National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
CHIVE, ONION, AND SHALLOT
1o. Although a number of alliaceous plants are indigenous to China,' there is one species, the chive (Allium scorodoprasum; French rocambole),
to which, as already indicated by its name hu swan U- or hu
(" garlic of the Hu, Iranian garlic "), a foreign origin is ascribed by the Chinese. Again, the worn-out tradition that also this introduction is due to Can Ktien, is of late origin, and is first met with in the spurious work Po wu ci, and then in the dictionary rail yün of the middle of the eighth century.' Even Li Si-Zen' says no more than that " people of the Han dynasty obtained the hu swan from Central Asia." It seems difficult, however, to eradicate a long-established prejudice or an error even from the minds of scholars. In 1915 I endeavored to rectify it, especially with reference to the wrong opinion expressed by Hirth in 1895, that garlic in general must have been introduced into China for the first time by Can Kien. Nevertheless the same misconception is repeated by him in 1917,4 while a glance at the Botanicon Sinicum5 would have convinced him that at least four species of Allium are of a prehistoric antiquity in China. The first mention of this Central-Asiatic or Iranian species of Allium is made by T`ao Hun-kin (A.D. 451-536), provided the statement attributed to him in the Cen lei pen tstao and Pen ts'ao kavc mu really emanates from him.' When the new Allium was introduced, the necessity was felt of distinguishing it from the old, indigenous Allium sativum, that was designated by the plain root-word swan. The former, accordingly, was characterized as to swan
(" large Allium"), the latter, as siao /iN swan (" small Allium"). This distinction is said to have first been recorded by Tao Huh-kin. Also the Ku kin cu is credited with the mention of hu swan; this, however, is not the older Ku kin by Tsui Pao of the fourth century, but, as expressly stated in the Pen ts'ao, the later re-edition by Fu Hou
Cf. T'oung Pao, 1915, pp. 96-99.
2 BRETSCHNEIDER, Bot. Sin., pt. III, No. 244.
3 Pen ts'ao kart mu, Ch. 26, p. 6 b.
Journal Am. Or. Soc., Vol. XXXVII, p. 92.
5 Pt. II, Nos. 1-4, 63, 357-360, and III, Nos. 240-243.
The Kin kwei yao lio (Ch. c, p. 24 b) of the second century A.D. mentions hu swan, but this in all probability is a later interpolation (above, p. 205).
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