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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

670   229. FAR

in a somewhat different redaction, in the first section of a ft j l Lung-nü chuan, « Lives of the Dragon daughters », wrongly ascribed to 6+ . Hsüeh Ying « of the T'ang » [in fact, he lived in the Chin, 1-281; cf. San kuo chih, 53 ( Wu 8), 6 a] in the Lung-wei pi-shu ed., 4th series, 3rd pen), shows that the « dragon-brain perfume » was still a rarity towards the end of the 7th cent. Apart from the terms mentioned above, camphor is also sometimes spoken of as mei p'ien, « plum flake », or 74t Fir-- ping p'ien, « ice flake ». Ping p'ien too is of course purely Chinese; GERINI'S attempt (Researches, 438) to connect it with most divergent terms in various languages cannot be considered. « Camphor oil », called 110 j nao yu « [dragon-]brain oil » in Chao Ju-kua

(HR, 194), was also mentioned in the second half of the 8th cent. by 4   Li Hsün as lung-nao
yu, « dragon-brain oil », and is there said to come from Vijaya (= rivijaya) in Sumatra.

The Mussulman notices on camphor are of great interest, and would deserve a detailed study, but the various designations are almost hopelessly corrupt; one may provisionally find them in the Index of Fe, 695-696, but attention must be drawn to the fact that some of them appear there under two or three different entries, due to various misreadings, sometimes without any of the forms

given being correct. For instance, ~s( bdkas and    beilküs are misreadings of ~~ bdlûs;
bhimsini is Skr. bhimasena (known as a sort of camphor); farfiun and firkün are identical; Ibn Battûtah's &IL) f. harddlah, which puzzled FERRAND, is certainly to be read .0.3f- j iiddnah; karsab, kawkab, küksab (or kiikasb), and perhaps garquwi are identical; ribdhi and riydhi are identical, both being perhaps corruptions of zabdji.

Polo speaks also of camphor produced in Fu-chien between Fu-chou and Ch'üan-chou. But this has nothing to do with Baros camphor. Chinese camphor, obtained in Fu-chien and Kuangtung, is the produce of a laurel, Camphora oficinarurn (or Laurus camphora, or Cinnamonum camphora; cf. STUART, Materia Medica, 87-88; T'u-shu chi-ch'êng, ts'ao-mu tien, 259). Its name

is :f*   chang nao, « camphor of the chang [tree] », a word the origin of which is debated; it was

also formerly written 4 chang. Other names are    shao nao, «Shao-chou camphor»

(from Shao-chou in Kuang-tung) and, in the north, i jJ ch'ao nao, « Ch'ao-chou camphor » (from Ch'ao-chou, also in Kuang-tung). No ancient notice of the product is cited in the Pên-ts'ao kang-mu (34, 62-63). But Avicenna (t 1037) already knew of Chinese camphor (cf. HEYD, II, 592); it is mentioned in the Ain-i Akbari (1595; cf. Fe, 545, ani), and this same name cini has remained in use for it in India (cf. Hobson-Jobson2, 151).

229. FAR far F, Z

This must be the French form used by Polo, since it is in F and Z («Fur » is a mistake in the Milan copy). It is, according to Polo, the name of a mountain at the entrance of the Black Sea, on the western side. YULE and BENEDETTO have restored it as « Faro », but I prefer to retain Polo's Far = Phare, Pharos. YULE has made no comment. BENEDETTO (BI, 411) thought of the promon-