National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
SAFFLOWER 327
tain produces hun-lan (Carthamus) which yields yen-ei (` cosmetic') ." All this, of course, is pure fantasy inspired by the homophony of the two words yen-ei (" cosmetic ") and Hiun-nu yen-ei (" royal consort ") . Another etymology propounded by Fu Hou t 1 in his Gun hwa ku
kin èu tr '-6-tit (tenth century) is no more fortunate: he explains
that yen-ti is produced in the country Yen A, and is hence styled } BR yen-ei (" sap of Yen"). Yen was one of the small feudal states at the time of the Cou dynasty. This is likewise a philological afterthought, for there is no ancient historical record to the effect that the state of Yen should have produced (exclusively or pre-eminently) Basella or Carthamus. It is perfectly certain that yen-ei is not Chinese, but the transcription of a foreign word: this appears clearly from the ancient formes A, which yields no meaning whatever; A, as is well known, being a favorite character in the rendering of foreign words. This is further corroborated by the vacillating modes of writing the word,
to which Li Si-ben adds 41 ,1 while he rejects as erroneous At
and liN A, and justly so. Unfortunately we are not informed as to the country or language from which the word was adopted: the Ku kin 'u avails itself only of the vague term Si fan ("Western Countries"), where Carthamus was called yen-ei; but in no language known to me is there any such name for the designation of this plant or its product. The Sanskrit name for safflower is kusumbha; and if the plant had come from India, Chinese writers would certainly not have failed to express this clearly. The supposition therefore remains that it was introduced from some Iranian region, and that yen-ei represents a word from an old Iranian dialect now extinct, or an Iranian word somehow still unknown. The New-Persian name for the plant is gdwd ila; in Arabic it is qurtum.2
Li Si-e'en distinguishes four kinds of yen-U: (I) From Carthamus tinctorius, the juice of the flowers of which is made into a rouge (the information is chiefly drawn from the Ku kin &u, as cited above). (2) From Basella rubra, as described in the Pei hu lu. (3) From the .§an-liu 11-1 fli flower [unidentified, perhaps a wild pomegranate: above,
p. 281], described in the Hu pen ts`ao. (4) From the tree producing
gum lac (tse-kun 9P),3 this product being styled All A hu yen-ei
("foreign cosmetic") and described in the Nan hai yao p`u f*l âla
of Li Sün1.4 "At present," Li Si-e'en continues, "the southerners
' Formed with the classifier 155, "red."
2 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 105.
3 See below, p. 476.
4 He lived in the second half of the eighth century.
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