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 CUCUMBER
9. Another dogma of the Changkienomaniacs is that the renowned General should have also blessed his countrymen with the introduction of the cucumber (Cucumis sativus), styled hu kwa tig 14 (" Iranian
melon") or hwan kwa 14 (" yellow melon ") .1 The sole document
on which this opinion is based is presented by the recent work of Li Si-cen,2 who hazards this bold statement without reference to any older authority. Indeed, such an earlier source does not exist: this bit of history is concocted ad hoc, and merely suggested by the name hu kwa. Any plants formed with the attribute hu were ultimately palmed off on the old General as the easiest way out of a difficult problem, and as a comfortable means of saving further thought.
Li Si-ben falls back upon two texts only of the Tang period,— the Pen ts'ao . i i, which states that the people of the north, in order to avoid
the name of Si Lo (A.D. 273-333), who was of Hu descent, tabooed
the term hu kwa, and replaced it by hwan kwa;3 and the i i lu *AO by Tu Pao f W, who refers this taboo to the year 6o8 (fourth year of the period Ta-ye of the Sui dynasty).4 If this information be correct, we gain a chronological clew as to the terminus a quo: the cucumber appears to have been in China prior to the sixth century A.D. Its cultivation is alluded to in the Ts'i min yao .0 from the beginning of the sixth century, provided this is not an interpolation of later times.'
According to ENGLER,° the home of the cucumber would most prob-
1 BRETSCHNEIDER, Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 21 (accordingly adopted by DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 266); STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 135. In Japanese, the cucumber is ki-uri.
2 Pen ts'ao lean mu, Ch. 28, p. 5 b.
3 A number of other plant-names was hit by this taboo (cf. above, p. 298) : thus
the plant to-lo (Ocimum basilicum), which bears the same character as i Lo's
personal name, as already indicated in the Ts'i min yao . u (see also 3i wu lei yuan, Ch. 10, p. 30 b; Z`i wu min Si l'u k`ao, Ch. 5, p. 34; and Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 26, p. 22 b). He is said to have also changed the name of the myrobalan ho-li-lo (below, p. 378) into ho-tse X . There is room for doubt, however, whether any of these plants existed in the China of his time; the taboo explanations may be makeshifts of later periods.
4 This is the Ta ye Si i lu (Records relative to the Ta-ye period, 6o5-618), mentioned by BRETSCHNEIDER (Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 195). The Pen ts'ao lean mu (Ch. 22, p. I) quotes the same work again on the taboo of the term hu ma (p. 288),
which in 6o8 was changed into kiao ma g.
5 Cf. ei wu min Si t'u feat), Ch. 5, p. 43.
6 In Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, p. 323.
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