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0228 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 228 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000248
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402   SINO—IRANICA

kü."1 These are vague and puerile anecdotes, without chronological specification. There is no country Kwa, which is merely distilled from the character A, and no such tradition appears in any historical text.2 The term wo-kg was well known under the Tang, being mentioned in the Pen tstao ,i i of C`en Ts`an-kg, who distinguishes a white and a purple variety, but is silent as to the point of introduction.3 This author, however, as can be shown by numerous instances, had a keen sense of foreign plants and products, and never failed to indicate them as such. There is no evidence for the supposition that Lactuca . was introduced into China from abroad. All there is to it amounts to this, that, as shown by the above passage of the ran hui yao, possibly superior varieties of the West were introduced.

In Persia, Lactuca sativa (Persian kâhu) occurs both wild and cultivated.' Cichoreum is kasni in Persian, hindubâ in Arabic and Osmanli.'

39• The hu ktin, mentioned in the above text of the Tan hui yao, possibly represents the garden celery, A plum graveolens (Persian kerefs or karats) (or possibly parsley, ' A plum petioselinum) of the west.' It appears to be a different plant from the hu k`in mentioned above (p. 196).

Hu k`in is likewise mentioned among the best vegetables of the country 7 Mo-lu, *Mwat-luk, Mar-luk, in Arabia.?

In order to conclude the series of vegetables enumerated in the text of the ran hui yao, the following may be added here.

In A.D. 647 the king of Gandhara (in north-western India) sent to

the Chinese Court a vegetable styled fu-ttu   4 ("Buddha-land
vegetable"), each stem possessing five leaves, with red flowers, a yellow pith, and purple stamens.'

1 I have looked up the text of the Ts`in i lu, which is reprinted in the rail Sun ts`un Su and Si yin hüan ts'un Su. The passage in question is in Ch. 2, p. 7 b, and printed in the same manner as in the Pen ts`ao kan mu, save that the country is called

Kao   , not Kwa Rh. It is easy to see that these two characters could be con-
founded, and that only one of the two can be correct; but Kao does not help us any more than Kwa. Either name is fictitious as that of a country.

2 We have had several other examples of alleged names of countries being distilled out of botanical names.

3 K`ou Tsun-Si is likewise; see his Pen ts`ao yen i (Ch. 19, p. 2).

a SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 337.

b See ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 146; E. SEIDEL, Mechithar, p. 134; LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. II, p. 28.

s Cf. ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, pp. I IO, 257. Celery is cultivated only in a few gardens of Teheran, but it grows spontaneously and abundantly in the mountains of the Bakhtiaris (SCHLIMMER, Terminologie, p. 43).

7 T'ai p`in hwan yü ki, Ch. 186, p. 16 b.

8 rait hui yao, Ch. 200, p. 4 b; and T`an Su, Ch. 221 B, p. 7. The name of Gandhara is abbreviated into *d`ar, but in the corresponding passage of the T'ait hui yao (Ch. Ioo, p. 3b) and in the Ts`e fu yuan kwei (Ch. 970, p. 12) the name is written completely a st Kien-ta, *G'an-d'ar.