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0104 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 104 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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378   SING-IRANICA

They take out of them the seed, which they call Nardan, wherewith they drive a great trade, and the Persians make use of it in their sawces, whereto it gives a colour, and a picquant tast, having been steep'd in water, and strain'd through a cloath. Sometimes they boyl the juyce of these Pomegranates, and keep it to give a colour to the rice, which they serve up at their entertainments, and it gives it withall a tast which is not unpleasant. . . . The best pomegranates grow in Jescht, and at Caswin, but the biggest, in Karabag."

Mirza Haidar mentions a kind of pomegranate peculiar to Baluristan (Kafiristan), sweet, pure, and full-flavored, its seeds being white and very transparent.'

"Grapes, melons, apples, and pomegranates, all fruits, indeed, are good in Samarkand.i2 The pomegranates of Khojand were renowned for their excellence.' The Emperor Jahangir mentions in his Memoirs the sweet pomegranates of Yazd and the subacid ones of Farrah, and says of the former that they are celebrated all over the world.' j. CRAWFURD5 remarks, "The only good pomegranates which, indeed,

I have ever met with are those brought into upper India by the caravans from eastern Persia."

The Yu yan tsa tsu6 states that the pomegranates of Egypt X71, t (Wu-se-1i, *Mwir-si-li, Mirsir)7 in the country of the Arabs (Ta-gi, *Ta-dzik) weigh up to five and six catties.

Also in regard to the pomegranate we meet the tradition that its introduction into China is due to General Can Kien. In the same manner as in the case of the walnut, this notion looms up only in post-Han authors. It is first recorded by Lu Ki;`~' 0, who lived under the Western Tsin dynasty (A.D. 265-313), in his 'work Yü ti yün u

M   . This text has been handed down in the Ts`i min yao . u
of Kia Se-niu of the sixth century.' There it is said that Can Kien, while an envoy of the Han in foreign countries for eighteen years, obtained t`u-lin *7 4, this term being identical with nan-§i-liu

IN. This tradition is repeated in the Po wu ßi9 of Can Hwa and in the

1 ELIAS and Ross, Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 386.

2 A. S. BEVERIDGE, Memoirs of Babur, p. 77.

3 Ibid., p. 8. They are also extolled by Ye-lu C'u-ts'ai (BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediæval Researches, Vol. I, p. 19).

' H. M. ELLIOT, History of India as told by Its Own Historians, Vol. VI, p. 348 . 6 History of the Indian Archipelago, Vol. I, p. 433.

6   S Ch. 1o, p. 4 b (ed. of Tsin tai pi su).

? Old Persian Mudraya, Hebrew Mizraim, Syriac Mezroye.

8 Ch. 4, p. 14 b (new ed., 1896).

9 See above, p. 258.