IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
304 SINO-IRANICA
In its appearance it is like lan-lin-tun 4,1 but greener. When
dried and powdered, it tastes like cinnamon and pepper. The root is capable of relieving colds."2 The Fun i wen kien ki3 adds that hun-t`i came from the Western Countries (Si yü).
Hun-t`i is a transcription answering to -ancient *gwun-de, and corresponds to Middle Persian gandena, New Persian gändanti, Hindi gandand, Bengali gundina (Sanskrit mleccha-kanda, "bulb of the barbarians "), possibly the shallot (Allium ascalonicum; French échalotte, ciboule) or A. porrum, which occurs in western Asia and Persia, but not in China.'
Among the vegetables of India, Hüan Tsan5 mentions hun-t`o
(*hun-da) ts`ai. JULIEN left this term untranslated; BEAT, did not know, either, what to make of it, and added in parentheses kundu with an interrogation-mark. WATTERS6 explained it as "kunda (properly the olibanum-tree) ." This is absurd, as the question is of a vegetable cultivated for food, while the olibanum is a wild tree offering no food. Moreover, hun cannot answer to kun; and the Sanskrit word is not kunda, but kundu or kunduru. The mode of writing, hun, possibly is intended to allude to a species of Allium. Hüan Tsan certainly transcribed a Sanskrit word, but a Sanskrit plant-name of the form hunda or gunda is not known. Perhaps his prototype is related to the Iranian word previously discussed.
1 The parallel text in the Tee fu yüan kwei (Ch. 970, p. 12) writes only lift-hi/T. This plant is unidentified.
2 T `an hui yao, Ch. I oo, p. 3 b; and Ch. 200, p. 14 b.
3 Ch. 7, p. I b (above, p. 232).
4 A. DE CANDOLLE, Origin of Cultivated Plants, pp. 68-71; LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. III, pp. 69-71; ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. 113, 258. Other Persian names are tärä and kawar. They correspond to Greek aphvov, Turkish prdsa, Arabic kurfit. The question as to whether the species ascalonicum or porrum should be understood by the Persian term gändänd, I have to leave in suspense and to refer to the decision of competent botanists. SCHLIMMER (Terminologie, p. 21) identifies Persian gändänd with Allium porrum; while, according to him, A. ascalonicum should be musir in Persian. VULLERS (Lexicon persico-latinum, Vol. II, p. 1036) translates the word by "porrum." On the other hand, STUART (Chinese Materia
Medica, p. 25), following F. P. Smith, has labelled Chinese hiai , an Allium
anciently indigenous to China, as A. ascalonicum. If this be correct, the Chinese would certainly have recognized the identity of the foreign hun-t`i with hiai, provided both should represent the same species, ascalonicum. Maybe also the two were identical species, but differentiated by cultivation.
5 Ta rat si yü ki, Ch. 2, p. 8 b.
6 On Yuan Chwang's Travels, Vol. I, p. 178.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.