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 DATE—PALM
35. The Chinese records of the date-palm (Phoenix dactylifera) contain two points that are of interest to science: first, a contribution to the geographical distribution of the tree in ancient times; and, second, a temporary attempt at acclimating it in China. The tree is not indigenous there. It is for the first time in the Tang period that we receive some information about it; but it is mentioned at an earlier date as a product of Sasanian Persia in both the Wei §u and Sui §u,
under the name ts`ien niera tsao ` ("jujubes of thousand years,"
the jujube, Zizyphus vulgaris, being a native of China).' In the Yu yan
tsa tsu,2 the date is styled Po-se tsao vi ("Persian jujube"), with
the observation that its habitat is in Po-se (Persia), or that it comes from there.' The Persian name is then given in the form vtk`u-man, *k`ut(k`ur)-man, which would correspond to a Middle Persian *xurman (*khurmang), Pazand and New Persian xurmâ, that was also adopted by Osmanli and Neo-Greek, xovpµäs (" date ") and Kovpµa8776, (" date-palm "), Albanian korme.4 The rail ßu5 writes the same word 114` hu-man, *gu8(gur)-man, answering to a Middle-Persian form *gurman or *kurmau. The New-Persian word is rendered SiZg k`u-lu(ru)-ma in the Pen ts'ao kan mu; 6 this is the style of the Yüan transcriptions,?
1 This name was bestowed upon the tree, not, as erroneously asserted by`HIRTH (Chau Ju-kua, p. 21o), "evidently on account of the stony hardness of the dates on reaching China," but, as stated in the Pen ts'ao lean mu (Ch. 31, p. 8), owing to the long-enduring character of the tree it IN st x 4. The same explanation holds good for the synonyme wan sui tsao (" jujube of ten thousand or numerous years "). Indeed, this palm lives to a great age, and trees of from one to two hundred years old continue to produce their annual crop.
2 Ch. 18, p. io.
3 The same term, Po-se tsao, appears in a passage of the Pei hu lu (Ch. 2, p. 9 b), where the trunk and leaves of the sago-palm (Sago rumphii) are compared with those of the date.
4 In Old Armenian of the fifth century we have the Iranian loan-word armav, and hence it is inferred that the x of Persian was subsequently prefixed (HüBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 265; Armen. Gram., p. III). The date of the Chinese transcriptions proves that the initial x existed in Pahlavi.
b Ch. 221 B, p. 13.
6 Ch. 31, p. 21. It is interesting to note that Li Si-6en endeavors to make out a distinction between k`u-man and k`u-lu-ma by saying that the former denotes the tree, the latter the fruit; but both, in his opinion, are closely allied foreign words.
7 The Tang transcription, of course, is not "probably a distorted transcription of khurma," as asserted by BRETSCHNEIDER (Chinese Recorder, 1871, p. 266), but, on the contrary, is very exact.
385
. __. .t.~.'~, ., . ~~ x ~1{y,y „-. •
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