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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
NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF FU—LIN
48. The preceding notes on Fu-lin plants have signally confirmed Hirth's opinion in regard to the language of Fu-lin, which was Aramaic. There now remains but one Fu-lin plant-name to be identified. This is likewise contained in the Yu yan tsa tsu.I The text runs as follows:
"The ptan-nu-se 1A fa tree has its habitat in Po-se (Persia),
likewise in Fu-lin. In Fu-lin it is styled k`ün-han . The tree is
thirty feet high, and measures from three to four feet in circumference.
Its leaves resemble those of the si .6un (the Banyan tree, Ficus
retusa) . It is an evergreen. The flowers resemble those of the citrus, kü il, and are white in color. The seeds are green and as large as a sour jujube, swan tsao M 1 (Diospyros lotus). They are sweet of taste and glossy (fat, greasy). They are eatable. The people of the western regions press oil out of them, to oint their bodies with to ward off ulcers."
The transcription p`an-nu-se answers to ancient *bwan-du-sek; and k `ün-han, to ancient g'win-xan. Despite a long-continued and intensive search, I cannot discover any Iranian plant-name of the type bandusek or wandusek, nor any Aramaic word like ginxan. The botanical characteristics are too vague to allow of a safe identification. Nevertheless I hope that this puzzle also will be solved in the future.'
In the Fu-lin name a-li-k`ü fa we recognized an Indian loan-word in Aramaic (p. 423). It would be tempting to regard as such also the
Fu-lin word for "pepper" *a-li-xa-da f 1 âiJ I (a-li-ho-t`o), which
may be restored to *alixada, arixada, arxad; but no such word is known from Indian or in Aramaic. The common word for " pepper" in Aramaic is filfol (from Sanskrit pippala). In certain Kurd dialects J. DE MORGAN3 has traced a word alat for "pepper," but I am not certain that this is
1 Ch. 18, p. io b.
2 My colleague, Professor M. Sprengling at the University of Chicago, kindly sent me the following information: "Olive-oil was used to ward off ulcers (see WINER, Bibl. Realwôrtb., Vol. II, p. 17o; and KRAUSS, Archaeologie des Talmud, Vol. I, pp. 229, 233, 683). Neither in Krauss nor elsewhere was I able to find the name of an oil-producing tree even remotely resembling ginxan. There is a root qnx (`to wipe, to rub, to anoint'). It is theoretically possible that q is pronounced voiced and thus becomes a guttural g, and that from this root, by means of the suffix -an, may be derived a noun *ginxan, *ginxan to which almost any significance derived from `rubbing, anointing' might be attached. But for the existence of such a noun or adjective I have not the slightest evidence."
' Mission scientifique en Perse, Vol. V, p. 132.
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