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
408 SING-IRANICA
China. Bunge says that it is commonly cultivated in North China; but that recent botanists have not seen it in South China, and the one cultivated near Peking is Prunus davidiana, a variety of P. persica.' These data, however, are not in harmony with Chinese accounts which attribute the cultivation of the almond to China; and it hardly sounds plausible that the Chinese should confound with this tree the apricot, which has been a native of their country from time immemorial. WATTERS asserts that "the Chinese have mixed up the foreign almond with their native apricot. The name of the latter is hin A`, and the kernels of its fruit, when dried for food, are called hin-&'n -i C. This name is given also to the kernels of almonds as imported into China from their resemblance in appearance and to some extent in taste to the seeds of apricots." The fact that almond-meat is styled "apricot-kernel" does not prove that there is a confusion between hin and hin-sen, or between almond and apricot. The confusion may be on the part of foreigners who take apricot-kernels for almonds.2
It has been stated by BRETSCHNEIDER3 that the word pa-Zan 1E it (*pa-lam), used by the travellers Ye-lu C`u-ts`ai and C`an C`un, might transcribe the Persian word bdddm. This form first appears in the Sun
i (Ch. 490) in the account of Fu-lin, where the first element is written phonetically e,4 so that the conclusion is almost warranted that this word was transmitted from a language spoken in Fu-lin. In all probability, the question is of a Fu-lin word of the type pa/am or param (perhaps *faram, fram, or even *spram) .
The fruit pa-lan must have been known in China during the Sung,
for it is mentioned by Fan C`en-ta 1E (1126-93), in his Kwei hai
yü hen ßi,5 in the description of the .i li (Aleurites triloba), which
1 BRETSCHNEIDER, Early Researches into the Flora of China, p. 149; FORBES and HEMSLEY, Journal Linnean Soc., Vol. XXIII, p. 217. W. C. BLASDALE (Description of Some Chinese Vegetable Food Materials, p. 48, Washington, 1899) mentions a peculiar variety of the almond imported from China into San Francisco. The almond is cultivated in China according to K. V. SCHERZER (Berichte'Osterr. Exped. nach Siam, China and Japan, p. 96). L. DE REINACH (Le Laos, p. 280) states that almond-trees grow in the northern part of Laos.
2 F. N. MEYER (Agricultural Explorations in the Orchards of China, p. 53) supposes erroneously that the consumption of apricot-kernels has given rise to the statement that almonds grow in China. Cf. SCHLEGEL'S Nederlandsch-Chineesch Woordenboek, Vol. I, p. 226.
3 Medival Researches, Vol. I, p. 20.
4 Cf. HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, p. 63. His identification with Greek PaXavos, which refers only to the acorn, a wild fruit, is hardly satisfactory, for phonetic and historical reasons. For Hirth's translation of - by "almonds" in the same clause read "apricots."
5 Ed. of ei pu tsu tai ts'un .u, p. 24.
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