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PERSIAN TEXTILES-BROCADES   489

twenty smaller ones, so that they could be accommodated on twenty camels, and were presented once in three years by the Arabs to the Kirgiz. The two nations had a treaty of mutual alliance, shared also by the Tibetans, and guaranteeing protection of their trade against the brigandage of the Uigur.' The term hu kin i J1 e ("brocades of the Hu," that is, Iranians) is used in the Kwan yü ki A ZZ2 with reference to Khotan.3 The Iranian word for these textiles, though not recognized

heretofore, is also recorded by the Chinese. This is   tie, anciently
*dziep, dziep, diep, dib,4 being the equivalent of a Middle-Persian form *dib or *dep,5 corresponding to the New-Persian word dibei ("silk brocade," a colored stuff in which warp and woof are both made of silk), dibâh (" gold tissue "), Arabicised dibâd ("vest of brocade, cloth of gold ") . The fabric as well as the name come from Sasanian Persia, and were known to the Arabs at Mohammed's time.' The Chinese term occurs as a textile product of Persia in the Sui gu (Ch. 83, p. 7b) . At a much earlier date it is cited in the Han Annals (Hou Han u, Ch. 116, p. 8) as a product of the country of the Ai-lao in Yün-nan. This is not surprising in view of the fact that at that period Yün-nan, by way of India, was in communication with Ta Ts'in: in A.D. 120 Yun Yu Tiao

Af   , King of the country T'an 441, presented to the Chinese em-
peror musicians and jugglers, who stated that "they had come from

the Mediterranean   i, which is the same as Ta Ts`in, and that
south-west from the Kingdom of T'an there is communication with Ta Ts`in." The commentator of the Han Annals refers to the Wai kwo

Evan   as saying that the women of Cu-po   (Java) make
white tie and ornamented cloth 4E4 V. The character rat, po (" silk") , preceding the term tie in the Han Annals, represents a separate item, and

1 T'an su, Ch. 217 B, p. 18; T'ai p`in hwan yü ki, Ch. 199, p. 14. Cf. DEVÉRIA, in Centenaire de l'Ecole des Langues Orientales, p. 308.

2 Ch. 24, p. 7 b. Regarding the various editions of this work, see p. 251. Likewise in the Sung Annals with reference to a tribute sent from Khotan in 961 (CHAVANNES and PELLIOT, Traité manichéen, p. 274). Regarding Persian brocades mentioned by mediœval writers, see FRANCISQUE-MICHEL, Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication et l'usage des étoffes de soie d'or et d'argent, Vol. I, pp. 315-317, Vol. II, pp. 57-58 (Paris, 1852, 1854).

4 According to the Yi ts`ie kin yin i (Ch. 19, p. 9 b), the pronunciation of the character tie was anciently identical with that of kit (see No. 7o), and has the fan ts`ie VÊ 0; that is, t`iap, *diab, d'ab. The ran su Si yin (Ch. 23, p. i b) indicates the same fan ts'ie by means of It TA. The phonetic element al serves for the transcription of Sanskrit dvipa (PELLIOT, Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. IV, p. 357).

5 A Pahlavi form depdk is indicated by `VEST (Pahlavi Texts, Vol. I, p. 286) ; hence Armenian dipak.

6 C. H. BECKER, Encyclopædia of Islam, Vol. I, p. 967.

Cf. Journal asiatique, 1918, II, p. 24.