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 WATER-MELON 441
with a juice which is very cold. Hun Hao, when he went out as envoy, brought the fruit back to China. At present it is found both in the imperial orchards and in village gardens. It can be kept for several months, aside from the fact that there is nothing to prevent it from assuming a yellow hue in course of time. In P `o-yan J 1 there lived a man who for a long time was afflicted with a disease of the eyes. Dried pieces of water-melon were applied to them and caused him relief, for the reason that cold is a property of this fruit." Accordingly the water-melon was transplanted into China proper only in the latter part of the twelfth century. Also the i wu ki yuan ill W.,2 which says that in the beginning there were no water-melons in China, attributes their introduction to Hun Hao. The Kin or Jurèi, a nation of Tungusian origin, appear to have learned the cultivation from the Kitan. From a Jur6i-Chinese glossary we know also the Jurèi designation of the water-melon, which is xeko, corresponding to Manchu xengke, a general term for cucurbitaceous plants. In Golde, xinke (in other Tungusian dialects kemke, kenke) denotes the cucumber, and seho or sego the water-melon. The proper Manchu word for the watermelon is dungga or dunggan. The Tungusian tribes, accordingly, did not adopt the Persian-Turkish word karpuz (see below) from the Uigur, but applied to the water-melon an indigenous word, that originally denoted another cucurbitaceous species.
Following is the information given on the subject in the Pen ts`ao kan mu.
Wu 2ui u a physician from the province of Ce-kian in the
thirteenth century, author of the Li yun pen ts`ao U * , is cited
in this work as follows: "When the Kitan had destroyed the Uigur, they obtained this cultivation. They planted this melon by covering the seeds with cattle-manure. The formation of this fruit is like the peck tou' ; it is large and round like a gourd, and in color like green jade. The seeds have a color like gold, but some like black hemp. In the northern part of our country the fruit is plentiful." Li Si-ben observes, "According to the Hien lu ki by Hu Kiao (see p. 438), this cultivation was obtained after the subjugation of the Uigur. It is styled `western melon' (si kwa). Accordingly it is from the time of the Wu-tai (A.D. 907-960) that it was first introduced into China.3 At present it occurs both in the south and north of the country, though the southern
1 In the prefecture of Lao-cou, Kian-si.
2 The work of Kao C'en A A1/4 of the Sung dynasty.
8 The same opinion is expressed by Yan Sen (1488-1559) in his Tan k`ien tsun lu (above, p. 331).
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