National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0056 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 56 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000248
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

230   SINO-IRANICA

of grape. According to the Hui k`ian ei q   ("Records of Turkis-

tan "), written in 1772 by the two Manchu officers Fusambô and Surde,

"there are purple, white, blue, and black varieties; further, round and long, large and small, sour and sweet ones. There is a green and seed-

less variety, comparable to a soy-bean, but somewhat larger, and of very sweet and agreeable flavor [then the so-so is mentioned]. Another kind is black and more than an inch long; another is white and large. All varieties ripen in the seventh or eighth month, when they are dried and can be transported to distant places." According to the Wu tsa tsu, previously quoted, Turkistan has a seedless variety of

grape, called to yen   p`u-t`ao ("hare-eye grape ") .

A. V. LE COQ1 mentions under the name sôzuq saivi a cylindrical, whitish-yellow grape, the best from Toyoq and Bulayiq, red ones of the same shape from Manas and Shichb. Sir AUREL STEIN2 says that throughout Chinese Turkistan the vines are trained along low fences, ranged in parallel rows, and that the dried grapes and currants of Ujat find their way as far as the markets of Aksu, Kashgar, and Turfan.

Every one who has resided in Peking knows that it is possible to obtain there during the summer seemingly fresh grapes, preserved from the crop of the previous autumn, and that the Chinese have a method of preserving them. The late F. H. KING,3 whose studies of the agriculture of China belong to the very best we have, observed regarding this point, " These old people have acquired the skill and practice of storing and preserving such perishable fruits as pears and grapes so as to enable them to keep them on the market almost continuously. Pears were very common in the latter part of June, and Consul-General Williams informed me that grapes are regularly carried into July. In talking with my interpreter as to the methods employed, I could only learn that the growers depend simply upon dry earth cellars which can be maintained at a very uniform temperature, the separate fruits being wrapped in paper. No foreigner with whom we talked knew their methods." This method is described in the Ts`i min yao §u, an ancient work on husbandry, probably from the beginning of the sixth century,' although teeming with interpolations. A large pit is dug in a room of the farmhouse for storing the grapes, and holes are bored in the walls near the surface of the ground and stuffed with branches. Some of these holes are filled with mud to secure proper support for the room.

1 Sprichwörter und Lieder aus Turfan, p. 92.

2 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, p. 228.

3 Farmers of Forty Centuries, P. 343 (Madison, Wis., 1911).

4 See BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 77; BIRTH, T'oung Pao, 1895, P. 436; PELLIOT, Bulletin de l'Ecole française, Vol. IX, p. 434.