes, is hardly related to Tibetan star-ga; this is not correct.
3 G. MAINWARING, Dictionary of the Lepcha Language, p. 30.
4 Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, Vol. IV, p. 550.
5 Flora Indica, p. 670.
6 N. G. MUKERJI, Handbook of Indian Agriculture, p. 233.
7 Himalayan Journals, p. 235; also RISLEY, Gazetteer of Sikkim, p. 92 (compare
DARWIN, Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. I, p. 445).
8 Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, p. 273. Also EDEN
and PEMBERTON (Political Missions to Bootan, p. 198, Calcutta, 1895) mention
the walnut in Bhutan.
9 Account of Nepaul, p. 81.
30 S. KURZ, Forest Flora of British Burma, Vol. II, p. 490 (Calcutta, 1877).
262 SlNO-lRANICA
much. The tree is found everywhere in eastern Tibet where horti-
culture is possible, and among the Tibetan tribes settled on the soil
of Se-S'wan Province. W. W. RocKHiLL 1 even mentions that in the
Ba-t'an region barley and walnuts are used in lieu of subsidiary coinage.
Lieut.-Col. WADDELL* makes two references to cultivated walnut-trees
in Central Tibet. The Chinese authors mention "Tibetan walnuts"
as products of the Lhasa district. 8
While the Cah-K'ien tradition is devoid of historical value, and
must be discarded as an historical fact, yet it is interesting from a
psychological point of view; for it shows at least that, at the time when
this fiction sprang into existence, the Chinese were under the impression
that the walnut was not an indigenous tree, but imported from abroad.
An autochthonous plant could not have been made the object of such a
legend. A direct reference to the introduction of the cultivated walnut
with an exact date is not extant in Chinese records, but the fact of such
an introduction cannot reasonably be called into doubt. It is supported
not only by the terms hu Vao and k'ian fao (" peach of the Hu," "peach
of the K'iah"), but also by the circumstantial evidence that in times
of antiquity, and even under the Han, no mention is made of the
walnut. True it is, it is mentioned in the Kin kwei yao lio of the second
century; but, as stated, this may be an interpolation. 4 Of all the data
relating to this fruit, there is only one that may have a faint chance to
be referred to the Han period, but even this possibility is very slight.
In the Si kin tsa ki S f H ffi 5 it is said that in the gardens of the
Saii-lin Park _L $fc #B of the Han emperors there were walnuts which
had come from the Western Regions or Central Asia. The Si kin tsa ki t
however, is the work of Wu Kun ^1 ^, who lived in the sixth century
A.D., 8 and cannot be regarded as a pure source for tracing the culture
of the Han. It is not difficult to see how this tradition arose. When the
San-lin Park was established, the high dignitaries of the empire were
called upon to contribute famed fruits and extraordinary trees of distant
lands. We know that after the conquest of Nan-yue in in B.C. the
Emperor Wu ordered southern products, like oranges, areca-nuts,
1 Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet, p. 347.
s Lhasa and its Mysteries, pp. 307, 315. See also N. V. KtiNER, Description of
Tibet (in Russian), Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 137.
1 ROCKHILL, Journal Royal As. Soc., 1891, p. 273.
4 Above, p. 205. Can Ki says or is made to say, "Walnuts must not be eaten in
large quantity, for they rouse mucus and cause man to drink" (Ch. c, p. 27).
6 Ch. I, p. 6 (ed. of Han Wei ts'un $u).
8 WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 189; and CHAVANNES, TOUHI Pa*,
1906, p. 102.
THE WALNUT 263
lun nan, li-ti, etc., to be brought to the capital C'an-nan, and to be
planted in the Fu-li Palace $c H ST, founded in commemoration of the
conquest of Nan-yue, whereupon many gardeners lost their lives when
the crops of the li-ti proved a failure. 1 Several of his palaces were named
for the fruits cultivated around them: thus there were a Grape-Palace
and a Pear-Palace. Hence the thought that in this exposition of foreign
fruits the walnut should not be wanting, easily impressed itself on the
mind of a subsequent writer. Wu Kun may also have had knowledge
of the Can-K'ien tradition of the Po wu ti, and thus believed himself
consistent in ascribing walnuts to the Han palaces. Despite his ana-
chronism, it is interesting to note Wu Kun's opinion that the walnut
came from Central Asia or Turkistan.
It is not probable that the walnut was generally known in China
earlier than the fourth century A.D., under the Eastern Tsin 3fC S
dynasty (265-41 9).* In the Tsin kun ko min S *& Bl ^fe, a description
of the palaces of the Tsin emperors, written during that dynasty, 3 it is
stated that there were eighty-four walnut-trees in the Hwa-lin Park
1 The palace Fu-li was named for the li-li $& $ (see Sanfu hwan t'u H $jf JS
, Ch. 3, p. 9 b, ed. of Han Wei ts'un $u).
8 BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 39) asserts that Juglans regia figures
among the plants mentioned passingly in the Nan fan ts'ao mu twan by Ki Han
ff ^, a minister of state under the Emperor Hui l of the Tsin dynasty
(A.D. 290-306) . He does not give any particulars. There are only two allusions to the
walnut, that I am able to trace in this work: in the description of the coco-nut,
the taste of this fruit is likened to that of the walnut; and the flavor of the "stone
chestnut" (5i-li ^J JH, Alcurites triloba) is compared with that of the same fruit.
We know at present that the book in question contains interpolations of later date
(see L. AUROUSSEAU, Bull, de l'Ecolefran$aise, Vol. XIV, 1914, p. 10); but to these
the incidental mention of the walnut does not necessarily belong, as Ki Han lived
under the Tsin. It is likewise of interest that the walnut is not dealt with as a special
item in the Ts'i min yao $u, a work on husbandry and economic botany, written by
Kia Se-niu jf ,> $$ of the Hou Wei dynasty (A.D. 386-534) ; see the enumeration
of plants described in this book in BRETSCHNEIDER (op. cit., p. 78). In this case, the
omission does not mean that the tree was unknown to the author, but it means only
that it had then not attained any large economic importance. It had reached the
palace-gardens, but not the people. In fact, Kia Se-niu, at least in one passage
(Ch. 10, p. 48 b, ed. 1896), incidentally mentions the walnut in a quotation from the
Kiao lou ki $ #1 ffi by Liu Hin-k'i 24 $ $J, where it is said, "The white yuan
tree j ^fctsj [ evidently = |^fc] is ten feet high, its fruits being sweeter and finer
than walnuts j $6." As the Kiao lou ki is a work relating to the products of
Annam, it is curious, of course, that it should allude to the cultivated walnut, which
is almost absent in southern China and Annam; thus it is possible that this clause
may be an interpolation, but possibly it is not. The fact that the same work like-
wise contains the tradition connecting the walnut with Can K'ien has been pointed
out above. The tree pai yuan is mentioned again in the Pen ts*ao kan mu 3r i (Ch. 8,
p. 23), where elaborate rules for the medicinal employment of the fruit are given.
8 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 202, No. 945.
264 SlNO-lRANICA
^ ^ H. 1 Another allusion to the walnut relative to the period Hien-ho
(A.D. 326-335) has been noted above (p. 259). There is, further, a refer-
ence to the fruit in the history of Su 13 , when, after the death of Li Hiufi
^ it in A.D. 334, Han Pao $$ 15 from Fu-fun ^ ft in Sen-si
was appointed Grand Tutor (t'ai fu Jt fil) of his son Li K'i ^ ffiJ, and
asked the latter to grant him seeds for the planting of walnut-trees,
which, on account of his advanced age, he was anxious to have in his
garden. 2
During the third or fourth century, the Chinese knew also that
walnuts grew in the Hellenistic Orient. "In Ta Ts'in there are jujubes,
jasmine, and walnuts," it is stated in the Wu Si wai kwo ci ^ B^ 9\>
@ ; ("Memoirs of Foreign Countries at the time of the Wu"). 3
The Kwan ci 9c i by Kwo Yi-kun tf Jl 3^ 4 contains the following
account: "The walnuts of C'en-ts'an Ef Jt 5 have a thin shell and a
large kernel; those of Yin-p'in ^ Z P 6 are large, but their shells are brittle,
and, when quickly pinched, will break." 7
Coming to the T'ang period, we encounter a description of the
walnut in the Yu yan tsa tsu It Bl H $&., written about A.D. 86o, 8 from
which the fact may be gleaned that the fruit was then much cultivated
1 Tai p'in yu Ian, I.e.
2 This story is contained in the Kwan wu kin ki Hf 3 ff IS (according to
BRETSCHNEIDER, a work of the Sung literature). As the text is embodied in the
T'ai p'in yu Ian, it must have been extant prior to A.D. 983, the date of Li Fan's
cyclopaedia.
3 Presumably identical with the Wu si wai kwo cwan noted by PELLIOT (Bull, de
VEcole fran^aise, Vol. IV, p. 270) as containing information secured by the mission
of K'ari T'ai in the first part of the third century A.D. Cf. also Journal asiatique,
1918, II, p. 24. The Min Si ascribes walnuts to Ormuz (BRETSCHNEIDER, Notices
of the Mediaeval Geography, p. 294).
4 This work is anterior to the year A.D. 527, as it is cited in the Svri kin lu of
Li Tao-yuan, who died in that year. Kwo Yi-kun is supposed to have lived under
the Tsin (A.D. 265-419). Cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$ aise, Vol. IV, p. 412.
6 Now the district of Pao-ki in the prefecture of Fun-sian, Sen-si Province.
6 At the time of the Han period, Yin-p'in was the name for the present prefec-
ture of Lufi-nan f| ^ in the province of Se-2'wan. There was also a locality of the
same name in the prefecture of Kiai in the province of Kan-su, inhabited by the Ti,
a Tibetan tribe (CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1905, p. 525).
7 Tai p'in yu Ian, 1. c.; Ko ci kin yuan, Ch. 76, p. 5; Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, I. c.
This text is cited also by Su Sun in his T'u kin pen ts'ao. The earliest quotation
that I can trace of it occurs in the Pei hu lu, written by Twan Kun-lu about A.D.
875 (Ch. 3, p. 4 b, ed. of Lu Sin-yuan), where, however, only the last clause in regard
to the walnuts of Yin-p'in is given (see below, p. 268).
8 PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 375. The text is in the T'u Su tsi I'en and
Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao (I. c.). I cannot trace it in the edition of the Yu yan tsa tsu in
the Tsin tai pi Su or Pai hai.
THE WALNUT 265
in the northern part of China (ft ~H & S ), a statement repeated
in the K*ai-pao pen ts'ao. The Yu yah tsa tsu, which is well informed
on the cultivated plants of Western and Central Asia, does not contain
the tradition relating to Can K'ien, but, on the other hand, does not
speak of the tree as a novel introduction, nor does it explain its name.
It begins by saying that "the kernel of the walnut is styled 'toad'
ha-mo ffilll." 1
Mon Sen j ffc, who in the second half of the seventh century wrote
the Si liao pen ts*ao? warns people from excessive indulgence in walnuts
as being injurious to health. 3 The T*ai p'ih hwan yu ki ;fc ^ 5 ? IS,
by Yo Si IB J& (published during the period T'ai-p'in, A.D. 976-981),
mentions the walnut as being cultivated in the prefecture of Fun-sian
JBL & in Sen-si Province, and in Kian 6ou $ $\ in San-si Province. 4
According to the Pen ts'ao kah mu, the term hu t'ao first appears in
the Pen ts'ao of the K'ai-pao period (968-976) of the Sung dynasty,
written by Ma Ci $1 j; that is to say, the plant or its fruit was then
officially sanctioned and received into the pharmacopoeia for the first
time. We have seen that it was certainly known prior to that date.
K'ou Tsun-si ?S ^ I?, in his Pen ts*ao yen i ^ ^ ffr SI of m6, 5 has a
notice on the medicinal application of the fruit.
It is possible also to trace in general the route which the walnut has
taken in its migration into China. It entered from Turkistan into
Kan-su Province, as stated by Su Sun (see above, p. 258), and gradually
spread first into Sen-si, and thence into the eastern provinces, but always
remained restricted to the northern part of the country. Su Sun ex-
pressly says that walnuts do not occur in the south, but only in the
north, being plentiful in Sen-si and Lo-yan (Ho-nan Province), while
those grown in K'ai-fun (Pien Scuff #1) were not of good quality. In the
south only a wild-growing variety was known, which is discussed
below. Wan Si-mou zE ifr S, a native of Kian-su, who died in 1591,
states in his Kwo su ^ 6fi, a treatise on garden-fruits, that "the walnut
is a northern fruit (pei kwo ft 5v), and thrives in mountains; that it
is but rarely planted in the south, yet can be cultivated there." 6 Almost
1 This definition is ascribed to the Ts'ao mu tse ^L ;fC -J" in the Ko U kin yuan
(Ch. 76, p. 5); that work was written by Ye Tse-k'i :| -J* isf in 1378 (WYLIE,
Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 168).
2 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 45.
3 Tan Sun pai k*un leu t'ie, Ch. 99, p. 12.
4 Tai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 30, p. 4; Ch. 47, p. 4 (ed. of Kin-lin !w ku, 1882).
5 Ch. 1 8, p. 6 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
6 Also J. DE LOUREIRO (Flora cochinchinensis, p. 702) states that the habitat of
Juglans regia is only in the northern provinces of China.
266 SlNO-lRANICA
all the district and prefectural gazetteers of Sen-si Province enumerate
the walnut in the lists of products. The " Gazetteer of San-tun" 1
mentions walnuts for the prefectures of Ts'i-nan, Yen-cou, and Ts'in-
Cou, the last-named being the best. The Gazetteer of the District of
Tun-no JK PP in the prefecture of Tai-nan in San-tun reports an
abundance of walnuts in the river- valleys. An allusion to oil-production
from walnuts is found in the " Gazetteer of Lu-nan," where it is said,
"Of all the fruits growing in abundance, there is none comparable to
the walnut. What is left on the markets is sufficient to supply the needs
for lamp-oil." 3 Also under the heading "oil," walnut-oil is mentioned
as a product of this district. 4
Juglans regia, in its cultivated state, has been traced by our botanists
in San-tun, Kian-su, Hu-pei, Yun-nan, and Se-S'wan. 6 Wilson nowhere
saw trees that could be declared spontaneous, and considers it highly
improbable that Juglans regia is indigenous to China. His opinion is
certainly upheld by the results of historical research.
A wild species (Juglans mandshurica or cathayensis Dode) occurs
in Manchuria and the Amur region, Ci-li, Hu-pei, Se-S'wan, and Yun-
nan. 6 This species is a characteristic tree of the Amur and Usuri val-
leys. 7 It is known to the Golde under the name kocoa or ko^oa, to the
Managir as korlo, to the Gilyak as tiv-alys. The Golde word is of
ancient date, for we meet it in the ancient language of the Juri, Juen,
or NiuSi in the form xusu* and in Manchu as xosixa. The great antiquity
of this word is pointed out by the allied Mongol word xusiga. The
whole series originally applies to the wild and indigenous species,
1 San tun fun li, Ch. 9, p. 15.
f Ch. 2, p. 32 (1829).
8 Quotation from Lu-nan li &jt ^) ]g, in the San cou tsun U $) ^ $| ,-g
(General Gazetteer of San-Sou), 1744, Ch. 8, p. 3.
4 Ibid., Ch. 8, p. 9. Oil was formerly obtained from walnuts in France both
for use at table and for varnishing and burning in lamps, also as a medicine sup-
posed to possess vermifuge properties (AINSLIE, Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 464).
8 See particularly C. S. SARGENT, Plantae Wilsonianae, Vol. Ill, pp. 184-185
(1916). J. ANDERSON (Report on the Expedition to Western Yunan, p. 93, Calcutta,
1871) mentions walnuts as product of Yun-nan. According to the Tien hai yu hen
li (Ch. 10, p. i b; above, p. 228), the best walnuts with thin shells grow on the Yan-pi
or Yan-p'ei River fi '/| fll of Yun-nan.
8 FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany, Vol. XXVI,
p. 493; SARGENT, op. cit., pp. 185 et seq. J. DE LOUREIRO (Flora cochinchinensis,
p. 702), writing in 1788, has a species Juglans camirium (Annamese deau lai) "habitat
agrestis cultaque in Cochinchina;" and a Juglans catappa (Annamese cay mo cua)
''habitat in sylvis Cochinchinae montanis."
7 GRUM-GRZIMAILO, Description of the Amur Province (in Russian), p. 313.
1 W. GRUBE, Schrift und Sprache der Juc'en, p. 93.
THE WALNUT 267
Juglans mandshurica. Manchu xdsixa designates the tree, while its
fruit is called xdwalama or xdwalame usixa (-ixa being a frequent ter-
mination in the names of plants and fruits). The cultivated walnut is
styled mase. 1 One of the earliest explorers of the Amur territory, the
Cossack chieftain Poyarkov, who reached the Amur in 1644, reported
that walnuts and hazel-nuts were cultivated by the Daur or Dahur on
the Dseya and Amur. 2
The same species is known to the aboriginal tribes of Yun-nan.
The Pa-yi and San style its fruit tw ai; z the Nyi Lo-lo, se-mi-ma-, the Ahi
Lo-lo, sa-mi. The Cun-kia of Kwei-ou call it dsao; the Ya-'io Miao,
li or &'; the Hwa Miao, klaeo\ while other Miao tribes have the Chinese
loan-word he-dao. 4
The wild walnut has not remained unknown to the Chinese, and it
is curious that it is designated San hu t'ao UJ 1$ tftj, the term Ian ("moun-
tain") referring to wild-growing plants. The "wild Iranian peach"
is a sort of linguistic anomaly. It is demonstrated by this term that
the wild indigenous species was discovered and named by the Chinese
only in times posterior to the introduction of the cultivated variety; and
that the latter, being introduced from abroad, was not derived from the
wild-growing species. The case is identical with that of the wild alfalfas
and vines. C'en Hao-tse, who wrote a treatise on flowers in i688, 5
determines the difference between the cultivated and wild varieties
thus: the former has a thin shell, abundant meat, and is easy to break; 6
the latter has a thick and hard shell, which must be cracked with a
hammer, and occurs in Yen and Ts'i (Ci-li and San-tun). This observa-
1 K'ien-lun's Polyglot Dictionary, Ch. 28, p. 55.
8 L. v. SCHRENCK, Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande, Vol. Ill, p. 160.
3 F. W. K. MULLER, Toung Pao, Vol. Ill, 1892, p. 26.
4 S. R. CLARKE, Tribes in South- West China, p. 312.
6 Hwa kin, Ch. 3, p. 49 b.
8 According to the Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao (Ch. 31, p. 3 b), the walnuts with thin
shells grow only in the prefecture of Yun-p'in ^jt *p in Ci-li, being styled lu Zan
ho t'ao fH H| %% $|y In C'an-li, which belongs to this prefecture, these nuts have
been observed by F. N. MEYER (Agricultural Explorations in the Orchards of China,
p. 51), who states, "Some trees produce small hard-shelled nuts of poor flavor, while
others bear fine large nuts, with a really fine flavor, and having shells so thin that
they can be cracked with the fingers like peanuts. Between these extremes one finds
many gradations in hardness of shell, size, and flavor." "In England the walnut
presents considerable differences, in the shape of the fruit, in the thickness of the
husk, and in the thinness of the shell; this latter quality has given rise to a variety
called the thin-shelled, which is valuable, but suffers from the attacks of titmice"
(DARWIN, Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. I, p. 445).
A variety of walnut with thin shells grows on the Greek Island Pares (T. v. HELD-
REICH, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 59).
268 SlNO-lRANICA
tion is quite to the point; the shell of the walnut gradually became more
refined under the influence of cultivation.
The earliest texts alluding to the wild walnut are not older than
the T'ang period. The Pei hu lu At fi $fc, written by Twan Kun-lu
l ^ J& about A.D. 87 5, 1 contains the following text concerning a wild
walnut growing in the mountains of southern China:
"The wild walnut has a thick shell and a flat bottom & Z P. In
appearance it resembles the areca-nut. As to size, it is as large as a
bundle of betel-leaves. 2 As to taste, it comes near the walnuts of
Yin-p'in 3 and Lo-yu, but is different from these, inasmuch as it has a
fragrance like apricot extract. This fragrance, however, does not last
long, but will soon vanish. The Kwan li says that the walnuts of Yin-
p'in have brittle shells, and that, when quickly pinched, the back of
the kernel will break. Liu Si-lun $P ifr 1^, in his Sie lo yu yuan II SI
>H ?S, remarks, with reference to the term hu t'ao, that the Hu take to
flight like rams, 4 and that walnuts therefore are prophets of auspicious
omens. Cen K'ien SB 3: 5 says that the wild walnut has no glumelle;
it can be made into a seal by grinding off the nut for this purpose.
Judging from these data, it may be stated that this is not the walnut
occurring in the mountains of the south." 6
The Lin piao lui $(%.$&=&, by Liu Sun S'J 1ft of the T'ang period, 7
who lived under the reign of the Emperor Cao Tsun (A.D. 889-904),
contains the following information on a wild walnut:
"The slanting or glandular walnut (p'ien ho t*ao fi! t^ $6) is pro-
duced in the country Can-pi fi ^. 8 Its kernel cannot be eaten. The
1 Cf . PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. IX, p. 223.
2 Fu-liu, usually written $C {, is first mentioned in the Wu lu ti li li ^ gjfc i&
3 iS by Can Pu jJH ^J of the third or beginning of the fourth century (see Ts'i
min yao su, Ch. 10, p. 32). It refers to Piper betle (BRETSCHNEIDER, Chinese Recorder,
Vol. Ill, 1871, p. 264; C. IMBAULT-HUART, Le be"tel, Toung Pao, Vol. V, 1894,
P- 313). The Chinese name is a transcription corresponding to Old Annamese
bldu; Mi^son, Uy-16, and Hung plu; Khmer m-luw, Stien m-lu, Bahnar bo-lou, Kha
b-lu ("betel").
8 See above, p. 264.
4 A jocular interpretation by punning t'ao $Ij upon t'ao $& (both in the same
tone).
6 Author of the lost Hu pen ts'ao SB ^ ^ (BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. I,
p. 45). He appears to have been the first who drew attention to the wild walnut.
His work is repeatedly quoted in the Pei hu lu.
6 Pei hu lu, Ch. 3, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
7 Ch. B, p. 5 (ed. of Wu yin lien).
8 The two characters are wrongly inverted in the text of the work. In the text
of the Pei hu lu that follows, the name of this country is given in the form Can-pei
^ $ From the mention of the Malayan Po-se in the same text, it follows that
THE WALNUT 269
Hu $J people gather these nuts in abundance, and send them to the
Chinese officials, designating them as curiosities 3^M. As to their
shape, they are thin and pointed; the head is slanting like a sparrow's
beak. If broken and eaten, the kernel has a bitter taste resembling that
of the pine-seeds of Sin-ra if it & -f. 1 Being hot by nature, they are
employed as medicine, and do not differ from the kernels of northern
China."
The Pei hu lu 2 likewise mentions the same variety of glandular wal-
nut (p*ien ho-t'ao) as growing in the country Can-pei fi $>, shaped
like the crescent of the moon, gathered and eaten by the Po-se, 3 having
a very fine fragrance, stronger than the peach-kernels of China, but of
the same effect in the healing of disease.
The species here described may be identical with Juglans catha-
yensis y called the Chinese butternut, usually a bush, but in moist
woods forming a tree from twelve to fifteen metres tall; but I do not
know that this plant occurs in any Malayan region. With reference to
Can-pi, however, it may be identical with the fruit of Canarium com-
mune (family Burseraceae) , called in Malayan kanari, in Javanese kenari.
J. CRAWFURD/ who was not yet able to identify this tree, offers the
following remarks: "Of all the productions of the Archipelago the one
which yields the finest edible oil is the kanari. This is a large handsome
tree, which yields a nut of an oblong shape nearly of the size of a walnut.
The kernel is as delicate as that of a filbert, and abounds in oil. This
Can-pi is a Malayan territory probably to be located on Sumatra. For this reason
I am inclined to think that Can-pi f JJI is identical with Can-pei J| BjL ; that is,
Jambi, the capital of eastern Sumatra (HiRTH and ROCKHILL, Chau Ju-kua, pp. 65,
66; see further GROENEVELDT, Notes on the Malay Archipelago, pp. 188, 196; and
GERINI, Researches on Ptolemy's Geography, p. 565; Lin wai tai ta, Ch. 2, p. 12).
From a phonetic point of view, however, the transcription 3 4fl, made in the
T'ang period, represents the ancient sounds *can-pit, and would presuppose an
original of the form *2ambit, fiambir, or jambir, whereas ^L is without a final con-
sonant. The country Can-pei is first mentioned under the year A.D. 852 (^ 4* sixth
year), when Wu-sie-ho ^ ffi J! and six men from there came to the Chinese Court
with a tribute of local products (T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 177, p. 15 b). A second
embassy is on record in 871 (PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$ aise, Vol. IV, p. 347).
1 Pinus koraiensis Sieb. et Zucc. (J. MATSUMURA, Shokubutsu mei-i, pp. 266-267,
ed. 1915), in Japanese losen-matsu ("Korean pine"); see also STUART, Chinese
Materia Medica, p. 333. Sin-ra (Japanese Sin-ra, Siraki) is the name of the ancient
kingdom of Silla, in the northern part of Korea.
2 Ch. 3, p. 5 (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
3 $l ^T certainly is here not Persia, for the Pei hu lu deals with the products
of Kwafi-tun, Annam, and the countries south of China (PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole
fran$aise, Vol. IX, p. 223). See below, p. 468. The Pei hu lu has presumably served
as the source for the text of the Lin piao lu i, quoted above.
4 History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 383.
270 SlNO-lRANICA
is one of the most useful trees of the countries where it grows. The
nuts are either smoked and dried for use, or the oil is expressed from
them in their recent state. The oil is used for all culinary purposes,
and is more palatable and finer than that of the coconut. The kernels,
mixed up with a little sago meal, are made into cakes and eaten as
bread. The kanari is a native of the same country with the sago tree,
and is not found to the westward. In Celebes and Java it has been
introduced in modern times through the medium of traffic."
The Yu yan tsa tsu 1 speaks of a man hu t'ao II S9 $6 as "growing
in the kingdom of Nan-ao ^ IB in Yun-nan; it is as large as a flat
conch, and has two shells of equal size; its taste is like that of the
cultivated walnut. It is styled also 'creeper in the land of the Man*
(Man tun t'en-tse 8 ^Jl-?)." It will be remembered that Twan
C'en-si, the author of this work, describes also the cultivated walnut
(P. 264).
The T'ai p*ih yii Ian contains another text attributed to the Lin
piao lu i relating to a wild walnut, which, however, is not extant in the
edition of this work published in the collection Wu yin tien in 1775.
This text is as follows: "The large walnut has a thick and firm shell.
It is larger than that of the areca-nut. 2 It has much meat, but little
glumelle. It does not resemble the nuts found in northern China. It
must be broken with an axe or hammer. The shell, when evenly
smoothed over the bottom, is occasionally made into a seal, for the
crooked structure of the shell (ko M) resembles the seal characters." 3
In the Lin wai tai ta ^ ^ ft ^, 4 written by Cou K'ii-fei JH * #
in 1178, mention is made, among the plants of southern China and
Tonking, of a "stone walnut (Si hu t'ao ^ $8 $fc), which is like stone,
has hardly any meat, and tastes like the walnut of the north." Again,
a wild species is involved here. I have not found the term Si hu t'ao in
any other author.
The various names employed by the T'ang writers for the wild
1 Ch. 19, p. 9 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi $u) ; or Ch. 19, p. 9 a (ed. of Pai hai).
* This sentence, as well as the first, agrees with the definition given by the Pei
hu lu with reference to a wild walnut (above, p. 268).
1 T'ai p'in yii Ian, Ch. 971, p. 8 b. The same text is cited by the Pen ts'ao kan
mu and the Ko li kin yuan (Ch. 76, p. 5 b), which offer the reading San hu t'ao \lj
SB $fc ("wild walnut") instead of "large walnut." The Kwan k'iinfan p'u (Ch. 58,
p. 26) also has arranged this text under the general heading "wild walnut." The
Pen ts'ao kan mu opens it with the sentence, "In the southern regions there is a wild
walnut." The restriction to South China follows also from the text as given in the
T'ai p'in yii Ian.
4 Ch. 8, p. 10 b (ed. of Ci pu tsu lai ts'un $u).
THE WALNUT 371
varieties (p'ien hu fao, fan hu Vao, man hu t'ao, to hu t*ao) y combined
with the fact that two authors describe both the varieties p'ien and
fan, raise the question whether this nomenclature does not refer to
different plants, and whether, aside from the wild walnut, other nuts
may not also be included in this group. In this respect it is of interest
to note that the hickory, recently discovered in Ce-kian by F. N.
MEYER, and determined by SARGENT 1 under the name Carya cathayensis,
is said by Meyer to be called shan-gho-to in the colloquial language;
and this evidently is identical with our fan hu t'ao. This certainly does
not mean that this term refers exclusively to the hickory, but only
that locally the hickory falls also within the category of fan hu t'ao.
The distribution of the hickory over China is not yet known, and the
descriptions we have of fan hu t'ao do not refer to Ce-kian.
In the P'an fan U 18: Ul ;, a description of the P'an mountains, 1
the term fan ho t'ao is given as a synonyme for the bark of Catalpa
bungei (ts*iu p'i Iffc IJt), which is gathered on this mountain for
medicinal purposes, presumably because the structure of this bark
bears some superficial resemblance to that of a walnut. Wild walnuts,
further, are mentioned as growing on Mount Si fu 2un ^5 ^ Uj ,
forming part of the Ma-ku Mountains & J6 Ul situated in Fu-cou
Si J /H in the prefecture of Kien-6'aii ^ B ffi, Kian-si Province. 3
While the cultivated walnut was known in China during the fourth
century under the Tsin dynasty, the wild species indigenous to south-
ern China was brought to the attention of scholars only several cen-
turies later, toward the close of the T'ang period. This case furnishes
an excellent object-lesson, in that it reveals the fallacies to which
botanists and others are only too frequently subject in drawing con-
clusions from mere botanical evidence as to cultivated plants. The
favorite argumentation is, that if, in a certain region, a wild and a
corresponding cultivated species co-exist, the cultivated species is simply
supposed to have been derived from the wild congener. This is a de-
ceptive conclusion. The walnut (as well as the vine) of China offers a
1 Plantae Wilsonianae, Vol. Ill, p. 187.
* Ch. 15, p. 2 b, of the edition published in 1755 by order of K'ien-lun. The
P'an an is situated three or four days' journey east of Peking, in the province of
Ci-li, the summit being crowned by an interesting Buddhist temple, and there being
an imperial travelling-station at its foot. It was visited by me in September, 1901.
F. N. MEYER (Agricultural Explorations in the Orchards of China, p. 52) says that
in the Pangshan district east of Peking one may still find a few specimens of the real
wild walnut growing in ravines among large bowlders in the mountains.
8 Ma-ku San U (Ch. 3, p. 6 b), written by members of the family Hwafi jf, and
published in 1866 by the Tun t'ien u wu }pj| ; ^ |g. These mountains contain
thirty-six caves dedicated to the Taoist goddess Ma-ku.
272 SlNO-lRANICA
specific case apt to teach just the opposite: a wild walnut (probably in
several species) is indigenous to China, nevertheless the species culti-
vated in this area did not spring from domestic material, but from
seeds imported from Iranian and Tibetan regions of Central Asia.
The botanical dogma has been hurled against many deductions of
Hehn: botanists proclaimed that vine, fig, laurel, and myrtle have been
indigenous to Greece ana Italy in a wild state since time immemorial ;
likewise pomegranate, cypress, and plantain on the Aegean Islands
and in Greece; hence it was inferred that also the cultivations of these
plants must have been indigenous, and could not have been introduced
from the Orient, as insisted on by Hehn. This is nothing but a sophism:
the botanists still owe us the proof that the cultivated species were
really derived from indigenous stock. A species may indeed be indige-
nous to a certain locality; and yet, as brought about by historical
inter-relations of the peoples, the same or a similar species in the
cultivated state may have been introduced from an outside quarter.
It is only by painstaking historical research that the history of culti-
vated plants can be exactly determined. ENGLER (above, p. 258) doubts
the occurrence of the wild walnut in China, because a cultivated species
was introduced there from Tibet ! It is plain now where such logic will
lead us. Wilson deserves a place of honor among botanists, for, after
close study of the subject in China, he recognized that "it is highly
improbable that Juglans regia is indigenous to China."
With reference to the walnut, conditions are the same in China as
in the Mediterranean region: there also Juglans regia grows spontane-
ously; still better, cultivated varieties reached the Greeks from Persia;
the Greeks handed these on to the Romans; the Romans transplanted
them to Gallia and Germania. Juglans regia occupies an extensive
natural area throughout the temperate zone, stretching from the
Mediterranean through Iran and the Himalaya as far as southern China
and the Chinese maritime provinces. Despite this natural distribution,
the fact remains that Iran has been the home and the centre of the
best-cultivated varieties, and has transmitted these to Greece, to India,
to Central Asia, and to China.
Dr. T. TANAKA has been good enough to furnish the following infor-
mation, extracted from Japanese literature, in regard to the walnut.
"Translation of the notice on ko-to (kurumi), 'walnut,' from a
Japanese herbal Yamato honzo ^C ?P ^ ^, by Kaibara Ekken jt M
^ ff (Ch. 10, p. 23), published in 1709.
"Kurumi $8 #6 (koto). There are three sorts of walnut. The first
is called oni-gurumi & SB $fc ('devil walnut'). It is round in shape,
THE WALNUT 273
and has a thick, hard skin (shell), difficult to break; it has very little
meat. In the Homo (Pen ts'ao, usually referring to the Pen ts'ao kan
mu) it is called til tft $ (yama-gurumi, Ian hu t'ao). It is customary
to open the shell by first baking it a little while in a bed of charcoal,
and suddenly plunging it in water to cool off; then it is taken out of the
fire, the shell is struck at the joint so that it is crushed, and the meat can
be easily removed. The second variety is called hime-gurumi tf& ?
J* ^ ('demoiselle walnut'), and has a thin shell which is somewhat
flat in form; it is very easily broken when struck with an iron hammer
at the joint. It has plenty of meat, is rich in oil, and has a better taste
than the one mentioned before. The names 'devil' and 'demoiselle*
are derived from the appearance of the nuts, the one being rough and
ugly, while the other is beautiful.
"The third variety, which is believed to have come from Korea,
has a thin shell, easily cracked, with very little meat, but of the best
quality. Mon Sen JnL BSfc (author of the Si liao pen ts'ao Jt Jj ^ ^,
second half of the seventh century) says, 'The walnut, when eaten,
increases the appetite, stimulates the blood-circulation, and makes one
appear glossy and elegant. It may be considered as a good medicine of
high merit.' For further details refer to the prescriptions of the Pen
ts'ao.
"Translation of the notice on walnut from the Honzo komoku keimd
(Ch. 25, pp. 26-27) by Ono Ranzan; revised edition by Igu& BOsi
of 1847 (first edition 1804).
"koto, kurimi (walnut, Juglans regia L., var. sinensis Cas., ex MATSU-
MURA, Shokubutsu Mei-i, ed. 1915, Vol. I, p. 189).
"Japanese names: to-kurimi ('Chinese walnut'); cosen-kurimi
(' Korean walnut ') .
"Chinese synonymes: kaku-kwa (Jibutsu imei); tins 5 kyoho (ibid.);
inpei cinkwa (ibid.); kokaku (Jibutsu konsu); kens' a (ibid.); to$u$i
(Kunmo jikwai).
"Names for kernels: kama (Roy a taisui-hen).
"Other names for Ian hu t'ao: sankakuto (Hokuto-roku); banzai-Zi
(Jonan Ho si); su (Kummo jikwai).
"The real walnut originated in Korea, and is not commonly planted
in Japan.
"The leaves are larger than those of onigurumi (giant walnut,
Juglans sieboldiana Maxim., ex Matsumura, I.e.). The shells are also
larger, measuring more than i sun (1.193 inches) in length, and having
more striations on the surface. The kernels are also larger, and have
more folds.
"The variety commonly planted in our country is onigurumi, the
J74 SlNO-lRANICA
abbreviated name of which is kurumi; local names are ogurumi (Prov-
ince of Kaga), okkoromi (eastern provinces), and so on. This giant wal-
nut grows to a large tree. Its leaves are much like those of the lacquer-
tree (Rhus vernificera DC.) and a little larger; they have finely serrated
margins. Its new leaves come out in the spring. It flowers in the
autumn.
"The flower-clusters resemble chestnut-catkins, but are much
larger, ranging in length from six to seven sun; they are yellowish white
and pendulous. A single flower is very small, like that of a chestnut.
The fruit is peach-shaped and green, but turns black when ripe. The
shells are very hard and thick, and can be opened by being put on the
fire for a little while; then insert a knife in the slit or fissure between the
shells, which thus break. The kernels are good for human food, and
are also used for feeding little birds.
"One species called hime-gurumi (' demoiselle walnut/ Juglans
cordiformis Maxim., ex Matsumura, I.e.), or me-gurumi ('female wal-
nut/ from the province of Kaga), has thin shells with fewer furrows, and
the kernels can easily be taken out. Under the heading $ukai (ti-kie,
explanatory information in the Pen ts*ao), this kind of walnut is de-
scribed as 'a walnut produced in Cinso (C'en-ts'an, a place in Fun-
sian fu, Sen-si, China) with thin shells and many surfaces,' so we call
it Zinso-gurumi ('en-ts*an hu-t'ao). 1 This variety is considered the
best of all yama-gurumi (San hu t'ao, wild walnuts), because no other
variety has such saddle-shaped kernels entirely removable from the
shells.
"A species called karasu-gurumi ('crow walnut') is a product of the
province of E&go; it has a shell that opens by itself when ripe, and
looks like a crow's bill when opened, whence it is called 'crow walnut.*
"Another variety from Oio-mura village of the Aidzu district is
called gonroku-gurumi ('Gonroku's walnut'); it has a very small shell
capable of being used as ojime ('string-fastener of a pouch'). This
name is taken from the personal name of a man called Anazawa Gon-
roku, in whose garden this variety originated. It is said that the same
kind has been found in the province of Kai.
"A variety found at Nosiro, province of UQ (Uzen and Ugo),
is much larger in size, and has thinner shells, easily crushed by hand,
so that the kernels may be taken out without using any tools. The
name of this variety is therefore teuci-gurumi ('hand-crushed walnut ')."
The most interesting point in these Japanese notes is presented by
1 Compare above, p. 264.
THE WALNUT 175
the tradition tracing the cultivated walnut of Japan to Korea. The
Koreans again have a tradition that walnuts reached them from China
about fifteen hundred years ago in the days of the Silla Kingdom. 1
The Korean names for the fruit are derived from the Chinese: ho do
being the equivalent of hu t'ao, kan do corresponding to k'ian t'ao,
and ha do to ho t'ao. The Geography of the Ming Dynasty states that
walnuts are a product of Korea. 1
1 Korea Review, Vol. II, 1902, p. 394.
1 Ta Mi* i run i, Ch. 89 p. 4 b.
THE POMEGRANATE
5. A. DE CANDOLLE 1 sums up the result of his painstaking investi-
gation of the diffusion of the pomegranate (Punica granatum, the sole
genus with two species only within the family Punicaceae) as follows:
"To conclude, botanical, historical, and philological data agree in show-
ing that the modern species is a native of Persia and some adjacent
countries. Its cultivation began in prehistoric time, and its early
extension, first toward the west and afterwards into China, has caused
its naturalization in cases which may give rise to errors as to its true
origin, for they are frequent, ancient, and enduring." In fact, the
pomegranate occurs spontaneously in Iran on stony ground, more
particularly in the mountains of Persian Kurdistan, Baluchistan, and
Afghanistan. I am in full accord with A. de Candolle's opinion, which,
as will be seen, is signally corroborated by the investigation that fol-
lows, and am not in the least disturbed by A. ENGLER'S view 2 that the
pomegranate occurs wild in Greece and on the islands of the
Grecian Archipelago, and that, accordingly, it is indigenous in anterior
Asia and part of the Balkan Peninsula, while its propagation in Italy
and Spain presumably followed its cultivation in historical times. First,
as stated also by G. BuscHAN, 3 these alleged wild trees of Greece are
not spontaneous, but have reverted from cultivation to a wild state. 4
Second, be this as it may, all ancient Greek accounts concerning the
pomegranate relate exclusively to the cultivated, in no case to the
wild species; and it is a gratuitous speculation of O. ScHRADER, 5 who
follows suit with Engler, that the Greek word pod was originally
applied to the indigenous wild species, and subsequently transferred
to the cultivated one. As will be shown hereafter, the Greek term is a
loan-word. The naturalization of the fruit in the Mediterranean basin
is, as A. DE CANDOLLE justly terms it, an extension of the original
1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 240.
2 In Hehn's Kulturpflanzen, p. 246 (8th ed.).
3 Vorgeschichtliche Botanik, p. 159.
4 I am unable, however, to share Buschan's view that the wild specimens of Iran
and north-western India also belong to this class; that area is too extensive to
allow of so narrow an interpretation. In this case, Buschan is prejudiced in order
to establish his own hypothesis of an indigenous origin of the tree in Arabia (see
below).
6 In Hehn's Kulturpflanzen, p. 247.
276
THE POMEGRANATE 277
area; and Hehn is quite right in dating its cultivation on the part of
the Greeks to a time after the Homeric epoch, and deriving it from Asia
Minor.
G. BuscHAN 1 holds that Europe is out of the question as to the
indigenous occurrence of the pomegranate, and with regard to Punica
protopunica, discovered by Balfour on the Island of Socotra, proposes
Arabia felix as the home of the tree; but he fails to explain the diffusion
of the tree from this alleged centre. He opposes Loret's conclusions
with reference to Egypt, where he believes that the tree was naturalized
from the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty; but he overlooks the prin-
cipal point made by Loret, namely, that the Egyptian name is a Semitic
loan-word. 2 Buschan's theory conflicts with all historical facts, and
has not been accepted by any one.
The pomegranate-tree is supposed to be mentioned in the Avesta
under the name haddnaepata* the wood serving as fuel, and the juice
being employed in sacrificial libations; but this interpretation is solely
given by the present ParsI of India and Yezd, and is not certain. The
fruit, however, is mentioned in Pahlavi literature (above, p. 193).
There are numerous allusions to the pomegranate of Persia on
the part of Mohammedan authors and European travellers, and it
would be of little avail to cite all these testimonies on a subject which
is perfectly well known. Suffice it to refer to the Fdrs Ndmah* and to
give the following extract from A. OLEARIUS : 6
" Pomegranate-trees, almond-trees, and fig-trees grow there with-
out any ordering or cultivation, especially in the Province of Kilan,
where you have whole forests of them. The wild pomegranates, which
you find almost every where, especially at Karabag, are sharp or sowrith.
1 Vorgeschichtliche Botanik, p. 159.
2 This fact was simultaneously and independently found by an American
Egyptologist, CH. E. MOLDENKE (ttber die in altagyptischen Texten erwahnten
Baume, p. 115, doctor dissertation of Strassburg, Leipzig, 1887); so that LORET
(Flore pharaonique, p. 76) said, "Moldenke est arrive" presque en me"me temps que
moi, et par des moyens diffe"rents, ce qui donne une entiere certitude a notre d6-
couverte commune, a la determination du nom e'gyptien de la grenade." See also
C. JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquite", Vol. I, p. 117. Buschan's book appeared in 1895;
nevertheless he used Loret's work in the first edition of 1887, instead of the second
of 1892, which is thoroughly revised and enlarged.
3 For instance, Yasna, 62, 9; 68, I. Cf. also A. V. W. JACKSON, Persia Past
and Present, p. 369.
4 G. LE STRANGE, Description of the Province of Pars in Persia, p. 38 (London,
1912). See also D'HERBELOT, Biblioth6que orientale, Vol. Ill, p. 188; and F. SPIEGEL,
Eranische Altertumskunde, Vol. I, p. 252.
6 Voyages of the Ambassadors to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King
of Persia (1633-39), p. 232 (London, 1669).
278 SlNO-lRANICA
They take out of them the seed, which they call Nardan, wherewith
they drive a great trade, and the Persians make use of it in their
sawces, whereto it gives a colour, and a picquant tast, having been
steep'd in water, and strain'd through a cloath. Sometimes they boyl
the juyce of these Pomegranates, and keep it to give a colour to the
rice, which they serve up at their entertainments, and it gives it withall
a tast which is not unpleasant. . . . The best pomegranates grow in
Jescht, and at Caswin, but the biggest, in Karabag."
Mirza Haidar mentions a kind of pomegranate peculiar to Baluris-
tan (Kafiristan), sweet, pure, and full-flavored, its seeds being white
and very transparent. 1
"Grapes, melons, apples, and pomegranates, all fruits, indeed, are
good in Samarkand." 2 The pomegranates of Khojand were renowned
for their excellence. 3 The Emperor Jahangir mentions in his Memoirs
the sweet pomegranates of Yazd and the subacid ones of Farrah, and
says of the former that they are celebrated all over the world. 4 J.
CRAWFURD 8 remarks, "The only good pomegranates which, indeed,
I have ever met with are those brought into upper India by the cara-
vans from eastern Persia."
The Yu yan tsa tsu 6 states that the pomegranates of Egypt %J$ft1$.
(Wu-se-li, *Mwir-si-li, Mirsir) 7 in the country of the Arabs (Ta-si,
*Ta-d2ik) weigh up to five and six catties.
Also in regard to the pomegranate we meet the tradition that its
introduction into China is due to General Can K'ien. In the same
manner as in the case of the walnut, this notion looms up only in
post-Han authors. It is first recorded by Lu Ki Bl $8, who lived under
the Western Tsin dynasty (A.D. 265-313), in his work Yu ti yun $u
& f& llf. This text has been handed down in the Ts'i min yao $u
of Kia Se-niu of the sixth century. 8 There it is said that Can K'ien,
while an envoy of the Han in foreign countries for eighteen years,
obtained t*u-lin ^ W, this term being identical with nan-$i-liu jf 15
VS. This tradition is repeated in the Po wu i 9 of Can Hwa and in the
1 ELIAS and Ross, Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 386.
a A. S. BEVERIDGE, Memoirs of Babur, p. 77.
3 Ibid., p. 8. They are also extolled by Ye-lu C'u-ts'ai (BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediae-
val Researches, Vol. I, p. 19).
4 H. M. ELLIOT, History of India as told by Its Own Historians, Vol. VI, p. 348 .
8 History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 433.
8 $8 36 Ch. 10, p. 4 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi Su).
7 Old Persian Mudraya, Hebrew Mizraim, Syriac Mezroye.
8 Ch. 4, p. 14 b (new ed., 1896).
9 See above, p. 258.
THE POMEGRANATE 279
Tu i li 39 M ;, written by Li Yu ^ % (or Li Yuan %) of the Tang
dynasty. Another formal testimony certifying to the acceptance of
this creed at that period comes from Fun Yen 3Nf iSC of the Tang in
his Fun Si wen kien ki M & ffi & 12 ,* who states that Can K'ien
obtained in the Western Countries the seeds of Si-liu 35 f and alfalfa
(mu-su), and that at present these are to be found everywhere in
China. Under the Sung this tradition is repeated by Kao C'en iti ^c. 2
C'en Hao-tse, in his Hwa kin* published in 1688, states it as a cold-
blooded fact that the seeds of the pomegranate came from the country
Nan-si or An-si (Parthia), and that Can K'ien brought them back.
There is nothing to this effect in Can K'ien's biography, nor is the
pomegranate mentioned in the Annals of the Han. 4 The exact time of
its introduction cannot be ascertained, but the tree is on record no earlier
than the third and fourth centuries A.D. 5
Li Si-Sen ascribes the term nan-$i-liu to the Pie lu J5!l ^, but he
cites no text from this ancient work, so that the case is not clear. 6
The earliest author whom he quotes regarding the subject is Tao
Hun-kin (A.D. 452-536), who says, "The pomegranate, particularly as
regards its blossoms, is charming, hence the people plant the tree in
large numbers. It is also esteemed, because it comes from abroad.
There are two varieties, the sweet and the sour one, only the root of
the latter being used by physicians." According to the Ts*i min yao $u,
Ko Hun 1 8 of the fourth century, in his Pao p*u tse JB tt ?, speaks
of the occurrence of bitter liu "\5 1S on stony mountains. These, indeed,
1 Ch. 7, p. i b (ed. of Ki fu ts'un Su).
2 Si wu ki yuan !j % J6 ]jj( (ed. of Si yin Man ts'un $u), Ch. 10, p. 34 b.
3 Ch. 3, p. 37, edition of 1783; see above, p. 259.
4 The Can-K'ien legend is repeated without criticism by BRETSCHNEIDER
(Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 25; pt. 3, No. 280), so that A. DE CANDOLLE (Origin of Cultivated
Plants, p. 238) was led to the erroneous statement that the pomegranate was intro-
duced into China from Samarkand by Can K'ien, a century and a half before the
Christian era. The same is asserted by F. P. SMITH (Contributions towards the
Materia Medica of China, p. 176), G. A. STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 361),
and HIRTH (T*oung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439).
6 It is mentioned in the Kin kwei yao lio (Ch. c, p. 27) of the second century A.D.,
"Pomegranates must not be eaten in large quantity, for they injure man's lungs."
As stated (p. 205), this may be an interpolation in the original text.
6 The Pie lu is not quoted to this effect in the Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 22, p. 39),
but the Ci wu min Si t*u k'ao (Ch. 15, p. 102; and 32, p. 36 b) gives two different
extracts from this work relating to our fruit. In one, its real or alleged medical prop-
erties are expounded; in the other, different varieties are enumerated, while not a
word is said about foreign origin. I am convinced that in this form these two texts
were not contained in the Pie lu. The question is of no consequence, as the work
itself is lost, and cannot be dated exactly. All that can be said with certainty is that
it existed prior to the time of T'ao Hun-kin.
280 SlNO-lRANICA
are the particular places where the pomegranate thrives. Su Sun of
the Sung period states that the pomegranate was originally grown in
the Western Countries (S* yii ffi $S), and that it now occurs everywhere;
but neither he nor any other author makes a positive statement as to
the time and exact place of origin. The Yao sin lun, Pen ts'ao si i,
and Pen ts'ao yen i l give merely a botanical notice, but nothing of his-
torical interest.
The pomegranate (si-liu) is mentioned in the "Poem on the Capital
of Wu" ^ U 8R by Tso Se & J&, who lived in the third century under
the Wu dynasty (A.D. 222-280). P'an Yo iS -r, a poet of the fourth
century A.D., says, "Pomegranates are the most singular trees of the
empire and famous fruits of the Nine Provinces. 2 A thousand seed-
cases are enclosed by the same membrane, and what looks like a single
seed in fact is ten/'
The Tsin Lun nan k'i ku lu W 81 ^ jfi Jg & (" Annotations on
the Conditions of the period Lun-nan [A.D. 397-402] of the Tsin Dy-
nasty") contains the following note: 3 "The pomegranates (nan si
liu) of the district Lin-yuan IS Sc in Wu-liii B IS 4 are as large as cups;
they are not sour to the taste. Each branch bears six fruits."
Lu Hui l^ftB of the Tsin dynasty, in his Ye lun ki US 3* ffi, 5 states
that in the park of Si Hu ^ fit there were pomegranates with seeds as
large as cups, and they were not sour. Si Hu or Si Ki-lufi 3? ^ fl ruled
from A.D. 335 to 349, under the appellation T'ai Tsu ;Jc IB. of the Hou
Cao dynasty, as "regent celestial king" (ku-se t'ien wan), and shifted
the capital to Ye ISi$, the present district of Lin-fen B$ f, in the pre-
fecture of Can-te ^ IS in Ho-nan. 6
The pomegranate is mentioned in the Ku kin Zu "ifr ^ ft, 7 written
by Ts'ui Pao -S f5 during the middle of the fourth century, with
reference to the pumelo W (Citrus grandis), the fruit of which is com-
pared in shape with the pomegranate. The Ts'i min yao Su (I.e.) gives
rules for the planting of pomegranates.
1 Ch. 1 8, p. 7 (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan); the other texts see in Cert lei pen ts'ao, I. c.
2 JL ^H , the ancient division of China under the Emperor Yu.
8 T'ai p'iA yii Ian, Ch. 970, p. 4 b. Regarding the department of records styled
k'i ku tu, see The Diamond, p. 35. In the Yuan kien lei han (Ch. 402, p. 2) the
same text is credited to the Sun Su.
4 In Hu-nan Province.
5 Ed. of Wu yin tien, p. 12.
6 Regarding his history, see L. WIEGER, Textes historiques, pp. 1095-1100.
BRETSCHNEIDER'S (Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 211) note, that, besides the Ye lun ki of Lu
Hui, there isjanother work of the same name by Si Hu, is erroneous; Si Hu is simply
the "hero" of the Ye lun ki.
1 Ch. c, p. i (ed. of Han Wei ts'un Su or Ki fu ts'un Su). Cf. also below, p. 283.
THE POMEGRANATE 281
The Annals of the Liu Sung Dynasty, A.D. 420-477 (SunSu), contain
the following account: "At the close of the period Yiian-kia % 51
(A.D. 424-453), when T'ai Wu (A.D. 424-452) * ^ of the Wei dynasty
conquered the city Ku jtfci^, 1 he issued orders to search for sugar-
cane and pomegranates (nan Si liu). Can C'aii 3fi H said that pome-
granates (Si-liu) come from Ye." This is the same locality as mentioned
above.
The Stan kwo ki H H IB 2 reports that in the district of Luii-kan
H O /IS 3 there are good pomegranates (Si liu). These various examples
illustrate that in the beginning the tree was considered as peculiar to
certain localities, and that accordingly a gradual dissemination must
have taken place. Apparently no ancient Chinese author is informed
as to the locality from which the tree originally came, nor as to the how
and when of the transplantation.
The Kwan U I? JS, written by Kwo Yi-kun SB il ^ prior to A.D.
527, as quoted in the Ts'i min yao Su, discriminates between two varie-
ties of pomegranate (nan Si liu), a sweet and a sour one, in the same
manner as T'ao Hun-kin. 4 This distinction is already made by Theo-
phrastus. 5 As stated above, there was also a bitter variety. 6
It is likewise a fact of great interest that we have an isolated instance
of the occurrence of a pomegranate-tree that reverted to the wild state.
The Lu San ki Jf Ul fffi 7 contains this notice: "On the summit of the
Hian-lu fun ?J^ ('Censer-Top') there is a huge rock on which
several people can sit. There grows a wild pomegranate (San Si-liu
ill ~fi t) drooping from the rock. In the third month it produces blos-
soms. In color these resemble the [cultivated] pomegranate, but they
1 Modern Cen-tin fu in Ci-li Province.
2 Thus in T'ai p*in yu Ian, Ch. 970, p. 5 b; the Ts'i min yao Su (Ch. 4, p. 14)
ascribes the same text to the Kin k'ou ki JEjl P ffS.
3 At present the district which forms the prefectural city of Sun-te in Ci-li
Province.
4 Above, p. 279.
5 Historia plantarum, II. II, 7.
6 Pliny (XIII, 113) distinguishes five varieties, dulcia, acria, mixta, acida,
vinosa.
7 T*ai p*in yu Ian, Ch. 970, p. 5. The Lu Mountain is situated in Kian-si Prov-
ince, twenty-five li south of Kiu-kian. A work under the title Lu San ki was written
by C'en Lin-ku $ft & ^ in the eleventh century (WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Liter-
ature, p. 55); but, as the T'ai p'in yil Ian was published in A.D. 983, the question here
must be of an older work of the same title. In fact, there is a Lu San ki by Kin Si
^ y^ of the Hou Cou dynasty; and the Yuan kien lei nan (Ch. 402, p. 2) ascribes
the same text to the Cou Kin Si Lu Ian ki. The John Crerar Library of Chicago
(No. 156) possesses a Lu San siao ti in 24 chapters, written by Ts'ai Yin ^ ^ and
published in 1824.
282 SlNO-lRANICA
are smaller and pale red. When they open, they display a purple calyx
of bright and attractive hues." A poem of Li Te-yu ^ ^ ffir (787-849)
opens with the words, "In front of the hut where I live there is a wild
pomegranate." 1
Fa Hien & IS, the celebrated Buddhist traveller, tells in his Fu kwo
ki ^ H IE ("Memoirs of Buddhist Kingdoms"), written about A.D.
420, that, while travelling on the upper Indus, the flora differed from
that of the land of Han, excepting only the bamboo, pomegranate, and
sugar-cane. 2 This passage shows that Fa Hien was familiar with that
tree in China. Huan Tsan observed in the seventh century that pome-
granates were grown everywhere in India. 3 Soleiman (or whoever may
be the author of this text), writing in A.D. 851, emphasizes the abun-
dance of the fruit in India. 4 Ibn Batata says that the pomegranates of
India bear fruit twice a year, and emphasizes their fertility on the
Maldive Islands. 5 Seedless pomegranates came to the household of the
Emperor Akbar from Kabul. 6
The pomegranate occurred in Fu-nan (Camboja), according to the
Nan Ts'i $u or History of the Southern Ts'i (A.D. 479-501), compiled
by Siao Tse-hien in the beginning of the sixth century. 7 It is mentioned
again by Cou Ta-kwanof the Yuan dynasty, in his book on the "Customs
of Camboja." 8 In Han-Sou, large and white pomegranates were styled
yu liu 3i IS ("jade" liu), while the red ones were regarded as inferior or
of second quality. 9
The following ancient terms for the pomegranate, accordingly, are
on record:
(i) ^ tt t'u-lin, *du-lim. Aside from the Po wu &', this term is
used by the Emperor Yuan of the Liang dynasty in a eulogy of the
fruit. 10 HiRTH 11 identified this word with an alleged Indian darim; and,
according to him, Can K'ien must have brought the Indian name to
J Li wei kun pie tsi, Ch. 2, p. 8 (Ki fu ts'un Su, t'ao 10).
2 Cf. J. LEGGE, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p. 24.
3 Ta Tan si yu ki, Ch. 2, p. 8 b (S. BEAL, Buddhist Records of the Western
World, Vol. I, p. 88).
4 M. RteiNAUD, Relation des voyages, Vol. I, p. 57.
5 DEFREMERY and SANGUINETTI, Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, Vol. Ill, p. 129.
6 H. BLOCHMANN, Ain I Akbari, Vol. I, p. 65.
7 PELLIOT, Le Fou-nan, Bull, de VEcole frangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 262.
8 PELLIOT, ibid., Vol. II, p. 168.
9 Mon Han lu ^ *& $& by Wu Tse-mu ^ g $C of the Sung (Ch. 18, p. 5 b;
ed. of Ci pu tsu lai ts'un Su).
10 Yuan kien lei han, Ch. 402, p. 3 b. Further, in the lost Hu pen ts'ao, as follows
from a quotation in a note to the Pei hu lu (Ch. 3, p. 12).
11 Toung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439.
THE POMEGRANATE 283
China. How this would have been possible, is not explained by him.
The Sanskrit term for the pomegranate (and this is evidently what
Hirth hinted at) is dadima or dalima, also dddimva, which has passed
into Malayan as dellma. 1 It is obvious that the Chinese transcription
bears some relation to this word; but it is equally obvious that the
Chinese form cannot be fully explained from it, as it leads only to
*du-lim, not, however, to dalim. There are two possibilities: the Chinese
transcription might be based either on an Indian vernacular or
Apabhramca form of a type like *dulim, *dudim, 2 or on a word of the
same form belonging to some Iranian dialect. The difficulty of the
problem is enhanced by the fact that no ancient Iranian word for the
fruit is known to us. 3 It appears certain, however, that no Sanskrit
word is intended in the Chinese transcription, otherwise we should
meet the latter in the Sanskrit-Chinese glossaries. The fact remains
that these, above all the Fan yi min yi tsi, do not contain the word
t'u-lin; and, as far as I know, Chinese Buddhist literature offers no
allusion to the pomegranate. Nor do the Chinese say, as is usually
stated by them in such cases, that the word is of Sanskrit origin; the
only positive information given is that it came along with General
Can K'ien, which is to say that the Chinese were under the im-
pression that it hailed from some of the Iranian regions visited by him.
*Dulim, dulima, or *durim, durima, accordingly, must have been a
designation of the pomegranate in some Iranian language.
(2) fir 3 tan-Zo t *dan-zak, dan-yak, dan-n'iak. This word appears
in the Ku kin cu* and in the Yu yan tsa tsu. 5 Apparently it represents a
transcription, but it is not stated from which language it is derived. In
my estimation, the foundation is an Iranian word still unknown to us,
but congeners of which we glean from Persian ddnak ("small grain")?
1 J. CRAWFURD (History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 433) derives this
word from the Malayan numeral five, with reference to the five cells into which the
fruit is divided. This, of course, is a mere popular etymology. There is no doubt
that the fruit was introduced into the Archipelago from India; it occurs there only
cultivated, and is of inferior quality. On the Philippines it was only introduced
by the Spaniards (A. DE MORGA, Philippine Islands, p. 275, ed. of Hakluyt Society)..
2 The vernacular forms known to me have the vowel a; for instance, Hindustani
darim, Bengali ddlim, dalim or darim; Newari, dhade. The modern Indo-Aryan
languages have also adopted the Persian word anar.
8 In my opinion, the Sanskrit word is an Iranian loan-word, as is also Sanskrit
karaka, given as a synonyme for the pomegranate in the Amarakosa. The earliest
mention of dd^ima occurs in the Bower Manuscript; the word is absent in Vedic
literature.
4 At least it is thus stated in cyclopaedias; but the editions of the work, as
reprinted in the Han Wei ts'un $u and Kifu ts'un su, do not contain this term.
6 Ch. 1 8, p. 3 b (ed. of Pai hai).
284 SlNO-lRANICA
ddna ("grain, berry, stone of a fruit, seed of grain or fruit "), ddngu
("kind of grain"), Sina danu ("pomegranate"); 1 Sanskrit dhanika,
dhanyaka, or dhamyaka ("coriander"; properly "grains"). The no-
tion conveyed by this series is the same as that underlying Latin
granatum, from granum ("grain"); cf. Anglo-Saxon cornappel and
English pomegranate ("apple made up of grains").
(3) 3c ^J J nan si liu or 35 t Si liu. This transcription is generally
taken in the sense "the plant liu of the countries Nan and Si, or of the
country Nan-i." This view is expressed in the Po wu i, which, as
stated, also refers to the Can-K'ien legend, and to the term t'u-lin,
and continues that this was the seed of the liu of the countries Nan
and Si; hence, on the return of Can K'ien to China, the name nan-si-liu
was adopted. 2 Bretschneider intimates that Nan and Si were little
realms dependent on K'an at the time of the Han. Under the T'ang,
the name Nan referred to Bukhara, and Si to TaSKend; but it is hardly
credible that these two geographical names (one does not see for what
reason) should have been combined into one, in order to designate
the place of provenience of the pomegranate. It is preferable to assume
that $ ^5 nan $i, *an-sek, an-sak, ar-sak, represents a single name
and answers to Arsak, the name of the Parthian dynasty, being on a
par with 3c U. nan-si, *Ar-sik, and jc IS nan-si, *Ar-sai. In fact,
:: 35 is the best possible of these transcriptions. We should expect,
of course, to receive from the Chinese a specific and interesting story as
to how and when this curious name, which is unique in their botanical
nomenclature, was transmitted; 8 but nothing of the kind appears to
be on record, or the record, if it existed, seems to have been lost. It
is manifest that also the plant-name liu (*riu, r'u) presents the tran-
scription of an Iranian word, and that the name in its entirety was
adopted by the Chinese from an Iranian community outside of Parthia,
which had received the tree or shrub from a Parthian region, and there-
fore styled it "Parthian pomegranate." It is not likely that the tree
was transplanted to China directly from Parthia; we have to assume
rather that the transplantation was a gradual process, in which the
1 W. LEITNER, Races and Languages of Dardistan, p. 17.
2 It is not correct, as asserted by BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871,
p. 222), to say that this definition emanates from Li Si-gen, who, in fact, quotes
only the Po wu i, and presents no definition of his own except that the word liu
means ^ liu ("goitre"); this, of course, is not to be taken seriously. In Jehol, a
variety of pomegranate is styled hai $$ liu (O. FRANKE, Beschreibung des Jehol-
Gebietes, p. 75); this means literally, "liu from the sea," and signifies as much as
"foreign liu."
3 Cf . nan-si hian ^C JS ^ ("Parthian incense") as designation for styrax
benzoin (p. 464).
THE POMEGRANATE 285
Iranian colonies outside of Iran proper, those of Sogdiana and Turkis-
tan, played a prominent part. We know the Sogdian word for the
pomegranate, which is written n'r'kh, and the reading of which has
been reconstructed by R. GAUTHiox 1 in the form *narak(a), developed
from *anar-aka. This we meet again in Persian anar, which was adopted
in the same form by the Mongols, while the Uigur had it as nara. At
all events, however, it becomes necessary to restore, on the basis of the
Chinese transcription, an ancient *riu, *ru, of some Iranian dialect.
This lost Iranian word, in my opinion, presents also the foundation of
Greek /$6a or potd, the origin of which has been hitherto unexplained or
incorrectly explained, 2 and the Semitic names, Hebrew rimmon,
Arabic rummdn, Amharic riiman, Syriac rumond, Aramaic rummdna,
from which Egyptian arhmdni or anhmdnl (Coptic erman or herman)
is derived. 3
(4) 3? $ %o-liu, *zak (yak, n'iak)-liu (riu). This hybrid compound,
formed of elements contained in 2 and 3, is found in the dictionary
Kwan ya K 5S, written by Can Yi 36 Si about A.D. 265. 4 It is also
employed by the poet P'an Yo of the fourth century, mentioned above. 5
Eventually also this transcription might ultimately be traced to an
Iranian prototype. Japanese zakuro is based on this Chinese form. 6
While the direct historical evidence is lacking, the Chinese names of
the tree point clearly to Iranian languages. Moreover, the tree itself
is looked upon by the Chinese as a foreign product, and its first intro-
duction into China appears to have taken place in the latter part of
the third century A.D.
In my opinion, the pomegranate-tree was transplanted to India,
1 Essai sur le vocalisme du sogdien, p. 49. Cf. also Armenian nrneni for the
tree and nurn for the fruit.
2 The etymologies of the Greek word enumerated by SCHRADER (in Hehn,
Kulturpflanzen, p. 247) are so inane and far-fetched that they do not merit dis-
cussion. It is not necessary, of course, to hold that an immediate transmission of
the Persian word took place, but we must look to a gradual propagation and to
missing links by way of Asia Minor. According to W. MUSS-ARNOLT (Transactions
Am. Phil. Assoc., Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. no), the Cyprian form ftvdla forbids all
connection with the Hebrew. It is not proved, however, that this dialectic word
has any connection with f>6a ; it may very well be an independent local development.
3 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 76. Portuguese roma, romeira, from the
Arabic; Anglo-Saxon read-appel.
4 This is the date given by WAITERS (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 38).
BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 164) fixes the date at about 227-240.
5 T'an lei han, Ch. 183, p. 9.
6 Written also fjj ^. E. KAEMPFER (Amoenitates exoticae, p. 800) already
mentions this term as dsjakurjo, vulgo sakuro, with the remark, "Rara est hoc
coelo et fructu ingrato."
286 SlNO-lRANICA
likewise from Iranian regions, presumably in the first centuries of
our era. The tree is not mentioned in Vedic, Pali, or early Sanskrit
literature; and the word ddlima, dddima, etc., is traceable to Iranian
*dulim(a), which we have to reconstruct on the basis of the Chinese
transcription. The Tibetans appear to have received the tree from
Nepal, as shown by their ancient term bal-poi seu-sin ("seu tree of
Nepal")- 1 From India the fruit spread to the Malayan Archipelago
and Camboja. Both Cam dalim and Khmer iatim 2 are based on the
Sanskrit word.. The variety of pomegranate in the kingdom of Nan-ao
in Yun-nan, with a skin as thin as paper, indicated in the Yu yan tsa
tsu? may also have come from India. J. ANDERSON 4 mentions pome-
granates as products of Yun-nan.
Pomegranate-wine was known throughout the anterior Orient at
an early date. It is pointed out under the name asis in Cant. VIII, 2
(Vulgata: mustum) and in the Egyptian texts under the name $edeh-it. 6
Dioscorides 8 speaks of pomegranate- wine (poirrjs olvos). Ye-lu C'u-
ts'ai, in his Siyulu (account of his journey to Persia^ 1219-24), speak-
ing of the pomegranates of Khojand, which are "as large as two fists
and of a sour-sweet taste," says that the juice of three or five fruits is
pressed out into a vessel and makes an excellent beverage. 7 In the
country Tun-sun 21 (Tenasserim) there is a wine-tree resembling
the pomegranate; the juice of its flowers is gathered and placed in jars,
whereupon after several days it turns into good wine. 8 The inhabitants
of Hai-nan made use of pomegranate-flowers in fermenting their wine. 9
I have not found any references to pomegranate-wine prepared by the
Chinese, nor is it known to me that they actually make such wine.
It is known that the pomegranate, because of its exuberant seeds,
is regarded in China as an emblem alluding to numerous progeny; it
has become an anti-race-suicide symbol. The oldest intimation of this
symbolism looms up in the Pei Si 4t Jfe, where it is told that two pome-
granates were presented to King Nan-te 5 ^ of Ts'i 3 on the occasion
1 This matter has been discussed by me in T'oung Pao, 1916, pp. 408-410. In
Lo-lo we have sa-bu-se in the A-hi dialect and se-bu-se in Nyi. Sa or se means "grain "
(corresponding to Tibetan sa in sa-bon, "seed"). The last element se signifies
"tree." The fruit is se-bu-ma (ma, "fruit").
2 AYMONIER and CABATON, Dictionnaire dam-franfais, p. 220.
8 Ch. 18, p. 3 b.
4 Report on the Expedition to Western Yunan, p. 93 (Calcutta, 1871).
6 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, pp. 77, 78.
' v, 34-
7 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 19.
8 Lian Su, Ch. 54, p. 3.
9 HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 177.
THE POMEGRANATE 287
of his marriage to the daughter of Li Tsu-sou ffi$C. The latter
explained that the pomegranate encloses many seeds, and implies the
wish for many sons and grandsons. Thus the fruit is still a favorite
marriage gift or plays a r61e in the marriage feast. 1 The same is the
case in modern Greece. Among the Arabs, the bride, when dismounting
before the tent of the bridegroom, receives a pomegranate, which she
smashes on the threshold, and then flings the seeds into the interior of
the tent. 2 The Arabs would have a man like the pomegranate, bitter-
sweet, mild and affectionate with his friends in security, but tempered
with a just anger if the time call him to be a defender in his own or in
his neighbor's cause. 3
1 See, for instance, H. DOR, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, pt. I ,
Vol. II, p. 479-
2 A. MUSIL, Arabia Petraea, Vol. Ill, p. 191.
8 C. M. DOUGHTY, Travels in Arabia Deserta, Vol. I, p. 564.
SESAME AND FLAX
6. In A. DE CANDOLLE'S book 1 we read, "Chinese works seem to
show that sesame was not introduced into China before the Christian
era. The first certain mention of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth
century, entitled Ts*i min yao $u. Before this there is confusion between
the name of this plant and that of flax, of which the seed also yields an
oil, and which is not very ancient in China." Bretschneider is cited as
the source for this information. It was first stated by the latter that,
according to the Pen ts'ao, hu ma $! K (Sesamum orientate) was brought
by Can K'ien from Ta-yuan. 2 In his "Botanicon Sinicum" 3 he asserts
positively that hu ma, or foreign hemp, is a plant introduced from west-
ern Asia in the second century B.C. 4 The same dogma is propounded
by STUART. 5
All that there is to this theory amounts to this. T'ao Hun-kin
(A.D. 451-536) is credited in the Pen ts'ao kan mu Q with the statement
that "huma 81 jft ('hemp of the Hu') originally grew in Ta-yuan
(Fergana) ^ ^ 3^C ^E, 7 and that it hence received the name hu ma
('Iranian hemp')." He makes no reference to Can K'ien or to the time
when the introduction must have taken place; and to every one
familiar with Chinese records the passage must evoke suspicion through
its lack of precision and chronological and other circumstantial evi-
dence. The records regarding Ta-yuan do not mention hu ma, nor
does this term ever occur in the Annals. Now, T'ao Hun-kin was a
Taoist adept, a drug-hunter and alchemist, an immortality fiend; he
never crossed the boundaries of his country, and certainly had no
special information concerning Ta-yuan. He simply drew on his
imagination by arguing, that, because mu-su (alfalfa) and grape sprang
1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 420.
2 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 222; adopted by HIRTH, Toung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895,
p. 439, and maintained again in Journal Am. Or. Soc., 1917, p. 92.
3 Pt. II, p. 206.
4 Ibid., p. 204, he says, however, that the Pen ts'ao does not speak of flax, and
that its introduction must be of more recent date. This conflicts with his statement
above.
5 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 404.
6 Ch. 22, p. i. Likewise in the earlier Gen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 24, p. I b.
7 This tradition is reproduced without any reference in the Pen ts'ao yen i of
1116 (Ch. 20, p. i, ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
288
SESAME AND FLAX 289
from Ta-yuan (that is, a Hu country), hu ma also, being a Hu plant,
must likewise have emanated from that quarter. Such vagaries
cannot be accepted as history. All that can be inferred from the passage
in question is that T'ao Hun-kin may have been familiar with hu ma.
Li Si-Sen, quoting the Mon k*i pi fan Or S Ife by Sen Kwa $6 ffi 1
of the eleventh century, says, "In times of old there was in China only
1 great hemp' ta ma zJcftfc (Cannabis sativa) growing in abundance.
The envoy of the Han, Can K'ien, was the first to obtain the seeds of
oil-hemp vft jft 2 from Ta-yuan; hence the name hu ma in distinction
from the Chinese species ta ma." The Can-K'ien tradition is further
voiced in the T*un Zi of Cen Tsiao (1108-62) of the Sung. 3 The T*ai
p'in yil Ian* published in A.D. 983, quotes a Pen fc'ao kin of unknown
date as saying that Can K'ien obtained from abroad hu ma and hu tou. 5
This legend, accordingly, appears to have arisen under the Sung (A.D.
960-1278); that is, over a millennium after Can K'ien's lifetime. And
then there are thinking scholars who would make us accept such stuff
as the real history of the Han dynasty!
In the T'ang period this legend was wholly unknown: the T'an Pen
ts'ao does not allude to any introduction of hu ma, nor does this work
speak of Can K'ien in this connection.
A serious book like the T*u kin pen fc'ao of Su Sun, which for the
first time has also introduced the name yu ma ("oil hemp"), says only
that the plant originally grew in the territory of the Hu, that in appear-
ance it is like hemp, and that hence it receives the name hu ma.
Unfortunately it is only too true that the Chinese confound Sesamum
indicum (family Pedaliaceae) and Linum usitatissimum (family Linaceae)
in the single term hu ma ("Iranian hemp"); the only apparent reason
for this is the fact that the seeds of both plants yield an oil which is put
to the same medicinal use. The two are totally different plants, nor
do they have any relation to hemp. Philologically, the case is somewhat
analogous to that of hu tou (p. 305). It is most probable that the two
are but naturalized in China and introduced from Iranian regions, for
both plants are typically ancient West- Asiatic cultivations. The alleged
wild sesame of China 6 is doubtless an escape from cultivation.
1 This is the author wrongly called "Ch'en Ts'ung-chung " by BRETSCHNEIDER
(Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 377). Ts'un-c"un ^ tf* is his hao.
2 A synonyme of hu ma.
3 Ch. 75, p. 33.
4 Ch. 841, p. 6b.
5 See below, p. 305.
6 FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXVI, p. 236.
2QO SlNO-lRANICA
Herodotus 1 emphasizes that the only oil used by the Babylonians
is made from sesame. Sesame is also mentioned among their products
by the Babylonian priest Berosus (fourth century B.C.). 2
Aelius Callus, a member of the Equestrian order, carried the Roman
arms into Arabia, and brought back from his expedition the report that
the Nomades (nomads) live on milk and the flesh of wild animals, and
that the other peoples, like the Indians, express a wine from palms and
oil from sesame. 3 According to Pliny, sesame comes from India, where
they make an oil from it, the color of the seeds being white. 4 Both the
seeds and the oil were largely employed in Roman pharmacology. 5
Megasthenes 6 mentions the cultivation of sesame in India. It likewise
occurs in the Atharva Veda and in the Institutes of Manu (Sanskrit
tila)* A. DE CANDOLLE'S view 8 that it was introduced into India from
the Sunda Isles in prehistoric times, is untenable. This theory is based
on a purely linguistic argument: "Rumphius gives three names for
the sesame in these islands, very different one from the other, and from
the Sanskrit word, which supports the theory of a more ancient existence
in the archipelago than on the continent." This alleged evidence proves
nothing whatever for the history of the plant, but is merely a fact of
language. 9 There can now be no doubt that from a botanical viewpoint
the home of the genus is in tropical Africa, where twelve species occur,
while there are only two in India. 10
In the Fan yi min yi tsi, 11 a Sanskrit synonyme of "sesame" is given as
PU $1 @ & flW a-t'i-mu-to-k'ie, *a-di-muk-ta-g'a, i.e., Sanskrit adhi-
muktaka, which is identified with ku-$en (see below) and hu-ma. An
old gloss explains the term as "the foreign flower of pious thoughtful-
ness" (San se i hwa 8 & Jl U), an example of which is the lighting of
a lamp fed with the oil oC three flowers (sandal, soma, and campaka
\Michelia champaca]) and the placing of this lamp on the altar of the
1 1, 193-
2 MULLER, Fragmenta historiae graecae, Vol. II, p. 496. Regarding Egypt,
see V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 57.
8 Pliny, vi, 28, 161.
4 Sesama ab Indis venit. Ex ea et oleum faciunt; colos eius candidus (xvin,
22, 96).
8 Pliny, XXH, 64, 132.
Strabo, XV. i, 13.
7 JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquit^, Vol. II, p. 269.
8 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 422.
9 The Malayan languages possess a common name for Sesamum indicum:
Javanese and Malayan lena, Batak lona, Cam lend or land; Khmer lono.
10 A. ENGLER, Pflanzenfamilien, Vol. IV, pt. 3 b, p. 262.
11 Ch. 8, p. 6 (see above, p. 254).
SESAME AND FLAX 291
Triratna. 1 From the application of adhimuktdka it becomes self-evident
also that sesame-oil must be included in this series. The frequent
mention of this oil for sacred lamps is familiar to all readers of the
Buddhist Jataka. The above Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary adds the
following comment: "This plant is in appearance like the 'great hemp*
(Cannabis sativa). It has red flowers and green leaves. Its seeds can
be made into oil; also they yield an aromatic. According to the Tsun
kin yin nie lun ? H 31 JR ffe, sesame (ku-$en) is originally charcoal,
and, while for a long time buried in the soil, will change into sesame.
In the western countries (India) it is customary in anointing the body
with fragrant oil to use first aromatic flowers and then to take sesame-
seeds. These are gathered and soaked till thoroughly bright; afterwards
they proceed to press the oil out of the sesame, which henceforth be-
comes fragrant."
Of greater importance for our purpose is the antiquity of sesame in
Iran. According to Herodotus 2 , it was cultivated by the Chorasmians,
Hyrcanians, Parthians, Sarangians, and Thamanaeans. In Persia
sesame-oil was known at least from the time of the first Achaemenides. 3
G. WATT* even looks to Persia and Central Asia as the home of the
species; he suggests that it was probably first cultivated somewhere
between the Euphrates valley and Bukhara south to Afghanistan and
upper India, and was very likely diffused into India proper and the
Archipelago, before it found its way to Egypt and Europe.
Sesamum indicum (var. subindiwswn Dl.) is cultivated in Russian
Turkistan and occupies there the first place among the oil-producing
plants. It thrives in the warmest parts of the valley of Fergana, and
does not go beyond an elevation of two thousand five hundred feet.
It is chiefly cultivated in the districts of Namanga and Andijan, though
not in large quantity. 5 Its Persian name is kunjut.
While there is no doubt that this species was introduced into China
from Iranian regions, the time as to when this introduction took place
remains obscure. First, there is no historical and dependable record
of this event; second, the confusion brought about by the Chinese in
treating this subject is almost hopeless. Take the earliest notice of
hu ma cited by the Pen ts'ao and occurring in the Pie lu: "Hu ma is
also called ku-$en E 0. It grows on the rivers and in the marshes of
1 Cf . EITEL, Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, p. 4.
2 HI, 117.
3 JORET, op. cit. t Vol. II, p. 71. Sesame is mentioned in Pahlavi literature
(above, p. 193).
4 Gingelly or Sesame Oil, p. n (Handbooks of Commercial Products, No. 21).
5 S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), p. 50.
292 SlNO-lRANICA
San-tan Ji J (south-eastern portion of San-si), and is gathered in the
autumn. What is called ts*in %an W j| are the sprouts of the ku-sen.
They grow in the river-valleys of Gun-yuan 4 1 $K (Ho-nan)." Nothing
is said here about a foreign introduction or a cultivation; on the con-
trary, the question evidently is of an indigenous wild swamp-plant,
possibly Mulgedium sibiriacum. 1 Both Sesamum and Linum are thor-
oughly out of the question, for they grow in dry loam, and sesame espe-
cially in sandy soil. Thus suspicion is ripe that the terms hu ma and
ku-sen originally applied to an autochthonous plant of San-si and
Ho-nan, and that hu ma in this case moves on the same line as the term
hu Sen in the Li sao (p. 195). This suspicion is increased by the fact
that hu ma occurs in a passage ascribed to Hwai-nan-tse, who died in
122 B.C., and cited in the T'ai p'in yu Ian? Moreover, the Wu si (or
p*u) pen ts'ao, written in the first half of the third century by Wu P'u
^ If, in describing hu ma, alludes to the mythical Emperor Sen-nun
and to Lei kun If &, a sage employed by the Emperor Hwan in his
efforts to perfect the art of healing.
The meaning of kit-Sen is "the great superior one." The later authors
regard the term as a variety of Sesamum, but give varying definitions
of it: thus, T'ao Hun-kin states that the kind with a square stem is
called kit-Sen (possibly Mulgedium), that with a round stem hu ma.
Su Kun of the T'ang says that the plant with capsules (kio ft ) of eight
ridges or angles (pa len A IS) is called kii-$en; that with quadrangular
capsules, hu ma. The latter definition would refer to Sesamum indicum,
the capsule of which is oblong quadrangular, two-valved and two-celled,
each cell containing numerous oily seeds.
Mori Sen J!L fJfc, in his Si liao pen fsao (written in the second half
of the seventh century), observes that "the plants cultivated in fertile
soil produce octangular capsules, while those planted in mountainous
fields have the capsules quadrangular, the distinction arising from the
difference of soil conditions, whereas the virtues of the two varieties are
identical. Again, Lei Hiao IS 5C of the fifth century asserts that
ku-sen is genuine, when it has seven ridges or angles, a red color, and
a sour taste, but that it is erroneous to style hu ma the octangular
capsules with two pointed ends, black in color, and furnishing a black oil.
There is no doubt that in these varying descriptions entirely different
plants are visualized. Kao C'en of the Sung, in his Si wu ki yuan?
1 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 269. This identification, however, is
uncertain.
2 Ch. 989, p. 6 b.
3 Ch. 10, p. 29 b (see above, p. 279).
SESAME AND FLAX 293
admits that it is unknown what the hu ma spoken of in the Pen-ts*ao
literature really is.
I have also prepared a translation of Li Si-cen's text on the subject,
which Bretschneider refrained from translating; but, as there are several
difficult botanical points which I am unable to elucidate, I prefer to
leave this subject to a competent botanist. In substance Li Si-cen
understands by hu ma the sesame, as follows from his use of the modern
term ci ma Bit $jt. He says that there are two crops, an early and a late
one, 1 with black, white, or red seeds; but how he can state that the
stems are all square is unintelligible. The criticism of the statements
of his predecessors occupies much space, but I do not see that it enlight-
ens us much. The best way out of this difficulty seems to me Stuart's
suggestion that the Chinese account confounds Sesamum, Linum,
and Mulgedium. The Japanese naturalist Ono Ranzan 2 is of the same
opinion. He says that there is no variety of sesame with red seed, as
asserted by Li Si-en (save that the black seeds of sesame are reddish
in the immature stage), and infers that this is a species of Linum which
always produces red seeds exclusively. Ono also states that there is a
close correlation between the color of the seeds and the angles of the
capsules: a white variety will always produce two or four-angled cap-
sules, while hexangular and octangular capsules invariably contain only
black seeds. Whether or in how far this is correct I do not know. The
confusion of Sesamum and Linum arose from the common name hu ma,
but unfortunately proves that the Chinese botanists, or rather pharma-
cists, were bookworms to a much higher degree than observers; for it
is almost beyond comprehension how such radically distinct plants
can be confounded by any one who has even once seen them. In view
of this disconsolate situation, the historian can only beg to be excused.
7. It is a point of great culture-historical interest that the Chinese
have never utilized the flax-fibre in the manufacture of textiles, but
that hemp has always occupied this place from the time of their
earliest antiquity. 3 This is one of the points of fundamental diversity
between East-Asiatic and Mediterranean civilizations, there hemp,
and here flax, as material for clothing. There are, further, two important
facts to be considered in this connection, first, that the Aryans
1 In S. COULING'S Encyclopaedia Sinica (p. 504) it is stated that in China there is
only one crop, but late and early varieties exist.
2 Honzo komoku keimo, Ch. 18, p. 2. .
3 In a subsequent study on the plants and agriculture of the Indo-Chinese, I
hope to demonstrate that the Indo-Chinese nations, especially the Chinese and
Tibetans, possess a common designation for "hemp," and that hemp has been
cultivated by them in a prehistoric age. There also the history of hemp will be
discussed.
294 SlNO-lRANICA
(Iranians and Indo- Aryans) possess an identical word for "hemp" (Avestan
bangha, Sanskrit bhangd), while the European languages have a distinct
designation, which is presumably a loan-word pointing to Finno-Ugrian
and Turkish; and, second, that there is a common Old-Turkish word
for "hemp" of the type kandir, which stands in some relation to the
Finno-Ugrian appellations. 1 It is most likely that the Scythians brought
hemp from Asia to Europe. 2 On the other hand, it is well known what
vital importance flax and linen claimed in the life of the Egyptians
and the classical peoples. 3 Flax is the typically European, hemp the
typically Asiatic textile. Surely Linum usitatissimum was known in
ancient Iran and India. It was and is still wild in the districts included
between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea. 4 It
was probably introduced into India from Iran, but neither in India nor
in Iran was the fibre ever used for garments: the plant was only culti-
vated as a source of linseed and linseed-oil. 5 Only a relatively modern
utilization of flax-fibres for weaving is known from a single locality in
Persia, Kazirun, in the province of Fars. This account dates from the
beginning of the fourteenth century, and the detailed description
given of the process testifies to its novelty and exceptional character. 6
This exception confirms the rule. The naturalization of Linum in China,
of course, is far earlier than the fourteenth century. As regards the
utilization of Linum, the Chinese fall in line with Iranians and Indo-
Aryans; and it is from Iranians that they received the plant. The
case is a clear index of the fact that the Chinese never were in direct
contact with the Mediterranean culture-area, and that even such culti-
vated plants of this area as reached them were not transmitted from
there directly, but solely through the medium of Iranians. The case
is further apt to illustrate how superficial, from the viewpoint of tech-
nical culture, the influence of the Greeks on the Orient must have
been since Alexander's campaign, as an industry like flax-weaving
was not promoted by them, although the material was offered there
by nature.
For botanical reasons it is possible that Linum usitatissimum was
introduced into China from Fergana. There it is still cultivated, and
only for the exclusive purpose of obtaining oil from the seeds. 7 As has
1 Z. GOMBOCZ, Bulgarisch-turkische Lehnworter, p. 92.
2 Cf. for the present, A. DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 148.
8 Pliny, xix, 1-3; H. BLTJMNER, Technologic, Vol. I, 2d ed., p. 191.
4 A. DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 130.
* See the interesting discussion of WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 721.
6 G. LE STRANGE, Description of the Province of Fars in Persia, p. 55.
7 S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), p. 51.
SESAME AND FLAX 295
been pointed out, the plant is indigenous also in northern Persia, and
must have been cultivated there from ancient times, although we have
no information on this point from either native documents or Greek
authors. 1
BRETSCHNEiDER 2 says that "flax was unknown to the ancient
Chinese; it is nowadays cultivated in the mountains of northern China
(probably also in other parts) and in southern Mongolia, but only for
the oil of its seeds, not for its fibres; the Chinese call it hu ma ('foreign
hemp'); the Pen ts'ao does not speak of it; its introduction must be of
more recent date." This is erroneous. The Pen ts*ao includes this
species under the ambiguous term hu ma; and, although the date of the
introduction cannot be ascertained, the event seems to have taken
place in the first centuries of our era.
At present, the designation hu ma appears to refer solely to flax.
A, HENRY* states under this heading, "This is flax (Linum usitatis-
simum), which is cultivated in San-si, Mongolia, and the mountainous
parts of Hu-pei and Se-S'wan. In the last two provinces, from personal
observation, flax would seem to be entirely cultivated for the seeds,
which are a common article in Chinese drug-shops, and are used locally
for their oil, utilized for cooking and lighting purposes." In another
paper, 4 the same author states that Linum usitatissimum is called at
Yi-c'afi, Se-S'wan, San Zi ma tfj Ba 5 K ("mountain sap-hemp"), and
that it is cultivated in the mountains of the Patufi district, not for the
fibre, but for the oil which the seed yields.
Chinese hu ma has passed into Mongol as xuma (khuma) with the
meaning "sesame," 6 and into Japanese as goma, used only in the sense
of Sesamum indicum? while Linum usitatissimum is in Japanese ama
or i&nen-ama*
Yao Min-hwi $fc ^ J, in his book on Mongolia (Mon-ku &'),*
mentions hu ma among the products of that country. There are several
wild-growing species of Linum in northern China and Japan, ya ma
1 JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquitS, Vol. II, p. 69.
2 Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 204.
8 Chinese Jute, p. 6 (publication of the Chinese Maritime Customs, Shanghai,
1891).
4 Chinese Names of Plants, p. 239 (Journal China Branch Royal As. Soc. t
Vol. XXII, 1887).
6 The popular writing ^, according to the Pen ts*ao kan mu, is incorrect.
6 KOVALEVSKI, Dictionnaire mongol, p. 934.
7 MATSUMURA, No. 2924.
8 Ibid., No. 1839.
8 Ch. 3, p. 41 (Shanghai, 1907).
2Q6 SlNO-lRANICA
55 Jtt (Japanese nume-goma or aka-goma), Linum perenne, and Japanese
matsuba-ninjin or matsuba-nade&ko, Linum possarioides. 1 FORBES and
HEMSLEY, 2 moreover, enumerate Linum nutans for Kan-su, and L.
stelleroides for Ci-li, San-tun, Manchuria, and the Korean Archipelago.
In northern China, Linum sativum (San-si hu ma tfj 15 iK Jfit ) is
cultivated for the oil of its seeds. 3
1 MATSUMURA, Nos. 1837, 1838; STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 242.
2 Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXIII, p. 95.
8 This species is figured and described in the i wu min Si t'u k'ao.
THE CORIANDER
8. The Po wu &', faithful to its tendencies regarding other Iranian
plants, generously permits General Can K'ien to have also brought back
from his journey the coriander, hu swi $J I? (Coriandrum sativnm). 1
Li Si-en, and likewise K'an-hi's Dictionary, repeat this statement
without reference to the Po wu &'; 2 and of course the credulous com-
munity of the Changkienides has religiously sworn to this dogma. 3
Needless to say that nothing of the kind is contained in the General's
biography or in the Han Annals. 4 The first indubitable mention of the
plant is not earlier than the beginning of the sixth century A.D.; that
is, about six centuries after the General's death, and this makes some
difference to the historian. 5 The first Pen ts'ao giving the name hu-swi
is the Si liao pen ts'ao, written by Mori Sen in the seventh century,
followed by the Pen ts'ao & i of C'en Ts'an-k'i in the first half of the
eighth century. None of these authors makes any observation on
foreign introduction. In the literature on agriculture, the cultivation
of the coriander is first described in the Ts*i min yao $u of the sixth
century, where, however, nothing is said about the origin of the plant
from abroad.
An interesting reference to the plant occurs in the Buddhist dic-
tionary Yi ts'ie kin yin i (I.e.), where several variations for writing
1 This passage is not a modern interpolation, but is of ancient date, as it is cited
in the Yi ts'ie kin yin i, Ch. 24, p. 2 (regarding this work, see above, p. 258). Whether
it was contained in the original edition of the Po wu i, remains doubtful.
2 Under ]$} ("garlic") K'an-hi cites the dictionary Tan yiin, published by Sun
Mien in A.D. 750, as saying that the coriander is due to Can K'ien.
3 BRETSCHNEIDER, Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 221, where the term hu-swi is
wrongly identified with parsley, and Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 25; HIRTH, T'oung Pao,
Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439.
4 The coriander is mentioned in several passages of the Kin kwei yao lio by
the physician Can Cun-km of the second century A.D.; but, as stated above (p. 205),
there is no guaranty that these passages belonged to the original edition of the
work. "To eat pork together with raw coriander rots away the navel" (Ch. c,
p. 23 b). "In the fourth and eighth months do not eat coriander, for it injures the
intellect " (ibid., p. 28). "Coriander eaten for a long time makes man very forgetful;
a patient must not eat coriander or hwan-hwa ts'ai 31 ^ f| (Lampsana
apogonoides)," ibid., p. 29.
6 An incidental reference to hu swi is made in the Pen ts'ao kan mu in
the description of the plant Man er (see BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II,
No. 438), and ascribed to Lu Ki, who lived in the latter part of the third century
A.D. In my opinion, this reading is merely due to a misprint, as there is preserved no
description of the hu-swi by Lu Ki.
297
298 SlNO-lRANICA
the character swi are given, also the synonymes hian is* at ^ 3
("fragrant vegetable") and hian sun ^ H. 1 In Kian-nan the plant
was styled hu swi ffl |g, also hu ki ffi ||, the pronunciation of the
latter character being explained by JfiS k*i y *gi. The coriander belongs
to the five vegetables of strong odor (p. 303) forbidden to the geomancers
and Taoist monks. 2
I have searched in vain for any notes on the plant that might
elucidate its history or introduction; but such do not seem to exist,
not even in the various Pen ts'ao. As regards the Annals, I found only
a single mention in the Wu Tai &, 3 where the coriander is enumerated
among the plants cultivated by the Uigur. In tracing its foreign origin,
we are thrown back solely on the linguistic evidence.
The coriander was known in Iran: it is mentioned in the Bundahisn. 4
Its medical properties are discussed in detail by Abu Mansur in his
Persian pharmacopoeia. 5 SCHLIMMER* observes, "Se cultive presque
partout en Perse comme plante potagere; les indigenes le croient
antiaphrodisiaque et plus spe*cialement aneantissant les ejections." It
occurs also in Fergana. 7 It was highly appreciated by the Arabs in their
pharmacopoeia, as shown by the long extract devoted to it by Ibn
al-Baitar. 8 In India it is cultivated during the cold season. The San-
skrit names which have been given on p. 284, mean simply " grain,"
and are merely attributes, 9 not proper designations of the plant, for
which in fact there is no genuine Sanskrit word. As will be seen below,
Sanskrit kustumburu is of Iranian origin; and there is no doubt in my
mind that the plant came to India from Iran, in the same manner as
it appears to have spread from Iran to China.
SB 15 or |g hu-swi, *ko(go)-swi (su), appears to be the transcription
of an Iranian form *koswi, koswi, goswi. Cf. Middle Persian go$niz;
1 Two dictionaries, the Tse yuan ^ $B an d Yiin Ho ^ Vtfe, are quoted in this
text, but their date is not known to me. As stated in the Pen ts* ao si i and Si wu ki yuan
(Ch. 10, p. 30; above, p. 279), the change from hu swi to hian swi was dictated by a taboo
imposed by Si Lo ^ Ipj (A.D. 273-333), who was himself a Hu (cf. below,
p. 300) ; but we have no contemporaneous account to this effect, and the attempt
at explanation is surely retrospective.
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 6 b; and STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 28.
8 Ch. 74, P- 4-
4 Above, p. 192.
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 112.
6 Terminologie, p. 156.
T S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), p. 51.
8 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, pp. 170-174.
9 Such are also the synonymes sukftnapatra, tikfnapatra, tikjnaphala ("with
leaves or fruits of sharp taste").
THE CORTANDER 299
New Persian ki$niz, kuniz, and gi$niz, also Suniz-, 1 Kurd ksnis or
Turkish ki$ni$; Russian ktinets; Aramaic kusbarta and kusbar (Hebrew
gad, Punic yol5, are unconnected), Arabic kozbera or kosberet; Sanskrit
kustumburu and kustumbari; Middle and Modern Greek Kowfiapas*
and KLavvrjT^i.
According to the Hut k'ian a, the coriander is called in Turkistan
(that is, in Turk!) yun-ma-su 3K M 3if .
It is commonly said that the coriander is indigenous to the Mediter-
ranean and Caucasian regions (others say southern Europe, the Levant,
etc.), but it is shown by the preceding notes that Iran should be included
in this definition. I do not mean to say, however, that Iran is the ex-
clusive and original home of the plant. Its antiquity in Egypt and in
Palestine cannot be called into doubt. It has been traced in tombs of
the twenty-second dynasty (960-800 B.C.), 8 and Pliny 4 states that the
Egyptian coriander is the best. In Iran the cultivation seems to have
been developed to a high degree; and the Iranian product was propa-
gated in all directions, in China, India, anterior Asia, and Russia.
The Tibetan name for the coriander, M-SU, may be connected with
or derived from Chinese hu-sui. L. A. WADDELL B saw the plant culti-
vated in a valley near Lhasa. It is also cultivated in Siam. 6
Coriander was well known in Britain prior to the Norman Con-
quest, and was often employed in ancient Welsh and English medicine
and cookery. 7 Its Anglo-Saxon name is cellendre, coliandre, going back
to Greek koridndron, koriannon.
1 Another Persian word is bughunj. According to STEINGASS (Persian Diction-
ary), talki or tdlgi denotes a "wild coriander."
2 The second element of the Arabic, Sanskrit, and Greek words seems to bear
some relation to Coptic bersiu, beresu (V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 72). In
Greece, coriander is still cultivated, but only sparsely, near TJieben, Corinth, and
Cyparissia (Tn. v. HELDREICH, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, p. 41).
3 V. LORET, op. cit., p. 72; F. WOENIG, Pflanzen im alten Aegypten, p. 225.
4 xx, 20, 82.
5 Lhasa, p. 316.
' PALLEGOIX, Description du royaume thai, Vol. I, p. 126.
7 FUteKiGER and HANBURY, Pharmacographia, p. 329.
THE CUCUMBER
9. Another dogma of the Changkienomaniacs is that the renowned
General should have also blessed his countrymen with the introduction
of the cucumber (Cucumis sativus), styled hu kwa $3 jR ("Iranian
melon") or hwan kwa !lt JR ("yellow melon"). 1 The sole document
on which this opinion is based is presented by the recent work of Li
Si-6en, 2 who hazards this bold statement without reference to any older
authority. Indeed, such an earlier source does not exist: this bit of
history is concocted ad hoc, and merely suggested by the name hu kwa.
Any plants formed with the attribute hu were ultimately palmed off on
the old General as the easiest way out of a difficult problem, and as a
comfortable means of saving further thought.
Li Si-5en falls back upon two texts only of the T'ang period, the
Pen ts'ao Si i, which states that the people of the north, in order to avoid
the name of Si Lo 15 Si (A.D. 273-333), who was of Hu descent, tabooed
the term hu kwa, and replaced it by hwan kwa; 3 and the Si i lu Jn'SLUfc
by Tu Pao tt 5K, who refers this taboo to the year 608 (fourth year
of the period Ta-ye of the Sui dynasty). 4 If this information be correct,
we gain a chronological clew as to the terminus a quo: the cucumber
appears to have been in China prior to the sixth century A.D. Its culti-
vation is alluded to in the Ts*i min yao $u from the beginning of the
sixth century, provided this is not an interpolation of later times. 6
According to ENGLER/ the home of the cucumber would most prob-
1 BRETSCHNEIDER, Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 21 (accordingly adopted by
DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 266); STUART, Chinese Materia
Medica, p. 135. In Japanese, the cucumber is ki-uri.
* Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 28, p. 5 b.
1 A number of other plant-names was hit by this taboo (cf . above, p. 298) : thus
the plant lo-lo jft 1$) (Ocimum basilicum), which bears the same character as Si Lo's
personal name, as already indicated in the Ts'i min yao Su (see also Si wu ki yuan,
Ch. 10, p. 30 b; Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 5, p. 34; and Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26,
p. 22 b). He is said to have also changed the name of the myrobalan ho-li-lo (below,
p. 378) into ho-tse fpf -J*. There is room for doubt, however, whether any of these
plants existed in the China of his time; the taboo explanations may be makeshifts
of later periods.
4 This is the Ta ye Si i lu (Records relative to the Ta-ye period, 605-618),
mentioned by BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 195), The Pen ts'ao kan mu
(Ch. 22, p. i) quotes the same work again on the taboo of the term hu ma (p. 288),
which in 608 was changed into kiao ma ^ jpfrjc.
6 Cf. Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 5, p. 43.
8 In Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 323.
300
THE CUCUMBER 301
ably be in India; and WATT 1 observes, "There seems to be no doubt
that one at least of the original homes of the cucumber was in North
India, and its cultivation can be traced to the most ancient classic times
of Asia." DE CANDOLLE 2 traces the home of the plant to northwestern
India. I am not yet convinced of the correctness of this theory, as the
historical evidence in favor of India, as usual in such cases, is weak; 3
and the cultivation of the cucumber in Egypt and among the Semites
is doubtless of ancient date. 4 At any rate, this Cucurbitacea belongs to
the Egypto-West-Asiatic cujture-sphere, and is not indigenous to
China. There is, however, no trace of evidence for the gratuitous
speculation that its introduction is due to General Can K'ien. The
theory that it was transmitted from Iranian territory is probable, but
there is thus far no historical document to support it. The only trace
of evidence thereof appears from the attribute Hu.
Abu Mansur mentions the cucumber under the name qittd, adding
the Arabic-Persian xiydr and kawanda in the language of Khorasan. 5
The word xiydr has been adopted into Osmanli and into Hindustani in
the form xlrd. Persian xdwuf or xdwa$ denotes a cucumber kept for
seed; it means literally "ox-eye" (gdv-a$; Avestan a$i, Middle Persian
o, Sanskrit aksi, "eye"), corresponding to Sanskrit gavdk$i ("a kind
of cucumber"). A Pahlavi word for "cucumber" is vdtrah, which
developed into New Persian bddran, bdlan, or varan (Afghan bddran). 6
1 Commercial Products of India, p. 439. In Sanskrit the cucumber is trapu$a.
2 Op. cit., p. 265.
3 Such a positive assertion as that of de Candolle, that the cucumber was
cultivated in India for at least three thousand years, cannot be accepted by any
serious historian.
4 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 75; C. JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquite*,
Vol. I, p. 61.
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu'Mansur, p. 106.
6 This series is said to mean also "citron." The proper Persian word for the
latter fruit is turunj (Afghan turanj, Baluc"i trunj). The origin of this word, as far
as I know, has not yet been correctly explained, not even by HUBSCHMANN (Armen .
Gram., p. 266). VULLERS (Lexicon persico-latinum, Vol. I, p. 439) tentatively
suggests derivation from Sanskrit suranga, which is surely impossible. The real
source is presented by Sanskrit matulurtga ("citron," Citrus medico).
CHIVE, ONION, AND SHALLOT
10. Although a number of alliaceous plants are indigenous to China, 1
there is one species, the chive (Allium scorodoprasum; French rocambole],
to which, as already indicated by its name hu swan fi9 %& or hu $J
("garlic of the Hu, Iranian garlic"), a foreign origin is ascribed by the
Chinese. Again, the worn-out tradition that also this introduction
is due to Can K'ien, is of late origin, and is first met with in the
spurious work Po wu ci, and then in the dictionary T'an yun of the middle
of the eighth century. 2 Even Li Si-Sen 3 says no more than that "people
of the Han dynasty obtained the hu swan from Central Asia." It seems
difficult, however, to eradicate a long-established prejudice or an error
even from the minds of scholars. In 1915 I endeavored to rectify it,
especially with reference to the wrong opinion expressed by Hirth in
1895, that garlic in general must have been introduced into China
for the first time by Can K'ien. Nevertheless the same misconception
is repeated by him in 191 7, 4 while a glance at the Botanicon Sinicum 8
would have convinced him that at least four species of Allium are of
a prehistoric antiquity in China. The first mention of this Central-
Asiatic or Iranian species of Allium is made by T'ao Hun-kin
(A.D. 45 1-536) , provided the statement attributed to him in the Cen lei pen
ts*ao and Pen ts'ao kan mu really emanates from him. 6 When the new
A Ilium was introduced, the necessity was felt of distinguishing it from the
old, indigenous Allium sativum, that was designated by the plain root-
word swan. The former, accordingly, was characterized as ta swan
Jtijfr ("large Allium"); the latter, as siao /J^ swan ("small Allium").
This distinction is said to have first been recorded by T'ao Hun-kin.
Also the Ku kin Zu is credited with the mention of hu swan; this, how-
ever, is not the older Ku kin u by Ts'ui Pao of the fourth century, but,
as expressly stated in the Pen ts'ao, the later re-edition by Fu Hou
1 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 96-99.
2 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 244.
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 6 b.
4 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, p. 92.
1 Pt. II, Nos. 1-4, 63, 357-360, and III, Nos. 240-243.
The Kin kwei yao Ho (Ch. c, p. 24 b) of the second century A.D. mentions hu
swan, but this in all probability is a later interpolation (above, p. 205).
302
CHIVE, ONION, AND SHALLOT 303
of the tenth century. However, this text is now inserted in the
older Ku kin u, l which teems with interpolations.
Ta swan is mentioned also as the first among the five vegetables of
strong odor tabooed for the Buddhist clergy, the so-called wu hun
3 $. 2 This series occurs in the Brahmajala-sutra, translated in
A.D. 406 by Kumarajlva. 3 If the term ta swan was contained in the
original edition of this work, we should have good evidence for carry-
ing the date of the chive into the Eastern Tsin dynasty (A.D. 317-419).
11. There is another cultivated species of Allium (probably A.
fistulosum) derived from the West. This is first mentioned by Sun Se-
miao ii & jH, 4 in his Ts'ien kin Si U f & & ?p (written in the begin-
ning of the seventh century), under the name hu ts'un ^ M., because
,j- t^
the root of this plant resembles the hu swan m #3>. It was usually styled
swan-ts'un m %H or hu $1 ts'un (the latter designation in the K'ai pao
pen ts'ao of the Sung). In the Yin san len yao (p. 236), written in 1331
under the Yuan, it is called hui-hui ts'un @ 1 (" Mohammedan
onion"). 8 This does not mean, however, that it was only introduced
by Mohammedans; but this is simply one of the many favorite alter-
ations of ancient names, as they were in vogue during the Mongol
epoch. This Allium was cultivated in Se-c'wan under the T'ang, as
stated by Mon Sen " I5fc in his Si liao pen ts'ao, written in the second
half of the seventh century. Particulars in regard to the introduction
are not on record.
12. There is a third species of Allium, which reached China under
the T'ang, and which, on excellent evidence, may be attributed to
Persia. In A.D. 647 the Emperor T'ai Tsun solicited from all his tribu-
tary nations their choicest vegetable products, 6 and their response to
the imperial call secured a number of vegetables hitherto unknown in
China. One of these is described as follows: "Hun-t*i onion W SI M
resembles in appearance the onion (ts'un, Allium fistulosum), but is
whiter and more bitter. On account of its smell, it serves as a remedy.
1 Ch. c, p. 3 b.
2 This subject is treated in the Pen ts*ao kan mu (Ch. 26, p. 6 b) under the
article swan, and summed up by STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 28) See,
further, DE GROOT, Le Code du Mahayana en Chine, p. 42, where the five plant-
names are unfortunately translated wrongly (hin-k'u, "asafoetida" [seep. 361], is
given an alleged literal translation as 'Me lys d'eau montant"!), and CHAVANNES
and PELLIOT, Traite" maniche'en, pp. 233-235.
3 BUNYIU NANJIO, Catalogue of the Buddhist Tripi^aka, No. 1087.
4 Cf. below, p. 306.
6 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 5.
6 We shall come back to this important event in dealing with the history of the
spinach.
304 SlNO-lRANICA
In its appearance it is like lan-lin-tun 10 1 %., 1 but greener. When
dried and powdered, it tastes like cinnamon and pepper. The root is
capable of relieving colds." 2 The Fun Si wen kien ki* adds that hun-t'i
came from the Western Countries (5* yu).
Hun-t'i is a transcription answering to ancient *gwun-de, and
corresponds to Middle Persian gandena, New Persian gandand, Hindi
gandand, Bengali gundina (Sanskrit mleccha-kanda, "bulb of the bar-
barians")? possibly the shallot (Allium ascalonicum; French echalotte,
ciboule) or A. porrum, which occurs in western Asia and Persia, but not
in China. 4
Among the vegetables of India, Huan Tsan 5 mentions $ fi hun-t'o
(*hun-da) ts'ai. JULIEN left this term untranslated; SEAL did not know,
either, what to make of it, and added in parentheses kandu with an
interrogation-mark. WATTERS G explained it as "kunda (properly the
olibanum-tree)." This is absurd, as the question is of a vegetable culti-
vated for food, while the olibanum is a wild tree offering no food. More-
over, hun cannot answer to kun; and the Sanskrit word is not kunda,
but kundu or kunduru. The mode of writing, hun, possibly is intended
to allude to a species of Allium. Huan Tsan certainly transcribed a
Sanskrit word, but a Sanskrit plant-name of the form hunda or gunda
is not known. Perhaps his prototype is related to the Iranian word
previously discussed.
1 The parallel text in the Ts'efu yuan kwei (Ch. 970, p. 12) writes only lin-tun.
This plant is unidentified.
2 T'an hut yao, Ch. 100, p. 3 b; and Ch. 200, p. 14 b.
3 Ch. 7, p. i b (above, p. 232).
4 A. DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, pp. 68-71; LECLERC, Traite"
des simples, Vol. Ill, pp. 69-71; ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 113, 258. Other
Persian names are tdrd and kawar. They correspond to Greek vp&crov, Turkish
prdsa, Arabic kurdt. The question as to whether the species ascalonicum or porrum
should be understood by the Persian term gdnddnd, I have to leave in suspense and
to refer to the decision of competent botanists. SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 21)
identifies Persian gdnddnd with Allium porrum; while, according to him, A. ascalon-
icum should be musir in Persian. VULLERS (Lexicon persico-latinum, Vol. II, p. 1036)
translates the word by "porrum." On the other hand, STUART (Chinese Materia
Medica, p. 25), following F. P. Smith, has labelled Chinese hiai $J, an Allium
anciently indigenous to China, as A. ascalonicum. If this be correct, the Chinese
would certainly have recognized the identity of the foreign hun-t'i with hiai, provided
both should represent the same species, ascalonicum. Maybe also the two were
identical species, but differentiated by cultivation.
6 Ta T'an si yu ki, Ch. 2, p. 8 b.
6 On Yuan Chwang's Travels, Vol. I, p. 178.
GARDEN PEA AND BROAD BEAN
13. Among the many species of pulse cultivated by the Chinese,
there are at least two to which a foreign origin must be assigned. Both
are comprised under the generic term hu ton fi9 -9. ("bean of the Hu,"
or "Iranian bean"), but each has also its specific nomenclature. It
is generally known that, on account of the bewildering number of species
and variations and the great antiquity of their cultivation, the history
of beans is fraught with graver difficulties than that of any other group
of plants.
The^cpmmon or garden pea (Pisum sativum) is usually styled wan
tou !$5 5L (Japanese $iro-endo), more rarely ts'in siao ton W /J* S
("green small pulse"), ts'in pan tou W E _5L ("green streaked pulse"),
and ma lei fK ^ . A term ^ J9. pi tou, *pit (pir) tou, is regarded as
characteristic of the T'ang period; while such names as hu tou y Zun $u
3ft it ("pulse of the Zufi"), 1 and hui-hu tou IS S ("pulse of the
Uigur;" in the YinjSan Zen yao of the Mongol period changed also into
hui-hui tou @ S, "Mohammedan pulse") are apt to bespeak the
foreign origin of the plant. 2 Any document alluding to the event of the
introduction, however, does not appear to exist in Chinese records.
The term hu tou occurs in the present editions of the Ku kin lu? hu-$a
fit & being given as its synonyme, and described as "resembling the
li tou H .2., but larger, the fruit of the size of a child's fist and eatable."
The term li tou is doubtfully identified with Mucuna capitata;* but the
species of the Ku kin u defies exact identification; and, as is well known,
this book, in its present form, is very far from being able to claim abso-
lute credence or authenticity. Also the Kwan &', written prior to
A.D. 5 2 7, contains the term hu tou; 5 but this name, unfortunately, is ambig-
uous. Li Si-Sen acquiesces in the general statement that the pea has
come from the Hu and Zun or from the Western Hu (Iranians) ; he cites,
however, a few texts, which, if they be authentic, would permit us to
1 This term is ambiguous, for originally it applies to the soy-bean (Glycine
hispida), which is indigenous to China.
2 Cf. Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 24, p. 7; and Kwan k'unfan p'u, Ch. 4, p. u. The
list of the names for the pea given by BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871,
p. 223) is rather incomplete.
3 Ch. B, p. i b.
4 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 269. The word li is also written J|.
5 Tai p'in yu Ian, Ch. 841, p. 6 b.
305
306 SlNO-lRANICA
fix approximately the date as to when the pea became known to the
Chinese. Thus he quotes the Ts'ien kin Jan ^f* 4 ~}j of the Taoist
adept Sun Se-miao 3& & i&, 1 of the beginning of the seventh century, as
mentioning the term hu tou with the synonymes ts'in siao tou and ma-lei.
The Ye lun ki 2 of the fourth century A.D. is credited with the statement
that, when Si Hu^ tabooed the word hu $J, the term hu tou was altered
into kwo tou H5 a ("bean of the country," "national bean"). Accord-
ing to Li Si-cen, these passages allude to the pea, for anciently the
term hu tou was in general use instead of wan tou. He further refers to
the T*an Si 8f $, as saying that the pi tou comes from the Westerta
2un and the land of the Uigur, and to the dictionary Kwan ya by Can
Yi (third century A.D.) as containing the terms pi tou, wan tou, and liu
tou "S -9.. It would be difficult to vouchsafe for the fact that these
were really embodied in the editio princeps of that work; yet it would
not be impossible, after all, that, like the walnut and the pomegranate,
so also the pea made its appearance on Chinese soil during the fourth
century A.D. There can be no doubt of the fact that it was cultivated in
China under the T'ang, and even under the Sui (A.D. 590-617). In the
account of Liu-kiu (Formosa) it is stated that the soil of the island is
advantageous for the cultivation of hu tou? Wu K'i-tsiin 4 contradicts
Li Si-Sen's opinion, stating that the terms hu tou and wan tou apply to
different species.
None of the Chinese names can be regarded as the transcription of
an Iranian word. Pulse played a predominant part in the nutrition of
Iranian peoples. The country Si (Tashkend) had all sorts of pulse. 8
Abu Mansur discusses the pea under the Persian name xullar and the
Arabic julban* Other Persian words for the pea are nujud and gergeru
or xereghan. 7
A wild plant indigenous to China is likewise styled hu tou. It is
first disclosed by C'en Ts'an-k'i of the T'ang period, in his Pen ts'ao $ii,
as growing wild everywhere in rice-fields, its sprouts resembling the
bean. In the Ci wu min Si t*u k'ao 8 we meet illustrations of two wild
1 Regarding this author, see WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, pp. 97, 99;
BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 43; L. WIEGER, Taoisme, le canon, pp. 142, 143,
182; PELLIOT, Bull, de I'Ecolefranfaise, Vol. IX, pp. 435-438.
1 See above, p. 280.
1 Sui Su, Ch. 81, p. 5 b.
4 Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 2, p. 150.
8 T*ai p'ift hwan yii ki, Ch. 186, p. 7 b.
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 41, 223.
7 The latter is given by SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 464).
Ch. 2, pp. II, 15.
GARDEN PEA AND BROAD BEAN 307
plants. One is termed hui-hui tou ("Mohammedan bean"), first men-
tioned in the Kin hwan pen ts'ao of the fourteenth century, called also
na-ho tou M fe -2., the bean being roasted and eaten. The other,
named hu tou, is identified with the wild hu tou of C'en Ts'an-k'i; and
Wu K'i-tsiin, author of the Ci wu mih H t'u k*ao, adds the remark,
"What is now called hu tou grows wild, and is not the hu tou [that is,
the pea] of ancient times."
14. On the other hand, the term hu tou {$ SL refers also to Faba
sativa (F. vulgaris, the vetch or common bean), according to BRET-
SCHNEIDER, 1 "one of the cultivated plants introduced from western
Asia into China, in the second century B.C., by the famous general
Chang K'ien." This is an anachronism and a wild statement, which he
has not even supported by any Chinese text. 2 The history of the species
in China is lost, or was never recorded. The supposition that it was
introduced from Iran is probable. It is mentioned under the name
pag (gdvirs) in the Bundahisn as the chief of small-seeded grains. 8
Abu Mansur has it under the Persian name bdqild or bdqld.* Its culti-
vation in Egypt is of ancient date. 5
15. Ts'an tou H 5 ("silkworm bean," so called because in its
shape it resembles an old silkworm), Japanese soramame, the kidney-
bean or horse-bean (Viciafaba), is also erroneously counted by BRET-
SCHNEIDER 8 among the Caii-K'ien plants, without any evidence being
produced. It is likewise called hu tou ffl 5, but no historical documents
touching on the introduction of this species are on record. It is not
mentioned in T'ang or Sung literature, and seems to have been intro-
duced not earlier than the Yuan period (1260-1367). It is spoken of
in the Nun Su It S ("Book on Agriculture") of Wan Cen 3: M of
that period, and in the Kiu hwan pen ts'ao ?8fc 5E ^ & of the early
1 Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 29.
2 The only text to this effect that I know of is the Pen ts'ao kin, quoted in the
T'ai p'in yu Ian (Ch. 841, p. 6 b), which ascribes to Can K'ien the introduction of
sesame and hu tou; but which species is meant (Pisum sativum, Faba sativa, or
Viciafaba) cannot be guessed. The work in question certainly is not the Pen ts % ao
kin of Sen- nun, but it must have existed prior to A.D. 983, the date of the publication
of the T*ai p'in yu Ian.
1 WEST, Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 90.
4 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 20.
* V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 94.
6 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 221 (thus again reiterated by DE CANDOLLE, Origin
of Cultivated Plants, p. 318). The Kwan k'iin fan p'u (Ch. 4, p. 12 b) refers the
above text from the T'ai p'in yii Ian to this species, but also to the pea. This con-
fusion is hopeless.
308 SlNO-lRANICA
Ming, 1 which states that "now it occurs everywhere." Li Si-Sen says
that it is cultivated in southern China and to a larger extent in Se-
'wan. Wan Si-mou 3: ifr S, who died in 1591, in his Hio pu tsa $u
^ HI $1 0S, a work on horticulture in one chapter, 2 mentions an espe-
cially large and excellent variety of this bean from Yun-nan. This is
also referred to in the old edition of the Gazetteer of Yun-nan Province
(Kiu Yun-nan fun Si) and in the Gazetteer of the Prefecture of Mun-
hwa in Yun-nan, where the synonyme nan tou 1M fit ("southern bean")
is added, as the flower turns its face toward the south. The New-Persian
name of the plant is bageld*
1 Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 2, p. 142. BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 52)
has recognized Vicia faba among the illustrations of this work.
2 Cf. the Imperial Catalogue, Ch. 116, p. 37 b.
3 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 562. Arabic bdqild. Finally, the Fan yi min yi tsi
(section 27) offers a Sanskrit term $fl fjfl wu-kia, "mwut-g'a, translated by hu tou
and explained as "a green bean." The corresponding Sanskrit word is mudga
(Phaseolus mungo), which the Tibetans have rendered as mon sran rdeu, the term
Mon alluding to the origin from northern India or Himalayan regions (Mem. Soc.
finno-ougrienne, Vol. XI, p. 96). The Persians have borrowed the Indian word in the
form mung, which is based on the Indian vernacular munga or mungu (as in Singha-
lese; Pali mugga). Phaseolus mungo is peculiar to India, and is mentioned in Vedic
literature (MACDONELL and KEITH, Vedic Index, Vol. II, p. 166).
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC
1 6. Saffron is prepared from the deep orange-colored stigmas,
with a portion of the style, of the flowers of Crocus sativus (family
Irideae). The dried stigmas are nearly 3 cm long, dark red, and aro-
matic, about twenty thousand of them making a pound, or a grain
containing the stigmas and styles of nine flowers. It is a small plant
with a fleshy bulb-like corm and grassy leaves with a beautiful purple
flower blossoming in the autumn. As a dye, condiment, perfume, and
medicine, saffron has always been highly prized, and has played an
important part in the history of commerce. It has been cultivated in
western Asia from remote ages, so much so that it is unknown in a
wild state. It was always an expensive article, restricted mostly to the
use of kings and the upper classes, and therefore subject to adulteration
and substitutes. 1 In India it is adulterated with safflower (Carihamus
tinctorius} , which yields a coloring-agent of the same deep-orange color,
and in Oriental records these products are frequently confused. Still
greater confusion prevails between Crocus and Curcuma (a genus of
Zingiberaceae) , plants with perennial root-stocks, the dried tubers of
which yield the turmeric of commerce, largely used in the composition
of curry-powder and as a yellow dye. It appears also that the flowers
of Memecylon tinctorium were substituted for saffron as early as the
seventh century. The matter as a subject of historical research is there-
fore somewhat complex.
Orientalists have added to the confusion of Orientals, chiefly being
led astray by the application of our botanical term Curcuma, which is
derived from an Oriental word originally relating to Crocus, but also
confounded by the Arabs with our Curcuma. It cannot be too strongly
emphasized that Sanskrit kunkuma strictly denotes Crocus sativus,
but never our Curcuma or turmeric (which is Sanskrit haridra)* and
1 Pliny already knew that there is nothing so much adulterated as saffron
(adulteratur nihil aeque. xxi, 17, 31). E. WIEDEMANN (Sitzber. Phys.-med.
Soz. Erl., 1914, pp. 182, 197) has dealt with the adulteration of saffron from Arabic
sources. According to WATT (Commercial Products of India, p, 430), it is too
expensive to be extensively employed in India, but is in request at princely marriages,
and for the caste markings of the wealthy.
2 This is not superfluous to add, in view of the wrong definition of kunkuma
given by EITEL (Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, p. 80). Sanskrit kdvera ("saffron")
and kaveri ("turmeric") do not present a confusion of names, as the two words
are derived from the name of the trading-place Kavera, Chaveris of Ptolemy and
Caber of Cosmas (see MACCRINDLE, Christian Topography of Cosmas, p. 367).
309
310 SlNO-lRANICA
that our genus Curcuma has nothing whatever to do with Crocus or
saffron.
As regards Chinese knowledge of saffron, we must distinguish two
long periods, first, from the third century to the T'ang dynasty
inclusive, in which the Chinese received some information about the
plant and its product, and occasionally tribute-gifts of it; and, second,
the Mongol period (1260-1367), when saffron as a product was actually
imported into China by Mohammedan peoples and commonly used.
This second period is here considered first.
Of no foreign product are the notions of the Chinese vaguer than
of saffron. This is chiefly accounted for by the fact that Crocus sativus
was hardly ever transplanted into their country, 1 and that, although
the early Buddhist travellers to India caught a glimpse of the plant
in Kashmir, their knowledge of it always remained rather imperfect.
First of all, they confounded saffron with safiflower (Carthamus tinctori-
us), as the products of both plants were colloquially styled "red
flower" (huh hwa SC^tE). Li Si-cen 2 annotates, "The foreign (fan HI)
or Tibetan red flower [saffron] comes from Tibet (Si-fan), the places of
the Mohammedans, and from Arabia (T'ien-fan 5^ if). It is the
hun-lan [Carthamus] of those localities. At the time of the Yuan
(1260-1367) it was used as an ingredient in food-stuffs. According to
the Po wu ci of Can Hwa, Can K'ien obtained the seeds of the hun-lan
[Carthamus] in the Western Countries (Siyii), which is the same species
as that in question [saffron], although, of course, there is some difference
caused by the different climatic conditions. ' ' It is hence erroneous to state,
as asserted by F. P. SMITH, 3 that "the story of Can K'ien is repeated for
the saffron as well as for the safflower;" and it is due to the utmost con-
fusion that STUART 4 writes, "According to the Pen-ts'ao, Crocus was
brought from Arabia by Can K'ien at the same time that he brought the
safflower and other Western plants and drugs." Can K'ien in Arabia!
The Po wu li speaks merely of safflower (Carthamus) , not of saffron
(Crocus), two absolutely distinct plants, which even belong to different
families; and there is no Chinese text whatever that would link the
saffron with Can K'ien. In fact, the Chinese have nothing to say re-
1 It is curious that the Armenian historian Moses of Khorene, who wrote about
the middle of the fifth century, attributes to China musk, saffron, and cotton (YuLE,
Cathay, Vol. I, p. 93). Cotton was then not manufactured in China; likewise is
saffron cultivation out of the question for the China of that period.
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 15, p. 14 b.
8 Contributions towards the Materia Medica of China, p. 189.
4 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 131.
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 311
garding the introduction or cultivation of saffron. 1 The confusion of
Li Si-Sen is simply due to an association of the two plants known as
"red flower." Safflower is thus designated in the TW min yao $u,
further by Li Gun ^ 4 1 of the T'ang and in the Sun &', where the yen-ci
red flower is stated to have been sent as tribute by the prefecture of
Hin-yuan J^ 7C in Sen-si. 2
The fact that Li Si-cen in the above passage was thinking of
saffron becomes evident from two foreign words added to his nomen-
clature of the product: namely, V ffe !fi ki-fu-lan and 8fc fc IP sa-fa-
tsi. The first character in the former transcription is a misprint for &&
tsa (*tsap, dzap); the last character in the latter form must be emen-
dated into &P /aw. 3 Tsa-fu-lan and sa-fa-lan (Japanese sqfuran, Siamese
faran), as was recognized long ago, represent transcriptions of
Arabic za'ferdn or za'faran, which, on its part, has resulted in our "saf-
1 BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 222) asserts that saffron is not
cultivated in Peking, but that it is known that it is extensively cultivated in other
parts of China. I know nothing about this, and have never seen or heard of any
saffron cultivation in China, nor is any Chinese account to that effect known to me.
Crocus sativus is not listed in the great work of F. B. FORBES and W. B. HEMSLEY
(An Enumeration of All the Plants known from China Proper, comprising Vols.
23, 26, and 36 of the Journal of the Linnean Society}, the most comprehensive syste-
matic botany of China. ENGLER (in Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 270) says that Crocus
is cultivated in China. WATT (Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 593) speaks of Chinese saffron
imported into India. It is of especial interest that Marco Polo did not find saffron
in China, but he reports that in the province of Fu-kien they have "a kind of fruit,
resembling saffron, and which serves the purpose of saffron just as well" (YULE,
Marco Polo, Vol. II, p. 225). It may be, as suggested by Yule after Fliickiger, that
this is Gardenia florida, the fruits of which are indeed used in China for dyeing-pur-
poses, producing a beautiful yellow color. On the other hand, the Pen ts'ao kan mu
Si i (Ch. 4, p. 14 b) contains the description of a "native saffron" (t'u hun hwa -fc
j|t ^, in opposition to the "Tibetan red flower" or genuine saffron) after the Con-
tinued Gazetteer of Fu-kien jj) jjjt |J[ ;, as follows: "As regards the native
saffron, the largest specimens are seven or eight feet high. The leaves are like those
of the p'i-p'a $ | (Eriobotrya japonicd), but smaller and without hair. In the
autumn it produces a white flower like a grain of maize (su-mi 5H 7^, Zea mays).
It grows in Fu-cou and Nan-nen-cou ffj JlH >}\\ [now Yan-kian |j| in K wan-tun]
in the mountain wilderness. That of Fu-cou makes a fine creeper, resembling the
fu-yun (Hibiscus mutabilis), green above and white below, the root being like that of
the ko Ifij (Pachyrhizus thunbergianus). It is employed in the pharmacopoeia, being
finely chopped for this purpose and soaked overnight in water in which rice has been
scoured; then it is soaked for another night in pure water and pounded: thus it is
ready for prescriptions." This species has not been identified, but may well be
Marco Polo's pseudo-saffron of Fu-kien.
2 Tu Su tsi Fen, XX, Ch. 158.
3 Cf. WATTERS, Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 348. This transcription,
however, does not prove, as intimated by Watters, that "this product was first
imported into China from Persia direct or at least obtained immediately from
Persian traders." The word zafardn is an Arabic loan-word in Persian, and may
have been brought to China by Arabic traders as well.
312 SlNO-lRANICA
fron." 1 It is borne out by the very form of these transcriptions that
they cannot be older than the Mongol period when the final consonants
had disappeared. Under the T'ang we should have *dzap-fu-lam and
*sat-fap-lan. This conclusion agrees with Li Si-Sen's testimony that
saffron was mixed with food at the time of the Yuan, an Indo-Persian
custom. Indeed, it seems as if not until then was it imported and used
in China; at least, we have no earlier document to this effect.
Saffron is not cultivated in Tibet. There is no Crocus tibetan us, as
tentatively introduced by PERROT and HuRRiER 2 on the basis of the
Chinese term "Tibetan red flower." This only means that saffron is
exported from Tibet to China, chiefly to Peking; but Tibet does not
produce any saffron, and imports it solely from Kashmir. STUART 3
says that "Ts*an hun hwa W> itt ~fe ('Red flower from Tsan,' that is,
Central Tibet) is given by some foreign writers as another name for
saffron, but this has not been found mentioned by any Chinese writer."
In fact, that term is given in the Pen ts*ao kan mu Si * 4 and the Ci wu
min Si t'u k*ao of i848, B where it is said to come from Tibet (Si-tsan)
and to be the equivalent of the Fan hun hwa of the Pen ts'ao kan mu.
Ts*an hwa is still a colloquial name for saffron in Peking; it is also called
simply hun hwa ("red flower"). 8 By Tibetans in Peking I heard it
designated gur-kum, sa-ka-ma, and dri-bzah ("of good fragrance").
Saffron is looked upon by the Chinese as the most valuable drug sent
by Tibet, ts'an hian ("Tibetan incense") ranking next.
Li Si-en 7 holds that there are two yii-kin flit 4, the yii-kin aromatic,
the flowers of which only are used; and the yii-kin the root of which is
employed. The former is the saffron (Crocus sativus); the latter, a
Curcuma. As will be seen, however, there are at least three yii-kin.
Of the genus Curcuma, there are several species in China and
Indo-China, C. leucorrhiza (yii-kin), C. longa (kian hwan H or :c 3f,
1 The Arabs first brought saffron to Spain; and from Arabic za'fardn are derived
Spanish azafran, Portuguese agafrao or azafrao, Indo-Portuguese safrao, Italian
zafferano, French safran, RumanAn sofrdn. The same Arabic root (*a$fur, "yellow")
has supplied also those Romance words that correspond to our safflow, safflower
(Carthamus tinctorius), like Spanish azafranillo, alazor, Portuguese agafroa, Italian
asforo, French safran; Old Armenian zavhran, New Armenian zafran; Russian
safran; Uigur sakparan.
2 Mat. me"d. et pharmacope'e sino-annamites, p. 94.
8 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 132.
4 Ch. 4, p. 14 b.
6 Ch. 4, p. 35 b.
It should be borne in mind that this name is merely a modern colloquialism,
but hun hwa, when occurring in ancient texts, is not "saffron," but "safflower"
(Carthamus tinctorius) ; see below, p. 324.
7 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 14, p. 18.
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 313
" ginger-yellow"), C. pallida, C. petiolata, C. zedoaria. Which particular
species was anciently known in China, is difficult to decide; but it
appears that at least one species was utilized in times of antiquity.
Curcuma longa and C. leucorrhiza are described not earlier than theT'ang
period, and the probability is that either they were introduced from the
West; or, if on good botanical evidence it can be demonstrated that
these species are autochthonous, 1 we are compelled to assume that
superior cultivated varieties were imported in the T'ang era. In regard
to yil-kin (C. leucorrhiza), Su Kun of the seventh century observes
that it grows in Su (Se-'wan) and Si-z"un, and that the Hu call it
$1 ma-$M, *mo-dzut (dzut), 2 while he states with reference to kian-
hwan (C. longa) that the Zun 3JG A call it | $u, *d2ut (dzut, dzur) ;
he also insists on the close resemblance of the two species. Likewise
C'en Ts'an-k'i, who wrote in the first part of the eighth century, states
concerning kian-hwan that the kind coming from the Western Bar-
barians (Si Fan) is similar to yu-kin and $u yao H IS. 3 Su Sun of the
Sung remarks that yil-kin now occurs in all districts of Kwan-tuii and
Kwan-si, but does not equal that of Se-c'wan, where it had previously
existed. K'ou Tsun-sl 4 states that yu-kin is not aromatic, and that in
his time it was used for the dyeing of woman's clothes. Li Si-cen re-
minds us of the fact that yu-kin was a product of the Hellenistic Orient
(Ta Ts'in) : this is stated in the Wei lio of the third century, 5 and the
Lion $u 6 enumerates yu-kin among the articles traded from Ta Ts'in
to western India. 7
The preceding observations, in connection with the foreign names
1 According to LOUREIRO (Flora Cochin-Chinensis, p. 9), Curcuma longa
grows wild in Indo-China.
2 This foreign name has not been pointed out by Bretschneider or Stuart or
any previous author.
3 This term is referred (whether correctly, I do not know) to K&mpferia
pundurata (STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 227). Another name for this
plant is J|g ^ j$c p'un-no su (not mou), *bun-na. Now, Ta Min states that the
Curcuma growing on Hai-nan is ^fr ^ Jt p*un-no su, while that growing in Kian-nan
is kian-hwan (Curcuma longa}. K&mpferia belongs to the same order as Curcuma,
Scitamineae. According to Ma Ci of the Sung, this plant grows in Si-zun and in
all districts of Kwan-nan; it is poisonous, and the people of the West first test it
on sheep: if these refuse to eat it, it is discarded. Chinese p'un-no, *bun-na, looks like
a transcription of Tibetan bon-na, which, however, applies to aconite.
4 Pen ts'ao yen i, Ch. 10, p. 3.
5 San kwo ci, Ch. 30, p. 13.
6 Ch. 78, p. 7.
7 The question whether in this case Curcuma or Crocus is meant, cannot be
decided; both products were known in western Asia. C'en Ts'an-k'i holds that the
yu-kin of Ta Ts'in was safflower (see below).
314 SlNO-lRANICA
u and ma-$u, are sufficient to raise serious doubts of the indigenous
character of Curcuma; and for my part, I am strongly inclined to believe
that at least two species of this genus were first introduced into Se-c'wan
by way of Central Asia. This certainly would not exclude the possi-
bility that other species of this genus, or even other varieties of the
imported species, pre-existed in China long before that time; and this
is even probable, in view of the fact that a fragrant plant yii %H, which
was mixed with sacrificial wine, is mentioned in the ancient Cou li,
the State Ceremonial of the Cou Dynasty, and in the Li ki. The com-
mentators, with a few exceptions, agree on the point that this ancient
yil was a yu-kin; that is, a Curcuma. 1
In India, Curcuma longa is extensively cultivated all over the coun-
try, and probably so from ancient times. The plant (Sanskrit haridrd)
is already listed in the Bower Manuscript. From India the rhizome is
exported to Tibet, where it is known as yun-ba or skyer-pa, the latter
name originally applying to the barberry, the wood and root of which,
like Curcuma, yield a yellow dye.
Ibn al-Baitar understands by kurkum the genus Curcuma, not Cro-
cus, as is obvious from his definition that it is the great species of the
tinctorial roots. These roots come from India, being styled hard in
Persian; this is derived from Sanskrit haridrd (Curcuma longa). Ibn
Hassan, however, observes that the people of Basra bestow on hard
the name kurkum, which is the designation of saffron, and to which it
is assimilated; but then he goes on to confound saffron with the root of
wars, which is a Memecylon (see below). 2 Turmeric is called in Persian
zird-cube or darzard (" yellow wood"). According to GARCIA DA ORTA,
it was much exported from India to Arabia and Persia; and there was
unanimous opinion that it did not grow in Persia, Arabia, or Turkey,
but that all comes from India. 3
The name yil-kin, or with the addition hian (" aromatic"), 4 is fre-
quently referred in ancient documents to two different plants of Indian
and Iranian countries, Memecylon tinctorium and Crocus sativus, the
1 Cf. BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 408.
2 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 167.
8 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 163.
4 As a matter of principle, the term yu-kin hian strictly refers to saffron. It is
this term which BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 408) was unable to identify,
and of which STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 140) was compelled to admit,
"The plant is not yet identified, but is probably not Curcuma. 1 ' The latter remark
is to the point. The descriptions we have of yu-kin hian, and which are given below,
exclude any idea of a Curcuma. The modern Japanese botanists apply the term yu-kin
hian (Japanese ukkonko) to Tulipa gesneriana, a flower of Japan (MATSUMURA,
No. 3193)-
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 315
latter possibly confounded again with Curcuma. 1 It is curious that
in the entire Pen-ts'ao literature the fact has been overlooked that under
the same name there is also preserved the ancient description of a tree.
This fact has escaped all European writers, with the sole exception of
PALLADIUS. In his admirable Chinese-Russian Dictionary 2 he gives
the following explanation of the term yu-kin: "Designation of a tree
in Ki-pin; yellow blossoms, which are gathered, and when they begin
to wither, are pressed, the sap being mixed with other odorous sub-
stances; it is found likewise in Ta Ts'in, the blossoms being like those
of saffron, and is utilized in the coloration of wine."
A description of this tree yii-kin is given in the Buddhist dictionary
Yi ts'ie kin yin i s of A.D. 649 as follows: "This is the name of a tree,
the habitat of which is in the country Ki-pin B 9. (Kashmir). Its
flowers are of yellow color. The trees are planted from the flowers.
One waits till they are faded; the sap is then pressed out of them and
mixed with other substances. It serves as an aromatic. The grains
of the flowers also are odoriferous, and are likewise employed as aro-
matics."
I am inclined to identify this tree with Memecylon tinctorium, M.
edule, or M. capitellatum (Melastomaceae), a very common, small tree
or large shrub in the east and south of India, Ceylon, Tenasserim, and
the Andamans. The leaves are employed in southern India for dyeing
a " delicate yellow lake." The flowers produce an evanescent yellow. 4
In restricting the habitat of the tree to Kashmir, Hiian Yin is doubtless
influenced by the notion that saffron (yu-kin) was an exclusive product
of Kashmir (see below).
The same tree is described by Abu Mansur under the name wars
as a saffron-like plant of yellow color and fragrant, and employed by
Arabic women for dyeing garments. 5 The ancients were not acquainted
1 A third identification has been given by BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder,
1871, p. 222), who thought that probably the sumbul (Sumbulus moschatus) is meant.
This is a mistaken botanical name, but he evidently had in mind the so-called musk-
root of Euryangium or Ferula sumbul, of musk-like odor and acrid taste. The only
basis for this identification might be sought in the fact that one of the synonym es
given for yu-kin hian in the Pen ts'ao is ts'ao se hian J=pL jff ^ ("vegetable musk");
this name itself, however, is not explained. Saffron, of course, has no musk odor;
and the term ts'ao se hian surely does not relate to saffron, but is smuggled in here
by mistake. The Tien hai yii hen ci (Ch. 3, p. I b, see above, p. 228) also equates yu-
kin hian with ts*ao se hian, adding that the root is like ginger and colors wine yel-
low. This would decidedly hint at a Curcuma.
Z Vol. II, p. 202.
3 Ch. 24, p. 8 (cf. Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 115; and above, p. 258).
4 WATT, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, Vol. V, p. 227.
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 145.
316 SlNO-lRANICA
with this dye. Abu Hanifa has a long discourse on it. 1 Ibn Hassan
knew the root of wars, and confounded it with saffron. 2 Ibn al-Baitar
offers a lengthy notice of it. 3 Two species are distinguished, one from
Ethiopia, black, and of inferior quality; and another from India, of a
brilliant red, yielding a dye of a pure yellow. A variety called barida
dyes red. It is cultivated in Yemen. Also the association with Cur-
cuma and Crocus is indicated. Isak Ibn Amran remarks, "It is said
that wars represents roots of Curcuma, which come from China and
Yemen"; and Ibn Massa el-Basri says, "It is a substance of a brilliant
red which resembles pounded saffron." This explains why the Chinese
included it in the term yu-kin. LECLERC also has identified the wars
of the Arabs with Memecylon tinctorium, and adds, "L'ouars n'est pas
le produit exclusif de 1'Arabie. On le rencontre abondamment dans
1'Inde, notamment aux environs de Pondiche*ry qui en a envoye* en
Europe, aux dernieres expositions. II s'appelle kana dans le pays." 4
The Yamato honzo speaks of yu-kin as a dye-stuff coming from Siam;
this seems to be also Memecylon.
The fact that the Chinese included the product of Memecylon in
the term yu-kin appears to indicate that this cheap coloring-matter
was substituted in trade for the precious saffron.
While the Chinese writers on botany and pharmacology have over-
looked yu-kin as the name of a tree, they have clearly recognized that
the term principally serves for the designation of the saffron, the product
of the Crocus sativus. This fact is well borne out by the descriptions
and names of the plant, as well as by other evidence.
The account given of Central India in the Annals of the Liang
Dynasty 5 expressly states that yu-kin is produced solely in Kashmir
(Ki-pin), that its flower is perfectly yellow and fine, resembling the
flower fu-yun (Hibiscus mutabilis) . Kashmir was always the classical
land famed for the cultivation of saffron, which was (and is) thence
exported to India, Tibet, Mongolia, and China. In Kashmir, Uddiyana,
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 272.
2 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 167.
8 Ibid., p. 409,
4 Arabic wars has also been identified with Flemingia congesta (WATT, Diction-
ary, Vol. Ill, p. 400) and Mallotus philippinensis (ibid., Vol. V, p. 114). The whole
subject is much confused, particularly by FLUCKIGER and H ANBURY (Pharma-
cographia, p. 573; cf. also G. JACOB, Beduinenleben, p. 15, and Arab. Geographen,
p. 166), but this is not the place to discuss it. The Chinese description of the yu-kin
tree does not correspond to any of these plants.
6 Lian $u, Ch. 54, p. 7 b. This work was compiled by Yao Se-lien in the first
half of the seventh century from documents of the Liang dynasty, which ruled from
A.D. 502 tO 556.
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 317
and Jaguda (Zabulistan) it was observed by the famous pilgrim Huan
Tsan in the seventh century. 1 The Buddhist traveller Yi Tsiii (671-695)
attributes it to northern India. 2
The earliest description of the plant is preserved in the Nan cou i
wu ci, written by Wan Cen in the third century A.D., 3 who says, "The
habitat of yu-kin is in the country Ki-pin (Kashmir), where it is culti-
vated by men, first of all, for the purpose of being offered to the Buddha.
After a few days the flower fades away, and then it is utilized on
account of its color, which is uniformly yellow. It resembles the fu-yun
(Hibiscus) and a young lotus (Nelumbium speciosum), and can render
wine aromatic." This characteristic is fairly correct, and unequivocally
applies to the Crocus, which indeed has the appearance of a liliaceous
plant, and therefore belongs to the family Irideae and to the order
Liliiflorae. The observation in regard to the short duration of the
flowers is to the point. 4
In A.D. 647 the country Kia-p'i f8U iJt in India offered to the Court
yu-kin hian, which is described on this occasion as follows: "Its leaves
are like those of the mai-men-tun P9 % (Ophiopogon spicatus). It
blooms in the ninth month. In appearance it is similar to fu-yun
(Hibiscus mutabilis) . It is purple-blue $? 1 in color. Its odor may be
perceived at a distance of several tens of paces. It flowers, but
does not bear fruit. In order to propagate it, the root must be
taken." 5
1 S. JULIEN, Me"moires sur les centimes occidentales, Vol. I, pp. 40, 131; Vol.
II, p. 187 (s^ory of the Saffron-Stupa, ibid., Vol. I, p. 474; or S. BEAL, Buddhist
Records, Vol. TI, p. 125); W. W. ROCKHILL, Life of the Buddha, p. 169; S. Lvi,
Journal asiatiquc 1915, I, pp. 83-85.
2 TAKAKUSU'S Tanslation, p. 128; he adds erroneously, "species of Curcuma."
3 Pen ts'ao kan v, Ch. 14, p. 22.
4 Compare Pliny's (xxi, 17, 34) description of Crocus: "Floret vergiliarum
occasu paucis diebus folioque florem expellit. Viret bruma et colligitur; siccatur
umbra, melius etiam hiberna."
5 T'an hui yao, Ch. 200, pp. 14 a-b. This text was adopted by the Pen ts'ao
kan mu (Ch. 14, p. 22), which quotes it from the T'ang Annals. Li Si-Sen comments
that this description agrees with that of the Nan cou i wu U, except in the colors of
the flower, which may be explained by assuming that there are several varieties; in
this he is quite correct. The flower, indeed, occurs in a great variation of colors,
purple, yellow, white, and others. W. WOODVILLE (Medical Botany, Vol. IV, p. 763)
gives the following description of Crocus: "The root is bulbous, perennial: the flower
appears after the leaves, rising very little above the ground upon a slender succulent
tube: the leaves rise higher than the flower, are linear, simple, radical, of a rich
green colour, with a white line running in the centre, and all at the base inclosed
along with the tube of the flower in a membranous sheath. The flower is large, of a
bluish purple, or lilac colour: the corolla consists of six petals, which are nearly
elliptical, equal, and turned inwards at the edges. The filaments are three, short,
tapering, and support long erect yellow antherae. The germen is roundish, from
318 SlNO-lRANICA
The last clause means that the plant i propagated from
bulbs. There is a much earlier tribute-gift of saffron on record. In
A.D. 519, King Jayavarman of Fu-nan (Camboja) offered saffron with
storax and other aromatics to the Chinese Court. 1 Accordingly we have
to assume that in the sixth century saffron was traded from India to
Camboja. In fact we know from the T'ang Annals that India, in her
trade with Camboja and the anterior Orient, exported to these coun-
tries diamonds, sandal-wood, and saffron. 2 The T'ang Annals, further,
mention saffron as a product of India, Kashmir, Uddiyana, Jaguda,
and Baltistan. 3 In A.D. 719 the king of Nan (Bukhara) presented
thirty pounds of saffron to the Chinese Emperor. 4
Li Si-cen has added to his notice of yii-kin hian a Sanskrit name
3K & If 'a-ku-mo, *d2a-gu-ma, which he reveals from the Suvar-
naprabhasa-sutra. 5 This term is likewise given, with the translation
yii-kin , in the Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary Fan yi min yi tsi. 6 This name
has been discussed by me and identified with Sanskrit jaguda through
the medium of a vernacular form *jaguma, the ending -ma corresponding
to that of Tibetan Sa-ka-ma. 1
A singular position is taken by C'en Ts'an-k'i, who reports, " Yii-kin
aromatic grows in the country Ta Ts'in. It flowers in the second or
third month, and has the appearance of the hun-lan (safflower, Car-
thamus tinctorius) . 8 In the fourth or fifth month the flowers are gathered
and make an aromatic." This, of course, cannot refer to the saffron
which blooms in September or October. C'en Ts'an-k'i has created
confusion, and has led astray Li Si-cen, who wrongly enumerates hun-
lan hwa among the synonymes of yii-kin hian.
The inhabitants of Ku-lin (Quilon) C KH rubbed their bodies with
which issues a slender style, terminated by three long convoluted stigmata, of a
deep yellow colour. The capsule is roundish, three-lobed, three-celled, three-valved,
and contains several round seeds. It flowers in September and October."
1 According to the Lian $u; cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcolefran$aise, Vol. Ill, p. 270.
2 Tan $u, Ch. 221 A, p. 10 b.
3 Kiu Tan su, Ch. 221 B, p. 6; 198, pp. 8 b, 9; Tan $u, Ch. 221 A, p. 10 b; cf.
CHAVANNES (Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, pp. 128, 150, 160, 166),
whose identification with Curcuma longa is not correct.
4 CHAVANNES, ibid., p. 203.
6 The passage in which Li Si-Sen cites this term demonstrates clearly that he
discriminated well between Crocus and Curcuma; for he adds that "6'a-ku-mo is
the aromatic of the yii-kin flower (Crocus), but that, while it is identical in name
with the yii-kin root (Curcuma) utilized at the present time, the two plants are
different."
6 Ch. 8, p. 10 b.
7 Toung Pao, 1916, p. 458.
8 See below, p. 324.
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 319
yu-kin after every bath, with the intention of making it resemble the
"gold body" of a Buddha. 1 Certainly they did not smear their bodies
with " turmeric," 2 which is used only as a dye-stuff, but with saffron.
Annamese mothers rub the bodies of their infants with saffron-powder
as a tonic to their skin. 3
The Ain-i Akbari, written 1597 in Persian by Abul Fazl 'Allami
(1551-1602), gives detailed information on the saffron cultivation in
Kashmir, 4 from which the following extract may be quoted: "In the
village of Pampur, one of the dependencies of Vlhi (in Kashmir), there
are fields of saffron to the extent of ten or twelve thousand bighas, a
sight that would enchant the most fastidious. At the close of the
month of March and during all April, which is the season of cultivation,
the land is plowed up and rendered soft, and each portion is prepared
with the spade for planting, and the saffron bulbs are hard in the ground.
In a month's time they sprout, and at the close of September, it is at
its full growth, shooting up somewhat over a span. The stalk is white,
and when it has sprouted to the height of a finger, one bud after another
begins to flower till there are eight flowers. It has six lilac-tinted petals.
Usually among six filaments, three are yellow and three ruddy. The
last three yield the saffron. [There are three stamens and three stigmas
in each flower, the latter yielding the saffron.] When the flowers are
past, leaves appear upon the stalk. Once planted it will flower for six
years in succession. The first year, the yield is small : in the second as
thirty to ten. In the third year it reaches its highest point, and the
bulbs are dug up. If left in the same soil, they gradually deteriorate,
but if taken up, they may be profitably transplanted."
The Emperor Jahangir was deeply impressed by the saffron planta-
tions of Kashmir, and left the following notes in his Memoirs: 5
"As the saffron was in blossom, his Majesty left the city to go to
Pampur, which is the only place in Kashmir where it flourishes. Every
parterre, every field, was, as far as the eye could reach, covered with
flowers. The stem inclines toward the ground. The flower has five
petals of a violet color, and three stigmas producing saffron are found
within it, and that is the purest saffron. In an ordinary year, 400
1 Lin wai tai ta, Ch. 2, p. 13.
2 HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 91.
3 PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. me"d. et pharmacope*e sino-annamites, p. 94.
Cf. also MARCO POLO'S observation (YULE'S edition, Vol. II, p. 286) that the faces
of stuffed monkeys on Java are daubed with saffron, in order to give them a manlike
appearance.
4 Translation of H. BLOCHMANN, Vol. I, p. 84; Vol. II, p. 357.
6 H. M. ELLIOT, History of India as told by Its Own Historians, Vol. VI, p. 375
320 SlNO-lRANICA
maunds, or 3200 Khurasan! maunds, are produced. Half belongs to
the Government, half to the cultivators, and a sir sells for ten rupees;
but the price sometimes varies a little. It is the established custom to
weigh the flowers, and give them to the manufacturers, who take them
home and extract the saffron from them, and upon giving the extract,
which amounts to about one-fourth weight of the flower, to the public
officers, they receive in return an equal weight of salt, in lieu of money
wages."
The ancient Chinese attribute saffron not only to Kashmir, but also
to Sasanian Persia. The Cou $u l enumerates yu-kin among the products
of Po-se (Persia) ; so does the Sui $u. 2 In fact, Crocus occurs in Persia
spontaneously, and its cultivation must date from an early period.
Aeschylus alludes to the saffron-yellow footgear of King Darius. 3
Saffron is mentioned in Pahlavi literature (above, p. 193). The plant is
well attested for Derbend, Ispahan, and Transoxania in the tenth
century by Istaxri and Edrisi. 4 Yaqut mentions saffron as the principal
production of Rud-Derawer in the province Jebal, the ancient Media,
whence it was largely exported. 5 Abu Mansur describes it under the
Arabic name zafardn. 6 The Armenian consumers esteem most highly
the saffron of Khorasan, which, however, is marketed in such small
quantities that the Persians themselves must fill the demand with
exportations from the Caucasus. 7 According to SCHLIMMER, S part of
the Persian saffron comes from Baku in Russia, another part is culti-
vated in Persia in the district of Kain, but in quantity insufficient to
fill the demand. In two places, Rudzabar (identical with the above
Rud-Derawer), a mountainous tract near Hamadan, and Mount
Derbend, where saffron cultivation had been indicated by previous
writers, he was unable to find a trace of it.
It is most probable that it was from Persia that the saffron-plant
was propagated to Kashmir. A reminiscence of this event is preserved
in the Sanskrit term vdhtika, a synonyme of "saffron," which means
"originating from the Pahlava." g The Buddhists have a legend to the
1 Ch. 50, p. 6.
2 Ch. 83, p. 7 b; also Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 5 b.
8 HEHN, Kulturpflanzen, p. 264.
4 A. JAUBERT, Geographic, pp. 168, 192.
6 B. DE MEYNARD, Dictionnaire ge"ogr. de la Perse, p. 267. See also G. FER-
RAND, Textes relatifs a rExtreTne-Orient, Vol. II, pp. 618, 622.
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 76.
7 E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 151. CHARDIN (Voyages en Perse, Vol. II, p. 14)
even says that the saffron of Persia is the best of the world.
8 Terminologie, p. 165.
9 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 459.
\
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 321
effect that Madhyantika, the first apostle of Buddha's word in Kashmir,
planted the saffron there. 1 If nothing else, this shows at least that the
plant was regarded as an introduction. The share of the Persians in the
distribution of the product is vividly demonstrated by the Tibetan
word for "saffron, "kur-kum, gur-kum,gur-gum, which is directly traceable
to Persian kurkum or karkam, but not to Sanskrit kunkuma. 2 The
Tibetans carried the word to Mongolia, and it is still heard among the
Kalmuk on the Wolga. By some, the Persian word (Pahlavi kulkem)
is traced to Semitic, Assyrian karkuma, Hebrew karkom, Arabic kurkum;
while others regard the Semitic origin as doubtful. 3 It is beyond the
scope of this notice to deal with the history of saffron in the west and
Europe, on which so much has been written. 4
From the preceding investigation it follows that the word yu-kin
& &, owing to its multiplicity of meaning, offers some difficulty to
the translator of Chinese texts. The general rule may be laid down that
yu-kin, whenever it hints at a plant or product of China, denotes a
species of Curcuma, but that, when used with reference to India, Indo-
China, and Iran, the greater probability is in favor of Crocus. The term
yu-kin hian ("yu-kin aromatic"), with reference to foreign countries,
almost invariably appears to refer to the latter plant, which indeed
served as an aromatic; while the same term, as will be seen below, with
reference to China, again denotes Curcuma. The question may now be
raised, What is the origin of the word yu-kin? And what was its original
meaning? In 1886 HiRTH 5 identified yu-kin with Persian karkam
("saffron"), and restated this opinion in 19 n, 6 by falling back on an
ancient pronunciation *hat-kam. Phonetically this is not very con-
vincing, as the Chinese would hardly have employed an initial h for
1 ScHiEFNER, Taranatha, p. 13; cf. also J. PRZYLUSKI, Journal asiatique, 1914
II, P- 537-
2 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 474. Cf. also Sogdian kurkumba and Tokharian kurkama.
3 HORN, Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 6. Besides kurkum,
there are Persian kdkbdn and kafiSa, which denote "saffron in the flower." Old
Armenian k'rk'um is regarded as a loan from Syriac kurkemd (HUBSCHMANN, Armen.
Gram., p. 320).
4 In regard to saffron among the Arabs, see LECLERC, Traite" des simples,
Vol. II, pp. 208-210. In general cf. J. BECKMANN, Beytrage zur Geschichte der
Erfindungen, 1784, Vol. II, pp. 79-91 (also in English translation); FLUCKIGER and
HANBURY, Pharmacographia, pp. 663-669; A. DE CANDOLLE, Geographic botanique,
p. 857, and Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 166; HEHN, Kulturpflanzen (8th ed.),
pp. 264-270; WATT, Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 592; W. HEYD, Histoire du commerce du
levant, Vol. II, p. 668, etc.
B Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc., Vol. XXI, p. 221.
6 Chau Ju-kua, p. 91.
322 SlNO-lRANICA
the reproduction of a foreign k; but the character yu in transcriptions
usually answers to *ut, ud. The whole theory, however, is exposed to
much graver objections. The Chinese themselves do not admit that
yu-kin represents a foreign word; nowhere do they say that yii-kin is
Persian, Sanskrit, or anything of the sort; on the contrary, they regard
it as an element of their own language. Moreover, if yu-kin should
originally designate the saffron, how, then, did it happen that this alleged
Persian word was transferred to the genus Curcuma, some species of
which are even indigenous to China, and which, at any rate, has been
acclimated there for a long period? The case, indeed, is not simple, and
requires closer study. Let us see what the Chinese have to say con-
cerning the word yu-kin. PELLiox 1 has already clearly, though briefly,
outlined the general situation by calling attention to the fact that as
early as the beginning of the second century, yu-kin is mentioned in
the dictionary Swo wen as the name of an odoriferous plant, offered as
tribute by the people of Yu, the present Yu-lin in Kwan-si Province;
hence he inferred that the sense of the word should be "gold of Yu,"
in allusion to the yellow color of the product. We read in the Sim kin
tu & K Sk 2 as follows: "The district Kwei-lin tie. tt %$ of the Ts'in
dynasty had its name changed into the Yu-lin district ^ ^P in the
sixth year of the period Yuan-tin (in B.C.) of the Emperor Wu of the
Han dynasty. Wan Man made it into the Yu-p'in district if Z P. Yin
Sao JBI Bft [second century A.D.], in his work Ti li fun su ki $L SI R
f&fti, says, 'The Cou li speaks of the yu Zen^HA. ('officials in charge of
the plant yU'), who have charge of the jars serving for libations; when-
ever libations are necessary for sacrifices or for the reception of guests,
they attend to the blending of the plant yu with the odoriferous wine
Fan, pour it into the sacred vases, and arrange them in their place.' 3
Yu is a fragrant plant. Flowers of manifold plants are boiled and mixed
with wine fermented by means of black millet as an offering to the
spirits: this is regarded by some as what is now called yii-kin hian
%H & ^ (Curcuma) ; while others contend that it was brought as
tribute by the people of Yu, thus connecting the name of the plant
with that of the clan and district of Yu." The latter is the explanation
1 Butt, de VEcole frangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 270.
2 This work is a commentary to the Swi kin, a canonical book on water-courses,
supposed to have been written by San K'in under the Later Han dynasty, but it
was elaborated rather in the third century. The commentary is due to Li Tao-yiian
of the Hou Wei period, who died in A.D. 527 (his biography is in Wei su, Ch. 89;
Pei si, Ch. 27). Regarding the various editions of the work, see PELLIOT, Butt, de
V Ecole franqaise, Vol. VI, p. 364, note 4.
3 Cf. BIOT, Le Tcheou-li, Vol. I, p. 465.
SAFFRON AND TURMERIC 323
favored by the Swo wen. 1 Both explanations are reasonable, but only
one of the two can be correct. 2 My own opinion is this: yii is an ancient
Chinese name for an indigenous Chinese aromatic plant; whether
Curcuma or another genus, can no longer be decided with certainty. 3
The term yu-kin means literally "gold of the yu plant," "gold" re-
ferring to the yellow rhizome, 4 yu to the total plant-character; the con-
crete significance, accordingly, is "yw-rhizome" or "yu-root." I do not
believe, however, that yu-kin is derived from the district or clan of Yu;
for this is impossible to assume, since yu as the name of a plant existed
prior to the name of that district. This is clearly evidenced by the
text of the Swi kin Zu: for it was only in in B.C. that the name Yii-lin
("Grove of the Yu Plant") came into existence, being then substituted
for the earlier Kwei-lin ("Grove of Cinnamomum cassia"). It is the
plant, consequently, which lent its name to the district, not the dis-
trict which named the plant. As in so many cases, the Chinese con-
found cause and effect. The reason why the name of this district was
altered into Yii-lin is now also obvious. It must have been renowned
under the Hail for the wealth of its yu-kin plants, which was less con-
spicuous under the Ts'in, when the cassia predominated there. At
any rate, yu-kin is a perfectly authentic and legitimate constituent
of the Chinese language, and not a foreign word. It denotes an indig-
enous Curcuma; while under the T'ang, as we have seen, additional
species of this genus may have been introduced from abroad. The word
yu-kin then underwent a psychological treatment similar to yen-U:
as yen-ci, "safflower," was transformed to any cosmetic or rouge, so yu-kin
' 'turmeric," was grafted on any dyes producing similar tinges of yellow.
Thus it was applied to the saffron of Kashmir and Persia.
1 The early edition of this work did not contain the form yu-kin, but merely the
plain, ancient yu. Solely the Fan yi min yi tsi (Ch. 8, p. 10 b) attributes ( I believe,
erroneously) the term yu-kin to the Swo wen.
2 Li i-<5en says that the district Yu-lin of the Han period comprises the territory
of the present cou >ft\ of Sim Vf|, Liu $P, Yun f , and Pin jj| of Kwan-si and Kwei-
6ou, and that, according to the Ta Min i Vun ci, only the district of Lo-c'en it ^
in Liu-cou fu (Kwan-si) produces yu-kin hian, which is that here spoken of (that is,
Crocus), while in fact Curcuma must be understood.
3 There is also the opinion that the ancient yu must be a plant similar to Ian
H5, an orchidaceous plant (see the P*i ya of Lu Tien and the T*un ci of Cen Tsiao).
4 PALLEGOIX (Description du royaume Thai ou Siam, Vol. I, p. 126) says, "Le
curcurfia est une racine bulbeuse et charnue, d'un beau jaune d'or."
SAFFLOWER
17. A. DE CANDOLLE, 1 while maintaining that the cultivation of
safflower 2 (Carthamus tinctorius) is of ancient date both in Egypt and
India, asserts on Bretschneider's authority that the Chinese received it
only in the second century B.C., when Can K'ien brought it back from
Bactriana. The same myth is repeated by STUART. S The biography
of the general and the Han Annals contain nothing to this effect. Only
the Po wu Zi enumerates hwan Ian jK ii in its series of Can-K'ien plants,
adding that it can be used as a cosmetic (yen-U ffi 5i). 4 The Ku kin
cu, while admitting the introduction of the plant from the West, makes
no reference to the General. The 7sV min yao $u discusses the method
of cultivating the flower, but is silent as to its introduction. The fact
of this introduction cannot be doubted, but it is hardly older than the
third or fourth century A.D. under the Tsin dynasty. The introduction
of safflower drew the attention of the Chinese to an indigenous wild
plant (Basella rubrd) which yielded a similar dye and cosmetic, and
both plants and their products were combined or confounded under
the common name yen-H.
Basella rubra, a climbing plant of the family Basellaceae, is largely
cultivated in China (as well as in India) on account of its berries, which
contain a red juice used as a rouge by women and as a purple dye for
making seal-impressions. This dye was the prerogative of the highest
1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 164.
2 Regarding the history of this word, see YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 779.
8 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 94. It is likewise an erroneous statement of Stuart
that Tibet was regarded by the Chinese as the natural habitat of this plant. This is
due to a confusion with the term Si-ts'an hun hwa ("red flower of Tibet "), which refers
to the saffron, and is so called because in modern times saffron is imported into
China from Kashmir by way of Tibet (see p. 312). Neither Carthamus nor saffron is
grown in the latter country.
4 Some editions of the Po wu li add, "At present it has also been planted in
the land of Wei |)| (China)," which might convey the impression that it had only
been introduced during the third century A.D., the lifetime of Can Hwa, author of
that work. In the commentary to the Pei hu lu (Ch. 3, p. 12), the Po wu li is quoted
as saying, "The safflower (hun hwa JC ffi, 'red flower') has its habitat in Persia,
Su-le (Kashgar), and Ho-lu $f jjjfc. Now that of Lian-han |j g| is of prime quality,
a tribute of twenty thousand catties being annually sent to the Bureau of Weaving
and Dyeing." The term hun hwa in the written language does not refer to "saffron,"
but to "safflower." Java produced the latter (Javanese kasumba), not saffron, as
translated by HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 78). The Can-K'ien story is repeated in the
Hwa kin of 1688 (Ch. 5, p. 24 b).
324
SAFFLOWER 325
boards of the capital, the prefects of Sun-t'ien and Mukden, and all
provincial governors. 1 Under the name lo k'wei $ H it is mentioned
by T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536), who refers to its cultivation, to the
employment of the leaves as a condiment, and to the use of the berries
as a cosmetic. 2 This probably came into use after the introduction of
safflower. The Ku kin u* written by Ts'ui Pao in the middle of the
fourth century, states, "The leaves of yen-ci 3? ^ resemble those of
the thistle (ki 15) and the p'u-kun $f & (Taraxacum officinalis). Its
habitat is in the Western Countries H Ji, where the natives avail them-
selves of the plant for dyeing, and designate it yen-li % 1&, while the
Chinese call it hun-lan ($[ 1 'red indigo/ Carthamus tinctorius} \
and the powder obtained from it, and used for painting the face, is
styled yen-ci Jen f&". [At present, because people value a deep-red
color &, they speak of the yen-ti flower which dyes; the yen-U flower,
however, is not the dye-plant yen-Zi, but has its own name, hun-lan
(Carthamus tinctorius). Of old, the color intermediate between Vi 7$
and white is termed hun itt, and this is what is now styled hun-lan.] " 4
It would follow from this text that Basella was at an early date con-
founded with Carthamus, but that originally the term yen-ci related to
Carthamus only.
The Pei hu lu 5 contains the following information in regard to the
yen-ti flower: "There is a wild flower growing abundantly in the
rugged mountains of Twan-ou SS ffl. 6 Its leaves resemble those of the
Ian E (Indigoferd) ; its flowers, those of the liao (Polygonum, prob-
ably P. tinctorium). The blossoms H, when pulled out, are from two
to three inches long, and yield a green-white pigment. It blooms in
the first month. The natives gather the bursting seeds while still in
their shells, in order to sell them. They are utilized in the preparation
of a cosmetic iS ;S i^, and particularly also for dyeing pongee and
other silks. Its red is not inferior to that of the Ian flower. Si Ts'o-S'i
1 P. HOANG, Melanges sur I'administration, pp. 80-81.
2 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 148; pt. Ill, No. 258.
3 Ch. c, p. 5 (ed. of Han Wei ts'un sii). In regard to the historicity of this work,
the critical remarks of the Imperial Catalogue (cf . WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Litera-
ture, p. 159) must be kept in mind. Cf. also above, p. 242.
4 The passage enclosed in brackets, though now incorporated in the text of the
Ku kin u, is without any doubt later commentatorial wisdom. This is formally
corroborated by the Pei hu lu (Ch. 3, p. 12), which omits all this in quoting the
relevant text of the Ku kin lu.
5 Ch. 3, p. ii (see above, p. 268).
6 Name of the prefecture of Cao-k'in jjl HI in Kwan-tun Province. This
wild flower is Basella, rubra.
326 SlNO-lRANICA
!? 1? 1S, in his Yu sie Si lun $u H IS f *\* ifr, says, 1 'These are hun-
lan (Carthamus): 2 did you know these previously, Sir, or not? The
people of the north gather these flowers, and dye materials a red-yellow
by rubbing their surface with it. The fresh blossoms are made into a
cosmetic. 3 Women, when dressing, use this pigment, it being the fashion
to apply only a piece the size of a small bean. When distributed evenly,
the paint is pleasing, as long as it is fresh. In my youth I observed this
cosmetic again and again; and to-day I have for the first time beheld
the hun-lan flower. Afterwards I shall raise its seeds for your benefit,
Sir. The Hiun-nu styled a wife yen-li (RJ &, 4 a word just as pleasing as
yen-li #8 5 ('cosmetic ') . The characters $9 and #3 have the same sound
yen-, the character J has the sound 5i &'. I expect you knew this
before, Sir, or you may read it up in the Han Annals.' Cen K'ien SB ft 5
says that a cosmetic may be prepared from pomegranate flowers." 6
The curious word yen-li has stirred the imagination of Chinese
scholars. It is not only correlated with the Hiuii-nu word yen-ti, as
was first proposed by Si Ts'o-6'i, but is also connected with a Yen-Si
mountain. Lo Yuan, in his Er ya i, remarks that the Hiun-nu had a
Yen-i mountain, and goes on to cite a song from the Si ho kiu Si 15 W
iff ^, 7 which says, "If we lose our K'i-lien mountain tfP 31 llj, 8 we cause
our herds to diminish in number; if we lose our Yen-i mountain, we
cause our women to go without paint. " J The Pei pien pei tui At jft
ifi f, a work of the Sung period, states, "The yen-ti 3S ~& of the Yen-ci
mountain ^t j UJ is the yen-U $5 Ba of the present time. This moun-
1 This author is stated to have lived under the Tsin dynasty (A.D. 265-419)
in the T'u Su tsi t'en, XX, Ch. 158, where this passage is quoted; but his book is
there entitled Yu yen wan Su $L ^ 3 lip. The same passage is inserted in the
Er ya i of Lo Yiian $31 H$l of the twelfth century, where the title is identical with
that given above.
2 In the text of the T'u Su: "At the foot of the mountain there are hun Ian."
1 Carthamus was already employed for the same purposes in ancient Egypt.
4 This is the Hiun-nu word for a royal consort, handed down in the Han Annals
(Ts'ien Han $u, Ch. 94 A, p. 5). See my Language of the Yue-chi, p. 10.
6 Author of the lost Hu pen ts'ao (above, p. 268).
6 Then follow a valueless anecdote anent a princess of the T'ang dynasty pre-
paring a cosmetic, and the passage of the Ku kin cu given above.
7 Mentioned in the T'ang literature, but seems to date from an earlier period
(BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 190).
8 A mountain-range south-west of Kan &>u in Kan-su (Si ki, Ch. 123, p. 4).
The word k'i-lien belongs to the language of the Hiun-nu and means "heaven."
In my opinion, it is related to Manchu kulun, which has the same meaning. The
interpretations given by WAITERS (Essays, p. 362) and SHIRATORI (Sprache der
Hiung-nu, p. 8) are not correct.
9 The same text is quoted in the commentary to the Pei hu lu (Ch. 3, p. II b).
SAFFLOWER 327
tain produces hun-lan (Carthamus) which yields yen-ti (' cosmetic ')"
All this, of course, is pure fantasy inspired by the homophony of the two
words yen-li (" cosmetic") and Hiun-nu yen-ci (" royal consort").
Another etymology propounded by Fu Hou f l in his Cun hwa ku
kin cu ^Hiffr^S: (tenth century) is no more fortunate: he explains
that yen-li is produced in the country Yen iS, and is hence styled J8& SB
yen-li ("sap of Yen"). Yen was one of the small feudal states at the
time of the Cou dynasty. This is likewise a philological afterthought,
for there is no ancient historical record to the effect that the state of
Yen should have produced (exclusively or pre-eminently) Basella or
Carthamus. It is perfectly certain that yen-Si is not Chinese, but the
transcription of a foreign word: this appears clearly from the ancient
form $ 5:, which yields no meaning whatever; j, as is well known,
being a favorite character in the rendering of foreign words. This is
further corroborated by the vacillating modes of writing the word,
to which Li Si-Sen adds 1& Ififc, 1 while he rejects as erroneous K J8
and US ;, and justly so. Unfortunately we are not informed as to the
country or language from which the word was adopted: the Ku kin
tu avails itself only of the vague term Si fan (" Western Countries"),
where Carthamus was called yen-Zi; but in no language known to me is
there any such name for the designation of this plant or its product.
The Sanskrit name for safflower is kusumbha; and if the plant had come
from India, Chinese writers would certainly not have failed to express
this clearly. The supposition therefore remains that it was introduced
from some Iranian region, and that yen-Si represents a word from an
old Iranian dialect now extinct, or an Iranian word somehow still
unknown. The New-Persian name for the plant is gawdZlla; in Arabic
it is qurtum. 2
Li Si-Sen distinguishes four kinds of yen-Si: (i) From Carthamus
tinctorius, the juice of the flowers of which is made into a rouge (the
information is chiefly drawn from the Ku kin u, as cited above).
(2) From Basella rubra, as described in the Pei hu lu. (3) From the
$an-liu Uj IS flower [unidentified, perhaps a wild pomegranate: above,
p. 281], described in the Hu pen ts'ao. (4) From the tree producing
gum lac (tse-kun ^ IfJP), 3 this product being styled $! % Ha hu yen-Si
("foreign cosmetic") and described in the Nan hai yao p'u IS fS l? IS
of Li Sim ^ *ij. 4 "At present," Li Si-cen continues, "the southerners
1 Formed with the classifier 155, "red."
- ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 105.
3 See below, p. 476.
4 He lived in the second half of the eighth century.
328 SlNO-lRANICA
make abundant use of tse-kun cosmetic, which is commonly called
tse-kun. In general, all these substances may be used as remedies in
blood diseases. 1 Also the juice from the seeds of lo k'wei $ $ (Basella
rubra) may be taken, and, mixed evenly with powder, may be applied
to the face. Also this is styled hu yen-ti" Now it becomes clear why
Basella rubra, a plant indigenous to China, is termed hu yen-li in the
T'un ti of Ceil Tsiao and by Ma Ci of the tenth century: this name
originally referred to the cosmetic furnished by Butea frondosa or other
trees on which the lac-insect lives, 2 trees growing in Indo-China, the
Archipelago, and India. This product, accordingly, was foreign, and
hence styled "foreign cosmetic" or "cosmetic of the barbarians"
(hu yen-Zi). Since Basella was used in the same manner, that name
was ultimately transferred also to the cosmetic furnished by this
indigenous plant.
What is not stated by Li Si-6en is that yen-ti is also used with
reference to Mirabilis jalapa, because from the flowers of this plant is
derived a red coloring-matter often substituted for carthamine. 3 It
is obvious that the term yen-ti has no botanical value, and for many
centuries has simply had the meaning "cosmetic."
Fan C'eii-ta (1126-93), in his Kwei hai yii hen ft, 4 mentions ¥-ti
K BH tree, strong and fine, with a color like yen-ci (that is, red), good
for making arrowheads, and growing in Yuri ou, also in the caves of
this department, and in the districts of Kwei-lin, in Kwan-si Province.
A. HENRY 5 gives for Yi-'aii in Se-S'wan a plant-name yen-li ma $1 SB
fit ("cosmetic hemp"), identified with Patrinia villosa.
1 On account of the red color of the berries.
3 See p. 478.
8 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 264; MATSUMURA, No. 2040; PERROT and
HURRIER, Matiere me"dicale et pharmacope'e sino-annamites, p. 116, where lo-k*wei
is erroneously given as Chinese name of the plant.
4 Ed. of Ci pu tsu lai ts*un $u, p. 28 b.
5 Chinese Names of Plants, p. 239 (Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc.,
Vol. XXII, 1887).
JASMINE
1 8. The Nan fan ts'ao mu Zwan & 3t ^ /fc JK, the oldest Chinese
work devoted to the botany of southern China, attributed to Ki Han
H &, a minister of the Emperor Hwei 8 (A.D. 290-309), contains
the following notice: 1
"The ye-si-min tff> & 3% flower and the mo-li M M flower (Jas-
minum officinale, family Oleaceae) were brought over from western
countries by Hu people $5 A, and have been planted in Kwan-tun
(Nan hai Si $J). The southerners are fond of their fragrant odor, and
therefore cultivate them . . . The mo-li flower resembles the white
variety of ts'ian-mi ^ H (Cnidium monnieri), and its odor exceeds that
of the ye-si-min."
In another passage of the same work 2 it is stated that the U-kia
JB V flower (Lawsonia alba)* ye-si-min, and mo-li were introduced by
Hu people from the country Ta Ts'in; that is, the Hellenistic Orient.
The plant ye-si-min has been identified with Jasminum officinale;
the plant mo-li, wiih Jasminum sambac. Both species are now cultivated
in China on account of the fragrancy of the flowers and the oil that
they yield. 4
The passage of the Nan fan ts*ao mu Zwan, first disclosed by BRET-
SCHNEIDER/ has given rise to various misunderstandings. HiRTH 6
remarked, "This foreign name, which is now common to all European
languages, is said to be derived from Arabic-Persian jasamm [read
ydsmm}, and the occurrence of the word in a Chinese record written
about A.D. 300 shows that it must have been in early use." WAITERS 7
regarded ydsmm as "one of the earliest Arabian words to be found in
Chinese literature." It seems never to have occurred to these authors
1 Ch. A, p. 2 (ed. of Han Wei ts'un $u).
2 Ch. B, p. 3.
8 See below, p. 334.
4 The sambac is a favored flower of the Chinese. In Peking there are special
gardeners who cultivate it exclusively. Every day in summer, the flower-buds are
gathered before sunrise (without branches or leaves) and sold for the purpose of
perfuming tea and snuff, and to adorn the head-dress of Chinese ladies. Jasminum
officinale is not cultivated in Peking (BRETSCHNEIDER, Chinese Recorder, Vol. Ill,
1871, p. 225).
5 Chinese Recorder, Vol. Ill, p. 225.
6 China and the Roman Orient, p. 270.
7 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 354.
329
330 SlNO-lRANICA
that at this early date we know nothing about an Arabic or Persian
language; and this rapprochement is wrong, even in view of the Chinese
work itself, which distinctly says that both ye-si-min and mo-li were
introduced from Ta Ts'in, the Hellenistic Orient. PELLiOT 1 observes
that the authenticity of the Chinese book has never been called into
doubt, but expresses surprise at the fact that jasmine figures there
under its Arabic name. But Arabic is surely excluded from the languages
of Ta Ts'in. Moreover, thanks to the researches of L. AUROUSSEAU, 2
we now know that the Nan fan ts'ao mu cwan is impaired by inter-
polations. The passage in question may therefore be a later addition,
and, at all events, cannot be enlisted to prove that prior to the year 300
there were people from western Asia in Canton. 3 Still less is it credible
that, as asserted in the Chinese work, the Nan yue kin ki S) 1^ fl fffi
ascribed to Lu Kia H H, who lived in the third and second centuries
B.C., should have alluded to the two species of Jasminum.* In fact,
this author is made to say only that in the territory of Nan Yiie the
five cereals have no taste and the flowers have no odor, and merely
that these flowers are particularly fragrant. Their names are not given,
and it is Ki Han who refers them to ye-si-min and mo-li. It is out of
the question that at the time of Lu Kia these two foreign plants should
have been introduced over the maritime route into southern China;
Lu Kia, if he has written this passage, may have as well had two other
flowers in mind.
The fact must not be overlooked, either, that the alleged introduction
from Ta Ts'in is not contained in the historical texts relative to that
country, nor is it confirmed by any other coeval or subsequent source.
The Pei hu lu 5 mentions the flower under the names ye-si-mi W S 35
and white mo-li & %> M ffi as having been transplanted to China by
Persians, like the p'i-Si-Sa or gold-coin flower. 6 The Yu yan tsa tsu
has furnished a brief description of the plant, 7 stating that its habitat
is in Fu-lin and in Po-se (Persia). The Pen ts'ao kan mu, Kwan k'un
fan p*u, 8 and Hwa kin 9 state that the habitat of jasmine (mo-li) was
1 Bull, de VEcole franc aise, Vol. II, p. 146.
2 See above, p. 263.
3 HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 6, note i.
4 This point is discussed neither by Bretschneider nor by Hirth, who do not
at all mention this reference.
6 Ch. 3, p. 1 6 (see above, p. 268).
6 See below, p. 335.
7 Translated by HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, 1910, p. 22.
s Ch. 22, p. 8 b.
Ch. 4, p. 9.
JASMINE 331
originally in Persia, and that it was thence transplanted into Kwari-
tun. The first-named work adds that it is now (sixteenth century)
cultivated in Yun-nan and Kwan-tun, but that it cannot stand cold,
and is unsuited to the climate of China. The Tan k'ien tsun lu fir ifr
It SSk of Yan Sen il W (1488-1559) is cited to the effect that "the name
nai ^ used in the north of China is identical with what is termed in the
Tsin Annals t tsan nai hwa 3jj (' hair-pin') ^ 3E. 1 As regards this
flower, it entered China a long time ago."
Accordingly we meet in Chinese records the following names for
jasmine: 2
(1) JfP 3 3? ye-si-min, * ya-sit(siS)-min, = Pahlavi yasmm,
New Persian ydsamln, ydsmin, ydsmun, Arabic yasmin, or !? ^ m
ye -si-mi y *ya-sit-mit (in Yu yan tsa tsu)= Middle Persian *yasmir (?). 3
Judging from this philological evidence, the statement of the Yu yan
tsa tsu, and Li Si-cen's opinion that the original habitat of the plant was
in Persia, it seems preferable to think that it was really introduced from
that country into China. The data of the Nan fan ts'ao mu Iwan are
open to grave suspicion; but he who is ready to accept them is com-
pelled to argue, that, on the one hand, the Persian term was extant in
western Asia at least in the third century A.D., and that, on the other
hand, the Indian word mallika (see No. 2) had reached Ta Ts'in about
the same time. Either suggestion would be possible, but is not con-
firmed by any West-Asiatic sources. 4 The evidence presented by the
Chinese work is isolated; and its authority is not weighty enough, the
relation of the modern text to the original issue of about A.D. 300 is
too obscure, to derive from it such a far-reaching conclusion. The
Persian- Arabic word has become the property of the entire world: all
European languages have adopted it, and the Arabs diffused it along
the east coast of Africa (Swahili yasmini, Madagasy dzasimini).
(2) ^ M or ^ ^5 mo-li? *mwat(mwal)-li=wa//?, transcription of
1 This is the night-blooming jasmine (Nyctanthes arbor tristis), the musk-flower
of India (STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 287).
2 There are numerous varieties of Jasminum, about 49 to 70 in India, about
39 in the Archipelago, and about 15 in China and Japan.
3 From the Persian loan-word in Armenian, yasmik, HUBSCHMANN (Armen.
Gram., p. 198) justly infers a Pahlavi *yasmlk, beside yasmin. Thus also *yasmlt
or *yasmlr may have existed in Pahlavi.
4 It is noteworthy also that neither Dioscorides nor Galenus was acquainted
with jasmine.
5 For the expression of the element li are used various other characters which
may be seen in the Kwan k'un fan p'u (Ch. 22, p. 8 b); they are of no importance
for the phonetic side of the case.
332 SlNO-lRANICA
Sanskrit mallika (Jasminum sambac), Tibetan mal-li-ka, Siamese ma-li, 1
Khmer maly or mlih, Cam molih. Malayan melati is derived from
Sanskrit malafi, which refers to Jasminum grandiflorum. Mongol
melirge is independent. Hirth's identification with Syriac molo 2 must
be rejected.
(3) ffc 3c san-mo y *san-mwat (Fukien mwak). This word is given
in the Nan fan ts*ao mu Zwan* as a synonyme of Lawsonia alba, furnish-
ing the henna; but a confusion has here arisen, for the transcription
does not answer to any foreign name of Lawsonia, but apparently cor-
responds to Arabic zanbaq ("jasmine"), from which the botanical term
sambac is derived. It is out of the question that this word was known
to Ki Han: it is clearly an interpolation in his text.
(4) St^S man hwa ("man flower") occurs in Buddhist literature,
and is apparently an abridgment of Sanskrit sumana (Jasminum grandi-
florum), which has been adopted into Persian as suman or saman.
Jasminum officinale occurs in Kashmir, Kabul, Afghanistan, and
Persia; in the latter country also in the wild state.
Jasmine is discussed in Pahlavi literature (above, p. 192) and in the
Persian pharmacopoeia of Abu Mansur. 4 C'aii Te noticed the flower
in the region of Samarkand. 5 It grows abundantly in the province of
Pars in Persia. 8
Oil of jasmine is a famous product among Arabs and Persians, being
styled in Arabic duhn az-zanbaq. Its manufacture is briefly described in
Ibn al-Baitar's compilation. 7 According to Istaxrl, there is in the
province of Darabejird in Persia an oil of jasmine that is to be found
nowhere else. Sabur and Slraz were renowned for the same product. 8
The oil of jasmine manufactured in the West is mentioned in the
Yu yan tsa tsu as a tonic. It was imported into China during the Sung
period, as we learn from the Wei lio U S, 9 written by Kao Se-sun
iS ISt B, who lived toward the end of the twelfth and in the beginning
of the thirteenth century. Here it is stated, "The ye-si-min flower is
a flower of the western countries, snow-white in color. The Hu $J
(Iranians or foreigners) bring it to Kiao-ou and Canton, and every one
1 PALLEGOIX, Description du royaume Thai, Vol. I, p. 147.
2 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, 1910, p. 23.
8 Ch. B, p. 3. See below, p. 334.
4 AcHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 147.
6 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 131.
6 G. LE STRANGE, Description of the Province of Pars, p. 51.
7 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. in.
8 P. SCHWARZ, Iran, pp. 52, 94, 97, 165.
Ch. 9, p. 9.
JASMINE 333
is fond of its fragrance and plants this flower. According to the Kwan
Zou t'u kin IS >H1 H S ('Gazetteer of Kwan-tufi Province 7 ), oil of
jasmine is imported on ships; for the Hu gather the flowers to press
from them oil, which is beneficial for leprosy M JIL 1 When this fatty
substance is rubbed on the palm of the hand, the odor penetrates through
the back of the hand."
1 According to the Arabs, it is useful as a preventive of paralysis and epilepsy
(LECLERC, /. c.).
HENNA
19. It is well known that the leaves of Lawsonia alba or L. inermis,
grown all over southern China, are extensively used by women and
children as a finger-nail dye, and are therefore styled U kia hwa 3&
^E ("finger-nail flower"). 1 This flower is mentioned in the Sanfu hwan
t*u, 2 of unknown authorship and date, as having been transplanted
from Nan Yiie (South China) into the Fu-li Palace at the time of the
Han Emperor Wu (140-87 B.C.). This is doubtless an anachronism or
a subsequent interpolation in the text of that book. The earliest datable
reference to this plant is again contained in the Nan fan ts'ao mu Iwan by
Ki Han, 3 by whom it is described as a tree from five to six feet in height,
with tender and weak branches and leaves like those of the young elm-
tree tfe (Ulmus campestris), the flowers being snow-white like ye-si-min
and mo-li, but different in odor. As stated above (p. 329), this work goes
on to say that these three plants were introduced by Hu people from
Ta Ts'in, and cultivated in Kwafi-tun. 4 The question arises again
whether this passage was embodied in the original edition. It is some-
what suspicious, chiefly for the reason that Ki Han adds the synonyme
san-mo, which, as we have seen, in fact relates to jasmine.
The Pei hu lu, 5 written about A.D. 875 by Twan Kun-lu, contains
the following text under the heading &' kia hwa: "The finger-nail flower
is fine and white and of intense fragrance. The barbarians HI A now
plant it. Its name has not yet been explained. There are, further, the
jasmine and the white mo-li. All these were transplanted to China by
the Persians (Po-se). This is likewise the case with the p'i-$i-$a Pttt/ 5
?J? (or 'gold coin') flower (Inula chinensis). Originally it was only
produced abroad, but in the second year of the period Ta-t'uii :fc 1^1
(A.D. 536 of the Liang dynasty) it came to China for the first time
(#p 2fc ^dl)." In the Yu yan tsa tsu, G written about fifteen years
earlier, we read, "The gold-coin flower 4 il ffi, it is said, was originally
produced abroad. In the second year of the period Ta-t'uii of the
1 Cf. Notes and Queries on China and Japan, Vol. I, 1867, pp. 40-41. STUART,
Chinese Materia Medica, p. 232.
2 Ch. 3, p. 9 b (see above, p. 263).
3 Ch. B, p. 3 (ed. of Han Wei ts'uh Iw).
4 Cf. also HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 268.
6 Ch. 3, p. 16 (see above, p. 268).
6 Ch. 19, p. 10 b.
334
V
HENNA 335
Liang (A.D. 536) it came to China. At the time of the Liang dynasty,
people of Kin ou M ffl used to gamble in their houses at backgammon
with gold coins. When the supply of coins was exhausted, they resorted
to gold-coin flowers. Hence Yu Hun ft A said, 'He who obtains flowers
makes money.' " The same work likewise contains the following note: 1
"PV-&-.foPttt P ^ is a synonyme for the gold-coin flower, 2 which was
originally produced abroad, and came to China in the first year of
the period Ta-t'un of the Liang (A.D. 535)." The gold-coin flower vis-
ualized by Twan Kun-lu and Twan C'en-si assuredly cannot be Inula
chinensis, which is a common, wild plant in northern China, and which
is already mentioned in the Pie lu and by T'ao Hun-kin. 3 It is patent
that this flower introduced under the Liang must have been a different
species. The only method of solving the problem would be to determine
the prototype of p*i-si-$a, which is apparently the transcription of a
foreign word. It is not stated to which language it belongs; but, judging
from appearances, it is Sanskrit, and should be traceable to a form
like *vislsa (or *vicesa). Such a Sanskrit plant-name is not to be
found, however. Possibly the word is not Sanskrit. 4
The Pei hu lu, accordingly, conceives the finger-nail flower as an
introduction due to the Persians, but does not allude to its product,
the henna. I fail to find any allusion to henna in other books of the
T'ang period. I am under the impression that the use of this cosmetic
did not come into existence in China before the Sung epoch, and that
the practice was then introduced (or possibly only re-introduced) by
Mohammedans, and was at first restricted to these. It is known that
also the leaves of Impatiens balsamina (fun sien IH fill) mixed with alum
are now used as a finger-nail dye, being therefore styled Zan ci kia ts'ao
K* |g ^ ^ ("plant dyeing finger-nails"), 5 a term first appearing
in the Kiu hwan pen ts*ao, published early in the Ming period. The
earliest source that mentions the practice is the Kwei sin tsa si 1 ^
1 Ch. 19, p. 10 a.
2 The addition of Ff* before kin in the edition of Pai hai surely rests on an error.
3 Cf. also BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 158.
4 The new Chinese Botanical Dictionary (p. 913) identifies the gold-coin
flower with Inula britannica. In Buddhist lexicography it is identified with
Sanskrit jdti (Jasminum grandiflorum; cf. EITEL, Handbook, p. 52). The same
word means also "kind, class"; so does likewise vi$esa, and the compound jati-
vi$e$a denotes the specific characters of a plant (HOERNLE, Bower Manuscript,
p. 273). It is therefore possible that this term was taken by the Buddhists in
the sense of "species of Jasminum," and that finally vi$e$a was retained as the
name of the flower.
5 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 215; Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 17 B, p. 12 b.
336 SlNO-lRANICA
H Ufa 1 by Cou Mi J9 $? (1230-1320), who makes the following ob-
servation: "As regards the red variety of the fun sien flower (Impatiens
balsamina), the leaves are used, being pounded in a mortar and mixed
with a little alum. 2 The finger-nails must first be thoroughly cleaned,
and then this paste is applied to them. During the night a piece of
silk is wrapped around them, and the dyeing takes effect. This process
is repeated three or five times. The color resembles that of the yen-Zi
(Basella rubrum). Even by washing it does not come off, and keeps
for fully ten days. At present many Mohammedan women are fond
of using this cosmetic for dyeing their hands, and also apply it to cats
and dogs for their amusement." The Pen ts'ao kan mu quotes only the
last clause of this text. From what Cou Mi says, it does not appear
that the custom was of ancient date; on the contrary, it does not seem
to be older than the Sung period.
None of the early Pen ts'ao makes mention of Lawsonia. It first
appears in the Pen ts'ao kan mu. All that Li Si-Sen is able to note
amounts to this: that there are two varieties, a yellow and a white one,
which bloom during the summer months; that its odor resembles that
of mu-si /fc JP (Osmanthus fragrans) ; and that it can be used for dyeing
the finger-nails, being superior in this respect to the fun sien flower
(Impatiens balsamina). Cen Kan-Sun 9$ M *%*, an author of the Sung
period, mentions the plant under the name i hian hwa && 3& ("flower
of peculiar fragrance").
It has generally been believed hitherto that the use of henna and
the introduction of Lawsonia into China are of ancient date; but, in
fact, the evidence is extremely weak. In my opinion, as far as the em-
ployment of henna is concerned, we have to go down as far as the
Sung period. It is noteworthy also that no foreign name of ancient date,
either for the plant or its product, is on record. F. P. SMITH and STUART
parade the term $$ |ft hai-na (Arabic hinna) without giving a reference.
The very form of this transcription shows that it is of recent date: in
fact, it occurs as late as the sixteenth century in the Pen ts'ao kan mu?
then in the K'iinfan p'u of 1630* and the Nun Zen ts'uan su H. Ifc dr it^,
published in 1619 by Su Kwan-k'i ^ 36 , the friend and supporter
of the Jesuits. It also occurs in the Hwa kin of i688. 5
It is well known what extensive use of henna (Arabic hinnd, hence
1 ft * Jb P. 17 (ed. of Pai hai).
2 In this manner the dye is also prepared at present.
3 Ch. 17 B, p. 12 b.
4 Kwan k'iin fan p'u, Ch. 26, p. 4 b. The passages of the first edition are
especially indicated.
6 Ch. 5, p. 23 b.
HENNA 337
Malayan inei) has been made in the west from ancient times. The
Egyptians stained their hands red with the leaves of the plant 1 (Egyp-
tian puqer, Coptic kuper or khuper, Hebrew kopher, Greek KUTTPOS). All
Mohammedan peoples have adopted this custom; and they even dye
their hair with henna, also the manes, tails, and hoofs of horses. 2 The
species of western Asia is identical with that of China, which is sponta-
neous also in Baluchistan and in southern Persia. 3 Ancient Persia
played a prominent r61e as mediator in the propagation of the plant. 4
"They [the Persians] have also a custom of painting their hands, and,
above all, their nails, with a red color, inclining to yellowish or orange,
much near the color that our tanners nails are of. There are those
who also paint their feet. This is so necessary an ornament in their
married women, that this kind of paint is brought up, and distributed
among those that are invited to their wedding dinners. They there-
with paint also the bodies of such as dye maids, that when they appear
before the Angels Examinants, they may be found more neat and
handsome. This color is made of the herb, which they call Chinne,
which hath leaves like those of liquorice, or rather those of myrtle. It
grows in the Province of Erak, and it is dry'd, and beaten, small as
flower, and there is put thereto a little of the juyce of sour pomegranate,
or citron, or sometimes only fair water; and therewith they color their
hands. And if they would have them to be of a darker color, they rub
them afterwards with wall-nut leaves. This color will not be got off in
fifteen days, though they wash their hands several times a day." 5 It
1 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 80; WCENIG, Pflanzen im alten Aegypten,
P- 349-
2 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 469; G. JACOB, Studien in arabischen
Geographen, p. 172; A. v. KREMER, Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen,
Vol. II, p. 325.
8 C. JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 47.
4 SCHWEINFURTH, Z. Ethnologie, Vol. XXIII, 1891, p. 658.
5 A. OLEARIUS, Voyages of the Ambassadors to the Great Duke of Muscovy
and the King of Persia (1633-39), P- 2 34 (London, 1669). I add the very exact
description of the process given by SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 343): "C'est avec
la poudre fine des feuilles seches de cette plante, largement cultive'e dans le midi
de la Perse, que les indigenes se colorent les cheveux, la barbe et les ongles en rouge-
orange. La poudre, forme en pate avec de 1'eau plus ou moins chaude, est applique"e
sur les cheveux et les ongles et y reste pendant une ou deux heures, ayant soin de la
tenir constamment humide en empechant 1'evaporation de son eau; apres quoi la
partie est lave"e soigneusement; 1'effet de 1'application du henna est de donner une
couleur rouge-orange aux cheveux et aux ongles. Pour transformer cette couleur
rougeatre en noir luisant, on enduit pendant deux ou trois autres heures les cheveux
ou la barbe d'une seconde pate forme'e de feuilles pulverise'es finement d'une espece
d'indigof ere, cultiv6e sur une large e"chelle dans la province de Kerman. Ces mani-
pulations se pratiquent d'ordinaire au bain persan, ou la chaleur humide diminue
338 SlNO-lRANICA
seems more likely that the plant was transmitted to China from Persia
than from western Asia, but the accounts of the Chinese in this case are
too vague and deficient to enable us to reach a positive conclusion.
In India, Lawsonia alba is said to be wild on the Coromandel coast.
It is now cultivated throughout India. The use of henna as a cosmetic
is universal among Mohammedan women, and to a greater or lesser
extent among Hindu also; but that it dates "from very ancient times,"
as stated by WATT, 1 seems doubtful to me. There is no ancient Sanskrit
term for the plant or the cosmetic (mendhl or mendkika is Neo-Sanskrit),
and it would be more probable that its use is due to Mohammedan
influence. JoRET 2 holds that the tree, although it is perhaps indigenous,
may have been planted only since the Mohammedan invasion. 3
FRANCOIS PYRARD, who travelled from 1601 to 1610, reports the
henna-furnishing plant on the Maldives, where it is styled innapa
(^hmd-fai, "henna-leaf"). "The leaves are bruised," he remarks,
"and rubbed on their hands and feet to make them red, which they
esteem a great beauty. This color does not yield to any washing, nor
until the nails grow, or a fresh skin comes over the flesh, and then (that
is, at the end of five or six months) they rub them again." 4
singulierement la dure"e de 1'op^ration." While the Persians dye the whole of their
hands as far as the wrist, also the soles of their feet, the Turks more commonly
only tinge the nails; both use it for the hair.
1 Commercial Products of India, p. 707.
2 Plantes dans I'antiquit6, Vol. II, p. 273.
3 Cf. also D. HOOPER, Oil of Lawsonia alba, Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. IV,
1908, p. 35-
4 Voyage of F. Pyrard, ed. by A. GRAY, Vol. II, p. 361 (Hakluyt Society). The
first edition of this work appeared in Paris, 1611.
THE BALSAM-POPLAR
20. Under the term hu fun (Japanese koto) 8 fl3 ("t'ung tree of
the Hu, Iranian Paulownia imperialism" that is, Populus balsamifera) ,
the Annals of the Former Han Dynasty mention a wild-growing tree
as characteristic of the flora of the Lob-nor region; for it is said to be
plentiful in the kingdom of San-san HP H. 1 It is self-evident from the
nomenclature that this was a species new to the Chinese, who discovered
it in their advance through Turkistan in the second century B.C., but
that the genus was somewhat familiar to them. The commentator
Mon K'an states on this occasion that the hu fun tree resembles the
mulberry (Morus alba), but has numerous crooked branches. A more
elaborate annotation is furnished by Yen 5i-ku (A.D. 579-645), who
comments, "The hu fun tree resembles the fun fll (Paulownia im-
perialis), but not the mulberry; hence the name hu fun is bestowed
upon it. This tree is punctured by insects, whereupon flows down a
juice, that is commonly termed hu fun lei $} fl? M ( l hu-fun tears'),
because it is said to resemble human tears. 2 When this substance
penetrates earth or stone, it coagulates into a solid mass, somewhat on
the order of rock salt, called wu-fun kien fif fl? fifc ('natron of the wu-fun
tree/ Sterculia platanifolia) . It serves for soldering metal, and is now
used by all workmen." 3
The Tun tien 3 ft, written by Tu Yu tt ffi between the years
766 and 801, says that "the country Lou IS 4 among the Si 2un ffi 3&
produces an abundance of tamarisks $P (Tamarix chinensis), hu fun,
and pai ts'ao 6 ^ ('white herb or grass'), 5 the latter being eaten by
1 Ts'ien Han Su, Ch. 96 A, p. 3 b. Cf. A. WYLIE, Journal Anthropological In-
stitute, Vol. X, 1 88 1, p. 25.
2 Pliny (xn, 1 8, 33) speaks of a thorny shrub in Ariana on the borders of India,
valuable for its tears, resembling the myrrh, but difficult of access on account of the
adhering thorns (Contermina Indis gens Ariana appellatur, cui spina lacrima pretiosa
murrae simili, difficili accessu propter aculeos adnexos). It is not known what plant
is to be understood by the Plinian text; but the analogy of the "tears" with the
above Chinese term is noteworthy.
3 This text has been adopted by the T'ai p'in hwan yu ki (Ch. 181, p. 4) in
describing the products of Lou-Ian.
4 Abbreviated for Lou-Ian ^ 10. the original name of the kingdom of San-San.
5 This is repeated from the Han Annals, which add also rushes. The "white
grass" is explained by Yen Si-ku as "resembling the grass yu ^ (Setariaviridis), but
finer and without awns; when dried, it assumes a white color, and serves as fodder
for cattle and horses."
339
340 SlNO-lRANICA
cattle and horses. The hu fun looks as if it were corroded by insects.
A resin flows down and comes out of this tree, which is popularly called
'hu-fun tears'. It can be used for soldering gold (or metal) and silver.
In the colloquial language, they say also lii & instead of lei, which is
faulty." 1
The T*an pen ts*ao* is credited with this statement: "Hu fun lei
is an important remedy for the teeth. At present this word is the name of
a place west of Aksu. The tree is full of small holes. One can travel
for several days and see nothing but hu fun trees in the forests. The
leaves resemble those of the fun (Paulownia). The resin which is like
glue flows out of the roots."
The Lin piao lu & states positively that hu fun lei is produced in
Persia, being the sap of the hu fun tree, and adds that there are also
"stone tears," Si lei 35 3H, which are collected from stones.
Su Kun, the reviser of the Pen ts*ao of the T'ang, makes this ob-
servation: 4 "Hu fun lei is produced in the plains and marshes as well
as in the mountains and valleys lying to the west of Su-5ou llf *K\.
In its shape it resembles yellow vitriol (hwah fan ift i), 5 but is far
more solid. The worm-eaten trees are styled hu fun trees. When their
sap filters into earth and stones, it forms a soil-made product like
natron. This tree is high and large, its bark and leaves resembling those
of the white poplar and the green fun ff ffil. It belongs to the family
of mulberries, and is hence called hu fun tree. Its wood is good for
making implements."
Han Pao-sen ?? ffi. ^, who edited the Su pen ts'ao a ^ ^ about
the middle of the tenth century, states, "The tree occurs west of Liari-
cbu i^ M (in Kan-su). In the beginning it resembles a willow; when
it has grown, it resembles a mulberry and the fun. Its sap sinks into
the soil, and is similar to earth and stone. It is used as a dye like the
ginger-stone (kian $i K^?). 6 It is extremely salty and bitter. It is
dissolved by the application of water, and then becomes like alum
shale or saltpetre. It is collected during the winter months."
Ta Min ;Jc $!, who wrote a Pen ts'ao about A.D. 970, says with
reference to this tree, "There are two kinds, a tree-sap which is not
employed in the pharmacopoeia, and a stone-sap collected on the
1 Cf. Cen lei pen ts*ao, Ch. 13, p. 33.
2 As quoted in the Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 35, p. 8 b.
3 Ch. B, p. 7 a (see above, p. 268).
4 Cen lei pen ts'ao, I.e.
6 F. DE MfLY, Lapidaire chinois, p. 149.
6 A variety of stalactite (see F. DE MLY, Lapidaire chinois, p. 94; GEERTS,
Produits, p. 343; Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 5, p. 32).
THE BALSAM-POPLAR 341
surface of stones; this one only is utilized as a medicine. It resembles
in appearance small pieces of stone, and those colored like loess take
the first place. The latter are employed as a remedy for toothache."
Su Sun, in his Tu kin pen ts*ao, remarks that it then occurred among
the Western Barbarians (Si Fan), and was traded by merchants. He
adds that it was seldom used in the recipes of former times, but that
it is now utilized for toothache and regarded as an important remedy in
families.
Li Si-Sen 1 refers to the chapter on the Western Countries (5^ yii
^wan) in the Han Annals, stating that the tree was plentiful in the
country Ku-si ^ SP (Turf an). No such statement is made in the
Annals of the Han with regard to this country, but, as we have seen,
only with reference to San-san. 2 He then gives a brief resume of the
matter, setting down the two varieties of "tree-tears" and "stone-
tears."
The Ming Geography mentions hu fun lei as a product of Kami.
The Kwan yu ki z notices it as a product of the Chikin Mongols between
Su-ou and Sa-ou. The Si yii wen kien lu* written in 1777, states in
regard to this tree that it is only good as fuel on account of its crooked
growth: hence the natives of Turkistan merely call it odon or otun,
which means "wood, fuel" in Turkish. 5 The tree itself is termed in
Turkl tograk.
The Hui k'ian & 6 likewise describes the hu t'un tree of Kami, saying
that the Mohammedans use its wood as fuel, but that some with
ornamental designs is carved into cases for writing-brushes and into
saddles.
BRETSCHNEiDER 7 has identified this tree with Populus euphratica,
the wood of which is used as fuel in Turkistan. It is not known, however,
that this tree produces a resin, such as is described by the Chinese.
Moreover, this species is distributed through northern China; 8 while
all Chinese records, both ancient and modern, speak of the hu fun
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 22.
2 There is a passage in the Swi kiri cu where the hu t*un is mentioned, and may
be referred to Ku-i (CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1905, p. 569).
3 Above, p. 251.
4 Ch. 7, p. 9 (WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 64).
6 This passage has already been translated correctly by W. SCHOTT (Abh. Berl.
Ak., 1842, p. 370). It was not quite comprehended by BRETSCHNEIDER (Mediaeval
Researches, Vol. II, p. 179), who writes, "The characters hu t'ung here are intended
to render a foreign word which means 'fuel'."
6 Above, p. 230.
7 Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 179.
8 FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Society, Vol. XXVI, p. 536.
342 SlNO-lRANICA
exclusively as a tree peculiar to Turkistan and Persia. The correct
identification of the tree is Populus balsamifera, var. genuina Wesm. 1
The easternmost boundary of this tree is presented by the hills of
Kumbum east of the Kukunor, which geographically is part of Central
Asia. The same species occurs also in Siberia and North America; it
is called Hard by the French of Canada. It is met with, further, wild
and cultivated, in the inner ranges of the north-western Himalaya,
from Kunawar, altitude 8000 to 13000 feet, westwards. In western
Tibet it is found up to 14000 feet. 2 The buds contain a balsam-resin
which is considered antiscorbutic and diuretic, and was formerly im-
ported into Europe under the name baume facot and tacamahaca 8 com-
munis (or vulgaris). WATT says that he can find no account of this
exudation being utilized in India. It appears from the Chinese records
that the tree must have been known to the Iranians of Central Asia
and Persia, and we shall not fail in assuming that these were also the
discoverers of the medical properties of the balsam. It is quite credible
that it was efficacious in alleviating pain caused by carious teeth, as it
would form an air-tight coating around them.
1 MATSUMURA, Shokubutsu mei-i, No. 2518.
8 G. WATT, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, Vol. VI, p. 325.
1 The tacamahaca (a word of American-Indian origin) was first described
by NICOLOSO DE MONARDES (Dos libros el uno que trata de todas las cosas que traen
de nuestras Indias Occidentales, Sevilla, 1569) : " Assi mismo traen de nueva Espafia
otro genero de Goma, o resina, que llaman los Indios Tacamahaca. Y este mismo
nombre dieron nuestros Espanoles. Es resina sacada por incision de un Arbol
grande como Alamo, que es muy oloroso, echa el fruto Colorado como simiente de
Peonia. Desta Resina o goma, usan mucho los Indios en sus enfermedades, mayor-
mente en hinchazones, en qualquiera parte del cuerpo que se engendran, por que las
ressuelue madura, y deshaze marauillosamente," etc. A copy of this very scarce work
is in the Edward E. Ayer collection of the Newberry Library, Chicago; likewise
the continuation Segunda parte del libro, de las cosas que se traen de nuestras
Indias Occidentales (Sevilla, 1571).
MANNA
21. The word "manna," of Semitic origin (Hebrew man, Arabic
mann), has been transmitted to us through the medium of Greek ^vva
in the translation of the Septuaginta and the New Testament. Manna
is a saccharine product discharged from the bark or leaves of a number
of plants under certain conditions, either through the puncture of insects
or by making incisions in the trunk and branches. Thus there are
mannas of various nature and origin. The best-known manna is the
exudation of Fraxinus ornus (or Ornus europaea), the so-called manna-
ash, occurring in the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor. 1 The chief
constituent of manna is manna-sugar or mannite, which occurs in
many other plants besides Fraxinus.
The Annals of the Sui Dynasty ascribe to the region of Kao-c'an
iSJ II (Turf an) a plant, styled yan ts*e ^ lW ("sheep-thorn"), the upper
part of which produces honey of very excellent taste. 2
C'en Ts'an-k'i, who wrote in the first part of the eighth century,
states that in the sand of Kiao-ho 3? W (Yarkhoto) there is a plant
with hair on its top, and that in this hair honey is produced; it is styled
by the Hu (Iranians) S ft ( = ffr) $k k*ie-p*o-lo, *k'it(k'ir)-bwu5-la. 3
The first element apparently corresponds to Persian xdr ("thorn") or
the dialectic form yar;* the second, to Persian burra or bura ("lamb"), 5
so that the Chinese term yan ts'e presents itself as a literal rendering
of the Persian (or rather a Middle-Persian or Sogdian) expression.
In New Persian the term xar-i-$utur ("camel-thorn") is used, and,
according to AITCHISON, also ocar-i-buzi ("goat's thorn"). 6
It is noteworthy that the Chinese have preserved a Middle-Persian
word for "manna," which has not yet been traced in an Iranian source.
The plant (Hedysarum alhagi), widely diffused over all the arid lowlands
1 Cf . the excellent investigation of D. HANBURY, Science Papers, pp. 355-368.
2 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 3 b. The same text is also found in the Wei $u and Pei Si;
in the T'ai p'in hwan yu ki (Ch. 180, p. n b) it is placed among the products of
Ku-Si ^ ftp in Turf an.
s STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 258) erroneously writes the first char-
acter IB . He has not been able to identify the plant in question.
4 P. HORN, Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 70.
6 In dialects of northern Persia also varre, varra, and werk (J. DE MORGAN,
Mission en Perse, Vol. V, p. 208).
6 Cf. D. HOOPER, Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. V, 1909, p. 33.
343
344 SlNO-lRANICA
of Persia, furnishes manna only in certain districts. Wherever it fails
to yield this product, it serves as pasture to the camels (hence its name
"thorn of camels"), and, according to the express assurance of SCHLIM-
MER, 1 also to the sheep and goats. "Les indigenes des contrees de la
Perse, ou se fait la re"colte de teren-djebin, me disent que les pasteurs
sont obliges par les institutions communales de s'eloigner avec leurs
troupeaux des plaines ou la plante mannifere abonde, parce que les
moutons et chevres ne manqueraient de faire avorter la re"colte." In
regard to a related species (Hedysarum semenowi), S. KoRsSiNSKi 2
states that it is particularly relished by the sheep which fatten on it.
The Lian se kun tse ki & R9 & ? IS 3 is cited in the Pen ts'ao kan mu
as follows: "In Kao-'an there is manna (ts'e mi ffl 3C). Mr. Kie fa
& says, In the town Nan-p'in Si Z P 4 ftfc the plant yan ts'e is devoid of
leaves, its honey is white in color and sweet of taste. The leaves of the
plant yan ts'e in Salt City (Yen c'eii 9L ftJt) are large, its honey is dark
W in color, and its taste is indifferent. Kao-c"'an is the same as Kiao-ho,
and is situated in the land of the Western Barbarians (Si Fan S 16) ; 5
at present it forms a large department (ta &?w :*C #!)."
Wan Yen-te, who was sent on a mission to Turfan in A.D. 981,
mentions the plant and its sweet manna in his narrative. 6
Cou K'u-fei, who wrote the Lin wai tai ta in 1178, describes the
"genuine manna (sweet dew)" M ~fr % of Mosul (to Sr ftE Wu-se-li)
as follows: 7 "This country has a number of famous mountains. When
the autumn-dew falls, it hardens under the influence of the sun-rays
into a substance of the appearance of sugar and hoar-frost, which is
gathered and consumed. It has purifying, cooling, sweet, and nutritious
qualities, and is known as genuine manna." 8
Wan Ta-yuan i i< *H, in his Tao i li lio H ^ ;6 %> of I349, 9 has
1 Terminologie, p. 357.
2 Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), p. 77.
3 The work of Can Yue (A.D. 667-730) ; see The Diamond, this volume, p. 6.
4 Other texts write ^ hu.
5 This term, which in general denotes Tibet, but certainly cannot refer to Tibet
in this connection, has evidently misled STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 258)
into saying that the substance is spoken of as coming from Tangut.
9 Cf. W. SCHOTT, Zur Uigurenfrage II, p. 47 (Abh. Berl. Akad., 1875).
7 Ch. 3, p. 3 b (ed. of Ci pu tsu lai ts'un $u). Regarding the term kan lu, which
also translates Sanskrit amrita, see CHAVANNES and PELLIOT, Traite" maniche'en,
p. 155-
8 The same text with a few insignificant changes has been copied by Cao Zu-kwa
(HiRTH's translation, p. 140).
9 Regarding this work, cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fransaise, Vol. IV, p. 255.
MANNA 345
the following note regarding manna (kan lu) in Ma-k'o-se-li: 1 "Every
year during the eighth and ninth months it rains manna, when the
people make a pool to collect it. At sunrise it will condense like water-
drops, and then it is dried. Its flavor is like that of crystallized sugar.
They also store it in jars, mixing it with hot water, and this beverage
serves as a remedy for malaria. There is an old saying that this is the
country of the Amritaraja-tathagata ~H* R 3: #B 2fc." 2
Li Si-cen, after quoting the texts of C'en Ts'an-k'i, the Pei Si, etc., 8
arrives at the conclusion that these data refer to the same honey-bearing
plant, but that it is unknown what plant is to be understood by the
term yan ts'e.
The Turkl name for this plant is yantaq, and the sweet resin accumu-
lating on it is styled yantaq Sakarl ("yantaq sugar")- 4
The modern Persian name for he manna is tar-angubln (Arabic
terenjobin; hence Spanish tereniabin) ; and the plant which exudates the
sweet substance, as stated, is styled %ar-i-$utur (" camel-thorn"). The
manna suddenly appears toward the close of the summer during the
night, and must be gathered during the early hours of the morning. It
is eaten in its natural state, or is utilized for syrup (Sire) in Central Asia
or in the sugar-factories of Meshed and Yezd in Persia. 5 The Persian
word became known to the Chinese from Samarkand in the tran-
scription ta-lan-ku-pin 31 W "i& 5C. 6 The product is described under
the title kan lu ~H* 1$ ("sweet dew") as being derived from a small
plant, one to two feet high, growing densely, the leaves being fine like
those of an Indigo/era (Ian). The autumn dew hardens on the surface
of the stems, and this product has a taste like sugar. It is gathered and
boiled into sweetmeats. Under the same name, kan-lu, the Kwan yu ki 7
describes a small plant of Samarkand, on the leaves of which accumu-
lates in the autumn a dew as sweet in taste as honey, the leaves resem-
1 Unidentified. It can hardly be identified with Mosul, as intimated by
ROCKHILL.
2 ROCKHILL, T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 622. This Buddhist term has crept in here
owing to the fact that kan lu ("sweet dew") serves as rendering of Sanskrit amr.ita
("the nectar of the gods") and as designation for manna.
s Also the Yu yan tsa tsu, but this passage refers to India and to a different
plant, and is therefore treated below in its proper setting.
4 A. v. LE COQ, Sprichworter und Lieder aus Turfan, p. 99. If the supposition
of B. MUNKACSI (Keleti szemle, Vol. XI, 1910, p. 353) be correct, that Hungarian
gyanta (gydnta, jdnta, gyenta, "resin") and gyantdr ("varnish") may be Turkish
loan-words, the above Turkl name would refer to the resinous character of the plant.
5 VAMBRY, Skizzen aus Mittelasien, p. 189.
6 Ta Min i t'un 6i, Ch. 89, p. 23.
7 Ch. 24, p. 26, of the edition printed in 1744; this passage is not contained in
the original edition of 1600 (cf. above, p. 251, regarding the various editions).
346 SlNO-lRANICA
bling those of an Indigof era (Ian) ; and in the same work 1 this plant is
referred to Qara-Khoja A #1 under the name yan ts'e. Also the Ming
Annals 2 contain the same reference. The plant in question has been
identified by D. HANBURY with the camel-thorn (Alhagi camelorum),
a small spiny plant of the family Leguminosae, growing in Iran and
Turkistan. 3
In the fourteenth century, ODORIC of Pordenone found near the
city Huz in Persia manna of better quality and in greater abundance
than in any part of the world. 4 The Persian-Arabic manna was made
known in Europe during the sixteenth century by the traveller and
naturalist PIERRE BELON DU MONS (i5i8-64), 5 who has this account:
"Les Caloieres auoyt de la Mane liquide recueillie en leurs montagnes,
qu'ils appellent Tereniabin, a la difference de la dure: Car ce que les
autheurs Arabes ont appelle* Tereniabin, est garde en pots de terre
comme miel, et la portent vendre au Caire : qui est ce qu' Hippocrates
nomma miel de Cedre, et les autres Grecs ont nomine* Rose"e du mont
Liban: qui est differente a la Manne blanche seiche. Celle que nous
auons en France, apporte*e de Brianson, recueillie dessus les Meleses a
la sornmite' des plus hautes montagnes, est dure, differente & la susdicte.
Parquoy estant la Manne de deux sortes, Ion en trouve au Caire de
1'vne et de Pautre es boutiques des marchands, exposed en vente.
L'vne est appellee Manne, et est dure: Pautre Tereniabin, et est liquide:
et pource qu'en auons fait plus long discours au liure des arbres tousiours
verds, n'en dirons autre chose en ce lieu." The Briancon manna men-
tioned by Belon is collected from the larch-trees (Pinus larix) of south-
ern France. 6 GARCIA DA ORTA T described several kinds of manna, one
brought to Ormuz from the country of the Uzbeg under the name
xirquest or xircast, ''which means the milk of a tree called quest, for xir
[read &r] is milk in the Persian language, so that it is the dew that falls
1 Ch. 24, p. 6, of the original edition; and Ch. 24, p. 30 b, of the edition of 1744.
2 Ch. 329 (cf. BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 192).
3 The plant is said to occur also in India (Sanskrit vi^dlada and gandhari; that
is, from Gandhara), Arabia, and Egypt, but, curiously, in those countries does not
produce a sugar-like secretion. Consequently it cannot be claimed as the plant
which furnished the manna to the Israelites in the desert (see the Dictionnaire de
la Bible by F. VIGOUROUX, Vol. I, col. 367). The manna of northern India became
known to the Chinese in recent times (see Lu Van kun i 't jj[ JJ & &, |^, p. 44,
in Ts'ifi lao fan ts'un Su).
4 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. II, p. 109; CORDIER'S edition of Odoric, p. 59.
6 Les Observations de plusieurs singularitez, pp. 228-229 (Anvers, 1555).
6 FLUCKIGER and HANBURY, Pharmacographia, p. 416.
7 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 280.
MANNA 347
from these trees, or the gum that exudes from them. 1 The Portuguese
corrupted the word to siracost." The other kind he calls tiriam-jabim
or trumgibim (Persian tdr-angubln) . "They say that it is found among
the thistles and in small pieces, somewhat of a red color. It is said that
they are obtained by shaking the thistles with a stick, and that they are
larger than a coriander-seed when dried, the color, as I said, between
red and vermilion. The vulgar hold that it is a fruit, but I believe
that it is a gum or resin. They think this is more wholesome than the
kind we have, and it is much used in Persia and Ormuz." "Another
kind comes in large pieces mixed with leaves. This is like that of Cala-
bria, and is worth more money, coming by way of Bacora, a city of
renown in Persia. Another kind is sometimes seen in Goa, liquid in
leather bottles, which is like coagulated white honey. They sent this
to me from Ormuz, for it corrupts quickly in our land, but the glass
flasks preserve it. I do not know anything more about this medicine."
JOHN FRYER 2 speaks of the mellifluous dew a-nights turned into manna,
which is white and granulated, and not inferior to the Calabrian.
According to G. WATT, S shirkhist is the name for the white granular
masses found in Persia on the shrub Cotoneaster nummularia; white
taranjabin ( = tar-angubiri) is obtained from the camel-thorn (Alhagi
camelorum and A. maurorum), growing in Persia, and consisting of a
peculiar sugar called melezitose and cane-sugar. The former is chiefly
brought from Herat, and is obtained also from Atraphaxis spinosa
(Polygonaceae) . 4
It is thus demonstrated also from a philological and historical point
of view that the yan ts'e and k*ie-p'o-lo of the Chinese represent the
species Alhagi camelorum.
Another Persian name for manna is xoSkenjubin, which means "dry-
honey." An Arabic tradition explains it as a dew that falls on trees in
the mountains of Persia; while another Arabic author says, "It is dry
honey brought from the mountains of Persia. It has a detestable odor.
It is warm and dry, warmer and dryer than honey. Its properties in
general are more energetic than those of honey." 6 This product, called
1 Garcia's etymology is only partially correct. The Persian word is sir-xest,
which means "goat's milk." Hence Armenian UrixiSd, SirxeSd, SimxuSg, or SiraxuZ
(cf. E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 210).
1 New Account of East India and Persia, Vol. II, p. 201.
8 Agricultural Ledger, 1900, No. 17, p. 188.
4 See FLtfcKiGER and H ANBURY, op. ciL, p. 415. According to SCHLIMMER
(Terminologie, p. 357), this manna comes from Herat, Khorasan, and the district
Lor-ehrestanek.
5 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 32.
348 SlNO-lRANICA
in India guzangabin, is collected from the tamarisk (Tamarix gallica,
var. manmfera Ehrenb.) in the valleys of the Peninsula of Sinai and
also in Persia. 1 In the latter country, the above name is likewise applied
to a manna obtained from Astragalus florulentus and A. adscendens
in the mountain-districts of Chahar-Mahal and Faraidan, and especially
about the town of Khonsar, south-west of Ispahan. The best sorts of
this manna, which are termed gaz-alefi or gaz-khonsar (from the prov-
ince Khonsar) , are obtained in August by shaking it from the branches,
the little drops finally sticking together and forming a dirty, grayish-
white, tough mass. According to ScHLiMMER, 2 the shrub on which this
manna is formed is common everywhere, without yielding, however,
the slightest trace of manna, which is solely obtained in the small
province Khonsar or Khunsar. The cause for this phenomenon is
sought in the existence there of the Coccus mannifer and in the absence
of this insect in other parts of the country. Several Persian physicians
of Ispahan, and some European authors, have attributed to the puncture
of this insect the production of manna in Khonsar; and Schlimmer
recommends transporting and acclimatizing the insect to those regions
where Tamarix grows spontaneously.
It has been stated that the earliest allusion to tamarisk-manna is
to be found in Herodotus, 3 who says in regard to the men of the city
Callatebus in Asia Minor that they make honey out of wheat and the
fruit of the tamarisk. The case, however, is different; Herodotus does
not allude to the exudation of the tree.
STUART 4 states that tamarisk-manna is called Pen Zu $H ?L. The
tamarisk belongs to the flora of China, th-ee species of it being known. 5
The Chinese, as far as I know, make no re t?rence to a manna from any
of these species; and the term pointed out by Stuart merely refers to
the sap in the interior of the tree, which, according to the Pen ts'ao, is
used in the Materia Medica. Cen Tsiao JIB KS of the Sung period, in
his T'un li 5 ^, 6 simply defines e'en Zu as "the sap in the wood or
trunk of the tamarisk." 7
1 See particularly D. HOOPER, Tamarisk Manna, Journal As. Soc. Bengal,
Vol. V, 1909, pp. 31-36.
2 Terminologie, p. 359.
3 vii, 31.
4 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 259.
5 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 527; Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35 B, p. 9.
6 Ch. 76, p. 12.
7 The Turkl name for the tamarisk is yulgun. In Persian it is styled gaz or
gazm (Kurd gazo or gezu}, the fruit gazmazak or gazmazu (gaz basrah, the manna of
the tree); further, balangmuU, balangmusk, or balanjmusk, and Arabic-Persian
kizmazaj.
MANNA 349
There is, further, an oak-manna collected from Quercus vallonea
Kotschy and Q. persica. These trees are visited in the month of August
by immense numbers of a small white Coccus, from the puncture of
which a saccharine fluid exudes, and solidifies in little grains. The people
go out before sunrise, and shake the grains of manna from the branches
on to linen cloths spread out beneath the trees. The exudation is also
collected by dipping into vessels of hot water the small branches on
which it is formed, and evaporating the saccharine solution to a syrupy
consistence, which in this state is used for sweetening food, or is mixed
with flour to form a sort of cake. 1
Aside from the afore-mentioned mannas, ScniiMMER 2 describes two
other varieties which I have not found in any other author. One he
calls in Persian &ker eighal (" sugar eighal"), saying that it is produced
by the puncture of a worm in the plant. This worm he has himself
found in fresh specimens. This manna is brought to Teheran by the
farmers of the Elburs, Lawistan, and Dimawend, but the plant occurs
also in the environment of Teheran and other places. Although this
manna almost lacks sweetness, it is a remarkable pectoral and alleviates
obstinate coughs. The other is the manna of Apocynum syriacum,
known in Persia as Siker al-o$r and imported from Yemen and Hedjaz.
According to the Persian pharmacologists, it is the product of a
nocturnal exudation solidified during the day, similar to small
pieces of salt, either white, or gray, and even black. It is likewise
employed medicinally.
Manna belonged to the food-products of the ancient Iranians, and
has figured in their kitchen from olden times. When the great king so-
journed in Media, he received daily for his table a hundred baskets full
of manna, each weighing ten mines. It was utilized like honey for
the sweetening of beverages. 3 I am inclined to think that the Iranians
diffused this practice over Central Asia.
The Yu yah tsa tsu has a reference to manna of India, as follows:
"In northern India there is a honey-plant growing in the form of a
creeper with large leaves, without withering yi the autumn and winter.
While it receives hoar-frost and dew, it forms the honey." According
to G. WATT, 4 some thirteen or fourteen plants in India are known to
and HANBURY, Pharmacographia, p. 416; HANBURY, Science
Papers, p. 287; SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 358) attributes the oak-manna to the
mountains of Kurdistan in Persia.
2 Terminologie, p. 359.
3 C. JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquit6, Vol. II, p. 93. Regarding manna in Persia,
see also E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 163.
4 Commercial Products of India, p. 929.
350 SlNO-lRANICA
yield, under the parasitic influence of insects or otherwise, a sweet fluid
called "manna." This is regularly collected and, like honey, enters more
largely than sugar into the pharmaceutical preparations of the Hindu.
The silicious concretion of crystalline form, found in the culms or
joints of an Indian bamboo (Bambusa arundinacea) and known as
tabashir, is styled in India also " bamboo manna," decidedly a
misnomer. On the other hand, a real manna has sometimes been
discovered on the nodes of certain species of bamboo in India. 1 The
subject of tabashir has nothing to do with manna, nor with Sino-Iranian
relations; but, as the early history of this substance has not yet been
correctly expounded, the following brief notes may not be unwelcome. 2
Specimens of tabashir, procured by me in China in 1902, are in the
American Museum of Natural History in New York. 3
We now know that tabashir is due to an ancient discovery made in
India, and that at an early date it was traded to China and Egypt.
In recent years the very name has been traced in the form tabasis
(rd/Sacris) in a Greek papyrus, where it is said that the porous stone is
brought down [to Alexandria] from [upper] Egypt: the articles of
Indian commerce were shipped across the Red Sea to the Egyptian
ports, and then freighted on the Nile downward to the Delta. 4 The
Indian origin of the article is evidenced, above all, by the fact that the
Greek term tabasis (of the same phonetic appearance as Persian tabaSir)
is connected with Sanskrit tavak-ksira (or tvak-ksira; ksira, " vegetable
juice"), and permits us to reconstruct a Prakrit form taba&ra; for the
Greek importers or exporters naturally did not derive the word from
Sanskrit, but from a vernacular idiom spoken somewhere on the west
coast of India. Or, we have to assume that the Greeks received the
word from the Persians, and the Persians from an Indian Prakrit. 6
The Chinese, in like manner, at first imported the article from India,
calling it "yellow of India" (Tien-tu hwan ^ * 36). It is first men-
tioned under this designation as a product of India in the Materia
Medica published in the period K'ai-pao (A.D. 968-976), the K*ai pao
1 See G. WATT, Agricultural Ledger, 1900, No. 17, pp. 185-189.
2 The latest writer on the subject, G. F. KUNZ (The Magic of Jewels and Charms,
pp. 233-235, Philadelphia, 1915), has given only a few historical notes of mediaeval
origin.
3 Cat. No. 70, 13834. This is incidentally mentioned here, as Dr. Kunz states
that very little of the material has reached the United States.
4 H. DIELS, Antike Technik, p. 123.
6 The Persian tabasir is first described by Abu Mansur (ACHUNDOW, p. 95),
and is still eaten as a delicacy by Persian women (ibid., p. 247). In Armenian it is
dabaSir.
TABASHIR 351
pen ts'ao; but at the same time we are informed that it was then obtained
from all bamboos of China, 1 and that the Chinese, according to their
habit, adulterated the product with scorched bones, the arrowroot
from Pachyrhizus angulatus, and other stuff. 2 The Pen ts'ao yen i of
in6 3 explains the substance as a natural production in bamboo, yellow
like loess. The name was soon changed into " bamboo-yellow' 3 (lu
hwan 13* 3?) or " bamboo-grease " (Zukao)* It is noticeable that the
Chinese do not classify tabashir among stones, but conceive it as a
production of bamboo, while the Hindu regard it as a kind of pearl.
The earliest Arabic author who has described the substance is
Aba Dulaf, who lived at the Court of the Samanides of Bokhara, and
travelled in Central Asia about A.D. 940. He says that the product
comes from Mandurapatan in northwestern India (Abulfeda and
others state that Tana on the island of Salsette, twenty miles from
Bombay, was the chief place of production), and is exported from there
into all countries of the world. It is produced by rushes, which, when they
are dry and agitated by the wind, rub against one another; this motion
develops heat and sets them afire. The blaze sometimes spreads over
a surface of fifty parasangs, or even more. Tabashir is the product of
these rushes. 5 Other Arabic authors cited by Ibn al-Baitar derive the
substance from the Indian sugarcane, and let it come from all coasts
of India; they dwell at length on its medicinal properties. 6 GARCIA
DA ORTA (1563), who was familiar with the drug, also mentions the
burning of the canes, and states it as certain that the reason they set
fire to them is to reach the heart; but sometimes they do not follow
tihis practice, as appears from many specimens which are untouched
by fire. He justly says that the Arabic name (taba&r, in his Portuguese
spelling tabaxir) is derived from the Persian, and means "milk or juice,
or moisture." The ordinary price for the product in Persia and Arabia
was its weight in silver. The canes, lofty and large like ash-trees,
1 The Cen lei pen ts^ao (Ch. 13, p. 48) cites the same text from a work Lin hai
& IS 'S S> apparently an other work than the Lin hai i wu li mentioned by BRET-
SCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 169).
2 The following assertion by STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 64)is erroneous:
"The Chinese did not probably derive the substance originally from India, but it is
possible that the knowledge of its medicinal uses were derived from that country,
where it has been held in high esteem from very early times." The knowledge of
this product and the product itself first reached the Chinese from India, and nat-
urally induced them to search for it in their own bamboos.
1 Ch. 14, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
4 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 37, p. 9.
8 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs I'ExtreTne-Orient, p. 225.
6 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, pp. 399-401.
352 SlNO-lRANICA
according to his statement, generate between the knots great humidity,
like starch when it is much coagulated. The Indian carpenters, who
work at these canes, find thick juice or pith, which they put on the lum-
bar region or reins, and in case of a headache on the forehead; it is used
by Indian physicians against over-heating, external or internal, and
for fevers and dysentery. 1 The most interesting of all accounts remains
that of ODORIC OF PORDENONE (died in 1331), who, though he does not
name the product and may partially confound it with bezoar, alludes
to certain stones found in canes of Borneo, "which be such that if any
man wear one of them upon his person he can never be hurt or wounded
by iron in any shape, and so for the most part the men of that country
do wear such stones upon them." 2
J. A. DE MANDELSLO S gives the following notice of tabashir: "It
is certain that on the coast of Malabar, Coromandel, Bisnagar, and
near to Malacca, this sort of cane (called by the Javians mambu [bam-
boo] ) produces a drug called sacar mambus, that is, sugar of mambu.
The Arabians, the Persians, and the Moores call it tabaxir, which in
their language signifies a white frozen liquor. These canes are as big
as the body of a poplar, having straight branches, and leaves something
longer than the olive-tree. They are divided into divers knots, wherein
there is a certain white matter like starch, for which the Persians and
Arabians give the weight in silver, for the use they make of it in physick,
against burning feavers, and bloudy fluxes, but especially upon the first
approaches of any disease."
1 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies of Garcia da Orta, pp. 409-414. A list of Sanskrit
synonymes for tabashir is given by R. SCHMIDT (ZDMG, Vol. LXV, 1911, p. 745).
2 YULE, Cathay, new ed. by CORDIER, Vol. II, p. 161.
3 Voyages and Travels, p. 120 (London, 1669).
ASAFCETIDA
22. The riddles of asafcetida begin with the very name: there is no
adequate explanation of our word asa or assa. The new Oxford English
Dictionary ventures to derive it from Persian dzd or aza. This word,
however, means nothing but " mastic," a product entirely different
from what we understand by asafcetida (p. 2 5 2) . In no Oriental language
is there a word of the type asa or aza with reference to this product, so
it could not have been handed on to Europe by an Oriental nation.
KAEMPFER, who in 1687 studied the plant in Laristan, and was fairly
familiar with Persian, said that he was ignorant of the origin of the
European name. 1 LITTRE, the renowned author of the Dictionnaire
frangais, admits that the origin of asa is unknown, and wisely abstains
from any theory. 2 The supposition has been advanced that asa was
developed from the laser or laserpitium of Pliny (xix, 5), the latter
having thus been mutilated by the druggists of the middle ages.
This etymology, first given by GARCIA DA ORTA, S has been indorsed
by E. BoRSZczow, 4 a Polish botanist, to whom we owe an excellent
investigation of the asa-furnishing plants. Although this explanation
remains as yet unsatisfactory, as the alleged development from laser
to asa is merely inferred, but cannot actually be proved from mediaeval
documents, 5 it is better, at any rate, than the derivation from the
Persian.
Asafcetida is a vegetable product consisting of resin, gum, and
essential oil in varying proportions, the resin generally amounting
to more than one-half, derived from different umbelliferous plants, as
Ferula narthex, alliacea, fcetida, persica, and scorodosma (or Scorodosma
1 Amoenitates exoticae, p. 539.
2 The suggestion has also been made that asa may be derived from Greek
asi (?) ("disgust") or from Persian anguza ("asafoetida"); thus at least it is said by
F. STUHLMANN (Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte Ostafrikas, p. 609). Neither is con-
vincing. The former moves on the same high level as Li Si-c"en's explanation of
a-wei ("The barbarians call out a, expressing by this exclamation their horror at
the abominable odor of this resin").
3 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 41. JOHN PARKINSON (Theatrum botanicum,
p. 1569, London, 1640) says, "There is none of the ancient Authours either Greeke,
Latine, or Arabian, that hath made any mention of Asa, either dulcis or faztida,
but was first depraved by the Druggists and Apothecaries in forraigne parts, that in
stead of Laser said Asa, from whence ever since the name of Asa hath continued."
4 MSmoires de VAcad. de St. Pttersbourg, Vol. Ill, No. 8, 1860, p. 4.
5 DUCANGE does not even list the word "asafcetida."
353
354 SlNO-lRANICA
fatidum). 1 It is generally used in India as a condiment, being espe-
cially eaten with pulse and rice. Wherever the plant grows, the fresh
leaves are cooked and eaten as a green vegetable, especially by the
natives of Bukhara, who also consider as a delicacy the white under part
of the stem when roasted and flavored with salt and butter. In the
pharmacopoeia it is used as a stimulant and antispasmodic.
Abu Mansur, the Persian Li 5i-en of the tenth century, discrimi-
nates between two varieties of asafcetida (Persian anguydn, Arabic
anjuddn), a white and a black one, adding that there is a third kind
called by the Romans sesalius. It renders food easily digestible, strength-
ens the stomach, and alleviates pain of the joints in hands and feet.
Rubbed into the skin, it dispels swellings, especially if the milky juice
of the plant is employed. The root macerated in vinegar strengthens
and purifies the stomach, promotes digestion, and acts as an appetizer. 2
The Ferula and Scorodosma furnishing asafcetida are typically
Iranian plants. According to Abu Hanifa, n asa grows in the sandy plains
extending between Bost and the country Klkan in northern Persia.
Abu Mansur designates the leaves of the variety from Sarachs near
Merw as the best. According to Istaxrl, asa was abundantly produced
in the desert between the provinces Seistan and Makran; according to
Edrlsi, in the environment of Kaleh Bust in Afghanistan. KAEMPFER
observed the harvest of the plant in Laristan in 1687, and gives the
following notice on its occurrence: 4 "Patria eius sola est Persia, non
Media, Libya, Syria aut Cyrenaica regio. In Persia plant am hodie
alunt saltern duorum locorum tractus, videlicet campi montesque circa
Heraat, emporium provinciae Chorasaan, et jugum montium in
provincia Laar, quod a flumine Cuur adusque urbem Congo secundum
Persici sinus tractum extenditur, duobus, alibi tribus pluribusve para-
sangis a litore." Herat is a renowned place of production, presumably
the exclusive centre of production at the present day, whence the
product is shipped to India.
The exact geographical distribution has been well outlined by E.
BoRSZczow. 5 Aside from Persia proper, Scorodosma occurs also on the
Oxus, on the Aral Sea, and in an isolated spot on the east coast of the
Caspian Sea. Judging from Chinese accounts, plants yielding asa
appear to have occurred also near Khotan (see below), Turf an, and
1 The genus Ferula contains about sixty species.
2 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 8.
8 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 142.
4 Amoenitates exoticae, p. 291.
5 Ferulaceen der aralo-caspischen Wuste (MSmoires de I'Acad. de St. Piter s-
bourg, Vol. Ill, No. 8, 1860, p. 16).
ASAFCETIDA 355
Shahrokia. 1 We do not know, however, what species here come into
question.
Cao Zu-kwa states that the home of asafcetida is in Mu-ku-lan
^C {^ IB, in the country of the Ta-sl (Ta-d2ik, Arabs). 2 Mu-kii-lan is
identical with Mekran, the Gedrosia of the ancients, the Maka of
the Old-Persian inscriptions. Alexander the Great crossed Gedrosia
on his campaign to India, and we should expect that his scientific staff,
which has left us so many valuable contributions to the flora of Iran
and north-western India, might have also observed the plant furnishing
asafcetida; in the floristic descriptions of the Alexander literature, how-
ever, nothing can be found that could be interpreted as referring to
this species. H. BRETZL S has made a forcible attempt to identify a
plant briefly described by Theophrastus, 4 with Scorodosma fcetidum;
and A. HoRT, 5 in his new edition and translation of Theophrastus, has
followed him. The text runs thus: "There is another shrub [in Aria]
as large as a cabbage, whose leaf is like that of the bay in size and
shape. And if any animal should eat this, it is certain to die of it.
Wherefore, wherever there were horses, they kept them under control"
[that is, in Alexander's army]. This in no way fits the properties of
Ferula or Scorodosma, which is non-poisonous, and does not hurt any
animal. It is supposed also that the laser pitium or silphion and laser
of Pliny 6 should, at least partially, relate to asafcetida; this, however,
is rejected by some authors, and appears to me rather doubtful. GARCIA
DA ORTA ? has already denied any connection between that plant of the
ancients and asa. L. LECLERC S has discussed at length this much-dis-
puted question.
The first European author who made an exact report of asafcetida
1 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, pp. 193, 254. The inter-
pretation of lu-wei ("rushes") as asafoetida in the Si yu ki (ibid., Vol. I, p. 85) seems
to me a forced and erroneous interpretation.
2 HIRTH and ROCKHILL, Chao Ju-kua, p. 224.
3 Botanische Forschungen des Alexanderzuges, p. 285.
4 Histor. plant., IV. iv, 12.
5 Vol. I, p. 321.
6 xix, 15. The Medic juice, called silphion, and mentioned as a product of
Media by Strabo (XI. xm, 7), might possibly allude to a product of the nature ol
asafcetida, especially as it is said in another passage (XV. n, 10) that silphion grew
in great abundance in the deserts of Bactriana, and promoted the digestion of the
raw flesh on which Alexander's soldiers were forced to subsist there. According to
others, the silphion of the ancients is Thapsia garganica (ENGLER, Pflanzenfamilien,
Vol. Ill, pt. 8, p. 247). Regarding the Medic oil (oleum Medicum) see Ammianus
Marcellinus, xxm, 6.
7 C. Markham, Colloquies, p. 44.
8 Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 144.
356 SlNO-lRANICA
was GARCIA DA ORTA in 1563. However, living and studying in Goa,
India, he did not learn from what plant the product was derived. On
its use in India he comments as follows: "The thing most used through-
out India, and in all parts of it, is that Assa-fetida, as well for medicine
as in cookery. A great quantity is used, for every Gentio who is able
to get the means of buying it will buy it to flavor his food. The rich
eat much of it, both Banyans and all the Gentios of Cambay, and he
who imitates Pythagoras. These flavor the vegetables they eat with it;
first rubbing the pan with it, and then using it as seasoning with every-
thing they eat. All the other Gentios who can get it, eat it, and laborers
who, having nothing more to eat than bread and onions, can only eat
it when they feel a great need for it. The Moors all eat it, but in smaller
quantity and only as a medicine. A Portuguese merchant highly praised
the pot-herb used by these Banyans who bring this Assa-fetida, and
I wished to try it and see whether it pleased my taste, but as I do not
know our spinach very well, it did not seem so palatable to me as it
did to the Portuguese who spoke to me about it. There is a respected
and discreet man in these parts, holding an office under the king, who
eats Assa-fetida to give him an appetite for his dinner, and finds it
very good, taking it in doses of two drachms. He says there is a slightly
bitter taste, but that this is appetising like eating olives. This is before
swallowing, and afterwards it gives the person who takes it much con-
tent. All the people in this country tell me that it is good to taste and
to smell."
CHR. ACOSTA or DA CosxA 1 gives the following account: "Altiht,
anjuden, Assa fetida, dulce y odorata medicina (de que entre los Doc-
tores ha auido differentia y controuersia) es ona Goma, que del Coragone
traen a Ormuz, y de Ormuz a la India, y del Guzarate y del reyno Dely
(tierra muy fria) la qual por la otra parte confina con el Coragone, y con
la region de Chiruan, como siente Auicena. Esta Goma es llamada de
los Arabics Altiht, y Antit, y delos Indies Ingu, o Ingara. El arbol de
adonde mana, se llama Anjuden, y otros le llaman Angeydan.
" La Assa se aplica para leuatar el miembro viril, cosa muy vsada en
aquellas partes : y no viene a proposito para la diminution del coito, vsar
del tal gumo de Regaliza. Y en las diuisiones pone Razis Altiht por
meditina para las fiestas de Venus: y Assa dulcis no la pone Doctor
Arabe, ni Griego, ni Latino, que sea de autoridad, porque Regaliza
se llama en Arabic Cuz, y el gumo del cozido, y reduzido en forma de
Arrope, le llaman los Arabes Robalcuz, y los Espafioles corrompiendole
1 Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias orientates, p. 362 (Burgos,
1578).
ASAFCETIDA 357
el nombre le llaman Rabacuz. De suerte que Robalcuz en Arabic, quiere
dezir c.umo basto de Regaliza: porque Rob, es cumo basto, y Al, ar-
ticulo de genitiuo, de, y Cuz, regaliza, y todo junto significa cumo
basto de Regaliza: y assi no se puede llamar a este gumo Assa dulcis.
Los Indies la loan para el estomago, para facilitar el vientre, y para
consumir las ventosidadas. Tambien curan con esta medicina los
cauallos, que echan mucha ventosidad. En tanto tienen esta medicina
que le llama aquella gente, principalmente la de Bisnaguer, manjar
delos Dioses."
JOHN FRYER 1 relates, "In this country Assa Fcetida is gathered at
a place called Descoon; 2 some deliver it to be the juice of a cane or reed
inspissated; others, of a tree wounded: It differs much from the stink-
ing stuff called Hing, it being of the Province of Carmania: 3 This latter
is that the Indians perfume themselves with, mixing it in all their pulse,
and make it up in wafers to correct the windiness of their food, which
they thunder up in belchings from the crudities created in their stom-
achs; never thinking themselves at ease without this Theriac: And this
is they cozen the Europeans with instead of Assa F&tida, of which
it bears not only the smell, but color also, only it is more liquid."
J. A. DE MANDELSLO 4 reports as follows: "The Hingh, which our
drugsters and apothecaries call Assa fcetida, comes for the most part
from Persia, but that which the Province of Utrad produces in the Indies
is the best, and there is a great traffick driven in it all over Indosthan.
The plant which produces it is of two kinds; one grows like a bush, and
hath small leaves, like rice, and the other resembles a turnip-leaf, and
its greenness is like that of fig-tree leaves. It thrives best in stony and
dry places, and its gum begins to come forth towards the latter end
of summer, so that it must be gathered in autumn. The traffick of it
is so much the greater in those parts, upon this account, that the
Benjans of Guzuratta make use of it in all their sawces, and rub their
1 New Account of East India and Persia, Vol. II, p. 195 (Hakluyt Soc., 1912).
2 Kuh-i Dozgan, west of Kuristan.
8 Ring is mentioned by FRYER (Vol. I, p. 286) as in use among the natives of
southern India, "to correct all distempers of the brain, as well as stomach," "a sort
of liquid Assa Fcetida, whereby they smell odiously." This is the product of Ferula
alliacca, collected near Yezd in Khorasan and in the province of Kerman, and
chiefly used by the natives of Bombay (FLtteKiGER and HANBURY, Pharmacographia,
pp. 319-320; WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 534). Fryer's distinction be-
tween hing and asafcetida shows well that there were different kinds and grades of
the article, derived from different plants. Thus there is no reason to wonder that
the Chinese Buddhist authors discriminate between hingu and a-wei (CHAVANNES
and PELLIOT, Trait6 maniche'en, p. 234); the l*ou ts'ai ("stinking vegetable") is
probably also a variety of this product.
4 Voyages and Travels, p. 67 (London, 1669).
3 $8 SlNO-lRANICA
pots and drinking vessels therewith, by which means they insensibly
accustom themselves to that strong scent, which we in Europe are
hardly able to endure."
The Chinese understand by the term a-wei products of two different
plants. Neither Bretschneider nor Stuart has noted this. Li Si-Sen 1
states that " there are two kinds of a-wei, one an herb, the other a
tree. The former is produced in Turkistan (Si yu), and can be sun-
dried or boiled: this is the kind discussed by Su Kun. The latter is
produced among the Southern Barbarians (Nan Fan), and it is the
sap of the tree which is taken: this is the kind described by Li Sun,
Su Sun, and C'en C'en." Su Kun of the T'ang period reports that
11 a-wei grows among the Western Barbarians (Si Fan) and in K'un-
lun. 2 Sprouts, leaves, root, and stems strongly resemble the pai li Q
3 (Angelica anomald). The root is pounded, and the sap extracted
from it is dried in the sun and pressed into cakes. This is the first
quality. Cut-up pieces of the root, properly dried, take the second
rank. Its prominent characteristic is a rank odor, but it can also stop
foul smells; indeed, it is a strange product. The Brahmans say that
hiin-kit (Sanskrit hingu, see below) is the same as a-wei, and that the
coagulated juice of the root is like glue; also that the root is sliced,
dried in the sun, and malodorous. In the western countries (India)
its consumption is forbidden. 8 Habitual enjoyment of it is said to do
away with foul breath. The barbarians (-$C A) prize it as the Chinese
do pepper." This, indeed, relates to the plant or plants yielding asa,
and Li Si-Sen comments that its habitat is in Hwo Sou (Qar5-Khoja)
and Sa-lu-hai-ya (Shahrokia). 4 Curiously enough, such a typical Iran-
ian plant is passed over with silence in the ancient historical texts
relative to Sasanian Persia. The only mention of it in the pre-T'ang
Annals occurs in the Sui $u b with reference to the country Ts'ao $t
north of the Ts'un-lin (identical with the Ki-pin of the Han), while
the T'ai p'in hwan yii ki* ascribes a-wei to Ki-pin.
The Yu yan tsa tsu 7 contains the following account of the product:
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 21.
2 K'un-lun is given as place of production in the Kwan i, written prior to
A.D. 527, but there it is described as the product of a tree (see below).
8 It was prohibited to the monks of the Mahayana (cf. S. Lvi, Journal asiatiquc,
1915, I, p. 87).
4 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, pp. 253, 254, also 193.
6 Ch. 83, p. 8 (also in the Pei Si).
6 Ch. 182, p. 12 b.
7 Ch. 18, p. 8 b.
ASAFGETIDA 359
"A-wei is produced in Gazna fto E8 l (*Gia-ja-na); 1 that is, in north-
ern India. In Gazna its name is hin-yti (Sanskrit hingu). Its habitat
is also in Persia, where it is termed a-yu-tsie (see below). The tree
grows to a height of eight and nine feet. 2 The bark is green and yellow.
In the third month the tree forms leaves which resemble a rodent's
ear. It does not flower, nor does it produce fruit. The branches, when
cut, have a continuous flow of sap like syrup, which consolidates, and
is styled a-wei. The monk from the country Fu-lin, Wan W by name,
and the monk from Magadha, T'i-p'o $1 SI (*De-bwa, Sanskrit Deva),
agree in stating that the combination 3 of the sap with rice or beans, and
powdered, forms what is called a-wei"*
Another description of a-wei by the Buddhist monk Hwei Zi S ,
born in A.D. 680, has been made known by S. Lfevi. 6 The Chinese pil-
grim points out that the plant is lacking in China, and is not to be seen
in other kingdoms except in the region of Khotan. The root is as large
as a turnip and white; it smells like garlic, and the people of Khotan
feed on this root. The Buddhist pilgrim Yi Tsifi, who travelled in
A.D. 671-695, reports that a-wei is abundant in the western limit of
India, and that all vegetables are mixed with it, clarified butter, oil,
or any spice. 6
Li Sim, who wrote in the second half of the eighth century, states
that, " according to the Kwan ci, a-wei grows in the country K'un-lun;
it is a tree with a ;sap of 'the appearance of the resin of the peach-tree.
That which is black in color does not keep; that of yellow color is the
best. Along the Yangtse in Yun-nan is found also a variety like the
one imported in ships, juicy, and in taste identical with the yellow brand,
but not yellow in color." Su Sun of the Sung period remarks that there
is a-wei only in Kwafi-ou (Kwafi-tun), and that it is the coagulated
sap of a tree, which does not agree with the statement of Su Kun.
C'en C'efi R $s a distinguished physician, who wrote the Pen ts'ao
1 In the Pen ts'ao kan mu, where the text is quoted from the Hai yao pen ',s'ao
of Li Sun, Persia is coupled with Gazna. Gazna is the capital of Jagutfa, the Tsao-
ku-c'a of Hiian Tsan, the Zabulistan of the Arabs. Huan Tsan reported that
asafoetida is abundant there (S. JULIEN, Me"moires sur les contre"es occidentales,
Vol. II, p. 187. Cf. S. L6vi, Journal asiatique, 1915, I, p. 83).
2 Thus in the text of the Pen ts'ao; in the edition of Pai hai: eighty or ninety
feet. In fact, the stems of Ferula reach an average height of from eight to ten feet.
3 Instead of $P of the text I read jf P with the Pen ts'ao.
4 The translation of this passage by HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 225) does not
render the sense correctly. The two monks mean to say that the sap or resin is a
condiment added to a dish of rice or beans, and that the whole mixture bears the
name a-wei.
5 Journal asiatique, 1915, I, p. 89.
6 TAKAKUSU, I-tsing, pp. 128, 137.
360 SlNO-lRANICA
pie $wo about A.D. 1090, says, "A-wei is classed among trees. People
of Kian-su and Ce-kian have now planted it. The odor of the branches
and leaves is the same, but they are tasteless and yield no sap." The
above K'un-lun refers to the K'un-lun of the Southern Sea; 1 and Li
Si-en comments that "this tree grows in Sumatra and Siam, and that
it is not very high. The natives take a bamboo tube and stick it into
the tree; the tube gradually becomes filled with the sap of the tree, and
during the winter months they smash the tube and obtain the sap."
Then he goes on to tell the curious tale of the sheep, in the same manner
as Cao Zu-kwa. 2
Cao Zu-kwa's notice that the resin is gathered and packed in skin
bags is correct; for GARCIA DA ORTA 3 reports that the gum, obtained
by making cuts in the tree, is kept in bullock's hides, first anointed with
blood, and then mixed with wheat flour. It is more difficult to account
for the tradition given by the Chinese author, that, in order to neutralize
the poison of the plant, a sheep is tied to the base of the tree and shot
with arrows, whereupon the poison filters into the sheep that is doomed
to death, and its carcass forms the asafcetida. This bit of folk-lore was
certainly transmitted by Indian, Persian, or Arabic navigators, but any
corresponding Western tradition has not yet been traced. Hobeich
Ibn el-Hacen, quoted by Ibn al-Baitar, 4 insists on the poisonous action
of the plant, and says that the harvests succeed in Sind only when asa
is packed in a cloth and suspended at -the mouth of water-courses, where
the odor spread by the harvest will kill water-dogs and worms. Here
we likewise meet the notion that the poisonous properties of the plant
are capable of killing animals, and the sheep of the Chinese tradition
is obviously suggested by the simile of white sheep-fat and the white
vegetable fat of asa. In reality, sheep and goats are fond of the plant
and fatten on it. 5 The asa ascribed to the country Ts'eii-t'an in the Sun
& 6 was surely an imported article.
1 Not to the K'un-lun mountains, as assumed by STUART (Chinese Materia
Medica, p. 173).
2 Needless to say, this Malayan asafoetida can have been but a substitute; but
to what plant it refers, I am unable to say. The Tun si yan k'ao (Ch. 2, p. 18; 3,
p. 6 b), published in 1618, mentions a-wei as product of Siam and Java. T'an Ts'ui
IS 2^, in his Tien hai yii hen i, written in 1799 (Ch. 3, p. 4, ed. of Wen yin lou yu
ti ts'un ), states that the a-wei of Yun-nan is produced in Siam, being imported
from Siam to Burma and brought from Burma up the Kin-Sa kian.
3 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 47.
4 LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. I, p. 447.
6 E. KAEMPFER, Amoenitates exoticae, p. 540; C. JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite",
Vol. II, p. 100.
8 Ch. 490; cf. HIRTH, Chao Ju-kua, p. 127. I am not convinced that Ts'en-t'an
is identical with Ts 'en-pa or Zanguebar.
ASAFCETIDA 361
In regard to the modern employment of the article, S. W. WILLIAMS 1
writes, "It is brought from Bombay at the rate of $15 a picul, and
ranks high in the Materia Medicaof the Chinese physician; it is exhibited
in cholera, in syphilitic complaints and worms, and often forms an
ingredient in the pills advertised to cure opium-smokers." It is chiefly
believed, however, to assist in the digestion of meat and to correct the
poison of stale meats (ptomaine poisoning), mushrooms, and herbs. 2
In Annam it is carried in small bags as a preventive of cholera. 3
The following ancient terms for asafcetida are on record:
(1) Persian P3 BE 18 a-yti-tsie, *a-nu-zet = Middle Persian *anguzad;
New Persian anguZa, anguZad, anguydn, anguwdn, angudan, angi&ak
(stem awgtt-h2a<i = "gum" 4 ); Armenian ankuZad, anjidan, Old Arme-
nian angu&at, ang$at; Arabic anjuddn. GARCIA gives anjuden or angeidan
as name of the tree from which asa is extracted.
(2) Sanskrit 1^11 kin-til, *hiii-gu; ^ BE kin-yU, *hiii-nu; HSI
hiin-k'ti, *hun-gu; corresponding to Sanskrit hingu. In my opinion,
the Sanskrit word is an ancient loan from Iranian. 5 GARCIA gives imgo
or imgara as Indian name, and forms with initial i appear in Indian
vernaculars: cf. Telugu inguva; cf., further, Japanese ingu, Malayan
angu (according to J. BONTIUS, who wrote in 1658, the Javanese and
Malayans have also the word kin) .
(3) M Jft a-wei, *a-nwai; & &. (in the Nirvana-sfltra) yan-kwei,
*an-kwai, correspond to an Indian or Iranian vernacular form of the
type *ankwa or *ankwai, that we meet in Tokharian B or Kua ankwa. 6
This form is obviously based on Iranian angu, angwa.
(4) Mongol N& iaf ?8 oca-si-ni (thus given as a Mongol term in the
Pen ts'ao kan mu after the Yin Ian Zen yao of the Mongol period, written
in 1331), corresponds to Persian kasni, kisni, or gism ("asafcetida")>
derived from the name of Gazni or Gazna, the capital of Zabulistan,
which, according to Huan Tsan, was the habitat of the plant. A Mon-
gol word of this type is not listed in the Mongol dictionaries of Kova-
levski and Golstunski, but doubtless existed in the age of the Yuan,
1 Chinese Commercial Guide, p. 80.
2 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 174.
8 PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. m6d. et phannacope'e sino-annamites, p. 161.
4 Cf. Sanskrit jatuka (literally, "gum, lac ") = asaf oetida. HUBSCHMANN, Armen.
Gram., p. 98.
6 D'HERBELOT (Bibliotheque orientale, Vol. I, p. 226; Vol. II, p. 327) derived
the Persian word (written by him angiu, engiu, ingu; Arabic ingiu, ingudan) from
Indian henk and hengu, ingu, for the reason that in India this drug is principally
used; this certainly is not correct.
6 Cf. Toung Pao, 1915, pp. 274-275.
362 SlNO-lRANICA
v
when the Mongols introduced the condiment into China under that
name, while they styled the root S M yin-tan. In modern Mongol,
the name of the product is singun, which is borrowed from the Tibetan
word mentioned below.
In the Tibetan dialect of Ladakh, asafcetida is called hin or sip. 1
The name sip or sup was reported by FALCONER, who was the first to
discover in 1838 Ferula narthex in western Tibet on the slopes of the
mountains dividing Ladakh from Kashmir. 2 The word sip, however,
is not generally Tibetan, but only of local value; in all probability,
it is not of Tibetan origin. The common Tibetan word is $in-kun,
which differs from the Iranian and Indian terms, and which, in view of
the fact that the plant occurs in Tibetan regions, may be a purely Tibe-
tan formation.
Finally it may be mentioned that, according to BORSZCZOW/
Scorodosma is generally known to the inhabitants of the Aralo-Caspian
territory under the name sasyk-karai or keurok-kurai, which means
as much as ''malodorous rush." The Bukharans call it sasyk-kawar
or simply kawar.
1 RAMSAY, Western Tibet, p. 7.
2 Transactions Linnean Soc., Vol. XX, pt. I, 1846, pp. 285-291.
3 Op. cit., p. 25.
GALBANUM
23. There is only a single Chinese text relative to galbanum, which
is contained in the Yu yan tsa tsu, 1 where it is said, "P*i-ts*i ail 2 ^
(*bit-dzi, bir-zi, bir-zai) is a product of the country Po-se (Persia).
In Fu-lin it is styled f I %J 3H fll han-p'o-ti-fa (*xan-bwi5-li-da). 8 The
tree grows to a height of more than ten feet, with a circumference of
over a foot. Its bark is green, thin, and extremely bright. The leaves
resemble those of the asafcetida plant (a-wei), three of them growing
at the end of a branch. It does not flower or bear fruit. In the west-
ern countries people are accustomed to cut the leaves in the eighth
month; and they continue to do this more and more till the twelfth
month. The new branches are thus very juicy and luxuriant; without
the trimming process, they would infallibly fade away. In the seventh
month the boughs are broken off, and there is a yellow sap of the
appearance of honey and slightly fragrant, which is medicinally em-
ployed in curing disease."
Hirth has correctly identified the transcription p'i-ts*i with Persian
forzai, which, however, like the other Po-se words in the Yu yan tsa tsu,
must be regarded as Pahlavi or Middle Persian; 4 and the Fu-lin han-
p'o-li-fa he has equated with Aramaic xelbanita, the latter from Hebrew
xelbendh, one of the four ingredients of the sacred perfume (Exodus,
xxx, 34-38). This is translated by the Septuaginta xaXjS&pq and by
the Vulgate galbanum. The substance is mentioned in three passages
1 Ch. 18, p. ii b.
2 HIRTH, who is the first to have translated this text (Journal Am. Or. Soc.
Vol. XXX, p. 21), writes this character with the phonetic element Hf , apparently
in agreement with the edition of the Tsin tai pi $u; but this character is not author-
ized by K'an-hi, and it is difficult to see how it could have the phonetic value p'i;
we should expect ni. The above character is that given by K'an-hi, who cites under
it the passage in question. It is thus written also in the Min hian p'u & fff by
Ye T'in-kwei ^ S S (p- 10, ed. of Hian yen ts'un su) and in the Pen ts'ao kan
mu (Ch. 33, p. 6), where the pronunciation is explained by $3 *biet. The editors
of cyclopaedias were apparently staggered by this character, and most of them
have chosen the phonetic man, which is obviously erroneous. None of our
Chinese dictionaries lists the character.
3 The Pen ts'ao kan mu (I. c.) annotates that the first character should have
the sound ^ffr to, *dwat, which is not very probable.
4 There are also the forms plrzed, bdrzed (LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I,
p. 201), berzed, barije, and bazrud; in India bireja, ganda-biroza. Another Persian
term given by SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 294) is
363
364 SlNO-lRANICA
by Theophrastus: 1 it is produced in Syria from a plant called Trava
("all-heal"); it is only the juice (OTTOS) which is called xaXjSdpq, and
which "was used in cases of miscarriage as well as for sprains and
such-like troubles, also for the ears, and to strengthen the voice. The
root was used in childbirth, and for flatulence in beasts of burden,
further in making the iris-perfume (Ipivov pvpov) because of its fra-
grance; but the seed is stronger than the root. It grows in Syria, and
is cut at the time of wheat-harvest/' 2
Pliny says that galbanum grows on the mountain Amanus in Syria
as the exudation from a kind of ferula of the same name as the resin,
sometimes known as stagonitis* Its medicinal employment is treated
by him in detail. 4 DioscoRiDES 5 explains it as the gum of a plant which
has the form of a ferula, growing in Syria, and called by some metopion.
Abu Mansur 8 discusses the drug under the Arabic name quinna and the
Persian name barzad. During the middle ages galbanum was well known
in Europe from the fourteenth century onward. 7
The philological result is confirmed by the botanical evidence,
although Twan C'en-si's description, made from an oral report, not as
an eye-witness, is naturally somewhat deficient; but it allows us to
recognize the characteristics of a Ferula. It is perfectly correct that the
leaves resemble those of the asafoetida Ferula, as a glance at the ex-
cellent plates in the monograph of BORSZCZOW (op. tit.) will convince
one. It is likewise correct that the leaves grow at the ends of the twigs,
and usually by threes. It is erroneous, however, that the tree does not
flower or bear fruit. 8 The process of collecting the sap is briefly but
well described. Nothing positive is known about the importation of gal-
banum into China, although W. AINSLIE* stated in 1826 that it was
1 Histor. plant., IX. I, 2; IX. vn, 2; IX. ix, 2. The term occurs also in the
Greek papyri.
a Cf. the new edition and translation of Theophrastus by A. HORT (Vol. II,
p. 261). I do not see how the term "balsam of Mecca" (ibid., p. 219), which is a
misnomer anyhow, can be employed in the translation of an ancient Greek
author.
a Dat et galbanum Syria in eodem Amano monte e ferula, quae eiusdem nominis,
resinae modo; stagonitim appellant (xii, 56, 126).
4 xxiv, 13.
8 in, 87 (cf. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 115).
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 108.
7 See, for instance, K. v. MEGENBERG, Buch der Natur (written in 1349-50),
ed. F. Pfeiffer, p. 367; FLUCKIGER and HANBURY, Pharmacographia, p. 321.
8 The fruits are already mentioned by Theophrastus (Hist, plant., IX. ix, 2)
as remedies.
9 Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 143.
GALBANUM 365
sent from Bombay to China, and SxuART 1 regards this as entirely
probable; but this is merely a supposition unsupported by any tangible
data: no modern name is known under which the article might come.
The three names given for galbanum in the English-Chinese Standard
Dictionary are all wrong: the first, a-yii, refers to asafcetida (see above,
p. 361) ; 2 the second, $8, denotes Liquidambar orientalis; and the third,
pai sun hian ("white pine aromatic "), relates to Pinus bungeana.
The Pen ts'ao kanmu 3 has the notice on p'i-ts'i as an appendix to "manna."
Li Si-6en, accordingly, did not know the nature of the product. He is
content to cite the text of the Yu yan tsa tsu and to define the medical
properties of the substance after C'en Ts'an-k'i of the T'ang. Only
under the T'ang was galbanum known in China.
The trees from which the product is obtained are usually identified
with Ferula galbaniflua and F. rubricaulis or erubescens, both natives
of Persia. The Syrian product used by the Hebrews and the ancients
was apparently derived from a different though kindred species.
F. rubricaulis, said by the botanist Buhse to be called in Persian khas-
suih* is diffused all over northern Persia and in the Daena Mountains
in the southern part of the country; it is frequent in the Demawend and
on the slopes of the Alwend near Hamadan. 5 No incisions are made
in the plant: the sap flowing out of the lower part of the stalks and from
the base of the leaves is simply collected. The gum is amber-yellow,
of not disagreeable, strongly aromatic odor, and soon softens between
the fingers. Its taste is slightly bitter. Only in the vicinity of Hamadan,
where the plant is exuberant, has the collecting of galbanum developed
into an industry.
SCHLIMMER* distinguishes two kinds, a brown and a white-yel-
lowish galbanum. The former (Persian barzed or barije), the product of
Ferula galbaniflua, is found near De Gerdon in the mountains Sa-ute-
polagh between Teheran and Gezwin, in the valleys of Lars (Elburs),
Khereghan, and Sawe, where the villagers gather it under the name
balubu. The latter kind is the product of Dorema anchezi Boiss., en-
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 181.
2 This is the name given' for galbanum by F. P. SMITH (Contributions towards
the Materia Medica, p. 100), but it is mere guesswork.
3 Ch. 33, p. 6.
4 Evidently identical with what WATT (Commercial Products of India, p. 535)
writes khassnib, explaining it as a kind of galbanum from Shlraz. LOEW (Aram.
Pflanzennamen, p. 163) makes kassnih of this word. The word intended is apparently
the kasni mentioned above (p. 361).
5 BORSZCZOW, op. cit., p. 35.
6 Terminologie, p. 295.
366 SlNO-lRANICA
countered by Buhse in the low mountains near Reshm (white galbanum).
Galbanum is also called kilyanl in Persian.
Borszczow has discovered in the Aralo-Caspian region another
species of Ferula, named by him F. schair from the native word lair
(= Persian ftr, " milk-juice") for this plant. The juice of this species
has the same properties as galbanum; also the plant has the same
odor.
Abu Mansur 1 mentions a Ferula under the name sakbinaj (Arabic
form, Persian sakfona), which his translator, the Persian physician
Achundow, has identified with the Sagapenum resin of Ferula persica,
said to be similar to galbanum and to be gathered in the mountains
of Luristan. According to FLI^CKIGER and HANBURY, Z the botanical
origin of Sagapenum is unknown; but there is no doubt that this word
(o-ayairrivov in Dioscorides, in, 95, and Galenus; sacopenium in Pliny,
xn, 56), in mediaeval pharmacy often written serapinum, is derived
from the Persian word.
The galbanum employed in India is imported from Persia to Bom-
bay. WATT 3 distinguishes three kinds known in commerce, Levant,
Persian solid, and Persian liquid. The first comes from Shiraz, the
second has an odor of turpentine, and the third is the gaoshir or jawa-
shir; the latter being a yellow or greenish semi-fluid resin, generally
mixed with the stems, flowers, and fruits of the plant. It is obtained from
the stem, which, when injured, yields an orange-yellow gummy fluid.
Generally, however, the galbanum of commerce forms round, agglu-
tinated tears, about the size of peas, orange-brown outside, yellowish-
white or bluish-green inside. The odor is not disagreeable, like that
of asafcetida, and the taste is bitter.
Galbanum consists of about 65 per cent resin, 20 per cent gum, and
from 3 to 7 per cent volatile oil.
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 84.
2 Pharmacographia, p. 342.
3 Commercial Products of India, p. 535.
OAK-GALLS
\
24. Oak-galls (French noix de galles, Portuguese galhas) are globular
excrescences caused by the gall-wasp (Cynips quercus folii) puncturing
the twigs, leaves, and buds, and depositing its ova in several species
of oak (chiefly Quercus lusitanica var. infectoria), to be found in Asia
Minor, Armenia, Syria, and Persia. In times of antiquity, galls were
employed for technical and medicinal purposes. In consequence of
their large percentage (up to 60 per cent) of tannic or Gallo-tannic
acid, they served for tanning, still further for the dyeing of wool and
the manufacture of ink. 1 Both Theophrastus 2 and Dioscorides 3 men-
tion galls under the name KT//CIS. Abu Mansur describes galls under
the Arabic name a/s. 4
The greater part of the galls found in Indian bazars come from
Persia, being brought by Arab merchants. 5 The Sanskrit name
mdjuphala (phala, "fruit") is plainly a loan-word from the Persian
mdzu.
In Chinese records, oak-galls are for the first time mentioned under
the term wu-$i-tse $ 'ft ? as products of Sasanian Persia. 6 They
first became known in China under the T'ang from Persia, being intro-
duced in the Materia Medica of the T'ang Dynasty (Tan pen ts'ao).
The Tan pen Zu Jl # i states that they grow in sandy deserts, 7 and
that the tree is like the tamarisk (pen 116 ). A commentary, cited as
kin cu ^ tt, adds that they are produced in Persia, while the Cen lei
pen ts'ao* says that they grow in the country of the Western 2un
(Iranians). The Yu yah tsa tsu g gives a description of the plant as
follows: " Wu-&-tse $& J5 ~? are produced in the country Po-se (Persia),
1 BLUMNER, Technologic, Vol. I, 26. ed., pp. 251, 268.
2 Hist, plant., III. vm, 6.
3 1, 146 (cf. LECLERC, Traite* des simples, Vol. II, p. 457). See also Pliny, xm
63; xvi, 26; xxiv, 109.
4 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 98.
5 W. AINSLIE, Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 145; WATT, Commercial Products of
India, p. 911.
6 Sui su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
7 According to another reading, "in sandy deserts of the Western Zun" (that
is, Iranians).
8 Ch. 14, p. 20.
9 Ch. 1 8, p. 9.
367
368 SlNO-lRANICA
where they are styled J^ ftS mo-tsei, *mwa-d2ak. 1 The tree grows to
a height of from six to seven feet, 2 with a circumference of from eight to
nine feet. The leaves resemble those of the peach, but are more oblong.
It blossoms in the third month, the flowers being white, and their
heart reddish. The seeds are round like pills, green in the beginning,
but when ripe turning to yellow-white. Those punctured by insects
and perforated are good for the preparation of leather; those without
holes are used as medicine. This tree alternately produces galls one
year and acorns ($C 9 -f pa-lu tse, *bwa6-lu; Middle Persian *ballu,
barru [see below], New Persian balut), the size of a finger and three
inches long, the next." 3 The latter notion is not a Chinese fancy, but
the reproduction of a Persian belief. 4
The Geography of the Ming (Ta Min i fun &') states that galls are
produced in the country of the Arabs (Ta-Si) and all barbarians, and
that the tree is like the camphor-tree (Laurus camphor a), the fruits
like the Chinese wild chestnuts (mao-li IP 3fl) .
The Chinese transcriptions of the Iranian name do not "all repre-
sent Persian mazu" as reiterated by Hirth after Watters, but repro-
duce older Middle-Persian forms. In fact, none of the Chinese render-
ings can be the equivalent of mazu.
(1) IP ftfi (Yu yan tsa tsu) mo-tsei, *mwa-dz*ak (dzak, zak), answers
to a Middle Persian *madz"ak (madzak or mazak).
(2) M ^ mo-&, *mak-zak, = Middle Persian *maxzak.
(3) & ^ wu-&, *mwu-zak, = Middle Persian *muzak.
(4) iS. ^f mu-U y *mut-zak, = Middle Persian *muzak. Compare
with these various forms Tamil matakai, Telugu matikai, and the
magican of Barbosa.
(5) Jj! 3 5 mo-t'u, *mwa-du, = Middle Persian *madu.
^ $ & $a-mu-lii (in Cao 2u-kwa), *sa-mut-lwut, answers to Iranian
1 Instead of tsei, some editions write & tso (*dzak, dzak), which is phonetically
the same.
2 The text has 3Jt, which should be corrected into K-. for tne tree seldom rises
higher than six feet.
8 The text of the following last clause is corrupted, and varies in the different
editions; it yields no acceptable sense. HIRTH'S translation (Chao Ju-kua, p. 215)
is not intelligible to me. WATTERS (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 349) is
certainly wrong in saying that "the Chinese do not seem to know even yet the
origin of these natural products" (oak-galls); this is plainly refuted by the above
description. The T'u $u tsi Veh (XX, Ch. 310) and Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao (Ch. 35,
p. 21) even have a tolerably good sketch of the tree, showing galls on the leaves.
4 E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 127.
6 The character 3fc Va in Cao Zu-kwa, and thus adopted by HIRTH (p. 2 15), is
an error.
OAK-GALLS 369
$ah-balut ("the edible chestnut," Castanea vulgaris), which appears in
the Bundahisn (above, p. 193), as correctly identified by Hirth; but
iff 3L p'u-lu and pa-lii of the Yu yan tsa tsu (see above) would indicate
that the Chinese heard bulu and balu without a final /, and such forms
may have existed in Middle-Persian dialects. In fact, we have this
type in the dialect of the Kurd in the form berru, and in certain Kurd
dialects baril and barru. 1
1 Cf. J. DE MORGAN, Mission scientifique en Perse, Vol. V, p. 133. The Iranian
term means literally "acorn of the Shah, royal acorn," somehow a certain analogy
to Greek Ai6s /SAXavos ("acorn of Zeus"). The origin of Greek Kaar&vaiov or
K&CTTOLVOV is sought in Armenian kask ("chestnut") and kaskeni ("chestnut-tree";
see SCHRADER in Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 402). According to the Armenian Geog.
raphy of Moses of Khorene, the tree flourished in the Old-Armenian provinc e
Duruperan (Daron); according to Galenus, near Sardes in Asia Minor; according to
Baud, on Cyprus; according to Abu Mansur, also in Syria; while, according to the
same author, Persia imported chestnuts from Adherbeijan and Arran; according to
Schlimmer, from Russia (E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 152). It is striking that the
Chinese did not see the identity of the Iranian term with their / Jj| f the common
chestnut, several varieties of which grow in China.
INDIGO
25. As indicated by our word "indigo" (from Latin indicum), this
dye-stuff took its origin from India. The indigo-plant (Indigofera
tinctoria), introduced into Persia from India, is discussed by Abu Man-
sur under the name nil or Ilia. The leaves are said to strengthen the
hair. The hair, if previously dyed with henna, becomes brilliant black
from the pounded leaves of the plant. Another species, I. linifolia,
is still used in Persia for dyeing beard and hair black. 1 The Persian
words are derived from Sanskrit nila, as is likewise Arabic mlej. 2 Also
nili hindi (" Indian indigo") occurs in Persian. GARCIA DA ORTA has
handed down a form on*/, 8 and in Spanish the plant is called anil
(Portuguese and Italian anil). 4 It may be permissible to assume that
indigo was first introduced into Sasanian Persia under the reign of
Khosrau I AnOSarwan (A.D. 531-579); for Masudl, who wrote about
A.D. 943, reports that this king received from India the book Kallla
wa Dimna, the game of chess, and the black dye-stuff for the hair,
called the Indian. 5
Under the designation ts'in tai W $5 ("blue cosmetic for painting
the eyebrows") the Chinese became acquainted with the true indigo
and the Iranian practice mentioned above. The term is first on record
as a product of Ts'ao ftSf (Jagu(Ja) 6 and Ku-lan 4H SB in the vicinity of
Tokharestan; 7 during the T'ang period, the women of Fergana did not
employ lead-powder, but daubed their eyebrows with ts'in tai. 8 Ma Ci
of the tenth century says that "ts*in tai came from the country Po-se
(Persia), but that now in T'ai-yuan, Lu-lin, Nan-k'an, and other
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 144, 271. SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 395)
gives ringi rl$ and wesme as Persian words for indigo-leaves.
2 LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 384.
1 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 51. The form anil is also employed by F. PYRARD
(Vol. II, p. 359, ed. of Hakluyt Society), who says that indigo is found only in the
kingdom of Cambaye and Surat.
4 ROEDIGER and POTT (Z. /. Kunde d. Morg., Vol. VII, p. 125) regard this
prefix a as the Semitic article (Arabic al-nil, an-nil).
6 BARBIER DE MEYNARD and PAVET DE COURTEILLE, Les Prairies d'or, Vol. II,
p. 203.
8 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 8 (see above, p. 317).
7 T*ai p'iA hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 12. It was also found in Ki-pin (ibid.,
Ch. 182, p. 12 b).
*Ibid., Ch. 181, p. 13 b.
370
INDIGO 371
places, a dye-stuff of similar virtues is made from tien Wi (the indigenous
Polygonum tinctorium)" 1 Li Si-Sen holds the opinfon that the Persian
ts'in tai was the foreign lan-tien H 85: (Indigo/era tinctoria). It must not
be forgotten that the genus Indigo/era comprises some three hundred
species, and that it is therefore impossible to hope for exact identifica-
tions in Oriental records. Says G. WATT 2 on this point, "Species of
Indigofera are distributed throughout the tropical regions of the globe
(both in the Old and New Worlds) with Africa as their headquarters.
And in addition to the Indigoferas several widely different plants yield
the self-same substance chemically. Hence, for many ages, the dye
prepared from these has borne a synonymous name in most tongues,
and to such an extent has this been the case that it is impossible to say
for certain whether the nlla of the classic authors of India denoted the
self -same plant which yields the dye of that name in modern com-
merce." " Indigo," therefore, is a generalized commercial label for a
blue dye-stuff, but without botanical value. Thus also Chinese indigo
is yielded by distinct plants in different parts of China. 3
It is singular that the Chinese at one time imported indigo from
Persia, where it was doubtless derived from India, and do not refer
to India as the principal indigo-producing country. An interesting
article on the term ts*in tai has been written by HiRTH. 4
1 Pen ts*ao kan mu, Ch. 16, p. 25 b.
2 Commercial Products of India, p. 663.
3 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 212.
4 Chinesische Studien, pp. 243-258.
RICE
26. While rice is at present a common article of food of the Persian
people, being particularly enjoyed as pilau, 1 it was entirely unknown
in the days of Iranian antiquity. No word for "rice" appears in the
Avesta. 2 Herodotus 3 mentions only wheat as the staple food of the
Persians at the time of Cambyses. This negative evidence is signally
confirmed by the Chinese annals, which positively state that there is
no rice or millet in Sasanian Persia; 4 and on this point Chinese testi-
mony carries weight, since the Chinese as a rice-eating nation were
always anxious to ascertain whether rice was grown and consumed by
foreign peoples. Indeed, the first question a travelling Chinese will
ask on arrival at a new place will invariably refer to rice, its qualities
and valuations. This is conspicuous in the memoirs of Can K'ien,
the first Chinese who travelled extensively across Iranian territory,
and carefully noted the cultivation of rice in Fergana (Ta-yuan), fur-
ther for Parthia (An-si), and T'iao-6i (Chaldasa). The two last-named
countries, however, he did not visit himself, but reported what he had
heard about them. In the Sasanian epoch, Chinese records tell us
that rice was plentiful in Kuca, KaSgar (Su-lek), Khotan, and Ts'ao
Qaguola) north of the Ts'ufi-lin; 6 also in Si (Tashkend). 6 On the
other hand, Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander on his expedition
in Asia and author of an Alexander biography written after 285 B.C.,
states that rice grows in Bactriana, Babylonia, Susis, and in lower
Syria; 7 and Diodorus 8 likewise emphasizes the abundance of rice in Susi-
1 Toung Pao, 1916, p. 481.
2 MODI, in Spiegel Memorial Volume, p. xxxvu.
3 III, 22.
4 Wei $u, Ch. 102, pp. 5 b-6 a; Cou $u, Ch. 50, p. 6. Tabari (translation of
NdLDEKE, p. 244) mentions rice among the crops taxed by Khusrau I (A.D. 531-578);
but this is surely an interpolation, as in the following list of taxes rice is not men-
tioned, while all other crops are. Another point to be considered is that in Arabic
manuscripts, when the diacritical marks are omitted, the word birinj may be read
as well naranj, which means "orange" (cf. OUSELEY, Oriental Geography of Ebn
Haukal, p. 221).
6 Sui $u, Ch. 83, pp. 5 b, 7 b.
8 Tai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 7 b.
' Strabo, XV. I, 18.
8 xix, 13.
372
RICE 373
ana. From these data HEHN 1 infers that under the rule of the Persians,
and possibly inconsequence of their rule, rice-cultivation advanced from
the Indus to the Euphrates, and that from there came also the Greek
name opva. This rice-cultivation, however, can have been but sporadic
and along the outskirts of Iran; it did not affect Persia as a whole. The
Chinese verdict of "no rice" in Sasanian Persia appears to me con-
clusive, and it further seems to me that only from the Arabic period
did the cultivation of rice become more general in Persia. This con-
clusion is in harmony with the account of Hwi Cao 3R fe, a traveller
in the beginning of the eighth century, who reports in regard to the
people of Mohammedan Persia that they subsist only on pastry and
meat, but have also rice, which is ground and made into cakes. 2 This
conveys the impression that rice then was not a staple food, but merely
a side-issue of minor importance. Yaqut mentions rice for the prov-
inces Khuzistan and Sabur. 3 Abu Mansur, whose work is largely based
on Arabic sources, is the first Persian author to discuss fully the subject
of rice. 4 Solely a New-Persian word for "rice" is known, namely birinj
or gurinj (Armenian and Ossetic brinj), which is usually regarded as a
loan-word from Sanskrit vrihi; Afghan vriXe (with Greek 6pua, /3p#a)
is still nearer to the latter. In view of the historical situation, the
reconstruction of an Avestan *verenja 5 or an Iranian *vrinji, 8 and the
theory of an originally Aryan word for "rice," seem to me inadmissible.
1 Kulturpflanzen, p. 505.
2 HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXIII, 1913, pp. 202, 204, 207.
3 B. DE MEYNARD, Dictionnaire gographique de la Perse, pp. 217, 294.
4 AcnuNDow, Abu Mansur, p. 5. J. SCHILTBERGER (1396-1427), in his Bondage
and Travels (p. 44, ed. of Hakluyt Society, 1879) speaks of the "rich country called
Gilan, where rice and cotton alone is grown."
5 P. HORN, Neupersische Etymologic, No. 208.
6 H. HtfBSCHMANN, Persischc Studien, p. 27.
PEPPER
27. The pepper-plant (hu tsiao, Japanese ko$o, $1 V&, Piper nigrum)
deserves mention in this connection only inasmuch as it is listed among
the products of Sasanian Persia. 1 Ibn Haukal says that pepper, sandal,
and various kinds of drugs, were shipped from Slraf in Persia to all
quarters of the world. 2 Pepper must have been introduced into Persia
from India, which is the home of the shrub. 3 It is already enumerated
among the plants of India in the Annals of the Han Dynasty. 4 The
Yu yah tsa tsu b refers it more specifically to Magadha, 6 pointing out
its Sanskrit name marica or marica in the transcription Bfc J3. : mei-
li-ci. 1 The term hu tsiao shows that not all plants whose names have
the prefix hu are of Iranian origin: in this case hu distinctly alludes
to India. 8 Tsiao is a general designation for spice-plants, principally
belonging to the genus Zanthoxylon. Li Si-Sen 9 observes that the black
pepper received its name only for the reason that it is bitter of taste
and resembles the tsiao, but that the pepper-fruit in fact is not a tsiao.
It is interesting to note that the authors of the various Pen ts'ao seem
to have lost sight of the fact of the Indian origin of the plant, and do
not even refer to the Han Annals. Su Kun states that hu tsiao grows
among the Si 2un, which plainly shows that he took the word hu in
the sense of peoples of Central Asia or Iranians, and substituted for it
1 Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b; Cou Su, Ch. 50, p. 6; and Wei Su, Ch. 102, p. 6. According
to HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 223), this would mean that pepper was brought to China
by Persian traders from India. I am unable to see this point. The texts in question
simply give a list of products to be found in Persia, and say nothing about exporta-
tion of any kind.
8 W. OUSELEY, Oriental Geography of Ebn Haukal, p. 133. Regarding the for-
mer importance of Slraf, which "in old times was a great city, very populous and
full of merchandise, being the port of call for caravans and ships," see G. LE STRANGE,
Description of the Province of Pars, pp. 41-43.
* In New Persian, pepper is called pilpil (Arabicized filfil, fulful), from the
Sanskrit pippatt.
4 Hou Han Su, Ch. 118, p. 5 b.
8 Ch. 18, p. II.
6 Cf . Sanskrit magadha as an epithet of pepper.
T In fact, this form presupposes a vernacular type *meriSi.
8 Hu tsiao certainly does not mean "Western Barbarians (Tartar) pepper,"
as conceived by WAITERS (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 441). What had
the "Tartars" to do with pepper? The Uigur adopted simply the Sanskrit word in
the form mur.
Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 32, p. 3 b.
374
PEPPER 375
its synonyme Si Zun; at least, it appears certain that the latter term
bears no reference to India. Li Si-cen gives as localities where the
plant is cultivated, "all countries of the Southern Barbarians (Nan
Fan), Kiao-Si (Annam), Yun-nan, and Hai-nan."
Another point of interest is that in the T*an pen ts'ao of Su Kun
appears a species called San hu tsiao ill $8 IK or wild pepper, described
as resembling the cultivated species, of black color, with a grain the
size of a black bean, acrid taste, great heat, and non-poisonous. This
plant-name has been identified with Lindera glauca by A. HENRY/
who says that the fruit is eaten by the peasants of Yi-6'an, Se-'wan.
The same author offers a ye hu-tsiao ("wild pepper"), being Zanihoxy-
lum setosum.
Piper longum or Chavica roxburghii, Chinese 2j! $ or Si pi-po,
*pit-pat(pal), from Sanskrit pippall, is likewise attributed to Sasanian
Persia. 2 This pepper must have been also imported into Iran from
India, for it is a native of the hotter parts of India from Nepal east-
ward to Assam, the Khasia hills and Bengal, westward to Bombay,
and southward to Travancore, Ceylon, and Malacca. 3 It is therefore
surprising to read in the Pen ts'ao of the T'ang that pi-po grows in the
country Po-se: this cannot be Persia, but refers solely to the Malayan
Po-se. For the rest, the Chinese were very well aware of the Indian
origin of the plant, as particularly shown by the adoption of the San-
skrit name. It is first mentioned in the Nan fan ts'ao mu cwan, unless
it be there one of the interpolations in which this work abounds, but
it is mixed up with the betel-pepper (Chavica betel).
1 Chinese Names of Plants, No. 45.
2 Ccu su, Ch. 50, p. 6.
3 WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 891.
SUGAR
28. The sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum) is a typically Indian
or rather Southeast-Asiatic, and merely a secondary Iranian culti-
vation, but its history in Iran is of sufficient importance to devote here
a few lines to this subject. The Sui Annals 1 attribute hard sugar
(Si-mi ^ U, literally, " stone honey") and pan-mi 3* 3* ("half honey")
to Sasanian Persia and to Ts'ao (Jaguda). It is not known what kind
of sugar is to be understood by the latter term. 2 Before the advent
of sugar, honey was the universal ingredient for sweetening food-stuffs,
and thus the ancients conceived the sugar of India as a kind of honey
obtained from canes without the agency of bees. 3 The term Si-mi first
appears in the Nan fan ts'ao mu cwan* which contains the first de-
scription of the sugar-cane, and refers it to Kiao-<H (Tonking) ; according
to this work, the natives of this country designate sugar as Si-mi, which
accordingly may be the literal rendering of a Kiao-ci term. In A.D. 285
Fu-nan (Camboja) sent lu-lo H M (" sugar-cane") as tribute to China. 5
It seems that under the T'ang sugar was also imported from Persia
to China; for Mon Sen, who wrote the Si liao pen ts*ao in the second
half of the seventh century, says that the sugar coming from Po-se
(Persia) to Se-c'wan is excellent. Su Kun, the reviser of the T'an pen
ts*ao of about A.D. 650, extols the sugar coming from the Si Zun, which
may likewise allude to Iranian regions. Exact data as to the introduc-
tion and dissemination of the sugar-cane in Persia are not available.
E. O. v. LiPPMANN 6 has developed an elaborate theory to the effect that
1 Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
2 It is only contained in the Sui Su, not in the Wei Su (Ch. 102, p. 5 b), which
has merely Si-mi. The sugar-cane was also grown in Su-le (Kashgar): T'ai p'in
hwan yu ki, Ch. 181, p. 12 b.
8 Pliny, xii, 17.
4 Ch. i, p. 4.
6 This word apparently comes from a language spoken in Indo-China; it is already
ascribed to the dictionary $wo wen. Subsequently it was replaced by kan ~fj*
("sweet") Id or kan ^ 0, presumably also the transcription of a foreign word.
The Nan Ts'i Su mentions lu-lo as a product of Fu-nan (cf . PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole
frangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 262). In C'i-t'u ffi i (Siam) a wine of yellow color and fine
aroma was prepared from sugar and mixed with the root of a Cucurbitacea (Sui Su,
Ch. 82, p. 2 b).
6 Geschichte des Zuckers, p. 93 (Leipzig, 1890); and Abhandlungen, Vol. I,
p. 263. According to the same author, the Persians were the inventors of sugar-
refining; but this is purely hypothetical.
376
SUGAR 377
the Christians of the city GundeSapur, which was in connection with
India and cultivated Indian medicine, should have propagated the
cane and promoted the sugar-industry. This is no more than an in-
genious speculation, which, however, is not substantiated by any
documents. The facts in the case are merely, that according to the
Armenian historian Moses of Khorene, who wrote in the second half
of the fifth century, sugar-cane was cultivated in Elymais near Gunde-
sapur, and that later Arabic writers, like Ibn Haukal, Muqaddasl,
and Yaqut, mention the cultivation of the cane and the manufacture
of sugar in certain parts of Persia. The above Chinese notice is of some
importance in showing that sugar was known under the Sasanians in
the sixth century. The Arabs, as is well known, took a profound inter-
est in the sugar-industry after the conquest of Persia (A.D. 640), and
disseminated the cane to Palestine, Syria, Egypt, etc. The Chinese
owe nothing to the Persians as regards the technique of sugar-pro-
duction. In A.D. 647 the Emperor T'ai Tsun was anxious to learn its
secrets, and sent a mission to Magadha in India to study there the
process of boiling sugar, and this method was adopted by the sugar-
cane growers of Yan-c"ou. The color and taste of this product then were
superior to that of India. 1 The art of refining sugar was taught the
Chinese as late as the Mongol period by men from Cairo. 2
1 T'an hui yao, Ch. 100, p. 21.
2 YULE, Marco Polo, Vol. II, pp. 226, 230. The latest writer on the subject of
sugar in Persia is P. SCHWARZ (Der Islam, Vol. VI, 1915, pp. 269-279), whose
researches are restricted to the province of Ahwaz. In opposition to C. Ritter, who
regarded Slraf on the Persian Gulf as the place whither the sugar-cane was first
transplanted from India, he assigns this r61e to Hormuz; the first mention of refined
sugar he finds in an Arabic poet of the seventh century. Lippmann's work is not
known to him.
MYROBALAN
29. The myrobalan Terminalia chebula, ho-li-lo M 3? ft (*ha-ri-
lak, Japanese kariroku, Sanskrit haritaki, Tokharian arirdk, Tibetan
a-ru-ra, Newarl halala; Persian halila, Arabic halllaj and ihllligat) , was
found in Persia. 1 The tree itself is indigenous to India, and the fruit
was evidently imported from India into Persia. 2 This is confirmed by
the fact that it is called in New Persian hallla (Old Armenian halile),
or hatila-i kabuli, hinting at the provenience from Kabul. 3
In the "Treatise on Wine," Tsiu p*u JB IS, 4 written by Tou Kin ^ S
of the Sung, it is said, "In the country Po-se there is a congee made
from the three myrobalans (san-lo tsian HftiK), 5 resembling wine, and
styled an-mo-lo M& M ft (dmalaka, Phyllanthus emblica) or p'i-li-lo
PBt 3S ft (vibhitaka, Terminalia belericd)." The source of this state-
ment is not given. If Po-se in this case refers to Persia, it would go
to show that the three myrobalans were known there.
On the other hand, there is quite a different explanation of the
term san-lo tsian. According to Ma Ci, who wrote in the tenth cen-
tury, this is the designation for a wine obtained from a flower of sweet
flavor, growing in the countries of the West and gathered by the Hu.
The name of the flower is K Or t'o-te, *da-tik. 6 In this case the term
san-lo may represent a transcription; it answers to ancient *sam-lak,
sam-raJq
1 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b; Cou $u, Ch. 50, p. 6.
2 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 275-276. Ho-li-lo were products of A-lo-yi-lo Pf
Ok Ifa $t in the north of U^iyana (T'ai p'in Tiwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 12 b).
3 Cf. G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs & rExtr&me-Orient, p. 227.
4 Ed. of Tan Sun ts*un Su, p. 20.
5 The san lo are the three plants the names of which terminate in lo, ho-li-lo
(Terminalia chebula), p'i-li-lo (T. belerica, Sanskrit vibhitaka, Persian baftla), and
a-mo-lo or an-mo-lo (Phyllanthus emblica, Sanskrit dmalaka, Persian amola).
8 The text is in the T'u IM tsi e'en, XX, Ch. 182, tsa hwa ts'ao pu, hui k'ao 2,
p. 13 b. I cannot trace it in the Pen ts'ao kan mu.
378
THE "GOLD PEACH "
30. A fruit called yellow peach (hwan t'ao 31 $) or gold peach
(kin t'ao dk $t), of the size of a goose-egg, was introduced into China
imder the reign of the Emperor T'ai Tsufi of the T'ang (A.D. 629-649),
being presented by the country K'ari jR (Sogdiana). 1 This introduction
is assigned to the year 647 in the T*an hui yao, 2 where it is said that
Sogdiana offered to the Court the yellow peach, being of the size of a
goose-egg and golden in color, and hence styled also "gold peach." A
somewhat earlier date for the introduction of this fruit is on record in
the Ts'e fu yuan kweif which has the notice that in A.D. 625 (under
the Emperor Kao Tsu) Sogdiana presented gold peaches (kin t'ao) and
silver peaches (yin fao), and that by imperial order they were planted
in the gardens. This fruit is not mentioned in the Pen-ts*ao literature;
it is not known what kind of fruit it was. Maybe it was a peculiar
variety of peach.
FU-TSE
31. Fu-tse Pft ? is enumerated among the products of Sasanian
Persia in the Sui $u* Pai S fu-tse is attributed to the country Ts'ao
(Jaguda) north of the Ts'un-lin, 5 and to Ki-pin. 6
In the form $ ? fu-tse, it occurs in a prescription written on a
wooden tablet of the Han period, found in Turkistan. 7 Fu-tse pjj ? is
identified with Aconitum fischeri, cultivated on a large scale in Can-min
hien in the prefecture of Lu-nan, Se-6'wan. 8 It is not known, however,
that this species occurs in Persia.
Yi Tsiii calls attention to the fact that the medicinal herbs of India
are not the same as those of China, and enumerates tubers of aconite
together with fu-tse among the best drugs of China, and which are never
found in India. 9
1 Fun si wen kien ki, Ch. 7, p. I b (ed. of Kifu ts'un $u).
2 Ch. 200, p. 14; also T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 183, p. 3.
3 Ch. 970, p. 8 b.
4 Ch. 83, p. 7 b; also ou su, Ch. 50, p. 6.
5 Sui $u, ibid., p. 8 a.
6 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 182, p. 12 b.
7 CHAVANNES, Documents de l'e"poque des Han, p. 115, No. 530.
8 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 10.
9 TAKAKUSU, Record of the Buddhist Religion, p. 148.
379
BRASSICA
32. Of the two species of mustard, Brassica or Sinapis juncea and
S. alba, the former has always been a native of China (kiai 3F). The
latter, however, was imported as late as the T'ang period. It is first
mentioned by Su Kun in the Pen ts'ao of the T'ang (about A.D. 650) as
coming from the Western Zun (Si Zufi), 1 a term which, as noted, fre-
quently refers to Iranian regions. In the Su pen ts'ao S) ^ ^, published
about the middle of the tenth century by Han Pao-Sen ^f fie ^, we
find the term ^^t-hu kiai ("mustard of the Hu"). C'en Ts'an-k'i of
the T'ang states that it grows in T'ai-yiian and Ho-tun Sf JC (San-si),
without referring to the foreign origin. Li Si-5en 2 annotates that this
cultivation comes from the Hu and Zun and abounds in Su (Se-'wan),
hence the names hu kiai and $u kiai ("mustard of Se-c"'wan"), while
the common designation is pai kiai ("white mustard"). This state
of affairs plainly reveals the fact that the plant was conveyed to China
over the land-route of Central Asia, while no allusion is made to an
oversea transplantation. As shown by me on a previous occasion, 3
the Si-hia word si-na ("mustard") appears to be related to
Greek sinapi, and was probably carried into the Si-hia kingdom
by Nestorian missionaries, who, we are informed by Marco
Polo, were settled there. The same species was likewise foreign
to the Tibetans, as is evidenced by their designation "white turnip"
(yuns-kar). In India it is not indigenous, either: WATT* says that
if met with at all, it occurs in gardens only within the tem-
perate areas, or in upper India during the winter months; it is not
a field crop.
This genus comprises nearly a hundred species, all natives of the
north temperate zones, and most of them of ancient European cultiva-
tion (with an independent centre in China).
Abu Mansur 5 distinguishes under the Arabic name karnab five kinds
of Brassica, Nabathaean, Brassica silvestris, B. marina, B. cypria
1 The same definition is given by T'an Sen-wei in his Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 27,
P. 15).
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 12.
8 Toung Pao, 1915, p. 86.
4 Commercial Products of India, p. 176.
B ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. no.
380
BRASSICA 381
(qanblt) and Syrian from Mosul. He further mentions Brassica rapa
under the name Selgem (Arabic Sal jam). 1
33. One of the synonymes of yun-Vai 8 X (Brassica rapa) is hu
ts'ai ffl 3S ("vegetable of the Hu"). According to Li Si-6en, 2 this term
was first applied to this vegetable by Fu K'ien HK It: of the second
century A.D.in his T*un su wen J f& X. If this information were correct,
this would be the earliest example of the occurrence of the term Hu in
connection with a cultivated plant; but this Hu does not relate to
Iranians, for Hu Hia $! ?p , in his Pai pin fail "5 $$ Jj, a medical
work of the Sui period (A.D. 589-618), styles the plant sai ts'ai H 2K,
which, according to Li Si-Sen, has the same significance as hu ts'ai, and
refers to tH 9\- Sai-wai, the Country beyond the Passes, Mongolia.
Some even believe that Yun-t'ai is a place-name in Mongolia, where
this plant thrives, and that it received therefrom its name. Such
localities abstracted from plant-names are usually afterthoughts and
fictitious. 3 The term yun-t'ai occurs in the early work Pie lu.
ScHLiMMER 4 mentions Brassica capitata (Persian kalam pi), B.
caulozapa (kalam gomri), and B. napus or rapa (Selgem). I have already
pointed out that the Persians were active in disseminating species of
Brassica and Raphanus to Tibet, the Turks, and Mongolia. 5 Reference
has been made above (p. 199) to the fact that Brassica rapa (yun-t'ai)
was introduced into China from Turkish tribes of Mongolia under the
Later Han dynasty, and it would be reasonable to conclude that these
had previously received the cultivation from Iranians. 6 Brassica rapa
is very generally cultivated in Persia^ and most parts of India during
the dry season, from October until March. 7 Yun-t'ai is enumerated
among the choice vegetables of the country ^ Oik Mo-lu, *Mar-luk, in
Arabia. 8
The country of the Arabs produced the rape-turnip (man-tsin
IE W, Brassica rapa-depressa) with roots the size of a peck ^*, round,
and of very sweet flavor. 9
Yi Tsin, the Buddhist pilgrim of the seventh century, makes some
comment on the difference between Indian and Chinese Brassica by saying,
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 87.
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 9 b.
3 Compare p. 401.
4 Terminologie, p. 93.
5 T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 84, 87.
6 The case would then be analogous to the history of the water-melon.
7 W. ROXBURGH, Flora Indica, p. 497.
8 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 16 b.
9 Ibid., Ch. 186, p. 15 b.
382 SlNO-lRANICA
"Man-tsin occurs [in India] in sufficient quantity and in two varieties,
one with white, the other with black seeds. In Chinese translation it is
called mustard (kie-tse 3F ?) . As in all countries, oil is pressed from it
for culinary purposes. When eating it as a vegetable, I found it not
very different from the man-tsin of China; but as regards the root, which
is rather tough, it is not identical with our man-tsin. The seeds are
coarse, and again bear no relation to mustard-seeds. They are like those
of Hovenia dulcis (fi-ku ^ Wi) , transformed in their shape in conse-
quence of the soil." 1
1 This sentence is entirely misunderstood by J. TAKAKUSU in his translation of
Yi Tsin's work (p. 44), where we read, "The change in the growth of this plant is
considered to be something like the change of an orange-tree into a bramble when
brought north of the Yangtse River." The text has: ^ ? ^H ^ i& }g ^.
There is nothing here about an orange or a bramble or the Yangtse. The character
^ is erroneously used for $|, as is still the case in southern China (see STUART,
Chinese Materia Medica, p. 209), and ^ $|> is a well-known botanical name for a
rhamnaceous tree (not an orange), Hovenia dulcis. "Change of an orange-tree into
a bramble" is nonsense in itself.
CUMMIN
34. Under the foreign term i^ SI &-lo, *2i-la, the Chinese have
not described the fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), as erroneously asserted
by WATTERS 1 and STUART, 2 but cummin (Cuminum cyminum) and
caraway (Carum carui). This is fundamentally proved by the prototype,
Middle Persian %ira or zira, Sanskrit jlra, of which U-lo (*zi-la) forms
the regular transcription. 3 In India, fira refers to both cummin and
caraway. 4 Although Cuminum is more or less cultivated in most prov-
inces of India, except Bengal and Assam, there is, according to WATT,
fairly conclusive evidence that it is nowhere indigenous; but in several
districts it would appear to be so far naturalized as to have been re-
garded as "wild," even by competent observers. No doubt, it was
transmitted to India from Iran. Cummin was known to the ancient
Persians, being mentioned in the inscription of Cyrus at Persepolis, 5
and at an early period penetrated from Iran to Egypt on the one hand,
and to India on the other. 6
Avicenna distinguishes four varieties of cummin (Arabic kammun), 7
that of Kirman, which is black; that of Persia, which is yellow and
more active than the others; that of Syria, and the Nabathaean. 8 Each
variety is both spontaneous and cultivated. Abu Mansur regards that
of Kirman as the best, and styles it zlre-i kirmdn* This name, accord-
ing to ScHLiMMER, 10 would refer to caraway, also called zlre-i siah, 11
while cummin is styled in Persian zlre-i sebze or sefid. Caraway (Carum
1 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 440. He even adds "coriander," which
is hu swi (p. 297).
2 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 176. Fennel is hwi hian ]lj ^jf, while a synonyme
of cummin is siao hwi, hian ("small fennel").
3 In the same form, the word occurs in Tibetan, zi-ra (T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 475).
4 G. WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 442.
5 JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquit6, Vol. II, p. 66.
6 Ibid., p. 258.
7 Hebrew kammon, Assyrian kamanu, resulting in Greek K&fjuvov, Latin cumt-
num, cyminum, or ciminum; Armenian caman; Persian kamun.
8 LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 196.
9 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 112, 258.
10 Terminologie, p. 112.
11 In India, the Persian word siah refers to the black caraway (Carum bulbocasta-
num), which confirms Schlimmer's opinion. Also Avicenna's black cummin of
Kirman apparently represents this species. This plant is a native of Baluchistan,
Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Lahul, mainly occurring as a weed in cultivated land.
383
384 SlNO-lRANICA
carui), however, is commonly termed in Persian loh-zire ("cummin of
the Shah") or zire-i ruml ("Byzantine or Turkish cummin"). 1
While the philological evidence would speak in favor of a trans-
mission of cummin from Persia to China, this point is not clearly brought
out by our records. C'en Ts'an-k'i, who wrote in the first half of the
eighth century, states that $i-lo grows in Fu-si $? If (Bhoja, Sumatra).
Li Sun, in his Hai yao pen ts*ao, says after the Kwan Zou ki K ffl IS
that the plant grows in the country Po-se; 2 and Su Sun of the Sung
notes that in his time it occurred in Lin-nan (Kwan-tun) and adjoining
regions. Now, the Kwan Ion ki is said to have been written under the
Tsin dynasty (A.D. 265-420) ; 3 and, as will be shown below in detail, the
Po-se of Li Sun almost invariably denotes, not Persia, but the Malayan
Po-se. Again, it is Li Sun who does not avail himself of the Iranian form
&-/0=ira, but of the Sanskrit form jiraka, possibly conveyed through
the medium of the Malayan Po-se.
Li Si-Sen has entered under U-lo another foreign word in the form
^ il: ft ts'e-mou-lo (*dz"i-mu-lak), which he derived from the K*ai
pao pen ts*ao, and which, in the same manner as $i-lo, he stamps as a
foreign word. This transcription has hitherto defied identification, 4
because it is incorrectly recorded. It is met with correctly in the Cen
lei pen ts*ao b in the form S ft ts*e-lo, *d2i-lak(rak), and this answers
to Sanskrit firaka. This form is handed down in the Hai yao pen ts'ao,
written by Li Sun in the eighth century. Thus we have, on the one
hand a Sanskrit form jiraka, conveyed by the Malayan Po-se to Kwan-
tun in the T'ang period, and on the other hand the Iranian type Si-
lo =Zira, which for phonetic reasons must likewise go back to the era
of the T'ang, and which we should suppose had migrated overland to
China. The latter point, for the time being, remains an hypothesis,
which will perhaps be elucidated by the documents of Turkistan.
1 Corresponding to Arabic kardwyd, the source of our word caraway.
2 The Gen lei pen teVo 'Oh. 13, p. 27 b) repeats this without citing a source.
3 Cf. below, p. 475.
4 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 176.
6 Ch. 13, p. 17 b.
THE DATE-PALM
35. The Chinese records of the date-palm (Phoenix dactyliferd)
contain two points that are of interest to science: first, a contribution
to the geographical distribution of the tree in ancient times; and,
second, a temporary attempt at acclimating it in China. The tree is
not indigenous there. It is for the first time in the T'ang period that
we receive some information about it; but it is mentioned at an earlier
date as a product of Sasanian Persia in both the Wei Su and Sui $u,
under the name ts'ien nien tsao T ^F 31 (" jujubes of thousand years,"
the jujube, Zizyphus vulgaris, being a native of China). 1 In the Yu yah
tsa tsu, 2 the date is styled Po-se tsao jft Sf 3R ("Persian jujube"), with
the observation that its habitat is in Po-se (Persia), or that it comes
from there. 3 The Persian name is then given in the form US I? k'u-man,
*k'ut(k'ur)-man, which would correspond to a Middle Persian *xurman
(*khurmang), Pazand and New Persian xurma, that was also adopted
by Osmanli and Neo-Greek, xovpjuas ("date") and Koup/zoSijA ("date-
palm"), Albanian korme* The T'ah $u 5 writes the same word l& ^
hu-man, *gu5(gur)-man, answering to a Middle-Persian form *gurman
or *kurman. The New-Persian word is rendered jS @ JK k'u-lu(ru)-ma
in the Pen ts'ao kah mu; & this is the style of the Yuan transcriptions, 7
1 This name was bestowed upon the tree, not, as erroneously asserted by HIRTH
(Chau Ju-kua, p. 210), "evidently on account of the stony hardness of the dates on
reaching China," but, as stated in the Pen ts'ao kan mu (Ch. 31, p. 8), owing to the
long-enduring character of the tree ^ tsj fe j$ ty\ -{&. The same explanation
holds good for the synonyme wan sui tsao ("jujube of ten thousand or numerous
years"). Indeed, this palm lives to a great age, and trees of from one to two hundred
years old continue to produce their annual crop.
2 Ch. 1 8, p. 10.
3 The same term, Po-se tsao, appears in a passage of the Pei hu lu (Ch. 2, p. 9 b),
where the trunk and leaves of the sago-palm (Sag o rumphii) are compared with those
of the date.
4 In Old Armenian of the fifth century we have the Iranian loan-word armav,
and hence it is inferred that the x of Persian was subsequently prefixed (HiiBSCH-
MANN, Persische Studien, p. 265; Armen. Gram., p. in). The date of the Chinese
transcriptions proves that the initial x existed in Pahlavi.
5 Ch. 221 B, p. 13.
6 Ch. 31, p. 21. It is interesting to note that Li Si-gen endeavors to make out
a distinction between k'u-man and k'u-lu-ma by saying that the former denotes the
tree, the latter the fruit; but both, in his opinion, are closely allied foreign words.
7 The T'ang transcription, of course, is not "probably a distorted transcription
of khurma," as asserted by BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 266), but, on
the contrary, is very exact.
385
386 SlNO-lRANICA
and first occurs in the Co ken lu $5 $ $fr, published in 1366. The Persian
word has also migrated into the modern Aryan languages of Iriia,
as well as into the Malayan group: Javanese kurma; Cam kuramo;
Malayan, Dayak, and Sunda korma; Bugi and Makassar koromma;
also into Khmer: romo, lomo, amo.
Following is the description of the tree given in the Yu yan tsa tsu:
"It is thirty to forty feet in height, 1 and has a circumference of from
five to six feet. The leaves resemble those of the f u fen dt Ji (a kind
of rattan), and remain ever green. It blooms in the second month.
The blossoms are shaped like those of the banana, and have a double
bottom. They open gradually; and in the fissure are formed more than
ten seed-cases, two inches long, yellow and white in color. When the
kernel ripens, the seeds are black. In their appearance they resemble
dried jujubes. They are good to eat and as sweet as candy."
Another foreign word for the date is handed down by C'en Ts'an-k'i
in his Pen ts*ao Si i, in the form 1$ Wt wu-lou, *bu-nu. He identifies
this term with the "Persian jujube," which he says grows in Persia,
and has the appearance of a jujube. Li Si-Sen annotates that the mean-
ing of this word is not yet explained. Neither Bretschneider nor any
one else has commented on this name. It is strikingly identical with
the old Egyptian designation of the date, bunnu. 2 It is known that
the Arabs have an infinite number of terms for the varieties of the date
and the fruit in its various stages of growth, and it may be that they
likewise adopted the Egyptian word and transmitted it to China. The
common Arabic names are nakhl and tamr (Hebrew tamar, Syriac
temar). On the other hand, the relation of wu-lou to the Egyptian word
may be accidental, if we assume that wu-lou was originally the designa-
tion of Cycas revoluta (see below), and was only subsequently trans-
ferred to the date-palm.
The Lin piao lu i 3 by Liu Sun contains the following interesting
account:
"In regard to the date ('Persian jujube'), this tree may be seen in
the suburbs of Kwaii-Sou (Canton). The trunk of the tree is entirely
without branches, is straight, and rises to a height of from thirty to
forty feet. The crown of the tree spreads in all directions, and forms
over ten branches. The leaves are like those of the 'sea coir-palm 1
1 It even grows to a height of sixty or eighty feet.
2 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 34. I concur with Loret in the opinion that
the Egyptian word is the foundation of Greek <f>olvi. The theory ^of HEHN (Kul-
turpflanzen, p. 273) and upheld by SCHRADER (ibid., p. 284), that the latter might
denote the Phoenician tree, does not seem to me correct.
a Ch. B, p. 4 (see above, p. 268).
THE DATE-PALM 387
(hai tsun $J $?, Chamaerops excelsa). 1 The trees planted in Kwan-Sou
bear fruit once in three or five years. The fruits resemble the green
jujube growing in the north, but are smaller. They turn from green
to yellow. When the leaves have come out, the fruit is formed in
clusters, each cluster generally bearing from three to twenty berries,
which require careful handling. The foreign as well as the domestic
kind is consumed in our country. In color it resembles that of granulated
sugar. Shell and meat are soft and bright. Baked into cakes or steamed
in water, they are savory. The kernel is widely different from that of
the jujube of the north. The two ends are not pointed [as in the jujube],
but doubly rolled up and round like a small piece of red kino 3?t 8K. 2
They must be carefully handled. When sown, no shoots sprout forth
for a long time, so that one might suppose they would never mature."
The date is clearly described in this text; and we learn from it that
the tree was cultivated in Kwaii-tun, and its fruit was also imported
during the T'ang period. As Liu Sun, author of that work, lived under
the Emperor Cao Tsun (A.D. 889-904), this notice refers to the end of
the ninth century. 3 A. DE CANDOLLE 4 states erroneously that the
Chinese received the tree from Persia in the third century of our era.
In his note on the date, headed by the term wu-lou tse, Li Si-en 5
has produced a confusion of terms, and accordingly brought together
1 In the text of this work, as cited in the Pen ts'ao kan mu, this clause is worded
as follows: "The leaves are like those of the tsun-lu |<| fl|J (Chamaerops excelsa),
and hence the people of that locality style the tree [the date] hai tsun ('sea,' that is,
'foreign coir-palm')." This would indeed appear more logical than the passage
above, rendered after the edition of Wu yin tien, which, however, must be regarded
as more authoritative. Not only in this extract, but also in several others, does the
Pen ts'ao kan mu exhibit many discrepancies from the Wu yin tien edition; this
subject should merit closer study. In the present case there is only one other point
worthy of special mention; and this is, that Li Si-gen, in his section of nomenclature,
gives the synonyme ^ jfj fan tsao ("foreign jujube") with reference to the Lin
piao lu i. This term, however, does not occur in the text of this work as trans-
mitted by him, or in the Wu yin tien edition. The latter has added a saying of the
Emperor Wen jjfc of the Wei dynasty, which has nothing to do with the date, and
in which is found the phrase jL jR fan tsao ("all jujubes"). In other editions, fan
("foreign") was perhaps substituted for this fan, so that the existence of the
synonyme established by Li and adopted by Bretschneider appears to be very
doubtful.
2 See below, p. 478.
* It is singular that Bretschneider, who has given a rather uncritical digest of
the subject from the Pen ts'ao, does not at all mention this transplantation of the
tree. To my mind, this is the most interesting point to be noted. Whether date-
palms are still grown in K wan- tun, I am not prepared to say; but, as foreign authors
do not mention the fact, I almost doubt it.
4 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 303.
5 Pen ts*ao kan mu, Ch. 31, p. 8.
388 SlNO-lRANICA
a number of heterogeneous texts. BRETSCHNEiDER 1 has accepted all this
in good faith and without criticism. It is hardly necessary to be a
botanist in order to see that the texts of the Nan fan ts'ao mu Iwan
and Co ken lu, alleged to refer to the date, bear no relation to this tree. 2
The hai tsao K 31 described in the former work 3 may very well refer
to Cycas rewluta* The text of the other book, which Bretschneider does
not quote by its title, and erroneously characterizes as "a writer of the
Ming," speaks of six "gold fruit" (kin kwo ^ :Jft) trees growing in
C'en-tu, capital of Se-c'wan, and, according to an oral tradition, planted
at the time of the Han. Then follows a description of the tree, the
foreign name of which is given as k'u-lu-ma (see above), and which,
according to Bretschneider, suits the date-palm quite well. It is hardly
credible, however, that this tree could ever thrive in the climate of
Se-6'wan, and Bretschneider himself admits that the fruit of Salisburia
adiantifolia now bears also the name kin kwo. Thus, despite the fact
that the Persian name for the date is added, the passage of the Co ken
lu is open to the suspicion of some misunderstanding.
Not only did the Chinese know that the date is a product of Persia,
but they knew also that it was utilized as food by certain tribes of the
1 Chinese Recorder, 1871, pp. 265-267.
2 Bretschneider, it should be understood, was personally acquainted with only
the flora of Peking and its environment; for the rest, his familiarity with Chinese
plants was mere book-knowledge, and botany as a science was almost foreign to
him. Research in the history of cultivated plants was in its very beginning in
his days; and his methods relating to such subjects were not very profound, and were
rather crude.
3 Ch. B, p. 4. Also Wu K'i-tsun, author of the Ci wu miii Si t'u k'ao (Ch. 17,
p. 21), has identified the term wu-lou-tse with hai tsao.
4 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 140; but Stuart falls into the other ex-
treme by identifying with this species also the terms Po-se tsao, ts'ien nien tsao,
etc., which without any doubt relate to the date. In Bretschneider's translation
of the above text there is a curious misunderstanding. We read there, "In the year
285 A.D. Lin-yi offered to the Emperor Wu-ti a hundred trees of the hai tsao. The
prince Li-sha told the Emperor that in his travels by sea he saw fruits of this tree,
which were, without exaggeration, as large as a melon." The text reads, "In the
fifth year of the period T'ai-k'an (A.D. 284), Lin-yi presented to the Court a hundred
trees. Li Sao-kun ifi ty ;" (the well-known magician) said to the Emperor Wu
of the Han, ' During my sea- voyages I met Nan-k'i Sen $ $8 ^fe (the magician of
the Blest Islands), who ate jujubes of the size of a gourd, which is by no means an
exaggeration.' " The two events are not interrelated; the second refers to the second
century B.C. Neither, however, has anything to do with the date. The working of
Chinese logic is visibly manifest: the sea- travels of Li Sao-kun are combined with
his fabulous jujube into the sea- jujube (hai tsao), and this imaginary product is
associated with a real tree of that name. Li Si-Sen's example shows at what fancies
the Chinese finally arrive through their wrong associations of ideas; and Bret-
Schneider's example finally demonstrates that any Chinese data must first be taken
under our microscope before being accepted by science.
THE DATE-PALM 389
East-African coast. The early texts relating to Ta Ts'in do not mention
the palm; but at the end of the article Fu-lin (Syria), the Tan $u speaks
of two countries, HI $$> Mo-lin (*Mwa-lin, Mwa-rin) and ^ l# HI
Lao-p'o-sa (*Lav-bwi5-sar), as being situated 2000 li south-west of
Fu-lin, and sheltering a dark-complexioned population. The land is
barren, the people feed their horses on dried fish, and they themselves
subsist on dates. 1 BRETSCHNEiDER 2 was quite right in seeking this
locality in Africa, but it is impossible to accept his suggestion that
"perhaps the Chinese names Mo-lin and Lao-p'o-sa are intended to
express the country of the Moors (Mauritania) or Lybia." HIRTH S
did not discuss this weak theory, and, while locating the countries
in question along the west coast of the Red Sea, did not attempt to
identify the transcriptions. According to Ma Twan-lin, the country
Mo-lin is situated south-west of the country ?& US. H Yan-sa-lo, which
Hirth tentatively equated with Jerusalem. This is out of the question,
as Yan-sa-lo answers to an ancient An-sa5(sar)-la(ra). 4 Moreover, it
is on record in the T'ai p'in hwan yu ki 5 that Mo-lin is south-west of
fr HI H P'o-sa-lo (*BwiS-sa5-la), so that this name is clearly identical
with that of Ma Twan-lin and the transcription of the T'ang Annals.
In my opinion, the transcription *Mwa-lin is intended for the Malindi
of Edrisi or Mulanda of Yaqut, now Malindi, south of the Equator, in
Seyidieh Province of British East Africa. Edrisi describes this place
as a large city, the inhabitants of which live by hunting and fishing.
They salt sea-fish for trade, and also exploit iron-mines, iron being the
source of their wealth. 6 If this identification be correct, the geographical
definition of the T'ang Annals (2000 li south-west of Fu-lin) is, of course,
deficient; but we must not lose sight of the fact that these data rest
on a hearsay report hailing from Fu-lin, and that, generally speaking,
Chinese calculations of distances on sea-routes are not to be taken too
seriously. 7 Under the Ming, the same country appears as j$E W Ma-lin,
the king of which sent an embassy to China in 1415 with a gift of
1 In the transcription hu-man, as given above, followed by the explanation that
this is the "Persian jujube." The date is not a native of eastern Africa, nor does it
.thrive in the tropics, but it was doubtless introduced there by the Arabs (cf. F.
STORBECK, Mitt. Sem. Or. Spr., 1914, II, p. 158; A. ENGLER, Nutzpflanzen Ost-
Afrikas, p. 12).
2 Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, p. 25.
3 China and the Roman Orient, p. 204.
4 If Mo-lin was on the littoral of the Red Sea, it would certainly be an absurdity
to define its location as south-west of Jersualem.
6 Ch. 184, p. 3.
6 DOZY and DE GOEJE, Edrlsl's description de 1'Afrique, p. 56 (Leiden, 1866).
7 Cf. Chinese Clay Figures, pp. 80-81, note.
390 SlNO-lRANICA
giraffes. 1 It likewise appears in the list of countries visited by Cen Ho, 2
where Ma-lin and La-sa JJ $ft are named, the latter apparently being
identical with the older Lao-p'o-sa. 3
The Chinese knew, further, that the date thrives in the country of
the Arabs (Ta-i), 4 further, in Oman, Basra, and on the Coromandel
Coast. 5 It is pointed out, further, for Aden and Ormuz. 6
There is no doubt that the date-palm has existed in southern Persia
from ancient times, chiefly on the littoral of the Persian Gulf and in
Mekran, Baluchistan. It is mentioned in several passages of the
Bundahisn. 7 Its great antiquity in Babylonia also is uncontested
(Assyrian gi&mmaru) . 8 Strabo 9 reports how Alexander's army was
greatly distressed on its march through the barren Gedrosian desert.
The supplies had to come from a distance, and were scanty and un-
frequent, so much so that the army suffered greatly from hunger, the
beasts of burden dropped, and the baggage was abandoned. The army
was saved by the consumption of dates and the marrow of the palm-
tree. 10 Again he tells us that many persons were suffocated by eating
unripe dates. 11 Philostratus speaks of a eunuch who received Apollonius
of Tyana when he entered the Parthian kingdom, and offered him
dates of amber color and of exceptional size. 12 In the Province of Pars,
the date-palm is conspicuous almost everywhere. 13 In Babylon, Persian
and Aramaic date-palms were distinguished, the former being held in
greater esteem, as their meat perfectly detaches itself from the stone,
while it partially adheres in the Aramaic date. 14 The same distinction
1 Ta Min i t'un i, Ch. 90, p. 24.
a Min Si, Ch. 304.
I It is not Ma-lin-la-sa, the name of a single country, as made out by GROENE-
VELDT (Notes on the Malay Archipelago, p. 170).
4 T'ai p'in hwan yii ki, Ch. 186, p. 15 b.
6 HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, pp. 133, 137, 96.
'RocKHiLL, T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 609. The word to-$a-pu, not explained by
him, represents Arabic dusab ("date-wine"; see LECLERC, Traite" des simples,
Vol. II, p. 49). NOLDEKE (Persische Studien, II, p. 42) explains this word from
du$ ("honey") and Persian db ("water").
7 Above, p. 193.
8 Herodotus, i, 193; E. BONAVIA, Flora of the Assyrian Monuments, p. 3;
HANDCOCK, Mesopotamian Archaeology, pp. 12-13.
9 xv, 2, 7.
10 Cf. Theophrastus, Histor. plant., IV. iv, 13.
II Ibid., IV. iv, 5; and Pliny, xm, 9.
12 C. JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 93.
13 G. LE STRANGE, Description of the Province of Pars, pp. 31, 33, 35, 39, 40,
etc.
14 1. LOEW, Aramaeische Pflanzennamen, p. 112.
THE DATE-PALM 391
was made in the Sasanian empire: in the tax laws of Khosrau I (A.D.
531-578), four Persian date-palms were valued and taxed equally with
six common ones. 1 As already remarked, the Wei and Sm Annals
attribute the date to Sasanian Persia, and the date is mentioned in
Pahlavi literature (above, p. 193). At present dates thrive in the low
plains of Kerman and of the littoral of the Persian Gulf; but the crops
are insufficient, so that a considerable importation from Bagdad takes
place. 2
A. DE CANDOLLE 3 asserts, "No Sanskrit name is known, whence it
may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in western India
are not very ancient. The Indian climate does not suit the species."
There is the Sanskrit name kharjura for Phoenix sylvestris, that already
occurs in the Yajurveda. 4 This is the wild date or date-sugar palm,
which is indigenous in many parts of India, being most abundant in
Bengal, Bihar, on the Coromandel Coast, and in Gujarat. The edible
date (P. dactylifera) is cultivated and self-sown in Sind and the southern
Panjab, particularly near Multan, Muzaffargarh, the Sind Sagar Doab,
and in the Trans-Indus territory. It is also grown in the Deccan and
Gujarat. 5 Its Hindi name is khajura, Hindustani khajur, from Sanskrit
kharjura. It is also called sindhi, seindi, sendri, which names allude to
its origin from Sind. Possibly Sanskrit kharjura and Iranian khurma(n),
at least as far as the first element is concerned, are anciently related.
1 NOLDEKE, Tabari, p. 245.
2 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 175.
3 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 303.
4 MACDONELL and KEITH, Vedic Index, Vol. I, p. 215.
5 G. WATT, Commercial Products of India, pp. 883, 885.
THE SPINACH
36. In regard to the spinach (Spinacia oleracea), BRETSCHNEiDER 1
stated that "it is said to come from Persia. The botanists consider
western Asia as the native country of spinach, and derive the names
Spinacia, spinage, spinat, epinards, from the spinous seeds; but as the
Persian name is esfinadsh, our various names would seem more likely
to be of Persian origin." The problem is not quite so simple, however.
It is not stated straightforwardly in any Chinese source that the spinach
comes from Persia; and the name "Persian vegetable" (Po-se ts'ai) is
of recent origin, being first traceable in the Pen ts*ao kan mu, where
Li Si-Sen himself ascribes it to a certain Fan Si-yin ~i) it BL
Strangely enough, we get also in this case a taste of the Can-K'ien
myth. At least, H. L. JoLY 2 asserts, "The Chinese and Japanese Reposi-
tory says that Chang K'ien brought to China the spinach." The only
Chinese work in which I am able to find this tradition is the T'un li
38 ;S, 3 written by Ceri Tsiao JIB ffi of the Sung dynasty, who states in
cold blood that Can K'ien brought spinach over. Not even the Pen
ts'ao kan mu dares repeat this fantasy. It is plainly devoid of any
value, in view of the fact that spinach was unknown in the west as
far back as the second century B.C. Indeed, it was unfamiliar to the
Semites and to the ancients. It is a cultivation that comes to light
only in mediaeval times.
In perfect agreement with this state of affairs, spinach is not men-
tioned in China earlier than the T'ang period. As regards the literature
on agriculture, the vegetable makes its first appearance in the Cun su
$u fi & fir, written toward the end of the eighth century. ; Here it is
stated that the spinach, po-lin $ H (*pwa-lin), came from the country
Po-liii $k f|@ (*Pwa-lin, Palinga).
The first Pen ts'ao that speaks of the spinach is the Cen lei pen ts'ao
written by T'an Sen-wei in A.D. no8. 5 This Materia Medica describes
altogether 1746 articles, compared with 1118 which are treated in the
Kia yu pu u pen ts'ao (published in the period Kia-yu, A.D. 105664),
so that 628 new ones were added. These are expressly so designated in
1 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 223.
2 Legend in Japanese Art, p. 35.
3 Ch. 75, p. 32 b.
4 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 79.
6 Ch. 29, p. 14 b (print of 1587).
392
THE SPINACH 393
the table of contents preceding each chapter, and spinach ranks among
these novelties. Judging from the description here given, it must have
been a favorite vegetable in the Sung period. It is said to be particularly
beneficial to the people in the north of China, who feed on meat and
flour (chiefly in the form of vermicelli), while the southerners, who
subsist on fish and turtles, cannot eat much of it, because their water
food makes them cold, and spinach brings about the same effect. 1
The Kia yu (or hwa) lu B M (or IS) $fr by Liu Yu-si t'J 3 fll (A.D.
772-842) is cited to the effect that "po-lin 3t || was originally in the
western countries, and that its seeds came thence to China 2 in the
same manner as alfalfa and grapes were brought over by Can K'ien.
Originally it was the country of Po-lin $tt i$, and an error arose in the
course of the transmission of the word, which is not known to many at
this time."
The first and only historical reference to the matter that we have
occurs in the T'an hui yao? where it is on record, "At the time of the
Emperor T'ai Tsun (A.D. 627-649), in the twenty-first year of the period
Cen-kwan (A.D. 647), Ni-p'o-lo (Nepal) sent to the Court the vegetable
po-lin 1$ IS, resembling the flower of the hun-lan H H (Carthamus
tinctorius), the fruit being like that of the tsi-li H H (Tribulus ter-
restris). Well cooked, it makes good eating, and is savory." 4
This text represents not only the earliest datable mention of the
vegetable in Chinese records, but in general the earliest reference to it
that we thus far possess. This document shows that the plant then was
a novelty not only to the Chinese, but presumably also to the people
of Nepal; otherwise they would not have thought it worthy of being
sent as a gift to China, which was made in response to a request of the
1 JOHN GERARDE (The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, p. 260, London,
1597) remarks, "Spinach is evidently colde and moist, almost in the second degree,
but rather moist. It is one of the potherbes whose substance is waterie."
2 According to another reading, a Buddhist monk (sen) is said to have brought
the seeds over, which sounds rather plausible. G. A. STUART remarks that the herb
is extensively used by the monks in their lenten fare.
3 Ch. 200, p. 14 b (also Ch. 100, p. 3 b). Cf. Ts'efu yuan kwei, Ch. 970, p. 12,
and Pei hu lu, Ch. 2, p. 19 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
4 The T'ai p'in yu Ian (Ch. 980, p. 7) attributes this text to the T'ang Annals.
It is not extant, however, in the account of Nepal inserted in the two Tan lu, nor
in the notice of Nepal in the T'an hui yao. Pen ts'ao kan mu, T'u su tsi e'en, and
Ci wu min si Vu k'ao (Ch. 5, p. 37) correctly cite the above text from the T'an hui
yao, with the only variant that the leaves of the po-lin resemble those of the hun-
lan. The Fun si wen kien ki (Ch. 7, p. i b) by Fun Yen of the ninth century
(above, p. 232), referring to the same introduction, offers a singular name for the
spinach in the form $fc H J |j| po-lo-pa-tsao, *pa-la-bat-tsaw, or, if tsao, denot-
ing several aquatic plants, does not form part of the transcription, *pa-la-bat(bar).
394 SlNO-lRANICA
Emperor T'ai Tsuh that all tributary nations should present their
choicest vegetable products. Yuan Wen A 3$C, an author of the Sung
period, in his work Wen yu kien p'in US f$ M Jrly states that the spinach
(po-lin) comes from (or is produced in) the country Ni-p'o-lo (Nepal)
in the Western Regions. 2 The Kia yu pen ts'ao, compiled in A.D. 1057,
is the first Materia Medica that introduced the spinach into the pharma-
copoeia. 3
The colloquial name is po ts'ai t^S ("po vegetable"), po being
abbreviated for po-lin. According to Wan Si-mou : 1iir (who died
in 1591), in his Kwa su su JR IS S, the current name in northern China
is Pi ken ts*ai ffi ffi 3S (" red-root vegetable"). The Kwan k'unfan p*u
uses also the term yin-wu ts*ai ("parrot vegetable"), named for the
root, which is red, and believed to resemble a parrot. Aside from the
term Po-se ts'ai, the Pen ts'ao kan mu &' i* gives the synonymes hun
ts'ai &C3K ("red vegetable") and yan ff ts'ai ("foreign vegetable").
Another designation is $an-hu ts'ai ("coral vegetable").
A rather bad joke is perpetrated by the Min $u ISJ S, a description
of Fu-kien Province written at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of
the seventeenth centttry, where the name po-lin is explained as Jfe It
po len ("waves and edges"), because the leaves are shaped like wave-
patterns and have edges. There is nothing, of course, that the Chinese
could not etymologize. 5
There is no account in the traditions of the T'ang and Sung periods
to the effect that the spinach was derived from Persia; and in view of
the recent origin of the term "Persian vegetable," which is not even
explained, we are tempted at the outset to dismiss the theory of
a Persian origin. STUART G even goes so far as to say that, "as the Chinese
have a tendency to attribute everything that comes from the south-
west to Persia, we are not surprised to find this called Po-se ts*ao, 'Per-
1 Ch. 4, p. ii b (ed. of Wu yin Hen, 1775).
2 ft 5ft ffi B % H ^ H H- This could be translated also, "in the
Western Regions and in the country Ni-p'o-lo."
3 Ci wu min Si /' k'ao, Ch. 4, p. 38 b.
4 Ch. 8, p. 87 b.
6 Of greater interest is the following fact recorded in the same book. The
spinach in the north of China is styled "bamboo (cu ft) po-lin," with long and
bitter stems; that of Fu-kien is termed "stone (Si ^J) po-lin," and has short and
sweet stems. The Min Su, in 154 chapters, was written by Ho K'iao-yuan $5 ^
JH from Tsin-kian in Fu-kien; he obtained the degree of tsin Si in 1586 (cf. Cat. of
the Imperial Library, Ch. 74, p. 19).
8 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 417.
THE SPINACH 395
sian vegetable.' ' n There is, however, another side to the case. In all
probability, as shown by A. DE CANDOLLE, Z it was Persia where the
spinach was first raised as a vegetable; but the date given by him,
"from the time of the Graeco-Roman civilization," is far too early. 3
A. de Candolle's statement that the Arabs did not carry the plant to Spain
has already been rectified by L. LECLERC; 4 as his work is usually not in
the hands of botanists or other students using de Candolle, this may
aptly be pointed out here.
According to a treatise on agriculture (Kitab el-faldha) written by
Ibn al-Awwam of Spain toward the end of the eleventh century, spinach
was cultivated in Spain at that time. 5 Ibn Haddjaj had then even
written a special treatise on the cultivation of the vegetable, saying that
it was sown at Sevilla in January. From Spain it spread to the rest of
Europe. Additional evidence is afforded by the very name of the
plant, which is of Persian origin, and was carried by the Arabs to Europe.
The Persian designation is aspanah, aspandj or asfindj; Arabic isfenah
or isbenah. Hence Mediaeval Latin spinachium or spinariumf Spanish
1 The outcry of WAITERS (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 347) against the
looseness of the term Po-se, and his denunciation of the "Persian vegetable" as "an
example of the loose way in which the word is used," are entirely out of place. It
is utterly incorrect to say that "they have made it include, beside Persia itself, Syria,
Turkey, and the Roman Empire, and sometimes they seem to use it as a sort of
general designation for the abode of any barbarian people to the south-west of
the Middle Kingdom." Po-se is a gpod transcription of Parsa, the native designa-
tion of Persia, and strictly refers to Persia and to nought else. When F. P. Smith applied
the name po-ts*ai to Convolvulus reptans, this was one of the numerous confusions
and errors to which he fell victim. Likewise is it untrue, as asserted by Watters,
that the term has been applied even to beet and carrot and other vegetables not
indigenous in Persia. As on so many other points, Watters was badly informed on
this subject also.
2 Origin of Cultivated Plants, pp. 98-100.
3 This conclusion, again, is the immediate outcome of Bretschneider's Chang-
kienomania: for A. DE CANDOLLE says, " Bretschneider tells us that the Chinese
name signifies 'herb of Persia,' and that Western vegetables were commonly intro-
duced into China a century before the Christian era."
4 TraitS des simples, Vol. I, p. 61.
5 L. LECLERC, Histoire de la me"decine arabe, Vol. II, p. 112. The Arabic work
has been translated into French by CLEMENT-MULLET under the title Ibn al Awwam,
le livre de I'agriculture (2 vols., Paris, 1864-67). De Candolle's erroneous theory
that "the European cultivation must have come from the East about the fifteenth
century," unfortunately still holds sway, and is perpetuated, for instance, in the
last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
6 The earliest occurrence of this term quoted by Du CANGE refers to the year
1351, and is contained in the Transactio inter Abbatem et Monachos Crassenses.
Spinach served the Christian monks of Europe as well as the Buddhists of China.
O. SCHRADER (Reallexikon, p. 788) asserts that the vegetable is first mentioned by
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) under the name spinachium, but he fails to give a
396 SlNO-lRANICA
espinaca, Portuguese espinafre or espinacio, Italian spinace or spinaccio,
Provencal espinarc, Old French espinoche or epinoche, French epinard. 1
The Persian word was further adopted into Armenian spanax or
asbanax, Turkish spandk or ispandk, Comanian yspanac, Middle
Greek spinakion, Neo-Greek spanaki(on) or spanakia (plural).
There are various spellings in older English, like spynnage,
spenege, spinnage, spinage, etc. In English literature it is not men-
tioned earlier than the sixteenth century. W. TURNER, in his
"Herball" of 1568, speaks of "spinage or spinech as an her be lately
found and not long in use."
However, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, spinach was
well known and generally eaten in England. D. REMBERT DoooENS 2
describes it as a perfectly known subject, and so does JOHN GERARDE, S
who does not even intimate that it came but recently into use. The
names employed by them are Spanachea, Spinachia, Spinacheum olus,
Hispanicum olus, English spinage and spinach. JOHN PARKINSON 4
likewise gives a full description and recipes for the preparation of the
vegetable.
The earliest Persian mention of the spinach, as far as I know, is
made in the pharmacopoeia of Abu Mansur. 5 The oldest source cited
by Ibn al-Baitar (i 197-1 248) 6 on the subject is the "Book of Nabathaean
Agriculture" (Falaha nabatiya), which pretends to be the Arabic trans-
lation of an ancient Nabathsean source, and is believed to be a forgery
of the tenth century. This book speaks of the spinach as a known
vegetable and as the most harmless of all vegetables; but the most
interesting remark is that there is a wild species resembling the culti-
vated one, save that it is more slender and thinner, that the leaves are
specific reference. It is a gratuitous theory of his that the spinach must have been
brought to Europe by the Crusaders; the Arabic importation into Spain has escaped
him entirely.
1 The former derivation of the word from "Spain" or from spina ("thorn"), in
allusion to the prickly seeds, moves on the same high level as the performance of the
Min $u. Littre* cites Me"nagier of the sixteenth century to the effect, "Les espinars
sont ainsi appelle"s a cause de leur graine qui est espineuse, bien qu'il y en ait de ronde
sans piqueron." In the Supplement, Littre* points out the oriental origin of the word,
as established by Devic.
2 A Niewe Herball, or Historic of Plants, translated by H. LYTE, p. 556 (Lon-
don, 1578).
8 The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, p. 260 (London, 1597).
4 Paradisus in sole paradisus terrestris, p. 496 (London, 1629).
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 6.
8 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 60.
THE SPINACH 397
more deeply divided, and that it rises less from the ground. 1 A. DE
CANDOLLE states that "spinach has not yet been found in a wild state,
unless it be a cultivated modification of Spinacia tetandra Steven, which
is wild to the south of the Caucasus, in Turkistan, in Persia, and in
Afghanistan, and which is used as a vegetable under the name of
Samum." The latter word is apparently a bad spelling or misreading
for Persian $omm or Sumin (Armenian zomin and Somin), another'
designation for the spinach.
The spinach is not known in India except as an introduction by the
English. The agriculturists of India classify spinach among the English
vegetables. 2 The species Spinacia tetrandra Roxb., for which Rox-
BURGH 3 gives the common Persian and Arabic name for the spinach,
and of which he says that it is much cultivated in Bengal and the
adjoining provinces, being a pot-herb held in considerable estimation
by the natives, may possibly have been introduced by the Moham-
medans. As a matter of fact, spinach is a vegetable of the temperate
zones and alien to tropical regions. A genuine Sanskrit word for the
spinach is unknown. 4 Nevertheless Chinese po-lin, *pwa-lin, must
represent the transcription of some Indian vernacular name. In Hin-
dustani we have palak as designation for the spinach, and palan or
palak as name for Beta vulgaris, Pustu pdlak, 5 apparently developed
from Sanskrit pdlanka, pdlankya, palakyu, pdlakyd, to which our
dictionaries attribute the meaning "a kind of vegetable, a kind of
beet-root, Beta bengalensis"; in Bengali palun* To render the coin-
cidence with the Chinese form complete, there is also Sanskrit Palakka
1 Perhaps related to A triplex L., the so-called wild spinach, chiefly cultivated
in France and eaten like spinach. The above description, of course, must
not be construed to mean that the cultivated spinach is derived from the
so-called wild spinach of the Nabathaeans. The two plants may not be in-
terrelated at all.
2 N. G. MUKERJI, Handbook of Indian Agriculture, 2d ed., p. 300 (Calcutta,
1907); but it is incorrect to state that spinach originally came from northern Asia.
A. DE CANDOLLE (op. cit., p. 99) has already observed, "Some popular works repeat
that spinach is a native of northern Asia, but there is nothing to confirm this sup-
position."
8 Flora Indica, p. 718.
4 A. BOROOAH, in his English-Sanskrit Dictionary, gives a word $akaprabheda
with this meaning, but this simply signifies "a kind of vegetable," and is accord-
ingly an explanation.
6 H. W. BELLE w, Report on the Yusufzais, p. 255 (Lahore, 1864).
6 Beta is much cultivated by the natives of Bengal, the leaves being consumed
in stews (W. ROXBURGH, Flora Indica, p. 260). Another species, Beta maritima, is
also known as "wild spinach." It should be remembered that the genus Beta belongs
to the same family (Chenopodiaceae) as Spinacia.
398 SlNO-lRANICA
or Palaka 1 as the name of a country, which has evidently resulted in
the assertion of Buddhist monks that the spinach must come from a
country Palinga. The Nepalese, accordingly, applied a word relative
to a native plant to the newly-introduced spinach, and, together with
the product, handed this word on to China. The Tibetans never became
acquainted with the plant; the word spo ts*od, given in the Polyglot
Dictionary, 2 is artificially modelled after the Chinese term, spo (pro-
nounced po) transcribing Chinese po, and ts*od meaning " vegetable."
Due regard being paid to all facts botanical and historical, we are
compelled to admit that the spinach was introduced into Nepal from
some Iranian region, and thence transmitted to China in A.D. 647.
It must further be admitted that the Chinese designation "Persian
vegetable," despite its comparatively recent date, cannot be wholly
fictitious, but has some foundation in fact. Either in the Yuan or in
the Ming period (more probably in the former) the Chinese seem to
have learned the fact that Persia is the land of the spinach. I trust that
a text to this effect will be discovered in the future. All available his-
torical data point to the conclusion that the Persian cultivation can
be but of comparatively recent origin, and is not older than the sixth
century or so. The Chinese notice referring it to the seventh century
is the oldest in existence. Then follow the Nabathaean Book of Agri-
culture of the tenth century and the Arabic introduction into Spain
during the eleventh.
1 The latter form is noted in the catalogue of the Mahamaytirl, edited by S.
Lvi (Journal asiatique, 1915, I, p. 42).
3 Ch. 27, p. 19 b.
SUGAR BEET AND LETTUCE
37. In the preceding notes we observed that the name for a species
of Beta was transferred to the spinach in India and still serves in China
as designation for this vegetable. We have also a Sino-Iranian name
for a Beta, - H, kun-fa, *gwun-d'ar, which belonged to the choice
vegetables of the country ^ flft Mo-lu, *Mar-luk, in Arabia. 1 The
Cen su wen H V& 3&C 2 says that it is now erroneously called ken ta ts'ai
fi Jt 3 or ta ken ts'ai, which is identical with tien ts'ai "$$ 3fc (" sweet
vegetable"). STUART"* gives the latter name together with jfl j| kiin-t*a,
identifying it with Beta vulgaris, the white sugar beet, which he says
grows in China. Stuart, however, is mistaken in saying that this plant
is not mentioned in the Pen ts'ao. It is noted both in the Cen lei pen
ts*ao* and the Pen ts'ao kan muf the latter giving also the term kun-t*a,
which is lacking in the former work. Li Si-Sen observes with reference
to this term that its meaning is unexplained, a comment which usually
betrays the foreign character of the word, but he fails to state the
source from which he derived it. There is no doubt that this kiln-fa
is merely a graphic variant of the above ||. The writing J? is as
early as the T'ang period, and occurs in the Yu yan tsa tsuf where the
leaves of the yu tien ts'ao V& Ifi ^ ("herb with oily spots") are com-
pared to those of the kun-t'a. 1 A description of the kiin-t'a is not con-
tained in that work, but from this incidental reference it must be
inferred that the plant was well known in the latter half of the ninth
century.
Beta vulgaris is called in New Persian tugundur or Zegonder, and
is mentioned by Abu Mansur. 8 The corresponding Arabic word is
silk* The Chinese transcription made in the T'ang period is apparently
based on a Middle-Persian form of the type *gundar or *gundur. Beta
vulgaris is a Mediterranean and West-Asiatic plant grown as far as the
1 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 16 b.
2 Ch. 12, p. 3. This work was published in 1884 by Ho Yi-hin %$ f& ff .
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 68.
4 Ch. 28, p. 9.
5 Ch. 27, p. i b. Cf. also Yamato honzo, Ch. 5, p. 26.
6 Ch. 9, p. 9 b.
7 "On each leaf there are black spots opposite one another."
8 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 81.
9 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 274.
399
400 SlNO-lRANlCA
Caspian Sea and Persia. According to DE CANDOLLE/ its cultivation
does not date from more than three or four centuries before our era.
The Egyptian illustration brought forward by F. WoENiG 2 in favor of
the assumption of an early cultivation in Egypt is not convincing to
me.
It is therefore probable, although we have no record referring to the
introduction, that Beta vulgaris was introduced into China in the T'ang
period, perhaps by the Arabs, who themselves brought many Persian
words and products to China. For this reason Chinese records some-
times credit Persian words to the Ta-sl (Arabs); for instance, the
numbers on dice, which go as Ta-i, but in fact are Persian. 3
The real Chinese name of the plant is tien ts'ai i| , the first
character being explained in sound and meaning by ^ft tien ("sweet")-
Li Si-en identifies tien ts*ai with kiln-fa. The earliest description
of tien ts'ai comes from Su Kun of the T'ang, who compares its leaves to
those of Sen ma 51* ]tt (Actea spicata, a ranunculaceous plant), adding
that the southerners steam the sprouts and eat them, the dish being very
fragrant and fine. 4 It is not stated, however, that tien ts'ai is an im-
ported article.
38. Reference was made above to the memorable text of the Tan
hui yao, in which are enumerated the vegetable products of foreign
countries sent to the Emperor T'ai Tsun of the T'ang dynasty at his
special request in A.D. 647. After mentioning the spinach of Nepal,
the text continues thus:
"Further, there was the ts*o ts'ai B ?fS ('wine vegetable') with
broad and long leaves. 5 It has a taste like a good wine and k'u ts'ai
^ 3& ('bitter vegetable/ lettuce, Lactuca), and in its appearance is like
kil JJ , 6 but its leaves are longer and broader. Although it is somewhat
bitter of taste, eating it for a long time is beneficial. Hu k*in SB Jr
1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 59; see also his Geographic botanique, p. 831
2 Pflanzen im alten Aegypten, p. 218.
3 See Toung Pao, Vol. I, 1890, p. 95.
4 A tien ts'ai mentioned by T'ao Hun-kin, as quoted in the Pen ts'ao kan mu,
and made into a condiment la fe^ for cooking-purposes, is apparently a different
vegetable.
6 The corresponding text of the Ts'e fu yuan kwei (Ch. 970, p. 12) has the
addition, "resembling the leaves of the Sen-hwo R ^C." The text of the Pei hu
lu (Ch. 2, p. 19 b) has, "resembling in its appearance the Sen-kwo, but with leaves
broader and longer." This tree, also called kin t'ien jjt ^ (see Yu yan tsa tsu,
Ch. 19, p. 6), is believed to protect houses from fire; it is identified with Sedum erythro-
stictum or Sempervivum tectorum (BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 205;
STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 401).
6 A general term for plants like Lactuca, Cichorium, Sonchus.
SUGAR BEET AND LETTUCE 401
resembles in its appearance the k'in ?r ('celery,' Apium graveolens),
and has a fragrant flavor."
Judging from the description, the vegetable ts'o ts'ai appears to have
been a species of Lactuca, Cichorium, or Sonchus. These genera are
closely allied, belonging to the family Cichoraceae, and are confounded
by the Chinese under a large number of terms. A. DE CANDOLLE*
supposed that lettuce (Lactuca sativd) was hardly known in China at
an early date, as, according to Loureiro, Europeans had introduced it
into Macao. 2 With reference to this passage, BRETSCHNEIDER S thinks
that de Candolle "may be right, although the Pen ts*ao says nothing
about the introduction; the Sen ts'ai &. ?K (the common name of lettuce
at Peking) or pai-ku fi J? seems not to be mentioned earlier than by
writers of the T'ang (618-906)." Again, DE CANDOLLE seized on this
passage, and embodied it in his "Origin of Cultivated Plants" (p. 96).
The problem, however, is not so simple. Bretschneider must have
read the Pen ts*ao at that time rather superficially, for some species of
Lactuca is directly designated there as being of foreign origin. Again,
twenty-five years later, he wrote a notice on the same subject, 4 in which
not a word is said about foreign introduction, and from which, on the
contrary, it would appear that Lactuca, Cichorium, and Sonchus, have
been indigenous to China from ancient times, as the bitter vegetable
(k*u ts'ai) is already mentioned in the Pen kin and Pie lu. The terms
pai ku 6 J? and k'u ku i g are supposed to represent Cichorium
endima; and wo-ku jS H, Lactuca sativa. In explanation of the latter
name, Li Si-cen cites the Mo k'o hui si SI 3tr W JP by P'eii C'efi ^ Si,
who wrote in the first half of the eleventh century, as saying that wo
ts'ai 1$j ^ ("wo vegetable") came from the country f^i Kwa, and hence
received its name. 5 The Ts'in i lu W M ^, a work by T'ao Ku PU WL
of the Sung period, says that "envoys from the country Kwa came
to China, and at the request of the people distributed seeds of a vegetable;
they were so generously rewarded that it was called ts'ien kin ts'ai
^^56 ('vegetable of a thousand gold pieces'); now it is styled wo-
1 Geographic botanique, p. 843.
2 This certainly is a weak argument. The evidence, in fact, proves nothing.
Europeans also introduce their own sugar and many other products of which China
has a great plenty.
3 Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 223.
4 Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 257.
5 1 do not know how STUART (p. 229) gets at the definition "in the time of the
Han dynasty." The same text is also contained in the Su po wu ci (Ch. 7, p. I b),
written by Li Si ^ ^ about the middle of the twelfth century.
402 SlNO-lRANICA
ku.' n These are vague and puerile anecdotes, without chronological
specification. There is no country Kwa, which is merely distilled from
the character j%, and no such tradition appears in any historical text. 2
The term wo-kil was well known under the T'ang, being mentioned in
the Pen ts*ao U i of C'en Ts'an-k'i, who distinguishes a white and a
purple variety, but is silent as to the point of introduction. 3 This
author, however, as can be shown by numerous instances, had a keen
sense of foreign plants and products, and never failed to indicate them
as such. There is no evidence for the supposition that Lactuca was
introduced into China from abroad. All there is to it amounts to this,
that, as shown by the above passage of the T'an hui yao, possibly supe-
rior varieties of the West were introduced.
In Persia, Lactuca sativa (Persian kahu) occurs both wild and culti-
vated. 4 Cichoreum is kasnl in Persian, hindubd in Arabic and Osmanli. 5
39. The hu k*in, mentioned in the above text of the T'an hui yao,
possibly represents the garden celery, Apium graveolens (Persian kerefs
or karqfs) (or possibly parsley, Apium petroselinum) of the west. 6 It
appears to be a different plant from the hu k'in mentioned above (p. 196).
Hu k'in is likewise mentioned among the best vegetables of the
country ~M jjft Mo-lu, *Mwat-luk, Mar-luk, in Arabia. 7
In order to conclude the series of vegetables enumerated in the
text of the T'an hui yao, the following may be added here.
In A.D. 647 the king of Gandhara (in north-western India) sent to
the Chinese Court a vegetable styled fu-t'u IS i & ("Buddha-land
vegetable")? each stem possessing five leaves, with red flowers, a yellow
pith, and purple stamens. 8
1 I have looked up the text of the Ts'in i lu, which is reprinted in the T'an Sufi
ts'un $u and Si yin huan ts'un Su. The passage in question is in Ch. 2, p. 7 b, and
printed in the same manner as in the Pen ts'ao kan mu, save that the country is called
Kao iilj, not Kwa jB5j. It is easy to see that these two characters could be con-
founded, and that only one of the two can be correct; but Kao does not help us any
more than Kwa. Either name is fictitious as that of a country.
2 We have had several other examples of alleged names of countries being
distilled out of botanical names.
3 K'ou Tsun-sl is likewise; see his Pen ts'ao yen i (Ch. 19, p. 2).
* SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 337.
5 See ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 146; E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 134; LECLERC,
Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 28.
6 Cf. ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. no, 257. Celery is cultivated only in a few
gardens of Teheran, but it grows spontaneously and abundantly in the mountains
of the Bakhtiaris (SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 43).
7 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 16 b.
8 T'an hui yao, Ch. 200, p. 4 b; and T'an $u, Ch. 221 B, p. 7. The name of
Gandhara is abbreviated into *d'ar, but in the corresponding passage of the T'an
hui yao (Ch. 100, p. 3 b) and in the Ts'e fu yuan kwei (Ch. 970, p. 12) the name is
written completely $ jjj^ Kien-ta, *G'an-d'ar.
RICINUS
40. In regard to Ricinus communis (family Euphorbiaceae) the
accounts of the Chinese are strikingly deficient and unsatisfactory.
There can be no doubt that it is an introduced plant in China, as it
occurs there only in the cultivated state, and is not mentioned earlier
than the T'ang period (618-906) with an allusion to the Hu. 1 Su Kun
states in the Tan pen ts*ao, "The leaves of this plant which is culti-
vated by man resemble those of the hemp (Cannabis saliva), being very
large. The seeds look like cattle-ticks (niu pei 3r ft) . 2 The stems of
that kind which at present comes from the Hu 3 are red and over ten
feet high. They are of the size of a tsao kia & ^ (Gleditschia sinensis).
The kernels are the part used, and they are excellent." It would seem
from this report that two kinds of Ricinus are assumed, one presumably
the white-stemmed variety known prior to Su Kun's time, and the red-
stemmed variety introduced in his age. Unfortunately we receive no
information as to the exact date and provenience of the introduction.
The earliest mention of the plant is made by Herodotus, 4 who
ascribes it to the Egyptians who live in the marshes and use the oil
pressed from the seeds for anointing their bodies. He calls the plant
sillikyprion? and gives the Egyptian name as kiki* In Hellas it grows
spontaneously (avr6/zara <verai), but the Egyptians cultivate it along
: the banks of the rivers and by the sides of the lakes, where it produces
fruit in abundance, which, however, is malodorous. This fruit is
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 17 A, p. n. BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871,
i p. 242) says that it cannot be decided from Chinese books whether Ricinus is in-
digenous to China or not, and that the plant is not mentioned before the T'ang.
! The allusion to the Hu escaped him.
2 Hence the name J or ^ Jfc pei ma (only in the written language) for the
j plant (Peking colloquial ta ma, "great hemp "). This etymology has already been ad-
vanced by Su Sun of the Sung and confirmed by Li Si-Sen, who explains the insect as
I the "louse of cattle." This interpretation appears to be correct, for it represents a
| counterpart to Latin ricinus, which means a "tick": Nostri earn ricinum vocant a
j similitudine seminis (Pliny, xv, 7, 25). The Chinese may have hit upon this simile
j independently, or, what is even more likely, received it with the plant from the West.
3 This appears to be the foundation for STUART'S statement (Chinese Materia
j Medica, p. 378) that the plant was introduced from "Tartaiy."
4 n, 94.
5 The common name was *cp6rwp (Theophrastus, Hist, plant., I. x, i), Latin
croton.
6 This word has not yet been traced in the hieroglyphic texts, but in Coptic.
In the demotic documents Ricinus is deqam (V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 49).
403
404 SlNO-lRANICA
gathered, and either pounded and pressed or roasted and boiled, and
the oily fluid is collected. It is found to be unctuous and not inferior to
olive-oil for burning in lamps, save that it emits a disagreeable odor.
Seeds of Ricinus are known from Egyptian tombs, and the plant is still
cultivated in Egypt. Pliny 1 states that it is not so long ago that the
plant was introduced into Italy. A. DE CANDOLLE 2 traces its home to
tropical Africa, and I agree with this view. Moreover, I hold that it was
transplanted from Egypt to India, although, of course, we have no
documentary proof to this effect. Ricinus does not belong to the plants
which were equally known to the Iranians and Indo-Aryans. It is not
mentioned in the Vedas or in the Laws of Manu. 3 The first datable
references to it occur in the Bower Manuscript, where its oil and root
are pointed out under the names eranda, gandharva, rubugaka, and
vaksana. Other names are ruvu, ruvuka, or ruvuka, citraka, gandharva-
hastaka, vydghrapuccha ("tiger's-tail"). The word eranda has become
known to the Chinese in the form i-lan ffi BU, 4 and was adopted into the
language of Ku5a (Tokharian B) in the form hiranda. 5 From India
the plant seems to have spread to the Archipelago and Indo-China
(Malayan, Sunda, and Javanese farak; Khmer lohon; Annamese du du
tran, kai-dua, or kai-du-du-tia; Cam tamnon, lahaun, lahon). 6 The
Miao and the Lo-lo appear to be familiar with the plant: the former
call it zrwa-no; 7 the latter, Pe-tu-ma (that is, "fruit for the poisoning
of dogs"). 8
In Iran the cultivation of Ricinus has assumed great importance,
but no document informs us as to the time of its transplantation. It
may be admitted, however, that it was well known there prior to our
era. 9 The Persian name is bedanjir, pandu, punde, or pendu; in Arabic
it is xarva or xirua.
1 xv, 7, 25.
2 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 422.
3 JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 270.
4 Fan yi min yi tsi, section 24.
5 S. Lvi, Journal asiatique, 1911, II, p. 123.
6 On the cultivation in Indo-China, see PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. me"d. et
pharmacope'e sino-annamites, p. 107. Regarding the Archipelago, see A. DE CAN-
DOLLE, op. cit., p. 422; W. MARSDEN, History of Sumatra, p. 92; J. CRAWFURD,
History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 382. The plant is reported wild from
Sumatra and the Philippines, but the common Malayan name jarak hints at an
historical distribution.
7 F. M. SAVINA, Dictionnaire miao-tseu-frangais, pp. 205, 235.
8 P. VIAL, Dictionnaire francais-lolo, p. 290. Also the Arabs used Ricinus as a
dog-poison (LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 20).
9 JORET, op. cit., p. 72.
THE ALMOND
41. Iran was the centre from which the almond (Amygdalus corn-
munis or Prunus amygdalus) spread, on the one hand to Europe, and on
the other to China, Tibet, and India. As to India, it is cultivated but
occasionally in Kashmir and the Panjab, where its fruits are mediocre.
It was doubtless imported there from Iran. The almond yields a gum
which is still exported from Persia to Bombay, and thence re-exported
to Europe. 1 The almond grows spontaneously in Afghanistan and
farther to the north-east in the upper Zarafshan valley, and in the
Chotkal mountains at an altitude of ^1000-1300 m, also in Aderbeidjan,
Kurdistan, and Mesopotamia. According to SCHLIMMER, Z Amygdalus
coparia is very general on the high mountains, and its timber yields
the best charcoal. 3
The Greeks derived the almond from Asia Minor, and from Greece
it was apparently introduced into Italy. 4 In the northern part of Media,
the people subsisted upon the produce of trees, making cakes of apples,
sliced and dried, and bread of roasted almonds. 5 A certain quantity of
dried sweet almonds was to be furnished daily for the table of the
Persian kings. 6 The fruit is mentioned in Pahlavi literature (above,
P. 193).
The Yin yai Sen Ian mentions almonds among the fruit grown in
Aden. 7 The Arabic name is lewze or lauz. Under this name the medicinal
properties of the fruit are discussed in the Persian pharmacopoeia of
Abu Mansur, who knew both the sweet almond (bdddm-i Slrin) and the
bitter one (bdddm-i talx). s It is curious that bitter almonds were used
as currency in the empire of the Moguls. They were brought into the
1 G. WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 905; and Dictionary, Vol. VI,
P- 343- JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 279. W. ROXBURGH (Flora
Indica, p. 403) concluded that the almond is a native of Persia and Arabia, whereas
it does not succeed in India, requiring much nursing to keep it alive.
2 Terminologie, p. 33.
3 A really wild almond is said to be very common in Palestine and Syria (A.
AARONSOHN, Agric. and Bot. Explorations in Palestine, p. 14).
4 HEHN, Kulturpflanzen, pp. 393, 402; FLUCKIGER and HANBURY, Pharma-
cographia, pp. 244, 245.
5 STRABO, XI. xm, n.
6 Polyaenus, Strategica, IV, 32.
7 ROCKHILL, Toung Pao, 1915, p. 609.
8 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 128.
405
406 SlNO-lRANICA
province of Gujarat from Persia, where they grow in dry and arid
places between rocks; they are as bitter as colocynth, and there is no
fear that children will amuse themselves by eating them. 1
What WATTERS 2 has stated about the almond is for the greater part
inexact or erroneous. "For the almond which does not grow in China
the native authors and others have apparently only the Persian name
which is Badan. This the Chinese transcribe pa-tan A J8 or EL IL and
perhaps also, as suggested by Bretschneider, pa-Ian ffi 81." First, the
Persian name for the almond is bdddm; second, the Chinese characters
given by Watters are not apt to transcribe this word, as the former
series answers to ancient *pat-dam, the latter to *pa-dan. Both A
and C< only had an initial labial surd, but never a labial sonant, and
for this reason could not have been chosen for the transcription of a
foreign ba in the T'ang period, when the name of the almond made its
dbut in China. Further, the character Jl, which was not possessed
of a final labial nasal, would make a rather bad reproduction of the
required element dam. In fact, the characters given by Watters are
derived from the Pen ts*ao kan mu, 3 and represent merely a comparative-
ly modern readjustment of the original form made at a time when
the transposition of sonants into surds had taken effect. The first form
given by Watters, as stated in the Pen ts'ao itself, is taken from the
Yin fan len yao (see p. 236), written by Ho Se-hwi during the Yuan
period; while the second form is the work of Li Si-Sen, as admitted by
himself, and accordingly has no phonetic value whatever. 4 Indeed, we
have a phonetically exact transcription of the Iranian term, handed
down from the T'ang period, when the Chinese still enjoyed the pos-
session of a well-trained ear, and, in view of the greater wealth of sounds
then prevailing in their speech, also had the faculty of reproducing
them with a fair degree of precision. This transcription is presented by
1 $ p*o-tan, *bwa-dam, almond (Amygdalus communis or Prunus
amygdalus), which actually reproduces Middle Persian vadam, New
Persian bdddm (Kurd badem, be'iv and baif, "almond-tree"). 5 This term,
1 TA VERNIER, Travels in India, Vol. I, p. 27.
2 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 348.
8 Ch. 29, p. 4. Hence adopted also by the Japanese botanists (MATSUMURA,
No. 2567), but read amendo (imitation of our word).
4 He further gives as name for the almond hu-lu-ma % ^ = Persian xurmd
(khurmd), but this word properly refers to the date (p. 385). From the Ta Min i
t'un ci (Ch. 89, p. 24), where the almonds of Herat are mentioned, it appears that
hu-lu-ma (xurmd) was the designation of a special variety of almond, "resembling
a jujube and being sweet."
6 The assertion of STUART (Chinese Materia Medica,p.4o),that pa-tan may refer
to some country in Asia Minor or possibly be another name for Persia, is erroneous.
THE ALMOND 407
as far as I know, is first mentioned in the Yu yah tsa tsu, 1 where it is
said, "The flat peach iM Ift grows in the country Po-se (Persia), where
it is styled p'o-tan. The tree reaches a height of from fifty to sixty feet,
and has a circumference of four or five feet. Its leaves resemble those
of the peach, but are broader and larger. The blossoms, which are
white in color, appear in the third month. When the blossoms drop, the
formation of the fruit has the appearance of a peach, but the shape
is flat. Hence they are called 'flat peaches.' The meat is bitter and
acrid, and cannot be chewed; the interior of the kernel, however, is
sweet, and is highly prized in the Western Regions and all other coun-
tries." Although the fact of the introduction of the plant into China
is not insisted upon by the author, Twan C'en-si, his description, which
is apparently based on actual observation, may testify to a cultivation
in the soil of his country. This impression is corroborated by the testi-
mony of the Arabic merchant Soleiman, who wrote in A.D. 851, and
enumerates almonds among the fruit growing in China. 2 The cor-
rectness of the Chinese reproduction of the Iranian name is confirmed
by the Tibetan form ba-dam, Uigur and Osmanli badam, and Sanskrit
vdtdma or bddama, derived from the Middle Persian. 3
The fundamental text of the Yu yah tsa tsu has unfortunately es-
caped Li Si-Sen, author of the Pen ts'ao kah mu, and he is accordingly
led to the vague definition that the almond comes from the old terri-
tory of the Mohammedans; in his time, he continues, the tree occurred
in all places West of the Pass (Kwan si; that is, Kan-su and Sen-si).
The latter statement is suppressed in BRETSCHNEIDER'S translation of
the text, 4 probably because it did not suit his peremptory opinion that
the almond-tree does not occur in China. He did not know, either, of
the text of the Yu yah tsa tsu, and his vague data were adopted, by A.
DE CANDOLLE. 5
LouREiRO 6 states that the almond is both wild and cultivated in
1 Ch. 18, p. 10 b.
2 M. REINAUD, Relation des voyages, Vol. I, p. 22.
3 Cf. the writer's Loan- Words in Tibetan, No. in. It should be repeated also
in this place that the Tibetan term p*a-tin t which only means "dried apricots,"
bears no relation to the Persian designation of the almond, as wrongly asserted by
Watters. The almond is also known to the Lo-lo (Nyi Lo-lo ni-ma, Ahi Lo-lo
i-ni-zo, i-sa).
4 Chinese Recorder, 1870, p. 176.
5 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 219. He speaks erroneously of the Pen ts*ao
published in the tenth or eleventh century. Bretschneider, of course, meant the
Pen ts'ao of the sixteenth century.
6 Flora cochinchinensis, p. 316. PERROT and HURRIER (Matiere me"dicale et
pharm. sino-annamites, p. 153) have an Amygdalus cochinchinensis for Annam.
408 SlNO-lRANICA
China. Bunge says that it is commonly cultivated in North China; but
that recent botanists have not seen it in South China, and the one
cultivated near Peking is Prunus davidiana, a variety of P. persica. 1
These data, however, are not in harmony with Chinese accounts which
attribute the cultivation of the almond to China; and it hardly sounds
plausible that the Chinese should confound with this tree the apricot,
which has been a native of their country from time immemorial.
WAITERS asserts that "the Chinese have mixed up the foreign almond
with their native apricot. The name of the latter is hin &, and the
kernels of its fruit, when dried for food, are called hin-Zen -2F C. This
name is given also to the kernels of almonds as imported into China
from their resemblance in appearance and to some extent in taste to
the seeds of apricots." The fact that almond-meat is styled " apricot-
kernel" does not prove that there is a confusion between hin and hih-
Zen, or between almond and apricot. The confusion may be on the
part of foreigners who take apricot-kernels for almonds. 2
It has been stated by BRETSCHNEIDER S that the word pa-Ian ffi 8f
(*pa-lam), used by the travellers Ye-lu C'u-ts'ai and C'aii C'un, might
transcribe the Persian word bdddm. This form first appears in the Sun
Si (Ch. 490) in the account of Fu-lin, where the first element is written
phonetically E<, 4 so that the conclusion is almost warranted that this
word was transmitted from a language spoken in Fu-lin. In all prob-
ability, the question is of a Fu-lin word of the type palam or par am (per-
haps *faram, fram, or even *spram).
The fruit pa-Ian must have been known in China during the Sung,
for it is mentioned by Fan C'en-ta ? J$c ;Jc (1126-93), m h* 8 Kwei hai
yu hen &', 5 in the description of the Si li 35 HI (Aleurites triloba), which
1 BRETSCHNEIDER, Early Researches into the Flora of China, p. 149; FORBES
and HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXIII, p. 217. W. C. BLASDALE (Descrip-
tion of Some Chinese Vegetable Food Materials, p. 48, Washington, 1899) men-
tions a peculiar variety of the almond imported from China into San Francisco.
The almond is cultivated in China according to K. v. SCHERZER (Berichte osterr.
Exped. nach Siam, China und Japan, p. 96). L. DE REINACH (Le Laos, p. 280)
states that almond-trees grow in the northern part of Laos.
2 F. N. MEYER (Agricultural Explorations in the Orchards of China, p. 53)
supposes erroneously that the consumption of apricot-kernels has given rise to the
statement that almonds grow in China. Cf. SCHLEGEL'S Nederlandsch-Chineesch
Woordenboek, Vol. I, p. 226.
3 Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 20.
4 Cf. HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 63. His identification with
Greek /SAXewos, which refers only to the acorn, a wild fruit, is hardly satisfactory,
for phonetic and historical reasons. For Hirth's translation of iJF by "almonds"
in the same clause read "apricots."
5 Ed. of Ci pu tsu tai ts'un $u, p. 24.
THE ALMOND 409
is said to be like pa-lan-tse. In the Gazetteer of C'en-te fu, pa-Ian %en
C is given as a variety of apricot. 1
Ho Yi-hin, in his Cen SH wen, published in i884, 2 observes that "at
present the people of the capital style the almond pa-ta El 38, which is
identical with pa-tan EL JL. The people of Eastern Ts'i 3K ^ (San-tun)
call the almond, if it is sweet and fine, cen hin tit 1*F (hazel-nut apricot),
because it has the taste of hazel-nuts. 3 According to the Hian tsu pi ki
^ SL ^ n, a certain kind of almond, styled 'almond of the I wu hui
Park' ^ % It ?E, is exported from Herat ^ 28!. At present it occurs
in the northern part of China. The fruit offered in the capital is large
and sweet, that of San-tun is small with thin and scant meat."
The old tradition concerning the origin of the almond in Persia
is still alive in modern Chinese authors. The Gazetteer of San-se cou
in the prefecture of T'ai-p'in, Kwan-si Province, states that the
flat peach is a cultivation of the country Po-se (Persia). 4 The tree
is (or was) cultivated in that region. Also the Hwa mu siao li ffi /fC
*h nS (p. 29 b) 5 testifies to indigenous cultivation by saying that almond-
trees grow near the east side of mountains. It may be, of course, that
the almond has shared the fate of the date-palm, and that its cultiva-
tion is now extinct in China. 6
1 O. FRANKE, Beschreibung des Jehol-Gebietes, p. 75.
2 Ch. 12, p. 5 b (see above, p. 399).
3 This observation is also made by Li Si-c"en.
4 San-se cou ci _h & #| ;, Ch. 14, p. 7 b (published in 1835).
5 Published in the 'un ts'ao fan tsi if IpL ^ jft during the period Tao-kwan
(1820-50).
6 HAUER (Erzeugnisse der Provinz Chili, Mitt. Sem. or. Spr., 1908, p. 14) men-
tions almonds, large and of sweet flavor, as a product of the district of Mi-vim in Ci-H,
and both sweet and bitter almonds as cultivated in the district of Lwan-p'in in
the prefecture of C'en-te (Jehol), the annual outpu of the latter locality being
given as a hundred thousand catties, a hardly credible figure should almonds
really be involved. Hauer's article is based on the official reports submitted by the
districts to the Governor-General of the Province in 1904; and the term rendered
by him "almond" in the original is ta pien fen ^ JH ^ apparently a local or
colloquial expression which I am unable to trace in any dictionary. It is at any
rate questionable whether it has the meaning "almond. " O. FRANKE, in his description
of the Jehol territory, carefully deals with the flora and products of that region
without mentioning almonds, nor are they referred to in the Chinese Gazetteer
of C'en-te fu.
THE FIG
42. The fig (Ficus carica) is at present cultivated in the Yang-tse
valley as a small, irregular shrub, bearing a fruit much smaller and
inferior in quality to the Persian species. 1 According to the Pen ts'ao
kan mu, its habitat is Yan-cou (the lower Yang-tse region) and Yun-
nan. In his time, Li Si-cen continues, it was cultivated also in Ce-
kian, Kian-su, Hu-pei, Hu-nan, Fu-kien, and Kwafi-tun (^ ^ IMJ )
by means of twigs planted in the ground. The latter point is of par-
ticular interest in showing that the process of caprification has remained
unknown to the Chinese, and, in fact, is not mentioned in their works.
The fig is not indigenous to China; but, while there is no information in
Chinese records as to the when and how of the introduction, it is per-
fectly clear that the plant was introduced from Persia and India, not
earlier than the T'ang period.
The following names for the fig are handed down to us:
(1) Po-se (Persian) H B o-&, *a-zit(zir) (or M H a-yi, *a-yik), 2
corresponds to an Iranian form without n, as still occurs in Kurd heffir
or ezir. There is another reading, ^fi tsan, which is not at the outset
to be rejected, as has been done by WATTERS S and HiRTH. 4 The Pen
ts'ao kan mu 5 comments that the pronunciation of this character (and
this is apparently an ancient gloss) should be >!! fru, *dzu, *tsu, *ts'u,
so that we obtain *adzu, *atsu, *ats'u. This would correspond to an
ancient Iranian form *aju* At any rate, the Chinese transcriptions, in
whatever form we may adopt them, have nothing to do with New
Persian anjlr, as asserted by Hirth, but belong to an older stage of
Iranian speech, the Middle Persian.
(2) ft H yin-ti* *aii-z"it(r). This is not "apparently a tran-
1 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 174. The Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao (Ch. 36,
p. 2), however, speaks of the fig of Yun-nan as a large tree. According to F. N.
MEYER (Agricultural Explorations in the Orchards of China, p. 47), the fig is grown
in northern China only as an exotic, mostly in pots and tubs. In the milder parts of
the country large specimens are found here and there in the open. He noticed black
and white varieties. They are cultivated in San-hwa ^j? 'ffc in the prefecture of
C'an-a, Hu-nan (San hwa hien i, Ch. 16, p. 15 b, ed. 1877), also in the prefecture
of Sun-t'ien, Ci-li (Kwan-su Sun t'ienfu ci, Ch. 50, p. 10).
Yu yan tsa tsu, Ch. 18, p. 13.
Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 349.
Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, p. 20.
Ch. 31, p. 9.
Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 31, p. 26.
410
THE FIG 411
scription of Hindustani anjir," as affirmed by Hirth, but of New Persian
anjlr or enjlr, the Hindustani (as well as Sanskrit anjira) being simply
borrowed from the Persian; Bukhara injir, Afghan intsir; Russian
indzarn.
(3) Fu-lin Jt IB ti-ni or ti-cen 3^ or *B (*ti-tsen, *ti-ten) ; the latter
variant is not necessarily to be rejected, as is done by Hirth. Cf.
Assyrian tittu (from *tintu); Phoenician tin; Hebrew ti'nu, te'enah; 1
Arabic tin, tine, tima; Aramaic ts'mta, tenta, tena; Pahlavi tin (Semitic
loan-word). The Semitic name is said to have taken its starting-point
from south-eastern Arabia, where also, in the view of the botanists, the
origin of fig-culture should be sought; but in view of the Assyrian
word and the antiquity of the fig in Assyria, 2 this theory is not probable.
There is no doubt that the Chinese transcription answers to a Semitic
name; but that this is the Aramaic name, as insisted on by Hirth in
favor of his theory that the language of Fu-lin should have been Aramaic,
is not cogent. The transcription ti-ni, on the contrary, is much nearer
to the Arabic, Phoenician, and Hebrew forms. 3
(4) ft 5 $ (or better &) yu-Van-po, *u-dan-pat(par), *u-dan-
bar = Sanskrit udambara (Ficus glomerata)* According to Li Si-6en,
this name is current in Kwan-tun.
(5) M 36 ^ wu hwa kwo ("flowerless fruit"), 5 Japanese icijiku.
The erroneous notion that the fig-tree does not bloom is not peculiar
to Albertus Magnus, as Hirth is inclined to think, but goes back to
times of antiquity, and occurs in Aristotle and Pliny. 6 This wrong
observation arose from the fact that the flowers, unlike those of most
fruit-trees, make no outward appearance, but are concealed within the
1 In the so-called histories of the fig concocted by botanists for popular consump-
tion, one can still read the absurdity that Latin ficus is to be derived from Hebrew
feg. Such a Hebrew word does not exist. What does exist in Hebrew, is the word pag,
occurring only in Canticle (n, 13), which, however, is not a general term for the fig,
but denotes only a green fig that did not mature and that remained on the tree during
the winter. Phonetically it is impossible to connect this Hebrew word with the Latin
one. In regard to the fig among the Semites, see, above all, the excellent article of
E. LEVESQUE in the Dictionnaire de la Bible (Vol. II, col. 2237).
2 E. BONAVIA, Flora of the Assyrian Monuments, p. 14.
3 It is surprising to read Hirth's conclusion that "ti-ni is certainly much nearer
the Aramean word than the Greek <rvicfj [better amov] for fig, or tptveds for capri-
ficus." No one has ever asserted, or could assert, that these Greek words are derived
from Semitic; their origin is still doubtful (see SCHRADER in Hehn, Kulturpflanzen,
p. 100).
4 Fan yi min yi tsi, Ch. 8, p. 5.
5 Also other fruits are described under this name (see Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao,
Ch. 1 6, pp. 58-60). The terms under 4 and 5 are identified by Kao Si-ki ^ T -^
in his Tien lu Siyii^J^^ f| (Ch. A, p. 60, published in 1690, ed. of Swo lin).
6 xvi, 39.
412 SlNO-lRANICA
fruit on its internal surface. On cutting open a fig when it has attained
little more than one-third its size, the flowers will be seen in full develop-
ment. 1
The common fig-tree (Ficus caricd) is no less diffused over the Iran-
ian plateau than the pomegranate. The variety rupestris is found in
the mountains Kuh-Kiluyeh; and another species, Ficus johannis,
occurs in Afghanistan between Tebbes and Herat, as well as in Baluchis-
tan. 2 In the mountain districts of the Taurus, Armenia, and in the
Iranian table-lands, fig-culture long ago reached a high development.
Toward the east it has spread to Khorasan, Herat, Afghanistan, as well
as to Merw and Khiwa. 3 There can be no doubt, either, that the fig was
cultivated in Sasanian Persia; for it is mentioned in Pahlavi literature
(above, p. 192), and we have a formal testimony to this effect in the
Annals of the Liang dynasty, which ascribe udambara to Po-se (Persia)
and describe the blossoms as charming. 4 In India, as stated, this term
refers to Ficus glomerata; in China, however, it appears to be also used
for Ficus carica. Huan Tsafi 5 enumerates udambara among the fruits
of India.
Strabo 6 states that in Hyrcania (in Bactria) each fig-tree annually
produced sixty medimni (one bushel and a half) of fruit. According to
Herodotus, 7 Croesus was dissuaded from his expedition against Cyrus
on the plea that the Persians did not even drink wine, but merely water,
nor did they have figs for sustenance. This, of course, is an anecdote
without historical value, for we know surely enough that the ancient
Persians possessed both grapes and wine. Another political anecdote
of the Greeks is that of Xerxes, who, by having Attic figs served at his
meals, was daily reminded of the fact that the land where they grow was
not yet his own. The new discovery of the presence of figs in ancient
Babylonia warrants the conclusion that they were likewise known and
consumed in ancient Persia.
We have no means of ascertaining as to when and how the fig
spread from Iran to China. The Yu yan tsa tsu is reticent as to the
transmission, and merely describes the tree as existing in Fu-lin and
1 LINDLEY and MOORE, Treasury of Botany, pt. I, p. 492.
2 C. JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 45.
3 G. EISEN, The Fig: Its History, Culture, and Curing, p. 20 (U. S. Department
of Agriculture, Washington, 1901).
4 Lian $u, Ch. 54, p. 14 b. Read yu-t'an-po instead of yu-po-t'an, as there printed
through an oversight.
6 Ta ran si yu ki, Ch. 2, p. 8.
II. I, 14.
7 1, 7L
THE FIG 413
Persia. 1 We have, however, the testimony of the Arabic merchant Solei-
man, who wrote in A.D. 851, to the effect that the fig then belonged to
the fruits of China. 2
Bret Schneider has never written on the subject, but did communicate
some notes to the botanist Solms-Laubach, from whom they were taken
over by G. EiSEN. 3 Here we are treated to the monstrous statement,
"The fig is supposed to have reached China during the reign of the
Emperor Tschang-Kien [sic!], who fitted out an expedition to Turan
in the year 127 A.D." [sic!]. It is safe to say that Bretschneider could
not have perpetrated all this nonsense; but, discounting the obvious
errors, there remains the sad fact that again he credited Can K'ien with
an introduction which is not even ascribed to him by any Chinese text.
It is not necessary to be more Chinese than the Chinese, and this
Changkienomania is surely disconcerting. What a Hercules this Can
K'ien must have been ! It has never happened in the history of the world
that any individual ever introduced into any country such a stupendous
number of plants as is palmed off on him by his epigone admirers.
Li Si-cen, in his notice of the "flowerless fruit," does not fall back
on any previous Pen ts*ao; of older works he invokes only the Yu yan
tsa tsu and the Fan yu li 3f ]U J, which mention the udambara of
Kwan-si.
The fig of Yun-nan deserves special mention. Wu K'i-tsun,
author of the excellent botanical work Ci wu min $i t'u k'ao, has de-
voted a special chapter (Ch. 36) to the plants of Yun-nan, the first of
these being the yu-t'an (udambara) flower, accompanied by two illus-
trations. From the texts assembled by him it becomes clear that this
tree was introduced into Yiin-nan from India by Buddhist monks.
Among other stories, he repeats that regarding the monk P'u-t'i(Bodhi)-
pa-po, which has been translated by C. SAiNSON; 4 but whereas Yan Sen,
in his Nan'Zao ye &', written in 1550, said that one of these trees planted
by the monk was still preserved in the Temple of the Guardian Spirit
rh 3k US of Yiin-nan fu, Wu K'i-tsun states after the Yun-nan t'un ci
that for a long time none remained in existence, owing to the ravages
and burnings of troops. Judging from the illustration, the fig-tree of
Yun-nan is a species different from Ficus carica. The genus Ficus
1 Contrary to what is stated by A. DE CANDOLLE (Origin of Cultivated Plants,
p. 296) after Bretschneider. But the description of the fig in that Chinese work
leaves no doubt that the author speaks from observation, and that the fig,
accordingly, was cultivated in the China of his time.
2 M. REINAUD, Relation des voyages, Vol. I, p. 22.
3 Op. cit., p. 20.
4 Histoire du Nan-Tchao, p. 196.
414 SlNO-lRANICA
comprises nearly a hundred and sixty species, and of the cultivated fig
there is a vast number of varieties.
According to the Yamato-honzo 1 of 1709, figs (icijiku) were first
introduced into Nagasaki in the period Kwan-ei Hi 7K (1624-44) from
the islands in the South-Western Ocean. This agrees with E. KAEM-
pFER's 2 statement that figs were brought into Japan and planted by
Portuguese.
1 Ch. 10, p. 26 b.
2 History of Japan, Vol. I, p. 180 (ed. reprinted Glasgow, 1906).
THE OLIVE
43. The Yu yan tsa tsu 1 has the following notice of an exotic plant:
"The ts'i-t'un ^ ^ (*dzi-tun, *zi-tun) tree has its habitat in the coun-
try Po-se (Persia), likewise in the country Fu-lin (Syria). In Fu-lin it
is termed ^ M ts*i-t*i* (*dzi, zi-ti). The tree grows to a height of twenty
or thirty feet. The bark is green, the flowers are white, resembling
those of the shaddock (yu tt, Citrus grandis), and very fragrant.
The fruit is similar to that of the yan-t'ao Ul fft (Averrhoa carambold)
and ripens in the fifth month. The people of the Western countries
press an oil out of it for frying cakes and fruit, in the same man-
ner as sesame seeds (ku-$en E 0) 3 are utilized in China."
The transcription ts*i-t*un has been successfully identified by HiRTH 4
with Persian zeitun, save that we have to define this form as Middle
Persian; and Fu-lin ts*i-Vi with Aramaic zaita (Hebrew zayitf). This
is the olive-tree (Olea Europaea). 5 The Persian word is a loan from
the Semitic, the common Semitic form being *zeitu (Arabic zeitun) . It
is noteworthy that the Fu-lin form agrees more closely with Grusinian
and Ossetic zet'i, Armenian jet, dzet ("olive-oil"), zeit ("olive"), Arabic
zaitf than with the Aramaic word. The olive-tree, mentioned in
Pahlavi literature (above, p. 193), grows spontaneously in Persia and
Baluchistan, but the cultivated species was in all likelihood received
by the Iranians (as well as by the Armenians) from the Semites. The
olive-tree was known in Mesopotamia at an early date: objects in
clay in the form of an olive belonging to the time of Urukagina, one
of the pre-Sargonic rulers of Lagash, are still extant. 7
1 Ch. 18, p. ii.
2 A gloss thus indicates the reading of this character by the fan ts'ie | ^.
3 See above, p. 292.
4 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, 1910, p. 19.
5 See, for instance, the illustrated article "olivier" in DUJARDIN-BEAUMETZ
and EGASSE, Plantes me'dicinales indigenes et exotiques (p. 492, Paris, 1889), which
is a very convenient and commendable reference-book, particularly valuable for
its excellent illustrations. Cf. also S. KRAUSS, Talmudische Archaologie, Vol. II,
p. 214; S. FRAENKEL, Die aramaischen Fremdworter im Arabischen, p. 147.
6 W. MILLER, Sprache der Osseten, p. 10; HUBSCHMANN, Arm. Gram., p. 309.
7 HANDCOCK, Mesopotamian Archaeology, p. 13. The contributions which
A. ENGLER has made to the olive in Hehn's Kulturpflanzen (p. 118) are just as sing-
ular as his notions of the walnut. Leaves of the olive-tree have been found in Pliocene
deposits near Mongardino north-west of Bologna, and this is sufficient for Engler
to "prove" the autochthonous character of the tree in Italy. All it proves, if the
415
4l6 SlNO-lRANICA
ScHLiMMER 1 says that Olea europaea is largely cultivated by the
inhabitants of Mendjil between Besht and Ghezwin in Persia, and
that the olives are excellent; nevertheless the oil extracted is very bad
and unfit to eat. The geographical distribution of the tree in Iran
has well been traced by F. SPIEGEL. 2
The word ts'i-t'un has been perpetuated by the lexicographers of
the Emperor K'ien-lun (1736-95). It makes its appearance in the
Dictionary of Four Languages, in the section " foreign fruit." 3 For
the Tibetan and Mongol forms, one has chosen the transcriptions
c'i-tun sin (transcribing tse ?) and tilun jimin respectively; while it is
surprising to find a Manchu equivalent ulusun, which has been correctly
explained by H. C. v. d. Gabelentz and Sakharov. In the Manchu-
Chinese Dictionary Ts*ih wen pu hui, published in 1771, we find the
fact be correct, is that a wild olive once occurred in the Pliocene of Italy, which
certainly does not exclude the idea and the well-established historical fact that the
cultivated olive was introduced into Italy from Greece in historical times. The
notice of Pliny (xv, i) weighs considerably more in this case than any alleged
palseontological wisdom, and the Pliocene has nothing to do with historical times
of human history. The following is truly characteristic of Engler's uncritical stand-
point and his inability to think historically: "Since the fruits of the olive-tree are
propagated by birds, and in many localities throughout the Mediterranean the con-
ditions for the existence of the tree were prepared, it was quite natural also that the
tree settled in the localities suitable for it, before the Oriental civilized nations
made one of the most important useful plants of it." If the birds were the sole
propagators of the tree, why did they not carry it to India, the Archipelago, and
China, where it never occurred? The distribution of the olive shows most clearly
that it was brought about by human activity, and that we are confronted with a
well-defined geographical zone as the product of human civilization, Western
Asia and the Mediterranean area. There is nothing in Engler like the vision and
breadth of thought of a de Candolle, in whose Origin of Cultivated Plants we read
(p. 280), "The question is not clearly stated when we ask if such and such olive-
trees of a given locality are really wild. In a woody species which lives so long and
shoots again from the same stock when cut off by accident, it is impossible to know
the origin of the individuals observed. They may have been sown by man or birds
at a very early epoch, for olive-trees of more than a thousand years old are known.
The effect of such sowing is a naturalization, which is equivalent to an extension
of area. The point in question is, therefore, to discover what was the home of the
species in very early prehistoric times, and how this area has grown larger by dif-
ferent modes of transport. It 'is not by the study of living olive-trees that this can
be answered. We must seek in what countries the cultivation began, and how it
was propagated. The more ancient it is in any region, the more probable it is that
the species has existed wild there from the time of those geological events which took
place before the coming of prehistoric man." Here we meet a thinker of critical
acumen, possessed of a fine historical spirit, and striving for truth nobly and honestly;
and there, a dry pedant, who thinks merely in terms of species and genera, and is
unwilling to learn and to understand history.
1 Terminologie, p. 406.
2 Eranische Altertumskunde, Vol. I, pp. 257-258.
8 Appendix, Ch. 3, p. 10.
THE OLIVE 417
following definition of ulusun in Chinese: "Ts'i-fun is a foreign fruit,
which is produced in the country Po-se (Persia). The bark of the tree
is green, the flowers are white and aromatic. Its fruit ripens in the fifth
month and yields an oil good for frying cakes." This is apparently based
on the notice of the Yu yan tsa tsu. The Manchu word ulusun (-sun
being a Manchu ending) seems to be an artificial formation based on
Latin oleum (from Greek elaiori), which was probably conveyed through
the Jesuit missionaries.
The olive remained unknown to the Japanese; their modern bo-
tanical science calls it oreifu M ?!l ^, which reproduces our "olive." 1
The Japanese botanists, without being aware of the meaning of ts'i-tun,
avail themselves of the characters for this word (reading them ego-no-ki)
for the designation of Sty rax japonica. 2
The so-called Chinese olive, kan-lan ffi 91, has no affinity with the
true olive of the West-Asiatic and Mediterranean zone, although its
appearance comes very near to this fruit. 3 The name kan-lan applies
to Canarium album and C. pimela, belonging to the order Burseraceaej
while the olive ranks in that of the Oleaceae. 4 Ma Ci, who, in his K'ai
1 MATSUMURA, No. 2136.
2 Ibid., No. 3051.
3 The kan-lan tree itself is suspected to be of foreign origin; it was most probably
introduced from Indo-China into southern China. Following are briefly the reasons
which prompt me to this opinion. I. According to Li Si-cen, the meaning of the
name kan-lan remains unexplained, and this comment usually hints at a foreign word.
The ancient pronunciation was *kam-lam or *kam-ram, which we still find in
Annamese as kam-lan. The tree abounds in Annam, the fruit being eatable and
preserved in the same manner as olives (PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. me"d. et phar-
macope"e sino-annamites, p. 141). Moreover, we meet in Pa-yi, a T'ai language
spoken in Yiin-nan, a word (maty-k'am, which in a Pa-yi-Chinese glossary is rendered
by Chinese kan-lan (the element mak means "fruit"; see F. W. K. MULLER, T'oung
Pao, Vol. Ill, p. 27). The relationship of Annamese to the T'ai languages has been
clearly demonstrated by H. MASPERO, and it seems to me that Chinese *kam-lam
is borrowed from Annam-T'ai. There are many more such Chinese botanical names,
as I hope to show in the near future. 2. The plant appears in Chinese records
at a comparatively recent date. It is first described in the Nan cou i wu li of the
third century as a plant of Kwan-tun and Fu-kien and in the Nan fan ts'ao mu Iwan
(Ch. c, p. 3 b). It is mentioned as a tree of the south in the Kin lou tse of the Em-
peror Yuan of the Liang in the sixth century (see above, p. 222). A description of
it is due to Liu Sun in his Lin piao lu i (Ch. B, p. 5 b). In the materia medica it
first appears in the K'ai pao pen ts'ao of the end of the tenth century. 3. The tree
remained always restricted to the south-eastern parts of China bordering on Indo-
China. According to the San fu hwan t'u, it belonged to the southern plants brought
to the Fu-li Palace of the Han Emperor Wu after the conquest of Nan Yue (cf.
above, p. 262).
4 The fruit of Canarium is a fleshy drupe from three to six cm in length, which
contains a hard, triangular, sharp-pointed seed. Within this are found one or more
oily kernels. The flesh of the fresh, yellowish-green fruit, like that of the true olive,
is somewhat acrid and disagreeable, and requires special treatment before it can
418 SlNO-lRANICA
pao pen ts'ao (written between A.D. 968 and 976), describes the kan-lan,
goes on to say that "there is also another kind, known as Po-se kan-lan
('Persian kan-lan'), growing in Yun cou I ffl, 1 similar to kan-lan in
color and form, but different in that the kernel is divided into two sec-
tions; it contains a substance like honey, which is soaked in water and
eaten." The San se cou ci 2 mentions the plant as a product of San-se
ou in Kwan-si. It would be rather tempting to regard this tree as the
true olive, as tentatively proposed by STUART ; 3 but I am not ready to
subscribe to this theory until it is proved by botanists that the olive-
tree really occurs in Kwan-si. Meanwhile it should be pointed out that
weighty arguments militate against this supposition. First of all, the
Po-se kan-lan is a wild tree: not a word is said to the effect that it is
cultivated, still less that it was introduced from Po-se. If it had been
introduced from Persia, we should most assuredly find it as a culti-
vation; and if such an introduction had taken place, why should it be
confined to a few localities of Kwan-si? Li Si-Sen does not express an
opinion on the question; he merely says that the fan jfr Ian, another
variety of Canarium to be found in Kwan-si (unidentified), is a kind
of Po-se kan-lan, which proves distinctly that he regards the latter
as a wild plant. The T'ang authors are silent as to the introduction of
the olive; nevertheless, judging from the description in the Yu yan tsa
tsu, it may be that the fruit was imported from Persia under the T'ang.
Maybe the Po-se kan-lan was so christened on account of a certain
resemblance of its fruit to the olive; we do not know. There is one
specific instance on record that the Po-se of Ma Ci applies to the
Malayan Po-se (below, p. 483) ; this may even be the case here, but the
connection escapes our knowledge.
S. JuLiEN 4 asserts that the Chinese author from whom he derives
his information describes the olive-tree and its fruit, but adds that
the use of it is much restricted. The Chinese name for the tree is not
given. Finally, it should be pointed out that Ibn Batuta of the four-
be made palatable. Its most important constituent is fat, which forms nearly one-
fourth of the total nutritive material. Cf. W. C. BLASDALE, Description of Some
Chinese Vegetable Food Materials, p. 43, with illustration (U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Bull. No. 68, 1899). The genus Canarium comprises about eighty
species in the tropical regions of the Old World, mostly in Asia (ENGLER, Pflan-
zenfamilien, Vol. Ill, pt. 4, p. 240).
1 Name under the T'ang dynasty of the present prefecture Nan-nin in Kwan-si
Province.
2 Ch. 14, p. 7 b (see above, p. 409).
8 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 89.
4 Industries de 1'empire chinois, p. 120.
THE OLIVE 419
teenth century positively denies the occurrence of olives in China. 1
Of course, this Arabic traveller is not an authority on Chinese affairs:
many of his data concerning China are out and out absurd. He may
even not have visited China, as suggested by G. Ferrand; notwith-
standing, he may be right in this particular point. Likewise the Arch-
bishop of Soltania, who wrote about 1330, states, " There groweth
not any oil olive in that country." 2
1 YULE, Cathay, Vol. IV, p. 118.
2 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 96.
CASSIA PODS AND CAROB
44. In his Pen ts'ao $i i, written during the first half of the eighth
century, C'en Ts'an-k'i has this notice regarding an exotic plant:
"A-lo-p*o M f& tft (*a-lak-bwut) grows in the country Fu-lin (Syria),
its fruit resembling in shape that of the tsao kia -Ib 5^ (Gleditschia or
Gymnocladus sinensis), save that it is more rounded and elongated.
It is sweet of taste and savory." 1
In the Cen lei pen ts'ao 2 we read that "a-lo-p*o grows in the country
Fu-si ft ffi"; that is, Bhoja, Sumatra. Then follows the same descrip-
tion as given above, after C'en Ts'aii-k'i. The name p'o-lo-men tsao
kia 1 H Fl & 35t is added as a synonyme. Li Si-Sen 3 comments that
P'o-lo-men is here the name of a Si-yii B ^ ("Western Regions")
country, and that Po-se is the name of a country of the south-western
barbarians; that is, the Malayan Po-se. The term p'o-lo-men tsao kia,
which accordingly would mean "Gleditschia of the P'o-lo-men coun-
try," he ascribes to C'en Ts'an-k'i, but in his quotation from this
author it does not occur. The country P'o-lo-men here in question is
the one mentioned in the Man Zu*
A somewhat fuller description of this foreign tree is contained in
the Yu yah tsa tsuf as follows: "The Persian tsao kia (Gleditschia) has
its habitat in the country Po-se (Persia), where it is termed hu-ye-
yen-mo & & @ R, while in Fu-lin it is styled a-li-k'u-fa M M tt. 6
The tree has a height of from thirty to forty feet, and measures from
four to five feet in circumference. The leaves resemble those of Citrus
medica (kou yuan $) $0 , but are shorter and smaller. During the cold
season it does not wither. 7 It does not flower, and yet bears fruit. 8
Its pods are two feet long. In their interior are shells (ko ko IS IB).
Each of these encloses a single seed of the size of a finger, red of color,
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 31, p. 9 b, where the name of the plant is wrongly
written a-p'o-lo. The correct form a-lo-p'o is given in the Cen lei pen ts'ao.
2 Ch. 12, p. 56 (ed. of 1587).
3 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 31, p. 9 b.
4 See below, p. 468.
6 Ch. 1 8, p. 12. Also Li Si-Sen has combined this text with the preceding one
under the heading a-p'o-lo (instead of a-lo-p'o).
6 The Pen ts'ao kan mu (Ch. 31, p. 9 b), in quoting this text, gives the Po-se
name as hu-ye-yen and the Fu-lin name only as a-li.
7 This means, it is an evergreen.
8 This is due to erroneous observation.
420
CASSIA PODS AND CAROB 421
and extremely hard. The interior [the pulp] is as black as [Chinese]
ink and as sweet as sugar-plums. It is eatable, and is also employed in
the pharmacopoeia."
The tree under consideration has not yet been identified, at least not
from the sinological point of view. 1 The name a-lo-p'o is Sanskrit; and
the ancient form *a-lak(rak, rag)-bwut(bud) is a correct and logical
transcription of Sanskrit aragbadha, aragvadha, dragvadha, or argvadha,
the Cassia or Caihartocarpus fistula (Leguminosai) , already mentioned
by the physician Caraka, also styled suvarnaka ("gold-colored") and
rajataru ("king's tree"). 2 This tree, called the Indian laburnum,
purging cassia, or pudding pipe tree from its peculiar pods (French
caneficier), is a native of India, Ceylon, and the Archipelago 3 (hence
Sumatra and Malayan Po-se of the Chinese), "uncommonly beautiful
when in flower, few surpassing it in the elegance of its numerous long,
pendulous racemes of large, bright-yellow flowers, intermixed with the
young, lively green foliage." 4 The fruit, which is common in most
bazars of India, is a brownish pod, about sixty cm long and two cm
thick. It is divided into numerous cells, upwards of forty, each con-
taining one smooth, oval, shining seed. Hence the Chinese comparison
with the pod of the Gleditschia, which is quite to the point. These pods
are known as cassia pods. They are thus described in the " Treasury of
Botany " : "Cylindrical, black, woody, one to two feet long, not splitting,
but marked by three long furrows, divided in the interior into a number
of compartments by means of transverse partitions, which project
from the placentas. Each compartment of the fruit contains a single
seed, imbedded in pulp, which is used as a mild laxative." Whether
the tree is cultivated in Asia I do not know; GARCIA DA ORTA affirms
that he saw it only in a wild state. 5 The description of the tree and
fruit in the Yu yan tsa tsu is fairly correct. Cassia fistula is indeed
from twenty to thirty feet high (in Jamaica even fifty feet) . The seed,
as stated there, is of a reddish-brown color, and the pulp is of a dark
viscid substance.
1 STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 496) lists the name a-p'o-lo (instead of
a-lo-p'o) among "unidentified drugs." Bretschneider has never noted it.
2 A large number of Sanskrit synonymes for the tree are enumerated by RODIGER
and POTT (Zeitschrift /. d. K. d. Morg., Vol. VII, p. 154); several more may be added
to this list from the Bower Manuscript.
3 GARCIA DA ORTA (Markham, Colloquies, p. 114) adds Malacca and Sofala.
In Javanese it is tenguli or trenguli.
4 W. ROXBURGH, Flora Indica, p. 349.
5 Likewise F. PYRARD (Vol. II, p. 361, ed. of Hakluyt Society), who states that
"it grows of itself without being sown or tended."
422 SlNO-lRANICA
When I had established the above identification of the Sanskrit
name, it was quite natural for me to lay my hands on MATSUMURA'S
"Shokubutsu mei-i" and to look up Cassia fistula under No. 754:
it was as surprising as gratifying to find there, "Cassia fistula M ffr 16
namban-saikachi." This Japanese name means literally the "Gleditschia
japonica (saikaci = Chinese tsao-kia-tse) of the Southern Barbarians"
(Chinese Nan Fan). The Japanese botanists, accordingly, had suc-
ceeded in arriving at the same identification through the description
of the plant; while the philological equation with the Sanskrit term
escaped them, as evidenced by their adherence to the wrong form
a-p*o-lo, sanctioned by the Pen ts'ao kan mu. The case is of methodo-
logical interest in showing how botanical and linguistic research may
supplement and corroborate each other: the result of the identification
is thus beyond doubt; the rejection of a-p'o-lo becomes complete, and
the restitution of a-lo-p'o, as handed down in the Cen lei pen ts*ao,
ceases to be a mere philological conjecture or emendation, but is raised
into the certainty of a fact.
The Arabs know the fruit of this tree under the names xarnub nindi
(" Indian carob") 1 and xiydr saribar ("cucumber of necklaces," from
its long strings of golden flowers). 2 Abu'l Abbas, styled en-Nebati
("the Botanist"), who died at Sevilla in 1239, the teacher of Ibn
al-Baitar, who preserved extracts from his lost work Rihla ("The
Voyage"), describes Cassia fistula as very common in Egypt, par-
ticularly in Alexandria and vicinity, whence the fruit is exported to
Syria; 3 it commonly occurs in Bassora also, whence it is exported to
the Levant and Irak. He compares the form of the tree to the walnut
and the fruit to the carob. The same comparison is made by Isak Ibn
Amran, who states in Leclerc's translation, "Dans chacun de ces tubes
est renferme'e une pulpe noire, sucree et laxative. Dans chaque com-
partiment est un noyau qui a le volume et la forme de la graine de
caroubier. La partie employee est la pulpe, a 1'exclusion du noyau et du
tube."
The Persians received the fruit from the Arabs on the one hand, and
from north-western India on the other. They adopted the Arabic word
xiyar-Sanbar* in the form xiydr-cambar (compare also Armenian xiar-
1 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 17.
2 Ibid., p. 64. Also qitta hindi ("Indian cucumber"), ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 62.
3 GARCIA DA ORTA says that it grows in Cairo, where it was also found by
Pierre Belon. In ancient times, however, the tree did not occur in Egypt: LORET,
in his Flore pharaonique, is silent about it. It was no doubt brought there by the
Arabs from India.
4 GARCIA DA ORTA spells it hiar-xamber.
CASSIA PODS AND CAROB 423
Samb, Byzantine Greek xiapaa^p, xecto-a/zTrdp) ; and it is a Middle-
Persian variation of this type that is hidden in the "Persian" tran-
scription of the Yu yah tsa tsu, hu-ye-yen-mo 3& if 8f i, anciently
*xut(xur)-ya-dzem(dzem)-mVak(bak, bax). The prototype to be
restored may have been *xaryadz"ambax. There is a New-Persian word
for the same tree and fruit, bakbar. It is also called kabuli ("coming
from Kabul").
The Fu-lin name of the plant is H M K a-li-fcu-fa, *a-li(ri')-
go-va5. I. LoEW 1 does not give an Aramaic name for Cassia fistula,
nor does he indicate this tree, neither am I able to find a name for it in
the relevant dictionaries. We have to take into consideration that the
tree is not indigenous to western Asia and Egypt, and that the Arabs
transplanted it there from India (cf . the Arabic terms given above,
"Indian carob," and "Indian cucumber"). The Fu-lin term is evi-
dently an Indian loan-word, for the transcription *a-ri-go-va5 cor-
responds exactly to Sanskrit drgvadha, answering to an hypothetical
Aramaic form *arigbada or *arigfada. In some editions of the Yu yah
tsa tsu, the Fu-lin word is written a-li or a-li-fa, *a-ri-va5. These would
likewise be possible forms, for there is also a Sanskrit variant arevata
and an Indian vernacular form ali (in Panjabi).
The above texts of C'en Ts'an-k'i and Twan C'en-si, author of
the Yu yah tsa tsu, give occasion for some further comments. PELLiox 2
maintained that the latter author, who lived toward the end of the
ninth century, frequently derived his information from the former, who
wrote in the first part of the eighth century; 3 from the fact that C'en
in many cases indicates the foreign names of exotic plants, Pelliot is
inclined to infer that Twan has derived from him also his nomenclature
of plants in the Fu-lin language. This is by no means correct. I have
carefully read almost all texts preserved under the name of C'en (or
his work, the Pen ts*ao Si i) in the Ceh lei pen ts*ao and Pen ts'ao kah mu,
and likewise studied all notices of plants by Twan; with the result
that Twan, with a few exceptions, is independent of C'en. As to Fu-lin
names, none whatever is recorded by the latter, and the above text is
the only one in which the country Fu-lin figures, while he gives the
plant-name solely in its Sanskrit form. In fact, all the foreign names
noted by C'en come from the Indo-Malayan area. The above case
shows plainly that Twan's information does not at all depend on C'en's
1 Aramaeische Pflanzennamen.
2 Toung Pao, 1912, p. 454.
3 The example cited to this effect (Butt, de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. IV, p. 1130)
is not very lucky, for in fact the two texts are clearly independent.
424 SlNO-lRANICA
passage: the two texts differ both as to descriptive matter and nomen-
clature. In regard to the Fu-lin information of Twan, HIRTH'S opinion 1
is perfectly correct: it was conveyed by the monk Wan, who had
hailed directly from Fu-lin. 2 The time when he lived is unknown, but
most probably he was a contemporary of Twan. The Fu-lin names,
accordingly, do not go back to the beginning of the eighth century, but
belong to the latter half of the ninth.
An interesting point in connection with this subject is that both
the Iranian and the Malayan Po-se play their r61e with reference to
the plant and fruit in question. This, as far as I know, is the only in-
stance of this kind. Fortunately, the situation is perfectly manifest on
either side. The fact that Twan C'eii-si hints at the Iranian Po-se
(Persia) is well evidenced by his addition of the Iranian name; while
the tree itself is not found in Persia, and merely its fruit was imported
from Syria or India. The Po-se, alluded to in the Cen lei pen ts'ao and
presumably traceable to C'en Ts'an-k'i, unequivocally represents the
Malayan Po-se: it is joined to the names of Sumatra and P'o-lo-men;
and Cassia fistula is said to occur there, and indeed occurs in the Malayan
zone. Moreover, Li Si-6en has added such an unambiguous definition
of the location of this Po-se, that there is no room for doubt of its identity.
45. Reference has been made to the similarity of cassia pods to
carob pods, and it would not be impossible that the latter were included
in the " Persian Gleditschia" of the Chinese.
Ceratonia siliqua, the carob-tree, about thirty feet in height, is
likewise a genus of the family Leguminosae, a typical Mediterranean
cultivation. The pods, called carob pods, carob beans, or sometimes
sugar pods, contain a large quantity of mucilaginous and saccharine
matter, and are commonly employed in the south of Europe for feeding
live-stock, and occasionally, in times of scarcity, as human food. The
popular names " locust-pods" or "St. John's Bread" rest on the suppo-
sition that the pods formed the food of St. John in the wilderness
(LUKE, xv, 1 6); but there is better reason to believe that the locusts
of St. John were the animals so called, and these are still eaten in the
Orient. The common Semitic name for the tree and fruit is Assyrian
xarubu, Aramaic xdrubd, Arabic xarrub and xarnub. 5 New Persian
xurnub (khurnub) or xarnub, also xarrub (hence Osmanli xarup, 4 Neo-
1 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, 1910, p. 18.
2 Cf. above, p. 359.
8 Egyptian darud, garuta, darruga; Coptic garate, are Greek loan-words
(the tree never existed in Egypt, as already stated by Pliny, xni, 16), from /cepdna.
4 Also ketSibujnuzu ("goat's horn").
CASSIA PODS AND CAROB 425
Greek xapoviriov, Italian carrobo or carrubo, Spanish algarrobo, French
caroube or carouge), is based on the Semitic name. Lelekl is another
Persian word for the tree, according to ScHLiMMER, 1 peculiar to Gilan.
The Arabs distinguish three varieties of carob, two of which are
named saidalani and sabuni? There is no doubt that the Arabs who
were active in transplanting the tree to the west conveyed it also to
Persia. A. de Candolle does not mention the occurrence of the carob
in that country. It is pointed out, however, by the Mohammedan
writers on Persia. It is mentioned as a cultivation of the province
Sabur by Muqaddasl 3 and Yaqut. 4 Abu Mansur discusses the medicinal
properties of the fruit in his pharmacopoeia; he speaks of a Syrian and
a Nabathasan xarnub. 5 SCHLIMMER G remarks that the tree is very
common in the forest of Gilan; the pods serve the cows as food, and are
made into a sweet and agreeable syrup. No Sanskrit name for the
tree exists, and the tree itself did not anciently occur in India. 7
A botanical problem remains to be solved in connection with Cassia
fistula. DuHALDE 8 mentions cassia-trees (Cassia fistula) in the province
of Yun-nan toward the kingdom of Ava. "They are pretty tall, and
bear long pods; whence 'tis called by the Chinese, Chang-ko-tse-shu,
the tree with long fruit (ft JK. -? 8f) ; its pods are longer than those we
see in Europe, and not composed of two convex shells, like those of
ordinary pulse, but are so many hollow pipes, divided by partitions
into cells, which contain a pithy substance, in every respect like the
cassia in use with us." S. W. WiLLiAMS 9 has the following: ''Cassia
fistula, t^ ffi W hwai hwa ts*in, is the name for the long cylindrical pods
of the senna tree (Cathartocarpus) , known to the Chinese as c'an kwo-tse
$M, or tree with long fruit. They are collected in Kwan-si for their
pulp and seeds, which are medicinal. The pulp is reddish and sweet,
and not so drastic as the American sort; if gathered before the seeds
are ripe, its taste is somewhat sharp. It is not exported, to any great
1 Terminologie, p. 120. The pods are also styled tarmil.
2 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 16.
3 P. SCHWARZ, Iran, p. 32.
4 BARBIER DE MEYNARD, Dictionnaire ge"ographique de la Perse, p. 294.
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 59.
6 Terminologie, p. 119.
7 The alleged word for the carob, $imbibheda, given in the English-Sanskrit
Dictionary of A. BOROOAH, is a modern artificial formation from qinibi or Qiniba
("pod"). According to WATT, the tree is now almost naturalized in the Salt Range
and other parts of the Pan jab.
8 Description of the Empire of China, Vol. I, p. 14 (or French ed., Vol. I, p. 26).
9 Chinese Commercial Guide, p. 114 (sth ed., 1863).
426 SlNO-lRANICA
extent, west of the Cape." F. P. SMITH/ with reference to this state-
ment of Williams, asserts that the drug is unknown in Central China,
and has not been met with in the pages of the Pen ts'ao. Likewise
STUART, 2 on referring to DuHalde and Williams, says, "No other
authorities are found for this plant occurring in China, and it is not
mentioned in the Pen ts'ao. The Customs Lists do not mention it; so,
if exported as Williams claims, it must be by land routes. The subject
is worthy of investigation." Cassia fistula is not listed in the work of
Forbes and Hemsley.
There is no doubt that the trees described by DuHalde and Williams
exist, but the question remains whether they are correctly identified.
The name hwai used by Williams would rather point to a Sophora,
which likewise yields a long pod containing one or five seeds, and his
description of the pulp as reddish does not fit Cassia fistula. Contrary
to the opinions of Smith and Stuart, the species of Williams is referred
to in the Pen ts*ao kan mu? As an appendix to his a-p'o-lo (instead of
a-lo-p'o), Li Si-Sen treats of the seeds of a plant styled lo-wan-tse it
H -?, quoting the Kwei hai yu hen li by Fan C'eii-ta (1126-93) as
follows: "Its habitat is in Kwan-si. The pods are several inches long,
and are like those of thefei tsao JJE & (Gleditschia or Gymnocladus sinen-
sis) and the tao tou 73 U (Canavallia ensiformis) . The color [of the
pulp] is standard red JE JJ. Inside there are two or three seeds, which
when baked are eatable and of sweet and agreeable flavor." 4 This lo-wan
is identified with Tamarindus indica; 5 and this, I believe, is also the
above plant of Williams, which must be dissociated from Cassia fistula;
for, while Li Si-Sen notes the latter as a purely exotic plant, he does not
state that it occurs in China; as to lo-wan , he merely regards it as a
kindred affair on account of the peculiar pods: this does not mean, of
course, that the trees yielding these pods are related species. The
fruit of Tamarindus indica is a large swollen pod from four to six inches
long, filled with an acid pulp. In India it is largely used as food, being
a favorite ingredient in curries and chutnies, and for pickling fish. It is
also employed in making a cooling drink or sherbet. 6
1 Contributions towards the Materia Medica of China, p. 53.
2 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 96.
Ch. 31, p. 9b.
4 The text is exactly reproduced (see the edition in the Ci pu tsu lai ts'un su,
p. 24).
5 MATSUMURA, No. 3076 (in Japanese dsen-modama-rabo$i).
8 WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 1067.
NARCISSUS
46. The Yu yah tsa tsu 1 contains the following notice: "The
habitat of the nai-k'i tft ffi is in the country Fu-lin (Syria). Its sprouts
grow to a height of three or four feet. Its root is the size of a duck's
egg. Its leaves resemble those of the garlic (Allium sativum). From the
centre of the leaves rises a very long stem surmounted by a six-petaled
flower of reddish-white color. 2 The heart of this flower is yellow-red, and
does not form fruit. This plant grows in the winter and withers during
the summer. It is somewhat similar to shepherd's-purse (tsi ?,
Capsella bursa-pastoris) and wheat. 3 An oil is pressed from the flowers,
with which they anoint the body as a preventive of colds, and is em-
ployed by the king of Fu-lin and the nobles in his country."
Li Si-cen, in his Pen ts'ao kan muf has placed this extract in his
notice of $wi sien ^K \& (Narcissus tazetta*), 5 and after quoting it, adds
this comment: "Judging from this description of the plant, it is similar
to Narcissus; it cannot be expected, of course, that the foreign name
should be identical with our own." 6 He is perfectly correct, for the
description answers this flower very well, save the comparison with
Capsella. Dioscorides also compares the leaves of Narcissus to those of
Allium, and says that the root is rounded like a bulb. 7
The philological evidence agrees with this explanation; for nai-k*i t
*nai-gi, apparently answers to Middle Persian *nargi, New Persian
nargis (Arabic narjis), 8 Aramaic narkim, Armenian narges (Persian
1 Ch. 18, p. 12 b.
2 Cf. the description of Theophrastus (Hist, plant., vn, 13): "In the case of
narcissus it is only the flower- stem which comes up, and it immediately pushes up
the flower." Also Dioscorides (iv, 158) and Pliny (xxi, 25) have given descriptions
of the flower.
3 This sentence is omitted (and justly so) in the text, as reprinted in the Pen
ts'ao kan mu; for these comparisons are lame.
4 Ch. 13, p. 16.
5 Also this species is said to have been introduced from abroad (Hwa mu siao li
xfE >fc /h ;S P- 19 b, in &un ts'ao fan tsi, Ch. 25).
6 In another passage of his work (Ch. 14, p. 10) he has the same text under
San nai \\j ff (Kcempferia galanga}, but here he merely adds that the description
of the Yu yan tsa tsu is "a little like san nai."
7 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 368.
8 According to HUBSCHMANN (Armen. Gram., p. 201), the New-Persian form
would presuppose a Pahlavi *narkis. In my opinion, Greek pdp/ao-o-os is derived from
an Iranian language through the medium of an idiom of Asia Minor, not vice versa,
as believed by NOELDEKE (Persische Studien, II, p. 43).
427
428 SlNO-lRANICA
loan-word), denoting Narcissus tazetta, which is still cultivated in
Persia and employed in the pharmacopoeia. 1 Oil was obtained from the
narcissus, which is called vapdaawv in the Greek Papyri. 2
HiRTH 3 has erroneously identified the Chinese name with the nard.
Aside from the fact that the description of the Yu yan tsa tsu does not
at all fit this plant, his restoration, from a phonetic viewpoint, remains
faulty. K'aii-hi does not indicate the reading not for the first character,
as asserted by Hirth, but gives the readings nai, ni, and yin. The second
character reads k*i, which is evolved from *gi, but does not repre-
sent tij as Hirth is inclined to make out. 4
For other reasons it is out of the question to see the nard in the
term nai-k'i; for the nard, a product of India, is well known to the
Chinese under the term kan sun hian ~H* ^ . 5 The Chinese did not
have to go to Fu-lin to become acquainted with a product which reached
them from India, and which the Syrians themselves received from
India by way of Persia. 6 Hebrew nerd (Canticle), Greek vapdos, 7
Persian nard and nard, are all derived from Sanskrit nalada, which
already appears in the Atharvaveda. 8 Hirth 's case would also run
counter to his theory that the language of Fu-lin was Aramaic, for
the word nard does not occur there.
1 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 390. Narcissus is mentioned among the aromatic
flowers growing in great abundance in Biavur, province of Pars, Persia (G. LE
STRANGE, Description of the Province of Pars, p. 51). It is a flower much praised
by the poets Hafiz and Jaml.
2 T. REIL, Beitrage zur Kenntnis des Gewerbes im hellenistischen Aegypten,
p. 146. Regarding narcissus-oil, see Dioscorides, I, 50; and LECLERC, Traite" des
simples, Vol. II, p. 103.
3 Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, 1910, p. 22.
4 See particularly PELLIOT, Bull, de I'EcolefranQaise, Vol. IV, p. 291.
6 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 278.
6 I. LOEW, Aram. Pflanzennamen, pp. 368-369.
7 First in Theophrastus, Hist, plant., IX. vn, 2.
s See p. 455.
THE BALM OF GILEAD
47. The Yu yan tsa tsu 1 has the following notice of an exotic plant
referred exclusively to Syria: "The plant H ^ & a-p'o-ts'an (*a-bwut-
sam) has its habitat in the country Fu-lin (Syria) . The tree is over ten
feet high. Its bark is green and white in color. The blossoms are
fine &lfl, two being opposite each other (biflorate) . The flowers resemble
those of the rape-turnip, man-tsm IE W (Brassica rapa-depressa) ,
being uniformly yellow. The seeds resemble those of the pepper-plant,
hu-tsiao ~$ft $& (Piper nigrum). By chopping the branches, one obtains
a juice like oil, that is employed as an ointment, serving as a remedy for
ringworm, and is useful for any disease. This oil is held in very high
esteem, and its price equals its weight in gold."
As indicated in the Pen ts'ao kan mu $i i? the notice of the plant
a-p'o-san has been adopted by two works, the C*enfu t'un hwi @ S$t
^t H", which simply notes that it grows in Fu-lin; and the Hwa i hwa
mu k'ao IS Jt ffi /fC ^ ("Investigations into the Botany of China and
Foreign Countries")) which has copied the account of the Yu yan tsa
tsu without acknowledgment. Neither of these books gives any addi-
tional information, and the account of the Yu yan tsa tsu remains the
only one that we possess.
The transcription *a-bwut(bwur)-sam, which is very exact, leads
to Aramaic and Talmudic afursama NDD^BNS (Greek fiaXcranov,
Arabic balessdn), the balm of Gilead (Amyris gileadensis, Balsamoden-
dron giliadense, or Commiphora opobalsamum, family Burseraceae) of
ancient fame. This case splendidly corroborates Hirth's opinion that
the language of Fu-lin (or rather one of the languages of Fu-lin) was
Aramaic. The last two characters p'o-ts'an (*bwut-sam) could very
well transcribe Greek balsam; but the element H excludes Greek and
any other language in which this word is found, and admits no other
than Aramaic. In Syriac we have apursama and pursdma (pursma),
hence Armenian aprsam or aprasam* In Neo-Hebrew, afobalsmon or
1 Ch. 18, p. 12.
2 Ch. 4, p. 15.
3 1. LOEW, Aramaeische Pflanzennamen, p. 73. Also afarsma and afarsmon
(]. BUXTORF, Lexicon chaldaicum, p. 109; J. LEVY, Neuhebr. Worterbuch, Vol. I,
p. 151). Cf. S. KRAUSS, Talmudische Archaologie, Vol. I, pp. 234-236.
4 HUBSCHMANN, Armenische Grammatik, p. 107. I do not believe in the Persian
origin of this word, as tentatively proposed by this author.
429
43 SlNO-lRANICA
afofalsmon is derived from the Greek oTrofiaXo-anov. 1 It is supposed also
that Old-Testament Hebrew bdsdm refers to the balsam, and might
represent the prototype of Greek balsamon, while others deny that the
Hebrew word had this specific meaning. 2 In my opinion, the Greek
/ cannot be explained from the Hebrew word.
Twan C'en-si's description of the tree, made from a long-distance
report, is tolerably exact. The Amyris gileadensis or balsam-tree is an
evergreen shrub or tree of the order Amyridaceae , belonging to the
tropical region, chiefly growing in southern Arabia, especially in the
neighborhood of Mecca and Medina, and in Abyssinia. As will be seen,
it was transplanted to Palestine in historical times, and Twan was
therefore justified in attributing it to Fu-lin. The height of the tree is
about fourteen feet, with a trunk eight or ten inches in diameter. It
has a double bark, an exterior one, thin and red, and an interior one,
thick and green; when chewed, it has an unctuous taste, and leaves an
aromatic odor. The blossoms are biflorate, and the fruit is of a gray
reddish, of the size of a small pea, oblong, and pointed at both ends.
The tree is very rare and difficult to cultivate. Twan's oil, of course,
is the light green, fragrant gum exuded from the branches, always highly
valued as a remedy, especially efficacious in the cure of wounds. 3 It
was always a very costly remedy, and Twan's valuation (equaling its
weight in gold) meets its counterpart in the statement of Theophrastus
that it sells for twice its weight in silver.
Flavius Josephus (first century A.D.) 4 holds that the introduction
of the balsam-tree into Palestine, which still flourished there in his
time, is due to the queen of Saba. In another passage 5 he states that
the opobalsamum (sap of the tree) grows at Engedi, a city near the lake
Asphaltitis, three hundred furlongs from Jerusalem; and again, 6 that it
grows at Jericho: the balsam, he adds in the latter passage, is of all
ointments the most precious, which, upon any incision made in the wood
with a sharp stone, exudes out like juice.
From the time of Solomon it was cultivated in two royal gardens.
1 J. LEVY, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 137.
2 E. LEVESQUE in Dictionnaire de la Bible, Vol. I, col. 1517. The rapproche-
ment of basam and balsamon has already been made by D'HERBELOT (Bibliotheque
orientale, Vol. I, p. 377), though he gives basam only as Persian. The Arabic form
is derived from the Greek.
3 Jeremiah, vm, 22. Regarding its employment in the pharmacology of the
Arabs, see LECLERC, Traite* des simples, Vol. I, pp. 255-257.
4 Antiquitates judaicae, VIII. VI, 6.
^ Ibid., IX. i, 2.
Ibid., XIV. iv, i.
THE BALM OF GILEAD 431
This fact was already known to Theophrastus, 1 who gives this account:
"Balsam grows in the valley of Syria. They say that there are only
two parks in which it grows, one of about four acres, the other much
smaller. The tree is as tall as a good-sized pomegranate, and is much
branched; it has a leaf like that of rue, but it is pale; and it is ever-
green. The fruit is like that of the terebinth in size, shape, and color,
and this too is very fragrant, indeed more so than the gum. The gum,
they say, is collected by making incisions, which is done with bent
pieces of iron at the time of the Dog-star, when there is scorching heat;
and the incisions are made both in the trunks and in the upper parts
of the tree. The collecting goes on throughout the summer; but the
quantity which flows is not very large: in a day a single man can
collect a shell-full. The fragrance is exceedingly great and rich, so that
even a small portion is perceived over a wide distance. However,
it does not reach us in a pure state: what is collected is mixed with
other substances; for it mixes freely with such, and what is known in
Hellas is generally mixed with something else. 2 The boughs are also
very fragrant. In fact, it is on account of these boughs, they say, that
the tree is pruned (as well as for a different reason), since the boughs
cut off can be sold for a good price. In fact, the culture of the trees has
the same motive as the irrigation (for they are constantly irrigated).
And the cutting of the boughs seems likewise to be partly the reason
why the trees do not grow tall ; for, since they are often cut about, they
send out branches instead of putting out all their energy in one direc-
tion. Balsam is said not to grow wild anywhere. From the larger park
are obtained twelve vessels containing each about three pints, from the
other only two such vessels. The pure gum sells for twice its weight
in silver, the mixed sort at a price proportionate to its purity. Balsam
then appears to be of exceptional value."
As the tree did not occur wild in Palestine, but only in the state of
cultivation, and as its home is in southern Arabia, the tradition of
Josephus appears to be well founded, though it is not necessary to
connect the introduction with the name of the Queen of Saba.
Strabo, 3 describing the plain of Jericho, speaks of a palace and the
garden of the balsamum. "The latter," he says, "is a shrub with an
aromatic odor, resembling the cytisus (Medicago arbored) and the
terminthus (terebinth-tree) . Incisions are made in the bark, and vessels
1 Hist, plant., IX, 6 (cf. the edition and translation of A. HORT, Vol. II, p. 245).
2 E. WIEDEMANN (Sitzber. phys.-med. Soz. Erl., 1914, pp. 178, 191) has dealt
with the adulteration of balsam from Arabic sources.
3 XVI. n, 41.
432 SlNO-lRANICA
are placed beneath to receive the sap, which is like oily milk. When
collected in vessels, it becomes solid. It is an excellent remedy for head-
ache, incipient suffusion of the eyes, and dimness of sight. It bears
therefore a high price, especially as it is produced in no other place. "
Dioscorides 1 asserts erroneously that balsam grows only in a certain
valley of India and in Egypt; while Ibn al-Baitar, 2 in his Arabic trans-
lation of Dioscorides, has him correctly say that it grows only 'in Judaea,
in the district called Rur (the valley of the Jordan). It is easily seen
how Judasa in Greek writing could be misread for India.
To Pliny, 3 balsamum was only known as a product of Judaea (uni
terrarum ludaeae concessum). He speaks of the two gardens after
Theophrastus, and gives a lengthy description of three different kinds
of balsamum.
In describing Palestine, Tacitus 4 says that in all its productions it
equals Italy, besides possessing the palm and the balsam; and the
far-famed tree excited the cupidity of successive invaders. Pompey
exhibited it in the streets of Rome in 65 B.C., and one of the wonderful
trees accompanied the triumph of Vespasian in A.D. 79. During the
invasion of Titus, two battles took place at the balsam-groves of Jericho,
the last being intended to prevent the Jews from destroying the trees.
They were then made public property, and were placed under the
protection of an imperial guard; but it is not recorded how long the two
plantations survived. Tn this respect, the Chinese report of the Yu yah
tsa tsu is of some importance, for it is apt to teach that the balm of
Gilead must still have been in existence in the latter part of the ninth
century. It further presents clear-cut evidence of the fact that
Judaea was included in the Chinese notion of the country Fu-lin.
Abd al-Latif (n6i-i23i) 5 relates how in his time balsam was col-
lected in Egypt. The operation was preferably conducted in the summer.
The tree was shorn of its leaves, and incisions were made in the trunk,
precaution being taken against injuring the wood. The sap was col-
lected in jars dug in the ground during the heat, then they were taken
out to be exposed to the sun. The oil floated on the surface and was
cleanc d of foreign particles. This was the true and purest balsam, form-
ing omy th^ tenth part of the total quantity produced by a tree. At
present, in Arabia leaves and branches of the tree are boiled. The first
1 1, 18.
2 LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. I, 255.
xn, 25, in.
4 Hist., v, 6.
6 SILVESTRE DE SACY, Relation de 1'Egypte, p. 20 (Paris, 1810).
THE BALM OF GILEAD 433
floating oil is the best, and reserved for the harem; the second is for
commerce.
The tree has existed in Egypt from the eleventh to the beginning
of the seventeenth century. It was presumably introduced there by the
Arabs. D'HERBELOT 1 cites an Arabic author as saying that the balm
of Mathara near Cairo was much sought by the Christians, owing to
the faith they put in it. It served them as the chrism in Confirmation.
The Irish pilgrim Symon Semeonis, who started on his journey to
the Holy Land in 1323, has the following interesting account of the
balsam-tree of Egypt: 2 "To the north of the city is a place called
Matarieh, where is that famous vine said to have been formerly in
Engaddi (cf. Cant., i, 13), which distils the balsam. It is diligently
guarded by thirty men, for it is the source of the greater portion of the
Sultan's wealth. It is not like other vines, but is a small, low, smooth
tree, and odoriferous, resembling in smoothness and bark the hazel
tree, and in leaves a certain plant called nasturtium aquaticum. The
stalk is thin and short, usually not more than a foot in length; every
year fresh branches grow out from it, having from two to three feet in
length and producing no fruit. The keepers of the vineyard hire Chris-
tians, who with knives or sharp stones break or cut the tops of these
branches in several places and always in the sign of a cross. The balsam
soon distils through these fractures into glass bottles. The keepers
assert that the flow of balsam is more abundant when the incision
is made by a Christian than by a Saracen." 3
In 1550 PIERRE BELON* still noted the tree in Cairo. Two speci-
mens Were still alive in 1612. In 1615, however, the last tree died.
The Semitic word introduced into China by the Yu yan tsa tsu
seems to have fallen into oblivion. It is not even mentioned in the
Pen ts'ao kan mu. The word "balsam," however, was brought back to
China by the early Jesuits. In the famous work on the geography of
the world, the Cifan wai ki tt 3f 9\- S, 5 first draughted by Pantoja, and
after his death enlarged and edited in 1623 by Giulio Aleni (1582-1649),
the Peru balsam is described under the name pa'r-sa-mo $t Iff 3St If .
The same word with reference to the same substance is employed by
1 Bibliotheque orientale, Vol. I, p. 392.
2 M. ESPOSITO, The Pilgrimage of Symon Semeonis: A Contribution to the
History of Mediaeval Travel (Geographical Journal, Vol. LI, 1918, p. 85).
3 Cf. the similar account of K. v. MEGENBERG (Buch der Natur, p. 358, writ-
ten in 1349-50).
4 Observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables, trouve"es en
Grece, Asie, Iude, Egypte, Arabie, p. 246.
5 Ch. 4, p. 3 (ed. of Sou San ko ts*un $u).
434 SlNO-lRANICA
Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-88) in his K'un yti t*u $wo ty H [3 1, and
was hence adopted in the pharmacopoeia of the Chinese, for it figures
in the Pen ts'ao kan mu & i. 1 The Chinese Gazetteer of Macao 2 mentions
pa 'r-su-ma aromatic B W ? Ok W as a kind of benjoin. In this case
we have a transcription of Portuguese bdlsamo.
1 Ch. 6, p. 19. See, further, WAITERS, Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 339.
2 Ao-men li lio, Ch. B, p. 41 (cf. WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 60).
NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF FU-LIN
48. The preceding notes on Fu-lin plants have signally confirmed
Hirth's opinion in regard to the language of Fu-lin, which was Aramaic.
There now remains but one Fu-lin plant-name to be identified. This is
likewise contained in the Yu yan tsa tsu. 1 The text runs as follows:
"The p'an-nu-se ^^^ tree has its habitat in Po-se (Persia),
likewise in Fu-lin. In Fu-lin it is styled k'un-han l St. The tree is
thirty feet high, and measures from three to four feet in circumference.
Its leaves resemble those of the si Sun % $? (the Banyan tree, Ficus
retusa). It is an evergreen. The flowers resemble those of the citrus,
ku , and are white in color. The seeds are green and as large as a
sour jujube, swan tsao Sc Si (Diospyros lotus). They are sweet of taste
and glossy (fat, greasy). They are eatable. The people of the western
regions press oil out of them, to oint their bodies with to ward off
ulcers."
The transcription p'an-nu-se answers to ancient *bwan-du-sek;
and k'un-han, to ancient g'win-xan. Despite a long-continued and
intensive search, I cannot discover any Iranian plant-name of the type
bandusek or wandusek, nor any Aramaic word like ginxan. The botanical
characteristics are too vague to allow of a safe identification. Never-
theless I hope that this puzzle also will be solved in the future. 2
In the Fu-lin name a-li-k'u-fa we recognized an Indian loan-word in
Aramaic (p. 423). It would be tempting to regard as such also the
Fu-lin word for "pepper" *a-li-xa-da Rf 83 M RE (a-U-ho-Vo), which
may be restored to *alixada, arixada, arxad; but no such word is known
from Indian or in Aramaic. The common word for " pepper " in Aramaic
isfilfol (from Sanskrit pippala). In certain Kurd dialects ]. DE MORGAN S
has traced a word alat for "pepper," but I am not certain that this is
1 Ch. 18, p. 10 b.
2 My colleague, Professor M. Sprengling at the University of Chicago, kindly
sent me the following information: "Olive-oil was used to ward off ulcers (see
WINER, Bibl. Realwortb., Vol. II, p. 170; and KRAUSS, Archaeologie des Talmud,
Vol. I, pp. 229, 233, 683). Neither in Krauss nor elsewhere was I able to find the
name of an oil-producing tree even remotely resembling ginxan. There is a root
qnx ('to wipe, to rub, to anoint'). It is theoretically possible that q is pronounced
voiced and thus becomes a guttural g, and that from this root, by means of the
suffix -an, may be derived a noun *qmxan, *ginxan to which almost any significance
derived from 'rubbing, anointing' might be attached. But for the existence of such
a noun or adjective I have not the slightest evidence."
3 Mission scientifique en Perse, Vol. V, p. 132.
435
436 SlNO-lRANICA
connected with our Fu-lin word, which at any rate represents a loan-
word.
There is another Fu-lin word which has not yet been treated cor-
rectly. The T'ang Annals, in the account of Fu-lin (Ch. 221), mention
a mammal, styled ts'un If, of the size of a dog, fierce, vicious, and
strong. 1 BRETSCHNEiDER, 2 giving an incorrect form of the name, has
correctly identified this beast with the hyena, which, not being found
in eastern Asia, is unknown to the Chinese. Ma Twan-lin adds that
some of these animals are reared, 3 and the hyena can indeed be tamed.
The character for the designation of this animal is not listed in K'an-hi's
Dictionary; but K'an-hi gives it in the form U 4 with the pronunciation
hien (fan-ts'ie 3t ffc, sound equivalent JS), quoting a commentary to
the dictionary Er ya, which is identical with the text of Ma Twan-lin
relative to the animal ts'un. This word hien (or possibly hiian) can be
nothing but a transcription of Greek vaiva, hyaena, or valvrj. On the
other hand, it should be noted that this Greek word has also passed as
a loan into Syriac; 5 and it would therefore not be impossible that it
was Syrians who transmitted the Greek name to the Chinese. This
question is altogether irrelevant; for we know, and again thanks to
Hirth's researches, that the Chinese distinguished two Fu-lin, the
Lesser Fu-lin, which is identical with Syria, and the Greater Fu-lin, the
Byzantine Empire with Constantinople as capital. 6 Byzantine Greek,
accordingly, must be included among the languages spoken in Fu-lin.
As to the origin of the name Fu-lin, I had occasion to refer to Pel-
liot's new theory, according to which it would be based on Rom,
Rum. 7 I am of the same opinion, and perfectly in accord with the
fundamental principles by which this theory is inspired. In fact, this
is the method followed throughout this investigation: by falling
back on the ancient phonology of Chinese, we may hope to restore
correctly the prototypes of the Chinese transcriptions. Pelliot starts
from the Old-Armenian form Hrom or HrOm, 8 in which h represents
1 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 60, 107, 220.
2 Knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of the Arabs, p. 24.
3 HIRTH (op. cit., p. 79) translates, "Some are domesticated like dogs." But
the phrase f{ J6j following ^f ^ ^ forms a separate clause. In the text printed
by Hirth (p. 115, Q 22) the character jfr is to be eliminated.
4 Thus reproduced by PALLADIUS in his Chinese-Russian Dictionary (Vol. I,
p. 569) with the reading siian.
5 R. P. SMITH, Thesaurus syriacus, Vol. I, col. 338.
6 Cf. HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXIII, 1913, pp. 202-208.
7 The Diamond (this volume, p. 8). PELLIOT'S notice is in Journal asiatique,
1914, I, pp. 498-500.
8 Cf. HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 362.
NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF FU-LIN 437
the spiritus asper of the initial Greek r. In some Iranian dialects the
spiritus asper is marked by an initial vowel: thus in Pahlavi Arum, in
Kurd Urum. The ancient Armenian words with initial hr, as explained
by A. Meillet, were borrowed from Parthian dialects which transformed
initial Iranian / into h: for instance, Old Iranian framana (now fermanj
"order") resulted in Armenian hraman, hence from Parthian *hraman.
Thus *From, probably conveyed by the Sogdians, was the prototype
from which Chinese Fu-lin, *Fu-lim, was fashioned. In my opinion,
the Chinese form is not based on *From, but on *Frim or *Frim. Rim
must have been an ancient variant of Rum; Rim is still the Russian
designation of Rome. 1 What is of still greater importance is that, as
has been shown by J. J. MoDi, 2 there is a Pahlavi name Sairima, which
occurs in the Farvardin Yast, and is identified with Rum in the Bun-
dahisn; again, in the Sahnameh the corresponding name is Rum. This
country is said to have derived its name from Prince Selam, to whom
it was given; but this traditional opinion is not convincing. A form
Rima or Rim has accordingly existed in Middle Persian; and, on the
basis of the Chinese transcription *Fu-lim or *Fu-rim, it is justifiable
to presuppose the Iranian (perhaps Parthian) prototype *Frim, from
which the Chinese transcription was made.
1 What Pelliot remarks on the Tibetan names Ge-sar and P'rom is purely
hypothetical, and should rather be held in abeyance for the present. We know so
little about the Ge-sar epic, that no historical conclusions can be derived from it.
For the rest, the real Tibetan designation for Byzance or Turkey, in the same
manner as in New Persian, is Rum (T'oung Poo, 1916, p. 491). In regard to the
occurrence of this name in Chinese transcriptions of more recent date, see BRET-
SCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 306; and HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 141.
2 Asiatic Papers, p. 244 (Bombay, 1905).
THE WATER-MELON
49. This Cucurbitacea (Citrullus wlgaris or Cucurbita citrullus)
is known to the Chinese under the name si kwa B jK. (" melon of the
west"). The plant now covers a zone from anterior Asia, the Caucasus
region, Persia to Turkistan and China, also southern Russia and the
regions of the lower Danube. There is no evidence to lead one to sup-
pose that the cultivation was very ancient in Iran, India, Central Asia,
or China; and this harmonizes with the botanical observation that
the species has not been found wild in Asia. 1
A. ENGLER 2 traces the home of the water-melon to South Africa,
whence he holds it spread to Egypt and the Orient in most ancient times,
and was diffused over southern Europe and Asia in the pre-Christian
era. This theory is based on the observation that the water-melon
grows spontaneously in South Africa, but it is not explained by what
agencies it .was disseminated from there to ancient Egypt. Neverthe-
less the available historical evidence in Asia seems to me to speak
in favor of the theory that the fruit is not an Asiatic cultivation; and,
since there is no reason to credit it to Europe, it may well be traceable
to an African origin.
The water-melon is not mentioned by any work of the T'ang dy-
nasty; notably it is absent from the T'ai p'in hwan yii ki. The earliest
allusion to it is found in the diary of Hu Kiao iS ^H, entitled Hien lu ki
PS 18 ffi, which is inserted in chapter 73 of the History of the Five Dy-
nasties (Wu tai Si), written by Nou-yaii Siu Bfc il H (A.D. 1017-72)
and translated by E. CHAVANNES. S Hu Kiao travelled in the country
of the Kitan from A.D. 947 to 953, and narrates that there for the first
time he ate water-melons (si kwa). 4 He goes on to say, "It is told that
the Kitan, after the annihilation of the Uigur, obtained this cultivation.
They cultivated the plant by covering the seeds with cattle-manure
and placing mats over the beds. The fruit is as large as that of the
1 A. DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 263.
2 In Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 323.
Voyageurs chinois chez les Khitan (Journal asiatique, 1897, I, pp. 390-442).
4 Chavannes' translation "melons" (p. 400) is inadequate; the water-melon
is styled in French past&que or melon d'eau. Hu Kiao, of course, was acquainted
with melons in general, but what he did not previously know is this particular species.
During Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, "on mangeait des lentilles, des pigeons, et
un melon d'eau exquis, connu dans les pays me"ridionaux sous le nom de pastique.
Les soldats 1'appelaient sainte pasttque" (THIERS, Histoire de la revolution francaise).
438
THE WATER-MELON 439
tun kwa 4* JR (Benincasa cerifera) 1 and of sweet taste." 2 The water-
melon is here pointed out as a novelty discovered by a Chinese among
the Kitan, who then occupied northern China, and who professed to
have received it from the Turkish tribe of the Uigur. It is not stated
in this text that Hu Kiao took seeds of the fruit along or introduced it
into China proper. This should be emphasized, in view of the con-
clusion of the Pen ts'ao kan mu (see below), and upheld by Bretschneider
and A. de Candolle, that the water-melon was in China from the tenth
century. At that time it was only in the portion of China held by the
Kitan, but still unknown in the China of the Chinese. 3
1 "Cultivated in China, Japan, India and Africa, and often met with in a wild
state: but it is uncertain whether it is indigenous" (FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal
Linnean Society, Vol. XXIII, p. 315).
2 Hu Kiao was a good observer of the flora of the northern regions, and his
notes have a certain interest for botanical geography. Following his above refer-
ence to the water-melon, he continues, "Going still farther east, we arrived at Niao-
t'an, where for the first time willows [JurSi suxei] are encountered, also water-grass,
luxuriant and fine; the finest of this kind is the grass si-ki J, fjt with large blades.
Ten of these are sufficient to satisfy the appetite of a horse. From Niao-t'an we
advanced into high mountains which it took us ten days' journey to cross. Then we
passed a large forest, two or three li long, composed entirely of elms, wu-i Jj| ^
(Ulmus macrocarpa) , the branches and leaves of which are set with thorns like arrow-
feathers. The soil is devoid of grass." Si-ki apparently represents the transcription
of a Kitan word. Three species of elm occur in the Amur region, Ulmus montana,
U. campestris, and U. suberosa (GRUM-GRZIMAILO, Opisanie Amurskoi Oblasti,
p. 316). In regard to the locality T'an-6'en-tien, Hu Kiao reports, "The climat
there is very mild, so that the Kitan, when they suffer from great cold, go there to
warm up. The wells are pure and cool; the grass is soft like down, and makes a
good sleeping-couch. There are many peculiar flowers to be found, of which two
species may be mentioned, one styled han-kin ^ <*, the size of the palm of a
hand, of gold color so brilliant that it dazzles man; the other, termed ts*in zan
^ ^, like the kin t*en ^ j|| (Orithia edulis) of China, resembling in color an
Indigofera (Ian ijff) and very pleasing." The term han-kin appears to be the tran-
scription of a Kitan word; so is perhaps also ts'in zan, although, according to STUART
(Chinese Materia Medica, p. 404), the leaves of Sesamum are so called; this plant,
however, cannot come here into question.
3 The Pien tse lei pien cites the Wu tai Si to the effect that Siao Han fj ft,
after the subjugation of the Uigur, obtained the seeds of water-melons and brought
them back, and that the fruit as a product of the Western Countries (Si yu, that is,
Central Asia) was called "western melon" (si kwa). I regret not having been able to
trace this text in the Wu tai si. The biography of Siao Han inserted in the Kiu
Wu tai Si (Ch. 98, pp. 6 b-7 a) contains nothing of the kind. The statement itself
is suspicious for two reasons. Siao Han, married to A-pu-li, sister of the Emperor
Wu-yii, in A.D. 948 was involved in a high-treason plot, and condemned to death in
the ensuing year (cf. H. C. v. D. GABELENTZ, Geschichte der grossen Liao, p. 65;
and CHAVANNES, op. cit., p. 392). Hu Kiao was secretary to Siao Han, and in this
capacity accompanied him to the Kitan. After his master's death, Hu Kiao was
without support, and remained among the Kitan for seven years (up to the year 953).
It was in the course of these peregrinations that, as related above, he was first
introduced to water-melons. Now, if Siao Han had really introduced this fruit into
440 SlNO-lRANICA
The man who introduced the fruit into China proper was Hun Hao
$c 6 (A.D. 1090-1155), ambassador to the Kin or Jurci, among whom he
remained for fifteen years (1129-43). In his memoirs, entitled Sun mo
ki wen & JH ilfi 1*9, he has the following report: 1 "The water-melon
(si kwa) is in shape like a flat Acorus (p'u Sf), but rounded. It is very
green in color, almost blue-green. In the course of time it will change
into yellow. This Cucurbitacea (t*ie fi) resembles the sweet melon (tien
kwa ?itt jR, Cucumis melo), and is sweet and crisp. 2 Its interior is filled
China during his lifetime (that is, prior to the year 949), we might justly assume
that his secretary Hu Kiao must have possessed knowledge of this fact, and would
hardly speak of the fruit as a novelty. Further, the alleged introduction of the
fruit by Siao Han conflicts with the tradition that this importation is due to Hun
Hao in the twelfth century (see above). It would be nothing striking, of course, if, as
the fruit was cultivated by the Kitan, several Chinese ambassadors to this people
should have carried the seeds to their country; but, as a rule, such new acquisitions
take effect without delay, and if Siao Han had imported the seeds, there was no
necessity for Hun Hao to do so again. Therefore it seems preferable to think either
that the text of the above quotation is corrupted, or that the tradition, if it existed,
is a subsequent makeshift or altogether erroneous.
1 Not having access to an edition of this work, I avail myself of the extract, as
printed in the Kwan k'unfan p'u (Ch. 14, p. 17 b), the texts of which are generally
given in a reliable form.
2 In regard to the melon (Cucumis melo], A. DE CANDOLLE (Origin of Cultivated
Plants, p. 261) says with reference to a letter received from Bretschneider in 1881,
"Its introduction into China appears to date only from the eighth century of our
era, judging from the epoch of the first work which mentions it. As the relations
of the Chinese with Bactriana, and the north-west of India by the embassy of
Chang-Kien, date from the second century, it is possible that the culture of the
species was not then widely diffused in Asia." Nothing to the effect is to be found in
Bretschneider's published works. In his Bot. Sin. (pt. II, p. 197) he states that all
the cucurbitaceous plants now cultivated for food in China are probably indigenous
to the country, with the exception of the cucumber and water-melon, which, as their
Chinese names indicate, were introduced from the West. In the texts assembled
in the Pen ts'ao kan mu regarding tien kwa, no allusion is made to foreign origin.
Concerning the gourd or calabash (Lagenaria vulgaris), A. DE CANDOLLE (/. c.,
p. 246) states after a letter of Bretschneider that "the earliest work which mentions
the gourd is that of Tchong-tchi-chou, of the first century before Christ, quoted in
a work of the fifth or sixth century." This seems to be a confusion with the Cun
$u $u of the T'ang period (BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 79). The gourd, of
course, occurs in ancient canonical literature (Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 198). The history
of this and other cucurbitaceous plants requires new and critical investigation, the
difficulty of which is unfortunately enhanced by a constant confusion of terms in
all languages, the name of one species being shifted to another. It means very little,
of course, that at present, as recently emphasized again by H. J. SPINDEN (Pro-
ceedings Nineteenth Congress of Americanists, p. 271, Washington, 1917), Lagenaria
is distributed over the New and Old Worlds alike; the point is, where the centre of the
cultivation was (according to A. de Candolle it was in India; see, further, ASA GRAY,
Scientific Papers, Vol. I, p. 330), and how it spread, or whether the wild form had a
wide geographical range right from the beginning, and was cultivated independently
in various countries. In view of the great antiquity of the cultivation both in India
and China, the latter assumption would seem more probable; but all this requires
renewed and profound investigation.
THE WATER-MELON 441
with a juice which is very cold. Hun Hao, when he went out as envoy,
brought the fruit back to China. At present it is found both in the
imperial orchards and in village gardens. It can be kept for several
months, aside from the fact that there is nothing to prevent it from
assuming a yellow hue in course of time. In P'o-yaii SC il 1 there lived
a man who for a long time was afflicted with a disease of the eyes.
Dried pieces of water-melon were applied to them and caused him relief,
for the reason that cold is a property of this fruit." Accordingly the
water-melon was transplanted into China proper only in the latter
part of the twelfth century. Also the Si wu ki yuan 9- $J $6 H^, 2 which
says that in the beginning there were no water-melons in China,
attributes their introduction to Hun Hao. The Kin or Juri, a nation
of Tungusian origin, appear to have learned the cultivation from the
Kitan. From a Jurci-Chinese glossary we know also the Jurci designa-
tion of the water-melon, which is xeko, corresponding to Manchu
xengke, a general term for cucurbitaceous plants. In Golde, xinke
(in other Tungusian dialects kemke, kenke) denotes the cucumber, and
seho or sego the water-melon. The proper Manchu word for the water-
melon is dungga or dunggan. The Tungusian tribes, accordingly, did
not adopt the Persian-Turkish word karpuz (see below) from the Uigur,
but applied to the water-melon an indigenous word, that originally
denoted another cucurbitaceous species.
Following is the information given on the subject in the Pen ts'ao
kan mu.
Wu Zui ^ S, a physician from the province of Ce-kian in the
thirteenth century, author of the Zi yun pen ts'ao $ ^ ^, is cited
in this work as follows: "When the Kitan had destroyed the Uigur,
they obtained this cultivation. They planted this melon by covering
the seeds with cattle-manure. The formation of this fruit is like the
peck tou ^TJ it is large and round like a gourd, and in color like green
jade. The seeds have a color like gold, but some like black hemp. In
the northern part of our country the fruit is plentiful." Li Si-cen ob-
serves, " According to the Hien lu ki by Hu Kiao (see p. 438), this
cultivation was obtained after the subjugation of the Uigur. It is styled
'western melon' (si kwd). Accordingly it is from the time of the Wu-tai
(A.D. 907-960) that it was first introduced into China. 3 At present it
occurs both in the south and north of the country, though the southern
1 In the prefecture of Zao-Sou, Kian-si.
2 The work of Kao C'en g & of the Sung dynasty.
8 The same opinion is expressed by Yan Sen (1488-1559) in his Tan frien tsuii
lu (above, p. 331).
442 SlNO-lRANICA
fruit is inferior in taste to that of the north." He distinguishes sweet,
insipid, and sour varieties.
In the T*ao hun kin Zu $0 ; 7JC 9: 1 it is stated that in Yun-kia
3K $ (in the prefecture of Wen-5ou, Ci-li) there were han kwa ^ &
("cold melons") of very large size, which could be preserved till the
coming spring, and which are regarded as identical with the water-
melon. Li Si-cen justly objects to this interpretation, commenting that,
if the water-melon was first introduced in the Wu-tai period, the name
si kwa could not have been known at that time. This objection must
be upheld, chiefly for the reason that we have no other records from the
fourth century or even the T'ang period which mention the water-
melon: it is evidently a post-T'ang introduction. 2
Ye Tse-k'i, in his Ts*ao mu tse ^ /{C -f- written in 1378, remarked
that water-melons were first introduced* under the Yuan, when the
Emperor Si-tsu ft 18. (Kubilai) subjugated Central Asia. This view
was already rejected under the Ming in the Cen In Fwan & *%> $n by
C'en Ki-zu W> $3 ffir, who aptly referred to the discovery of the fruit by
Hu Kiao, and added that it is not mentioned in the Er ya, the various
older Pen ts*ao, the Ts'i min yao $u, and other books of a like character,
it being well known that the fruit did not anciently exist in China. As
to this point, all Chinese writers on the subject appear to be agreed; and
its history is so well determined, that it has not given rise to attempts
of antedating or "changkienizing" the introduction.
The Chinese travellers during the Mongol period frequently allude
to the large water-melons of Persia and Central Asia. 3 On the other
hand, Ibn Batuta mentions the excellent water-melons of China, which
are like those of Khwarezm and Ispahan. 4
According to the Manchu officers Fusamb6 and Surde, who pub-
lished an account of Turkistan about I772, 5 the water-melon of this
region, though identical with that of China, does not equal the latter
in taste; on the contrary, it is much inferior to it. Other species of melon
belong to the principal products of Turkistan; some are called by the
Chinese "Mohammedan caps" and "Mohammedan eyes." The so-
called "Kami melon," which is not a water-melon, and ten varieties
of which are distinguished, enjoys a great reputation. Probably it is
1 Apparently a commentary to the works of T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536).
2 The alleged synonyme han kwa for the water-melon, adopted also by BRET-
SCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 223) and others, must therefore be weeded out.
3 Cf. BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, pp. 20, 31, 67, 89.
4 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. IV, p. 109.
6 Hui k'ian i, see above, p. 230; and below, p. 562.
THE WATER-MELON 443
a variety of sweet melon (Cucumis melo), called in Uigur and Djagatai
kogun, kavyn, or kaun, in Turk! qawa and qawaq.
It is said to have been introduced into China as late as the K'an-hi
era (1662-1721), and was still expensive at that time, but became
ubiquitous after the subjugation of Turkistan. 1 Of other foreign
countries that possess the water-melon, the Yin yai $en Ian mentions
Su-men-ta-la (Sumatra), where the fruit has a green shell and red
seeds, and is two or three feet in length, 2 and Ku-li "& M (Calicut) in
India, where it may be had throughout the year. 3 In the country of the
Mo-ho the fruits are so heavy that it takes two men to lift them. They
are said to occur also in Camboja. 4 If it is correct that the first report
of the water-melon reached the Chinese not earlier than the tenth
century (and there is no reason to question the authenticity of this
account), this late appearance of the fruit would rather go to indicate
that its arrival in Central Asia was almost as late or certainly not much
earlier; otherwise the Chinese, during their domineering position in
Central Asia under the T'ang, would surely not have hesitated to
appropriate it. This state of affairs is confirmed by conditions in Iran
and India, where only a mediaeval origin of the fruit can be safely sup-
posed.
The point that the water-melon may have been indigenous in
Persia from ancient times is debatable. Such Persian terms as hindewane
("Indian fruit") [Afghan hindwdnd] or battix indi (" Indian melon") 5
raise the suspicion that it might have been introduced from India. 6
GARCIA DA ORTA states, "According to the Arabs and Persians, this
fruit was brought to their countries from India, and for that reason they
1 Hui k'ian i, Ch. 2; and Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 16, p. 85.
2 Malayan mandetikei, tambikei, or semanka (Javanese semonka, Cam samkai).
Regarding other Malayan names of cucurbitaceous plants, see R. BRANDSTETTER,
Mata-Hari, p. 27; cf. also J. CRAWFURD, History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I,
P- 435-
3 Regarding other cucurbitaceous plants of Calicut, see ROCKHILL, T'oung Pao,
I 9 I 5. PP- 459. 460; but tun kwa is not, as there stated, the cucumber, it is Benincasa
cerifera.
4 Kwan k'iin fan p'u, Ch. 14, p. 18. Cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$aise,
Vol. II, p. 169. Water-melons are cultivated in Siam (PALLEGOIX, Description
du royaume Thai, Vol. I, p. 126).
5 From the Arabic; Egyptian bettu-ka, Coptic betuke; hence Portuguese and
Spanish pasteca, French pastegue. The batfix hindi has already been discussed by Ibn
al-Baitar (L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 240) and by Abu Mansur (AcnuN-
DOW, p. 23). Armenian ttum bears no relation to the dudaim of the Bible, as tenta-
tively suggested by E. SEIDEL (Mechithar, p. 121). The latter refers to the man-
dragora.
6 Thus also SPIEGEL, Eranische Altertumskunde, Vol. I, p. 259.
444 SlNO-lRANICA
call it Batiec Indi, which means ' melon of India,' and Avicenna so calls
it in many places." 1 Nor does Persian herbuz* Middle Persian harbojina
or ocarbuzak (literally, "donkey-cucumber") favor the assumption of
an indigenous origin. VAMB^RY 3 argues that Turkish karpuz or harbuz
is derived from the Persian, and that accordingly the fruit hails from
Persia, though the opposite standpoint would seem to be equally
justifiable, and the above interpretation may be no more than the
outcome of a popular etymology. But Vambe'ry, after all, may be right;
at least, by accepting his theory it would be comparatively easy to
account for the migration of the water-melon. In this case, Persia
would be the starting-point from which it spread to the Turks of Central
Asia and finally to China. 4 A philological argument may support the
opinion that the Turkish word was derived from Persia: besides the
forms with initial guttural, we meet an alternation with initial dental,
due to phonetic dissimilation. The Uigur, as we know from the Uigur-
Chinese vocabulary, had the word as karpuz; but the Mongols term the
water-melon tarbus. Likewise in Turk! we have tarbuz, but also qarpuz.
This alternation is not Mongol-Turkish, but must have pre-existed in
Persian, as we have tarambuja in Neo-Sanskrit, and in Hindustani
there is xarbuza and tarbuza (also tarbuz and tarmus) , and correspondingly
tarbuz in West-Tibetan. In Pustu, the language of the Afghans, we
have tarbuja in the sense of "water-melon," and xarbuja designating
various kinds of musk-melon. 5 Through Turkish mediation the same
word reached the Slavs (Russian arbuz* Bulgarian karpuz, Polish
arbuz, garbuz, harbuz) and Byzantines (Greek Kapirovaia) , and Turkish
tribes appear to have been active in disseminating the fruit east and
west.
T t would therefore be plausible also that, as stated by JORET/ the
fruit may have been propagated from Iran to India, although the
dat ; of this importation is unknown. From Indian sources, on the other
hai .d, nothing is to be found that would indicate any great antiquity of
the cultivation of this species. Of the alleged Sanskrit word chayapula,
1 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies by Garcia da Orta, p. 304.
2 From which Armenian xarpzag is derived.
8 Primitive Cultur des turko-tatarischen Volkes, pp. 217-218.
4 Vambe'ry, of course, is wrong in designating Persia and India as the mother-
country of this cultivation. The mother-country was ancient Egypt or Africa in
a wider sense.
6 H. W. BELLEW, Report on the Yusufzais, p. 255 (Lahore, 1864).
8 In the dialects of northern Persia we also find such forms as arhuz and arhoz
(J. DE MORGAN, Mission en Perse, Vol. V, p. 212).
7 Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 252.
THE WATER-MELON 445
which A. DE CANDOLLE introduces as evidence for the early diffusion
of the cultivation into Asia, I cannot find any trace. The Sanskrit
designations of the water-melon, na\amra ("mango of the Nata"?),
godumba, tarambuja, sedn, are of recent origin and solely to be found in
the lexicographers; while others, like kalinga (Benincasa cerifera), orig-
inally refer to other cucurbitaceous plants. WATT gives only modern
vernacular names.
Chinese si kwa has been equated with Greek aiKva by HiRTH, 1 who
arbitrarily assigns to the latter the meaning "water-melon." This
philological achievement has been adopted by GILES in his Chinese
Dictionary (No. 6281). The Greek word, however, refers only to the
cucumber, and the water-melon remained unknown to the Greeks of
ancient times. 2 A late Greek designation for the fruit possibly is Treirwv,
which appears only in Hippocrates. 3 A. DE CANDOLLE 4 justly remarked
that the absence of an ancient Greek name which may with certainty
be attributed to this species seems to show that it was introduced into
the Graeco-Roman world about the beginning of the Christian era.
The Middle and Modern Greek word x a pnova or /capTrouo-ta, derived
from Persian or Turkish, plainly indicates the way in which the By-
zantine world became acquainted with the water-melon. There is,
further, no evidence that the Greek word O-IKUO, ever penetrated into
Asia and reached those peoples (Uigur, Kitan, Jurci) whom the Chinese
make responsible for the transmission of the water-melon. The Chinese
term is not a transcription, but has the literal meaning "western melon " ;
and the "west" implied by this term does not stretch as far as Greece, but,
as is plainly stated in the Wu tai $i, merely alludes to the fact that the
fruit was produced in Turkistan. Si kwa is simply an abbreviation
for Si yil kwa H J& JR; that is, "melon of Turkistan." 5
According to the Yamato-honzo Q of 1709, water-melons were first
introduced into Japan in the period Kwan-ei (1624-44).
1 Fremde Einflusse in der chinesischen Kunst, p. 17.
2 A. DE CANDOLLE, Geographic botanique, p. 909.
3 Even this problematic interpretation is rejected by L. LECLERC (Trait6 des
simples, Vol. I, p. 239), who identifies the Greek word with the common gourd.
Leclerc's controversy with A. de Candolle should be carefully perused by those
who are interested in the history of the melon family.
4 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 264.
6 Illustrations of Chinese water-melon fields may be seen in F. H. KING, Farm-
ers of Forty Centuries, pp. 282, 283.
Ch.8,p. 3 .
FENUGREEK
50. In regard to the fenugreek (Trigonella joenum-graecum, French
fenugrec), Chinese hu-lu-pa (Japanese koroha) 49 M. EL, STUART* states
without further comment that the seeds of this leguminous plant were
introduced into the southern provinces of China from some foreign
country. But BRETSCHNEiDER 2 had correctly identified the Chinese
name with Arabic hulba (xulbd). The plant is first mentioned in the
Pen ts'ao of the Kia-yu period (A.D. 1056-64) of the Sung dynasty,
where the author, Can Yu-si ^ S &, says that it grows in the prov-
inces of Kwan-tufi and Kwei-cou, and that, according to some, the
species of Lin-nan represents the seeds of the foreign lo-po (Raphanus
sativus), but that this point has not yet been investigated. Su Sun,
in his T*u kin pen ts*ao, states that "the habitat of the plant is at present
in Kwafi-tun, and that in the opinion of some the seeds came from
Hai-nan and other barbarians; passengers arriving on ships planted
the seeds in Kwan-tuii (Lin-wai), where the plant actually grows, but
its seeds do not equal the foreign article; the seeds imported into China
are really good." Then their employment in the pharmacopoeia is
discussed. 3 The drug is also mentioned in the Pen ts'ao yen i*
The transcription hu-lu-pa is of especial interest, because the
element hu forms part of the transcription, but may simultaneously
imply an allusion to the ethnic name Hu. The form of the transcription
shows that it is post-T'ang; for under the T'ang the phonetic equiva-
lent of the character $J was still possessed of an initial guttural, and a
foreign element xu would then have been reproduced by a quite different
character.
The medical properties of the plant are set forth by Abu Mansur in
his Persian pharmacopoeia under the name hulbat. 5 The Persian name
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 442.
2 Bot. Sin., pt. i, p. 65.
3 STUART (/. c.) says wrongly that the seeds have been in use as a medicine since
the T'ang dynasty; this, however, has been the cage only since the Sung. I do not
know of any mention of the plant under the T'ang. This negative documentary
evidence is signally confirmed by the transcription of the name, which cannot have
been made under the T'ang.
4 Ch. 12, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
5 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 47. Another Persian form is hulya. In Arme-
nian it is hulba or hulbe (E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 183). See also LECLERC, Traitd
446
FENUGREEK 447
is Sanbalid, Sanbalile in Ispahan, and Samliz in Shiraz, which appears
in India as Samti. As is well known, the plant occurs wild in Kashmir,
the Panjab, and in the upper Gangetic plain, and is cultivated in many
parts of India, particularly in the higher inland provinces. The Sanskrit
term is methi, methika, or meihim. 1 In Greek it is /SouKepas ("ox-horn"), 2
Middle Greek -xpvKirev (from the Arabic), Neo-Greek rrjXu; Latin
foenum graecum.* According to A. DE CANDOLLE, 4 the species is wild
(besides the Panjab and Kashmir) in the deserts of Mesopotamia and
of Persia, and in Asia Minor. JOHN FRYER 5 enumerates it among the
products of Persia. 6
Another West- Asiatic plant introduced by the Arabs into China under the
Sung is ff ^ jH ya-pu-lu, first mentioned by Cou Mi ID tffi (1230-1320) as a
poisonous plant growing several thousand li west from the countries of the Moham-
medans (Kwei sin tsa Si, sil tsi A, p. 38, ed. of Pai hai; and i ya fan tsa Z'ao, Ch. A,
p. 40 b, ed. of Yue ya fan ts'un $u). This name is based on Arabic yabruh or abruh
(Persian jabruh), the mandragora or mandrake. This subject has been discussed by
me in detail in a monograph "La Mandragore" (in French), T'oung Pao, 1917,
pp. 1-30.
des simples, Vol. I, p. 443. SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 547) remarks, "L'infusion
de la semence est un remede favori des me"decins indigenes dans les blennorhagies
urethriques chroniques."
1 It occurs, for instance, as a condiment in an Indian tale of King Vikramaditya
(A. WEBER, Abh. Berl. Akad., 1877, p. 67).
2 Hippocrates; Theophrastus, Hist, plant., IV. rv, 10; or rfjXts: ibid., III. xvi,
2; Dioscorides, II, 124.
3 Pliny, xxiv, 120.
4 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 112.
5 New Account of East India and Persia, Vol. II, p. 311.
6 For further information see FLUCKIGER and H ANBURY, Pharmacographia,
p. 172.
NUX-VOMICA
51. The nux-vomica or strychnine tree (Strychnos nuoo-wmicd)
is mentioned in the Pen ts'ao kan mu under the name ^C IS fan
mu-pie (" foreign mu-pie," Momordica cochinchinensis, a cucurbitaceous
plant), with the synonymes $1 IS ? ma ts'ien-tse ("horse-coins," re-
ferring to the coins on a horse's bridle, hence Japanese matin), ^ K
JC 5 k'u Si pa tou ( lt pa-tou [Croton tiglium] with bitter fruits"), 1 and
^C ^ J& JC %$ hwo-$i-k'o pa-tu. The latter term, apparently of foreign
origin, has not yet been identified; and such an attempt would also
have been futile, as there is an error in the transcription. The correct
mode of writing the word which is given in the Co ken lu, 2 written in
A.D. 1366, is ^C ^ $0 hwo-Si-la, and this is obviously a transcription of
Persian kutla or kutula ("nux-vomica"), a name which is also current
in India (thus in Hindustani; Bengali kutila). The second element
pa-tu is neither Persian nor Arabic, and, in my opinion, must be ex-
plained from Chinese pa-tou (Croton tiglium).
The text of the Co ken lu is as follows: "As regards hwo-Si-la pa-tu ,
it is a drug growing in the soil of Mohammedan countries. In appear-
ance it is like mu-pie-tse (Momordica cochinchinensis), but smaller. It
can cure a hundred and twenty cases; for each case there are special
ingredients and guides." This is the earliest Chinese mention of this
drug that I am able to trace; and as it is not yet listed in the Cen lei
pen ts'ao of 1108, the standard work on materia medica of the Sung
period, it is justifiable to conclude that it was introduced into China
only in the age of the Mongols, during the fourteenth century. This is
further evidenced by the very form of the transcription, which is in
harmony with the rules then in vogue for writing foreign words. The
Kwan k'iln fan p*u* cites no other source relative to the subject than
the Pen ts'ao kan mu, which indeed appears to be the first and only
1 This name does not mean, as asserted by STUART (Chinese Materia Medica,
p. 425), "bitter-seeded Persian bean." STUART (ibid., p. 132) says that the Arabic
name for Croton tiglium is "batoo, which was probably derived from the Chinese
name pa tou C< S-" True it is that the Arabs are acquainted with this plant as an
importation from China (L. LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. II, p. 95), but only
under the name dend. I fail to trace a word batu in any Arabic dictionary or in Ibn
al-Baitar.
2 Ch. 7, p. 5 b. See above, p. 386.
3 Ch. 6, p. 7.
448
Nux-VoMiCA 449
Pen ts'ao to notice it. The point is emphasized that the drug serves
for the poisoning of dogs. The plant now grows in Se-c'wan.
The Sanskrit term for nux-vomica is kupilu, from which is derived
Tibetan go-byi-la or go-bye-la. 1 The latter is pronounced go-ji-la, hence
the Mongols adopted it as gojila. It is uncertain whether the Sanskrit
name is related to Persian kucla or not.
According to FLUCKIGER and HANBURY, 2 the tree is indigenous to
most parts of India, especially the coast districts, and is found in Burma.
Siam, Cochin-China, and northern Australia. The use of the drug in
India, however, does not seem to be of ancient date, and possibly was
taught there by the Mohammedans. It is mentioned in the Persian
pharmacopoeia of Abu Mansur (No. 113) under the Arabic name jauz
ul-qei. 3 ScHLiMMER 4 gives also the terms azaragi and gatel el-kelbe, and
observes, "Son emploi dans la paralysie est d'ancienne date, car Pauteur
du Mexzen el-Edviyeh en parle deja, a j out ant en outre que la noix vo-
mique est un remede qui change le temperament froid en temperament
chaud; le merae auteur recommande les cataplasmes avec sa poudre
dans la coxalgie et dans les maladies articulaires."
The Arabs, who say that the tree occurs only in the interior of
Yemen, were well acquainted with the medicinal properties of the fruit. 5
Nux-vomica is likewise known in Indo-China (Cam salain and phun
akam, Khmer slen, Annamese ku-ci; the latter probably a transcription
of kucila)*
The Kew Bulletin for 1917 (p. 341) contains the following notice on
Strychnos nux-vomica in Cochin-China: "In K. B. 1917 (pp. 184, 185),
some evidence is given as to the occurrence of this species in Cochin-
China in the wild state. Since the account was written a letter and a
packet of undoubted nux-vomica seeds have been received from the
Director, Agricultural and Commercial Services, Cochin-China, with
the information that the seeds were obtained from trees growing wild
in the country. H. B. M.'s Consul, Saigon, also sends the following
information about 5. nux-vomica in Cochin-China which he has received
from Monsieur Morange, Director of the Agricultural and Commercial
1 Cf. Loan- Words in Tibetan, No. 50 (T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 457).
2 Pharmacographia, p. 428.
3 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 43.
4 Terminologie, p. 402.
5 L. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 380.
6 Cf. E. PERROT and P. HURRIER, Matiere medicale et pharmacope"e sino-
annamites, p. 171; the Chinese and Annamese certainly did not avail themselves
of this drug "from time immemorial," as stated by these authors. See, further,
C. FORD, China Review, Vol. XV, 1887, p. 220.
45 SlNO-lRANICA
Services of Cochin-China, and also a sample of the seeds obtained from
a Chinese exporter. The tree exists in the Eastern provinces of Cochin-
China, principally in the forests of Baria. The seeds are bought by
Chinese from the savage tribes known as Mois, who collect them in the
forest; the Chinese then export them to China or sell them again to
firms exporting to Europe. The time of fruiting is in November and
December. M. Morange considers that the tree is certainly indigenous
in Cochin-China, and was not introduced by early traders." If the
tree is indigenous there, it was certainly discovered there, as far as the
Chinese are concerned, only after the Mongol period. H. MAiTRE 1 deals
with the poisons used by the Moi for their arrows, and arrives at the
conclusion that they are derived from the upas tree (Antiaris). He does
not mention Strychnos.
1 Les regions Moi du sud indo-chinois, pp. 119-121 (Paris, 1909).
THE CARROT
52. The carrot 1 (Daucus carota), hu lo-po (Japanese ninjin) iK fli 'B
(" Iranian turnip"), a native of northern Europe, was first introduced
into China at the time of the Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1260-1367). This is
the opinion of Li Si-cen, who states that the vegetable first appeared
at the time of the Yuan from the land of the Hu; and it is likewise main-
tained in the Kwan k'un fan p*u 2 that the carrot first came from the
countries beyond the frontier j H. I know of no text that would give
a more detailed account of its introduction or allude to the country of
its origin. Nevertheless it is very likely that this was some Iranian
region. Li Si-cen states that in his time it was abundantly culti-
vated in the northern part of the country and in San-tun, likewise
in middle China. 3
The history of the carrot given by WATT 4 after G. Birdwood suffers
from many defects. A fundamental error underlies the statement,
"In fact, the evidence of cultivation would lead to the inference that
the carrot spread from Central Asia to Europe, and if so it might be
possible to trace the European names from the Indian and Persian."
On the contrary, the carrot is a very ancient, indigenous European
cultivation, which is by no means due to the Orient. Carrots have been
found in the pile-dwellings of Robenhausen. 5 It is not to the point, either,
that, as stated by Watt and Birdwood, "indeed the carrot seems to
have been grown and eaten in India, while in Europe it was scarcely
known as more than a wild plant." The Anglo-Saxons cultivated the
carrot in their original habitat of Schleswig-Holstein at a time when,
in my opinion, the carrot was not yet cultivated in India; and they con-
1 From French carote, now carotte, Italian carota, Latin carota; Greek napwrbv
(in Diphilus). This word has supplanted Anglo-Saxon moru, from *morhu (Old
High German moraha, morha; Russian morkov', Slovenian mrkva). Regarding the
origin of the word lo-po, cf. T*oung Pao, 1916, pp. 83-86.
2 Ch. 4, p. 24.
3 A designation for the carrot not yet indicated is fu { lo-po, derived from the
three fu H f, the three decades of the summer, extending from about the middle
of July to the middle of August: during the first fu the seeds of the carrot are planted,
in the second fu the carrots are pale red, in the third they are yellow (San hwa Men
ci if ft JR Jg, Ch. 16, p. 14 b, ed. 1877).
4 Commercial Products of India, p. 489, or Dictionary, Vol. Ill, p. 45.
6 J. HOOPS, Waldbaume und Kulturpflanzen, p. 297; G. BUSCHAN, Vorge-
schichtliche Botanik, p. 148.
451
452 SlNO-lRANICA
tinued to cultivate it in England. 1 Moreover, the carrot grows wild in
Britain and generally in the north temperate zone of Europe and Asia,
and no doubt represents the stock of the cultivated carrot, which can
be developed from it in a few generations. 2 It is impossible to connect
Anglo-Saxon morn (not mora, as in Watt) with Sanskrit mula or mulaka.
No evidence is given for the bold assertion that "the carrot appears to
have been regularly used in India from fairly ancient times." The only
sources quoted are Baber's Memoirs 3 and the Ain-i Akbari, both works
of the sixteenth century. I fail to see any proof for the alleged antiquity
of carrot cultivation in India. There is no genuine Sanskrit word for
this vegetable. It is incorrect that "the Sanskrit gar jam originated
the Persian zardak and the Arabic jegar" (sic, for jezer). Boehtlingk
gives for gar jar a only the meaning "kind of grass." As indicated below,
it was the Arabs who carried the carrot to Persia in the tenth century,
and I do not believe that it was known in India prior to that time.
According to Watt, Daucus carota is a native of Kashmir and the western
Himalaya at altitudes of from 5000 to 9000 feet; and throughout
India it is cultivated by Europeans, mostly from annually imported
seed, and by the natives from an acclimatised if not indigenous stock.
Also N. G. MuKERji 4 observes, "The English root-crop which has a
special value as a nourishing famine-food and fodder is the carrot. Up-
country carrot or gajra is not such a nourishing and palatable food as
European carrot, and of all the carrots experimented with in this
country, the red Mediterranean variety grown at the Cawnpore Experi-
mental Farm seems to be the best."
W. ROXBURGH 5 states that Daucus carota "is said to be a native
of Persia; in India it is only found in a cultivated state." He gives
two Sanskrit names, grinjana and gargara, but his editor remarks
that he finds no authority for these. In fact, these and Watt's alleged
Sanskrit names are not at all Sanskrit, but merely Hindi (Hindi
gajard) ; and this word is derived from Persian (not the Persian derived
from Sanskrit, as alleged by Watt). The only Sanskrit terms for
the carrot known to me are yavana ("Greek or foreign vegetable")
and pltakanda (literally, "yellow root"), which appears only in the
Rajanighantu, a work from the beginning of the fifteenth century. This
1 HOOPS, op. cit., p. 600.
2 A. DE CANDOLLE, Geographic botanique, p. 827.
3 Baber ate plenty of carrots on the night (December 21, 1526) when an attempt
was made to poison him. Cf. H. BEVERIDGE, The Attempt to Poison Babur Padshah
(Asiatic Review, Vol. XII, 1917, pp. 301-304).
4 Handbook of Indian Agriculture, 2d ed., p. 304.
6 Flora Indica, p. 270.
THE CARROT 453
descriptive formation is sufficient to show that the cultivated carrot
was foreign to the Hindu. Also W. AiNSLiE 1 justly concludes, "Carrots
appear to have been first introduced into India from Persia."
According to ScHWEiNFURTH, 2 Daucus carota should display a very-
peculiar form in Egypt, a sign of ancient cultivation. This requires
confirmation. At all events, it does not prove that the carrot was
cultivated by the ancient Egyptians. Neither Loret nor Woenig men-
tions it for ancient Egypt.
In Greek the carrot is aracfrvKlvos (hence Syriac istajlm) . It is men-
tioned by Theophrastus 3 and Pliny; 4 davKos or davKov was a kind of
carrot or parsnip growing in Crete and used in medicine; hence Neo-
Greek TO 5cu/>/d (" carrot"), Spanish dauco. A. DE CANDOLLE S is right
in saying that the vegetable was little cultivated by the Greeks and
Romans, but, as agriculture was perfected, took a more important place.
The Arabs knew a wild and a cultivated carrot, the former under
the name nehsel or nehsel* the knowledge of which was transmitted to
them by Dioscorides, 7 the latter under the names jezer, sefanariya (in
the dialect of Magreb zorudiya), and sabahia* The Arabic word dauku
or duqu, derived from Greek daiiKos, denotes particularly the seed of the
wild carrot. 9
JoRET 10 presumes that the carrot was known to the ancient Iranians.
The evidence presented, however, is hardly admissible : Daucus maximus
which grows in Western Persia is only a wild species. This botanical
fact does not prove that the Iranians were acquainted with the culti-
vated Daucus carota. An Iranian name for this species is not known.
Only in the Mohammedan period does knowledge of it spring up in
Persia ; and the Persians then became acquainted with the carrot under
the Arabic name jazar or jezer, which, however, may have been derived
from Persian gazar (gezer). It is mentioned under the Arabic name in
the Persian pharmacopoeia of Abu Mansur, 11 who apparently copied
from Arabic sources. He further points out a wild species under the
1 Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 57.
2 Z. /. Ethnologic, Vol. XXIII, 1891, p. 662.
3 Hist, plant., IX. xv, 5.
4 xx, 15.
5 Geographic botanique, p. 827.
6 L. LECLERC, Traite des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 380.
7 LECLERC, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 353.
8 LECLERC, ibid., and p. 367.
9 LECLERC, ibid., p. 138.
10 Plantes dans 1'antiquite, Vol. II, p. 66.
11 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 42.
454 SlNO-lRANlCA
name SaSqdqul, which, according to ACHUNDOW, is Eryngium campestre.
It is therefore very probable that it was the Arabs who introduced the
carrot into Persia during the tenth century. Besides gazar (gezer),
Persian names are zardak 1 and Sawandar; the latter means " beet-root'*
and " carrot."
JOHN FRYER, who travelled in India and Persia from 1672 to 1681,
enumerates carrots among the roots of Persia. 2 The late arrival of the
vegetable in Persia is signally confirmed by the Chinese tradition
regarding its introduction under the Mongols. This is the logical
sequence of events. 3
ScHUMMER 4 has the following note on the subject: "Ce legume,
forme* en comp6te, est conside're' par les Persans comme un excellent
aphrodisiaque, augmentant la quantit et ameliorant la qualite* du
sperme. L'alimentation journaliere avec des carottes est fortement
pr6ne*e dans les hydropisies; les carottes cuites, conserves au vin aigre,
dissiperaient 1'engorgement de la rate." Only the yellow variety of
carrot, with short, spindle-shaped roots, occurs in Fergana. 5
1 Possibly derived from zard ("yellow"). Persian murdmun is said to denote
a kind of wild carrot. In Osmanli the carrot is called hawuj.
8 New Account of East India and Persia, Vol. II, p. 310 (Hakluyt Soc., 1912).
1 Regarding the Tibetan names of the carrot, see my notes in Toung Pao, 1916,
pp. 503-505.
4 Terminologie, p. 176.
6 S. KORZINSKI, Vegetation of Turkistan (in Russian), p. 51.
AROMATICS
53. The Sui su l mentions two aromatics or perfumes peculiar to
K'an (Sogdiana), kan hian IB" 2 W and a-sa-na hian P3 HI ffi
Fortunately we have a parallel text in the T*ai p*in hwan yu kif where
the two aromatics of K'an are given as ~B* & H HI M . Hence
it follows that the kan of the Sui Annals is no more than an abbreviation
of kan sun, which is well known as an aromatic, and identical with the
true spikenard furnished by Nardostachys jatamansi. It is Sanskrit
nalada, Tibetan span spos, Persian nard or sunbul, Armenian sumbul,
smbul, snbul, etc. 4 It is believed that the nard found by Alexander's
soldiers in Gedrosia 5 represents the same species, while others hold
that it was an Andropogon*
The Sanskrit term nalada is found in the Fan yi min yi tsi 7 in the
form 8$ H $ na-lo-t'o, *na-la-da. It is accompanied by the fanciful
analysis nara-dhara ("held or carried by man"), because, it is said,
people carry the fragrant flower with them in their girdles. The word
nalada is of ancient date, for it appears in the Atharvaveda. 8 Hebrew
nerd, Greek nardos* Persian nard and nard, are derived therefrom. 10
Being used in the Bible, the word was carried to all European languages.
1 Ch. 83, p. 4 b.
2 This character is not listed in K'an-hi, but the phonetic element -ff leaves no
doubt that its phonetic value is kan, *kam.
3 Ch. 183, p. 4.
4 ABU MANSUR (Achundow's translation, pp. 82, 241) mentions sunbul-i-hindt,
the nard of India. SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 36) identifies this name as Andro-
pogon nardoides or Nardus indica. On the other hand, he says (p. 555) that Nar-
dostachys or Valeriana jatamansi has not yet been found in Persia, but that it could
be replaced in therapeutics by Valeriana sisymbrifolia, found abundantly in the
mountains north of Teheran.
5 Arrian, Anabasis, VI. xxn, 5.
6 JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. II, p. 648. See, further, Periplus, 48;
and Pliny, xn, 28; WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 792. MARCO POLO
(ed. of YULE, Vol. I, pp. 115, 272, 284) mentions spikenard as a product of Bengal,
Java, and Sumatra. The Malayan word narawastu, mentioned by YULE (ibid. %
p. 287), must be connected with Sanskrit nalada.
7 Ch. 8, p. 4 b.
8 MACDONELL and KEITH, Vedic Index, Vol. I, p. 437; H. ZIMMER, Altindisches
Leben, p. 68.
9 First mentioned by Theophrastus, IX. vm, 2, 3.
10 See above, p. 428.
455
SlNO-lRANICA
According to STUART/ this plant is found in the province of Yun-
nan and on the western borders of Se-c'wan, but whether indigenous or
transplanted is uncertain. If it should not occur in other parts of
China, it is more likely that it came from India, especially as Yun-nan
has of old been in contact with India and abounds in plants intro-
duced from there.
54. Wl&ffi 2 *a-sar(sat)-na (Sui Su), MMM a-sie-na (Wei $u,
Ch. 102, p. 9), is not explained. There is no doubt that this word
represents the transcription of an Iranian, more specifically Sogdian,
name; but the Sogdian terms for aromatics are still unknown to us.
Hypothetical restorations of the name are *asarna, axsarna, asna.
55. Storax, an aromatic substance (now obtained from Liquid-
ambar orientalis; in ancient times, however, from Styrax officinalis) ,
is first mentioned by Herodotus 3 as imported into Hellas by the Phoe-
nicians. It is styled by the Chinese Hfc & su-ho, *su-gap (giep), su-gab
(Japanese sugd), being mentioned both in the Wei lio and in the Han
Annals as a product of the Hellenistic Orient (Ta Ts'in). 4 It is said
there, "They mix a number of aromatic substances and extract from
them the sap by boiling, which is made into su-ho" (& H* ft W M
3 ft $ Ji $ / o fc ). 5 It is notable that this clause opens and ends with
the same word ho &', and it would thus not be impossible that the
explanation is merely the result of punning on the term su-ho, which
is doubtless the transcription of a foreign word. Aside from this sema-
siological interpretation, we have a geographical theory expressed in the
Kwan i, written prior to A.D. 527, as follows: "Su-ho is produced in
the country Ta Ts'in; according to others, in the country Su-ho. The
natives of this country gather it and press the juice out of it to make
it into an aromatic, fatty substance. What is sold are the sediments
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 278.
2 This character is not in K'an-hi. It appears again on the same page of the
Sui Su ( 4 b) in the name of the river *Na-mit ffi $? (Zaraf san) in the kingdom
Nan $*, and on p. 4 a in fy$ fe $ @, the country Na-se-po (*Na-sek-pwa; accord-
ing to CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue, p. 146, NakhSab or Nasaf). On
pp. 6 b and 7 a the river Na-mit is written 3ft. Cf. also CHAVANNES and PELLIOT,
Traite" maniche'en, pp. 58, 191.
3 m, 107.
4 Hou Han Su, Ch. 118, pp. 4 b 5 a. E. H. PARKER (China Review, Vol. XV,
p. 372) indicates in an anecdote relative to Cwan-tse that he preferred the dung-
beetle's dung-roll to a piece of storax, and infers that indirect intercourse with western
Asia must have begun as early as the fourth century B.C., when Cwan-tse flourished.
The source for this story is not stated, and it may very well be a product of later
times.
6 The Sil Han Su gives the same text with the variant, "call it su-ho. 1 '
AROMATICS STORAX 457
of this product." 1 Nothing is known, however, in Chinese records about
this alleged country Su-ho (*Su-gab); hence it is probable that this
explanation is fictitious, and merely inspired by the desire to account in
a seemingly plausible way for the mysterious foreign word.
In the Annals of the Liang Dynasty, 2 storax is enumerated among
the products of western India which are imported from Ta Ts'in and
An-si (Parthia). It is explained as "the blending of various aromatic
substances obtained by boiling their saps; it is not a product of nature." 3
Then follows the same passage relating to the manufacture in Ta Ts'in
as in the Kwan ci; and the Lian $u winds up by saying that the product
passes through the hands of many middlemen before reaching China,
and loses much of its fragrancy during this process. 4 It is likewise on
record in the same Annals that in A.D. 519 King Jayavarman of Fu-nan
(Camboja) sent among other gifts storax to the Chinese Court. 5
Finally, su-ho is enumerated among the products of Sasanian Persia. 6
Judging from the commercial relations of Iran with the Hellenistic
Orient and from the nature of the product involved, we shall not
err in assuming that it was traded to Persia in the same manner
as to India.
The Chinese-Sanskrit dictionaries contain two identifications of
the name su-ho. In the third chapter of the Yii k'ie $i ti lun %& ft W
$L P (Yogacaryabhumigastra) , 7 translated in A.D. 646-647 by Huan
Tsan, we find the name of an aromatic in the form 2 * @ ?5E su-tu-
lu-kia, *sut-tu-lu-kyie; that is, Sanskrit *sturuka = storax. 8 It is
identified by Yuan Yin with what was formerly styled 5E 18 1 tou-lou-
P'OJ *du-lyu-bwa. 9 It is evident that the transcription su-tu-lu-kia is
based on a form corresponding to Greek styrak-s, storak-s, styrdkion
of the Papyri (Syriac stiraca, astorac). This equation presents the
1 Fan yi min yi tsi, Ch. 8, p. 9; T'ai p'in yu Ian, Ch. 982, p. I b.
2 Lian $u, Ch. 54, p. 7 b.
3 The Fan yi min yi tsi, which reproduces this passage, has, "It is not a single
(or homogeneous) substance."
4 Cf. HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 47.
5 Cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de I'Ecolefrangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 270.
6 Sui su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b; or ou su, Ch. 50, p. 6. It does not follow from these
texts, that, as assumed by HIRTH (Chao Ju-kua, pp. 16, 262), su-ho or any other
product of Persia was imported thence to China. The texts are merely descriptive
in saying that these are products to be found in Persia.
7 BUNYIU NANJIO, Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka, No. 1170.
8 Yi ts'ie kin yin i, Ch. 22, p. 3 b (cf. PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 478-479).
This text has been traced by me independently. I do not believe that this name is
connected with turu$ka.
9 Probably Sanskrit durva (cf. Journal asiatique, 1918, II, pp. 21-22).
458 SlNO-lRANICA
strongest evidence for the fact that the su-ho of the Chinese designates
the storax of the ancients. 1
The Fan yi min yi tsi (I.e.} identifies Sanskrit p ffi @ ! M tu-lu-se-
kien, *tu-lu-s6t-kiam, answering to Sanskrit turuskam, with su-ho.
In some works this identification is even ascribed to the Kwan Zi of the
sixth century (or probably earlier). In the Pien tse lei pien 2 where the
latter work is credited with this Sanskrit word, we find the character
$& kie, *g'ia5, in lieu of the second character lu. The term turuska
refers to real incense (olibanum) . 3 It is very unlikely that this aromatic
was ever understood by the word su-ho t and it rather seems that some
ill-advised adjustment has taken place here.
T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536) relates a popular tradition that su-ho
should be lion's ordure, adding that this is merely talk coming from
abroad, and untrue. 4 C'en Ts'aii-k'i of the eighth century states, 5
"Lion-ordure is red or black in color; when burnt, it will dissipate the
breath of devils; when administered, it will break stagnant blood
and kill worms. The perfume su-ho, however, is yellow or white in
color: thus, while the two substances are similar, they are not identical.
People say that lion-ordure is the sap from the bark of a plant in the
western countries brought over by the Hu. In order to make people
prize this article, this name has been invented." This tradition as yet
unexplained is capable of explanation. In Sanskrit, rasamala means
"excrement," and this word has been adopted by the Javanese and
Malayans for the designation of storax. 6 Thus this significance of the
word may have given the incentive for the formation of that trade-
trick, examples of which are not lacking in our own times.
Under the T'ang, su-ho was imported into China also from Malayan
regions, especially from K'un-lun (in the Malayan area), described as
1 The most important pharmacological and historical investigation of the sub-
ject still remains the study of D. HANBURY (Science Papers, pp. 127-150), which
no one interested in this matter should fail to read.
2 Ch. 195, p. 8 b.
3 Cf . Language of the Yue-chi, p. 7.
4 He certainly does not say, as BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 463) wrongly
translates, "but the foreigners assert that this is not true." Only the foreigners
could have brought this fiction to China, as is amply confirmed by C'en Ts'aii-k'i.
Moreover, the Tan pen lu J? ; % says straight, "This is a falsehood of the Hu."
8 Ceh lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 12, p. 52 (ed. of 1587).
6 BRETSCHNEIDER (/. c.) erroneously attributes to Garcia da Orta the statement
that Rocamalha should be the Chinese name for the storax, and STUART (Chinese
Materia Medica, p. 243) naturally searched in vain for a confirmation of this name
in Chinese books. GARCIA says in fact that liquid storax is here (that is, in India)
called Rocamalha (MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 63), and does not even mention China
in this connection.
AROMATICS STORAX 459
purple-red of color, resembling the tse fan ^ W. (Pier ocar pus santalinus,
likewise ascribed to K'un-lun), strong, solid, and very fragrant. 1 This
is Liquidambar altingiana or Altingia excelsa, a lofty deciduous tree
growing in Java, Burma, and Assam, with a fragrant wood yielding a
scented resin which hardens upon exposure to the air. The Arabs
imported liquid storax during the thirteenth century to Palembang on
Sumatra; 2 and the T'ai p'in hwan yu ki states that su-ho oil is produced
in Annam, -Palembang (San-fu-ts'i), and in all barbarous countries, from
a tree-resin that is employed in medicine. The Mon ki pi fan discrimi-
nates between the solid storax of red color like a hard wood, and the
liquid storax of glue-like consistency which is in general use. 3
The Chinese transcription su-ho , *su-gap, has not yet been explained.
HiRTH's 4 suggestion that the Greek orupa should have been " muti-
lated" into su-ho is hardly satisfactory, for we have to start from the
ancient form *su-gab, which bears no resemblance to the Greek word
save the first element. In the Papyri no name of a resin has as yet been
discovered that could be compared to *su-gab. 5 Nor is there any such
Semitic name (cf . Arabic lubna) . In view of this situation, the question
may be raised whether *su-gab would not rather represent an ancient
Iranian word. This supposition, however, cannot be proved, either, in
the present state of science. Storax appears in the Persian materia
medica of Abu Mansur under the Arabic name mi'a. & The storax called
rose-maloes is likewise known to the Persians, and is said to be derived
1 Cen lei pen ts'ao, 1. c. This tree is mentioned in the Ku kin cu (Ch. c, p. I b,
as a product of Fu-nan, and by Cao Zu-kwa as a variety of sandal-wood (HIRTH)
Chao Ju-kua, p. 208). Li Si-Sen (Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 12) says that the
people of Yiin-nan call tse fan by a peculiar word, $$ sen; this is pronounced sen
in Yun-nan, and accordingly traceable to a dialectic variation of Sandan, sandan,
sandal. The Japanese term is litan (MATSUMURA, No. 2605).
2 HIRTH, Chao Ju-kua, p. 61.
3 Cf. Pien tse lei pien, Ch. 195, p. 8 b; BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill,
p. 464. The Hian p'u quoted in the Pen ts'ao is the work of Ye T'in-kwei Jj| QT,
not the well-known work by Hun C'u, in which the passage in question does not
occur (see p. 2, ed. of T*an Sun ts'un $u, where it is said that it is difficult to recognize
the genuine article). For further information on liquid storax, see HIRTH, Chao
Ju-kua, p. 200.
4 Chao Ju-kua, p. 200.
5 MUSS-ARNOLT (Transactions Am. Phil. Assac., Vol. XXIII, p. 117) derives
the Greek word from Hebrew z'ri; the Greek should have assimilated the Semitic
loan-word to <rrupa ("spike"). This is pure fantasy. The Hebrew word, moreover,
does not relate to storax, but, according to GESENIUS, denotes a balsam or resin like
mastic (above, p. 252). The Hebrew word for Styrax officinalis is said to be nataf
(EXODUS, xx, 34), Septuaginta OTOK^, Vulgata stacte (E. LEVESQUE in Diction-
naire de la Bible, Vol. V, col. 1869-70).
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 138.
460 SlNO-lRANICA
from a tree growing on the Island of Cabros in the Red Sea (near Kadez,
three days' journey from Suez), the product being obtained by boiling
the bark in salt water until it obtains the consistency of glue. 1
5657. The earliest notice of myrrh is contained in the Nan ton ki
1M ffl Ifi of Su Piao ^ ^ (written before the fifth century A.D., but
only preserved in extracts of later works), if we may depend on the
Hai yao pen ts*ao, in which this extract is contained. 2 Su Piao is made
to say there that "the myrrh grows in the country Po-se, and is the
pine-tree resin of that locality. In appearance it is like W ^ $en hian
('divine incense ') and red-black in color. As to its taste, it is bitter and
warm." Li Si-cen annotates that he is ignorant of what the product
Sen hian is. In the Pei Si, myrrh is ascribed to the country Ts'ao
(Jaguda) north of the Ts'un-lifi (identical with the Ki-pin of the Han),
while this product is omitted in the corresponding text of the Sui $u.
Myrrh, further, is ascribed to Ki-pin. 3 The Cen lei pen ts'ao gives a
crude illustration of the tree under the title mu yao of Kwan-cou (Kwan-
turi), saying that the plant grows in Po-se and resembles benjoin (nan-
si hian, p. 464), being traded in pieces of indefinite size and of black
color.
In regard to the subject, Li Si-Sen 4 cites solely sources of the Sung
period. He quotes K'ou Tsun-si, author of the Pen ts'ao yen i (A.D. 1 1 16),
to the effect that myrrh grows in Po-se, and comes in pieces of in-
definite size, black in color, resembling benjoin. In the text of this work,
as edited by Lu Sin-yuan, 6 this passage is not contained, but merely
the medicinal properties of the drug are set forth. 6 Su Sun observes
that "myrrh now occurs in the countries of the Southern Sea (Nan-hai)
and in Kwan-Sou. Root and trunk of the tree are like those of Canarium
(kan-lan). The leaves are green and dense. Only in the course of years
does the tree yield a resin, which flows down into the soil, and hardens into
larger or smaller pieces resembling benjoin. They may be gathered at
any time."
A strange confusion occurs in the Yu yan is a tsu, 7 where the myrtle
(Myrtus communis) is described under its Aramaic name asa (Arabic
1 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 495.
2 Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 13, p. 39; Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 17.
3 Tai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 182, p. 12 b.
4 Pen ts'ao kan mu, I. c.
6 Ch. 14, p. 4 b.
6 In all probability, there is an editorial error in the edition of the Pen ts'ao
quoted; in other editions the same text is ascribed to Ma Ci, one of the collaborators
in the K'ai Pao pen ts*ao.
7 Ch. 1 8, p. 12.
AROMATICS MYRRH 461
as), while this section opens with the remark, "The habitat of the
myrrh tree H is in Po-se." 1 It may be, however, that, as argued by
HIRTH, mu may be intended in this case to transcribe Middle and
New Persian murd, which means "myrtle" (not only in the Bundahisn,
but generally). 2 Myrrh and myrtle have nothing to do with each
other, belonging not only to different families, but even to different
orders; nor does the myrtle yield a resin like myrrh. It therefore re-
mains doubtful whether myrrh was known to the Chinese during the
T'ang period; in this case, the passage cited above from the Nan cou
ki (like many another text from this work) must be regarded as an
anachronism. Cao Zu-kwa gives the correct information that myrrh
is produced on the Berbera coast of East Africa and on the Hadramaut
littoral of Arabia; he has also left a fairly correct description of how the
resin is obtained. 3
Li Si-en 4 thinks that the transcription $L or ~fc represents a Sanskrit
word. This, of course, is erroneous: myrrh is not an Indian product,
and is only imported into India from the Somali coast of Africa and from
Arabia. The former Chinese character answers to ancient *mut or
*mur; the latter, to *mwat, mwar, or mar. The former no doubt repre-
sents attempts at reproducing the Semite-Persian name, Hebrew
mor, Aramaic murd, Arabic murr, Persian mor (Greek o-^upa, a/iupov,
nbpov, Latin myrrha) . 5
Whether the Chinese transcribed the Arabic or Persian form, re-
mains uncertain: if the transcription should really appear as late as
the age of the Sung, it is more probable that the Arabic yielded the
prototype; but if it can be carried back to the T'ang or earlier, the
assumption is in favor of Iranian speech.
1 Cf. HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXX, p. 20. Owing to a curious mis-
conception, the article of the Yu yan tsa tsu has been placed under mi hian ^ ^>
("gharu-wood") in the Pen ts'ao kan mu (Ch. 34, p. 10 b), for mu $ hian is wrongly
supposed to be a synonyme of mi hian.
2 Another New-Persian word for this plant is amba or amta. In late Avestan
it is mustemesa (BARTHOLOMAE, Altiran. Wort., col. 1189). I do not believe that the
Persian word and Armenian murt are derived from Greek fjLvpvlvr) (SCHRADER in
Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 238) or from Greek /i&pros (NoLDEKE, Persische Studien,
II, p. 43).
3 HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 197.
4 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 17.
5 Pliny, xii, 34-35; LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 300; V. LORET,
Flore pharaonique, p. 95. The transcription *mwat appears to transcribe Javanese
and Bali madu ("myrrh"; Malayan manisan lebah). In an Uigur text translated
from Sogdian or Syriac appears the word zmurna or zmuran ("myrrh"), connected
with the Greek word (F. W. K. MULLER, Uigurica, pp. 5-7).
462 SlNO-lRANICA
Theophrastus 1 mentions in the country Aria a "thorn" on which
is found a gum resembling myrrh in appearance and odor, and this
drops when the sun shines on it. SiRABO 2 affirms that Gedrosia produced
aromatics, particularly nard and myrrh, in such quantity that Alex-
ander's army used them, on the march, for tent-coverings and beds,
and thus breathed an air full of odors and more salubrious. Modern
botanists, however, have failed to find these plants in Gedrosia or any
other region of Iran; 3 and the Iranian myrrh of the ancients, in all
probability, represents a different species of Balsamodendron (perhaps
B. pubescens or B. mukul). According to W. GsiGER, 4 Balsamodendron
mukul is called in Balu6i bod, bod, or boz, a word which simply means
"odor, aroma." It is a descendant of Avestan baoibi, which we find in
Pahlavi as bod, bol, Sogdian fra^odan, (3o8a, New Persian bol, bo (Ossetic
bud, "incense"). 5
It is noteworthy also that the ancient Chinese accounts of Sasanian
Persia do not make mention of myrrh. The botanical evidence being
taken into due consideration, it appears more than doubtful that
the statement of the Nan Zou ki, Yu yan tsa tsu, K'ai pao pen ts'ao, and
Cen lei pen ts'ao, that the myrrh-tree grows in Po-se, can be referred to
the Iranian Po-se. True it is, the tree does not occur, either, in the
Malayan area; but, since the product was evidently traded to China by
way of Malaysia, the opinion might gain ground among the Chinese
that the home of the article was the Malayan Po-se.
The Japanese style the myrrh mirura, which is merely a modern
transcription of "myrrha." 6
58. Ts'inmu /wan W/fcW ("dark-wood aromatic") is attributed
to Sasanian Persia. 7 What this substance was, is not explained; and
merely from the fact that the name in question, as well as mu hian
/fcW ("tree aromatic") and mi hian 3? W, usually refer to costus
root or putchuck (also pachak), we may infer that the Persian aromatic
was of a similar character. Thus it is assumed by HIRTH; S but the
matter remains somewhat hypothetical. The Chinese term, indeed, has
1 Hist, plant., IV. IV, 13.
2 XV. n, 3.
8 C. JORET, Plantes dans 1'antiquite", Vol. I, p. 48.
4 Etymologic des Balu&, p. 46.
6 In regard to the use of incense on the part of the Manichaeans, see CHAVANNES
and PELLIOT, Traite" maniche'en, pp. 302-303, 311.
8 J. MATSUMURA, Shokubutsu mei-i, No. 458.
7 Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 5 b; Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
8 Chau Ju-kua, p. 221. Putchuck is not the root of Aucklandia costus, but of
Saussurea lappa (see WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 980).
AROMATICS PUTCHUCK 463
no botanical value, being merely a commercial label covering different
roots from most diverse regions. If Cao Zu-kwa compares the putchuck-
yielding plant with Luffa cylindrica, a Cucurbitacea of southern China,
with which he compares also the cardamom, it is perfectly clear that he
does not visualize the genuine costus-root of Saussurea lappa, a tall,
stout herb, indigenous to the moist, open slopes surrounding the valley
of Kashmir, at an elevation of eight or nine thousand feet. If he further
states that the product is found in Hadramaut and on the Somali coast,
it is, in my opinion, not logical to reject this as " wrong," for a product
of the name mu hian was certainly known in the China of his time
from that region. And why not? Also Dioscorides mentions an Arabian
costus, which is white and odoriferous and of the best quality; besides,
he has an Indian costus, black and smooth, and a Syrian variety of wax
color, dusky, and of strong odor. It is obvious that these three articles
correspond to the roots of three distinct species, which have certain
properties in common; and it has justly been doubted that the modern
costus is the same thing as that of the ancients. The Arabs have
adopted the nomenclature of Dioscorides. 1 The Sheikh Daud dis-
tinguishes an Indian species, white; a black one from China; and a red,
heavy one, adding that it is said to be a tree of the kind of Agallockum.
Nearly everywhere in Asia have been found aromatic roots which in
one way or another correspond to the properties of the Indian kustha.
Thus in Tibet and Mongolia the latter is adjusted with the genus Inula;
and the Tibetan word ru-rta, originally referring to an Inula, was
adopted by the Buddhist translators as a rendering of Sanskrit kustha. 2
In the same manner, the Chinese term mu hian formerly denoted an
indigenous plant of Yun-nan, which, according to the ancient work
Pie lu, grew in the mountain-valleys of Yun-6'afi. 3 The correctness of
this tradition is confirmed by the Man $u, which mentions a mountain-
range, three days' journey south of Yun-6'an, by name Ts'iii-mu-hiafi
("Dark-Wood Aromatic"), and owing its name to the great abundance
of this root. 4 The Man $u, further, extends its occurrence to the country
1 LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. Ill, pp. 85-86.
2 H. LAUFER, Beitrage zur Kenntnis der tibetischen Medicin, p. 61.
3 Also Wu K'i-tsun (Ci wu min Si t'u k'ao, Ch. 25, p. n) observes correctly that
this species is not the putchuck coming from the foreign barbarians. His three
illustrations, putchuck from Hai-Sou in Kian-su, from Kwan-tun, and from C'u-ou
in Nan-hwi, are reproduced from the T'u su tsi I' en (XX, Ch. 117), and represent
three distinct plants.
4 The Tien hai yu hen li (Ch. 3, p. i; see above, p. 228) states that mu hian is
produced in the native district C'6-li !$L M 3, formerly called C'an-li |g Jt,
of Yun-nan.
464 SlNO-lRANICA
K'un-lun of the Southern Sea; 1 and Su Kun of the T'ang says that, of
the two kinds of mu-hian (known to him), that of K'un-lun is the best,
while that from the West Lake near Han-Sou is not good. 2 In the time
of T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536) the root was no longer brought from
Yun-c'an; but the bulk of it was imported on foreign ships, with the
report that it came from Ta Ts'in (the Hellenistic Orient), 3 hence
presumably the same article as the Arabian or Syrian costus of Dios-
corides. The Nan fan ts*ao mu Zwan is cited by Cen Kwan of the seventh
century as saying that the root is produced in India, being the product
of an herbaceous plant and of the appearance of licorice. The same
text is ascribed to the Nan cou i wu li of the third century in the T'ai
p'in yu Ian* while the Kwan li attributes the product to Kiao-cou
(Tonking) and India. A different description of the plant is again given
by Su Sun. Thus it is no wonder that the specimens from China
submitted for identification have proved to be from different plants,
as Aplotaxis auriculata, Aristolochia kaempferi, Rosa banksia, etc. 5 If,
accordingly, costus (to use this general term) was found not only in
India and Kashmir, but also in Arabia, Syria, Tibet, Mongolia, China,
and Malacca, it is equally possible also that Persia had a costus of her
own or imported it from Syria as well as from India. 6 This is a question
which cannot be decided with certainty. The linguistic evidence is
inconclusive, for the New-Persian kust is an Arabic loan-word, the
latter, of course, being traceable to Sanskrit kustha, which has obtained
a world-wide propagation. 7 Like so many other examples in the his-
tory of commerce, this case illustrates the unwillingness of the world
to tolerate monopolies for any length of time. The real costus was
peculiar (and still is) to Kashmir, but everywhere attempts were con-
stantly made to trace equivalents or substitutes. The trade-mark
remained the same, while the article was subjected to changes.
59. Under the term nan (or an) -si hian *$ S W the Chinese have
1 PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. IV, p. 226.
2 The attribution of the root to K'un-lun is not fiction, for this tradition is
confirmed by Garcia da Orta, who localizes pucho on Malacca, whence it is exported
to China.
3 This text is doubtless authentic; it is already recorded in the T'ai p'in yu Ian
(Ch. 991, p. n).
4 Ch. 982, p. 3.
5 HANBURY, Science Papers, p. 257; STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 43.
6 In the sixteenth century, as we learn from GARCIA (Markham, Colloquies,
p. 150), costus was shipped from India to Ormuz, and thence carried to Persia and
Khorasan; it was also brought into Persia and Arabia by way of Aden.
7 In Tokharian it is found in the form ka$$u (S. Lvi, Journal asiatique, 1911,
II, p. 138).
AROMATICS STYRAX BENJOIN 465
combined two different aromatics, an ancient product of Iranian
regions, as yet unidentified; and the benjoin yielded by the Styraoc
benjoin, a small tree of the Malay Archipelago. 1 It is necessary to dis-
criminate sharply between the two, and to understand that the ancient
term originally relating to an Iranian aromatic, when the Iranian im-
portation had ceased, was subsequently transferred to the Malayan
article, possibly on account of some outward resemblance of the two,
but that the two substances have no botanical and historical inter-
relation. The attempt of Cao Zu-kwa to establish a connection between
the two, and to conjecture that the name is derived from An-si (Parthia),
but that the article was imported by way of San-fo-ts'i (Palembang on
Sumatra), 2 must be regarded as unfounded; for the question is not of
an importation from Parthia or Persia to Sumatra, but it is the native
product of f a plant actually growing in Sumatra, in Borneo, and other
Malayan islands. 3 The product is called in Malayan kaminan (GARCIA :
cominham), Javanese menan, Sunda minan. The duplicity of the article
and the sameness of the term have naturally caused a great deal of
confusion among Chinese authors, and perhaps no less among European
writers. At least, the subject has not yet been presented clearly, and
least of all by BRETSCHNEiDER. 4
According to Su Kufi, nan-si hian is produced among the Western
Zun IS 3% (Si-2un), a vague term, which may allude to Iranians
(p. 203). Li Sim, in his Hai yao pen ts'ao, written in the second half of
the eighth century, states that the plant grows in Nan-hai (" Southern
Sea"; that is, the Archipelago) and in the country Po-se. The co-
ordination with Nan-hai renders it probable that he hints at the
Malayan Po-se rather than at Persia, the more so, as Li Si-Sen himself
states that the plant now occurs in Annam, Sumatra, and all foreign
countries. 5 The reason why the term nan-si was applied to the Malayan
1 The word "benjoin" is a corruption of Arabic lubdnjdwl ("incense of Java";
that is, Sumatra of the Arabs). The Portuguese made of this benzawi, and further
beijoim, benjoim (in Vasco da Gama and Duarte Barbosa); Spanish benjui, menjui;
Italian belzuino, belguino; French benjoin. Cf. R. DOZY and W. H. ENGELMANN,
Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais derives de 1'arabe, p. 239; S. R. DALGADO,
Influencia do vocabuldrio portugue"s, p. 27.
2 HIRTH, Chao Ju-kua, p. 201.
3 According to GARCIA (C. Markham, Colloquies, p. 49), benjoin is only known
in Sumatra and Siam. According to F. PYRARD (Vol. II, p. 360, ed. of Hakluyt
Society), who travelled from 1601 to 1610, it is chiefly produced in Malacca and
Sumatra.
4 Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 313.
5 As the Malayan product does not fall within the scope of the present in-
vestigation, this subject is not pursued further here (see HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua,
pp. 201-202). In Bretschneider's translation of this matter, based on the unreliable
466 SlNO-lRANICA
product may be explained from the fact that to the south-west of
China, west of the Irawaddy, there was a city Nan-si 5: , mentioned
in the Itinerary of Kia Tan and in the Man $u of the T'ang period. 1
The exact location of this place is not ascertained. Perhaps this or
another locality of an identical name lent its name to the product; but
this remains for the present a mere hypothesis. The Tien hai yii hen i 2
states that nan-si is produced in the native district Pa-po ta-tien
A B" Jt ^ 3, formerly called A 9 tt it ft, ol Yiin-nan.
The Yu yan tsa tsu 3 contains the following account: "The tree
furnishing the nan-si aromatic is produced in the country Po-se. 4 In
Po-se it is termed p'i-sie $$ W tree ('tree warding off evil influences'). 5
The tree grows to a height of thirty feet, and has a bark of a yellow-black
color. The leaves are oblong, 6 and remain green throughout the winter.
It flowers in the second month. The blossoms are yellow. The heart
of the flower is somewhat greenish (or bluish). It does not form fruit.
On scraping the tree-bark, the gum appears like syrup, which is called
nan-si aromatic. In the sixth or seventh month, when this substance
hardens, it is fit for use as incense, which penetrates into the abode of
the spirits and dispels all evil." Although I am not a botanist, I hardly
believe that this description could be referred to Sty rax ben join. This
genus consists only of small trees, which never reach a height of thirty
feet; and its flowers are white, not yellow. Moreover, I am not con-
vinced that we face here any Persian plant, but I think that the Po-se
of the Yu yan tsa tsu, as in some other cases, hints at the Malayan
Po-se. 7
text of the Pen ts'ao, occurs a curious misunderstanding. The sentence JH1 ^ Ha
^k JH ^f J$ iJI is rendered by him, "By burning the true an-si hiang incense
rats can be allured (?)." The interrogation-mark is his. In my opinion, this means,
"In burning it, that kind which attracts rodents is genuine."
1 Cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$ aise, Vol. IV, pp. 178, 371.
2 Ch. 3, p. i (see above, p. 228).
3 Ch. 18, p. 8 b.
4 Both BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, p. 466) and HIRTH (Chao Ju-kua,
p. 202) identify this Po-se with Persia, without endeavoring, however, to ascertain
what tree is meant; and Sty rax benzoin does not occur in Persia. Garcia already
stated that benjuy (as he writes) is not found in Armenia, Syria, Africa, or Cyrene,
but only in Sumatra and Siam.
5 P'i-sie is not the transcription of a foreign word; the ancient form *bik-dza
would lead to neither a Persian nor a Malayan word.
6 BRETSCHNEIDER, who was a botanist, translates this clause (J| ^ P9 )
"The leaves spread out into four corners (!)." Literally it means "the leaves have
four corners"; that is, they are rectangular or simply oblong. The phrase se len p}
U with reference to leaves signifies "four-pointed," the points being understood as
acute.
7 See the following chapter on this subject.
AROMATICS STYRAX BENJOIN 467
An identification of nan-si to which PELLIOT* first called attention
is given in the Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary Fan yi min yi tsi, 2 where it is
equated with Sanskrit guggula. This term refers to the gum-resin ob-
tained from Boswellia serrata and the produce of Balsamodendron mukul,
or Commiphora roxburghu, the bdellion of the Greeks. 3 Perhaps also
other Balsamodendrons are involved; and it should be borne in mind
that Balsamodendron and Boswellia are two genera belonging to the
same family, Burseraceae or Amyrideae. Pelliot is quite right in assum-
ing that in this manner it is easier to comprehend the name nan-si hian,
which seems to be attached to the ancient Chinese name of the Persia
of the Arsacides. In fact, we meet on the rocks of Baluchistan two
incense-furnishing species, Balsamodendron pubescens and B. mukul*
observed by the army of Alexander in the deserts of Gedrosia, and col-
lected in great quantity by the Phoenician merchants who accompanied
him. 5
While it is thus possible that the term nan-si hian was originally
intended to convey the significance "Parthian aromatic," we must not
lose sight of the fact that it is not mentioned in the ancient historical
documents relative to Parthia (An-si) and Persia (Po-se) , a singular
situation, which must furnish food for reflection. The article is pointed
out only as a product of Kuca in Turkistan and the Kingdom of Ts'ao
jf (Jaguda) north of the Ts'un-lin. 6
Aside from the geographical explanation, the Chinese have
attempted also a literal etymology of the term. According to Li Si-Sen,
this aromatic "wards off evil and sets at rest * & all demoniacal
influences ft 3ft; hence its name. Others, however, say that nan-si is
the name of a country." This word-for-word interpretation is decidedly
forced and fantastic.
1 T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 480.
2 Ch. 8, p. 10 b.
3 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1914, p. 6.
4 JORET, Plantes dans I'antiquite', Vol. II, p. 48. The former species is called in
Balucl bayi or bai.
5 Ibid., p. 649.
6 Sui su, Ch. 83, pp. 5 b, 7 b.
THE MALAYAN PO-SE AND ITS PRODUCTS
On the preceding pages reference has repeatedly been made to the
fact that besides the Iranian Po-se $t r, transcribing the ancient name
Parsa, the Chinese were also acquainted with another country and
people of the same name, and always written in like manner, the loca-
tion of which is referred to the Southern Ocean, and which, as will be
seen, must have belonged to the Malayan group. We have noted several
cases in which the two Po-se are confounded by Chinese writers; and
so it is no wonder that the confusion has been on a still larger scale
among European sinologues, most of whom, if the Malayan Po-se is
involved in Chinese records, have invariably mistaken it for Persia.
It is therefore a timely task to scrutinize more closely what is really
known about this mysterious Po-se of the Southern Sea. Unfortunately
the Chinese have never co-ordinated the scattered notices of the south-
ern Po-se; and none of their cyclopasdias, as far as I know, contains
a coherent account of the subject. Even the mere fact of the duplicity
of the name Po-se never seems to have dawned upon the minds of
Chinese writers; at least, I have as yet failed to trace any text insisting
on the existence of or contrasting the two Po-se. Groping my way
along through this matter, I can hardly hope that my study of source-
material is complete, and I feel sure that there are many other texts
relative to the subject which have either escaped me or are not acces-
sible.
The Malayan Po-se is mentioned in the Man $u H fiF (p. 43 b), 1
written about A.D. 860 by Fan Co ^ $?, who says, "As regards the
country P'iao IS (Burma), it is situated seventy-five days' journey
(or two thousand It) south of the city of Yufi-S'an. 2 ... It borders on
Po-se S $T and P'o-lo-men 1 18 P? (Brahmana) ; 3 in the west, however,
on the city Se-li fe fl" It is clearly expressed in this document that
Po-se, as known under the T'ang, was a locality somewhere contermi-
nous with Burma, and on the mainland of Asia.
1 Regarding this work, see WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 40; and
PELLIOT, Bull, de I'Ecolefrangaise, Vol. II, p. 156; Vol. IV, p. 132.
2 In Yun-nan. The T'ai p'in hwan yii ki gives the distance of P'iao from that
locality as 3000 li (cf. PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. IV, p. 172). The text
of the Man $u is reproduced in the same manner in the Su kien of Kwo Yiin-t'ao
(Ch. 10, p. 10 b), written in 1236.
3 1 do not believe that this term relates to India in general, but take it as denot-
ing a specific country near the boundary of Burma.
468
THE MALAYAN Po-SE HISTORICAL NOTES 469
In another passage of the Man $u (p. 29), the question is of a place
Ta-yin-k'un ^ $1 JL (evidently a silver-mine), not well determined,
probably situated on the Gulf of Siam, to the south of which the people
of the country P'Q-lo-men (Brahmana), Po-se, Se-p'o (Java), P'o-ni
(Borneo), and K'un-lun, flock together for barter. There are many
precious stones there, and gold and musk form their valuable goods. 1
There is no doubt that the Malayan Po-se is understood here, and not
Persia, as has been proposed by PELLiOT. 2 A similar text is found in the
Nan i U US 3^ w ("Records of Southern Barbarians "), as quoted in the
T'ai p'in yu Ian* "In Nan-ao there are people from P'o-lo-men, Po-se,
Se-p'o (Java), P'o-ni (Borneo), K'un-lun, and of many other heretic
tribes, meeting at one trading-mart, where pearls and precious stones in
great number are exchanged for gold 4 and musk." This text is identical
with that of the Man $u, save that the trading centre of this group of
five tribes is located in the kingdom of Nan-ao (in the present province
of Yiin-nan). E. H. PARKER 5 has called attention to a mention of Po-se
in the T'ang Annals, without expressing, however, an opinion as to
what Po-se means in this connection. In the chapter on P'iao (Bur-
ma) it is there stated that near the capital of that country there are
hills of sand and a barren waste which borders on Po-se and P'o-lo-men,
identical with the above passage of the Man $u*
In A.D. 742, a Buddhist priest from Yan-^ou on the Yangtse, Kien-
en it M by name, undertook a voyage to Japan, in the course of which
he also touched Canton in 748. In the brief abstract of his diary given
by the Japanese scholar J. TAKAKUSU/ we read, "Dans la riviere de
Canton, il y avait d'innombrables vaissaux appartenant aux brahmanes,
aux Persans, aux gens de Koun-loun (tribu malaise)." The text of the
work in question is not at my disposal, but there can be no doubt that
it contains the triad P'o-lo-men, Po-se, K'un-lun, as mentioned in the
Man $u, and that the question is not of Brahmans, but of the country
1 In another passage (p. 34 b) Fan Co states that musk is obtained in all moun-
tains of Yun-6'an and Nan-ao, and that the natives use it as a means of exchange.
2 Bull, de I'Ecole fran$aise, Vol. IV, p. 287, note 2.
s Ch. 981, p. 5 b.
4 The text has ^ ^. I do not know what lu ("to boil") could mean in this
connection. It is probably a wrong reading for jfj , as we have it in the text of the
Man $u. i
5 Burma with Special Reference to Her Relations with China, p. 14 (Rangoon,
1893)-
6 This passage is not contained in the notice of P'iao in the Kiu T'an $u
(Ch. 197, p. 7 b).
7 Premier Congres International des Etudes d'Extr6me-Orient, p. 58 (Hanoi,
1903); cf. G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a I'Extr&ne-Orient, Vol. II, p. 638.
470 SlNO-lRANICA
and people P'o-lomen on the border of Burma, the Po-se likewise on the
border of Burma, and the Malayan K'un-lun. In the first half of the
eighth century, accordingly, we find the Malayan Po-se as a seafaring
people trading with the Chinese at Canton. Consequently also the
alleged "Persian" settlement on the south coast of Hainan, struck by
the traveller, was a Malayan-Po-se colony. In view of this situation, the
further question may be raised whether the pilgrim Yi Tsiii in A.D. 671
sought passage at Canton on a Persian ship. 1 This vessel was bound
for Palembang on Sumatra, and sailed the Malayan waters; again, in
my opinion, the Malayan Po-se, not the Persians, are here in question.
The Malayan Po-se were probably known far earlier than the T'ang
period, for they appear to have been mentioned in the Kwan ci written
before A.D. 527. In the Hian p*u ^ ^ of Hun C'u 9$ 185 of the Sung, 2
this work is quoted as saying that $u hian ?L ^ (a kind of incense) 3 is
the sap of a pine-tree in the country Po-se in the Southern Sea. This
Po-se is well enough defined to exclude the Iranian Po-se, where, more-
over, no incense is produced. 4
The same text is also preserved in the Hai yao pen ts'ao of Li Sun of
the eighth century, 5 in a slightly different but substantially identical
wording: "Zu hian grows in Nan-hai [the countries of the Southern
Sea] : it is the sap of a pine-tree in Po-se. That kind which is red like
cherries and transparent ranks first." K'ou Tsun-si, who wrote the
Pen ts'ao yen i in A.D. 1116, says that the incense of the Southern Bar-
barians (Nan Fan) is still better than that of southern India. The
Malayan Po-se belonged to the Southern Barbarians. The fact that
these, and not the Persians, are to be understood in the accounts relating
to incense, is brought out with perfect lucidity by C'en C'en Ell ^c,
who wrote the Pen ts*ao pie $wo ^ |j? $U |& in A.D. 1090, and who says,
"As regards the west, incense is produced in India (T'ien-cu); as re-
1 CHAVANNES, Religieux e"minents, p. 116; J. TAKAKUSU, I-Tsing, p. xxvm.
2 Ed. of Tan Sun ts'un $u, p. 5.
3 Not necessarily from Boswellia, nor identical with frankincense. The above
text says that Zu hian is a kind of hun-lu. The latter is simply a generic term for
incense, without referring to any particular species. I strictly concur with PELLIOT
(T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 477) in regarding hun-lu as a Chinese word, not as the tran-
scription of a foreign word, as has been proposed.
4 If hun lu is enumerated in the Sui $u among the products of Persia, this means
that incense was used there as an import-article, but it does not follow from this
that "it was brought to China on Persian ships" (HiRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 196).
The "Persian ships," it seems, must be relegated to the realm of imagination.
Only from the Mohammedan period did really Persian ships appear in the far east.
The best instance to this effect is contained in the notes of Hwi Cao of the eighth
century (HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., 1913, p. 205).
6 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 16.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE HISTORICAL NOTES 471
gards the south, it is produced in Po-se and other countries. That of
the west is yellow and white in color, that of the south is purple or
red." It follows from this text that the southern Po-se produced a kind
of incense of their own; and it may very well be, that, as stated in the
Kwan ci, a species of pine was the source of this product.
The Kwan ci contains another interesting reference to Po-se. It
states that the tree W ko, *ka (Quercus cuspidata), grows in the moun-
tains and valleys of Kwan-tuii and Kwan-si, and that Po-se people use
its timber for building boats. 1 These again are Malayan Po-se. The
Kwan ci was possibly written under the Tsin dynasty (A.D. 2 6 5-4 2 o), 2
and the Iranian Po-se was then unknown to China. Its name first
reached the Chinese in A.D. 461, when an embassy from Persia arrived
at the Court of the Wei. 3 It should be borne in mind also that Persia's
communications with China always took place overland by way of
Central Asia; while the Malayan Po-se had a double route for reaching
China, either by land to Yun-nan or by sea to Canton. It would not
be impossible that the word *ka for this species of oak, and also its
synonyme ^ i$L mu-nu, *muk-nu, are of Malayan-Po-se origin.
The Kiu yu ci JL ;, published by Wan Ts'un IE & in A.D. 1080,
mentions that the inhabitants of Po-se wear a sort of cotton kerchief,
and make their sarong (tu-man S$ H) of yellow silk. 4
In A.D. 1103, three countries, Burma, Po-se, and K'un-lun, presented
white elephants and perfumes to the King of Ta-li in Yun-nan. Again,
this is not Persia, as translated by C. SAINSON. S Persia never had any
relations with Yun-nan, and how the transportation of elephants from
Persia to Yiin-nan could have been accomplished is difficult to realize.
We note that the commercial relations of these Po-se with Yiin-nan,
firmly established toward the end of the ninth century under the T'ang,
were continued in the twelfth century under the Sung.
In the History of the Sung Dynasty occurs an incidental mention of
Po-se. 6 In A.D. 992 an embassy arrived in China from Java, and it is
said that the envoys were dressed in a way similar to those of Po-se, who
1 This passage is transmitted by Li Sun of the eighth century in his Hai yao
pen ts'ao (Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35 B, p. 14), who, as will be seen, mentions several
plants and products of the Malayan Po-se.
2 PELLIOT, Bull, de I'Ecolefrangaise, Vol. IV, p. 412.
3 Cf. DEVRIA in Centenaire de 1'Ecole des Langues Orientales, p. 306.
4 E. H. PARKER, who made this text known (China Review, Vol. XIX, 1890,
p. 191), remarked, "It seems probable that not Persia, but one of the Borneo or
Malacca states, such as P'o-li or P'o-lo, is meant."
^Histoire du Nan-tchao, p. 101 (translation of the Nan lao ye Si, written by
Yaii Sen in 1550).
6 Sun si, Ch. 489.
472 SlNO-lRANICA
had brought tribute before. The Javanese could hardly be expected
to have been dressed like Persians, as rashly assumed by GROENEVELDT; 1
but they were certainly dressed like their congeners, the Malayan Po-se.
Cou K'u-fei, in his Lin wai tai ta, z written in 1178, gives the following
description of the country Po-se: "In the South- Western Ocean there
is the country Po-se. The inhabitants have black skin and curly hair.
Both their arms are adorned with metal bracelets, and they wrap
around their bodies a piece of cotton-cloth with blue patterns. There
are, no walled towns. Early in the morning, the king holds his court,
being seated cross-legged on a bench covered with a tiger-skin, while his
subjects standing beneath pay him homage. In going out he is carried
in a litter (Ifc 9H Swan tou), or is astride an elephant. His retinue con-
sists of over a hundred men, who, carrying swords and shouting (to clear
the way), form his body-guard. They subsist on flour products, meat,
and rice, served in porcelain dishes, and eat with their fingers." The
same text has been reproduced by Cao Zu-kwa with a few slight changes.
His reading that Po-se is situated "above the countries of the south-
west" is hardly correct. 3 At all events, the geographical definition of
the Sung authors is too vague to allow of a safe conclusion. The expres-
sion of the Lin wai tai ta does not necessarily mean that Po-se was lo-
cated on an island, and Hirth infers that we might expect to find it in
or near the Malay Peninsula. However vague the above description
may be, it leaves no doubt of the fact that the tribe in question is one of
Malayan or Negrito stock.
As far as I know, no mention is made of the Malayan Po-se in the
historical and geographical texts of the Ming, but the tradition regard-
ing that country was kept alive. In discussing the a-lo-p'o (Cassia
fistula) of C'en Ts'an-k'i, as noted above (p.. 420), Li Si-en annotates
that Po-se is the name of a country of the barbarians of the south-west
There is some evidence extant that the language of Po-se belongs to
the Malayan family. TSUBOI KuMAZO 4 has called attention to the
numerals of this language, as handed down in the Kodanso (Memoirs
of Oye), a Japanese work from the beginning of the twelfth century.
These are given in Japanese transcription as follows:
1 sasaa, sasaka 6 namu 20 toaro
2 too, 7 toku, tomu 30 akaro, akafuro
3 naka, maka 8 jembira, or gemmira 40 hiha-furo
4 namuha (nampa) 9 sa-i-bira, or sa-i-mi-ra 100 sasarato, sasaratu
5 rima (lima) 10 sararo, or Sararo 1000 sasaho, sasahu
1 Notes on the Malay Archipelago, p. 144.
2 Ch. 3, p. 6 b.
3 Ch. A, p. 33 b; HIRTH'S translation, p. 152.
4 Actes du Douzieme Congres des Orientalistes, Rome 1899, Vol. II, p. 121.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE LANGUAGE 473
Florenz has correctly recognized in this series the numerals of a Malayan
language, though they cannot throughout be identified (and this could
hardly be expected) with the numerals of any known dialect. Various
Malayan languages must be recruited for identification, and some forms
even then remain obscure. The numeral i corresponds to Malayan sa,
satu; 2 to dua; 4 to ampat; 5 to lima; 6 to namu; 7 to tujoh; 9 to sembilan;
10 to sa-puloh. The numeral 20 is composed of toa 2 and ro 10 (Malayan
puloh) ; 30 oka ( = naka, 3) and ro orfuro 10. The numeral 100 is formed
of sasa i and rato = Malayan -rains.
Two Po-se words are cited in the Yu yan tsa tsu, 1 which, as formerly
pointed out by me, cannot be Persian, but betray a Malayan origin. 2
There it is said that the Po-se designate ivory as fi PH pai-nan, and
rhinoceros-horn as M hei-nan. The former corresponds to ancient
*bak-am; the latter, to *hak-am or *het-am. The latter answers
exactly to Jarai hotam, Bisaya itontj Tagalog Him, Javanese item,
Makasar etah, Cam hutam (hatam or hutum), Malayan hltam, all mean-
ing "black." 3 The former word is not related to the series putih, puteh,
as I was previously inclined to assume, but to the group: Cam baun,
bon, or bhun; Senoi biug, other forms in the Sakei and Semang lan-
guages of Malakka biok, biak, bieg, begidk, bekun, bekog;* Alfur, Boloven,
Kon tu, Kaseng, Lave, and Niah bok, Sedeng robon, Stieng bok
("white"); Bahnar bak (Mon bu). 5 It almost seems, therefore, as if the
speech of Po-se bears some relationship to the languages of the tribes
of Malacca. The Po-se distinguished rhinoceros-horn and ivory as
"black" and "white." However meagre the linguistic material may be,
it reveals, at any rate, Malayan affinities, and explodes BRETSCHNEIDER'S
theory 6 that the Po-se of the Archipelago, alleged to have been on
Sumatra, owes its origin to the fact that "the Persians carried on a
great trade with Sumatra, and probably had colonies there." This is an
unfounded speculation, justly rejected also by G. E. GERINI: T these
Po-se were not Persians, but Malayans.
The Po-se question has been studied to some extent by G. E.
GERINI, S who suggests its probable identity with the Vasu state located
by the Bhagavata Purana in Kugadvipa, and who thinks it may be
1 Ch. 16, p. 14.
2 Chinese Clay Figures, p. 145.
8 Cf. CABATON and AYMONIER, Dictionnaire c"am-francais, p. 503.
4 P. SCHMIDT, Bijdragen tot de Tool-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. VIII, 1901 ,
p. 420.
5 Ibid., p. 344.
6 Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, p. 16.
7 Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia, p. 471.
8 Ibid., p. 682.
474 SlNO-lRANICA
Lambesi; i.e., Besi or Basi (lam meaning "village"), a petty state on
the west coast of Sumatra immediately below Acheh, upon which it
borders. This identification is impossible, first of all, for phonetic reasons :
Chinese po & was never possessed of an ancient labial sonant, but
solely of a labial surd (*pwa). L
TSUBOI KuMAZo 2 regards Po-se as a transcription of Pasi, Pasei,
Pasay, Pazze, or Pacem, a port situated on northern Sumatra near the
Diamond Cape, which subsequently vied in wealth with Majapahit
and Malacca, and called Basma by Marco Polo. 3
C. O. BLAGDEN 4 remarks with reference to this Po-se, "One is very
much tempted to suppose that this stands for Pose (or Pasai) in north-
eastern Sumatra, but I have no evidence that the place existed as early
as 1178." If this be the case, the proposed identification is rendered
still more difficult; for, as we have seen, Po-se appears on the horizon
of the Chinese as early as from the seventh to the ninth century under the
Tang, and probably even at an earlier date. The only text that gives
us an approximate clew to the geographical location of Po-se is the
Man $u; and I should think that all we can do under the circumstances,
or until new sources come to light, is to adhere to this definition;
that is, as far as the T'ang period is concerned. Judging from the
movements of Malayan tribes, it would not be impossible that, in the
age of the Sung, the Po-se had extended their seats from the mainland
to the islands of the Archipelago, but I am not prepared for the present
either to accept or to reject the theory of their settlement on Sumatra
under the Sung.
Aside from the references in historical texts, we have another class
of documents in which the Malayan Po-se is prominent, the Pen-is* ao
literature and other works dealing with plants and products. I propose
to review these notices in detail.
60. In regard to alum, F. P. SMITH 5 stated that apart from native
localities it is also mentioned as reaching China from Persia, K'un-lun,
1 On p. 471 Gerini identifies Po-se with the Baslsi tribe in the more southern
parts of the Malay Peninsula. On the other hand, it is difficult to see why Gerini
searched for Po-se on Sumatra, as he quotes after Parker a Chinese source
under the date A.D. 802, to the effect that near the capital of Burma there were
hills of sand, and a barren waste which borders on Po-se and P'o-lo-men (see
above, p. 469).
2 Actes du Douzieme Congres des Orientalistes, Rome 1899, Vol. II, p. 92.
3 Cf. YULE, Marco Polo, Vol. II, pp. 284-288. Regarding the kings of Pase,
see G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a 1'Extreme-Orient, Vol. II, pp. 666-669.
4 Journal Royal As. Soc., 1913, p. 168.
6 Contributions towards the Materia Medica of China, p. 10.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE ALUM 475
and Ta Ts'in. J. L. SouBEiRAN 1 says, "L'alun, qui etait tire* primitive-
ment de la Perse, est aujourd'hui importe de POccident." F. DE MELY 2
translates the term Po-se ts*e fan by "fan violet de Perse." All this is
wrong. HiRTH 3 noted the difficulty in the case, as alum is not produced
in Persia, but principally in Asia Minor. Pliny 4 mentions Spain,
Egypt, Armenia, Macedonia, Pontus, and Africa as alum-producing
countries. Hirth found in the P'ei wen yun fu a passage from the Hai
yao pen ts*ao, according to which Po-se fan fflt $? i ("Persian alum,"
as he translates) comes from Ta Ts'in. In his opinion, "Persian alum"
is a misnomer, Persia denoting in this case merely the emporium from
which the product was shipped to China. The text in question is not
peculiar to the Hai yao pen ts'ao of the eighth century, but occurs at a
much earlier date in the Kwan cou ki K ffi ttfi, an account of Kwan-
tun, written under the Tsih dynasty (A.D. 265-419), when the name of
Persia was hardly known in China. This work, as quoted in the Cen
lei pen ts*ao, 5 states that kin sien & $&fan ("alum with gold threads")
is produced ^ in the country Po-se, and in another paragraph that the
white alum of Po-se (Po-se pai fan) comes from Ta Ts'in. 6 The former
statement clearly alludes to the alum discolored by impurities, as still
found in several localities of India and Upper Burma. 7 Accordingly
the Malayan Po-se (for this one only can come into question here)
produced an impure kind of alum, and simultaneously was the transit
mart for the pure white alum brought from western Asia by way of
India to China. It is clear that, because the native alum of Po-se was
previously known, also the West-Asiatic variety was named for Po-se.
A parallel to the Po-se fan is the K'un-lun fan, which looks like black
mud. 8
61. The Wu In ^ 1^, written by Can Po 3Jt $4 in the beginning of
the fourth century, contains the following text on the subject of "ant-
lac" (yi tsi il J$) : 9 "In the district of Kii-fun M ft (in Kiu-cen, Ton-
1 Etudes sur la matiere me'dicale chinoise (Mine"raux), p. 2 (reprint from
Journal de pharmacie et de chimie, 1866).
2 Lapidaire chinois, p. 260.
3 Chinesische Studien, p. 257.
4 xxxv, 52.
5 Ch. 3, p. 40 b.
6 Also in the text of the Hai yao pen ts'ao, as reproduced in the Pen ts'ao kan mu
(Ch. u, p. 15 b), two Po-se alums are distinguished.
7 WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 61.
8 Pen ts'ao kan mu, I. c.
9 Tai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 171, p. 5.
476 SlNO-lRANICA
king) 1 tkere are ants living on coarse creepers. The people, on examin-
ing the interior of the earth, can tell the presence of ants from the soil
being freshly broken up ; and they drive tree-branches into these spots,
on which the ants will crawl up, and produce a lac that hardens into a
solid mass." Aside from the absurd and fantastic notes of Aelian, 2 this is
the earliest allusion to the lac-insect which is called in Annamese con
mdij in Khmer kandier, in Cam mu, mur y or muor? The Chinese half-
legendary account 4 agrees strikingly with what Garcia reports as the
Oriental lore of this wonder of nature: "I was deceived for a long
time. For they said that in Pegu the channels of the rivers deposit mud
into which small sticks are driven. On them are engendered very large
ants with wings, and it is said that they deposit much lacre 5 on the
sticks. I asked my informants whether they had seen this with their
own eyes. As they gained money by buying rubies and selling the cloths
of Paleam and Bengal, they replied that they had not been so idle as
that, but that they had heard it, and it was the common fame. After-
wards I conversed with a respectable man with an enquiring mind, who
told me that it was a large tree with leaves like those of a plum tree, and
that the large ants deposit the lacre on the small branches. The ants
are engendered in mud or elsewhere. They deposit the gum on the
tree, as a material thing, washing the branch as the bee makes honey;
and that is the truth. The branches are pulled off the tree and put in
the shade to dry. The gum is then taken off and put into bamboo joints,
sometimes with the branch." 8
In the Yu yan tsa tsu 7 we read as follows: "The tse-kun tree $* &JP 3
Sf has its habitat in Camboja (Cen-la), where it is called ?fr 14 lo-k'ia t
*lak-ka (that is, lakka, lac). 9 Further, it is produced in the country
1 Regarding this locality, cf. H. MASPERO, Etudes d'histoire d'Annam, V, p. 19
(Bull, de VEcole fran$ aise, 1918, No. 3).
2 Nat. Anim., iv, 46. There is no other Greek or Latin notice of the matter.
8 Cf. AYMONIER and CABATON (Dictionnaire c'am-franc.ais, p. 393), who trans-
late the term "termite, pou de bois, fourmi blanche."
4 Much more sensible, however, than that of Aelian.
6 The Portuguese word for "lac, lacquer," the latter being traceable to lacre.
The ending -re is unexplained.
C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 241.
7 Ch. 18, p. 9.
8 The Pai-hai edition has erroneously the character j J.
9 From Pali Idkhd (Sanskrit lak?a, laktaka); Cam lak, Khmer lak; Siamese rak
(cf. PALLEGOIX, Description du royaume Thai, Vol. I, p. 144). We are thus en-
titled to trace the presence of this Indian word in the languages of Indo-China
to the age of the T'ang. The earliest and only classical occurrence of the word is in
the Periplus (Ch. 6: Xdiocos). Cf. also Prakrit lakka; Kawi and Javanese laka;
Tagalog lakha.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE LAC 477
Po-se $ ST. The tree grows to a height of ten feet, with branches dense
and luxuriant. Its leaves resemble those of the Citrus and wither
during the winter. In the third month it flowers, the blossoms being
white in color. It does not form fruit. When heavy fogs, dew, and
rain moisten' the branches of this tree, they produce tse-kun. The en-
voys of the country Po-se, Wu-hai J| M and Sa-li-sen & M & by name,
agreed in their statement with the envoys from Camboja, who were
a & Fun tu wei Jf ttf S$ JtJ 1 and the gramana $g & JS St K Si-sVni-
pa-t'o (piganibhadra?). These said, 'Ants transport earth into the
ends of this tree, digging nests in it; the ant-hills moistened by rain
and dew will harden and form tse-kun.' 2 ' That of the country K'un-lun
is the most excellent, while that of the country Po-se ranks next.' " 3
1 Title of a military officer.
2 "The gum-lac which comes from Pegu is the cheapest, though it is as good as
that of other countries; what causes it to be sold cheaper is that the ants, making
it there on the ground in heaps, which are sometimes of the size of a cask, mix with
it a quantity of dirt" (TAVERNIER, Travels in India, Vol. II, p. 22).
3 The story of lacca and the ants producing it was made known in England at
the end of the sixteenth century. JOHN GERARDE (The Herball or Generall Historic
of Plantes, p. 1349, London, 1597, ist ed; or, enlarged and amended by Thomas
Johnson, p. 1533, London, 1633) tells it as follows: "The tree that bringeth forth
that excrementall substance, called Lacca, both in the shops of Europe and elsewhere,
is called of the Arabians, Persians and Turkes Loc Sumutri, as who should say Lacca
of Sumutra : some which have so termed it, have thought that the first plentie thereof
came from Sumutra, but herein they have erred; for the abundant store thereof
came from Pegu, where the inhabitants thereof do call it Lac, and others of the
same province Tree. The history of which tree, according to that famous Herbalist
Clusius is as followeth. There is in the countrey of Pegu and Malabar, a great tree,
whose leaves are like them of the Plum tree, having many small twiggie branches;
when the trunke or body of the tree waxeth olde, it rotteth in sundrie places, wherein
do breed certaine great ants or Pismires, which continually worke and labour in the
time of harvest and sommer, against the penurie of winter: such is the diligence
of these Ants, or such is the nature of the tree wherein they harbour, or both, that
they provide for their winter foode, a lumpe or masse of substance, which is of a
crimson colour, so beautifull and so faire, as in the whole world the like cannot be
seene, which serveth not onely to phisicall uses, but is a perfect and costly colour for
Painters, called by us, Indian Lack. The Pismires (as I said) worke out this colour, by
sucking the substance or matter of Lacca from the tree, as Bees do make honie and
waxe, by sucking the matter thereof from all herbes, trees, and flowers, and the in-
habitants of that countrie, do as diligently search for this Lacca, as we in England
and other countries, seeke in the woods for honie; which Lacca after they have found,
they take from the tree, and drie it into a lumpe; among which sometimes there
come over some sticks and peeces of the tree with the wings of the Ants, which have
fallen amongst it, as we daily see. The tree which beareth Lacca groweth in Zeilan
and Malavar, and in other partes of the East Indies." The second edition of 1633
has the following addition, "The Indian Lacke or Lake which is the rich colour used
by Painters, is none of that which is used in shops, nor here figured or described by
Clusius, wherefore our Author was much mistaken in that he here confounds together
things so different; for this is of a resinous substance, and a faint red colour, and
wholly unfit for Painters, but used alone and in composition to make the best hard
478 SlNO-lRANICA
The question here is of gum-lac or stick-lac (Gummi lacca; French
laque en bdtons), also known as kino, produced by an insect, Coccus
or Tachardia lacca, whichlives on a large number of widely different trees, 1
called $t $JP or Hi tse-kun or tse-ken. Under the latter name it is men-
tioned in the "Customs of Camboja" by Cou Ta-kwan; 2 under the
former, in the Pen ts*ao yen i. 3 At an earlier date it occurs as ^ IS in
the T'an hui yaof where it is said in the notice of P'iao (Burma), that
there the temple-halls are coated with it. In all probability, this word
represents a transcription: Li Si-cen assigns it to the Southern Bar-
barians.
The Po-se in the text of the Yu yan tsa tsu cannot be Persia, as is
sufficiently evidenced by the joint arrival of the Po-se and Camboja
envoys, and the opposition of Po-se to the Malayan K'un-lun. Without
any doubt we have reference here to the Malayan Po-se. The product
itself is not one of Persia, where the lac-insect is unknown. 5 It should be
added that the Yu yan tsa tsu treats of this Po-se product along with the
plants of the Iranian Po-se discussed on the preceding pages; and there
is nothing to indicate that Twan C'eii-si, its author, made a distinction
between the two homophonous names. 6
62. The Malayan Po-se, further, produced camphor (Dryobalanops
aromatica), as we likewise see from the Yu yan tsa tsu, 7 where the tree
sealing wax. The other seemes to be an artificiall thing, and is of an exquisite crim-
son colour, but of what it is, or how made, I have not as yet found any thing that
carries any probabilitie of truth." Gerarde's information goes back to Garcia,
whose fundamental work then was the only source for the plants and drugs
of India.
1 WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 1053; not necessarily Erythrina, as
stated by STUART (Chinese Materia Medica, p. 489). Sir C. MARKHAM (Colloquies,
p. 241) says picturesquely that the resinous exudation is produced by the puncture
of the females of the lac-insect as their common nuptial and accouchement bed, the
seraglio of their multi-polygamous bacchabunding lord, the male Coccus lacca;
both the males and their colonies of females live only for the time they are cease-
lessly reproducing themselves, and as if only to dower the world with one of its
most useful resins, and most glorious dyes, the color "lake."
2 PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcolefran$aise, Vol. II, p. 166.
3 Ch. 14, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
4 Ch. 100, p. 18 b. Also Su Kun and Li Sun of the T'ang describe the product.
5 The word lak (Arabic) or ranglak (Persian) is derived from Indian, and
denotes either the Indian product or the gum of Zizyphus lotus and other plants
(ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 265). In the seventeenth century the Dutch bought
gum-lac in India for exportation to Persia (TAVERNIER, /. c.}. Cf. also LECLERC,
Trait6 des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 241 ; and G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a 1'Extreme-
Orient, p. 340.
6 In regard to stick-lac in Tibet, see H. LAUFER, Beitrage zur Kenntnis der
tibetischen Medicin, pp. 63-64.
7 Ch. 18, p. 8 b.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE LAC, CAMPHOR 479
is ascribed to Bali 51 f!l (P'o-li, *Bwa-li) 1 an5 to Po-se. Camphor is
not produced in Persia; 2 and HIRTH S is not justified in here rendering
Po-se by Persia and commenting that camphor was brought to China
by Persian ships.
63 . The confusion as to the two Po-se has led Twan C'en-si 4 to ascribe
the jack-fruit tree (Artocarpus integrifolid) to Persia, as would follow
from the immediate mention of Fu-lin; but this tree grows neither in
Persia nor in western Asia. It is a native of India, Burma, and the
Archipelago. The mystery, however, remains as to how the author
obtained the alleged Fu-lin name. 5
Pepper (Piper longum), according to Su Kun of the T'ang, is a prod-
uct of Po-se. This cannot be Persia, which does not produce pepper. 6
In the chapter on the walnut we have noticed that the Pei hu lu,
written about A.D. 875 by Twan Kun-lu, mentions a wild walnut as
growing in the country Can-pei (*Cambi, Jambi), and gathered and
eaten by the Po-se. The Lin piao lu i, written somewhat later (between
889 and 904), describes the same fruit as growing in Can-pi (*Cambir,
Jambir) , and gathered by the Hu. This text is obviously based on the
older one of the Pei hu lu; and Liu Sim, author of the Lin piao lu i,
being under the impression that the Iranian Po-se is involved, appears
to have substituted the term Hu for Po-se. The Iranian Po-se, however,
is out of the question: the Persians did not consume wild walnuts;
and, for all we know about Can-pi, it must have been some Malayan
region. 7 I have tentatively identified the plant in question with Juglans
cathayensis or, which is more probable, Canarium commune; possibly
another genus is intended. As regards the situation of Can-pi (or -pei)
and Po-se of the T'ang, much would depend on the botanical evidence.
I doubt that any wild walnut occurs on Sumatra.
The Hai yao pen ts'ao, written by Li Sun in the second half of the
eighth century, and as implied by the title, describing the drugs from
1 Its Bali name is given as jjfj >fC ^ ^ ku-pu-p'o-lu, *ku-put-bwa-lwut, which
appears to be based on a form related to the Malayan type kapor-bdrus. Cf. also
the comments of PELLIOT (T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 474-475).
2 SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 98) observes, "Les auteurs indigenes persans
recommendent le camphre de Borneo comme le meilleur. Camphre de menthe,
provenant de la Chine, se trouve depuis peu dans le commerce en Perse." Camphor
was imported into Slraf (W. OUSELEY, Oriental Geography of Ebn Haukal, p. 133;
G. LE STRANGE, Description of the Province of Pars, p. 42).
3 Chau Ju-kua, p. 194.
4 Yu yan tsa tsu, Ch. 18, p. IO.
5 Cf. HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 213.
6 See above, pp. 374, 375.
7 See the references given above on p. 268.
480 SlNO-lRANICA
the countries beyond the sea and south of China, has recorded several
products of Po-se, which, as we have seen, must be interpreted as the
Malayan region of this name. Such is the case with benjoin (p. 464)
and cummin (p. 383).
We noticed (p. 460) that the Nan lou ki and three subsequent works
attribute myrrh to Po-se, but that this can hardly be intended for
the Iranian Po-se, since myrrh does not occur in Persia. Here the
Malayan Po-se is visualized, inasmuch as the trade in myrrh took its
route from East Africa and the Hadramaut coast of Arabia by way of
the Malay Archipelago into China, and thus led the Chinese (errone-
ously) to the belief that the tree itself grew in Malaysia.
64. The case of aloes (Aloe vulgaris and other species) presents a
striking analogy to that of myrrh, inasmuch as this African plant
is also ascribed to Po-se, and a substitute for it was subsequently found
in the Archipelago. Again it is Li Sim of the T'ang period who for the
first time mentions its product under the name lu-wei HE. If, stating
that it grows in the country Po-se, has the appearance of black con-
fectionery, and is the sap of a tree. 1 Su Sun of the Sung dynasty
observes, "At present it is only shipped to Canton. This tree grows in
the mountain-wilderness, its sap running down like tears and coagulat-
ing. This substance is gathered regardless of the season or month."
Li Si-en feels doubtful as to whether the product is that of a tree or of
an herb ^: he points out that, according to the Ta Min i t'un &,
aloes, which belongs to the class of herbs, is a product of Java, Sumatra
(San-fu-ts'i), and other countries, and that this is contradictory to
the data of the T'ang and Sung Pen-ts'ao. It was unknown to him,
however, that the first author thus describing the product is Cao
Zu-kwa, 2 who indeed classifies Aloe among herbs, and derives it from
the country Nu-fa i$L il, a dependency of the Arabs, and in another
passage from an island off the Somali coast, evidently hinting at Socotra.
This island is the home of the Aloe perryi, still imported into Bombay. 3
The name lu-wei is traced by Hirth to Persian alwd. This theory is
difficult to accept for many reasons. Nowhere is it stated that lu-wei
is a Persian word. Li Si-6en, who had good sense in diagnosing foreign
words, remarks that lu-wei remains unexplained. The Chinese his-
torical texts relative to the Iranian Po-se do not attribute to it this
product, which, moreover, did not reach China by land, but exclusively
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 34, p. 21 b. The juice of Aloe abyssinica is sold in the
form of flat circular cakes, almost black in color.
2 Cufan i, Ch. B, p. n (cf. HIRTH'S translation, p. 225).
3 Regarding the history of aloes, see especially FLUCKIGER and HANBURY,
Pharmacographia, p. 680.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE ALOES 481
over the maritime route to Canton. Aloes was only imported to Persia, 1
but it is not mentioned by Abu Mansur. The two names sebr zerd
and sebr sugutri ( = Sokotra), given by ScHLiMMER, 2 are of Arabic and
comparatively modern origin; thus is likewise the alleged Persian word
alwa. The Persians adopted it from the Arabs; and the Arabs, on their
part, admit that their alua is a transcription of the Greek word dXo??. 3
We must not imagine, of course, that the Chinese, when they first re-
ceived this product during the T'ang period, imported it themselves
directly from the African coast or Arabia. It was traded to India, and
from there to the Malayan Archipelago; and, as intimated by Li Sun,
it was shipped by the Malayan Po-se to Canton. Another point over-
looked by Hirth is that Aloe vera has been completely naturalized in
India for a long time, although not originally a native of the country. 4
GARCIA DA ORTA even mentions the preparation of aloes in Cambay
and Bengal. 5 Thus we find in India, as colloquial names for the drug,
such forms as alia, ilva, eilya, elio t yalva, and aliva in Malayan, which
are all traceable to the Arabic-Greek alua, alwa. This name was picked
up by the Malayan Po-se and transmitted by them with the product to
the Chinese, who simply eliminated the initial a of the form aluwa
or aluwe and retained luwe* Besides lu-wei, occur also the transcriptions
2 or Ift H" nu or no hwi, the former in the K'ai-pao pen ts'ao of the Sung,
perhaps suggested by the Nu-fa country or to be explained by the
phonetic interchange of / and n. It is not intelligible to me why
Hirth says that in the Ming dynasty lu-wei "was, as it is now,
catechu, a product of the Acacia catechu (Sanskrit khadira)." No
authority for this theory is cited; but this is quite impossible, as
catechu or cutch was well known to the Chinese under the names
er-Pa or hai'r-Fa.' 1
65. A plant, IS ffi 1$ so-$a-mi, *suk-sa-m'it(m'ir), Japanese
suku$amitsu (Amomum wlloswn or xanthioides), is first mentioned by Li
Sun as "growing in the countries of the Western Sea (Si-hai) as well as
in Si-2un 15 -$C and Po-se, much of it coming from the Nan-tun circuit
1 W. OUSELEY, Oriental Geography of Ebn Haukal, p. 133.
3 Terminologie, p. 22.
3 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, p. 367.
4 G. WATT, Commercial Products of India, p. 59.
5 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 6.
WATTERS (Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 332), erroneously transcrib-
ing lu-hui, was inclined to trace the Chinese transcription directly to the Greek
aloe; this of course, for historical reasons, is out of the question.
7 See STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 2; and my Loan- Words in Tibetan,
No. 107, where the history of these words is traced.
482 SlNO-lRANICA
3c ^ Jit." 1 According to Ma Ci,it grows in southern China, and, accord-
ing to Su Sufi, in the marshes of Lin-nan; thus it must have been intro-
duced between the T'ang and Sung dynasties. In regard to the name,
which is no doubt of foreign origin, Li Si-cen observes that its significance
is as yet unexplained. Certainly it is not Iranian, nor is it known to me
that Amomum occurs in Persia. On the contrary, the plant has been
discovered in Burma, Siam, Camboja, and Laos. 2 Therefore Li Sun's
Po-se obviously relates again to the Malayan Po-se; yet his addition of
Si-hai and Si-2uii is apt to raise a strong suspicion that he himself
confounded the two Po-se and in this case thought of Persia. I have
not yet succeeded in tracing the foreign word on which the Chinese
transcription is based, but feel sure that it is not Iranian. The present
colloquial name is ts*ao $a Zen ^ ffi C. 3
66. There is a plant styled 9 ft ft p'o-lo-te, *bwa-ra-tik, or | &
S5 p'o-lo-lo, *bwa-ra-lak(lok, lek), not yet identifie^. Again our
earliest source of information is due to Li Sun, who states, "P'o-lo-te
grows in the countries of the Western Sea (Si-hai) and in Po-se. The
tree resembles the Chinese willow; and its seeds, those of the castor-oil
plant (pei-ma tse, Ricinus communis, above, p. 403) ; they are much used
by druggists." 4 Li Si-cen regards the word as Sanskrit, and the elements
of the transcription hint indeed at a Sanskrit name. It is evidently
Sanskrit bhallataka, from which are derived Newarl paldla, Hindustani
belatak or bheld, Persian balddur, and Arabic beladur (GARCIA : balador) .
Other Sanskrit synonymes of this plant are aruska,bijapadapa,virawksa,
visasya, and dahana. It is mentioned in several passages of the Bower
Manuscript.
This is the marking-nut tree (Semecarpus anacardium, family Ana-
cardiaceae) , a genus of Indian trees found throughout the hotter parts
of India as far east as Assam, also distributed over the Archipelago as
far as the Philippines 5 and North Australia. It does not occur in Burma
or Ceylon, nor in Persia or western Asia. The fleshy receptacle bear-
ing the fruit contains a bitter and astringent substance, which is uni-
versally used in India as a substitute for marking-ink. The Chinese
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 14, p. 13 b.
2 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 38. LOUREIRO (so-xa-mi) mentions it
for Cochin-China (PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. me"d. et pharmacope'e sino-annamites,
P- 97).
3 Ci wu min Si t"u k'ao, Ch. 25, p. 72.
4 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35, p. 7; Gen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 5, p. 14 b. In the latter
work Li Sun attributes the definition "Western Sea and Po-se" to Su Piao, author
of the Nan tou ki.
6 M. BLANCO, Flora de Filipinas, p. 216.
THE MALAYAN Po-SE SEMECARPUS, PSORALEA 483
say expressly that it dyes hair and mustache black. 1 It gives to cotton
fabrics a black color, which is said to be insoluble in water, but soluble
in alcohol. The juice of the pericarp is mixed with lime water as a
mordant before it is used to mark cloth. In some parts of Bengal the
fruits are regularly used as a dye for cotton cloths. 2 The fleshy cups on
which the fruit rests, roasted in ashes, and the kernels of the nuts, are
eaten as food. They are supposed to stimulate the mental powers,
especially the memory. The acrid juice of the pericarp is a powerful
vesicant, and the fruit is employed medicinally.
In regard to the Persian-Arabic balddur, Ibn al-Baitar states express-
ly that this is an Indian word, 3 and there is no doubt that it is derived
from Sanskrit bhalldtaka. The term is also given by Abu Mansur, who
discusses the application of the remedy. 4 The main point in this con-
nection is that p'o-lo-te is a typical Indian plant, and that the Po-se of
the above Chinese text cannot refer to Persia. Since the tree occurs in
the Malayan area, however, it is reasonable to conclude that again the
Malayan Po-se is intended. The case is analogous to the preceding
one, and the Malayan Po-se were the mediators. At any rate, the
transmission to China of an Indian product with a Sanskrit name by
way of the Malayan Po-se is far more probable than by way of Persia.
I am also led to the general conclusion that almost all Po-se products
mentioned in the Hai yao pen ts*ao of Li Sun have reference to the
Malayan Po-se exclusively.
67. A drug, by the name -fit H* BB pu-ku-i (*bu-kut-ti), identified
with Psoralea corylifolia, is first distinctly mentioned by Ma Ci $f ;,
collaborator in the K'ai pao pen ts'ao (A.D. 968-976) of the Sung period,
as growing in all districts of Lin-nan (Kwan-tun) and Kwan-si, and
in the country Po-se. According to Ta Min ^C W, author of the Zi hwa
cu kia pen ts'ao H Sf ft IK ^ ^, published about A.D. 970, the drug
would have been mentioned in the work Nan con ki by Su Piao
(prior to the fifth century) , 5 who determined it as SB MM ? hu kiu-tse,
the "Alliwn odorum of the Hu." This, however, is plainly an anachro-
nism, as neither the plant, nor the drug yielded by it, is mentioned by
any T'ang writers, and for the first time looms up in the pharmacopoeia
of the Sung. Su Sun, in his T*u kin pen ts*ao, observes that the plant
now occurs abundantly on the mountain-slopes of southern China,
1 Cett lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 5, p. 14 b.
2 Cf. WATT, Dictionary, Vol. VI, pt. 2, p. 498.
3 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, pp. 162, 265.
4 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 30.
5 See above, p. 247.
484 SlNO-lRANICA
also in Ho-Sou / p fc ffl in Se-c"'wan, but that the native product does not
come up to the article imported on foreign ships. 1 Ta Min defines the
difference between the two by saying that the drug of the Southern
Barbarians is red in color, while that of Kwan-tun is green. Li Si-cen
annotates that the Hu name for the plant is ^ @ fla p*o-ku-ti (*bwa-
ku-&, baku&), popularly but erroneously written 8$ ~$* %fc p*o-ku-ti
(*pa-ku-ci), that it is the " Allium odorum of the Hu," because the
seeds of the two plants are similar in appearance, but that in fact it is
not identical with the Allium growing in the land of the Hu. These
are all the historical documents available. STUART 2 concludes that the
drug comes from Persia; but there is neither a Persian word bakuci,
nor is it known that the plant (Psoralea cor ylij olid) exists in Persia.
The evidence presented by the Chinese sources is not favorable, either,
to this conclusion, for those data point to the countries south of China,
associated in commerce with Kwaii-tun. The isolated occurrence of
the plant in a single locality of Se-S'wan is easily explained from the
fact that a large number of immigrants from Kwan-tun have settled
there. In fact, the word *bakuc"i yielded by the Chinese transcription
is of Indian origin: it answers to Sanskrit vakuci, which indeed designates
the same plant, Psoralea corylifolia? In Bengali and Hindustani it is
hakuc* and bavaci, Uriya bakuci, Panjab babel , Bombay bawaci, Marathi
bavacya or bavaci, etc. According to WATT, it is a common herbaceous
weed found in the plains from the Himalaya through India to Ceylon.
According to AINSLIE, this is a dark brown-colored seed, about the
size of a large pin-head, and somewhat oval-shaped; it has an aromatic,
yet unctuous taste, and a certain degree of bitterness. The species in
question is an annual plant, seldom rising higher than three feet; and is
common in southern India. It has at each joint one leaf about two inches
long, and one and a half broad; the flowers are of a pale flesh color,
being produced on long, slender, axillary peduncles. In Annam it is
known as hot-bo-kot-Zi and p'a-ko-Zif It is therefore perfectly obvious
1 According to the Gazetteer of Sen-si Province (Sen-si fun i, Ch. 43, p. 31),
the plant occurs in the district Si-ts'uan ^ Jf. in the prefecture Kin-nan.
2 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 359; likewise F. P. SMITH (Contributions, p. 179)
and PERROT and HURRIER (Matiere me'dicale et pharmacope'e sino-annamites,
p. 150).
3 W. AINSLIE, Materia Indica, Vol. II, p. 141.
4 This name is also given by W. ROXBURGH (Flora Indica, p. 588). See, further,
WATT, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, Vol. VI, p. 354.
5 PERROT and HURRIER, Mat. me"d. et pharmacopde sino-annamites, p. 150.
According to these authors, the plant is found in the south and west of China as
well as in Siam. Wu K'i-tsun says that physicians now utilize it to a large extent in
lieu of cinnamon (Ci wu min U t'u k'ao, Ch. 25, p. 65).
THE MALAYAN Po-Ss EBONY 485
that the designation "Allium of the Hu" is a misnomer, and that the
plant in question has nothing to do with the Hu in the sense of Iranians,
nor with Persia. The Po-se of Ma Ci, referred to above, in fact repre-
sents the Malayan Po-se.
68. In the Pen ts*ao kan mu, a quotation is given from the Ku kin
Zu, which is not to be found in the accessible modern editions of this
work. The assertion is made there with reference to that work that
ebony J| 3&C /fc is brought over on Po-se ships. It is out of the question
that Po-se in this case could denote Persia, as erroneously assumed by
STUART/ as Persia was hardly known under that name in the fourth
century, when the Ku kin Zu was written, or is supposed to have been
written, by Ts'ui Pao; 2 and, further, ebony is not at all a product of
Persia. 3 Since the same work refers ebony to Kiao-Sou (Tonking), it
may be assumed that this Po-se is intended for the Malayan Po-se; but,
even in this case, the passage may be regarded as one of the many
interpolations from which the Ku kin lu has suffered.
Chinese wu-men J| frt (*u-mon), "ebony" (timber of Diospyros
ebenum and D. melanoxylon) is not a transcription of Persian abnus,
as proposed by HiRTH. 4 There is no phonetic coincidence whatever.
Nowhere is it stated that the Chinese word is Persian or a foreign word
at all. There is, further, no evidence to the effect that ebony was ever
traded from Persia to China; on the contrary, according to Chinese
testimony, it came from Indo-China, the Archipelago, and India;
according to Li Si-Sen, from Hai-nan, Yun-nan, and the Southern Bar-
barians. 5 The speculation that the word had travelled east and west
with the article from "one of the Indo-Chinese districts," is untenable;
for the ebony of western Asia and Greece did not come from Indo-
China, but from Africa and India. The above Chinese term is not a
transcription at all: the second character men is simply a late substitu-
tion of the Sung period for the older 3$C, as used in the Ku kin ZM, wu wen
meaning "black-streaked wood." In the Pen ts*ao kan mu 6 it is said
1 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 253.
2 Persia under the name Po-se is first mentioned in A.D. 461, on the occasion of
an embassy sent from there to the Court of the Wei (compare above, p. 471).
3 It was solely imported into Persia (W. OUSELEY, Oriental Geography of Ebn
Haukal, p. 133).
4 Chau Ju-kua, p. 216.
5 The Ko ku yao lun (Ch. 8, p. 5 b; ed. of Si yin huan ts'uti l#) gives Hai-nan,
Nan-fan ("Southern Barbarians"), and Yun-nan as places of provenience, and
adds that there is much counterfeit material, dyed artificially. The poles of the tent
of the king of Camboja were made of ebony (Sui l, Ch. 82, p. 3).
6 Ch. 35 B, p. 13.
486 SlNO-lRANICA
that the character men should be pronounced in this case 31 man,
that the name of the tree is 3fc /K (thus written in the Nan fan ts'ao mu
Zwan), and that the southerners, because they articulate 2fc like IS,
have substituted the latter. This is a perfectly satisfactory explanation.
The Ku kin u, 1 however, has preserved a transcription in the form
ill /}C JH *i-muk-i or ]gf *bu (wu), which must have belonged to the
language of Kiao-fou 3 M (Tonking), as the product hailed from there.
Compare Khmer mak pen and Cam mokid ("ebony," Diospyros eben-
aster). 2
Ebony was known in ancient Babylonia, combs being wrought from
this material. 3 It is mentioned in early Egyptian inscriptions as being
brought from the land of the Negroes on the upper Nile. Indeed, Africa
was the chief centre that supplied the ancients with this precious wood. 4
From Ethiopia a hundred billets of ebony were sent every third year
as tribute to Darius, king of Persia. Ezekiel 5 alludes to the ebony of
Tyre. The Periplus (36) mentions the shipping of ebony from Barygaza
in India to Ommana in the Persian Gulf. Theophrastus, 6 who is the
first to mention the ebony-tree of India, makes a distinction between two
kinds of Indian ebony, a rare and nobler one, and a common variety of
inferior wood. According to Pliny, 7 it was Pompey who displayed
ebony in Rome at his triumph over Mithridates; and Solinus, who copies
this passage, adds that it came from India, and was then shown for the
first time. According to the same writer, ebony was solely sent from
India, and the images of Indian gods were sometimes carved from this
wood entirely, likewise drinking-cups. 8 Thus the ancients were ac-
quainted with ebony as a product of Africa and India at a time when
Indo-China was still veiled to them, nor is any reference made to the
far east in any ancient western account of the subject. The word itself
is of Egyptian origin: under the name heben, ebony formed an important
article with the country Punt. Hebrew hobmm is related to this word or
directly borrowed from it, and Greek t'fievos is derived from Semitic.
Arabic-Persian 'abnus is taken as a loan from the Greek, and Hindi
abanusa is the descendant of abnus.
1 Ch. c, p. I b. The product is described as coming from Kiao-c"ou, being of
black color and veined, and also called "wood with black veins" (wu wen mu).
2 AYMONIER and CABATON, Dictionnaire Sam-francais, p. 366.
s HANDCOCK, Mesopotamian Archaeology, p. 349.
4 Herodotus, in, 97.
6 xxvn, 15.
6 Hist, plant., IV. IV, 6.
7 xii, 4, 20.
8 Solinus, ed. MOMMSEN, pp. 193, 221.
THE MALAYAN Po-Sz AND ITS PRODUCTS 487
It is thus obvious that the term Po-se in Chinese records demands
great caution, and must not be blindly translated "Persia." Whenever
it is used with reference to the Archipelago, the chances are that Persia
is not in question. The Malayan Po-se has become a fact of historical
significance. He who is intent on identifying this locality and people
must not lose sight of the plants and products attributed to it. I dis-
agree entirely with the conclusion of HIRTH and RocKHiLL 1 that from
the end of the fourth to the beginning of the seventh centuries all the
products of Indo-China, Ceylon, India, and the east coast of Africa
were classed by the Chinese as "products of Persia (Po-se)," the coun-
try of the majority of the traders who brought these goods to China.
This is a rather grotesque generalization, inspired by a misconception
of the term Po-se and the Po-se texts of the Wei $u and Sui $u. The
latter, as already emphasized, do not speak at all of any importation of
Persian goods to China, but merely give a descriptive list of the arti-
cles to be found in Persia. Whenever the term Po-se is prefixed to the
name of a plant or a product, it means only one of two things, Persia
or the Malayan Po-se, but this attribute is never fictitious. Not a
single case is known to me where a specific product of Ceylon or India
is ever characterized by the addition Po-se.
1 Chau Ju-kua, p. 7.
PERSIAN TEXTILES
69. Brocades, that is, textiles interwoven with gold or silver threads,
were manufactured in Iran at an early date. Gold rugs are mentioned
in the Avesta (zaranaene upasterene, Yast xv, 2). Xerxes is said to
have presented to citizens of Abdera a tiara interwoven with gold. 1
The historians of Alexander give frequent examples of such ck>th in
Persia. 2 Pliny, 3 speaking of gold textiles of the Romans, traces this art
to the Attalic textures, and stamps it as an invention of the kings of
Asia (Attalicis vero iam pridem intexitur, invento regum Asiae). 4
The accounts of the ancients are signally confirmed by the Chinese.
Persian brocades $, $? are mentioned in the Annals of the Liang as
having been sent as tribute in A.D. 520 to the Emperor Wu from the
country Hwa ?il. 5 The king of Persia wore a cloak of brocade, and bro-
cades were manufactured in the country. 6 Textiles woven with gold
threads dfe He Sfc $ are expressly mentioned; 7 this term almost reads
like a translation of Persian zar-baf (literally, "gold weaving"). 8 Per-
sian brocades, together with cotton stuffs from An-si (Parthia) 3c
6 H6, are further mentioned at the time of the Emperor Si Tsun ifr ^
(A.D. 954-958) of the Hou Cou dynasty, among tribute-gifts sent from
Kwa Cou JK. W in Kan-su. 9 The Kirgiz received precious materials for
the dress of their women from An-si (Parthia), Pei-t'iii At (BiSbalik,
in Turkistan) , and the Ta-gi Jt ^ (Tadjik, the Arabs) . The Arabs made
pieces of brocade of such size that the wefght of each equalled that of
twenty camel-loads. Accordingly these large pieces were cut up into
1 Herodotus, vm, 120.
2 YATES, Textrinum Antiquorum, pp. 366-368.
8 xxxm, 19, 63.
4 At the Court of the Persian kings there was a special atelier for the weaving
of silken, gold, and silver fabrics, styled star bdf xane (E. KAEMPFER, Amoenitaturn
exoticarum fasciculi V, p. 128, Lemgoviae, 1712).
8 Lian $u, Ch. 54, p. 13 b. Hwa is the name under which the Ephthalites first
appear in Chinese history (CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux,
p. 222).
6 Kiu Tan Su, Ch. 198, p. 10 b (see also Lian Su, Ch. 54, p. 14 b; and Sui $u
Ch. 83, p. 7 b). Huan Tsan refers to brocade in his account of Persia (Ta Tan si
yu ki, Ch. II, p. 17 b, ed. of Sou San ko ts'un su).
8 Cf. Loan- Words in Tibetan, No. 118.
9 Wu tai Si, Ch. 74, p. 3 b; Kiu Wu Tai Si, Ch. 138, p. I b.
488
PERSIAN TEXTILES BROCADES 489
twenty smaller ones, so that they could be accommodated on twenty
camels, and were presented once in three years by the Arabs to the
Kirgiz. The two nations had a treaty of mutual alliance, shared also
by the Tibetans, and guaranteeing protection of their trade against the
brigandage of the Uigur. 1 The term hu kin $% 18 ("brocades of the Hu,"
that is, Iranians) is used in the Kwan yii ki 3f H- IS 2 with reference to
Khotan. 3 The Iranian word for these textiles, though not recognized
heretofore, is also recorded by the Chinese. This is 31 tie, anciently
*dziep, dziep, diep, dib, 4 being the equivalent of a Middle-Persian form
*dib or *dep, 5 corresponding to the New-Persian word dlbd ("silk bro-
cade," a colored stuff in which warp and woof are both made of silk),
dlbah ("gold tissue ") , Arabicised dibdd% ("vest of brocade, cloth of gold") .
The fabric as well as the name come from Sasanian Persia, and were
known to the Arabs at Mohammed's time. 6 The Chinese term occurs
as a textile product of Persia in the Sui $u (Ch. 83, p. 7 b ). At a much
earlier date it is cited in the Han Annals (Hou Han $u, Ch. 116, p. 8)
as a product of the country of the Ai-lao in Yun-nan. This is not
surprising in view of the fact that at that period Yun-nan, by way of
India, was in communication with Ta Ts'in: in A.D. 120 Yun Yu Tiao
^t d3 M, King of the country T'an W, presented to the Chinese em-
peror musicians and jugglers, who stated that "they had come from
the Mediterranean $1 B, which is the same as Ta Ts'in, and that
south-west from the Kingdom of T'an there is communication with
Ta Ts'in." The commentator of the Han Annals refers to the Wai kwo
cwan fa & IS- 7 as saying that the women of Cu-po ft lU (Java) make
white tie and ornamented cloth ffi rfft. The character & po ("silk"),
preceding the term tie in the Han Annals, represents a separate item, and
1 Tan su, Ch. 217 B, p. 18; Tai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 199, p. 14. Cf. DEVRIA,
in Centenaire de 1'Ecole des Langues Orientales, p. 308.
2 Ch. 24, p. 7 b. Regarding the various editions of this work, see p. 251.
3 Likewise in the Sung Annals with reference to a tribute sent from Khotan
in 961 (CHAVANNES and PELLIOT, Traite" maniche'en, p. 274). Regarding Persian
brocades mentioned by mediaeval writers, see FRANCISQUE-MICHEL, Recherches sur
le commerce, la fabrication et 1'usage des e"tofles de soie d'or et d'argent, Vol. I,
PP- 315-317, Vol. II, pp. 57-58 (Paris, 1852, 1854).
4 According to the Yi ts'ie kin yin i (Ch. 19, p. 9 b), the pronunciation of the
character tie was anciently identical with that of f| (see No. 70), and has the fan
ts*ie $ $3; that is, Map, *diab, d'ab. The Tan $u Si yin (Ch. 23, p. i b) indicates
the same fan ts*ie by means of -fj '^. The phonetic element Jf^ serves for the
transcription of Sanskrit dmpa (PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcolefran$aise, Vol. IV, p. 357).
5 A Pahlavi form depak is indicated by WEST (Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 286) ;
hence Armenian dipak.
6 C. H. BECKER, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. I, p. 967.
7 Cf. Journal asiatique, 1918, II, p. 24.
490 SlNO-lRANICA
is not part of the transcription, any more than the word $$& kin, which
precedes it in the Sui Annals; but the combination of both po and kin
with tie indicates and confirms very well that the latter was a brocaded
silk. HiRTH 1 joins po with tie into a compound in order to save the
term for his pets the Turks. "The name po-tie is certainly borrowed
from one of the Turki languages. The nearest equivalent seems to be
the Jagatai Turki word for cotton, pakhta" There are two fundamental
errors involved here. First, the Cantonese dialect, on which Hirth
habitually falls back in attempting to restore the ancient phonetic
condition of Chinese, does not in fact represent the ancient Chinese
language, but is merely a modern dialect in a far-advanced stage of
phonetic decadence. The sounds of ancient Chinese can be restored
solely on the indications of the Chinese phonetic dictionarie^and on the
data of comparative Indo-Chinese philology. Even in Cantonese,
po-tie is pronounced pak-tip, and it is a prerequisite that the foreign
prototype of this word terminates in a final labial. The ancient pho-
netics of & H is not pak-ta, but *bak-dzip or *dip, and this bears no
relation to pakhta. Further, it is impossible to correlate a foreign
word that appears in China in the Han period with that of a com-
paratively recent Turkish dialect, especially as the Chinese data rela-
tive to the term do not lead anywhere to the Turks; and, for the rest,
the word pakhta is not Turkish, but Persian, in origin. 2 Whether the
term tie has anything to do with cotton, as already stated by CHA-
VANNES, 3 is uncertain; but, in view of the description of the plant as
given in the Nan Si* or Lian $u? it may be granted that the term po-tie
was subsequently transferred to cotton.
The ancient pronunciation of po-tie being *bak-dib, it would not be
impossible that the element bak represents a reminiscence of Middle
Persian pambak ("cotton"), New Persian panpa (Ossetic bambag,
Armenian bambak). This assumption being granted, the Chinese term
po-tie ( = Middle Persian *bak-6ib = pambak dip) would mean "cotton
brocade" or "cotton stuff." Again, po-tie was a product of Iranian
regions: kin siu po tie 4k SI S & is named as a product of K'aii (Sog-
diana) in the Sasanian era; 5 and, as has been shown, po-tie from Parthia
1 Chao Ju-kua, p. 218.
2 STEINGASS, Persian-English Dictionary, p. 237.
8 Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, p. 352.
4 Ch. 79, p. 6 b.
6 Ch. 54, p. 13 b. Cf. CHAVANNES, ibid., p. 102; see also F. W. K. MULLER,
Uigurica, II, pp. 70, 105.
Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 4. Hence *bak-dlb may also have been a Sogdian word.
PERSIAN TEXTILES BROCADES 491
is specially named. Po-tie, further, appears in India; 1 and as early as
A.D. 430 Indian po-tie was sent to China from Ho-lo-tan ^ H W- on Java. 2
According to a passage of the Kin T'an $u? the difference between ku-
pei (Sanskrit karpasa) 4 and po-tie was this, that the former was a coarse,
1 Nan Si, Ch. 78, p. 7 a.
2 Sun Su, Ch. 97, p. 2 b.
3 Ch. 197, p. I b, indicated by PELLIOT (Bull, de VEcole fran$aise, Vol. Ill,
p. 269).
4 It is evident that the transcription ku-pei is not based directly on Sanskrit
karpasa; but I do not believe with WAITERS (Essays on the Chinese Language,
p. 440) and HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 218) that Malayan kdpas is at the root of the
Chinese form, which, aside from the lack of the final s, shows a peculiar vocalism that
cannot be explained from Malayan. Of living languages, it is Bahnar kopaih ("cot-
ton") which presents the nearest approach to Chinese ku-pei or ku-pai. It is there-
fore my opinion that the Chinese received the word from a language of Indo-China.
The history of cotton in China is much in need of a revision. The following case
is apt to show what misunderstandings have occurred in treating this subject.
Ku-cun (*ku-dzun, *ku-dun) "jjj $ is the designation of a cotton-like plant grown
in the province of Kwei-c"ou ^ j'H ; the yarn is dyed and made into pan pu f: ^ftj .
This is contained 'in the Nan Yue ci flj jtt S by Sen Hwai-yuan ^6 HC }L of the
fifth century (Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 36, p. 24). SCHOTT (Altaische Studien, III,
Abh. Berl. Akad., 1867, pp. 137, 138; he merely refers to the source as "a descrip-
tion of southern China," without citing its title and date), although recognizing that
the question is of a local term, proposed, if it were permitted to read kutun instead
of kutun, to regard the word as an indubitable reproduction of Arabic qu}un, which
resulted in the colon, cotton, kattun, etc., of Europe. MAYERS then gave a similar
opinion; and HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 219), clinging to a Fu-Sou pronunciation
ku-tun (also WAITERS, Essays, p. 440, transcribes ku-tun), accepted the alleged
derivation from the Arabic. This, of course, is erroneous, as in the fifth century
there was no Arabic influence on China, nor did the Arabs themselves then know
cotton. It would also be difficult to realize how a plant of Kwei-c"ou could have
been baptized with an Arabic name at that or any later time. Moreover, ku-cun
is not a general term for "cotton" in Chinese; the above work remains the only
one in which it has thus far been indicated. Ku-cun, as Li Si-Sen points out, is a
tree-cotton yfC %$& (Bombax malabaricunt) , which originated among the Southern
Barbarians (Nan Fan ]^ ^), and which at the end of the Sung period was trans-
planted into Kian-nan. It is very likely that, as stated by STUART (Chinese Materia
Medica, p. 197), the cotton-tree was known in China from very ancient times, and
that its product was used in the manufacture of cloth before the introduction of the
cotton-plant (Gossypium herbaceum). In fact, the same work Nan yue U reports,
"None of the Man tribes in the kingdom Nan-Sao rear silkworms, but they merely
obtain the seeds of the so-lo (*sa-la) | |H tree, the interior of which is white and
contains a floss that can be wrought like silk and spun into cloth; it bears the name
so-lo lun twan g f| H &" The Fan yucijj S& ^ of Cu Mu $J ^ of the Sung
period alludes to the same tree, which is said to be from thirty to fifty feet in height.
The Ko ku yao lun (Ch. 8, p. 4 b; ed. of Si yin huan ts'un su) speaks of cotton stuffs
!ffi jH i& ( JS ; tou-lo = Sanskrit tula) which come from the Southern Barbarians,
Tibet (Si-fan), and Yun-nan, being woven from the cotton in the seeds of the so-lo
tree, resembling velvet, five to six feet wide, good for making bedding and also clothes.
The Tien hi writes the word ^ H (G. SOULI, Bull, de VEcole jranq aise, Vol. VIII,
? 343)- So-let is the indigenous name of the tree; sa-la is still the Lo-lo designation
492 SlNO-lRANICA
and the latter a fine textile. In the Glossary of the T'ang Annals the
word tie is explained as "fine hair" &ffl ^ and "hair cloth" ^ ^; these
terms indeed refer to cotton stuffs, but simultaneously hint at the fact
that the real nature of cotton was not yet generally known to the Chinese
of the T'ang period. In the Kwan yu ki, po-tie is named as a product of
Turf an; the threads, it is said, are derived from wild silkworms, and
resemble fine hemp.
Russian altabds ("gold or silver brocade," "Persian brocade":
DAI/), Polish altembas, and French altobas, in my opinion, are nothing
but reproductions of Arabic-Persian al-dlbadZ, discussed above. The
explanation from Italian alto-basso is a jocular popular etymology; and
the derivation from Turkish altun ("gold") and b'az ("textile") 1 is
likewise a failure. The fact that textiles of this description were subse-
quently manufactured in Europe has nothing to do, nor does it conflict,
with the derivation of the name which Inostrantsev wrongly seeks in
Europe. 2 In the seventeenth century the Russians received altabds
from the Greeks; and Ibn Rosteh, who wrote about A.D. 903, speaks
then of Greek dibad%? According to Makkari, dibadZ were manufac-
tured by the Arabs in Almeria, Spain, 4 the centre of the Arabic silk
industry. 5
70. U?i fa-ten, Map ( = Sj) 8 -dafi ( = 3), tap-tan, woollen rugs.
The name of this textile occurs in the Wei lio of the third century A.D.
as a product of the anterior Orient (Ta Ts'in) , 7 and in the Han Annals
for cotton (ViAL, Dictionnaire francais lo-lo, p. 97). Likewise it is sa-la in P'u-p'a,
so-lo in C6-ko (Bull, de VEcole frangaise, Vol. IX, p. 554). In the same manner I
believe that *ku-dzun was the name of the same or a similar tree in the language of
the aborigines of Kwei-ou. Compare Lepcha ka-cuk ki kun ("cotton-tree"), Siii-p'o
ga-dun ("cotton- tree"), given by J. F. NEEDHAM (Outline Grammar of the Singpho
Language, p. 90, Shillong, 1889), and Meo coa ("cotton"), indicated by M. L.
PIERLOT (Vocabulaire m6o, Actes du XIV* Congres int. des Orientalistes Alger
1905, pt. I, p. 150).
1 Proposed by SAVEL'EV in Erman's Archiv, Vol. VII, 1848, p. 228.
1 K. INOSTRANTSEV, Iz istorii starinnyx tkanei (Zapiski Oriental Section Russian
Archaeol. Soc., Vol. XIII, 1901, pp. 081-084).
1 G. JACOB, Handelsartikel, p. 7; Waren beim arabisch-nordischen Verkehr,
p. 1 6.
4 G. MIGEON, Manuel d'art musulman, Vol. II, p. 420.
5 DEFREMERY, Journal asiatique, 1854, p. 168; FRANCISQUE-MICHEL, Recherches
sur le commerce, la fabrication et Tusage des toffes de soie, d'or et d'argent, Vol. I,
pp. 232, 284-290 (Paris, 1852).
6 The fan ts'ie is $ Jjjj; that is, *du-kiap = d'iap (Yi ts'ie kinyin *,Ch. 19, p. 9 b),
or * $9 *du-hap=dap (Hou Han $u, Ch. 118, p. 5 b).
7 F. HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 71, 112, 113, 255. T'a-ten of five
and nine colors are specified.
PERSIAN TEXTILES RUGS 493
as a product of India. 1 In the Sui Annals it appears as a product of
Persia. 2 CHAVANNES has justly rejected the fantastic explanation given
in the dictionary Si min, which merely rests on an attempt at punning.
The term, in fact, represents a transcription that corresponds to a
Middle-Persian word connected with the root Vtab ("to spin")*
cf. Persian taftan ("to twist, to spin"), tabad ("he spins"), tdfta or tqfte
("garment woven of linen, kind of silken cloth, taffeta"). Greek Tcnrrjs
and TCLTrrjTlov (frequent in the Papyri; TairLdvQol, "rug-weavers") are
derived from Iranian. 3 There is a later Attic form dams. The Middle-
Persian form on which the Chinese transcription is based was perhaps
*taptaii, tapetaii, -an being the termination of the plural. The Persian
word resulted in our taffeta (med. Latin taffata, Italian taffeta, Spanish
tafetan).
71. To the same type as the preceding one belongs another Chinese
transcription, ffi ffl fo(t*o)-pi, ftj 8? tso-p*i, or $5 '& tso-pi, dance-
rugs sent to China in A.D. 718 and 719 from Maimargh and Bukhara
respectively. 4 These forms correspond to an ancient *ta-bik (2 or i$)
or *ta-bi5 (&), and apparently go back to two Middle-Persian forms
*tabi% and *tabe5 or *tabiS (or possibly with medial p). &
72. More particularly we hear in the relations of China with
Persia about a class of textiles styled yue no pu fif 'ft?. 6 As far as I
know, this term occurs for the first time in the Annals of the Sui Dy-
nasty (A.D. 590-617), in the notice on Po-se (Persia). 7 This indicates
that the object in question, and the term denoting it, hailed from Sasa-
nian Persia.
1 E. CHAVANNES, Les Pays d'occident d'apres le Heou Han Chou (T'oung Pao,
1907, p. 193). Likewise Jin the Nan $i (Ch. 78, p. 5 b) and in Cao Zu-kwa (trans-
lation of HIRTH and ROCKHILL, p. in).
2 Sui $11, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
3 P. HORN, Grundriss iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 137. NOLDEKE'S notion
(Persische Studien, II, p. 40) that Persian tanbasa ("rug, carpet") should be derived
from the Greek word, in my opinion, is erroneous.
4 CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 34.
5 These two parallels possibly are apt to shed light on the Old High-German
duplicates tepplh and teppid. The latter has been traced directly to Italian tappeto
(Latin tapete, tapetum), but the origin of the spirant x i n tepplh has not yet been
explained, and can hardly be derived from the final /. Would derivation from an
Iranian source, direct or indirect, be possible?
6 According to HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 220), "a light cotton gauze or muslin,
of two kinds, pure white, and spangled with gold"; but this is a doubtful explana-
tion.
7 Sui su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b. This first citation of the term has escaped all previous
writers on the subject, Hirth, Chavannes, and Pelliot. From the Sui su the text
passed into the T'ai p'in hwan yil ki (Ch. 185, p. 18 b).
494 SlNO-lRANICA
In the T'ang Annals we read that in the beginning of the period
K'ai-yiian (A.D. 713-741) the country of K'afi (Sogdiana), an Iranian
region, sent as tribute to the Chinese Court coats-of-mail, cups of rock-
crystal, bottles of agate, ostrich-eggs, textiles styled yue no, dwarfs,
and dancing-girls of Hu-suan $3 JS (Xwarism). 1 In the Ts'efu yuan kwei
the date of this event is more accurately fixed in the year 7i8. 2 The
Man $u, written by Fan Co of the T'ang period, about A.D. 86o, 3 men-
tions yue no as a product of the Small P'o-lo-men /h 31 ii P5 (Brah-
mana) country, which was conterminous with P'iao JH (Burma) and
Mi-c"'en (*Mid2en) 9f 15. 4 This case offers a parallel to the presence
of tie in the Ai-lao country in Yiin-nan.
The Annals of the Sung mention yue no as exported by the Arabs
into China. 5 The Lin wai tai ta, G written by Cou K'u-fei in 1178, men-
tions white yile-no stuffs in the countries of the Arabs, in Bagdad, and
yile-no stuffs in the country Mi IS.
HiRTH 7 was the first to reveal the term yue no in Cao Zu-kwa, who
attributes white stuffs of this name to Bagdad. His transcription yiit-
nok, made on the basis of Cantonese, has no value for the phonetic
restoration of the name, and his hypothetical identification with cut-
tanee must be rejected; but as to his collocation of the second element
with Marco Polo's nac, he was on the right trail. He was embarrassed,
however, by the first element yue, " which can in no way be explained
from Chinese and yet forms part of the foreign term." Hence in his
complete translation of the work 8 he admits that the term cannot as
yet be identified. His further statement, that in the passage of the
T*ah $u, quoted above, the question is possibly of a country yile-no
(Bukhara), rests on a misunderstanding of the text, which speaks only
of a textile or textiles. The previous failures in explaining the term
simply result from the fact that no serious attempt was made to restore
1 Cf. CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, pp. 136, 378,
with the rectification of PELLIOT (Bull, de VEcole frangaise, Vol. IV, 1904, p.^483).
Regarding the dances of Hu-suan, see Kin Si hwiyuan kiao k'an ki ^ ^ 'ft 7G $
^ ffi (p- 3). Critical Annotations on the Kin Si hwi yuan by Li San-kiao ^ J^ ^
of the Sung (in Ki fu ts'un Su, t'ao 10).
2 CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 35.
3 See above, p. 468.
4 Man Su, p. 44 b (ed. of Yun-nan pei ten li). Regarding Mi-S'en, see PELLIOT,
Bull, de VEcole frang aise, Vol. IV, p. 171.
5 Sun Si, Ch. 490; and BRETSCHNEIDER, Knowledge possessed by the Chinese
of the Arabs, p. 12. Bretschneider admitted that this product was unknown to him.
6 Ch. 3, pp. 2-3.
7 Lander des Islam, p. 42 (Leiden, 1894).
8 Chau Ju-kua, p. 220.
PERSIAN TEXTILES YUE No 495
it to its ancient phonetic condition. 1 Moreover, it was not recognized
that yue no represents a combination of two Iranian words, and that
each of these elements denotes a particular Iranian textile.
(1) The ancient articulation of what is now sounded yue @ was
*vat, va5, wia5, or, with liquid final, *var or *val. 2 Thus it may well
be inferred that the Chinese transcription answers to a Middle-Persian
form of a type *var or *val. There is a Persian word barnu or barnun
("brocade"), vdld, which means "a kind of silken stuff," 3 and balds,
"a kind of fine, soft, thin armosin silk, an old piece of cloth, a kind of
coarse woollen stuff." 4
(2) H? no corresponds to an ancient *nak, 5 and is easily identified
with Persian nax (nakk), "a carpet beautiful on both sides, having a
long pile; a small carpet with a short pile; a raw thread of yarn of any
sort," 6 but also "brocade." The early mention of the Chinese term,
especially in the Sui Annals, renders it quite certain that the word nak
or naoc was even an element of the Middle-Persian language. Hither-
to it had been revealed only in mediaeval authors, the Yuan Fao pi &*,
*DE GOE JE'S identification of yue-no pu with djanndbi (in HIRTH, Lander des Islam,
p. 61) is a complete failure: pu ("cloth") does not form part of the transcription,
which can only be read va8-nak, var-nak, or val-nak. TSUBOI KUMAZO (Actes XII*
Congres international des Orientalistes Rome 1899, Vol. II, p. 112) has already
opposed this unfortunate suggestion.
2 For examples, see CHAVANNES, Me"moires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien,
Vol. IV, p. 559; and particularly cf. PELLIOT, Journal asiatique, 1914, II, p. 392.
3 STEINGASS, Persian-English Dictionary, p. 1453. HORN (Grundriss iran.
Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 29) translates the word "a fine stuff, " and regards it as a loan-
word from Greek pjj\ov ("veil"), first proposed, I believe, by NOLDEKE (Persische
Studien, II, p. 39). This etymology is not convincing to me. On the contrary,
vala is a genuine Persian word, meaning "eminent, exalted, high, respectable, sub-
lime, noble"; and it is quite plausible that this attribute was transferred to a fine
textile. It was, further, the Persians who taught the Greeks lessons in textile art,
but not the reverse. F. JUSTI (Iranisches Namenbuch, p. 516) attributes to vdld
also the meaning "banner of silk."
4 STEINGASS, op. cit., p. 150. The Iranian character of this word is indicated
by Waxl palds, Sariqoll palus ("coarse woollen cloth") of the Pamir languages.
Perhaps also Persian bat ("stuff of fine wool"), Waxl bot, Sariqoll bel (cf. W. TOMA-
SCHEK, Pamirdialekte, Sitzber. Wiener Akad., 1880, p. 807) may be enlisted as possible
prototypes of Chinese *vat, val; but I do not believe with Tomaschek that this
series bears any relation to Sanskrit pafta and ld(a or Armenian lotik ("mantle").
The latter, in my opinion, is a loan-word from Greek Xw5i ("cover, rug"), that
appears in the Periplus ( 24) and in the Greek Papyri of the first century A.D.
(T. REIL, Beitrage zur Kenntnis des Gewerbes im hellenistischen ^Egypten, p. 118).
5 See, for instance, T'oung Pao, 1914, p. 77, and 1915, p. 8, where the character
in question serves for transcribing Tibetan nag. It further corresponds to nak
in Annamese, Korean, and Japanese, as well as in the transcriptions of Sanskrit
words.
8 STEINGASS, Persian-English Dictionary, p. 1391.
496 SlNO-lRANICA
Yuan U, Ibn Batata, Rubruk, Marco Polo, Pegoletti, etc. 1 W. BANG
has shown in a very interesting essay 2 that also the Codex Cumanicus
contains the term nac (Cumanian), parallel with Persian nagh and Latin
nachus, in the sense of "gold brocades/ 'and that the introitus natorum
et nascitorum of the books of tax-rates of Genoa about 1420 refers to
these textiles, and has nothing to do with the endowment of the new-
born, as had been translated. Bang points out also "ndchi, a kinde
of slight silke wouen stuffe" in Florio, "Queen Anna's New World of
Words" (London, 1611). In mediaeval literature the term nac, nak,
naque, or nachiz occurs as early as the eleventh century, and figures in
an inventory of the Cathedral of Canterbury of the year 1315.
73. 1HM hu-na, *yu-na, a textile product of Persia 3 (or M fift). 4 An
ancient Iranian equivalent is not known to me, but must be supposed
to have been *yuna or *guna. This word may be related to Sighnan
(Pamir language) ghdun ("coarse sack"), Kashmir gun, Sanskrit gomf
Anglo-Indian gunny, gunny-bag, trading-name of the coarse sacking
and sacks made from the fibre of the jute. 6
74. tffi fan, *dan, *tan, a textile product of Persia, likewise men-
tioned in the Sui Annals. This is doubtless the Middle-Persian des-
ignation of a textile connected with the root Vtan ("to spin"), of
which several Middle-Persian forms are preserved. 7 Compare Avestan
tanva, Middle Persian tanand, Persian tamdan, tanando ("spider"),
and, further, Persian tan-basa, tan-bisa ("small carpet, rug"); tanld
("a web"); tamdan ("to twist, weave, spin").
75. Js &&$[) sa-ha-la or 55 P' IJ S so-ha-la, of green color, is men-
1 See E. BRETSCHNEIDER, Notices of the Mediaeval Geography, p. 288, or Me-
diaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 124; YULE, Cathay, new ed. by CORDIER, Vol. Ill,
pp. 155-156, 169; YULE, Marco Polo, Vol. I, pp. 63, 65, 285; W. HEYD, Histoire
du commerce du levant au moyen age, p. 698; and, above all, F.-MiCHEL, Recherches
sur le commerce etc., des toffes de soie, Vol. I, pp. 261-264. A. HOUTUM-SCHINDLER
(Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. VI, 1910, p. 265) states that nax occurs in a letter of
RaSid-eddin.
2 Ueber den angeblichen "Introitus natorum et nascitorum" in den Genueser
Steuerbuchern, in Bull, de la Classe des Lettres de I'Academie royale de Belgique,
No. i, 1912, pp. 27-32.
3 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
4 T'ai p'in hwan yil ki, Ch. 185, p. 18 b.
5 W. TOMASCHEK, Pamirdialekte (Sitzber. Wiener Akad., 1880, p. 808).
6 YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 403.
; SALEMANN, Grundriss iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. I, p. 303.
8 This transcription is given in the fran wu ci g $0 J by Wen Cen-hen 3^
R ^ of the Ming (Ch. 8, p. I b; ed. of Yue ya fan ts'un su). He describes the
material as resembling sheep-wool, as thick as felt, coming from the Western
Regions, and very expensive.
PERSIAN TEXTILES WOOLLEN STUPES 497
tioned in the Ming history as having been sent as a present in 1392 from
Samarkand/ The Ming Geography, as stated by BRETSCHNEiDER, 1
mentions this stuff as a manufacture of Bengal and So-li, saying that
it is woven from wool and is downy. There is a red and a green kind.
Bretschneider's view, that by sa-ha-la the Persian Sal is intended, must
be rejected. 2 In the Yin yai sen Ian of 1416, sa-ha-la is enumerated
among the goods shipped from Malacca, being identified by GROENE-
VELDT with Malayan saklat or sahalat? Sa-ha-la is further mentioned
for Ormuz and Aden. 4
In the Ko ku yao lun $* "& H fft, written by Ts'ao Cao W i@ in
1387, revised and enlarged in 1459 by Wan Tso 3: fe, 5 we meet this
word in the transcription ffl ( = $5) $S 3fil sa-hai-laf which is said to
come from Tibet B HI in pieces three feet ( in width, woven from wool,
strong and thick like felt, and highly esteemed by Tibetans. Under the
heading p'u-lo ^ it ( = Tibetan p'rug) 7 it is said in the same work that
this Tibetan woollen stuff resembles sa-hai-la.
Persian sakirlat, sagirldt, has been placed on a par with Chinese
sa-ha-la by T. WATTERS S and A. HouTUM-ScniNDLER; 9 it is not this
Persian word, however, that is at the root of Chinese sa-ha-la t but
saqalat or saqalldt, also saqalat y saqalldt ("scarlet cloth"). Dr. E. D.
Ross 10 has been so fortunate as to discover in a Chinese-Persian vocabu-
lary of 1 549 the equation : Chinese sa-ha-la = Persian saqalat. This settles
the problem definitely. There is, further, Persian saqldtun or saqlafin,
said to mean "a city in Rum where scarlet cloth is made, scarlet cloth
or dress made from it." The latter name is mentioned as early as
A.D. 1040 and 1150 by Baihaki and Edrlsi respectively. 11 According to
Edrisi, it was a silk product of Almeria in Spain, which is doubtless
meant by the city of Rum. Yaqut tells of its manufacture in Tabriz,
1 Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 258.
2 Regarding the Chinese transcription of this Persian word, see ROCKHILL, T'oung
Poo, 1915, p. 459.
3 Notes on the Malay Archipelago, p. 253.
4 ROCKHILL, T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 444, 606, 608. It does not follow from the
text, however, that sa-ha-la was a kind of thin veiling or gauze, as the following
term (or terms) || j^J? is apparently a matter in itself.
5 Ch. 8, p. 4 b (ed. of Si yin Man ts'un Su).
6 This mode of writing is also given in the &an wu Zi, cited above.
7 T'oung Pao, 1914, p. 91.
8 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 342.
9 Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. VI, 1910, p. 265.
10 Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. IV, 1908, p. 403.
11 YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 861.
49 8 SlNO-lRANICA
so that the Chinese reference to Samarkand becomes intelligible. The
Chinese reports of sa-ha-la in India, Ormuz, and Aden, however, evi-
dently refer to European broadcloth, as does also Tibetan sag-lad. 1
The Ain-i Akbari speaks of sukldt (saqaldt) of Ram (Turkey),
Farangi (Europe), and Purtagal! (Portugal); and the Persian word is
now applied to certain woollen stuffs, and particularly to European
broadcloth.
The Persian words sakirldt and saqaldt are not interrelated, as is
shown by two sets of European terms which are traced to the two
Persian types: sakirldt is regarded as the ancestor of " scarlet" (med.
Latin scarlatum, scarlata; Old French escarlate, New French ecarlate,
Middle English scarlat, etc.); saqldtun or siqldtun is made responsible
for Old French siglaton, Provencal sisclaton (twelfth century), English
obs. ciclatoun (as early as 1225), Middle High German cicldt or sigldt.
Whether the alleged derivations from the Persian are correct is a de-
batable point, which cannot be discussed here; the derivation of siglaton
from Greek /cu/cXds (cyclas), due to Du Cange, is still less plausible. 2
Dr. Ross (I.e.) holds that "the origin of the word scarlet seems to be
wrapped in mystery, and there seems to be little in favor of the argu-
ment that the word can be traced to Arabic or Persian sources. "
76. Toward the close of the reign of Kao Tsun iS ^, better known
as Wen C'efi 3$C $ (A.D. 452-465) of the Hou Wei dynasty (386-532),
the king of Su-le (Kashgar) sent an emissary to present a garment
(kdsdya) of f akyamuni Buddha, over twenty feet in length. On ex-
amination, Kao Tsun satisfied himself that it was a Buddha robe. It
proved a miracle, for, in order to get at the real facts, the Emperor
had the cloth put to a test and exposed to a violent fire for a full day, but
it was not consumed by the flames. All spectators were startled and
spell-bound. 3 This test has repeatedly been made everywhere with
asbestine cloth, of which many examples are given in my article
"Asbestos and Salamander." 4 The Chinese themselves have recog-
nized without difficulty that this Buddha relic of Kashgar was made
of an asbestine material. In the Lu Fan kun $i k*i, 5 a modern work,
1 See Loan- Words in Tibetan, No. 119.
2 Cf. also P.-MiCHEL, Recherches sur le commerce etc., des e"toffes de soie,
Vol. I, pp. 233-235. The Greek word in question does not refer to a stuff, but to a
robe (KVK\&S, "round, circular," scil., eo-flifc, "a woman's garment with a border all
round it"). Cycladatus in Suetonius (Caligula, LII) denotes a tunic with a rich border.
3 Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 4 b.
4 T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 299-373.
6 Ed. of Ts'in lao fan ts'un $u, p. 40 (see above, p. 346). On p. 41 b there is a
notice of fire-proof cloth, consisting of quotations from earlier works, which are
all contained in my article.
PERSIAN TEXTILES ASBESTOS 499
which contains a -great number of valuable annotations on subject-
matters mentioned in the Annals, the kdsdya of Kashgar is identified
with the fire-proof cloth of the Western Regions and Fu-nan (Camboja) ;
that is, asbestos.
During the K'ai-yuan and T'ien-pao periods (A.D. 713-755), Persia
sent ten embassies to China, offering among other things "embroideries
of fire-hair" (hwo mao siu ^C ^ IK). 1 CnAVANNES 2 translates this term
"des broderies en laine couleur de feu." In my opinion, asbestos is
here in question. Thus the term was already conceived by ABEL-
REMUSAT. 3 I have shown that asbestos was well known to the Persians
and Arabs, and that the mineral came from BadaxSan. 4 An additional
1 T'an Iw, Ch. 221 B, p. 7. In the T'an hui yao (Ch. 100, p. 4) this event is
fixed in the year 750.
2 Documents sur les Tou-kiue, p. 173.
3 Nouveaux melanges asiatiques, Vol. I, p. 253. The term hwo pu fc ffi ("fire-
cloth") for asbestos appears in the Sun $u (Ch. 97, p. 10). The Chinese notions of
textiles made from an "ice silkworm," possibly connected with Persia (cf. H. MAS-
PERO, Bull, de I'Ecole frang aise, Vol. XV, No. 4, 1915, p. 46), in my opinion, must
be dissociated from asbestos; the Chinese sources (chiefly Wei lio, Ch. 10, p. 2 b)
say nothing to the effect that this textile was of the nature of asbestos. Maspero's
argumentation (ibid., pp. 43-45) in regard to the alleged asbestos from tree-bark,
which according to him should be a real asbestine stuff, appears to me erroneous.
He thinks that I have been misled by an inexact translation of S. W. WILLIAMS.
First, this translation is not by Williams, but, as expressly stated by me (/. c. t
p. 372), the question is of a French article of d'Hervey-St.-Denys, translated into
English by Williams. If an error there is (the case is trivial enough), it is not due to
Williams or myself, but solely to the French translator, who merits Maspero's criticism.
Second, Maspero is entirely mistaken in arguing that this translation should have
influenced my interpretation of the text on p. 338. This is out of the question, as all
this was written without knowledge of the article of St.-Denys and Williams, which
became accessible to me only after the completion and printing of the manuscript,
and was therefore relegated to the Addenda inserted in the proofs. Maspero's in-
terpretation leads to no tangible result, in fact, to nothing, as is plainly manifest
from his conclusion that one sort of asbestos should have been a textile, the other a
kind of felt. There is indeed no asbestos felt. How Maspero can deny that Malayan
bark-cloth underlies the Chinese traditions under notice, which refer to Malayan
regions, is not intelligible to me. Nothing can be plainer than the text of the
Liang Annals: "On Volcano Island there are trees which grow in the fire. The
people in the vicinity of the island peel off the bark, and spin and weave it into cloth
hardly a few feet in length. This they work into kerchiefs, which do not differ in
appearance from textiles made of palm and hemp fibres," etc. (pp. 346, 347). What
else is this but bark-cloth? And how could we assume a Malayan asbestine cloth
if asbestos has never been found and wrought anywhere in the Archipelago? I
trust that M. Maspero, for whose scholarship I have profound respect, will pardon
me for not accepting his opinion in this case, and for adhering to my own inter-
pretation. I may add here a curious notice from J. A. DE MANDELSLO'S Voyages
into the East Indies (p. 133, London, 1669): "In the Moluccaes there is a certain
wood, which, laid in the fire, burns, sparkles, and flames, yet consumes not, and
yet a man may rub it to powder betwixt his fingers."
4 T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 327-328.
500 SlNO-lRANICA
text to this effect may be noted here. Ibn al-Faqlh, who wrote in
A.D. 902, has this account: "In Kirman there is wood that is not burnt
by fire, but comes out undamaged. 1 A Christian 2 wanted to commit
frauds with such wood by asserting that it was derived from the cross of
the Messiah. Christian folks were thus almost led into temptation. A
theologian, noting this man, brought them a piece of wood from Kir-
man, which was still more impervious to fire than his cross-wood."
According to P. ScHWARz, 3 to whom we owe the translation of this
passage, the question here is of fossilized forests. Most assuredly, how-
ever, asbestos is understood. The above text of the Wei $u is thus by
far the earliest allusion to asbestos from an Iranian region.
The following notes may serve as additional information to my
former contribution. Cou Mi M $? (1230-1320), in his Ci ya fan tsa
c'ao Jfe 3i ^ H &, mentions asbestine stuffs twice. 4 In one passage
he relates that in his house there was a piece of fire-proof cloth (hwo
hwan pu) over a foot long, which his maternal grandfather had once
obtained in Ts'uan Cou ^ /HI (Fu-kien Province). 8 Visitors to his house
were entertained by the experiment of placing it on the fire of a brazier.
Subsequently Cao Mon-i Jfi j HI borrowed it from him, but never
returned it. In the other text he quotes a certain Ho Ts'in-fu 9 ?ra 5fe
to the effect that fire-proof cloth is said to represent the fibres of the
mineral coal of northern China, burnt and woven, but not the hair of
the fire-rodent (salamander). This is accompanied by the comment
that coal cannot be wrought into fibres, but that now pu-hwei-mu
^F K ^C (a kind of asbestos) is found in Pao-tin (Ci-li). 6 A brief notice
of asbestos is inserted in the Ko ku yao lun, 7 where merely the old fables
are reiterated. Information on the asbestos of Ci-li Province will be
1 Qazwlnl adds to this passage, "even if left in fire for several days."
2 Qazwlnl speaks in general of charlatans.
3 Iran im Mittelalter, p. 214.
4 Ch. A, p. 20 b; and Ch. B, p. 25 b (ed. of Yue ya fail ts'un Su).
5 This locality renders it almost certain that this specimen belonged to those
imported by the Arabs into China during the middle ages (p. 331 of my article).
The asbestos of Mosul is already mentioned in the Lin wai tai ta (Ch. 3, p. 4).
6 The term pu-hwei-mu ("wood burning without ashes, incombustible wood")
appears as early as the Sung period in the Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 5, p. 35): it comes
from San- tan (south-east portion of San-si and part of Ho-nan), and is now found
in the Tse-lu mountains g| $$ jlj . It is a kind of stone, of green and white color,
looking like rotten wood, and cannot be consumed by fire. Some call it the root of
soapstone.
7 Ch. 8, p. 4 (ed. of Si yin Man ts'ufi $u). In Ch. 7, p. 17, there is a notice on
pu-hwei-mu stone, stated to be a product of Tse-2ou and Lu-iian in San-si, and em-
ployed for lamps.
PERSIAN TEXTILES ASBESTOS 501
found in the Kifu t'un ci, 1 on asbestos of Se-c'wan in the Se c'wan fun ci. 2
In the eighteenth century the Chinese noticed asbestos among the
Portuguese of Macao, but the article was rarely to be found i^i the
market. 3 Hanzo Murakami discusses asbestos (^ $8, " stone cotton")
as occurring in the proximity of Kin-cou 4zt $H in Sen-kin, Manchuria. 4
In regard to the salamander, FRANCiSQUE-MiCHEL 5 refers to "Tradi-
tions teYatologiques de Berger de Xivrey" (Paris, Imprimerie royale,
1836, pp. 457, 458, 460, 463) and to an article of Duchalais entitled
"L'Apollon sauroctone" (Revue archeologique, Vol. VI, 1850, pp. 87-90) ;
further to Mahudel in Mimoires de litterature tires des registres de
V Academic royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Vol. IV, pp. 634-647.
Quoting several examples of salamander stuff from mediaeval romances,
Francisque-Michel remarks, "Ces tofles en poil de salamandre, qui
vraisemblablement e*taient passers des fables des marchands dans celles
des poetes, venaient de loin, comme ceux qui avaient par la beau jeu
pour mentir. On en faisait aussi des manteaux; du moins celui de
dame Jafite, du Roman de Gui le Gallois, en 6tait."
No one interested in this subject should fail to read chapter LII of
book III of Rabelais' Le Gargantua et Le Pantagruel, entitled "Comment
doibt estre prepare et mis en ceuvre le celebre Pantagruelion."
77. The word "drugget," spelled also droggitt, drogatt, druggit (Old French
droguet, Spanish droguete, Italian droghetto) is thus defined in the new Oxford English
Dictionary: "Ulterior origin unknown. Littre" suggests derivation from drogue
drug as 'a stuff of little value'; some English writers have assumed a derivation
from Drogheda in Ireland, but this is mere wanton conjecture, without any histor-
ical basis. Formerly kind of stuff, all of wool, or mixed of wool and silk or wool and
linen, used for wearing apparel. Now, a coarse woollen stuff for floor-coverings,
table-cloths, etc." The Century Dictionary says, "There is nothing to show a con-
nection with drug."
Our lexicographers have overlooked the fact that the same word occurs also
in Slavic. F. MiKLOSicn 6 has indicated a Serbian doroc ("pallii genus") and Magyar
darocz ("a kind of coarse cloth"), but neglected to refer to the well-known Russian
word dorogi or dorogi, which apparently represents the source of the West-European
term. The latter has been dealt with by K. INOSTRANTSEV 7 in a very interesting
1 Ch. 74, pp. 10 b, 13.
2 Ch. 74, p. 25.
3 Ao-men ci lio, Ch. B, p. 41.
4 Journal Geol. Soc. Tokyo, Vol. XXIII, No. 276, 1916, pp. 333-336. The
same journal, Vol. XXV, No. 294, March, 1918, contains an article on asbestos in
Japan and Korea by K. OKADA.
5 Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication et 1'usage des e"toffes de soie, d'or
et d'argent, Vol. II, pp. 90, 462 (Paris, 1854).
6 Fremdworter in den slavischen Sprachen, Denk. Wiener Akad., Vol. XV,
1867, p. 84.
7 Iz istorii starinnix tkanei, Zapiski of the Russian Arch. Soc., Vol. XIII, 1902,
p. 084.
502 SlNO-lRANICA
study on the history of some ancient textiles. According to this author, the dorogi
of the Russians were striped silken fabrics, which came from Gilan, Kaan, Kizylba,
Tur, and Yas in Persia. DAL' says in his Russian Dictionary that this silk was some-
times interwoven with gold and silver. In 1844 VELTMAN proposed the identity of
Russian dorogi with the Anglo-French term. BEREZIN derived it from Persian
darddza ("kaftan"), which is rejected, and justly so, by Inostrantsev. On his part,
he connects the word with Persian ddrdi ("a red silken stuff"), 1 and invokes a
passage in VESELOVSKI'S "Monuments of Diplomatic and Commercial Relations of
Moscovite Rus with Persia," in which the Persian word ddrdi is translated by
Russian dorogi. This work is unfortunately not accessible to me, so I cannot judge
the merits of the translation; but the mere fact of rendering dorogi by ddrdi would
not yet prove the actual derivation of the former from the latter. For philological
reasons this theory seems to me improbable : it is difficult to realize that the Russians
should have made dorogi out of a Persian ddrdi. All European languages have con-
sistently preserved the medial g, and this cannot be explained from ddrdi.
Another prototype therefore, it seems to me, comes into question; and this probably
is Uigur torgu, Jagatai torka, Koibal torga, Mongol torga(n), all with the meaning
"silk." 2 It remains to search for the Turkish dialect which actually transmitted
the word to Slavic.
1 Mentioned, for instance, in the list of silks in the Ain-i Akbari (BLOCHMANN'S
translation, Vol. I, p. 94).
2 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 489.
IRANIAN MINERALS, METALS, AND PRECIOUS STONES
78. Pf &r hu-lOj *%u-lak, perhaps also *fu-lak, *fu-rak, a product of
Persia, 1 which is unexplained. In my opinion, this word may cor-
respond to a Middle Persian *furak = New Persian burak, bura, Arme-
nian porag ("borax")- Although I am not positive about this identifica-
tion, I hope that the following notes on borax will be welcome. It is
well known that Persia and Tibet are the two great centres supplying
the world-market with borax. The ancient Chinese were familiar with
this fact, for in the article on Po-se (Persia) the T'ai p'in hwan yu ki 2
states that "the soil has salty lakes, which serve the people as a substi-
tute for salt" (*& 1f $8 M A K 5S B). Our own word "borax" (the x is
due to Spanish, now written borraj) comes from Persian, having been
introduced into the Romanic languages about the ninth century by
the Arabs. Russian burd was directly transmitted from Persia. Like-
wise our "tincal, tincar" (a crude borax found in lake-deposits of
Persia and Tibet) is derived from Persian tinkar, tankdlf or tangdr,
Sanskritized tankana, tanka, tanga, tagara;* Malayan tingkal; Kirgiz
danakar, Osmanli tangar. 5 Another Persian word that belongs to this
category, $ora ("nitre, saltpetre"), has been adopted by the Tibetans
in the same form $o-ra, although they possess also designations of their
own, ze-ts*wa, ba-ts'wa ("cow's salt"), and ts'a-la. The Persian word is
Sanskritized into soraka, used in India for nitre, saltpetre, or potassium
nitrate. 6
79. The relation of Chinese nao-$a ("sal ammoniac, chloride of
sodium") 7 to Persian nuSadir or nauSadir is rather perspicuous; never-
theless it has been asserted also that the Persian word is derived from
1 Sui su, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
2 Ch. 185, p. 19.
3 It is not a Tibetan name, as supposed by ROEDIGER and POTT (Z./. K. Morg.,
Vol. IV, p. 268).
4 These various attempts at spelling show plainly that the term has the status
of a loan-word, and that the Sanskrit term has nothing to do with the name of the
people who may have supplied the product, the Tayyavoi in the Himalaya of
Ptolemy (YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 923). How should borax be found in the
Himalaya !
5 KLAPROTH, Me*moires relatifs a TAsie, Vol. Ill, p. 347.
6 See, further, T'oung Pao, 1914, pp. 88-89.
7 D. HANBURY, Science Papers, pp. 217, 276.
503
504 SlNO-lRANICA
the Chinese. F. DE MELY* argues that nao-$a is written ideographically,
and that the text of the Pen ts'ao kan mu adds, "II vient de la province
de Chen-si; on le tire d'une montagne d'ott il sort continuellement des
vapeurs rouges et dangereuses et tres difficile aborder par rapport a
ces mmes vapeurs. II en vient aussi de la Tartarie, on le tire des
plaines ou il y a beaucoup de troupeaux, de la meme facon que le
salpetre de houssage; les Tartares et gens d'au deU de la Chine salent
les viandes avec ce sel." Hence F. de Mely infers that the Persians, on
their part, borrowed from the Chinese their nao-$a, to which they added
the ending dzer, as in the case of the bezoar styled in Persian badzeher. 2
The case, however, is entirely different. The term nao-$a is written
phonetically, not ideographically, as shown by the ancient transcription
Hi & in the Sui Annals (see below) and the variant $8 ffi (properly
nun-faj but indicated with the pronunciation nao-$a) ; 3 also the syno-
nymes ti yen 3ft IS ("salt of the barbarians") and Pei-t'in la 4fc J&fiP
("ore of Pei-t'in," in Turkistan), which appear as early as the Sung
period in the T'u kin pen ts'ao of Su Sun, allude to the foreign origin of
the product. The term is thus plainly characterized as a foreign loan
in the Pen ts'ao kan mu. This, further, is brought out by the history of
the subject. The word is not found in any ancient Chinese records.
The Chinese learned about nao-$a in Sogdiana and Kuca for the first
time during the sixth century A.D. The Pen ts'ao of the T'ang period is
the earliest pharmacopoeia that mentions it. Su Kun IS 3^, the reviser
of this work, and the author of the Cen lei pen ts*ao, know of but one
place of provenience, the country of the Western Zun 15 -?5c (F. de
Mely's "Tartary "). It is only Su Sun M of the Sung period, who
in his T*u kin pen ts'ao remarks, "At present it occurs also in Si-Han
and in the country Hia [Kan-su] as well as in Ho-tufi [San-si], Sen-si,
and in the districts of the adjoining regions" ^ffiiSJll32$.$f^
RBiE*ifflSI&3fr#. [note the additions of 5* "at present" and
3F "also"]. And he hastens to add, "However (#&), the pieces coming
from the Western Zun are clear and bright, the largest having the size
of a fist and being from three to five ounces in weight, the smallest
1 L'Alchimie chez les Chinois (Journal asiatique, 1895, II, p. 338) and Lapidaire
chinois, p. LI.
2 All this is rather lack of criticism or poor philology. The Persian word in
question is pdzahr, literally meaning "antidote" (see below, p. 525). Neither this
word nor nusadir has an ending like dzer, and there is no analogy between the two.
8 According to the Pie pen cu JjJ'J Hfc fe, cited in the Cen lei pen ts'ao (Ch. 5,
p. 10, ed. of 1587), the transcription nun-la should represent the pronunciation of
the Hu people; that is, Iranians. Apparently it was an Iranian dialectic variation
with a nasalized vowel u. It is indicated as a synonyme of nao-sa in the Si yao er
ya of the T'ang period (see Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 115).
IRANIAN MINERALS SAL AMMONIAC 505
reaching the size of a finger and being used for medical purposes." 1
It is accordingly the old experience that the Chinese, as soon as they
became acquainted with a foreign product, searched for it on their own
soil, and either discovered it there, or found a convenient substitute.
In this case, Su Sun plainly indicates that the domestic substitute was
of inferior quality; and there can be no doubt that this was not sal
ammoniac, which is in fact not found in China, but, as has been demon-
strated by D. HANBURY, 2 chloride of sodium. As early as the eighteenth
century it was stated by M. COLLAS S that no product labelled nao-$a
in Peking had any resemblance to our sal ammoniac.
H. E. SxAPLETON, 4 author of a very interesting study on the employ-
ment of sal ammoniac in ancient chemistry, has hazarded an etymo-
logical speculation as to the term nao-$a. Persian nutddur appears to
him to be the Chinese word nau-$a, suffixed by the Persian word dam
("medicine"), 5 and the Sanskrit navasdra would also seem to be simply
the Chinese name in a slightly altered form. H. E. Stapleton is a
chemist, not a philologist; it therefore suffices to say that these specu-
lations, as well as his opinion "that the syllables nau-$a appear to be
capable of complete analysis into Chinese roots," 6 are impossible.
The Hindustani name can by no means come into question as the
prototype of the Chinese term, as proposed by F. P. SMITH 7 and T.
WATTERS; S for the Chinese transcription was framed as early as the
sixth century A.D., when Hindustani was not yet in existence. The
Hindustani is simply a Persian loan-word of recent date, as is
likewise Neo-Sanskrit naiqadala; while Sanskrit navasdra, navasddara,
or narasdra, the vacillating spelling of which betrays the character
of a loan-word, is traceable to a more ancient Iranian form (see
below) .
In the Sui $u* we meet the term in the form tfi ffi nao-$a, stated to
1 See also Pen ts'ao yen i, Ch. 6, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
2 Science Papers, pp. 217, 276.
3 Me"moires concernant les Chinois, Vol. XI, 1786, p. 330.
4 Sal Ammoniac: a Study in Primitive Chemistry (Memoirs As. Soc. Bengal,
Vol. I, 1905, pp. 40-41).
5 He starts from the popular etymology nus daru ("life-giving medicine"),
which, of course, is not to be taken seriously.
6 Even if this were the case, it would not tend to prove that the word is of
Chinese origin. As is now known to every one, there is nothing easier to the Chinese
than to transcribe a foreign word and to choose such characters as will convey a
certain meaning.
7 Contributions toward the Materia Medica of China, p. 190.
8 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 350.
9 Ch. 83, pp. 4 b and 5 b.
506 SlNO-lRANICA
be a product of K'ari (Sogdiana) and Kuca. 1 The fact that this tran-
scription is identical with fiS we recognize from the parallel passage in
the Pel Si, 2 where it is thus written. The text of the Sui Annals with
reference to Iranian regions offers several such unusual modes of
writing, where the Pei Si has the simple types subsequently adopted as
the standard. The variation of the Sui Annals, at all events, demon-
strates that the question is of reproducing a foreign word; and, since
it hails from Sogdiana, there can be no doubt that it was a word of the
Sogdian language of the type *navsa or *naf sa (cf . Sanskrit navasara,
Armenian navt*, Greek va(j>6a); Persian naSddir, nuSddir, nauSadir,
nauSddur, noSddur, being a later development. It resulted also
in Russian nuSatyr. In my opinion, the Sogdian word is related
to Persia neft ("naphta"), which may belong to Avestan napta
("moist"). 3
Tribute-gifts of nao-Sa are not infrequently mentioned in the Chinese
Annals. In A.D. 932, Wan Zen-mei 3: iH H, Khan of the Uigur, pre-
sented to the Court among other objects ta-p'en Sa (" borax") 4 and sal
ammoniac (kan So). 6 In A.D. 938 Li Sen-wen $ H 3C, king of Khotan,
offered nao-Sa and ta-p'en Sa ("borax") to the Court; and in A.D. 959
jade and nao-Sa were sent by the Uigur. 6 The latter event is recorded
also in the Kin Wu Tai Si, 7 where the word is written ffl #J% pho-
netically kan-Sa, but apparently intended only as a graphic variant
for nao-Sa* The same work ascribes sal ammoniac (written in the same
manner) to the T'u-fan (Tibetans) and the Tafi-hian (a Tibetan tribe
in the Kukunor region). 9 In the T'ang period the substance was well
1 According to Masudi (BARBIER DE MEYNARD, Les Prairies d'or, Vol. I, p. 347),
sal-ammoniac mines were situated in Soghd, and were passed by the Moham-
medan merchants travelling from Khorasan into China. KuSa still yields sal am-
moniac (A. N. KUROPATKIN, Kashgaria, pp. 27, 35, 76). This fact is also noted in
the Hui k'ian ci (Ch. 2), written about 1772 by two Majichu officials, Fusamb6
and Surde, who locate the mine 45 li west of Kuca in the Sartatsi Mountains, and
mention a red and white variety of sal ammoniac. Cf. also M. REINAUD, Relation
des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans 1'Inde et a la Chine, Vol. I,
p. CLXIII.
2 Ch. 97, p. 12.
3 Cf. P. HORN, Neupersische Etymologic, No. 1035; H. HUBSCHMANN, Persische
Studien, p. 101, and Armen. Gram., p. 100.
4 As I have shown on a former occasion (T'oung Pao, 1914, p. 88), Chinese
p'en (*bun) is a transcription of Tibetan bul.
5 Ts'efu yuan kwei, Ch. 972, p. 19.
6 Wu Tai hui yao, Chs. 28, p. 10 b; and Ch. 29, p. 13 b (ed. of Wu yin lien).
7 Ch. 138, p. 3.
8 The character kan is not listed in K'an-hi's Dictionary.
9 Ch. 138, pp. i b, 3 a.
IRANIAN MINERALS SAL AMMONIAC 507
known. The Si yao er ya l gives a number of synonymes of Chinese
origin, as kin tsei & B$, c*i $a3$~$ ("red gravel")? P h Kin & M
$& ("essence of the white sea").
Sal ammoniac is found in Dimindan in the province of Kirman.
Yaqut (1179-1229) gives alter Ibn al-Faqih (tenth century) a descrip-
tion of how nuSadir is obtained there, which in the translation of C.
B ARBIER DE MEYNARD 2 HinS as f olloWS I
"Cette substance se trouve principalement dans une montagne
nommee Donbawend, dont la hauteur est eValuee a 3 farsakhs. Cette
montagne est a 7 farsakhs de la ville de Guwasir. On y voit une caverne
profonde d'oti. s'chappent des mugissements semblables a ceux des
vagues et une fume'e epaisse. Lorsque cette vapeur, qui est le principe
du sel ammoniac, s'est attache'e aux parois de 1'orifice, et qu'une certaine
quantite s'est solidifiee, les habitants de la ville et des environs viennent
la recueillir, une fois par mois ou tous les deux mois. Le sulthan y envoie
des agents qui, la re"colte faite, en prel event le cinquieme pour le trsor;
les habitants se partagent le reste par la voie du sort. Ce sel est celui
qu'on expedie dans tous les pays."
Ibn Haukal describes the mines of Setrus'teh thus: 3 "The mines
of sal ammoniac are in the mountains, where there is a certain cavern,
from which a vapor issues, appearing by day like smoke, and by night
like fire. Over the spot whence the vapor issues, they have erected a
house, the doors and windows of which are kept so closely shut and
plastered over with clay that none of the vapor can escape. On the
upper part of this house the copperas rests. When the doors are to be
opened, a swiftly-running man is chosen, who, having his body covered
over with clay, opens the door; takes as much as he can of the copperas,
and runs off; if he should delay, he would be burnt. This vapor comes
forth in different places, from time to time; when it ceases to issue from
one place, they dig in another until it appears, and then they erect that
kind of house over it; if they did not erect this house, the vapor would
burn, or evaporate away."
Taxes are still paid in this district with sal ammoniac. Abu Mansur
sets forth its medicinal properties. 4
1 See Beginnings of Porcelain (this volume, p. 115).
2 Dictionnaire g6ographique de la Perse, p. 235 (Paris, 1861). Jbn al-Faqlh's
text is translated by P. SCHWARZ (Iran im Mittelalter, p. 252). According to Ibn
Haukal (W. OUSELEY, Oriental Geography of Ebn Haukal, p. 233), sal-ammoniac
mines were located in Maweralnahr (Transoxania).
3 W. OUSELEY, op. cit., p. 264.
4 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 144. ABEL-REMUSAT (Melanges asiatiques,
Vol. I, p. 209, 1825), translating from the Japanese edition of the cyclopaedia San
ts'ai Vu hui, gave the following interesting account: "Le sel nomine" (en chinois)
508 SlNO-lRANICA
The Tibetans appear to have received sal ammoniac from India, as
shown at least by their term rgya ts'wa ("Indian salt"), literally trans-
lated into Mongol Anatkak dabusu. Mongol Andtkak is a reproduction
of Chinese *In-duk-kwok (" country of India"). The informants of
M. CoLLAS 1 stated that the nao-$a of the Peking shops came from Tibet
or adjacent places. Lockhart received in Peking the information that
it is brought from certain volcanic springs in Se-6'wan and in Tibet.*
80. * te fll vni-fo-sen, *m'it(m'ir) -da-sari, and 8 ft mu-to-
seh, *mut(mur)-ta-san, litharge, dross of lead, is an exact reproduction
of Persian mirdasang or murdasang of the same meaning. 3 Both tran-
scriptions are found in the Pen ts*ao of the T'ang dynasty, written
about the middle of the seventh century. 4 Therefore we are entitled to
extend the Persian word into the period of Middle Persian. Su Kuh,
the reviser of the T'an pen ts'ao, states expressly that both mi-t'o and
mu-to are words from the language of the Hu or Iranians ($J !f -&),
and that the substance comes from or is produced in Persia, being in
shape like the teeth of the yellow dragon, but stronger and heavier;
there is also some of white color with veins as in Yun-nan marble. Su
Sun of the Sung period says that then ("at present") it was also found
nao-cha (en persan nouchader) et aussi sel de Tartarie, sel volatil, se tire de deux
montagnes volcaniques de la Tartarie centrale; 1'une est le volcan de Tourfan, qui
a donne" a cette ville (ou pour mieux dire a une ville qui est situe"e a trois lieues de
Tourfan, du cdte" de Test) le nom de Ho-tcheou, ville de feu; 1'autre est la montagne
Blanche, dans le pays de Bisch-balikh; ces deux montagnes jettent continuellement
des flammes et de la fume"e. II y a des cavity's dans lesquelles se ramasse un liquide
verdatre. Expose" a 1'air, ce liquide se change en un sel, qui est le nao-cha. Les
gens du pays le recueillent pour s'en servir dans la preparation des cuirs. Quant a
la montagne de Tourfan, on en voit continuellement sortir une colonne de fum^e;
cette fume"e est remplace'e le soir par une flamme semblable a celle d'un flambeau.
Les oiseaux et les autres animaux, qui en sont e"clair6s, paraissent de couleur rouge.
On appelle cette montagne le Mont-de-Feu. Pour aller chercher le nao-cha, on met
des sabots, car des semelles de cuir seraient trop vite brule"es. Les gens du pays
recueillent aussi les eaux-meres qu'ils font bouillir dans des chaudieres, et ils en
retirent le sel ammoniac, sous la forme de pains semblables a ceux du sel commun.
Le nao-cha le plus blanc est repute" le meilleur; la nature de ce sel est tres-p6n6trante.
On le tient suspendu dans une poele au-dessus du feu pour le rendre bien sec; on y
ajoute du gingembre pour le conserver. Expose" au froid ou a rhumidite", il tombe en
deliquescence, et se perd." Wan Yen-te, who in A.D. 981 was sent by the Chinese
emperor to the ruler of Kao-c" f an, was the first to give an account of the sal-ammoniac
mountain of Turkistan (BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 190).
See also F. DE MELY, Lapidaire chinois, p. 140; W. SCHOTT, Zur Uigurenfrage, II,
p. 45 (Abh. Berl. Akad., 1875) and Ueber ein chinesisches Mengwerk (ibid., 1880,
p. 6) ; GEERTS, Produits, p. 322.
1 Me"moires concernant les Chinois, Vol. XI, p. 331.
2 D. HANBURY, Science Papers, p. 277.
3 Cf. HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 270.
4 Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 4, p. 31; and Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 8, p. 8 b.
IRANIAN MINERALS LITHARGE, GOLD 509
in the silver and copper foundries of Kwan-tun and Fu-kien. It is
further mentioned briefly in the Pen ts*ao yen i of IH6, 1 which maintains
that the kind with a color like gold is the best.
According to Yaqut, mines of antimony, known under the name
razi t litharge, lead, and vitriol, were in the environs of Donbawend or
Demawend in the province of Kirman. 2 In the Persian pharmacopoeia
of Abu Mansur, the medicinal properties of litharge are described under
the Arabicized name murddsanj, to which he adds the synonymous term
murtak? Pegoletti, in the fourteenth century, gives the word with a
popular etymology as morda sangue* The Dictionary of Four Lan-
guages 5 correlates Chinese mi-t'o-sen with Tibetan gser-zil (literally,
"gold brightness ")> 6 Manchu for can, and Mongol jildunur. 7
81. PALLADIUS S offers a term 3?t Hf & tse-mo kin with the meaning
"gold from Persia," no source for it being cited. In the Pen ts'ao kan
mu* the tse-mo kin of Po-se (Persia) is given as the first in a series of
five kinds of gold of foreign countries, 10 without further explanation.
The term occurs also in Buddhist literature: CHAVANNES U has found it
in the text of a Jataka, where he proposes as hypothetical translation,
"un amas d'or raffine* rouge." It therefore seems to be unknown what
the term signifies, although a special kind of gold or an alloy of gold is
apparently intended. The Swi kin cu & M ffi 12 says that the first
quality of gold, according to Chinese custom, is styled tse-mo kin
(written as above); according to the custom of the barbarians, how-
ever, yan-mai SI 31. From this it would appear that tse-mo is a Chinese
term, not a foreign one.
1 Ch. 5, p. 6 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
2 BARBIER DE MEYNARD, op. tit., p. 237.
3 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 139. This form goes back to Middle Persian
murtak or martak.
4 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. Ill, p. 167.
5 Ch. 22, p. 71.
6 JAESCHKE, in his Tibetan Dictionary, was unable to explain this term.
7 KOVALEVSKI, in his Mongol Dictionary, explains this word wrongly by
"mica."
8 Chinese-Russian Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 203.
9 Ch. 8, p. i b.
10 The four others are, the dark gold of the eastern regions, the red gold of
Lin-yi, the gold of the Si-zun, and the gold of Can-6'en (Camboja). The five kinds
of foreign gold are mentioned as early as the tenth century in the Pao ts'an lun
s mm.
11 Fables et contes de 1'Inde, in Actes du XIV 6 Congres des Orientalistes,
Vol. I, 1905, p. 103.
12 Ch. 36, p. 18 b (ed. Wu-6'an, 1877). See p. 622.
510 SlNO-lRANICA
The Ko ku yao lun 1 has a notice of tse kin $ & ("purple gold")
as follows: "The ancients say that the pan-Han 3r M money 2 is tse
kin. The people of the present time make it by mixing copper with
gold, but our contemporaries have not yet seen genuine tse kin."
The same alloy is mentioned as a product of Ma-k'o-se-li in the
Tao i ci lio, written in 1349 by Wan Ta-yuan. 3 I am not sure, of
course, that this tse kin is identical with tse-mo kin.
In the same manner as the Chinese speak of foreign gold, they also
offer a series of foreign silver. There are four kinds; namely, silver of
Sin-ra (in Korea), silver of Po-se (Persia), silver of Lin-yi, and silver
of Yiin-nan. Both gold and silver are enumerated among the products
of Sasanian Persia. The Hai yao pen ts'ao cites the Nan ytie ci of the
fifth century to the effect that the country Po-se possesses a natural
silver-dust HI Iff , employed as a remedy, and that remedies are tested
by means of finger-rings. 4 Whether Persia is to be understood here
seems doubtful to me. Gold-dust is especially credited to the country
of the Arabs. 5
82. 5fi$& yen-lii ("the green of salt," various compositions with
copper-oxide) is mentioned as a product of Sasanian Persia 6 and of
Ku6a. 7 Su Kun of the T'ang (seventh century) points it out as a product
of Karasar (Yen-Si 35 iff) , found in the water on the lower surface of
stones. Li Sim, who wrote in the second half of the eighth century,
states that "it is produced in the country Po-se (Persia) adhering to
stones, and that the kind imported on ships is called U'-lil 35 l$Cthe
green of the stone ') ; its color is resistant for a long time without chang-
ing; the imitation made in China from copper and vinegar must not
be employed in the pharmacopoeia, nor does it retain its color long."
Li Si-cen employs the term "green salt of Po-se." 8 The substance was
employed as a remedy in eye-diseases.
This is Persian zingdr (Arabic zinjar), described in the stone-book
of Pseudo- Aristotle as a stone extracted from copper or brass by means
1 Ch. 6, p. 12 b.
2 See Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 83.
3 ROCKHILL, T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 622.
4 Cen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 4, p. 23.
6 Ibid., Ch. 4, p. 21 b.
6 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
7 ou Su, Ch. 50, p. 5; Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 5 b.
8 Cf. also GEERTS, Produits, p. 634; F. DE MLY, Lapidaire chinois, pp. 134,
243. According to Geerts, the term is applied in Japan to acetate of copper, formerly
imported, but now prepared in the country.
IRANIAN MINERALS COPPER-OXIDES, SALT, ZINC 511
of vinegar, and employed as an ingredient in many remedies for eye-
diseases. 1
83. The Emperor Yafi (A.D. 605-616) of the Sui dynasty, after
his succession to the throne, despatched Tu Han-man tt fi 1 Sf to the
Western Countries. He reached the kingdom of Nan 3c (Bukhara),
obtained manicolored salt (wu se yen), and returned. 2 Istaxri relates
that in the district of Darabejird there are mountains of white, yellow,
green, black, and red salts; the salt in other regions originates from the
interior of the earth or from water which forms crystals; this, however,
is salt from mountains which are above the ground. Ibn Haukal adds
that this salt occurs in all possible colors. 3
The Pei hu In* distinguishes red, purple, black, blue, and yellow
salts. C*i yen ffi IS ("red salt ") like vermilion, and white salt like jade,
are attributed to Kao-c'aii (Turf an). 5 Black salt (hei yen) was a product
of the country Ts'ao (Jaguda) north of the Ts'un-lin. 6 It is likewise
attributed to southern India. 7 These colored salts may have been im-
pure salt or minerals of a different origin.
84. lift ^ t'ou-$i is mentioned as a metallic product of Sasanian
Persia (enumerated with gold, silver, copper, pin, iron, and tin) in the
Sui $u. 8 It is further cited as a product of Nu kwo, the Women's Realm
south of the Ts'uii-liii; 9 of A-lo-yi-lo K it $* H in the north of Udcji-
yana, 10 and of the Arabs (Ta-si). 11 Huan Tsafi's Memoirs contain the
term three times, once as a product found in the soil of northern India
(together with gold, silver, copper, and iron) , and twice as a material
from which Buddhist statues were made. 12 According to the Kin Pu
1 J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 182; and Steinbuch des Qazwlnl,
p. 25.
2 Sui Su, Ch. 83, p. 4 b.
3 P. SCHWARZ, Iran, p. 95.
4 Ch. 2, p. ii (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
6 Sui su, Ch. 83, p. 3 b. In the T'ai p"in hwan yu ki (Ch. 180, p. n b) the same
products are assigned to Ku-i J|L flljj (Turf an).
6 Sui su, Ch. 83, p. 8.
7 ran su, Ch. 221 A, p. 10 b.
* Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
9 T'ai p*in hwan yu ki, Ch. 186, p. 9.
10 Ibid., p. 12 b.
11 Ibid., p. 15 b.
12 Cf. S. JULIEN, M6moires sur les contre"es occidentales, Vol. I, pp. 37, 189,
354. Julien is quite right in translating the term by laiton ("brass"). PALLADIUS
(Chinese-Russian Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 16) explains it as "brass with admixture of
lead, possessing attractive power." The definition of Giles ("rich ore brought
from Persia supposed to be an ore of gold and copper, or bronze") is inexact. T*ou-
512 SlNO-lRANICA
swi Si ki M J^ fff H, written in the sixth century, the needles used
by women on the festival of the seventh day of the seventh month 1
were made of gold, silver, or Vou-U. 2 Under the T'ang, t*ou-$i was an
officially adopted alloy, being employed, for instance, for the girdles of
the officials of the eighth and ninth grades. 3 It was sent as tribute
from Iranian regions; for instance, in A.D. 718, from Maimargh (north-
west of Samarkand). 4
The Ko ku yao lun states, " T*ou-$i is the essence of natural copper.
At present zinc-bloom is smelted to make counterfeit t* ou. According to
Ts'ui Fail -S B#, one catty of copper and one catty of zinc-bloom will
yield Vou-li. The genuine /' ou is produced in Persia. It looks like gold,
and, when fired, assumes a red color which will never turn black."
This is clearly a description of brass which is mainly composed of copper
and zinc. Li Si-Sen 5 identifies t*ou-$i with the modern term hwan fun
("yellow copper"); "that is, brass. According to T'an Ts'ui, 6 Vou-U is
found in the C'6-li 4 M t'u-se of Yim-nan.
The Chinese accounts of t*ou or t*ou-$i agree with what the Persians
and Arabs report about tutiya. It was in Persia that zinc was first mined,
and utilized for a new copper alloy, brass. Ibn al-Faqih, who wrote
about A.D. 902, has left a description of the zinc-mines situated in a
mountain Dunbawand in the province of Kirman. The ore was (and
still is) a government monopoly. 7 Jawbari, who wrote about 1225, has
described the process of smelting. 8 The earliest mention of the term
occurs in the Arabic stone-book of Pseudo-Aristotle (ninth century), 9
where the stone tutiya is explained as belonging to the stones found in
mines, with numerous varieties which are white, yellow, and green;
Si is only said to resemble gold, and the notion that brass resembles gold turns up in
all Oriental writers. See also BEAL, Records of the Western World, Vol. I, p, 51;
and CHAVANNES (T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 34), who likewise accepts the only admissible
interpretation, "brass."
1 Cf. W. GRUBE, Zur Pekinger Volkskunde, p. 76; J. PRZYLUSKI, T'oung Pao,
1914, p. 215.
2 P'ei wen yunfu, Ch. 100 A, p. 25.
8 Jade, p. 286; cf. also Ta T'an leu tien, Ch. 8, p. 22.
4 CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1904, p. 34.
5 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 8, pp. 3 and 4. Cf. also GEERTS, Produits, p. 575.
6 Tien hai yu hen ci, Ch. 2, p. 3 b.
7 P. SCHWARZ, Iran im Mittelalter, p. 252.
8 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a I'Extr^me-Orient, p. 610 (cf. also pp. 225, 228;
and LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 322).
9 J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 175. J. BECKMANN (Beytrage zur
Geschichte der Erfmdungen, Vol. Ill, p. 388) states that the word first occurs in
Avicenna of the eleventh century.
IRANIAN MINERALS ZINC 513
the quarries are located on the shores of Hind and Sind. This is prob-
ably intended for vitriol or sulphate of copper. 1
In Chinese fou-&, the second element &" ("stone") does not form
part of the transcription; the term means simply "t*ou stone/' and t'ou
(*tu) reproduces the first syllable of Persian tutiya, which, on the basis
of the Sui Annals, we are obliged to assign also to the Middle-Persian
language. To derive the Chinese word from Turkish tuj t as proposed
by WATTERS, 2 and accepted without criticism by HiRTH, 3 is utterly im-
possible. The alleged Turkish word occurs only in Osmanli and other
modern dialects, where it is plainly a Persian loan-word, but not in
Uigur, as wrongly asserted by Hirth. This theory seems to imply that
the element U should form part of the transcription; this certainly is
out of the question, as 5 represents ancient *sek or *sak, *zak, and
could not reproduce a palatal. For the rest, the Chinese records point
to Iran, not to the Turks, who had no concern whatever with the
whole business. 4 Two variations of the Persian word have penetrated
into the languages of Europe. The Arabs carried their tiltiyd into
Spain, where it appears as atutia with the Arabic article; in Portuguese
we have tutia, in French tutie, in Italian tuzia, in English tutty. A final
palatal occurs in the series Osmanli tuj or tune, Neo-Greek rovvr^i,
Albanian tut, Serbian and Bulgarian tuc, Rumanian tuciu. Whether
Sanskrit tuttha, as has been assumed, is to be connected with the Per-
sian word, remains doubtful to me: the Sanskrit word refers only to
green or blue vitriol. 5 It is noteworthy that Persian birinj ("brass"), a
more recent variant of pirin (Kurd pirinjok, Armenian plinj)* has not
migrated into any foreign language, for I am far from being convinced
that our word "bronze" should be traceable to this type. 7
The Japanese pronunciation of $f 5 is cuseki. The Japanese used
1 A curious error occurs in FELDHAUS' Technik (col. 1367), where it is asserted,
"Qazwml says about 600 that zinc is known in China, and could also be made
flexible there." Qazwlnl wrote his cyclopaedia in 1134, and says nothing about
zinc in China (cf. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Qazwlnl, p. n); but he mentions a tutiya
mine in Spain (G. JACOB, Studien in arabischen Geographen, p. 13).
2 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 359.
3 Chau Ju-kua, p. 81. T*ou-si does not mean "white copper" in the passage
under notice, but means "brass." "White copper" is a Chinese and quite different
alloy (see below, p. 555).
4 It is likewise odd to connect Italian tausia (properly taunia) and German
tauschieren with this word. This is just as well as to derive German tusche from
an alleged Chinese t'u-se (HiRTH, Chines. Studien, p. 226).
5 P. C. RAY, History of Hindu Chemistry, 2d ed., Vol. II, p. 25.
6 HUBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 27.
7 O. SCHRADER, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, Vol. II, p. 73.
514 SlNO-lRANICA
to import the alloy from China, and their Honz5 (Pen ts'ao) give for-
mulas for its preparation. 1 The Koreans read the same word not or
not-si. The French missionaries explain it as " composition de differents
metaux qui sert a faire les cuilleres, etc. Airain, cuivre jaune (premiere
qualite). Cuivre rouge et plomb." 2
The history of zinc in the East is still somewhat obscure; at least,
it so appears from what the historians of the metal have written about
the subject. I quote from W. R. INGALLS: S "It is unknown to whom is
due the honor of the isolation of zinc as a metal, but it is probable that
the discovery was first made in the East. In the sixteenth century zinc
was brought to Europe from China and the East Indies under the name
of tutanego (whence the English term tutenegue), and it is likely that
knowledge of it was obtained from that source at an earlier date. . . .
The production of zinc on an industrial scale was first begun in England;
it is said that the method applied was Chinese, having been introduced
by Dr. Isaac Lawson, who went to China expressly to study it. In 1740
John Champion erected works at Bristol and actually began the manu-
facture of spelter, but the production was small, and the greater part
used continued to come from India and China." The fact that in the
eighteenth century the bulk of zinc which came to Europe was shipped
from India is also emphasized by J. BECKMANN, 4 who, writing in 1792,
regretted that it was then unknown where, how, and when this metal
was obtained in India, and in what year it had first been brought over
to Europe. According to the few notices of the subject, he continues, it
originates from China, from Bengal, from Malakka, and from Malabar,
whence also copper and brass are obtained. On the other hand, W.
AiNSLiE 5 states that by far the greater part of zinc which is met with
in India is brought from Cochin-China or China, where both the cala-
mine and blende are common. Again, S. JULIEN G informs us that zinc
is not mentioned in ancient books, and appears to have been known in
China only from the beginning of the seventeenth century.
W. HoMMEL 7 pleaded for the origin of zinc-production in India,
whence it was obtained by the Chinese. He does not know, of course,
that there is no evidence for such a theory in Chinese sources. The
1 GEERTS, Produits, p. 641; F. DE MLY, Lapidaire chinois, p. 42.
2 Dictionnaire coren-frangais, p. 291.
3 Production and Properties of Zinc, pp. 2-3 (New York and London, 1902).
4 Op. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 408.
6 Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 573.
6 Industries de 1'empire chinois, p. 46.
7 Chemiker-Zeitung, 1912, p. 905.
IRANIAN MINERALS ZINC, STEEL 515
Indian hypothesis, I believe, has been accepted by others. In my opin-
ion, the art of zinc-smelting originated neither in India nor in China, but
in Persia. We noted from Ibn al-Faqih that the zinc-mines of Kirman
were wrought in the tenth century; and the early Chinese references to
t*ou-& would warrant the conclusion that this industry was prominent
under the Sasanians, and goes back at least to the sixth century.
Li Si-cen 1 states that the green copper of Persia can be wrought into
mirrors. I have no other information on this metal.
85. $& or ! Sc pin t*ie, pin iron, is mentioned as a product of Sa-
sanian Persia, 2 also ascribed to Ki-pin (Kashmir). 3 Mediaeval authors
like C'afi Te mention it also for India and Kami. 4 The Ko ku yao lun 5
says that pin Vie is produced by the Western Barbarians (Si Fan), and
that its surface exhibits patterns like the winding lines of a conch or
like sesame-seeds and snow. Swords and other implements made from
this metal are polished by means of gold threads, and then these pat-
terns become visible; the price of this metal exceeds that of silver. This
clearly refers to a steel like that of Damascus, on which fine dark lines
are produced by means of etching acids. 6
Li Si-cen 7 states that pin t'ie is produced by the Western Barbarians
(Si Fan), and cites the Pao ts'an lun H JU H, by Hien Yuan-u
ff St 3& of the tenth century, to the effect that there are five kinds of
iron, one of these being pin t'ie, which is so hard and sharp that it can
cut metal and hard stone. K'an-hi's Dictionary states that pin is
wrought into sharp swords. Previous investigators have overlooked the
fact that this metal is first mentioned for Sasanian Persia, and have
merely pointed to the late mediaeval mention in the Sung Annals. 8
The word pin has not yet been explained. Even the Pan-Turks have
not yet discovered it in Turkish. It is connected with Iranian *spaina,
Pamir languages spin, Afghan ospina or ospana, Ossetic afsan. g The
1 Pen ts*ao kan mu, Ch. 8, p. 3 b.
2 Cou w, Ch. 50, p. 6; Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
3 T'ai p'in hwan yil ki, Ch. 182, p. 12 b.
4 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 146; Kwan yil ki, Ch. 24,
p. sb.
5 Ch. 6, p. 14 b (ed. of Si yin Man ts'un su).
8 A reference to pin t'ie occurs also in the San ku sin hwa \lj f Jpf gj, written
by Yan Yu ^ 1$ in 1360 (p. 19, ed. of Ci pu tsu ai ts'un $u).
7 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 8, p. n b.
8 BRETSCHNEIDER, On the Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs,
p. 12, and China Review, Vol. V, p. 21; W. F. MAYERS, China Review, Vol. IV
P- 175.
9 HUBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 10.
516 SlNO-lRANICA
character pin has been formed ad hoc, and, as already remarked by
Mayers, is written also without the classifier; that is, in a purely pho-
netic way.
86. H>11> se-se, *sit-sit (Japanese sitsu-sitsu) , hypothetical restora-
tion *sirsir, a precious stone of Sasanian Persia, which I have discussed
at some length in my " Notes on Turquois in the East" (pp. 25-35,
45-55, 67-68). For this reason only a brief summary is here given, with
some additional information and corrections. I no longer believe that
se-se might be connected with Shignan (p. 47) or Arabic jaza (p. 52), but
am now convinced that se-se represents the transcription of an Iranian
(most probably Sogdian) word, the original of which, however, has not
yet been traced. Chinese records leave us in the dark as to the character
of the Iranian se-se. It is simply enumerated in a list of precious stones
of Persia and Sogdiana (K'afi) , l The T'ang Annals locate the se-se mines
to the south-east of the Yaxartes in Sogdiana; 2 and the stones were
traded to China by way of Khotan. 3 Possibly the Nestorians were
active in bringing to China these stones which were utilized for the
decoration of their churches. The same history ascribes columns of
se-se to the palaces of Fu-lin (Syria); 4 in this case the question is of a
building-stone. In ancient Tibet, se-se formed part of the official costume,
being worn by officials of the highest rank in strings suspended from
the shoulder. The materials ranking next to this stone were gold,
plated silver, silver, and copper, 5 a clear index of the fact that se-se
was regarded in Tibet as a precious stone of great value, and surpassing
gold. The Tibetan women used to wear beads of this stone in their
tresses, and a single bead is said to have represented the equivalent of
a noble horse. 6 Hence arose the term ma kia c u $f i *5fc ("pearl or bead
equalling a horse in price"). These beads are treated in the Ko ku yao
luri 1 as a separate item, and distinct from turquois. 8
In the T'ang period, se-se stones were also used as ornaments by the
1 Pei Si, Ch. 97, pp. 7 b, 12; Cou Su, Ch. 50, p. 6; Sui I, Ch. 83, p. 7 b; Wei Su,
Ch. 102, pp. 5 a, 9 b.
2 Tan Su, Ch. 221 B, p. 2 b.
3 Tan Su, Ch. 221 A, p. lob.
4 Kiu Tan Su, Ch. 198, p. II b; Tan Su, Ch. 221 B, p. 7 b.
6 Tan $u, Ch. 216 A, p. I b (not in Kiu Tan Su).
6 Sin Wu Tai Si, Ch. 74, p. 4 b.
7 Ch. 6, p. 5 b.
8 As justly said by GEERTS (Produits de la nature japonaise et chinoise, p. 481),
it is possible that ma kia cu (Japanese bakasu) is merely a synonyme of the emerald.
Also in the Pen ts'ao kan mu (Ch. 8, p. 17 b) a distinction is made between the two
articles, tien-tse jU -J- being characterized as pij^, ma kia cu as ts'ui z$L.
IRANIAN PRECIOUS STONES SE-SE 517
women of the Nan Man (the aboriginal tribes of southern China), being
fastened in their hair; 1 and were known in the kingdom of Nan-cao. 2
Likewise the women of Wei-cou H ^H in Se-'wan wore strung se-se
in their hair. 3 Further, we hear at the same time of se-se utilized by the
Chinese and even mined in Chinese soil. In so^e cases it seems that
a building-stone is involved; in others it appears as a transparent
precious stone, strung and used for curtains and screens, highly valued,
and on a par with genuine pearls and precious metals. 4 Under the year
786, the Tang Annals state, "The Kwan-'a-si 8t^$l 5 of San-cou
K. ffl (in Ho-nan), Li Pi $ $& by name, reported to the throne that the
foundries of Mount Lu-si A Ki produce se-se, and requested that it
should be prohibited to accept these stones in the place of taxes; where-
upon the Emperor (Te Tsufi) replied, that, if there are se-se not pro-
duced by the soil, they should be turned over to the people, who are
permitted to gather them for themselves." The question seems to be
in this text of a by-product of metallic origin; and this agrees with what
Kao Se-sun remarks in his Wei lio } that the se-se of his time (Sung period)
were made of molten stone.
I have given two examples of the employment of se-se in objects of
art from the K'ao ku t'u and Ku yu t'u p*u (p. 31). Meanwhile I have
found two instances of the use of the word se-se in the Po ku t'u lu t
published by Wan Fu in 1107-11. In one passage of this work, 6 the
patina of a tin ffi, attributed to the Cou period, is compared with the
color of se-se: since patinas occur in green, blue, and many other hues,
this does not afford conclusive evidence as to the color of se-se. In
another case 7 a small tin dated in the Han period is described as being
decorated with inlaid gold and silver, and decorated with the seven
jewels (saptaratna) and se-se of very brilliant appearance. This is
striking, as se-se are not known to be on record under the Han, but first
appear in the accounts of Sasanian Persia: either the bronze vessel in
question was not of the Han, but of the T'ang; or, if it was of the Han,
the stone thus diagnosed by the Sung author cannot have been identical
with what was known by this name under the T'ang. I already had
occasion to state (p. 33) that the Sung writers knew no longer what the
1 Tan $u, Ch. 222 A, p. 2.
2 Man su, p. 48.
3 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 78, p. 9 b.
4 Min hwan tsa lu, Ch. B, p. 4; Wei Ho, Ch. 5, p. 3; Tu yan tsa pien, Ch. A, pp. 3,
8; Ch. c, pp. 5, 9 b, 14 b.
5 Official designation of a Tao-t'ai.
6 Ch. 3, p. 15 b.
7 Ch. 5, p. 46 b.
$l8 SlNO-lRANICA
se-se of the T'ang really were, that the T'ang se-se were apparently
lost in the age of the Sung, and that substitutes merely designated by
that name were then in vogue.
Under the Yuan or Mongol dynasty the word se-se was revived.
C'ari Te, the envoy who visited Bagdad in 1259, reported se-se among
the precious stones of the Caliph, together with pearls, lapis lazuli, and
diamonds. A stone of small or no value, found in Kin-cou (in Sen-kin,
Manchuria), was styled se-se; 1 and under the reign of the Emperor
C'en-tsun (1295-1307) we hear that two thousand five hundred catties
of se-se were palmed off on officials in lieu of cash payments, a practice
which was soon stopped by imperial command. 2 Under the Ming, se-se
was merely a word vaguely conveying the notion of a precious stone of
the past, and transferred to artifacts like beads of colored glass or
clay. 3
The Chinese notices of se-se form a striking analogy to the accounts
of the ancients regarding the emerald (smaragdos) , which on the one
hand is described as a precious stone, chiefly used for rings, on the
other hand as a building-stone. Theophrastus 4 states, "The emerald
is good for the eyes, and is worn as a ring-stone to be looked at. It is
rare, however, and not large. Yet it is said in the histories of the
Egyptian kings that a Babylonian king once sent as a gift an emerald
of four cubits in length and three cubits in width; there is in the temple
of Jupiter an obelisk composed of four emeralds, forty cubits high, four
cubits wide, and two cubits thick. The false emerald occurs in well-
known places, particularly in the copper-mines of Cyprus, where it
fills lodes crossing one another in many ways, but only seldom is it
large enough for rings." H. O. LENz 5 is inclined to understand by the
latter kind malachite. Perhaps the se-se of Iran and Tibet was the
emerald; the se-se used for pillars in Fu-lin, malachite. No Chinese
definition of what se-se was has as yet come to light, and we have to
await further information before venturing exact and positive identifi-
cations.
In Buddhist literature the emerald appears in the transcription
mo-lo-k*ie-t*o ^ fi/H P2, 6 corresponding to Sanskrit marakata. In the
transcription $6 ;fc $!) cu-mu-la, in the seventeenth century written
jfi -& $fc tsu-mu-lu, the emerald appears to be first mentioned in the
1 Yuan si, Ch. 24, p. 2 b.
*Ibid., Ch. 21, p. 7b.
8 Cf . Notes on Turquois, p. 34.
4 De lapidibus, 42.
6 Mineralogie der Griechen und R&mer, p. 20.
6 Fan yi min yi tsi, Ch. 8, p. 14 b.
IRANIAN PRECIOUS STONES EMERALD, TURQUOIS 519
Co ken lu, written in I366. 1 The Dictionary in Four Languages 2 writes
this word tsie-mu-lu IB. l& $&. This is a transcription of Persian
zumurrud.
The word itself is of Semitic origin. In Assyrian it has been traced
in the form barraktu in a Babylonian text dated in the thirty-fifth year
of Artaxerxes I (464-424 B.C.). 3 In Hebrew it is bdreket or barkat, in
Syriac borko, in Arabic zummurud, in Armenian zemruoot; in Russian
izumrud. The Greek maragdos or smaragdos is borrowed from Semitic;
and Sanskrit marakata is derived from Greek, Tibetan mar-gad from
Sanskrit. 4 The Arabic-Persian zummurud appears to be based directly
on the Greek form with initial sibilant.
87. In regard to turquois I shall be brief. The Persian turquois,
both that of Nisapur and Kirman, is first mentioned under the name
tien-tse 'fcj -f in the Co ken lu of 1366. This does not mean that the
Chinese were not acquainted with the Persian turquois at a somewhat
earlier date. It is even possible that the Kitan were already acquainted
with turquois. 5 I do not believe that pi-lu 8 5& represents a transcrip-
tion of Persian firuza ("turquois"), as proposed by WATTERS C without
indicating any source for the alleged Chinese word, which, if it exists,
may be restricted to the modern colloquial language. I have not yet
traced it in literature. 7 As early as 1290 turquoises were mined in Hui-
'wan, Yun-nan. 8 The Geography of the Ming dynasty indicates a
turquois-mine in Nan-nin Sou ;c #1 in the prefecture of Yun-nan,
1 Ch. 7, p. 5 b; Wu li siao Si, Ch. 7, p. 14. The author of this work cites the
writing of the Yuan work as the correct one, adding tsu-mu-lu, which he says is at
present in vogue, as an erroneous form. It is due to an adjustment suggested by
popular etymology, the character lu ("green") referring to the green color of the
stone, whose common designation is lit pao Si $jfc jt 5 ("green precious stone");
see GEERTS, Produits, p. 481.
2 Ch. 22, p. 66.
3 C. FOSSEY, Etudes assyriennes (Journal asiatique, 1917, I, p. 473).
4 Cf. Notes on Turquois, p. 55; T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 465. MUSS-ARNOLT
(Transactions Am. Phil. Assoc., Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. 139) states erroneously that
both the Greek and the Semitic words are independently derived from Sanskrit.
In the attempt to trace the history of loan-words it is first of all necessary to ascer-
tain the history of the objects.
5 As intimated by me in American Anthropologist, 1916, p. 589. Tien-tse as the
product of Pan-ta-li are mentioned in the Tao i ci lio, written in 1349 by Wan Ta-
yuan (ROCKHILL, T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 464).
6 Essays on the Chinese Language, p. 352.
7 In the Pen ts'ao kan mu (Ch. 8, p. 17 b) is mentioned a stone p'iao pi lu Hf
H $&, explained as a precious stone (pao Si) of pi ^ color. This is possibly the
foundation of Watters' statement.
8 Yuan Si, Ch. 16, p. 10 b. See, further, Notes on Turquois, pp. 58-59.
520 SlNO-lRANICA
Yun-nan Province. 1 In this text, the term pi t'ien-tse it *0| -f- is em-
ployed. T'an Ts'ui 2 says that turquoises (pi t'ien) are produced in the
Mori-van t'u-se : ^ 3 of Yun-nan. In the Hin-nan fu ci R ^
fl\f S, 3 the gazetteer of the prefecture of Hiii-iian in southern Sen-si,
it is said that pi Vien (written Hi) were formerly a product of this lo-
cality, and mined under the T'ang and Sung, the mines being closed in
the beginning of the Ming. This notice is suspicious, as we hear of
pi-tien or tien-tse neither under the T'ang nor the Sung; the term comes
into existence under the Yuan. 4
88. & fit kin tsih (" essence of gold") appears to have been the term
for lapis lazuli during the T'ang period. The stone came from the
famous mines of Badaxsan. 5
At the time of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty a new word for lapis
lazuli springs up in the form lan-fri S3 Jfc. The Chinese traveller C'an
Te, who was despatched in 1259 as envoy by the Mongol Emperor
Mangu to his brother Hulagu, King of Persia, and whose diary, the
Si U ki, was edited by Liu Yu in 1263, reports that a stone of that name
is found on the rocks of the mountains in the south-western countries
of Persia. The word Ian-Pi is written with two characters meaning
"orchid" and "red," which yields no sense; and BRETSCHNEiDER 6 is
therefore right in concluding that the two elements represent the tran-
scription of a foreign name. He is inclined to think that "it is the same
as landshiwer, the Arabic name for lapis lazuli." In New Persian it is
la&vard or Idjvard (Arabic lazvard). Another Arabic word is Unej, by
which the cyanos of Dioscorides is translated. 7 An Arabic form lanjiver
is not known to me.
"There is also in the same country [Badashan] another mountain,
in which azure is found; 'tis the finest in the world, and is got in a vein
like silver. There are also other mountains which contain a great
amount of silver ore, so that the country is a very rich one." Thus runs
1 Ta Min i t'un ci, Ch. 86, p. 8.
2 Tien hai yil hen ci, 1799, Ch. I, p. 6 b (ed. of Wen yin lou yii ti ts'un $u). See
above, p. 228. T'u-se are districts under a native chieftain, who himself is subject to
Chinese authority.
3 Ch. ii, p. ii b (ed. of 1788).
4 The turquois has not been recognized in a text of the Wei si wen kien ki of
1769 by G. SOULI (Bull, de I'Ecole fran$ aise, Vol. VIII, p. 372), where the question
is of coral and turquois used by the Ku-tsun (a Tibetan tribe) women as ornaments;
instead of yuan-song, as there transcribed, read lii sun Si %Jk ffi ^.
6 CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue, p. 159; and T'oung Pao, 1904,
p. 66.
6 Chinese Recorder, Vol. VI, p. 16; or Mediaeval Researches, Vol. I, p. 151.
7 LECLERC, Traite* des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 254.
IRANIAN PRECIOUS STONES LAPIS LAZULI 521
Marco Polo's account. 1 YULE comments as follows: "The mines of
Lajwurd (whence 1'Azur and Lazuli) have been, like the ruby mines,
celebrated for ages. They He in the upper valley of the Kokcha, called
Koran, within the tract called Yamgan, of which the popular etymology
is Hamah-Kan, or ' All-Mines,' and were visited by Wood in iS^S. 2
The produce now is said to be of very inferior quality, and in quantity
from thirty to sixty pud (thirty-six Ibs. each) annually. The best
quality sells at Bokhara at thirty to sixty tillas, or 12 /. to 24 I. the pud
(Manphul)." 3 In the Dictionary of Four Languages, 4 lapis lazuli is
styled ts'in kin $i W & ^; in Tibetan mu-men, Mongol and Manchu
nomin.
The diamond is likewise attributed by the Chinese to Sasanian
Persia, and I have formerly shown that several Iranian tribes were
acquainted with this precious stone in the beginning of our era. 5 Dia-
mond-points were imported from Persia into China under the T'ang
dynasty. 6
89. The first mention of amber in Chinese records is the reference
to amber in Ki-pin (Kashmir). 7 Then we receive notice of the occurrence
of amber in Ta Ts'in (the Hellenistic Orient) 8 and in Sasanian Persia. 9
The correctness of the latter account is confirmed by the Bundahisn, in
which the Pahlavi term for amber, kahrupai, is transmitted. 10 This word
corresponds to New Persian kahrubd, a compound formed with kdh
("straw") and rubd ("to lift, to attract"). 11 The Arabs derived their
kahrubd (first in Ibn el- Abbas) from the Persians; and between the
1 YULE'S edition, Vol. I, p. 157. /
2 This refers to WOOD, Journey to the Oxus, p. 263.
3 See, further, M. BAUER, Precious Stones, p. 442.
4 Ch. 22, p. 65.
5 The Diamond, p. 53.
6 Ta Tan leu tien, Ch. 22, p. 8.
7 Ts'ien Han $u, Ch. 96 A, p. 5.
8 In the Wei Ho and Hou Han $u (cf. CHAVANNES, T'oung Pao, 1907, p. 182).
9 Nan si, Ch. 79, p. 8; Wei su, Ch. 102, p. 5 a; Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b. The Sui
Su has altered the name hu-p'o into $ou-p*o Hfc S|, in order to observe the tabu
of the name Hu in Li Hu $: jj^, the father of the founder of the T'ang dynasty.
Amber (also coral and silver) is attributed to Mount Ni / \\1 in the country Fu-lu-ni
W lit JB to the north of Persia, also to the country Hu-se-mi Pf j[ Jg (Wei Su,
Ch. 102, p. 6 b).
10 WEST, Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 273.
11 Analogies occur in all languages: Chinese U-kiai f* 3f* ("attracting mustard-
seeds"); Sanskrit Ir.inagrahin ("attracting straw"); Tibetan sbur len or sbur Ion,
of the same meaning: French (obsolete) tire-paille. Another Persian word for amber
is saihbari.
522 SlNO-lRANICA
ninth and the tenth century, the word penetrated from the Arabic into
Syriac. 1 In Armenian it is kahribd and kahribar. The same word
migrated westward: Spanish carabe, Portuguese carabe or charabe,
Italian carabe, French carabe; Byzantine Kepafit', Cumanian charabar.
Under the Ming, amber is listed as a product of Herat, Khotan, and
Samarkand. 2 A peculiar variety styled "gold amber" (kin p'o & 59)
is assigned to Arabia (T'ien-faii). 3
The question arises, From what sources did the Persians derive their
amber? G. JACOB, 4 from a study of Arabic sources, has reached the
conclusion that the Arabs obtained amber from the Baltic. The great
importance of Baltic amber in the history of trade is well known, but,
in my estimation, has been somewhat exaggerated by the specialists,
whereas the fact is easily overlooked that amber is found in many parts
of the world. I do not deny that a great deal of amber secured by the
Arabs may be credited to the Baltic sources of supply, but I fail to see
that this theory (for it is no more) follows directly from the data of
Arabic writers. These refer merely to the countries of the Rus and Bui-
gar as the places of provenience, but who will guarantee that the amber
of the Russians hailed exclusively from the Baltic? We know surely
enough that amber occurs in southern Russia and in Rumania. Again,
Ibn al-Baitar knows nothing about Rus and Bulgar in this connection,
but, with reference to al-Jafiki, speaks of two kinds of amber, one
coming from Greece and the Orient, the other being found on the littoral
and underground in the western portion of Spain. 5 Pliny informs us
that, according to Philemon, amber is a fossil substance, and that
it is found in Scythia in two localities, one white and of waxen color,
styled electrum; while in the other place it is red, and is called suali-
ternicum* This Scythian or South-Russian amber may have been traded
by the Iranian Scythians to Iran. In order to settle definitely the
question of the provenience of ancient Persian and Arabic amber, it
would be necessary, first of all, to obtain a certain number of authentic,
ancient Persian and Arabic ambers, and to subject them to a chemical
analysis. We know also that several ancient amber supplies were
1 Cf. E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 146; and G. JACOB, ZDMG, Vol. XLIII, 1889,
P- 359-
3 Ta Min i t'un li, Ch. 89, pp. 23, 24 b, 25 (ed. of 1461).
* Ibid., Ch. 91, p. 20.
4 L. c., and Arabische Handelsartikel, p. 63.
5 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 209.
6 Philemon fossile esse et in Scythia erui duobus locis, candidum atque cerei
colons quod vocaretur electrum, in alio fulvum quod appellaretur sualiternicum
(xxxvn, ii, 33).
IRANIAN MINERALS AMBER 523
exhausted long ago. Thus Pliny and the ancient Chinese agree on the
fact that amber was a product of India, while no amber-mines are
known there at present. 1 Amber was formerly found in the
district of Yun-6'an in Yun-nan, and even on the sacred Hwa-San in
Sen-si. 2
G. JACOB 3 has called attention to the fact that the supposition of a
derivation of the Chinese word from Pahlavi kahrupdl is confronted
with unsurmountable difficulties of a chronological character. The
phonetic difficulties are still more aggravating; for Chinese hu-p'o % ffi
was anciently *gu-bak, and any alleged resemblance between the two
words vanishes. Still less can Greek harpax* come into question as the
foundation of the Chinese word, which, in my opinion, comes from an
ancient San or T'ai language of Yun-nan, whence the Chinese received
a kind of amber as early at least as the first century A.D. Of the same
origin, I am inclined to think, is the word tun-mou ^ ^ for amber,
first and exclusively used by the philosopher Wan C'un. 5
Uigur kubik is not the original of the Chinese word, as assumed by
Klaproth; but the Uigur, on the contrary (like Korean xobag), is a
transcription of the Chinese word. Mongol %uba and Manchu xdba
are likewise so, except that these forms were borrowed at a later period,
when the final consonant of Chinese bak or bek was silent. 6
90. Coral is a substance of animal origin; but, as it has always been
conceived in the Orient as a precious stone, 7 a brief notice of it, as far
as Sino-Persian relations are concerned, may be added here. The
1 Cf. Ts'ien Han Su, Ch. 96 A, p. 5 (amber of Kashmir); Nan Si, Ch. 78, p. 7.
2 Cf. Hwa yoli ^ ^ jg, Ch. 3, p. i (ed. of 1831).
3 L. c., p. 355.
4 Proposed by HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 245. This was merely
a local Syriac name, derived from Greek dpTrdfw (In Syria quoque f eminas verticillos
inde facere et vocare harpaga, quia folia paleasque et vestium fimbrias rapiat.
Pliny, xxxvn, n, 37).
6 Cf. A. FORKE, Lun-heng, pt. II, p. 350. This is not the place for a discussion
of this problem, which I have taken up in a study entitled "Ancient Remains from
the Languages of the Nan Man."
6 For further information on amber, the reader may be referred to my Historical
Jottings on Amber in Asia (Memoirs Am. Anthr. Assoc., Vol. I, pt. 3). I hope to come
back to this subject in greater detail in the course of my Sino-Hellenistic studies,
where it will be shown that the Chinese tradition regarding the origin and properties
of amber is largely influenced by the theories of the ancients.
7 The proof of the animal character of coral is a recent achievement of our
science. Peyssonel was the first to demonstrate in 1727 that the alleged coral-
flowers are real animals; Pallas then described the coral as Isis nobilis; and Lamarck
formed a special genus under the name Corallium rubrum (cf. LACAZE-DUTHIERS,
Histoire naturelle du corail, Paris, 1864; GUIBOURT, Histoire naturelle des drogues,
Vol. IV, p. 378). The common notion in Asia was that coral is a marine tree.
524 SlNO-lRANICA
Chinese learned of the genuine coral through their intercourse with
the Hellenistic Orient : as we are informed by the Wei lio and the Han
Annals, 1 Ta Ts'in produced coral; and the substance was so common,
that the inhabitants used it for making the king-posts of their habita-
tions. The T'ang Annals 2 then describe how the marine product is fished
in the coral islands by men seated in large craft and using nets of iron
wire. When the corals begin to grow on the rocks, they are white like
mushrooms; after a year they turn yellow, and when three years have
elapsed, they change into red. Their branches then begin to intertwine,
and grow to a height of three or four feet. 3 Hirth may be right in
supposing that this fishing took place in the Red Sea, and that the
"Coral Sea" of the Nestorian inscription and the "sea producing
corals and genuine pearls" of the Wei lio are apparently identical with
the latter. 4 But it may have been the Persian Gulf as well, or even the
Mediterranean. Pliny 5 is not very enthusiastic about the Red-Sea
coral; and the Periplus speaks of the importation of coral into India,
which W. H. ScnoFF 6 seems to me to identify correctly with the Medi-
terranean coral. Moreover, the Chinese themselves correlate the above
account of coral-fishing with Persia, for the Yi wu ci H $7 ;S is cited
in the Cen lei pen ts*ao 7 as saying that coral is produced in Persia, being
considered by the people there as their mosjt precious jewel; and the
Pen ts'ao yen i speaks of a coral-island in the sea of Persia, 8 going on to
tell the same story regarding coral-fishing as the T'ang Annals with
reference to Fu-lin (Syria). Su Kuii of the T'ang states that coral grows
in the Southern Sea, but likewise comes from Persia and Ceylon, the
latter statement being repeated by the T'u kin pen ts*ao of the Sung.
It is interesting that the Pen ts'ao of the T'ang insists on the holes in
coral, a characteristic which in the Orient is still regarded (and justly
so) as a mark of authenticity. Under the T'ang, coral was first intro-
duced into the materia medica. In the Annals, coral is ascribed to
1 HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, pp. 41, 73.
2 Ibid., p. 44-
* Ibid., p. 59.
4 Ibid., p. 246.
B xxxii, ii.
6 The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, p. 128.
' Ch. 4, p. 37.
8 Ch. 5, p. 7 (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan). The coral island where the coral- tree grows
is also mentioned by an Arabic author, who wrote about A.D. 1000 (G. FERRAND,
Textes relatifs a 1'Extr^me-Orient, Vol. I, p. 147). See, further, E. WIEDEMANN,
Zur Mineralogie im Islam, p. 244.
IRANIAN MINERALS CORAL, BEZOAR 525
Sasanian Persia; 1 and it is stated in the T'ang Annals that Persia pro-
duces coral not higher than three feet. 2 There is no doubt that Persian
corals have found their way all over Asia; and many of them may still
be preserved by Tibetans, who prize above all coral, amber, and tur-
quois. The coral encountered by the Chinese in Ki-pin (Kashmir) 3
may also have been of Persian origin. Unfortunately we have no
information on the subject from ancient Iranian sources, tor do we
know an ancient Iranian name for coral. Solinus inform, us that
Zoroaster attributed to coral a certain power and salubrious effects; 4
and what Pliny says about coral endowed with sacred properties and
being a preservative against all dangers, sounds very much like an
idea emanating from Persia. Persian infants still wear a piece of coral
on the abdomen as a talisman to ward off harm; 5 and, according to
Pliny, this was the practice at his time, only that the branches of coral
were hung at the infant's neck.
The Chinese word for coral, M $8 $an-hu, *san-gu (Japanese
san-go), possibly is of foreign origin, but possibly it is not/ 1 For the
present there is no word in any West-Asiatic or Iranian language with
which it could be correlated. In Hebrew it is ra 'mot, which the Seventy
transcribes pa^oQ or translates /-terewpa. The common word in New
Persian is marjdn (hence Russian marZan); other designations are
birbdl, xuruhak or xurohak, bussad or bissad (Arabic bessed or bussad).
In Armenian it is bust. 7
91. The identification of Chinese H l p'o-so (*bwa-sa) with Persian
pdzdhr or pddzahr* ("bezoar," literally, "antidote"), first proposed by
HiRTH, 9 in my opinion, is not tenable, although it has been indorsed
1 Cou $u, Ch. 50, p. 6; Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b; regarding coral in Fu-lu-ni, see
above, p. 52 1 , note 9.
2 Tan $u, Ch. 221 B, p. 6 b. The Lian Su (Ch. 54, p. 14 b) attributes to Persia
coral-trees one or two feet high.
3 Ts'ien Han su, Ch. 96 A, p. 5. This passage (not Hou Han su, Ch. 1 18, as stated
by HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, p. 226, after Bretschneider) contains the earliest mention
of the word san-hu.
4 Habet enim, ut Zoroastres ait, materia haec quandam potestatem, ac propterea
quidquid inde sit, ducitur inter salutaria (n, 39, 42).
5 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 166.
6 According to BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, Vol. VI, p. 16), "it seems not
to be a Chinese name."
7 Cf . PATKANOV, The Precious Stones according to the Notions of the Armenians
(in Russian), p. 52.
8 Pazand padazahar (see HUBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 193). STEINGASS
gives also pdnzahr. The derivation from bad "wind" (H. FUHNER, Janus, Vol. VI,
I 9 OI P- 317) is not correct.
9 Lander des Islam, p. 45.
526 SlNO-lRANICA
by PELLiOT. 1 Pelliot, however, noticed well that what the Chinese
describe as p'o-so or mo-so IS c is not bezoar, and that the tran-
scription is anomalous. 2 This being the case, it is preferable to reject
the identification, and there are other weighty reasons prompting us
to do so. There is no Chinese account that tells us that Persia had
bezoars or traded bezoars to China. The Chinese were (and are) well
acquainted with the bezoar 3 (I gathered several in China myself), and
bezoars are easy to determine. Now, if p*o-so or mo-so were to repre-
sent Persian pdzahr and a Persian bezoar, the Chinese would not for
a moment fail to inform us that p'o-so is the Po-se niu-hwan or Persian
bezoar; but they say nothing to this effect. On the contrary, the texts
cited under this heading in the Pen ts'ao kan mu* do not make any
mention of Persia, but agree in pointing to the Malay Archipelago as
the provenience of the p'o-so stone. Ma Ci of the Sung assigns it to
the Southern Sea (Nan Hai). Li Si-Sen points to the Ken sin yil ts'e
J^J ^ 3 flfl", written about 1430, as saying that the stone comes from
San-fu-ts'i (Palembang on Sumatra). 5 F. DE MELY designates it only
as a "pierre d'epreuve," and refers to an identification with aventurine,
proposed by Remusat. 6 Bezoar is a calculus concretion found in the
stomachs of a number of mammals, and Oriental literatures abound in
stories regarding such stones extracted from animals. Not only do the
Chinese not say that the p'o-so stone is of animal origin, but, on the con-
trary, they state explicitly that it is of mineral origin. The Ken sin yu ts*e
relates how mariners passing by a certain mountain on Sumatra break
this stone with axes out of the rock, and that the stone when burnt
emits a sulphurous odor. Ma Ci describes this stone as being green
in color and without speckles; those with gold stars, and when rubbed
yielding a milky juice, are the best. All this does not fit the bezoar.
Also the description in the Pen ts'ao yen i 1 refers only to a stone of
mineral origin.
1 Toung Pao, 1912, p. 438.
2 The initial of the Persian word would require a labial surd in Chinese. Whether
the p'o-sa | of the Pei hu lu belongs here is doubtful to me; it is not explained
what this stone is. As admitted in the Pen ts'ao yen i (Ch. 4, p. 4 b), the form mo-so
is secondary.
3 It is first mentioned in the ancient work Pie lu, then in the Wu Si pen ts'ao
of the third century, and by T'ao Hun-kin.
4 Ch. 10, p. 10 b.
6 This text is cited in the same manner in the Tun si yan k'ao of 1618 (Ch. 3,
p. 10). Cf. F. DE MLY, Lapidaire chinois, p. 120.
6 Ibid., pp. LXIV, 260.
7 Ch. 4, p. 4 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan).
IRANIAN MINERALS BEZOAR 527
Even as early as the T'ang period, the term p'o-so merely denotes
a stone. It is mentioned in a colophon to the P*ih ts*uan $an ku ts*ao mu
fo^&tllS^/Ktfiby Li Te-yu 3 s IS IS (A.D. 787-849) as a curious
stone preserved in the P'o-so Pavilion south of the C'an-tien & K in
Ho-nan.
Yada or jada, as justly said by Pelliot, is a bezoar; but what at-
tracted the Chinese to this Turkish-Mongol word was not its char-
acter as a bezoar, but its role in magic as a rain-producing stone. Li
Si-cen l has devoted a separate article to it under the name fcfc ^ ca-ta,
and has recognized it as a kind of bezoar; in fact, it follows immediately
his article on the Chinese bezoar (nin-hwan) . 2
The Persian word was brought to China as late as the seventeenth
century by the Jesuits. Pantoja and Aleni, in their geography of the
world, entitled Cifan wai ki? and published in 1623, mention an animal
of Borneo resembling a sheep and a deer, called pa-tsa'r JC H Bl, 4 in
the abdomen of which grows a stone capable of curing all diseases, and
highly prized by the Westerners. The Chinese recognized that this was
a bezoar. 5 Bezoars are obtained on Borneo, but chiefly from a monkey
(Simia longumanis, Dayak buhi) and hedgehog. The Malayan name
for bezoar is gullga; and, as far as I know, the Persian word is not used
by the Malayans. 6 The Chinese Gazetteer of Macao mentions "an
animal like a sheep or goat, in whose belly is produced a stone capable
1 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 50 B, p. 15 b.
1 There is an extensive literature on the subject of the rain-stone. The earliest
Chinese source known to me, and not mentioned by Pelliot, is the K'ai yuan t'ien
pao i fi M j. 3? X ife 4( J* Wan Zen-yu 3 C IS of the T'ang (p. 20 b).
Cf. also the Sit K'ien su 0f Jfr |J, written by Can Cu jjjt $f in 1805 (Ch. 6, p. 8,
ed. of Yiie ya fan ts'un Su). The Yakut know this stone as sata (BOEHTLINGK, Jakut.
WCrterbuch, p. 153); Pallas gives a Kalmuk form sadan. See, further, W. W. ROCK-
HILL, Rubruck, p. 195; F. v. ERDMANN, Temudschin, p. 94; G. OPPERT, Presbyter
Johannes, p. 102; J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Qazwlnl, p. 19, and Der Islam, Vol. IV,
1913, pp. 26-30 (it is of especial interest that, according to the Persian mineralogical
treatise of Mohammed Ben Mansur, the rain-stone comes from mines on the frontier
of China, or is taken from the nest of a large water-bird, called surxab, on the frontier
of China; thus, after all, the Turks may have obtained their bezoars from China);
VAMBRY, Primitive Cultur, p. 249; POTANIN, Tangutsko-Tibetskaya Okraina
Kitaya, Vol. II, p. 352, where further literature is cited.
1 Ch. i, p. ii (see above, p. 433).
4 This form comes very near to the pajar of Barbosa in 1516.
8 Cf. the Lu can kun Si k'i (above, p. 346), p. 48.
6 Regarding the Malayan beliefs in bezoars, see, for instance, L. BOUCHAL in
Mitt. Anthr. Ges. Wien, 1900, pp. 179-180; BECCARI, Wanderings in the Great
Forests of Borneo, p. 327; KREEMER in Bijdr. taal- land- en volkenkunde, 1914,
p. 38; etc.
528 SlNO-lRANICA
of curing any disease, and called pa-tsa'r" (written as above); 1 cf.
Portuguese bazar y bazodr, bezoar.
On the other hand, bezoars became universal in the early middle
ages, and the Arabs also list bezoars from China and India. 2 From the
Persian word fddaj, explained as "a stone from China, bezoar," it
appears also that Chinese bezoars were traded to Persia. In Persia, as
is well known, bezoars are highly prized as remedies and talismans. 3
1 Ao-men li lio, Ch. B, p. 37.
2 J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 148.
8 C. ACOSTA (Tractado de las drogas, pp. 153-160, Burgos, 1578), E. KAEMPFER
(Amoenitates exoticae, pp. 402-403), GUIBOURT (Histoire naturelle des drogues
simples, Vol. IV, pp. 106 et seq.), and G. F. KUNZ (Magic of Jewels and Charms,
pp. 203-220) give a great deal of interesting information on the subject. See also
YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 90; E. WIEDEMANN, Zur Mineralogie im Islam, p. 228;
D. HOOPER, Journal As. Soc. Bengal, Vol. VI, 1910, p. 519.
TITLES OF THE SASANIAN GOVERNMENT
92. SI J? sa-pao, *saS(sar)-pav. Title of the official in charge of
the affairs of the Persian religion in Si-nan, an office dating back to the
time when temples of the celestial god of fire were erected there, about
A.D. 621. In an excellent article PELLIOT has assembled all texts relative
to this function. 1 I do not believe, however, that we are justified in
accepting Deveria's theory that the Chinese transcription should render
Syriac saba ("old man"). This plainly conflicts with the laws of tran-
scription so rigorously expounded and upheld by Pelliot himself: it is
necessary to account for the final dental or liquid in the character sa,
which regularly appears in the T'ang transcriptions. It would be
strange also if the Persians should have applied a Syriac word to a
sacred institution of their own. It is evident that the Chinese tran-
scription corresponds to a Middle-Persian form traceable to Old Persian
x$aOra-pavan (x$$pava, x$a$apdva), which resulted in Assyrian axSadar-
apan or axSadrapdn, Hebrew axaSdarfnim? Greek crarpctTnys (Armenian
Sahapand, Sanskrit k$atrapa). The Middle-Persian form from which the
Chinese transcription was very exactly made must have been *sa0-pav
or *xsa0-pav. The character sa renders also Middle and New Persian
sar ("head, chief"). 3
93. J5 Si ftl K'u-sa-ho, *Ku-sa5(r)-7wa, was the title. 3r* of the
kings of Parsa (Persia). 4 This transcription appears to be based on an
Iranian xtadva or xZarva, corresponding to Old Iranian *xsayavan-,
*xsaivan, Sogdian x$evan (" king ") . 5 It is notable that the initial spirant
x is plainly and aptly expressed in Chinese by the element k'u, G while
in the preceding transcription it is suppressed. The differentiation in
time may possibly account for this phenomenon: the transcription
sa-pao comes down from about A.D. 621; while K'u-sa-ho, being con-
1 Le Sa-pao, Bull, de I'Ecole fran$ aise, Vol. Ill, pp. 665-671.
z H. POGNON, Journal asiatique, 1917, I, p. 395.
3 R. GAUTHIOT, Journal asiatique, 1911, II, p. 60.
4 Sui $u, Ch. 83, p. 7 b.
5 R. GAUTHIOT, Essa", sur le vocalisme du sogdien, p. 97. See also the note of
ANDREAS in A. Christens ^n, L'Empire des Sassanides, p. 113. I am unable to see
how the Chinese transcription could correspond to the name Khosrou, as proposed
by several scholars (CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux, p. 171;
and HIRTH, Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXIII, 1913, p. 197).
6 In the Manichasan transcriptions it is expressed by P$ *xu (hu) ; see CHA-
VANNES and PELLIOT, Traite" maniche"en, p. 25.
529
53 SlNO-lRANICA
tained in the Sui Annals, belongs to the latter part of the sixth century.
According to SALEMANN, 1 Iranian initial xS- develops into Middle-
Persian ; solely the most ancient Armenian loan-words show aSx- for
x$-, otherwise appears regularly save that $x takes the place of inter-
vocalic xL z In view of our Sino-Iranian form, this rule should perhaps
be reconsidered, but this must remain for the discussion of Iranian
scholars.
94. i 5? $a-ye, *sat(sa5)-ya. Title of the sons of the king of
Persia (Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 6; T*ai fin hwan yu ki, Ch. 185, p. 17).
It corresponds to Avestan xSaBrya ("lord, ruler"). 3 The princes of
the Sasanian empire were styled sa0ra5aran. 4 According to Sasanian
custom, the sons of kings ruled provinces as "kings." 5 Regarding $c
in transcriptions of Iranian names, cf. the name of the river Yaxartes
H$t (Sui hi, Ch. 83, p. 4 b) Yao-sa, that is *Yak-s"a5(sar). As the
Middle-Persian name is Xsart or Asart (Pazend Asard), 6 we are bound
to assume that the prototype of the Chinese transcription was *Axart
or *Yaxart.
95. H p lt i-tsan, but, as thefan-ts'ie of the last character is indicated
by ^ 9J, the proper reading is i-ts'at, *i-dza5, i-dza5, designation of the
king of Parsa ( A $ or II V Pg: Wei ht, Ch. 102, p. 6; Tai
fin hwan yu ki, Ch. 185, p. 17). The Chinese name apparently repre-
sents a transcription of IxseS, the Ixsidh of al-Beruni, title of the
kings of Sogd and Fergana, a dialectic form of Old Persian xSdyaBiya. 7
IxseS is the Avestan x$aeta ("brilliant"), a later form being Sedah.
It must be borne in mind that Sogdian was the lingua franca and
international language of Central Asia, and even the vehicle of civiliza-
1 Grundriss der iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. I, p. 262.
s Cf. also GAUTHIOT, op. cit., p. 54, 61.
3 K. Hori's identification with New Persian $ah (Spiegel Memorial Volume,
p. 248) must be rejected. The time of the Wei $u plainly refers to Sasanian Persia;
that is, to the Middle-Persian language.
4 A. CHRISTENSEN, op. cit., p. 20. Cf. Old Persian xsc,m, xsa$am ("royalty,
kingdom"), Avestan xSadrem, Sanskrit ksatram (A. MEILLET, Grammaire du vieux
perse, p. 143); xsadrya corresponds to Sanskrit kfatriya.
6 N&LDEKE, Tabari, p. 49; Grundriss, Vol. II, p. 171. I think that H. POGNON
(Journal asiatique, 1917, I, p. 397) is right in assuming that "satrap" was a purely
honorific title granted by the king not only to the governors of the provinces, but
also to many high functionaries.
6 WEST, Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 80.
7 See SACHAU, Chronology of Ancient Nations, p. 109; F. JUSTI, Iranisches
Namenbuch, p. 141; A. MEILLET, Grammaire du vieux perse, pp. 77, 167 (xsayaBiya
parsaiy, "king in Persia"); F. W. K. MULLER, Ein Doppelblatt aus einem mani-
chaischen Hymnenbuch, p. 31.
TITLES or THE SASANIAN GOVERNMENT 531
tion. 1 The suggestion offered by K. HoRi, 2 that the Chinese transcrip-
tion should represent the Persian word izad ("god"), is not acceptable:
first, New Persian cannot come into question, but only Middle Persian;
second, it is not proved that izad was ever a title of the kings of Persia.
On the contrary, as stated by NoLDEKE, 3 the Sasanians applied to them-
selves the word bag ("god"), but not yazdan, which was the proper word
for "god" even at that time.
96. W$?^ fan-pu-$wai, *pwan-bu-zwi5, designation of the queen
of Parsa (Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 6; T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 185, p. 17).
The foundation of this transcription is presented by Middle Persian
bdnbufn, bdnbiSn (Armenian bambiSn), "consort of the king of Persia." 4
The Iranian prototype of the Chinese transcription seems to have been
*banbuzwi5. The latter element may bear some relation to Sogdian
wdbu or wydySth ("consort"). 5
97. 81 $1 }J[ mo-hu-t*an, *mak-ku(mag-gu)-dan. Officials of
Persia in charge of the judicial department ^ ft ^ f& (Wei lu,
Ch. 102, p. 6). K. HoRi 6 has overlooked the fact that the element
fan forms part of the transcription, and has simply equalized mo-hu with
Avestan moyu. The transcription *mak-ku (mag-gu) is obviously found-
ed on Middle Persian magu, and therefore is perfectly exact. The later
transcription 8 H *muk-gu (mu-hu) is based on New Persian muy,
moy. 7 The ending dan reminds one of such formations as herbeddn
("judge") and mobeddn mobed ("chief of the Magi"), the latter being
Old Persian magupati, Armenian mogpet, Pahlavi maupat, New Persian
mubid (which, according to the Persian Dictionary of Steingass, means
also "one who administers justice, judge"). Above all, compare the
Armenian loan-word movpetan (also movpet, mogpet, mog). s Hence it
1 R. GAUTHIOT, Essai sur le vocalisme du sogdien, p. x; P. PELLIOT, Les in-
fluences iraniennes en Asie centrale et en Extreme-Orient, p. II.
2 Spiegel Memorial Volume, p. 248.
3 Tabari, p. 452.
4 HuBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 116. In his opinion, the form bdnbuSn,
judging from the Armenian, is wrong; but its authenticity is fully confirmed by the
Chinese transcription.
5 R. GAUTHIOT, Essai sur le vocalisme du sogdien, pp. 59, 112. The three afore-
mentioned titles had already been indicated by ABEL-RMUSAT (Nouvelles melanges
asiatiques, Vol. I, p. 249) after Ma Twan-lin, but partially in wrong transcription:
"Le roi a le titre de Yi-thso; la reine, celui de Tchi-sou, et les fils du roi, celui de
Cha-ye."
6 Spiegel Memorial Volume, p. 248.
7 CHAVANNES and PELLIOT, Traite" maniche"en, p. 170. Accordingly this example
cannot be invoked as proving that muk might transcribe also mak, as formerly
assumed by PELLIOT (Butt, de VEcole franqaise, Vol. IV, p. 312).
8 HORN, Neupersische Etymologic, No. 984; and HUBSCHMANN, Persische
Studien, p. 123.
532 SlNO-lRANICA
may justly be inferred that there was a Middle-Persian form *ma-
gutan or *magudan, from which the Chinese transcription was exactly
made.
98. JE ^ ff ni-hu-han, *ni-hwut-7an. Officials of Persia who have
charge of the Treasury (Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 6). The word, in fact, is a
family-name or title written by the Greek authors Naxopayav, Naxoepyav,
'Zapvaxopyavr]* (prefixed by the word sar, "head, upper"). Firdausl
mentions repeatedly under the reign of Khosrau II a Naxwara, and
the treasurer of this king is styled "son of Naxwara." 1 The treasury
is named for him al-Naxirajan. The Chinese transcription is made
after the Pahlavi model *Nixur7an or Nexur7an; and, indeed, the
form Nixorakan is also found. 2
99. *& $ ^] ti-pei-p'o, *di-pi-bwi$(bir, wir). Officials of Persia
who have charge of official documents and all affairs (Cou lu, Ch. 50,
p. 5b). In the parallel passage of the Wei $u (Ch. 102, p. 6), the second
character is misprinted > tsao* *tsaw; *di-tsaw would not correspond
to any Iranian word. From the definition of the term it becomes
obvious that the above transcription *di-pi answers to dipi ("writing,
inscription"), 4 Middle Persian dijfir or dapir, New Persian dibUr or dabir
(Armenian dpir)', and that *di-pi-bwi5 corresponds to Middle Persian
dipivar, from *dipi-bara, the suffix -var (anciently bar a) meaning "carry-
ing, bearing." 5 The forms dipir and diblr are contractions from dipivar.
This word, as follows from the definition, appears to have comprised
also what was understood by devdn t the administrative chanceries of
the Sasr ,nian empire.
100. JH It M & no-lo-ho-ti, *at(ar)-la-ha-di. Officials of Persia
who superintended the inner affairs of the king (or the affairs of the
royal household Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 6). Theophylactus Simocatta 6
gives the following information on the hereditary functions among
the seven high families in the Sasanian empire: "The family called
Artabides possesses the royal dignity, and has also the office of placing
1 NOLDEKE, Tabari, pp. 152-153, 439.
2 JUSTI, Iran. Namenbuch, p. 219. In Naxuraqan or Na%Irajan q and j represent
Pahlavi g. The reconstructions attempted by MODI (Spiegel Memorial Volume,
p. nx) of this and other Sino-Iranian words on the basis of the modern Chinese
pronunciation do not call for any discussion.
3 This misprint is not peculiar to the modern editions, but occurs in an edition
of this work printed in 1596, so that in all probability it was extant in the original
issue. It is easy to see how the two characters were confounded.
4 In the Old-Persian inscriptions, where it occurs in the accusative form dipim
and in the locative dipiya (A. MEILLET, Grammaire du vieux perse, pp. 147, 183).
6 C. SALEMAN, Grundriss iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. i, pp. 272, 282.
8 m, 8.
TITLES OF THE SASANIAN GOVERNMENT 533
the crown on the king's head. Another family presides over military
affairs, another superintends civil affairs, another settles the litigations
of those who have a dispute and desire an arbiter. The fifth family com-
mands the cavalry, the sixth collects the taxes and supervises the
royal treasures, and the seventh takes care of armament and military
equipment." Artabides ('Apra^ldrjs), as observed by NOLDEKE,* should
be read Argabides ('Apyafildrjs), the equivalent of ArgabeS. There
is also a form apyaTre-nys in correspondence with Pahlavi arkpat. This
title originally designated the commandant of a castle (arg, "citadel"),
and subsequently a very high military rank. 2 In later Hebrew we find
this title in the forms alkafta, arkafta, or arkabta* The above tran-
scription is apparently based on the form *Argade ('Apyadrj) = Argabe5.
1 01. l $& ^8 sie-po-p'o, *sit-pwa-bwi5. Officials of Persia in
charge of the army (infantry and cavalry, pai7an and aswaran), of the
four quarters, the four patkos (pat, "province"; kos, "guarding")
^ ^^^: Wei $u, Ch. 102, p. 6. The Cou $u (Ch. 50, p. 5^)
has II *sat, sar, in the place of the first character. The word corresponds
to Middle Persian spdhbed ("general"); Pahlavi pat, New Persian -bad,
-bud ("master"). EranspahbeS was the title of the generalissimo of
the army of the Sasanian empire up to the time of Khusrau I. The
Pahlavi form is given as spahpat;* the Chinese transcription, however,
corresponds better to New Persian sipahbad, so that also a Middle-
Persian form *spahba5 (-bed or -bud) may be inferred.
102. 3L & 31 nu-se-ta, *u-se-da5, used in the Chinese inscription dated 1489
of the Jews of K'ai-fon fu in Ho-nan, in connection with the preceding name ^0 i$(
Lie-wei (Levi). 5 As justly recognized by G. DEVRIA, this transcription represents
Persian ustad,{ which means "teacher, master." 6 The Persian Jews availed them-
selves of this term for the rendering of the Hebrew title Rab (Rabbi), although
in Persian the name follows the title. The Chinese Jews simply adopted the Chinese
mode of expression, in which the family-name precedes the title, Ustad Lie-wei
meaning as much as "Rabbi Levi." The transcription itself appears to be of much
older date than the Ming, and was doubtless recorded at a time when the final
consonant of ta was still articulated. In a former article I have shown from the
data of the Jewish inscriptions that the Chinese Jews emigrated from Persia and
appeared in China not earlier than in the era of the Sung. This historical proof is
signally confirmed by a piece of linguistic evidence. In the Annals of the Yuan
Dynasty (Yuan Si, Ch. 33, p. 7 b; 43, p. n b) the Jews are styled Su-hu (Ju-hud)
1 Tabari, p. 5.
2 CHRISTENSEN, op. tit., p. 27; NOLDEKE, op. cit., p. 437; HUBSCHMANN, Per-
sische Studien, pp. 239, 240.
3 M. JASTROW, Dictionary of the Targumim, p. 73.
4 HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 240.
6 J. TOBAR, Inscriptions juives de K'ai-fong-fou, p. 44.
6 Regarding this word, see chiefly H. HUBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 14.
534 SlNO-lRANICA
jffl ^ or Cu-wu ^ 7C- This form can have been transcribed only on the basis of
New Persian JuhuS or JahuS with initial palatal sonant. As is well known, the
change of initial y into j is peculiar to New Persian. 1 In Pahlavi we have Yah at,
as in Hebrew Yehudl and in Arabic Yahud. A Middle-Persian Yahut would have
been very easy for the Chinese to transcribe. The very form of their transcription
shows, however, that it was modelled on the New-Persian type, and that it cannot
be much older than the tenth century or the age of the Sung.
1 Cf. HORN, Grundr. iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 73.
IRANO-SINICA
After dealing with the cultural elements derived by the Chinese
from the Iranians, it will be only just to look also at the reverse of the
medal and consider what the Iranians owe to the Chinese.
i. Some products of China had reached Iranian peoples long before
any Chinese set their foot on Iranian soil. When Can K'ien in 128 B.C.
reached Ta-hia (Bactria), he was amazed to see there staves or walking-
sticks made from bamboo of Kiufi flS 1t ^t 1 and cloth of Su (Se-S'wan)
18 3ft. What this textile exactly was is not known. 2 Both these articles
hailed from what is now Se-S'wan, Kiufi being situated in Zun cou IS $H
in the prefecture of Kia-tin, in the southern part of the province. When
the Chinese envoy inquired from the people of Ta-hia how they had
obtained these objects of his own country, they replied that they pur-
chased them in India. Hence Can K'ien concluded that India could
not be so far distant from Se-'wan. It is well known how this new
geographical notion subsequently led the Chinese to the discovery of
Yun-nan. There was accordingly an ancient trade-route running from
Se-5'wan through Yun-nan into north-eastern India; and, as India on
her north-west frontier was in connection with Iranian territory, Chinese
merchandise could thus reach Iran. The bamboo of Kiufi, also called
Sr, has been identified by the Chinese with the so-called square bamboo
(Bambusa or Phyllostachys quadrangularis) . 3 The cylindrical form is so
universal a feature in bamboo, that the report of the existence in China
and Japan of a bamboo with four-angled stems was first considered in
Europe a myth, or a pathological abnormity. It is now well assured
that it represents a regular and normal species, which grows wild in
the north-eastern portion of Yun-nan, and is cultivated chiefly as an
ornament in gardens and in temple-courts, the longer stems being used
1 He certainly did not see "a stick of bamboo," as understood by HIRTH (Journal
Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, 1917, p. 98), but it was a finished product imported
in a larger quantity.
- Assuredly it was not silk, as arbitrarily inferred by P. v. RICHTHOFEN (China,
Vol. I, p. 465). The word pu never refers to silk materials.
3 For an interesting article on this subject, see D. J. MACGOWAN, Chinese Record-
er, Vol. XVI, 1885, pp. 141-142; further, the same journal, 1886, pp. 140-141. E.
SATOW, Cultivation of Bamboos in Japan, p. 92 (Tokyo, 1899). The square bamboo
(Japanese sikaku-dake) is said to have been introduced into Japan from Liukiu.
FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXXVI, p. 443.
535
S3 6 SlNO-lRANICA
for staves, the smaller ones for tobacco-pipes. The shoots of this species
are prized above all other bamboo-shoots as an esculent.
The Pel hu lu l has the following notice on staves of the square
bamboo: "C'en cou $1 (in Kwan-si) produces the square bamboo.
Its trunk is as sharp as a knife, and is very strong. It can be made into
staves which will never break. These are the staves from the bamboo
of ICiun r, mentioned by Can K'ien. Such are produced also in Yuri
Sou & W, 2 the largest of these reaching several tens of feet in height.
According to the Cen $en tsi JE ^ 3ft, there are in the southern ter-
ritory square bamboo staves on which the white cicadas chirp, and
which C'en Cen-tsie K M 15 has extolled. Moreover, Hai-yen M H 3
produces rushes (lu JH, Phragmites communis) capable of being made
into staves for support. P'an 6ou M #I 4 produces thousand-years ferns
T ^ W, and walking-sticks which are small and resemble the palmyra
palm J| & (Borassus tftabelliformis') . There is, further, the su-tsie
bamboo J$ IB 1t, from which staves are abundantly made for the
Buddhist and Taoist clergy, all singular objects. According to the
Hui tsui if ft, the Vuh M bamboo from the Cen River K JI| is straight,
without knots in its upper parts, and hollow."
The Ko ku yao lun 5 states that the square bamboo is produced in
western Se-S'wan, and also grows on the mountain Fei-lai-fun 3$ ^ ^
on the West Lake in Ce-kian; the knots of this bamboo are prickly,
hence it is styled in Se-6'wan tse lu M 1t ("prickly bamboo").
According to the Min siao ki P3 /h IS, 6 written by Cou Liafi-kun
M J X in the latter part of the seventeenth century, square bamboo
and staves made from it are produced in the district of Yuri-tin ^C 3t
in the prefecture of T'in-c'ou and in the district of T'ai-niii ^ ^ in the
prefecture of Sao-wu, both in Fu-kien Province. 7
1 Ch. 3, p. 10 b (ed. of Lu Sin-yuan) ; see above, p. 268.
2 In the prefecture of Liu-ou, Kwan-si.
3 Explained in the commentary as the name of a locality, but its situation is
not indicated and is unknown to me.
4 The present Mou-min hi en, forming the pref ectural city of Kao-Sou f u, Kwan-tun.
6 Ch. 8, p. 9 (ed. of Si yin hilan ts'un Su).
6 Ed. of $wo lin, p. 17.
7 The San hai kin mentions the "narrow bamboo (hia lu ffi 1^) growing in
abundance on the Tortoise Mountain"; and Kwo P'o (A.D. 276-324), in his com-
mentary to this work, identifies with it the bamboo of Kiun. According to the
Kwan ci, the Kiun bamboo occurred in the districts of Nan-kwan [ff He (at present
Nan-k'i ffif j(f|) and Kiun-tu in Se-5'wan. The Memoirs of Mount Lo-fou (Lo-fou
San ki) in Kwan-tun state that the Kiun bamboo was originally produced on Mount
Kiun, being identical with that noticed by Can K'ien in Ta-hia, and that village-
elders use it as a staff. A treatise on bamboo therefore calls it the "bamboo support-
ing the old " ^ ^ Yf - These texts are cited in the T'ai p*in yu Ian (Ch. 963, p. 3).
IRANO-SINICA THE SQUARE BAMBOO, SILK 537
It is said to occur also in the prefecture of Ten-Sou ^ #1, San-tun
Province, where it is likewise made into walking-sticks. 1 The latter
being much in demand by Buddhist monks, the bamboo has received
the epithet "Lo-han bamboo" (bamboo of the Arhat). 2
It is perfectly manifest that what was exported from Se-c'wan by
way of Yun-nan into India, and thence forwarded to Bactria, was the
square bamboo in the form of walking-canes. India is immensely rich
in bamboos; and only a peculiar variety, which did not exist in India,
could have compensated for the trouble and cost which this long and
wearisome trade-route must have caused in those days. For years, I
must confess, it has been a source of wonder to me why Se-c'wan bamboo
should have been carried as far as Bactria, until I encountered the text
of the Pei hn IM, which gives a satisfactory solution of the problem. 3
2. The most important article by which the Chinese became
famously known in ancient times, of course, was silk. This subject is so
extensive, and has so frequently been treated in special monographs,
that it does not require recapitulation in this place. I shall only recall
the fact that the Chinese silk materials, after traversing Central Asia,
reached the Iranian Parthians, who acted as mediators in this trade
with the anterior Orient. 4 It is assumed that the introduction of seri-
culture into Persia, especially into Gilan, where it still flourishes, falls
in the latter part of the Sasanian epoch. It is very probable that the
acquaintance of the Khotanese with the rearing of silkworms, introduced
by a Chinese princess in A.D. 419, gave the impetus to a further growth
of this new industry in a western direction, gradually spreading to
Yarkand, Fergana, and Persia. 5 Chinese brocade (diba-i cm) is fre-
quently mentioned by Firdaus! as playing a prominent part in Persian
decorations. 6 He also speaks of a very fine and decorated Chinese silk
under the name parniydn, corresponding to Middle Persian parnlkan. 1
Iranian has a peculiar word for "silk," not yet satisfactorily explained:
Pahlavi *apresum, *aparesum; New Persian abreSum, abreSam (Arme-
1 San tun t*uh ci, Ch. 9, p. 6.
2 See K'ien su Jj^ ^jf , Ch. 4, p. 7 b (in Yue ya fan ts'un Su, t*ao 24) and Su K'ien
su, Ch. 7, p. 2 b (ibid.). Cf. also u p*u sian lu ft |g j^ f, written by Li K'an
:$: ffj in 1299 (Ch. 4, p. i b; ed. of Ci pu tsu cai ts'un su).
3 The speculations of J. MARQUART (Eransahr, pp. 319-320) in regard to this
bamboo necessarily fall to the ground. There is no misunderstanding on the part
of Can K'ien, and the account of the Si ki is perfectly correct and clear.
4 HIRTH, Chinesische Studien, p. 10.
5 SPIEGEL, Eranische Altertumskunde, Vol. I, p. 256.
6 J. J. MODI, Asiatic Papers, p. 254 (Bombay, 1905).
7 HUBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 242.
538 SlNO-lRANICA
nian, loan-word from Persian, apribtm); hence Arabic ibarisam or
ibrisam; Pamir dialects war sum, warsiim, Sugni wre%om, etc.; Afghan
wresam. 1 Certain it is that we have here a type not related to any
Chinese word for "silk." In this connection I wish to register my utter
disbelief in the traditional opinion, inaugurated by KLAPROTH, that
Greek ser (" silk- worm "; hence Seres, Serica) should be connected with
Mongol sirgek and Manchu sirge ("silk"), the latter with Chinese se
M. 2 My reasons for rejecting this theory may be stated as briefly as
possible. I do not see how a Greek word can be explained from Mongol
or Manchu, languages which we merely know in their most recent
forms, Mongol from the thirteenth and Manchu from the sixteenth
century. Neither the Greek nor the Mongol-Manchu word can be
correlated with Chinese se. The latter was never provided with a final
consonant. Klaproth resorted to the hypothesis that in ancient dialects
of China along the borders of the empire a final r might (peut-ttre) have
existed. This, however, was assuredly not the case. We know that the
termination V JS, so frequently associated with nouns in Pekingese, is
of comparatively recent origin, and not older than the Yuan period
(thirteenth century) ; the beginnings of this usage may go back to the
end of the twelfth or even to the ninth century. 3 At any rate, it did not
exist in ancient times when the Greek ser came into being. Moreover,
this suffix 'r is not used arbitrarily: it joins certain words, while others
take the suffix tse -?, and others again do not allow any suffix. The
word se, however, has never been amalgamated with 'r. In all probabil-
ity, its ancient phonetic value was *si, sa. It is thus phonetically im-
possible to derive from it the Mongol-Manchu word or Korean sir,
added by Abel-Remusat. I do not deny that this series may have its
root in a Chinese word, but its parentage cannot be traced to se. I do
1 HUBSCHMANN, Arm. Gram., p. 107; HORN, Neupers. Etymologic, No. 65.
The derivation from Sanskrit k$auma is surely wrong. Bulgar ibrisim, Rumanian
ibriSin, are likewise connected with the Iranian series.
2 Cf. KLAPROTH, Conjecture sur 1'origine du nom de la soie chez les anciens
(Journal asiatique, Vol. I, 1822, pp. 243-245, with additions by ABEL-REMUSAT,
245-247); Asia polyglotta, p. 341; and Me"moires relatifs a 1'Asie, Vol. Ill, p. 264.
Klaproth's opinion has been generally, but thoughtlessly, accepted (HIRTH, op.
tit., p. 217; F. v. RICHTHOFEN, China, Vol. I, p. 443; SCHRADER, Reallexikon, p. 757).
PELLIOT (T'oung Pao, 1912, p. 741), I believe, was the first to point out that Chinese
se was never possessed of a final consonant.
3 See my note in T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 77; and H. MASPERO, Sur quelques textes
anciens de chinois parle", p. 12. Maspero encountered the word mao'r (" cat ") in a text
of the ninth century. It hardly makes any great difference whether we conceive V
as a diminutive or as a suffix. Originally it may have had the force of a diminutive,
and have gradually developed into a pure suffix. Cf. also P. SCHMIDT, K istorii
kitaiskago razgovornago yazyka, in Sbornik stat'ei professorov, p. 19 (Vladivostok,
1917).
I RANO-SiNiCA SILK, PEACH AND APRICOT 539
not believe, either, that Russian folk ("silk"), as is usually stated (even
by Dal'), is derived from Mongol sirgek: first of all, the alleged phonetic
coincidence is conspicuous by its absence; and, secondly, an ancient
Russian word cannot be directly associated with Mongol; it would be
necessary to trace the same or a similar word in Turkish, but there it
does not exist; "silk" in Turkish is ipak, torgu, torka, etc. It is more
probable that the Russian word (Old Slavic selk, Lithuanian $snlkc&),
in the same manner as our silk, is traceable to sericum. There is no
reason to assume that the Greek words ser, Sera, Seres, etc., have
their origin in Chinese. This series was first propagated by
Iranians, and, in my opinion, is of Iranian origin (cf. New Persian
sarah, "silk"; hence Arabic sarak).
Persian kimxaw or kamxab, kamxa, kimxd (Arabic kimxaw, Hin-
dustani kamxab), designating a "gold brocade," as I formerly ex-
plained, 1 may be derived from Chinese IS ffi kin-hwa, *kim-xwa.
3-4. Of fruits, the West is chiefly indebted to China for the peach
(Amygdalus persica) and the apricot (Prunus armeniaca). It is not
impossible that these two gifts were transmitted by the silk-dealers,
first to Iran (in the second or first century B.C.), and thence to Armenia,
Greece, and Rome (in the first century A.D. ) . In Rome the two trees appear
as late as the first century of the Imperium, being mentioned as Persica
and Armeniaca arbor by Pliny 2 and Columella. Neither tree is men-
tioned by Theophrastus, which is to say that they were not noted
in Asia by the staff of Alexander's expedition. 3 DE CANDOLLE has ably
pleaded for China as the home of the peach and apricot, and ENGLER 4
holds the same opinion. The zone of the wild apricot may well extend
from Russian Turkistan to Sungaria, south-eastern Mongolia, and the
Himalaya; but the historical fact remains that the Chinese have been -p^
the first to cultivate this fruit from ancient times. Previous authors
have justly connected the westward migration of peach and apricot
with the lively intercourse of China and western Asia following Can
K'ien's mission. 5 Persian has only descriptive names for these fruits,
the peach being termed saft-alu ("large plum"), the apricot zard-dlu
1 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 477; YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 484.
2 xv, n, 13.
3 DE CANDOLLE (Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 222) is mistaken in crediting
Theophrastus with the knowledge of the peach. JORET (Plantes dans 1'antiquite",
p. 79) has already pointed out this error, and it is here restated for the benefit of
those botanists who still depend on de Candolle's book.
4 In Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 433.
5 JORET, op. cit., p. 81; SCHRADER in Hehn, p. 434.
540 SlNO-lRANICA
("yellow plum"). 1 Both fruits are referred to in Pahlavi literature
(above, pp. 192, 193).
As to the transplantation of the Chinese peach into India, we have
an interesting bit of information in the memoirs of the Chinese pilgrim
Htian Tsafi. 2 At the time of the great Indo-Scythian king Kaniska,
whose fame spread all over the neighboring countries, the tribes west of
the Yellow River (Ho-si in Kan-su) dreaded his power, and sent hostages
to him. Kaniska treated them with marked attention, and assigned to
them special mansions and guards of honor. The country where the
hostages resided in the winter received the name Cmabhukti ("China
allotment," in the eastern Panjab). In this kingdom and throughout
India there existed neither pear nor peach. These were planted by the
hostages. The peach therefore was called cmanl ("Chinese fruit");
and the pear, cmarajaputra ("crown-prince of China"). These names
are still prevalent. 3 Although Hiian Tsafi recorded in A.D. 630 an oral
tradition overheard by him in India, and relative to a time lying back
over half a millennium, his well-tested trustworthiness cannot be
doubted in this case: the story thus existed in India, and may indeed
be traceable to an event that took place under the reign of Kaniska,
the exact date of which is still controversial. 4 There are mainly two rea-
sons which prompt me to accept Huan Tsafi's account. From a botani-
cal point of view, the peach is not a native of India. It occurs there only
1 In the Pamir languages we meet a common name for the apricot, Minjan
eri, WaxI ciwan or loan (but Sariqoll no$, Signi na&). The same type occurs in the
Dardu languages (jui or ji for the tree, jarote or jorote for the fruit, and juru for
the ripe fruit) and in Kacmlii (tser, tser-kul) ; further, in West-Tibetan cu-li or co-li,
Balti su-ri, Kanaurl lul (other Tibetan words for "apricot "are k'am-bu, a-u, and
Sa-rag, the last-named being dried apricots with little pulp and almost as hard as
a stone). KLAPROTH (Journal asiatique, Vol. II, 1823, p. 159) has recorded in Bu-
khara a word for the apricot in the form iserduli. It is not easy to determine how this
type has migrated. TOMASCHEK (Pamir-Dialekte, p. 791) is inclined to think that
originally it might have been Tibetan, as Baltistan furnishes the best apricots.
For my part, I have derived the Tibetan from the Pamir languages (T'oung Pao,
1916, p. 82). The word is decidedly not Tibetan; and as to its origin, I should
hesitate only between the Pamir and Dardu languages.
2 Ta Tan Si yil ki t Ch. 4, p. 5.
8 There are a few other Indian names of products formed with "China":
cinapitfa ("minium"), cinaka ("Panicum miliaceum, fennel, a kind of camphor"),
cinakarpura ("a kind of camphor"), cinavanga ("lead").
4 Cf. V. A. SMITH, Early History of India, 3d ed., p. 263 (I do not believe with
Smith that "the territory of the ruler to whose family the hostages belonged seems
to have been not very distant from Kashgar"; the Chinese term Ho-si, at the time
of the Han, comprised the present province of Kan-su from Lan-c"ou to An-si);
T. WAITERS, On Yuan Chwang's Travels, Vol. I, pp. 292-293 (his comments on
the story of the peach miss the mark, and his notes on the name Clna are erroneous;
see also PELLIOT, Bull, de VEcolefranQaise, Vol. V, p. 457).
IRANO-SINICA PEACH, CINNAMON 541
in a cultivated state, and does not even succeed well, the fruit being
mediocre and acid. 1 There is no ancient Sanskrit name for the tree; nor
does it play any rdle in the folk-lore of India, as it does in China. Fur-
ther, as regards the time of the introduction, whether the reign of
Kaniska be placed in the first century before or after our era, it is
singularly synchronous with the transplantation of the tree into western
Asia.
5. As indicated by the Persian name ddr-cml or dar-cm ("Chinese
wood" or "bark"; Arabic ddr sml), cinnamon was obtained by the c<^
Persians and Arabs from China. 2 Ibn Khordadzbeh, who wrote between
A.D. 844 and 848, is the first Arabic author who enumerates cinnamon
among the products exported from China. 3 The Chinese export cannot
have assumed large dimensions: it is not alluded to in Chinese records,
Cao Zu-kwa is reticent about it. 4 Ceylon was always the main seat of ^Tj
cinnamon production, and the tree (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) is a native
of the Ceylon forests. 5 The bark of this tree is also called dar-cmi. It
is well known that cassia and cinnamon are mentioned by classical
authors, and have given rise to many sensational speculations as to the
origin of the cinnamon of the ancients. Herodotus 6 places cinnamon in
Arabia, and tells a wondrous story as to how it is gathered. Theo-
phrastus 7 seeks the home of cassia and cinnamomum, together with
frankincense and myrrh, in the Arabian peninsula about Saba, Had-
ramyt, Kitibaina, and Mamali. Strabo 8 locates it in the land of the
Sabaeans, in Arabia, also in Ethiopia and southern India; finally he has
a "cinnamon-bearing country" at the end of the habitable countries
of the south, on the shore of the Indian ocean. 9 Pliny 10 has cinnamomum
or cinnamum grow in the country of the Ethiopians, and it is carried
over sea on rafts by the Troglodytae.
1 C. JORET, Plantes dans l'antiquit<, Vol. II, p. 281.
2 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, pp. 68, 272. The loan-word daricenik
in Armenian proves that the word was known in Middle Persian (*dar-i c"enik) ; cf .
HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 137.
8 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a l f Extreme-Orient, p. 31.
4 SCHOFF (Periplus, p. 83) asserts that between the third and sixth centuries
there was an active sea-trade in this article in Chinese ships from China to Persia.
No reference is given. I wonder from what source this is derived.
5 DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 146; WATT, Commercial Prod-
ucts of India, p. 313.
8 in, 107, in.
7 Hist, plant., IX. iv, 2.
3 XV. iv, 19; XVI. iv, 25; XV. I, 22.
9 1. iv, 2.
10 xii, 42.
542 SlNO-lRANICA
The descriptions given of cinnamon and cassia by Theophrastus 1
show that the ancients did not exactly agree on the identity of these
plants, and Theophrastus himself speaks from hearsay ("In regard to
cinnamon and cassia they say the following: both are shrubs, it is said,
and not of large size. . . . Such is the account given by some. Others
say that cinnamon is shrubby or rather like an under-brush, and that
there are two kinds, one black, the other white"). The difference be-
tween cinnamon and cassia seems to have been that the latter possessed
stouter branches, was very fibrous, and difficult to strip off the bark.
This bark was used; it was bitter, and had a pungent odor. 2
Certain it is that the two words are of Semitic origin. 3 The fact that
there is no cinnamon in Arabia and Ethiopia was already known to
GARCIA DA ORTA. 4 An unfortunate attempt has been made to trace
the cinnamon of the ancients to the Chinese. 5 This theory has thus
been formulated by Muss-ARNOLx: 6 "This spice was imported by
Phoenician merchants from Egypt, where it is called khisi-t. The
Egyptians, again, brought it from the land of Punt, to which it was
imported from Japan, where we have it under the form kei-chi ('branch
of the cinnamon-tree'), or better kei-shin ('heart of the cinnamon')
[read sin, *sim]. The Japanese itself is again borrowed from the Chinese
kei-& [?]. The -t in the Egyptian represents the feminine suffix." As
may be seen from O. SCHRADER, ? this strange hypothesis was first put
forward in 1883 by C. SCHUMANN. Schrader himself feels somewhat
sceptic about it, and regards the appearance of Chinese merchandise on
the markets of Egypt at such an early date as hardly probable. From a
sinological viewpoint, this speculation must be wholly rejected, both
in its linguistic and its historical bearings. Japan was not in existence
in 1500 B.C., when cinnamon-wood of the country Punt is spoken of in
the Egyptian inscriptions; and China was then a small agrarian inland
community restricted to the northern part of the present empire, and
1 Hist, plant., IX. v, 1-3.
2 Theophrastus, IX. v, 3.
3 Greek /ccurJa is derived from Hebrew qesi'a, perhaps related to Assyrian kasu,
kasiya (POGNON, Journal asiatique, 1917, I, p. 400). Greek kinnamomon is traced
to Hebrew qinnamon (Exodus, xxx, 23).
4 MARKHAM, Colloquies, pp. 119-120.
6 Thus also FLUCKIGER and HANBURY (Pharmacographia, p. 520), whose
argumentation is not sound, as it lacks all sense of chronology. The Persian term
dar-clnl, for instance, is strictly of mediaeval origin, and cannot be invoked as evidence
for the supposition that cinnamon was exported from China many centuries before
Christ.
6 Transactions Am. Phil. Assoc., Vol. XXIII, 1892, p. 115.
7 Reallexikon, p. 989.
IRANO-SINICA CINNAMON 543
not acquainted with any Cassia trees of the south. Certainly there was
no Chinese navigation and sea-trade at that time. The Chinese word
kwei ft (*kwai, kwi) occurs at an early date, but it is a generic term for
Lauraceae; and there are about thirteen species of Cassia, and about
sixteen species of Cinnamomum ,'m China. The essential point is that the
ancient texts maintain silence as to cinnamon; that is, the product from
the bark of the tree. Cinnamomum cassia is a native of Kwaii-si, Kwan-
tun, and Indo-China ; and the Chinese made its first acquaintance under
the Han, when they began to colonize and to absorb southern China.
The first description of this species is contained in the Nan fan ts*ao
mu cwan of the third century. 1 This work speaks of large forests of this
tree covering the mountains of Kwan-tun, and of its cultivation in
gardens of Kiao-ci (Tonking) . It was not the Chinese, but non-Chinese
peoples of Indo-China, who first brought the tree into cultivation, which,
like all other southern cultivations, was simply adopted by the con-
quering Chinese. The medicinal employment of the bark (kwei p*i
&) is first mentioned by T'ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536), and probably
was not known much earlier. It must be positively denied, however,
that the Chinese or any nation of Indo-China had any share in the
trade which brought cinnamon to the Semites, Egyptians, or Greeks
at the time of Herodotus or earlier. The earliest date we may assume
for any navigation from the coasts of Indo-China into the Indian Ocean
is the second century B.C. 2 The solution of the cinnamon problem of
the ancients seems simpler to me than to my predecessors. First, there
is no valid reason to assume that what our modern botany understands
by Cassia and Cinnamomum must be strictly identical with the products
so named by the ancients. Several different species are evidently in-
volved. It is perfectly conceivable that in ancient times there was a
fragrant bark supplied by a certain tree of Ethiopia or Arabia or both,
which is either extinct or unknown to us, or, as Fee inclines to think,
a species of Amyris. It is further legitimate to conclude, without forc-
ing the evidence, that the greater part of the cinnamon supply came from
Ceylon and India, 3 India being expressly included by Strabo. This, at
least,' is infinitely more reasonable than acquiescing in the wild fantasies
of a Schumann or Muss-Arnolt, who lack the most elementary knowl-
edge of East-Asiatic history.
6. The word " China " in the names of Persian and Arabic products,
1 The more important texts relative to the subject are accessible in BRET-
SCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. Ill, No. 303.
2 Cf. PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 457-461.
3 The Malabar cinnamon is mentioned by Marco Polo (YULE'S ed., Vol. II,
p. 389) and others.
544 SlNO-lRANICA
or the attribution of certain products to China, is not always to be
understood literally. Sometimes it merely refers to a far-eastern
product, sometimes even to an Indian product, 1 and sometimes to
products handled and traded by the Chinese, regardless of their pro-
venience. Such cases, however, are exceptions. As a rule, these Persian-
Arabic terms apply to actual products of China.
ScHLiMMER 2 mentions under the name Killingea monocephala the
zedoary of China: according to Piddington's Index Plantarum, it should
be the plant furnishing the famous root known in Persia as jadivdre
ocitdi (" Chinese jadvar"); genuine specimens are regarded as a divine
panacea, and often paid at the fourfold price of fine gold. The identifica-
tion, however, is hardly correct, for K. monocephala is kin niu ts'ao
& ^ ~tJL in Chinese, 3 which hardly holds an important place in the
Chinese pharmacopoeia. The plant which Schlimmer had in mind
doubtless is Curcuma zedoaria, a native of Bengal and perhaps of China
and various other parts of Asia. 4 It is called in Sanskrit nirvisd ("poison-
less") or sida, in Kua or Tokharian B viralom or wiralom, 5 Persian jad-
vdr, Arabic zadvdr (hence our zedoary, French zedoaire). Abu Mansur
describes it as zarvdr, calling it an Indian remedy similar to Costus and
a good antidote. 6 In the middle ages it was a much-desired article of
trade bought by European merchants in the Levant, where it was sold
as a product of the farthest east. 7 Persian zarumbdd, Arabic zeronbdd,
designating an aromatic root similar to zedoary, resulted in our zer-
umbet* While it is not certain that Curcuma zedoaria occurs in China
(a Chinese name is not known to me), it is noteworthy that the Persians,
as indicated above, ascribe to the root a Chinese origin: thus also
kazur (from Sanskrit karcura) is explained in the Persian Dictionary of
1 Such an example I have given in T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 319: bi, an edible
aconite, does not occur in China, as stated by Damlri, but in India. In regard to
cubebs, however, GARCIA DA ORTA (C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 169) was mis-
taken in denying that they were grown in China, and in asserting that they are
called kabab-cini only because they are brought by the Chinese. As I have
shown (ibid., pp. 282-288), cubebs were cultivated in China from the Sung period
onward.
2 Terminologie, p. 335.
3 Also this identification is doubtful (STUART, Chinese Materia Medica,
p. 228).
4 W. ROXBURGH, 'Flora Indica, p. 8; WATT, Commercial Products of India,
p. 444, and Dictionary, Vol. II, p. 669.
5 S. Lvi, Journal asiatique, 1911, II, pp. 123, 138.
6 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 79. See also LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I,
P. 347-
7 W. HEYD, Histoire du commerce du levant, Vol. II, p. 676.
8 YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 979.
IRANO-SINICA ZEDOARY, GINGER 545
Steingass as "zedoary, a Chinese root." Further, we read under mah-
parwdr or parwin, " zedoary, a Chinese root like ginger, but perfumed."
7. Abu Mansur distinguishes under the Arabic name zanjabll three
kinds of ginger (product of Amomum zingiber, or Zingiber officinale),
Chinese, Zanzibar, and Melinawi or Zurunbaj, the best being the
Chinese. 1 According to SiEiNGASS, 2 Persian anqala denotes "a kind
of China ginger." 3 The Persian word (likewise in Arabic) demonstrates
that the product was received from India: compare Prakrit singabera }
Sanskrit $rngavera (of recent origin), 4 Old Arabic zangabil, Pahlavi
Sangawr, New Persian $ankalil, Arabic-Persian zanjabll, Armenian
snroel or snkrvil (from *singivel), Greek iyyi(3epis, Latin zingiberi;
Madagasy Sakawru (Indian loan-word). 5
The word galangal, denoting the aromatic rhizome of Alpinia
galanga, is not of Chinese origin, as first supposed by D. HANBURY, G
and after him by HiRTH 7 and GILES. 8 The error was mainly provoked
by the fact that the Arabic word from which the European name is
derived was wrongly written by Hanbury khalanjdn, while in fact it is
khulanjdn (xulandzdri) , Persian xdwalinjdn. The fact that Ibn Khor-
dadzbeh, who wrote about A.D. 844-848, mentions khulanjdn as one of
the products of China, 9 does not prove that the Arabs received this
word from China; for this rhizome is not a product peculiar to China,
but is intensively grown in India, and there the Arabs made the first
acquaintance of it. Ibn al-Baitar 10 states expressly that khulanjdn
comes from India; and, as was recognized long ago, the Arabic word
is derived from Sanskrit kulanja, 11 which denotes Alpinia galanga.
The European forms with ng (galangan, galgan, etc.) were suggested by
the older Arabic pronunciation khillangdn. 12 In Middle Greek we have
1 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 76.
2 Persian Dictionary, p. 113.
3 Concerning ginger among the Arabs, cf. LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II,
p. 217; and regarding its preparation, see G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a 1'Extreme-
Orient, p. 609.
4 Cf. the discussion of E. HULTZSCH and F. W. THOMAS in Journal Roy. As. Soc.,
1912, pp. 475, 1093. See also YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 374.
5 The curious word for "ginger" in Kuca or Tokharian B, tvankaro (S. Lvi,
Journal asiatique, 1911, II, pp. 124, 137), is not yet explained.
6 Science Papers, p. 373.
7 Chinesische Studien, p. 219.
8 Glossary of Reference, p. 102.
9 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a I'Extr&ne-Orient, p. 31.
10 Ibid., p. 259. Cf. also ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 60.
11 ROEDIGER and POTT, Z. K. d. Morgenl., Vol. VII, 1850, p. 128.
12 E. WIEDEMANN (Sitzber. Phys.-Med. Soz. ErL, Vol. XLV, 1913, p. 44) gives
as Arabic forms also xaulangad and xalangdn.
546 SlNO-lRANICA
/coXour"ta, xauXife*', and 7a\cry7d; in Russian, kalgdn. The whole group
has nothing to do with Chinese kao-lian-kian. 1 Moreover, the latter
refers to a different species, Alpinia officinarum; while Alpinia galanga
does not occur in China, but is a native of Bengal, Assam, Burma,
Ceylon, and the Konkan. GARCIA DA ORTA was already well posted on
the differences between the two. 2
8. Abu Mansur mentions the medical properties of mamiran*
According to AcnuNDOW, 4 a rhizome originating from China, and
called in Turkistan momiran, is described by Dragendorff , and is re-
garded by him as identical with the so-called mishmee (from Coptis
teeta Wall.), which is said to be styled mamiralin in the Caucasus. He
further correlates the same drug with Ranunculus ficaria (xe\Ldovt,ov
rb viKpov), subsequently described by the Arabs under the name
mamirun. Al-Jafiki is quoted by Ibn al-Baitar as saying that the
mantiran comes from China, and that its properties come near to
those of Curcuma? these roots, however, are also a product of Spain,
the Berber country, and Greece. 6 The Sheikh Daud says that the best
which comes from India is blackish, while that of China is yellowish.
Ibn Batuta 7 mentions the importation of mamlran from China, saying
that it has the same properties as kurkum. Hajji Mahomed, in his
account of Cathay (ca. 1550), speaks of a little root growing in the
mountains of Succuir (Su-6ou in Kan-su), where the rhubarb grows,
and which they call Mambroni Cini (mamiran-i Cini, "mamiran of
China"). "This is extremely dear, and is used in most of their ail-
ments, but especially where the eyes are affected. They grind it on
a stone with rose-water, and anoint the eyes with it. The result is
wonderfully beneficial." 8 In 1583 LEONHART RAUWOLF 9 mentions
1 Needless to say that the vivisections of Hirth, who did not know the Sanskrit
term, lack philological method.
2 MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 208. Garcia gives lavandou as the name used in
China; this is apparently a corrupted Malayan form (cf. Javanese laos}. In Java, he
says, there is another larger kind, called lancuaz; in India both are styled lancuaz. This
is Malayan lenkuwas, Makasar lankuwasa, Cam lakuah or lakuak, Tagalog lankuas.
The Arabic names are written by Garcia calvegiam, chamligiam, and galungem; the
author's Portuguese spelling, of course, must be taken into consideration.
3 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 138.
4 Ibid., p. 268.
6 LECLERC, Traite* des simples, Vol. II, p. 441. Dioscorides remarks that the
sap of this plant has the color of saffron.
6 In Byzantine Greek it is y.o.\n\pk or nepriptv, derived from the Persian-Arabic
word.
7 Ed. of DEFREMERY and SANGUINETTI, Vol. II, p. 186.
8 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. I, p. 292.
9 Beschreibung der Raiss inn die Morgenlander, p. 126.
IRANO-SINICA MAMIRAN, RHUBARB 547
the drug mamirani tchini for eye-diseases, being yellowish like Curcuma.
Bernier mentions mamiran as one of the products brought by the
caravans from Tibet. Also according to a modern Mohammedan source,
mamiran and rhubarb are exported from Tibet. 1
Mamlra is a reputed drug for eye-diseases, applied to bitter roots
of kindred properties but of different origin. By some it is regarded as
the rhizome of Coptis teeta (tlta being the name of the drug in the Mishmi
country); by others, from Tkalictrum foliosum, a tall plant common
throughout the temperate Himalaya and in the Kasia Hills. 2 In another
passage, however, YULE S suggests that this root might be the ginseng
of the Chinese, which is highly improbable.
It is most likely that by mamira is understood in general the root of
Coptis teeta. This is a ranunculaceous plant, and the root has some-
times the appearance of a bird's claw. It is shipped in large quantities
from China (Chinese hwan-Uen H 31) ma Singapore to India. The
Chinese regard it as a panacea for a great many ills; among others, for
clearing inflamed eyes.
9. Abu Mansur discriminates between two kinds of rhubarb, the
Chinese (riwand-i slm) and that of Khorasan, adding that the former
is most employed. 4 Accordingly a species of rhubarb (probably Rheum
ribes) must have been indigenous to Persia. Yaqut says that the finest
kind grew in the soil of Nisapur. 5 According to E. BoissiER, 6 Rheum
ribes occurs near Van and in Agerowdagh in Armenia, on Mount Pir
Omar Gudrun in Kurdistan, in the Daena Mountain of eastern Persia,
near Persepolis, in the province Aderbeijan in northern Persia, and in
the mountains of Baluchistan. There is a general Iranian name for
"rhubarb": Middle Persian rewds, New Persian rewds, rewand, riwand
(hence Armenian erevant), Kurd riwds, rlbds; Baluci rava$; Afghan
rawdL 1 The Persian name has penetrated in the same form into Arabic
1 CH. SCHEFER, Histoire de 1'Asie centrale par Mir Abdoul Kerim Boukhary,
p. 239. Cf. also R. DOZY, Supplement aux dictionnaires arabes, Vol. II, p. 565.
2 YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 548.
3 Cathay, Vol. I, p. 292.
4 AcHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 74. Chinese rhubarb is also called simply Uni
("Chinese") in Persian, fini in Arabic.
5 BARBIER DE MEYNARD, Diet. g6ogr. de la Perse, p. 579.
6 Flora Orientalis, Vol. IV, p. 1004. Rheum ribes does not occur in China or
Central Asia.
7 The Afghan word in particular refers to Rheum spiciforme, which grows wild
and abundantly in many parts of Afghanistan. When green, the leaf-stalks are
called rawas; and when blanched by heaping up stones and gravel around them,
lukri; when fresh, they are eaten either raw or cooked (WATT, Dictionary, Vol.VI,
p. 487). The species under notice occurs also in Kan-su, China: FORBES and
548 SlNO-lRANICA
and Turkish, likewise into Russian as reven' and into Serbian as reved.
It is assumed also that Greek priov (from *rewon) and pd are derived from
Iranian, and it is more than likely that Iran furnished the rhubarb
known to the ancients. The two Greek names first appear in Dios-
corides, 1 who states that the plant grows in the regions beyond the
Bosporus, for which reason it was subsequently styled rha ponticum
or rha barbarum (hence our rhubarb, Spanish ruibarbo, Italian rabarbaro,
French rhubarbe), an interesting case analogous to that of the Hu
plants of the Chinese. In the fourth century, Ammianus Marcellinus 2
states that the plant receives its name from the River Rha ('Pd, Finnish
Rau, Rawa), on the banks of which it grows. This is the Volga, but the
plant does not occur there. It is clear that Ammianus' opinion is
erroneous, being merely elicited by the homophony of the names of
the plant and the river. Pliny 3 describes a root termed rhacoma, which
when pounded yields a co^or like that of wine but inclining to saffron,
and which was brought from beyond the Pontus. Certain it is that
this drug represents some species of Rheum, in my opinion identical
with that of Iran. 4 There is no reason to speculate, as has been done by
some authors, that the rhubarb of the ancients came from China; for
the Chinese did not know rhubarb, as formerly assumed, from time
immemorial. This is shown at the outset by the composite name ta
hwan i$ 3? ("the great yellow one") or hwan lian jH &.("the yellow
good one"), merely descriptive attributes, while for all genuinely ancient
plants there is a root-word of a single syllable. The alleged mention of
rhubarb in the Pen kin or Pen ts *ao, attributed to the mythical Emperor
Sen-nun, proves nothing; that work is entirely spurious, and the text
in which we have it at present is a reconstruction based on quotations
in the preserved Pen-ts'ao literature, and teems with interpolations and
anachronisms. 5 All that is certain is that rhubarb was known to the
HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXVI, p. 355. There is accordingly no rea-
son to seek for an outside origin of the Iranian word (cf. SCHRADER, Reallexikon,
p. 685). The Iranian word originally designated an indigenous Iranian species,
and was applied to Rheum officinale and palmatum from the tenth century onward,
when the roots of these species were imported from China.
1 in, 2. Theophrastus is not acquainted with this genus.
2 XXII. vm, 28.
3 xxvn, 105.
4 FLUCKIGER and HANBURY (Pharmacographia, p. 493) state, "Whether pro-
duced in the regions of the Euxine (Pontus), or merely received thence from remoter
countries, is a question that cannot be solved." The authors are not acquainted
with the Iranian species, and their scepticism is not justified.
6 It is suspicious that, according to Wu P'u of the third century, Sen Nun and
Lei Kun ascribed poisonous properties to ta hwan, while this in fact is not true.
The Pen kin (according to others, the Pie lu) states that it is non-poisonous.
IRANO-SINICA RHUBARB 549
Chinese in the age of the Han, for the name ta hwan occurs on one of
the wooden tablets of that period discovered in Turkistan by Sir A.
Stein and deciphered by CnAVANNES. 1
Abu Mansur, as cited above, is the first Persian author who speaks
of Chinese rhubarb. He is followed by a number of Arabic writers.
It is therefore reasonable to infer that only in the course of the tenth
century did rhubarb develop into an article of trade from China to
western Asia. In 1154 Edrisi mentions rhubarb as a product of China
growing in the mountains of Buthink (perhaps north-eastern Tibet). 2
Ibn Sa'ld, who wrote in the thirteenth century, speaks of the abundance
of rhubarb in China. 3 Ibn al-Baitar treats at great length of rawend,
by which he understands Persian and Chinese rhubarb, 4 and of ribas,
"very common in Syria and the northern countries," identified by
LECLERC with Rheum ribes. 5
MARCO POLO relates that rhubarb is found in great abundance over
all mountains of the province of Sukchur (Su-cou in Kan-su), and that
merchants go there to buy it, and carry it thence all over the
world. 6 In another passage he attributes rhubarb also to the mountains
around the city of Su-ou in Kian-su, 7 which, Yule says, is believed by
the most competent authorities to be quite erroneous. True it is that
rhubarb has never been found in that province or anywhere in middle
China; neither is there an allusion to this in Chinese accounts, which
restrict the area of the plant to Sen-si, Kan-su, Se-c'wan, and Tibet.
Nevertheless it would not be impossible that at Polo's time a sporadic
attempt was made to cultivate rhubarb in the environs of Su-ou. Friar
Odoric mentions rhubarb for the province Kansan (Kan-su), growing
in such abundance that you may load an ass with it for less than six
groats. 8
Chinese records tell us very little about the export-trade in this
article. Cao Zu-kwa alone mentions rhubarb among the imports of
1 Documents chinois de'couverts dans les sables du Turkestan oriental, p. 115,
No. 527.
2 W. HEYD, Histoire du commerce du levant, Vol. II, p. 665. See also FLUCKIGER
and HANBURY, Pharmacographia, pp. 493-494.
3 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a I'Extr&ne-Orient, p. 350.
4 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. II, pp. 155-164.
6 Ibid., p. 190. This passage was unknown to me when I identified above the
Persian term riwand with this species, arriving at this conclusion simply by consult-
ing Boissier's Flora.
6 YULE, Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 217.
7 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 181.
8 YULE, Cathay, Vol. II, p. 247.
550 SlNO-lRANICA
San-fu-ts'i (Palembang) and Malabar. 1 In vain also should we look in
Chinese books for anything on the subject that would correspond to the
importance attached to it in the West.
GARCIA DA ORTA (1562) held it for certain that "all the rhubarb
that comes from Ormuz to India first comes from China to Ormuz by
the province of Uzbeg which is part of Tartary. The fame is that it
comes from China by land, but some say that it grows in the same
province, at a city called f amarcander (Samarkand) . 2 But this is very
bad and of little weight. Horses are purged with it in Persia, and I
have also seen it so used in Balagate. It seems to me that this is the
rhubarb which in Europe we called ravam turquino, not because it is
of Turkey but from there." He emphasizes the point that there is no
other rhubarb than that from China, and that the rhubarb coming to
Persia or Uzbeg goes thence to Venice and to Spain; some goes to
Venice by way of Alexandria, a good deal by Aleppo and Syrian Tripoli,
all these routes being partly by sea, but chiefly by land; 3 the rhubarb
is not so much powdered, for it is more rubbed in a month at sea than in
a year going by land. 4 As early as the thirteenth century at least, as we
see from Ibn al-Baitar, what was known to the Arabs as "rhubarb of
the Turks or the Persians," in fact hailed from China. In the same
manner, it was at a later time that in Europe "Russian, Turkey, and
China rhubarb' 7 were distinguished, these names being merely in-
dicative of the various routes by which the drug was conveyed to
Europe from China. 5 Also CHRISTOVAL ACOSTA notes the corruption
of rhubarb at sea and its overland transportation to Persia, Arabia,
and Alexandria.
1 HIRTH, Chau Ju-kua, pp. 61, 88.
2 Probably Rheum ribes, mentioned above.
3 LEONHART RAUWOLF (Beschreibung der Raiss inn die Morgenlander, 1583,
p. 461) reports that large quantities of rhubarb are shipped from India to Aleppo
both by sea and by land.
4 Cf. MARKHAM, Colloquies, pp. 390-392.
5 In regard to the Russian trade in rhubarb see G. CAHEN, Le livre de comptes
de la caravane russe a P6kin, p. 108 (Paris, 1911).
6 Reobarbaro (medicina singular, y digna de ser de todo el linage humano ve-
nerada) se halla solamente dentro de la China, de donde lo traen a vender a Cataon
(que es el puerto de mas comercio de la China, donde estan los Portugueses) y de
alii viene por mar a la India: y deste que viene por mar no se haze mucho caso, por
venir, por la mayor parte corropido (por quanto el Reobarbaro se corrope co mucha
facilidad enla mar) y dela misma tierra d e tro de la China, lo lleuan a la Tartaria,
y por la prouincia de Vzbeque lo lleua a Ormuz, y a toda la Persia, Arabia, y Alex-
adria: de dode se distribuye por toda la Europa (Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas
de las Indias Orientales, p. 287, Burgos, 1576). Cf. also LINSCHOTEN (Vol. II, ,
p. 101, ed. of Hakluyt Society), who, as in most of his notices of Indian products,
exploits Garcia.
IRANO-SINICA RHUBARB, VARIOUS PLANTS 551
JOHN GERARDE 1 illustrates the rhubarb-plant and annotates, "It
is brought out of the countrie of Sina (commonly called China) which
is towarde the east in the upper part of India, and that India which is
without the river Ganges: and not at all Ex Scenitarum provincia,
(as many do unadvisedly thinke) which is in Arabia the happie, and far
from China/' etc. "The best rubarbe is that which is brought from
China fresh and newe," etc.
WATT 2 gives a Persian term revande-hindi ("Indian rhubarb") for
Rheum emodi. Curiously, in Hindustani this is called Hindi-remand
cim ("Chinese rhubarb of India")? and in Bengali Bangla-revan cml
("Chinese rhubarb of Bengal"), indicating that the Chinese product
was preeminently in the minds of the people, and that the Himalayan
rhubarbs were only secondary substitutes.
10. Abu Mansur 3 mentions under the Arabic name ratta a fruit
called "Indian hazel-nut" (bunduq-i hindi), also Chinese Salsola kali.
It is the size of a small plum, contains a small blackish stone, and
is brought from China. It is useful in chronic diseases and in cases of
poisoning, and is hot and dry in the second degree. This is Sapindus
mukorossi, in Chinese wu (or mu)-hwan-tse $& (or /fC) ,S -?* (with a
number of synonymes), the seeds being roasted and eaten.
11. Arabic suk, a drug composed of several ingredients, according
to Ibn Sina, was originally a secret Chinese remedy formed with amlaj
(Sanskrit amalaka, Phyllanthus emblica, the emblic myrobalan). 4 It
is the 3 j|l (jf an-mo-lOj *an-mwa-lak, of the Chinese. 5 In Persian it
is amala or amula.
12. Persian guli xaira (xairu) is explained as Chinese and Persian
hollyhock (Alihcea rosea). Q This is the $u k'wei 13 U ("mallow of Se-
c'wan") of the Chinese, also called Zun k'wei ("mallow of the Zun").
It is the common hollyhock, which STUART T thinks may have been
originally introduced into China from some western country.
13. Ibn al-Baitar 8 speaks of a "rose of China" (ward smi), usually
called nisrin. According to Leclerc, this is a malvaceous plant. In
Persian we find gul-cim ("rose of China"), the identification of which,
1 The Herball or Generall Historic of Plantes, p. 317 (London, 1597).
~ Dictionary, Vol. VI, p. 486.
3 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 74.
4 E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 215.
5 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 30, p. 5 b; Fan yi min yi tsi, Ch. 8, p. I. STUART (Chinese
Materia Medica, p. 421) wrongly identifies the name with Spondias amara.
6 STEINGASS, Persian Dictionary, p. 1092.
7 Chinese Materia Medica, p. 33.
8 LECLERC, Traits' des simples, Vol. Ill, pp. 369, 409.
552 SlNO-lRANICA
judging from what Steingass says, is not exactly known. The Arabic
author, further, has a $ah-smi ("Chinese king"), described as a drug
in the shape of small, thin, and black tabloids prepared from the sap
of a plant. It is useful as a refrigerant for feverish headache and in-
flamed tumors. It is reduced to a powder and applied to the diseased
spot. 1 Leclerc annotates that, according to the Persian treatises, this
plant originating from China, as indicated by its name, is serviceable
for headache in general. Dimaski, who wrote about 1325, ascribes
$ah-ftm to the island of Cankhay in the Malayan Archipelago, saying
that its leaves are known under the name "betel." 2 STEINGASS, in
his Persian Dictionary, explains the term as "the expressed juice of
a plant brought from China, good for headaches." I do not know what
plant is understood here.
14. According to Ibn al-Baitar, the mango (Arabic anbd) is
found only in India and China. 3 This is Mangifera indica (family
Anacardiaceae) , a native of India, and the queen of the Indian fruits,
counting several hundreds of varieties. Its Sanskrit name is amra,
known to the Chinese in the transcription ^ jH an-lo, *am-la(ra).
Persian amba and Arabic anbd are derived from the same word. During
the T'ang period the fruit was grown in Fergana. 4 Malayan manga
(like our mango) is based on Tamil mangas, and is the foundation of the
Chinese transcription mun HI . The an-lo tree is first mentioned for
Cen-la (Camboja) in the Sui Annals, 5 where its leaves are compared
with those of the jujube (Zizyphus vulgaris), and its fruits with those
of a plum (Prunus tri flora) .
15. Isak Ibn Amran says, "Sandal is a wood that conies to us from
China." 6 Santalum album is grown in Kwan-tun to some extent, but it
is more probable that the sandal-wood used in western Asia came from
India (cf. Persian Randan, candal, Armenian candan, Arabic sandal,
from Sanskrit candand).
1 6. Antaki notes the xalen tree ("birch") in India and China; and
Ibn al-Kebir remarks that it is particularly large in China, in the
country of the Rus (Russians) and Bulgar, where are made from it
vessels and plates which are exported to distant places; the arrows
made of this wood are unsurpassed. According to Qazwmi and Ibn
1 Ibid., p. 314.
2 G. FERRAND, Textes relatifs a I'Extr^me-Orient, p. 381.
8 LECLERC, Trait< des simples, Vol. II, p. 471. Cf. Ibn Batata* ed. of DE-
FREMERY and SANGUINETTI, Vol. Ill, p. 127; YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 553.
4 T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, Ch. 181, p. 13 b.
6 Sui $u, Ch. 82, p. 3 b.
6 LECLERC, op. cit., p. 383.
IRANO-SINICA MANGO, BIRCH, TEA 553
Fadlan, the tree occurred in Tabaristan, whence its wood reached the
comb-makers of Rei. 1 The Arabic xalen, Persian xadan or xadanj,
is of Altaic origin: Uigur qadan, Koibal, Soyot and Karagas kaden,
Cuwas xoran, Yakut xatyn, Mordwinian kilen, all referring to the birch
(Betula alba). It is a common tree in the mountains of northern China
(hwa IS ), first described by C'en Ts'an-k'i of the eighth century. 2 The
bark was used by the Chinese for making torches and candles filled with
wax, as a padding or lining of underclothes and boots, for knife-hilts
and the decoration of bows, the latter being styled " birch-bark bows." 3
The universal use of birch-bark among all tribes of Siberia for pails,
baskets, and dishes, and as a roof -covering, is well known.
17. It would be very desirable to have more exact data as to
when and how the consumption of Chinese tea (Camellia theifera)
spread among Mohammedan peoples. The Arabic merchant Soleiman,
who wrote about A.D. 851, appears to be the first outsider who gives an
accurate notice of the use of tea-leaves as a beverage on the part of the
Chinese, availing himself of the curious name sax* It is strange that
the following Arabic authors who wrote on Chinese affairs have nothing
to say on the subject. In the splendid collection of Arabic texts relative
to the East, so ably gathered and interpreted by G. FERRAND, tea
is not even mentioned. It is likewise absent in the Persian pharmacology
of Abu Mansur and in the vast compilation of Ibn al-Baitar. On the
other hand, Chinese mediaeval authors like Cou K'u-fei and Cao Zu-
kwa do not note tea as an article of export from China. As far as
we can judge at present, it seems that the habit of tea-drinking spread
to western Asia not earlier than the thirteenth century, and that it
was perhaps the Mongols who assumed the r61e of propagators. In
Mongol, Turkish, Persian, Indian, Portuguese, Neo-Greek, and Rus-
sian, we equally find the word cai, based on North-Chinese 'a. 5 Ramu-
1 G. JACOB, Handel sartikel der Araber, p. 60.
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35 B, p. 13.
3 Ko ku yao lun, Ch. 8, p. 8 b. Cf. also O. FRANKE, Beschreibung des Jehol-
Gebietes, p. 77.
4 REINAUD, Relation des voyages, Vol. I, p. 40 (cf. YULE, Cathay, new ed.,
Vol. I, p. 131). Modern Chinese c'a was articulated *ja (dza) in the T'ang period;
but, judging from the Korean and Japanese form sa, a variant sa may be supposed
also for some Chinese dialects. As the word, however, was never possessed of a
final consonant in Chinese, the final spirant in Soleiman's sax is a peculiar Arabic
affair (provided the reading of the manuscript be correct).
5 The Tibetans claim a peculiar position in the history of tea. They still have
the Chinese word in the ancient form ja (dza}, and, as shown by me in T'oung Pao
(1916, p. 505), have imported and consumed tea from the days of the T'ang. In
fact, tea was the dominant economic factor and the key-note in the political rela-
tions of China and Tibet.
554 SlNO-lRANICA
sio, in the posthumous introduction to his edition of Marco Polo pub-
lished in 1545, mentions having learned of the tea beverage from a
Persian merchant, Hajji Muhammed. 1 A. DE MANDELSLO, 2 in 1662,
still reports that the Persians, instead of The, drink their Kahwa (coffee).
In the fifteenth century, A-lo-tin, an envoy from T'ien-fan (Arabia),
in presenting his tribute to an emperor of the Ming, solicited tea-
leaves. 3
The Kew Bulletin for 1896 (p. 157) contains the following inter-
esting information on " White Tea of Persia:"
"In the Consular Report on the trade of Ispahan and Yezd (Foreign Office,
Annual Series, 1896, No. 1662) the following particulars are given of the tea trade
in Persia: 'Black or Calcutta tea for Persian consumption continues to arrive in
steady quantities, 2,000,000 pounds representing last year's supply. White tea from
China, or more particularly from Tongking, is consumed only in Yezd, and, there-
fore, the supply is limited.' Through the courtesy of Mr. John R. Preece, Her
Majesty's Consul at Ispahan, Kew received a small quantity of the 'White tea*
above mentioned for the Museum of Economic Botany. The tea proved to be very
similar to that described in the Kew Bulletin under the name of P'u-erh tea (Kew
Bulletin, 1889, pp. 118 and 139). The finest of this tea is said to be reserved for the
Court of Peking. The sample from Yezd was composed of the undeveloped leaf
buds so thickly coated with fine hairs as to give them a silvery appearance. Owing
to the shaking in transit some of the hairs had been rubbed off and had formed small
yellow pellets about ^ inch diameter. Although the hairs are much more
abundant than usual there is little doubt that the leaves have been derived from
the Assam tea plant (Camellia theifera, Griff.) found wild in some parts of Assam
and Burma but now largely cultivated in Burma, Tongking, etc. The same species
has been shown to yield Lao tea (Kew Bulletin, 1892, p. 219), and Leppett tea (Kew
Bulletin, 1896, p. 10). The liquor from the Persian white tea was of a pale straw
colour with the delicate flavour of good China tea. It is not unknown but now little
appreciated in the English market."
1 8. The Arabic stone-book sailing under the false flag of Aristotle
distinguishes several kinds of onyx (jiza'), which come from two places,
China and the country of the west, the latter being the finest. Qazwin!
gives Yemen and China as localities, telling an anecdote that the
Chinese disdain to quarry the stone and leave this to specially privileged
slaves, who have no other means of livelihood and sell the stone only
outside of China. 4 As formerly stated, 5 this may be the pi yti H 3i of
the Chinese.
19. Qazwlni also mentions a stone under the name husyat ibtis
("devil's testicles") which should occur in China. Whoever carries it is
1 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. I, p. 292; or Hobson-Jobson, p. 906.
2 Travels, p. 15.
3 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediaeval Researches, Vol. II, p. 300.
4 J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 145; and Steinbuch des Qazwlni,
p. 12; LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. I, p. 354.
6 Notes on Turquois, p. 52.
IRANO-SINICA MINERALS, METALS 555
not held up by bandits; also his baggage in which the stone is hidden is
safe from attack, and its wearer rises in the esteem of his fellow-mates. 1
I do not know what Chinese stone is understood here.
20. It is well known that the Chinese have a peculiar alloy of copper
consisting of copper 40.4, zinc 25.4, nickel 31.6, iron 2.6, and occa-
sionally some silver and arsenic. It looks white or silver-like in the
finish, and is hence called pai-t'un (" white copper")- In Anglo-Indian
it is tootnague (Tamil tutundgum, Portuguese tutanaga). 2 It is also
known to foreigners in the East under the Cantonese name paktung.
It is mentioned as early as A.D. 265 in the dictionary Kwan ya 9t 5S, 3
where the definition occurs that pai-t'un is called wu 4 .
This alloy was adopted by the Persians under the name xar-clm
(Arabic xdr-sim) . 4 The Persians say that the Chinese make this alloy
into mirrors and arrowheads, a wound from which is mortal. 5 Vullers
cites a passage from the poet Abu al Ma'am, "One who rejects and
spurns his friend pierces his heart with xdr-slni." Qazwinl speaks of
very efficient lance-heads and harpoons of this metal. The Persians
have further the term isfidruj, which means "white copper," and which
accordingly represents a literal rendering of Chinese pai-t*uh. More-
over, there is Persian sepidmi (Arabic isbiaddri, isbdddrlti)\ that is,
"whitish in appearance." English spelter (German s planter, speauter,
spialter, Russian Spiauter), a designation of zinc, is derived from this
word. 6 Bimasqi, who wrote about 1325, explains ocdr-sml as a metal
from China, the yellow color of copper being mixed with black and
white; the mirrors imported from China, called "mirrors of distortion, "
are made from this alloy. It is an artificial product, hard, and fragile;
it is injured by fire, after being wrought. Qazwmi adds that no other
metal yields a ring equalling that of this alloy, and that none is so suit-
able for the manufacture of large and small bells. 7
21. In the thirteenth century the Arabs became acquainted with
saltpetre, which they received from China; for they designate it as
1 RusKA, ibid., p. 21.
2 Cf. YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 932. This, of course, is a misnomer, as the
Indian word, connected with Persian tutiya (above, p. 512), in fact refers to zinc.
3 Ch. 8 A, p. 1 6 (ed. of Kifu ts'un $u).
4 Literally, "stone of China." Spanish kazini is derived from the Arabic word.
6 STEINGASS, Persian Dictionary, p. 438.
6 It seems also that the Persian word is the source of the curious Japanese term
sabari or sahari, which denotes the white copper of the Chinese. The foreign char-
acter of this product is also indicated by the writing jjjfl iff fj|.
7 Cf. E. WIEDEMANN, Sitzber. Phys.-Med. Soz. ErL, Vols. XXXVII, 1905,
pp. 403-404; and XLV, 1913, p. 46; R. DOZY, Supplement, Vol. I, p. 857.
SlNO-lRANICA
thelg as-sm (" Chinese snow"), and the rocket as sahm xatai (" Chinese
arrow"). 1
22. Ibn al-Faqlh extols the art-industries of the Chinese, par-
ticularly pottery, lamps, and other such durable implements, which are
admirable as to their art and permanent in their execution. 2 Kaolin is
known to the Persians as xak-i Zlm ("Chinese earth"). In excellent
quality it is found in Kermanshah, but the art of making porcelain
there is now lost. 3 The Persian term for porcelain is fag fun or fagfur-i
.* Fagfur (Sogdian va7vur, "Son of Heaven"), as far as I know, is
the only sinicism to be found in Iranian, being a literal rendering of
Chinese Vien-tse X ?.
23. Persian Itibi elm ("China root"), Neo-Sanskrit cobaclnl or
copaclm (kub-cim in the bazars of India), is the root of Smilax pseudo-
china , so-called Chinese sarsaparilla (t'u-fu-lin dhK^), a famous
remedy for the treatment of Morbus americanus, first introduced into
Europe by the returning sailors of Columbus, and into India by the
sailors of Vasco da Gama (Sanskrit phirangaroga, "disease of the
Franks"). It is first mentioned, together with the Chinese remedy, in
Indian writings of the sixteenth century, notably the Bhavaprakaca. 5
Good information on this subject is given by GARCIA DA ORTA, who
says, "As all these lands and China and Japan have this morbo napo-
litano, it pleased a merciful God to provide this root as a remedy with
which good doctors can cure it, although the majority fall into error.
As it is cured with this medicine, the root was traced to the Chinese,
when there was a cure with it in the year 1535." Garcia gives a detailed
description of the shrub which he says is called lampatam by the Chi-
nese. 7 This transcription corresponds to Chinese len-fan-fwan & Hfc US
(literally, "cold rice ball"), a synonyme of t'u-fu-lin; pronounced at
1 G. JACOB, Oriental Elements of Culture in the Occident (Smithsonian Report
for 1902, p. 520). See also LECLERC, Traite des simples, Vol. I, pp. 71, 333; and
QUATREM^RE, Journal asiatique, 1850, I, p. 222.
2 E. WIEDEMANN, Zur Technik bei den Arabern, Sitzber. Phys.-Med. Soz. ErL,
Vol. XXXVIII, 1906, p. 355-
3 SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 334.
4 See Beginnings of Porcelain, p. 126.
B J. JOLLY, Indische Medicin, p. 106.
6 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies, p. 379. Cf. also FLUCKIGER and HANBURY, Phar-
macographia, p. 712. F. PYRARD (Vol. I, p. 182; ed. of Hakluyt Society), who trav-
elled in India from 1601 to 1610, observes, "Venereal disease is not so common,
albeit it is found, and is cured with China-wood, without sweating or anything
else. This disease they call farangui baescour (Arabic basur, 'piles'), from its coming
to them from Europe." A long description of the remedy is given by LINSCHOTEN
(Vol. II, pp. 107-112, ed. of Hakluyt Society).
7 C. ACOSTA (Tractado de las drogas, p. 80) writes this word lampatan.
IRANO-SINICA CHINA ROOT, PAPER 557
Canton lan-fan-t'un, at Amoy lin-hoan-toan. It must be borne in mind
that final Portuguese m is not intended for the labial nasal, but indicates
the nasalization of the preceding vowel, am and a being alternately
used. The frequent final guttural nasal n of Chinese has always been
reproduced by the Portuguese by a nasalized vowel or diphthong; for
instance, tufao (" typhoon "), given by Fernao Pinto as a Chinese
term, where fao corresponds to Chinese fun ("wind"); tutao, repro-
ducing Chinese tu-t'un 8$ $ (" Lieutenant-General"). Thus the tran-
scription lampatam moves along the same line. The Portuguese designa-
tion of the root is raiz da China ("root of China").
There is an overland trade in this root from China by way of Turkis-
tan to Ladakh, and probably also to Persia. 1 The plant has been known
to the Chinese from ancient times, being described by T'ao Hun-kin. 2
The employment of the root in the treatment of Morbus americanus
(yah mei tu cwah Hf Jf8 H 3f ) is described at length by Li Si-cen, who
quotes this text from Wan Ki feE ffi, a celebrated physician, who lived
during the Kia-tsin period (1522-66), and author of the Pen ts'ao hui
pien >fc 3$ 'fr 81. This is an excellent confirmation of the synchronous
account of Garcia. 3 Li Si-cen states expressly, "The yah-mei ulcers
are not mentioned in the ancient recipes, neither were there any people
afflicted with this disease. Only recently did it arise in Kwan-tun,
whence it spread to all parts of China."
24. Of Chinese loan-words in Persian, HORN 4 enumerates only
cdi ("tea"), ladan ("teapot"), cdu ("paper money"), and perhaps also
kdgab or kdgid ("paper"). As will be seen, there are many more Chinese
loans in Persian; but the word for "paper" is not one of them, although the
Persians received the knowledge of paper from the Chinese. This theory
was first set forth by HiRTH, 5 who asserts, "The Arabic word
kdghid for paper, derived from the Persian, 6 can without great difficulty
be traced to a term ku-chih He &K (ancient pronunciation kok-dz'),
which means 'paper from the bark of the mulberry-tree,' and was
already used in times of antiquity." This view has been accepted by
1 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 477.
2 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 8 B, p. 2; also Ch. 4 B, p. 6 b; BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot.
Sin., pt. Ill, p. 320.
3 1 have sufficient material to enable me to publish at some later date a detailed
history of the disease from Chinese sources.
4 Grundriss der iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 7.
5 T'oung Pao, Vol. I, 1890, p. 12; or Chines. Studien, p. 269.
6 In my opinion, the word is of Uigur origin (kagat, kagas), and was subsequently
adopted by the Persians, and from the Persians by the Arabs. In Persian we have
the forms kdyad, kdyid, kdyaz, and kdgiz (Baluci kdgad). Aside from this vacillating
mode of spelling, the word is decidedly non-Persian. See, further, below, p. 558.
558 SlNO-lRANICA
KARABACEK and HoERNLE. 1 Let us assume for a moment that the prem-
ises on which this speculation is based are correct : how could the Uigur,
Persians, and Arabs make kdgad out of a Chinese kok-li (or dzi)?
How may we account for the vocalization a, which persists wherever the
word has taken root (Hindi kdgad, Urdu kdgaz, Tamil kdgidam, Mala-
yalam kdyitam, Kannada kdgada) ? 2 The Uigur and Persians, according
to their phonetic system, were indeed capable of reproducing the
Chinese word correctly if they so intended; in fact, Chinese loan-words
in the two languages are self-evident without torturing the evidence.
For myself, I am unable to see any coincidence between kok-ti and
kdgad. But this alleged kok-ci, in fact, does not exist. The word ku,
as written by Hirth, is known to every one as meaning " grain, cereals; "
and none of our dictionaries assigns to it the significance "mulberry."
It is simply a character substituted for kou HI (anciently *ku, without
a final consonant), which refers exclusively to the paper-mulberry
(Broussonetia papyri/era), expressed also (and this is the most common
word) by fru fif. The Pen ts'ao kan mu z gives the character ku i on
the same footing with *u, quoting the former from the ancient dic-
tionary Si min* and adding expressly that it has the phonetic value of
$$*, and is written also S . The character ku, accordingly, to be read
kou, is merely a graphic variant, and has nothing to do with the word
ku (*kuk), meaning "cereals."
According to Li Si-Sen, this word kou (*ku) originates from the
language of C'u 3&, in which it had the significance "milk" (Zu ?L);
and, as the bark of this tree contained a milk-like sap, this word was
transferred to the tree. It is noteworthy in this connection that Ts'ai
Lun, the inventor of paper in A.D. 105, was a native of C'u. The
dialectic origin of the word kou shows well how we have two root-words
for exactly the same species of tree. This is advisedly stated by Li
Si-en, who rejects as an error the opinion that the two words should
refer to two different trees; he also repudiates expressly the view that
the word kou bears any relation to the word ku in the sense of cereals or
rice. According to T'ao Hun-kin, the term kou li was used by the
people of the south, who, however, said also ?u ci; the latter word,
1 Journal Roy. As. Soc., 1903, p. 671.
2 According to BUHLER (Indische Palaographie, p. 91), paper was introduced
into India by the Mohammedans after the twelfth century. The alleged Sanskrit
word for "paper," kdyagata, ferreted out by HOERNLE (Journal Roy. As. Soc., 1911,
p. 476), rests on a misunderstanding of a Sanskrit text, as has been shown by Lieut.-
Col. WADDELL on the basis of the Tibetan translation of this text ((ibid., 1914,
pp. 136-137).
3 Ch. 36, p. 4.
4 See above, p. 201.
iRANO-SiNiCA PAPER 559
indeed, has always been more common. Hirth's supposition of a former
pronunciation kok cannot be accepted; but, even did this alleged kok
exist, I should continue to disbelieve in the proposed etymology of the
Persian-Arabic word. There is no reason to assume that, because
paper was adopted by the Arabs and Persians from the Chinese, their
designation of it should hail from the same quarter. I do not know
of a foreign language that was willing to adopt from the Chinese
any designation for paper. Our word comes from the Greek-Latin
papyrus; Russian bumaga originally means " cotton," being ultimately
traceable to Middle Persian pambak. 1 The Tibetans learned the tech-
nique of paper-making from the Chinese, but have a word of their own
to designate paper (sog-bu). So have the Japanese (kami) and the
Koreans (muntsi). The Mongols call paper tsagasun (Buryat tsaraso,
sdrahan), a purely Mongol word, meaning "the white one." Among
the Golde on the Amur I recorded the word ocausal. The Lolo have
f o-i, the Annamese bia, the Cam baa, baar, or biar, the Khmer credas,
which, like Malayan kertas, is borrowed from Arabic kirtas (Greek
xaprr?s). 2 As stated, the Persian- Arabic word is borrowed from a
Turkish language: Uigur kagat or kagas; Tuba, Lebed, Kumandu,
Comanian kagat; Kirgiz, Karakirgiz, Taranci, and Kazan kagaz. The
origin of this word can be explained from Turkish; for in Lebed, Ku-
mandu, and Sor, we have kaga$ with the significance " tree-bark. "
I need not repeat here the oft-told story of how the manufacture of
paper was introduced into Samarkand by Chinese captives in A.D. 751.
Prior to this date, as has been established by Karabacek, Chinese
paper was imported to Samarkand as early as 6501, again in 707. 3
Under the Sasanians, Chinese paper was known in Persia ; but it was a
very rare article, and reserved for royal state documents. 4
25. Another form in which paper reached the Persians was paper
money. It is well known that the Chinese were the originators of
1 See above, p. 490.
2 S. FRAENKEL, Die aramaischen Fremdworter im Arabischen, p. 245.
3 Cf. HOERNLE, Journal Roy. As. Soc., 1903, p. 670. I regret being unable to
accept his general result that the Arabs or Samarkandis should be credited with the
invention of pure rag-paper (p. 674). This had already been accomplished in China,
and indeed was the work of Ts'ai Lun. I expect to come back to this problem on
another occasion. With all respect for the researches of Karabacek, Wiesner, and
Hoernle, I am not convinced that the far-reaching conclusions of these scholars are
all justified. We are in need of more investigations (and less theorizing), especially
of ancient papers made in China. There are numerous accounts of many sorts of
paper, hitherto unnoticed, in Chinese records, which should be closely studied.
4 According to Masudi (B. DE MEYNARD, Les Prairies d'or, Vol. II, p. 202);
see also E. DROUIN, Me"moire sur les Huns Ephthalites, p. 53 (reprint from Le
Museon, 1895).
560 SlNO-lRANICA
paper bank-notes. 1 The Mongol rulers introduced them into Persia,
first in 1294. The notes were direct copies of Kubilai's, even the Chinese
characters being imitated as part of the device upon them, and the
Chinese word Vao $3? being employed. This word was then adopted
by the Persians as tau or av. 2 The most interesting point about this
affair is that in that year (1294) the Chinese process of block-printing
was for the first time practised in Tabriz in connection with the printing
of these bank-notes.
In his graphic account describing the utilization of paper money
by the Great Khan, MARCO PoLO 3 makes the following statement:
"He makes them take of the bark of a certain tree, in fact of the mul-
berry tree, the leaves of which are the food of the silkworms, these
trees being so numerous that whole districts are full of them. What
they take is a certain fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood
of the tree and the thick outer bark, and this they make into something
resembling sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been
prepared they are cut up into pieces of different sizes." In the third
edition of Yule's memorable work, the editor, HENRI CORDIER,* has
added the following annotation: "Dr. Bretschneider (History of
Botanical Discoveries, Vol. I, p. 4) makes the remark: 'Polo states
that the Great Khan causeth the bark of great mulberry trees, made
into something like paper, to pass for money.' He seems to be mistaken.
Paper in China is not made from mulberry-trees, but from the Brous-
sonetia papyri/era, which latter tree belongs to the same order of
Moraceae. The same fibres are used also in some parts of China for
making cloth, and Marco Polo alludes probably to the same tree when
stating that 'in the province of Cuiju (Kuei-chou) they manufacture
stuff of the bark of certain trees, which form very fine summer clothing.' "
This is a singular error of Bretschneider. Marco Polo is perfectly
correct: not only did the Chinese actually manufacture paper from
the bark of the mulberry-tree (Morns alba), but also it was this paper
which was preferred for the making of paper money. Bretschneider
is certainly right in saying th#t paper is made from the Broussonetia, but
1 KLAPROTH, Sur 1'origine du papier-monnaie (in his Memoires relatifs a 1'Asie,
Vol. I, pp. 375-388); YULE, Marco Polo, Vol. I, pp. 426-430; ANONYMUS, Paper
Money among the Chinese (Chin. Repository, Vol. XX, 1851, pp. 289-296); S. SA-
BURO, The Origin of the Paper Currency (Journal Peking Or. Soc., Vol. II, 1889,
pp. 265-307); S. W. BUSHELL, Specimens of Ancient Chinese Paper Money (ibid.,
pp. 308-316); H. B. MORSE, Currency in China (Journal China Branch Roy. As. Soc. r
Vol. XXXVIII, 1907, pp. 17-31); etc.
2 For details consult YULE, /. c.
3 H. YULE, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 423.
4 Ibid., p. 430.
IRANO-SINICA PAPER MONEY 561
he is assuredly wrong in the assertion that paper is not made in China
from mulberry-trees. This fact he could have easily ascertained from
S. JULIEN/ who alludes to mulberry- tree paper twice, first, as "papier
de racines et d'ecorce de murier;" and, second, in speaking of the bark
paper from Broussonetia, "On emploie aussi pour le mme usage
1'ecorce d' Hibiscus Rosa sinensis et de murier; ce dernier papier sert
encore a recueillir les graines de vers & soie." What is understood by
the latter process may be seen from plate i in Julien's earlier work on
sericulture, 2 where the paper from the bark of the mulberry-tree is like-
wise mentioned.
The Ci p*u jffi Mf, a treatise on paper, written by Su Yi-kien S H IB
toward the close of the tenth century, enumerates, among the various
sorts of paper manufactured during his lifetime, paper from the bark
of the mulberry-tree (san p*i Jk &) made by the people of the north. 3
Chinese paper money of mulberry-bark was known in the Islamic
world in the beginning of the fourteenth century; that is, during the
Mongol period. Accordingly it must have been manufactured in China
during the Yuan dynasty. Ahmed Sibab Eddin, who died in Cairo
in 1338 at the age of ninety-three, and left an important geographical
work in thirty volumes, containing interesting information on China
gathered from the lips of eye-witnesses, makes the following comment
on paper money, in the translation of CH. ScHEFER: 4 "On emploie
dans le Khita, en guise de monnaie, des morceaux d'un papier de forme
allonge*e fabrique* avec des filaments de muriers sur lequel est imprime*
le nom de 1'empereur. Lorsqu'un de ces papiers est use", on le porte
aux officiers du prince et, moyennant une perte minime, on regoit un
autre billet en ^change, ainsi que cela a lieu dans nos hdtels des mon-
naies, pour les matieres d'or et d'argent que 1'on y porte pour tre
converties en pieces monnayees."
And in another passage: "La monnaie des Chinois est faite de
billets fabriqu6s avec l'e*corce du murier. II y en a de grands et de
1 Industries anciennes et modernes de 1'empire chinois, pp. 145, 149 (Paris
1869).
2 Re'sume' des principaux trace's chinois sur la culture des muriers et 1'e'ducation
des vers a soie, p. 98 (Paris, 1837). According to the notions of the Chinese, JULIEN
remarks, everything made from hemp, like cord and weavings, is banished from the
establishments where silkworms are reared, and our European paper would be
very harmful to the latter. There seems to be a sympathetic relation between the
silkworm feeding on the leaves of the mulberry and the mulberry paper on which
the cocoons of the females are placed.
3 Ko ci kin yuan, Ch. 37, p. 6.
4 Relations des Musulmans avec les Chinois (Centenaire de 1'Ecole des langues
orientales vivantes, Paris, 1895, p. 17).
562 SlNO-lRANICA
petits. . . . On les fabrique avec des filaments tendres du mirier et,
apres y avoir appose un sceau au nom de Tempereur, on les met en
circulation." 1
The bank-notes of the Ming dynasty were likewise made of mul-
berry-pulp, in rectangular sheets one foot long and six inches wide, the
material being of a greenish color, as stated in the Annals of the Dy-
nasty. 2 It is clear that the Ming emperors, like many other institutions,
adopted this practice from their predecessors, the Mongols. KLAPROTH S
is wrong in saying that the assignats of the Sung, Kin, and Mongols
were all made from the bark of the tree Zu (Broussonetia) , and those of
the Ming from all sorts of plants. 4
In the Hui kian U 31 t&, an interesting description of Turkistan
by two Manchu officials Surde and Fusambd, published in i772, 5 the
following note, headed " Mohammedan Paper" -f $, occurs: " There
are two sorts of Turkistan paper, black and white, made from mulberry-
bark, cotton ffi! 'Iff , and silk-refuse equally mixed, resulting in a coarse,
thick, strong, and tough material. It is cut into small rolls fully a foot
long, which are burnished by means of stones, and are then fit for
writing."
Sir AUREL STEiN 6 reports that paper is still manufactured from mul-
berry-trees in Khotan. Also J. WIESNER, ? the meritorious investigator
1 Ibid., p. 20. .
* Minti, ch. 8i, P . i (# M U # i -K A -* K it ,)
The same text is found on a bill issued in 1375, reproduced and translated by
W. VISSERING (On Chinese Currency, see plate at end of volume), the minister of
finance being expressly ordered to use the fibres of the mulberry-tree in the com-
position of these bills.
3 M6moires relatifs a 1'Asie, Vol. I, p. 387.
4 This is repeated by ROCKHILL (Rub ruck, p. 201). I do not deny, of course,
that paper money was made from Broussonetia. The Chinese numismatists, in their
description of the ancient paper notes, as far as I know, make no reference to the
material (cf., for instance, Ts'uan pu t'un li ^ ^fij $t ;, Ch. 5, p. 42; 6 A, p. 2;
6 B, p. 44). The Yuan li (Ch. 97, p. 3) does not state, either, the character of the
paper employed in the Mongol notes. My point is, that the Mongols, while they
enlisted Broussonetia paper for this purpose, used mulberry-bark paper as well,
and that the latter was exclusively utilized by the Ming.
5 A. WYLIE, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 64. The John Crerar Library of
Chicago owns an old manuscript of this work, clearly written, in 4 vols. and chapters,
illustrated by nine ink-sketches of types of Mohammedans and a map. The volumes
are not paged.
6 Ancient Khotan, Vol. I, p. 134.
7 Mikroskopische Untersuchung alter ostturkestanischer Papiere, p. 9 (Vienna,
1902). I cannot pass over in silence a curious error of this scholar when he says
(p. 8) that it is not proved that Cannabis sativa (called by him "genuine hemp")
is cultivated in China, and that the so-called Chinese hemp paper should be intended
for China grass. Every tyro in things Chinese knows that hemp (Cannabis sativa)
IRANO-SINICA PAPER MONEY, PARCHMENT 563
of ancient papers, has included the fibre of Morus alba and M. nigra
among the materials to which his researches extended.
Mulberry-bark paper is ascribed to Bengal in the Si yan c'ao kun
tien fo V# 1MI- JlJRby Hwafi Siii-ts'en ^ ^ 't", published in 1520.!
Such paper is still made in Corea also, and is thicker and more solid
than that of China. 2 The bark of a species of mulberry is utilized by
the Shan for the same purpose. 3
As the mulberry-tree is eagerly cultivated in Persia in connection
with the silk-industry, it is possible also that the Persian paper in the
bank-notes of the Mongols was a product of the mulberry. 4 At any
rate, good Marco Polo is cleared, and his veracity and exactness have
been established again.
Before the introduction of rag-paper the Persians availed them-
selves of parchment as writing-material. It is supposed by Herzfeld
that Darius Hystaspes introduced the use of leather into the royal
archives, but this interpretation has been contested. 5 A fragment of
Ctesias preserved by Diodorus 6 mentions the employment of parchment
(di<f)6epa) in the royal archives of Persia. The practice seems to be of
Semitic, probably Syrian, origin. In the business life of the Romans,
parchment (membrana) superseded wooden tablets in the first century
A.D. 7 The Avesta and Zend written on prepared cow-skins with gold ink
is mentioned in the Artai-viraf-namak (i, 7). The Iranian word post
("skin") resulted in Sanskrit pusta or pustaka (" volume, book"), 8
from which Tibetan po-ti is derived. 9 On the other hand, the Persians
have borrowed from the Greek dufrdepa ("skin, parchment") their
word daftar or defter ("book," Arabic da/tar, diftar), which likewise
belongs to the oldest cultivated plants of the Chinese (see above, p. 293), and that
hemp paper is already listed among the papers invented by Ts'ai Lun in A.D. 105
(cf. CHAVANNES, Les Livres chinois avant 1'invention du papier, Journal asiatique,
I 95 P- 6 of the reprint).
1 Ch. B., p. 10 b (ed. of Pie Ma lai ts'un Su).
2 C. DALLET, Histoire de l'e*glise de Core*e, Vol. I, p. CLXXXIII.
3 J. G. SCOTT and J. P. HARDIMAN, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States, pt. I, Vol. II, p. 411.
4 The Persian word for the mulberry, tu8, is supposed to be a loan-word from
Aramaic (HORN, Grundriss iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 6); but this is erroneous
(see below, p. 582).
5 Cf. V. GARDTHAUSEN, Buchwesen im Altertum, p. 91.
6 ii, 32.
7 K. DZIATZKO, Ausgewahlte Kapitel des antiken Buchwesens, p. 131.
8 R. GAUTHIOT in Memoires Soc. de Linguistique, Vol. XIX, 1915, p. 130.
9 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 452.
564 SlNO-lRANICA
spread to Central Asia (Tibetan deb-t*er, Mongol debter, Manchu
debtelin) *
The use of parchment on the part of the people of Parthia (An-si) has
already been noted by the mission of Can K'ien, who placed it on record
that "they make signs on leather, from side to side, by way of literary
records." It is accordingly certain that parchment was utilized in
Iran as early as the second century B.C. There are also later references
to this practice; for instance, in the Nan &, 2 where it is said that the
Hu (Iranians) use sheep-skin ^ & as paper. The Chinese have hardly
ever made use of parchment for writing-purposes, but they prepare
parchment (from the skins of sheep, donkeys, or oxen) for the making
of shadow-play figures. The only parchment manuscripts ever found
in China were the Scriptures of the Jews of K'ai-fon, which are also
mentioned in their inscriptions. 3
26. Most of the Chinese loan-words in Persian were imported by
the Mongol rulers in the thirteenth century (the so-called Il-Khans,
1265-1335), being chiefly terms relative to official and administrative
institutions. The best known of these is pdizah, being a reproduction of
Chinese p^ai-tse ft$ ?, an official warrant or badge containing imperial
commands, letters of safe-conduct, permits of requisition, according to
the rank of the bearer, made of silver, brass, iron, etc. They were
taken over by the Mongols from the Liao and Kin, 4 and are mentioned
by Rubruck, Marco Polo, 5 and Raid-eddin.
27. Titles like wan 3i ("king, prince"), fai wan : 3: ("great
prince"), kao wan iSi i ("great general"), Vai hu :Jc Jo ("empress"),
fu Sen (Persian fucln) ^ A (title for women of rank), and kun lu
& l ("princess") were likewise adopted in Mongol Persia. 6 Persian
jinksdnak, title of a Mongol prefect or governor, transcribes Chinese
Fen sian 7$t 9 ("minister of state"). 7
28. From Turkish tribes the Persians have adopted the word toy
1 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 481.
2 Ch. 79, P- 7-
3 Cf. J. TOBAR, Inscriptions juives de K'ai-fong-fou, pp. 78, 86, 96 (note 2).
4 CHAVANNES, Journal asiatique, 1898, I, p. 396.
5 YULE'S edition, Vol. I, p. 351, which consult for a history of the p'ai-tse; see,
further, LAUFER, Keleti Szemle, 1907, pp. 195-196; ZAMTSARANO, Paiza among the
Mongols at the Present Time (Zapiski Oriental Section Russian Archaol. Soc.,
Vol. XXII, 1914, pp. 155-159).
6 E. BLOCHET, Introduction a 1'histoire des Mongols de Rashid Ed-din, p. 183;
and Djami el-Tevarikh, p. 473. Regarding the title wan, see also J. J. MODI, Asiatic
Papers, p. 251.
7 Cf. my notes in Toung Pao, 1916, p. 528.
i
IRANO-SINICA CHINESE LOAN-WORDS IN PERSIAN 565
(togti) or tuy, 1 which designates the tassels of horse-hair attached to the
points of a standard or to the helmet of a Pasha (in the latter case a
sign of rank). Among the Turks of Central Asia, the standard of a
high military officer is formed by a yak's tail fastened at the top of a
pole. This is said also to mark the graves of saintly personages. 2 In
the language of the Uigur, the word is tuk? As correctly recognized by
ABEL-REMUS AT, 4 who had recourse only to Osmanli, the Turkish word
is derived from Chinese HI tu, anciently *duk, that occurs at an early
date in the Cou li and Ts*ien Han $u. Originally it denoted a banner
carried in funeral processions; under the Han, it was the standard of the
commander-in-chief of the army, which, according to Ts'ai Yun ^
(A.D. 133-192), was made of yak-tails. 5 Yak-tails (Sanskrit cdmara,
Anglo-Indian chowry) were anciently used in India and Central Asia as
insignia of royalty or rank. 6
29. The Cou $u 7 states that in respect to the five cereals and the
fauna Persia agrees with China, save that rice and millet are lacking
in Persia. The term " millet" is expressed by the compound $u $u
3J l'1t; that is, the glutinous variety of Panicum miliaceum and the
glutinous variety of the spiked millet (Setaria italica glutinosa). Now,
we find in Persian a word $U$M in the sense of "millet." It remains
to study the history of this word, in order to ascertain whether it might
be a Chinese loan-word.
ScHLiMMER 8 notes erzen as Persian word for Panicum miliaceum.
30. Persian (also Osmanli) cank ("a harp or guitar, particularly
played by women") is probably derived from Chinese cen ^ ("a
harpsichord with twelve brass strings").
31. One of the most interesting Chinese loan-words in Persian is
ooutu (khutu), from Chinese ku-tu (written in various ways), principally
denoting the ivory tooth of the walrus. This subject has been dis-
1 In Sugnan, a Pamir language, it occurs as tux (SALEMANN, in VostoSnye Za-
m'atki, p. 286).
2 SHAW, Turkl Language, Vol. II, p. 76.
3 RADLOFF, Wort, der Turk-Dial., Vol. Ill, col. 1425.
4 Recherches sur les langues tatares, p. 303.
5 See K'an-hi sub ^.
6 YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 214. Under the Emirs of the Khanat Bukhara
there was the title toksaba: he who received this title had the privilege of having a
tug carried before him; hence the origin of the word toksaba (V^LIAMINOF-ZERNOF,
Melanges asiatiques, Vol. VIII, p. 576). Cf. also a brief note by PARKER (China
Review, Vol. XVII, p. 300).
7 Ch. 50, p. 6.
8 Terminologie, p. 420.
566 SlNO-lRANICA
cussed by me in two articles. 1 VuLLERS 2 gives no less than seven
definitions of the Persian word: (i) cornu bovis cuiusdam Sinensis;
(2) secundum alios cornu rhinocerotis; (3) secundum alios cornu avis
cuiusdam permagnae in regno vastato, quod inter Chinam et Aethiopiam
situm est, degentis, e quo conficiunt anulos osseos et manubria cultri
et quo res venenatae dignosci possunt; (4) secundum alios cornu ser-
pentis, quod mille annos natus profert; (5) secundum alios cornu
viperae; (6) secundum alios cornu piscis annosi; (7) secundum alios
dentes animalis cuiusdam. Of these explanations, No. 3 is that of
al-Akfanl, and the bird in question is the buceros. No. 4 is a reproduc-
tion of the definition of ku-tu-si in the Liao Annals ("the horn of a
thousand-years-old snake"). How the Persians and Arabs arrived at
the other definitions will be easily understood from my former dis-
cussion of the subject. In. the Ethiopic version of the Alexander Ro-
mance are mentioned, among the gifts sent to Alexander by the king of
China, twenty (in the Syriac version, ten) snakes' horns, each a cubit
long. 3
Meanwhile I have succeeded in tracing a new Chinese definition
of ku-tu. Cou Mi J$ $8 (1230-1320), in his Ci ya fan tsa c*ao* states,
"According to Po-ki f& |i&, 5 what is now styled ku-tu si if" JS IP is
a horn of the earth (ti kio J& ft, 'a horn found underground'?)." He
refers again to its property of neutralizing poison and to knife-hilts
made of the substance.
In the edition of the Ko ku yao lun, 6 the text regarding ku-tu-si is
somewhat different from that quoted by me in T'oung Pao (1913, p. 325).
Ku-tu-si is not identified there with pi-si, as appears from the text of
the P*ei wen yunfu and Pen ts'ao kan mu, but pi-si is a variety of ku-tu-si
of particularly high value.
1 Arabic and Chinese Trade in Walrus and Narwhal Ivory (T'oung Pao, 1913,
pp. 315-364, with Addenda by P. PELLIOT, pp. 365-370); and Supplementary
Notes on Walrus and Narwhal Ivory (ibid., 1916, pp. 348-389). Regarding objects
of walrus ivory in Persia, see pp. 365-366.
8 Lexicon Persico-Latinum, Vol. I, p. 659.
8 E. A. W. BUDGE, Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, p. 180; likewise
his translation of the Syriac version, p. 112 (Syriac edition, p. 200). In the Syriac
occurs another gift from China, "a thousand talents of mai-kdsi" (literally, "waters
of cups"). Budge leaves this problem unsolved. Apparently we face the tran-
scription of a Chinese word, which I presume is *mak, mag HI (at present mo),
"China ink." In Mongol and Manchu we find this word as bexe, in Kalmuk as beke.
* Ch. A, p. 29 b (ed. of Yue ya fan ts'un ).
6 Surname of Sien-yu C'u iff ^f fll, calligraphist and poet at the end of the
thirteenth century (see PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1913, p. 368).
8 Ch. 6, p. 9 b (ed. of Si yin Man ts'un $u).
IRANO-SINICA WALRUS IVORY 567
The Chinese Gazetteer of Macao 1 contains the following notice of
the walrus (hai ma): "Its tooth is hard, of a pure bright white with
veins as fine as silk threads or hair. It can be utilized for the carving of
ivory beads and other objects."
Finally I have found another document in which the fish-teeth of
the Russians are identified with the tusks of the walrus (morse). This
is contained in the work of G. FLETCHER, "The Russe Common Wealth,"
published in London, i59i, 2 and runs as follows: "Besides these (which
are all good and substantiall commodities) they have divers other of
smaller account, that are natural and proper to that country: as the
fishe tooth (which they cal ribazuba), which is used both among them-
selves and the Persians and Bougharians, that fetcht it from thence
for beads, knives, and sword hafts of noblemen and gentlemen, and
for divers other uses. Some use the powder of it against poyson, as
the unicornes home. The fish that weareth it is called a morse, and is
caught about Pechora. These fishe teeth, some of them are almost two
foot of length, and weigh eleven or twelve pound apiece." 3
1 Ao-men ci lio, Ch. B, p. 37.
2 Ed. of E. A. BOND, p. 13 (Hakluyt Society, 1856).
3 The following case is interesting as showing how narwhal ivory could reach
India straight from the Arctics. PIETRO DELLA VALLE (Vol. I, p. 4, Hakluyt Soc. ed.),
travelling on a ship from the Persian Gulf to India in 1623, tells this story: "On
Monday, the Sea being calm, the Captain, and I, were standing upon the deck of
our Ship, discoursing of sundry matters, and he took occasion to show me a piece
of Horn, which he told me himself had found in the yar 161 1 in a Northern Country,
whither he then sail'd, which they call Greenland, lying in the latitude of seventy-
six degrees. He related how he found this horn in the earth, being probably the horn
of some Animal dead there, and that, when it was intire, it was between five and
six feet long, and seven inches in circumference at the root, where it was thickest.
The piece which I saw (for the horn was broken, and sold by pieces in several places)
was something more than half a span long, and little less than five inches thick;
the color of it was white, inclining to yellow, like that of Ivory when it is old; it was
hollow and smooth within, but wreath'd on the outside. The Captain saw not the
Animal, nor knew whether it were of the land or the sea, for, according to the place
where he found it, it might be as well one as the other; but he believed for certain,
that it was of a Unicorn, both because the experience of its being good against poyson
argu'd so much, and for that the signes attributed by Authors to the Unicorn's
horn agreed also to this, as he conceiv'd. But herein I dissent from him, inasmuch as,
if I remember aright, the horn of the Unicorn, whom the Greeks call'd Monoceros,
is, by Pliny, describ'd black, and not white. The Captain added that it was a report,
that Unicorns are found in certain Northern parts of America, not far from that
Country of Greenland; and so not unlikely but that there might be some also in
Greenland, a neighbouring Country, and not yet known whether it be Continent
or Island; and that they might sometimes come thither from the contiguous lands
of America, in case it be no Island. . . . The Company of the Greenland Merchants
of England had the horn, which he found, because Captains of ships are their stipen-
diaries, and, besides their salary, must make no other profit of their Voyages; but
whatever they gain or find, in case it be known, and they conceal it not, all accrues
568 SlNO-lRANICA
The term pi-si has been the subject of brief discussions on the part
of PzLLiox 1 and myself. 2 The Ko ku yao lun, as far as is known at
. present, appears to be the earliest work in which the expression occurs.
Hitherto it had only been known as a modern colloquialism, and Pelliot
urged tracing it in the texts. I am now in a position to comply with
this demand. T'an Ts'ui W. 3, in his Tien hai yu ken Zi? published in
1799, gives an excellent account of Yun-nan Province, its mineral re-
sources, fauna, flora, and aboriginal population, and states that pi-kia-si
^ It 3 or pi-kia-pi H f{ *it or pi-si H $fe are all of the class of precious
stones which are produced in the Mon-mi t'u-se ffi $? i ^ of Yun-
nan. 4 It is obvious that these words are merely transcriptions of a
non-Chinese term; and, if we were positive that it took its starting-
point from Yun-nan, it would not be unreasonable to infer that it hails
from one of the native T'ai or Shan languages. T'an Ts'ui adds that
the best pi-si are deep red in color; that those in which purple, yellow,
and green are combined, and the white ones, take the second place;
while those half white and half black are of the third grade. We are
accordingly confronted with a certain class of precious stones which
remain to be determined mineralogically.
32. The Persian name for China is Cm, Cmistan, or Cinastan.
In Middle Persian we meet Saini in the Farvardin Yast and Sini in the
Bundahisn, 5 besides Cen and Cenastan. 6 The form with initial palatal
is confirmed, on the one hand, by Armenian Cen-k', Cenastan, Cen-
bakur ("emperor of China"), cenazneay (" originating from China"),
cenik (" Chinese"), and, on the other hand, by Sogdian Cynstn (Clna-
to the Company that employes them. When the Horn was intire it was sent to
Constantinople to be sold, where two thousand pounds sterling was offer'd for it:
But the English Company, hoping to get a greater rate, sold it not at Constantinople,
but sent it into Muscovy, where much about the same price was bidden for it, which,
being refus'd, it was carry'd back into Turkey, and fell of its value, a much less sum
being now proffer'd than before. Hereupon the Company conceiv'd that it would
sell more easily in pieces then intire, because few could be found who would purchase
it at so great a rate. Accordingly they broke it, and it was sold by pieces in sundry
places; yet, for all this, the whole proceed amounted onely to about twelve hundred
pounds sterling. And of these pieces they gave one to the Captain who found it,
and this was it which he shew'd me."
1 Toung Pao, 1913, p. 365.
2 Ibid., 1916, p. 375.
3 Ch. I, p. 6 (ed. of Wen yin lou yu ti ts'un $u). Title and treatment of the
subject are in imitation of the Kwei hai yii hen ci of Fan C'en-ta of the twelfth century.
4 T'u-se are districts under the jurisdiction of a native chieftain, who himself
is more or less subject to the authority of the Chinese.
5 Cf. J. J. MODI, References to China in the Ancient Books of the Parsees,
reprinted in his Asiatic Papers, pp. 241 et seq.
6 HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 49.
IRANO-SINICA THE NAME CHINA 569
stan). 1 The parallelism of initial c and 5 corresponds exactly to the
Greek doublet Sfrai and Qlvon ( = Cmai), and the Iranian forms
with c meet their counterpart in Sanskrit Cina (Cina). This state of
affairs renders probable the supposition that the Indian, Iranian, and
Greek designations for China have issued from a common source, and
that chis prototype may be sought for in China itself. I am now inclined
to think that there is some degree of probability in the old theory that
the name "China" should be traceable to that of the dynasty Ts'in.
I formerly rejected this theory, simply for the reason that no one had
as yet presented a convincing demonstration of the case; 2 nor did I
become converted by the demonstration in favor of Ts'in then attempted
by PELLiOT. 3 Pelliot has cited several examples from which it appears
that even under the Han the Chinese were still designated as "men of
the Ts'in" in Central Asia. This fact in itself is interesting, but does
not go to prove that the foreign names Cina, Cen, etc., are based on
the name Ts'in. It must be shown phonetically that such a derivation
is possible, and this is what Pelliot failed to demonstrate: he does
not even dwell for a moment on the question of the ancient pronuncia-
tion of the character ts*in ^. If in ancient times it should have had the
same articulation as at present, the alleged phonetic coincidence with
the foreign designations would amount to nothing. The ancient pho-
netic value of 31 was *din, *dzin, *dzin (jin), *dz'in, with initial dental
or palatal sonant; 4 and it is possible, and in harmony with phonetic
1 R. GAUTHIOT, T'oung Pao, 1913, p. 428.
- T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 719-726.
3 Ibid., pp. 727-742. The mention of the name Cina in the Arthagastra of
Canakya or Kautilya, and Jacobi's opinion on the question, did not at all prompt me
to my view, as represented by Pelliot. I had held this view for at least ten years
previously, and Jacobi's article simply offered the occasion which led me to express
my view. Pelliot 's commotion over the date of the Sanskrit work was superfluous.
I shall point only to the judgment of V. A. SMITH (Early History of India, 3d ed.,
1914, p. 153), who says that "the Arthacastra is a genuine ancient work of Maurya
age, and presumably attributed rightly to Canakya or Kautilya; this verdict, of
course, does not exclude the possibility, or probability, that the existing text may
contain minor interpolations of later date, but the bulk of the book certainly dates
from the Maurya period," and to the statement of A. B. KEITH (Journal Roy.
As. Soc., 1916, p. 137), "It is perfectly possible that the Arthacastra is an early
work, and that it may be assigned to the first century B.C., while its matter very
prol;,bly is older by a good deal than that." The doubts as to the Ts'in etymology
of the name "China" came from many quarters. Thus J. J. MODI (Asiatic Papers,
p. 247), on the supposition that the Farvardin Yast may have been written prior
to the fourth or fifth century B.C., argued, "If so, the fact that the name of China
as Saini occurs in this old document, throws a doubt on the belief that it was the
Ts'in dynasty of the third century B.C. that gave its name to China. It appears,
therefore, that the name was older than the third century B.C."
4 In the dialect of Shanghai it is still pronounced dzin.
570 SlNO-lRANICA
laws, that a Chinese initial d% was reproduced in Iranian by the palatal
surd . It is this phonetic agreement on the one hand, and the coin-
cidence of the Sanskrit, Iranian, and Greek names for China on the other,
which induce me to admit the Ts'in etymology as a possible theory; that
the derivation has really been thus, no one can assert positively. The
presence of the designation Ts'in for Chinese during the Han is an histor-
ical accessory, but it does not form a fundamental link in the evidence.
33. The preceding notes should be considered only as an outline
of a series of studies which should be further developed' by the co-
operation of Persian scholars and Arabists familiar with the Arabic
sources on the history and geography of Iran. A comprehensive study
of all Persian sources relating to China would also be very welcome.
Another interesting task to be pursued in this connection would be
an attempt to trace the development of the idealized portrait which
the Persian and Arabic poets have sketched of the Chinese. It is known
that in the Oriental versions of the Alexander Romance the Chinese
make their appearance as one of the numerous nations visited by
Alexander the Great (Iskandar). In Firdausl's (935-1025) version he
travels to China as his own ambassador, and is honorably received by
the Fagfur (Son of Heaven), to whom he delivers a letter confirming
his possessions and dignities, provided he will acknowledge Iskandar as
his lord and pay tribute of all fruits of his country; to this the Fagfur
consents. In Nizamfs (1141-1203) Iskandarndme ("Book of Alex-
ander"), Iskandar betakes himself from India by way of Tibet to China,
where a contest between the Greek and Chinese painters takes place,
the former ultimately carrying the day. 1 In the Ethiopic version of
the Alexander story, "the king of China commanded that they should
spread out costly stuffs upon a couch, and the couch was made of gold
ornamented with jewels and inlaid with a design in gold; and he sat in
his hall, and his princes and nobles were round about him, and when
he spake they made answer unto him and spake submissively. Then he
commanded the captain to bring in Alexander the ambassador. Now
when I Alexander had come in with the captain, he made me to stand
before the King, and the men stood up dressed in raiment of gold and
silver; and I stood there a long time and none spake unto me." 2 The
Kowtow (k'o-t'ou) question was evidently not raised. It is still more
amusing to read farther on that the king of China made the ambassador
sit by his side upon the couch, an impossible situation. The Fagfur
sent to Alexander garments of finely woven stuff, one hundred pounds
1 Cf. P. SPIEGEL, Die Alexandersage bei den Orientalen, pp. 31, 46.
2 E. A. W. BUDGE, Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, p. 173.
IRANO-SINICA THE CHINESE IN THE ALEXANDER ROMANCE 571
in weight, two hundred tents, men-servants and maid-servants, two
hundred shields of elephant-hide, as many Indian swords mounted in
gold and ornamented with gold and precious stones of great value,
as many horses suitable for kings, and one thousand loads of the finest
gold and silver, for in this country are situated the mountains where-
from they dig gold. The wall of that city is built of gold ore, and like-
wise the habitations of the people; and from this place Solomon, the
son of David, brought the gold with which he built the sanctuary, and
he made the vessels and the shields of the gold of the land of China. 1
In the history of Alexander the Great contained in the "Universal His-
tory" of al-Makin, who died at Damascus in 127374, a distinction is
made between the kings of Nearer China and Farther China. 2
The most naive version of Alexander's adventures in China is con-
tained in the legendary "History of the Kings of Persia," written in
Arabic by al-Ta'alibi (96i-io38). 3 Here, the king of China is taken
aback, and loses his sleep when Alexander with his army enters China.
Under cover of night he visits Alexander, offering his submission in order
to prevent bloodshed. Alexander first demands the revenue of his
kingdom for five years, but gradually condescends to accept one third
for one year. The following day a huge force of Chinese troops surrounds
the army of Alexander, who believes his end has come, when the king
of China appears, descending from his horse and kissing the soil (!).
Alexander charges him with perfidy, which the king of China denies.
"What, then, does this army mean? " "I wanted to show thee," the
king of China replied, "that I did not submit from weakness or owing
to the small number of my forces. I had observed that the superior
world favored thee and allowed thee to triumph over more powerful
kings than thou. Whoever combats the superior world will be van-
quished. For this reason I wanted to submit to the superior world
by submitting to thee, and humbly to obey it by obeying thee and
complying with thy orders." Alexander rejoined, "No demand should
be made of a man like thee. I never met any one more qualified as a
sage. Now I abandon all my claims upon thee and depart." The king
of China responded, "Thou wilt lose nothing by this arrangement."
He then despatched rich presents to him, like a thousand pieces of silk,
painted silk, brocade, silver, sable-skins, etc., and pledged himself to
pay an annual tribute. Although the whole story, of course, is pure
invention, Chinese methods of overcoming an enemy by superior
diplomacy are not badly characterized.
1 Ibid., p. 179.
2 Ibid., pp. 369, 394.
8 H. ZOTENBERG, Histoire des rois des Perses, pp. 436-440.
APPENDIX I
IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN MONGOL
On the preceding pages, as well as in my "Loan-Words in Tibetan,"
I had occasion to point out a number of Mongol words traceable to
Iranian; and, as this subject has evoked some interest since the dis-
coveries made in Turkistan, I deem it useful to treat it here in a coherent
notice and to sum up our present knowledge of the matter.
1. Certain relations of the Mongol language to Iranian were known
about a century ago to I. J. SCHMIDT/ the real founder of Mongol phil-
ology. It was Schmidt who, as far back as 1824, first recognized in the
Mongol name Xormusda (Khormusda) the Iranian Ormuzd or Ahura-
mazdah of the Avesta. Even Schmidt's adversary, J. KLAPROTH, was
obliged to admit that this theory was justified. 2 Re'musat's objections
were refuted by SCHMIDT himself. 3 At present we know that the name
in question was propagated over Central Asia by the Sogdians in the
forms Xurmazta (Wurmazt) and Oharmizd. 4 What we are still ignorant
of is how the transformation of the supreme Iranian god into the
supreme Indian god was effected; for in the Buddhist literature of the
Mongols the name Xormusda strictly refers to the god Indra. Also
in the polyglot Buddhist dictionaries the corresponding terms of
Chinese, Tibetan, etc., relate to Indra.
2. Esroa, Esrua, or Esrun, is in the Buddhist literature of the
Mongols the designation of the Indian god Brahma. The Iranian
origin of this word has been advocated by A. ScniEFNER. 6 Although
taken for a corruption of Sanskrit iguara ("lord"), it seems, according
to Schiefner, to be in closer relation to Avestan $raosha (sraofa) or
qravanh. Certain it is that the Mongol word is derived from the Uigur
1 Forschungen im Gebiete der Bildungsgeschichte der Volker Mittel-Asiens,
p. 148.
2 "Cette hypothec me"rite d'etre soigneusement examinee et nous invitons
M. Schmidt a recueillir d'autres faits propres a lui donner plus de certitude" (Nou-
veau Journal asiatigue, Vol. VII, 1831, p. 180).
3 Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen, p. 353.
4 F. W. K. MILLER, Die "persischen" Kalenderausdrucke, pp. 6, 7; Hand-
schriftenreste, II, pp. 20, 94.
6 In his introduction to W. RADLOFF'S Proben der Volkslitteratur der turki-
schen Stamme, Vol. II, p. xi. Schiefner derives also Kurbustu of the Soyon from
Ormuzd.
572
IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN MONGOL 573
Azrua, which in the Manichean texts of the Uigur appears as the name
of an Iranian deity. C. SALEMANN 1 has promised a discussion of this
word, but I have not yet seen this article. Meanwhile GAUTHiOT 2 has
solved this problem on the basis of the Sogdian form 'zrw' ( = azrwa),
which appears as the equivalent of Brahma in the Sogdian Buddhist
texts. The Sogdian word, according to him, is the equivalent of
Avestan zrvan.
3. Mongol suburgan, tope, Stupa, is derived from Uigur supurgan.
The latter may be of Iranian origin, and, as suggested by GAUTHiox, 3
go back to spur-ocan ("house of perfection").
4. Mongol titim, diadem, crown (corresponding in meaning to and
rendering Sanskrit mukutd). This word is traceable to Sogdian 8i5im.*
The prototype is Greek 5tdSr?jua (whence our "diadem"), which has
been preserved in Iran since Macedonian times. 5 In New Persian it is
dakim or dehlm, developed from an older *deSem. Mongol titim,
accordingly, cannot be derived from New Persian, but represents an
older form of Iranian speech, which is justly correlated with the Sogdian
form.
5. Mongol Simnus, a class of demons (in Buddhist texts, translation
of Sanskrit Mara, "the Evil One"), is doubtless derived from Uigur
$mnu, the latter from Sogdian Smnu? Cf. also Altaic and Teleutic
lulumys ("evil spirit").
6. In view of the Sogdian loan-words in Mongol, it is not impossible
that, as suggested by F. W. K. MULLER/ the termination -ntsa (-nZd)
in Sibagantsa, cibagantsa, or Simnantsa ("bhiksunl, nun;" Manchu
cibahanci) should be traceable to the Sogdian feminine suffix -nl (pre-
sumably from inc, "woman"). The same ending occurs in Uigur
upasanc (Sanskrit upasikd, "Buddhist lay- woman") and Mongol
ubasantsa. R. GAUTHIOT 8 is certainly right in observing that it is im-
1 Bull, de I'Acad. de St.-Pet., 1909, p. 1218.
2 In CHAVANNES and PELLIOT, Trait< maniche'en, p. 47.
3 Ibid., p. 132.
4 MULLER, Uigurica, p. 47.
5 NOLDEKE, Persische Studien, II, p. 35; cf. also HUBSCHMANN, Persische
Studien, p. 199.
6 P. W. K. MULLER, Uigurica, p. 58; Soghdische Texte, I, pp. u, 27. In Sog-
dian Christian literature, the word serves for the rendering of "Satan." According
to MULLER (SPAW, 1909, p. 847), also Mongol nisan ("seal") and badman (not
explained) should be Middle Persian, and have found their way into Mongol through
the medium of the Uigur.
7 Uigurica, p. 47.
8 Essai sur le vocalisme du sogdien, p. 112.
574 SlNO-lRANlCA
possible to prove this interdependence; yet it is probable to a high
degree and seems altogether plausible.
7. Textiles made from cotton are designated in Mongol bus (Kalmuk
bos), in Jurci Queen or Niuci) busu, in Manchu boso. This series, first
of all, is traceable to Uigur boz. 1 The entire group is manifestly con-
nected, as already recognized by ScHOTT, 2 with Greek pvcrvos (byssos),
which itself goes back to Semitic (Hebrew bus, Assyrian busu). But
how the Semitic word advanced to Central Asia is still obscure; its
presence in Uigur might point to Iranian mediation, but it has not yet
been traced in any Iranian language. Perhaps it was transmitted to
the Uigur directly by Nestorian missionaries. The case would then be
analogous to Mongol nom (Manchu nomun), from Uigur nom, num
("a sacred book, law")j which AsEL-RfeMUSAT 3 traced through Semitic
to Greek v6nos.
Cotton itself is styled in Mongol kuben or kubiln, in Manchu kubun.
SCHOTT (I.e.) was inclined to derive this word from Chinese ku-pei, but
this is impossible in view of the labial surd. Nevertheless it may be
that the Mongol term is connected with a vernacular form based on
Sanskrit karpdsa, to which also Chinese ku-pei is indirectly traceable
(above, p. 491). This form must be sought for in Iranian; true it
is, in Persian we have kirpds (correspondingly in Armenian kerpas)
and in Arabic kirbds. In Vaxi, a Pamir dialect, however, we
find kubas* which, save the final s, agrees with the Mongol form.
The final nasals in the Mongol and Manchu words remain to be
explained.
8. Mongol anar, pomegranate, is doubtless derived from Persian
andr (above, p. 285). In the Chinese-Uigur Dictionary we meet the
form nara? In this case, accordingly, Uigur cannot be held responsible
as the mediator between Persian and Mongol. In all probability, the
fruit was directly transmitted by Iranians to the Mongols, who thus
adopted also the name for it.
9. Mongol turma, radish, is derived from Persian turma (also turub,
turb, turf). 6
1 F. W. K. MULLER, Uigurica, II, p. 70.
2 Altaisches Sprachengeschlecht, p. 5; and Abh. Berl. Akad. t 1867, p. 138.
3 Recherches stir les langues tartares, p. 137.
4 HJULER, The Pamir Languages, p. 38.
5 KLAPROTH, Sprache und Schrift der Uiguren, p. 14; and RADLOFF, Turk.
W6rt., Vol. Ill, col. 648.
6 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 84. The derivation from Persian escaped MUNKACSI
and GOMBOCZ (Mem. Soc. finno-ougrienne, Vol. XXX, p. 131), who erroneously
seek the foundation of the word in Turkish.
IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN MONGOL 575
10. Mongol xasinij asafoetida, from Persian kasni ("product of
hazni"). Cf. above, p. 361.
11. Mongol bodso, an alcoholic beverage made from barley-meal
milk, is connected by KOVALEVSKI in his Mongol Dictionary with
Persian boza, a beverage made from rice, millet, or barley.
12. Mongol bolot, steel, is derived from New Persian puldd, whether
lirectly or through the medium of Turkish languages is not certain.
The Persian word is widely diffused, and occurs in Tibetan, Armenian,
Ossetic, Grusinian, Turkish, and Russian. 1
13. Mongol bagdar, coat-of-mail, armor, goes back to Persian
bagtar (Jagatai baktar, Tibetan beg-tse).
14. Mongol sagari and sarisu, shagreen. 2 Prom Persian sagri. In
Tibetan it is sag-ri; 3 in Manchu sarin (while Manchu $empi is a tran-
scription of Chinese sie-p^i ffl $t) . 4
15. Mongol kukur, kugur, sulphur. From Persian gugurd, Afghan
kokurt (Arabic kibrlt, Hebrew gafrit, Modern Syriac kugurd).
1 6. Other Persian loan-words in Mongol have come from Tibetan,
thus: Mongol nal, spinel, balas ruby. From Tibetan nal; Persian Idl
(Notes on Turqois, p. 48). Mongol zira, cummin. From Tibetan zi-ra;
Persian zlra, Zira (above, p. 383).
17. In some cases the relation of Mongol to Persian is not entirely
clear. In these instances we have corresponding words in Turkish, and
it cannot be decided with certainty whether the Mongol word is trace-
able to Turkish or Persian.
Thus Mongol bony a, trumpet (cf. Manchu bur en and buleri), Turk-
ish boru, Uigur bb'rgu, 5 Persian burl.
1 8. Mongol dsaran (dsagaran), a species of antelope (Procapra
subgutturosa)-, Altaic jar an, wild goat of the steppe; Jagatai jiren,
gazelle; Persian jirdn, gazelle.
19. Mongol tos (written tagus, logos, to indicate the length of the
vowel), peacock. From Persian tdwus (Turk! ta'us).
20. Mongol toti, parrot. From Persian toil (Uigur and Turk! tofi).
21. Mongol bag, garden. This word occurs in a Mongol-Chinese
inscription of the year 1314, where the corresponding Chinese term
signifies " garden," and, as recognized by H. C. v. D. GABELENTz, 6
doubtless represents Persian bay ("garden").
1 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1916, pp. 82, 479.
2 K'ien-lun's Polyglot Dictionary, Ch. 24, pp. 38, 39.
3 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 478.
4 This term is not noted in the Dictionary of Giles.
6 PELLIOT, T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 22.
6 Z. K. d. Morg., Vol. II, 1839, p. 12.
576 SlNO-lRANICA
22. Mongol Sikar, &kir, sugar. From Persian Sakar.
23. Mongol &tara, Kalmuk tatar, chess. From Persian Satranj.
E. Blochet's derivation of Mongol bogda from Persian bokhta is a
pseudo-Iranicum. The Mongol term is not a loan-word, but indigenous. 1
BOEHTLINGK, in his Yakut Dictionary, has justly compared it with
Yakut bogdo.
1 Cf. T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 495.
APPENDIX II
CHINESE ELEMENTS IN TURKI
On the preceding pages I had occasion to make reference in more
than one instance to words of the Turk! language spoken in Chinese
Turkistan. A. v. LE CoQ 1 has appended an excellent Turk! vocabulary
to a collection of texts recorded by him in the territory of Turf an. This
list contains a certain percentage of Chinese loan-words which I wish
briefly to discuss here.
In general, these have been correctly recognized and indicated by
Le Coq, though not identified with their Chinese equivalents. But
several pointed out as such are not Chinese; while there are others
which are Chinese, but are not so designated; and a certain number
of words put down as Chinese are left in doubt by the addition of an
interrogation-mark. To the first class belongs jan-za (" tobacco-pipe"),
alleged to be Chinese; on the contrary, this is a thoroughly Altaic word,
no trace of which is to be discovered in Chinese. 2 It is khamsa or xamsa
in Yakut, already indicated by BOEHTLINGK. S It is gangsa or gantsa
in Mongol; 4 gansa in the Buryat dialect of Selengin. 5 The word has
further invaded the Ugrian territory: Wogul qansa, Ostyak ocohsa, and
Samoyed ocansa. 6 It is noteworthy that the term has also found its way
into Tibetan, where its status as a loan-word has not yet been recog-
nized. It is written in the form gan-zag (pronounced gah-za; Kovalevski
writes it gan-sa, and Ramsay gives it as kanzak for West-Tibetan);
this spelling is due to popular assimilation of the word with Tibetan
gan-zag ("man, person").
In ju-xai gill ("narcissus") I am unable, as suggested by the author,
to recognize a Chinese-Turkish formation. The narcissus is styled in
1 Sprichworter und Lieder aus der Gegend von Turf an, Baessler-Archiv, Beiheft
I, 1910.
2 The Chinese word for a tobacco-pipe, (yen-) tai, is found as dai in Golde and
other Tungusian languages, because the Tungusian tribes receive their pipes from
China.
3 Jakutisches Worterbuch, p. 79.
4 KOVALEVSKI, Dictionnaire mongol, pp. 980, 982.
6 CASTRN, Burjatische Sprachlehre, p. 130.
6 A. AHLQUIST (Journal de la Societe finno-ougrienne, Vol. VIII, 1890, p. 9),
who regards the Ugrian words as loans from Turkish.
577
578 SlNO-lRANICA
Chinese $wi-hien ^K $1 ("water-fairy"). 1 Gill, of course, is Persian gul
("flower"). Jusai ("garlic") is not Chinese either. Mdjdzd ("chair")
is hardly Chinese, as suggested.
To the second class belong ton ("cold, frozen"), which is apparently
identical with Chinese tun 5C of the same meaning, and tung ("wooden
bucket"), which is the equivalent of Chinese fun IB ("tub, barrel").
There are, further, pdn ("board"), from Chinese pan S; yangza ("sort,
kind"), from yan-tse It! -?; qdwd ("gourd"), from kwa J&.
The word ton-kai ("donkey's knuckle-bones employed in a game")
is tentatively marked Chinese. This term is mentioned, with a brief
description of the game, in the Manchu Polyglot Dictionary 2 as Chinese
(colloquial) tan cen'r kun'r W Of & St 5i and Tibetan t'e-k'ei-gan; the
latter is not Tibetan, and without any doubt represents a transcription.
The Chinese term, however, may be so likewise. In Manchu, the word
toxai denotes the smooth side of the knuckle-bone, and is apparently
related to Turk! tonkai.
The Chinese origin of Id-zd ("red pepper, pimento") is not to be
questioned. It is Chinese la-tse J& -?\ 3 Still less can the Chinese charac-
ter of 'irJtin ("two men," that is, descendant of a Chinese and a Turkish
woman) be called into doubt; this, of course, is er Zen ^ A.
The following Chinese words indicated by Le Coq may be identified,
only those of special interest being selected:
dan, inn, bungalow, from tien j. This word has been carried by the Chinese
all over Central Asia. It has also been traced in Sogdian in the form fim.*
go-si, official placards posted in a public place, from kao-U ^ 73^.
sai-pun, tailor, from ts'ai-fun ^ jft.
maupan, miller, mill, from mo-fan (cu) | i rf.
yan-xo, match, from yan hwo ffi fc.
tunli bdk, interpreter; the first element from t'un-$i jjj lj (see Loan- Words in
Tibetan, No. 310; and Journal Am. Or. Soc., 1917, p. 200).
Ian, money, from Vien ^.
ti-za, banknotes issued by the Governor of Urumc'i, from M-tse JH -J*.
jozd, table (Le Coq erroneously "chair"), from lo-tse ^ -J*.
Ian, bed, from Zwan jf^C.
dd-dir, kind of horse-bean, perhaps from ta-tou ~fc S-
dan-za, notebook, from can-tse ^^ -^.
Sum-po, title of the Chinese governor, from sun fu p$
Id-tdi, candlestick, from la t*ai $j^ ft.
min-ldn-zd, door-curtain, from men-lin-tse P5 ;^l ?"
yan-yo, potato, from yan yao ^ ^.
1 See, further, above, p. 427.
2 Cf. K. HIMLY, T'oung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, p. 280.
3 Cf. Loan- Words in Tibetan, No. 237.
4 F. W. K. MULLER, Soghdische Texte, I, p. 104.
CHINESE ELEMENTS IN TURKI 579
In the Turkl collectanea of G. RAQUETTE 1 I note the following
Chinese words:
cin-say, celery, from Vin ts'ai J^ ^j.
manto, meat-dumpling, from man-t'ou fH |H-
lizd, a Chinese foot (measure), from Vi-tse /?, -f.
lobo, a long turnip, from lo-po |j >ffj.
jin, a Chinese pound, from fan /p.
A few other remarks on Turkl words recorded by Le Coq may
follow here:
ndhdl ("ruby") is apparently Persian Idl (above, p. 575).
zummurdt ("emerald") is not Arabic-Turkish, but Persian (above, p. 519).
There is no reason to question the Persian origin of palas ("cloth, sail"); it
is identical with Persian balds (above, p. 495).
dowd ("hill") is identical with Turkish deve, teve ("camel"); cf. Toung Pao,
1915, p. 21.
yttpis ("snow-leopard") is identical with Mongol irbis ("panther").
1 Eastern Turki Grammar, Mitt. Sem. Or. Spr., 1914, II, pp. 170-232.
APPENDIX III
THE INDIAN ELEMENTS IN THE PERSIAN PHARMA-
COLOGY OP ABU MANSUR MUWAFFAQ
On the preceding pages reference has repeatedly been made to the
work of Abu Mansur as proving that the Persians were acquainted
with certain plants and products, or as demonstrating the inter-
relations of Persia and India, or of Persia and China. Abu Mansur's
"Principles of Pharmacology" is a book of fundamental importance,
in that it is the first to reveal what Persian- Arabic medicine and pharma-
cology owe to India, and how Indian drugs were further conveyed to
Europe. The author himself informs us that he had been travelling
in India, where he became acquainted with her medical literature. It
therefore seems to me a useful task to collect here what is found of
Indian elements in his work, and thus present a complete summary of
the influence exerted by India on the Persia of the tenth century. It is
not my object to trace merely Indian loan-words in Persian, although
several not hitherto recognized (as, for instance, balddur, turunj, dand,
pUpal, etc.) have been identified by me; but I wish to draw up a list of
all Indian drugs or products occurring in Abu Mansur, regardless of
their designations, and to identify them with their Indian equivalents.
Abu Mansur gives the names in Arabic; the Persian names are supplied
from Achundow's commentary or other sources. The numbers in
parentheses refer to those in Achundow's translation.
J. Jolly has added to the publication of Achundow a few observations
on Indian words occurring in the work of Abu Mansur; but the real
Indian plants and drugs are not noticed by him at all, while his alleged
identifications are mere guesswork. Thus he proposes for armdk or
armal Skr. amlaka, amlikd, and dmra, three entirely different plants,
none of which corresponds to the description of armak, which is a bark
very similar to kurfa (Winterania canella), the best being brought from
Yemen; it is accordingly an Arabic, not an Indian plant. Harbuwand
(No. 576) is described as a grain smaller than pepper, somewhat yellow-
ish, and smelling like Aloeocylon agallochum; according to Jolly, this
should be derived from Skr. kharva-mndhyd ("small cardamom"),
but the question is not of cardamoms, and there is no phonetic coin-
cidence of the words. The text says that kader (No. 500) is a wholesome
remedy to soften the pustules of small-pox. Jolly proposes no less
580
INDIAN ELEMENTS IN PERSIAN PHARMACOLOGY 581
than four Sanskrit plant-names, kadara, kadala, kandara, and kandata,
while the Tohfat states that kader is called kawi in India, being a tree
similar to the date-palm, the flower being known as kaburah (p. 197);
kader, accordingly, is an Arabic word, while kawi is the supposed Indian
equivalent and may correspond to Sanskrit kapi (Emblica officinalis,
Pongamia glabra, or Olibanum). These examples suffice: the twenty-one
identifications proposed by Jolly are not convincing. Many of these
have also been rejected by Achundow.
The Indian loan-words in Persian should occasionally be made the
subject of an exhaustive study. A few of these are enumerated by
P. HoRN. 1 Kurkum ("saffron"), however, is not of Indian origin, as
stated by him (cf. above, p. 321). Skr. surd, mentioned above, occurs in
Persian as sur ("rice-wine"). Middle Persian kapik, Persian kabl
("monkey"), is derived from Skr. kapi?
1(1). aruz, P. birinj, rice (Oryza sativa). Cf. above, p. 373.
2(5). utruj, P. turunj, citron (Citrus medico). From Skr. mdtulunga
(above, p. 301), also mdtulanga, -Idnga, and -linga.
3(11). ihlilaj, P. halila, myrobalan (Terminalia chebula). Skr. harUakl
(above, p. 378).
4(76). balilaj, P. balila, Terminalia belerica, Skr. vibhitaka (cf. T'oung
Pao, 1915, p. 275).
5(12). amlaj, P. amlla (amela, amula), Emblica officinalis or Phyl-
lanthus emblica. Skr. amala (also dhdtri), provided the botanical identi-
fication is correct; phonetically, P. dmila would rather point to Skr.
dmla or amlikd (Tamarindus indica), Chinese transcription ^ 5? $1
an-mi-lo, *am-mi-la. Abu Mansur states that "there is a variety
sir-amlaj; some physicians erroneously read this name slr-amlaj, be-
lieving that it was administered in milk (sir) ; but this is a gross error,
for it is sir, and this is an Indian word, and amlaj signifies 'without
stone/ I was there where amlaj grows, and have seen it with my own
eyes." The etymology given is fantastic, but may have been com-
municated to the author in India.
6(33). atmat, Nelumbium speciosum or Nelumbo nucifera (p. 205).
"It is a kernel like an Indian hazel-nut. Its effect is like that of Orchis
morio. It is the seed of Nymph&a alba indica, and is as round as the
Indian hazel-nut." Both the botanical identification and the trans-
lation appear to me somewhat questionable. Cf. No. 47.
7(36). dzddraxt, dzddiraxt, Melia azadiracta. Abu Mansur adds
as the Arabic name of the plant. Ibn al-Baitar (LECLERC, Vol. I,
1 Grundr. iran. Philol., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 7.
2 HUBSCHMANN, Pers. Studien, p. 87.
582 SlNO-lRANICA
p. 54) explains the Persian word as "free tree," and Leclerc accordingly
derives it from azdd-diraxt. Skr. nimba, nimbaka, mahdnimba.
8(40). usndn, Herba alkali, chiefly species of Salsola. "There are
four kinds of alkali herb, a white, yellow, green, and an Indian kind
which occurs as Indian hazel-nut (funduq-i hindl), also called xurs-i
sml ('Chinese xurs') and rutta." Cf. T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 93;
above, p. 551.
9(54). bitlx ul-hindl, P. hindewdne, water-melon (above, p. 443).
10(73). belddur, balddur, the marking-nut tree (Semecarpus anacar-
dium). Cf. above, p. 482.
11(77). birinj-i kdbill, ''rice of Kabul" (Embelia ribes). Skr. vidanga
(cf. T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 282-288; 1916, p. 69).
12(78). bang, henbane (Hyoscyamus) , a narcotic prepared from
hemp-seeds. The seed was used as a substitute for opium (Abu Mansur,
No. 59). Skr. bhangd, hemp (Cannabis saliva). The Persian word is
also traced to Avestan banha, "a narcotic," but it seems to me preferable
to assume direct derivation from Skr. in historical times. Arabic banj,
Portuguese bango, French bangue. P. Sabibi, "a narcotic root; also the
inebriating hemp-seed."
13(85). bUs, halahil, aconite (Aconitum). Hindi bis, Skr. vi$a (Aconi-
tum ferox), from visa, "poison;" Skr. hdldhala, a species of aconite and
a strong poison prepared from it. Cf. T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 319-320,
note.
14(87). tut, mulberry (Morus alba), a native of China. The opinion
of NOLDEKE (Pers. Studien, II, p. 43), that the Persian word is traceable
to Semitic, is entirely erroneous, as this species spread from the far
east and India to Iran and Europe, and began to be cultivated in the
Mediterranean area only from the twelfth century. Skr. tuda and tula,
Bengali and Hindustani tul, tut, Morus alba or indica (ROXBURGH, Flora
Indica, p. 658); cf. SCHRADER in Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 393. Morus
nigra, the black mulberry, is a native of Persia.
15(90). tamr ul-hindl, P. tamar-i hindl, tamarind (Tamarindus
indica), cultivated throughout India and Burma. Skr. tintida, tintidlka,
tintilikd, etc., jhdbuka, amllkd.
16(94). tanbul, P. pan, barge-tanbol, betel (Piper betle). Skr. tdmbula,
ndgavallikd.
17(111). juz-i buwwd, P. juz-i buy a, nutmeg (Myristica moschata,
officinalis, or fragrans) . Skr. jdti, jdtikoqa, jdtisdra, jdtiphala.
18(112). juz-i mdtil, P. tdtura, datura, Datura metel. Skr. mdtula,
dhatura. Cf. T'oung Pao, 1917, p. 23.
19(142). habb ul-qilqil (qulqul), seeds of Cassia tor a (the foetid cassia).
Skr. prapundda, prapundta, prapumndla, tubariqimba; Singhalese peti-
INDIAN ELEMENTS IN PERSIAN PHARMACOLOGY 583
tora (also cultivated in Indo-China, China, and Japan: PERROT and
HURRIER, p. 146; STUART, p. 96; Japanese ebisu-gusa) .
20(248). duhn ul-amlaj, oil of myrobalan (oleum emblicae). Cf.
No. 5.
21(251). duhn ul-sunbul, Indian nard-oil (oleum Valerianae jata-
mansi). Cf. No. 32.
22(253). ddr-sml, P. dar-fini, cinnamon (Laurus cinnamomum, Cin-
namomum tamala) . Arabic also saddj. Skr. tvaca.
23(254). ddr-filfil, P. pipal, pilpil, long pepper (Piper longum).
Skr. pippati.
24(260). dandy dend, dund, Croton tiglium. From Skr. dantl, Croton
polyandrus (also called Baliospermum montanum). Abu Mansur adds
that this plant is called in Indian ceipal. This is Skr. jayapdla, Croton
jamalgota (the latter from Hindustani jamalgota), styled also sdraka.
Arabic also dend smi (Low, Aram. Pflanzennamen, p. 170). Cf. above,
p. 448. In Tibetan we have dan-da and dan-rog.
25(261). P. divddr, devddr, Pinus or Cedrus devdara, deodar a, or
deodora. Skr. devaddru ("tree of the gods")- I n Persian also sanobar-i
Hindi, nastar; Arabic Sajratud-devddr , sanobarul-hind.
26(272). zarira, sweet flag (Acorus calamus). Achundow (p. 192)
identifies Arabic zarira with an alleged Indian word dksarirah, indicated
by Berendes; I cannot trace such an Indian word. Zarira appears to
be identical with Arabic dirira (GARCIA) or darira ("aroma"); cf. also
Low, I.e., p. 342. Skr. vacd, conveyed to Persian and Arabic as vdj
(GARCIA: Guzerat vaz, Deccan bache, Malabar vazabu, Concan vaicam,
employed by Abu Mansur in No. 564, where Achundow identifies it
with Iris pseudacorus, and on p. 272 also with Acorus calamus'), ugra-
gandha, and sadgranthd.
27(281). ratta, P. bunduq-i hindl ("Indian hazel-nut"), Sapindus
mukorossi and trifoliatus (not in Watt); Achundow's identification is
apparently erroneous. The question evidently is of Guilandina bonduc
(cf. LECLERC, Vol. I, p. 276), also called C&salpinia bonducella, the
fever-nut or physic-nut, Skr. kuberdksl ("eye of Kubera"), latdkaranja;
P. xdyahe-i iblls; Arabic akitmakit, kitmakit.
28(288). Sangatil (Middle Persian sangamr), Arabic-Persian zanjabil,
ginger (Zingiber officinale) . Three kinds Chinese, Zanzibar, and
Melinawi or zurunbdj are distinguished. The word is based on an
Indian vernacular form *s(s)angavira, corresponding to Pali singivera,
Skr. qrngavera; drdraka (the fresh root).
29(292). zurunbdd, P. zarambad, Curcuma zedoaria. Cf. YULE,
Hobson-Jobson, p. 979.
30(304). zarwdr, Curcuma aromatica or zedoaria. "This is an Indian
584 SlNO-lRANICA
remedy." Achtmdow (p. 193) suspects a clerical error for zadwdr
(also jadwdr). Skr. nirvisa, vanaharidrd. Cf. above, p. 544.
31(311). sukkar, P. Sakar, Sakkar, sugar-cane, sugar (Saccharum
officinarum). Prakrit and Pali sakkhard, Skr. qarkard.
32(315). sunbul, P. sunbul-i hindi, Valeriana jatamansi. Skr.
jatdmdmsl.
33(316). satixa, Laurus cassia. Skr. tvaca Cf. No. 22.
34(324). saqmuniyd, Convolvulus scammonia. "There are three
kinds, an Indian, that from Carmgan, and that from Antiochia; the
latter being the best, the Indian ranking next. The Indian kind is the
gum of Convolvulus (or Ipomcea) turpethum" The latter is Skr. tripufa,
or trivft; hence Hindustani tarbud, P. turbid, Arabic turbund. C. scam-
monia is a native of Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, and is cultivated in
some parts of India.
35(333). sdtil. "It is an Indian remedy which resembles a Tuber
terrae (fungus), and purges the corrupted humours." It is also called
Sdtil and in Persian rolanak.
36(361). M (M), "Indian quince (Cydonia indica)" In the com-
mentary (p. 245), Achundow cites also a Persian bih-i hindi ("Indian
quince"), and adds that Schlimmer mentions merely a Cydonia vulgaris.
What this Cydonia indica is supposed to be is a mystery: neither Rox-
burgh nor Watt knows such an Indian species. A. de Candolle already
knew that there is no Sanskrit name for the quince. The Persian quince
is mentioned by Abu Mansur (No. 309) as safarjal (P. bih or beh, and obi).
37(368). sandal (Arabic), andan, Zandal (Persian), sandal-wood
(Lignum santalinum). Red (from Pterocarpus santalinus) and white
(from Santalum album) are distinguished. Skr. candana.
38(386). tdllsfar, alleged to be Myristica moschata; on p. 247, how-
ever, Achundow withdraws this interpretation. According to Daud, it
is the bark of the mulberry coming from the Dekkan. The word, at all
events, appears to be Indian: cf. Skr. tdUqapattra, "leaf of Flacourtia
cataphracta."
$9(422). julful, sAsofilfil, black pepper (Piper nigrum). Skr. pippali,
marica.
40(434). fufal, P. pupal, areca-nut palm (Areca catechu). Skr.
pugaphala; Singhalese puvak.
41(450). qust, P. kustj Costus amarus or speciosus (cf. also p. 254).
Skr. kutfha, idem and Saussurea lappa.
42(456). qdqula, P. hll-i buzurg, grains of paradise seeds, greater seeds
of cardamom (Amomum granum paradisi, or melegueta).
43(457). qaranful, P. mexak, cloves (Caryophyllus aromaticus). Skr.
lavanga.
INDIAN ELEMENTS IN PERSIAN PHARMACOLOGY 585
44(459). quldni, a kind of barley brought from India. JOLLY (p. 196) ,
without giving an Indian name, regards this as Glycine labialis (ROX-
BURGH, Flora Indica, p. 565) ; Watt does not give this species for India.
Cf. No. 572, where it is described under the name hdl.
45(480). kundur, incense (Boswellia thuriferd). Skr. kunduru,
kundura, kundu, kunduruka. Achundow does not mention a Persian
form kunduru, as asserted by HUBSCHMANN (Armen. Gram., p. 172).
Pahlavi *kunduruk and Armenian kndruk are directly traceable to Skr.
kunduruka.
46(483). kafur (Arabic and Persian), camphor (Laurus camphor a).
The same word appears already in Middle Persian. Skr. karpura.
47(512). Idk, rangldk, lac (Gummi laccae). Cf. above, p. 476.
48(517). md$, mungo bean (Phaseolus mungo). Skr. md$a (Phaseolus
radiatus). This Indian word is widely diffused over Asia: Tibetan
ma-$a, Mongol ma$a, Turk! ma's ("a small kind of bean")j Taran&
mas ("bean"), Sart mat ("lentil"), Osmanli maS.
49(525). musktirdmu&r , musktirdmsl, Origanum dictamnus. "The
best is that of India." The name is said to come from the Syriac (p. 267),
AINSLEE (Materia Indica, Vol. I, p. 112) calls it dittany of Crete, and
says that he has never seen it in India. Indeed it does not occur there,
hence the Indian variety of Abu Mansur must be 0. marjorana, the
sweet marjoran, Skr. phanijjhaka, Arabic mardakus or mizunjus.
50(550). nargll (Arabic ndrjil), coco-nut (Cocos nucifera). Avicenna:
juz hindl ("Indian nut"). Skr. ndrikela, ndrikera, etc.
51(552). nllufar, P. nilupar, Nymph&a alba, N. lotus, etc. Skr.
mlotpala (Nymph&a lotus)', also kumuda, kamala, etc. Cf. LOEW, I.e.,
P- 3i3.
52(557). ml, Ilia, indigo (Indigofera tinctoria). Skr. nlla (above,
P- 37o).
53(572). hdl, P. hll-i xurde, lesser cardamom (Cardamomum minus or
malabaricum, or Elettaria cardamomum). Skr. eld.
54(583). yabruh, mandrake (Atropa mandragora). "Two kinds are
distinguished, an Indian, called yabruh ul-sanam, and a Nabathsean."
As the genus Atropa does not occur in India, with the exception of
A. belladonna, which, however, is restricted to the territory stretching
from Simla to Kashmir, it is obvious that a species of Datura is to be
understood by the Indian mandrake of Abu Mansur. This case is
interesting, in that it shows again the identical employment of the
mandrake and the datura (cf. LAUFER, La Mandragore, T'oung Pao,
1917, pp. 1-30).
APPENDIX IV
THE BASIL
I propose to treat here briefly of the history of a genus of plants
which has not yet been discussed by historians, Ocimum, an extensive
genus of the order Labiatae. I do not share the common opinion of
most commentators of Theophrastus and Pliny, that their &KWOV or
ocimum is identical with the Ocimum basilicum of Linne*. Theophrastus
touches on okimon in several passages; but what he describes is a shrub,
not an herb, nor does he emphasize any of the characteristic properties
of Ocimum basilicum. FEE justly comments on Pliny (xx, 48) that
this species is not understood by him, it being originally from India
(or rather, as will be seen, from Iran), and never found in a wild state.
From what Varro says, he infers that Pliny's ocimum must be sought
among the leguminous plants, the genus Hedysarum, Lathyrus, or
Medicago. 1 Positive evidence of this conclusion comes from Ibn al-
Baitar, whose vast compilation is principally based on the work of
Dioscorides, with the addition of annotations of Arabic authors. Ibn
al-Baitar, in his discussion of the plant which we call Ocimum, does
not fall back on the okimon of Dioscorides (n, 171), and, in fact, does
not cite him at all. 2 He merely reproduces the data of Arabic writers:
this is decisive, and leads us to reject any connection between the
ocimum of the ancients and the species coming from the Orient and
known to our science of botany as Ocimum. 3
There is good reason to assume that at least one species, if not
several, is a native of Persia, and was diffused from there to India
and China, probably also to the West. This is Ocimum basilicum, the
sweet or common basil. The name paaCKiKov ("royal") as the designa-
tion of an Ocimum first occurs in Byzantine literature, in Aetius (sixth
century) and Symeon Seth; and, since the king of Persia was known to
the Greeks simply as "the king" (/Sao-tXcus), it is more than probable
that the Greek term is reproduced after the model of Persian Sdh-
siparam (spram) or $ah-i sfaram, which means as much as "fragrant
1 Cf . BOSTOCK and RILEY, Natural History of Pliny, Vol. IV, p. 249.
2 Cf. LECLERC, Traits des simples, Vol. II, p. 186; Vol. Ill, p. 191.
8 Leclerc upholds the opposite opinion, although Sprengel, Fe"e, and Littr6 argue
in the same manner as here proposed.
586
THE BASIL 587
leaf of the king," and denotes the basil. 1 The plant is esteemed for its
leaves, which serve for culinary purposes to season soups or other dishes,
and which have a flavor somewhat like cloves. The juice of the leaves
is employed medicinally.
Indeed, as shown by our word "basil," it was under this Middle-
Greek name, which did not exist in the period of classical antiquity,
that the plant became known to the herbalists of Europe. Thus the
celebrated JOHN GERARDE 2 says, "The latter Grecians have called it
basilikon: in shops likewise Basilicum, and Regium: in Spanish Alba-
haca: B in French Basilic: in English Basill, Garden Basill, the greater
Basill royall, the lesser Basill gentle, and Bush Basill." D. REMBERT
DoDOENS 4 speaks of the basill royall or great basill, and says, "In this
countrey the Herboristes do plante it in their gardens." There is much
in favor of Sickenberger's supposition that the introduction of the basil
into Europe may be due to the returning crusaders, 5 while the Arabic
name adopted in Spain and Portugal suggests a Moorish transplantation
into western Europe.
Two varieties are common throughout Persia and Russian Turkistan,
one with green and another with dark-red leaves. 6 According to
Avicenna, it grows in the mountains of Ispahan. 7 Abu Mansur sets
forth its medicinal properties. 8 It is further cultivated throughout
India, Malaya, and China. 9
W. ROXBURGH 10 states that Ocimum basilicum is a native of Persia,
and was thence sent to the Botanic Garden at Calcutta under the
Persian names deban-$dh and deban-macwassi. According to W.
, Z. f. K. Morg., Vol. VII, 1850, p. 145. Osmanli fesligen or fesliyen is
likewise based on the Greek word. According to the Century Dictionary, the word
basil is of unknown origin. The Oxford Dictionary cites from Prior, "perhaps
because the herb was used in some royal unguent, bath, or medicine," a baseless
speculation, as in fact it was never used in this way.
2 The Herball or Generall Historic of Plantes, p. 547 (London, 1597).
3 Also alfabega, alhabega, alabega, Portuguese alf abaca (French fabregue) , from
Arabic al-habak (rixani) ; the latter occurs in LECLERC, Trait6 des simples, Vol. I,
p. 404.
4 Niewe Herball, translation of HENRY LYTE, p. 239 (London, 1578).
5 Cited in ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 211.
6 KORZINSKI, Ocerki rastitelnosti Turkestana, p. 51. SCHLIMMER mentions the
two species Ocimum album and basilicum as occurring in Persia.
7 LECLERC, Traite" des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 191.
8 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 66, 90, 103.
9 FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journ. Linn. Soc., Vol. XXVI, p. 266; KING and
GAMBLE, Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula, p. 702 (Perak, Penang,
Malacca, perhaps only cultivated).
10 Flora Indica, p. 464.
588 SlNO-lRANICA
AiNSLiE, 1 the plant was brought to India from Persia, where it is
common, by Sir John Malcolm. This is quite possible; but the fact
cannot be doubted that the basil was known in India at a much earlier
date, for we have a variety of Sanskrit names for it. Also G. WATT*
holds that the herb is indigenous in Persia and Sind. It is now culti-
vated throughout tropical India from the Panjab to Burma.
The Chinese name of Ocimum basilicum is lo-lo $146 (*la-lak).
It is first described in the Ts'i min yao lu of the sixth century, where it
is said that Si Lo (273-333) tabooed the name (on account of the
identity of the second character with that in his own name, cf . above,
p. 298) and changed it into Ian hian SB ; but T'ao Hun-kin (451-536)
mentions it again as lo-lo, and gives as popular designation Si-wah-mu
ts*ai S3:-W? ("vegetable of the goddess Si-wan-mu"). The Ts'i
min yao $u cites an older work Wei hunfu su ^ 1 BR /$, ("Preface to
the Poems of Wei Hun") to the effect that the plant lo-lo grows on the
hills of the K'un-lun and comes from the primitive culture of the
Western Barbarians ( tt! It i H f>) . This appears to be an allusion to
foreign origin; nevertheless an introduction from abroad is not hinted
at in any of the subsequent herbals. Of these, the Pen ts'ao of theKia-yu
period (1056-64) is the first which speaks of the basil as introduced
into the materia medica. The name lo-lo has no meaning in Chinese,
and at first sight conveys the impression of a foreign word. Each of the
two elements is most frequent in transcriptions from the Sanskrit. In
fact, one of the Sanskrit names of the basil is kardlaka (or kardla), and
Chinese *la-lak (*ra-lak) corresponds exactly; the first syllable ka- is
sometimes dropped in the Indian vernaculars. 3 If this coincidence is
fortuitous, the accident is extraordinary; but it is hardly possible to
believe in an accident of this kind.
There is, further, a plant & ffll it ^Jfou-lan-lo-lo, *fu (bu)-lan-la-lak,
solely mentioned by C'en Ts'an-k'i of the eighth century as growing in
Sogdiana (K'afi) and resembling the hou-p'o J3I ft (Magnolia hypoleuca),
Japanese ho-no-ki* The Pen ts*ao kan mu has therefore placed this
notice as an appendix to hou-p'o. This Sogdian plant and its name
remain unidentified. At the outset it is most improbable that a Mag-
nolia is involved; this is a typical genus of the far east, which to my
knowledge has not yet been traced in any Iranian region. BOISSIER'S
1 Materia Indica, Vol. II, p. 424.
2 Dictionary, Vol. V, p. 441.
1 Cf. for instance kakinduka (" Diospyros tomentosa") Uriya kendhu, Bengal,
kend.
4 Gen lei pen ts'ao, Ch. 12, p. 56 b; Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 35 A, p. 4; STUART!
Chinese Materia Medica, p. 255.
THE BASIL 589
"Flora Orientalis" does not contain any Magnolia. The foreign name
is apparently a compound, the second element of which, lo-lo, is iden-
tical with the Indian-Chinese name of the basil, so that it is justifiable
to suppose that the entire name denotes an Iranian variety of the basil
or another member of the genus Ocimum.
The basil is styled in Middle Persian palangamutk, in New Persian
palanmifk, Arabic-Persian fakmjmufk, faranjmu$k, Abu Mansur:
faranjamuSk (Armenian p*alangamu$k}, 1 the second element mu$k or
mi$k meaning "musk," and the first component denoting anything of
a motley color, like a panther or giraffe. The significance of the word,
accordingly, is "spotted and musky." This definition is quite plausible,
for the leaves of some basils are spotted. JOHN PARKINSON, 2 discussing
the various names of the basil, remarks, "The first is usually called
Ocimum vulgar e, or vulgatius, and Ocimum Citratum. In English, Com-
mon or Garden Basill. The other is called Ocimum minimum, or Gario-
phyllatum, Clove Basill, or Bush Basill. The last eyther of his place, or
forme of his leaves, being spotted and curled, or all, is called Ocimum
Indicum maculatum, latifolium and crispum. In English according to the
Latine, Indian Basill, broade leafed Basill, spotted or curled Basill,
which you please." 3 The Arabic forms are phonetically developed from
Persian palan; and it is somewhat surprising that R. DozY 4 explains
Arabic faranjmufk as "musk of the Franks," although he refers to the
variants baranj and falanj.
While there is a certain resemblance between the Middle-Persian
name and our Chinese transcription, I do not believe that the two
can be identified. The Chinese calls for an initial sonant and a u- vowel;
whereas the Iranian form, as positively corroborated by the Armenian
loan-word, is possessed of an initial surd with following a. I am rather
inclined to regard *bu-lan as a Sogdian word, and to derive it from
Sogdian boba, bodan ("perfume"). 5 The name *bu-lan ra-lak would
accordingly signify "aromatic basil" (corresponding to our "sweet
basil"), the peculiar aroma being the prominent characteristic of the
1 HuBscHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 254. According to others, this word would
refer to Ocimum gratissimum, the shrubby basil, but practically this makes no
difference, as the properties and employment of the herbs are the same.
2 Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, p. 450 (London, 1629). The technical
term of the botanists in describing the leaves is subtus punctata (G. BENTHAM,
Labiatarum genera, p. 5; DE CANDOLLE, Prodromus, pars XII, p. 32).
3 LINNE (Species plantarum, Vol. I, p. 597, Holmiae, 1753) has Ocymum latifo-
lium maculatum sive crispum.
4 Supplement aux dictionnaires arabes, Vol. II, p. 262.
6 R. GAUTHIOT, Essai sur le vocalisme du sogdien, pp. 45, 101, 102; F. W. K.
MULLER, Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo-Schrift, II, p. 35.
590
SlNO-lRANICA
herb. As it is localized in Sogdiana, it is perfectly justifiable to regard
the term as Sogdian; it may be, however, that the second component did
not form part of the Sogdian word, and is an addition of C'en Ts'aii-k'i;
it is also possible that the term applies to another species of Ocimum or
to a peculiar variety of Ocimum basilicum, differentiated by cultiva-
tion. It is well known that the New-Persian word boi, bo (" scent, per-
fume") enters into composition with a number of aromatics; 1 and
Persian naz-bo is indeed a designation of the basil, and means "having
an agreeable odor." In the same manner we have Sanskrit gandhapatra
("fragrant leaf, basil").
From India one or more species of Ocimum (basilicum, sanctum,
and gratissimum) spread into the Malayan Archipelago. The Sanskrit
term surasi or surasd has been adopted by Malayan sulasi, Javanese
selasih or sulasih, Sunda salasih. Javanese has likewise received tulasih
or telasih from Sanskrit tulasi? The two surasd, the white and black
varieties of the Tulsi-plant, appear in the Bower Manuscript. 3 In the
folk-lore of India the plant plays an extensive role. 4 ODORIC OF POR-
DENONE relates, "In this country every man hath before his house a
plant of twigs as thick as a pillar would be here, and this never withers
as long as it gets water." YULE S justly comments that this plant is the
sacred tulasi (Ocimum sanctum) . It is widely employed in the pharma-
copoeia of the Persians and Arabs. 6 Arabic terms are: badruj, xauk,
rixdn, keblr, aqm, xamdxim.
1 HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 123. Cf. also above, p. 462; and HORN,
Neupers. Etymol., No. 240.
2 Cf. H. KERN, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde, 1880, p. 564.
3 HOERNLE'S edition, p. 22. There are also the forms suravalH, surasdgrarn,
and surasagraja, the two last-named relating to the white variety.
4 YULE, Hobson-Jobson, p. 931.
5 Cathay, new ed. by Cordier, Vol. II, p. 116.
6 LECLERC, Traite des simples, Vol. I, pp. 92, 367, 403, 404, 456, 474; Vol. II,
pp. 100, 104, 191, 375, 390.
APPENDIX V
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LOAN-WORDS IN TIBETAN
In my "Loan- Words in Tibetan" (Toung Pao, 1916, pp. 403-552)
I was obliged to deal succinctly with some of the problems which are
discussed at greater 1 ength in this volume. The brief notes given there
on saffron, cummin, almond, alfalfa, coriander, etc., are now super-
seded by the contributions here inserted. A detailed history of Guinea
pepper (No. 237) is now ready in manuscript, and will appear as a chapter
in my "History of the Cultivated Plants of America." The numbers
of the following additions refer to those of the former article.
Note the termination -e in the loan-words derived from the Indian
vernaculars: bram-ze, neu-le, ma-he, sen-ge, ban-de, bhan-ge. This -e
appears to be identical with the nominative -e of Magadhi.
49. ga-bur, camphor. Sir GEORGE A. GRIERSON (see below) observes,
"The softening of initial k to g is, I think, certainly not Indian." The
Tibetan form has always been a mystery to me : it is not only the initial
g, but also the labial sonant b, which are striking as compared with the
surds in Skr. karpura. As is well known, this word has migrated west-
ward, the initial k being retained everywhere: Persian-Arabic kdfur
(GARCIA: capur and cafur), Spanish alcanfor (ACOSTA: canfora). These
forms share the loss of the medial r with Tibetan. This phenomenon
pre-existed in Indian; for in Hindustani we have kapur, in Singhalese
kapuru, in Javanese and Malayan kdpur. The Mongols have adopted
from the Tibetans the same word as gabur; but, according to KOVALEV-
SKI (p. 2431), there is also a Tibeto-Mongol spelling gad-pu-ra: this
can only be a transcription of the Chinese type PS ^ H kie-pu-lo,
anciently *g'ia5-bu-la, based on an Indian original *garpura, or
*garbura. Tibetan ga-bur, of course, cannot be based on the Chinese
form; but the latter doubtless demonstrates that, within the sphere of
Indian speech, there must have been a dialectic variant of the word with
initial sonant.
54. The Pol. D. (27, p. 31) gives naliSam (printed aliSam) as a
Mongol word; assuredly it is not Tibetan. The corresponding Manchu
word is ocalxdri.
58. Regarding Sin-kun, see above, p. 362.
60. With respect to the Chinese transcription su-ki-mi-lo-si, PELLIOT
(Toung Pao, 1912, p. 455) had pointed out that the last element si
591
5Q2 SlNO-lRANICA
does not form part of the transcription. This is most likely, but the
Sino-Indian word is thus recorded in the Pen ts'ao kan mu.
64. Add: Skr. also bildla, birdla.
65. Sikkim noile, Dhimal nyul, Bodo nyulai ("ichneumon").
74. ban-de, as suggested by my friend W. E. Clark of the Univer-
sity of Chicago, is connected with Pali and Jaina Prakrit bhante, Skr.
bhadanta ("reverend").
79. I have traced Tibetan sendha-pa to Sanskrit sindhuja. This, as
a matter of fact, is correct, but from a philological viewpoint the Tibetan
form is based on Sanskrit saindhava with the same meaning ("relating
to the sea, relating to or coming from the Indus, a horse from the Indus
country, rock-salt from the Indus region"). The same word we find in
Chinese garb as 3fc K c sien-t'o-p'o, *sian-da-bwa, explained as "rock-
salt" (Fan yi min yi tsi, section 25). Tokharian has adopted it in the
form sindhdp orsintdp (S. LEVI, Journal asiatique, 1911, II, pp. 124, 139).
158. The recent discussion opened in the Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (1917, p. 834) by Mr. H. BEVERIDGE in regard to the
title tarxan (tarkhan, originally tarkan), then taken up by Dr. F. W.
THOMAS (ibid., 1918, p. 122 ), and resumed by BEVERIDGE (1918, p. 314),
induces me to enlarge my previous notes on this subject, and to trace
the early history of this curious term as accurately as in the present state
of science is possible.
The word tarkan is of Old-Turkish, not of Mongol, origin. It is first
recorded during the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-906) as the designation of
a dignity, usually preceded by a proper name, both in the Old-Turkish
inscriptions of the Orkhon (for instance, Apa Tarkan) and in the Chinese
Annals of the T'ang (cf. THOMSEN, Inscriptions de 1'Orkhon, pp. 59,
131, 185; RADLOFF, Altturk. Inschriften, p. 369, and Wdrterb. Turk-
Dialecte, Vol. Ill, col. 851; MARQUART, Chronologic d. altturk. In-
schriften, p. 43; HIRTH, Nachworte zur Inschrift des Tonjukuk,
pp. 55-56). An old Chinese gloss relative to the significance of the
title does not seem to exist, or has not yet been traced. According to
Hirth, the title was connected with the high command over the troops.
The modern Chinese interpretation is "ennobled:" the title is be-
stowed only on those who have gained merit in war (WATTERS, Essays,
p. 372). The Tibetan gloss indicated by me, "endowed with great
power, or empowered with authority," inspires confidence. The subse-
quent explanation, "exempt from taxes," seems to be a mere make-
shift and to take too narrow a view of the matter. A lengthy disserta-
tion on the meaning of the title is inserted in the Ain-i Akbari of 1597
(translation of BLOCHMANN, p. 364) ; but it must not be forgotten that
what holds good for the Mongol and Mogul periods is not necessarily
LOAN-WORDS IN TIBETAN 593
valid for the Turkish epoch under the T'ang. According to the T'ang
Annals (Tan $u, Ch. 217 B, p. 8), the officials of the Kirgiz were divided
into six classes, the sixth being called tarkan. The other offices are
designated by purely Chinese names, and refer to civil and military
grades. Among the Kirgiz, therefore, tarkan denoted a high military
rank and function.
The title has been traced by E. CHAVANNES and SYLVAIN LEVI in
the Itinerary of Wu K'ufi (751-790). The Chinese author relates that
the kingdom of Ki-pin (Gandhara and territory adjoining in the west)
sent in 750, as envoy to the court of China, the great director Sa-po ta-kan
H $ 31 & (or T ), anciently *Sat or Sar-pa dar-kan (cf. Journal
asiatique, 1895, II, p. 345). Chavannes and LeVi have recognized a
Turkish dynasty in the then reigning house of Ki-pin, and have regarded
the title ta-kan also as Turkish, without, however, identifying it (ibid.,
p. 379). In 1903 Chavannes noted the identity of the Chinese tran-
scription with Turkish tarkan (Documents sur les Tou-kiue occidentaux,
p. 239). The Chinese transcription *dar-kan does not allow us to pre-
suppose a Turkish model darkan; but the Old-Turkish form was indeed
tarkan, as is also confirmed by New Persian tarxan and Armenian
t'arxan (HUBSCHMANN, Armen. Gram., p. 266). Tarsa, the Persian
designation of the Christians, is transcribed in Chinese by the same
character, * l ta-sOj anciently *dar-sa. The complex phonetic phe-
nomenon which is here involved will be discussed by me in another
place. Wherever the Chinese mention the title, it regularly refers to
Turkish personages : thus the pilgrim Hiian Tsan is accompanied by an
officer Mo-tu tarkan, assigned to him by the Turkish Kagan (WATTERS,
On Yuan Chwang's Travels, Vol. I, pp. 75, 77); for examples in the
Chinese Annals, see HIRTH, I.e.
In the Vita S Clementis (XVI), a Bori-tarkdnos appears as com-
mander of Belgrad; this may be Turkish bilri ("wolf")- Among the
Bulgars, Bulias tarkanos (Old Turkish boila tarkan) was one of the
titles of the oldest two princes (cf. MARQUART, I.e., pp. 41, 42). As a
Hunnic title, tarxan occurs in the Armenian History of Albania by Moses
Kalankatvaci (HUBSCHMANN, I.e., p. 516). The word has survived in
the name of the Russian city Astrakhan, originally Haj or Hajji Tar-
khan, as it was still called by Ibn Batuta (ed. DEFREMERY, Vol. II,
pp. 410, 458), who adds that tarkhan among the Turks designates a
place exempt from any taxation. PEGOLETTI calls the city Gintarchan
(YULE, Cathay, Vol. Ill, p. 146). Our word does not occur in Marco
Polo, as supposed by H. Beveridge, nor do the Mongols know it in the
form tarkan, but they have only darkan or darxan (KOVALEVSKI,
p. 1676), which has two different meanings, " workman, artist," and
594 SlNO-lRANICA
"exempt from taxes." GOLSTUNSKI, in his Mongol-Russian Dictionary
(Vol. Ill, p. 63), defines it as " smith, master; exempt from taxes and
obligations." There is no association between these two meanings, as
wrongly deduced by E. BLOCHET (Djami el-TeVarikh, Vol. II, p. 58).
In Karakirgiz we have darkan in the sense of "smith, artist," while the
same word in Kirgiz means "favorite of the Khan" and "liberty."
Perhaps darkan was an independent Mongol-Turkish word, which was
subsequently amalgamated with Old Turkish tarkan.
The Tibetan forms dar-k'a-c'e and dar-rgan lead to Uigur darkati
(-&* being a suffix) and dargan or darkan. Tibetan tradition itself assigns
these words to the Uigur language; thus it is legitimate to conclude that
Mongol, on its part, derived the words from the Uigur, and that the
initial dental sonant is peculiar or due to the latter. The Tibetan
transcriptions, further, are decisive in reconstructing the Uigur forms;
for an Uigur (or Mongol) tarkan would have been transcribed by the
Tibetans only t*ar-k*an. Among the Mongols, the title never had an
extensive application; it does not occur in the chronicle of Sanafi
Setsen. Also the fact that the Manchu and other Tungusian languages
did not adopt it from the Mongols is apt to show that it is of com-
paratively recent date among the Mongols. Neither was it the Mongols
who conveyed the word to Persia, as is evidenced by the Persian form
tarxan. The form dargan paves the way to daruga, which, although a
different word, that has assumed a development of its own, in its founda-
tion is doubtless related to darkan, tarkan. Both words start with the
common significance "official, governor, commander, high authority,"
and gradually depreciate in value, daruga simply becoming a chief,
mayor, superintendent, manager, and tarkan a favorite of the Khan.
There is no evidence of the existence of the title on Asiatic soil
prior to the seventh or eighth century A.D. The Chinese do not ascribe
it to the Hiun-nu or any of the numerous early Turkish tribes with
which they came in contact, while they have preserved many titles and
offices in their languages. We have no right to assume an unlimited
antiquity for any historical or linguistic phenomenon; nor can it be
argued with Mr. Beveridge that "the antiquity of the name is evidenced
by the fact that its etymology is unknown, and that Oriental writers are
obliged to make absurd guesses on the subject." There are a great many
ancient words the etymology of which is perfectly known, and there are
many words of recent origin the etymology of which is shrouded in
mystery or dubious. I have no judgment on the point raised by Mr.
Beveridge, that the names Tarchon, Tarquin, and Tarkhan may be
identical ; but for chronological and ethnographical reasons this theory
does not seem very probable. At any rate, both detailed phonetic and
LOAN-WORDS IN TIBETAN 595
historical investigations are necessary in order to establish such an iden-
tity ; a merely apparent coincidence of words proves little or nothing.
170. The Turkish origin of tupak is also maintained by W. GEIGER
(Lautlehre des BaluSi, p. 66) : Baluci tupak, tupan, tufan, topak; Yidga
tufuk.
171. The word cdku occurs also in Kurd caku, caxo, etc. (J. DE
MORGAN, Mission en Perse, Vol. V, p. 140).
183. The word se-mo-do occurs in the Tibetan translation of the
Amarakosa (p. 166).
198. pir-t'i (" quick-match") is also connected with Turk! pilta
(LE COQ, p. 86 b).
207. Another Sanskrit term for Panicum miliaceum is cmaka
("Chinese") and cinna.
279. k'ra-rtse, pronounced t*ar-tse, is perhaps merely a bad spelling
of Persian tardzu (No. 128).
299. t'ai rje is possibly connected with Mongol taiji (cf. O. FRANKS,
Jehol, p. 30).
On p. 421 it is stated that the animal kun-ta is not yet traced to its
Sanskrit original. Boehtlingk's Dictionary, however, has Sanskrit
kunta with the meaning "a small animal, a worm"; but this entry
may be simply based on the Tibetan mDzans-blun. The Chinese tran-
scription calls for a prototype *kunda.
To the Persian loan-words add $o-ra (above, p. 503).
To the Arabic loan-words add $eg (" chief tain, elder"), from Arabic
Saix.
To the Turkl loan-words add gan-zag (above, p. 577).
Sir GEORGE A. GRIERSON, editor of the "Linguistic Survey of India/'
has done me the honor to look over my Loan- Words in Tibetan, and to
favor me with the following observations, which are herewith published
with his kind permission:
The Kashmiri for "egg" (p. 405) is t'ul.
15. I cannot think that *andanil is a possible Apabhramga (using
the word in its technical sense) word. The presence of n seems to
point to Kashmiri, in which ni has a tendency to change to ni. The
Ksh. equivalent of Skr. mla- is nilu, pronounced nyul, and it is a com-
mon-place that ny and n in that language have the same sound. In fact,
original medial ny is written n (e.g. dana, from Skr. dhdnya-, "paddy"),
in this following Paigaci Prakrit.
17. 'Arya-pa-lo. This is typical Pigaca, which changes ry to
r(i}y and v(b) to p. In all Indian Prakrits, dry a would become ajja- 9
with short initial a.
596 SlNO-lRANICA
1 8. pot'l is the common word for "book" all over North India.
The Ksh. form is put'i.
21. sendura- is the regular Prakrit form of Skr. sindura-.
28. I do not see how ba-dan can represent patdka. The change
of initial p to b is, I think, impossible in any Prakrit or modern
Indian language. Of course, the change might have occurred in
Tibetan. 1
29. saccha, with a long a, is impossible in Prakrit. Compare Hindo-
stani saca ("a mould").
30. In true Apabhramca, medial k often becomes g (Hemacandra,
iv 39 6 ) This accounts for the g in mu-tig. But the Ap. form would
be *mu(6)ttiga-, not mukt- or mut-.
45. Is not Tibetan &'a-ra = HindostanI khar, "coarse sugar?" I
should be inclined to derive the Tibetan word $a-ka-ra from the Persian
word lokar, not from Skr. Sarkara. If the Tibetan word came from
India, it would be sa-ka-ra. In regular Prakrit, and in all the modern
Indo-Aryan vernaculars except Bengali, Sanskrit (f) becomes 5. The
Persian word is in regular use in Kashmiri $akar t and could thus have
got into Tibet.
68. The regular Prakrit form is vidduma-, which is quite common.
See, e.g., the index to the Setubandha. I have never met any form such
as *viruma-, or the like.
113. Although dar-cmi is the dictionary word, dal-cini is universal
all over North India.
1 1 8. T have not come across cob-cml in Kashmiri, but in that
language other compounds with cob are common, to indicate the roots of
various plants. This leads me to think that the word probably got into
Tibetan through Kashmir.
122. The word tsddar, a shawl, is pure Kashmiri. It came into that
language from India.
143. Araq is, of course, common all over North India. It is even
used by Hindus, and appears in Hindi. In Kashmiri, arak means ' 'sweat."
It is the same word.
143-156. I think it is certain that all these Arabic words came via
India. They are all in common use in North India and Kashmir. The
only exception is No. 148. I do not remember coming across this cor-
ruption of masjid anywhere in India proper. But, curiously enough,
1 It 'hould be borne in mind that the derivation of ba-dan from patdka is proposed
by tb^xfibetan grammarians; whether this is objectively correct, is another ques-
tion. At any rate, ba-dan is not a Tibetan word, and the object which it denotes
came from India with Buddhism. [B.L.]
LOAN-WORDS IN TIBETAN 597
maslt occurs in the Ormuri language spoken in Afghanistan. Of course,
the form bagSis with g (No. 145) does not occur in India. 1
173. Argon occurs in Kashmiri in the same sense.
1 The final g (pronounced k} is a purely graphic, not a phonetic phenomenon;
Tibetan writing has no final k. [B.L.]
GENERAL INDEX
The Index contains also additional information.
A-lo-yi-lo, 378 note 2, 511.
Abel-Re"musat, see Re"musat.
Abu Dulaf, 351.
Abu Mansur, 194, 209, 298, 301, 306,
307, 315, 320, 332, 350, 354, 364, 366,
369, 370, 373, 38o, 383, 396, 399, 405,
425, 443, 446, 449, 453, 455, 459, 481,
483, 507, 509, 544-547, 549, 55i, 553,
587, 589; Indian elements in pharma-
cology of, 580-585.
Abulfeda, 351.
Achundow, A. C., 194, 209, 253, 298,
301, 304, 306, 307, 315, 320, 327, 332,
350, 354, 364, 366, 367, 370, 373, 380,
383, 396, 399, 402, 405, 425, 443, 446,
449, 453-455, 459, 478, 483, 507, 509,
544-547, 551, 580, 583-585, 587.
Aconite, 582.
Acorn, in Persia, 246.
Acosta, C., 356, 528, 550, 556, 591.
Aden, almonds of, 405.
Aeschylus, 320.
Aetius, 586.
Africa, aloes of, 480; date-palm intro-
duced into eastern, 389 note I ; ebony
from, 485, 486; home of Ricinus, 404;
home of sesame cultivation, 290;
home of water-melon, 438; myrrh
from East, 461.
Ahlquist, A., 577.
Ahmed Sibab Eddin, 561.
Ai-lao, 489.
Ain-i Akbari, 222, 282, 319, 502, 592.
Ainslie, W., 241, 254, 266, 364, 367, 453,
484, 514, 585, 588.
Aitchison, 343.
Akbar, promoter of viticulture, 240.
al-Akfani, 566.
Albertus Magnus, 395 note 6, 411.
Alcohol, Chinese allusion to, 237.
Aleni, Giulio, S. J., 433, 527.
Alexander Romance, Chinese in, 570-
571; Ethiopic version of, 566.
Alexandria, 550.
Alfalfa, cultivation of, in Fergana, 210;
history of, 208-219; wild species of, in
China, 217-218. Alfalfa is culti-
vated in Arabia, being styled gadhub
on the South- Arabian coast. The
Arabs also received the plant from
Persia. In Egypt it became only
known during the nineteenth century
under the name "Arabian clover"
(bersim hegi&si)\ cf. G. Schweinfurth,
Z. Ethn., 1891, p. 658.
Almeria, 492, 497.
Almond, 193, 405-409.
Altabas, altobas, term for brocades,
derivation of, 492.
Alum, 336, 474-475-
Amber, 521-523; of Samarkand, 251.
Ammianus Marcellinus, 355, 548.
Amomum, 481-482.
An-si, Chinese name of the dynasty of
the Arsacides or Parthia, 187, 221,
457; cotton stuffs of, 488.
Anabasis, 223, 224.
Andamans, Memecylon on, 315.
Anderson, J., 266, 286.
Andreas, 529.
Anglo-Saxons, cultivation of carrot by,
451, 452; cultivation of coriander by,
299.
Annam, pepper of, 375; Psoralea of, 484;
styled Yavana, 212; Styrax benjoin
of, 465.
Antimony, 509.
Ao-men & Ho, 434, 501.
Apricot, in India, 240, 408; transmitted
from China to the west, 539.
Arabia, alleged home of fig-culture, 411;
amber from, 522; costus of, 463;
manna of, 346 note 3; myrrh from,
461; saffron from, 310; turmeric ex-
ported from India to, 314.
Arabs, activity in sugar-industry of,
377; date of, 390; gold-dust of, 510;
grapes of, 223; grape- wine of, 239;
importers of asbestos into China, 500;
nux-vomica of, 449; rape-turnip of,
381; symbolism of pomegranate
among, 287; trading brocades with
Kirgiz, 488-489; viticulture of, 241;
yue no textiles of, 494.
Areca palm, 584.
Argentine, alfalfa in, 219.
Aristobulus, 239, 372.
Aristophanes, 208.
Aristotle, 411, 512.
Armenia, alfalfa in, 218; grape- wine in,
220; peach and apricot in, 539; rhu-
barb of, 547.
Armenian apple, Greek term for apricot,
203, 209.
Aromatics, 455-467.
Arrian, 455.
599
6oo
GENERAL INDEX
Arsak, Chinese transcription of, 284.
Arthac,astra, 569.
Asafoetida, 353-362.
Asbestos, 498-501.
Assyria, fig in, 411.
Atharva Veda, 290, 455.
Athenaeus, 223, 224.
Attalic textures, 488.
Aurousseau, L., 263, 330.
Avesta, 185, 187, 277, 372, 488, 563, 572.
Avicenna, 383, 587.
al-Awwam, 395.
Aymonier, E., 286, 473, 476, 486.
Baber, 452.
Babylonia, ebony of, 486; figs of, 412.
Babylonians, ebony used by, 486; se-
same oil used by, 290.
Backgammon, a Persian game (nard),
known in China in the sixth century
A. D., 335.
Bactria, bamboo of Se-6'wan traded to,
535; pistachio of, 246; visited by
Can K'ien, 211.
BadaxSan, asbestos of, 499.
Bagdad, yue no of, 494.
Bailey, T. G., 260.
al-Bai^ar, Ibn, 298, 314, 316, 332, 351,
360, 396, 422, 432, 443, 448, 483, 522,
545, 546, 549, 550-553, 58i, 586.
Baku, saffron exported from, 320.
Balas nlby, 575.
Bali, camphor of, 479.
Balm of Gilead, 429-434.
Balsam-poplar, 339-342.
Baltistan, saffron of, 318.
Baluchistan, alfalfa in, 209, 216; Bal-
samodendron of, 467; caraway of,
383 note ii ; date of, 390; fig of, 412;
Lawsonia alba in, 337; olive of, 415;
pistachio in, 246; pomegranate in,
276; rhubarb of, 547.
Bamboo, the square, 535-537.
Bang, W., 496.
Barberry, 314.
Bartholomae, C., 461.
Basil, 193, 194, 586-590.
Batata, Ibn, 282, 418, 442, 496, 546,
Bauer, M., 521.
Seal, S., 282, 304, 512.
Beccari, 527.
Becker, C. H., 489.
Beckmann, J., 321, 512, 514.
Bellew, H. W., 397, 444.
Belon du Mons, P., 346, 433.
Bentham, G., 589.
Be"guinot, A., 218.
Berbera coast, myrrh from, 461.
Berezin, 502.
Bergaigne, A., 212.
Bernier, 547.
Berosus, 290.
Betel, 582.
Beveridge, A. S., 278, 452.
Beveridge, H., 592-594.
Bezoar, 525-528. To the bibliography
on p. 528 add the new edition of
Barbosa by M. L. Dames, Vol. I,
p. 235 (Hakluyt Society, 1918).
Bhoja, see Fu-i.
Biddulph, D., 254.
Billiard, R., 220.
Biot, E., 322.
Birch, 552-553-
Birdwood, G., 451.
Blagden, C. O., 474.
Blanco, M., 482.
Blasdale, W. C., 408, 418.
Blochet, E., 564, 576, 594.
Blochmann, H., 222, 282, 319, 502, 592.
Blumner, H., 294, 367.
Bod, Chinese transcription of, 198 note 6.
Boehtlingk, O., 452, 527, 576, 577, 595.
Boissier, E., 547, 549, 588.
Bokhara, Bukhara, rugs from, 493; salt
of, 511; seedless grape of, 231.
Bonavia, E., 390, 411.
Bontius, J., 361.
Borax, 503.
Borneo, 469; bezoar of, 527; tabashir of,
352.
Borooah, A., 397, 425.
Borszczow, E., 353, 354, 362, 364-366.
Bostock, 586.
Bouchal, L., 527.
Bouvet, J., S. J., 238.
Bower Manuscript, 248, 254, 283, 314,
404 482.
Brandstetter, R., 443.
Brass, 511-515-
Brassica, 380-382.
Bretschneider, E., 190, 191, 195, 201,
204, 206, 207, 213, 214, 216, 226, 230,
236, 238, 252, 254, 257-260, 263-265,
268, 278-280, 284-286, 288, 289, 293,
295, 297, 300, 302, 305-308, 311, 313-
315, 324-326, 329, 330, 332, 335, 341,
346, 348, 351, 355, 358, 371, 385, 387-
389, 392, 395, 400, 401, 403, 406-408,
413, 421, 436, 437, 439, 440, 442, 446,
458, 459, 465, 466, 473, 494, 496, 497,
508, 515, 520, 525, 543, 554, 557, 560.
Bretzl, H., 355.
Briancon, manna of, 346.
Brocades, Chinese, in Persia, 537; Per-
sian, 488-492.
Brown, E., 211.
Browne, E. G., 194.
Budge, E. A. W., 566, 570.
Buhler, G., 558.
Bandahisji, disquisition on plants, con-
tained in the, 192-194.
Burma, Alpinia galganga in, 546; lac
employed in, 478; mentioned in the
Man u, 468, 494; mentioned in the
GENERAL INDEX
601
T'ang Annals, 469; nux-vomica of,
449; trade of, with Yun-nan, 471;
transit-mart in the trade of asafcetida
from Siam to Yun-nan, 360 note 2.
Buschan, G., 276, 277, 451.
Bushell, S. W., 560.
Buxtorf, J., 429.
Cabaton, A., 286, 473, 476, 486.
Cahen, G., 550.
Cairo, balsam of, 433; men from, teach-
ing sugar-refining in China, 377.
Camboja, 477; gold of, 509 note 10;
mango in, 552; pomegranate of, 282;
saffron exported from India to, 318.
Cambyses, 224, 372.
Camphor, 478-479, 585, 591.
Canakya, 569.
Candolle, A. de, 190, 205-208, 214, 216,
219, 220, 246, 257, 258, 276, 279, 288,
290, 294, 300, 301, 304, 307, 320, 324,
387, 39i , 395, 397. 400, 401, 404, 407,
413, 416, 425, 438-440, 445, 447, 452,
453, 539, 54i, 584, 589-
Cange, Du, 353, 395, 498.
Canton, former cultivation of date in,
386.
Caraway, 383.
Cardamom, in Pahlavi literature, 193.
Carmania, 223.
Carob, 424-425.
Carrot, 451-454-
Cassia pods, 420-426.
Castre"n, 577.
Celery, 402.
Chalybonian wine, 224.
Chardin, 320.
Chavannes, E., 186, 195, 202, 211, 221,
222, 262, 264, 303, 318, 341, 344, 357,
379, 438, 439, 456, 462, 470, 488-490,
493-495, 499, 509, 512, 520, 521, 529,
53i, 549, 563, 564, 573, 593-
Chess, 576.
Chestnut, in Pahlavi literature, 193.
China, etymology of the name, 568-570.
China Root, 556-557.
Chive, 302.
Chloride of sodium, 505.
Chowry, 565.
Christensen, A., 529, 530, 533.
Chrysanthemum, in Pahlavi literature,
193.
Cinnamon, 541-543, 583.
Citron, 581.
Clark, W. E., 592.
Clement-Mullet, 395.
Coccus lacca, 478.
Coccus mannifer, 348.
Cockscomb, 193.
Coco-nut, Arabic-Persian designation of,
derived from Indian, 585; mentioned
in Pahlavi literature, 193; wine, 240.
Collas, M., 505, 508.
Copper, green, attributed to Persia, 515.
Copper-oxide, 510.
Coral, 523-525; of Samarkand, 251.
Cordier, H., 206, 236, 252, 346^352, 496,
560.
Coriander, 192, 205, 297-299. To the
Persian names add sauniz; Persian
karinj, kiranj, or kurinj, and juljul&n,
mean ' ' coriander-seed ' ' (juljul&n
means also "sesame-seed").
Cosmas, 240.
Cosmetic, of white lead, 201.
da Costa, see Acosta.
Costus root, 462-464.
Cotton, 490, 491, 574.
Couling, S., 293.
Courteille, Pavet de, 370.
Crab-apple, in India, 240.
Crawfurd, J., 269, 278, 283, 404, 443.
Croton, 583.
Cucumber, 300-301.
Cucurbitaceous plants, history of, 440
note 2.
Cummin, 383-384, 575-
Curtel, G., 220.
Cynips quercus folii, 367.
Cyropaedia, 223, 224.
Cyrus, 223, 412.
Can-pei, or Can-pi, a Malayan country,
268.
Can Cu, 527 note 2.
Can Cun-kin, or Can Ki, 205, 262.
Can Hun-mao, 232.
Can Hwa, 258, 259, 278, 310, 324.
Can K'ien, Chinese general of the second
ceiitury B. c., introduced alfalfa and
grape-vine into China, 190, 210, 221;
chive not introduced by, 302; cori-
ander not introduced by, 297; cucum-
ber not introduced by, 300; fig not
introduced by, 413; introduction of
safflower wrongly connected with, 310,
324; introduction of sesame wrongly
ascribed to, 288-289; Memoirs of his
journey, 242; pomegranate not due
to, 278-279; walnut not introduced
by, 257-259; see, further, 372, 535,
536, 539, 564.
Can K'ien 'u kwan i, 242.
Can Yi, 285, 306.
Can Yu-si, 446.
Can Yue, 233, 344.
Cao Hio-min, 229, 252.
Cao u-kwa, 344, 355, 360, 368, 459,
461, 463, 465, 472, 480, 493, 541, 549.
^553-
Cen cu S'wan, 442.
Cen Kwan, 464.
Cen Ho, 390.
Cen Kan-cun, 336.
602
GENERAL INDEX
Cen K'ien, 268, 326.
Cen lei pen ts'ao, 201, 204, 211, 233, 250,
258, 279, 280, 288, 302, 340, 351, 367,
380, 384, 392, 399, 420, 422-424, 448,
458-460, 462, 475, 483, 500, 504, 508,
510, 524, 588.
Cen su wen, 399, 409.
Cen en tsi, 536.
Cen Tsiao, 196, 289, 323, 328, 348, 392.
Ci fan wai ki, 433, 527.
Ci p'u, 561.
Ci wu min i t'u k'ao, 196, 197, 204, 218,
247, 258, 264, 267, 279, 296, 300,
306-308, 312, 340, 368, 388, 393, 394,
410, 411, 413, 443, 463, 482, 484.
Ci ya fan tsa c"'ao, 447, 500, 566.
Co ken lu, 386, 388, 448, 519.
Cou Kin i Lu an ki, 281.
Cou K'u-fei, 270, 344, 472, 494, 553.
Cou li, 314, 322, 565.
Cou Lian-kun, 536.
Cou Mi, 336, 447, 500, 566.
Cou u, 201, 320, 372, 374, 375, 378, 379,
_ 457. 510, 515, 5i6, 525, 532, 533, 565.
Cou Ta-kwan, 282, 478.
Cu fan i, 480.
Cu Mu, 491.
Cu p'u sian lu, 537.
Cu Yi-&in, 234.
Cun hwa ku kin 6u, 327.
Cun Su Su, 392, 440.
C'an Te, 332, 515, 520.
C'an wu &, 496, 497.
C'en C'en, 358, 359, 470.
C'en Hao-tse, 259, 267, 279.
C'en Ki-zu, 442.
C'en Lin-ku, 281.
C'en Si-lian, 198.
C'en Ts'an-k'i, 195-198, 200, 228, 233,
247, 297, 306, 307, 313, 318, 343, 345,
365, 380, 384, 386, 402, 420, 423, 424,
458, 472, 553, 588, 590.
C'en fu fun hwi, 429.
C'en-ts'an, walnuts of, 264, 274.
C'u hu kwo fan, 204.
C'un ts'ao fan tsi, 409, 427.
Dal', 502.
Dalgado, S. R., 465.
Dallet, C., 563.
Damascus, wine of, 224.
Darius, 208, 223, 320.
Darwin, C., 261, 267.
Date, in Pahlavi literature, 193.
Date-palm, 385-391.
Datura, 582, 585.
Daud, 369, 546, 584.
Daur, Tungusian tribe, cultivators of
walnuts, 267.
Dautremer, J., 244.
Davis, J. F., 232.
Defre"mery, 282, 492.
Department of Agriculture, Washing-
ton, 208, 219.
Deva, a Buddhist monk from Magadha,
359-
Dev<ria, G., 471, 489, 529, 533.
Diamond, 518, 521.
Diels, H M 350.
Dilock, Prince of Siam, 242.
Dimagql, 555.
Diodorus, 372, 563.
Dioscorides, 208, 246, 252, 255, 286, 364,
366, 367, 427, 428, 432, 447, 453, 463,
464, 546, 548, 586.
Diratzsuyan, P. N., 218.
Distillation, practised by Chinese from
the Mongol period, 238.
Dodoens, D. R., 396, 587.
Dog-rose, 193.
Dore", H., 287.
Doughty, C. M., 287.
Dozy, R., 389, 465, 547, 555, 589.
Dragendorff, 546.
Drouin, E., 559.
Drugget, 501-502.
Dudgeon, J., 236, 238.
Dujardin-Beaumetz, 415.
Dziatzko, K., 563.
Ebony, 485-486.
Eden, 261 note 8.
Edkins, J., 211, 238.
Edrtsl, 320, 354, 389, 549.
Egasse, 415.
Egypt, balsam in, 432, 433; carrot in,
4535 Cassia fistula in, 422; coriander
of, 299; cucumber of, 301; cummin
from Iran to, 383; ebony of, 486;
grape-vine in, 220; manna of, 346
note 3; pomegranate of, 278; safflower
of, 324; tabashir shipped from India
to, 35O; vetch in, 307; water-melon
in, 438.
Egyptians, ricinus-oil used by, 403.
Eisen, G., 412, 413.
Eitel, E. J., 291, 309, 335.
Elderkin, G. W., 223.
Elephants, white, sent from Burma,
Po-se, and K'un-lun to Yun-nan, 471.
Elias, 278.
Elliott, H. M., 278, 319.
Emblic myrobalan, 551, 581.
Emerald, 518-519.
Engler, A., 206, 207, 255, 258, 272, 276,
290, 300, 311, 355, 389, 415, 416, 418,
438, 539-
Ephthalites, Persian brocades sent to
China by, 488.
Er ya i, 212, 326, 436, 442.
GENERAL INDEX
603
Erdmann, F. v., 527.
Esposito, M., 433.
Ezekiel, 486.
Fa Hien, 282.
Fadlan, 553.
Falaha naba^Iya, 396.
Falconer, 362.
Fan C'en-ta, 197, 328, 408, 426.
Fan Co, 468, 469, 494.
Fan I-6i, 260.
Fan yi min yi tsi, 215, 216, 254, 283, 290,
308, 318, 323, 404, 411, 455, 457, 458,
466, 518, 551, 592.
Fanyu &, 413, 491.
al-Faqlh, Ibn, 500, 507, 512, 515, 556.
Farvardin Yat, 569.
F6e, 543, 586.
Fei sue hi, 197.
Feldhaus, 513.
Fenugreek, 446-447.
Fergana, carrot in, 454; centre from
which viticulture spread to China,
221; Chinese words from language of,
212-213, 22 5; coriander in, 298; indigo
in, 370; Iranian language spoken in,
212; mango in, 552; rice in, 372; se-
same attributed by Chinese to, 288;
sesame cultivated in, 291; visited by
Can K'ien, 210; walnut in, 255.
Ferrand, G., 320, 351, 378, 419, 469,
474, 478, 512, 524, 541, 545, 549, 552,
^.553-
Fig, 410^414.
Filbert, in Pahlavi literature, 193.
Firdausl, 532, 570.
Fish-teeth = walrus ivory, 567.
Flax, 293-296.
Fletcher, G., 567.
Fluckiger, F. A., 299, 311, 316, 320, 346,
347, 349, 357, 364, 366, 405, 447, 449,
480, 542, 548, 549, 556.
Forbes, F. B., 217, 266, 289, 296, 311,
341, 408, 426, 439, 535, 547, 587.
Ford, C., 196, 449.
Forke, A., 523.
Formosa, pea of, 306.
Fossey, C., 519.
Fraenkel, S., 415, 559.
France, manna of, 346; walnut oil manu-
factured in, 266 note 4.
Francisque-Michel, 489, 492, 496, 498,
501.
Franke, O., 231, 284, 409, 553, 595.
Frankincense, in Pahlavi literature, 193.
Fryer, John, 253, 347, 357, 447, 454.
Fu Hou, 302, 327.
Fu-kien, square bamboo of, 536.
Fu K'ien, 381.
Fu kwo ki, 282.
Fu-li Palace, 263.
Fu-lin (Syria), balm of Gilead of, 429;
cassia pods of, 420; fig of, 411, 412;
galbanum of, 363; grape- wine in, 223;
jasmine of, 330; language of, 408, 411,
415, 420, 423, 427, 429, 435-437, 479;
olive of, 415; se-se of, 516; transcrip-
tion of the name in Chinese, 436-437 ;
words from, transmitted to China in
latter half of the ninth century, 424.
Fu-lu-ni, amber and coral of, 521 note 9.
Fu-nan (Camboja), pomegranate of,
282; Pterocarpus of, 459 note i;
saffron from, 318; storax from, 457.
Fu-si, on Sumatra, cassia pods of, 420;
cummin of, 384.
Fu-tse, 379.
Fuhner, H., 525.
Fukuba, Y., 244.
Fun i wen kien ki, 232, 279, 304, 379,
393-
Fun Yen, 279.
Gabelentz, H. C. v. d., 416, 439, 575.
Galangal, name not derived from Chi-
nese, 545.
Galbanum, 363-366.
Galenus, 246, 366, 369.
Gandhara, vegetable from, 402.
Garcia da Orta, 314, 346, 347, 351, 353,
355, 356, 360, 361, 370, 421, 422, 443,
458, 464-466, 476, 481, 482, 542, 544,
546, 550, 556, 583, 591.
Gardthausen, V., 563.
Garver, 218.
Gauthiot, R., 186, 212, 285, 529, 530,
531, 563, 569, 573, 589.
Gazna, asafcetida of, 359, 361.
Gedrosia, Balsamodendron of, 467;
myrrh of, 462; nard of, 455.
Geerts, A. J. C., 201, 340, 508, 510, 512,
514, 516, 519-
Geiger, W., 462, 595.
Gerarde, John, 393, 396, 477, 551, 587.
Gerini, G. E., 269, 473, 474.
Gesar romance, 235, 236, 437 note I.
Gilyak, acquainted with wild walnut,
266.
Ginger, dried, 201, 583.
Goeje de, 389, 495.
Gold, in Tibet, 516; of Persia, 509;
traded in Yun-nan, 469.
"Gold Peach," 379.
Golde, on the Amur, acquainted with
wild walnut, 266.
Golstunski, 361, 594.
Gombocz, Z., 294, 574.
Gourd, native of China, 197.
Grape-vine, 220-245.
Grape-wine, at the court of the Mongols,
234; in Fergana and Sogdiana, 221;
in KuSa, 222; in Persia, 223-225; in
Syria, 223, 224; introduced into China,
231; method of making, introduced
into China, 232; of India, 239-242; of
Qara-Khoja, 236; of Tibet, 236; pro-
604
GENERAL INDEX
duced in T'ai-yuan fu, 236; recipe for
making, 234.
Grapes, introduced into China in 128
B.C., 221; method of preserving and
storing, 230; rare in southern China,
232; varieties of, in China, 228-230.
Gray, A., 338, 440.
Greek, alleged loan-words from the, in
Chinese, 225, 445; Iranian loan-words
in, 285, 427 note 8; not known in
Fergana, 226.
Greeks, influence of, on Orient in tech-
nical culture superficial, 294; water-
melon unknown to ancient, 445.
Grierson, Sir George A., 591, 595.
Groeneveldt, W. P., 269, 390, 472,
497-
Groot de, 303.
Grube, W., 266, 512.
Grum-Gr2imailo, 266, 439.
Gruppy, H. B., 238.
Guibourt, 523, 528.
Guillon, J. M., 220.
GundeSapQr, 377.
Hadramaut, myrrh from, 461.
Hai-nan, 286, 375, 470, 485.
Hai yao pen ts'ao, 247, 248, 359, 384,
460, 465, 470, 471, 475, 479, 483, 510.
Hajji Mahomed, 546.
Halde Du, 425, 426.
Haleyy, J., 208.
Hami, balsam-poplar of, 341; raisins of,
231; varieties of grape introduced
from, 229.
Han Pao-en, 340, 380.
Han Wu ti nei 6wan, 232.
Hanbury, D., 198, 299, 316, 321, 343,
346, 347, 349, 357, 364, 366, 405,
447, 449, 458, 464, 48o, 503, 505, 508,
542, 545, 548, 549, 556.
Handcock, P. S. P., 415, 486.
Hanlfa, Abu, 316, 354.
Hansen, N. E., 219.
HanzO Murakami, 501.
Hardiman, J. P., 563.
Hauer, 409.
Haukal, Ibn, 255, 374, 377, 507, 5H.
Hehn, V., 206, 208, 220, 243, 247, 258,
272, 276, 277, 300, 320, 321, 369, 373,
386, 438 539-
Hei Ta & ho, 234.
Heldreich, Th. v., 267, 299.
Hemp, brought to Europe by Scythians,
294; mentioned in Pahlavi literature,
I 93I typical textile of the ancient
Chinese, 293.
Hemsley, W. B., 218, 266, 289, 296, 311,
341, 408, 426, 439, 535, 548, 587.
Henna, 332, 334~338.
Henry, A., 295, 328, 375.
Herat, almonds exported from, 409;
almonds of, 406 note 4; amber from,
522; asafoetida of, 354; Chinese and
Iranian names of, 187; manna of, 347
note 4.
Herbelot d', 277, 361, 430, 433.
Herodotus, 223, 224, 290, 291, 348, 372,
390, 403, 412, 456, 486, 488.
Hervey St.-Denys d', 499.
Herzfeld, 563.
Heyd, W., 321, 496, 544, 549.
Hi, country and tribe of Korea, 198.
Hian p'u, 459, 470.
Hian tsu pi ki, 409.
Hickory, discovered in China by F. N.
Meyer, 271.
Hien lu ki, 438, 441.
Hien Yuan-gu, 515.
Himly, K., 578.
Kin-nan fu &, 520.
Hio pu tsa u, 308.
Hippocrates, 447.
Hirth, F., 186, 187, 190, 191, 202, 21 1,
213, 223, 226, 227, 230, 239, 242, 257,
269, 279, 282, 283, 286, 288, 297, 302,
319, 321, 324, 329, 330, 334, 344, 355,
359, 36o, 363, 368, 369, 371, 373, 374,
385, 389, 408, 410, 411, 415, 424, 428,
429, 435-437, 445, 457, 459, 461, 462,
465, 466, 470, 472, 475, 479-481, 485.
487, 490-495, 513, 523-525, 529, 535,
537, 538, 545, 546, 550, 558, 559, 592,
593-
Hjuler, A., 574.
Ho K'iao-yuan, 394.
Ho-lo-tan, on Java, 491.
Ho-nan, pomegranates of, 280; walnuts
of, 265.
Ho Se-hwi, 236, 252, 406.
Ho Yi-hin, 399, 409.
Hoang, P., 325.
Hoernle, A. F. R., 248, 254, 335, 558, 559,
590.
Hollyhock, 551.
Hommel, W., 514.
Hone's Sokukan, 244.
HonzO komoku keimO, 204, 243, 250
260, 273, 293.
HonzO-wamyO, 243.
Hooker, J. D., 260, 261.
Hooper, D., 338, 343, 348, 528.
Hoops, J., 221, 255, 451, 452.
Hori, K., 530, 531.
Horn, P., 225, 321, 343, 373, 493, 495,
506, 53i, 538, 557, 563, 58i, 590.
Horses, of Iran, conveyed to China, 210.
Hort, A., 355, 364, 431.
Hou Han Su, 187, 221, 374, 456, 489, 492,
521, 525-
Houtum-Schindler, A., 496, 497.
Hu, alluding to India, 374; iron of the,
202; language of the, 508; meaning of
term, 194 (cf. also the discussion of
S. Le>i, Bull, de I'Ecole fr., Vol. IV,
PP' 559-563) ; prefixed to plant-names,
GENERAL INDEX
605
194-202; salt of the, 201; with refer-
ence to Mongolia, 381.
Hu Hia, 381.
Hu Kiao, 438-442.
Hu-nan, pomegranates of, 280.
Hu-pei, flax in, 295.
Hu pen ts'ao, 204, 268, 282, 326, 327.
Hu-pi-lie, 252.
Hu-se-mi, amber and coral of, 521 note
9-
Ht -suan, dancing-girls of, 494.
Hu.m Tsari, 240, 282, 304, 317, 359, 361,
TT 457 '^ 40 '
Huan Ym, 240.
Hubschmann, C M 248, 256, 301, 321,
331, 36i, 373, 385, 415, 427, 429, 436,
506, 508, 513, 515, 525, 531, 533, 537,
538, 541, 568, 573, 58i, 585, 589, 590,
593-
Hui k'ian Ci, 230, 299, 341, 442, 443, 506,
5.62.
Hui tsui, 536.
Hujler, A., 261.
Hultzsch, E., 545.
Hun C'u, Jj9, 470.
Hun Hao, watermelon introduced into
China by, 440, 441.
Hurrier, P., 312, 319, 328, 361, 404, 407,
417, 449, 482, 484, 583.
Hwa i hwa mu k'ao, 429.
Hwa kin, 259, 267, 279, 324, 330, 336.
Hwa-lin Park, 263.
Hwa mu siao &, 409, 427..
Hwa p'u, 204.
Hwa yo i, 523.
Hwai-nan-tse, 292.
Hwan^Sin-ts'en, 563.
HweiZi, 359.
Hwi Cao, 373, 470.
Hyaena, transcription of word, in Chi-
nese, 436.
Hi, 20 1.
Imbault-Huart, C., 268.
Incense, 585; produced in the Malayan
Po-se, 470.
. idia, alfalfa cultivation of recent date
in, 209; black salt of, 511; brass of,
511; Brassica rapa in, 381; consump-
tion of asafcetida in, 354, 359; cori-
ander in, 298; costus of, 464; cucum-
ber in, 301; Curcuma in, 314; ebony
from, 485, 486; fenugreek in, 447; fig
of, 412 ; flax introduced from Iran into,
294; ginger of, 201; grape and grape-
wine of, 239-242; Lawsonia alba in,
338; manna in, 346 note 3, 349~35o;
nux-vomica of, 449; pepper of, 201,
374; pomegranate of, 282; rugs of,
493? sesame of, 290; textiles of, 491;
walnuts of, 254.
Indigo, 370-371, 585-
Indo-China, nux-vomica of, 449.
Indo-Europeans, relation of, to viticul-
ture, 220^-221.
Indo-Scythians, see Yue-c"i.
Ingalls, W. R., 514.
Inostrantsev, K., 492, 501, 502.
Interpolations, in the Kin kwei yao Ho,
205; in the Ku kin &i, 485; in the Nan
fan ts'ao mu Swan, 263, 330, 331, 334;
in the Ts'i min yao u, 191.
Iranian, geographical and tribal names
in Chinese transcription, 186.
Irano-Sinica, 535-571.
Iron, of the Hu, 202.
Iskandarname, 570.
Ispahan, wine of, 241.
Istaxrl, 255, 320, 332, 354, 511.
I2ak Ibn Amran, 316, 442, 552.
'aba, A., 250.
ack-fruit, 479.
ackson, A. V. W., 225, 277.
acob, G., 239, 316, 337, 492, 513, 522,
523, 553, 556.
Jacobi, 569.
al-Jafiki, 546.
Jaguda, aconite of, 379; black salt of,
511; indigo of, 370; myrrh in, 460;
rice in, 372; saffron of, 317, 318;
styrax benjoin of, 467; sugar in, 376.
Jahanglr, on saffron cultivation, 319.
Japan, alfalfa in, 218; fig introduced
into, 414; wild vine in, 226.
Jaschke, H. A., 235, 260, 509.
Jasmine, 192, 193, 329-333.
Jastrow, M., 533.
Jaubert, A., 320.
Java, 469; aloes from, 480; a-wei
ascribed to, 360 note 2; Canarium
in, 270; textiles of, 489.
Jawbarl, 512.
Jehol, grapes of, 231.
Jews, Chinese desij
lesignation of, 533;
parchment manuscripts of Chinese,
564-
Jolly, J-, 556, 580, 581, 585-
Joly, H. L., 392.
Joret, C., 206, 208, 223, 239, 246, 255,
277, 290, 291, 295, 301, 337, 338, 349,
360, 383, 390, 404, 405, 412, 444, 453,
455, 462, 467, 539, 541.
Josephus, Flavius, 430.
Joshi, T. R., 260.
Julien, S., 240, 254, 304, 317, 359, 418,
511, 514,561.
Justi, F., 495, 530, 532.
Kabul, jasmine of, 332; myrobalan of,
378.
Kaempfer, E., 249, 250, 285, 353, 354,
360, 414, 488, 528.
Kafiristan, pomegranate of, 278.
Kaibara Ekken, 204, 272.
Kalila wa Dimna, 370.
6o6
GENERAL INDEX
Kan-su, vine growing in, 226.
Kao-S'an, grape of, 232; manna of, 343,
344^
Kao C'en, 279, 292, 441.
Kao Se-sun, 332, 517.
Kao Si-ki, 411.
Kao Tsun, 498.
Kaolin, known in Persia, 556.
Karabacek, J., 558, 559.
KaraSar, copper-oxide of, 510; wine in,
222.
Kashgar, asbestos garment from, 498;
rice in, 372; sugar-cane of, 376 note 2.
Kashmir, alfalfa found in, 209, 216;
amber of, 521 ; carrot of, 452; coral of,
525; famed for grapes, 222 note 6;
fenugreek of, 447; grape- wine of, 240;
jasmine of, 332; saffron of, 310, 315-
321; vine of, 222.
Keith, A. B., 240, 308, 391, 455, 569.
Ken sin yu ts'e, 526.
Kermanshah, kaolin of, 556.
Kern, H., 212, 590.
Khojand, pomegranate of, 286.
Khonsar, manna of, 348.
Khorasan, manna of, 347 note 4; pis-
tachio in, 246; rhubarb of, 547; saf-
fron of, 320.
Khordadzbeh, 541, 545.
Khosrau I, 209, 370, 372 note 4, 391.
Khosrau II, 532.
Khotan, amber from, 522; asafcetida of,
359; borax and sal ammoniac from,
506; rice of, 372.
Ki fu t'un c'i, 501.
Ki Han, 263, 329, 330, 332.
Kia-p'i, in India, 317.
Kia Se-niu, 247, 263, 278.
Kia Tan, 466.
Kia yu lu, 393.
Kia yu pen ts'ao, 394.
Kia yu pu u pen ts'ao, 392.
Kiao-6i, 375, 376, 485.
Kiao ou ki, 263.
Kidney bean, 307.
Kie-li-pie, name of a pass in Persia, 187.
Kien-c'en, Buddhist priest, 469.
Kin kwei yao lio, 205, 262, 279, 297,
302.
Kin lou tse, 222, 417.
Kin 6'u swi si ki, 511, 512.
Kin k'ou ki, 281.
Kin Si, 281.
Kin si hwi yuan, 494.
King, F. H. f 230, 445.
Kingsmill, T. W., 213, 225, 226.
Kirgiz, recipients of Parthian textiles,
488; trading with Arabs, 489.
Kirkpatrick, 261.
Kirman, antimony in, 509; asbestos in,
500; cummin of, 383; sal ammoniac
of, 5O7; turquois of, 519; zinc-mines
of, 512.
Kitab el-falaha, 395.
Kitan, water-melon obtained from the
Uigur by, 438, 441; words from the
language of, in Chinese transcription,
439 note 2.
Kiu c'i ki, 217.
Kiu hwan pen ts'ao, 197, 307, 335.
Kiu T'an su, 318, 469, 488, 491, 516.
Kiu Wu tai i, 439, 488, 506.
Kiu yii c'i, 471.
Kiu Yun-nan t'un c'i, 308.
Klaproth, 236, 503, 523, 538, 540, 560,
562, 572, 574.
Ko & kin yuan, 259, 264, 265, 270, 561.
Ko Hun, 279.
Ko ku yao lun, 485, 491, 497, 500, 510,
512, 515, 516, 536, 553, 566, 568.
Kobert, R., 194.
Kodans'o', 472.
Kojiki, 243.
Korea, Corydalis of, 198; mint of, 198;
variety of walnut from, introduced
into Japan, 273; walnut introduced
from China into, 275.
Korzinski, S., 211, 246, 255, 291, 294,
298, 344, 454, 587.
K'ou Tsun-i, 204, 217, 265, 313, 402,
460, 470.
Kovalevski, O., 235, 295, 361, 509, 575,
577, 59i, 593-
Krauss, S., 415, 429, 435.
Kremer, A. v., 337, 527.
Ku kin cu, 242, 280, 283, 302, 303, 305,
324-327, 459, 485, 486.
Ku-lan, 370.
Ku-i, 341, 343.
Ku yu t'u p'u, 517.
Kua, cosmetic of, 201; grape-wine in,
222; rice in, 372; sal ammoniac of, 504,
506; styrax ben join in, 467; yen-lu of,
510.
Kumarajlva, 303.
Kuner, N. V., 262.
Kunos, I., 214.
Kunz, G. F., 350, 528.
Kurdistan, almond in, 405; pomegranate
in, 276.
Kuropatkin, A. N., 506.
Kurz, S., 261.
Kwa, alleged name of a country, 401,
402.
Kwa su su, 394.
Kwan c'i, 228, 250, 264, 268, 281, 305,
358, 359, 456-458, 464, 470, 471, 536.
Kwan &>u ki, 384, 475.
Kwari Sou t'u kin, 333.
Kwan k'un fan p'u, 204, 259, 270, 305,
307, 330, 331, 394, 440, 443, 448, 451.
Kwan-sii Sun t'ien fu c'i, 410.
Kwan-tun, fenugreek in, 446; myrrh of,
460, 475.
Kwan wu hin ki, 264.
Kwan ya, 285, 306.
GENERAL INDEX
607
Kwan yu ki, 201, 251, 341, 345, 489, 492,
SIS-
Kwei hai yu hen ft, 197, 328, 408, 426,
568.
Kwei ki san fu c"u, 199.
Kwei sin tsa si, 335, 447.
Kwo P'o, 212, 536.
Kwo su, 256, 265.
Kwo Yi-kun, 264, 281.
Kwo Yun-t'ao, 468.
K'ai-pao pen ts'ao, 258, 265, 303, 350,
351, 384, 417, 418, 460, 462, 481, 483.
K'ai yuan t'ien pao i si, 527.
K'an miu cen su, 227.
K'an-hi, the Emperor, new varieties of
grape introduced by, 228, 229; pre-
sented with foreign wine, 238.
K'ao ku t'u, 517.
K'i-lien Mountain, 326.
K'ian, forefathers of Tibetans, connected
with plant-names, 199; salt of the,
201 ; walnut named for, 257, 259.
K'ien su, 537.
K'u Yuan, 195.
K'un fan p'u, 336.
K'un-lun, a Malayan country, alum
from, 475; a-wei (kind of asafcetida)
in, 358-360; costus root of, 464; lac
from, 477; storax from, 458; trade of,
with Yiin-nan, 469471.
Lac, 475-478.
Lacaze-Duthiers, 523.
Lamarck, 523.
Land-tax, of Khosrau I, 209, 391.
Lao-p'o-sa, 389.
Lapis lazuli, 518, 520.
Laufer, H., 463.
Leclerc, L., 209, 298, 304, 314, 316, 321,
332, 333, 337, 347, 351, 354, 355, 360,
363, 367, 370, 383, 390, 395, 396, 399,
402, 404, 422, 425, 427, 428, 430, 432,
445, 446, 448, 449, 453, 461, 463, 478,
483, 512, 520, 522, 541, 544, 545, 546,
549, 55i, 552, 554, 556, 581-583, 586,
587, 590.
LeCoq, A. v., 214, 230, 345, 577-579,
595-
Lei Hiao, 197, 292.
Lei Kun, 548.
Leitner, W., 284.
Lentil, 193.
Lenz, H. O., 518.
Lettuce, 400402.
Levesque, E., 411, 430, 459.
LeVi, Sylvain, 222, 317, 358, 359, 398,
404, 464, 544, 545, 592, 593.
Levy, J., 429, 430.
Li Cun, 311.
Li Hiao-po, 201.
Li ki, 216.
Li K'an, 537.
Li Po, 232.
Li Sao, 195.
Li sao ts'ao mu su, 195.
Li Sun, 248, 327, 358, 359, 384, 465,
470, 471, 478-483, 5io.
Li San-kiao, 494.
Li Si, 401.
Li Si-cen, 198-200, 204, 214, 215, 217,
225, 226, 228, 231, 237, 238, 242, 252,
279, 284, 289, 293, 297, 300, 302, 305-
307, 310-313, 317, 318, 323, 327, 328,
33i, 336, 341, 345, 358, 360, 365, 371,
374, 375, 38o, 381, 384-388, 392,
399-401, 403, 406, 407, 409-411, 413,
417, 418, 420, 426, 427, 441, 442, 451,
459-461, 465, 467, 472, 478, 480, 482
484, 485, 491, 510, 512, 515, 526, 527
557, 558.
Li Tao, 191.
Li Tao-yiian, 264, 322.
Li Te-yu, 282, 527.
Li wei kun pie tsi, 282.
Li-yi, production of grapes in, 221.
Li Yu, 279
Li Yuan, 279.
Lian se kun tse ki, 233, 344.
Liari u, 286, 316, 412, 457, 488, 490,
525-
Lily, 193-
Lin hai i, 351.
Lin piao lu i, 196, 268-270, 340, 386,
417, 479-
Lin wai tai ta, 269, 270, 319, 344, 472,
T - 4 ;tf ' 5 ?'
Lmdley, J., 412.
Linne", 586, 589.
Linschoten, 550, 556.
Lippmann, E. O. v., 238, 376, 377.
Litharge, 508-509.
Littre", 353.
Liu Hi, 201.
Liu Hin-k'i, 263.
Liu Sun, 268, 386, 387, 417, 479.
Liu Si-lun, 268.
Liu Tsi, 197.
Liu Yii-si, 393.
Lo-fou san ki, 536.
Lo yan k'ie Ian ki, 217.
Lo Yuan, 212, 326.
Localities, plant-names derived from,
381, 401, 402, 456, 457.
Lockhart, 508.
Lo-lo, of Yun-nan, acquainted with
pomegranate, 286 note i; acquainted
with tree-cotton, 491, 492 note;
acquainted with wild walnut, 267;
familiar with almond, 407 note 3;
familiar with Ricinus, 404.
Loan-words, Arabic, in Tibetan, 596;
Chinese, in Persian, 557, 564, 565, 568;
Chinese, in Turkl, 577-579; from
ancient languages of Indo-China, in
6o8
GENERAL INDEX
Chinese, 268 note 2, 376 note 5, 486,
491; Greek, in Syriac, 436; Indian, in
Arabic, 545; Indian, in Malayan, 283;
Indian, in Persian, 332; Iranian, in
Greek, 427 note 8; Iranian, in Mongol,
572-576; Iranian, in Sanskrit, 240,
283 note 3, 286, 367, 407, 411, 503;
Malayan-Pose (Pasa), in Chinese, 471 ;
Man, in Chinese, 197; Persian in
Hindi, 452; Persian, in Hindustani,
505; Persian, in Tibetan, 503; Slavic,
in West-European, 501.
Loew, I., 365, 390, 423, 428, 429, 583,
585.
Lorenzetti, I. B., 219.
Loret, V., 220, 277, 285, 286, 290, 299,
301, #>7, 337, 386, 403, 422, 453, 461.
Lotus, 585.
Loureiro, J. de, 265, 266, 313, 401, 407,
482.
Lu 5'an kun i k'i, 346, 498, 527.
Lu Hui, 280.
Lu Ki, 278, 297.
Lu Kia, 330.
Lu Kwan, conqueror of Ku5a, 222.
Lu Mountain, 281.
Lu-nan &, 266.
Lu Sin-yuan, 460.
Lu Sanki, 281.
Lu an siao 6i, 281.
Lu Tien, 323.
Lu Yin-yan, 251.
Lun-kan, pomegranate of, 281.
Lyte, H., 396, 587.
Ma Ci, 265, 313, 328, 370, 378, 417, 418,
482, 483, 485, 526.
Ma-k'o-se-li, 345, 510.
Ma-ku Mountains, 271.
Ma-ku San &, 271.
Ma Twan-lin, 389, 436.
Macao, 501, 567.
MacCrindle, 309.
Macdonell, A. A., 240, 308, 391, 455.
Macgowan, J., 237, 535.
MadLyantika, 321.
Magadha, pepper of, 374; sugar-indus-
try of, 377.
Magadhl, influence of, on Tibetan, 591.
Magnolia, 588.
Maimargh, 512.
Main waring, G. f 261.
Maitre, H., 450.
al-Makln, 571.
Makkari, 492.
Malayan Po-se, see Po-se.
Malindi, 389.
Man u, 420, 463, 466, 468, 469, 474,
494 517.
Manchuria, asbestos in, 501; se-se in,
518; wild walnut in, 266.
Mandelslo, J. A. de, 352, 357, 499, 554.
Mandrake, 447, 585.
Mango, 552.
Manna, 343-35-
Manna-ash, 343.
Manu, Institutes of, 290, 404.
Margiana, 223.
Marigold, 193.
Marjoran, 585.
Markham, C., 314, 346, 352, 353, 355,
360, 370, 444, 458, 464, 465, 476, 478,
542, 544, 546, 550, 556.
Marking-nut tree, 482-483.
Marquart, J., 537, 592, 593.
Marsden, W., 404.
Maspero, H., 186, 417, 476, 499, 538.
Massagetae, 224.
Masudi, 370, 506.
Matsuda, S., 216.
Matsumura, 196, 218, 243, 244, 250, 251,
269, 273, 274, 295, 296, 314, 328, 342,
406, 417, 422, 426, 459, 462.
Mayers, W. P., 491, 515, 516.
Media, products of, 208.
Medic apple, Greek term for citron, 202,
209.
Medike, the Medic grass, Greek term
for alfalfa, 202, 208.
Megasthenes, 290.
Megenberg, K. v., 364, 433.
Meillet, A., 186, 187, 437, 530, 532.
Melinawi, ginger of, 583.
M61y t F. de, 340, 475, 504, 508, 510, 514,
526.
Merw, Chinese names of, 187.
Mesopotamia, early cultivation of grape-
vine in, 220; fenugreek in, 447; olive
in, 415.
Methodology, in the history of culti-
vated plants, 242-243, 271-272, 422.
Meyer, F. N., 267, 271, 408, 410.
Meynard, Barbier de, 320, 370, 373, 425,
, 506, 507, 509, 547, 559- 1
Miao tribes, familiar with Ricinus, 404.
Migeon, G., 492.
Miklosich, F., 501.
Miller, W., 256, 415.
Millet, in Persia and China, 565.
Min siao ki, 536.
Min u, 394, 396.
Min hian p'u, 363.
Min hwan tsa lu, 517.
Min &, 264, 390, 562.
Min wu Si, 256 note 6.
Mint, 193, 194, 198.
Mirrors, with grape-designs, 226 note I.
Mo k'o hui si, 401.
Mo-lin, 389.
Mo-lu, country in Arabia, 381, 399, 402.
Modi, J. J., 372, 437, 532, 537, 564, 568,
569-
Mohammedan bean, 197.
Moldenke, Ch. E., 277.
Mon K'an, 339.
Mon k'i pi fan, 289, 459.
GENERAL INDEX
609
Mon-ku &, 295.
Mon lian lu, 229, 282.
Mon Sen, 233, 238, 265, 292, 297, 303,
376.
Mon-tse, 216.
Monardes, N. de, 342.
Mongol dynasty, cultivation of alfalfa,
encouraged by, 217.
Mongol, Iranian Elements in, 572-576.
Mongolia, Brassica rapa in, 381; flax
in, 295.
Morange, M., 449, 450.
Morbus americanus, 556.
Morga, A. de, 283.
Morgan, J. de, 343, 369, 435, 444, 595-
Morse, H. B., 560.
Moses of Khorene, Armenian historian,
310 note i, 369, 377.
Mosul, manna of, 344.
Mu-ku-lan^ Mekran, 355.
Mu-lu, Chinese name of a city on the
eastern frontier of Parthia, 187.
Mukerji, N. G., 261, 397, 452.
Mulberry, 339, 582.
Miiller, F. W. K., 267, 290, 417, 461, 490
530, 572-574, 578, 589-
Mun ts'uan tsa yen, 227, 229.
Mungo bean, 585.
Munkacsi, B., 345, 574.
Muqaddasl, 255, 377, 425.
Musil, A., 287.
Musk, of China, 310 note i; traded in
Yun-nan, 469.
Musk flower, 193.
Muss-Arnolt, 226, 285, 459, 519, 542,
543-
Myrobalan, 378, 583.
Myrrh, 460-462.
Myrtle, 461.
Nagasaki, figs introduced into, 414..
Nan-ao, 469; cotton in, 491; peculiar
variety of pomegranate in, 286; se-se
in, 517; wild walnut in, 270.
Nan ao ye Si, 413, 471.
Nan ou i wu &, 317, 417, 464.
Nan 6ou ki, 247, 248, 250, 460-462, 480,
482, 483.
Nan Fan, Southern Barbarians, 358,
375, 49i-
Nan fan ts'ao mu cwan, 263, 329, 330-
332, 334, 375, 376, 388, 417, 464, 486,
543-
Nan hai yao p'u, 327.
Nan i i, 469.
Nan Man, se-se among women of the,
517.
Nan i, 490, 491, 493, 521, 523, 564.
Nan-tou, vine m, 222.
Nan Ts'i su, 282, 376.
Nan Yue &, 491, 510.
Nan yue hin ki, 330.
Nanjio, Bunyiu, 254, 303, 457.
Narcissus, 427-428; mentioned in Pah-
lavi literature, 192.
Needham, J. F., 492.
Needles, of gold, silver, and brass, 512.
Nepal, spinach introduced into China
from, 393.
Nicolaus of Damaskus, 247.
NizamI, 570.
Noldeke, T., 209, 390, 391, 427, 461, 493,
495, 530-533, 573, 582.
Nonsuch, 218.
Numerals of Malayan-Pose (Pasa)
language, 472-473-
Nun cen ts'uan u, 336.
Nun u, 307.
Nux-vomica, 448-450.
Oak-galls, 367-369.
Oak manna, 349.
Oakley, 218.
Odoric of Pordenone, 346, 352, 549,
590.
Oil, from walnuts, 266.
Okada, K., 501.
Olearius, A., 277, 337.
Olive, 415-419; absent in Bactria, 223;
in India, 239; in Pahlavi literature,
193. No other text regarding the
olive is known than that of the Yu yan
tsa tsu. Li Si-en (Pen ts'ao kan mu,
Ch. 31, p. lob) cites this single text
only, and is at a loss as to what to
make of this plant. He has added this
note as an appendix to the article on
mo-'u (*mwa-dzu), saying that the
ts'i-tun fruit is of the same kind.
G. Ferrand (Journal asiatique, 1916,
II, p 523) has identified the term
mo-Vu with Javanese maja, the fruit
of the Aegle marmelos.
Ono Ranzan, 204, 250, 260, 273, 293.
Onyx, 554.
Oppert, G., 527.
Oranges, method of storing, 231.
Ormuz, 346.
Osbeck, P., 238.
Ouseley, W., 372, 374, 479, 485, 507-
Pa-lai, locality in southern India, 240.
Pai pin fan, 381.
Palaka, Palakka, name of country, 397,
398.
Palembang, 470; p'o-so stone of, 526;
storax-oil of, 459.
Palestine, coriander in, 299.
Palladius, 315, 436, 509, 511.
Pallas, P. S., 523, 527.
Pallegoix, 299, 323, 332, 443, 476.
Pandanus, 192.
Panto; a, S. J., 433, 527.
Pao 6i lun, 197.
Pao p'u tse, 279.
Pao ts'an lun, 509, 515.
6io
GENERAL INDEX
Paper, 557-559. To the series of Indian
words (p. 558) add Kagmlrl kakaz.
The Uigur-Persian word has further
migrated into some Indo-Chinese (or,
as I now prefer to say, Sinic) lan-
guages, Siamese kadat and Kanaurl
kagll. All Sinic palatals are evolved
from dentals: thus Chinese i
("paper") is evolved from an older
*di. The ancient dental sonant is still
preserved in Miao ndou ("paper")
and in Pa-ten (a T'ai dialect) do; it
is changed into the dental surd or
aspirate in the Lo-lo dialects (Lo-lo-
p'o ta-vi, Nyi t'o-i, A-hi t'u-yi, P'u-p'a
Vo-zo) and in T'ai (White T'o *'*, Man
Ta-pan t'oi, White Meo tad}. All these
forms represent ancient loan-words
based on Old Chinese *di, while Ahom
li was apparently derived from Chi-
nese ci at a more recent date.
Paper money, 559^563.
Parchment, as writing-material in Persia,
563-564.
Parker, E. H., 187, 204, 456, 469, 471,
565-
Parkinson, John, 353, 396, 589.
Parrenin, D., S. J., 238.
Parthia, 187, 210, 284, 372, 457, 488,
564-
Patkanov, K. P., 525.
Pauthier, G., 218.
Pea, 305-307-
Peach, in India, 240, 540; variety of,
introduced into China from Sogdiana,
379; transmitted from China to the
west, 539.
Pear, in India, 240; wild, in Persia, 246.
Pegoletti, 252, 496, 509, 593.
Pei hu lu, 196, 264, 268-270, 282, 324-
327, 330, 334, 335, 385, 393, 400, 479,
11, 526,536,537.
Pei pien pei tui, 326.
Pei Ian tsiu kin, 234.
Pei si, 286, 322, 343, 345, 460, 506, 516.
Pei-t'in, 488.
Pelliot, P., 185, 186, 191, 195, 198, 211,
214, 222, 230, 235, 236, 248, 264, 268,
269, 282, 303, 306, 318, 322, 330, 344,
357, 376, 423, 428, 436, 437, 443, 456,
457, 462, 464, 466-471, 478, 479, 489,
491, 494, 495, 526, 527, 529, 531, 538,
540, 543, 566, 568, 569, 575, 591.
Pemberton, 261.
Pen kin, 401, 548.
Pen kin fun yuan, 229.
Pen ts'ao hui pien, 557.
Pen ts'ao kan mu, 196, 198, 200, 201,
204, 206, 214, 217, 226, 228, 229, 233,
236, 237, 242, 254, 256-258, 265, 270,
273, 288, 295, 297, 298, 300, 302, 303,
305, 3io, 312, 317, 330, 335, 336, 341,
344, 348, 351, 358, 359, 36i, 363, 365,
371, 374, 378, 380, 381, 385, 387, 392,
393, 399, 400, 402, 403, 407, 410, 420,
422, 423, 426, 427, 433, 439-441, 448,
459-461, 470, 471, 475, 482, 485, 491,
504, 508, 509, 512, 515, 516, 519, 526,
527, 551, 553, 557, 558, 566, 588, 592.
Pen ts'ao kan mu si i, 229, 236, 242, 252,
263, 311, 312, 394, 429, 434.
Pen ts'ao kin, 307.
Pen ts'ao pie wo, 359, 360, 470.
Pen ts'ao si i, 197, 233, 247, 248, 280, 297,
298, 300, 306, 386, 402, 420, 423.
Pen ts'ao yen i, 204, 217, 223, 232, 233,
265, 280, 288, 313, 351, 402, 446, 460,
470, 478, 505, 509, 524, 526.
Pepper, 201, 374~375, 435, 479, 583, 584-
Periplus, 486, 524.
Perrot, E., 312, 319, 328, 361, 404, 407,
417, 449, 482, 583.
Persepolis, inscription of, 210, 383.
Persian Pharmacology, Indian elements
in, 580-585.
P6tillon, C., 216.
Peyssonel, 523.
Philippines, Semecarpus in, 482.
Phillott, D. C., 253.
Philostratus, 390.
Pi e'en, 229.
Pie lu, 196, 201, 211, 227, 279, 291, 335,
381, 401, 463, 526, 548.
Pie pen 6u, 504 note 3.
Pien tse lei pien, 439, 458, 459.
Pierlot, M. L., 492.
Pilau, 372.
Pistachio, 193, 246-253.
Pliny, 208, 246, 281, 290, 294, 299, 309,
317, 339, 353, 355, 364, 366, 367, 376,
403, 404, 411, 416, 424, 432, 447, 453,
455, 46i, 475, 486, 488, 522-525, 541,
548, 586.
Po-ki, 566.
Po ku t'u lu, 226, 517.
Po-lin, name of a country, 393.
Po-se, Chinese name of Parsa, Persia,
203.
Po-se, Pa-sa, a Malayan country and
people, 203, 269, 375, 384, 424, 460,
462, 465, 466, 468-487.
Po wu &, 258, 259, 263, 278, 282, 284,
297, 302, 310, 324.
Pognon, H., 529, 530, 542.
Polo, Marco, 236, 247, 319, 380, 455,
474, 496, 521, 543, 549, 560, 563, 564,
593 ; new identification of his saffron of
Fu-kien, 311.
Polyaenus, 247.
Pomegranate, 193, 205, 276-287, 574.
Pompey, 432, 486.
Pondicherry, French viticulture at, 241.
Portuguese, asbestos of Macao, 501;
fig introduced into Japan by, 414.
Posidonius, 224, 246.
Potanin, 527.
GENERAL INDEX
611
Pott, F. A., 249, 370, 421, 503, 545, 587.
Powder, of white lead, 201.
Poyarkov, 267.
Procopius, 224.
Przyluski, J., 321, 512.
Psoralea, 483-485.
Ptolemy, 473.
Putchuck, 462-464.
Pyrard, F., 338, 370, 421, 465, 556.
P'an an, 271.
P'an san ci, 259, 271.
P'an Yo, 280, 285.
P'ei wen cai kwari k'un fan p'u, 259.
P'ei wen yiin fu, 475, 512, 566.
P'en C'en, 401.
P'i ya, 323.
P'in ts'uan san ku ts'ao mu ki, 527.
P'o-lo-men, country along the frontier
of Burma, 46 8-470, 494.
Qara-Khoja, asafcetida of, 358; manna
of, 346; wine of, 236.
eazwlnl, 552, 554.
uatremere, 556.
Rabelais, 203.
Radloff, W., 256, 565, 572, 574, 592.
Raisins, 231.
Ramsay, H., 362, 577.
Rape- turnip, 381.
Raquette, G., 579.
RaSid-eddin, 564.
Rauwolf, L., 546, 550.
Ray, P. C., 513-
Reil, T., 428, 495.
Reinach, L. de, 408.
Reinaud, M., 232, 248, 282, 407, 413,
506, 553.
Re"musat, Abel, 499, 508, 526, 531, 538,
565, 572, 574-
Rhubarb, 547-551.
Rice, 372-373.
Ricinus, 403-404 1482.
Richthofen, F. v., 190, 535, 538.
Riley, 586.
Risley, H. H., 235, 261.
Ritter, C., 377.
Rock-crystal, cups of, from Sogdiana,
494-
Rockhill, W. W., 202, 260, 262, 269, 317,
345, 355, 390, 405, 487 493. 497, 5,
519, 527, 562.
Roediger, R., 249, 370, 421, 503, 545.
Rom, Rim, transcription of, in Chinese,
437-
Rose, in the Lo-yu gardens, 217; in
Pahlavi literature, 194.
"Rose of China," 551.
Ross, Sir E. D., 199, 278, 497, 498.
Rosteh, Ibn, 492.
Roxburgh, W., 261, 381, 397, 405, 421,
452, 484, 544, 582, 584, 585, 587.
Rubruck, 496, 564.
Rugs, with gold threads, 488; woollen,
492-493-
Rum, in plant-names, 384, 497, 498.
Rumphius, 290.
Ruska, J., 511-513, 527, 528, 554, 555-
Russia, alfalfa in, 219.
Russian Turkistan, pistachio in, 246;
sesame in, 291.
Sa-la, Lo-lo word for tree-cotton, re-
corded by Chinese in the fifth century,
491.
Saba, Queen of, 430, 431.
Saburo, S., 560.
Sachau, E., 530.
Sacy, Silvestre de, 432.
Safflower, 324-328; confounded by Chi-
nese with saffron, 310; saffron adul-
terated with, 309.
Saffron, 193, 309-323.
Sainson, C., 413, 471.
Sakharov, 416.
Sal ammoniac, 503-508.
Salamander, 500, 501.
Salemann, C., 496, 530, 532, 565, 573.
Saltpetre, 503, 555.
Salts, of various colors, 511.
Samarkand, amber from, 522; jasmine
of, 332; manna of, 345, rhubarb of,
550.
San fu hwan t'u, 263, 334, 417.
San kwo &, 313.
San ts'ai t'u hui, 507.
San K'in, 322.
"Sand-pot," peculiar kind of pottery,
234-
Sandal- wood, exported from India, 318,
374 SS 2 , 584. See the recent discus-
sion of S. Le"vi, Journal asiatique, 1918,
I, pp. 104-111.
Sanguinetti, 282, 552.
Sanskrit, no word for "alfalfa" known
in, 214; method of treating plant-
names in Chinese dictionaries of
215-216.
Sapan-wood, in Pahlavi literature, 193.
Sargent, C. S., 266, 271.
Sarkar, B. K., 240.
Sasanian Government, titles of, 529-534.
Satow, E., 535.
Savel'ev, 492.
Savina, F. M., 404.
Scarlet, 498.
Schefer, Ch., 547, 561.
Scherzer, K. v., 408.
Schiefner, A., 260, 321, 572.
Schiltberger, J., 373.
Schlegel, G., 199, 408.
Schlimmer, J. L., 200, 206, 209, 249, 251,
298, 304, 306, 308, 320, 337, 344, 347-
349, 363, 365, 369, 370, 381, 383, 391,
402, 405, 416, 425, 428, 447, 449, 454,
6l2
GENERAL INDEX
455, 460, 479, 48i, 525, 544, 556, 565,
587-
Schmidt, I. J., 235, 572.
Schmidt, P., 473.
Schmidt, P., 538.
Schmidt, R., 352.
Schoff, W. H., 524, 541.
Schott, W., 251, 252, 257, 341, 344, 491,
508, 574.
Schrader, O., 208, 220, 240, 249, 274,
285, 369, 386, 395, 411, 461, 513, 538,
542, 548, 582.
Schrenck, L. v., 267.
Schumann, C., 542, 543.
Schwarz, P., 255, 332, 377, 425, 500, 507,
511, 512.
Schweinfurth, G., 337, 453.
Scott, J. G., 563.
Scythians, hemp brought from Asia to
Europe by, 294.
Se-2'wan, aconite of, 379; brassica of,
380; flax in, 295; kidney bean in, 308;
Psoralea in, 484; species of Curcuma
in, 313; square bamboo of, 536; sugar
imported into, 376; walnut in, 266;
wild pepper of, 375.
Se S'wan t'un &, 501.
Seals, made from walnut shells, 268.
Seidel, E., 320, 347, 349, 368, 369, 402,
443, 446, 522, 551.
Seligmann, R., 194.
Seres, name not connected with a
Chinese word for "silk," 538. I have
meanwhile found what I believe is
the correct derivation of the word, on
which I hope to report in the near
future.
Sesame, in Chinese records, 288-293; * n
Pahlavi literature, 193.
Seth, Symeon, 586.
Shagreen, 575.
Shah, acorn of, 369; basil named for, 586;
cummin of, 384.
Shahrokia, 355, 358.
Shallot, 303-304.
Shaw, R. B., 213, 214, 256, 261, 565.
Shiratori, 326.
Shiraz, galbanum of, 366; fenugreek of,
447; jasmine oil of, 332; wine of, 241.
Si-fan, 200, 20 1, 310.
Si Fan, Western Barbarians (not Tibe-
tans), 341, 344.
Si ho kiu i, 326.
Si kin tsa ki, 217, 262.
Si Si ki, 520.
Si Ts'o-S'i, 325, 326.
Si Wan Mu, 232.
Si yan S'ao kun tien lu, 563.
Si yu ki, 355.
Si yu lu, 286.
Si ^u wen kien lu, 341.
Si-zun, in names of Iranian plants,
synonymous with Hu, 203.
Si 2un, 313, 339, 367, 374~376, 380, 465,
481, 482, 504, 509 note 10. See also
Siam, a-wei ascribed to, 360 note 2;
coriander in, 299; dye-stuff of, 316;
nux-vomica of, 449; Psoralea in, 484
note 5; wine from sugar in, 376 note
5-
Sian kwo ki, 281.
Siao Tse-hien, 282.
Siberia, alfalfa in, 219; Conioselinum in,
200.
Sickenberger, 587.
Sie Lin-ft, 216.
Sie lo yu yuan, 268.
Silk, 537-539-
Silphion, 208, 355.
Sin-ra, in Korea, mint of, 198; pine of,
269; silver of, 510.
Sin Wu Tai i, 516.
Sina, Ibn, 551.
Slraf, 374, 377 note 2.
Skattschkoff, C. de, 218.
Smith, A. H., 234.
Smith, F. P., 201, 279, 304, 310, 336, 365,
395, 426, 436, 474, 484, 505.
Smith, V. A., 540, 569.
Socotra, Punica protopunica of, 277.
Sogdiana, 494; basil of, 588; peach of,
379; pistachio in, 246; sal ammoniac
of, 504, 506; se-se of, 516; visited by
Can K'ien, 211; viticulture in, 221.
Soleiman, 231, 232, 282, 407, 413, 553.
Solinus, 486, 525.
Soltania, Archbishop of, 419.
Soubeiran, J. L., 475.
Soulie", G., 491, 520.
Spain, basil brought by Arabs to, 587;
spinach cultivated from end of
eleventh century in, 395.
Spelter, 555.
Spiegel, F., 240, 254, 277, 416, 443, 537,
570-
Spinach, 392-398.
Spinden, H. J., 440.
Spinel, 575.
Sprengling, M., 435.
Square bamboo, 535~537.
Stachelberg, R. v., 209.
Stalactites, 21.
Stapleton, H. E., 505.
Steel, 515, 575.
Stein, Sir M. A., 214, 230, 255, 549, 562.
Steingass, F., 249, 299, 490, 495, 525,
53i, 545, 55i, 552, 555-
Storax, 456-460.
Storbeck, 389.
Strabo, 208, 212, 222-225, 239, 246, 290,
355, 372, 390, 405, 412, 431, 462, 541-
Strange, G. le, 277, 294, 332, 374, 390,
428, 479.
Strychnine tree, 448.
GENERAL INDEX
Stuart, G. A., 195-197, 200, 216, 236,
251, 258, 260, 269, 279, 288, 292, 298,
300, 303-305, 3io, 312-314, 324, 328,
331, 334-336, 343, 344, 348, 35i, 358,
360, 361, 365, 379, 382-384, 388, 393,
394, 399-401, 403, 406, 410, 418, 421,
426, 428, 439, 446, 448, 456, 458, 464,
478, 482, 484, 485, 491, 544, 551, 583,
588.
Stuhlmann, F., 353.
Stummer, A., 220.
Stumpf, B. K., S. J., 238.
Sty-rax benjoin, 464-467.
Su &>u fu ft, 228.
Su Han Su, 456.
Su Kun, 200, 201, 228, 313, 340, 358, 359,
374-376, 380, 400, 403, 464, 465, 478,
479, 504, 508, 510, 524.
Su K'ien Su, 527, 537.
Su Kwan-k'i, 336.
Su-le, 376 note 2, 498.
Su Piao, 247, 460, 482, 483.
Su po wu i, 242, 401.
Su Sun, 195-198, 200, 228, 257-259, 264,
265, 280, 288, 313, 341, 358, 359, 384,
403, 446, 460, 464, 480, 482, 483, 504,
505, 508.
Su Tin, 234.
Su Yi-kien, 561.
Suarez, J., S. J., 238.
Sugar, 376-377, 576, 584, 596.
Sugar beet, 399-400.
Sui u, 1 86, 201, 221, 306, 320, 343, 370,
372, 374, 376, 378, 379, 385, 455-457,
460, 462, 467, 470, 485, 487-490, 493,
496, 503, 505, 5io, 511, 515, 5i6, 521,
525, 529, 530, 552.
Sulphur, 575.
Sumatra, aloes from, 480; cassia pods of,
420; p'o-so stone of, 526; Styrax
benjoin of, 465.
Sun Mien, 297.
Sun Se-miao, 198, 303, 306.
Sun mo ki wen, 440.
Sun i, 311, 360, 408, 471, 494.
Sun u, 280, 281, 491, 499.
Swallow of the Hu, 199.
Swingle, W. T., 195, 620.
Syria, wine of, 224. See Fu-lin.
Sa-li-Sen, envoy from the Malayan Po-se,
x 477-
Sahnameh, 224.
San hai kin, 536.
San hwa hien &, 410, 451.
San ku sin hwa, 515.
San-si, flax of, 295; grape- wine of, 236-
237; raisins produced in, 231.
San- tun, square bamboo in, 537; wal-
nuts of, 266, 267.
San tun fun &, 266, 537.
San cou tsun G, 266.
San-se ou, grapes of, 232 note 2.
San-se ou ci, 409, 418.
Sen Hwai-yiian, 491.
Sen Kwa, 289.
Sen Nun, 548.
Sen-si, alfalfa abundant in, 217; walnuts
of, 265.
Sen-si t'un ci, 484.
Si Hu, 280, 306.
Si i lu, 300.
Si ki, 191, 194, 221, 231, 326, 537.
Si kin, 216.
Si leu kwo 6'un ts'iu, 232.
Si liao pen ts'ao, 233, 265, 273, 292, 297,
303,376.
Si Lo, taboo placed on plant-names by,
298, 588.
Si min, 201, 493, 558.
Si sin pen ts'ao, 198.
Si wu ki yuan, 279, 292, 298, 300, 441.
Si yao er ya, 504, 507.
Su i ki, 217.
Su kien, 468.
Su pen ts'ao, 340.
Swi kin cu, 264, 322, 323, 341, 509.
Swo wen, 322, 323, 376.
al-Ta'alibl, 571.
Ta-ho, explanation of name, 186.
Ta Min, 201, 313, 340, 483, 484.
Ta Min i t'un &, 201, 251, 275, 323, 345,
368, 406, 480, 520, 522.
Ta Tail leu tien, 512, 521.
Ta Tan si yu ki, 240, 282, 304, 412, 488,
Ta Ts'in, the Hellenistic Orient, alum
from, 475; amber of, 521; coral of,
524; costus of, 464; jasmine and henna
from, 329-330, 334; musicians and
jugglers from, 489; rugs of, 492;
storax of, 456; yu-kin, growing in, 318.
Ta ye i i lu, 300.
Ta Yue-&, see Yue-ci.
Tabashir, 350-352.
Taboo, in the word hu-p'o (amber), 521
note 9; plant-names changed in con-
sequence of, 198, 298, 300, 306, 588.
Tacitus, 432.
Takakusu, 317, 359, 379. 382, 469,
470.
Tamarind, 582.
Tamarisk, 339, 348, 367.
Tamarisk manna, 348.
Tan k'ien tsun lu, 331, 441.
Tanaka, T., 207; note on fei zan by, 260
note 2; notice on grape-vine trans-
lated from Japanese by, 243-245;
notice on walnut translated from Japa-
nese by, 272-275.
Tao i & Ho, 344, 510, 519.
6i4
GENERAL INDEX
Tashkend, pulse of, 306; rice in, 372;
wine in, 221.
Tavernier, 241, 242, 406, 477, 478.
Tea, 553-554- The request of an envoy
from Arabia for tea-leaves (p. 554)
meets its counterpart in a similar docu-
ment recently translated by Sir E. D.
Ross (New China Review, Vol. I, p. 40),
who observes, "It is curious to note
from these memorials that tea, which
was first brought to Europe toward the
end of the sixteenth century, appears
to have been in demand in Arabia
long before that period." The ancient
Chinese form of the word for "tea"
was *da, which, like all initial dental
sonants, could pass into the palatal
series (hence mediaeval Chinese *dza
and dialect of Wu dzo), or could be
changed into the dental surd (hence
dialect of Fu-kien ta, the source of
our word "tea"; Korean ta, An-
namese tra).
Tenasserim, Memecylon of, 315; wine
of, 286.
Terebinthus, 246, 431.
Textiles, Persian, 488-502.
Theophrastus, 208, 239, 246, 281, 355,
364, 367, 390, 403, 427, 428, 430-432,
447, 453, 455, 462, 486, 518, 539, 54',
542, 548, 586.
Theophylactus Simocatta, 532.
Thiers, 438.
Thomas, F. W., 545, 592.
Thomsen, V., 592.
Ti li fun su ki, 322.
Tibet, alfalfa unknown in, 218; almond
in, 405; borax and tincal of, 503;
Brassica of, 381; rhubarb of, 549;
saffron imported into China from, 310;
saffron not cultivated in, 312; sal
ammoniac of, 506; salt of, 201 ; se-se of,
516; woollen stuffs of, 497.
Tien hai yu hen &, 228, 266, 315, 360,
463, 466, 512, 520, 568.
Tien hi, 491.
Tigris, 1 86.
Tincal, 503.
Tobar, J S. J., 533, 564.
Tomaschek, W., 212-214, 225, 226, 248,
261, 495, 496, 540.
Tonking, ebony of, 485.
Tootnague, 555.
Tou Kin, 378.
Trigonella, in Pahlavi literature, 194.
Tse yuan, 298 note I.
Tsen tin kwan yu ki, 251.
Tsi yun, 199.
Tsin kun ko min, 263.
Tsin Lun nan k'i ku cu, 280.
Tsin su, 221, 259, 260.
Tsiu-mo, vine in, 222.
Tsiu p'u, 378.
Tso Se, 280.
Tsuboi, K., 472, 474, 495.
Tsufi kin yin nie lun, 291.
Tu i ft, 279.
Tu Pao, 300.
Tu yan tsa pien, 517.
Tu Yu, 339.
Tulip, 192.
Tun-hwan, grape- wine of, 232; vine
growing in, 226.
Tun si yan k'ao, 360, 526.
Tun-sun, 286.
Turf an, 232, 511 ; co^on-stuffs of, 492.
Turkistan, grapes of, 229-230; originally
inhabited by Iranian tribes, from the
end of the fourth '. entury settled by
Turks, 233.
Turmeric, 309-323.
Turner, W., 261, 396^
Turquois, 519-520.
Twan C'en-Si, 247, 3;' 15, 364, 407, 423,
424, 430, 478, 479.
Twan Kun-lu, 264, 334, 335, 479.
T'ai p'in hwan yu ki, 187, 222, 223, 265,
269, 306, 339, 343, 358, 370, 372, 376,
378, 379, 38i, 389, 390, 399, 402, 438,
455, 459, 46o, 468, 475, 489, 493, 496,
503, 5". 515, 517, 530, S3', 552.
T'ai p'in yu Ian, 195, 217, 222, 228, 231-
233, 258-260, 264, 270, 280, 281, 292,
305, 307, 393- 457, 46?', 469, 536.
T'ai Tsun, emperor, instrumental in the
introduction of foreign vegetables into
China, 303, 394, 400; method of mak-
ing grape- wine introduced under reign
of, 232; promoting sugar-industry,
377; spinach introduced from Nepal
under reign of, 393; variety of
peach introduced under reign of, 379.
T'ai-yuan fu, production of wine in, 236.
T'an, country, 489.
T'an hui yao, 232, 304, 317, 377, 379,
393,400,402,478,499.
T'an lei han, 285.
T'an pen cu, 367, 458.
T'an pen ts'ao, 227, 233, 29, 340, 367,
375, 376, 403, 508. '
T'an Sen-wei, 204, 250, 258^380, 392.
T'an i, 306.
T'an su, 221, 222, 318, 38. , 393, 402,
489, 494, 499, 511, 516, 5x7, 525, 593.
T'an su i yin, 489. ,
T'an Sun pai k'un leu fie, 250, 260, 265.
T'an Ts'ui, 228, 360, 512, 52 " 568.
T'an yun, 297, 302.
T'ao Hun-kin, 200, 21 1, 227 279, 281,
288, 289, 292, 302, 325, 335, 400, 442,
458, 543, 557, 558, 588. :
T'ao hun kin cu, 442.
T'ao Ku, 401.
T'ien lu i yu, 411.
Ts'ai Fan-pin, 251.
GENERAL INDEX
615
Ts'ai Lun, 563.
Ts'ai Yin, 281 note 7.
Ts'ai Yun, 565.'
Ts'ao Cao, 497.
Ts'ao mu tse, 237, 442.
Ts'e fu yuan kwei, 304, 379, 393, 400,
402, 494, 506.
Ts'i min yao s"u, 191, 211, 230, 247, 258,
263, 268, 278-281, 288, 297, 300, 311,
324, 442, 588.
Ts'ien Han su, 187 216, 222, 326, 339,
521, 523,525, 56 v
Ts'ien kin fan, 198, 306.
Ts'ien lian lu, 232.
Ts'in i lu, 401, 40:*.
Ts'in wen pu hui, . 16.
Ts'uan pu t'un &, 562.
Ts'ui Fan, 512.
Ts'ui Pao, 242, 28 , 302, 325, 485.
T'u kin pen ts'a< , 195, 196, 198, 257,
264, 288, 341, t ;.6, 483, 504, 524.
T'un 6i, 196, 199, ^89, 323, 327, 348, 392.
T'un su wen, 381. '
T'un tien, 339.
T'un ya, 260.
Uigur, borax and sal ammoniac sent by,
506; coriander cultivated by, 298; pea
attributed to, 306; taught the Chinese
the process of making grape-wine,
232-233; yitf ulture of, 223; water-
melon cultivaced by, 438, 439.
Uzbeg, 346.
Valle, Pietro della, 567.
Vambe-ry, H., 214, 233, 345, 444, 527.
Varro, 586.
Vegetables, five, of strong odor, 298, 303.
Veliaminof-Zernof, 565.
Veltman, 502.
Venice, rhubarb traded to, 550.
Verbiest, P., S. J., 434.
Veselovski, 502.
Vespasian, 432.
Vetch, 307.
Vial, P., 226, 404, 492.
Vigne, G. T. 216.
Vigouroux, 3 16.
Vinegar, ma e from grapes, 233.
Violet, ment oned in Pahlavi literature,
192.
Vissering, V T ., 562.
Viticulture, of uniform origin, 220.
Vullers, T. A., 249, 301, 304, 566.
Waddell, L A., Lieut.-Col., 262, 299,
558
Wai kwo 6wan, 489.
Ws/nut, history of, 254-275; in Pahlavi
literature, 193; mentioned by Can Ki,
205.
Walrus, referred to in Chinese Gazetteer
of Macao, 567.
Walrus ivory, 565-568.
WamyO-ruiju0, 244.
Wan, a monk from Fu-lin, 359, 424.
Wan Cen, 317.
Wan Sou gen tien, 238.
Wan Cen, 307.
Wan C'un, 523.
Wan Fu, 517.
Wan Hao-ku, 198.
Wan Ki, 557-
Wan Si-mou, 256, 265, 308, 394.
Wan Su-ho, 205.
Wan Ta-yuan, 344, 510, 519.
Wan Tso, 497.
Wan Ts'un, 471.
Wan Yen-te, 344, 508 note.
Wan 2en-yu, 527.
Water-lily, 193.
Water-melon, 438-445.
Watt, G., 200, 209, 214, 222, 246, 249,
253, 261, 291, 294, 301, 309, 311, 315,
321, 338, 342, 347, 349, 350, 357, 365-
367, 371, 375, 38o, 383, 391, 405, 425,
426, 445, 451, 452, 455, 462, 475, 478,
483, 484, 541, 544, 547, 55i, 583-585,
588.
Watters, T., 213, 285, 304, 311, 326, 329,
368, 374, 383, 395, 406-408, 410, 434,
491, 497, 505, 513, 519, 540, 592, 593-
Weber, A., 447.
Wei hun fu su, 588.
Wei lio, 332, 456, 492, 499, 517, 521, 524.
Wei si wen kien ki, 520 note 4.
Wei 2u, 201, 239, 320, 322, 343, 372,
374, 385, 456, 462, 487, 498, 500, 516,
52i. 530, 531-533-
Wen Cen-hen, 496 note 8.
Wen hien t'un k'ao, 191.
Wen yu kien p'in, 394.
West, E. W., 192, 255, 307, 489, 521, 530.
Westgate, J. M., 208.
Wheat, staple food of ancient Persians,
372.
Wiedemann, E., 309, 431, 524, 528, 545,
555, 556.
Wieger, L., 231, 236, 260, 280, 306.
Wiesner, J., 559, 562.
Williams, S. W., 361, 425, 426, 499.
Wilson, 266.
Wine, from flowers, 378; from palms,
290; from pomegranate juice, 286; see
grape- wine.
Woenig, F., 299, 337, 400, 453.
Wood, 521.
Woodville, W., 317.
Wu, emperor of Han dynasty, 210.
Wu, mint of, 198.
Wu-hai, envoy from the Malayan Po-se,
477-
Wu Kun, 217, 262, 263.
Wu K'i-tsun, 197, 218, 306, 307, 388,
413, 463, 484.
Wu k siao 1, 519,
6i6
GENERAL INDEX
Wu lu ti li Si, 268.
Wu P'u, 548.
Wu i pen ts'ao, 200, 292, 526.
Wu Si wai kwo Si, 264.
Wu-sun, horses of the, 210.
Wu Tai hui yao, 506.
Wu Tai i, 298, 439, 445, 488.
Wu tsa tsu, 229, 230, 252.
Wu Tse-mu, 229, 282.
Wu Zen-kie, 195.
Wu Zui, 441.
Wylie, A., 205, 234, 251, 254, 262, 265,
281, 306, 325, 339, 341, 434, 468, 562.
Xenophon, 223, 224.
Xerxes, 412, 488.
Xwarism > dancing-girls of, 494.
Yamanasi, principal vine-district of
Japan, 244.
Yamato honzO, 204, 316, 399, 414, 445.
Yan Huan-Si, 217.
Yan-sa-lo, 389.
Yan Sen, 413, 441, 471.
Yan Yu, 515.
Yao Min-hwi, 295.
Yao Se-lien, 316.
Yao sin lun, 280.
Yaqut, 320, 373, 377, 389, 425, 497, 507,
509, 547-
Yarkand, 231.
Yarkhoto, 343.
Yates, 488.
Yavana, Indian designation of Greeks
and other foreigners, Chinese tran-
scription of, 211 (cf. also Pelliot, Bull,
de I'Ecole frangaise, Vol. Ill, p. 341);
wine of, 241.
Yaxartes, 516; transcription of name in
Chinese, 530.
Ye, in Ho-nan, pomegrante of, 280, 281.
Ye Sun ki, 280, 306.
Ye-lu C'u-ts'ai, 278, 286.
Ye T'in-kwei, 363, 459.
Ye Tse-k'i, 237, 265, 442.
Yemen, nux-vomica of, 449.
Yen-Si Mountain, 326.
YenSi-ku, 211, 227, 339.
Yezd, pistachio of, 249; wine of, 241.
Yi ts'ie kin yin i, 240, 258, 297, 315, 457,
489, 492.
Yi Tsin, 317, 359, 379, 380, 382.
Yi wu Si, 524.
Yin-p'in, walnuts of, 264, 268.
Yin san Sen yao, 236, 252, 303, 305, 361,
Yin Sao, 322.
Yin yai en Ian, 405, 443, 497.
Yo Si, 265.
Yu k'ie i ti lun, 457.
Yu-lin district, 322.
Yu sie i Sun su, 326.
Yu ti yun u, 278.
Yu-wen Tin, 229.
Yu yan tsa tsu, 204, 228, 242, 247, 248,
264, 265, 270, 278, 283, 330-332, 334,
345, 349, 358, 363, 365, 367-369, 374,
385, 386, 399, 400, 407, 4io, 412, 413,
415, 417, 418, 420, 421, 423, 427-429,
432, 433, 435, 46i, 462, 466, 473, 476,
478, 479.
Yu yen wan su, 326.
Yu-yue, not a transcription of Yavana,
211.
Yuan, Emperor, 222, 417.
Yuan S'ao pi i, 495.
Yuan kien lei han, 280-282.
Yuan i, 217, 496, 518, 519, 533, 562.
Yuan tien San, 236.
Yuan Wen, 394.
Yuan Yin, 258.
Yue-Si, 21 1 ; wine of, 222.
Yule, H., 236, 252, 310, 311, 319, 324,
346, 352, 377, 419, 442, 455, 474, 496,
497, 503, 509, 521, 528, 539, 544-546,
549, 552-555, 56o, 564, 565, 583, 590,
593-
Yun Ho, 298 note I.
Yun-nan, Ai-lao of, 489; amber of, 523;
ancient trade-route to India, 535;
asafcetida in, 359, 360 note 2; cassia
of, 425; costus root of, 463; cotton of,
491; ebony of, 485; fig of, 413-414; in
communication with Ta Ts'in by way
of India, 489; pepper of, 375; pome-
granate of, 286; precious stones of,
568; silver of, 510; spikenard of, 456;
square bamboo of, 535; Styrax ben-
join of, 466; t'ou-s"i of, 512; turquois-
mines of, 519, 520; walnut in, 266;
wild walnut in, 267, 270.
Yun-nan ki, 231.
Zanzibar, ginger of, 545, 583.
Zedoary, 544.
Zimmer, H., 455.
Zinc, 511-515, 555.
Zoroaster, 525.
Zotenberg, H., 571.
Zamtsarano, 564.
Zen Fan, 217.
Zi hwa Su kia pen ts'ao, 483.
Zi yun pen ts'ao, 441.
, 200, 201, 305, 306, 313, 367-
BOTANICAL INDEX
Abrus precatorius 215
Acacia catechu 481
Aconitum ferox 582
Aconitum fischeri 379
Acorus calamus 583
Actea spicata 400
Agallochum 463
Aleurites triloba 263, 408
Alhagi camelorum 346, 347
Alhagi maurorum 347
Allium ascalonicum 304
Allium fistulosum 303
Allium odorum 483, 484
Allium porrum 304
Allium sativum 302, 427
Allium scorodoprasum 205, 259, 302
Aloe abyssinica 480
Aloe perryi 480
Aloe vulgaris 480
Aloexylon agallochum 580
Alpinia galanga 545, 546
Alpinia globosum 242
Alpinia officinarum 546
Althaea rosea 551
Altingia excelsa 459
Amarantus 195
Amomum 482
Amomum granum paradisi 584
Amomum melegueta 584
Amomum villosum 481
Amomum xanthioides 481
Amomum zingiber 545
Amygdalus cochinchinensis 407
Amygdalus communis 405, 406
Amygdalus coparia 405
Amygdalus persica 539
Amyris 543
Amyris gileadensis 429, 430
Andropogon nardoides 455
Angelica anomala 358
Angelica decursiva 196
Antiaris 450
Apium graveolens 401 , 402
Apium petroselinum 102
Aplotaxis auriculata 464
Apocynum syriacum 349
Areca catechu 584
Aristolochia kaempferi 464
Artocarpus integrifolia 479
Astragalus adscendens 348
Astragalus florulentus 348
Atraphaxis spinosa 347
Atriplex L. 397
Atropa belladonna 585
Atropa mandragora 585
Aucklandia costus 462
Averrhoa carambola 415
Baliospermum montanum 583
Balsamodendron giliadense 429
Balsamodendron mukul 462, 467
Balsamodendron pubescens 462, 467
Bambusa arundinacea 350
Bambusa quadrangularis 535
Barkhausia 200
Barkhausia repens 199
Basella rubra 324-328, 336
Benincasa cerifera 439, 443, 445
Beta bengalensis 397
Beta maritima 397
Beta vulgaris 399, 400
Betula alba 553
Bombax malabaricum 491
Borassus flabelliformis 536
Boswellia 470
Boswellia serrata 467
Boswellia thurifera 585
Brassica capitata 381
Brassica caulozapa 381
Brassica cypria 380
Brassica marina 380
Brassica napus 381
Brassica rapa 199, 381
Brassica rapa-depressa 381, 429
Brassica silvestris 380
Broussonetia papyrifera 558, 560
Brunella vulgaris 200
Bupleurum falcatum 196
Butea frondosa 328
Caesalpinia bonducella 583
Camellia oleifera 251
Camellia theifera 553, 554
Canarium album 417
Canarium commune 269, 479
Canarium pimela 417
Canavallia ensiformis 426
Cannabis sativa 289, 291, 403, 562, 582
Capsella bursa-pastoris 427
Cardamomum malabaricum 585
Cardamomum minus 585
Carthamus tinctorius 309, 310, 312, 318,
324, 325, 327, 393
Carum bulbpcastanum 383
Carum carui 383, 384
Gary a cathayensis 271 f
Caryophyllus aromaticus 222, 584
Cassia fistula 421-426, 472
Cassia tora 582
Castanea vulgaris 369
Catalpa bungei 271
Cathartocarpus 425
617
6i8
BOTANICAL INDEX
Cathartocarpus fistula 421
Cedrus deodara 583
Ceratonia siliqua 424
Chamaerops excelsa 387
Chavica betel 375
Chavica roxburghii 375
Chenopodium botrys 226
Cichorium 400-402
Cichorium endivia 401
Cinnamomum cassia 323, 543
Cinnamomum tamala 583
Cinnamomum zeylanicum 541
Citrullus vulgaris 438
Citrus chirocarpus 260
Citrus grandis 195, 280, 415
Citrus medica 301, 420, 581
Cnidium monnieri 329
Cocos nucifera 585
Commiphora opobalsamum 429
Commiphora roxburghii 467
Conioselinum univittatum 200
Convolvulus reptans 395
Convolvulus scammonia 584
Convolvulus turpethum 584
Coptis teeta 199, 546, 547
Corallium rubrum 523
Coriandrum sativum 297
Corydalis ambigua 197
Corylus heterophylla 247
Costus amarus 584
Costus speciosus 584
Cotoneaster nummularia 347
Crocus sativus 309-312, 314, 316
Crocus tibetanus (alleged name,
species does not exist) 312
Croton jamalgota 583
Croton polyandrus 583
Croton tiglium 448, 583
Cucumis melo 440, 443
Cucumis sativus 300
Cucurbita citrullus 438
Cucurbitacea 301, 440, 463
Cuminum cyminum 383
Curcuma aromatica 583
Curcuma leucorrhiza 312, 313
Curcuma longa 312-314, 318
Curcuma pallida 313
Curcuma petiolata 313
Curcuma zedoaria 313, 544, 583
Cycas reyoluta 386, 388
Cydonia indica (doubtful name) 584
Cydonia vulgaris 584
Datura 585
Datura metel 582
Daucus carota 451-453
Daucus maximus 453
Diospyros ebenaster 486
Diospyros ebenum 485
Diospyros embryopteris 215
Diospyros kaki 215, 234
Diospyros lotus 435
Diospyros melanoxylon 485
this
Diospyros tomentosa 588
Dorema anchezi 365
Dryobalanops aromatica 478
Elaeagnus longipes 197
Elaeagnus pungens 197
Elettaria cardamomum 585
Embelia ribes 582
Emblica officinalis 581
Eriobotrya japonica 311
Eryngium campestre 454
Erythrina 478
Euryangium 315
Faba sativa 307
Faba vulgaris 307
Ferula alliacea 353, 357
Ferula erubescens 365
Ferula foetida 353
Ferula galbaniflua 365
Ferula narthex 353, 362
Ferula persica 353, 366
Ferula rubricaulis 365
Ferula schair 366
Ferula scorodosma 353
Ferula sumbul 315
Ficus carica 410, 412, 413
Ficus glomerata 412
Ficus johannis 412
Ficus retusa 435
Flacourtia cataphracta 584
Flemingia congesta 316
Foeniculum vulgare 383
Fraxinus ornus 343
Gardenia florida 311
Gariophyllatum 589
Gelsemium elegans 196
Gleditschia sinensis 403, 420, 426
Glycine hispida 305
Glycine labialis 585
Gossypium herbaceum 491
Guilandina bonduc 583
Gymnocladus sinensis 420, 426
Hedysarum 586
Hedysarum alhagi 343
Hedysarum semenowi 344
Hibiscus mutabilis 311, 316, 317
Hibiscus Rosa sinensis 561
Hyoscyamus 582
Impatiens balsamina 335, 336
Indigofera linifolia 370
Indigofera tinctoria 370, 371, 585
Inula britannica 335
Inula chinensis 334, 335
Ipomoea aquatica 196
Ipomoea turpethum 584
Iris pseudacorus 583
I sis nobilis 523
Jasminum grandiflorum 332, 334
BOTANICAL INDEX
619
Jasminum officinale 329, 332
Jasminum sambac 329, 332
Juglans camirium 266
"uglans catappa 266
uglans cathayensis 266, 269, 479
uglans cordiformis 274
uglans mandshurica Dode 266, 267
uglans plerococca Roxb. 261
uglans pterocarpa 255
uglans regia 254, 255, 260, 261, 263,
265, 266, 272, 273
Juglans sieboldiana 273
Kaempferia galanga 427
Kaempferia pundurata 313
Killingea monocephala 544
Lactuca sativa 401, 402
Lagenaria vulgaris 197, 440
Lampsana apogonoides 297
Lathyrus 586
Laurus camphora 368, 585
Laurus cassica 584
Laurus cinn*nomum 583
Lawsonia alba 329, 332, 334, 338
Lawsonia inennis 334
Lindera glauca 375
Linum nutans 296
Linum perenne 296
Linum possarioides 296
Linum sativum 296
Linum stelleroides 296
Linum usitatissimum 289, 294, 295
Liquidambar altingiana 459
Liquidambar orientalis 365, 456
Luff a cylindrica 463
Magnolia 589
Mallotus philippinensis 316
Mangifera indica 552
Medicago agrestis 218
Medicago arborea 431
Medicago denticulata 217, 218
Medicago falcata 218, 219
Medicago lupulina 218, 219
Medicago minima 218
Medicago platycarpa 219
Medicago sativa 208-210, 213, 215, 216,
218, 219
Melia azadiracta 581
Memecylon capitellatum 315
Memecylon edule 315
Memecylon tinctorium 309, 314-316
Mentha arvensis (aquatica) 198
Michelia champaca 290
Mirabilis jalapa 328. It is not surprising
that this species is not mentioned in
the Pen ts'ao, for it is a plant of
American origin, and was not known
in China during the sixteenth century.
Its history will be dealt with in my
Cultivated Plants of America.
Momordica cochinchinensis 448
Morus alba 339, 560, 563, 582
Morus indica 582
Morus nigra 563, 582
Mucuna capitata 305
Mulgedium sibiriacum 292
Myristica fragrans 582
Myristica moschata 582, 584
Myristica officinalis 582
Myrtus communis 460
Narcissus tazetta 427, 428
Nardostachys jatamansi 215, 455
Nardus indica 455
Nasturcium aquaticum 433
Nelumbium speciosum 317, 581
Nelumbp nucifera 581
Nigella indica 215
Nyctanthes arbor tristis 331
Nymphaea alba 585
Nymphaea lotus 585
Ocimum album 587
Ocimum basilicum 300, 586-588, 590
Ocimum gratissimum 589, 590
Ocimum sanctum 590
Ocimum vulgare 589
Olea europaea 415, 416
Olibanum 581
Ophiopogon spicatus 317
Origanum dictamnus 585
Origanum marjorana 585
Orithia edulis 439
Ornus europaea 345
Oryza sativa 581
Osmanthus fragrans 336
Pachyrhizus angulatus 351
Pachyrhizus thunbergianus 242, 311
Panictim miliaceum 540, 565, 595
Patrinia villosa 328
Paulownia imperialis 339
Peucedanum decursivum 199
Phaseolus mungo 308, 585
Phaseolus radiatus 585
Phoenix dactylifera 385, 391
Phoenix sylvestris 391
Phragmites communis 536
Phyllanthus emblica 378, 551, 581
Phyllpstachys quadrangularis 535
Pimpinella anisum 196, 200
Pinus bungeana 365
Pinus deodara 583
Pinus gerardiana 260
Pinus koraiensis 269
Pinus larix 346
Piper betle 582
Piper longum 375, 479, 583
Piper nigrum 374, 429, 584
Pistacia acuminata 246, 249
Pistacia chinensis 250
Pistacia lentiscus 252
Pistacia mutica 250
Pistacia sylvestris 249
620
BOTANICAL INDEX
Pistacia terebinthus 246, 250
Pistacia vera 246, 250, 251
Pisum sativum 305
Polygonum tinctorium 325, 371
Polypodium fortune! 195
Poncirus trifoliata 227. It is the trifoliate
orange common in northern China
and Japan, and usually called Citrus
trifoliata. The name Poncirus has
been re-introduced by W. T. Swingle
(in Sargent, Plantae Wilsonianae,
Vol. II, pp. 135-137).
Pongamia glabra 581
Populus balsamifera 339, 342
Populus euphratica 341
Prunus amygdalus 405, 406
Prunus armeniaca 539
Prunus davidiana 408
Prunus domestica 216
Prunus persica 408
Prunus triflora 552
Psoralea corylifolia 483, 484
Pterocarpus santalinus 459, 584
Punica granatum 276
Punica protopunica 277
Quercus cuspidata 471
Quercus lusitanica var. infectoria 367
Quercus persica 349
Quercus vallonea Kotschy 349
Ranunculus ficaria 546
Raphanus 381
Raphanus sativus 446
Rehmannia glutinosa 195
Rheum emodi 551
Rheum officinale 548
Rheum palmatum 548
Rheum ribes 547, 549, 550
Rheum spiciforme 547
Rhus toxicodendron 196
Rhus vernificera 274
Ricinus communis 403, 482
Rosa banksia 464
Rosa rugosa 217
Saccharum officinarum 376, 584
Sago rumphii 385
SaHsburia adiantifolia 251, 388
Santalum album 552, 584
Sapindus mukorossi 551, 583
Sapindus trifoliatus 583
Saussurea lappa 462, 463, 584
Schizandra chinensis 229
Scorodosma foetidum 353-355
Sedum erythrostictum 400
Semecarpus anacardium 482, 582
Sesamum indicum 289-292, 295
Sesamum orientale 288
Setaria italica glutinosa 565
Setaria viridis 339
Sinapis alba 380
Sinapis juncea 380
Smilax pseudochina 556
Sonchus 400, 401
Sophora 426
Spanachea 396
Spinacia oleracea 392
Spinacia tetandra 397
Spondias amara 551
Sterculia platanifolia 242, 339
Strychnos nux-vomica 448, 449
Sty rax japonica 417
Sty rax officinalis 456, 459
Tamarindus indica 426, 581, 582
Tamarix chinensis 339
Tamarix gallica 348
Taraxacum officinalis 325
Terminalia belerica 378, 581
Terminalia chebula 378, 581
Thalictrum foliosum 547
Thapsia garganica 355
Torreya nucifera 251
Tribulus terrestris 393
Trifolium giganteum 215
Trigonella foenum graecum 216, 446
Tulipa gesneriana 314
Ulmus campestris 334, 439
Ulmus macrocarpa 439
Ulmus montana 439
Ulmus suberosa 439
Valeriana jatamansi 455, 584
Valeriana sisymbrifolia 455
Vicia faba 307
Viola pinnata 196
Vitis bryoniaefolia 227
Vitis coignetiae 244, 245
Vitis filifolia 243
Vitis flexuosa 245
Vitis labrusca 227
Vitis saccharifera 245
Vitis thunbergii 243, 245
Vitis vinifera 220, 221, 227, 243, 244
Winterania canella 580
Zanthoxylum 252, 374
Zanthoxylum setosum 375
Zingiber officinale 545, 583
Zizyphus lotus 478
Zizyphus vulgaris 385, 552
INDEX OF WORDS
Iranian, Indian, Mongol and other words reconstructed on the basis of Chinese transcriptions are
provided with an asterisk.
Afghan 629
Arabic 625
Aramaic 626
Armenian 629
Baluci 629
Chinese 621
Ferganian 627
Fu-lin 626
Greek 630
Hebrew 626
Hindustani 62 7
Japanese 623
Javanese 624
Kurd 629
Malayan 624
Chinese
a-lo-p'o 420, 421
a-sa-na hian 455, 456
a-t'i-mu-to-k'ie 290
a-wei 358, 361
a-yii-tsie 359, 361
a-yue 247, 248
a-yiie-hun 247, 248
a-zi 410
an-lo 552
2a-ta 527
en-t'ou-kia 215
Ci ma 293
Co-pi 493
u-c6 376
u-mu-la 518
c^a-ku-mo 318
6'a mu 250
'ui-hu-ken 196
fan mu-pie 448
fan-pu-wai 531
fei-zan 260
fou-lan-lo-lo 588
fu lo-po 451 note 3
fu-t'u ts'ai 402
hai liu 284 note 2
hai-na 336
han-hue 210
hei-nan 473
hian ts'ai 298
hin-kii 361
hiun-k'iun 200
ho-li-lo 378
ho t'ao, hu t'ao 256
hu fen 201
Alphabetical Index of Languages
Manchu 623
Middle Persian 627
Mongol 623
New Persian 628
Old Iranian 627
Pamir 629
Portuguese 630
Russian 630
Sanskrit 626
Sogdian 628
Spanish 630
Syriac 626
Tibetan 624
Turkish 624
Uigur 624
hu hien 195
hu hwan lien 199
hu kan kian 201
hu kiai 380
hu k'ian si e 199
hu k'in 196, 400
hu kiu-tse 483
hu kwa 300
hu-lo 503
hu lo-po 451
hu-lu-pa 202, 446
hu ma 288, 290-292
hu-man 196
hu-man 385
hu mien man 195
hu-na 496
hu pa-ho 198
hu-sa 305
hu Sen 195
hu-swi 202, 297, 298
hu tou 197, 305, 307
hu ts'ai 199, 202, 381
hu ts'un 303
hu t'ui-tse 197
hu t'un lei -202, 339
hu wan si e 199
hu-ye-yen-mo 420, 423
hu yen 201
hu yen-& 327, 328
hui-hu tou 305
hui-hui tou 197, 307
hui-hui ts'un 303
hun 248
hun-t'i 303, 304
hun-t'o ts'ai 304
hun hwa 310
hun-ku 358
hwan kwa 300
hwan-lien 547
621
hwan-p'o-nai 197
hwo mao siu 499
hwo-i-k'o pa-tu 448
hwo-si-la 448
i-lan 404
i-muk-i 486
i-ts'at 530
kan hian 455
kan-lan 417, 460
kan-sun hian 215, 428
ken ta ts'ai 399
kian-hwan 313
kiao ma 300 note 4
kin-hwa 539
kin tsin 520
ko47i
ku-un 491
ku-pei 491
ku-pu-p'o-lu 479 note I
ku-sui-pu 195
ku-tu 565
ku-lin-kia 216
ku-en 290-292
kun-t'a 399
kwo tou 306
k'ian hwo 199
k'ian t'ao 259
k'ian ts'in 199
k'ie-p'o-lo 343
k'u-lu-ma 385
k'u-man 385
k'u-mi-6'e 215
K'u-sa-ho 529
k'u i pa tou 448
lan-6'i 520
V
622
INDEX OF WORDS
len-fan-t'wan 556
po-tie 489-492
t'a-ten 492
li tou 305
po ts'ai 394
fan 496
liu tou 306
pu-hwei-mu 500
t'ien-u hwan 350
lo-k'ia 476
pu-ku-i 483
t'ien ma 210
lo-wan-tse 426
t'o-te 378
lu-tu-tse, plant-name de-
p'i-li-lo 378
fou-i 511, 513
rived from a language
p'i-Si-Sa 330, 334, 335
t'u hun hwa 311 note I
of the Man, 197
p'i-ts'i 363
t'u-lin 282
lu-wei 480, 481
p'ien ho t'ao 268
ma kia u 516
p'o-lo-pa-tsao 393 note 4
p'o-lo-te 482
tsa-fu-lan 311
tse-kun 327, 476-478
ma-k'in 196
p'o-so 525
tse-mo kin 509
ma lei 305
p'o-tan 406
tse p'u-t'ao 228
ma-se-ta-ki 252
p'u-lo 497
tse-t'an 459
ma-Su 313
p'u-t'ao 225
tsiu-pei-t'en 242
ma ts'ien-tse 448
p'u-t'ui-tse 197
tso-pi(p'i) 493
ma zu p'u-t'ao 228, 232
tsu-mu-lu 518
man hu t'ao 270
man hwa 332
mi hian 462
mi-li-ye 241
mi-to-sen, mu-to-sen 508
sa-fa-lan 311
sa-ha-la, so-ha-la 496
sa-pao 529
sai-pi-li-k'ie 214
san-lo tsian 378
ts'an tou 307
ts'ao lun 5u 228
ts'e-hu 196
ts'e-mou-lo 384
mo-hu-t'an 531
mo-li 329, 330
mo-lo-k'ie-t'o 518
mo-so 526
mo-t'o 241
mo-tsei 368
mu hian 462
mu-nu 471
se kio (botanical term),
pointed, oblong (of
leaves), 466 note 6.
se-se 516
si kwa 438, 439, 445
sie-po-p'o 533
so-lo 491
so-Sa-mi 481
ts'i-t'un 4^5
ts'ien-hu 196
ts'ien nien tsao 385
ts'in mu hian 462
ts'ifi tai 370, 371
ts'in zan 292
ts'iu p'i 271
ts'o ts'ai 400
mu-su 212
so-so 229
wo-ku 401, 402
su-ho 456
1 i
wu hwa kwo 411
na-ho tou 197 note 3, 307
su-lo 240
wu-kia 308
nai-k'i 427
su-tu-lu-kia 457
wu-lou 386
nan tou 308
wu-men 485
nao-Sa 503
Sa kwo 234 note 2
wu min mu 247
ni-hu-han 532
Sa-mu-lu 368
wu pa- ho 198
niu k'in 196
Sa p'en 234
wu-t'un kien 339
nu hwi 481
Sa-ye 530
nan-si hian 464-467
nan Si liu 278, 284
no-lo-ho-ti 532
nu-se-ta 533
pa-Ian 408
pa-lu 368, 369
pai-nan 473
pan-han-5'un 197
pan-mi 376
Pei-t'in a 504
pi-lu 519
pi-po 375
pi-se-tan 251
pi-si 568
pin 515
po-ho 198
po-lin 392, 397
po-lo-i 254
Po-se fan 475
Po-se kan-lan 418
Po-se tsao 203, 385
Po-se ts'ai 394
an-hu 525
San hu t'ao 267
an-hu ts'ai 394
ge-mo-k'ie 200 note 6
Si hu t'ao 270
Si liu 279, 284
Si-lo 383
Si-lu 510
Si-mi 376
Sou-ti 200
Su-hu-lan 196
Swi tsiri p'u-t'ao 228
ta ken ts'ai 399
ta-lan-ku-pin 345
ta pien fen 409
ta-p'en Sa 506
tan-zo 283
ti-pei-p'o 532
ti yen 504
tou-lou-p'o 457
tu hwo 199
tu-lu-se-kien 458
tun-mou 523
ya ma 295
ya-pu-lu 447
yan-kwei 361
yaft-mai 509. This word
is derived from the
language of the Cham,
and is identified with
the term tse-mo kin in
theNanTs'iSu,Ch.58,
p. 3b.
yan ts'e 343
ye-si-mi 330, 331
ye-si-min 329-331
yen-Si 324-328
yen hu su 197
yen-lu 510
yi tien ts'ao 399
yin-wu ts'ai 394
yin-vu 227
yin-zi 410
yu ma 289
yu-kin 312, 314, 316, 317,
explanation of term,
321-323
INDEX OF WORDS
623
yu-kin hian 314, 317
sankaku-dzuru 245
b6riya 575
yii liu 282
sankakuto 273
bus 574
yu-t'an-po 411
soramame 307
yue no 493~496
sugO 456
ditun jimin 416
gitan 459 note I
darkan, darxan 593
Japanese
gokai 274
debter 564
gukugamitsu 481
dsaran 575
agetsu-kongi 250
aka-goma 296
teuCi-gurumi 274
Esroa 572
ama 295
to-kurimi 273
ama-dzuru 245
tsuta-urugi 196 note 8
gad-pu-ra, gabur 591
gangsa 577
banzai-gi 273
yama-budO 245
budo 225, 243
yama-gurumi 273
irbis 579
yebikadzura 243
6insO-gurumi 274
osen-kurimi 273
zakuro 285
jildunur 509
jirukba 198 note I
&5sen-matsu 269 note I
&5sen-modama-rabOgi 426
kuben 574
kugur, kukur 575
cflseki 513
Manchu
marba 235
ebi-dzuru 243, 245
arc"an 235
maga 585
ebi-kadzura 243, 244
ego-no-ki 417
boso 574
buleri, buren 575
&bahanc"i 573
mirba 235
nal575
fusudasu, fusudasiu 250,
CirCan 509
naligam 591
2SI
debtelin 564
nom 574
dungga(n) 441
nomin 521
goma 295
farsa 198 note I
gonroku-gurumi 274
hime-gurumi 273, 274
ho-no-ki 588
kubun 574
kulun, related to Hiun-nu
k'i-lien, 326 note 8
kuru 235
sagari, sarisu 575
suburgan 573
gibagantsa 573
mase 267
gikar 576
i&jiku 411, 414
monggo Sibin 199
gimnus 573
i&nen-ama 295
morxo 218
gingun 362
ingu 361
nomin 521
giradsa 235
inu-ebi 243
nomun 574
girgek 538
sarin 575
kami 559
sirge 538
takpa 235
karasu-gurumi 274
kariroku 378
koroha 446
gempi 575
toxai 578
ulusun 416, 417
tarbus 444
tikpa 235
titim 573
ko0 374
xalxori 591
torga(n) 502
koto 273, 339
xengke 441
tos 575
xdba 523
toti 575
matsuba-nadegiko 296
matsuba-ninjin 296
xosixa 266
xowalama usixa 267
tsagasun 559
turma 574
me-gurumi 274
mirura 462
Mongol
ubasantsa 573
namban-saikaft 422
anar 574
*yinan 362
ninjin 451
aradsa 235
nume-goma 296
araki 235-237
*xasini 361, 575
xatun xariyatsai 199
ogurumi 274
bag 575
xoradsa 235
okkoromi 274
oni-gurumi 272, 273
bagdar 575
bodso 575
Xormusda 572
xuba 523
oreifu 417
bogda 576
xurut 235
bolot 575
xusiga 266
safuran 311
bor 235
sakuboku 250
boradsa 235
zira 575
624
INDEX OF WORDS
Uigur
min-lan-za 578
deb-t'er 564
badam 407
borgu 575
boz 574
dargan 594
darka& 594
kagas, kagat 559
karpuz 444
kavyn, kogun, kaun 443
kubik 523
mur 374 note 8
nara 285, 574
nom, num 574
6zum 233
qadan 553
sakparan 312 note I
supurgan 573
srnnu 573
nahal 579
palas 579
pan 578
pilta 595
qalmaq qarlogac* 199
qarpuz 444
qawa 578
qawa(q) 443
sai-pun 578
sozuq saivl 230
um-pO 578
tarbuz 444
dri-bzan 312
pir-fi 595
span spos 455
spo ts'od 398
p'a-tin 407 note 3
p'o-lo-lin 198 note I
p'rug 497
ba-dan 596
ba-dam 407
ba-ts'wa 503
ban-de 592
bal-poi seu in 286
beg-tse 575
bug-sug 212
byi-rug-pa 198 note I
sburlen 521 note II
ma-a 585
torgu 502
fntT C7C
tarxan 592-594
tl-za 578
mu-men 521
mon sran rdeu 308
ion 575
tuk565
upasan 573
zmuran, zmurna 461 note
ton 578
ton-kai 578
torgu, torka 502, 539
tung 578
ts'a-la 503
zi-ra 575
ze-ts'wa 503
u-su 299
tuiift bak 578
ol 218
Turkish
tupak 595
yun-ba 314
yuns-kar 380
bids, beda 214
xoz 256
ru-rta 463
boru 575
ga-ka-ma 312, 318
yada 527
Sin-kun 362, 591
San 578
yantaq 345
eg 595
Can 578
yan-xO 578
so-ra 503
Sin-say 579
yan-yO 578
og-bu 559
&za 579
yangza 578
sag-ri 575
yilpis v 579
sag-lad 498
da-dir 578
yondze 209
sip, sup 362
dan 578
dan-za 578
yulgun 348 note 7
*yunmasu 299
se-mo-do 595
sendha-pa 592
d6wa 579
gser-zil 509
fistiq 252
zummurat 579
hin 362
gO-sl 578
'a-ru-ra 378
7anza 576
Tibetan
harbuz 444
ipak 539
Jin 579
joza 578
ju-xai gul 577
jiisai 578
kaden 553
kagat, kagaz 559
kandir 294
karpuz 444
kimi 231, 241, 299
koz 256
kun-ta 595
kur-kum 321
skyer-pa 314
k'a-ra 596
k'ra-rtse 595
ga-bur 591
gan-zag 577
gur-kum 312, 321
go-byi-la 449
gyi-gyi k'ug-rta 199
rgya ts'wa 508
Cu-li 540 note I
Javanese
item 473
jarak 404
kenari 269
kurma 386
laka 476 note 9
lena 290 note 9
madu 461 note 5
mefian 465
sulasih 590
tulasih 590
5'i-tun siu 416
la-tai 578
tarbuz 444
Malayan
la-za 578
star-ka 260
lobo 579
t'ai rje 595
angu 361
t'e-k'ei-gan 578
dellma 283
manto 579
dan-da, dan-rog 583
gullga 527
mas' 585
dar-k'a-6'e, dar-rgan 594
hltam 473
maupan 578
dar-sga 260
inei 337
INDEX OF WORDS
625
jarak 404
kalgan 546
kaminan 465
ihlilaj 581
isbiadari 555
isfenah 395
kanari 269
isfist 209
kapas 491
kapor-barus 479 note I
jauz ul-qei 449
kertas 559
jiza' 555
korma 386
30z 256
lena 290 note 9
sulasi 590
tingkal 503
julbar 306
juz-i buwwa 582
jaz-i matil 582
kafar 585, 591
Arabic
kahruba 521
kamman 383
abruh 447
karnab 380
afs 367
keblr 590
akitmakit 583
kibrlt 575
amlaj 581
kirbas 574
anba 552
kundur 585
aqln 590
kurkum 321
araq 237, 596
aruz 581
lak 478 note 5
atmat 581
lak 585
azadiraxt 581
lauz, lewze 405
lazvard 520
badrQj 590
llnej 520
baladur 582
luban jawl 465 note I
balllaj 581
bang 582
mamirun 546
banj 582
mann 343
beladur 482
mardakuS 585
birinj-i kabill 582
mastaki 252
bl 582
mas 585
bitlx ul-hindl 582
ml'a 459
bussad 525
murdasanj 509
murr 461
dar-&nl 583
muSktiramuslr 585
dar-filfil 583
dar smi 541, 583
na-ho tou 307
dauku 453
nakhl 386
dibadz 489, 492
narjll 585
duhn az-zanbaq 332
nehsel 453
duhn ul-amlaj 583
nil, Ilia 585
duhn ul-sunbul 583
nllej 370
nllafar 585
falanjmusk 589
nisrln 551
filfil, fulful 374 note 3
fisfisa 209
pazahr 525
fistaq, fustaq 252
fufal 584
fulful, filfil 584
qanblt 381
qaqula 584
qaranful 584
habb ul-qilqil 582
quinna 364
hal 585
qitta 301
halahil 582
qalani 585
halilaj 378
qurtum 327
hinduba 402
qust 584
hinna 336
qutun 491
hulba 446
husyat iblls 554
ranej 240 note 7
ratba 209
ibarlsam 538
ratta 551, 583
rixan 590
rumman 285
rutta 582
sabahla 453
sadaj 583
safarjal 584
saidalani 425
sakblnaj 366
sallxa 584
sandal 552, 584
saqmuniya 584
sarak 539
satil 584
sax 553
sef anariya 453
suk 551
sukkar 584
sunbul 584
Sabuni 425
ah-slnl 552
al 584
saljam 381
slsian 581
slnl 547 note 4
tabaSir 351
talisfar 584
tamr 386
tamr ul-hindl 582
tanbfll 582
terenjobln 345
tin, tima 411
turbund 584
tat 582
tatiya 513
unan 582
jtruj 581
vaj 583
wars 315, 316
xalen 552
xamaxim 590
xar-slnl ("stone of
China"), Arabic term
for Chinese tootnague,
555. The designation
"stone" corresponds to
the t 'ou-i (" tou stone ' '
of the Chinese, which
denotes the zinc ;and
brass of the Persians.
xarnub, xarrub 424
xarnub hindi 422
xarva 404
xauk 590
626
INDEX OF WORDS
xiyar Sanbar 422
Fu-lin
*gunda 304
xOlandzan 545
goi^l 496
xurs-i slnl 582
a-li, a-li-fa 423
a-li-ho-t'o 435
candana 552, 584
yabruh 447, 585
a-li-k'u-fa 420, 423
camara 565
yasmin 331
a-p'o-ts'an 429
clnaka 595
han-p'o-li-t'a 363
clnanl 540
zadvar 544, 584
hien 436
clnarajaputra 540
za'faran 311, 320
k'un-han 435
cobaclnl 556
zait 415
pa-Ian 408
zanbaq 332
zangabll, zanjabll 545, 583
ti-Sen, ti-ni 411
ts'i-t'i 415
jatamamsl 584
jati 582
zartra 583
jatuka 361 note 4
zarwar 583
zeronbad 544
Sanskrit
jayapala 583
*jaguma 318
zinjar 510
zummurud 519
zurunbad 583
ak0ta 248, 254
afijlra 411
adhimuktaka 290
jlra 383
jlraka 384
amala 581
jhabuka 582
amllka 582
Hebrew
aragbadha, aragvadha
tanka 503
alkafta 533
asls 286
421
aru?ka 482
tarambuja 444
tavak(tvak)-kIra 350
axadarfnim 529
akhota 248, 254
tambQla 582
bareket 519
adraka 583
tallgapattra 584
basam 430
amalaka 378, 551
tintio!a 582
bu 574
arevata 423
tinduka 215
egoz 248, 254, 256
tila 290
gafrit 575
ugragandha 583
tuttha 513
karkOm 321
udambara 411
tubarlgimba 582
kopher 337
turu?ka 458
man 343
erantfa 404
tulasl 590
mor 461
els 585
tuda, tQla 582
nataf 459 note 5
tala 491
ngrd 428, 455
kapi 581
tripuia, trivrt 584
rimmOn 285
karalaka 588
tvaca 583, 584
tamar 386
karcQra 544
ti'nu 41 1
karpasa 491, 574
dantl 583
xelbenah 363
karpara 585, 591
datfima, dalima 283, 286
zayi0 415
kavera 309
devadaru 583
kaverl 309
drak?a 239, 240
kalinga 445
Aramaic (Syriac)
kunkuma 321
dhanika, dhanyaka 284
kunduru 585
afursama 429
kunkuma 309
nalada 428, 455
*arigbada 423
kunci, kuncika 215
navasara 505, 506
asa 460
kupllu 449
nagavallika 582
aspesta 209
kuberaksl 583
natamra 445
astorac 457
kulafija 545
narikela 193, 585
borko 519
ku?#ia 463, 464, 584
nimba 582
filfol 435
kusumbha 327
nirvia 584
gauza 256
kustumburu 298, 299
nirvi?a 544
kusbar(ta) 299
ksatrapa 529
nlla 370
mura 461
nllotpala 585
narkim 427
khadira 481
naigadala 505
pespesta 209
kharjura 391
rflmOnO 285
*parasl 254. Compare
stiraca 457
gandhamamsl 216
paraslka, a Persian
tena, tgnta, ts'lnta 411
gandharva 404
horse; paraslka-taila,
xarQba 424
garjara 452
naphta; paraslya-yava-
xelbanita 363
gandhan 346 note 3
nl, a remedy imported
zaita 415
guggula 467
from Persia.
palanka 397
pippala 435
pippall 374 note 3, 375,
583
pltakanda 452
pdgaphala 584
prapunatfa 582
phanijjhaka 585
badama 407
bhanga 294
bhanga 582
bhadanta 592
bhallataka 482
madhu 241
marakata 518
marica 374
mallika 331, 332
magadha 374 note 6
majuphala 367
matula 582
matulunga 301 note 6, 581
maa 585
mudga 308
mendhi 338
maireya 241
mleccha-kanda 304
yavana 452
rasamala 458
raj ataru 421
rubflgaka 404
ruvuka 404
latakarafija 583
lavanga 584
laka 476 note 9
vak?ana 404
vaca 583
vanaharidra 584
vakucl 484
vatama 407
vahlika 320
vi&mga 582
vibhltaka 378, 581
vigalada 346 note 3
*vigea 335
vi?a 582
vyaghrapuccha 404
vrlhi 373
carkara 584
gaka-vfika 215
Sfngavera 583
saraka 583
sumana 332
surasl 590
INDEX OF WORDS
sura 240, 581
soraka 503
saindhava 592
*stunika 457
haridra 309, 314
harltakl 378, 581
halahala 582
hingu 358, 359, 361
*hunda 304
Hindustani
akrOt, axrOt 248, 254
bavacl 484
belatak, bhela 482
darim 283 note 2
haka5 484
Hindi-revand 551
kamxab 539
kapar 591
kuSla 448
khajHr 391
palak, palan 397
tarbud 584
tarbuza 444
tol, tflt 582
xarbQza 444
xlra 301
Old Iranian, Ferganian
*agoz-van 250
agOza, angOza 248, 254
aspo-asti 209
ai 301
bangha 294
budawa 225
*buksuk, buxsux 213
dipi532
*goswi 298
haSanaepata 277
*koswi 298
ma5a 241
maSav 225
magupati 531
*pistaka 251
spaina 515
tanva 496
xa0ra-pavan 529
xsaflrya 530
xSaeta 530
xaya0iya 530
Middle Persian
*aju 410
anargll 193
*anguzad, *angu, *angwa
361
627
arkpat 533
Arttm 437
aspast, aspist 209
batak 225
*ballu, "barru, 368
*balu, bulu 369
banbiSn, banbun 531
blrzai 363
bod 193
daplr, diplr 532
depak 489
devan 532
diplvar 532
funduk 193
gandena 304
goniz 298
harbojlna 444
kahrupai 521
kaplk 581
kundur 193
kundurak 585
*kurman (*gurman) 385
kulkem 321
*mad2ak, *maxzak, *mu-
zak 368
magu 531
*magutan, magudan 532
mai 241
martak, murtak 509
maupat 531
murd 461
*nargi 427
naz-bO 590
pag 307
palangamuSk 589
pambak 490
parnlkan 537
*pistak 251
rewas 547
siparam 192
*spahba5, spahpat 533
spahbeS 533
*2a0pav 529
ah balut 193, 369
Sangavlr 545, 583
*tabix, *tabi5 493
tanand 496
*tapetan 493
tin 411
tatiya 513
628
INDEX OF WORDS
vadam 406
bagela 308
gergeru 306
ven 249
bagtar 575
gOz 248, 254, 256
badran 301
gugurd 575
yasmin 193
baladur 482
o p \J i \J
gul-Slnl 551
*yssmlr 331
balas 495
gurinj 373
balila 378, 581
*xar-burra, *yar-burra
balut 368
ban 249
hallla 378, 587
hll-i buzurg 584
xarbuzak 444
*xaryadzambax 423
*xurman 385
banak 249
baqila 307
barge-tanbol 582
hil-i xurde 585
hindewane 443, 582
hulbat, hulya 446
barna 495
zlra, zlra 383
barzad 364
battix indi 443
isfldruj 555
bazrud, berzed 363 note 4
jabroh 447
beda 214
jadvar 544
Sogdian
bedanjir 404
bih, beh 584
jazar 453
jlran 575
*asarna, *asna, *axarna
A .
bih-i hindl 584
birinj 373, 513, 581
jaz-i baya 582
45o
bakdib 490 note 6
*bulan(ralak) 589
blrzai 363
bo, boi 462
boza 575
kabl 581
kafar 585, 591
kagaS 557
/305a 462
Cynstn 568
Si5im 573
fra/SOSan 462
yara 187 note
kurkumba 321 (see J.
Bloch, La Formation de
la langue marathe,
budenk 198 note I
baghunj 299 note I
bunduq-i hindl 583
barak 503
ban 575
ai, Sadan 557
Sandan, Sandal 552, 584
kahruba 521
kahu 402
kalam gomri 381
kalam pi6 381
kamxab 539
karafs 402
karkam, kurkum 321
kasnl, kisnl36i,365, 575
P- 97-)
narak(a) 285
*nava 506
Sau, av 557, 560
Sank 565
&ni 547 note 4
kawanda 301
kazar 544
kimxaw 539
smnu 573
Sugundur 399
kirpas 574
tlm 578
kisniz 299
vayvar 556
waSu, wy5yth 531
dablr, diblr 532
dahlm 573
kQz 248, 254, 256
kuSla, ku6ula 448
xevan 529
dana 284
kunjut 291
'zrw' 573
danak 283
kundurak 252
dand 583
kuSnlz 299
New Persian
danga 284
dar-Sin 541
kust 584, 464
abnus 485, 486
abres"um 537
alwa 480, 481
amala, amlla 551, 581
amba 552
darai 502
darzard 314
datara 582
diba 489
dlba-i-cm 537
divdar 583
lazvard 520
lelekl 425
Ilia 370
marjan 525
masdax 253
amola 378
maza 367
anar 285, 574
erzen 565
mei 241
angur 227
mexak 584
anguyan 354
anguza, anguzad 361
anlba, anlta 461 note 2
fadaj 528
fagfarl &nl 556
firOza 519
mor 461
mabid 531
mu7, moy 531
anjlr 411
mard 461
aspanah, aspanaj 395
gandana 304
aspust, aspist 209
gatel el-kelbe 449
nard, nard 428, 455
azaragi 449
gawdzlla 327
nargil 193
gaz, gazm 348 note 7
nargis 427
bada, badye 225
gaz-alefi 348
nauSadir 503, 506
badam 405, 406
gaz-khonsar 348
nax 495
bay 575
gazar 453
neft 506
INDEX OF WORDS
629
nil 370
tatura 582
Afghan
nilupar 585
tinkar 503
nujud 306
nusadir 503, 505, 506
totl 575
turbid 584. The cor-
badran 301
hindwana 443
responding Tibetan
intsir 411
padzahr 525
palanmisk 589
pan 582
form is dur-byid; the
initial sonant is strik-
ing: cf. the analogous
kokurt 575
Ospana, osplna 515
palak 397
pandu 404
case of ga-bur, 591
rawa 547
panpa 490
turma, turub 574
riska 215
parniyan 537
turunj 301 note 6, 581
spastu 209
pipal, pilpil 583
tatiya 512, 513
turanj 301
pilpil 374 note 3
vrlze 373
pistan 252
tawus 575
wream 538
pudina 198 note I
xarbuja, tarbuja 444
pulad 575
ustad 533
pupal 584
vaj 583
Baluci
qaqulah 193
vala 495
ban 249
ranglak 478 note 5
wan 249
bod, boz 462
revande-hindi 551
rewas, rewand, rlwand
wea 363 note 4
rava 547
trunj 301
547
roanak 584
xadan, xadanj 553
xak-i c"ml 556
tapak 595
wana 249
xar-cml 555
sagrl 575
sakblna 366
sakirlat 497
saman, suman 332
xar-i-buzi 343
xar-i-sutur 343, 345
xarnub, xurnQb, xarrab
Kurd
alat 435
saqalat 497
sarah 539
sebr sugutri 481
sebr zerd 481
sepldrui 555
sipahba5 533
sunbul 455
sunbul-i hindi 584
sur 581
424
xawalinjan 545
xawus 301
xayahe-i iblls 583
xiyar 301
xiyar-5ambar 422
xokenjubin 347
xullar 306
xurma 385
xutu 565
badem 406
barru, berru 369
Saku 595
dariben 249
egvlz 256
ezir 410
fystiq 252
hezlr 410
kasu-van, kazu-van 250
kezvan, kizvan 250
gablbl 582
mstekki 253
sah siparam 586
yasamln, yasmln 331
pirinjok 513
sah-zire 384
punk 198 note 3
ganballd 447
zar-baf 488
rtwas, rlbas 547
Sakar 576, 584
zarambad 583
Urum 437
gamliz 447
zardak 452, 454
gankalil 545
zarumbad 544
gatranj 576
zeitun 415
Armenian
gawandar 454
zingar 510
gelgem 381
zird-cube 314
ankuzad, anguzat 361
slr-xest 347 note I
zumurrud 519
aprasam, aprsam 429
somln, sumln 397
aprisum 538
gora 503
armav 385 note 4
gdniz 299
Pamir (and other Iranian
asbanax 396
gugu 565
dialects)
bambak 490
bambiSn 531
tabasir 350 note 5
btlSO 212
brinj 373
tar-angubm 345
ghaun 496
bust 525
tan-basa 496
kubas 574
Randan 552
tanlSan 496
spin 515
dabaSir 350 note 5
tankal, tangar 503
vurj, wux 213
dipak 489
tarsa 593
waram 538
dpir 532
tarxan 593
wujerk 213
dzet 415
630
INDEX OF WORDS
engoiz 248, 256
erevant 547
fesdux, fstoul 252
halile 378
hraman 437
Hrom, HrOm 436
hulba 446 note 5
Jet 415
kahnba 522
kask 369
kerpas 574
kndruk 585
mogpet 531
movpetan 531
narges 427
navt' 506
Plinj 513
porag 503
snrvel 545
spanax 396
gahapand 529
irixid 347 note I
2omin 397
f arxan 593
xarpzag 444 note 2
xiar-amb 423
zavhran 312 note I
zeit 415
zemruxt 519
zomin 397
Greek
aloe 481
balsamon 429, 430
bistakion 251
bukeras 447
byssos574
daukon, daukos 453
diadema 573
ebenos 486
harpaks 523
hyaina, Chinese tran-
scription of, 436
kasia 542 note 3
kastanon 369
kinnamomon 542 note 3
kusbaras 299
maragdos 519
naphtha 506
nardps 455
narkissos 427
narkission 428
pistakion, psistakion 251
rha 548
rheon 548
rhoa 285
rhydia 285 note 2
satrapes 529
ser 538
smapi 380
smyra 461
staphylinos 453
storaks, styraks 457
tabasis 350
tapes 493
terebinthos, termmthos
249
Russian
altabds, derivation of
word 492
arbuz 444
bumaga 559
bura 503
burkun, burun&k 219
dorogi 501
fistaSka 252
indzaru 411
izumrud 519
kiSnets 299
1'utserna 219
marzan 525
medunka 219
morkov' 451 note I
nuSatyr 506
reven' 548
Rim 437
olk 539
gpiauter 555
Spanish
alazor 312 note I
albahaca, alfabega 587
alcanfor 591
algarrpbo 425
almaciga 252 note 7
anil 370
atutia 513
azafran 312 note I
azafranillo 312 note I
benjui, menjui 465 note I
borraj 503
carabe 522
dauco 453
droguete 501
espinaca 396
mdsticis 252 note 7
ruibarbo 548
tafetan 493
tereniabin 345
Portuguese
acafroa 312
alfabaca 587 note 3
anil 370
azafrao 312 note I
balsamo, Chinese tran-
scription of, 434
bango 582
bazar, bazoar 528
benzawi, benjoim 465 no. I
carabe 522
espinafre, espinacio 396
lacre 476
lampatam 556
roma, romeira 285 note 3
tufao 557
tutanaga 555
tutao 557
tutia 513
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