National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
270 SINO-IRANICA
is one of the most useful trees of the countries where it grows. The nuts are either smoked and dried for use, or the oil is expressed from
them in their recent state. The oil is used for all culinary purposes,
and is more palatable and finer than that of the coconut. The kernels, mixed up with a little sago meal, are made into cakes and eaten as
bread. The kanari is a native of the same country with the sago tree, and is not found to the westward. In Celebes and Java it has been introduced in modern times through the medium of traffic."
The Yu yan tsa tsu' speaks of a man hu t`ao 4 41 it as "growing in the kingdom of Nan-èao f l /a in Yün-nan; it is as large as a flat
conch, and has two shells of equal size; its taste is like that of the cultivated walnut. It is styled also `creeper in the land of the Man' (Man Zun t`en-tse gtti ;î, ) ." It will be remembered that Twan C`en-si, the author of this work, describes also the cultivated walnut (p. 264).
The Tai più yü lan contains another text attributed to the Lin piao lu i relating to a wild walnut, which, however, is not extant in the edition of this work published in the collection Wu yin tien in 1775- This text is as follows: "The large walnut has a thick and firm shell.
It is larger than that of the areca-nut.2 It has much meat, but little glumelle. It does not resemble the nuts found in northern China. It
must be broken with an axe or hammer. The shell, when evenly smoothed over the bottom, is occasionally made into a seal, for the crooked structure of the shell (ko I) resembles the seal characters.i3
In the Lin wai tai to a M- ,4 written by Cou K`ü-fei J t 4
in 1178, mention is made, among the plants of southern China and Tonking, of a "stone walnut (.i hu t`ao i J t), which is like stone, has hardly any meat, and tastes like the walnut of the north." Again, a wild species is involved here. I have not found the term §i hu t'ao in any other author.
The various names employed by the Tang writers for the wild
Ch. 19, p. 9 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi su); or Ch. 19, p. 9 a (ed. of Pai hai).
2 This sentence, as well as the first, agrees with the definition given by the Pei hu lu with reference to a wild walnut (above, p. 268).
3 T'ai p'iit yü lan, Ch. 971, p. 8 b. The same text is cited by the Pen ts'ao kain mu and the Ko ci kin yuan (Ch. 76, p. 5 b), which offer the reading San hu t'ao (" wild walnut") instead of "large walnut." The Kwain k`ün fan p'u (Ch. 58, p. 26) also has arranged this text under the general heading "wild walnut." The Pen ts'ao han mu opens it with the sentence, " In the southern regions there is a wild walnut." The restriction to South China follows also from the text as given in the T'ai p'iit yü lan.
4 Ch. 8, p. 10 b (ed. of Ci pu tsu cai ts'un Su).
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.