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0212 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 212 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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386   SING-IRANICA

and first occurs in the Co ken lu iglit $, published in 1366. The Persian word has also migrated into the modern Aryan languages of India, as well as into the Malayan group : Javanese kurma; Cam kuramô; Malayan, Dayak, and Sunda korma; Bugi and Makassar koromma; also into Khmer: romö, lomö, amö.

Following is the description of the tree given in the Yu yan tsa tsu: "It is thirty to forty feet in height,' and has a circumference of from

five to six feet. The leaves resemble those of the t`u t'en ±   (a kind
of rattan), and remain ever green. It blooms in the second month. The blossoms are shaped like those of the banana, and have a double bottom. They open gradually; and in the fissure are formed more than ten seed-cases, two inches long, yellow and white in color. When the kernel ripens, the seeds are black. In their appearance they resemble dried jujubes. They are good to eat and as sweet as candy."

Another foreign word for the date is handed down by C'en Ts`an-k`i in his Pen ts`ao . i i, in the form 1 tW wu-lou, *bu-nu. He identifies this term with the "Persian jujube," which he says grows in Persia, and has the appearance of a jujube. Li Si-èen annotates that the meaning of this word is not yet explained. Neither Bretschneider nor any one else has commented on this name. It is strikingly identical with the old Egyptian designation of the date, bunnu.2 It is known that the Arabs have an infinite number of terms for the varieties of the date and the fruit in its various stages of growth, and it may be that they likewise adopted the Egyptian word and transmitted it to China. The common Arabic names are nakhl and tamr (Hebrew temar, Syriac temar). On the other hand, the relation of wu-lou to the Egyptian word may be accidental, if we assume that wu-lou was originally the designation of Cycas revoluta (see below), and was only subsequently transferred to the date-palm.

The Lin piao lu i3 by Liu Sim contains the following interesting account.—

" In regard to the date (` Persian jujube'), this tree may be seen in the suburbs of Kwan-6ou (Canton) . The trunk of the tree is entirely without branches, is straight, and rises to a height of from thirty to forty feet. The crown of the tree spreads in all directions, and forms over ten branches. The leaves are like those of the `sea coir-palm'

1 It even grows to a height of sixty or eighty feet.

2 V. LORET, Flore pharaonique, p. 34. I concur with Loret in the opinion that the Egyptian word is the foundation of Greek c/o"ZvcE. The theory of HEHN (Kulturpflanzen, p. 273) and upheld by SCHRADER (ibid., Q. 284), that the latter might denote the Phoenician tree, does not seem to me correct.

3 Ch. B, P. 4 (see above, p. 268).