National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0131 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 131 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000248
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

GARDEN PEA AND BROAD BEAN

13. Among the many species of pulse cultivated by the Chinese, there are at least two to which a foreign origin must be assigned. Both are comprised under the generic term hu tou IA IL ("bean of the Hu," or "Iranian bean "), but each has also its specific nomenclature. It is generally known that, on account of the bewildering number of species and variations and the great antiquity of their cultivation, the history of beans is fraught with graver difficulties than that of any other group of plants.

The common or garden pea (Pisum sativum) is usually styled wan

tou   a (Japanese §iro-endô), more rarely ts'in siao tou     /i"

("green small pulse "), is `in pan tou W A .. (" green streaked pulse ") , and ma lei i % . A term # a pi tau, *pit (pir) tou, is regarded as characteristic of the Tang period; while such names as hu tou, dun . u

ifk ("pulse of the Zun "),1 and hui-hu tou E1 t4 a ("pulse of the Uigur;" in the Yin . an ëen yao of the Mongol period changed also into hui-hui tou I1 q _9_, "Mohammedan pulse ") are apt to bespeak the foreign origin of the plant! Any document alluding to the event of the introduction, however, does not appear to exist in Chinese records. The term hu tou occurs in the present editions of the Ku kin eu,3 hu-ga

i0 being given as its synonyme, and described as "resembling the li tougla, but larger, the fruit of the size of a child's fist and eatable." The term li tou is doubtfully identified with Mucuna capitata; 4 but the species of the Ku kin Cu defies exact identification; and, as is well known, this book, in its present form, is very far from being able to claim absolute credence or authenticity. Also the Kwan ai, written prior to A.D. 527, contains the term hu tou;5 but this name, unfortunately, is ambiguous. Li Si-cen acquiesces in the general statement that the pea has come from the Hu and Zun or from the Western Hu (Iranians) ; he cites, however, a few texts, which, if they be authentic, would permit us to

1 This term is ambiguous, for originally it applies to the soy-bean (Glycine hispida), which is indigenous to China.

2 Cf. Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 24, p. 7; and Kwai k'ün fan p'u, Ch. 4, p. I1. The list of the names for the pea given by BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 223) is rather incomplete.

3 Ch. B, p. 1 b.

4 STUART, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 269. The word li is also written V. 6 T'ai p'in yü lan, Ch. 841, p. 6 b.

305