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
| fly | 4 | A7. |
THE MALAYAN PO-SE--SEMECARPIIS, PSORALEA 483
say expressly that it dyes hair and mustache black.' It gives to cotton fabrics a black color, which is said to be insoluble in water, but soluble in alcohol. The juice of the pericarp is mixed with lime water as a mordant before it is used to mark cloth. In some parts of Bengal the fruits are regularly used as a dye for cotton cloths.2 The fleshy cups on which the fruit rests, roasted in ashes, and the kernels of the nuts, are eaten as food. They are supposed to stimulate the mental powers, especially the memory. The acrid juice of the pericarp is a powerful vesicant, and the fruit is employed medicinally.
In regard to the Persian-Arabic balddur, Ibn al-Baitâr states expressly that this is an Indian word,' and there is no doubt that it is derived from Sanskrit bhalldtaka. The term is also given by Abu Mansur, who discusses the application of the remedy.4 The main point in this connection is that p `o-lo-te is a typical Indian plant, and that the Po-se of the above Chinese text cannot refer to Persia. Since the tree occurs in the Malayan area, however, it is reasonable to conclude that again the Malayan Po-se is intended. The case is analogous to the preceding one, and the Malayan Po-se were the mediators. At any rate, the transmission to China of an Indian product with a Sanskrit name by way of the Malayan Po-se is far more probable than by way of Persia.
I am also led to the general conclusion that almost all Po-se products mentioned in the Hai yao pen ts'ao of Li Sün have reference to the Malayan Po-se exclusively.
67. A drug, by the name pu-ku-ci (*bu-kut-tsi), identified
with Psoralea corylifolia, is first distinctly mentioned by Ma Ci 4 ,
collaborator in the K'ai pao pen ts'ao (A.D. 968-976) of the Sung period, as growing in all districts of Lin-nan (Kwan-tun) and Kwan-si, and in the country Po-se. According to Ta Min flit author of the Zi hwa
cu kia pen ts'ao H V-, published about A.D. 97o, the drug
would have been mentioned in the work Nan cou ki by Sü Piao
(prior to the fifth century),5 who determined it as MI P hu kiu-tse,
the "Allium odorum of the Hu." This, however, is plainly an anachronism, as neither the plant, nor the drug yielded by it, is mentioned by any Tang writers, and for the first time looms up in the pharmacopoeia of the Sung. Su Sun, in his Tu kin pen ts'ao, observes that the plant now occurs abundantly on the mountain-slopes of southern China,
1 eat lei pen tfao, Ch. 5, p. 14 b.
2 Cf. WATT, Dictionary, Vol. VI, pt. 2, p. 498.
3 LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. I, pp. 162, 265.
4 ACHUNDOW, Abu Mansur, p. 30.
5 See above, p. 247.
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