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0069 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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THE GRAPE-VINE   243

the circumstances which accompanied this important event. We have likewise ascertained that the art of making grape-wine was not learned by the Chinese before A.D. 640. There are in China several species of wild vine which bear no relation to the imported cultivated species. Were we left without the records of the Chinese, a botanist of the type of Engler would correlate the cultivated with the wild forms and assure us that the Chinese are original and independent viticulturists. In fact, he has stated' that Vitis thunbergii, a wild vine occurring in Japan, Korea, and China, seems to have a share in the development of Japanese varieties of vine, and that Vitis filifolia of North China seems to have influenced Chinese and Japanese vines. Nothing of the kind can be inferred from Chinese records, or has ever been established by direct observation. The fact of the introduction of the cultivated grape into China is wholly unknown to Engler. The botanical notes appended by him to HEHN'S history of the grape' have nothing whatever to do with the history of the cultivated species, but refer exclusively to wild forms. It is not botany, but historical research, that is able to solve the problems connected with the history of our cultivated plants.

Dr. T. TANAKA of the Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, has been good enough to contribute the following notes on the history of the grape-vine in Japan:

"The early history of the cultivation of the grape-vine (Vitis vinifera) in Japan is very obscure. Most of the early Japanese medical

and botanical works refer to budô t   (Chinese p`u-t`ao) as ebi, the
name occurring in the Kojiki (compiled in A.D. 712, first printed in 1644) as yebikadzura,3 which is identified by J. MATSUMURA4 as Vitis vinifera. It seems quite incomprehensible that the grape-vine, which is now found only in cultivated form, should have occurred during the

mythological period as early as 66o B.C. The Honzö-wamyô   -

(compiled during the period 897-930, first printed 1796) mentions ô-ebi-kadzura as vine-grape, distinguishing it from ordinary ebi-kadzura, but the former is no longer in common use in distinction from the latter. The ebi-dzuru which should correctly be termed inu-ebi (false ebi plant), as suggested by Ono Ranzan,5 is widely applied in Japan for

16   (Chinese yin-yù), and is usually identified as Vitis thunbergii,

1 Erläuterungen zu den Nutzpflanzen der gemässigten Zonen, p. 30.

2 Kulturpflanzen, pp. 85-91.

3 B. H. CHAMBERLAIN, Ko-ji-ki, p. xxxIv.

4 Botanical Magazine, T6kyô, Vol. VII, 1893, p. 139.

5 Honzô kbmoku keimô, ed. 1847, Ch. 29, P. 3.