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0115 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 115 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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SESAME AND FLAX   289

from Ta-yuan (that is, a Hu country), hu ma also, being a Hu plant, must likewise have emanated from that quarter. Such vagaries cannot be accepted as history. All that can be inferred from the passage in question is that Tao Hun-kin may have been familiar with hu ma.

Li Si-den, quoting the Mon k`i pi i'an   4i by Sen Kwa it MI
of the eleventh century, says, " In times of old there was in China only `great hemp ' to ma IC* (Cannabis sativa) growing in abundance. The envoy of the Han, Can Ktien, was the first to obtain the seeds of

oil-hemp   g2 from Ta-yuan; hence the name his ma in distinction
from the Chinese species to ma." The Can-Ktien tradition is further voiced in the rm./ of Cen Tsiao (1108-62) of the Sung.' The T'ai

yü lan,4 published in A.D. 983, quotes a Pen ts'ao kin of unknown date as saying that Can Ktien obtained from abroad hu ma and hu tou.5 This legend, accordingly, appears to have arisen under the Sung (A.D. 960-1278); that is, over a millennium after Can Ktien's lifetime. And then there are thinking scholars who would make us accept such stuff as the real history of the Han dynasty!

In the Tang period this legend was wholly unknown: the T`an Pen ts'ao does not allude to any introduction of hu ma, nor does this work speak of Can Ktien in this connection.

A serious book like the T u kin pen ts'ao of Su Sun, which for the first time has also introduced the name yu ma (" oil hemp "), says only that the plant originally grew in the territory of the Hu, that in appearance it is like hemp, and that hence it receives the name hu ma.

Unfortunately it is only too true that the Chinese confound Sesamum indicum (family Pedaliaceae) and Linum usitatissimum (family Linaceae) in the single term hu ma (" Iranian hemp ") ; the only apparent reason for this is the fact that the seeds of both plants yield an oil which is put to the same medicinal use. The two are totally different plants, nor do they have any relation to hemp. Philologically, the case is somewhat analogous to that of hu tou (p. 305) . It is most probable that the two are but naturalized in China and introduced from Iranian regions, for both plants are typically ancient West-Asiatic cultivations. The alleged wild sesame of Chinas is doubtless an escape from cultivation.

1 This is the author wrongly called "Chien Ts'ung-chung" by BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. II, p. 377). Ts'un-dufi 4 rI4 is his hao.

2 A synonyme of hu ma.

3 Ch. 75, p. 33.

4 Ch. 841, p. 6 b.

b See below, p. 305.

6 FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXVI, p. 236.