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
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.
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