IIIF Color HighRes
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
194 SINO-IRANICA
scented mint is Vâd's, the trigonella is Din-pavan-Din's, the hundred-petalled rose is Din's, all kinds of wild flowers (vandr) are Ard's, Açtad
has all the white HBm, the bread-baker's basil is Asmä,n's, Zamyäd has the crocus, Maraspend has the flower of Ardasir, Aniran has this Ham of the angel HBm, of three kinds."
From this extract it becomes evident that the ancient Persians paid attention to their flora, and, being fond of systematizing, possessed a classification of their plants; but any of their botanical literature, if it ever existed, is lost.
The most important of the Persian works on pharmacology is the Kitdb-ulabniyat 'an hagd'iq-uladviyat or " Book of the Foundations of
the True Properties of the Remedies," written about A.D. 97o by the
physician Abu Mansur Muvaffaq bin 'Ali alharavi, who during one of his journeys visited also India. He wrote for Mansur Ibn Nah II
of the house of the Samanides, who reigned from 961 to 976 or 977.
This is not only the earliest Persian work on the subject, but the oldest extant production in prose of New-Persian literature. The
text has been edited by R. SELIGMANN from a unique manuscript of Vienna dated A.D. 1055, the oldest extant Persian manuscript.' There is a translation by a Persian physician, ABDUL-CHALIG ACHUNDOW from Baku.' The translation in general seems good, and is provided with an elaborate commentary, but in view of the importance of the work a new critical edition would be desirable. The sources from which Abu Mansur derived his materials should be carefully sifted: we should like to know in detail what he owes to the Arabs, the Syrians, and the Indians, and what is due to his own observations. Altogether Arabic influence is pre-eminent. Cf. Appendix III.
A good many Chinese plant-names introduced from Iran have the word Hu MI prefixed to them. Hu is one of those general Chinese desig-
nations without specific ethnic value for certain groups of foreign tribes. Under the Han it appears mainly to refer to Turkish tribes; thus the Hiuti-nu are termed Hu in the ~i ki. From the fourth century onward it relates to Central Asia and more particularly to peoples of
1 Codex Vindobonensis sive Medici Abu Mansur Muwaffak Bin All Heratensis liber Fundamentorum Pharamacologiae Pars I Prolegomena et textum continens (Vienna, 1859).
9 Die pharmakologischen Grundsätze des A. M. Muwaffak, in R. Kobert's Historische Studien aus dem Pharmakologischen Institute der Universität Dorpat, 1873. Quoted as "Achundow, Abu Mansur." The author's name is properly 'Abdu'1-Khaliq, son of the Akhund or schoolmaster. Cf. E. G. BROWNE, Literary History of Persia, pp. II, 478.
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