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
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
