IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
THE CORIANDER
8. The Po wu ~i, faithful to its tendencies regarding other Iranian plants, generously permits General Can Ktien to have also brought back
from his journey the coriander, hu swi (Coriandrum sativum).1
Li Si-ben, and likewise K`an-hi's Dictionary, repeat this statement without reference to the Po wu 'i;2 and of course the credulous community of the Changkienides has religiously sworn to this dogma.3 Needless to say that nothing of the kind is contained in the General's biography or in the Han Annals.' The first indubitable mention of the plant is not earlier than the beginning of the sixth century A.D.; that is, about six centuries after the General's death, and this makes some difference to the historian.' The first Pen tstao giving the name hu-swi is the ,i liao pen ts'ao, written by Mon Sen in the seventh century, followed by the Pen tstao .i i of C'en Ts`an-k`i in the first half of the eighth century. None of these authors makes any observation on foreign introduction. In the literature on agriculture, the cultivation of the coriander is first described in the Ts`i min yao gu of the sixth century, where, however, nothing is said about the origin of the plant from abroad.
An interesting reference to the plant occurs in the Buddhist dictionary Yi tstie kin yin i (1.c.), where several variations for writing
1 This passage is not a modern interpolation, but is of ancient date, as it is cited in the Yi ts'ie kin yin i, Ch. 24, p. 2 (regarding this work, see above, p. 258). Whether it was contained in the original edition of the Po wu ci, remains doubtful.
2 Under îi (" garlic ") K'an-hi cites the dictionary T'an yün, published by Sun Mien in A.D. 750, as saying that the coriander is due to Cat). K'ien.
3 BRETSCHNEIDER, Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 22I, where the term hu-swi is wrongly identified with parsley, and Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 25; HIRTH, T'oung Pao, Vol. VI, 1895, p. 439.
4 The coriander is mentioned in several passages of the Kin kwei yao lio by the physician Card Cut-kin of the second century A.D.; but, as stated above (p. 205), there is no guaranty that these passages belonged to the original edition of the work. "To eat pork together with raw coriander rots away the navel" (Ch. c, p. 23 b). "In the fourth and eighth months do not eat coriander, for it injures the intellect" (ibid., p. 28). "Coriander eaten for a long time makes man very forgetful; a patient must not eat coriander or hwan-hwa ts'ai 11E1 (Lampsana apogonoides)," ibid., p. 29.
5 An incidental reference to hu swi is made in the Pen ts`ao lean mu in the description of the plant küan er (see BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. II, No. 438), and ascribed to Lu Ki, who lived in the latter part of the third century A.D. In my opinion, this reading is merely due to a misprint, as there is preserved no description of the hu-swi by Lu Ki.
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